This is a little off-topic. I am a middle-aged white man living in a predominantly black neighborhood and haunt a local family-owned bodega with a rotating cast of relatives and friends working the counter whose first language is not English.

Let us not forget 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry, another Bay Stater who flamed out against a Bush:

This was a while ago, post-9/11 but not by much. There were a lot of American flags flying and I got a warm reception everywhere I went. That was a staunchly pro-American window that opened and closed pretty quickly.

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You don’t work for Diageo do you? Or InBev? The beer executive didn’t at the time, but there was a lot of industry consolidation going on and he was a little cagey about why he wanted to look at a Heineken brewery in Rome. He did tell me that it was very difficult to find Heineken in Rome, and pointed me to an…

I’m gay and I have no gaydar whatsoever. I was actually shocked to learn that George Michael was gay. I’m not yet banned from the Pines ferry but I really should be.

If you’ve ever seen “Victor/Victoria,” you’d know that all you need to do is go to a very expensive restaurant, order everything, eat it, and toward the end release the cockroach you found in your apartment.

A few years ago I got talking with a beer executive in Rome, of all places. I asked him why he was there, Peroni is crap and everyone drinks the excellent wine that can cost $2/bottle, and he said he was there to look at the local Heineken brewery. After reading these comments I thought I was having a false recovered…

It’s a cliché but you really should live life like every day’s going to be the last.

I was waiting for a food professional to weigh in on Blue Apron. I’m a pretty good cook, self-taught and have a weird obsession with recipes from the immediate post-WWII era...

You’d be surprised by how many adults who can’t cook at all. When I was in my 20s I once stayed with fellow young-adult friends after a heavy night of partying. I was the relatively sober one so I got up first and remembered that there was a 24-hour bodega across the street. After I found the apartment keys I went out…

Lots of really good people HAVE moved on. I wish Gizmodo would have kept the comments in the archives along with the original stories, but I guess for legal reasons only the original stories were kept. Did you see that Randilyn is back? She is the one who got me started commenting in the first place, because I loved…

Thanks! I know who you are, you’re one of the best commenters and I look forward to everything you contribute. I tend to go on a little bit too much at Jezebel, partly because it’s free and easy but mostly because I like the camaraderie and the feedback. I’ve been reading Gawker/Gizmodo since its inception in 2002…

I live in a predominantly black neighborhood. Years ago I got off the subway after work and there were crowds on the sidewalks, a few people were crying, people had their car doors open and the radios blaring. I hadn’t seen anything like it since 9/11. I immediately thought, “It’s Obama. Shit.” It was Michael Jackson.…

This man is sorry we gave up the robe, the toga, and the kilt. I normally work from home but every so often I go into an office. New York in August is not fun. The subway platforms are like convection ovens. On the trains they sometimes turn down the air conditioning to take some of the pressure off the electrical…

I think the world of wealth and power embodied by Lower Manhattan is supposed to be the New Jerusalem but your Staten Island take is much funnier.

Gone with the Wind

I didn’t remember the typhoid in the water! I’ve read a couple of social histories about Washington, DC, in the 1800s, it sounds like it was a pretty gruesome place, and must have forgotten about typhus.

It wasn’t the plumbing, bad as it was, it was the malaria that you had to worry about. President James Garfield’s wife Lucretia contracted it while living in the White House. She survived by getting out of the White House and recuperating on the Jersey Shore. Garfield, sadly, did not survive his assassination attempt.

I’m an occasional copy editor and on this and this alone I will defend Trump.