To commemorate our first date, we returned to Blind Owl Brewery, where we had met face to face for the first time seven years earlier, the final step after surviving a gauntlet of initial online dating site chats, then the exchange of personal email addresses, then an actual phone call, until I was deemed text…
(Editor’s Note: This story by Scott Saalman recently appeared in Next Avenue, a non-profit journalism website produced by Twin Cities PBS.) I recently listened to an NPR news story about how National Geographic, the venerable, glossy-paged gold standard chronicler of our natural world, will no longer be purchasable on newsstands. This doesn’t mean that the magazine has…
HOW I BROKE THIS | EPISODE 5 | JOHNNY “HICCUPS” STROMBOLINI PODCAST INTRODUCTION: Ineptitude … Failure … Inanity … Stupidity … MURDER! … MURDER!! … MURDER!!! This is How I Broke This. SFX | CARTOONISH BROKEN SPRING: Boing. GUY: I’m Guy Razz, host of How I Broke This. Not to be confused with that other podcast by…
In 2019 re-watched The Sopranos. All 86 episodes. My biggest binge. Just like last decade when it aired, I couldn’t get enough Tony Soprano. I knew I was in way too deep the second time around when: Brynne: “Scott, the toilet is still running.”Scott: “Whaddya gonna do?” Brynne: “Well, you could do what you normally…
I just published a new collection of humor columns, Quietly Making Noise, which is now available to purchase on Amazon. Below is the Introduction, titled “20 Bucks and a Byline.” I hope it encourages you to give Quietly Making Noise a spot on your nightstand or atop your toilet tank. Regarding the latter’s proposed placement,…
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”– Charles Dickens My father used to say, “The more keys a man has, the more worries.” Then, for emphasis, he’d shake his vast key collection at me, causing metallic smells to rush up my nose. The acrid keys seemed alive, angry, a voodoo death rattle. His…
Today, I turned 59. I don’t expect too much from 59 other than being subjected to a lengthier list of physical ailments. Fifty-eight proved to be a major pain in the butt. Literally. Currently, a physical therapist is working with me on sciatica issues. The pain in my right butt cheek is intense, making it…
“Pumpkin pie, if rightly made, is a thing of beauty and a joy – while it lasts . . .” —Joseph Wood Krutch, naturalist Do you want to make a pumpkin pie, she asks. She steals my heart in the simplest of ways. Yes. Yes, of course, I say. We shall get culinary together, she…
It was one of the most devastating incidents in the history of women serving in the military I am a stranger to war, but four brave Americans related to me and bearing my surname have served our country. My great-great-great grandfather Sgt. Christian Saalman was a Union soldier who died of scurvy and thirst at Andersonville,…
I love late October, the scary time of the year, when a good horror movie casts the heaviest of shadows over the mind and spreads the iciest of chills within the spine. I love how a good horror movie worms through the creaky, cobwebby attic of my brain, causes the pulsations of the heart to…
