Category

His spoon rises sparkingat my near peripheral. Dessert: dainty custard, vanilla, whip-creamed & coveredin cookie crumbles. He doesn’t see the flames as I do, attuned to the accidental. Each blaze passes bristly lips,snuffs. How does fire taste? I glance down at the centerpiece candle.It looks delicious, candied. At my side, the convex mirrorstreaks, a willow-o’-wisp. I’m a fool to believe in dragon kisses,though

The game proves to be a closely contested, nip-and-tuck affair, with the outcome on the line in the bottom of the ninth and assorted Rangers on the basepaths. The Twins’ reliever managed to find the third out, though, securing the visitors a 4-3 victory. Highlights were monstrous home runs by Twins’ batsmen Jonathan Schoop and Max Kepler, the former of which deposited into section H of the bleachers, where it bounced

Last February in New England. The snow, as predicted, falls all night. I wake with the alarm at 5 AM, don the warm and crappy clothes, and in the darkness I rev up the snowblower and proceed to clear the driveway. One hour later I am driving the Saturn Vue southward and westward. The morning snowfall is wispy and fog-like, and it collects in undulating patterns on the highway. Eventually I arrive in New Haven, Connec

Do you know about the cronuts? Let’s talk about the cronuts. I had learned of cronuts about 7 years ago, which means they arrived on the scene much earlier because I am notoriously slow on the uptake. A cronut is a combination of croissant and donut, invented (or at least, perfected) by a man named Dominique Ansel, and by all accounts, a real delicacy. For his Internet show, comedian Jerry Seinfeld drove his special

Agnes Moorehead, in her role of Endora, used to invade my dreams and nightmares. When I was ages 7 and 8, I was very impressionable, very serious, and very literal, which made Endora the most powerful and frightening character of all media, real and fictional. In the dreams she was not evil or malicious—she never turned me into a goat or a werewolf, or made me speak Italian, as she did to poor Darrin on the televisio

A For my overnight in Geneva, I felt a little funny booking myself into the Nash Airport Hotel, mostly because “Nash” is a name I associate with the United States and not Europe, and certainly not Switzerland. My sixth-grade teacher enjoyed reading aloud the works of Ogden Nash, the American poet and humorist. I have visited Nashville, Tennessee, which was named for Francis Nash, a hero of the Revolutionary War. Nash

Three women, covered head-to-toe in jet-black burkhas, are standing on line for Krispy Kreme donuts. I wonder if I am the only observer, here at a ritzy shopping mall in Abu Dhabi, who finds this sight to be noteworthy. The UAE (aka, the United Arab Emirates) has adopted some of the western worldview—corporate capitalism, overarching consumerism, a fast-paced lifestyle—but not its other, arguably less-use

The time is July, 1988, and Dwayne is admitted to the child psych ward. I am his medical student. The diagnosis (from memory today, more than 30 years later) was borderline autism accompanied by various social and behavioral issues. Physically he was short and slight, even for his age, which was around 8 years, and he wore glasses that highlighted a somewhat vacant/absent look, and he spoke with a serious lisp. His f

ALTHOUGH Mulligan’s, the miniature golf course in my neighborhood, is now closed for the season, I still get the tiniest of buzzes when I spy the simple fairways and the concrete moose en route to or from the freeway. Mind you, my desire to play miniature golf is right up there with my desire to eat excessively-sweetened breakfast cereal while watching cheaply-produced Saturday morning television. Nevertheless, the p