GETTYSBURG, Pa.—So I was planning to write a cute little feature article about the guys in Silicon Valley warning us that the sex dolls of the future are programmed to hug you and so there’s a danger of the code getting scrambled and they crack a rib or strangle you instead. Little did I know ...
RALEIGH, N.C.—The stand-up comedy stage is the last place where you can speak without a filter. Or at least I always thought so. People are bringing tape recorders into workout clubs to make sure comics don’t “cross over the line.” That would be the Speech Code Line, the one that dwells ...
NEW YORK—There’s a moment in the cult film Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2—we all remember that one, right?—when deranged serial killer Ricky Caldwell wanders through a residential suburb blowing away random people until he’s surrounded by three barricaded cops with firearms pointed at ...
NEW YORK—As far as I can tell, there are six warring factions in the Leggings Wars. First come the “You’re Disgusting” people: Women should never wear leggings. Leggings are cheap/immoral/against God. As far as I’m concerned, these people can just go back to Bible school and shut up. ...
NEW YORK—Last week a $57 million movie flopped and the director apologized. He didn’t just apologize, he kind of humiliated himself publicly. This doesn’t happen. Directors don’t apologize. Is this the beginning of a Reparations Movement for predatory directors who steal our time? If so, ...
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.—I have this strong suspicion that the airlines are lying to us every time they say, “We have some weather ahead.” “Some weather ahead” means...a rainstorm. There’s no need to turn back. Didn’t America invent the airplane? Haven’t we had 116 years to figure out ...
RICHMOND, Va.—I meet a lot of people. I meet a lot of people at horror conventions and other pop-culture gatherings. Therefore I’ve witnessed every kind of tattoo, every kind of face metal, every part of the body that can be pierced, painted, or plastered with special-effects makeup. I know ...
MONTREAL—So now San Francisco is banning e-cigarettes, because a City Council member discovered there are still people making personal decisions about what to do with their lives. They’ve been trying to eliminate these people for three decades now, but some individuals just refuse to ...
KANSAS CITY—If you asked any American in, say, 1963 what he thought of the right to legal counsel, you would have gotten a 99 percent response: Hell yes, everybody is entitled to a lawyer. The most popular courtroom drama on TV at the time was Perry Mason, the Raymond Burr series about a ...
JACKSONVILLE—First Starbucks had that incident in Philadelphia where two guys were arrested, in handcuffs, for loitering in a Starbucks, raising the philosophical question: Is it possible to loiter in a Starbucks? If we were to strictly interpret the definition of loitering—we should ask the ...
