Untold Epstein Story, San Antonio Love Triangle, World Cup Mbappe, Widow’s Bay, and Three Billboards

Anne and I share the stories we read or watched on this week’s Torg Stories Podcast. Check out the links to some of the stories below:

Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of June 15, 2026

“The Infamous San Antonio Love Triangle That Ended in Murder” by Katy Vine 

  • https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/san-antonio-three-emmas-legend/
  • Pearl Beer magnate Otto Koehler killed by one of his mistresses in 1914. His wife, his mistress & wife’s nurse and his 2nd mistress all named Emma. The Three Emmas
  • After his death his wife reemerged back into society. Was her sickness something he kind of forced on her? A “nervous disorder”. She became the pres if the beer association even
  • Authorities wanted to protect rep and the city’s brewers from investigators so sort of swept it under the rug.
  • Who was the man who was allowed to leave?
  • The 2 emma nurses lived in a house together bought by Otto. Affair stopped when the 1st mistress met a man and got married, so then he got with 2nd mistress. Then the next year he decided to do a payoff and break it off. They thought she was going to be possibly killed by him? She claims he started to choke her, then the other Emma came in and so she got a gun to save the other emma.
  • Site of the Pearl Brewing Co. is now a mixed use site called the Pearl which is very popular, including the previously mentioned in our podcast (in relation to the NBA), San Antonio’s best hotel in San Antonio “Hotel Emma”
  • Cocktails are named after the emmas etc.

Kylian Mbappe is Scoring All the Goals – and Taking All the Heat”

Vanity Fair, by Aidan Mclaughlin

Widow’s Bay, AppleTV final episode, Creator Katie Dipold, was a Parks & Rec writer, wrote the movie “The Heat” which is a terrific comedy

  • Got renewed, nice twist at the end
  • Good laughs again at the end.
  • Had some nods to Lost with the underground ladder

Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of June 15, 2026

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

  • Stars Frances McDormand as a mom whose daughter was raped and killed, Woody Harrelson as the town sherriff with cancer, and Sam Rockwell as a racist drunk town cop. Peter Dinklage (Elf and I Care A lot are two of my favorites of his) 
  • Set in Sylva, North Carolina! 
  • Came out in 2017. 
  • My kind of title! 
  • 7 academy nominations and 3 wins for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor 
  • Rockwell is in another great movie you haven’t seen: The Green Mile. 
  • Interesting stuff from Wikipedia about McDormand: grew up in IL, adopted and name change from Cynthia Ann Smith, adopted dad a Disciples of Christ preacher
  • Married to Joel Coen! 
  • Amazing job from moving around the Midwest and South eventually to the Yale School of Drama. 
  • I watched it on HBO Max. 
  • There’s a screenwriting book called Save the Cat and it tells you to just have someone state the theme out loud. I feel like it’s this for this film: violence begets violence. 

“The Untold Story of Jeffrey Epstein’s Death,” a NY Times Exclusive by Charles Homans, Steve Eder, Jan Ransom, and Michael Rothfeld 

  • Click here for the article. 
  • It’s one of those amazing interactive multimedia articles with lots of pictures from the jail and the scene where Epstein died. Also… shot of the outside of the prison that zooms inside, shows a map, and then labels the areas of the prison where Epstein was, 3D tour of the hub of that floor like you’d see on a real estate listing
  • Really works to bring to life the story. Here are the opening two paragraphs: Late in the afternoon of July 6, 2019, about a dozen F.B.I. agents and New York Police Department officers gathered at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, waiting out of view of the tarmac so as not to spook their quarry. The day before, they received an email informing them that a private jet would be arriving at 5:20 p.m. Attached to the email was an arrest warrant for its lone passenger, Jeffrey Epstein.Returning from Paris, Epstein was making plans on his phone: a trip to his private island in the Caribbean, a documentary interview with Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser. When the plane touched down, customs agents boarded to check the passports of Epstein and the plane’s two pilots. Then they escorted Epstein into the terminal, where an F.B.I. agent and a detective told him he was under arrest.
  • Bad working conditions for the guards. Guards not doing their jobs in some ways understandably. Cameras not working. Just a dysfunctional situation. 
  • Interviews and pictures with guards. 
  • Interesting Epstein could be scared, shocked and depressed, but also intimidating because of his wealth and access to lawyers who could cause lots of problems for everyone he encountered. 
  • It would have taken a massive conspiracy given all the levels of security, different sets of keys, etc. 
  • Last two paragraphs: In the end, the autopsy photos were like everything else in the Epstein case, offering more possibilities than conclusions. Every question was easier to ask than to answer. It made the case the perfect petri dish for conspiracy theories, a space in which nothing could definitively be proved wrong, as long as someone wanted to believe in it. It is fitting, then, that the last known image of Epstein alive appears to be a brief fragment of surveillance camera footage at 7:49 p.m. on Aug. 9, the last full day of his life, after his final phone call, as he was led back to his cell for the last time. In it, he is little more than a silver head of hair, visible for a split second — stripped of his wealth and influence, reduced to something vague, elusive, a blur, a ghost. He is there, and then he is gone.

Thanks for taking time to visit Torg Stories!

Knicks Win NBA Finals, MVP Brunson, Wemby as a Villain, Matricide, Office Romance and Other Stories We Read or Watched

We discuss the stories we read and watched including articles about the Knicks winning the NBA Title, the essay “Matricide,” the film Office Romance, and the Apple tv show Widow Bay. (Check out video podcast near the end of this post)

Click player to listen to episode on stories related to Knicks, NBA Finals, Wemby, Matricide, Office Romance

Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of June 8, 2026

“The New York Knicks Just Won a Championship of a Lifetime” by Danny Chau on The Ringer

  • Click here to access the article. Chau on X: https://x.com/dannychau 
  • Opening paragraph: Fifty-three years is a long time for an echo to travel, from the legendary Forum in Inglewood back in 1973 to the Frost Bank Arena in San Antonio on Saturday night. The one tether, the one constant, across two landmark moments in New York City history was the Knicks’ blue away uniforms, with orange and white trim.
  • This is reference Wilt Chamberlain scoring his last basket vs. Knicks losing to them in finals: Where the Knicks’ last championship served as a farewell to a walking myth, their current triumph coincides with the arrival of Wilt’s spiritual successor—a modern-day Goliath who, if this series was any indication, will be the object of awe and derision for the rest of his career.
  • And, most importantly, an all-time night from Jalen Brunson, the 2026 Finals MVP, who stands alongside Jordan with the most points in a championship-clinching performance on the road with 45. These 2025-26 New York Knicks? One of the greatest postseason teams ever. Let it sink in. Let it linger. 
  • Mitchell Robinson proved himself to be the best offensive rebounder in basketball, bulldozing Wemby underneath the basket with 22 seconds remaining in the game to effectively clinch the title.
  • Interesting sentence about Alvarado diving into former Mayor Bloomberg: “Alvarado—who was raised in an affordable housing co-op in Williamsburg that was the most ethnically diverse apartment building in the country—crash-landing into former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose net worth exceeds $100 billion) in Game 3 is the kind of metaphor that could take years to fully unpack.”

A Few More Torg Notes on the NBA Basketball Season: 

  • The #1 difference stats wise I saw in game 5 was that Brunson was 13-15 from the line. The only statistical advantage for either team was FTs made and attempted and it came from Brunson. Nobody on the Spurs can do that right now. 
  • On Game 4: one of the most exciting games we’ve ever seen with the 29 point comeback, the Wemby missed FTs, the Fox try the lay up, and the OG tip in for game 4. Oh yeah, the KAT tip of the inbound pass. 
  • I wondered if Jalen Brunson could do what he does against teams and defenders such as those on OKC and the Spurs. Yes he can! 
  • Wemby is some version of KD on offense. He’s the best defender in the league and looks like he could be the best defender since the Celtics Bill Russell. 
  • Jordan and Scottie Pippen went 6-0 in the Finals. John Havlicek went 8-0. Bill Russell went 11-1. What would you set the over/under for finals appearances and finals wins for Wemby and the Spurs? 

“Matricide,” an essay, by Meghan Daum

  • It’s the opening essay in Daum’s 2014 collection The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion 
  • Daum is a fellow born in 1970 human being with me. 
  • Another Columbia MFA graduate like Beller and the H&H Bagel story we read. 
  • Webster’s defines Matricide as the “murder of a mother by her child.” 
  • The opening paragraph: People who weren’t there like to say that my mother died at home surrounded by loving family. This is technically true, though it was just my brother and me and he was looking at Facebook and I was reading a profile of Hillary Clinton in the December 2009 issue of Vogue. A hospice nurse had been over a few hours earlier and said my mother was “very imminent.” She was breathing in that slow, irregular way that signals that the end is near. Strangely, I hadn’t noticed it despite listening for the past several weeks (months earlier, when her death sentence had been officially handed down but she was still very much alive, my mother had casually mentioned that she’d noticed this breathing pattern in herself and that I should be prepared to walk into the room and find her gone at any moment) but apparently it was here now and when I reached the third paragraph of the second page of the Hillary Clinton article (this remains imprinted on my brain; I can still see the wrap of the words as my eye scanned the column; I can still see the Annie Leibowitz photo on the previous page) I heard her gasp. Then nothing more.
  • A second quote: My mother would die nine months later, and what most people don’t know is that of all the sad things about this fact, the saddest by far is that she did not have one day on this earth where she was both healthy and free of her mother. All her life she’d waited to be relieved of the burden of being unseen, only to have that relief perfectly timed with her own death sentence. FROM The Contemporary American Essay (p. 179) Kindle edition. 
  • Quote: It’s amazing what the living expect of the dying. We expect wisdom, insight, bursts of clarity that are then reported back to the undying in the urgent staccato of a telegram: I have the answer. Stop. They’re waiting for me. Stop. Everyone Who Died Before. Stop. And they Look Great. Stop. We expect them to reminisce over photos, to accept apologies and to make them, to be sad, to be angry, to be grateful. We expect them to clear our consciences, to confirm our fantasies. We expect them to be excited about the idea of being a bird.
  • Makes me think of when I bought our grandpa Bill a little waterfall with a picture of us in it to put by his bed. What the heck…
  • Love this: In the beginning, I’d laughed and told her there was no cat, but with the dying you soon learn the folly of raining on a parade, especially one that might produce that holy grail of darnedest things: insight into the afterlife.
  • A report on our mom. Yesterday, she went to some live music. I came in and she was in the atrium. She didn’t realize she’d seen it by the time I got her in her room. She took a few bites of a sandwich and fell asleep. She remarked their were bites in her sandwich when she woke up again. How does that work? 
  • Was our mom a big talker? A conversationalist? Did I ever talk to her about a book? 
  • Quote: It started with a fever. Actually it started before that. Of course it did. Nothing ever begins when you think it does.
  • Why did mom’s short term memory go? One year she was taking care of dad and coming out back to watch the girls shoot and in less than a year she could barely stand up.  
  • The writer gets sick: Even in my delirium, I cringed the way adult children cringe when they look down and realize the hands sticking out of their arms are actually their parents’ hands. I remember thinking that everyone was on to me now. My husband, the doctor, whoever else was there: they all knew not only that I was my mother’s daughter but that I was no different from her. Just as she had outlived her own mother by less than a year, I, too, would be denied a life outside of her shadow. The message was so obvious it might as well have been preordained: no woman in this matriarchal line would escape punishment for not loving her mother enough, for not mourning her mother enough, for not missing her enough, for refusing to touch her. None of us would be allowed out in the world on our own.
  • For a review of the collection in Electric Lit, click here. 
  • She’s @Meghan_daum on X and click here for her X page. She has a WKRP shirt on in her X profile pic. I said this from the show this week: As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. 

Office Romance on Netflix: 

  • Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso) with Jennifer Lopez. 
  • Written by Brett Goldstein. Goldstein also in Shrinking with Harrison Ford. 
  • Directed by Ol Parker who also directed Ticket to Paradise. 
  • Some funny stand alone scenes. A really good scene where Goldstein’s understated lawyering style works well and the romance starts to kindle. 
  • Some beautiful shots of the DR! 
  • Ends like Notting Hill. Hits romantic comedy tropes hard, which is no problem. 

Secret Window rented on Amazon. Came out in 2004. 

  • Based on the long short story Secret Window, Secret Garden 
  • Directed by David Koepp (sounds like Kep to me) who also directed some Jurassic Park movies, Death Becomes Her, Mission Impossible, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones, 
  • Film summary spoiler alert: The writer Johnny Depp character gets away with murdering his wife and her new boyfriend. 
  • Love this about the short story: The Shooter character manifests by supernatural powers, kills the writer, and the wife and boyfriend survive. 
  • Starring Johnny Depp, John Turturro (was in San Antonio for the Knicks Finals win), Maria Bellow and Timothy Hutton. 
  • Great shots of the window and the garden in the film. They are telling us the whole story what’s going to happen. A running commentary on writing. The ending is the most important part. 
  • Strengths: Spoiler alert that the Shooter character isn’t real and is just a creation of the writer character Johnny Depp’s mind. Depp’s performance is dark and funny. 
  • Weakness: hits me today in a way it didn’t 20 years ago that this is a story about a man who gets away with killing his ex wife and her new boyfriend. Lots of Johnny Depp napping. 
  • An alternate ending was included on the home media release, explicitly showing both Ted’s and Amy’s dead bodies underneath the corn patch in Mort’s garden.

Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of June 8, 2026

Why the NBA Champion Knicks are the greatest team in New York Sports History by Ian O’Connor, (The Athletic) X: @Ian_OConnor 

The Knicks Logo Almost Included the Empire State Building by Jeremy Rellosa (Curbed)  Is this him? @jrello9 

Widow Bay on Apple TV 

  • Scary/Comedy combination
  • Well acted, interesting actors.
  • Some real scares but not too many. Lots of references to other scary movies. 
  • “A reminder that It’s not mandatory that you speak” at funeral 
  • Renewed for 2nd season 
  • Matthew Rhys

Thanks for checking out the Torg Stories website! 

Stories We Read and Watched: Knicks and Spurs, University GenAI, Caitlin Clark, Castaway and Obama Library

We read or watched stories related to the NBA Finals, the billionaires who charter jets to the games, Spike Lee, University GenAI, Contagion, Caitlin Clark and Stephanie White, Castaway, The Bourne Ultimatum, Yellowstone, and the new Obama Library in Chicago.

Click player above to listen to this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast

Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of June 1, 2026…

NBA Story: “2026 NBA Finals: Storylines, Matchups that will define Knicks-Spurs”

Now that the Knicks are up two games to zero and heading home, how can I apply what Zach wrote to what’s happened: 

  1. These two teams played in the finals in 1999. Average final score back then was 85-80. 
  2. Jalen’s Brunson’s dad played for the Knicks then. Spurs Coach Mitch Johnson was in middle school. 
  3. Knicks were better head to head during regular season and NBA Cup and now they are again. 
  4. KAT has done most of the defending on Wemby and he’s doing great. KAT has attacked Wemby on offense and took it right at him. Players have attacked Wemby in a way I didn’t think was possible. 
  5. Thought was Wemby might roam and Hart might have a lot of open shots. Hart had a big rebounding game in game 1 and his minutes were way down to 18 in game two. Shamet has played those minutes and hit enough threes. 
  6. Spurs won Wemby minutes by 6 last game. 
  7. Spurs won by 12 when Harper played. 
  8. Some of these stats come from Basketball Reference, a great site that I am not a pro at using. Click here to access. 

Do you remember your NBA Finals pick? 

  • I think you said Spurs in six and I said Knicks in seven. 
  • ESPN writer Zach Kram said Spurs in Six. 

Wemby is Going Down by Spike Lee 

From the Spike Lee Article: 

  • Since that 1999 series, a lot of terrible things happened to New York: 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the pandemic and the recent ICE raids targeting immigrants, a direct affront to Ellis Island.
  • I dreamed a vision that it’s going to happen in Madison Square Garden. I don’t believe that the basketball gods are going to let us win the deciding game in San Antonio. By the decree of God, Jehovah, Allah and Black Jesus (that was Earl “The Pearl” Monroe’s nickname), whatever you want to call it, on this day, June 16 in the year of our Lawd 2026, the New Yawk Knickerbockers will defeat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 6 at da world’s most famous arena to win the N.B.A. championship. New York is Fun City again.

“Caitlin Clark and Stephanie White say all is good while Downplaying Sideline Spat Video”

  • By Michael Marot on AP news click here. 
  • I watched a good win over ATL and Angel Reese. White and Clark looked good. 
  • Fever did lose to NY 83-75. 
  • Fever are in last playoff spot, 8th. Lynx are on top without Collier. Wings are 4th. Valkyries and Fire are in 6th and 7th. 

Castaway the screenplay by William Broyles JR. 

  • You can get the script on Script Slug here. 
  • I’m writing Hurricane Drive about our drive home from dad’s funeral to Boone during Hurricane Helene. I wanted to look at how Boryles handled all of that no dialogue time. (Wilson the volleyball and mom with dementia). 
  • Came out in 2000. 
  • Zemeckis directed and he directed Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Contact, and The Polar Express. 
  • Broyles wrote Apollo 13, The Polar Express, and Jarhead. (he’s 81). 

The Bourne Ultimatum starring Matt Damon and directed by Paul Greengrass.  2007

  • I own all the Bourne movies. I watch them running on the treadmill. 
  • This is the third one, in 2007. (Damon wasn’t in the 4th one). 
  • Has that Waterloo Train Station scene early with the reporter that is killed by the CIA.
  • Has Julia Stiles, who you said you liked. 
  • The “I doubt that” comment. “We’d be having this conversation face to face.”
  • Awesome ending where Bourne starts swimming in the river, and we know he’s alive. 

Yellowstone on Peacock starring Kevin Costner 

  • Written by Taylor Sheridan who lived in rural Texas and Wyoming. 
  • This is set in Montana. 
  • Jeez: inspired two prequels and spin offs Marshals and Dutton Ranch.
  • 5 seasons 
  • The first season has two big stories: Costner’s kid has married a Native American and lives on the reservation. The ranch and the tribe are arguing over cattle and property lines. Also, there’s a guy who wants to build a big condo development. 

“Obama Center’s Two Sides: A Lovely Park and a Forbidding Tower” by Michael Kimmelman. 

Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of June 1, 2026

Whatever NBA finals article you read here. (prob wait until after first two games? 

  • “The Billionaires Booking Private Jets to See The Knicks” by Adriane Quinlan in Curbed
https://www.curbed.com/article/billionaire-knicks-vip-nba-finals-msg-private-jet-stylist.html

Delta Sky 360 club (ca. 150 people) or Suite 200

Spike and Ben Stiller pay for their tickets

San Antonio the city

Highlights that we just don’t know what future is. Fear loss of job, critical writing and thinking skills.

  • Contagion – kind of ho hum since we lived thru it? On Max
  • National Treasure – old throwback, it was fine On Prime
  • Tuned – pretty good about a piano tuner / safe cracker. Leo Woodhall, Dustin Hoffman

Some of the writers on X: @zachkram @AdrianeQ @lindakinstler

Thanks for checking out this Torg Stories post!

It’s the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals

The NBA Finals are set: it will be the New York Knicks vs. the San Antonio Spurs. Wemby and the Spurs vanquished the defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder in an exciting game 7. Also, at the bottom of this post check out the stories I read or watched this week. At the bottom of the page, check out the latest episode of the Torg Stories Podcast.

What happened after Wemby’s big game 1? 

  • Way more physical with him. Holding jersey, shoulders and waist. 
  • Wemby not strong enough to just go inside and post up. It will probably be hard to ever be strong enough to do that. 
  • Hard tags on Wemby’s rolls. Running a high ball screen with a Wemby roll pretty much guaranteed open threes for the rest of the team.

In game 7, Wemby had a stat line that was more like the ones he had when they lost. How did the Spurs still beat OKC in game 7? 

  1. Champagnie went 6-11 from three. Wemby went 3-5. Sometimes Wemby doesn’t hit any. 
  2. De’Aron Fox looked way more explosive on offense, more active on defense and scored 15. He was giving them zero early in the series. 
  3. Caruso, who had been good, was bad on offense going 3-14 from the field and 1-6 from the three point line. 
  4. A lot was made of Chet taking two shots. 
  5. You can often just go to the three point line to see what happened. Both teams shot 45% from the field. Spurs were 17-40 and OKC was 12-35. That’s a 15 point difference. What kind of threes? How many off of offensive rebounds? 
  6. Note: The Spurs really got their turnover numbers down. I think mostly because of De’Aaron Fox playing more and more but also their players adjusted.

Even though I am Pacer fan and the Knicks are a historical rival, here are some reasons the Knicks are a fun finals team for me: 

  1. I worked in NYC for 11 years 
  2. I have been to MSG and “behind the scenes” at least twice. Plus, we went to Billy Joel. 
  3. Timothee Chalamet brought my daughter Izzy to the Knicks. Then she liked Tyler Kolek. Now he doesn’t play. And she’s yelling at the TV. 
  4. Feels fun to see who is at the game. 
  5. KAT has a fascinating personality. 
  6. The Villanova connection and the way those guys act together. 
  7. The Bruson footwork and little guy doing it. 
  8. Mitchell Robinson’s FT struggles, his mental health struggles, and his big truck driving country music listening personality. What happened with his broken finger?!!!

Looking ahead to the NBA Finals Knicks vs. Spurs: 

  1. Wemby’s age and don’t forget about Magic. I am thinking of Magic Johnson being 20 years and 276 days old when he won the title. Wemby is 22 years and 147 days old. We’re in year 3 with Wemby. Magic was finals MVP as a rookie scoring 42 pts, 15 reb, and 7 assists to clinch title. 
  2. Brunson will hunt De’Aaron Fox and that works. Can the Spurs function without Fox? Because if they can, the player Brunson wants to hunt is gone. This isn’t James Harden and Donavan Mitchell on defense. (This sentence alone makes me wonder if the Knicks can win) 
  3. How will Knicks guard Wemby? 
  • Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not OG Anunoby. 
  • If Mitchell can play he can do what Hartenstein did for OKC. 
  • KAT isn’t Holmgren on defense. He won’t rim protect but he is A LOT more physical. 

Why would the Knicks win? 

  • They have a more polished offensive game. They know Brunson is the man in a way that the Spurs don’t have. They know how they work in KAT and Bridges. 
  • The Knicks can play five 3-point shooters. There’s no Hartenstein for Wemby to roam away from. 
  • The Knicks starters have had a nice rest and time to recover. 

Why would the Spurs win? 

  • No weak links on defense with certain line ups. They might be able to switch a lot of ball screens and successfully make Brunson a lot less efficient without much help. 
  • Shooters do their job when Wemby demands a lot of attention. 
  • Wemby just too unique on both sides of the ball. 

Who will win? 

  • I really don’t know. Feels like a toss up series, but I will make a prediction…
  • The Spurs defense will be a dominant force in the series, BUT I think the Knicks will find just enough offense to win in a series where both teams have trouble scoring. 
  • Anne picked Spurs in six. I picked Knicks in seven.

Thanks for checking out this post!

Best and Worst Work Stories and NYC to LA Bagel Testing: Inspired by Thomas Beller’s “Portrait of the Bagel as a Young Man”

What’s the craziest stuff that’s ever happened to you at work? Any weird interview stories?

Anne and I use Thomas Beller’s piece about working at H&H Bagels at 80th and Broadway in NYC to spark our own work-themed conversation. He also inspired us to go out an have local bagels: mine in Boone, NC at the Boone Bagelry and Anne’s at The Bagel Broker in Los Angeles.

Click above to listen to our Work Stories Podcast with Beller’s “Portrait of the Bagel as a Young Man”

🛒 My novel Love on the Big Screen tells the story of a college freshman whose understanding of love is shaped by late-80s romantic comedies.

📚 Read Beller’s essay in the anthology The Contemporary American Essay on Amazon.

🥯 Click here to read “Portrait of the Bagel as a Young Man” on Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood website.

Izzy, Bill, Megan, and Charlotte in Boone, NC

What makes “Portrait of the Bagel as a Young Man” worth reading? How does it work?

  1. Organized from interview to last day on the job. 
  2. Main parts: who works there; what he does with the inventory, the ledger, and the counting; some harder days; being trusted with the money, a big mistake; getting out
  3. Rewards: 
  • It tells the story of an evolving artist (Beller) in a way that the title alludes to about James Joyce. 
  • glimpse into a world I don’t know about
  • the visit to NYC which takes me back kind of like the people who order bagels from all over
  • insights on being alive like being loved on own terms
  • Thinking about my own jobs
  • Inspired me to go get a local bagel 
Everything bagel sandwich, fresh OJ, and a hearty breakfast at Boone Bagelry

Podcast Episode Summary from Zoom software:

  • On this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast, Anne and Torg discussed work stories using Thomas Beller’s essay “Portrait of the Bagel as a Young Man” as their framework. Anne shared her experience visiting bagel shops in Los Angeles, including The Bagel Broker and Sam’s Bagels, while Torg discussed his visit to Boone Bagelry in North Carolina. They analyzed Beller’s narrative about working at H&H Bagels in New York City, discussing themes of job routine, physical labor, and the challenges of working in a factory environment. The conversation included personal work stories from both participants, with Torg sharing numerous past employment experiences ranging from lifeguarding to teaching, while Anne discussed her career path from factory work to tech writing to her current role in architectural design. They explored how work stories can provide insight into different cultures and work environments, and discussed the potential for Anne to share more work-related experiences in future episodes.

A List of Jobs I Remember Having

  1. Lifeguard at Winamac Town Pool 
  2. Stockboy at Russell’s Old Trading Post
  3. Indiana Beach ride operator 
  4. Summer Residence Hall Staff at Olivet Nazarene University 
  5. Numerous men’s and women’s basketball camps including Purdue, Butler, Indiana and the Bloomington YMCA
  6. TIS Book Company in Bloomington
  7. Tree Trimming Assistant in Bloomington
  8. Substitute Teacher in Kankakee IL including parking lot security 
  9. Gap 
  10. North Miami HS in Denver, Indiana
  11. Carroll HS in Fort Wayne, Indiana
  12. Vance HS in Charlotte, NC
  13. Weddington MS in NC
  14. Queens Golf Course 
  15. St. John’s University 
  16. Greenwood HS in IN
  17. Appalachian State University 
Anne went to the Bagel Broker at Fairfax and Beverly in Los Angeles

What work stories do we have?

  1. I have two (kind of three) published: Ye Olde Trading Post based on working at Russell’s, A Golf Course Story based on working in Queens (the cash register, the Twilight rate, and racial tensions) and the novel The Coach’s Wife 
  1. Indiana Beach lying to the insurance adjusters 
  2. Tank not going back to TIS book warehouse after lunch 
  3. Tree trimmer set his chest hair on fire in the tree in Bloomington
  4. R-rated faculty meetings at SJU 

Here’s a bit about the author and the piece: 

  • Looks like Thomas Beller has a website called Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood: New York City Stories. Click here. 
  • This story was first published on the Beller Neighborhood website on March 29, 2004. 
  • I came across it in an anthology titled The Contemporary American Essay published in 2021. Click here to access that anthology on Amazon. 

Seems like Beller is a big basketball fan. He wrote a book called Lost in the Game: A Book About Basketball. Click here to read more about the book. He has an MFA from Columbia. He teaches at Tulane.

Thanks for stopping by the website!