I’ve never been one for mental health, but I recently started seeing a therapist, with early results pertinent to Sparts.
The Weather
Discussion Questions: Swamplandia!
1. Now that you’ve read the novel, go back and reread the epigraph [“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice. “I only wish that I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass]. Why do you think Russell chose this quote?
Popcorn and Ghosts: The Other Side of Savannah
Popcorn and Ghosts presents “The Other Side of Savannah,” a tale of friendship, family, and baby teeth.
First Place: Oyster: An Unwritten Article on the Commencement Proceedings of Paw Paw Unincorporated
David placed first in the inaugural Trop Short Fake College or High School Class President Commencement Address Contest.
Second Place: Most of You Know Me As The Girl Who Lost Her Virginity to The Ben Franklin Impersonator
John placed second in the inaugural Trop Short Fake College or High School Class President Commencement Address Contest.
Third Place: A Prominent Zombie Addresses the Class of 2013
Marc placed third in the inaugural Trop Short Fake College or High School Class President Commencement Address Contest.
Fourth Place: An Impending Apocalypse Puts a Damper on Graduation Proceedings for the Class of 2567
Matthew placed fourth in the inaugural Trop Short Fake College or High School Class President Commencement Address Contest.
Fifth Place: My High School Commencement Address, or, I Know What Ashley Benson is Going to Do This Summer
Brian placed fifth in the inaugural Trop Short Fake College or High School Class President Commencement Address Contest.
Honest and Unbiased: Café Hero
Café Hero
South Mission Road, Los Angeles
.5 Stars
I was hoping for capes and piles of shaved meat. I got both.
Hunter S. Thompson and The American Dream
I was on the can with a cowboy hat on, and I got to thinking Hunter S. Thompson went looking for the American Dream where he knew he’d never find it: the rabbit hole of Las Vegas, the neurotic circle of the Kentucky Derby, the oblivion of Big Kahuna. With his visor and gun, he was after the chase not the game, leaning forward forever falling. He was a writer and as such craved motion, the moving words, making money with every word like a trucker does with every mile. Writers must move, must fall, with no such thing as a landing soft or hard, or a happy or sad end. Hunter Thompson wryly mistook the value of speed often enough, sacrificed for velocity, sacrificed the marathon for the sprint, could never write a novel—a man of articles.
Things Your Irish Immigrant Grandparents Teach You, In Order Of Increasing Utility
How to know where faeries have been (the key here is recognizing seemingly random arrangements of rocks in wooded groves for what they are, i.e. faerie circles).
Call Me Crazy, But I Don’t Think The Government Should Be Injecting Tiny Cameras Into My Bloodstream
Boy oh boy. Those clowns in Congress have done it again. Just when you think that the political system can’t shoot any further down the crapper, these fat cat politicians come along with some “amazing new program” that’s “great for the American people,” and we’re just supposed to just sit back and accept it. Well, I’m sorry, buster, but if you ask me, this time they’ve gone too far. There’s got to be a limit. Call me crazy, but I don’t think the government should be injecting tiny cameras into my bloodstream.
Honest and Unbiased: Disneyland
Disneyland
Anaheim, CA
2 Stars
I know what you’re thinking, okay? How can I give two stars to the Happiest Place on Earth? Look, I understand that Disneyland is a paradise for children, and God knows I have great memories there. But guess what—I’m not a child anymore, and this paradise for children is really a tyranny of evil little beasts trampling the tired souls of hard-working adults with their Velcro Mickey Mouse-shod feet.
Every Off Off Broadway Play My Ex-Girlfriend Ever Made Me See
ACT ONE
SCENE 1
Silence. Darkness. An underpaid, virtually untrained light board operator slowly raises a single light onstage. A bearded MAN (30s, desperate, sad eyes) stands naked in a bathtub, staring out into the audience, his uncut pubes bushing out like a tiny afro. Sitting in a rocking chair upstage and wielding a large knife, a WOMAN (20s, recent college graduate) begins chopping up dolls or makeup or hair or glamour magazines—anything but actual food. Silence, except for the sound of the knife, held for what feels like thirty minutes but is actually three.
Best of The Weather: Year One
Holy hell it’s getting hot in here. And why? Because today, exactly one year after we humbly went live, we present Trop’s first ever BEST OF THE WEATHER.
Bad Luck
My mind was closing around a perfect idea, like an elevator enclosing me with a beautiful young woman. But then I lost it—nothing but bad luck. Bad luck: it’s bad luck to eat with shoes on; it’s bad luck to sleep next to a computer; it’s bad luck to use a paperclip for anything but its intended purpose. For whatever reason, the idea was gone. I went back to reading A Tale of Two CatDogs: dog by day and cat by night, always awaiting that moment of transformation, where service, obedience, and safety by day slip the leash to become freedom, defiance, and danger by night; and then back again from adventure to the comforts of home. I started to doze off. I pictured winged men and women on bicycles, flying past attic windows and tree-houses. I pictured a moment where they lift off their saddles to let the bikes fall like snowflakes: bikes crashing through windshields, making snowflakes of cracked glass; bikes tackling commuters like spiders from the sky, all while the winged ones ascend, bumping through airborne fields of egg-like chrysalises, hanging like punching bags the color of the moon (some jostled too many times, snap off their webs to fall, burning up in their slow drift through the glittering atmosphere, like cotton and feathers in dull blue flames). As they fly their way through the swinging, bulging bags, the winged ones take a beating too. Some, entwined in the silky dew, can’t fly on and become, like water for epiphytes, food for the cocoons. But the ones who do, going higher than the sparkling, reach outer space, so high until the cave-like mouth of the universe is before them. They can only enter single file its profound darkness, head to toe, like a long worm with wings instead of legs. It rises through the soil of darkness, tilling and composting the soil of darkness, the soil of another sphere far beyond, and then I remembered:
Hotel Stories: Caesars Palace
This is the first installment of Hotel Stories, Lori’s series about growing up in Las Vegas.
Honest and Unbiased: Sugway
Sugway
Los Angeles, Los Angeles
5 Stars
They kept asking me if I wanted it toasted. They cut the bread and laid it out. “Toasted?” the guy said. “No,” I said. “Toasted sandwiches do not work for me. Keep it soft.”