Author Archives: Michael Ervin

For five years the bureaucrats fought us over these buses–now they were taking credit for them.

Coach Saddam Discusses This Week’s Strategy

As soon as my mother told me the news, I caught the first bus home. I hoped I wasn’t too late. Our old friend suddenly had a week to go, two weeks max. “Archer Big Store is going out of business,” she’d said. I grew up on the southwest side, and the news was a […]

What do you call a communist with a sense of humor?

What does the Frugal Gourmet order after a long day in the prop kitchen?

The man sitting in the library reading the Tribune appears to be about 60. There’s a dusting of gray in his thin beard, and he looks somewhat frail and unsteady. He wears a plaid cabdriver’s cap, a clashing plaid shirt, and well-pressed blue pants. A man who appears to be about 30 walks up with […]

Afghanistan leopard. Panthera pardus saxicolor. Less than 50 in captivity. Survival in nature in doubt. Nouri the leopard can see it coming. She cowers behind the leafless, in fact branchless, tree in her cage in the lion house at the Lincoln Park Zoo. She sees the cart loaded with the vet’s boxes, which look more […]

The reverend is wearing a gas mask. He holds his protest sign high for the cameras. He wants to be seen on television. He’s a self-ordained minister. We also have here a self-proclaimed prince and a God-anointed presidential candidate and defender of American democracy. They’ve come to have their say! They don’t want to have […]