When my son turned three it was like a wild west rodeo buzzer went off. One minute I was staining the front deck and my child was kind and lovely and full of blond curls and questions like “what’s daddy’s doing?” and overnight I was the father of the angriest child in the world. It was […]
Category Archives: Writing
October
04
How to Win a Civil War: Advice for the President of the United States of America
posted by Adam Nathan
September
21
Why the Airlines Are Not in Trouble
posted by Adam Nathan
Thanks to everyone for your help on the exit row dilemma, especially the comment this morning that said I’d only be “panicky” and “I’m unlikely to be of much use” from this fellow who has looked in depth at the challenge of sharing middle seat armrests on international flights. Best advice was to “get out of Dodge” and “I’ll […]
September
19
Read Me, Daniel
posted by Adam Nathan
From the moment I finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs I’ve wanted my son, Daniel, to read it. For one thing my son is a gifted engineer in the making. He has fashioned a whole manner of weird and wonderful things: weed whacker engines turned into RC plane motors, a firefighting robot that he […]
September
02
Top 10 Reasons To Use 1942 Farkas Vintage Eye Black Grease (Amazon Product Review)
posted by Adam Nathan
Amazon Product Review: “1942 Farkas Vintage Eye Black Grease“ In no way do I intend any SO-CALLED DISRESPECT, but the previous reviewer has never played football BY HER OWN ADMISSION and has no idea what she is talking about. Basically I COULD wash this product out from my jersey and it did not take FIVE […]
August
24
The Droid They’re Looking For
posted by Adam Nathan
* I remember Patient Zero. My company was subbing a contract for a larger consulting firm and the project minder who kept tabs on my team had an early Blackberry. He didn’t sit down a lot when he came in. He’d stand there with his Blackberry, his coat still on, his neck hunched over, his […]
Allstate Ad / “Good Life Anthem”
posted by Adam Nathan
* Deep down we know that all the bad things that happen in life can’t stop us from making our lives… good. * A few weeks ago on Mad Men, Don Draper spent a long amphetamine weekend at the office with his entire staff trying to come up with something original for their new Chevrolet […]
June
02
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #46 Bennie and the Jets, Elton John
posted by Adam Nathan
Warm June applause explodes and sparkles on the brick cobblestone. We are drenched to the bone in liquid helium, but we have not yet floated out of the Columbia University in the City of New York Stadium. * She’s got electric boobs, a Mohawk suit, You know I read it in a magazine… Tony […]
May
04
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #47 – Love Is in the Air, John Paul Young
posted by Adam Nathan
We were identified to the group as guys that wanted to be cool long after high school was over or something to that effect. The trainer told us we were to find, borrow, or purchase pink ballerina tutus and white t-shirts before we came back the next morning.
Mad Men Predictions through New Year’s 1970
posted by Adam Nathan
Melanie and I spent date night on Saturday having sushi and plotting out the major developments of Mad Men between now and the end of the show – which we believe runs through next season. We were watching “Sunday’s” episode last night and she scolded me for not posting them earlier because – we believe […]
March
16
Robert Frost
posted by Adam Nathan
Because if we have a God at all then I’m quite certain He is a subtle, almost poetic God, a cool, Vermont, Robert Frost of a God, looking up from His desk and watching the wind and snow through His hoary farmhouse window. I see Him sipping His tea carefully and then setting it down […]
March
04
Elton John’s Maple Drive Oscar Party (3/3)
posted by Adam Nathan
The wait staff, of which I was a member, could tell you the exact ingredients in the dishes. They could explain with words and subtle hand movements how the parts and techniques comprised the sublime culinary whole – gesticulating “smoothing” and “sprinkling” and “gently folding” like auditioning hand models. They could tell you about the rich mineral […]
Elton John’s Maple Drive Oscar Party (2/3)
posted by Adam Nathan
Stage right of the piano there was an oyster bar with handsome young men dressed just as handsomely in white buttoned kitchen jackets. They filled mignonette ramekins, speared lemon wedges with cocktail forks and effortlessly cracked open Kumamotos, tucking them into clean white beds of ice. And all the while they would laugh good-naturedly at […]
January
31
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #48 –You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Bob Dylan
posted by Adam Nathan
It was (I thought at the time) a song of love in the summer, when future loss can barely be imagined except as a sparkling plaything for the happiness of now: goodbye as imagined in a world of dragon clouds and lazy rivers and French poetry by the riverside.
January
23
The Desert Angel
posted by Adam Nathan
I’m only a few late-night conversations from realizing everything I tell you is rubbish. I’m a year out from wishing I hadn’t written anything down. I’m up to wondering if I’m not a blind man who saw, but a blind man who had a dream of seeing.
December
15
Plane Crash
posted by Adam Nathan
I still remember that the captain communicated with the passengers fairly directly about their situation, and everybody in the plane knew that they were about to die, or probably about to die, but even so there were things to do. Everyone was still going to do this thing and that thing in a certain order. […]
