ArcaMax

In the days when I used to drink in bars, there was always the consolation of my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. I enjoyed watching myself get better-looking as my tab got bigger.

Sadly, I'm not the saloon customer I used to be, and so I spend a lot more time in my living room, watching a cat sleep and waiting for my wife to get home...Read more

I am part of a small chain of three men, all of us riding out the pandemic, none of us particularly young. One of us is fully retired from the food service industry. I am retired from the newspaper business, but still do a radio show and write this column. The other still works full time in management at a plant that makes, of all things, ...Read more

While we watch, frozen in ice cubes of ideology, the trial of ex-police office Derek Chauvin proceeds. Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd until Floyd was dead. The prosecution wants to convince you it was murder. The defense wants you to believe Floyd dropped dead while being strangled. This theory gives a whole new meaning to the ...Read more

Ever see a movie called "Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs"?

I didn't think so. Made in 1943, it's never shown on television and was never released on video.

It's a wildly racist cartoon, a clumsy spoof on Snow White. There's a fat "mammy" in it. All the characters are Black, and their huge lips speak solely in the exaggerated "darky" dialect so...Read more

No one hates the idea of a $15 an hour minimum wage more than the person making $15 an hour now.

You don't like to think of yourself as being on the bottom, and the only way to be sure you're not is if you can see other people doing worse than you are. If you make $15 an hour, nothing makes you feel better than the $10-an-hour janitor who ...Read more

Back in the ancient times, when our ancestors smoked nonfilter cigarettes and were sometimes shot for trying to form a union, there was a group of people called "the deserving poor."

The deserving poor were poor, but they worked when they could, they were religious, they didn't drink, they produced children only inside of marriage, and they ...Read more

By now, Friday, March 5, 2021, the revolution will have reached its full flowering. Donald Trump was reinstated as the president of the United States, Pres. Joe Biden is languishing in federal prison, and Hillary Clinton is waiting her turn in the electric chair. Meanwhile, the hand of God has turned aside the Jewish space laser that was ready...Read more

Just about three minutes from the radio station where I do a talk show, there is a store that, until fairly recently, sold Trump-related supplies. The place sold hats, ties, banners, T-shirts, sweatshirts, flags and presumably thong underwear bearing the picture, slogans and word pieces of former Pres. Donald J. Trump. The store thrived for a ...Read more

We don't need Lent. Not this time.

At the very least, we don't need to "give something up," this year, 2021, during Lent.

Like a lot of other people, I come from a Christian background that includes the idea of giving something up for Lent.

Smoking. Drinking. Chocolate. Those are all popular choices for things to give up during Lent, a ...Read more

Larry Flynt, bootlegger, American military veteran and publisher of unabashedly pornographic magazine Hustler, is dead, leaving behind either a legacy of filth, or a legacy of upholding the First Amendment, depending on your point of view, religious sensibilities and, very often, gender.

Back in the pre-internet days, we got our pornography ...Read more

The columns you write in the bright glare of the newsroom are clever. They shine like the dimes you're earning. The columns you write at home, in an office where you can have pictures on the walls and an ashtray, those columns seem slow, and more thoughtful. They nudge the line from newspaper column to novel.

The columns you see written on the ...Read more

We've been out, my wife, Deborah, and I, in the car.

Election. Deflection. Insurrection. Misdirection. Vaccination.

The words come at us like a hot wind that withers everything growing.

I'm retired, but I still work a little. She still works full time, and we go about our business covered in masks and sanitizer, wounds scraped in our skin ...Read more

The girls and boys are out tonight in my town, walking back and forth in front of the old gray granite public library, locking glances with men in passing cars, looking for the jittery, hot-eyed one who slows down.

And it's not that I don't like the brag and bounce of "Hail to the Chief" played by a well-fed band. I do.

But the girls and the ...Read more