ArcaMax

I'm dying. I'm literally dying from laughter. LOL.

Up the hill from where I live, there is a fine building, a home for the elderly owned by the Catholic diocese. My mother died in that noble old brick building, on the Alzheimer's floor, where they put you while your family hopes you die.

Ma didn't know me for the last 18 months, but she'd ...Read more

I love the rich people who employ me. I do. Before that, I loved the other rich people who employed me. I want them swaddled with care, smothered with tax incentives, insulated against the cold breezes of the income tax. I am the dog, and they are the hand that comes mysteriously out of the air to put food in my bowl. Sometimes, they pet my head...Read more

There is a new species of hero abroad in the land!

And, no, I don't mean President Donald Trump, who now regards himself as a "war president."

And, no, I don't mean those guys who "almost joined the military." As the nation slides deeper into uniform worship, the "I almost joined" brigade has swollen to the size of an army. Apparently, even ...Read more

Do you want to know the truth?

It's coronavirus season, and it's election season, and my wife's disinfecting all the doorknobs in the house every night, and all the candidates for president stink.

Yeah. We're forted up in our house with a lush supply of canned food and bottled beer, and outside, the prospects of saving the nation are dimmer ...Read more

I probably won't die from the coronavirus, though saying that means I probably will. As the old-time Irish said, "What you call comes to you."

In the meantime, I'm washing my hands more often. My wife, Deborah, says I have to wash my hands more often.

"You hardly ever wash your hands," she said last week.

"I do talk radio for a living," I ...Read more

"You're blowing it now, son! You're blowing it!" The late fight trainer Angelo Dundee to Sugar Ray Leonard between rounds 12 and 13 of his fight with Thomas Hearns. Leonard picked up the pace, and he stopped Hearns in round 14.

A pack of Democratic title contenders are fighting each other, looking for the title shot. Donald Trump waits, ...Read more

In World War I, when the combatants hunkered down fearfully in miles of opposing trenches, everything took on the name of the trench.

There was trench foot, a disease, and a weapon called a trench knife.

And there was trench shaving.

Filthy, louse-ridden, frightened, uncomfortable under a heavy beard and without a razor, a man would hold a ...Read more

Even the greasiest, most hungover, least-skilled newspaper columnist loves to discover that his/her next column will run on a holiday.

With a subject resented in a beautifully wrapped box, the columnist sets to work.

The release date for this column is Valentine's Day.

As it happens, there is a tale of peril associated with this Valentine's ...Read more

"Same knife cut the sheep cut the goat"

--Cajun singer Horace Trahan, from the song of the same name.

You don't learn to cover government by covering the United States government. You learn to cover government sitting on a hard plastic chair, at night, on the second floor of a country town hall.

There, you will see, in miniature and only 10 ...Read more

Many people, including our whopping mistake of a president, characterize the investigation and the impeachment of Donald J. Trump as a "witch hunt."

They refer to history, or rather what they think is history.

Originally, a witch hunt was just what it sounds like.

Your infant daughter died and, even though most of your children died in ...Read more

There will be no war with Iran. Yet. This is because President Donald Trump sent troops to the threatened embassy. It wasn't at all like a similar situation when Hillary Clinton "murdered" several Americans in Benghazi. So, that is a tinseled Trumpian victory, suitable for inscribing on the soon-to-be-built Arc de Trump. As a bonus, "only" 11 ...Read more

I tried. I swear I tried.

Like any columnist, I combed the week's news, looking for that thing from which a newspaper column could be built.

Iran. Nukes. Impeachment. The British royal family. Drugs. Tariffs. Heartbreak and fear and the sense that standards are slipping everywhere.

Scared hell out of me, is what happened.

And then, it struck...Read more

Well, we done it. We kicked Iranian butt. We butt-kicked 'em. Their butts were kicked. We put a boot in their butts. Their butts, they were kicked. We opened up a can of butt-kick. We came to eat lollipops and kick butt, and we were out of lollipops. We took names and kicked butts. Butt kick. Kick butt. Works the same way backward and forward. ...Read more