I met this guy on a date – let’s call him Roy, because his name was actually Roy – in the dead of a Chicago winter. We’d gone out twice before. This time was different, though, because the meeting was indoors.
I scooted into the booth. We each ordered a beer.
Then, from my seated position, I shrugged out of my coat.
“Whoa!” Roy shouted. (more…)
Before I sit, Josh Larson is careful to make one thing clear: “This is a game about Ryan and his wife’s four-year-old son, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer two and a half years ago,” he explains. And then this: “He’s still alive.” (more…)
Ah, the holidays: good times, good friends, too much food and far more booze than one person can drink by themselves. It is no secret that Unwinnable loves a good party – and nothing beats a holiday party. So our gift to you, dear friends and dear readers, is a rocking 100 minutes of Christmas songs. It’s an instant party, full of good cheer and best wishes from the Unwinnable family to you and yours. (more…)
Exactly six years ago I bought a Nintendo Wii – came home from Toys “R” Us, plugged it in. (The box is still there on the floor of my girlhood bedroom, right where I left it in another November.)
“Can you imagine, Al?” my mother asked my father. “In our lifetime?” She was standing around marveling as I – ahem – went bowling.
Then I saw the Wii’s “pacemaker” warning and now I was pushing my adoptive dad out of the room. “Out, out!” I commanded him. I was not going to be the one to murder my father, thank you. (more…)
The turkey has been eaten. The belt has been loosened. Some folks are working off their food coma in front of the TV, watching a football game or a movie. Some folks are on the computer, looking at their favorite websites. To you, we say, “Welcome!” Team Unwinnable is off with family and friends, just like you, but every year we leave behind something to help pass your idle hours. Now that you’ve fed your stomach, here’s a menu of sixteen favorite pieces from 2012 to feed your brain. Bon appetit! (more…)
I keep having this weird dream.
I’m on a rocket ship in outer space. Sometimes I’m strapped into a seat, but often I’m in free-fall. Often there are other people on the rocket ship, but sometimes I’m alone.
Sometimes the rocket ship isn’t floating through space. Sometimes, instead, it’s on fire and trembling – it is reentering Earth’s atmosphere, presumably because of a mechanical failure. Sometimes it isn’t a rocket ship at all: sometimes it is an airplane that is crashing. A few times I’ve found myself inside a flooded submarine. (more…)
When I was a teenager in Cambridge, I wanted to buy a British book. What I ended up with was 253, written by an American called Geoff Ryman.
253 contains 253 vignettes about 252 passengers on the London tube train, most of whom are connected in some way (the 253rd person is the train’s driver). The book describes the moments before a train crash. (more…)
