December 23, 2023
Those of you who’ve read Ghosts and Ballyhoo may have noticed that I make only one mention of Tony Levin, on pages 42-43. This was not deliberate. My friend Steiv Dixon and Carmen were Levinites, as they called themselves. They introduced me to Tony Levin’s best work. As a result he became one of my…
December 21, 2023
I love Christopher Walken. His acting career, I mean. I know nothing about him personally, except for one quote that describes me perfectly. We’ll get to that in a minute. He’s always great, even if the movie isn’t. Some of his best performances are in Catch Me if You Can, The Rundown, Sleepy Hollow, Suicide…
December 20, 2023
When I read news articles and listen to the radio, the one constant is the state of confusion people have about what motivates the bad decisions we see being made daily. Our government is utterly dysfunctional, companies do really crazy things that alienate their customers, individuals mess up their lives to a level of parody,…
December 19, 2023
I’ve published an article on German aerial flamethrowers. It’s in Windsock Worldwide, Volume 29, Number 6, November/December 2013. This is the best World War I aviation journal around, so I’m proud that my article was accepted. Years ago I built model airplanes for Windsock, but I had to stop when my eyesight started going. During…
December 18, 2023
When I say a funny thing happened, I don’t mean funny like this. I mean, really unusual. A few days ago, I got an e-mail asking about my Great-uncle Colonel Curtis Yarnell Kimball, O.B.E., U.S. Army (ret.) Here he is being awarded a medal by Field Marshal Bernhard Montgomery in Munich, April of 1945. At…
December 17, 2023
It’s my new obsession: actions have consequences. Always be aware that what you do today may haunt you for the rest of your life. The proudly communist, rabidly anti-gun, pathologically Republican-hating, completely dead loser who attacked Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, on Friday 13, 2013, was a huge fan of the The Anarchist Cookbook,…
December 17, 2023
Yesterday Robert Schulslaper interviewed me at length for Fanfare. The question of my sense of humor came up a few times. I have a rather dark sense of humor. It’s not completely dark; for example I find this ad extremely funny. The two actresses are absolute geniuses. This Monty Python sketch can still make me…