I love the movie Murphy’s War, even though I hate the premise. Peter O’Toole plays Murphy, the only survivor of a British naval ship that a German U-boat sinks in the Orinoco River, probably in Venezuela. Murphy is the sole survivor because the Germans deliberately, methodically, and calmly kill all the sailors who go into…
The Stupidest Dreams Possible
September 20, 2023
Now I’m dreaming that I’m lying in bed, unable to sleep. Easily the stupidest dreams a person could have. Dreams are supposed to restore you. If you’re kept from dreaming, you go crazy. If you dream that you’re not dreaming, is that the same as not dreaming? Am I now dreaming myself to a higher…
Why the Beard?
September 19, 2023
I’ve been asked again why I don’t shave off my beard so I can look younger. Well, looking younger isn’t important to me. I’m fifty-one. It’s okay for me to look fifty-one. Currently, shaving isn’t a priority. I always hated shaving. You women should try scraping your face every day with sharp metal. I was…
Movie Beds and Food
September 19, 2023
I’m a film fanatic. Movies are my favorite art form. The last time I went to a theater was in 2002, to see the Mel Gibson movie Signs. I stopped going to theaters because the audiences were so ill-mannered, loud, and crazy. At the showing of Signs, a guy two seats away from me had…
My Whole Story
September 19, 2023
There it is. Right there. Everything. My whole story in one image. When I first saw this photo in 1980, I didn’t play the bass, and Kate Bush scared me. Small, dark-haired, big-eyed, provocative, theatrical, musician-weirdo. With a bass. Not my type. So why did I buy the magazine with the photo, take it home,…
Mystery is important
September 18, 2023
The possibility of life after death has been on my mind since I was six years old, when I first understood what death was, and I realized that someday I’d die. There were periods in which I couldn’t bear to think about it because I couldn’t accept either the possibility of eternal life or the…
Why I don’t Mind Hermitude
September 16, 2023
I go out on shopping excursions and to visit Mom in the nursing home. Hermitude is the new normal. Since 2011 the longest car trips I’ve made were to meet with Scott Thunes and watch him play. Yet even in my nearly nonexistent brushes with the general public, things keep happening. It’s simply my fate…
A friend I want to meet
September 15, 2023
I’ve known Mark for about twelve years now. An Aussie and a bassist, he sent me a complimentary note about In Cold Sweat, I responded, and we gradually got to be pals despite our legions of differences. He’s a friend I want to meet. I’m not sure if we ever will. I can’t travel, and…
Karma, baby
September 14, 2023
The U.S. Postal Service is swirling the drain. I can’t bring myself to feel badly about it. Why? Because karma. I’ve had too many priceless postcards, photos, and cartes de visite stolen. A theft ring of postal workers operates in New York. With total, absolute, complete impunity. Every American collector of military postcards knows about…
Preach it, Gene Simmons!
September 14, 2023
I don’t have anything to say about Gene Simmons’s personal life. I did watch his reality show for a season, the one in which his children confronted him with his failings. I’ve also seen the episode where he went to Israel to meet his half-siblings and visit his father’s grave. To me he made a…