In the late 90s, the Bible Belt was an almost mythological place to live if you were of the Evangelical persuasion. The economy was flush, your religious liberties weren’t really in jeopardy and you rested easy within your enclosed, profanity-free, abortionless corner of society. Oh the world may be falling apart everywhere else, but in …
In the year 2000, there wasn’t much in life I loved more than award shows. Not much has changed since then, but the 1999 Video Music Awards marked a pronounced shift in my pop culture trajectory. I hadn’t stopped talking about the show for months and I re-watched it endlessly on my VHS recording. I …
I think the term “growing up” should be amended to “growing in” or “growing out.” “Growing up,” as I understand it, is a physical reference to people as if we’re trees. We begin as a fleshy sapling and over time, earn our rings and sprout upward—some higher than others. At a certain point, we’ve branched …
If you’re a writer, you know there’s nothing more harrowing, more debilitating, or more anxiety-inducing than pressing ‘publish’ on something you’ve been working on for a long time. The reason is simple: Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back. It agonizing to think I possibly made a mistake, said something that reads differently …
I had a fairly normal suburban American childhood. My dad worked in downtown Dallas which felt like a wondrous Oz—oversized and industrial with a skyscraper lit in neon green light presiding over the cityscape—but back in our neighborhood, life felt more simple. Not quite Munchkinland, but simple. Summers in the suburbs were speckled with block …
Ryan Brinson 