Longreads

For those who were let down by the first Presidential debate (a.k.a. the Rumble in the Rockies), there is hope for a kind of rhetorical redemption this weekend. On Saturday night, Jon Stewart and…

At the Jenner manse in Hidden Hills, California, as Kylie, left, and Kendall are being shot for the new season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Published in the June/July 2012 issue Fathers suffer…

On the way to visit my mother one recent rainy afternoon, I stopped in, after quite some constant prodding, to see my insurance salesman. He was pressing his efforts to sell me a long-term-care policy with a pitch about how much I’d save if I bought it now, before the rates were set to precipitously rise. For $5,000 per year, I’d receive, when I needed it, a daily sum to cover my future nursing costs. With an annual inflation adjustment of 5 percent, I could get in my dotage (or the people caring for me would get) as much as $900 a day. My mother carries such a policy, and it pays, in 2012 dollars, $180 a day—a fair idea of where heath-care costs are going.

I took the SAT a grand total of one time when I was in dipshit prep school. This was 1993. Like any other kid, I wanted to do well on the test, primarily so that I would NEVER have to take it again,…

I do a lot of pretty random stupid shit thinking that I will write about it. Most of my activities turn out to be useless, though there’s always the idea that I could hit upon something so I…

The three-episode finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show consisted of a two-part spectacular at the United Center in Chicago and a final sermon delivered from the shows studio at Harpo…

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So the way my father used to tell it, my parents second date went something like this: My father was positively smitten after his blind date with my mother, and wanting to spend as much time with…

I met Steve Jobs while I worked at Gizmodo. He was always a gentleman. Steve liked me and he liked Gizmodo. And I liked them back. Some of my friends who I used to work with at Gizmodo…