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Thomas Wood Reads Live at San Francisco’s TNB Literary Experience

May 27, 2010

In case you missed this interesting event, here is a clip of my reading for TheNervousBreakdown‘s San Francisco Literary Experience. The show was at the Makeout Room in the mission district. Having gaged the audience to be both short in attention span and long in their need of laughs I decided to read two of my quicker, [...]

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“Too Many Porn-Stars” TNB

April 28, 2010

I’ve always felt it was too easy for a person to be labeled a “porn-star.” The criteria seems to be that you have had sex, on camera, for the purpose of distribution, and that many people have seen it. But such criteria says nothing about one’s history, accomplishment or following. The real problem is that there doesn’t [...]

“It’s Like An Essay, But An Essay “On Crack!”" – TNB

April 10, 2010

What does it mean when you use the analogy that “It’s like (something), but like (something) on crack!”?

“The Pursuit of “What is Happiness?”" – TNB

February 25, 2010

Before we discuss if we have a “right to be happy” or “how can we be happy,” we must first decide what we mean by ‘happiness.’ The word “happiness,” today, is used too ubiquitously to really mean much. There is a happy life, a happy moment, a happy accident. In etymological terms, the word’s origin is actually [...]

“Sentimental Tool”- TNB

February 18, 2010

There are two kinds of people: Keepers and Throwers. I’m a Keeper. I can’t throw anything away. This epiphany came while editing a recent story that my editor had called, “unwieldy,” a polite way of saying, “Get to the bloody point.” His version of the piece was five-hundred words. My original was nearly two-thousand. His [...]

“Cats Know Where The People Poop” – TNB

February 10, 2010

One of my cats has started following me into the bathroom. Most of the day, he sleeps under the bed, while I am on the couch. At night, we switch. As I see it, I respect his territory and he respects mine, with only minimal crossover for such necessary exchanges as food-in-bowl and pet-on-head (he is, after [...]

“The Bottom of Humanity” – TNB

January 13, 2010

One of the first things you might notice about people at the DMV—besides the most obvious, superficial aspects of race, class, and station—are the bottoms. It’s not that you’re into people’s rear ends – though maybe you are – but that there’s a kind of taboo to looking. At first, you tell yourself, it’s just a [...]

“The Domino Fort” – TNB

October 14, 2009

Marty couldn’t hear my father. Historically, all the men in my family seem to have a difficult time relating to some children. Nobody has ever quite figured it out, either. Some say it’s the baritone voice, others say it’s because we tend to talk to children like adults, rarely raising the pitch of our voice, [...]