In the fall of 2002, I was living and studying in Vienna, Austria. Like good American tourists in a European city, my classmates and I sought out the sites and attractions that the Wieners—think “people living in Vienna,†not “hotdogsâ€â€”rarely visited. Think of a museum or park in your hometown. How many times have you […]
For Fourth of July weekend, Megan and I drove up to Lake Erie in Ohio. We stopped for gas in one of those cute, if forgettable, towns with a row of storefronts on each side of the main drag and one traffic light. We laughed at a restaurant called Pizza Explosion. How could that name […]
This past Sunday, I went to Dollywood with my wife Megan, my parents, and my older sister and her family. Megan’s dad runs a non-profit production company, and he has performed a one-man show called “The Whittlin’ Man†for the past seven summers. Ash’s show is the best thing going at Dollywood, unless of course […]
The other day, I was waiting in line at Regions. The North Broadway branch in Knoxville always provides a fascinating slice of Knoxville citizenry. To my right, a substantial young woman was standing at a teller window with her toothless grandmother. The grandmother had a handkerchief on her head and stooped over her cane with […]
It happened either my freshman or sophomore year of college. I had driven to an area of Nashville called Bellevue to play kill my friends on Playstation 2. I sat waiting to turn left at a stoplight when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Perhaps fifty yards to my right, two […]
Early this afternoon, I saw something that made me happy. Obviously, someone at Delta read my diatribe, “Why men should carry purses,†recognized the good sense of what I was saying, and changed the verbiage on all the corporate signage. At one of the Delta gate kiosks in the Knoxville airport, I read a signed […]
Sometimes gu.ebers come in pairs. This month, I’d like to showcase the genius of Allison Sprouse and Rachel Wood Turner. On June 1, they released the premiere issue of modern ink, the prettiest new online magazine at school, and quite frankly, they knocked my socks off. Everything about the magazine looks as though the duo […]
If you’d like to entertain yourself at the expense of your friends, then try one of my favorite pranks. Here’s the recipe: 1) Sign up your friends for Joel Osteen’s daily devotionals. 2) Casually introduce Joel Osteen into the conversation: “I saw Joel Osteen on the television at the gym the other day and I […]
