Scooter & Skipper Celebrate Father’s Day
The landline rings, waking me from the first of my two (2) allotted naps of a Sunday. I normally wouldn’t pick up–it’s usually a local financial planner who drops the call as soon as he […]
Author: Con Chapman
I'm a Boston-area writer, author of The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Red Sox-Yankees pennant race, and 50 books of humor including "Scooter & Skipper Blow Things Up!" by HumorOutcasts Press. My work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe among print outlets. "Rabbit's Blues," my biography of Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington's long-time alto sax player, will be published by Oxford University Press in September.
Golf Tournament to End Golf a Hit With Anti-Golfers
PLAISTOW, New Hampshire. It’s Monday, the day when golf courses are traditionally closed but available for charity golf tournaments, and the Dun Roamin course here is the scene of a recent entrant in a crowded field that […]
“Notary Wives!” Renewed for Second Season
HOLLYWOOD. The reality-based distraught-spouse genre is a crowded one on cable these days, with worried wives a sidebar in a number of series that focus on tuna fisherman, firemen and bomb squads. “Some say it’s […]
The Thinner Man
Written after falling asleep reading a Thin Man mystery by Dashiell Hammett, featuring those hard-drinking, wise-cracking sophisticates Nick and Nora Charles. I felt lousy when I woke up because I didn’t have a hangover, so […]
Reunion Has High School Twister King Tied Up in Knots
BEMIDJI, Minn. Bob and Carole Hulvig both graduated from high school in 1969, and both have a fifty-year reunion this year. “It would be fun,” says Carole, “except for one teeny-tiny little detail.” Beautiful downtown […]
For One Boy, Police Misconduct is a Dream Come True
BOSTON. Ten-year-old Timmy Kwiezscki has a dream–to become a uniformed police officer patrolling a beat–but it’s not clear he’ll ever realize it. “The chances of out-living a case of Stage 3 Osgood-Schlatter’s Disease are zero,” […]
A Day in the Life of a Feline Court Officer
Xavier Fernandez came to court in Middle Village, N.Y. to fight a minor charge. Then a cross-eyed cat jumped on the table. “You got any problem with a cat being in this hearing?” said Hearing […]
Divided Nation Turns to Metric Crank to Heal Wounds
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island. Residents of the smallest state in the Union often feel like country cousins at the Thanksgiving Dinner of American politics since their vote is worth only four electoral votes for President. “It’s […]
Ask the Wedding Lady
The day of your wedding should be the happiest day of your life, or at least the day of your first wedding. But the customs, folkways and by-laws of matrimony are so darned confusing, it […]
Drive-By Flamers Brighten On-Line Experience
BOSTON. Donna Del Vecchio works in the accounting department of a large law firm here, and says she has “the most thankless task in the entire American economy”–approving partners’ requests for expense reimbursements. “$95 for a […]