PicoBlog

“He wasn’t great long enough.” “He didn’t have a strong playoff track record.” “He wasn’t enough of a winner.” “He’s ranked X in total (insert yards/touchdowns)” Let’s get something out of the way immediately; I am not objective on this topic. I wrote this for The Athletic when Jamaal Charles, one of the greatest runners to ever walk on to an NFL field, retired back in 2019: Jamaal Charles once gave a speech at a Special Olympics ceremony.

Welcome to the latest installment of Notable Sandwiches, the series in which I faithfully chronicle the bizarre and twisted document that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches, in alphabetical order. I’ve rambled before in this publication about the restraint and pleasure of writing within fixed guidelines—the way that following a preset model, such as the List of Sandwiches, can paradoxically provide great freedom. I’ve gotten to noodle on the page about New York sandwich culture, Jewish history, the scourge that was early-twentieth-century home economics, et cetera.

OK MK, I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice, because as many here in the comments can claim - I've been there. The reason I'm serving up this bowl of advice, is no one ever tells the divorcee this, until they've made several missteps and gotten themselves in another mess or strayed off into self pity/world hating hell. Since you're obviously an intelligent and savvy person, the concepts will be easy and obvious, but having them said by another, is key.

Dear Intimacy Dr., My new partner is kinkier that I expected. I’m not complaining, tho! She likes the choking a lot and I’m scared I’m not doing it right. She says its great but she’s so much smaller than me, so I don’t know if I’m applying too much pressure. She won’t tell me to stop but I swear that gasp of air she takes in sounds like someone who’s just been revived.

[A little bit of housekeeping: I’ll be turning on paid subscriptions in the next few weeks. If you’d like to pledge ahead of time, please do! If not, keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll make another announcement when we’re there.] I just wrote a short essay on my history as a failed diarist/semi-successful Livejournaler over on my “About” page. You can check it out if you like, but I did want to draw the main feed’s attention to this gem—a scanned page of my childhood diary, complete with the redacted names of my childhood enemies.

If you don’t already know that my results this year were subpar, 1. You’re a fake fan, and 2. Go back and read my recap of this year. As a result, my ranking has dropped a bit and I’m now at risk of dropping out of the top 100😱. It hurts my soul to think it let alone broadcast it to everyone reading this. And I’m not trying to be a brat, it’s just disappointing when you ended the year worse off than when you started it.

I was scrubbing a kitchen sink to make it shine. You taught us this, remember? The Flylady? She was a judge or something with a fly-fishing hobby. She devised a housecleaning system and sent out lessons in an email group. Egroups, I think it was called, before she had the website. You were one of her first one hundred followers. It would’ve been around 2000 or so, just after the colossal deflation of Y2k pressure.

We lost a guinea pig. That’s not true. I know exactly where he is: in a bag inside another bag in the trash can behind the house. It’s not the tomb of the pharaohs, but it will do, at least until Wednesday, when the garbage truck shows up. Then his final resting place will be a landfill in parts unknown. It’s nothing less than what I expect my kids to do with my remains someday.

Almost exactly one year ago I attended the funeral of one of my oldest friends who died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack at 53. A few days later, on a trip with Dr. McCullough to Cabo, I got a call from an old surfer buddy in Maui who’d heard I was there. He was all excited because he was flying to Cabo the next week and wanted to talk me into extending my trip.