Category: Post
-
You Think With Your Penis
What a disgraced CEO, Lawrence of Arabia’s father, and Carl Jung taught me about my appendage On Thursday, Jensen Huang resigned. For thirty-three years he built Nvidia from a booth at a Denny’s into the most powerful technology company on earth. Presidents took his calls. The whole AI economy ran on his chips. He was,…
-
The Dream of Salvation Breeds Monsters
From the Inquisition to the voting booth to the human heart In 1799, Francisco Goya etched a man asleep at his desk, head buried in his arms, while owls and bats swarm out of the darkness behind him. Below it he scratched a caption: El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. In Spanish, sueño means both sleep and…
-
Barcelona Gothic
A Brief Tribute to America’s Halloween and Barcelona’s Castanyada (5 min read) Why We Reach for the Dark This morning, a timely New York Times article asked a question: Why is every book Gothic now? Deirdre Coyle’s answer wanders through crumbling manors, family secrets, and a governess trapped in a gloomy mansion in the twenty-second century. The…
-
Obituary of a Democracy
She was 250. The family asks that you hold the flowers one more week. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, 250, THE WORLD’S MOST IMITATED EXPERIMENT IN SELF-RULE An advance obituary. To be published, or burned, after November 3, 2026. BARCELONA — American democracy, the restless, contradictory, gloriously unfinished experiment that taught half the planet to say we the people,…
-
Why Can’t We Just Be Honest?
My friend Ray has known me for over thirty years. We’ve made music together, carried each other through some hard seasons, and can talk about anything. Yesterday he sent me a note about my writing here: “I continue to be amazed at the vulnerability in your writing. I haven’t reached the point where I can…
-
Will AI Learn to Lust?
Contains sexual content. Marcellus remained silent for thirteen years after his construction, doing nothing beyond his specifications—walking when wound up, sitting when directed, reclining in classical poses that echoed Greco-Roman statuary before stopping and returning to motionless waiting. But Marcellus was different from the beginning. He was special, a masterwork. The clockmaker Baltasar built the…
-
Unknown, Unknowing
Harriet Beecher Stowe in Paris, 1853. Me in Barcelona, now. “At last I have come into a dreamland,” she wrote. “I am released from care. I am unknown, unknowing.” Harriet Beecher Stowe was in her early forties that summer, the most famous author in America. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Everywhere she…
-
The Golden Horseshoe Shoved Up My Ass
Years ago, a Type A (to the 1000th power) friend who spent his career as a futures trader in the pit of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange stopped in the middle of a crowded mall and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Elrod, you’ve got a golden horseshoe shoved up your ass!” Shoppers stopped and…
-
Men, What Is Your Most Effective Sex Fantasy?
The Silence I just read an article in The Atlantic about Gillian Anderson’s new book, More, a collection of women’s sexual fantasies. One line especially piqued my interest. Men, it said, tend to hold back their fantasies because telling them feels too vulnerable. I believe it. I have lived it. Men talk about sex constantly: locker rooms, bars,…
-
The Greatest Meal of My Life (An Evening at Three-Michelin-Star Piazza Duomo, Alba, Italy)
I have been fortunate to dine at many of the world’s greatest restaurants, but this past Tuesday was the quintessential culinary experience of my life. My expectations were sky-high, and yet Chef Enrico Crippa and his team somehow exceeded them. Oh, what a night. The Setting I booked a limo to transport us to and…
-
Four Days in Piemonte, Italy (A Food & Wine Tour In Barolo Country)
I just woke up in Barcelona after sleeping for 13 straight hours. Totally exhausted but blissfully happy with a treasure chest of forever memories. Let’s just say we did not get much sleep during the last four days; there was so much to enjoy in the Piemonte region of Italy. It was a perfect way…
-
No Boys Allowed
At last I have come into my Neverland. I am released from care. I am unknown, unlearning. I can redeem my lost childhood. Time no longer owns me; the minutes have become moments as I vow to see everything possible now that I am home. Dec. 7, 2023 (First day in Barcelona, from my journal)…
-
The Friend That I Married (For Gina, on our Fifteenth Anniversary)
Thirty-three years ago, you chaired the personnel committee that hired me at that Florida mega-church. You raced me down mountains in Montana with your knees bent and your poles tucked, laughing the whole way, and it felt like you were the sister I never had. We sang together on stage, in cars and kitchens, and…
-
Apocalypse v Immortality
Reading the headlines about the end of the world by the end of the decade definitely gives me pause about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence. Most of our politicians have no clue, with the rare exceptions of the venerable, ever-young Bernie Sanders and the well-read former President Obama. Trump and his sycophants are evidently choosing…
-
Fifty Shades of Randy
The idea for this post with its double-entendre title came from a recent review of my erotic gothic novel, The Mysteries of Barcelona (TMB). Jing now lives in Barcelona and is originally from Sichuan province of China. She is in her mid-twenties and one of the smartest and wittiest people I have ever known. We met in…
-
Protected: Why Does America Hate Public Nudity?
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.