Dave's Fiction Warehouse

In which I bloviate about books, TV, movies, politics and other stuff.

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This could be
the last time

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You always know when you’re experiencing something for the first time. But you can never be sure when it’s the last. After a certain age, most things take on an elegiac cast. Only later can you look back and recognize a final moment for what it was. And you always wish you’d paid more attention.  The older I get, the more I wonder about those last times, […]

Not throwing away
my shot

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Whenever I go to a Wal-Mart, I am reminded that whatever you save there in dollars you eventually surrender in dignity. But it happened to be the first place with available appointments for the Covid vaccine, so my vigilant wife arose early and booked it online. When I arrived at the appointed hour, a number of lines had already formed at the understaffed pharmacy counter. In the […]

February fugue

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In Barry Levinson’s 1990 movie “Avalon,” there’s a scene where the aging patriarch sits down in his easy chair in front of the TV. The camera remains stationary, but there’s a slow cross-fade, and at the end of it we see that several years have passed. The old guy is in the same chair, still watching TV, but he has gotten much older.  He hasn’t moved, but […]

Jigsaw etiquette

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During these uncertain times, you may find yourself borrowing jigsaw puzzles. I hate to borrow anything, but I don’t own any puzzles, and looking online I see that pretty much anything rated age 6 and above is back-ordered to around 2025. Some neighbors were nice enough to loan us a few. We worked on them for days, only to find at the end that pieces were missing. […]

A good time for fiction

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I know; it’s been awhile. The Trump nightmare keeps getting darker, and writing about anything else has seemed frivolous. But life goes on. I am just determined to outlive this bastard, to dance rhetorically on his grave when all this passes, as it must. So I’ve deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone again, and I’ve resumed writing fiction. Rewriting it, too. Recently I decided to repackage […]

Bonfire of my vanity

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Take a look at the composite picture above: What do the five faces have in common? I’ll just wait here while you ponder. Hint: It’s not the Dave Clark Five. It’s not the Five Amigos. It’s not the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s not the Five Guys. It’s not the Five Pillars of Islam. No, my friends, these five faces represent the closest resemblance to yours […]

Vain hopes for 2018

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Last night we headed for bed just before midnight. The New Year’s Eve gunfire was like the opening battle scene in “Saving Private Ryan,” to the point that the dog followed us upstairs to cower by the bed. My wife asked me what my hopes for 2018 might be. She asks things like that. I hadn’t thought much about it, but the answer came pretty quickly: “To […]