MangoZeen

Published BEAR ONLINE 2001
A black Suburban was heading west on Route 2 at the top of Lake Michigan. The late afternoon traffic was nearly non-existent and no state troopers cruised the two-laner crossing the Upper Peninsula. The driver would have accelerated to 85, if he hadn’t spotted a white van in the Wonderland Diner parking […]

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 7pm at Freddy’s Backroom
Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Reading Series is moving to Brooklyn and as a tribute to our move to the Dodgers home borough, our first event will feature all stories from New Yorkers and their love for the game- any game- all games! We will hear from soft-ballers, basket-ballers, marathon-ballers- all […]

Adam and Eve were banished from Eden for eating apples. This Original Sin condemned future generations to the purgatory of this mortal coil, however from time to time humans have defied this divine decree with repeated attempts to recreate Heaven on Earth. Most of these utopias have been short-lived for nothing irks the true believers […]

St. Patrick’s Day promised to be another disaster for the Retail Collection of the Plaza Hotel. Hordes of green-clad spectators streamed down the escalator into the basement. Their eyes averted the luxury goods on offer, as their destination was the hotel’s public bathroom. Within the first hour I had given directions to the toilet over […]

I thought Billy Wilder’s film SOME LIKE IT HOT was funny, until my next-door neighbor asked in his basement, “Who you think is prettier as a woman? Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis?”
“Neither.” This was 1964 and men in dresses weren’t supposed to be funny to 11 year-old boys on the South Shore of Boston.
“Yeah, but […]