My boy tried out for varsity basketball at Northwood this year. He likes basketball, but he’s never played on a team before. He plays roller hockey at a pretty high level, and if you break it down to fundamentals, basketball and hockey are pretty similar: you score goals at one end, defend the goal at the other end, and play together as a team. He practiced a lot and worked out a lot and he made the squad. I’m proud of him for trying out. When I was a high schooler, I could easily talk myself out of trying anything where I had a good chance of embarrassing myself in front of my peers. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Twitter: 2011-01-23
RT @celebinrmonolog: 10-YEAR-OLD WILLOW SMITH: Yo, I've paid my dues! Now gimme my deserved stardom, bitches! # RT @theharryshearer: The voice of empire: “Get used to it, world. We’re not going to put up with nonsense.” Duane (Dewey) Clarridge. # Read more →
Count No Man Happy
People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus. He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance, He rose to power, a man beyond all power. Who could behold his greatness without envy? Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him. Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day, Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last. — Sophocles, Oedipus the King Read more →
Twitter: 2011-01-22
RT @capricecrane: To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world. And to everyone else, you're just some asshole. # Pet peeve: People who pronounce -th as -f, as in "toof" or "boof" # Read more →
Twitter: 2011-01-21
RT @alaindebotton: It's always the scariest people who parade their kids around us to persuade us of their (elusive) humanity. # Read more →
Hu’s on First
The Chinese delegation visiting the White House squared off against the Americans in a game of softball. The President of China played first base. Read more →
Twitter: 2011-01-20
RT @MrsRupertPupkin: My cat tried to knock over my TV this morning. WHY ARE MY BEST FRIENDS FIGHTING?! # Read more →
Joyeux Anniversaire, Paul Cézanne
Today is Paul Cézanne’s 172nd birthday! Did you know that Cézanne sometimes spent hours positioning objects before painting a still life? He did! Read more →
My Kid Needs to Learn to Set an Alarm Clock
“I’m taking a nap,” the boy says. “I need to wake up at five.” “Okay,” I reply. “Five o’clock,” he says. “Okay.” “What time do I need to wake up?” “Five.” “That’s right.” Read more →
The Cats of War
Decapitations: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
27 deaths, including 14 decapitated, rock Acapulco — msnbc.com Welcome to Mexico! Read more →
Ask for Help
This is the first, and most important, lesson of teams: ask for help. So we live by this lesson. If they don’t ask us for help, they never learn who we are and what we have to give. It can be frustrating for us, and hard for them, but not as frustrating and hard for both as us wasting ourselves upon people who do not want what we urge upon them. — Jim McCarthy Read more →
Twitter: 2011-01-07
RT @sockelganger: hello table hello rug hello lamp hello window i am lucky to have so many friends # Read more →
Welcome to Hell
Gerry Rafferty, 1947-2011
Just one more year and then you’ll be happy . . . If that doesn’t sum up what life is all about, I don’t know what does. Just one more year till I lose some weight, gain some weight, get married, get divorced, get out of school, go back to school, get pregnant, get the kids out of the house, get a job, quit my job, etc., etc., etc. Then I’m really going to start living! R.I.P. Gerry Rafferty. Read more →
Twitter: 2011-01-04
Trying to teach my dog to yawn on command when I say "Sleepy?" Has anyone done this? # If a God has made this world, then I would not like to be the God; its misery and distress would break my heart. — Schopenhauer # Read more →
All in the Waiting
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. — T.S. Eliot, “East Coker” Read more →
It’s Kittens
EppsNet at the Movies: Tender Mercies
I don’t know why I wandered out to this part of Texas drunk, and you took me in and pitied me and helped me to straighten out, marry me. Why? Why did that happen? Is there a reason that happened? And Sonny’s Daddy died in the war, my daughter killed in an automobile accident. Why? See, I don’t trust happiness. I never did; I never will. — Mac Sledge Read more →
Christmas in Las Vegas
My son makes the observation that there are no balconies in Las Vegas hotels. We’ve got a room on the 24th floor of Bellagio, overlooking the fountains, which allows me to visually scan other hotels up and down the strip, and by god I think the boy is right. Am I the only person who didn’t know that? Of course it makes perfect sense once someone points it out. The Vegas mindset requires that a disproportionate amount of attention be directed to winners . . . lights flashing, bells ringing, people screaming with glee . . . meanwhile, 99 other people are silently losing their ass. Clearly it’s going to put a damper on things to have the losers flinging themselves off the balconies of high-rise hotels. Read more →