Rob Walker's Blog
November 5, 2009
Soon To Be A Significant Object
If it's before 11:40 a.m. Eastern, then consider this post a notice that at least one and maybe both of us will be on The Brian Lehrer show on WNYC at that time.
If it's 11:40 or after, and you're a Brian Lehrer Show listener, here's a link to participate in our Six Words contest collaboration with SmithMag. (Obviously everybody is welcome, not just Lehrer listeners.) Create Significance for the lighter that looks like a small pool ball, pictured at right. Give i...
November 4, 2009
Object No. 92 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Mark Sarvas, here.]
When I was seventeen, I was expelled from high school. My father, reasonably enough, gave me a choice: Get a job or get out. The only job for a 30-mile radius was the night shift behind the counter at an Amoco station on a deserted back road off the interstate. Scott, the owner, told me I probably wouldn't see a customer most nights. He was chubby, hairy and, at 26, overly proud of himself for owning a gas...
November 3, 2009
Object No. 91 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Meghan O'Rourke, here. ]
After my mother died, a stranger emailed me. He told me that my mother had been the most important person in his life. They went to Catholic school together. He was unpopular, she was popular; he was a bad student, she was a good student; he was a football player; she was a cheerleader. Though he wasn't in her clique, one night at a dance, she came up to him while "Hey Jude" was playing and asked him...
November 2, 2009
Object No. 90 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Ben Ehrenreich, here.]
I pull a marble from your skull each time we kiss. "Give it back," you say, each time.
"Darling," I say. "Baby," I say. "No."
I put the marble in my pocket. Later, I will hide it with the others. But not now, because now you're watching. Now you're getting mad. I knew you would, and now you're doing it. You cross your arms. Your features droop. Not just your lips but your eyelids and ears and the cleft...
November 1, 2009
October 30, 2009
Object No. 89 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Maud Newton, here.]
This astonishing "Cracker Barrel" artifact appears to be a souvenir of modern vintage, representing a down-home North American restaurant-and-country-store chain that upholds Christian values by refusing to hire gay people. In fact, the object dates to the Bronze Age and was unearthed last week in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, on what is believed by several prominent archaeologists to be the site of the...
Earlier this morning I checked in on the progress of our Six Words Significant Objects contest, in collaboration with SmithMag. In its first 24 hours, the contest has attracted 144 submissions. Josh notes that this works out to a story every ten minutes (and since each story is six words, that's a word every 100 seconds for a solid day!). Pretty impressive!
Six Words Will Make It Significant
That said, we of course want the submissions to keep coming, and to that end I will now invoke our old f...
October 29, 2009
Object No. 88 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Kathryn Borel Jr., here.]
Marc's room smelled like half-open tins of chewing tobacco. He liked Skoal butternut, and I loved it too. Not to chew — I was only seven — but I loved the way its manky smell would tussle and fuse with all his other teen things: his gym bag with its tube socks and olive work shirt, the after-effects of a spritz from his Polo cologne. I'd sneak in there before he got home from Ramapo High, before he'd l...
