When I first went to the Moth to tell stories, back in 2017, one of the regulars there was a woman around my age who consistently told moving stories and told them well. She was naturally funny and got lots of laughs. The crowd and the judges loved h...

One of the Homeric tales in my family, retold at gatherings with my brothers, is called The Epiphany on the Big Dipper. Here is that tale… From the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, my family made an annual visit to Geauga Lake, an amusement park in Ohio....

The past two weeks have been as busy as possible without some tragedy befalling, but we were very near tragedy. We fell for a phishing scam. My friends, it’s not fun. My wife took the call and fell under the spell of the man on the phone. She believe...

I was in Brooklyn, New York the other day and walked my kid’s dog to the bodega to get a sandwich. If you’re not familiar, a bodega is a corner convenience store/delicatessen crammed into the smallest space imaginable. They offer one of everything in...

I’m writing you from Brooklyn, New York, where I’m visiting my kid. Things are strange here compared to the suburbs of Lansing, but the basics still work fine. Smile at someone’s dog as they walk by and you get a smile back, either from the dog or th...

A new book is making the rounds of popularity in the circles where I hang out (Twitter and Substack) as writer after writer proclaims the book’s awesomeness. It’s Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, and I’m never going to read it. It’s not that I think...

I try to plan my months, weeks, and days. Every morning, I pick out stuff to get done, and mostly I make progress, chipping away at my novels, humor, and essays. Then a tick walks across my face at three o’clock in the morning and my world quickly sh...

Last week, we saw a movie (Hey, Viktor!) at the local film festival and it’s a hoot. It’s about a child actor who has hit rock bottom in adulthood, acting in porn, alcoholic, and about to lose his family. It’s a dark comedy and the strong sense of hu...