When you reach a certain age, you have a lot of life experiences to draw on and use as a basis for comparison. I’m now at that point where I can say, “Kids today—” and be right. It’s not entirely the kids’ fault that they’re doing it wrong, but thirty years ago I was subjected…
Goodbye is Forever
April 9, 2024
On page 267 of Ghosts and Ballyhoo, I describe how the Cardinal Ghost Carmen explained why the Arcadia song “Goodbye is Forever” choked me up. She said it was just a matter of the harmonies eliciting an emotional response. To her it was only a song. Many women—including my mother—have told me that it’s much…
Why there’s no Website memorial to my mother
April 9, 2024
Someone asked me why there’s no Website memorial to my mother. The answer is that it’s too soon. Mom and Dad were both diagnosed with cancer on January 16, 2013. Dad’s death was a blitz attack that ended on February 23, 2013. Mom’s death was a siege that lasted six months. For more than five…
The snakes are loose
April 8, 2024
One of my all-time favorite films is Crossfire. It’s got everything I love in art: surreality, beautiful women who break your heart, insane authority figures always on the edge of violence, the sense of everything spinning out of control, and fantastic writing: “The snakes are loose.” The story is about homicidal bigotry, but that’s not…
Residue
April 7, 2024
Mom and Dad made no real provisions for their deaths. For some reason Dad threw away most of his tax documents. Since his death we’ve discovered that he had plenty to hide. Mom’s residue, on the other hand, is fully intact. Tim and I have learned a lot about not only Mom and Dad but…
The customer is never right
April 6, 2024
Everywhere you look you see the new way of governing and doing business: “The customer is never right.” This is what happens when decision makers become rigid, power mad, and self-deluding. It’s also a terrible time to adopt such short-term thinking, because capital is more mobile than ever. Consumers have more choices than ever. In…
Confession
April 5, 2024
I have a confession to make. Here’s my brother Tim and his friend Winston, our next-door neighbor in Campo Verde, Tia Juana, Venezuela. The two redheads were so similar that they even broke their left arms in April of 1968. Tim was pretending to be Tarzan. He tried to swing from one branch to another…
The most insane day in decades
April 4, 2024
It started with one of the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. I won’t describe it, but it had to do with my parents. They were both alive and refusing to get involved in my attempt to save a hideously mutilated child. The little girl had most of her face torn off. From there it became…
Everything goes into the open file
April 3, 2024
Yesterday a soldier carried out a mass shooting at Fort Hood. The CNN report I quote does everything to make the reader think this was a combat veteran who snapped. Because of agendas, everything I now hear goes into the open file. Basically, all the the reporting from April 2, 2014, was utterly worthless. It’s…