I'll keep this as brief as possible: 

There's an excellent chance that the technology you're using to read this contains components built on the blood of innocent people in the Congo. In today's  New York Times, Nicholas Kristof says the conflict is the most barbaric war he's ever seen (whi… Read full post »

On my other blog today, I answered a question from the lovely and talented rita shibr. The title of my post was (and still is): So It Was Cancer, Part 76: In Which A Reverse Cheever Is Dreamt. Rita wanted to know what I meant by "reverse Cheever."

I said that it was… Read full post »

In which I interview Frank Indiana about his soon-to-be-completed blog novel, So It Was Cancer: A Love Story. 

K: First things first: is this fiction? Or did all this stuff really happen?

F: It would be a lie to call it anything but semi-autobiographical fiction. It certainly is told from the… Read full post »

A TV commercial made her cry.

“It’s just so sad,” she said. Said I,

“It didn’t seem sad to me.” And she

said, “not the commercial—just that we

met far too late for a family,

and it makes me sad,” she said to me.

“It… Read full post »

This thing has gotten out of hand. Instead of all of us trying to do excellent work—I mean, any kind of excellent work, from beautiful love poetry to tributes about our mothers to blowing the lid off corporate greed to recipes for delicious cake to naked pictures of Sarah Palin—we all… Read full post »

I have a friend named C.K. She’s a groovy sort of gal.

(Sure, I know that that’s offensive, but, come on, be a pal.)

And so to help her celebrate the day that she was born

I searched the world over for a perfect ponicorn.

Ponicorns are special—if you haven’t,… Read full post »

So Poison frontman and reality TV star Bret Michaels, he of the ubiquitous bandana and dueling groupies, has had a massive brain hemorrhage. As of this writing, he's still in critical condition at an undisclosed hospital, but he's been "awake and chatty."

That's good--even thou… Read full post »

A week ago, a man was shot and killed, near the end of a workday, around the corner from my office. I mean, literally: around the corner. Turn right at St. Pat's. Walk a block. Can't miss it.

I wasn't here. But some of my friends and employees were. I've been thinking… Read full post »

I admit it: I'm a college sports curmudgeon. I hate the way we've turned our colleges and universities into farm systems for the NBA and the NFL. The money involved is obscene; in its annual ranking of most valuable college basketball programs, Forbes says the Tarheels of North C/… Read full post »

In so many ways, it's like any other television commercial you've worked on for the last thirty years. You dream up some spot ideas and pitch them to the client. (The client chooses the idea that wasn't your favorite.) You bid the job and hire the production company. (You don't have… Read full post »

 I watched you watching Jackson Browne,

heard you sighing like a cello

propping up his codeine voice while

plucking at my fingers like the

strings of his guitar;

and for a moment I imagined

you were seventeen, in bells and

madras plaid,… Read full post »

Super Bowl Sunday is also the National Day of Advertising Excess. For those of us who work in the biz, it's party time. (No, it's not like Mad Men anymore. But you can see Don Draper from here.) We get to sit in judgment on all the big clients and agencies who have… Read full post »

It's a familiar refrain on sports talk radio in Indianapolis: "The national media's been dissing us all year! Finally, we're gonna show them all!"

This is boring, but true. Keyshawn Johnson called the Colts "the worst 14-0 team ever." That's a ridiculous statement on its face. The… Read full post »

Every year, I make a mix CD of my favorite songs. And nobody plays the damn thing all the way through.

Okay, right. I know you’re the exception. Seriously, you are. Dude. It’s okay, really.

It’s just that, for some time now, it’s struck me how often I’m talking to… Read full post »

Here is a great story from a time that seems more innocent, more dangerous, and more fun. It's all about Dock Ellis, a fine pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates (mostly), who claims he threw a no-hitter under the influence of LSD.

Here are my questions to any and all who've dropped… Read full post »

 Blame George Harrison. This is all his fault.

In 1971, the Concert for Bangladesh was a happening unlike the world had ever seen. George organized the shows at the request of his friend Ravi Shankar to help provide relief to refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War--many of whom were… Read full post »

Here in Indianapolis, we're in the middle of our annual Spirit & Place Festival. It started fourteen years ago with a Public Conversation among Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Dan Wakefield, and more than 2,000 people who overflowed Butler University's Clowes Hall.

Coincidentally, some friends a… Read full post »

It's been a crazy week around Open Salon. John Blumenthal and Will Someone Feed The Cat? hosted a couple of crazy parties. (And, as if Friday's all-nighter weren't enough, an afterparty.) There were threats to quit, calls for ethnic solidarity, capitulations, recapitulat… Read full post »

This was inspired by a Robert Frank photograph for a reading at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, in conjunction with an exhibition of the original manuscript of On The Road.

I Used To Love The USA

I used to love the USA—

land of the brave, home of… Read full post »

"I think we need to get Jay Bennett to play a show here," said my friend Duncan on Tuesday afternoon.

His idea was an odd one, but not a bad one. Jay Bennett, the supremely talented multi-instrumentalist and producer, had been gone from Wilco for about a year. Meanwhile, Wilco had… Read full post »

Somehow, Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times and Heather Havrilesky's column today's Salon resonated with me in weird harmony. Rich's column was about Richard Heene, to be known henceforth and forevermore as "the Balloon Boy's terrible dad," and the gullible, culpab… Read full post »

Welcome to Punchout: an occasional feature in which four popular music junkies with too much time on their hands--mookie Need, Ken Honeywell, Scott Woolgar, and Matt Mays--debate the relative merits of a recent release. First up: The Avett Brothers' I and Love and You. Can the Brothers take a punch?&… Read full post »

Maybe it's because I'm still kind of new here, but it seems to me that everyone on OS is writing a blog. It probably has something to do with the success of Julie and Julie that everyone is now thinking to him- or herself, gosh, maybe I, too, have what it… Read full post »