John McPhee Burps Toothpaste

Stop what you’re doing and read his blog post.

Once upon a time, Kelly Conaboy called for people to “Blog so we have something good to read.” Well, my dear Kelly, your call has been answered by John Angus McPhee, living Princeton mascot, and the greatest writing teacher ever. Over at The New Yorker’s Culture Desk, he recalls his first sip of alcohol, at age ten:

The sniff. The snort. The dilation of the nose. The glowing briquet in the throat. As the gastroentomologist Ian Frazier has reflected after munching brown-drake mayflies, it was hard stop at just one. Across fifteen, twenty minutes, I took in several gulps of whatever it was. One thing it wasn’t was unpleasant.

Dah Dah Doo Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Doo Dah La Ti Mi Fa La So Fa Mi – The New Yorker

Just look at that title. Could anyone else get away with that? No, because John McPhee is a drop-everything-and-read kind of writer, and for all I care he could title his blog post “This Is My Blog” and it would be perfect. Go forth and click, my friends. Everything out there in the world is bad and gloomy, but it doesn’t have to be that way because now you have a delightful morsel to read. Cheers to the golf-ball fisherman.