ArcaMax

If you've been a reporter long enough, you learn that when people say you're a "member of the Fourth Estate," they mean to insult you and to let you know they read a book once.

The only exception is lawyers, who use the term the same way they use Latin, as a way to remind you that they've read a lot of books.

And in America, we can afford a ...Read more

Send in the Marines! Damn! That sounds tough.

Say it. Just say it. Yell it into the silence of your living room.

"Send in the Marines!"

When you yell that, you automatically make a fist.

From the halls of Orange County. To the shores of Redondo Beach.

America hasn't really won a war overseas since 1945, so I guess we figured we could win ...Read more

Old guys like me always believe the world is getting worse.

You're young and strong and you're hell in a fistfight, and you figure if you lose your white-collar job, you can just go tend bar somewhere until you get another job.

Yeah. That's beautiful, but it doesn't last. If you're not careful, in your later years, you start being nostalgic ...Read more

The penny, which costs more to make than it's worth, will be going away. That's a shocking reversal of government policy. Usually, the government doesn't stop producing anything that's overpriced or just plain worthless.

I'm just about old enough to remember little pieces of candy that sold for a penny at a little wooden-floored store near my...Read more

There are two things some of us know about taxes.

The first is that taxes are unfair because, "Hey! I earned that money."

The second is that if we didn't pay ANY taxes, then every government service would be free because if you don't pay for something, then it's free, right?

This is the kind of math that keeps the lottery in business. The ...Read more

When I was much younger than I am right now, I got a new job.

I'd been out of work for a while before I got the job, but I had some freelance work and some money in the bank, and I lived cheap.

A small number of people worked there, and it was at least a little cozy, and I was new in town.

And I wasn't there too long before it was almost ...Read more

I saw a priest in the coffee shop Wednesday morning.

He was wearing a cassock, the long black robe with buttons down the front that Catholic priests wore everywhere until Vatican II.

The cassock might mean he's what they call a "trad Catholic," which is short for "traditional Catholic" and means you act the way every Catholic did in 1964, ...Read more

A word on generations. I'm from the "his mom found his pot" generation, which, speaking in substances, comes after the "Spanish fly makes girls crazy" generation and the "cocaine isn't really addictive, like heroin is" generation.

In other words, I graduated from high school in a proudly all-white, working-class Midwestern suburb in 1975.

...Read more

When news stories about bedbugs started showing up a few years back, I wrote that bedbugs were out of my father's world, the 1920s world of immigrant tenement dwellers.

My father told hilariously about his mother's battles with bedbugs.

"After she boiled all the sheets, she'd paint the bed slats with kerosene, and she'd put all four legs of ...Read more

I knew a guy once, clerical type guy, had a stroke, couldn't work anymore. He was a few years shy of retirement age, so he needed to get himself on disability and the health insurance the state provides for people in his situation.

He lived alone, had worked since he was old enough to work and was able to walk unsteadily and live alone after ...Read more

I have never owned an autographed baseball or a basketball jersey with some guy's name on the back. I have hundreds of books, but none of them are signed.

I'm not a fanboy. I like boxing, but when I met Muhammad Ali in a hotel lobby, I didn't ask for his autograph.

For about 50 years, I've loved the writing of Jack Kerouac.

Who is Jack ...Read more

"Last words" used to be a popular concept. The idea was that, at the moment of your death, you were supposed to say something meaningful. They said the last words of Napoleon were, "France. The army. Head of the army. Josephine."

Josephine was Napoleon's first wife, so his last words show him either digging down to what he really loved or ...Read more

Two days ago, I went out to get trash bags because I needed trash bags, a prescription because I needed a prescription and cookies because I like cookies.

The kind young woman behind the drugstore counter handed me my prescription in a little white bag, stapled shut.

"Do you want a receipt?" she asked.

I go to one of those drugstores where ...Read more