Last night, after a decent day at work and a meal of peanut butter sandwiches while I watched the Obama coverage on CNN, my work friend Karissa called me up and asked if I wanted to go to the movies.

“I really want to go see The Dark Knight again,” she’d told me.

And so I agreed, and she came and picked me up around 8:30, and after an hour the movie finally started with the 20 minutes of previews that we, the audience, just absolutely hate to sit through. Some interesting flicks coming up in the previews? The new Frank Miller movie, The Spirit, looks interesting. The new crime drama Righteous Kill, starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino looks good too. The Terminator preview nearly induced a strobe-related fit, in my opinion.

Click here to continue reading →

While at the beach a couple of weeks ago, on Sunday when I actually decided to sit in the sand and take a walk with my mother up and down the shore. It’s one of her favorite past times, just sitting on the beach drinking a glass of Pinot Grigio (it used to be much, much worse wine than that…) and then getting up and taking a walk with me while we talked of many things.

So there I sat, a Landshark in my hand and my little mat of seaweed underneath my feet to keep from getting all sandy and whatnot, and then she started up conversation.

Click here to continue reading →

The faintest hints of sunlight begin to clear the horizon in the early morning hours of a spring day in the mountains of East Tennessee. The trees are beginning to wake from their winter slumber and put out a fresh batch of large oak and maple leaves. The birds were stirring and started singing their spring songs, their hunger forcing them up early looking for that worm. The morning was a promising one for all the creatures in the forest as they filled their bellies and their hopes on the youngsters soon to be brought into this world.

John awoke and looked out at this scene deep in the heart of the mountains, waking to prepare for the day’s hike the woods.

He stirred with the songs of the birds ringing in his ears and rummaged through his knapsack, pulling out a couple of slices of bread and some peanut butter for a simple wilderness breakfast, a feast fit for any man in the morning. Like the beasts around him, John ate quickly and heartily, ready to undertake the days adventure. He disassembled his simple camp quickly and then headed out upstream on Hooker’s Creek, named after a man who once owned the property he was hiking on now. He headed toward the falls where Daniel Jacob Hooker, who’d lived up here until he was 96, was thought to have run his moonshine still.

Click here to continue reading →