We’ll get to physical therapy in a minute, but first: this weekend I got a shiny new toy, a label-maker. It’s the second I’ve owned; the first was a birthday gift when I was eight or nine. It was red and black with an alphabet wheel and you’d squeeze its handle with every selection to […]

If you ever watched Reba, you can take it from here — and please don’t forget the “Hey-hey!” from the second-season funkification of its theme.* Moving along, I’m playing it safe today and writing this while fully awake, following a mishap last night in which I sleepily hit ‘publish’ on an unedited post with an

Do I sound like an asshole when I criticize my siblings’ handling of their marital (and quasi-marital) problems? My own marriage has enough issues to fill a newsstand, which one could argue is disqualifying, but I’m not sure if that pencils out when there’s no such thing as a perfect marriage. We know that because

During these last couple weeks of not feeling as mentally sluggish as usual, I had pretty bad dystonia. Today it was my brain that felt clenched instead of my hand, foot or jaw, and I wasn’t able to produce anything of consequence here or with the lighthouse. I don’t write much about oromandibular dystonia because

As Tom’s drama commenced yesterday, and again today when a marathon phone call from the (wo)man of the hour kept going and going, I was reminded of Deana Carter: “Did I reenable my notifications for this?” Having heard from the horse’s mouth the reasons for this breakup, I fully support it and hope they don’t

Did I unleash an ancient curse on my siblings when I wrote a post called “You Can Have It All” last December? The timelines absolve me of any responsibility but I feel implicated nevertheless.* It was only a couple months after first mentioning my sisters’ envy of my life, and mine of theirs, that Youngest

This has nothing to do with the 2005 film or Bunny Mellon, lest anyone be gripped by curiosity or fear. For nine days in a row I’ve felt like Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin at the end of All of Me, practically gliding on air.* I’m speaking figuratively, of course, and am mostly referring to

You couldn’t have asked for a worse first-round opponent for Rafael Nadal at this year’s Roland-Garros than Alexander Zverev, and Zverev’s recent Rome title has nothing to do with it: theirs is a mismatch of character, not styles of play. The odds favored Nadal losing early regardless of his opponent; with all his absences from

To paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, “I saw the best tennis players of my generation destroyed by aging, sweaty and hobbled in dirt-streaked kits.” It happened again today in Paris as Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka, two of the ATP’s last great geezers still standing (if only barely) in their late thirties, met in the first round

“That’s really her name?!” Crankenstein asked late this afternoon, having emerged from her nap to find me half-watching an episode of Reba while folding laundry. She was referring to Park Overall, a national treasure whose credits I’ve rehashed for her in the past. But it never sticks, and once every year or two Overall is