Bumper Sticker Idea of the Week: CONSUMERS SUCK. Chuck Berry may have been something of a visionary if not a leftist in the rock-and-roll 50s. (He invented rock-and-roll music simply by being a rhythm-and-blues musician attempting to write a country song. The result was “Maybelline.”) Berry has always been up-front and unrepentant about being in […]
In my father’s day, people who did specialized, skilled things were called engineers. He was an electronics engineer. He maintained the radar apparatus at Chincoteague Island, watching for German U-boats. Later he designed circuitry for guided missiles. He taught a night class for beginning engineers. His tendency was to call skilled people engineers of one […]
This morning in the supermarket parking lot, I was assaulted by a loud, unpleasant sound coming from the wide-open door of a shiny new sport utility vehicle. The sound was a commercial music recording played through one of those wildly over-powered stereo systems most often heard in the vehicles of suburban teenagers as they cruise […]
I was going to say “extreme” right but that would have implied nazi salutes and torch marches. This is the mainstream right, which isn’t that far from extreme any more. It was interesting to read about Marilyn Davin’s visit to Jerry Philbrick, and to note that politics were not really discussed. Philbrick came off as […]
Elvis Presley shot the TV when Robert Goulet’s face came onscreen. That’s how I feel when I see Trump’s phony-baloney face makeup, fake tan and hairdo. Luckily I don’t have a gun. Trump seems to be sticking with places like West Virginia and Mississippi, where inexplicably there are still people who believe his bullshit. Now […]
This is the story of Shirley and Spike, as much as I know and can recall. A very odd couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was 1967 or so and my band was playing at at the Blue Moon, a Mafia-run club in Lowell, Mass. We had long hair but were far from being hippies. […]
After all the attempted thefts and failed installation of cameras and night lights – including a motion sensor that activates an obnoxious flashing light on the front bumper, and now, in the middle of construction of a fence behind which to hopefully, finally, conceal the Big Red Truck, the truck is wrecked, totally. The irony […]
Conservative writer P.J. O’Rourke, who used to butt heads with Molly Ivins on TV, came on the Tonight show once and explained right wing logic: “If you weren’t a liberal when young, you had no heart. If you’re not a conservative when older, you have no brain.” Tell that to Chomsky… or Molly Ivins’ ghost. […]
The Big Red pickup truck. Bright red with huge wheels that lift it high off the road. Guy moves in next door with this monster, parks it on the street with a “club” on the steering wheel to prevent theft. Someone tries to steal it anyway, here in the land of the big macho truck. […]
To begin with, I’ve been in a Walmart a total of three times, emergency only. The Waltons don’t need what little money I have. Here in the flyover zone we are awash in big box stores. They’re all here, in profusion. My big box of choice is Costco, it’s nearby and has agreeably low prices […]
Twice in my life I have been told “You look like Einstein.” This occurs only when my hair and mustache grow out too long. Both times I have resisted or forgotten to reply, “Thanks, I feel smart.”