You might not know it from the top hat and monocle I wear to the opera these days, but I was born a hillbilly. I was a redneck trailer park child, raised amid the pluff mud and pork rinds of the South Carolina Low Country. I ate grits with every… Read full post »

 

 

 

 

Evening Protest

I was wandering through the neighborhood, having just gotten out of the shower. A group of protesters were parading outside a small, suburban home, yelling at "Bill."

"Bill, where are the market reports?" "Bill, why did you shred the documents?" Etc.

I could see "Bill" in… Read full post »

 

You know the guy. Hell, you may even be the guy. He’s deeply entrenched in a mid-life crisis, radiating stress over his job and his home life. He’s buying status symbols by the truckload; a sporty new car here, a 3-D smell-o-rama flat screen there. He’s got a personal… Read full post »

 

Because she is one of the few people still speaking to me after all these years, I spend a lot of time with my wife, Melissa. And my desperate need for her constant attention means I tag along on routine excursions I might usually avoid, and that would surely have… Read full post »

Middle age has its share of embarrassments – the uncontrollable girth, the aching joints, the sudden tendency to crank up the volume when Genesis comes on the radio. Come to think of it, still having a radio at all at this stage is an embarrassing sign of aging. But we… Read full post »

 

I woke up in a dingy Super 8 motel, not quite sure where I was. I took a look around, searching my memory for a moment, and realized that no, I hadn’t been double-crossed by a dame in a Chandler novel, I was with my friend, Doug, who was still… Read full post »

  

When the wife and I moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina a few years ago, I knew what I was getting into. I knew that this was desolate hill country, with only the barest hints of civilization. I knew the locals rejected all efforts at cultural encroachment by outsiders, and that… Read full post »

 

 

Over the years, with my kneejerk rebellion in full jerk, I’ve resisted adopting any overarching philosophy of life. I don’t think the Golden Rule applies in every situation, I don’t twelve-step my way towards anything and I don’t believe that the world is divided… Read full post »

  

A few years ago, while exploring the ruins of my grandfather’s shed, I found an old wooden ladder. This was a basic, folding stepladder, covered in paint drips, that my grandfather had likely used for decades of household repair. Nothing exotic about it. But the ladder, thou… Read full post »

 

A couple of years ago I got a call from a Washington Post reporter, asking for an interview. She’d seen some comment I made online about owning a product called TV-B-Gone, a keychain remote that can turn off almost any television, and was writing a story about the device. The interview… Read full post »

 

In the seventh grade there was a bus stop right outside my house, but I never hung out there. Every morning I snubbed the pale, bookish, grade-grubbing children loitering at the closest stop and walked several blocks to wait for the bus with a much seedier crew of juvenile losers… Read full post »

 

Insofar as I gave a damn about astrology, I was pretty satisfied with my designation as a Sagittarius, the sign of the lazy, philosophical dreamer who writes poems between naps. The Sagittarius follows his own interests, pursuing higher education to suit his whims,… Read full post »

"Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness: money is not an infantile wish." – Sigmund Freud

In the early Seventies, I saw a photograph of Hagar the Horrible cartoonist Dik Browne in Parade Magazine.  I knew who Dik B… Read full post »

 

Loitering in my local Barnes-a- Million, I was thumbing through a Marvel Masterworks book, a hardback reprint of early comic books with horrific digital color. Coming across the section featuring Fantastic Four #25, I had one of those electric jolts of repressed memory that I… Read full post »

 

After several decades of consistent failure, I have to conclude that I suck at Halloween. It’s embarrassing. I mean, I pride myself on being a creative type, moderately well-versed in geek culture, and I’m certainly a fan of the holiday and all its paraphernalia. But I&rsquo… Read full post »

  

It’s hard to determine if the condemnation of Robert McNamara is fully deserved or merely convenient.  Mind you, I’m no Bob apologist.  McNamara was instrumental is selling the Gulf of Tonkin incident as Congressional justification for the war in Vietnam, eve… Read full post »

 

I hated Michael Jackson.  I hated him in the way every young sophisticate turns his nose up at popular culture when he enters his teens.  Jackson was the cherry on top of a huge mound of ‘80s mall culture; Pac Man, Care Bears, New Coke, Rubik’s Cubes, parachute pan… Read full post »

 A quickie portrait of Karl Malden, dependable character actor. I managed to throw this one together on the fly, scratching out the drawing in ballpoint and utilizing the scanner and good old MS Paint at work. Pablo Lobato suggested he needed a "butt nose". I tried it, but I just can't…

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Even in 1976, at the height of her stardom, it was considered trite and superficial to like Farrah Fawcett.  But everyone did, of course.  All the guys had that ubiquitous poster, all the girls were blow-drying their hair to Farrahesque perfection.  And how cold-hearted w… Read full post »