11Jan 2025 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Second Forbidden City

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For those of you who’ve never been, China is a big country.   Like, really big.   And even though this might come as news to most tourists, the country has more cities than just Beijing and Shanghai.  A lot more.  I mean, it should seem almost logical that in a country of 1.4 billion folks, all those people would have to live somewhere.  But at the same time, most 外国人 would be hard pressed to name any of China’s provinces or its second-tier cities.  For those of you in this category, allow me to introduce the city of Shenyang.  While this “tiny” metropolis has a population of just 8 million people, the city is a major commercial hub and the capital of Liaoning Province, which means that it qualifies…
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14Dec 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

McMillion$, by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte

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Several decades ago— long before I set out to launch a career on the traveling carnival circuit— my earliest jobs weren’t nearly as glamorous.  Like many Americans, my first work experience was bathed in the light of the golden arches, as a crew member for the McDonald’s corporation.  I spent two full years slaving away at my hometown franchise, filling every role from fry cook to drive-through cashier.  Even though it was honest work and a steady paycheck, it wasn’t exactly a career-enhancing period, and I generally leave it off my resume.  Working with my high school classmates was never boring, though, and I always enjoyed the company’s tie-in promotions with blockbuster Hollywood movies.  I distinctly recall shilling McRib sandwiches for the Flintstones Movie and pushing collectible glassware for Batman…
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08Nov 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Kung Fury

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And then this one day, back in 2015, there was absolutely nothing on TV. Although this certainly qualified as a hardship, the situation was hardly a new dilemma.  Even back when there were just a handful of broadcast channels, all of them streamed into our living rooms through a rickety set of rabbit ear antennas, families gathered around the television set every evening, hoping they might come across some show that was actually worth watching.  People “of a certain age” will remember this all too well, as the youngest children in every family were required to sit on the floor and work the chunky knob to change channels on demand.  But even with the advent of remote control devices and cable services, the problem only grew worse.  As viewing options…
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12Oct 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“The Coolest Little Suburb in The World”

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2015 was a pretty good year for New Zealand.   Sir Peter Jackson had finally concluded his “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” movies, films which did wonders for the country’s tourism industry.  In October, the All Blacks national team went on to capture the Rugby World Cup.  And after Lonely Planet magazine named Wellington the “Coolest Little Capital in the World,” the country found itself thrust into the global spotlight. And of course, 2015 was the year that the traveling circus dispatched my family and me to New Zealand on a multi-year engagement.  By that point in our world tour, I have to admit, I’d become somewhat jaded.  Though, when we finally touched down after a wind-buffeted descent, even I had to admit that the place really did…
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13Sep 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Warriors, by Sol Yurick

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Years ago— back in the days before streaming online movies— those of us “of a certain age” may remember going to the local video store whenever we wanted to see a certain film.  It’s hard to describe such a hardship to the current generation— like Lewis and Clark, we’d have to forge a path across town to the Adopt-a-Video store, with absolutely no way of knowing if the movie we wanted would be available.  New releases flew off the shelves, and you could never tell if the clerk on duty was a stickler for renting R-rated movies to minors.  I was introduced to “The Warriors” through broadcast television, since our local networks used to re-run old movies at night to fill air time.  I guess eventually, I must’ve seen enough…
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10Aug 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Marco Polo Bridge (卢沟桥)

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Back in 2020, life in Beijing got a little more… interesting.  COVID-19 was a new and interesting phenomenon, and living in the city became even more of an adventure than usual.  As new health protocols were rolled out, the rules seemed to change from day to day.  Most of my Chinese neighbors found themselves locked down in quarantine at some point or other, stuck at home for weeks— or even months— at a time.  With international travel shut down, the expat’s preferred leisure activity— leaving China— was simply not an option.  Tourism was effectively limited to Beijing, but on the bright side, there were very few people out and about.  It was almost like having the run of the capital, with none of the usual traffic or congestion.  Apart from…
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12Jul 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Icy Hot Stuntaz

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For some of you youngsters out there, this may seem hard to believe, but back in the early days of the Internet, there were actually a finite number of websites.  Whenever somebody expended enough time and energy to create an online footprint, the effort itself seemed worthy of attention, regardless of the quality of their content.  In the heady days of Web 1.0, building a personal webpage counted as a significant accomplishment, so even casual browsers felt compelled to “surf on in”.  But even back before social media—in the Stone Age, really— kids were already learning that the Internet never forgets.  And at some point, three young men from Toccoa, Georgia helped drive that point home by serving as an object lesson for an entire generation of netizens. Sometime around…
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07Jun 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 2 Comments

POSTBOX: THE PIT!

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In my younger and more vulnerable years, my older brother introduced me to one of the classics of modern literature.  An ongoing wartime drama, featuring an impressively diverse cast of characters who found themselves thrown into the timeless and enduring struggle of good versus evil. I’m speaking, of course, about G.I. Joe comics. For kids of the 1980s, there was no higher form of entertainment than Saturday morning cartoons.  Of course we didn’t realize it at the time, but most of our favorite shows were partnerships with toy companies, created as a way to advertise their products directly to children.  Back then, we were just happy to tune in and witness the good guys doing battle against the forces of evil, always emerging victorious of course.  And in a true…
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10May 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Once Were Warriors”, by Alan Duff

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It was 2014, and for some reason or other, I was spending yet another year of my life in Iraq.  And then one day, out of the blue, I learned that my employer would be sending me on to New Zealand for our next engagement. Now, the memories from way back then are a little bit hazy— as I recall, it was a somewhat chaotic time for the traveling circus that pays my bills.  But one thing I remember clearly, was that shortly after I’d managed to locate my future host country on a map, I also happened to bump into a gentleman from Australia.   It was one of those awkward work interactions— the kind of brief encounter that only happened because our jobs had placed us in the…
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12Apr 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 1 Comment

The Hebert Candy Mansion

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Thomas Wolfe once said, “You Can’t Go Home Again”.   Well actually, the guy never really said that.  Apparently it was one of his close friends who coined the phrase, and Wolfe just liked the sound of it, so he got permission to use it as the title of one of his books, a novel that was posthumously published in 1940.  But you get the idea.   The point is, people tend to view the past through rose-colored glasses, remembering things much more fondly than they actually were.  “You can’t go home again” is normally used as a cautionary phrase, warning people to manage their expectations before they go and revisit places from their past.  See, our favorite childhood haunts are never the same when we go back as adults—…
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08Mar 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Spud”, by John van de Ruit

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One of my favorite things about traveling is the books!  Whenever I’m on the road, I always try to hit up the used book stores to snag copies of local favorites.  Stories that for whatever reason, just never made it across the ocean to find success with US publishers.  Of course, one of the best ways to search out these hidden gems is to make contact with a local, and ask them about their favorite novels.  And just a few years back, not long after landing in South Africa, this tried-and-tested strategy led me to pick up a copy of “Spud”.   “Spud”— known to his parents as John Milton— is fourteen years old, and just starting the ninth grade at a prestigious boarding school in the Drakensberg mountains.  Spud…
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09Feb 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Staglands Wildlife Reserve

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As countries go, New Zealand definitely punches above its weight class.  Like, no matter how often mapmakers might snub the place, treating a sovereign nation of more than five million inhabitants as if it was nothing more than a forgotten annex of Australia, the 'Land of the Long White Cloud' seems to be a perennial favorite on travelers’ bucket lists.   And why shouldn’t it be?  There’s literally tens of interesting places to visit throughout the country, from a defunct movie set to the corpse of a really, really big cephalopod. But for travelers of a certain age— specifically toddlers, kindergartners, and first grade students—  the absolute crown jewel among all these attractions seems to be a deer farm in the middle of nowhere. As with all of New Zealand’s…
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12Jan 2024 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Whatever happened to Chuck Cunningham?

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I’m so old, I predate Netflix.   Back in my day, whippersnappers, television programs came on the air at pre-determined dates and times.  If you happened to miss an episode of your favorite show, you were pretty much forced to wait for months until the networks re-ran it during the off season.  And some of the most successful shows— classics like Gilligan’s Island, or I Love Lucy— eventually made it into a state of perpetual syndication.  Popular series like these were often licensed by smaller, local stations a way to fill airtime, so they seemed to run on indefinitely.   Which is how I became acquainted with a classic show called Happy Days.  https://www.youtube.com/embed/0H4EBicz5qQ?si=lABdTJQlXRTndnTT Way back in the 1980s, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Happy Days reruns were in heavy…
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08Dec 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Gubei Water Town (古北水镇)

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China is an absolutely fascinating country!  Its proud citizens are quick to boast of their 5000 years of history… but on the other hand, so much of that history has been unapologetically demolished to make way for new development. The contrast is absolutely striking, with glass and steel skyscrapers popping up alongside the scant few temples and traditional hutong homes which have somehow managed to dodge the bulldozer.  A few years ago, the traveling circus that pays my bills had assigned me to work in the Middle Kingdom, so I spent about three years of my life there.  In all that time, nowhere was the past/present paradox more apparent than at Gubei Water Town (古北水镇).  Gubei Water Town might look like an ancient Chinese village, but it was actually just…
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10Nov 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Managing Ignatius”, by Jerry Strahan

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One of my all-time favorite books is “A Confederacy of Dunces” by the late, great, John Kennedy Toole.  This classic comedy/tragedy is the story of Ignatius Reilly, a luckless academic and aspiring author from New Orleans, who struggles against both obesity and modern society.  Over the course of the book, Ignatius fails to succeed at a number of careers— including one particularly ill-fated stint as a hot dog vendor. In his early days as a street merchant, Ignatius hopes that this new form of “gainful employment” will finally be enough to satisfy his overbearing mother.  It’s not a terrible job— pushing a cart through the French Quarter affords him plenty of time to ruminate on the finer points of medieval philosophy— and the weiners provide plenty of sustenance for breakfast,…
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06Oct 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“The Diamond Invention”, by Edward Jay Epstein

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If you’ve never heard of Edward Jay Epstein, you should know that he’s an investigative reporter.  Epstein came up in the old school, back before cable news and the Internet combined to ruin the field of journalism.  He’s the author of 16 books, all of which question the establishment narrative on major issues, beginning with a critique of the Warren Commission’s findings and continuing all the way up through Edward Snowden.  And when he’s not writing, Epstein works as an adjunct professor at both Harvard and MIT. You know, as one does with one’s spare time. I recently stumbled across one of Epstein’s books from the 1980s, "The Diamond Invention", and made a spot decision to grab it.  This book was absolutely fascinating, the result of Epstein’s worldwide travels researching…
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09Sep 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

One Month in Lesotho

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The Kingdom of Lesotho is probably never going to make it onto anyone's bucket list.  To say that this tiny African country is ‘off the beaten path’ would be a massive understatement; and yet, for some reason I’ve been there twice.  In a series of circumstances that I’m still struggling to understand, the traveling circus that pays my bills once asked me to spend an entire month in The Kingdom in the Sky.  As it turned out, though, that was just enough time to see everything.  I managed to visit every notable restaurant in the capital city of Maseru, and even picked up fine dining from the country’s only drive-thru window.  Preparing for this trip was an adventure in itself, since it’s nearly impossible to find current travel information.  Lesotho…
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12Aug 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Disappearance of the “Witchcraft”

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People love a good mystery.   And with some mysteries, we love them so much that we don’t want them solved.   This Chicago Tribune map depicting the Bermuda Triangle, Shown on Feb. 5, 1979. (AP Photo) That seems to be the case with the Bermuda Triangle, a section of the northern Atlantic Ocean where a number of ships and aircraft have allegedly gone missing under suspicious circumstances.  The myth of the Bermuda Triangle first came about in the 1950s, when a few local news articles mentioned the historical loss of several ships in the area, including a group of planes from a U.S. Air Force training flight.  And after one imaginative author suggested the possibility of a supernatural element to these disappearances, the area gained worldwide notoriety. This urban legend…
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08Jul 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Africatown, by Nick Tabor

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Alabama’s Gulf Coast is a popular tourist destination, attracting nearly eight million visitors each year.  But as these sunbirds flock towards the state’s beaches and casinos, they’re driving past a unique piece of American culture:  the historic district of Africatown, located just a few miles north of Mobile.   Africatown was founded by a group of 32 West Africans, all of whom had been transported to the United States during our country’s last known transport of slaves.  The United States had officially outlawed the trans-Atlantic slave trade by 1807, but due to the massive profits involved, human traffickers never really abandoned the treacherous Middle Passage.  That was the case in 1860, when a group of of Alabama landowners bet each other to see if they could evade federal authorities, and…
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10Jun 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Lost in Helsinki

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And then this one time, the traveling circus that pays my bills had deposited me in Helsinki, Finland.  That trip was an odd one— from the very start, things just didn’t add up.  The itinerary called for a five-day stay, but for some reason there were only four days worth of work on the books.  With the math in my favor for once, I made a quick decision to exploit this rare and unexpected day off.  Without even taking time to unpack, I rose early on that first day, grabbed a quick breakfast of reindeer sausage, and ventured off to explore. We’d pitched our tents out in the boondoocks, alongside a massive and picturesque lake, so the only way to reach the central business district was by using these electric…
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13May 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 2 Comments

The John Brown Bell

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Growing up in Massachusetts, the public school teachers in my small town took a certain pride in how much local history they could drill into the heads of the students. I’m talking annual field trips to Plymouth Plantation and the Olde Sturbridge Village, plus a countless number of trips into Boston to walk the Freedom Trail.  But despite all the history I managed to absorb through osmosis, somehow I grew up clueless to the fact that the “second most famous bell in America” was just a few miles away. The John Brown Bell, in all its present-day glory. In case you’ve never heard of John Brown, you should know that the man was an outspoken abolitionist in the 1800s.  A devout preacher (who was probably affected by a touch of…
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07Apr 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Collector’s Treasury

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When it comes to the Dark Continent, basically everything has the potential to be an adventure.  A simple chore like grocery shopping can involve taking your life into your own hands, dodging reckless minibus taxis on your way to the market.  And even my own hobby of used book hunting— normally a tame endeavor— is anything but boring. Recently, while spending some time in the sprawling metropolis of Johannesburg, South Africa, I learned that the largest used book store in all of Africa— and possibly the largest used book store in the entire southern hemisphere— was located just a few miles away.  Naturally, I just had to mount an expedition to go visit. Collector’s Treasury is a towering building in the heart of Johannesburg’s Central Business District, a section of…
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11Mar 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Pride of Baghdad” by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

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For better or worse, Iraq is an absolutely fascinating country.  Even after having spent nearly three years there, it’s always a challenge for me to describe the place.  The ancient capital city of Baghdad— the historic setting of the literary classic One Thousand and One Nights— is home to millions of Iraqis, each of them with their own unique story. “Pride of Baghdad” is just one such tale. The Baghdad Zoo was built in 1971, inside the city’s Zawra’a Park.  The facilities were generally considered to be insufficient, and the creatures suffered in their small confinement spaces.  In the wake of the sanctions that followed the first Gulf War, animal feed and proper veterinary supplies were nearly impossible to come by.  These bleak conditions turned into absolute horror in 2003,…
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11Feb 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The 40-Foot-Tall Virgin Mary

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It was over a decade ago when the traveling circus that pays my bills dispatched me up Boston, Massachusetts for a multi-year engagement.  My troupe decided to set up camp on the North Shore, which meant that my daily commute took me through the quaint little town of Revere.  And even though Revere is far from famous— known mainly for the Suffolk Downs race track, its annual sandcastle festival, and a single Target store— there’s absolutely no reason to look down on this small municipality.  The town is a destination for food lovers, boasting a countless number of Dunkin Donuts cafes and Kelly’s Roast Beef and Seafood shops.  For those of us in the know, however, Revere’s true claim to fame is its 40-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary. If…
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19Jan 2023 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Three Sisters and Elephant Rock

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There we were, driving up the coast of New Zealand’s North Island, for some reason or other.  My traveling circus had stopped over in the bustling metropolis of New Plymouth, known to locals and tourists alike as the ‘Jewel of the Taranaki’, hoping to wait out the grey fog of yet another rainstorm.  Of course we were still relatively new to New Zealand at the time, and we didn’t realize just how long of a wait that might be. With time to kill in the middle of nowhere, my troupe did our best to manage our pace, ticking down the area’s limited list of attractions just as slowly as we could manage.  Unfortunately, the region’s key draw— the picturesque summit of Mount Taranaki— was shrouded by low-lying clouds, so we…
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15Dec 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“The Terminal Man”, by Alfred Merhan

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If you’ve flown on an airplane at any point in your life, you’ve experienced the unpleasant feeling of waiting in an airport.  Even if all the stars are in alignment and your flight’s on time, there’s still the inevitable queuing up at the check-in counter, standing in the airport security line, and waiting to board at the gate.  And even something as simple as a change in the weather— some rainstorm clear on the other side of the country— had the potential to disrupt your well-planned itinerary.   Delays come in all shapes and sizes, and they’ve given me cause to nap in more airports than I care to remember.  On one occasion, for reasons I’m still trying to understand, a one-day labor strike somewhere in Germany disrupted my unrelated…
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12Nov 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

48 Hours in Istanbul

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The year was 2015.  My bags were packed, like always, but for some strange reason I found myself with an itinerary that was somewhat… convoluted.  It was a particularly hectic season for the traveling circus, and our booking agents were having a bit of a moment, which is how I came to find myself re-routed through the ancient city of Constantinople.   I suppose I could’ve made a stink about the extra leg; whined and complained up the ladder until somebody got tired of dealing with me, and eventually changed my flights back to the usual direct route.  But after an hour or so of reflection, I decided to do the exact opposite, and even made a quick phone call to extend the layover.   After all— there was no…
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08Oct 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Hammond Castle

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Less than an hour north of Boston, past a half dozen Dunkin’ Donuts franchises and tucked in behind a Kelly’s Roast Beef and Seafood shop, a towering medieval castle stands watch over the Atlantic coastline. No, really. See, the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts is home to so much more than those delicious breaded fish sticks.  One of Cape Ann’s most notable residents— besides the Gorton’s fisherman, of course— was John Hays Hammond Jr., an inventor best known as the “father of radio control.”  Raised by his talented engineer namesake, Hammond the Younger spent his childhood traveling around the world, developing a lifelong fascination with military history.  Upon his eventual return to the United States, Hammond accompanied his father on a work trip to New Jersey, where he managed to turn…
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10Sep 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Mark Linn-Baker: Legend of the Silver Screen

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Not too long ago, for some reason or other, I found myself stumbling down an Internet rabbit hole of 80s and 90s television sitcoms.  Whatever writing project I’d been working was cast aside, abandoned, as I clicked my way through a never-ending series of clips from “Perfect Strangers”, my absolute favorite show from that era.   The basic premise of this long-running sitcom was that an immigrant from Mypos, some remote island country in Eastern Europe, had traveled to the USA and ended up sharing an apartment in downtown Chicago with his uptight cousin.  With the “odd couple” pairing of mismatched roommates and a massive cultural gap, the stage was set for eight full seasons of non-stop laughter. And even with Hollywood’s habit of remaking classic shows, I’m not quite…
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13Aug 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Maryland Renaissance Festival

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’Twas 1534, and after the longest of years, the vile plague had finally lifted from Queen Mary’s Land.  Relieved, my band of merry adventurers set off in search of a hearty feast, and the company of our fellow travelers, whom we’d so sorely missed during the Dark Days. Well… no.   This was just last year, actually.   But everything else is true. See, even though a traveling circus stays on the move, the wheels never turn quickly.  Last fall, my fellow carnies and I found ourselves in the nation’s capital once again, undergoing all of the necessary preparations for yet another long-term overseas engagement.  One weekend in particular, having already burnt through the standard fare of overcrowded Smithsonian museums and overblown presidential monuments, we cast our gaze beyond the…
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09Jul 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Temple of Hercules

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Jordan’s capital doesn’t normally make it to the top of anyone’s bucket list.  The city of Amman isn’t anything special, and to be painfully honest, the entire country is kind of the same way.  For the majority of Western travelers, a trip to Jordan is little more than an add-on to their Holy Land pilgrimages, with day trips to religious sites like the Dead Sea or Mount Nebo filling out empty spaces in the itinerary.  While the truly adventurous might brave a four-hour bus trip across the desert to visit Petra, the ancient, sprawling red rock city of the Nabateeans, these days a lot of people are finding themselves in Amman for a brief stopover en route to more remote (or more dangerous) destinations in the Middle East. The traveling…
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11Jun 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Wycheproof: The World’s Smallest Mountain

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When it comes to non-fiction, I’m a sucker for travelogues.  There’s something oddly satisfying about sitting down in a comfortable chair and paging through an account about some poor sap struggling to ask directions in a foreign language, or even to check their luggage through airport security.  I particularly enjoy the suffering inherent in a good adventure story— the more perilous, the better— which is why I absolutely devoured “Into Thin Air”, John Krakauer’s memoir of an ill-fated Mount Everest expedition in 1996. In this classic tale of true adventure, Krakauer, a writer for Outside magazine, recounts his assignment to document the rapid growth of commercial guiding companies on Mount Everest’s dangerous slopes.  After a relatively smooth start, Krakauer’s team encountered a series of obstacles, including poor communication, equipment failures,…
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14May 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 2 Comments

“The Beach”, by Alex Garland

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Thailand is one of those places that I never thought twice about visiting, until one day, I finally did.  I was aware of the country’s existence, of course.  But the way I heard it, the kingdom was mostly a destination for backpackers and partygoers.  A place of natural beauty, spoiled by all the grungy hippies who’d swarmed in over the years.  If that opinion sounds grossly stereotypical, then yeah, I guess it is.  But what can I say?  I place the blame for my bias squarely on author Alex Garland, and his amazing debut novel “The Beach.”  Just in case you’ve never read this book, or even seen the movie adaption that came along afterwards, “The Beach” is the story of Richard, a backpacker who winds up in Bangkok during…
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09Apr 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Jack Chick, Comic Evangelist

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If you’ve ever been so bold as to use the bathroom at a state fair, chances are, you’ve probably come across a small stack of “Chick Tracts” lying there on the sink. Jack Chick was a prolific American cartoonist who adopted a Christian fundamentalist worldview after serving in World War II.  Chick spent several years in the Asian theater, traveling across New Guinea, the Philippines and Japan.  He cited the experience as the inspiration for his missionary zeal, and later, the reason why he insisted his comics be printed in as many foreign languages as possible. Chick’s work took on the form of the traditional comic book— between 1974 and 1985, he published “The Crusaders” series, 23 issues about a former Green Beret and a reformed drug dealer who teamed…
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12Mar 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Hee Haw Salute!

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Television viewers of a certain age might remember “Hee Haw,” a variety show based on a theme of country music and hillbilly comedy.  The program debuted on the CBS network in 1969, before settling in at its long-term home, TNN.  Over the next twenty-five years, Hee Haw would go on record an amazing 655 episodes.    “Hee Haw” began as a carbon copy of the era’s other variety shows, such as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, though its rural “Kornfield Kounty” setting helped set it apart from the pack.  Hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark, the show’s deep supporting cast also included stars of music and comedy, like Grandpa Jones, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff and Junior Samples.  Over the course of its run, the show also managed to snare a…
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03Feb 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Wangfujing Snack Street (王府井小吃街), then & now

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It was the summer of 2018.   The before times, if you will.   Back when it was still possible to uproot one’s self and travel abroad, without an inordinate fear of death by plague, or of being locked away indefinitely in a government-run quarantine facility. As for me and my team, we’d recently done just that.  The traveling circus which so munificently allows me to remain in gainful employ had, in all its wisdom, dispatched us to the sprawling metropolis of Beijing (北京) for a long-term engagement.   At the time, Beijing was a smoggy, crowded megacity, with over 20 million documented residents.  Our troupe’s arrival was fraught with a certain amount of culture shock— we quickly discovered that Beijingers, though lovely people, tended to speak English only infrequently. …
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14Jan 2022 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Mustang Rolling

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These days, home Internet service is seen as a necessity.  It’s a utility, nearly as important as running water, or even electricity.  But I’m old enough to remember when having access to the World Wide Web at home was a rarity.  And back before social media sites like Twitter and Facebook (or even MySpace!) the only real way for netizens to build an online platform was to construct their own website.  But even then, it seemed that very few people had either the time or the inclination to master HTML. All of that changed when the “web log” came along.  Better known by its truncated nickname, the “blog” first appeared during the late 1990s, though it would be another few years before your grandmother and all her fellow retirees would…
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10Dec 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Steampunk & Penguins

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Two types of people go to Oamaru:  those who live there, and those who want to see penguins.  My traveling circus runs itself as a quasi-democracy, with the kids getting at least a partial vote, so it hardly came as a surprise that during our extended engagement in New Zealand, these adorable little birds earned themselves a place of honor on our bucket list. New Zealand is actually home to three types of penguins, but we were focused on the smallest.  The korora, or little blue penguin, ventures the furthest north, so naturally they’re the most commonly seen.  These noisy little birds spend their days at sea, only coming ashore at night, and you’re much more likely to hear them than to see them.  But as cute as they are,…
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12Nov 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

In the Heat of the Night, by John Ball

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Old television shows never die; they just get uploaded to the Internet.  Recently Youtube introduced me to “All in the Family”, a brilliant if less-than-politically-correct sitcom from the 1970s.  But even though I’d never watched the show before, the lead character just seemed so familiar.  And that’s how, after a few episodes, I found myself digging through actor Carroll O’Connor’s career, and re-discovering where I’d already met the man:  in Sparta, Mississippi, where he played the role of Sheriff Bill Gillespie. But of course, we all know how these things go.  Before “In the Heat of the Night” was a hit television series, with 142 episodes running from 1988 to 1995, it was a 1967 movie with Rod Steiger playing the role of Chief Gillespie.   But even before that,…
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08Oct 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Laolongtou (老龙头)

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There we were, stuck in Beijing on yet another beautiful spring day.  This was pre-COVID, of course— back in an era when we wore Vogmasks solely due to pollution, and if you did happen to leave the house and get halfway down the street without one, it was your own choice whether or not to dash back home and grab it.  After all, lung cancer isn’t a communicable disease, so nobody really cared if you’d go on to suffer from it decades in the future. We were living carefree back in 2019, even if we didn’t fully realize it.  And that spring, with smog at an all-time low, there were so many gorgeous days that us carnies found that we’d actually spent too much time outside.  Weekend after weekend spent…
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10Sep 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Foxfire

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I don’t know what it is about the Appalachian Mountains, but this region seems to have an independent streak.  For better or for worse, people have been living a different way of life here for centuries.  And even today, the time-honored practices of living off the land, or of making do with what you have, are still alive and well… even if you do have to venture a little further off the beaten path to discover them.  Appalachia is an absolutely fascinating part of America, and I suppose that’s why the Foxfire Project may never run out of material. In 1966, an English teacher at Georgia’s Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School was struggling to make his class more interesting.  When he solicited writing topics from his students, they suggested going out into…
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13Aug 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 3 Comments

Coin Pushers

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In my younger and more vulnerable years, I found myself taking part in that great American tradition of “youth baseball.”  After the first few hundred times I dropped an easy infield fly ball, though, my coach pulled me aside and confided that a career in athletics was probably not in my future.  And so I found myself spending more and more time hanging around the concession stand, drowning my sorrows in orange Gatorade.  Those snack sales were just one way that my hometown worked to raise money to pay for our uniforms, bats and balls, and over time, I found myself more captivated by the business aspects of the sports-industrial complex than by the game itself. Every spring, like clockwork, the parking lot near our high school football field was…
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09Jul 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Cadbury World Dunedin

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Dunedin might be the second-largest city in New Zealand’s South Island, but as those of us who’ve been there know, the place has a reputation for being kind of an afterthought.  But, well, after two years of living down at the end of the world, my family and I had just enough time left in our engagement for one more road trip across Aotearoa. And as we pored over the map, I guess the main reason for adding Dunedin to the itinerary was that we simply hadn’t made it there yet.  So why not? As it turned out, Dunedin was much cooler than we’d expected.  Originally founded by Scottish immigrants, their heritage was evident in the city’s unique architecture.  Yes, the temperamental South Island weather lived up to its reputation,…
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11Jun 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

GOAT Mascot: The Chicken

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While sports headlines tend to focus on athletes, those talented performers and their amazing feats, it’s easy to forget that the professional sporting industry also relies on an army of unsung heroes.  Ticket takers.  Security guards.  Concession vendors.  Clean-up crews.  The men and women who do the thankless work which enables our favorite teams to shine in the spotlight. But every so often, one of these faceless minions actually manages to break out of the drudgery and capture a rare moment of glory for themselves.  Among this “cast of millions,” one man in particular stands apart.  Of course, I’m talking about the Greatest Of All Time Mascot: The Chicken. The San Diego Chicken.   The Famous Chicken.   The KGB Chicken.   No matter what you call him, there’s no denying that Ted…
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14May 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Rebel Gold, by Warren Getler and Bob Brewer

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For a country that’s just a couple hundred years old, America sure has its fair share of history.  For my part, I’m absolutely fascinated by the myths and legends of our young nation.  Take the idea of buried treasure, for example.  If you were to count up every story about buried caches of pirate booty, stashed loot from Wild West bank robberies, abandoned gold mines or lost Native American cities, it almost seems as if every square foot of this country should be concealing some kind of hidden fortune.  Just slam a pickax into the ground-- you’re sure to turn up something!   Of course in real life, finding buried treasure is incredibly hard… and Bob Brewer is a man who knows this well.  After his service in the Navy was…
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09Apr 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Many Faces of Howard Hesseman

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One of the highest compliments you can give any actor, writer, or other creative type is to refer to them as “prolific.”  See, in most career fields, overwork is seen as a bad thing.  It’s a one-way ticket to professional burnout.  In the arts, however, simply managing to find steady work is a significant accomplishment by itself. I’m still not sure what prompted me to run that Google search on actor Howard Hesseman.  I suspect I’d gone a little too far down the Youtube rabbit hole of classic television while “researching” another writing project, and I must have been in one of those moods where I found myself wondering where people ended up.  Whatever the reason, I was amazed at what I discovered. Now, I’m willing to bet that most…
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12Mar 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George C. Higgins

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I’m not quite sure why it took me so long to discover “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”, but I know for certain that Dennis Lehane was responsible for helping correct my oversight.  See, not too many years ago, I’d spent a couple years living and working up in Boston, Massachusetts.  New England wasn’t a usual stop for our traveling circus, but since this was an extended engagement, I used the opportunity to immerse myself in the local fiction. That was a heady time for tales of Boston crime, as the legendary gangster, James Joseph Bulger (better known as “Whitey”) had just been captured after more than a decade on the run.  Movies like “The Departed” and “The Town” were killing it at the box office, and as for me, I…
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12Feb 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution (中国人民革命军事博物馆)

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There I was, stuck in Beijing during yet another wave of the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus, when I felt an irresistible urge to break quarantine.  For some strange reason it seemed like most of the tourist sites had been kept open this time around, as opposed to just a few short months before when they’d been sealed off completely.  My mind made up, I turned off the Tiger King episodes I’d been binging and prepared to break free from the locked-down Traveling Circus.  One quick glance at my Middle Kingdom Bucket List showed there was still one more tourist attraction I had yet to explore, and this one was a doozy.   It was the Holy Grail of Communist Propaganda Museums. It was the White Whale of Revisionist Historical Sites. It was…
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09Jan 2021 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

A Brief History of Paper Airplanes

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Today I learned: 1.  Paper planes actually predate aviation itself!  The earliest folded gliders are thought to have originated in China as early as 500 BC.  These flying toys caught on in Japan right around the same time, as origami, the art of paper folding, grew in popularity. 2.  The term ‘paper airplanes’ is pretty broad.  The category encompasses homemade jobs, the kind we all remember illicitly folding up from the back row of detention with a single sheet of spiral bound paper, as well as professionally-designed, store-bought kits.  Kids of a certain age might remember purchasing those fancy “White Wings” gliders--- made from several sheets of pressed balsa wood paper, these cutout kits are *technically* still paper airplanes too. 3.  Paper planes have been used to demonstrate aeronautical principles…
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12Dec 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Nothing Lasts Forever, by Roderick Thorp

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When it hit the theaters in 1988, the movie Die Hard was an instant success.  But just in case you’re one of the few people left on Earth who still hasn’t seen this film, you should know that it’s the story of John McClane, a New York City police detective played by Bruce Willis.  McClane is travelling to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, where he hopes to reconcile with his estranged wife Holly by attending her company’s office party.  At the height of the evening, however, the massive Nakatomi Tower is invaded by a group of elite German terrorists set on raiding the corporation’s secure vault!  As you can imagine, the movie devolves into a thrilling parade of gunfire and explosions.  But even while being recognized as a modern classic,…
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14Nov 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 3 Comments

Treasure on the Tigris

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Life on a traveling circus can bring you to some really out-of-the-way destinations.  At two separate points in my carnie career I found myself working in Iraq, both times wondering what exactly I was supposed to be accomplishing there.  But the strange part is, having spent just about 31 months of my adult life in that country, I never really did get the chance to see much of the cradle of civilization.  From the side window of the circus train, during those long, dusty rides across the desert, I spotted at least a million or so date trees, but that’s about it.  At one point we’d actually pitched our tent about ten short miles away from the ancient city of Babylon…  but of course, the ringmaster kept making up excuses…
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10Oct 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 1 Comment

John Titor

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One of the dangers that comes with any new writing project is the research.  The funny thing is, that’s also one of the best parts of the job!  Research gives you an ironclad excuse to disappear down a Youtube rabbit hole for hours, and it’s technically all “work-related.”  That’s not laziness, it’s called being a diligent writer.  And even though I thought I’d seen a few things on the Web, having trolled through hundred of different Freemason conspiracy theories while outlining “Wikipedia Jones and the Case of the All-Seeing Eye,” those results were nothing compared to when I started looking into time travel. Science fiction readers are a unique breed, and they’re oddly passionate about stories which involve travelling through time.  There are entire communities of people who love nothing…
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12Sep 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Marvel Comics “No-Prize”

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When I was a kid, back in the days before the War on Terror, my understanding of global conflict was a lot more... limited.  It was a simple calculus, really:  the Soviet Union = bad, and it was only on rare occasions that the Russkies’ interests would align with America’s.  In fact, the only thing that could ever bring the two powers together was a common enemy:  a shadowy terrorist organization named COBRA.  For those of you who might not be familiar with GJ Joe, they were basically this division of super soldiers, a motley crew drawn from all branches of the US military.  The franchise technically began as a line of action figures (read: “dolls for boys”) sometime during the 1960s, but kids of my generation could also watch…
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08Aug 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Boys’ Life

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Remember magazines?  Yeah, I’ve heard this media form is actually still out there in the wild somewhere, clinging to life and jamming up peoples’ mailboxes, but it probably won’t be long until they’re gone forever.  Those glossy publications have mostly gone digital now, with entire advertising sections condensed into small clickbait windows.  The magazine seems to be dying a long, slow death, and I, for one, will miss them dearly.  I’ve spent more than my fair share of time loitering around the Barnes & Noble, paging through (but not actually buying) endless copies of Cycle World, Southern Living and Popular Mechanics, but there’s no question: my favorite magazine of all time still has to be Boys’ Life.   Just in case you weren’t aware, Boys’ Life is the monthly magazine of…
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11Jul 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Dungeon Master, by William Dear

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One of the best things about used book hunting is when you come across a title that’s long been out of print.  A book that still has a perfectly good story, yet for whatever reason, you just can’t find it at your local Barnes & Noble.  I’d been searching for a copy of William Dear’s true crime classic “The Dungeon Master” for a few years now, so when I finally stumbled across a beat up hardcover, I had to stop what I was doing and dive in. This is the story of James Dallas Egbert III, a child prodigy who began studying computer science at Michigan State University from the age of 16.  Egbert lost himself on the huge campus, suffered from depression and loneliness, and also struggled with drug…
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13Jun 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Honk for Fonk

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“Each year, thousands of new commuters take the bus to work.  You too, can ensure a safe trip, every day.” “OR YOU COULD DRIVE YOUR CAR!” Even though I’ve never personally been to Washington, the place has been on my list of future road trip destinations for years.  In addition to the gorgeous Pacific Northwest coastline, this state seems to have so much to offer. The legendary Space Needle. The original Starbucks cafe.  And of course, no Washington travelogue would be complete without a nod to the Vern Fonk insurance company.   [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItWpoUMbqJE&w=560&h=315]   Vern Fonk first caught my attention through their hilarious videos, back in the days before social media, when people had to actually email these sorts of things around to make them go viral.  I was…
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09May 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

High Feather

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The recent trend of school cancellations, and the sudden transition to online education that followed, had me reminiscing about my own elementary school days.  Home computers were still somewhat of a rarity during the 1980s, and portable devices were pretty much limited to those few rich kids whose parents went and blew hundreds of dollars on the first handheld television sets.  People didn’t seem all too stressed out about overindulging on “screen time” back then, I guess since parents were expected to throw their kids outside to play in traffic every few hours.   That being said, if any of you parents out there might be getting a little concerned about the amount of screen time Junior’s been logging lately, take a deep breath.  In my childhood, introducing technology into the…
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11Apr 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

An American Bum in China, by Tom Carter

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For those of us living and working in China, it’s been an interesting couple of months.  As the COVID-19 Coronavirus spreads its way around the world, we’ve seen communities, cities, and even entire countries go into lockdown mode.  Unprecedented travel restrictions have literally sprung up overnight, all in an effort to curb the spread of this new virus. It’s a challenging time for everyone, and not surprisingly, everybody has their own way of dealing with the stress.  For my part, I’ve been using any extra spare time to revisit my reading list.   I first heard about “An American Bum in China” on a Reddit discussion thread last year, and the crazy story instantly appealed to me.  This is the true story of Matthew Evans, a young man from Iowa without…
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28Feb 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Beijing Bookworm

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I live in Beijing, and I like to read.  Those two things must have marked me as a likely bookstore customer, because during my first few months in town, I must’ve had at least a dozen people recommend The Beijing Bookworm to me.  The shop sounded interesting enough— an English-language bookstore and cafe, located right in the heart of a city that, well, just doesn’t seem to have many bookshops.  Naturally, I added the Sanlitun landmark to my list of places to visit. Somehow, though, time got away from me.  Despite my best intentions, and despite the fact that I’d been living in the capital for over a year, I never actually got around to visiting the place.  Until this past November, that is, when I caught a short blurb in…
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14Feb 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Five More Places to See Before You Die

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Recently I was cleaning out my bookshelf, and came across this copy of “1000 Places to See Before You Die” that I’d received for Christmas a few years ago.  Now I’m not trying to knock the author, Ms. Patricia Schultz, but I remember thinking how the guidebook was a little… well, let’s say “biased”.  Ms. Schultz seemed to have a particular affinity for Europe, and France in particular.  As I thumbed through the pages again, I couldn’t hold back a swell of pride at having tramped through more of the Middle East than she had.  (Well, more of Iraq, anyway.) Interestingly enough, the book’s last dozen or so pages are actually a checklist of all 1000 places, as if anybody with an inclination to buy this weighty tome might have…
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31Jan 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Jim’s Journal

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A couple of decades ago, back when I was a lowly undergraduate college student with dreams of making it big on the county fair circuit, one of my happiest times came at the start of each semester.  All of the bright young academics would file into the campus bookstore, queueing up to purchase new editions of textbooks which were sure to shape the course of our futures.  Several years into this routine, however, the shine wore off as I became accustomed to the grind of the educational-industrial complex.  That was probably after I’d realized how little these same books were worth when we re-sold them three months later, and how much more economical it would have been to just photocopy a classmate’s copy.  No, about halfway through my college experience,…
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17Jan 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Geneva: The Highlights

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When it comes to Switzerland, I guess I’m kind of neutral on the subject.  The entire country can’t really be considered a destination— it’s more like some place that a tourist might end up when they’re on the way to somewhere else.  That’s exactly what happened to me a few years ago, when I was making my way through a much more interesting part of Europe and the traveling circus changed my travel plans on short notice.  Not having anything else to do, I agreed to hop a plane for Geneva. I quickly discovered that Switzerland is one of those countries where it seems like the locals purposefully try to make life hard for you, just because.  After landing, when I greeted the Customs clerk on duty with a smattering…
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03Jan 2020 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Cookin’ Cajun with Justin Wilson

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I pre-date remote controls.  Back in my day, when you were sick and tired of watching a program, you literally had to get off the couch, walk your happy little butt over to the television set, and wrench a giant clunky knob sideways in order to change the channels.  The sheer amount of effort involved, combined with the fact that we only had like five or six channels to choose from back then, probably goes a long way towards explaining why we watched what we did.  Television wasn’t all that great, simply because it didn’t have to be.  Without any competition from video game consoles, streaming services like Netflix, or even DVDs and VHS tapes, whatever was on television at the moment was literally all you had to watch. In…
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20Dec 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Friends Cafe, Beijing (老友记主题店)

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One of the neat things about living in a mega-city is that the opportunities for urban adventures are literally endless.  Beijing is a place which seems to constantly be under construction, so it’s important to get out and explore all those local shops and markets before they meet with the inevitable bulldozer.  It was in this spirit of adventure that, as the sun rose up on a frigid winter’s day, we set off in search of that legendary nostalgia site, the Friends Cafe.   I have to admit, I’d never actually seen a full episode of Friends, a ‘90s television show that was wildly popular back when I was in high school and college.  I’m not sure why, really— I guess it just never happened.  Of course this was back in…
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06Dec 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Reject-a-Hit”

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One of the inevitable, unavoidable truths of writing is rejection.  Not every story or book that you write will successfully find its way to print, so whenever you send out those those query letters, you have to be mentally prepared for editors to tell you “no.”  Fortunately, I’d read Stephen King’s guidance “On Writing” early on in my career, so I’ve embraced his advice keep driving on in spite of any rejections.   To be fully honest, a rejection letter usually serves a valid purpose.  It’s a simple, business-like way for editors to let writers know that their story just isn’t a good fit right now.  And sometimes, these rejections are actually a polite way of telling an author that their stuff jusst needs a little more work.  I remember…
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24Nov 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Welcome To The Blog

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Hey everyone, welcome to the blog!  I’ve been running a Wordpress website since early 2017, and before that on good ol’ Blogger (R.I.P.) since about 2011, but in all that time I don’t think I’ve ever gotten around to setting up a proper welcome post.  So, welcome. The nice part of running a blog is that I keep full control here.  My books are all fiction, so this is where I can write about whatever else I want— those weird travel experiences, interesting books or movies I’ve come across, or even just a shout-out to a cool Youtube channel.  If something interests me, there’s a small chance that at least a few other people might be into it too.  And by all means, if you’ve got any suggestions for projects…
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22Nov 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Journey to a One-Hit Wonder

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The A-Side It was back in 1984, a time when I still wasn’t allowed to cross the street by myself, when I first heard about this place called New Zealand.  My older siblings were big into a new form of entertainment called “music videos”, so as the junior member of the family, the task of running back and forth to change channels had been delegated to me.  And so one day, as I was flipping the cable box back and forth between MTV (Channel 24) and VH1 (23), somewhere in between Michael Jackson, Rod Stewart and A-Ha, we came across the musical stylings of the the Patea Maori Club.    I think back then, when music videos were still in their infancy, these channels must have made it known that they’d…
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08Nov 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Worst of Carpentersville

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I started writing seriously back in 2007, long after the Internet had come into existence.  Since that time I’ve wasted countless hours streaming through Youtube videos in between paragraphs, and I can’t help but wonder how old-school writers killed time back in the day.  But in addition to serving as an incredibly effective distraction, Youtube also makes for a handy research platform.  For example, while I was researching conspiracy theories for “Wikipedia Jones and the Case of the All-Seeing Eye,” I came across any number of cover-ups that THEY don’t wan’t you to know! Of course, Youtube isn’t all revelations from the Deep State.  One of my favorite “new” finds is an awesome video series called “Worst of Carpentersville.”  Sometime in the late 2000s, a man named Grant Crowell was living in…
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25Oct 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The World’s Smallest Police Station

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Mark Twain once said that “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”  As a seasoned carnie, traveling around the world has also taught me that tour guides are full of crap. Case in point:  Not long ago, my crew and I had the opportunity to disappear in London for a few weeks.  It was an awesome trip, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the place at our leisure, and we made the most of it, wandering around the city which once called itself the capital of the world.  We absolutely loved stumbling across all the historic sites… at least until the last few days, when we made the mistake of buying tickets for one of those Hop On / Hop Off tour buses.  These buses can be found in pretty…
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11Oct 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Higgins Armory Museum

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The year was 1988, although in my fourth-grade class, it could’ve just as easily have been 1488:  for some reason or other, my school spent about three solid months trying to teach us kids about the Dark Ages.  I guess medieval life must have been in vogue or something; in addition to the Castle series of Lego construction sets that were flying off the shelves at Toys R Us, it wasn’t long after that when the film world was treated to the genius of “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”  (If you haven’t dusted off that VHS tape in a while, it’s worth re-watching:  this film is a rare chance to see Kevin Costner at the peak of his career, bolstered by the star power of Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Sean…
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27Sep 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Tesco Metro, Bermondsey Spa

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The first time I’d ever visited London was back in 2008, when an extended layover granted me a full day in that city.  That whistle stop turned into a whirlwind tour, 24 straight hours of sprinting through Westminster during a freezing December, trying to cram in as many sights as possible.  This year, when the traveling circus gave me the opportunity to go back to London with my family in tow, the one thing I didn’t want to do there was rush.  We booked an Air BnB on the edge of the city for a solid two weeks, using the Southbank neighborhood of Bermondsey as our launchpad for adventure.  And after the trip had ended, once we’d viewed the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and St. Paul’s Cathedral, it was only then…
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13Sep 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Shakespeare and Company

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I’ve been to Paris three times now, and it’s safe to say that I’ve got a love/hate relationship with that city.  On the one hand, there’s no denying that the French people have made countless contributions to the world at large, including, but not limited to, French fries and that awesome Ratatouille movie.  On the other hand, I’ve noticed that after a while, Parisians can just be so… Parisian.  They all tend to exhibit a particular air, not so much an attitude of superiority, but rather a subtle form of humblebragging.  This personality trait manifests itself through a need to constantly remind you of their presence, like the way all those bicyclists whipping along the Champs Elysses never fail to ring their bells at you, even though you’re nowhere near…
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30Aug 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Bad Movie Reviews: Airborne

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It was back in the late-1990s, when in-line skates were still a socially acceptable form of fitness, that I first came across the movie ‘Airborne’.  If I remember correctly, one of my college roommates seemed absolutely distraught by the fact that I’d never heard of this 1993 classic, so much so that he skipped classes that afternoon to run out to the Blockbuster Video (remember those?) and grab a copy. The plot, in a nutshell, is that teenager Mitchell Goosen (played by Shane McDermott) is just your stereotypical blond California kid, a gifted surfer and skater.  When his parents have the opportunity to visit Australia (in 1993, possibly the coolest place in the world) for an extended research trip, Mitchell isn’t invited; rather, he’s shipped off to stay with extended…
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16Aug 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Babson Boulders

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I can’t remember the full details about how I first discovered this place, but I’m certain that Marky Mark must have had something to do with it.  As I recall, the rapper-turned-actor now known as Mark Wahlberg had starred alongside George Clooney in “The Perfect Storm”, a 1991 film about a group of tuna fishermen from Gloucester, Massachusetts.  I’d snagged the dusty DVD out of a Redbox kiosk while staying only a short drive away from that legendary seaport town, so of course I dutifully set about researching a day trip.  And so, when it finally came time for my visit, after cruising the main drag and paying my respects at the Fisherman’s Memorial, I was right back off in search of a much more obscure, remote destination: The Babson…
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02Aug 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Blue Plate Books

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When you live on the road, you quickly come to appreciate the sheer handiness of a used book.  It’s a quiet form of portable entertainment, one which never requires re-charging.  And whenever you’ve come across a good book for cheap (or even better, for free), there’s very little hesitation about passing it along to another reader once you’re done with it.  I guess that’s why, no matter where I travel, I always do my best to seek out the local used book store. Sometime in the last decade or so, this traveling circus that I work for had set me up in the small town of Winchester, Virginia for a couple months.  It was just short enough of a time so that I couldn’t really get settled in, but just…
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19Jul 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Tianjin Binhai Library

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There we were, holed up in Beijing over the week-long Spring Festival, when life in the big city suddenly ground to an absolute halt.  It’s somewhat of a tradition for Chinese people to head home to visit their families during this time, so the capital was as deserted as we’d ever seen it, and the cold February winds swept through the empty streets and narrow hutongs.  With not much else to do, we carnies decided to pile into the circus van and head east, seeking a change of scenery via a quick day trip to Tianjin.  The highway seemed barren all morning long, a scene which could have been lifted straight out of some post-apocalyptic B-movie, with many long stretches during the two-hour drive where there was simply no other…
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05Jul 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Moving Fortress, by Richardo Barreiro & Enrique Alcatena

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Over the past decade or so, comic books have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in popularity.  And as awesome as that may be, one of my favorite things about this shift is how graphic novels have gained a lot more acceptability as a form of reading material.  Even though I’m more of a passing fan of the genre, sticking mostly to the “illustrated classics” like Maus or Persepolis, there’s literally a world of choices out there.  But it seems like one of my all-time favorite graphic novels always manages to float beneath the radar, so I’d like to get up on my soapbox and give a well-earned shout-out to Richardo Barreiros’ and Enrique Alcatena’s brilliant production, “Moving Fortress.” “Moving Fortress” first appeared in Argentina during the 1980s, as a serialized comic in…
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21Jun 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Hartmann Model Railroad Museum

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Maybe six or seven years ago now, the traveling circus had me up in New England for a couple years on an extended engagement.  The day-to-day work tempo was fast and furious, but this one summer I somehow managed to snag an entire week off.  And if you’ve never been to that part of the world, there’s really only one must-see destination in the whole region.  That’s right, I’m talking about God’s Country, the Mecca of family vacations: North Conway, New Hampshire. I’ve heard this place is a bustling ski destination during the winter, but during the summer it’s a paradise for all those families who just don’t feel like trucking all the way down I-95 to Walt Disney World.  North Conway is absolute heaven for kids, with an endless…
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07Jun 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Advantage Play” at Dave & Buster’s

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Today I learned: Counted among the fans of Dave & Buster’s, arguably the best chain restaurant and video game arcade in the world, are a hardcore group of gamers known as “Advantage Players.”  These players aim to amass the largest amount of prize tickets in the shortest possible time, with the goal of cashing them in for high-value prizes in the Winner’s Circle.  Items like electric scooters, video game consoles or electronics can then be resold for a healthy profit on sites like Craigslist or Ebay.  In fact, some skilled gamers have estimated that they normally average around $50 per hour for their “work”.   Even though the “Advantage Play” scheme might sound too good to be true, it’s actually just a simple strategy for maximizing your redemption tickets.  Advantage Players…
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25May 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Soup”, by Robert Newton Peck

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I’m not sure how my older brother ever heard about the “SOUP” series of books by Robert Newton Peck, but when he passed them on to me I was hooked from the first page.  SOUP is Mr. Peck’s only-slightly-fictionalized memoir about growing up in depression-era Vermont, and all of the stories are told from his childhood perspective.  Most of the chapters are based on the trouble that his best friend, Luther Wesley Vinson (aka “Soup”) managed to get the boys wrapped up in, which was apparently an endless source of literary inspiration.  A lot of city kids might think there’s nothing fun to do out in the country, but Rob and Soup always seemed to put their imaginations to good use! The first “SOUP” book is more like a collection of…
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11May 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

798 Art District

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Last year, the traveling circus shipped me and my family to the other side of the world for an extended engagement in China.  Beijing can be… interesting… at times, a city where over 20 million people do their best to get along.  But even in a huge, sprawling urban center like this one, one of my favorite things about the place is just how many hidden gems are out there to discover, so long as you’re willing to wander off the beaten path once in a while.  What with the near-constant construction here, guidebooks are sure to be out-of-date the instant they’re printed… although somehow, a few favorites have still managed to dodge the bulldozers and slip through the cracks. One such area, and one of my favorite spots in…
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26Apr 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Bad Movie Reviews: Gymkata

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I’ve always loved action movies, and over time I’ve developed an unusually high tolerance for cheesy dialogue and plot holes.  Honestly, though, I’ve got no one but myself to blame for watching this film.  I should’ve known full well what I was getting into the first time I saw “Gymkata” — even the VHS cassette looked lame, sitting there all sad and lonely on the shelf of my hometown Adopt-a-Video store, looking dusty and untouched and pathetic.  The tagline said it all: “A new kind of martial arts combat!  The skill of gymnastics, with the kill of karate.”  And as for the starring role?  Stallone or Schwarzenegger must have been tied up on other projects, so a gymnast named Kurt Thomas scored top billing.     As far as the…
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13Apr 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Four Hours in Vladivostok

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Signing on with a traveling circus will take you to some odd places, and the city of Vladivostok definitely fits this bill.  There we were, booked in for a full engagement of seven days and six nights in Mother Russia, with the September air already turning frigid and me with no winter clothing packed in my duffel bag.  All of the local hotels seemed to be unavailable for some reason or other, but our ever-resourceful ringmaster had managed to find us bunkspace within a recently-renovated college campus.  The dorm rooms were so new that they still smelled of wet paint, and the gentle sounds of heavy construction lulled me to sleep after work each night.  My room’s tiny television streamed eight separate channels of static, and as I unwound by…
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30Mar 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Confederates in the Attic”, by Tony Horwitz

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If you had to cram Tony Horwitz’ writing into any category, I guess it’d be safe to call him a “travel writer.”  Most of his books involve seem to involve a lot of time spent on the road doing research, and my all-time favorite book of his, “Confederates in the Attic”,  is certainly no different.  This epic work of journalism goes off in dozens of weird directions as the author explores a unique and curious cross-section of American society:  the Civil War re-enactor. In “Confederates”, Horwitz travels deep below the Mason-Dixon line, through the heart of the American South.  Like many Americans, Horwitz shares a fascination with the only major war fought on US soil, and his writing explores how public interest in this conflict has grown over time.  But…
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15Mar 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Report of the Week

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One of the things I appreciate most about social media is the way that it gives everyone a platform to make their voice heard.  Every so often I stumble across an “influencer” who grabs my attention, and lately I’ve been working my way through the filmography of John Jurasek, a 21-year old Youtube star best known for his channel “The Report of the Week.”  Jurasek, also known as “ReviewBrah”, stands out from most content creators by paying particularly close attention to his appearance, to the point where he dons a Sunday suit in nearly all of his clips.  And what, pray tell, does this distinguished-looking young gentleman choose to discuss with his audience?  Fast food. That’s right, the kid does fast food reviews, and he does them well.  When questioned…
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01Mar 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Beit Al-Sadu: House of Traditional Weaving

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There’s not very much to do in Kuwait City.  I’m not saying that as a knock on the place, it’s just a fact, and I think most Kuwaitis would readily concede the point.  The country just doesn’t receive a ton of tourists, so I think they’re probably just at a loss for what to do with us Westerners.  And even though this tiny nation sits right alongside the Persian Gulf, the beaches there simply aren’t a destination.  Besides, most of the year it’s too simply hot to enjoy being outside.  And while the air conditioning flows freely inside Kuwait’s countless luxury shopping malls, you can only visit these oases so often before you begin to question your life choices.  It only took me a couple days in country to reach…
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15Feb 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“The Traveller’s Handbook” (1981)

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Recently, I found myself stuck waiting on a chartered bus which was running a little behind for the next adventure.  The chairs in the lobby were uncomfortable and set me to pacing about, so I guess I ended up exploring the building more as a way to kill time than out of any real curiosity about the place.  Up on the third floor, after slipping past a set of tensile barriers in order to have a peek at a closed-off area, I stumbled across an unused sitting room complete with a dusty pool table and cloth-covered furniture.  A tall set of bookshelves lined the walls, the rows of English-language titles serving as artifacts which bore testimony to the volume of expatriates who’d traveled through the space in decades past.  Their…
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01Feb 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Wikipedia Jones and the Case of the All-Seeing Eye

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Spend enough time surfing the Internet, and eventually you’ll stumble across those dark corners of the Web where unanswered questions lurk, lying in wait to confront curious minds.  Hang around long enough, and eventually you might even find yourself doubting the things you thought were the truth.  For example, have you wondered about any of these: -You know those streams of white mist left behind by high-flying airplanes?  Could it be possible that the United States Air Force is actually conspiring with civilian aviation companies to mix behavior-modifying chemicals in with the contrails generated by passenger aircraft?  And could the government really be working to control our behavior through the use of these mind-altering drugs? -And what about the United Nations?  Was that organization really established to erode the concept…
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04Jan 2019 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Real-Life Treasure: The Iraqi Dinar

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Sometime in the 2000s, my gig with the traveling circus took me to Iraq for a couple years.  It was a very interesting time to be there, when over a hundred thousand military troops stationed throughout the country were supported by an equal or greater number of private contractors.  The demographics of deployment made for a unique slice of life, and people whose paths might not have ordinarily crossed in the real world now found themselves bunkmates in the dusty transit tent.  Coming and going through the Baghdad International Airport was always prime time for people-watching, and one impression I took away from the experience was how many ‘self-proclaimed experts’ seemed to gravitate towards working in a war zone.  Some days it seemed as it the smoke pits and shuttle…
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22Dec 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Bad Cop”, by Paul Bacon

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Full disclosure— when I started reading this book, I was fully prepared to dislike it.  I don’t normally read a whole lot of memoirs, but since Paul Bacon’s “Bad Cop” came to me via a close friend’s personal recommendation, I figured I’d give it a shot.  What the heck, right?  Ever since I joined the digital age and picked up a Kindle a few years back, it’s been a whole lot easier to broaden my literary horizons.  Worst case scenario, if a book turns out to be terrible, I can always delete the digital edition and I’m only out, what?  A couple bucks?  As it turns out, though, “Bad Cop” took me through a whole range of emotions:  from simply being grateful that the book wasn’t awful, to being pleasantly surprised…
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08Dec 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Library of Congress

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Recently, when I was passing through Washington, DC, I had the opportunity to visit one of my favorite places in the world:  the Library of Congress.  I’ve actually been here several times before, and I always try to stop in for the public tour whenever I’m in town.  But during this visit, my mission was slightly different.  I’d set a personal goal to obtain the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail of book nerds everywhere:  a researcher card from the Library of Congress. [caption id="attachment_585" align="alignnone" width="1296"] Back Camera[/caption] This idea first got stuck in my head about ten years back, during one of a few visits to our nation’s capitol in 2008.  I remember being absolutely blown away by the Jefferson Building’s architecture, although the public areas are basically limited…
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24Nov 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com 2 Comments

WishbookWeb

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As a general rule, I make it a goal to avoid talking about any of my writing projects before they’re actually finished.  I mean, why would you tell people about a story you’re working on, when your goal is to get them to read it after you’re done?  But without giving anything away, my latest work-in-progress required me to do some research into the 1990s, that lost decade of Starter jackets and Zubaz pants.  Stop shuddering… you know you miss wearing those Bugle Boy jeans and Reebok pumps.  Now thanks to the wealth of information out there on the Web, I could have easily spent entire days paging through a countless number of blogs about nostalgia, but that scattershot approach seemed a little… disorganized.  After only a short time, I…
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17Nov 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Cold Case: The Black Friday Glue Bandit

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Friday, November 28, 2008, is a date that will live in infamy.  Traditionally, or at least since the mid-1950s, the day after Thanksgiving is commonly regarded as the first day of America’s Christmas shopping season.  Known as “Black Friday,” this is the busiest shopping day of the year.  Retailers often advertise “door-buster” sales, slashing prices on big-ticket items so low that they actually take a loss , all in order to draw in as many customers as possible.  Unfortunately, the build-up to all this excitement can often end with chaotic results. For example: on Black Friday 2008, at a Toys R Us store in Palm Desert, California, two men pulled guns and shot each other to death following an altercation. And on the same day, at a Wal-Mart store in…
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10Nov 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

d20

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A few years back I was living and working in Wellington, New Zealand.  I’d gotten the day off for some reason or other, and was spending the afternoon poking through a used bookstore.  It was a nice enough place: small and cramped with a cranky owner, but otherwise unremarkable, at least until I turned into the last aisle.  There it was, holding court in the Games section:  a well-worn copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guidebook:   [caption id="attachment_601" align="alignnone" width="625"] "Enter, adventurers..."[/caption] For me, seeing this book on the shelf was almost like spotting a long-lost friend.  Back in junior high school, I spent more than my fair share of weekends playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends, the group of us diving down into the depths of lost mines in search…
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27Oct 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Building 19

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  Building 19, a chain of discount stores in New England, was one of those places that people either seemed to really love or really hate.  The brainchild of Gerald Elovitz, aka “Jerry Ellis”, the Building 19 empire began as a single store in Hingham, Massachusetts.  During its fifty-year run, from 1963 to 2013 the chain specialized in offering “good things cheap”, most often leftover stock from name-brand retailers.  Jerry Ellis even made it a part of his business model to track warehouse fires, in order to buy bulk stock at pennies on the dollar. Nearly every New Englander “of a certain age” probably has their own Building 19 story, but my part about this chain, even more than the subtle, lingering smell of smoke you’d sometimes catch when visiting…
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13Oct 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

Moonrunners

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Today I learned: 1)  One of my all-time favorite TV shows, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” was actually based on a 1975 movie called “Moonrunners” which starred James Mitchum as an outlaw moonshine bootlegger.  That movie was in turn inspired by another 1958 film, also starring James Mitchum and his father Robert, called “Thunder Road.” 2)  In “Moonrunners”, Grady and Bobby Lee Hagg run bootleg liquor for their Uncle Jesse in a Chevrolet stock car named “Traveller”, after General Robert E. Lee’s horse.  You might also recognize a few familiar names such as the Boar’s Nest bar, Sheriff Rosco Coletrane, Cooter Pettigrew, or Waylon Jennings (as the Balladeer). 3)  While you might be as disappointed as I was to learn that Hazzard County, Georgia is an entirely fictional place, there is…
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29Sep 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“In Search of King Solomon’s Mines”, by Tahir Shah

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No question, one of my all-time favorite writers has to be the great Tahir Shah, a man who approaches travel writing from a completely unique perspective.  Not quite a travelogue, yet also not quite a full-blown paranormal activity report: when describing his books, I can only say that Shah seems to have a knack for finding adventure in the most random places and subjects.  I’ve read at least half of his bibliography so far, so it was incredibly difficult to select just one favorite. Of course there’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, where Shah travels across India to master the tricks of the trade used by that country’s faith healers; And then there’s “The Caliph’s House”, in which Shah describes how, through the process of moving his family to Morocco, he somehow…
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15Sep 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The Robert Louis Stevenson Museum

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There I was, off in the South Pacific island nation of Samoa for some reason or other.  I’d just arrived back in the outskirts of the capital city of Apia, my rear end stiff and numb after riding a rented moped out to visit the legendary To Sua Ocean Trench.  That day trip was an adventure in itself:  dodging wild pigs along the unmarked side roads; getting soaked through by a handful of sudden rainstorms; eating Sapa Sui in grass hut along a white-sand beach; and getting hijacked by a three-year-old in a Larry Bird jersey, who refused to get off my moped until I’d bought an overpriced coconut from him. What can I say, really?  Five tala sure ain’t cheap, but I respected the kid’s hustle. But I’ve got…
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01Sep 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

The US ProMiniGolf Association (USPMGA)

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Today I learned: 1) There’s such a thing as the United States Pro Mini Golf Association (USPMGA). 2) Professional mini golf isn’t just a quirky, US-only thing: it’s a worldwide phenomenon.  The USPMGA is a subsidiary of the World Mini Golf Sports Federation (WMSF). 3)  In my younger days, I actually shanked a few balls into the water at Hawaiian Rumble Mini Golf in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I never realized that Hawaiian Rumble is an officially sanctioned, USPMGA-approved mini golf course, widely considered to be one of the world's best. 4)  Both the USPMGA and the WMSF sponsor regular tournaments, in both the “Open” and “Masters” categories.  For 2018, the USPMGA Master’s tournament boasts a $20,000 cash purse. 5)  In light of these facts, it’s pretty obvious that I…
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18Aug 2018 by jamesvachowski@gmail.com No Comments

“Cannonball!”, by Brock Yates

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Picture this:  It’s 1971, and for the first time in the short history of America’s interstate highway system, strict traffic laws are about to take effect.  Searching for a way to protest what they view as excessive restrictions, a handful of automobile enthusiasts— Car & Driver magazine editor Brock Yates, his son Brock Yates Jr., Steve Smith and Jim Williams, set out on a single-car, cross-country road trip in a Dodge Custom Sportsman Van.  By switching drivers regularly and stopping only long enough to refuel, the small group made the trip from New York City to Redondo Beach, California… in 40 hours and 51 minutes! The inaugural “Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash” proved so much fun that the team repeated the event later that same year, although they opened…
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