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 […]
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
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.
December
13
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #49 – Happy Xmas (War Is Over), John Lennon
posted by Adam Nathan
I didn’t like his pasty skin or his circular wire glasses. His long, unkempt hair formed two crescents down both sides of his face, and I didn’t know why anyone would wear their hair to make it look ugly.
December
10
The Codex Calixtinus – Part II – Dan Brown
posted by Adam Nathan
When it couldn’t get any worse for the dean, newspapers begin reporting that the Codex Calixtinus wasn’t even insured.
December
06
The Codex Calixtinus – Part I – Dan Brown
posted by Adam Nathan
It was like someone had stolen the Bayeux tapestry. One medieval documents expert placed the auction value of the artifact in the range of $125 million dollars.
November
25
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #50 – Mannish Boy, Muddy Waters (The Last Waltz)
posted by Adam Nathan
And every time I play it… the same roosters skidding across the roofs of tin shacks, the same moss-gurgling pools of testosterone bubbling up in the bayou, the same thrashing moonshine alligators, the same women stumbling through the burning corn, tearing their cotton dresses and chasing Waters’ unstoppable, slow-moving, black locomotive.
adamnathan.com 