America's Most Critical Journal since 1999
If Cormac McCarthy wrote dialogue for “Emily in Paris” by Stephen J. Lyons Scene: Emily Cooper, dressed in a paisley micro mini-skirt, with mismatched suede boots, has pain au chocolat and café au lait with her BFF Mindy Chen outside the Café de... More »
The 12 Steps of Aspiring Autocrats Anonymous by Stephen J. Lyons We admit that we are powerless over the mighty sway of Donald Trump—aka “Him”—his enabling lies rhetoric and the glitter of repeated appearances on Fox News. We came to believe tha... More »
Stephen J. Lyons I am a bad American. My sin: I don’t care one whit about Mars. There, I said it. Go ahead and dox me. Be mean and make me a meme. I will still not budge an inch from my stance. As Elton John famously sang: “Mars ain’t the kind of place t... More »
Dear Melinda: Because you haven’t responded to my phone calls, emails or drone flyovers and, because your recent injunction against me does not apply to snail mail, I thought I would simply send you a letter. First, I would like to offer my heartfelt condole... More »
The signs are everywhere. A man walks into a Subway in North Carolina carrying an AT-4 anti-tank rocket launcher and two sidearms. No tanks are in the vicinity. He is there to get a sandwich. And maybe a bag of chips. Another man shops at a Vons grocery store ... More »
Friends, I have left my safe cocoon and ventured over to the dark side. What first triggered this odyssey was coming across the #FireFauci hashtag on Twitter. I decided to sit quietly in a room with comforting pillows and aroma therapy (vanilla spice), and fol... More »
On Easter—check that—or two weeks past, or whenever I am an older man than I am today, I shall wear purple with a red MAGA hat that will suit my mood. I shall emerge from my fetid shelter, eyes blinking from the heavenly sunshine, nose itching from the fre... More »
Stephen J. Lyons Before I even entered the plane’s cabin I could see disaster lurking in the boarding tunnel. This is the staging area where mothers and fathers gear up like wilderness backpackers at a trailhead, disassembling baby joggers and strollers,... More »
By Stephen J. Lyons I found the following untitled poem while picking up trash in the city park near the picnic pavilion: “Our booze who art in mugs Hallowed be thy brew Our liquor come, we will be drunk In bars as it is in basements Give us this day our... More »
Snow is falling, but I am not in a white world. At the Anchorage airport, broad-faced natives move through the lobby with the weary look of the world’s indigenous; Pacific-rim Asians with deal-making cell phones dial home; and an Afr... More »