January 24, 2024
I’ve always loved “Stuck in the middle with You,” by Stealers Wheel. You hear it once, and it’s in your head for good. Trying to make some sense of it all But I can see that it makes no sense at all Bassist Tony Williams has a Fender Musicmaster, a short-scale and the first bass…
January 24, 2024
I hate fakery. When I was in college, a guy on my dorm floor overturned his BMW as he tried to pull into the parking lot. He ended up in a ditch, upside down. A tow truck was called, and his Beemer was removed. He and I were not exactly friends, but we spent a…
January 23, 2024
I’d like to introduce you to my two favorite con artists, Mike Albee and Lura Dold of Sandpiper Publicity. Stand up, kids! Don’t be shy. Mike also runs another fake company, Magnus Publicity. Let’s give Mike and Lura a hand! Mike has a long history of defrauding people. Unfortunately for me I didn’t see this…
January 22, 2024
Well, it’s time to embarrass Scott Thunes. I’ve written two books that are mostly about him, In Cold Sweat and Ghosts and Ballyhoo. I’ve interviewed him several times. Requiem for a Heavyweight? Scott Thunes: Unghosted. Scott Thunes on the Ghosts and Ballyhoo Album. Although it’s blasphemy to say so, I listen only to the Zappa…
January 21, 2024
On May 3, 1986, I met the real Jason Bourne. It was on a ferry between Korea and Japan. I’d gone to Korea to extend my tourist visa so I could work another three months before having to find a work sponsor. Korea was a nightmare of inexplicable, shudder-inducing strangeness. It was the only nation…
January 19, 2024
I was surfing around, waiting for next week to begin so I can start up the next phase of my publicity campaign. On a blog that’s run by two brothers whose work has appeared in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, I found a post on the movie Lone Survivor. In the piece…
January 18, 2024
Here’s the second passage from my novel Invisible Idiot, which became Chasing the Last Whale, Volume Two of the Ghosts Trilogy. Though I agreed with the need to remove these scenes, I liked them, so I’m publishing them here when I get the urge. Tonight I have the urge. Excised Snippet Number Two: Terrible Pagan…
January 18, 2024
I just read an article about how the Saudi Mutawaa (religious police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) have banned women from using swing sets. The rationale is that the police are protecting the women from any men who might see them and get excited. Thus, Saudi culture not…
January 17, 2024
Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the day Mom and Dad took their first steps on the journeys that removed them from my life. Tim and I didn’t commemorate it in any special way. We commemorate our parents daily, talking about what they did and why. The one favor our parents did us by dying…