Words for Play Cause real nerds love words.

Pops called me daughter, dropping the grand. Sometimes he called me oh girl. “Oh girl, oh girl, oh girl,” he’d say when he entered the room, and I knew he was talking to me. He had voice, and I loved him for it. But, I liked it best when he said “Just like New York.” [...]

In Brooklyn there came the sound of the ice cream truck, maddening in its frequency and cheeriness, a sure way to recognize the summer season if the foul smell of garbage cans and the oppressive heat hadn't already clued you in. There's an equally irritating aural villain in my neighborhood in Casab

We raced a Moroccan sun. “If we time it right, you’ll see magic twice from the terrace,” I explained to my friend Natalie. “First when the sun sets, and then again when the square twinkles to life.” We both needed a bathroom badly, but I insisted there wasn’t time. Our waiter at Cafe Argana had [...

I heard about Mogador before I landed in Africa. An older adjunct at the university where I taught in Brooklyn narrated the story of adventuring with his family through Morocco in a VW van. "Essaouira was great in those days," he said. "It was the 70s. About five minutes after I rolled in, a kid ask

There's a Moroccan joke about how hard it is for tourists to pronounce the word for mint, which is na3na3. And in the joke the tourist orders atay b'na3na3 (mint tea), but because they can't pronounce the eins, the waiter brings out banana tea.

During my freshman year of college, I developed an overwhelming and unrealistic crush on young Orson Welles. He’d died in 1985 at the age of 70 (I was four), but that didn’t matter. At 18, I lusted after his long takes, swooned over his severe angles, and eagerly awaited his shadow play and deep foc

(hi friends, I’m a little behind on updating my blog. But! I’m back!). In Lyon, I wore a short skirt with bare legs and pretended I was back in New York. Signs across France proclaimed le Beaujolais Nouveau Est Arrivé!, and to compliment our dinner of squid, foie gras, and scallops, my friend and I

Old Abe was a crotchety, but pious, feller roundabouts 86 years and climbing. He had fine-looking wife named Sara, who also happened to be his half-sister. But they didn’t care. Because she was hot! But Sara was also barren. Still, she wanted her husband to have everything his big ol’ heart desired.