This is my office. The desk was made by my friend Marc Deloach, from wood reclaimed from an old collapsed farm house in my hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi. I like to keep things around that bring back good memories, maybe as proof during bouts of despair that stories usually end up working out. There's a signed muleta from a bullfighter, and my dad's shotguns, and the Visitors sign from the old ESPN The Magazine offices at E 34th St. There's a Sam Peckinpah poster, and a Widespread Panic poster, and framed newspaper pages from the New Orleans Times Picayune and the Kansas City Star. There's a piece of paper from a notebook where Michael Jordan tried to explain the triangle offense to me. There's a Cubs hat I just brought home. There's a photo from college of me, Seth Wickersham and Justin Heckert at Elaine's, next to a bowling pin I won at a weird speakeasy in a dry county near Nazareth, Texas. That's Archie Manning above the window. The Offbeat story is the first thing I ever wrote. The brick on the desk is from Shakespeare's Pizza in Columbia, Missouri. The frame in the window used to hang in my dad's law office. It says: If your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.