urbantrappistblogastery

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I am a sucker for anything that is unabashedly, unrealistically beautiful (excepting photoshopped cover girls). From magical novels by Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez to amplified art by Georges Rouault or Vincent van Gogh to ultravivid films like Amèlie or The Fall, works of astonishment [...]

Football (the real version, not the misnamed American version) and I have a long (albeit sporadic), bitter history similar to the protracted struggle between orange juice and coffee for breakfast beverage supremacy. (You can guess what I prefer.) From the preschool days of getting scored on by disoriented teammates to the hilariously unskilled [...]

(the 2007 Christmas email, for virtual posterity)
In the beginning, there was art. There were sunrises, nocturnes, landscapes, still lifes. Finally, The Eternal Artist fiddled with figures and formed a pair fit to express His image. He saw that they were good and so decided to be fruitful and multiply, expressing Himself uniquely [...]