When I was a music journalist, I tried multiple times to interview bassist Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. His manager always turned me down, saying that Roger was too busy. The scuttlebutt was that he didn’t actually play the bass on the records, but who knows? A deeply unpleasant man, Waters had deeply unpleasant toadies…
Rich, trendy, vacuous, and ready to kill thousands.
June 1, 2014
Meet Ryan Chamberlain. He lives in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Ryan is a self-described political junkie, wordie, techie, fithead, poker player, and sports fan. And he’s now wanted by the FBI because he was laying the groundwork for a mass-casualty terrorist attack. Why are so many truly fortunate people ready to kill…
A sign that the apocalypse is imminent
April 15, 2014
We are doomed. The world is about to end. How do I know that the apocalypse is imminent? Because after fifty years, there’s finally a good Japanese pop band. It’s called Tricot, pronouced “tree-ko.” Our destruction won’t be pretty. Tricot may be over before it really begins. Although most English-speaking press say that it’s an…
Mom, I’m really pissed off at you
November 8, 2013
I’m very angry at you for killing yourself, Mom. Sad-angry, not I’ll-smash-your-face angry. So I’m going to do what you always said when you got upset: “I want to write a letter to somebody!” Here’s my letter to you. Dear CeeCee: You died on October 13, 2013, after nine months of refusing to eat. Since…
Orphans
October 18, 2013
Today it finally hit me that my brothers, my sister, and I are orphans. Eric still has his mother, but the rest of us are parentless. We’re all fifty or thereabouts, so it’s not like we’re now helpless and terrified. I find it incomprehensible more than anything else. Though Mom and Dad died for nine…
Mom’s favorite song
October 14, 2013
Mom was a music prodigy. She gave her first public piano recital at the age of four. She quit playing when she was sent to boarding school at five due to family problems. Someday I’ll write about that. Mom’s time in the boarding school led directly to her death eighty years later. Since there was…