If you want to sound hip at parties when people are discussing what is sure to be the book of the season, let us, in association with the folks at the Associated Press, lend you a hand: "Actually, it's pronounced 'bree.'" Everyone will be very impressed.
"Well-meaning white people who like violent rap music will argue against the notion that it inspires real-life violence among those who listen to it. I will argue this. But what are we to say when a black person says, 'Someone sees Waka and then kills Treyvon.' And we know that she sees Trayvon’s face on the TV news and can’t not see her own face in his, and thus see her own face in Chief Keef’s, because she believes, she knows, that much of her country sees, still sees, all black faces as the same. We want it to be different, us well-meaning white people. Maybe that’s even part [...]
Dave Bry explains one more reason not to have children: childbirth is the number one indicator of an adult onset of fear of flying.
Dear riders of the Powell-Mason cable car line in San Francisco, late summer 1991,
Sorry for flashing you.
Dear Everlast from House of Pain,
I'm sorry for calling you a "Leprechaun of Rage."
Dear visiting music professor who taught History of Jazz at Connecticut College spring semester 1990:
I'm sorry for comparing Miles Davis' Kind of Blue to Bob Seger's "Turn the Page."
"Dear Residents of 208 East 7th Street: Sorry for leaving that couch outside our door on the fourth-floor stairwell for two weeks.
We were just moving in to the building, my friend Tim and I, fall of 1995. I graduated from college that spring, and this was the first apartment I ever officially leased. And I didn’t know a lot about neighborly etiquette. Or making a good first impression.
The couch did not completely block the stairwell, or access to the hallway off which our door opened. It was off to the side, tipped up on an armrest, leaning vertically against the wall. Obviously we would have preferred it [...]
Oh, just announced: there is going to be a book stemming from our longest-running feature, Dave Bry's Public Apology! Grand Central, the fun group at Hachette, will be publishing. Soon you can feel all the shame, awkwardness and hilarity in one convenient place.
My kid, who just turned five, wakes up before me every morning and plays in his room. I hear him talking through my half-sleep, spooling out imaginary dialogue between his Ben 10 action figures, mostly about who will defeat who, who has stronger magical powers or superior fire power. This morning, though, amidst the usual, I heard something different.
"Oh, you lost your jobs?" he said, in a deep monster voice. "I'm sorry."
Dear Rory's parents,
I'm sorry if I conjured up a very disturbing image for you at Jack's birthday party.
It was about this time last year, I think, that we found ourselves talking by the bowl of ranch-dressing dip. Jack was turning four. I was there because my kid was in Jack's preschool class. You're friends with Jack's parents, I believe. One of you works with one of them, maybe? Anyway, you have a son who was at the party, too. Rory.
Dear guy in a brown corduroy jacket,
I'm sorry for stealing $40 from your checking account at the ATM in the HSBC Bank on Union Square East.
Sorry for writing you and asking for your autograph under false pretenses.
This was a long time ago. 1981 or 82, I think. My friend Chris Pack and I were ten or eleven years old, and deeply, totally obsessed with baseball. We collected cards, memorized statistics, perfected pantomime of our favorite players' pitching deliveries and batting stances—Dan Quisenberry's submarine sidearm, Cecil Cooper's low-slung crouch, Graig Nettles' rod-straight right leg. In the summer, we'd watch the Yankees on Channel 11 every night (the Mets on Channel 9 if the Yankees had an off day) and play our own games of Wiffle ball in my backyard—all day, everyday. The fence [...]
Miles Klee: I think I have a little bit of a crush on Generation X. And seeing Pavement play a concert in an apocalyptic Central Park thunderstorm last night took it to a whole new level. It also didn't hurt that Cece and I ran into you, Dave, an authentic Gen X-er (if my math is sound)-by the way, you do the meanest air guitar I've seen in ages. But the point is, I pretty much swooned when I heard the opening bars of "Spit On A Stranger."
Tim Sutton and Seth Bomse make films for a living and now they've made three short ones based on installments of the Public Apology column here at The Awl. Author Dave Bry feels awkward about them and won't watch-but the rest of us have, and we dig it.
Dear person who lived next to Kris Friendly in Harkness at Connecticut College during the fall semester of 1989,
I'm sorry for calling you at 2:30 in the morning on a Tuesday and asking you to knock on Kris's door and tell him he had an important call.
Dear Peter Arbour,
I'm sorry for trying to make you worship my Jim Morrison poster.
