24 1 / 2012
Average Day
“Mom! Quick! Turn on the light, poop is about to come out of my body!” —Nia
22 1 / 2012
Nia’s dictionary
Crobbled [kraw-buh ld]
When your mouth is so sore that bad stuff comes out of it.
22 1 / 2012
[Nia rocking back and forth in a chair.]
Me: Do you have to go potty?
Nia: No. Just jammin.
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17 1 / 2012
He was the guy they all loved, and he was dead.
He looked a little like Willie Nelson, too.
It was a cool crowd. Half the people were wearing glasses and there were several asymmetrical haircuts. One man wore a beanie with a pom-pom. Youth had little to do with it. This is, after all, New York, where 90-year-olds can be socialites and 20-somethings wear brogues and bulky cardigans to work. The man in the photo knew it all and knew better and maybe even tisked at the whole show of it but he was still proud to be a part of it. Probably a lot like how Bob Dylan felt, hanging out with the Grateful Dead.
They played some songs on guitars. Merle Haggard, and Loudon Wainwright’s “Heaven.”
People cried during the slideshow. It wasn’t for him that I felt sad. I’d never met him, this man on the wall, who looked like he’d be good for a joke at an awkward party. I felt sad because of Melanie, his partner who seemed more his wife than most wives I know. I felt sad because she’d lost him, and because he’d lost her. Either scenario seemed wrong and awful. In the slideshow they were young and smiling and they looked so comfortable that it made me want to take a nap. Easy, is what it looked like.
Melanie didn’t speak much, other than to exhort others to come and talk. I don’t know what she could have said that wasn’t written across her face, and interlaced into every word that anyone else said. She was the reason he was in New York. She was the reason he was in all their lives. This whole room of people—drinking wine and Sam Adams and eating crab cakes and pigs-in-a-blanket and some of them crying so much that they had to stuff their tissues in a wine glass and give up drinking—they were all there not because Tyler had died, but because he had fallen in love.
Mary Mann
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09 1 / 2012
Stories Nia has recently told her teachers
“My mom is pregnant with twins.”
“My mom got stuck in the bathroom. She got hurt bad. She had to go to the hospital.”
“Is this good or bad poop? What if a witch came out of my poop?”
02 1 / 2012
Live Bait: A Lesson From the Annals of Peter Kaplan's New York Observer
This story about Tyler Rush takes place on Aug. 5, 2003. It was originally published sometime in May 2009 as part of a special Peter Kaplan farewell edition of the New York Observer. After reading it, Tyler sent me this drawing of an eel. It’s been prominently displayed in my living room ever…
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08 11 / 2011
Listen to Monday’s show here: http://www.mixcloud.com/anotherdementia/another-dementia-11-05-11-theme-houses-with-kevin-freeny-and-sierra-rose-mills/
Theme: Houses
With special guest Kevin Freeny. Interview with Sierra Rose Mills. Dumb poetry by Matt Wright. Inane banter.
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08 11 / 2011
“Mel Bay is dead. You can see him alive in these pictures. He is all around the town. Just like Jesus.”
—Nia
