An ode to six-on-six
The wonderfully idiosyncratic sporting variant achieved extraordinary popularity in rural Iowa
Life
Thursday
How to host the perfect Christmas party
Things going wrong are an opportunity for the magic to happen
Monday
Cacophony at the dinner table
The NIH operates a website called Noisy Planet. There you will learn that experts advise you to ‘move away from the noise’
The joy of politics
Does the Old Republican Establishment really believe that it can resurrect, reassemble, recreate itself and run — and win — again?
Friday
The time I danced with Lyndon B. Johnson
At the time President Kennedy was still in office for a few short months with the terrible ending to his story as yet unknown
Thursday
My parental lobotomy
In my experience anterograde amnesia is just as essential to the creation of new life as wine
The thrill of being recognized
There are writers and journalists who get public recognition all the time. Alas, I’m not one
The return of CRT TVs
For enthusiasts of retro video games and other esoteric media hobbies, what others see as trash is their treasure
Monday
A new approach to swimming lessons
You do not need the US Coast Guard or CCP manufacturers, hot tub trade groups or international standards agencies to avoid tragedy
Back to 1984 with Robert Dean Lurie
‘My forty-five-year-old self is inhabiting my nine-year-old body’
Why I never enjoy going on holiday
I meant to experience Beauty. Wonder. Awe and all that jouissance jazz. Instead I’m thinking: help!
Overnight in New Mexico
‘I think we can look forward to an encounter tonight, after all’
A brief history of parties
The political implications of soirées
My World Series of Poker debut
In the beginning, it looked great for your hero
Thursday
Waste not want not
Any child can transition out of diapers in a weekend so long as Dad commits to the Lethal Weapon 2 method of potty training
How one bad scene can ruin an otherwise great movie
When I go on an early 1970s jag — revisiting the golden age of American cinema — I can never bring myself to rewatch Five Easy Pieces
The era of ideological, overreaching and omnipresent government
The faults and weaknesses of civilizations, like those of individuals, become more pronounced as they age
Monday
The tantric sex retreat that wasn’t
I could treat the whole thing with bemused Tom Wolfe snarkiness — or keep an open mind and get with the program
The awesome Alan Pell Crawford
The writer has made a literary reputation on his fluid narratives of late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Southern history
Plane stupidity: my waking flight-mare
My iPhone spent almost a week last October trapped inside the belly of a Boeing 767