Volume IV, Issue 2

Regular readers know that the Surly Bartender does not suffer fools gladly, from patchouli stinkin’ hippies spreading bubblegum Buddhism and sexually transmitted diseases across the gringo trail to yacht-masted, Right Wing rogues who feel entitled (by their inheritance and their investment portfolios) to bitch about poorer people collecting “entitlements.”… »

My grandmother died in late January of 2005, at 93 years of age. The day before she ended this dance, she and I were planning her 94th birthday party and joking about the hospital food. Sometime in the evening a nurse came in and said the doctors wanted to start her on… »

David and I loitered anxiously, hoping someone would pick us for their team. The crowd were about to play “It’s A Knockout” and we wanted in. Straining to catch the captains’ eyes, we waited pitifully as the finger of favour pointed at people all around us. But we just weren’t wanted. I’m sure it… »

The cable chatter about Scott Brown’s surprise – to everyone but Massachusetts voters – victory in the US Senate race to succeed Edward M. Kennedy focused primarily on how it might affect the debate on Health Reform in the United States. Sixty Democratic Senate votes in favor had become fifty-nine, and in the math… »

Semana Santa is presently washing over us like a tsunami of purple robes with thousands of floating – then sinking – now sinking, now floating again – cross-bearing effigies.  It is a beautiful time of year. Neighbors get together and make gorgeous alfombras, the intricate flowered carpets that take hundreds of man-hours to create… »

There is something haunting in the intonation of light and color in the work of César Barrios, something of an unearthed memory that the viewer recognizes both as their own and yet fully apart from their experiences. We recognize the faces, and the way the colors fall within them, as if they are our… »

If one bears in mind the amount of marijuana I had smoked, my actions might seem slightly less retarded. Or not. Remove the influence of mind-altering substances and we probably wouldn’t have been hitchhiking through a civil war zone in the first place. Nor would we have decided to illegally… »

Back when I was a teenager one of my favorite words was “cosmic.” It’s kind of embarrassing now, but I’m sure you had your own silly colloquialisms, so no harm done. I remember many “cosmic” moments in the adolescent years: like when Craig and I wandered up to Grand Boulevard and were hammered to… »