Dear Mr. Beckett, I am 8 years old and you are my favorite baseball player. I love the way you look all serious all the time and throw the ball really hard to get the guys on the o[...]

Sometimes all it takes is a tactless, overweight, blotchy IT guy to provide a blunt, indelible reintroduction to the power of words. There I was, walking into the gray-carpeted, ba[...]

On Saturday, May 5, I will buckle my 4-year-old son into his car seat and drive a half-hour south to a second-rate thoroughbred racetrack called Emerald Downs in a second-rate Wash[...]

In-N-Out Burger, The NBA, Death Cab For Cutie, LaMontagne, Ray.   The TV show “Louie,” And “Mad Men,” too, Adele, Kristen Bell, Troy Polamalu.   “The Descendants,” “Money[...]

Let’s get right to it, shall we? Fine, but let’s not bite and taste the strange brownish-greenish middle part of the egg, dog! ** Brownish, chocolatish, Germanish? Goodish? Not so [...]

I recently ate dinner at a Golden Corral buffet and grill restaurant on the outskirts of Phoenix. I had not eaten breakfast or lunch and was famished after a long day of journalizi[...]

What is it about the song “All Along the Watchtower”? Why does almost every rock band in existence cover this song in concert? Why is it that this is often the song during which th[...]

This is an excerpt from “The Walrus,” by Tom Dinard, for Machine Wash Warm, the new FlipCollective e-magazine. Machine Wash Warm can be purchased here for $1. The Walru[...]

Can it be done? Has it ever been done? Can an essay about Indigo Girls be written without the mention of a particular word or phrase or related words or phrases? Let’s give it a sh[...]

Dear Jonathan Franzen and Ben Marcus, Apparently, both of you are great writers. Now, I’ve never read any of your books. But, I understand that you, Jonathan, prefer to write thing[...]