The Real Memphis Mike (don't settle for imitations)

 "The young worry about being noticed.  The old learn the value of being ignored." He'd grown to enjoy mornings. He enjoyed the still, soft silence - aside from the ever-present hum of his tinnitus. Mornings had always been stressful. Rush rush rush! Rush to school! Rush to work! Rush to this appointment or that one. What's going to go wrong today? He'd never stopped to think 'what might go right today?' Mornings were now an excellent time for contemplation - prayer even. Even in the worst weather, he'd often look out the window and thank the Lord for another beautiful day. Another chance, another opportunity.  He'd lost most of the hearing in his right ear. He'd lost most of the vision in his left eye. A stroke robbed him of many abilities. He had trouble walking. He tripped a lot. He often dropped things. He had a hard time remembering words. He had stomach problems. His breathing was slowly becoming an issue. Yet, he remained oddly positive....

Working night shift in a personal care home was about as exciting as it sounds. Paperwork, filing, a bit of cleaning, and a lot of down time. The pay wasn't great, but it was steady. Decent benefits too.  He worked on the lower level. The nurses' station was on the upper level. The nurse's aide was supposed to do hourly rounds on both levels, but she usually never came downstairs. This was fine with him. Had he been a more social person, he probably wouldn't have taken the job, let alone kept at it for years. Sure, he'd occasionally go up and chat with the nurses and the aide. He wasn't much for watching TV, and night-time radio sucked. So, he'd go up in the rickety old elevator, grab a smoke with the other staff, make a little small talk and then return to his office and whatever latest book he was reading.  He made his rounds without fail, every hour. Sometimes twice an hour if he was bored. Most of the residents slept like logs. Some of the whackier ones ...

It started as a harmless prank. A viral trend. Easy to do. Easy to laugh about. Someone taking a photo - you slip into the background. Make a face. Throw up a peace sign. Pretend to trip. No harm, no foul. Most people laughed. Some didn’t. But that's the thing about the internet - you never really know who's watching. And someone is always watching. Jared didn’t think much about it. He was just a kid having fun. --- Saturdays down in the Market District were prime photo bomb days. Everyone and their sister were there - picking up produce, browsing specialty shops, wandering between street vendors, or eating fried cat-on-a-stick. The locals understood. Tourists never did. Which made it perfect. Families posed in front of colorful produce stands. Couples snapped selfies outside bakeries. Kids stood with oversized lemonades and greasy paper trays of things nobody could quite identify. Photos of buskers. Street performers. And somewhere in the background, there was Jared. Shorter ...

 I woke up this morning, made coffee, and before I even got a sip in, I was already being informed that something - somewhere - was unacceptable. No context. No details. Just the digital equivalent of a stranger bursting into your kitchen yelling: “THIS IS NOT OK.” What is it? Nobody knows. But we’re furious. Because in 2026, outrage isn’t a reaction - it’s a hobby. People don’t wake up wondering what they’re going to do anymore. They wake up wondering what they’re going to be mad about. “Give us this day our daily grievance.” And when they find it - and they always do - they gather. Not to understand. Not to fix. To perform. You’ve got the Outraged. The Counter-Outraged. The Late Arrivals, somehow the angriest of all. And of course, PatriotEagle420, who hasn’t read a full sentence since 2008 but is absolutely certain this is tyranny. Meanwhile, the one poor bastard asking, “Wait… what actually happened?” gets treated like he just farted in church. Now here’s the part nobody wants ...

I can't personally verify the truth of this story. A friend told it, and I felt it was comic gold, given a few minor tweaks. I also have to question my friend's taste in pizza. Sir Pizza is a chain joint out of Indiana. That said, Indiana is home to some of the worst excuses for pizza I have ever encountered. Living in the greater Pittsburgh area, my friend and I are not lost for choices when it comes to pizza. Not sure where to go? Ask. - MM I have been eating Sir Pizza for roughly three decades, which is longer than some marriages and at least one of my cholesterol medications. I don’t just order it - I commit to it. I drive out of my way. I plan evenings around it. If Sir Pizza had a loyalty punch card, I’d be entitled to partial ownership by now. Today, however, I made a grave and unforgivable error. I ordered from the wrong location. Not the wrong pizza, mind you. Not anchovies instead of pepperoni. No, I ordered the correct pizza from the incorrect geographic coordinate, ...

 Simmer down...this is more for me than anyone else. I'm chuckling like a goon here. - MM I’m now 60. This is not a drill. I was today years old when I realized the English language did not survive the internet. It was not murdered - it was slowly, painfully algorithmed to death. Not me witnessing the full collapse of vocabulary in real time... Unpopular opinion: If you know, you know...and I wish I didn’t. I did a thing. Yeah. You avoided a verb. Congratulations on your brave journey. Living your best life? Most of you are eating cold pizza in sweatpants at 2am arguing with something named “Kyle (Patriot Mode).” Be aware. Proceed with caution. Yinz ain't ready for that conversation - mostly because it requires complete sentences. And I oop - In my era (go ahead, dock my aura points, I’ve got plenty), we didn’t say “adulting.” We just suffered quietly and developed personality disorders like God intended. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. (No one asked for. No one needed. Y...

 If you've been following along on the home version, you know I've started a new book. While still fiction, it's a departure from what you may be accustomed to from me. Allow me to set the scene: 2 middle aged American musicians, in Hokkaido. If you've ever experienced jet lag and a hangover, you might be able to appreciate this excerpt. - MM Vince really wasn't prepared for his first night sleeping on a tatami mat. In his mind, it was little more than a lumpy futon mattress on an old pallet. He also wasn't ready for Daniel's snoring, which sounded like a congested heifer. Between the lack of comfort, the noise, the booze, and the jet lag - he didn't sleep well at all. And he got so little of it. After a few hours, he gave up. He got dressed, found a pen and left a note.  Couldn't sleep. Went for a walk. Back later. - V  He left the note in the bathroom. He figured one of them would find it.  Hiroshi's neighborhood looked different in the early m...

Marilyn wasn’t her real name.  It was the name she used. The one people remembered. Like her idol, Marilyn Monroe, she understood that names mattered. People remembered her. Not for what she had once hoped to become, but for what she had become instead. She was known to the police. To psychiatrists. To probation officers, pimps, and pushers. She moved through the system the way some people moved through neighborhoods - familiar, practiced, expected. By the time she arrived, her reputation had already gotten there first. --- The night manager read her file before ever meeting her. It was thick in all the wrong ways - incident reports, evaluations, arrests. Schizophrenia was stamped across the top, the diagnosis of convenience. But the details underneath told a different story. Long-term drug abuse. Manipulation. Violence when necessary. Charm when useful. Nothing suggested confusion. Everything suggested control. There were rarely empty beds. When one opened, it filled quickly - usu...

 My dear friend Yanka has been in the hospital for a couple of days now, and it drives me nuts that there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s thousands of miles away. My language skills are limited, which means there’s only so much I can communicate, and only with certain people. I can’t just call the hospital - and anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely would if I could. Last night I got word that she’s doing slightly better. The phrase I heard was “serious but stable.” I have no direct way to contact her family, so I’ve been sending messages and hoping someone can make sense of my Yoda-like Bulgarian. I’m lucky to have such a friend. Yanka is incredible. She grew up a village girl, became a nurse, and then life took a turn I doubt she ever expected. She won a singing contest, and suddenly she had a career. In 1971 there was the plane crash. Yanka was one of the few survivors, and the experience changed her deeply. A few years later she formed Trio Bulgarka. Their music was al...

 I still don’t know if he ever fired a shot. That’s the funny thing about small-town stories. By the time they’re finished making their rounds, everyone remembers something different. Someone heard shots. Someone else swore the police found an arsenal in his house. Another person claimed he tried to lure a kid inside. But the truth is, none of us really knew. All I knew for certain was the way he used to greet us. The Southend projects sat just a few blocks from downtown, close enough that you could still hear traffic off Fourth Street and smell the bakery some mornings. Kids cut through the sidewalks on their way to the chippy, and old houses leaned into each other along Fifth like they’d been standing there too long. And almost every time we passed his place, we heard it. “Hiiiiiiiiiiii neighbor.” He’d draw it out in a soft voice that never quite sounded friendly, even though it was clearly meant that way. My friend and I would hear it whenever we passed his place. This was down ...

 Pascal philosophized that all human problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room alone. He believed people fear loneliness because it forces them to confront their own anxieties, leading them to seek constant, often shallow, distractions. For millennia, humans have found ways to build relationships and propagate the species. Until now.  What's changed?  If media is to be believed, the younger folks just ain't getting freaky like their grandparents did.  Josh was thirty-four years old and had never so much as held a woman’s hand. That was the line he liked to start with when he argued online. It had a certain tragic rhythm to it, something he felt people should recognize as proof of his personal deep injustice. Thirty-four years. As if time itself had wronged him. His bedroom was still the same room he had grown up in. Posters had been replaced with a second monitor and a ring light for recording videos no one watched. The carpet smelled faintly of dust ...

  It began with shadows. His vision was already getting bad. Diabetic retinopathy. His great-grandmother had gone blind from it, but that was a long time ago. Modern medicine had come a long way since then. But his vision was definitely getting worse. His world was slowly growing darker and more shadowy. He'd come to terms with it. What he hadn't come to terms with - yet - was his Parkinson's diagnosis. He'd noticed his left forefinger was twitchy. It didn't hurt, and it really wasn't impacting his day in any big way. His doctor asked about it during an office visit. The questions kept coming, and soon he had ticked enough boxes to warrant the diagnosis.  Parkinson's Disease. He'd had some of the early signs for a few years, but the doctor had initially chalked them up as resulting from the stroke he suffered. Ever since, he'd been moving slower. His voice was quieter and raspier. Constipation was common. He'd never slept well, but he slept worse...