The only time I'll try to write about sports
I love watching Juan Pierre play outfield for the Dodgers. He is a spindly and serious player. He dives and leaps with a dancer’s ease. Pierre wears his socks up over his pants (this is an old-school wardrobe throwback that has always endeared me to players). He isn’t a power-hitter. There are no flashy offensive moves in his game. But he’s an eager defense man. He lunges and slides along the slick grass of the stadium if he can’t run fast enough to get catch the ball. Or he’ll sprint furiously toward the back wall with his dangly arms outstretched and often times he’ll make the heroic catch. He’s been the nourishing antedote to Manny’s over-stuffed, turgid style.
Well, Manny’s back so Juan is on the bench, unsmiling but always clapping.
i'm just a sucker for philandering, self-contemptuous, retirees
Oh Graham Greene, Norman Mailer, John Updike why do I just adore your “wintery” horniness? Your joyless indulgence?
I guess I just want an erudite cop to wife me.
I'm guessing that for the young educated adults of the 60's and 70's, for whom the ultimate horror was the hypocritical conformity and repression of their own parents' generation, Mr. Updike's evocation of the libidinous self appeared redemptive and even heroic. But the young educated adults of the 90's-who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so beautifully-got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40's have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.
this is an interview with my dad where he talks about reporting and TMZ
There’s a cocaine joke in there.
combines my two favorite topics
I wrote my first column for The Awl today, called “Hiram S. Thomas, The Troublesome Colored Man of Fort Greene.” The following topics are discussed: real estate, Fort Greene, black people, white people, clergymen, Saratoga Springs, the 1890s, and potato chips.
They named the column “New York City (A look at recent history),” which I think is a very good name.
Troublesome Colored Men and Snacks!
'dems da rules
I won’t write for any outfit that could pay me but doesn’t.
I could never intern because I no longer believe in dues-paying to any sort of media institution.
I will live with my parents until I can support myself writing. I won’t do this “poverty” scene. Ever. It’s too demoralizing and makes for shitty copy.
I will stop feeling bad about eating waffles so often.
on the reporters' bench
I used my business card, that I paid to get printed, to get on the reporters’ bench today for closing statements of the Hollywood trial. I don’t generally sit with the “press” because it’s uncomfortable (it’s a literal bench in the back of the courtroom. The physical detachment spills over into the psychological) I sit in the audience, among family, friends, and on-lookers. I take notes and I pick at my cuticles til one bleeds because that’s what I do when I’m nervous.
Today I openly sobbed on the bench. I’m a loud crier. And so the two reporters who sat next to me could hear me whimpering and wiping my face. On the first break they both asked me what paper I was writing for. I explained that I’m writer and I grew up with Nick. And that I’m not a reporter, I’m a blogger, and I’m writing essays on the case. They we’re totally confused as to why I was allowed to sit on the press bench.
I thought I deserved to be there more than any one else.
