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Baggage Claim

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I thought my dreams were weird. Over the weekend, I watched Dream Scenario , Nicolas Cage’s 2023 movie about an ordinary schlub whose life becomes a nightmare after strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. The hero, Paul Matthews, is a college professor who initially enjoys his strange celebrity and sees an opportunity to publish his long‑delayed book. But things go horribly wrong when people start dreaming that Paul is attacking — and even murdering — them. He quickly becomes a pariah to his neighbors, students, and even his family. It’s a strange and, at times, disturbing film, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Adaptation , Being John Malkovich , and Synecdoche, New York. The plot resembles a supposedly real event compiled on the website “Ever Dream This Man?”, created by Italian advertiser Andrea Natella. He claimed that more than 3,000 people had dreamed of the same man repeatedly for years, with the first case registered in Ne...
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Boarding Pass

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I wish I could remember that young man’s name. I was just thinking of this fellow I met at the end of my vacation to Denver and Nebraska last October. It was quite a trip. I had finally kept a promise to myself by going out to the Cornhusker State, and I got to meet up with my family in the Mile High City. Not bad, I thought, reaching around to give myself an imaginary pat on the back. And now it was time to go home, which meant getting on an airplane, of course, which, in turn, meant I was a nervous wreck. Things had gotten off to a rickety start when the airport’s automated train system got stuck in the tunnel as I was heading to the JetBlue terminal. Being a New Yorker, I immediately had a flashback to far too many subway shutdowns I’d experienced over the years. Now that I work from home, those incidents are much less frequent, but the anger remains in the wings just waiting to take center stage. So, the one time I come to Denver, the goddamn train system goes down, ...
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The Old Ball Game

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On June 21, 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren submitted his resignation to President Lyndon Johnson after 15 years as the nation’s highest‑ranking judicial officer. On the same day, the St. Lawrence Seaway was closed after operating and maintenance workers went on strike. Hugo Vihlen, an airline pilot from Florida, ended his 4,100‑mile solo trans‑Atlantic voyage 25 miles from shore on this day and came home aboard a fishing yacht to a hero's reception. He had been within 6 miles of Miami the night before, when his six‑foot sailboat, April Fool , was pushed back to sea by offshore winds and the currents of the Gulf Stream. The single‑handed sailor had started his 84‑day voyage from Casablanca, Morocco, on March 29 of that year. Mort Sahl was appearing nightly—except Mondays—at the Village Gate through June 30, and My Fair Lady , starring Fritz Weaver and Inga Swenson, was showing at N.Y. City Center. In the world of fashion, Satori’s in Mamaroneck, NY, was selling Nehru ...
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Eighth Wonder

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“Hey, do you remember Intercrime Island?” I ran the question by my brother Peter to see if he could recall a key element from 8th Man , one of our favorite cartoons when we were growing up. It was just another one of these strange memory flashes I have when something from my past pops into my head for no apparent reason and I can’t shake it out. Of course, I didn’t get an answer since Peter died nearly a year ago, but I was feeling pretty low and a bit isolated, so I addressed my question to an empty chair on the other side of my kitchen table. This is the first Easter without him, as the Curse of the First rolls along. I’ve written before about chair work, a method of processing trauma, grief or personal tensions where you speak to an empty chair and imagine it’s someone from your life who is no longer here. I’ve done this with my mother, and though I did a lot of sobbing, I found it to be quite helpful. Usually, I make my chair work practice a solemn occasion and do...
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Hat Crime

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I like to think of myself as a man of many hats, but as of right now, I’m wearing one less. The chapeau in question is my father’s cap, which commemorates the 104th Infrantry Division in World War II. I think he had ordered two of them many years ago and given one to me, but in any case, I like wearing it to honor his service. Every so often people will ask me about it, and I’ll tell them about my dad’s time with "the Timberwolves," which was the division’s nickname. Usually though, people don’t even notice. But that all changed recently when my sister and I flew out to San Francisco for our family reunion. It started at JFK as we boarded the plane and the gate agent scanned my ticket. “Thank you for your service.” I was so twisted about flying that at first, his words didn’t register with me. That’s an expression of gratitude reserved for military veterans, but I’ve never been in the service. Why would he say that to me? And then I realized he was referrin...
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Robot Wars

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My sister called that one right. I’m referring to a disagreement we had during our visit to San Francisco last week after we wrapped up our family reunion. Right wing media has working overtime to depict the Fog City as some kind of dystopian hellhole, but we saw very little evidence of that during our outings. It’s a big city with big city problems, okay? Give it a rest, dickwads. But one spooky thing that stood out to us was the overwhelming presence of Waymo robotaxis zipping up and down the streets seemingly every other second. Seriously, you’d get to an intersection and they’d buzz by--white driverless vehicles with LIDAR units mounted on the roof, often two or three at a time. I’m fascinated by the science behind these robots, but I am a bit creeped out by the lack of humanity. Still, I kept bugging my sister to take a ride in one of the things just to say we did it. However, she steadfastly refused, pointing to safety concerns and the human toll as people are l...
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Why I Otter…

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And so, the First Cousins Reunion is in the books. My sister and I are back home after a five-day get together with our father’s side of the family in Northern California. During that time, we got a tour of the Monterey Aquarium courtesy of my cousin Erin, explored San Francisco and Sausalito, met a ton of cool people (and a couple of twits) while reconnecting with the West Coast branch of our family. My cousin got us a bird’s eye view of the otter tank so we could watch the frisky little critters glide through the water with the greatest of ease. We hadn’t seen each other since my Uncle Joe’s memorial service Los Angeles, prompting my sister to suggest that we should get together for happier occasions. The fact was underscored in May when we lost our brother Peter. And, oh how I wish he could have been there with us. It still hurts to think I'll never see him again. We spent a couple of days at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove before heading over to our Cou...
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