I hadn’t seen Jake and Wendy since our engagement party at the Gooney Bird. This is over a year ago now. A lot has happened since then. A honeymoon, a job change, a new house (our first non-apartment dwelling), another job change. Stuff happens quickly as you get older. That day is still clear in […]
Hagen Engler’s upcoming novel, ‘In The Maid’s Room’, is going to do two things for readers: make people laugh until their stomachs ache, and talk about race in a way that needs to happen. I’ll come back to this in a moment. For anyone outside South Africa, Hagen became the voice of a generation in about 1997, when […]
Most days, I don’t feel like an obvious foreigner in this country. Especially not in Portland. There’s no much about me that stands out here. I’m a thirty something white dude with a beard, glasses, and at least one dietary requirement. Aside from my accent, I’m pretty much a carbon copy of every other cisgender […]
1. The Abierto Agua is a “Five Star Luxury Hotel, of Spanish heritage,” according to Raphael Mulanovitch, its managing director. He told me this during my interview in his office, a smirk on his face and a glass of cognac in his hand. This is no lie. The hotel has everything you’d expect from a […]
Living in Portland has forced me to reevaluate how I measure the distance of things. For example, I drive from Oregon to Washington 5 days a week, where I work in a different state with different tax codes, regulations and laws. It’s only 22 kilometers, but the distance is significant. At the same time, surfing […]
The auditorium is dark, heavily air-conditioned, and emptier than I expected. Something around here stinks. It’s a mixture of fried pork and burnt hair, maybe. I can’t be sure. People shuffle in their seats, check social media, check emails, check social media again. Repeat. Two runners approach the stage carrying chairs, one for Shark Tank’s […]
Clayton Truscott’s episodic collection of stories, Ocean Beach, embraces the uncomfortable relationship between human nature and responsibility. Set against the lively backdrop of San Diego’s OB, each character tries to manage their fate in a world where half-truths and personal mythology are the only connection to hope. “An adulterer, a sexy taxidermist, a college graduate, […]
Should Las Vegas Exist? Day: Sunday Time: 10:37 a.m. “Las Vegas shouldn’t exist.” Jordache said this to Sam and I, speaking over the hooting and whistling of other passengers as our plane made its final descent towards at McCarran International Airport. We cut through a layer of heavy clouds, and the Spring and Sheep Mountain […]
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” (Ingsoc) In an era where information is freely available in developed countries, watching the news sometimes feels like Hate Week in Oceania. There is a war or a hostile situation to fret about for every day of the week. Western freedom […]
It’d be glorious and terrifying to read what Charles Bukowski would write about life today. I can only imagine the disgust and wry, straight-faced disdain. They sure don’t make ’em like they used to…