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ABOUTNow in its 14th year of publication, this magazine was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Black Lamb Review is a literate rather than a literary publication. Regular columns by writers in a variety of geographic locations and vocations are supplemented by features, reviews, articles on books and authors, and a selection of “departments,” including an acerbic advice column and a lamb recipe. SUBMISSIONSBlack Lamb welcomes submissions from new writers. Email us. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
Archive for the 'Ferrandino' CategoryNo segueI'm happy to wake up alive every day.April 1st, 2012 The All-Medicine Issue BY ROD FERRANDINO Most of the major transitions in my life have been, if not seamless, at least gradual: from toddler to little kid to teenager and all the way into middle age. Some changes were a bit abrupt: college cocoon to “real” world, drinker to non-drinker, not-dad to dad, but overall the process of life seemed to roll along without quantum leaps or falls. My merry little apple-cart was dumped in July of 2011. There I was, an active middle-aged guy playing full-court hoops, jogging, pumping iron, cutting firewood, swinging a maul, and doing a lot of “etcetera” when, suddenly… Bam! Heart attack! Just three days later I’m an old man shuffling out of a hospital and my wife has to drive me home. Instead of popping a couple of preemptive Advil tablets before going for a run, I stand in the kitchen and scratch my head as I try to remember if I already took my umpteen unpronounceable meds that morning.
Posted by: The Editors How hot was it?May 1st, 2007 BY ROD FERRANDINO Setting for tragedy: And the question is when, oh when, will this bleeping show ever end? Is that possibly a speck of light at the end of this almost forever tunnel? It has been a demoralizing seventeen-day eternity, an energy-sapping, bankroll-depleting, brain-sucking disaster. Not just a garden variety, never-to-repeat, “rear-view-mirror” weekend show, a plentiful type in any forty-four-show year, but, like a hundred-year storm, one for the ages. The “Flood of Ought-seven,” or “Plague,” or “Famine,” maybe a “Drought.” Pick your curse.
Posted by: The Editors I do, I did, I willApril 1st, 2007 BY ROD FERRANDINO Marriage is the commingling of ingredients in a spaghetti sauce.
Marriage, as we all know, yet are constantly reminded of anyway, is a holy, or civil, or ungodly union of a man and/or a woman and/or another man and/or another woman, or maybe it’s the other way around. I tell you, I have a lot less trouble figuring out the spaghetti sauce. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it has to do with consenting adults over the age of eighteen, or maybe twenty-one, though it could be much different in countries frequented by National Geographic reporters or Jerry Lee Lewis. I am hesitant to expound upon this most delicate subject without first consulting renowned experts in the field. My research and travel budgets are somewhat limited, so I consider myself extremely fortunate to have two such experts right in my own house. Who’da thunk it?
Posted by: The Editors You say tomato, I say…... but you may have a point thereMarch 1st, 2007 BY ROD FERRANDINO My wife, Deborah, says she has “nigglings”. Webster’s says she has “inklings.” “Nigglings” is her definition for the intuitive flashes she has that rule my life. When I’m making the call (and remembering that I’m married), the home team, i.e. Deborah, has a decided edge. I know what she means, while the technically correct Team Webster, outfitted in 2,000-plus pages of italics, footnotes, abbreviations, racing stripes, designer logo-wear, and accent marks, not only gets the short end of this particular stick, but can also be banished to a musty closet. (I’ve spent time in that closet; trust me when I say it’s not Cozumel.)
Posted by: The Editors As far away as todayNovember 1st, 2006 BY ROD FERRANDINO To the junkies and lushheads in two-bit scratchpads, You know when I drink alone, I was no pinky-lifting drinking dilettante, no sloe gin, no umbrella drinks, and nothing in a coconut, thank you very much. I was the real deal. Bombay, yes, Frangelica, no. Oh, I had smokes, and I had other smokes, and more than enough in the way of powders and pills to fuel a run at the Presidency, and I inhaled everything, but it was Drink that ran the show, and Drink that pimped me for a big chunk of the twentieth century.
Posted by: The Editors The dumbing down of FerrandinoMarch 1st, 2006
TV, telly, Boob Tube, television. It doesn’t matter what you call it; you smoke it, you get high. Oops, there I go again, mixing up Tee Vee with the other massive opiates. Some of that’s for another column. For present purposes I’ll confine myself to plumbing the intellectual depths of television programming vis-à-vis in re as per de facto development of a cerebral leprechaun, i.e. yours truly. As well we know, he stated pompously, television is no more than junk food for the brain, a vapid, calorie-empty, sugar-laden waste of time, a cranial void, and unsuitable for anybody with even a double-digit I.Q.
Posted by: The Editors Author profileDecember 1st, 2002 Rod Ferrandino is an unpaid professional husband and father. He is constantly hectored, pestered, and bossed around by his spouse, daughter, and pets, and loves every minute of it. He lives outside of Lexington, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley, in a shabbily elegant antebellum plantation house surrounded by 300 acres (not his) full of bovine spot-fertilizers. His Black Lamb column is called Cracked Windshield.
Posted by: The Editors
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