No one has ever accomplished anything more worth having than the moments little kids steal away from the big grown-up world, together; when they wall out all of our sad hypocrisies and fucked-up values and grotesque striving, illuminate a little world for each other, and fill it with their easy goodwill and eagerness…

We’re coming home along the Thruway and decide to stop at McD’s. There’s a woman and smallish kid in front of us getting huffy and I can tell this won’t end well. And in due time she starts yelling at the cashier, “Why is everything more expensive here? This is ridiculous! You’re ripping people off!” and so on, as the…

The second story reminds me of one of my wife’s tales of waiting tables at Dead Lobster while in grad school.

I still hold a grudge against them for leaving Houston >_>. The Oilers is such a better name than the Texans

Re: the Cunts. For a while, my parents loved to tell the story of how my dad loved to tell me to ask any given waiter for a fork and spoon when I was a toddler. I couldn’t pronounce fork and spoon correctly, because I was like 2, and apparently I would politely request a “fuckin’ poon,” and my dad thought it was…

A couple of years ago, I was frequently under fire from a few of the subjects I was writing on/off about. There was one instance, specifically, where the guy was swearing that the interactions I was certain were with him were actually with someone else. After publicly stating that he wasn’t going to seek litigation,…

Simple kindnesses like the ones you and others are recounting about Tommy here get paid forward in ways we might never even realize. During a dark time for me, a writer whose work means the world to me and who I didn’t even know particularly well told me “you’re doing fine and will continue doing fine.”

Such a small…

Can’t seem to edit:

I’m heartbroken, too.

I, too, have this job because of Tommy. More broadly, I have my faith in writing, in editing, in journalism as a whole as something still worth doing in 2015 because of Tommy. He’s the best, and smartest, and sharpest, and angriest writer I know. I’m heartbroken that I’ll no longer get to work alongside him, but…

This is true.

My brother and I started Hoopism.com about 100 years ago and had some moderate success. Tommy was always amazing to us in terms of getting us exposure and encouragement. More often than not it was one or two line emails but that was at a time when virtually nobody gave a crap about basketball visualizations (now…

Tommy is so smart. He’s much smarter than I am. Every time I’ve known I was going to have to talk to him about something significant I had to stop and think it over in my head a few times. I think he knew that and he probably could have used it against me in some way if ever wanted to. He never did. He never felt like…

One morning, shortly after I had been hired full time, one of our editorial fellows, Dan, sent an email to Tommy and me, explaining that he would be a little bate late getting into work because he’d been mugged the night before, and was still sort of getting himself together. Tommy emailed him back, telling him to…

Put less loquaciously: Tommy is the tits.

Well said, Albert. Craggs is so goddamned crazy and angry that I think people who haven’t had the pleasure might not guess that he’s also a fucking sweetheart. His talent is obvious to anyone who can read, but what might be less obvious is that he’s a Real Good Dude.

Tommy Craggs gave me a second chance. I spent nearly three years writing for a different Gawker site, and I hit a point where I was just done. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was looking elsewhere, and my time at the company was up. I didn’t want to leave though, and in a passing conversation, I told Tommy I felt…