Fight for your right to nude up While advising a police officer out on a routine call at the start of the week, an emergency dispatcher passed along that the homeowner “believes it’s her right to answer her door unclothed.” She’s right, too. Why, the Second Amendment alone addresses “bare arms” and I think if […]
Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: The fussy man's guide to Thanksgiving
I won’t lie to you. As far as Thanksgiving dinner guests go, you won’t find one worse than me. For one thing, I’m more fidgety than your 4-year-old. After five minutes of sitting at the boring adults’ table, I’m going to want to get up to look out the window. Or to go see what […]
Talk of the town: There. Diagonally.
Regular air is just so 2005 So, to combat the horrors of cold weather leakage, I had my truck tires filled with nitrogen this week. Nitrogen! I had no idea that nitrogen inflation was even a thing until a certain wife mentioned it to me as I topped off my tires with boring old air […]
Hot sandwiches and band-aids: Hard times at Speaker’s Variety
There was a time when I was eating, on average, five hot ham and cheese sandwiches from Speaker’s Variety every week. For one thing, the hot ham and cheese sandwiches from Speaker’s were spectacular. I’d ask Jim or Pat or whoever was manning the ovens that day to cook them a little extra so that […]
Talk of the town: Nope. Nothing wrong here.
Talk of the town? How in blue blazes should I know what the talk of the town is? I’ve been on vacation for two weeks. Thanks for noticing. All I can tell you is that the new “Halloween” is just God awful, the movie “Hereditary” is terrifying and the town of Unity celebrates Halloween like […]
15 binge-worthy television series to fuel your addiction
Hello. My name is Mark and I’m a binge TV addict. It wasn’t always that way, you know. Until a couple years ago, I spent most of my free time either writing or reading into the wee hours. I’d write short stories or chunks of novels until I nodded off at the keyboard. I’d read […]
The rise and fall of George Stanley’s empire of stuff | Mark LaFlamme
You can call Stanley a lot of things — eccentric, strange, more trouble than a house full of monkeys — but stupid isn’t one of them, Mark LaFlamme writes.
Mark LaFlamme: Gangland shootings and cute dogs in hats
It had been a rowdy morning on Bartlett Street. Right around the time most people are sleepily fetching newspapers from front porches, bullets were flying between two groups of rival drug dealers. Apartment houses were dotted with bullet holes. Tenants dove for cover under kitchen tables and on the street outside, a trail of blood […]
Street Talk: Pretty sure the moon is out to get me
“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” – George Carlin I’m not saying there are werewolves running amok in downtown Lewiston. I’m just saying there probably are. A few years back, I wrote a fairly tedious feature story about the full moon and its reported affect on crime and […]
Talk of the town: Your Yankee Doodle Dandy in a gold Rolls Royce
Campaign season hell As a sort of reporter, I get put on to all kinds of lists so I get mail from every political candidate from one end of the state to the other. It’s a real joy, especially during campaign season. You think campaign signs are a blight? You ought to see my email […]