I have to be honest with you. When you called me at 1 p.m. the other day and I failed to answer, I wasn’t hard at work and I wasn’t busily running errands like a good boy. I wasn’t across town reading to the sick and infirm and I wasn’t bringing canned goods to elderly […]
Mark LaFlamme
The mystery of Wendell Strout’s missing moustache
Moving violations State Police say they pulled over a guy going 146 mph Wednesday on the turnpike – in a Dodge Neon! I once dated a girl who drove a Neon and that sucker could barely go fast enough to handle the on-ramp, let alone the turnpike itself. The only thing fast about that car […]
Street Talk: The Great Debate
It was just a few hours until the presidential debate and I was excited as a wound-up puppy dog in a room full of legs. The hype had been unreal — it was like Mayweather versus Pacquiao all up in here — if Mayweather had triple-advanced super pneumonia and Pacquiao was a platitude-spouting bored guy […]
Talk of the town: Little boxes on the hillside
Who ya gonna call? Almost got beat up in the newsroom the other day after announcing to the other reporters that I was never a fan of the original “Ghostbusters.” I know that it’s “a classic,” whatever that means, but I never got the hype. Anyway, I averted that beatdown, but when I added that […]
Street Talk: Fight Club, Lewiston style
Many moons ago in downtown Lewiston, I saw a man get into a fight with a trash bag. He was hauling the overstuffed Hefty down Park Street, toward Chestnut, when the bag split and some greasy garbage spilled out. Enraged, the flustered fellow gave the bag a petulant yank which caused more trash to come […]
Talk of the town: The autumnal squash that shall not be named
Drained Many of you good, probably drunk people have sent me your photos of the canals in Lewiston, which were recently drained. I appreciate all the images of busted computer monitors, bent shopping carts, sad-looking boots, bald tires, wrecked bird cages, ancient TVs, ugly sofas and doorless microwave ovens scattered half-buried in the muck at […]
Talk of the town: Bleep Blips are good, too
The Mad Dog barks at midnight Somewhere in Lewiston, a man walks into convenience store, grabs a bottle of liquor off a shelf, downs it and promptly passes out on the floor. Now, I ask you: is that even shoplifting? I mean, the drunken fellow never left the store with the goods. As far as […]
Talk of the town: Leaving lurid messages on your answering machine
Black cord fever When I was a young fella, I used to go out to the bars all night and then come reeling home with the drunken notion that 2 a.m. is a great time to make phone calls. All lit up and gregarious, I’d call ex-girlfriends, old buddies I hadn’t seen since kindergarten, distant […]
Street Talk: A reluctant glimpse of the future
Here’s how it’s going to go down. Winter is going to come early this year and it’s going to come with attitude. After a 2015-16 season of mild temperatures and little snow, the 2017 version of winter will be a bad mother, back to assert herself as the bitter-cold destroyer of fun and good moods. […]
Talk of the town
Pantsless at Shaw’s It happened in Lewiston because Lewiston is like the half-naked capital of the state, am I right? A shopper was reported to be inside the store wearing a shirt but no pants, which to me doesn’t violate any laws whatsoever. I mean, the sign on the door does say “shoes and shirt […]