Category Archives: Poetry and fiction

Cinderella’s memories of the zoo.

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story October 22, 1996 Cinderella was in a snit, and who could blame her? She was an orphan swarmed by a family of strangers, accidental intimates, pushy and intrusive and unwelcome. And the most distant stranger … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry and fiction, Willie stories | 2 Comments

Wanna make it big as a Hollywood screenwriter? Just take a weed-whacker to every testicle you see.

“Hey, hey, hey! Who’s your daddy?”Photo by: Mike MozartHollywood hates fathers. Who knew? Just kidding. It’s an evergreen story, one that comes up every 18 months or so: ‘TV dads are dopes, dupes and dumb-asses.’ This trenchant essay is based … Continue reading

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Prufrock’s honor…

There is worthiness, which is difficult; it can never be supplied by another, and it can never be faked. And there is worship, which is demanding; you can fake the virtues the worshipper worships, but you dare not falter. And … Continue reading

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Lies all the way down: Ventilating Uncle Willie’s Father’s Day funk.

“Hey, dipshit, if you want to lose your house and lose your family, to see your kids a third of the time if you’re lucky, to watch them spin out of control as they learn to pit the two of … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry and fiction, The Naso Diaries, Willie stories | 4 Comments

Fathering fathertongue: “The purpose of civilization is to prevent rape, to make the world safe for women and children.”

“Can you read the inscriptions on the buildings outside? This is M.I.T.’s way of honoring all the great men of science. Galileo, Kepler, Fourier, LaPlace. Aristotle, toward whom every branch of science must bow. Hundreds of names, some larger, some … Continue reading

Posted in Love and marriage, Poetry and fiction, Splendor! | 3 Comments

For Father’s Day, sympathy for the trans-aborted.

“How can you live your authentic reality as a stuffed animal if you can’t be laundered? Are the trans-furry to be forevermore mislabeled as ‘Dry Clean Only’?”A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story June 18, 2015 “So here’s a question for you,” … Continue reading

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Telling long stories about other people’s nightmares — for Father’s Day.

“Every one of those guys knows that this could be his last Father’s Day at home, his last chance to see his kids before they get sideswiped for life by the family court system, his last chance to make believe … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry and fiction, The Naso Diaries, Willie stories | 3 Comments

#MyKindOfBenedy: Notes on a reconciliation with satire.

Just when you thought nothing could be more enduringly funny than the shopping mall choo-choo train itself…1. As always, comedy is a misleading term, since you can make fun of people either as farce or as satire. 2. That comes … Continue reading

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Discovering #MyKindOfBenedy: Who do you have to kill to find a good villain around here?

Everyone knows how to motivate a villain. You have him rub his hands together with an evil relish and snarl, “Nyar har har har!”Kaptain Kobold / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) I wrote this on … Continue reading

Posted in #MyKindOfBenedy, Poetry and fiction | 10 Comments

Cinema-of-the-mind: Sheesh! A romantic benedy in three acts.

Love conquers all? Surely there are limits…For my friend Brian Brady, a movie that won’t be made, a flavor of satire informed by pathos: Sheesh! A romantic benedy in three acts. Gordon Gecko Goldblum – so named by his parents, … Continue reading

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Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie in one lesson: Thugs all the way down…

“No,” said Morczyk. “This will fix him better. Make him stay in the game. But take away his gun.”Photo by: Justin BaederA Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story January 8, 1997 When I walked in, Murcheson from 4-B was holding a gun … Continue reading

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What would Mohammed do? Just about anything, apparently, provided it’s petty, pathetic and cruel.

“We were watching horse racing by simulcast at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, home of the Preakness Stakes, and everything in the place seemed to be old and dirty and badly maintained. No skin off my nose. You can … Continue reading

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Xavier’s destiny: Fatherhood and the manly art of manliness.

But the main job of being a father is simply being around. I’m not congratulating myself for what I did with Xavier, because I knew it was temporary. He didn’t have a father all of a sudden, he just had … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry and fiction, Willie stories | 4 Comments

Making a #MyKindOfBenedy-making machine.

Like everything else, the art of romance is upside down. Righting it is simply a matter of demonstrating why well-working real-life romances work so well: Because there is a man in charge.Photo by: Andrew CrumpA while ago I wrote about … Continue reading

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Finding visibility, absolution and closure at the choo-choo train at the mall on New Year’s Eve.

Woo-woo!A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story December 31, 2015 When I got back with the train, the Lonely Guy was still sitting there on the bench across the way, his elbows on his knees, his palms supporting his chin. I had … Continue reading

Posted in Christmas brutality, Poetry and fiction, Traindancing, Willie stories | 3 Comments