Night-Shifting For the Hip Fleet

Cab stories are tales of survived disasters. The flat-tire-with-no-spare-on-Eighth-Avenue-and-135th-Street is a good cab story. The no-brakes-on-the-park-transverse-at-50-miles-an-hour is a good cab story. The stopped-for-a-red-light-with-teen-agers-crawling-on-the-windshield is not too bad. They’re all good cab stories if you live to tell about them. But a year later the cab stories at Dover sound just a little bit more foreboding, not quite so funny. Sometimes they don’t even have happy endings. A year later the mood at shape-up is just a little bit more desperate. They gray faces and burnt-out eyes look just a little bit more worried. And the most popular cab story at Dover these days is the what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here? story.

Published: Sep 22, 1975
Length: 17 minutes (4,482 words)

The Road to Economic Crisis Is Paved with Euros

The advantages of a single European currency were obvious. No more need to change money when you arrived in another country; no more uncertainty on the part of importers about what a contract would actually end up costing or on the part of exporters about what promised payment would actually be worth. Meanwhile, the shared currency would strengthen the sense of European unity. What could go wrong?

Published: Jan 12, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,285 words)

Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? Part 7, 1996: The Death of Layne Staley and Bradley Nowell

There really is life after death in ’90s rock, provided you can retain enough of your old sound to convince people to move forward with you. But while the surviving members of Alice In Chains made sure to present their band as a newly evolved entity, Sublime’s Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson are trying to pick up where they were forced to leave off in 1996, when their lead singer, Bradley Nowell, died of a heroin overdose at age 28.

Source: Onion A.V. Club
Published: Jan 12, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,022 words)

Separation Anxiety

Now that there’s no escaping the digital world, research is getting more serious about what happens to personalities that are incessantly on. “The e-personality is more impulse-driven and more narcissistic; it gives itself permission to explore or seek out more morbid subjects; it regresses to earlier developmental stages that are more about action without heed to consequences; and it has a more grandiose view of itself.”

Published: Jan 12, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,148 words)

‘I Will Never Know Why’

Since the day her son participated in the most devastating high school shooting America has ever seen, I have wanted to sit down with Susan Klebold to ask her the questions we’ve all wanted to ask—starting with “How did you not see it coming?” and ending with “How did you survive?” Over the years, Susan has politely declined interview requests, but several months ago she finally agreed to break her silence and write about her experience for O. Even now, many questions about Columbine remain. But what Susan writes here adds a chilling new perspective. This is her story.

Published: Oct 13, 2009
Length: 15 minutes (3,996 words)

Upon This Rock

Remember those perfume dispensers they used to have in pharmacies—”If you like Drakkar Noir, you’ll love Sexy Musk”? Well, Christian rock works like that. Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian off-brand, and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that’s because your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something cool and new, it needs to play something proven to please…while praising Jesus Christ. That’s Christian rock.

Source: GQ
Published: Feb 1, 2004
Length: 47 minutes (11,858 words)

No Objections: What History Tells Us About Gay Marriage

Many features of marriage that were once considered essential have been remade, often in the face of strong resistance, by courts and legislatures. Economic and social changes have led to increasing legal equality for the marriage partners, gender-neutrality of spousal roles, and control of marital role-definition by spouses themselves rather than by state prescription. Yet marriage itself has lasted, despite these dramatic changes. Not only that: it retains vast appeal.

Source: Boston Review
Published: Jan 11, 2011
Length: 14 minutes (3,704 words)

The Man Who Saw Too Much

Fellow Aspen first responders were momentarily shocked by Ferrara’s news. PTSD was supposed to happen to soldiers, a malady incurred on jittery battlefields far from home, not in a Xanadu dedicated to strenuous good fun. But Ferrara had long suspected he had PTSD and wasn’t surprised. “Of course he got PTSD,” says Pitkin County sheriff’s deputy Alex Burchetta. “Mike always did it big. He climbed the biggest mountains. And when he was on duty, he seemed to get the biggest calls. Injury, trauma, death—for 30 years, that pager was on 24/7, and he couldn’t get a reprieve. You’d have to be naive to think that he’d be impervious to it.”

Source: Outside
Published: Jan 10, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,311 words)

Ballad for a Plain Man

Musician Jeff Finlin thought he’d hit the big-time—until he didn’t. “I loaded his songs into my iPod and while living on the road, while sitting on planes and trains, while lying in strange motel rooms, I closed my eyes and focused on his lyrics and thought: This guy’s channeling the angels. This guy’s got the gift. This guy can conjure a heartbreak, a hangover, moonlight, the Deep South, with a few words. I wondered: Who is this guy? Who the hell is Jeff Finlin?”

Source: 5280 Magazine
Published: Jul 1, 2007
Length: 14 minutes (3,744 words)

Game of Her Life

[Profile Writing] She’s 14, lives in the slums of Uganda and is just now learning to read. But Phiona Mutesi’s instincts have made her a player to watch in international chess. “News eventually spread around Katwe that Katende was part of an organization run by white people, known in Uganda as mzungu, and Harriet began hearing disturbing rumors. ‘My neighbors told me that chess was a white man’s game and that if I let Phiona keep going there to play, that mzungu would take her away,’ she says. ‘But I could not afford to feed her. What choice did I have?'”

Source: ESPN
Published: Jan 10, 2011
Length: 20 minutes (5,103 words)