Articles
A sampling of my nonfiction, written for magazines and the web, on subjects ranging from marriage and movies to cooking and evangelical Christians. For a complete list of my Salon articles, go here.
Published
Sports & Advertising (Written for Sports Illustrated, published in the
Portland Monthly June 2005)
“I don’t think anybody gets into advertising saying, ‘I’d really like to
work on the Tampax account.’ People get into advertising and say, ‘I want to
work on Nike, I want to work on Adidas…’”
The Emperor's New Woes (Psychology Today, April 2005)
“Last year I was asked by the editor of a men’s magazine to write a story
about intimacy in relationships. His was one of those publications that
advise the American man how to flatten his stomach and increase his chest
size – that look, in other words, like a lot of women’s magazines…”
Band of Fathers (O: The Oprah Magazine, June 2003)
My wife offered to buy me a stove for my birthday. We were having dinner at a neighborhood restaurant when she made the suggestion – just a suggestion, she assured me, a joke if I wanted to look at it that way – but the joke was on her.
The Treacherous Journey of Vernon and Charlene Rollins (Gourmet, October
2003)
Getting to the bucolic college town of Ashland, Oregon, 25 miles north of the California border, can be a little hair-raising.
Hibbing, Minnesota (National Geographic, October 2002)
It’s sixties night at Zimmy’s, the Bob Dylan-theme bar-and- restaurant in the singer’s hometown of Hibbing, but hardly anyone has come in costume. Oh, sure, a few of the locals have made a small attempt to get in the spirit, especially since best costume wins tickets to see Dylan perform in Minneapolis, about 200 miles south of here.
Codetalkers (Premiere, November 2001)
On a sultry day in late July, The United States Marine Corps band was playing the Monty Python theme in the Capitol Rotunda as the domed room filled out to spilling. The occasion was the Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony honoring the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers...
Drinking's End (Men’s Health, April 2001)
The end of my drinking began with a phone call. It was five years ago April when a woman I know called from California to say a mutual friend of ours had died. And his death was caused, in part, by alcohol.
Unpublished
Scranton (written for Salon, November 2004)
The first thing we did on our quest to work for John Kerry in the battleground state of Pennsylvania was get lost.
Escaped from New York (written for New York magazine, 2004)
In August of 20001 Leslie Vanderlee was attending “yet another goodbye dinner,” this one for a family moving to Chappequa. It was a regular ritual for the moms of Battery Park City, saying farewell to families...
The Second Time Around (written for Details, 2002)
It used to be that the question writers asked of book editors was “Why is it so hard to get a first novel published?” Today, according to a number of agents, editors and writers, the question is “Why is it so hard to get a second novel published?”
Children, Go Where I Send Thee (written for the New
York Times Magazine, 2002)
The son and daughter of Billy Graham preach to the faithful.
Low School (written for San Francisco magazine, 1996)
Nineteen-seventy-one was the year I dropped out of high school, and while boomer historians now debate when exactly the sixties ended (cutoff years range from 1969, the year of Altamont and Charlie Manson, to 1973, the year of Watergate), that year and that act signaled the end of an era for me.
Disney on Ice (written for the website Word, 1998)
In which the author searches for amusement in a hell of his own
making only to be stalked by John Wayne and Rilke.