I am the low man on all things Sorkin, though the quality actors in his joints often salvage things.

We’re going to have a new Wawa in our town soon. What’s good there? No lamentations of Wawa past, I need to know Wawa present.

MLA is for slobs and dilettantes!

Me, when students ask if they can use whatever citation style they were taught at school.

When they make me Grand Poohbah of Major League Baseball, all those dugout interviews and that “mic’d-up player” b.s. are going straight in the trash. #openingday

Did I ever tell you that CIR was often what the Northfork WV cable company had as background music on its local announcements channel? (This was in the ancient days before channel guides.) Pretty sure it’s the first place I heard “Pop Musik,” “White Wedding,” and “She Blinded Me With Science.”

Yes, tell us more! I will drive the 75 minutes to meet you, for sure.

Those first three Henley solo albums are shockingly excellent. Maybe even annoyingly so, since I’d rather hate them.

And safe travels, of course! Hope you enjoyed the jaunt!

Honestly, the most motivating thing for me to get into better physical shape is the prospect of going back to the U.K., even though, aside from 27 hours in Paris, the U.K. Is the only non-North-American place I’ve ever been.

0 to 60 is *always* a red flag.

As a moody teen, I appreciated and could even revel in overcast weather, driving thunderstorms, etc. Outer and inner turmoil aligning!

But since my 30s, it’s been “eff this gray shit, I need the sun!”

I remember a conversation about Logical Positivism with great historian Paul Conkin when I was a grad student at Vandy. He was very shocked when I told him that while Logical Positivism was dead among academicians, it was alive and well among the actual practitioners of science and medicine.

The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had

It’s a way of life.

Yeah, that’s never been my domestic situation.

But it looks like you’re finding your people in this thread! If you can see each other, that is.

I just don’t get this. I don’t want overhead lights every second of every day, but I enjoy little things like being able to see stuff. One of my exes abhorred overhead lights to such a degree that I wondered if she had been raised in 1970s singles bars or something.

Any update?

I’m simultaneously pro-legalization and anti-stink.

Your long ramble was mostly about the Black Water situation in WV, so it was catnip for my wife (disaster maven) and me (native West Virginian).

Btw last year, we got married at Fort Boreman in Parkersburg, which overlooks Belpre. The location’s disaster proximity was coincidental, but a plus.

Me to my wife just now: “WHY DIDN’T WE DO THIS?”

Seems like a case of McCarveritis.

Of course, I believe that progressive ideas would help make a much brighter future for “the Free State of McDowell” than the GOP’s nihilistic culture war distractions, and it’s been a nightmare to see mentors and classmates succumb to these poisons. But they are still humans who deserve clean water.

I mostly agree, but as a McDowell County native, I feel compelled to add that no one in power has truly cared about Appalachian poverty since LBJ. At the state level, neither the Dems who ruled for decades nor the current GOP supermajority give a crap about McDowell. Something truly bipartisan!

Are you rereading the Locked Tomb books?

I’ve been a @brucespringsteen.net fan since 1980, when his records began transforming my life.

I’ve never been prouder to be Bruce fan than I was when he posted this yesterday.

Having to have to do things just to stay alive is a bitch.

I am not saying this sarcastically at all. I remember when remaining above ground required neither work nor infrastructure.

I feel like you need to see this:

Jason and the Scorchers
Wire
Bruce Springsteen
The Jazz Butcher
The V-Roys

Overheard conversation in 2017 while waiting to disembark from the ORD-SFO 747:

“I’m visiting my friend, who’s the world’s leading dental sociologist. But it doesn’t take much to be the world’s leading dental sociologist.”

I have no wish to enter the “tavern-style vs deep-dish” discourse - can’t a person enjoy many varieties of pizza and be left in peace?

I usually get deep-dish in Chicago, mostly because good deep-dish (or any deep-dish) can be hard to find elsewhere, whereas thin-crust can be had most everywhere.