Probably my favorite and most oft-repeated personal anecdote is my half-hour ride to Folly Beach chauffeured by none other than that legendary folk hero and serial killing cut-up Donald “Pee Wee Gaskins,” nee Donald Parrot, AKA Junior Parrot.[1] In fact, the Kirkus review of my memoir Long Ago Last Summer highlights the Pee Wee incident: One of the standout … Continue reading Pee Wee’s Here, Pee Wee’s There, Pee Wee’s Everywhere, Pee Wee’s Dead, But Be Aware
At my age, with 2.7 billion heartbeats (and counting) above my belt and 26,598 days (and counting) marked off my calendar, I’m not surprised when I learn that one of my highschool classmates has departed for “that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.”[1] A couple of weeks ago, for example, news that my … Continue reading I Read the Obituaries Today, Oh Boy
poster designed by Gil Shuler Given that my novel Today, Oh Boy inspired David Boatwright’s and Paul Brown’s short film Summerville 1970, I won’t pretend that my critical assessment of their movie possesses the clear-eyed detachment that disinterest fosters. On the other hand, the number of authors who hated film adaptations of their work is legion. For example, Gore … Continue reading My Take on Summerville 1970, an Adaptation of My Novel Today, Oh Boy
When I taught high school English and attempted to explain to students how karma works, I employed the analogy of dropping a pebble into a still pond. If the pebble was positive, a pearl, let’s say, the expanding concentric circles spreading outward would promote positivity. There’s a Liberty Mutual commercial that effectively illustrates this phenomenon: … Continue reading Sowing Discord: The Death of Charlie Kirk
Arnold Böcklin, The Plague I hesitate to admit it, but searching for telltale signs of Donald Trump’s imminent demise, I squandered way too much time last weekend following threads on X as I obsessively pored over grainy telephoto shots and videos of that shambling wreck of a human being. Oh, yay, his mouth is drooping, … Continue reading Hurry Up, Grim Reaper, Do Your Blankety-Blank Job, Dammit!
In the first quarter of the 21st Century, there was an imperial president so exceedingly fond of adulation that he appointed his cabinet officials based, not on experience and competence, but on their television chops and their talent for groveling and abasing themselves. This president cared nothing about the welfare of US citizens who weren’t … Continue reading A Confederacy of Doofuses
Obviously, I’m a huge fan of the novel as a literary genre. Just the other day, I was explaining to someone at Chico Feo how literary novels can be treasure troves of vicarious experience because they feature lifelike characters who behave like real people. These novels aren’t didactic, but by co-experiencing Emma Bovary’s tragic vanity, you … Continue reading Emma Bovary Meets the Hardy Boys
Sleep Walking on High by Pauline Lim I left for college as a journalism major, but I quit before ever taking even one introductory journalism class. All of the journalism professors I met at the freshman orientation were chain-smokers who seemed to have a mild case of the heebie-jeebies. Also, you had to pass a typing test, … Continue reading The Unlikely Story of How I Became an English Teacher
Rene Magritte: Not to Be Reproduced I’ve resigned myself to the reality that I can’t always distinguish an AI-altered video from what might be an actual recording of people or animals or vehicles moving in real time in three dimensional space. Hence, I’m not confident of the validity of some of what I see online. … Continue reading Ersatz Everything
In 1983, before we had children, Judy Birdsong and I spent two months galivanting around Europe. We prebooked only three hotels – one in London, one in Paris, and one in Athens. In between these destinations, we idly roamed. We climbed white cliffs in Dover, spent a week in Arles as a base camp for excursions to … Continue reading Neo Nazi Swag
This year’s Spoleto Festival features a potentially budget-busting array of popular musical choices. To wit, Mavis Staples, Patti Smith, Jeff Tweedy, Lucinda Williams, MJ Lenderman, Band of Horses, and Yo La Tengo. For the sake of solvency, I’ve limited myself to two performances, Patti Smith and Lucinda Williams. First up was Patti Smith, who appeared … Continue reading Do the Mash Potato, Do the Alligator, Do the TS Eliot
Like the recurring characters in Cheers, I show up most afternoons at what the quaint call “a local watering hole.” Chico Feo, my bar of choice, is one part Cannery Row, one part Key West tourist mecca, one part – as far as the cooks and bartenders go – extended family. I enjoy watching people interact, hearing … Continue reading Deaf Heaven, Bootless Cries, Sha La La La La Live for Today
Vaudeville Meets William Faulkner Meets The Hallmark Channel On Friday, I had my first interview involving my new book Long Ago Last Summer. Lorne Chambers, who owns the Folly Current and has an MFA in writing from the College of Charleston, met me at Chico Feo where we chatted about creative writing in general and Long Ago in particular … Continue reading Vaudeville Meets William Faulkner Meets The Hallmark Channel
Little Baby Blues: 1953 Edition On 14 December 1952, a rare snowy day in Summerville, South Carolina, Dr. Howard Snyder, aided and abbeted by forceps, yanked me from my mother’s womb into a world of relative woe. The procedure flattened my head, which resulted in cephalohematoma, a condition in which blood pools under a newborn’s scalp. … Continue reading Little Baby Blues: 1953 Edition
Yesterday, Oh Boy When my friend David Boatwright, who produced the cover of Today, Oh Boy, approached me about adapting the poolroom chapter from the novel into a fifteen-minute film, I jumped at the chance. David whipped out a script, which I approved, then later made some significant changes. Near the end of the novel, which is … Continue reading Yesterday, Oh Boy
These Riffs I Have Shored Against My Ruin for David Connor Jones Outside that rococo room in the Waste Land where in sad light a carvéd dolphin swam the cock crew co co rico co co rico While beneath the laqueraria, you and I cut the rug – jug jug – u and i travel to the … Continue reading These Riffs I Have Shored Against My Ruin
Novels Vis-a-Vis Screenplays At the request of an actor who’s interested in pitching my novel Today, Oh Boy to producers he’s worked with, I’ve written an adaptation of the novel for the screen.[1] It’s not an official screenplay per se, but a roadmap for the actor to determine what scenes he will use to produce a short “teaser” reel … Continue reading Novels Vis-a-Vis Screenplays
Although spring offers rebirth, for example, dollar weeds resurrecting, azaleas ablaze, etc., it also has its downsides. Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold … Continue reading Nothing Orange Can Stay
Let me say right off that I’m an avid admirer of WC Fields, who, in fact, is the inspiration for Colonel Duckenfield, the amiable but drunken calculus teacher in my novel Today, Oh Boy.[1] Here he is in action: Colonel Dukenfield has charged his minions with two in-class problems using the squeeze principle, so he has … Continue reading “Go Away, Lindsey; You Bother Me.”
I subscribe to an internet entity called “Poem of the Day,” which provides me each a.m. with a dollop of verse to go along with a cup of whatever ground coffee is on sale at Harris Teeter on the previous Senior Citizen Discount Thursday. This morning’s poem, Copyright © 2025 by Jessica Abughattas, has a … Continue reading Failed Poems, Fake Art, and Commerce