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Beads
It was a Fat Tuesday at Farmer’s Market. Mardi Gras. There was a good New Orleans band doing funk, zydeco, etc and the people were drinking too much and throwing beads. The crowd was relatively tame...
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Killer shoes
(Many years ago….) Went to a party last night. A gloriously crazed one just down the street with wild music spun, drunken Germans spinning, inadvertently cracked skulls, blood, and a rather wanton...
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Red Queen
A couple weeks ago I confessed on a thread that I had no idea what football player beat up who. And I really did have no idea, I’d missed the whole appalling thing. Which meant I had no idea what these...
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The Informant
The Informant (1935) is on, with Victor McLaglen in the title spot. One of the all time great big guy on celluloid performances. This is one doomed, dark, depressing, taut film. John Ford was about as...
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Road to Damascus
I can vividly remember the very moment my life changed forever….it was November 1977 and I was a twenty years old and a college kid in Santa Barbara and bored, so bored. One beautiful day–they were...
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Grammar lesson
I thought Boston Market was a place where a guy might get scrod without using the pluperfect subjunctive. Awkward. .
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Throwing an old boot out the window
I think the difference between writing and jazz is that you have to know how to play on a jazz gig. I mean really know how to play. You aren’t competing with, say, the cat next door to me here who...
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Visitor experience consultant
I never knew there was such a thing as a visitor experience consultant. Actually, my opening line was what the hell is a visitor experience consultant, but I’m being nice. I saw an article in the...
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El Duce
El Duce pissed on me once. Well, misted. He was pissing off a garage. It blew my way like a breeze off Niagara Falls. The girls screamed. He laughed. That was what, 1980? ’81? Ancient history. Though...
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The hippest guy on the Sunset Strip
So I’m scrolling down Facebook and see the People You May Know section. There are pictures of three gorgeous women. I don’t actually know them, but the thought was nice. Intrigued I press the See All...
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Matches
Apparently they no longer have Musso and Frank matches anymore. We’ve been lighting candles with Musso and Frank matches for thirty years. Now what? Lighters? Are wooden matches too analog? Has digital...
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Candles
A friend sent out an email about some scented candles. Said it was her favorite. Plugging some friend’s shop ahead of Christmas I suppose. I replied that I didn’t have a favorite candle. She said...
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Chinatown
Jazz geek that I refuse to admit that I am, my favorite thing about the classic flick Chinatown is Uan Rasey‘s trumpet tone. It’s perfection. Not that it’s pure–you can hear the breath in it–but it’s...
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Elm trees
We were driving through the endless northern expanses of Chicago, huge houses, huge cars, big money, and the last of the cicadas were whirring, and we turned and found ourselves on an elm lined street....
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Almost Like Being In Love
Actually it’s kinda funny, a jazz critic living next to the world’s worst trumpeter. I woke up from a deep, dreamless sleep by an Almost Like Being in Love so dreadful it verged on profound. Several...
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Strange Notes
I remember doing drugs with Darby Crash. Only one time, I think–joints don’t count–and it must have been 1980. We–me and my wife, or wife to be at the time–were at the Capital Records swap meet. If you...
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Summer of Love
The Reluctant Astronaut is on. Some channel is having a Don Knotts marathon. (The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is next, but I’m not in the mood for gothic horror.) I remember seeing The Reluctant Astronaut at...
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Joe Cocker
Joe Cocker’s performance at Woodstock was so freaking outrageous, his live act was so demented that when I first heard he’d been a working man I didn’t believe it. I thought he must be mad. And what a...
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A big bottle of pomegranate rum
For the first time in I don’t know how long, a decade or two, I don’t have to drive anywhere on New Years Eve. No, I get to walk next door. Tonight I get to act like a real writer. I know hundreds of...
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Get TV
Wow, Morgan Fairchild is selling me a burial plot of Get TV. I mean I haven’t even started using the catheters yet. I’m not actually sure what they’re for. It’s fallen and I can’t get it up? Or is it a...
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