Day 971: Forget The Superheroes – This Man Literally Saved The World

originally published August 28, 2014 Look deep into his eyes. Ignore the fact that he might at any moment pitch forward from the weight of all those medals; he deserves your reverent gaze. Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov is very possibly the reason you are alive right now. Depending on how deeply you’re willing to reach into […]

Day 970: How One Woman’s Bad Advice Helped To Crumble An Empire

originally published August 27, 2014 A modicum of historical investigation, along with a smidge of fact-manipulation in order to build a semi-credible opening sentence has revealed a morsel of data heretofore unknown to me: the Roman Empire – the most mighty and triumphant political juggernaut of the early A.D.’s – was tipped over to a […]

Day 969: Pound-For-Pound Performances

originally published August 26, 2014 If anyone asks, I’m currently beefing up for the lead role in the upcoming biopic about Orson Welles’ final days. I haven’t been cast yet, and to my knowledge no such movie exists, but when Hollywood finally comes around to making it, I’ll be ready. So yes, I will have […]

Day 968: The Wayward Wanderings Of Thomas Culpeper’s Foolish Dink

originally published August 25, 2014 When one is granted access to the inner circle of England’s royal family, allowed to mingle with the most upper of crusts and graced with the juiciest insider knowledge of the most important goings-on in the British Empire, rule number one would have to be: DON’T BANG THE QUEEN. You […]

Day 967: Riding The Hood

originally published August 24, 2014 It was late one February night in 1992. Edmonton’s winters don’t even call their travel agent to book their flight out of town until at least March, so the snow on the ground was thick and slothful. My friend Josh White and I were exercising our teenage stupidity in a […]

Day 966: Which Came First And What’s On Second?

originally published August 23, 2014 While the central focus of this project has been devoted to the kind of esoteric trivia that will one day allow me to run the category of ‘Obscure Miscellany’ on Jeopardy, sometimes I like to ask the big questions. The paradoxes. The queries that prompt chortles and didactic witticisms in […]

Day 965: The Inaugural Road Trip

originally published August 22, 2014 Roll down your windows, crank up the vintage Lindsey Buckingham and ready your innards for a deluge of fast-food grease – we are hitting the open road. In 1903, right around the time those two bike-shop brothers in North Carolina were writing the first stand-up routines about in-flight meals, the […]

Day 964: The Engineering Of Consent

originally published August 21, 2014 To be perfectly clear, Edward Bernays was not in advertising. Yes, he was hired by companies, corporations and entire industries to convince the public that they should buy a given product, but there’s a fundamental philosophical difference here. Advertisers want the public to accept a product or service, and then […]

Day 963: The Hounds Of Fealty

originally published August 20, 2014 Yes, I’m writing about dogs again. Last year saw the earthly departure of Rufus and Yoko, my two loyal – albeit halitosis-heavy – bulldog assistants, and I would be remiss (which is Latin for “an asshole”) if I did not honor their memory with a few feel-good tales of puckish […]

Day 962: Moriarty, Unmasked

originally published August 19, 2014 What can be said of a criminal mastermind? I’d always been deterred from a life of misdeeds by my utter conviction that I’d be lousy at it, and that the inevitable consequences of such a career are either prison, demise by the hand of the swarthy hero, or if one […]