A New Year’s Herring Sandwich For Luck

The last two years have been a real pisser, eh? Coming off another hard candy pandemic Christmas, feelings of weariness are mingled with a glimmer of cautious optimism. I'm still hopeful that 2022 has good things in store for all of us, if we're so inclined to look for a silver lining. That said, do you know what else has a silver lining? Pickled herring! Stay ...

Another Pandemic Christmas

In a 21-month period that's been a constant stream of anxiety, panic porn, and incessant carrot-dangling with regard to the promise of a return to normalcy, it would seem that the holiday season would offer a welcome respite from the 24-7 fuckery. Rather, the pressure to be cheerful, upbeat, and cling to tradition on top of feeling as if you're living in a prequel to ...

The Road Behind: Thoughts on Supernatural’s Final Episode

The last episode of Supernatural, television's longest-running genre series, has finally aired and I don't know how I feel about it. Having watched from the beginning, it's tough to say goodbye to a show that was a fixture of my Thursday nights for nearly 15 years. Supernatural is one of those shows that, when you meet someone else who watches it and has just as ...

The Mind Forgets, But the Body Remembers

I got up to pee, squinting my eyes at the clock to see what time it was. It was 3am on September 3rd, 2020. Then it hit me. Shit. It was now officially 11 years since my father had passed. It was 11 years since I went to sleep after my last phone conversation with him the night before -- September 2nd, 2009 -- hearing fear in his voice ...

A Letter to 11-Year-Old Me

Dear 11-year-old Lana, You're not gonna believe this shit, but this is Future Lana writing to you from the year 2020. Crazy, right? Speaking of crazy, that word doesn't even begin to describe this year. Remember how you were obsessed with and creeped out by that "In The Year 2525" song that Mom used to play on the Oldies channel? Welp, 2020 isn't quite that weird, but ...

Semi-Inspirational Quotes To Get You Through

Life's hard. Sometimes you need a bit of inspiration to get you through. I'm not talking about those bullshit inspirational quotes that appear in front of a stock image of a sunset: "Follow your bliss" or "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best." Or those alpha douchebag quotes that are almost always accompanied by a photo of a ...

The Drama and Excitement of Trash Day

Ever since I was a kid, one of my favorite films has been The 'Burbs. It reminded me of the apartment complex where I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where there were always people moving in and moving out -- and you wondered what their M.O. was. You'd bond with some neighbors and feud with others, but there was always some excitement and drama. I ...

2am Thoughts: Keep Pa Beautiful?

When you have insomnia, your mind starts to race and you think back on a lot of things. I guess it's the adult equivalent of trying to tell yourself a bedtime story. Staring at the ceiling last night, I started remembering (for all you young whippersnappers out there) that there was a time when state abbreviations weren’t standardized. There were no neat, clean, two-capital-letter abbreviations. ...

Objects I Have Been Hit in the Head With – Part 4 of 4

They say all bad things must come to an end. And so comes the long-awaited conclusion to this epic four-part series, "Objects I Have Been Hit in the Head With." Going through my blog and wracking my brain for things to write about, it dawned on me that it's been over four years since I wrote the penultimate installment in this series, detailing my experience ...

5 Unorthodox Life Lessons From Dad

I was lucky enough to have had a cool dad. A really cool dad. The kind of dad who would help you smuggle contraband rock albums into the house and help you hide them from Mom. The kind of dad who knew you couldn't afford action figures, so he'd make awesome, handmade paper dolls of your favorite cartoon characters. The kind of dad who made ...