It was obvious from his profile photo that Octavius, the Lyft driver assigned to take me to the hospital for yesterday’s swallow study, was a flaming homosexual.* Still, I was unprepared for what greeted me as I opened the door to his SUV and he launched into a carefully choreographed routine. Todrick Hall’s “Queen” was […]

There will be no jocularity or linguistic sleight of hand this evening, just a shallow sigh of resignation (since I’m not currently as skilled at deep breaths) as we get this out of the way: the barium swallow study ended prematurely because — surprise, surprise — there was a problem. No, I didn’t choke in

I’m heeding Labelle’s advice and (mostly) taking the night off, though I’ll ignore their commandment to disrobe since the living room window is open and I don’t give it up for free — if you want to be traumatized by my nudity, you’ll have to date me or subscribe to my OnlyFans like anyone else.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: there was another PT scheduling snafu today that meant I only saw the speech-language pathologist. The first time, I was understanding. This morning… I was still understanding, despite my exasperation, because the SLP had just asked me to schedule four more appointments with her. Since I’ll be

There comes a moment in almost every Carlos Alcaraz match where I wonder if I’m Pam Ewing. It happened near the end of the fifth set today, when he robbed Sascha Zverev right in front of the Coupe des Mousquetaires. (As Andy Roddick tweeted, “This was CINEMA.”) He served for the match a few minutes

It was a day of surprises, beginning not on the red dirt of Paris but at the Whole Foods cash register, where for the first time in recent memory we managed to drop off an Amazon return without spending a small fortune on Jeni’s ice cream. The price made Crankenstein’s eye bulge, and she was

The most hotly anticipated match of this year’s French Open, the Carlos Alcaraz/Jannik Sinner semifinal, was even at one set apiece this morning when I set off for an IKEA date that couldn’t be broken. “I wish you were literate and had opposable thumbs,” I told Muriel before bidding her farewell. “Then you could text

“You have the dresser of a murderous transvestite,” a friend told me a couple years ago, and while I knew why he said ‘transvestite’ (we’d just discussed one), I was less clear on the ‘homicidal’ part; maybe it was a nod to our love of Brian De Palma and Angie Dickinson, or maybe it was

Though I have little time tonight for kvetching or clowning around, I’m checking in to remind you of the importance of lucky sock preparedness. By which I mean, if you own a pair of lucky socks — and of course I do — you also have a duty to make sure they’re always clean and

From the time I woke up this morning I had every intention of writing something light and airy tonight, a palate cleanser after yesterday’s speech therapy recap. And then this evening was disrupted by ‘Niles,’ who was triggered by a seemingly benign action of Muriel’s in a pattern so familiar by now that you can