Brick

Portable chairs these days are of a kind: metal rods sup­port­ing a ham­mock seat and back, designed to col­lapse and fit in a tubu­lar cloth bag. It’s been impos­si­ble to find those web chairs, strips of woven plas­tic inter­laced on a frame of light alu­minum tub­ing; it just folds for trans­port. Web chairs are more …

With apolo­gies to George Orwell: Win­ston gazed up at the enor­mous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hid­den beneath the dark mous­tache. O cruel, need­less mis­un­der­stand­ing! O stub­born, self-willed exile from the lov­ing breast! Two Vic­tory Gin-scented tears trick­led down the sides of his nose, only to …

Some blasts from the vuvuzela. I used to play instru­ments, not just blow my own horn. While avoid­ing graven images, there’s no writ against craven puns. Mosque, ow, on the Hud­son? Say­ing where houses of wor­ship do not belong raises all sorts of red flags, no mat­ter the neigh­bor­hood, no mat­ter the reli­gion. How could a …

Here’s some vuvuzela blasts to adver­tise­ments of the you-must-be-kidding sort. Vir­tu­ally all of these are from the Sun­day news­pa­per coupon sets. Because these go a long way to pay­ing my salary, please buy every one of these. They’re fine prod­ucts at hon­est prices. • • • Del Monte has a new cam­paign for its canned fruits …

As long as soccer’s World Cup has made the vuvuzela sta­dium noise­maker a com­mon word in Amer­ica, Brick wants to horn in on its ubiq­uity for a new series of short takes. Today, it’s skin and drama. • • • Speak­ing of vuvuzela, one rash has come home to roost, on my left fore­arm. Until the most …