LOS ANGELES, CA-

I got inside of another taxicab last night and was stunned when, about three quarters of the way through the ride, the cabdriver started asking me about my innards.

“You know what a bladder is?” he said to me.

“A bladder?” I said.

“Yeah, a bladder,” he said.

My wife was seated on my left, and she repeated my question aloud for the sake of overall clarity.

“You want to know what a bladder is?” she said.

“Yeah,” said the cabdriver. “I want to know, like, where it’s located in the body.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before,” I said. (more…)

SACRAMENTO, CA-

I’ve noticed lately that I think a lot more about my health in real terms.

I don’t just think about the cold I have or the weird pains in my legs as something that will cure themselves in the next couple days. Instead I find myself wondering what the cause is, what it means in the long term.

Most of the weird things I see happening to my body lately can be traced directly back to birth control pills. The pain in my legs, which I swear is hypertension or blood clotting, is listed as a possible side effect of the pill. So is the melasma, or sunspot, found on my upper lip that makes me look like I have a mustache.

Maybe these things are also just caused by a poor diet and general aging. I’m not so sure though, so I’ve decided to do an experiment. I’ve decided to go off the pill. And in this decision I realized that, holy cow!, I’ve been taking birth control for nearly 10 years. (more…)

MADRID

The message read Feliz Navidad Guapisimo!

Spaniards toss around the word guapo/a as if it were a definite article, but the extra oomph given to any noun with -isimo/a is not to be taken lightly and should be considered serious flirtation.

The number had no name attached to it, but I assumed it was from a girl, as most men don’t call other men guapisimo unless they’re gay or being facetious. (more…)

PARIS-

Nicolas Sarkozy has been president of France for nearly a year, and in that time he has gone from enormously popular to a running joke.

Maybe that’s just the nature of politics: elect someone, then rail against him until he’s no longer there to kick around.

Or maybe, just maybe, the election of Nicolas Sarkozy was a huge mistake.

As words like “controversy,” “scandal” and “farce” continue to share sentences with his name, one must look back for a moment and try to understand how the French missed all the warning signs and elected the man.

Never known as a particularly warm and friendly guy, he was looked at pre-election as a break from the stodgy politics of his predecessor Jacques Chirac, a bright mind who would shake up the sagging French economy. (more…)

THE SKYLINE -

Like most days in New England, the weather can’t decide what it would like to do.

There’s been rain and sun and wind and periods of all three combined - and that’s just within the last hour.

I’ve been here in New Hampshire since Wednesday evening visiting college friends and now, on Sunday evening, after a great lunch with my parents and my brother, I’m heading home to Maryland and to work in the morning.

It should be illegal to put St. Patrick’s Day on a Monday…someone (ahem…Mr. President) should really consider making it a federal holiday.

(more…)

MIAMI, FL-

I am really hungover.

I stayed up late last night, doing blow and talking shit.

“When in Rome….”

Miami makes me behave like this guy-

Of course, I’m only joking. In actuality, here in Miami, I tend to be act more like most of the other residents. The blue rinse and pinochle set. But without the blue rinse. Or the pinochle.

My time here has been lovely. Two weeks of sun and friendship, late nigh (more…)

GULF BREEZE, FL-

In honor of my recent move to Florida, I thought I’d tell a Florida story from when I lived here previously, in 1989-92.

Once when I was living in Gainesville, Florida, I developed a crush on a guy. We’ll call him Terence.

(more…)

THE DEEP SOUTH-

What is life but the moments

the haunting slivers of time

free from some abstract tomorrow or

glossed-out yesterday

the aching gravity of sadness and

all

that will never be and never be again

torn between here and there, the perceived difference

between existence and living

the contagious monoxide of oppression

(more…)

PARIS-

Three-quarters of the way through Cédric Klapisch’s Paris, a young African man who has already traveled a great distance from his home looks over the choppy sea from the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar and asks the ferryman who will sneak him into Europe if it’s all worth the trouble.

The ferryman, perhaps just eager for payment, replies that it is definitely worth it.

The young man, who is seen only in snippets during his long journey, carries with him a post card sent by a relative.

The black and white image is that of Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris.

Klapisch, and his mighty ensemble cast, bring that piece of photo paper to vibrant life in a wonderful movie that lives up to the gamble that is its name.

If you’re going to write and direct a film and call it Paris, it had better be worth the trouble. (more…)

CHICAGO, IL -

I admit that the set up is pretty dramatic:

A man stands motionless on a street corner in single-digit morning temperatures holding onto a sign that simultaneously calls the mayor of Chicago a dictator while asking a certain FBI agent to stop raping his wife. (more…)

GULF BREEZE, FL-

So. Here I am in the new place.

Crickets chirp. A tumbleweed rolls by.

(more…)

MIAMI, FL-

“Tis not the amount of stress one copes with, but the grace with which one handles it, that is the measure of a persons strength.”

I said that!

“Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you even know you’re falling.”

I said that too!

I’m wicked fucking smart sometimes, but it’s a crying fucking shame that I’m terrible at following my own advice.

I need a t-shirt made up with “I’m a hypocrite” on the front and “No I’m not” on the back.

(more…)

PARIS, FRANCE-

There is a weird breed of people who love the idea of a big family.

When they find out I come from a family of nine, they exclaim, “Oh I bet that was so much fun growing up!”

I should note that these people are normally from single-child families. They have no idea how much fun it was. (more…)

NEW YORK CITY-

As I am about to put an end to an 8-year procrastination on recording my second album, I have gathered some thoughts from that stretch of time, that I would like to share.

I write songs; Folk/Pop(ular) songs (I’ll call them folk songs) as opposed to classical (formal) music, to make a simple differentiation which probably leaves many things unaccounted for.
I generally think the following:
A folk song is comprised of three elements.
Chords  -  Vocal melody  -  Lyrics

Many of the songs I love express feelings so universal that I and others feel the urge to sing them in the shower or play them around a campfire.  These three aforementioned elements are all that is (more…)

METAL, NC-

Up until I was around twenty-five I went to concerts. I saw some great shows. The US Festival (I was in the 8th grade, hustling stickers and pins for KMET). Queensryche on their epic Operation: Mindcrime tour.

Soundgarden in the early nineties. Ice Cube on a sunny and very stony Orange County day. Satchel. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Tori Amos. Steve Vai in Hollywood which was probably the best singular performance I ever witnessed.

I saw Korn in Vegas with fifty other people at the Huntridge Theater. No one knew who they were except for us transplanted Californians. I got drunk with them, helped load up their equipment in their U-Haul with the Deftones.

(more…)

LOS ANGELES, CA-

The first and only time I ever found myself star struck, I wasn’t even meeting a celebrity. Well, he was somewhat of a celebrity, but he wasn’t in the movie business and he was about three thousand miles away from Hollywood.

(more…)

PARIS-

It is so hard to talk about Paris.

Not for a lack of things to be said.

That’s easy.

But what makes it hard is being original about it.

How do you frame it?

What can you call the city that’s already been called by every name imaginable?

You try to come up with some never before thought of angle, some new twist on the old city, and how long is it before you realize it just can’t be done?

Even writing what I just wrote has already been written thousands of times.

It’s quite discouraging.

So, there.

Paris, the city of everlasting discouragement. (more…)

GRAND BLANC, MI-

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