🇺🇸 United States
Oddlets from United States.
The Poet Ford Hired
What happens when a car company asks a sixty-seven-year-old Pulitzer poet to name their next sedan?
The Bait Camp Visionary
How does a shrimp seller who couldn't swim, living alone on a sandspit reachable only by boat, end up on Betty Parsons's walls beside Pollock and Rothko?
The Bandit Queen's Funeral
Her husband, her son, and the neighbor all had reasons — and the mourners brought cornbread to the grave.
The Company He Kept
In 1825 an eighteen-year-old from New York couldn't get cast in an American theatre, so he sailed to London and played Oroonoko; thirty years later, what was Prussia giving him a gold medal for?
The Soot and the Spit
What does a self-taught artist do when the family finally retires the wood stove and his only source of ink disappears?
The Steersman Goes Home
What does it look like when the man who taught Wall Street to predict the future can't predict where he parked?
The Buckingham Palace Duel
At six, mid-reverse-bow out of Buckingham Palace, the Queen's poodle came for him — so he drew his sword.
The Bandleader From Saturn
What does a man who insists he was sent here from Saturn do when NASA rejects his application?
No to Edison
What do you do when the man who twice tried to take your patent in court turns around and offers you a job?
The Hatchery Sessions
What does a composer do when the bulldozers show up before the last take is finished?
The Weatherman Was Wrong Again
For ten years, a Chicago dishwasher kept a secret diary grading the local weatherman against reality.
Play a Strawberry
Who feeds a band one cup of soybeans a day for a month and calls it rehearsal?