I’m generally against nostalgia, since I think it’s obvious charms can insidiously blot out our ability to live in the moment. But I’ll confess to being overwhelmed with sadness upon learning a few minutes ago that Sports Illustrated has essentially been swept into the dustbin of history. As I’ve discussed on this here site several […]
Tags:basketball·Gary McLain·journalism·magazines·sports·Sports Illustrated·writing
I used to resist the first-person voice in my stories at all costs, but no longer: I’ve come to accept that everything I write is at least partly about the personal doubts and fixations that keep me up at night, and there’s really no shame in being frank about that aspect of my work. And […]
Tags:art·creators·culture·tacos·TikTok·Ursus Magana·Wired·writing
Whenever I’m stuck on a writing project—an all-too-frequent occurrence—I usually try to find my way forward by contemplating a single question: How can I shift what I’m trying to say without reaching for cliches? Because a lot of the time, the reason I’m banging my head against the wall is because I’m taking an approach […]
The illustration above should give you some sense of how I spent my summer: Learning everything I possibly could about the current state of hibernation research, the unheralded key to getting our species to Mars and beyond. I did so in order to write this new Wired story, which came out on Thanksgiving morning. The […]
Tags:exhuastion·hibernation·Mars·mental health·philosophy·Wired·writing
A thought I’m frequently comforted by is the realization that most of my fellow humans understand the absurdity of life. It’s a truism that shines through in the jokes people create when there’s nothing outwardly funny about their circumstances. Take, for example, the humorous anecdotes that Soviet citizens crafted under Stalin, a topic explored in […]
One of the animating principles of Microkhan is the steadfast belief that the recent past was more chaotic—and thus immeasurably more interesting—than most of us realize. Take, for example, the prevalence of hogs on the streets of New York City in the mid-19th century, the subject of this paper by a pair of Spanish professors. […]
I recently went down the rabbit hole on the history of American bullfighters in Mexico, thanks in large part to this incredibly niche book. One of the characters who jumped out at me was New York native Diego O’Bolger (née James Bolger), who was affectionately profiled in Tucson Weekly some 19 years ago. The story […]
At the tail end of June, I stopped posting on Twitter. I’d been inching toward that decision for a while, in large part because the space had become so joyless. I realized I was mostly there out of a sense of obligation, or maybe fear—if I wasn’t out their touting my own work, would anyone […]
Tags:lighthouses·Twitter
I’ve been trying really hard to fall back in love with the English language, and this gargantuan compendium of racehorse lineages is really helping. There’s such a pleasing alchemy to the way the names evolve over the different generations, and then often end up with a thoroughbred whose moniker can be interpreted as having multiple […]
Tags:horse names·horse racing·Jack Gilbert·language·poetry·writing
In the name of getting better as a writer, I’ve been grappling with the aspects of the craft that I’m pretty terrible at. High up the list is final paragraphs—I just struggle so much with concocting a hefty parting thought that naturally connects to all that has come before. On the rare occasions I manage […]
Tags:Blank Check·Bob Fosse·Dorothy Stratten·endings·movies·narcissism·podcasts·Star 80·Teresa Carpenter·Village Voice·writing
I’m still immersed in trying to get a hard-to-corral Wired story out the door, so deeper thoughts will have to wait another day or two. In the meantime, let me point you toward one of the better microprojects I’ve come across in recent days: A year-long effort to chronicle art that depicts reflections in space […]
If Goal A with the revival of Microkhan is to get myself back in the habit of writing and creating stories, then Goal B is to celebrate folks completely nerding out about the most random of subjects. I find few things more admirable or adorable than people who’ve clearly fallen in love with some arcane […]
Tags:boats·junks·martime·South Vietnam
Though the jury’s still out as to whether it was wise of me to reboot Microkhan, I’m happy to report that this endeavor has had one incredibly positive outcome so far: While hunting for some daily material the other week, I came across an idea that I’m tempted to to make my next major project. […]
Tags:1980s·books·Brian Bosworth·football·literature·Maui·memoirs
Like most folks who spend too much time on The Tubes, I’m signed up for dozens of newsletters that I rarely, if ever, crack open. But I never do a thoughtless delete of The Prepared, a weekly publication about the nitty-gritty of how complex and gargantuan objects get made. Though a fair chunk of each […]
Tags:engineering·manufacturing·newsletters·recommended·The Prepared·the sublime
When you pick through the work of accomplished nonfiction writers, you’ll usually find that they keep exploring the same general theme through multiple projects. In the case of Randall Sullivan, that theme can be neatly summarized as, “Charismatic individuals whose delusions of grandeur exert a strong gravitational pull on people in search of meaning.” It’s […]
Tags:adolescence·crime·FFF·gangs·Gizmondo·Los Angeles·Randall Sullivan·writing
I have a lot of good things planned for next week, including pieces about an obscure cinematic ending I’ve grown to love, a punk band with delusions of grandeur, and mouth-to-snout resuscitation. For the moment, though, I’ll confess to feeling out-of-sorts and thus not up to writing anything of particular value today: I’m pretty burnt […]
Tags:Stephen King·writing
The title of today’s post could easily be yesterday’s: “Commitment to the Bit.” Because what I find most fascinating about the field of hitchhiker studies is the effort that its practitioners pour into gathering data. I don’t know many social scientists who would throw themselves into their work quite like the authors of “WHO PICKS […]
Tags:flowers·hippies·hitchhiking·psychology·science·sociology
It would honestly have been super-easy for me to blow off posting here today, mostly because—and I have the page-view statistics to support this contention—literally no one is reading what I write. But I didn’t want to betray the main reason I opened Microkhan back up, which is my desperate need to get back in […]
My Grand Unified Theory of Celebrity Profiles™ is that they should only be written when the subject is smack dab in the creative valley between their early peak and their first real comeback. Because that’s when a writer worth his-or-her salt is able to capture the character traits I find most interesting in accomplished artists: […]
Tags:addiction·celebrity profiles·drugs·Esquire·Gregg Allman·writing
The Nakhla meteorite is one of the most famous objects to ever smash into this planet of ours. Originally produced by a Martian volcano some 1.3 billion years ago, the meteorite disintegrated over Egypt in 1911, producing at least 40 individual shards that currently reside in a range of museums. Locals who witnessed the event […]
Tags:dogs·Egypt·meteoritics·Nakhla meteorite·reporting·urban legends
I have a heavy writing day ahead: I’m having serious problems with a transition in my lede, and experience has taught me that ironing things out will take a good eight hours. So I’m shirking my Microkhan duties for the day and just tossing up some rare footage of the greatest squash player to ever […]
Tags:Jahangir Khan·Pakistan·sports·squash·writer's block·writing
The lyrics for national anthems are usually testaments to a country’s finer aspects—its gorgeous scenery, perhaps, or the indomitable fighting spirit of its longtime (though not necessarily original) residents. One notable exception is the anthem of Bikini Atoll, the South Pacific island that the United States destroyed with nuclear weapons tests in the early years […]
Since my current writing project involves thinking about how artificial intelligence will soon upend our world, I’ve also been pondering which professions will forever be safe from silicon-based competition. What I currently do for a living is, alas, not on the list, but there’s a good argument to be made that masonry will remain a […]
Over the years here at Microkhan, we’ve spilled a lot of digital ink while paying homage to the Sports Illustrated stories that sparked our love for writing. Another one recently bubbled back up to the surface, mostly because it has one haunting line about the link between the physical and the psychological. The piece is […]
Tags:hair·horse racing·literature·psychology·Raymond Carver·sports·Sports Illustrated·William Nack·writing
In the course of revising a Wired story I’ve been working on, I’ve had to dive into the technical history of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. That little research tangent brought me in contact with this lengthy piece about Douglas Rain, the Canadian actor who voiced HAL, the movie’s murderous AI system. There’s a […]
Tags:2001·accents·Canada·Douglas Rain·movies·Pat Kiernan·Stanley Kubrick
As someone who’s occasionally been tempted to retreat from the professional life I’ve built, I’m pretty curious about what’s happened with the director Martin Brest. He went from churning out a solid-to-great film every few years, including one of my all-time favorites, to being a non-entity in the movie business: Nearly two decades have elapsed […]
As someone who’s chosen to write for free on WordPress for a presumable audience of none, I’ve developed a soft spot for age-worn media platforms that are still chugging along. If I so desired, I could make Microkhan nothing but a series of valentines to still-updated BlogSpot sites that chronicle 1950s postcards or models of […]
Though this probably doesn’t bode well for the future of Microkhan, I’ve decided to take it easy with the writing today. It’s the annual anniversary of my arrival on this hunk of nickel, iron, and what-have-you, and I’m celebrating by stealing a few hours to sketch out my plans for the next 365 days. (There […]
It’s not too often that the central hero of a news story isn’t named, so I had to take note of what occurred in the realm of Kiribati politics last month. For much the year, the current president has been trying hard to deport an Australian-born judge—a man who just happens to be married to […]
When I parted ways with Twitter back in June, I did so with a post stating that I needed more time to focus on strengthening my parasocial relationships. This was only half in jest: I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time dialed into my headphones, listening to people chatter about great books, bad movies, […]
Tags:Abroad in Japan·Japan·podcasts
