As a kid I was nothing but strikeouts at bat and errors in right field — couldn’t play the game at all, but I’ve always enjoyed watching baseball. … [read more]

our 103rd weekly open mike

Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever. … [read more]

Four out of today’s five flicks are foreign, but that’s just the alphabet — not many American movies fall between Ks and Kw.

Reading so many subtitles has made me restless, eager to see some good old American schlock, where the conversations are in English and inane, often interrupted by gunfire or explosions or dames in bikinis. … [read more]

Hey, I read a book. I do that a lot, but it’s usually one of the same dozen books over and over again. Books outside that dozen tend to bore me, and are never finished. … [read more]

‘We tried to levitate the Pentagon’: the almost unbelievable life of Ed Sanders, trickster god of the US counterculture

This snake cartwheels to escape danger

At a Seattle museum, young volunteers answer the call to preserve phone history

Woman who rescued injured crow keeps getting ‘thank-you gifts’ from birds

How botched executions were handled in centuries past

On the inside, looking outside, looking in: Joe Matt’s Peepshow

‘I didn’t expect to be portrayed as a cannibal’: Rachael Stirling on eating her mother Diana Rigg’s ashes

‘At war with the obvious’: the everyday genius of William Eggleston – in pictures

[1956] Loco baseball, by Eddie Lawrence

[July 2026] Los Angeles Dodgers visit the Trump White House

our 102nd weekly open mike

Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever. … [read more]

When LBJ’s right-hand man got arrested for bathroom cruising, the President could barely understand what that was. Then the story got even weirder. … [read more]

The Krone Experiment (2005)

On a regular, recurring basis, a small but frightful phenomenon pushes up from the bowels of the earth, bursting out at a different location every time. … [read more]

The silent war for the soul of software

I work very hard, and I would like to try cake.

Woman ‘posed as substitute teacher to insult students because she hates kids’

I’ve been thinking about 9/11

The Atlas of Trump’s America

His unmarked grave lay forgotten for 200 years. … [read more]