dan oshinsky dot com: A blog about stories, storytelling... and my mother.

There is a very strange realization I came to tonight: Fans of my alma mater believe that who we were define who we are. And I do not. I was with this girl tonight. She is Missouri-born and a Tiger fan through and through. She loves this team. She actually understands football. And tonight, when (…)

This is my favorite week of the year. It has been since I was in fourth grade, and my dad took me to the ACC Tournament for the first time. It was in Greensboro, North Carolina, and we stayed at a two-level drive-in motel with red brick and paint fading off the second-floor guardrails. There (…)

In my three months in Biloxi, the question that’s been my “Do you play basketball?” is, “What’s your favorite story from down here?” I’ve been told of miracles and horrors, and I’ve become intimately familiar with the inner workings of both local government and insurance contracts. But my favorite story to write down here didn’t (…)

In the fall of 2007, I decided that I wanted to study abroad. The rationale was simple: I was running out of classes to take at the University of Missouri, and also, I could get away with it. Seemed logical enough at the time. I decided that I’d go to Spain, and the study abroad (…)

The first thought was that I was being pranked. Sure, I’d just written a fairly controversial column about why the Spurs should trade Tony Parker for Kens5.com. It had generated quite a few hits on our website, and I’d gotten plenty of e-mail feedback from readers about it. But a radio station in New York (…)

I haven’t been home to D.C. since I left for south Texas just over seven months ago. I keep up with some home friends via phone, and I caught up with a few earlier this month out in L.A. But for a good chunk of news and gossip from home, I rely on an email (…)

I want to take it back. I cannot un-know what I know. I cannot reverse time. I cannot deny what has happened. But I cannot imagine going on knowing that one day, fourteen years ago, I may have accidentally rooted for Kansas. ¶¶ My dad used to do a bit of work with the D.C.-area (…)