Idle Idolatry

Our contributors examine themselves and their relationships with an “other.”

I Love a Man in Uniform

by Mary Kay Holmes May 1, 2013

I have a thing for superheroes. Not comic books or illustrations or that dude in the Spiderman outfit outside Trader Joe’s advertising the sushi joint next door. I’m talking about buff, macho actors in skin tight unitards with broad shoulders and fiberglass molded six packs saving the day. If there’s a montage of a dude […]

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Me and Jonathan Winters – RIP

by Chris Bonno April 18, 2013

Chris Bonno recounts meeting legendary comedian Jonathan Winters, who died last week at the age of 87. One of the true greats, Jonathan Winters was as versatile as he was hilarious. During a career that lasted more than sixty years, Winters  was a comedian, writer, performer, and artist, who recorded  more than twenty comedy albums […]

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Funny Stuff at the Outhouse – My Life in Midwest Punk Rock

by Ben Easher April 2, 2013

Though my parents were from the East Coast and have since retired there, my father got his first and only job in Springfield, Missouri when I was one year old. For a while, he had continued to seek employment elsewhere, but we were still there when I was graduating high school at seventeen. Though medium-sized, […]

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The Luck of the Irish

by Jim Coughlin March 16, 2013

In the fourth grade, I became a collector of four-leaf clovers. Word had gotten to me that Dyan Ortbal, a fellow fourth grader, had found a four-leaf clover. Suddenly, finding four-leaf clovers was something I could possibly do. I suppose if a kid from my neighborhood had made it into the NBA, maybe I would have […]

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Gutsy the Lizard

by Dan O'Day McClellan March 15, 2013

This past weekend, as I was walking to the store to buy some wine for dinner, I came across a very long lizard lying in the middle of the parking lot of the store. Though you wouldn’t necessarily think so, Los Angeles is filled with animal life: coyotes, the occasional mountain lion, and loads of these […]

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Three Cheers for Beer

by Jay Stone January 24, 2013

I love beer. A world of sensory exploration via brewed liquid awaits.  Any pub worth its salt in beer offerings can have you sampling it’s arsenal of tap handles for hours and set you off on a course with destiny. To some this is enough, but if our pioneering forefathers taught us anything it’s that […]

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Has Hockey Lost its Mind?

by Tony Shea December 27, 2012

The NHL cancelled all games through Jan 21, 2012 as the labor dispute continues. If games resume at that time, each team would still be able to play 48 games, slightly less than 50% of the season. I could live with that because the normal 82 game season is too long, really. The season goes […]

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In the Dark with Ozzy

by Jim Coughlin November 29, 2012

This is the story of how I found myself in complete darkness, alone, with the Godfather of Heavy Metal–Ozzy Osbourne. It was just a surreal minute or two. Also, I was dressed as Spider-Man. My friend Leesa Severyn, an actress, got me the job. She was helping produce an internal video for Activision about Activision […]

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Happy Birthday, Mr. Vonnegut

by Tony Shea November 19, 2012

Kurt Vonnegut would have been 90 this year. His birthday was November 11th. I missed it, not that there is any grand celebration per se. I usually just read some of my favorite work of his – Mother Night, if I had to pick an absolute favorite, although I love them all, and Bluebeard, which […]

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The Ramones

Me and the Ramones

by Tony Shea October 11, 2012

Anybody who knows me has probably heard me talk about the Ramones fifty times. In honor of Johnny Ramone’s recent birthday on October 8, I decided to finally catalog it and put it to rest. Me and The Ramones. On the list of my heroes, which otherwise includes Evel Knievel, Charles Bukowski, Malcom X, Rodney […]

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