I promised you guys a mommyblogger — the closest I could come was an autocrosser and track rat who happens to be a mother. Sorry about that. We will keep looking. In the meantime, please give Ryan a warm welcome — jb The 2018 Michelin Tire School. Well, at least, that’s what it said on…
(Please welcome Daniel, everybody — this is the first of two contributions! — JB) Elliot and I grew up in the same hometown, but didn’t become friends until we both transferred to the same university, around my twentieth birthday. Elliot was the sort of stain-on-his-shirt awkward but consistently jovial soul you couldn’t help but root…
On Monday, I made the long trip up to the Land Transport Office, the Japanese version of your local License Bureau, to return the Town & Country’s license plates and obtain an export certification. Sometime this morning, the shippers are slated to come and take it to the port in Yokohama where it will be…
This piece originally appeared at The Tannhauser Gate — JB I think that the assertion that the Nobel Prize in Literature is essentially silly (and therefore, we are fools for taking it seriously) has something to be said for it. (Those happen to be the positions of the British novelist and translator Tim Parks.) Not…
The car I can remember like it was yesterday was my grandmother’s 1987 Fleetwood d’Elegance. No, this was not the large and in charge Brougham d’Elegance, but the trimmer, front wheel drive Fleetwood. The year was 1989. My Grandma was a young 77 years old. She had just lost her second husband a few months…
This comes to us from a Riverside Green reader who would like to remain anonymous — JB Oh, and no one ever really knows you And life is brief So I’ve heard, but what’s that gotta do with This black hole in me? I am an industrial salesman. I sell metal. My company is a…
I just had a rather arresting (in the sense of, one has to stop doing anything else, and just listen) listening experience. I want to share it with you. The music I was listening to is from an underappreciated (really, almost unknown) classic-era jazz recording; but I have heard it many times. However, I had…
Being practical, I spent the ‘winter term’ of my freshman year in college earning an EMT Basic certification in lieu of studying ‘Religiosity in the Simpsons’. My idea was to both increase my earning power during summers through learning a skill and to do something useful. After busting my ass for a month in a…
Tonight, after a 20 year hiatus, the 90’s sitcom staple Roseanne returns to network television. The critics, fresh from their advance viewing, have done their part and the internet is awash in reviews. As expected, opinions are mixed but the details being reported appear to be consistent. The father of the Conner family, Dan, it…
“Everyone,” as Mike Tyson famously said, “has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” It’s a good quote, but I think it vastly overestimates the majority of the human race. In my experience, most people don’t have a plan. In fact, punch in the mouth or not, most of us don’t even have…
