dan oshinsky dot com: A blog about journalism. And my mother.

In the summer of 2009, having just accepted a job at a TV station in San Antonio, Texas, I attempted to convince my bosses to allow me to channel my inner Dave Barry and publish a daily blog, to be titled “The Evolution of Local Man.” The pitch, as I delivered to my bosses in (…)

There’s this amazing moment in one of Carl Reiner’s and Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man” sketches, when Reiner is moving through a line of questions about the early days of man. He’ll get to the good stuff in a second — questions about Joan of Arc, questions about the secrets to longevity — but (…)

For the last 10 days, there has been something wrong with me. I have been slightly more irritable than usual. I’ve been twitchy at work. I’ve gone through long spells when my mind appears to be in a very different place. Today, I believe I’ve discovered the problem. I may be bleeding out of my (…)

The first thing I heard was a weird scratching on the phone, like aluminum foil was being rubbed against the receiver. Then I heard my mother’s voice, frantic. “I must have just missed your call,” she said. This was last Thursday. But I didn’t call, I told her. That didn’t stop her. “No, Dan,” she (…)

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 (…)

I am an idiot. I’m 22 years old and blissfully unaware of the world around me. Blissfully unaware, I’d venture, is one step closer to bliss than most people ever get. But it’s that bliss that, today, reminded me of how big an idiot I really am. I had to go to Target this afternoon (…)

Yesterday, in the process of writing about relativity, I went looking for a photo to lead off my blog post.  So I opened up Apture — the program that allows you to click on a link like this without leaving the page –  and searched the word “big” to see what came up. Here’s what (…)