Keep your holly jolly Christmas, I’ll be watching sword and sorcery on Netflix. — While I’ll no doubt be spending some time over the holidays with Ralphie Parker of Hohman, Indiana and the Abominable Snow Monster of the North, I’m especially looking forward to hanging with Geralt of Rivia. Geralt is a “witcher”—a monster hunter—and a creation of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Besides being…

“Timothy,” a catchy little song about eating your workmate — For some reason, there are precious few pop songs about cannibalism. Perhaps it’s because “Timothy,” a 1971 hit by The Buoys, set such a high bar. “Timothy” describes a mine disaster in which three people, including Timothy, Joe, and the narrator, are trapped for an undisclosed amount of time and…

Bring on the colder weather — It’s not the fall equinox, but for most of us, Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer. Good. It’s time to move on. It’s not you, summer, it’s me. Actually, it is you. I’m sick of your heat and humidity. If there were a light dusting of snow tomorrow…

There is no “secret” to staying together. Except maybe this one. — My wife and I are approaching our 32nd wedding anniversary. We owe it all to coffee. It is the reason I get out of bed in the morning. But it is not my wife’s reason. Because every morning without fail I bring her a cappuccino in bed while she’s just…

Traffic is heading uptown. So why is the signal facing downtown? — There are many mysteries in the city of New York. This one puzzled me for weeks, until its secret was revealed. I work in an office building in midtown and pass by this corner every day. Eventually I noticed this traffic signal at 51st and Madison. It was facing the…

A new discovery could sink the “Vikings Disease” — I suffer from a hand disease, although “suffer’’ is too strong a word for it. It’s more of an ongoing annoyance, punctuated by periodic surgeries. The condition is called Dupuytren’s contracture. It affects people of Northern European background and is sometimes called “the Vikings disease,” as it’s often passed on…

I thought my “Please God, don’t hit it to me” days were over. — Sometimes a piece of your long-forgotten past descends upon you from the sky, like a thunderbolt sent from Zeus himself to teach you an unpleasant lesson. Only in my case, it was a high foul ball headed my way at Yankee Stadium, sent by a Cleveland Guardian. There were 39,050…

I can’t imagine anything less interesting to me than something interesting. — After the last two-and-a-half years of pandemic and political insanity, the last thing I need is stimulation of any kind. I’d rather be pleasantly numbed. My mind-altering substance of choice is YouTube. I think there are a lot of people who share my desire for a few precious, placid moments…

It starts with his last name — In the J.R.R. Tolkien novels and Peter Jackson films of The Lord of the Rings, Gríma Wormtongue is portrayed as a devious, sniveling bad guy, with greasy dark hair and an all-around bad attitude. By far, he’s my favorite character. I find it easy to sympathize with him. Let’s start…