Montaigne

Recent

Trick Shot

Sometimes successful films — ones that aren’t expected to be, by many excellent people — spawn copycats, a fact as well-known as well-attested. The followers aren’t as awesome as the originals but they’re not always so awful, and the makers, if they care a little, will throw some new stuff in, or at least get people

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No Prizes for Subtlety

It was the sort of place you wouldn’t be found dead in; the guy on the floor didn’t agree. Didn’t seem to like the floor — but it was in better shape than his face. Then someone had gone duck hunting on his chest. And either another guy was standing in front of me, or

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Can We Tawk?

Comedienne Joan Rivers’ catchphrase was, ‘Can we talk?’ with all that that entails — its rhetorical nature, the Jewish thing, an implication that at least one of the parties will be better off for having done so … Like God. T’other day a priest spoke of ontological remembrance, the immediate and ongoing memory of past-present-future

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Hide and See

Something lost, Dallas Willard said once, might yet be very valuable. One’s car keys for instance. He was speaking somewhat in the context of salvation, if I recall … the general point was calling something lost doesn’t mean it’s not wanted — quite the opposite. Yet it remains … until finding its way out or being found

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Random

Get Out Of The Boat

For Jonah, dissent was a felix culpa, a happy fault that brought him closer to God. Or like Dante, when doubting pleased him no less than knowing (Inferno, Canto 11), for what he could learn and gain. Our error brings us closer to Him. And He knew it would do so. Then we know he

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Size 46 Walmart

There was a time when my weight goal was to fit into size 46/30 khakis from Walmart, and that time was last Thursday, when I bought them. I weigh some 334 pounds. I am 42 years old, heading to 43. I am officially diabetic, per my doctor’s adjudication of some recent unfortunate blood tests.* The

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What Men Want

In an office of the U.S. Postal Service this morning, a morning show deejay played clips from last night’s Leno and … I forget now, but prolly was a guy after Leno, on the same network. Come to think it, maybe they own the station, and the whole shtick — supposedly hey you might have

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Tesla Girl

Someone the other day called Elon Musk both an “inventor” and “a badass” but he is neither. Let me say flat-out, upfront, and clearly it’s good that Musk — entrepreneur behind the Tesla carmaker, companies involved in solar power and space exploration, and who was previously part of PayPal — is alive. We need people like him

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