First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having

The Catholic Church is known for its charity and public service, and Holy Infant of Prague Catholic Church in Trussville is no different. "We are a stewardship parish," says the parish priest, called "Father Bill" by his parishioners, "and we focus on gifts of service to the Lord.

I ride the city bus. Hold your applause! No autographs, please! I’ve ridden the bus in Birmingham all my life. “Unnatural,” you say? “Unheard of,” you say? Well, wait for this shocker. Hold onto your hat, assuming you’re wearing a hat while reading this.

(A hypothetical scenario that may or may not happen to any politico, local or otherwise. There’s no actual evidence that these conversations ever took place...but we sure hope they did.)

Prizes, from the Oscars to the Heisman Trophy to the Nobel, matter not at all to me, which is perhaps why I was surprised to find that so many of my friends were surprised last October when Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Hi, kids. I’m back. It’s Syd. What up? After a long, strange trip from L.A., I’m in New York, chilling in Gramercy at the Carlton Arms.

We all have stories. We hold them close, for stories are the most potent form that memory can take. We carry them around with us, carefully polishing and honing them in the telling and re-telling, until they become integral parts of our identity.

I’m not having a good day. I have a splitting headache. I’m at a truck stop in Milesburg, Pa. waiting for the New York bus. My so-called book agent in Manhattan—a guy named Aubrey—is not returning my calls.

“Was it the drink was his ruin,” asked Hugh Kenner of Flann O’Brien in A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers, “or was it the column? For ruin is the word. So much promise has seldom accomplished so little.” By the end of his life, “a great future lay behind him.”

This is the end. My only friend, the end. See, I’ve been thinking a lot about Jim Morrison and the Doors and Apocalypse Now. I’m not alone. Charlie Sheen is drawing much of his snappiest patter from Coppola’s Vietnam flick, in which his old man Marty co-starred.