by Adam | Wednesday 25 April 2012
This is definitely the most fun I've ever had reporting on a story. New Orleans, Carnival, parades, culture, anarchy, sex, drugs, and violence. For The Atlantic: The parade reached its endpoint, which was a warehouse-turned-event-space on the corner of Piety...
Click here to continue reading "The Krewe of Eris" »
by Adam | Saturday 22 October 2011
I arrived in D.C. during rush hour and suddenly realized that I wanted to live in a smaller place. A community (DC is a very small place when you place it beside New York) where there is familiarity and...
Click here to continue reading "Weltschmerz" »
by Adam | Wednesday 17 August 2011
Landed in Oakland, it was late and the airport was empty. First stop, In-N-Out burger, I wasn't hungry, but I downed a double-double with fries (animal style) because you have to do these things when you land in a...
Click here to continue reading "Bay Area" »
by Adam | Saturday 13 August 2011
I know you are all anxious to hear about my time in California and Missouri, but I am working on a paean to Hakeem Olajuwon and I can't stop working on it simply to make you jealous of all the...
Click here to continue reading "Road Work" »
by Adam | Sunday 7 August 2011
I call this one Chipped Sunset from a Plane Window Well folks, as I was flying out west, TrustFundReporting turned five years old. Let it be known that five in blog years is like 77 in people years. This...
Click here to continue reading "Five Years of TFR | Couch-by-Couchwest IV" »
by Adam | Tuesday 21 June 2011
This place is very strange. Not that all other airports seem normal, but this one, here in the nowheres of Colorado is especially weird. First of all, the airport itself is immaculately clean. You could eat an Omaha steak off...
Click here to continue reading "Denver Int'l Airport. Monday, 11:48 PM." »
by Adam | Saturday 21 May 2011
Friends, I've been in Florida, bumping into your grandparents, pool-sitting, and being terrifically over/underdressed for all occasions. Apologies for being neglectful. For all matters Middle East, I urge you to check out Jeffrey Goldberg's blog at the Atlantic. I am,...
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by Adam | Tuesday 19 April 2011
Author's Note #1: There are many different ways to tell an exciting story. Author's Note #2: This is not an exciting story. Part One The bachelor and I had left Brenham after stopping in a gas station/bbq stand for some...
Click here to continue reading "On Being Arrested in Rockdale, Texas" »
by Adam | Monday 11 April 2011
Like all good stories, they require waiting. Be on the lookout for a dispatch about my time in custody at the Rockdale jail. It's the most boring arrest story ever....
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by Adam | Tuesday 23 November 2010
It was Wednesday and I met my girlfriend uptown at the doctor. Stop right there. It’s not that kind of story. The city has a way of stiffing one’s neck to the point that requires a professional intercession. The...
Click here to continue reading "Natural History" »
by Adam | Saturday 13 November 2010
Your intrepid reporter has gone rogue, quite literally, in the Rogue Valley of southern Oregon to work on a story about America's next grape crush: the marijuana harvest. My meals have been two all-you-can-eat buffets (Asian and breakfast, no...
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by Adam | Tuesday 24 August 2010
31/7/10 Istanbul We sat in an outdoor cafe, which was more like a patio once meant for something else and while he sketched the view across the Bosporus, I read aloud from a book I'd picked up that morning...
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by Adam | Friday 6 August 2010
The day’s end came while we were gunning back to Ramallah. Along with the wrenching of the van—with the same erratic gusto as before (substituting techno music for Koran verses)—I felt enervated and unsettled by the intensity of the...
Click here to continue reading "Driving from Jenin (ii)" »
by Adam | Tuesday 27 July 2010
TFR Shoutout:Daniella Cheslow, journalist nonpareil, who accompanied me to Jenin. I boarded the van from Jerusalem to Ramallah a little after 7:00 in the morning, it was cold in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time which is...
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by Adam | Thursday 8 July 2010
by Adam | Sunday 27 June 2010
Israel is all grown up. Gone is that diminutive little Ben Gurion Airport where you'd arrive and wobble down the steps of the plane, perhaps level your lips with the concrete of the tarmac, and crowd a tram to the...
Click here to continue reading "Entry Point: Things Are Bad Here" »
by Adam | Friday 25 June 2010
Dear Friends: I’m writing you from the fluorescent underbelly of Newark Liberty International Airport. My attempts to find an officious-looking picture of Corey Booker have failed. The international terminal has just erupted into cheers for United States football heroics just...
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by Adam | Tuesday 25 May 2010
Sweet Houston. So wholesome, so earnest, so well-meaning. I saw this sign when I was home for Mother's Day and forgot to post it until now....
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by Adam | Saturday 13 March 2010
It was exactly a week ago on one shining, mild and temperate Texas day—a Saturday—that friends and I embarked on the Mengele experiment in sociological wire-walking that is the Rodeo Houston. This beginning sentence is not adequate, but I’m...
Click here to continue reading "Rodeo: Part I" »
by Adam | Monday 8 March 2010
that I spend more time apologizing for not writing on TFR than I spend actually writing on TFR. I'm onto you perceptive types. I was in Texas at the rodeo this weekend and one of my charges was essentially to...
Click here to continue reading "It's True" »
by Adam | Sunday 4 October 2009
A hotel room that can't be photographed (that you have no desire to photograph) is already a bad room. Upon arriving in a city, the first thing to do is to take a picture of the room, as if to...
Click here to continue reading "Fugue State: The Hotel Room" »
by Adam | Wednesday 2 September 2009
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American Avalon, a Tennessee paradise. The outskirts of the park, however, are a flailing, tacky Southern waiting room. There is a highway stretch filled with chapels, theme parks, chain restaurants. Dollywood spans...
Click here to continue reading "Fugue State: Assert Your Dominance (Bears)" »
by Adam | Sunday 30 August 2009
I only know Jackson from the two hours I spent awake there. I arrived at night and shot through the specter of downtown. It was boarded up, looked like another place in the area hit by a storm and never...
Click here to continue reading "Fugue State: The City Where Medgar Evers Died" »
by Adam | Saturday 29 August 2009
Houston, Texas -----------> Jackson, Mississippi As I sped for probably 80% of the drive from Houston to New York, I constantly had to adapt the premeditated lie I would tell if pulled over on the highway. The lies would shift...
Click here to continue reading "Fugue State: Lying to Authority" »
by Adam | Saturday 29 August 2009
Dissociative Fugue Disorder: When a person is in a fugue state, he'll pick up and travel suddenly to some random point, not at all sure why he's doing it, and sometimes with little memory of who he is. This summer...
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by Adam | Monday 17 August 2009
Amish buggie on the Ohio/West Virginia border. More like I've been on the road. I finished my two-week Chicago residency and went east to Ann Arbor for a few days. I camped out in SE Ohio and spent a...
Click here to continue reading "August Malaise." »
by Adam | Friday 10 April 2009
Unconsciously affecting a lisp, I ask the burly bartender for two Jamesssons. “How do you want those, hon?” he asks. I slight-eye the dark horizon of the bar to catch my friend’s gaze and relay the query. Three pride...
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by Adam | Monday 30 March 2009
It begins with bathroom graffiti. Out on the curb of my block, some evidence that a neighbor was doing some spring cleaning. Perched astride a stack of discarded books was a VHS cassette tape of Girls Gone Wild (Girl...
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by Adam | Sunday 2 November 2008
"Central Park" Fall is the preferred season of New Yorkers. I conducted an informal survey of locals who wagged their middle digits to appropriate their answers. I stepped out into the breach of footpaths and saw the latticework of...
Click here to continue reading "New York Onanism in Three Parts" »
by Adam | Wednesday 6 August 2008
Girl on the BART train to Milbrae There was a cut-off and she just made it (suitcase in hand); it was pink beyond flamingo and bubble gum, she wore an aqua marine fleece and turquoise socks, all the pastels of...
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by Adam | Tuesday 29 July 2008
My descent upon it continues from California. Stay tuned....
Click here to continue reading "The Slippery Slope" »
by Adam | Monday 21 July 2008
by Adam | Monday 23 June 2008
I am soon embarking on Couch by Couchwest, a summer tour of America....and the couches of my friends. Should you wish to reserve a cushion to be blessed by my fulsome derrière, please hit the "Contact the Trust Fund Reporter"...
Click here to continue reading "Couch by Couchwest: Tentative Line-up" »
by Adam | Tuesday 20 May 2008
I go to Central Park three times a week now that school is out and I'm also slightly unemployed. Pardon the dust, we are renovating here. My friend Mike calls and asks where I am. It had been raining off-and-on...
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by Adam | Wednesday 30 January 2008
Author's Note: This piece is the product of an assignment to write a complete piece strictly within a fifty-minute increment without an outline or any editing or anything more than a prompt for a topic. The prompt was to write...
Click here to continue reading "Cairo with Osama" »
by Adam | Sunday 6 January 2008
Well technically, I am not there yet, but by the time most of you read this, I will be (I've got a sixth sense about these things just like when I picked Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee to be the...
Click here to continue reading "Happy New Year from Israel" »
by Adam | Sunday 23 December 2007
But oh, the smell of burnt cocaine The dolor and decay It only makes me cranky Oh great calamity, Ditch of iniquity and tears How I abhor this place Its sweet and bitter taste Has left me wretched, retching on...
Click here to continue reading "Los Angeles I'm Yours: Part One" »
by Adam | Sunday 26 August 2007
Spoiler Alert: The end of this post contains the first two sentences of my forthcoming book about racist warlocks. Should you be a warlock purist, I strongly urge you not to read the last section of this post. I...
Click here to continue reading "Racist Warlocks and Sunflowers" »
by Adam | Friday 17 August 2007
I may or may not have almost been thrown out of here for screaming "BIJOU!" I knew that I had successfully left Paris when strangers started to speak to me on the trains and buses. I met a very...
Click here to continue reading "Toulouse, Cat'Art, Ste Columbe" »
by Adam | Monday 13 August 2007
After being surrounded by billions of people at the museum, this was easily the highlight of my day and my last night in Paris. After dinner in Montparnasse, I walked down Rue Emile Richard which divides the cemetary in...
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by Adam | Sunday 12 August 2007
Artistic/symbolic blurriness or low battery? You decide. I napped and "worked" until 10:30 on Saturday night, showered and made it to Montmartre at midnight. For those unfamiliar, Montmartre is on the far northern end of Paris (I think), on...
Click here to continue reading "The Montmartre Arcade Fire" »
by Adam | Sunday 12 August 2007
Trying to look as French as possible here. Champs Elysees: Part One One day when I'm traveling dishonestly, I will wake up early (or stay out all night) so that I can walk the Champs Elysees when it's empty...
Click here to continue reading " A Mime, A Beret, and the Champs-Élysées" »
by Adam | Sunday 12 August 2007
Only the French (and Tony Parker) would place this backdrop for a basketball court. Inspired by the stories of French apostasy at the Jewish Museum of Art and History, I decided that I would break all the Shabbas laws...
Click here to continue reading "Croque Madame and Eiffel Power" »
by Adam | Saturday 11 August 2007
I woke in a panic as I had missed free breakfast at the hotel and had overslept to counterbalance the difference between my intended and actual bedtimes. I was due uptown (which is a totally inaccurate but wholly-of-habit term) in...
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by Adam | Thursday 9 August 2007
Author's note: I got progressively drunker as this post was written and though I planned to edit it, I thought I would be robbing you of my precious integrity if I were to change any of the wacky, Freudian things...
Click here to continue reading "Foggy Londontown Sans Fog" »
by Adam | Tuesday 7 August 2007
After 1200 miles and 11 states, you have no idea what a beignet can actually mean. Crossing Lake Ponchartrain was a highlight of the trek. Something inherently redemptive about a first sojourn to New Orleans since the deluge. But...
Click here to continue reading "Chocolate City In White Beignet Powder" »
by Adam | Sunday 5 August 2007
Baseball in America is alive and well in Alabama. Or maybe America in baseball is alive and well in Alabama, where outside of Birmingham, our national pastime still thrills, if only as sideshow to a more salient national pastime,...
Click here to continue reading "Tocqueville in Birmingham" »
by Adam | Saturday 4 August 2007
Official press credentials. A view from the press box. Barons locker room where the non-human-growth-hormone magic happens. This is NOT what a baseball dugout should look like. Midnight moon and dugout lights from the pitchers mound....
Click here to continue reading "Regions Park, Alabama" »
by Adam | Friday 3 August 2007
Waffle House is, at the exact same time, an unabashed and guilty pleasure of mine. It's a difficult paradox to explain, but I will try my best (especially for Northeast and West Coast readers). Three hours past Washington, D.C.,...
Click here to continue reading "Panegyric L'Waffle House" »
by Adam | Tuesday 31 July 2007
It all began with the end of my stint in Corporate America. That's right (censored corporate publishing house name), I will dance in a bear suit for you NO MORE! And yes, I actually did wear a bear suit,...
Click here to continue reading "Random Roadtrip Tableaux" »
by Adam | Monday 30 July 2007
Total Hours: 74 Total Miles: 1668 Total States and Federal Districts Entered: 12 Total Waffle Houses Patronized: 2 Total Moving Violations Accrued: 0 (bitch!) Total Crosses Seen: 3.147579232345 Beignets Eaten: 2 Total Amount of Time Which An Oppressive Middle Eastern...
Click here to continue reading "Roadtrip: By the Numbers" »
by Adam | Friday 29 June 2007
Part II of last week's series: A New York Week After Wednesday's brush with Edward Albee, I left work early on Thursday to go to a press screening of the new Michael Moore "documentary" SiCKO. On the way to...
Click here to continue reading "Andy Rooney, Inflatable Rats, SiCKO: A New York Week" »
by Adam | Tuesday 26 June 2007
It all started with Edward Albee... Well, it actually started with a walk home from work. Or it started with the 76 degree June day that prompted the urge to walk. It was a straight shot down 5th Avenue (of...
Click here to continue reading "Don't Write Your Second Book: A New York Week" »
by Adam | Monday 14 May 2007
I realize how unfair, disastrously unkarmic (or completely meaningless for some) it is for me to brag about the Arcade Fire concert I went to last week at Radio City Music Hall, but I can't help but find meaning...
Click here to continue reading "Throwback to Adolescent Angst" »
by Adam | Saturday 6 January 2007
While away in the nation's capital over the weekend, be on the look for some quality updates coming early next week. And how. Here's some homework in the meantime. Gilad Shalit, Udi Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev. Anybody remember them?...
Click here to continue reading "A Long December" »