Sigh. I have so much to do. It's a matter of chipping away at all of them until, at some point in the distant future, I'll get a vague feeling that something has been accomplished. This is how I lost my way. On Monday, I spent the morning producing a weekly NASCAR column for Bleacher …
Tag: Monte Dutton
The Crazy World Is Just Getting Older
It's a lovely Saturday morning, not that I have so much as cracked a door to sniff the chill wind. My confidence relies on the sunlight flickering through the blinds behind me. The outside world flickers, also, affected by the various blinds of the programming I happen to be using. I read Sarah Palin's Facebook …
High Above the World Where No One Cares
Marvin staggered out of bed, stopped off for a leak, and advanced boldly into the kitchen in search of a swallow of water to combat the cotton mouth. Gaining coherence and mental acuity, he applied the fundamentals of coffee making to his machine and retreated because nature was beginning to call, and, sometimes, in …
Moping About the Madness
This morning I'm feeling paralyzed. I need to write about cowboys in 1946, and my mind is stuck in the present. I've tried sticking planks under the tires. I've jammed the gears. Nothing. So I decided to ruminate here. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. Here's the transition I've been making, and it may be unduly influenced …
Be Clever … But Not Too Clever
My father was a wonderful storyteller. I was probably an adult before I ever questioned their truthfulness. It seemed like my dad was either alone, or with a long-forgotten pal, when the miraculous events in question occurred. They were almost funny. Among my friends, they became my famous, as did my dad. One of my …
The Inestimable Benefit of Sport
"Remember that time we almost lost to Hugheyville?" "Yeah," Dan Dimmelmeier replied. "Us playing against a school so small that they barely had enough boys in the student body to field a team." "Went into the seventh inning trailing by a run," his best friend, Brandin Porcher, recalled. "Then we tied it on a single …
Time and Place
I got up early. I used to get up early all the time, probably six-thirty on the average, but it's unusual for me to have to be up early, and I usually stay up late, reading and watching late-night talk shows, and I go to bed when I'm good and ready, and wake up when …
Coming Home Took a While for the Author, Too
Today was fun. I didn't go anywhere but L&L Office Supply for a couple reams of paper. Okay, I stopped by the Old Mill for an early supper, before the crowds hit. The crowds had already hit Dempsey's. It's tough to beat that crowd on a Monday. The writing was fun. I had the docket …
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Speeding, and Fiction, and … Speeding Through Fiction
I can't drive 55. I can drive 62. They never stop you when you're 10 miles an our or less over the speed limit. About four months ago, I got my first speeding ticket in at least five years. I got it in the worst state possible to be stopped for speeding, North Carolina, which …
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Tuesday Morning Consciousness Stream
I've had much to think of, and yet I've learned gradually that I'm living in a world that seldom thinks. It tweets. It texts. It posts. It links. It sinks. But it seldom thinks. It's turnt af. Nowumsayin? Saturday was unexpected. I was pecking away at something at least as nonsensical as this when …
Nightrider's Lament 