When I ask the Biscuit to hold my messenger bag for a second so I can re-layer my clothing or whatever, he often makes a big show of staggering underneath its weight. I usually greet …

Welcome to the first installment of The Canon According To Tomato Nation, a list of the books and authors you’ll find on my bookshelves (and in my closet, and stacked in piles beside my bed, …

Back in the day, the Biscuit and I produced our own public-access television show. One of these days, I’ll write a column about the “Moist Towelette” era, but in order to avoid meandering off into …

A couple of days ago, I found myself tearing up during a movie preview, which sounds pathetic enough by itself, but it gets worse. I teared up during a preview for a Kevin Costner movie. …

I have read Susan Faludi’s Backlash. It took me three tries, but I finally got through it, and only because I brought with me on my forty-minute subway commute each morning so that I would …

My freshman year in college, I had a roommate who played hockey – not upper-crusty kilt-wearing field-hockey hockey, but thuggish pad-wearing ice-hockey hockey. I knew next to nothing about hockey – my parents hauled me …

Ernie and I became best friends because we could both derive hours of undiminished amusement from bathroom humor. We became friends in a rather roundabout fashion; we met through our mutual friend The Lip at …

Gary Larson once drew a panel for his cartoon The Far Side in which a kid huddled underneath his bedclothes with a snorkel-esque apparatus attached to his face; the apparatus had a tube that snaked …

This morning, my alarm went off, and when I tried to get out of bed, I found that a microbe or allergen of some kind had once again invited several million of its closest friends …

In light of previous rants in this space in which I railed against various no-brow media subjects, not to mention my tendency in conversation to use the words “Joey Buttafuoco” synonymously with the word “contemptible,” …