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 […]
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.”
Do you shudder at the sight of low-life trailer-trash crankheads driving around in their beat-up Camaros? Do you nod solemnly when one of the big tv news actors presents a piece on how methamphetamine is now the Number One Drug Scourge of the United States? Are you shocked at video footage of police and firefighting […]
Boston, 1967 — My band called The Ones was playing a regular gig at the Brown Derby, five nights a week or something like that. We had been reviewed in a new trade paper called Crawdaddy by Jon Landau, who after such humble beginnings later became Bruce Springsteen’s manager and head of the nominating committee […]