When the tourists were done admiring the stalagmites and stalactites, the crude pictographs and the controversial “autograph of blood,” Jefferson Jiminez herded them back into the elevator for the 1:32 ride back to the earth’s surface, where sunlight, fresh air, and, not inconsequentially, the gift shop, awaited. The proprietors of the Painted Cave at Slippery...
Doug realized his crush on Moira Feldberg was a cliche, a subplot on a sitcom or a set-up for a letter to Penthouse. But he didn’t care. He thought Moira the librarian was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen. She wasn’t obviously beautiful, or even attractive, really. In fact, most men of Doug Bishop’s age,...
“If you’ll watch your hands and feet, we’ll start the descent!” This was a good group, Jefferson guessed. Interested enough to pay attention but just impatient enough to get to the gift shop so that they wouldn’t linger after the tour and ask questions he was unprepared to answer. Possibly a few tips to be...
When Leonard Wizenberg awoke from his dreamless slumber, 34 hours after the scopolamine cocktail he had unwittingly ingested first splashed through his bloodstream, he thought it was the morning after his ill-advised mercy fuck, and he immediately began concocting ways to get that ugly bitch (he couldn’t remember Patricia’s name) with her crooked wig out...
That was the wonderful thing about being alive, he thought. Well, one of the wonderful things, anyway: You could always learn new things. Douglas Bishop liked that. He also liked coffee ice cream and hashish and reruns of “I Love Lucy,” but he mostly liked becoming a wiser soul with every new sunrise. Doug smiled...
Casinos depressed Douglas Bishop. Disinclined to mathematics, he didn’t understand any of the games, and the haze of cigarette smoke triggered his tendency toward hypochondria. If it were up to him, they never would have stopped in Tunica. He and Lenny would have driven straight through from Memphis to New Orleans, where Doug was keen...
Times were tough. The thing with the watches, the “Rolex Tribute Series,” hadn’t gone as well as they had hoped. Good cash flow but far too many phone calls from lawyer types droning on about “intellectual property.” Because of the greyhound thing, Lenny wasn’t allowed in Alabama anymore. (How laxatives ended up in the puppy...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
The French filmmaker and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, 76, has made his valedictory statement. The ravishing documentary Legacy, now streaming, is a visual and aural love letter to our planet, the creatures that inhabit it, and the ones (us) who are destroying it. Employing languid footage shot from a hot-air balloon, as he did in his...
