Yelp only allows something like 5,000 characters per review, so I had to considerably trim down this one-star review of the new business that effectively displaced us from our home of two years. This is the full version, but you can read the mercifully shorter version of my review of Cafe Delano in Hillcrest on…
The last time Artie had been to Spain, there was a lot of explaining to do. Sadly, since he didn’t speak a blessed word of Spanish, the explanations went mainly unnoticed — but not before he was thrown in the local jail to await translation. It was unclear if he had meant to offend the…
Caretaker Thompson pensively chewed the taste-spent lump of spearmint gum in the gap between the molars where he’d lost a tooth to a slip of a faulty mechanical shovel back in the ’50s. Raking the autumn oak leaves from where they rested on another row of old, but well-kept graves, he took the time, as…
What won us the war? Begonia Escargot. When they ask me 20, 30, 40 years down the way — when they’re piecing together what happened for their fancy books, undergraduate lecture halls, and big budget history documentaries — I’ll say the same thing. After all, I was there. Not many people living today can say…
Sure, the off-white sheets had been changed recently, but the nauseating aroma of old leftovers wafted from the mini-fridge like a fog of decay. An antediluvian slab of fungus-encrusted pot roast peered over the lip of a lidless Tupperware bowl, and a thick carpet of mold clung to every surface inside of the unplugged refrigerator.…
The alehouse’s brash din was a welcome respite from the grave silence of the mountain crypt and its endless, solemn halls that Fulholme and company had traversed for the past fortnight. Though somewhat deafening, the overwhelming cacophony was an affirmation of life that the members of the haggard party had found themselves craving throughout the…
The mechanized dipshits on floor nine had no idea where to begin. Boxes, many burst like office supply piñatas, lay in toppled stacks across the tread-creased, threadbare carpeting. Mold-scented ceiling tiles dotted the floor; above them were the empty spaces they’d left behind like incomplete visions of the abyss rumored to lurk, masquerading as floor…
The telemarketer’s headache radiated pain beyond her skull’s confinement and filled the summer-steamy subway car with waves of despair that crashed in all directions outward. She extended the psychic opposite of a hug to anyone who, unwelcome, met her gaze. It had been like this on the 5 am commute into the city, throughout a…
Pompous ligaments fine tuned by the bereaved kept themselves limber by yoga on the graves of the ancestors who had no need of them any longer; the stretchers could share from the great beyond. Nothing gone to waste, see? So the yolk stays in the egg even if it’s scrambled up and served to people…
Blameless, the tarnished angels were wishing upon stars that twinkled between their toes and addressed them with passionate eyelessness. No man is an island, but an angel is even less so. It could be said that we’re dismissing them for being more than human, but maybe the opposite is true. Bowling is less traumatic when…