New 'Essays in Idleness' & Other Reviews from The Hard Flex Cafe

Your everlasting summer and you can see it fading fast,  So you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last… I’ve spent a lifetime trying to live over my paygrade and staying outta’ trouble with debt and the taxman.  I knew when I turned down that law school admission that I’d stepped in it, that I’d chosen my heart over my head.  I was at least smart enough not to attempt to make a life working with my hands, unless that means with ink and paper. Voltaire proves there is value in a life of words.    Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste templedédié à la discorde .   I try not to forget this though it’s important we don’t get too grumpy, self-important, or assertive even when life's done it's job and tempered, burnt, and otherwise chasten us into believing that we know better.  No one likes to pay more than they have to but too many of us are looking for a bargain when we'd be far better off if we sucked it up to pay retail ...

Wanting to be at ease with yourself means you have to learn how to enjoy an effortless effort.     As Spinoza said, perhaps with prescience for the experience of wearing a fine leather jacket, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”     Fine things also tell good stories.     So let’s roll the tape. I’ve always been keen on leather jackets ‘cause where I grew up you got beat up a lot whether or not you were cool.  So you might as well be cool.  My first real jacket was a Schott Perfecto that I, umm, stole from my elder brother.  He had mistakenly left it behind at home while he was having a Born to Run episode in the summer of ’75.  I ran off with it and forever pretended that I didn’t know what happened to the thing. Ironically, such said  perfection  was stolen from me in a bar not long afterwards and this might be the first time I publicly admit to having stolen from my own brother one o...