’m not sure I truly appreciated what was happening in the world of mixed martial arts until UFC 252, when an off-duty cop named Chris Daukaus—fish-bellied and pale as a sheet—used precise boxing skills to beat the tar out of an extremely overweight but still game Parker Porter. They both sacrificed to get there: Daukaus, […]
y father, a bear of a man who immiserated my life in ways too bizarre to recount here, ended up saving it as well. I was a strong and outgoing boy from the time I was small, but I often felt sad or depressed, in part because the old man’s abuse or recklessness had caused […]
n the small Southwestern Pennsylvania coal-mining town where I grew up, the locals kept to themselves and were notoriously tight-lipped when it came to praising anyone for anything. The elderly residents—mostly descendants of Slovak and Croatian immigrants who came to the town to work the mine—were pessimistic people, distrustful of the Democratic politicians they voted […]