The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.

Buffy's high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn't?

There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don't.

Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.

But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there—good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you’re uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some afternoons a person just wants to rent Die Hard, close the curtains, and have Cheerios for lunch.

What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.