There’s this guy who has been feeding me news tips like clockwork for 20 years. Problem is, none of his tips have ever been any good. “Iceland,” he’ll say to me on one of our occasional meet-ups. “They’re tossing the bankers out on their keisters up there in Iceland. You didn’t hear that from me.” […]
Street talk
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: How to shop for a new girlfriend without getting crushed by a Yule log
Shopping for your new girlfriend? Sweet. Here’s a piece of advice for you: that thing you have in your hand right now? Put it down. Put it down and walk away or it’s going to become a big, old thing and your Christmas morning will be filled with screaming and acrimony, instead of Johnny Mathis […]
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Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: At college campuses, it’s ‘The Crucible’ all over again
The world has gone nuts. There’s hardly anything more that needs to be said about it. The world is crazy, and it’s apparently out of our control now to bring it back. In Missouri, a group of students stomping their feet and screaming about phantom insults was enough to force a president and chancellor out […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: The lost art of note-passing
Dear Reader. I like you, do you like me? Your eyes sparkle like diamonds and I think you’re neat. Don’t tell anybody, OK? OK. In Florida, a 9-year-old fourth-grader is in trouble — in BIG trouble, little mister — for passing a love letter to a classmate. Apparently the lovelorn lad wanted the girl to […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Lewiston embraces mayhem on its own unpredictable schedule
Most reporters will tell you that when the really big stuff is about to go down, they can feel it. When the S is about to H the eff, sensitive reporter nerves start jumping like bacon in a pan. It’s an extra sense, they insist. You either have it or you don’t. Most reporters are […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk does not mean I’m talking to you
Hi there. How are you? I like your hair today. Do you like mine? Don’t answer those questions. I wasn’t talking to you. Sometimes I think I might be losing my mind. This will come as a shock to most of you. I know you’ve always considered me the very height of emotional and spiritual […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Street Talk: How to give up smoking even if you’re stupid
Contained within the Sun Journal photo archives are roughly 6,000 photos of yours truly taken over the course of the past 20 years. Here’s me brooding at a crime scene. Here I am getting my face painted (I was a kitten) at the Balloon Festival. Here’s me leaning against a post, sitting at my desk […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Street Talk: Inconsiderate E.T.s never show up on time
One recent evening, on the woody outskirts of Lewiston, I drove past a group of people who had their eyes upturned to the darkened skies. I recognized the scene at once. The fingers pointed at the heavens; the low-hanging jaws, the wide eyes … What we had here was a UFO sighting in progress. I […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Warning: Childhood can be hazardous to your health
When I was a boy, each day was a date with death. By today’s standards, anyway. We used to climb trees like monkeys, and sometimes we’d fall out of them. Falling out of trees was half the fun of climbing them. It was also how we verified, once and for all, that gravity was real. […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme, sj-web
Street Talk: What you do in the morning says a lot about me
I’m not one to brag. But this morning I had a cup of coffee in my hand, ready to drink, in less than a minute after I rolled out of bed. Fifty-two seconds, to be precise, shattering the old record of one minute flat. I truly don’t like to brag, but … In your face! […]