 Red Room Writer Profile
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Chris Rodell's Blog
November 21, 2009
- I smiled this week at the intense reaction to the scientific study that said too frequent mammograms cause unnecessary stress and can be safely reduced. It was a beautiful smile, too. The mostly straight ivories look like rows of surfboards left to bleach in the summer sun. It’s a contagious sort of smile. I’ve found people nearly always smile back when I smile at them. In fact, the only ...
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November 20, 2009
- President Barack Obama is returning from an overseas diplomatic mission in which he’s now being criticized for being too diplomatic. Yes, it’s true. His courtly bow before Japanese Emperor Akihito was deemed demeaning by that Miss Manners of international relations, Dick Cheney. Cheney said it “showed weakness” for a U.S. president to observe such formality with one of our closest allies, ...
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November 18, 2009
- My mother stared at the new cable remote the way the ancients must have stared at a solar eclipse. For a minute, I thought she was going to run into her bedroom and slam the door. But the powerful demands of another glowing pagan god, the 42-inch Toshiba flat screen, exerted an even greater pull and my Mom is convinced she’ll perish without Diane Sawyer in the morning. Thus, we began the ritual ...
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November 16, 2009
- I selected my best duds, tidied up an ugly tangle of stray nose hairs and took steps to ensure I wouldn’t be too hungover for the big day. That left only one item on the big to-do list: watch a taped “Green Acres” marathon. You can take Perry Mason or Arnie Becker. For me the most persuasive television attorney of all time was Oliver Wendell Douglas. He was the erstwhile New York lawyer who ...
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November 13, 2009
- When I heard that former Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa was getting lighter I expressed enthusiastic support. Good for him, I thought. We could all afford to lose a few pounds. I was disappointed when Sosa got caught illegally corking his bat and cheating with steroids so to hear him crusading about the importance of fitness was refreshing. It sounded like Sammy was becoming cool again. Then I ...
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November 11, 2009
- When news of the execution of D.C. sniper John Muhammad, people every where recalled a three-week reign of terror as diabolical as anything conceived by bin Laden. Not me. My first thought was of a warm, friendly tavern in the far northwest corner of the country. It was the Waterfront Seafood & Bar in Bellingham, Washington. It’s a place where everybody knows your name and the odds of one ...
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November 9, 2009
- I’m nostalgic for the days when I used to gauge my how hard I was working by the frequency of my rejection letters. I knew I wasn’t working hard enough unless I was getting at least one rejection a day. This made sense because if the rejections were coming with regularity it meant that my stuff was being considered elsewhere and would by the law of averages produce a positive result. These ...
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November 6, 2009
- In the future, newborns will be implanted with forehead bar codes that can be scanned with iPhone apps to eventually reveal things like name, astrological sign, political disposition, cereal preference and current level of sexual arousal. And, dammit, guys like me will still struggle to get laid. I’m so far removed from the horny dating scene that I should be restricted from ever commenting ...
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November 4, 2009
- While other writers are triumphantly engaged in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which they try to in 30 days write 50,000-word novels, I will write about what it’s like to listen to 318 consecutive Bruce Springsteen songs in chronological order over 23.5 hours. I’m not like other writers. And Springsteen, 60, is not like other artists. He’s in the midst of an historic run of ...
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November 2, 2009
- I have yet to write United Airlines complaining about mistreatment during a recent free flight because I’m fearful they might respond with another free flight. And I don’t think I could take that again. The airline industry is today thrilled they can scapegoat Northwestern pilots Richard Cole and Thomas Cheney for using personal lap tops while they should have been devoting their full ...
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October 31, 2009
- For the past five nights, I’ve had a recurring nightmare that every trick or treater coming to my house was either dressed as Kate Gosselin or was actually Kate Gosselin herself. She moves in with me. She brings her eight kids. Jon starts showing up to go through my drawers looking for money he can claim is his. Worst of all, instead of having to ride herd over just two children through the ...
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October 27, 2009
- I’ve discovered a second male puberty and I’m smack dab in the middle of it. The first male puberty happens when boys are teenagers. They become awkward about their appearance and begin to grow funny hairs in places that surprise them. The second male puberty happens when men like me, aged 46, become awkward about our appearance and begin to grow funny hairs in places that surprise us. I’m ...
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October 23, 2009
- I’m writing this in the big box book store where I plan on rushing up and putting a big sloppy kiss on the first stranger I see with nasty flu symptoms. I’m going to swab their throat with my tongue and hope to inhale a virus that might lay me low for about seven good days. I’m aching to be sick. I don’t want N1H1, flesh-nibbling virus or, heaven forbid, anything venereal in nature. ...
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October 21, 2009
- A recent report shows that any parent eager to pre-determine the sex of their eventual offspring ought to pause and consider the cow. Yes, in what is surely an indicator of what’s to come for mankind, dairy farmers have for the past three years been given the opportunity to select the sex of their cattle. They got to tinker with the divine selection ordained by God and Mother Nature that had ...
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October 19, 2009
- The most interesting musical act in the country right now is, once again, Bruce Springsteen. Unfortunately, the second most interesting act are those merry madcaps from the FreeCreditReport.com commercials. They dress up in medieval garb, play pirates in seafood restaurants, rock it out on rollercoasters -- and do it all while based in the cellar of the plucky lead singer’s girlfriend’s ...
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