In the book Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries there’s a great story titled “The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice,” about a rich old bastard who everybody hates. The story begins this way. Forever after, Andy Adams would remember that tremendous, metallic voice screaming for help, bringing him out of a sound sleep with the blankets…
The danger of reactionaryism
January 25, 2014
Merriam-Webster defines reactionaryism as follows. Attitudes or opinions tending to favor established ideas, conditions, or institutions (The region’s entrenched reactionaryism made it one of the major battlegrounds for the civil rights movement in the 1960s.) Synonyms: conservativeness, die-hardism, reactionaryism, traditionalism, ultraconservatism Related Words: neoconservatism, Toryism; bigotry, illiberalism; conventionalism, conventionality, fogyism (or fogeyism) Near Antonyms: neoliberalism;…
Stuck in the middle
January 24, 2014
I’ve always loved “Stuck in the middle with You,” by Stealers Wheel. You hear it once, and it’s in your head for good. Trying to make some sense of it all But I can see that it makes no sense at all Bassist Tony Williams has a Fender Musicmaster, a short-scale and the first bass…
Introducing my two favorite con artists
January 23, 2014
I’d like to introduce you to my two favorite con artists, Mike Albee and Lura Dold of Sandpiper Publicity. Stand up, kids! Don’t be shy. Mike also runs another fake company, Magnus Publicity. Let’s give Mike and Lura a hand! Mike has a long history of defrauding people. Unfortunately for me I didn’t see this…
Time to embarrass Scott Thunes
January 22, 2014
Well, it’s time to embarrass Scott Thunes. I’ve written two books that are mostly about him, In Cold Sweat and Ghosts and Ballyhoo. I’ve interviewed him several times. Requiem for a Heavyweight? Scott Thunes: Unghosted. Scott Thunes on the Ghosts and Ballyhoo Album. Although it’s blasphemy to say so, I listen only to the Zappa…
I met the real Jason Bourne
January 21, 2014
On May 3, 1986, I met the real Jason Bourne. It was on a ferry between Korea and Japan. I’d gone to Korea to extend my tourist visa so I could work another three months before having to find a work sponsor. Korea was a nightmare of inexplicable, shudder-inducing strangeness. It was the only nation…
Anatomy of the Mike Albee scam
January 21, 2014
Mike Albee and Lura Dold scammed me of $40,000 by pretending to be book publicists. Exposing their methods should help you avoid being defrauded. This might also force Mike and Lura to come up with a new approach. I don’t think they’ll be able to do it. Anatomy of the Mike Albee scam 1.You contacted…
The stinging pebbles of virtue
January 18, 2014
I just read an article about how the Saudi Mutawaa (religious police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) have banned women from using swing sets. The rationale is that the police are protecting the women from any men who might see them and get excited. Thus, Saudi culture not…
White privilege in action
January 16, 2014
I haven’t seen Lone Survivor, the movie about former US Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. But I read LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson’s review of it. In her review, Nicholson says the following. As the film portrays them, their attitudes to the incredibly complex War on Terror, fought hillside by bloody hillside in the Afghan…
