Román Leão

Author: Román Leão

  • 17–16 to 60: On Genesis, Pt. 2

    09-10.07.2026

    Even as a child, I rejected the idea of original sin, instinctively knowing better than to take the rap for something I hadn’t done. I knew, even then, that I would probably do enough stupid things in life to legitimately feel guilty for, there was no reason to front load that weight. I would later come to believe that the way of the spiritual warrior would be to accept one’s failings and move past them; learning, and changing, not bemoaning.

    The creator we meet in the Old Testament is, by admission, a jealous and vengeful god, a god that needs a nap, Sunday apparently not having been enough. Upon rereading Genesis recently, I recognized the whole Tree of Knowledge scene as what is most definitely was: a total set-up. As a former high school teacher, if there was something I did not want my students to mess with, or something that I thought might distract from the day’s lesson, I simply would not have it sitting in the middle of the classroom, unless it happened to be the lesson.

    What was it that angered Yahweh so much to see what He/She/Them surely knew was going to happen play out? Was it the fact that, as we were created in the image of the godhead, the creator recognized one of His/Her/Their own tendencies reflected back? Regardless, it all seems a little petty for an entity that just created the universe. Could it have actually been the bittersweet anger of a parent that knows their child must defy them at some point to grow beyond the nest? It seems like only yesterday the kids were a pile of dust.

    Can we really proscribe human frailty and psychologically-driven peccadillos to an all-being? I think we have to. That would certainly be part of being “all.” Of course there would be countless unrecognizable motivations that color a creator’s actions. God moves in a mysterious way, indeed.

    Another thing that stood out was that Adam was a straight-up snitch. When Yahweh comes walking down the garden path, Ad-Rock doesn’t hesitate for a second to throw his partner—and not unimportantly, the only other person to talk to in all of creation—under the bus. Could this be read as humankind’s sublimation of the corporeal in deference of the spiritual? Maybe. It could be that Adam had no real father figure to tell him not to be a tout. But I digress.

    In Genesis, our man Adam actually comes off as a little dim. It is Eve who has a healthy curiosity and nascent agency, and, to be fair, FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out) hadn’t been invented yet… whoomp, there it is!

    As far as getting kicked out of the garden, our whole concept of a garden is based on the environments that we have known, only not degraded. I would argue that the garden is all around us, and the sooner we start acting like it and treat it with due respect, the better off we—and the creatures we are supposed to be taking care of—will be.

  • 23–18 to 60: On Myth

    03–08.07.2026

    This Fourth of July marked one year since I took the Stars and Stripes down from the front of the house and put it away. The myths that had sustained my faith in our country’s leadership—which, to be fair, had been on shaky ground for some time—were proving not up to the challenge of thwarting the rise of out-and-out fascism.

    The heartbreak that I felt last year as I folded up the flag was supplanted by a low-key depression, mitigated somewhat by getting my hands dirty in the backyard garden and inventing my new favorite cocktail: The Red-headed Stranger (1 oz rye whiskey, 1 oz Willie’s Remedy+ THC Social Tonic, and ginger ale over crushed ice).

    Turning on the news for a moment to see a phalanx of Patriot Front yahoos marching in the streets of Washington DC only redoubled my resolve to sit this one out and spend some time thinking about what really matters.

    In his 1988 book The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell wrote, “Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words.”

    I started thinking about the myths that had formed the basis of my own operating system, the code, for lack of a better metaphor, upon which my own reactions and functions relied. Were they flawed as well? As the great American Harry Belafonte sang, “House built on a weak foundation will not stand, oh, no.”

    I was raised in one of the many Portuguese communities in the Bay Area of Northern California, most families having immigrated from the Azores. An important tradition they brought with them was the celebration of the Festa do Divino Espírito Santo, or Holy Ghost Festa. Every Sunday after Easter, you can be sure that some town in California is spending a week sprucing up the hall, cooking up enough soupas to feed hundreds, and getting ready for a big procession to the church.

    I think the one story that helped shape my outlook as a young impressionable seeker, one not found in the Bible, the Torah, the Upanishads, or the Jack Kirby multiverse, was St. Isabella’s miracle of the roses. Isabella was the queen of Portugal in the late 1300s and early 1400s, and was well known for her kindness and generosity (apparently to the point of caring for her husband’s bonus children from other women).

    As the story goes, Queen Isabella was feeding the poor on the down low, often hiding bread in her cloak and taking it out to the hungry and destitute. Her husband, King Denis, considered her charity a waste and thought the peasants should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Sound familiar?

    One day he caught her in the garden going out the backdoor with another load of bread and demanded to know what she had under her cloak. Isabella entreated the Holy Spirit and when she opened her garment, roses cascaded out onto the ground. The festas celebrate her compassion, as well as the divine intervention, by freely feeding anyone who wants to be fed.

    That is a story I can get behind, to me it says, take care of those that need it, no matter the cost. I’m afraid that our country, by and large, has lost its way where this sort of altruism is concerned. Between this administration defunding USAID, and cutting supplementary food assistance to the bone, millions of people who could use a bit of purloined bread are not going to get it.

    To this can only I say, “Foda-se o rei!”

  • 26–24 to 60: On Genesis, Pt. 1

    30.06–02.07.2026

    As I have been blessed with what could only be called a spotty memory (perhaps a learned coping mechanism, but I don’t really remember, so I guess it works). As I result, I can’t recall any of what my years of Sunday school and catechism actually taught. Over the years, this has led be to explore my own philosophical studies, which gradually wound their way back around to the books of the Bible.

    What struck me upon revisiting Genesis about 10 years ago, was how little of it has seeped into the general zeitgeist. I am pretty sure I would have been fascinated with the mention of a race of giants, the product of forbidden union between humans and angels. Hold on, could there have been allusions to Bigfoot in the Bible? I’ll make sure and circle back on that.

    When I wrote my second novel, Burn Your Starry Crown, I envisioned the creator as a distant CEO, the head of a Byzantine organization that hasn’t been seen around in years, but everyone fears could be back at any time. Whenever angels, members of the Upstairs Agency, referred to their chief, they used the term He/She/Them, a term I meant to indicate universal totality as well as poke a little fun at the pronoun culture wars that were raging at the time.

    The first thing that struck me upon rereading Genesis, was as God was first creating humankind in Genesis 1:26, it was written as, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” From the perspective of the second decade of the second millennium this seems to denote an inherent plurality in the creator, which to me makes perfect sense. He/She/Them surely embodied the original encompassing spirit, the OG, that Walt Whitman much later envisioned when he wrote in Leaves of Grass, “And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.”

    However, as anyone can tell you, it is no fun at all to hang out with people exactly like yourself. (Do not get me started on the white supremacists.) There is nothing like a living mirror to point out the things in your own personality that drive you crazy. As the creator must, by definition, embody every conceivable notion or state, can fallibility be off the list? Of course not. It is rude to think so.

    Fortunately, He/She/They quickly sees the remedy to what could have ended up as humankind’s eternal insufferability, at least from a godhead’s perspective; split up the prototype, it would certainly be more entertaining. And so we are, for better or worse.

  • 32–27 to 60: Back to the Holler

    24–29.06.2026

    Last weekend Biscuit, the missus, and I drove back to the close-knit Fairfax neighborhood that had sustained us through some pretty heavy changes from the mid-oughts through to the edge of lockdown, with caring, understanding, and a healthy dollop of humor.

    The block-long American sycamore-lined street had once been the end of the line for those escaping the chill of a San Francisco summer by rail. An electric train once ran from Sausalito to a turnaround at the end of our block. Travelers bound west to Cazadero could then jump on a steam train that entered the pastoral world of West Marin through a tunnel at White’s Hill.

    The completion of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, along with investment in highway infrastructure rang the death knell for trains in Marin, leaving a short street of vacation bungalows built in the 1920s available for year-round suburban inhabitancy. At least that’s how I imagined it went down, all the better to explain the lack of any insulation against the very real rainy season in the Mt. Tamalpais watershed.

    We had been introduced to the pocket neighborhood by a coworker at a guitar magazine in San Rafael who had recently become dis-enamored by the semi-exposure to the winter cold and damp a non-renovated summer bungalow provided. The missus and I had just endured the opposite problem, as our second-story, south-facing apartment on Sir Francis Drake had become an unlivable human terrarium during an unprecedented 11-day heatwave in which the temperature never dropped below 100 degrees. A casual invitation to come down and join a block party in the shady glen across the way had become a matter of survival as we staggered down into the relative cool of the holler.

    I remember sitting on a lawn chair in the middle of the blocked-off street, enjoying a frosty one, when one of my new acquaintances asked, “Where did your wife go?” An extensive, village-wide search later, I found her sprawled out on the grass under the downtown redwoods, crazy from the heat. That was how we met the people who would become some of our best friends and support community for the next decade and change.

    What brought us back on Saturday, was a last chance to visit in situ with Donna and Shirley, the undisputed mavens of Marin Road who are decamping for a place in Oregon. Shirley, an expert gardener, had turned their lot-sized yard into a garden paradise over the years, one that we were lucky to end up living next to. Donna’s main love is in the kitchen—although she’ll tell you it’s not—raising vegan cuisine to a delicious art form in the interim.

    Donna, the older of the couple, has a quiet feistiness possibly born from sticking up for her sexuality in a time, even in the Bay Area, where one could get in big trouble just dancing with the same gender. Shirley, a decade younger, enjoyed the social progress made in the interim and brooked no shit from anyone that would dare to comment on any choices she may or may not have made.

    Their story is not mine to tell, but Goddamn if we didn’t have some fun, whether it was strumming guitar and sipping tequila around their fire pit, slinging tamales at roller derbies, or trekking out to their place in Idaho (along with half the neighborhood) to witness a total solar eclipse. I love them both madly and already miss them terribly.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: A Second Chance [ficção]

    UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    The first thing Lucious Cole became aware of was a ring of soft light behind his eyelids. Was this heaven? he wondered, slowly piecing together the chaotic events of his final night on Earth. The last thing he remembered was standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and taking off the paint-spattered coveralls his kidnappers had made him wear… now, that’s not quite right, is it? his inner voice chastised. Cole was so sick and tired of that voice. It was a big part of why he had stepped into the breaking waves off Ocean Beach.

    Breaking waves, he chuckled to himself in spite of everything. He had wanted to be broken, and yet, here he was, seemingly whole and, well, here. Where the hell is here? Cole slowly opened his eyes and found himself staring into a round fluorescent light fixture protected by a heavy wire mesh.

    The loud buzzing from the light’s ballast and the attendant old electronics aroma of hot piss on tar was the only discernible sound and smell. Nope, not heaven, he surmised. A quick look around the white-painted cinder block room only confirmed that thought. Great, hell looks just like the London Traffic Area Office on Black Prince Road, Cole surrendered. I should have known.

    Apparently, there was a door to this particular circle of hell, nondescript enough so that he hadn’t noticed it until it opened. An average-sized noirette in an ultra-flammable pantsuit stepped into the room carrying a tray with a God’s-honest English fry-up on it. Cole realized that he was starving.

    “Good morning, Mr. Cole,” the woman he could only guess was the Devil’s waitress said.

    “Is it, now, love?”

    “Is it morning? I can assure you it very much is, Lucious. May I call you Lucious?” The woman put the tray down in front of him.

    “If you might scare up a cup of tea, love,” Cole began to salivate,“you may call me whatever you like.”

    “I believe the kettle is already on the boil. Is PG Tips, all right?”

    “Is this a trick?”

    “It’s not a trick, Lucious,” the woman laughed. “It’s actually your lucky day.”

    It was Cole’s turn to laugh as he could not fathom how waking up in a cinder block purgatory was lucky in any capacity.

    “I am in a position to give you what you want,” the woman purred.
    “A cup of tea, then?”

    “Right, right, I’ll be right back. Have your breakfast and then we’ll talk.”

    Cole watched the pantsuit walk back across the room, appraising the woman’s ass moving beneath the melon-colored rayon before refocusing on his situation. He had made more than enough Faustian bargains in his short lifetime to know that he was on the precipice of making a really stupid decision. There aren’t a lot of cards to play here, he silently bemoaned as he crept up to the door and found it locked tight.

    “Lucious!” the woman played at being startled upon finding him at the doorway as she brought in the tea. Cole was not entirely convinced, but he was glad to have the tea, regardless. “A dollop of milk, no sugar, just the way you like it.”

    Cole sniffed the cup, trying to discern any nefarious adjuncts, but realized that it didn’t really matter either way. “You do seem to know a lot about me, disturbingly so, but I don’t even know what to call you, love.”

    “Carol.”

    “Carol?” Cole snorted. “The devil’s minion goes by, ‘Carol?’ You know what, that is almost fitting. Nice gear, by the way. I see ol’ Scratch likes you to keep fit.”

    It was the woman’s turn to snort. “I was warned about your charm, Lucious Cole.”

    As soon as Cole brought the first forkful of baked beans to his mouth he became ravenous. When he cut into a Lincolnshire banger, the smell of fresh sage that emanated nearly overwhelmed him. Agent Davidson watched her charge wipe the tray clean before speaking any further.

    “Can I get you anything else, Lucious?”

    Cole wiped his mouth with the proffered linen napkin, taking a moment to properly phrase his question. “Just what is it that you believe I want?” he finally asked, referring to the woman’s earlier gambit.

    “Why, Louie… may I call you Louie?”

    “No, you may not, Carol.”

    “Lucious, then,” Davidson capitulated. You would like nothing more than another chance. I am in a position to grant you exactly that.”

    “What does that make you, my fairy fucking godmother?” Cole questioned, taking a long draught of the tea and suddenly pining for a cigarette.

    “Something like that,” Davidson admitted as she produced a pack of Player’s Navy Cut, unbidden. “I know that you are tired of everything related to being Lucious Cole. Tired enough to walk into the Pacific Ocean like an idiot. You are lucky I passed by.”

    “Why do I get the idea that wasn’t exactly a coincidence?” Against his better judgement, Cole accepted a cigarette and leaned in for a light. There was something about the ritual that signaled a certain level of capitulation that the breakfast hadn’t.

    “You aren’t the only one that has seen the future,” Davidson explained.

    “I see,” Cole took a long pull and pondered the implications of the statement.

    “I know you do, and I know what a burden it can be. If Lucious Cole is so hot to disappear, maybe I can help him step aside so you can get on with your life… or a life at any rate.

    “And exactly how do you plan on doing that?”

    “Oh, you know… heavy drugs, mind control, all the fun stuff. We can start right away if you want.”

    For longer than he liked to admit, Cole’s fervent wish had been for the chance to just start over, and here it was being offered on a plate. He was rightfully wary of the woman’s motivations, but it was bound to be better than ending up shark food. He nodded his assent.

    “This might hurt a bit,” Davidson warned, a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Or maybe quite a lot, I’m really not sure. But won’t it be fun to find out?”

  • 37–33 to 60: On Faith

    19–23.06.2026

    In accordance with the wishes of my father—whose own father was a Mason and a virulent anti-Catholic—I was raised in the Roman church. I went to mass every Sunday with my grandmother and sister while my mom, a convert, sang in the folk choir; this was the ’70s after all.

    In addition to the weekly service, I attended catechism once a week as soon as I was of age. The only thing I remember about it was the day we were given a sheet of paper and asked to draw what we thought God looked like. Most of my classmates proceeded in drafting the usual old white guy with the flowing beard, but I, not being savvy enough to see where this was going, drew a psychedelic mandala, incorporating ersatz Native American iconography mostly gleaned from National Geographic and Eagles album covers. Needless to say, this was not what the nuns were looking for, and so the first rift in my relationship with Organized Religion was formed.

    I did continue on, going through the rituals of First Communion and Confirmation before hanging it up. This would have been right before the first major child molestation scandals hit in the mid-’80, continuing on through the new century, and effectively putting a pin in my faith where the Church was concerned.

    This is not to say that my belief in a higher power ever wavered. Experimenting with psychedelics throughout the ’80s only strengthened my conviction that there is a force for good that runs through it all (and just maybe Jerry Garcia’s guitar solos had something to do with it).

    This is a good place to mention my grandfather on my mother’s side, a polymath if there ever was one. Born in Hinton, West Virginia, he had an insatiable appetite for learning, devouring everything from Shakespeare to Crowley, from astral projection to, in his later years, calculus (which, in retrospect, doesn’t really seem the kind of thing one can learn on your own). When I was old enough, I borrowed books on Castaneda and mushroom cults from his extensive library, the glorious result of a bibliomania that appears to be hereditary, and probably fatal.

    It was the late ’80s when I found myself taking a Comparative Religion class in college. Our assignment was to attend three separate services in religious organizations other than the one we may have been exposed to. No pun intended. It was then that I learned that my grandfather had studied Hebrew so that he might read the Kabbala in its original language, as one does as an expatriated Appalachian academic.

    He had actually worked with a local rabbi on the project and called him up to ask if he and I might visit his synagogue together. We arrived at the evening service and were lent a pair of yarmulkes to show proper respect; I would say, “to blend in,” but that was not going to happen. Unbeknownst to us goyim stumbling through reading from the back of the siddur, or prayer book, we had arrived on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when the Nazis rampaged throughout Germany, destroying as much of the Jewish communities as they could.

    One by one, survivors of the pogrom, and its horrific aftermath, stood to bear witness to what they experienced and endured. I felt as if each speaker was talking to me, making sure that I understood where that sort of ideology could lead if left unchecked.

    Finally, the rabbi stood and announced that there was a special opportunity that night. As the synagogue was new, they had written back to Eastern Europe for a torah. He explained that, as the Germans advanced toward the Soviet Union, leveling communities and places of worship as they went, they collected the typical silver ornamentation and velvet wrappings that the ancient scrolls usually wore, and tossed the naked torahs into a warehouse to be used in a “museum to a dead race” to be built later.

    The rabbi announced that this would be a rare chance to actually touch an 800-year-old scroll, as the mantle, or covering, did not reach to the bottom of the parchment. My grandfather and I watched as the object was carried down the aisle and the faithful touched it with total reverence. When they got to our pew, I deferred at first, feeling that—as an outside visitor—it was a step too far. I soon realized that the men who carried the scroll were not going anywhere and they redoubled the offer, saying that it was fine.

    As soon as I touched the edge of the parchment, I felt what I can only describe as a spiritual shock. The men just nodded like, “yea, this happens all the time,” and moved on to the next pew. In later years I learned about yogic awakening and the movement of Kundalini energy up through the chakras to the Crown chakra representing a connection to the divine. My grandfather’s Kabbala study had taught him about the Hitlahavut, or “catching on fire,” an intense burst of ecstatic spiritual passion. I’m not sure that’s what I experienced, but it was something.

    Itzhak Bentov, a Czech-born Israeli-American scientist, inventor, and mystic, wrote about how consciousness itself is an all-encompassing energy field and is responsible for creating our physical reality. A certain place or an object can amass psychic power and significance through protracted attention (I can only imagine the charge that an eight-century-old Pentateuch belonging to a community that had been through so much grief might hold).

    In quantum mechanics, as much as I understand it, this is called the Observer Effect. At the subatomic level, particles exist in superposition, or waves of probability. As soon as they are observed, the wave collapses, causing the particle to exist in a single state.

    Is faith a mechanism to create reality? Or are we the outcome of an outside observer? This bears further thought, but it’s late and I must sleep. Perchance to dream a better world.

  • 40–38 to 60: History Rhymes

    16–18.06.2026

    French president Emmanuel Macron dragged TFG* by the good ear to the Palace of Versailles to sign an Agreement to Accede, an Acquiescence, if you will, to bring a stop (a pause? a lacuna? a smoke break?) to open hostilities in the Persian Gulf that have pretty much fucked the economies of the entire planet sideways, killed thousands of innocents and less sos, and ensured that no conscious nation will never trust the United States again. I, for one, am very tired of winning.

    I am 100% certain that the import of the historical location was lost on our guy, even when he managed to keep his eyes open. Not much more than a century ago, a humbled Germany was dragged into the same room to sign the Treaty of Versailles that brought the first world war to an end and set the pot on high simmer in preparation for the next.

    Perhaps not being the alpha for a while will be good for us. America has always seen itself as the scrappy underdog, even while wearing the fat suit of empire. We could do worse than lose a few pounds. What we need to keep an eye on, however, will be those that take this international humiliation personally.

    We should look to the German Weimar Republic of the 1920s and 30s for a cautionary tale. Why did the postwar democratic government of Germany fail? It couldn’t have been because everyone was too busy learning Bob Fosse chair routines, could it?

    I seem to recall that rampant inflation was one reason. My German-American grandmother told me stories of citizens pushing wheelbarrows of reichmarks to go buy bread. That may have been hyperbolic—I should Google it—but regardless, the pillars of civility are already groaning under economic strain in this country.

    If people start falling through the massive holes that this administration ripped in the social safety net, the masses are going to start looking for a scapegoat. Never mind the extrajudicial police force already roaming the streets, looking for… who are we rounding up this week? Is it you? Is it me? Oh fuck, it is me, and probably you, as well.

    TFG signed national security directive NSPM-7 back in September, calling out “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” “anti-capitalist,” and “anti-fascist” views as indicators of domestic terrorism. On any given day, I fall under one, probably two, of those categories. Three on a bad day. The ACLU slapped back, rightly stating that, “Nonprofits, their donors, and activists striving for a more equal, just, and fair country and world are core components of American civil society.”

    On Tuesday, ICE arrested 15 people in Minneapolis on spurious charges of “domestic terrorism,” stemming from their involvement in “Antifa-related” activities, while yesterday the White House posted an article on whitehouse.gov titled, “Trump Administration Delivers Another Crushing Blow to Antifa Terrorist Network.”

    I’m going to say this once because I’m pissed that it even bears repeating at this point: Antifa means Anti-Fascist. It is an ideology—one that we, as Americans, should be in line with—not an organization. Seriously, if you are pulling people off the street for being anti-fascist, what does that make you?

    According to my limited, but curious, knowledge of German history, the Weimar Republic was beginning to make a go of it until the Great Depression came along and their economy, along with everyone else’s, screwed the pooch. That’s when the Hugo Boss outfits came out of the closet, so to speak.

    I would be surprised if the Democrats don’t take both houses in the November midterms, followed by the White House in 2028, but then what? Many of our former allies, as well as all of our adversaries, are tired of our shit. All it will take is one good economic downturn, and the blackshirts will be out in force, looking for someone to blame.

    Make no mistake, we’re in a tight spot, but is it too late to double down on our own humanity? I believe it was Wilbert Harrison who sang, way back in 1969, “Together we will stand divided we’ll fall / Come on now people, let’s get on the ball / And work together, come on, come on, let’s work together, now, now people / Say now together we will stand, every boy, girl, woman, and man.”

    I couldn’t put it any better than that.

    *This Fucking Guy

  • 44–41 to 60: America Jumps the Shark

    12–15.06.2026

    The country was one year past its 200th birthday in 1977. Our living room televisions, when the adults let us near them, had all of three channels, one for each existing network. Every Tuesday night, however, the dial was set on ABC to pay deference to the unifying paragon of cool for all 11 year olds: Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli from the sitcom Happy Days.

    Producer Garry Marshall had tapped into a nascent nostalgia for a bygone era that, in the middle of rampant inflation and disastrous foreign entanglements, was quickly receding in the rearview mirror. Unlike CBS’s boundary-pushing programs such as All in the Family, and it’s spin-off, The Jeffersons, or even NBC’s Sanford and Son, the trials and travails of Milwaukee’s Cunningham family was pure escapism, but even dewy-eyed fantasy has its limits.

    The three-part episode that opened the show’s fifth season found the usual suspects in Hollywood where, for some fucking reason, Fonzie had to jump over a live shark in waterskis (To be clear, the Fonz wore waterskis, not the shark, but would that be any less ridiculous?).

    The episode become synonymous for a point when, according to Wikipedia, “a creative work or entity has evolved and reached a point in which it has exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with or an extreme exaggeration (caricature) of its original theme or purpose.” Which brings us to yesterday.

    For three weeks now, visitors to the nation’s capital were treated to the erection of a 92-foot-tall, 600-ton steel canopy called, “The Claw,” on the White House South Lawn. Originally built by a Belgian stage company for music festivals in Europe, the massive structure was retrofitted with red, white, and blue and shipped across the ocean for “UFC Freedom 250,” an event ostensibly created to celebrate the country’s semiquincentennial, but held on TFG’s* 80th birthday in his backyard, so… yea.

    In addition to the planned mixed martial arts fights, the event featured stunt rider Travis Pastrana performing a backflip over the octagon on a dirt bike. Seriously, did no one think to bring a shark? And, nothing says “Freedom!” like Bud Lite and Monster Energy Drink logos flying high over greased up dudes beating the shit out of each other. Personally, I don’t follow MMA, but I’m not going to kink-shame anyone who enjoys the sport. I do have to say, however, that as a writer of speculative fiction, this timeline is starting to piss me off.

    Of course, no Whitetrashpalooza is complete without blatant racism and misogyny. After puking on himself during weigh-in, Josh Hokum went on to win his heavyweight bout, after which, apropos to nothing, he claimed, “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

    I don’t often claim to speak for America, but in this instance allow me to say what I should not have to fucking say, “You are incorrect, you rotten piece of shit.”

    Arthur Fonzarelli made his jump over the shark, Happy Days played out another six seasons, and Henry Winkler, the actor who played The Fonz went on to become a cherished American icon. In stark contrast, this weekend the country landed squarely on its own dick. It remains to be seen if we are picked up for another season.

    *This Fucking Guy

  • 47–45 to 60: When the Saints Come Marching In

    09–11.06.2026

    Taking a break from the news and the eternal doomscroll really does a mind and body good. If it wasn’t for the mysterious bug that had cut down myself and my co-workers like summer wheat, I would have had a better chance to feel rejuvenated by our road trip. At least being stuck in low gear helped ensure that I wasn’t running from pillar to post with the missus like a rainforest version of The Amazing Race. I love her to death, but the woman doesn’t not know how to sit still.

    One thing I did have time for, and have been meaning to do for a long time, was to sign up for a course with ULC, the “non-denominational religious organization,” that ordained me back in the ’90s. All of the recent talk about Christian Nationalism, and the Dominionism preached by our Secretary of Defense’s pastor Doug Wilson, has found my thoughts toward faith and the teachings of Jesus become better defined in my mind. Maybe that’s these clowns’ purpose all along, but I am positive that they don’t think it is.

    Rushing down the Embarcadero to catch my boat home one evening a couple of months ago, I was confronted by a young, overeager evangelical who fell in quickstep with me, asking if I was a Christian. I was stopped in my tracks by the question, which is not conducive to making the ferry. I had to admit, that, “No, I do not consider myself a “Christian.” He proceeded to tell me that Christ died for my sins, and the usual litany of, well… litany.

    I had to stop him, and said, “Hold on, don’t get me wrong, I dig the rabbi. I try to follow his advice on the daily. It is these people that call themselves Christians and do not listen to a single thing the dude said that piss me off.”

    My candor stopped the young man, as suddenly as his question had stooped me. I continued on my desperate attempt to catch the ferry, but upon settling in my seat, I was kind of surprised by my own declaration. I was raised Catholic, your grandma’s weird, old country version of Christianity, which, don’t get me wrong, is one of the things I think it has going for it. I always loved the statues and the pageantry, which I strangely feel protective toward all of a sudden.

    Later that week, my sister and I were at a planning meeting at the Portuguese Hall, an old school immigrant society function if there ever was. If it wasn’t for half of the group Zooming in from parts unknown, it could have been a scene from 50 or 100 years ago. After bimonthly business was finished, the conversation drifted to whatever crazy thing the administration had said or done that day. As a joke, I asked, “What are we going to do when they make carrying the flag of Portugal in our procession illegal?” Ha ha.

    Wilson has called for one better. In his vision of a Christian nation, he would outlaw “public displays of idolatry,” meaning the very Catholic statues and parades that fascinated me as a youngster. This is the same pastor that was invited to preach at Hegseth’s Pentagon.

    One of the reasons the founders of this nation inserted an Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was to avoid the type of religious infighting that tore Europe apart for generations. We now have a fundamentalist preacher, close to the levers of power, champing at the bit to start some shit.

    At the same time, TFG* has been beefing with the first American pope for doing what popes are supposed to do, i.e., advocating for the downtrodden, the immigrant, the peace makers. I admit that it had been years since I really paid much attention to what the various popes were up to, now all of a sudden, I’m seriously rooting for Chicago’s own Leo XIV.

    We unlikely theologians have got to stick together.

    *This Fucking Guy

  • 51–48 to 60: Wagons North; or, No Sleep ’til Deadline

    05–08.06.2026

    This weekend, the missus and I took off up the 101 for some much-needed change of scenery, as well as a break from the news. For a couple of years now, when we head up to the redwoods, we have been staying north of our old Arcata stomping grounds in a campground with cabins in Trinidad.

    We met in college in the early ’90s, when Humboldt was still a state school, and it took me years to get her to want to go back and visit. Now that she is able to see the good aspects of the area—the forest, the rivers, the ocean, the slower pace—she takes joy in planning the trips and counting down the days.

    It was just short of a miracle that we crossed paths back in the day at all. I was not supposed to be admitted to the college when I was, and if I had made a different split-moment decision, things could have been very different.

    I had become the editor-in-chief of our community college paper the semester we won best-in-state and was champing at the bit to transfer to a four-year to finish off my degree. I just happened to run into Howard Seeman, the head of HSU’s newspaper program, at a journalism conference in Sacramento. He asked if I had ever considered transferring to Humboldt, and I admitted that I had not. I had seen their paper, The Lumberjack, in passing at our office, and knew vaguely where the school was located from my many fishing trips on the Klamath River.

    The California Legislature, as is their wont, had fucked the budget sideways, and all state colleges were closed to further admissions as a result. Howard said he would see what he could do and I applied, not expecting to hear anything at least until the impasse was broken. I was getting ready to go to work at Sears one Friday morning when I got a call from Admissions telling me that I had been accepted.

    Thinking it would be for the following semester, and I would have plenty of time to disentangle myself from my established life, I said, “Great! When does it start?” When the admissions woman said, “Monday,” it was with no sense of irony or dramatic flourish. When I silently counted the social excisions I would have to perform, tout de suite, she broke in with, “Do you want to go, or not?”

    I was still in a daze when I walking into the room where the operators sat. The store had its fill of management, but in reality, it was these two women that held the keys to the kingdom. If you wanted anyone or anything, it was these two that would make it happen. I stopped them in their paces when I announced, “Well, I quit.” They were delighted, however, when I told them the reason was I was going off to college, somewhat less so when I responded to their questions of when that might happen with, “Right now.”

    I do think that everyone should pack up everything that will fit in a vehicle and burn it all down at least once in their life. If for nothing else, it will give you a well-earned sense of fearlessness. A certain c’est la fuck it. Regardless, the 101 is long and dark, especially in the middle of winter, and many times I wondered if I had made the right decision.

    After crashing out at one of the sketchy hotels out on Giuntoli Lane, I made my way down to the college in the morning and met the first of what would be my newspaper family for the next couple of years. Fellow intrepid Lumberjack Jen Kinavey opened the door to Nelson Hall East and I stepped across the threshold to a new life.

    It’s crazy how many things could have gone another way, and maybe some of those timelines would have been fine, but I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. It helped make me the refined curmudgeon that I relish in being today.

    No sleep ’til deadline.

    30

  • 52 to 60: The Ghosts of ’80s Retail

    04.06.2026

    Yesterday was a strange day, crawling up and down ladders all day while working on installing the museum’s summer show was really bringing back memories of practically living on a fiberglass stairway to the stars back in the ’80s. As if summoned by my verticality, two blasts from my remote mallrat past contacted me to chat, quite out of the blue.

    Once I quit my teen-age restaurant job for the final time, I worked for Sears for the last bite of high school and all through community college. There was a gap in there between earning an AA degree and jumping into the journalistic deep end in which I thought I wanted to be an electrician and practiced electrocuting myself for the good of the company. That’s another series of painful yet humorous stories that I’ll save for another day.

    It is probably a time of one’s life where everything has added portent, but I still dream that I am working there from time to time. I never dream about the music store, the newspapers, the magazine, teaching high school (for good fucking reason, since that was a nightmare), or even the Exploratorium.

    It’s not that I was all that engaged with the work either, although I did learn a lot. I also met some great people, many of which I still speak with today. Truth be told, however, I was really hungover and/or high as fuck a good part of the time. That was really the only way to survive the late-period retail environment.

    For younger readers, Sears, in those days, was kind of like Amazon, except… a place. Instead of the internet, which wasn’t a thing, we had a printed catalog that got sent to your house that had everything you could possibly spend money on. I bought a Chevy small block rebuild kit and Moon-shaped hubcaps out of the Sears catalog.

    When Christmas rolled around, Sweet Jesus, a totally separate catalog showed up with all the good shit in it. Working the holidays was to navigate a mob scene not often seen out of hurricane relief news footage.

    I was working the Christmas Eve Eve that a small commuter plane completely undershot Concord’s Buchanan Field and crashed into the center of the mall, raining glass, burning plane bits, and melted tar down on Santa, his elves, and shoppers alike.

    I had just left the baseline madhouse and most likely was cranking Black Sabbath on the way home, trying to get into the holiday spirit, so did not hear the news until I was swept up into a house full of freaked-out relatives. To this day, upon entering any crowded building, I peep my exits, and look around for Santas. One “Ho…” and I’m out.

    I hear that our location is the last remaining store in all of California, which is crazy. I should go grab a ladder before it’s too late.

  • 53 to 60: Not Shit, Energy!

    03.06.2026

    Driving back home from the San Francisco Ferry yesterday, I passed my local gas station and the price per gallon had actually dropped from the $6.19 that it had topped out at in recent months— down to $5.99. I’m not complaining, but to me, it is just further proof that we are no longer tethered to any agreed definition of reality. Maybe we never were.

    More concerning, and talked about much less than the price of fuel, is the effect the closed Middle East shipping lanes is having, and will have, on America’s farmers. Who knew that so much fertilizer came from that part of the world, I mean, metaphorically, sure…

    One interesting byproduct of all this is learning that there are three basic types of fertilizers: phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen. Nitrogen fertilizers are primarily derived from cheap natural gas and the sulfur byproduct of oil and gas refining, two things the Middle East has in spades.* No wonder they are so explosive. The Oklahoma bombing kind of makes sense now. Not philosophically, mind you, but perhaps chemically. Maybe that was ammonia… damned if I’m going to Google it.

    Professor Rory Maguire at Virginia Tech was on the school’s Curious Conversations podcast talking about his role as extension specialist in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences as well as supervisor of the Soil Testing Laboratory. Maguire explains that our soils hold phosphorus and potassium very well, whereas nitrogen dissipates quickly and, depending on the crop, needs to be reapplied in order to maximize yields.

    Maguire points out that chicken shit is an excellent source of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, the problem is that there just isn’t enough of it.

    Perhaps someone can send him directions to Congress.

    *The nitrogen itself is derived from the air, which is 78% nitrogen, another thing I didn’t know.

  • 55–54 to 60: Rabbit, Rabbit

    01–02.06.2026

    Make no mistake, we’re in a tight spot. Moving into the twinned summer months of June and July, the country feels like it’s just waiting for the next shoe to drop. The war/not a war/war in the Persian Gulf limps along while the president said today that he “couldn’t care less” about Iran suspending peace negotiations.
    While the Strait of Hormuz remains strangled tight, TFG* cycles between saying the talks had become “very boring” and threatening to “blow them up to kingdom come” if the Iranians attempt to restart their uranium enrichment program.

    Man, it would be great if we had some sort of agreement that would allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency 24/7 access to pertinent sites and supply chains to give us the heads-up so we could make a learnèd decision before resorting to blowing shit up.

    Oh, that’s right, we did. TFG ripped it up and now he can’t be bothered to do his fucking job to negotiate another. Granted, Liberace-ing the entire White House (at least the parts you haven’t torn down) does take a lot out of a person. That and golf, those little white balls aren’t going to lose themselves.

    It almost seems as if he doesn’t want this mess to end, and why would he? He and the grifter class are making money hand-over-fist by gaming the oil futures market. Doesn’t anyone remember the 1982 Eddie Murphy movie, Trading Places?

    You tried to warn us, Eddie, and we just didn’t listen.

    *This Fucking Guy

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: A Last Meal, Perhaps [ficção]

    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA | 1971

    After dropping Rosenda off at the studio in West Hollywood, Shane continued south on the San Diego Freeway to Orange County where a community of Vietnamese immigrants had begun to coalesce. He hated driving anything other than his Lincoln and the Catalina handled like a boat. The car’s one saving grace was its 455 cubic-inch V8, although traffic on the 405 wasn’t going to let him put it through its paces. What’s the use of having a Quadrajet four-barrel in L.A.? he mused. I’d be lucky to feel those secondaries open up once at this rate.

    At least the odds were in his favor of getting to hit someone once he got where he was going. Chaperoning Rosenda was only part of his agenda while in Southern California, and truth-be-told, the woman could handle herself, physically losing the label’s number one cash cow, regardless.

    Lý Nhân, the woman who kept his hair from turning gray, in more ways than one, was another strong woman able to handle her business, come what may. Her younger brother, Trai, was another story all together. When in Southern California, Trai was known to frequent a Vietnamese restaurant in Garden Grove called Quán Cà Phê. Shane was asked to have a talk with him, and if he could treat himself to their special clay jar grilled chicken while he was there, so much the better. Bringing a wayward lamb back into the warm bosom of Jesus, so to speak, always made him hungry.

    The appearance of a tall, flaming red-haired Irishman didn’t raise a single eyebrow as he helped himself to a table where he could watch the door. A waitress brought him a glass of water and plopped a laminated menu down on the scarred Formica table in front of him.

    “Cho một ly cà phê nóng, làm ơn,” he said, asking for coffee. The fact that a strange American was able to order in Vietnamese almost got an eyebrow. Almost.

    Since his slow-roasted order could take up to 50 minutes to prepare, Shane settled in, downshifting into what he liked to think of as a slow idle. He was never a big reader, and was perfectly comfortable with his coffee and his thoughts. An hour later, Shane was one bite into his tender chicken and crispy charred broken rice, when the bell above the café’s front door betrayed Nhân’s arrival.

    “Dừng lại,” Shane commanded, noticing the look of fight or flight on Nhân’s face. “Just stop.”

    Nhân looked around the café for help but only seeing the impassive waitress, and knowing from experience that she had only the one gear, he sat down across the table from Shane.

    “Bear, what a nice surprise,” he opened the gambit with a platitude. “How’s my sister?”

    “You fucked up, Trai,” Bear stated, dipping a piece of chicken into a ramekin of Nam Jim Jaew, a spicy Thai chili sauce.

    “You don’t think I know that?” Nhân sighed. “How the hell did you find me?”

    “Plum.”

    “Goddamn, Quỷ da trắng! You must have something really going on in the sack to get my own sister to drop a dime.”

    “There’s no need to be vulgar, Trai. She is worried about you. She wants you to get this mess straightened out, before…”

    “Before what?” Nhân interrupted. “Before someone sends their goon after me? Too fucking late for that. Jesus.”

    “I’m not your enemy, Trai,” Shane switched to the small bowl of Nước Chấm, the house fish sauce. “I would like to see you put all this behind you as well.”

    “Would you? How altruistic of you.” Nhân gazed down at the feast laid out before the Irishman. “Do you mind if I order? A last meal, perhaps.”

    “Don’t be so dramatic,” Shane waved over the waitress who had been passively eavesdropping the entire time. “We aren’t there yet. But the people I work with are concerned that you leaving town was a signal that you aren’t all that interested in making this right.”

    “Where the fuck am I supposed to get a hundred grand, for Christ’s sake?”

    “Not my problem,” Shane said before turning to the waitress. “I am going to order for my friend. He’ll have the lemongrass pork chop with the broken rice, and, let’s see… the canh chua—the sweet and sour soup.”

    “Motherf… this is my hang! You have some nerve ordering for me in my hang. What do you know about canh chua?”

    “You make bad decisions, Trai,” Shane explained. “A man that forgets to make a heavy bet for heavy people can’t be trusted to choose what goes into his face.”

    “I’m not scared of you, you know,” Nhân said.

    “Good, I’m not looking for fear,” Shane explained, “I’m looking for respect. I don’t want you to be afraid of what might happen if you don’t make this right, I want you to know what will happen. I want you to stand on the solid rock of that and see a way out of this mess. Do we understand each other?”

    “Fuck.”

    “Yes! Fuck. Fuck is right. Fuck is good. Now that you’ve grasped the solemnity of the situation, fix it. You have one month.”

    “Fuck.”

    “That’s the spirit! Check, please.”

  • 57–56 to 60: The Last Days of May

    30–31.05.2026

    Every year at this time, I have to pull out the old Blue Öyster Cult records and celebrate. Then Came The Last Days of May is the easily the most haunting song on probably the eeriest rock album ever made. BÖC’s portrayal of a true-life trio of young men who were shot in a drug deal gone bad out in the Arizona desert presages Breaking Bad by three and a half decades. The cautionary tale is the set piece around which the rest of the songs on the band’s eponymously-named album revolve—like planets around a cold, dead star.

    The song chillingly relates the ride to pick up “the stuff,” as well as the anticipation the boys feel as they imagine spending the money they are about to make. Lead guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser paints a stark, yet bucolic scene—much like the band itself—heavy with understated menace.

    Sky’s bright, the traffic light / Now and then a truck
    And they hadn’t seen a cop around all day / (What luck)

    When performing my favorite version of the tune (so far) on 1975’s live album, On Your Feet or On Your Knees, Buck drops the bit in parenthesis, leading one to wonder what would have happened if a cop had been around. Of course, as soon as the driver gets far enough out of town, the car pulls over and the trio is shot and left for dead.

    It wasn’t until the car suddenly stopped / In the middle of a cold and barren plain
    And the other guy turned and spilled / Three boys blood, did they know a trap had been laid?

    I figure I must have been around 13 when I finally got around to buying the band’s first album. I had all ready memorized every note of 1978’s Some Enchanted Evening, and of course, 1976’s Agents of Fortune was an 8-track* that you had to have in the ’70s. It was the law. As beautifully odd and varied as that collection is, nothing prepared me for the rarefied atmosphere of the first three, what us fans refer to as the “black and white” albums.

    Forsaking any pictures of the band, 1972’s Blue Öyster Cult, and Tyranny and Mutation from the next year, featured stark graphic illustrations by a mysterious artist listed only as “Gawlik” which only added to the group’s mystique. Secret Treaties from ’74 did have a pencil drawing of some cagey cretins who had apparently got their hands on a Messerschmitt Me 262.

    Who knew where they got one of those planes nearly 20 years since the last one took to the air? If I had to guess, it was from the dude with the cape and the German Shepherds. Who shot the dogs as we see on the back cover, and why? Are they in Argentina? What the hell is going on here?

    Something about the stark, yet somehow still murky recording of the first few records fits the material so perfectly. Think of R.E.M.’s Murmur, if everything was easily decipherable, would it be half as fun? Something to think about as modern artists use Auto-Tune and AI to build perfect yet soulless music.

    It’s pretty incredible that the band that fired up my young imagination are still out there doing it. They may have lost some members along the way, but the oyster boys can still deliver (hear them chatter on the tide).

    This music always makes me think of the friends I’ve lost along the way and the great times we had listening to this uncanny band. I had always interpreted the last lines of The Last Days as one of the wounded boys making peace with joining his friends soon, and given Dharma’s propensity for lyrical fatalism that would find full flower with Don’t Fear the Reaper, I can’t be too far off.

    They’re OK the last days of May / I’ll be breathin’ dry air
    I’m leaving soon / The others are already there
    You wouldn’t be interested in coming along / Instead of staying here?
    It’s said the West is nice this time of year    …

    *Ask your grandparents

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Whenever I think back to those years, I just remember that without all that craziness, I probably never would have met my partner of almost 25 years. Don’t listen to him if he tries to tell you it was a case of Nightingale Syndrome that brought us together. He is such a bullshitter. It was just a broken toe for Christ’s sake.

    The truth is, I had noticed him before he dropped that sink on his foot. How could you miss him? He is tall for a Kānaka ʻŌiwi. At six foot, he was even taller than Charlie who tended to use his physicality to intimidate when he felt threatened. Ikaia never did that. He just had a vibe, still does, that projects compassionate authority.

    The only thing I hated was that stupid nickname he carried back from the war. Sticky. What the hell is that? I’m here to tell you, Ikaia was, is, and always will be smooth as a motherfucker. Amen.

  • 58 to 60: Not Dark Yet

    29.05.2026

    Paul McCartney just dropped a new collection of music that his fans are warmly receiving as a late-career masterpiece. The forever Beatle will turn 84 next month. Neil Young, the baby here at a mere 80-years-young, released a new live set with his latest band, The Chrome Hearts, today as well. Bob Dylan turned 85 last Sunday and is out on the Never-Ending Tour right now reportedly doing his most inspired playing in years. The fucking Rolling Stones, for God’s sake, have a new album coming out in July in time for Mick’s 83rd birthday, the same day as my 60th.

    I am sure that none of these artists imagined that they would still be at it this far down the road, but I am heartened by their ability to keep at it. There is something about playing music that truly feeds the soul. I was almost tempted to say “keeps you young,” but obviously that is not the case. It keeps you young at heart, perhaps, but youth itself isn’t what this is about. Now into their respective eighth decades, most of these artists look rode hard and put back wet, but that’s what gives them gravitas.

    That is a big reason that the video the Stones released for their lead single, In the Stars, is so dispiriting. In it, an AI-created ’70s-era Rolling Stones plays the song for a happy crowd of vintage clothing enthusiasts. It’s too bad because it’s not a bad song, but someone decided that the Rolling Stones looked too old to what… be rock stars? They helped invent that shit.

    The Stones have been at it a minute longer than I’ve been alive. I’ve grown up watching them go through their changes, and loving a good portion of it. I mean, I’m no longer dewy, and I’m just supposed to forget that, as far as I’m concerned, Keith and the boys have always been around? It’s disrespectful, and not in a cool, anti-establishment way.

    I hate to even think it, but once you start playing with this particular fire, you are opening yourself to the question, what else here is AI? Does the hit machine keep cranking along after our heroes can’t physically do it any more. If there was a market for it, I’m afraid that someone would make that Devil’s bargain. I think we have to be clear about where we stand as fans.

    Fuck AI. Long live rock and roll!

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ikaia Keala 1 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    You know, when I talked Charlie into helping me demo the hot springs resort, I wasn’t planning on hanging around his scene at all. I had plenty of… let’s say, other opportunities, spread throughout the county. It was on the last day of the big push to move salvage to the old ranch and I dropped an enameled cast iron sink on my foot. I was literally hopping mad, letting every curse word I picked up in the Army just fly. Not exactly the good vibes the group was looking for, but fuck it. That shit hurt.

    There I was, doing my wounded Tasmanian Devil routine, when up walks the sexiest chick I had ever seen. Long, blonde hair, built like a brick shit house. She says her name is Ronda and she is actually a nurse. I mean, what the hell is a hot nurse doing playing pioneer with Charlie and his crew in the woods? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she was!

    Ronda quickly diagnosed me with a broken toe and buddy-taped it to keep it stable. Charlie had a cooler full of beer and half-melted ice in the bird and she had me stick my foot in it (after taking out the beers, of course). That hurt like a motherfucker, but her bedside manner soon had me forgetting all about it.

    You never know with medics. Are they being nice because it’s their job? Are they just trying to distract you from how badly you fucked yourself up? I was definitely picking up on a vibe, and pretty soon, I just sort of forgot to go home.

    As far as I remember, we never did use that goddamned sink for anything.

  • 59 to 60: It Was Later Than I Thought

    28.05.2026

    I don’t know how I always end up sprinting for the ferry every morning, but I do. My boilerplate weekday morning includes rolling out of bed at 6 o’clock, making coffee and toast, feeding all the animals, and checking in on the downfall of civilization.

    Depending on my capacity for utter bullshit on any given day, when Dana gets up, I’ll switch over to the local news before getting in the shower and taking the dog for a walk. It would be easy, but ultimately unfair, to blame her for the sense of panic that always accompanies getting on the road just before 8. It is, however, an observable fact that the amount of sniffing Biscuit feels the need to accomplish is inversely related to the amount of time we have to do it.

    The one thing that made moving back to the old stomping grounds feasible is the ability to take the boat from Vallejo to San Francisco instead of having to drive. My time on the road is best summed up as a mad, 80-mile-an-hour dash to the terminal. It is a nice straight shot and wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for… people.

    People in no particular hurry. People that don’t wait until the last minute to leave the house. People with a misplaced respect for authority and outdated speed limits (thanks for nothin’, Nixon). Basically, people who can all kiss my ass.

    I suppose it is good to know that I can run if forced by circumstance to do so. I wasn’t exactly breathless when I discovered that my transit allotment had run dry and I had to buy a ticket for the ferry, but I must have appeared weathered enough to prompt the porter to look me over and ask, “senior?”

    OK, it’s not that far off, five years and 59 days is sure to go by like a shot, but, come on, man.

    I took the discount.

  • 60 to 60: The Ride

    27.05.2026 Welcome to a vain attempt to actually write everyday (apart from working on the new novel) in which I reflect on either the day’s batshit crazy events, random memories, or how it feels to be turning 60. Spoiler alert: It often, but not perpetually, hurts. So, I have that going for me. Which is nice.

    
My father’s favorite ride at the Anaheim Disneyland was Peter Pan’s Flight, the one where, once the family was buckled in, a disembodied Pan cheerfully exclaimed, “Come on, everybody! Here we go!” I don’t know if it brought back memories of visiting the new park with his father or if it was just an opportunity to escape the Southern California summer heat for a blessèd three minutes.

    The Flight opened when the park opened, back in 1955, when Dad would have been 12. The old-old man wound up buried in Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a stone’s throw from Walt, so there is a possibility that he may have taken little Louie to the Happiest Place on Earth before taking the final trip to Never Never Land himself by the end of the decade.

    Disney’s far-right leanings certainly jibes with what I know about the guy. Perhaps they knew each other from German-American Bund picnics out in La Crescenta’s Hindenburg Park (later, the site of California’s first Octoberfest in 1957).

    Whatever the reason, Pan’s exhortation entered the family lexicon early on. Whenever we were gathered together to go anywhere, the clarion call was sounded and God save anyone in the way.

    As I enter the final approach toward 60, I can’t think of any other rallying cry that might drive these old bones over the line, although I admit that I am finding it hard to muster a fraction o the Prince of Lost Boys’ brio. I’m afraid that today—at best—it sounds resigned yet resolute.

    Come on, everybody. Here we go.

  • Shit From an Old Notebook: My Hometown

    The 1970s were well established when I attended Mills Elementary School on the East Side of town—the other side of the tracks—that is if tracks had ever run down the middle of the quaint Main Street that effectively cleaved the town into West Side and other.

    Being the ’70s, we had a folk singer come in one day (It may have been required by law at the time), and in addition to all the ol’ chestnuts like Clementine, Rocky Top, and my personal favorite, Oh, Susanna, the woman—probably no more than a girl in retrospect—sang an original song about our town.

    Considering the set list up to that point had leaned heavily toward tunes from at least a century previous, to be face-to-knee with someone who actually wrote a song effectively blew our still-congealing eight-year-old minds. I can still remember the first few lines, as well as the melody of the tune, although all together we may have heard it twice. It went something like this:

    There’s a little town / On the map / Of Cal-if-orn-i-a-a-a-a [rhymes with say]
    And if you ask me / About this town / This is what I’ll say-a-a-a…

    I’ll spare you the details of what the song went on to list as the distinguishing attributes of our little town on the map, as if I could remember them. I am pretty sure it didn’t mention anything about rampant alcoholism, xenophobia, or a barely distinguishable sense that our best days as a town may, at that point, have been behind us.

    I’m dead certain it did say something about being the state capital for a hot minute back in the 1850s, as well as the flash point for the dissemination of the news about the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill (Our now bucolic main drag was once an adult playground of whorehouses and establishments exclusively dedicated to drinking and gambling, none of which leads to one keeping his mouth shut for very long), but that was all ancient history by the time we came around and as meaningless to us as the lyrics to Clementine.

    What the song should have mentioned, but I’m sure left out, was how great it was to be an eight-year-old and be able to explore the vaguely reclaimed post-industrial waterfront, mysterious alleyways, and open space that still surrounded our village at that time.

    It should have extolled the virtue of being able to ride your bike until the streetlights began to flicker to life without worrying that you were going to end up in someone’s basement “putting lotion on it’s skin,” the Zodiac Killer notwithstanding, of course.

    It could have sung the praises of the decent union jobs that still were out there, ensuring that a young family could get by with one working parent, and that there were enough stay-at-home moms to go around to keep most of us correct. It may have commented in passing upon a quickly-fading Johnsonian liberalism that would soon go the way of “Save the Whales” medallions, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t.

    Regardless, it did rock.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 4 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I’m not one to toot my own horn, but it was a good, damned thing that the boys had a legitimate nurse involved, or half of them would have died of tetanus just moving all the recycled crap they got from Ikaia. The first thing I did when I saw their tendency to bleed, was to make sure that they all were up on their vaccinations.

    When I was doing my clinicals, I saw a biker die of asphyxia after just trying to “walk it off” after a crash. It was pretty fucked up. You know the Joker in the Batman comics? It was like this guy got hit with the Joker toxin. The Clostridium tetani bacteria kills the nerves that tell muscles to relax, and the facial muscles end up contracting into the freakiest permanent grin. Nothing funny about that shit, that’s for sure.

    At first, I had planned on going back to the City after the heat died down. I had just finished getting my ADN, and had planned to go on to get my bachelor’s, but, you know, life ended up showing me where I belonged. Some of the guys that started the project had military experience, but the vast majority of people moving into Girassol were literal babes in the woods. I couldn’t just leave them out there to die, now could I?

    Plus, Ikaia was a fox.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 3 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I imagine that you’ve talked to the boys already and heard all their cute, mystical, bullshit. I’ll admit that sort of thinking was in the air back then—the feeling of everything clicking into place. One thing about living in a completely chaotic society is that when something goes right, it does take on an inordinate significance. Don’t get me wrong, when the world is on fire, a glass of water is a goddamn miracle.

    I’ve never been a predestinarian, though. Putting an alternative community together is a lot of work if you want it to last longer than a summer. It’s a good thing they had some smart women to tell them what to do.

    I’m kidding, of course.

    Sort of.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 2 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I’m sure that everyone has their “I met Zongo when” story. I don’t think that people should become celebrities for being stupid enough to get duped by the CIA, but that’s just me. It’s not his fault, I mean Zongo’s never been the brightest star in the firmament.

    He was still going by “Fred” when he used to come into the club now and again. Broadway was a different scene back then. It’s pretty seedy now, but back in the day, a night on the town felt more “up scale,” cosmopolitan, even. Even us dancers felt like we were on the leading edge of a progressive wave. Believe it or not, a lot of us were early feminists. What can I say? The job paid better than waiting tables, and if some drunk decided to get grabby, the bouncers were more than ready to toss them back out on the street.

    That’s actually what led to my early retirement. One of Z’s made buddies was getting too handsy with another one of the dancers and a new bouncer that didn’t fully appreciate the North Beach ecosystem stepped up to set him straight.

    I was in the alley, smoking a pre-performance enhancer when the back door to the kitchen slammed open and three goons dragged the poor guy out and commenced to test the limits of his medical insurance.

    When they were finished, I could swear that one of them looked over at me and said, “You didn’t see nothin’,” but maybe I saw that in a movie, it all runs together now. I did what I could for him, but when the cops came into the club the next night asking questions, I figured that it hadn’t done much good. It was right around then that I ran into Zongo and he told me that he was starting this new scene up the coast. I figured that it just might be the opportunity I needed to lay low for a while.

    Talk about “out of the frying pan, into the bonfire.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Ronda Schermerhorn 1 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    It’s ScherMERhorn, just like it sounds. Dutch, actually. My father always claimed that we could trace our family roots back to the people that settled New Amsterdam. I don’t know about that, though. All I can tell you is that sweet, sweet tulip money was all spent by the time I showed up.

    Yea, it’s crazy, when you start telling stories about “back in the day,” it often sounds like there was only a dozen people in the City. Obviously, that wasn’t the case, but for some reason, I happened to be smack in the middle of this story. Just lucky, I guess.

    I was living with a couple of friends in this tiny flat in the Mission. Karoline and I knew each other from school. She ended up playing quite the provocateur later on. I was putting myself through the nursing program by dancing in the clubs over on Broadway. I don’t remember what she was studying, business, probably. Monkey business, it turned out.

    I actually got her the job over at the record company. Well, introduced her, at least. The guy that ran that mess, this guy named “Z,” used to come into the club to commiserate with his mob buddies. It’s easy to get a man’s attention when you are shaking your ass in his face for tips. Don’t get me wrong, it was a decent gig. You have to put it in context. Carol had revolutionized the club scene by going topless almost a decade previously. It was just a matter of time before we freed the kitties, if you know what I mean.

    As a nurse, I was very comfortable about the human body, I mean, we are all naked underneath our clothes, right?

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Music was always a big part of life at Girassol. I was… still am, a huge fan of Ray Barreto, Mongo Santamaria, all those congueros who were bringing a Puerto Rican flavor to all kinds of music in those days. Just about the only thing I went back to the City to grab, once we settled in, was my King Conga.

    We were lucky that the big house was in such good shape, so we didn’t have to worry about building any structures for a hot minute, at least until the word got out and the community started to grow too big, and too funky, to live under one roof.

    At first, the lack of electricity was a bit of an adjustment, but it forced us to adopt an old school daily schedule. We got up when the Sun came up, worked at the various jobs we found for ourselves, and by nightfall, were ready to gather around a campfire and play.

    I’m proud to say that I helped introduce the descarga, the improvised jam session, that I learned from listening to all the players with the Fania All-Stars. Charlie invited this band of legit pickers from Marin that he knew, and we immediately got it on. We ended up coming up with a heady mix of bluegrass, folk, and salsa we called ¡Hierba exuberante! For obvious reasons.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Whatever Zongo had picked up at the airport, once he made his connection back down in the City, he was flush for a bit. I had a more-or-less steady paycheck from the Forestry Department, as long as I kept the state from burning down, but the rest of our growing family weren’t exactly Rockefellers. We needed a line of income, at least enough to keep us in beans, rice, and good ol’ Red Mountain Wine.

    After Sticky came out to see what we were doing with all the salvage, he and Bravo hit off and decided to get a grow going together. The soil around the ranch had been left to the feral chickens long enough, that whatever we threw down, popped right back out of the ground before you could say, “Johnny Appleseed.”

    The idea of a marijuana grow wasn’t exactly to everyone’s liking. Some heads were worried that it might draw the heat, and since we were relatively closer to town than a lot of farms, they might try to make an example of us without, you know, too much effort.

    Later, everyone would vote on things that could affect the greater group, but at this point, we were still figuring it out—and small enough—that if someone was inspired to do something, and willing to put the work in, it usually just happened.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 5 [ficção]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Not having power out at Girassol wasn’t a problem for me. I was used to working the back forty with all the low-profile grows up-county. I preferred it, actually. The one concession I made to modernity, was my radio. As long as I didn’t run out of batteries, I was golden. Of course, the only station I could pull in up there was Floyd’s pirate station, KRTO. Good thing he and I saw eye-to-eye, or ear-to-ear, rather.

    Once we got to know each other, I would often ride my bike to town and hang with him at the lighthouse and spin records all night. It was beautiful, man, we had no idea who, if anyone, was listening, but that’s not the point, it is? We weren’t kowtowing to corporate interests and were adding positive vibrations out into the ether. How could that be wrong?

    I was talking up our jam sessions one night and was saying that he should come out and tape us one night so he could play it on the air. Now, for a pirate, Floyd is a lot more practical than me, he just looked and me and laughed, asking “How the hell did you imagine that was going to happen since y‘all are are sitting around in the dark out there like Little House on the Goddamn Prairie?” Fair point, Floyd, fair point.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Teacake & Lady Marmalade [ficção]

    UKIAH, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    After a restless night back home, The Kid cursed the alarm clock radio that had unkindly begun blasting out one of the National Loaf’s lesser known hits. To Lucious Cole’s perpetual entreating that the target of his affection, “Come and lay it all down,” The Kid resolved to do the opposite. Much to his still-fuzzy delight, the smell of fresh-brewed coffee was wafting like a scent plume from the kitchen, baiting him in.

    “Good morning, sunshine,” Joaninha sang, apparently well under the influence of her Goan-style brew that inherited preparation methods from South India. Having squeezed every drop out of a slow drip through Arabica and Robusta grounds and chicory, she added the concoction to a cup of frothed milk, before sugaring the living shit out of it.

    “Sera,” The Kid rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he walked blindly toward the heavenly smell. “When did you get here?”

    “I was worried about you, so I brought bagels,” Joaninha handed The Kid a steaming mug, “and, of course, kaapi.”

    “Bless you,” The Kid gratefully took the offering in both hands. “I slept like shit.”

    “The first day of filming didn’t go so well?” Joaninha looked over the rim of her own cup, her dark chocolate brown eyes searching The Kid’s face for a clue.

    “Not exactly,” he started, “I mean, the interview was going along all right, then, out of nowhere, this guy Charlie Perigo blurts out that he didn’t know who my parents were.”

    “That’s not suspicious,” Joaninha adjudged. “He totally knows.”

    “You think so? That wasn’t even what we were talking about…”

    “Querido, I’m telling you, he knows,” Joaninha put down her cup and captured The Kid’s gaze, something she found ridiculously easy to do, but still found handy from time-to-time. “The question is, do you need to know? Is that what this is all about?”

    The Kid pondered the question, letting the strong, sweet brew slowly coax him back to life. “Maybe he’s right,” he finally admitted. “I mean, when I was younger, I really wanted to know. I wanted to confront them and ask why they gave me up; but as I grew up, I sort of pushed all that aside. I convinced myself that it didn’t matter. I became more interested in the bigger story.”

    Joaninha merely offered a raised eyebrow, a look that she had long learned was going to cut through whatever tale her partner was spinning out, even if only for himself.

    “Not the eyebrow! Come on, Sera,” The Kid folded. “Of course, I had it in the back of my mind that I might find out who my parents were as part of the story, but that’s not what’s driving this.”

    “All right. Just so you know, it is totally understandable if you were…”

    “Serafina!”

    “Fair enough,” Joaninha let him off the hook. “Are you driving back to Point Arena today?”

    “I’m going to finish filming Mr. Perigo and then he wants to introduce me to someone.”

    “Mind if I tag along? I’ve got the day off. Mom closed the store since Dad just had hand surgery and is possibly the worst patient ever.”

    “Hand surgery?” The Kid put down his coffee. “What did he do now?”

    “Don’t ask. The worst part is Mom nearly let him bleed out before driving him over to Ukiah Valley. His shop looked like a crime scene.”

    “Jesus. Of course you can come. I’d love the company. It’s a pretty drive, but—with so much to do—it’s easy to let your mind wander. I would hate to start the day by hitting a deer.”

    “It’s settled, then,” Joaninha declared, “I’m driving.”

    Two hours, 50 miles, and an infinite number of trees later, Joaninha finally reached Hwy 1 and turned south toward the seaside town. As winding as the road had been, she liked driving The Kid’s Saturn and jumped at the chance to leave her tired Honda at his place. Of course, that meant at the end of the day she was going to have to make the full trip back to Ukiah, and given how late it would probably be by then, stay there. Oh, darn, she thought. The two had talked about moving in together, but The Kid’s project had recently sucked the air out of that conversation.

    The blue coupe had just skirted the town’s outer limits when a police car pulled in behind them and lit up its rooftop gumball machine. The Kid turned in the passenger seat and recognized the short, salt-and-pepper haircut, and sun-, salt-, and wind-leathered face.

    “Shit,” he said. “Were we speeding?”

    “Not a bit.” Joaninha appreciated the difference between ‘we’ and ‘were you speeding?’ and silently congratulated once again herself on finding a diamond in the rough. It’s the little things, she thought as she pulled over and rolled down the driver’s side window.

    Chief Burton sauntered up to the open window, once again unworried about being taken out by a southbound driver.

    “Teacake,” he said, leaning down to look past Joaninha, “I didn’t expect you back in town so soon. Who does that make you, miss, Lady Marmalade?”

    “Officer?” Joaninha asked, utterly confused about the turn in conversation.

    “I have some friendly advice for young Michael Moore here,” Burton got down to business.

    “Are you often in the business of pulling over drivers to dispense filmmaking tips?” The Kid asked, trying and failing to suppress a rising anger.

    “I could pull you over for a broken taillight,” Burton suggested, “but I think you’d rather hear what I have to say.”

    “Are you going to ask for my license?” Joaninha asked, beginning to feel left out of the conversation.

    “Do you have one?” Burton asked.

    “Of course,” Joaninha began to reach for her wallet in the tiny center console in front of the shifter.

    “Then, no,” Burton waved the idea away. “Listen, Teacake…”

    “Why do keep calling him that?”

    “Listen, I can understand your interest in the rich history of our little town,” Burton launched into his monologue. “There is something you need to know about our friend, Mr. Perigo, before you cause yourself, and more importantly, me, some problems.”

    “What would that be, officer?” The Kid’s interest was piqued.

    “That’s Chief Burton, remember that name, Teacake. Charlie… Mr. Perigo served his country in Vietnam, and for all intents and purposes, came through it pretty well. There are some poor fellows his age, that weren’t quite as lucky. That said, there are certain things that Mr. Perigo really doesn’t need to be reminded of.”

    “I think I understand,” The Kid said, trying to think if might have said anything that could have upset Charlie.

    “I don’t know that you do, but it’s not Mr. Perigo that really concerns me.”

    “All right,” The Kid turned in his seat to better confront the man.

    “As you dig around, Teacake, just be mindful of the rocks you are kicking over. I would take it as a personal favor if certain individuals, who have gone to great lengths to disappear from this story, stay disappeared.” Burton handed The Kid his card. “Remember that name.”

    “Are we free to go, Chief Burton?” Joaninha asked.

    “You are free to do whatever you please, Lady Marmalade,” Burton chuckled at his own perceived cleverness. “Just watch out for those rocks, Teacake, there may be snakes under some of them. You two have a nice day, now.”

    The Kid and Joaninha sat in silence as Burton walked back to his vehicle and drove off.

    “What the hell was that?” Joaninha finally asked. “And why does he call you Teacake?”

    “I have no idea,” The Kid said, his mind racing, “but I aim to find out.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Black Eyes & Cowboy Bollocks [ficção]

    ARTICLE, ROCK HOUND MAGAZINE, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 12 |  1969

    After a contentious autumn spent recording their new record, Cut the Loaf, it looks like the groundbreaking English band, National Loaf, may have gone and done just that. Guitarist and frontman Lucious Cole declined to comment on what lead up to an on-stage fistfight between himself and bassist Simon Wilkie at New York’s Fillmore West, but insiders mentioned smoldering band tensions regarding the new direction that Cole was taking the group.

    Long known for their English pop anthems and lysergically-charged psychedelic freak-outs, Cole recently spoke about a desire to simplify the band’s sound in a desire to “get back to what’s real.” Keyboardist Koda Cornell’s work on the new album certainly shows an affinity with the new material, his work on an antique tack piano especially fits in with what many critics have termed the Loaf’s American Gothic.

    Wilkie, he of the black eye, appears to be the most out-of-synch with the group’s new sepia-toned vibe. Fans of the bassist’s more outré forays on the four string were shocked at how straight he played it on the new songs. Before the show, Wilkie was overheard complaining to a fan that all Cole wanted was “that bloody oompah, oompah shite.” It didn’t help the situation that Cole had showed up late to the Loaf’s own release party with Mexican mariachi outfits for the band to wear.

    It’s unknown whether the band will continue without Wilkie, as he immediately told reporters that he was done with “Cole and all his American cowboy bollocks.” Rumors that Wilkie is putting together his own project, tentatively called, The Crust, have been unsubstantiated at press time.

    Jere Woodrow, founding member, and Cole’s best friend since childhood, was unavailable for comment after the Fillmore fracas, but it is this reporter’s bet that whatever Cole decides to do next, Woodrow will be involved, holding down the beat.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Oh, We’re Waiting [ficção]

    EAST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK  |  1969

    Woodrow hurried down a rainy East 6th Street, turned up Second Avenue, and dove into the stage door in the back of the former Yiddish Theater. The drummer held a special love for New York City as, out of all American places, it reminded him of home.

    Everywhere you looked, layers of history piled atop older layers, reaching down past an age of tenements to find the Dutch of New Amsterdam, digging deeper to find the trading post of Juan Rodríguez and the village of the Lenape, and past that to an island of black bears, wolves, muskrats.

    The sold-out crowd packed into the Fillmore East was being to get rowdy as the National Loaf was more than an hour late taking the stage. Billed as a record release party for “friends and family,” the venue on New York’s Lower East Side had long become the go-to place to catch shows that often lasted until the Sun came up.

    The Loaf was rumored to have undergone a musical sea change on the forthcoming album, Cut the Loaf, however, the “Crumb Bums,” as the rabid fan base had begun to call themselves, had taken their medicinal cues from the group’s last psychedelic masterpiece, Take My Mind and Eat It. Various and sundry shifts in perception had already begun in earnest, leading the promoters to give a nod to the communal artists that ran the house light show to distract the crowd by flooding the stage with glowing, swirling, and shifting forms.

    “I’m just going to get a T-shirt that says, ‘Where the Fuck is Lucious Cole?’ I am so tired of saying it,” Wilkie dropped his cigarette into a half-drained glass of champagne where it died with a truncated hiss.

    “He’ll be here, don’t worry,” Woodrow appeased, even as he nervously drummed on the green room’s well-scarred coffee table. “This record is his baby. You know he is chomping at the bit to get this one out there.”

    “Champing,” Cornell uncharacteristically corrected.

    “Excuse me?” Woodrow snapped.

    “Champing at the bit. Horses champ, you pillock,” Wilkie pilled on. “Alligators fucking chomp.”

    “I’ll chomp you, you clever Dick!” Woodrow rose from the table, drumsticks ready to serve as a suppository if called for.

    “Easy, lads,” Cornell stepped in-between the warring rhythm section. “How many times have we been in these straits and our man has come through.”

    “Sod that,” Wilkie refused to let it go. “That is exactly the problem. We are expected to be the responsible ones while Lucious waltzes the fuck in whenever he feels like it. We are supposed to act grateful that he graces us with his presence. I’m done with it.”

    “What are you going to do, quit?” Woodrow asked. “Cole writes the songs, sings the fucking songs, like it or not, he is the face of the bloody Loaf.”

    “Face, my ass,” Wilkie seethed. “These people just want to watch him self-destruct. They want to be able tell their friends that they were there when Cole… fill in the sodding blank.”

    “Cornish, do you feel the same way,” Woodrow probed the depth of the band’s discontent.

    “Jere, you know I respect his talent,” Cornell admitted. “I just don’t know about this new direction. I mean, we are not cowboys for fuck’s sake. We were all born within a stone’s throw from bloody St. Giles-Without.”

    “So what? What’s to be said about that? It’s all gone, and I say let it bloody go. What is this really about? Not money,” Woodrow looked from face to face. “We’ve all done quite well following Louie’s muse. You think Ringo gets a quarter share of publishing? He does not.”

    “It is unnerving working with someone who swears that he knows every move in advance,” Wilkie confessed. “It really gives me the willies, especially since he is always right.”

    “What about this ‘meditation chamber,’ Jere?” Cornell asked. “Have you seen it… have you ever used it yourself?”

    Woodrow rubbed the back of his neck in contemplation before coming clean. “I’ve seen it, yea, even stole a seat in the bloody thing myself. I got nothing out of it, just the reflection of an idiot sitting on a stool. The only thing missing was a dunce cap.”

    The vision Woodrow painted finally broke the tension as the trio laughed together at the idea.

    “Is he bonkers, then?” Cornell wondered out loud. “Has all this been a lie?”

    “This is real,” Woodrow countered. “All those people out there believe in it. I think that makes it real, no matter where Lucious pulled it all from. I mean, who can say where art comes from? If his muse finds him when he’s sitting in a coil of aluminum sheeting, well, that’s where he should sit. Who gives a monkey’s arse?”

    “Right then,” Wilkie conceded. “I’ll see where this goes tonight, but if our man can’t pull his head out, I’m going to find a real band.”

    “Good luck with that,” Woodrow laughed. “You think our peers aren’t every bit as dysfunctional as the Loaf? You should go ask The Ox what he thinks about working with an auteur. And at least I’m not driving my cars into swimming pools.”

    “You don’t drive,” Cornell unhelpfully pointed out.

    “That’s not the bloody point, is it?”

    From out in the venue, a chant of “Loaf! Loaf! Loaf!” began in earnest, prompting a visit to the green room from a nervous promoter. “Where the Fuck is Lucious Cole?” he asked, counting heads.

    “Bloody hell,” Wilkie sighed, checking the tuning on his Fender P-bass for the umpteenth time.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Knight in Shining Brass [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    It was after midnight when Palacios left The Slab, the bar that she and her partner had started in the old temporary Vets Hall, and turned right toward the ocean. Her 1984 Ford Ranger balked when she tried to put it in gear, but she was persistent, and—powerless against an unbroken stream of invectives—it finally relented.

    Ever since they started having punk shows on Wednesday nights, she found herself leaving her club later and later. Something about the rawness of the young bands appealed to her. All the things that she wished she had said when she was younger was now being shouted out by kids with no chance of ever making a record deal or even being on the radio. They did it just because they felt they had to, and she was glad to provide a venue for them to do just that.

    The Ranger, meanwhile, rethought its position, and as soon as the opportunity presented itself at the town’s singular red light, it died; purely out of spite.

    “Sonofacocksuckingpieceofmother…” Palacios was just getting warmed up when an all-too-familiar pair of red and blue lights appeared in her rearview mirror, needlessly announced by a quick yelp.

    “Driver, move to the side,” Chief Burton’s voice came over the police car’s siren speaker.

    “You are just loving this, aren’t you,” she growled through gritted teeth into the mirror.

    “Driver…”

    Palacios rolled down the hand-cranked window and shouted back at her ex-husband. “Don’t you think I would if I could, asshole? Why don’t you give me a push instead of just sitting there?”

    “Isn’t that what you said to me on our first date?” Burton broadcast out to the empty streets. “Driver, put the vehicle in neutral.” Slowly, the police car crept up on the dead Ranger, until it finally kissed it with its push bumper.

    “Nice decorum, officer,” Palacios shouted out the window as the truck began to roll. Coasting toward the side of the road, she cranked what would have been the power steering, had the truck not expired, and stood on the unassisted brakes, finally pulling up the emergency lever.

    “Are we having some trouble this evening, little lady?” Burton appeared at the open driver’s side window, not worried in the slightest about standing in the lane of non-existent traffic.

    “Warren, dear,” Palacios gave in to the situation, “I don’t remember saying your name three times.”

    “What’s the Bogart line? ‘Just put your lips together and… blow.’ ”

    “Now, I remember our first date! How are you doing, Warren?”

    “A bit better than you seem to be right now, Benita. I told you to get rid of this rust bucket years ago.”

    “Yea, well, there are three things a financial advisor would talk you out of buying if you don’t want to end up stranded at a stoplight in the middle of the night: a boat, a horse, and a club.”

    “Why don’t you let me give you a ride home? I’ll have the boys at the corp yard tow this piece of shit to the shop in the morning.”

    “My knight in shining brass. Let me get my things.”

    Palacios followed Burton to the idling police car, stopping only to kick the Ranger’s back tire.

    “You’ll never guess you I saw at the café this morning,” Burton mentioned once they were moving.

    “Warren, it’s late,” Palacios began before noticing a hurt look threaten to steal across the weathered policeman’s face. “Alright, who?”

    “If you don’t want to know, that’s fine…”

    “Warren, goddamn it, it is late! Tell me.”

    “Charlie.”

    “Charlie?”

    “Charlie.”

    “You saw Charlie Perigo in the Lighthouse Café?”

    “That’s what I’m telling you.”

    “I call bullshit.”

    “You can call whatever you want, but he was sitting there, real as your ass.”

    “Warren, leave my ass outta this. Charlie hasn’t set foot in that place since the mid-’70s. You of all people know what happened.”

    “That’s why I thought you would want to know, but that’s not all.”

    “Jesus, Warren…”

    “He wasn’t alone, there was some kid with him, a documentary filmmaker. Teacake or something.”

    “The guy’s name was Teacake?”

    “Yea, I don’t know, fucking artists, right? The bigger question is who the hell would want to interview Charlie?”

    “You don’t think it’s about the commune, do you?”

    “No, it’s probably about Charlie’s work with unwed mothers… of course, it’s about the commune, Benita!”

    “Christ.”

    “Have you talked to Chae recently?”

    “Warren, she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

    “That’s OK, Benita,” Warren stopped the patrol car in front of Palacio’s house. “Just tell her that whatever this is, I’ll make sure and keep her name out of it.”

    “I’ll tell her,” Palacio said, looking down at her hands. “Thanks, Warren, and thanks for the lift.”

    Burton watched his ex-wife walk up the path and disappear into the house before driving off into the night.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Great Big Face (1967) [ficção]

    ST. JOHN’S WOOD, WESTMINSTER, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1967

    Three-quarters of the National Loaf sat in the cavernous expanse of EMI’s Studio B laconically smoking cigarettes and waiting, as usual, for their leader and—according to London’s music trades—resident musical genius. The combined fumes of the proletariat Woodbines favored by the pianist and the Player’s Navy Cuts that kept the rhythm section awake and in sync added up to a furious funk matched only by the prevailing mood.

    “Where the bloody hell is he?” Wilkie hissed, tossing his spent cigarette on the floor and stepping it out with a pointed Italian boot, polished to a painful shine.

    “Oi, mate! You’re not down at the pub,” Woodrow remarked, casting his eye up at the waiting technicians that crowded the control booth that loomed over them.

    “Yea, well we might as well be,” interjected Cornell. “At least, there, I could chat up yer auld one.”

    “You leave her out of this,” Woodrow parried. “The poor woman is a saint.”

    “Yea, Saint Bernard,” Wilkie joined the scrum. “I have never seen that gal without a barrel of brandy at hand.”

    “She’s comforted many a stranded traveler, I’ll tell you that much,” Cornell delivered the killing stroke, having perfected playing the dozens on countless interminable van trips with his bandmates.

    “Tell ’im what?” A unfashionably late Cole swung into the space and the conversation. “Have you lot read this bit?”

    “Cole, where’ve you been mate? We were about to pack it in,” Woodrow sided with the rest of the frustrated band against his childhood friend.

    “Oi contraire, mon frère,” Cole tossed a music trade into the center of the gathering like a grenade. “We have work to do! Bunfight Magazine there says that we are the hottest group in London this week. Of, course ‘you know who’ are off in Wales contemplating their navels or some bollocks. So, that helps. Even so, read it out loud, will you, Jere?”

    “Let me see that,” Wilkie grabbed the periodical, pre-folded to the section dedicated to the local music scene.

    “When did you learn how to read?” Cornell snatched the magazine from the bassist and cleared his throat. “The latest pop group to take London by storm hails from an unlikely corner of the city. The National Loaf has emerged fully formed from the area of the massive Barbican Estate project that, even now, is rebuilding from the ashes of Cripplegate.

    ‘I think it gives us something to prove,’ said guitarist and singer Lucious Cole. ‘No one expects anything from the edge of good auld Londinium but cranes… come to think of it, that’s a good name for the band right there: The Cranes! Oh well, next time.’ ”

    “Cheeky fucker,” Woodrow chimed in. “Come on, what’s it say about the music? Especially, the extremely handsome and talented drummer!”

    “Hold yer water, Ringo, let’s see what is says about the masterful keys, first. ‘We named the band, National Loaf, because we’re fortified with calcium and vitamins,’ according to bassist Simon Wilkie, name checking Britain’s infamous wartime staple. ‘We’re really a mix of everything left in the larder. A little R&B, a little skiffle, lots of rock ’n’ roll.’

    ‘We’ve got a tough crust as well,’ added Cole. ‘We’ll last forever!’ ”

    “Bollocks,” Woodrow chided. “Get to the meat of it, will you?

    “Patience is a bloody virtue, Jere,” Cole stepped in and took back the magazine. “Listen to this; ‘The Loaf’s latest single, “What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?” has the swinging crowds down on Wardour St. doing the pony and the frug until the wee hours at clubs like The Marquee and La Discotheque. Songwriter and frontman Cole’s peculiar mix of R&B and psychedelia give the Loaf’s rhythm section a lot to work with, and work they do. The sinuous, shifting dynamics of the heady material is navigated with naval aplomb, especially when the big waves hit. Drummer Jere Woodson drives crowds to higher and higher levels of frenzy as bassist Simon Wilkie lays down a better foundation than a Midland brickie.’ ”

    “Ace!” Wilkie exclaimed. “Finally, a reviewer who knows from which he speaks!”

    “The Keys, mate! What does it say about the bloody keys?”

    “Here it is; ‘The Loaf’s secret weapon, and one that sets them apart from organ-grinding groups like The Pink Floyd or Burdon’s Animals, is avowed pianist Koda Cornell’s work on the 88s. Cornell can tickle the ivories as well as Liberace or pound them like they owe him money like Jerry Lee…’ ”

    “For fuck’s sake,” Cornell exclaimed, “Liberace? They’re going to ruin my reputation as a cocksman nonpareil!”

    “Now don’t be so quick to discount all the new attention you might get,” Cole jibbed.

    “Yea, don’t knock it, Koda,” Woodson piled on. “Or do, we won’t judge.”

    “Are we going to bloody play today, or are we going to waste the studio?” Wilkie threw the pianist a rope.

    “Hear, hear! Gather around boys, I’ve got lyrics for that song we’ve been working up,” Cole announced. “I ducked into the Windmill to catch Bergman’s crazy flick…”

    “Persona?” Wilkie asked, doing his best to light another cigarette as if he were in a French new wave film.

    “The same.”

    “I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of that one,” Cornell admitted. “The birds sure do love it, though. Makes them feel all European.”
 “If you can get your mind off the miniskirts for a moment, let’s take it from the top.”

    Woodson counted off and the National Loaf broke into a straight-ahead rocker that had just been waiting for words as Cole slid up to a microphone and began to sing.

    Pick a persona right up off the shelf

    Change your name to something else

    Whatever you want to call yourself

    It’s only on the surface

    You gotta voice like a megaphone

    You’re well connected just like Al Capone

    Peripatetic and you’re never home

    Wandering the surface

    You, you gotta great big face

    You have no natural grace

    You gotta real nice place

    See if you can keep it

    You, you gotta rock hard heart

    It’s got no moving parts

    You gotta jump it to start

    Come on, keep it going

    “Peri, what now?” Wilkie dropped the bass line, bringing the song to a clattering halt.

    “Peripatetic,” Cole explained. “Wandering from place to place; like us in that bloody van.

    “Like you don’t love it,” Cornell punctuated his comment with a glissando.

    “Who wouldn’t love to smell all your air biscuits after night after night on the tiles,” Cole bemoaned.

    “Come on, now; we’re the only touring group that makes its own gas!” Woodson tossed off a bon mot and paradiddle.

    “There’s more, you uncultured louts,” Cole broke in. “Take it from the chorus!”

    You fool the people to depend on you

    Camel the needle, baby, push it through

    Whatever it is that you’re going to do

    It’s only on the surface

    You gotta mojo, gotta black cat bone

    Agents calling on the telephone

    Telling you you’ll never be alone

    Calling from the surface

    The band kicked back into the chorus and capped it off with a short solo by each member before bringing the whole thing home in a rousing crescendo.

    “Did you get that?” Cole shouted up to the control booth where the coterie of white shirts and ties were actually smiling for a change.

    “We got it,” the talkback announced. “That’s a take.”

    A cheer went up from the entire Loaf before Woodson asked the important question, “Who’s thirsty?”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Blank Check Face [ficção]

    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    Felix Rune spun up the reel of half-inch Ampex tape and winked at Rosenda who had made herself comfortable in front of the massive Neve mixing desk. She and Rune were old friends and he knew her well enough to have a cold pitcher of Armillita Chicos ready on an adjacent table when she arrived from the airport.

    “Where’s Bear?” Rune inquired as he readied to hit the playback. “Busting heads or chasing tail?”

    “Neither; both; I don’t know,” Rosenda took a long pull of the refreshing tequila-based drink. “Hertz stuck him with a Catalina and he’s probably somewhere setting it on fire.”

    “Yikes,” Rune sucked the funky studio air between his teeth with a sharp hiss. “A Pontiac? I wouldn’t have the nerve to slide those keys over the desk.”

    “You know, he took it better than I expected. Maybe he’s mellowing in his old age. It wasn’t until we got on the 405 that the veneer began to crack.”

    “Here’s to him finding a Continental before someone gets hurt,” Rune poured himself a drink and clinked Rosenda’s glass while maintaining eye contact.

    “To Lucious Cole,” Rosenda added. “Wherever the hell he may be.”

    “No offense, but can you imagine being a shark and getting a bite of that polluted trash bag? You’d be high for days!”

    “Come on, Felix, show some respect for the dead.”

    “Too soon? I apologize,” Rune recanted for a beat. “Hey, man, you ever really look at your fins?”

    “Felix!”

    Rune settled back and with the appropriate flourish hit the playback button on the console. Cole’s famous baritone jumped out of the studio speakers, filling the air with unfamiliar admonishments.

    Once more in to the stifling heat

    Until it melts away your ghost

    Once more into the acid bath

    Until your memory turns to smoke

    Once more under the crushing load

    Until we find ourselves some shade

    Once more onto the bloody road

    Until we fix the mess you made

    Rune stopped the tape and shot Rosenda a perplexed look only to see her jaw hanging wide open.

    “What the fuck is this?” She asked, placing her half-empty Armillita Chico on the floor and scooting her chair closer to the deck. “Play that again, Felix.”

    Rune rewound the song, the words and music getting sucked back out of the air at double speed. Starting the tape again, both he and Rosenda listened carefully for a clue about the music’s provenance. The guitar was clearly Cole’s doing, his quirky choice of chord inversions and the off-kilter melody of his solo called back to nearly a decade of mining his particular musical lode. The song sat solidly within his cannon, yet somehow yearned for what could be next.

    “That, my dear, is a hit,” Rune refilled their glasses for another toast. “Even if there is no other new stuff on this reel, slap that on a Best Of collection, and we will all be farting through silk.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: On the Lash (1964) [ficção]

    SOHO, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1964

    Simon Wilkie leaned his lanky frame against the brick archway of the Marquee Club’s new Wardour Street location and smoked. He was splitting his time watching girls running in and out of the boutiques and scanning the crowd for the rest of his band. The National Loaf had finally secured an opening slot for the latest Fab Four-wannabes and the group was primed to cut them to ribbons, if the rest of them showed, that was.

    “Oi, Si!” The voice of an ardent voyeur called from down the street. “The birds are certainly out today, eh, mate?”

    “Cornish, about time you slipped yer nan’s clutches,” Wilkie needled the one person in the band he felt close enough with to take the piss out of. “I thought I might have to do an extended bass solo, and I don’t know if this lot is ready for it.”

    Pianist Koda Cornell forced his focus away from a young woman in a raspberry A-line shift dress that danced above her knees as she walked. “Where are those wankers, anyway?”


    “Where were you?” Wilkie pitched his fag end into the street. “I feel like I’m the only one serious about this gig.”

    “Steady on, mate,” Cornell finally pulled both wandering eyes into focus on the situation. “You know those two, probably drunk as lords. I don’t know how Jere keeps up with that punter. He’s got a hollow leg, that one.”


    “Hollow leg?” Wilkie snorted. “Cole’s a bloody Trojan horse, he is. Seeing how those two prolly have a head start, buy you a pint?”

    “I thought you’d never ask.”

    “Did Simon just say he was buying?” Cole called from up the block, Woodrow in his wake, proving that he hadn’t yet burned out either his hearing or love of a free pint.

    “Fuck me,” Cornell bemoaned. “Mention the Devil and he appears.”

    “Cheers, good fellows,” Cole beamed. “Are you ready to tear this pile down? Mark my words, people in the future are going to lie and say they were here tonight just to sound gear.”

    “Let’s hope the room isn’t all phantoms,” Cornell spoke up. “Hard to shag a ghost.”

    “Fear not, my thirsty friend,” Cole mollified. “While you two were holding up the bricks, Jere and I were busy getting the word out… and here they come now.”

    The entire National Loaf turned to see a crowd of fashionable young women coming up the street.

    Jere, here, knows a secretary who works around the corner and just so happens has a lot of beautiful friends looking for something to do this evening.”

    “Cor, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for,” Wilkie gave Woodrow a nod. “Well done, mate.”

    “All right, that sorted, let’s talk setlist,” Cole got down to business. “I thought we’d open with ‘On the Lash!’”

    We had better get drinking, then,” Cornell exclaimed. “We can’t very well play that one sober.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: The Stick Meets The Kid [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1995

    After the hour-long winding drive on Mountain View Road from Boonville, the sight of the blue Pacific Ocean was a revelation after the untamed stretch of green trees. The Kid was itching to stretch his legs and get centered before he started recording the locals talk about what they remembered about the early ’70s at Girassol.

    Having grown up in Mendocino County, he was ready for that job to be more difficult than it looked on paper. It wasn’t that the old hippies were wary about expounding about their glory days, it was often the case that there were large holes in their memories of the era, which they would then fill with unmitigated bullshit.

    The Kid parked his ’91 Light Blue Metallic Saturn SC2 coupe in front of the Lighthouse Café. He had spent a considerable amount of time making phone calls over the past few weeks talking the owners into letting him borrow their unused backroom for his project interviews. He finally played his ace card and told them that he had been born out at the infamous commune, something he hated to do but was going to have to get used to once the project was finished. The disclosure changed the owner’s attitude immediately and suddenly the documentary was real; as real as something that was going to take a semester of interviews and editing to finish, that is.

    “Hey, man,” a voice called from down the street. “Is that one of those new GM deals? How far the mighty have fallen.”

    “Excuse me?” The Kid turned around to see what appeared to be an aging stuntman coming toward him pointing at the back of the Saturn.

    “I remember when General Motors was proud to put their name on their cars. What is this shit?’

    “Can I help you?” The Kid said, eager to get inside the café and set up his equipment.

    “The question is, can I help you,” the man took off his Vietnam veteran baseball cap and stuck out his hand. “Charlie Perigo, at your service. You must be The Kid.”

    “That’s me,” The Kid declared, everything suddenly swinging into focus. Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Perigo.”

    “The honor’s mine, kid… or Mr. Kid, or… how are you dealing with it?”

    “TK, is fine.”

    “Far out. You can drop the Mr. Perigo business; it makes me feel like I’ve been pulled over. Charlie’s fine, or ‘The Stick,’”

    “OK, Mr. Stick,” The Kid motioned to the backseat of the Saturn. Would you mind giving me a hand with this stuff? Then I won’t have to make two trips.”

    “Not ‘Mr.’ Stick,” Perigo emphasized, “‘The’ Stick.”

    “Right.”

    “So, TK, have you ever been shot?”

    “Scene one banana, take one,” The Kid announced once the pair had set up in the backroom of the café. “Mark.”

    “I haven’t been in here since it was the Burger Shack,” Perigo noticed.

    “I see,” The Kid asked, hoping to move the conversation along as the video was rolling. “Did you move away after the commune split up?”

    “Nope,” Perigo answered, still trying to reconcile the room he was sitting in with the place he remembered. “86’d, I’m afraid. Honestly, I don’t remember why.”

    “I see. Did a lot of your… communards come out here, then?”

    “Ha! Communards. That would not have gone over too well with the feminist caucus, I’ll tell you that. You know, this place is where I first met Zongo.”

    “Zongo Khumalo? The guy arrested for trying to bomb the Pentagon with the Weathermen?”

    “I don’t know anything about that,” Perigo waved off the question. “I don’t know who your parents are, either.”

    “Excuse me?”


    “Your parents,” Perigo repeated, “I don’t know who they are.”

    “I didn’t ask you,” The Kid stopped the video. “That isn’t what is this is about.”

    “Isn’t it, though?” Perigo asked. “Do you get high, TK? We should take a break.”

    Chief Burton sat alone drinking his morning coffee at the café’s counter when Perigo and TK emerged from the backroom.

    “Well, look what a bird dropped here,” Burton swiveled around on his padded pedestal stool. “Mr. Perigo, I don’t believe I’ve seen you in this place in 20 years.”

    “Chief,” Perigo offered the one word he was willing to give.

    “It’s good to see you out in respectable surroundings again. Who’s your friend?”

    Perigo, having already spent any social capital he had reserved for the police, kept silent, waiting to see if TK would offer the chief anything further. Burton, for his part, kept an inquisitive look plastered on his face and trained on the newcomer.

    “I’m TK, a documentary filmmaker,” he finally bowed to the pressure and stuck out his hand.

    “Teacake?” Burton chuckled. “Well, that’s not the craziest name I’ve heard in these parts. It’s right up there, though. What are you documenting, if you don’t mind me asking?”

    “Actually, chief,” Perigo found some more words somewhere, “we were just leaving. We need to scout some location shots, you know, while we have the light.”

    “The light, of course,” Burton accepted the brushoff. “You never know when a black cloud is going to show up out of nowhere in this town. It can ruin the whole day.”

    “Chief,” Perigo uttered as he ushered TK out of the café.

    “Teacake, if you get tired of listening to The Stick’s bullshit, you know where to find me,” Burton called after the pair. “Get the real story!”

    “What is his problem?” TK asked as they crossed the parking lot.

    “We have, what you might call, history,” Perigo confessed. “It’s a long story, and not an especially good one.”

    “Teacake? Seriously? What the hell, man?”

    “What can I tell you?” Perigo opened his hands in a gesture of supplication. “Chief Burton is well known for making friends wherever he goes.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts (Pt. 2) [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    After slowly, but steadily, wearing out the good graces of Palacios, and throwing a couple of bucks into the band’s tip jar, the two men found themselves out in the gravel parking lot next to the 442.

    “Hop in, old man, I’ll give you two a lift to the lighthouse,” Perigo offered.

    “Forget it, Charlie, we are taking the Chevrolegs,” Anderson countered. “It’s the end of the month and Burton has to meet his quota. I don’t figure the fact that you are screwing his niece is going to keep you from walking a line. Besides, it’s only one klick from here. The fresh air’ll do us both a bit of good.”

    “Sticks don’t know from klicks, man. It’s all contour and tree lines from up there,” Perigo teased before realizing there was inherent wisdom in the offer. “Lead on, ground pounder. What’s the big surprise, anyway?”

    “Do you really not know how surprises work? That’s just sad,” Anderson pouted in drunken jest.

    “That’s just sad!” Gloria Lynne agreed.

    “I have to admit, Floyd,” Perigo mused as they left the lot and turned toward the sea, “I didn’t get the chance to really hang with any RTOs back in ’Nam, given their propensity for walking around the jungle with a big fucking antenna. Was Korea any better?”

    “I was lucky, Charlie, I got drafted out of college and ended up in the 1st Radio Broadcasting & Leaflet Group. ‘A Very Proper Gander,’ as Thurber put it. Ever hear of us?”

    “Psy-Ops?”

    “Machinations of a most devious and duplicitous nature, all told.”

    “Far out.”

    “The furthest, Charlie boy,” Anderson copped. “But it did get me thinking deeply about the power of radio. Isn’t it amazing how hearing a voice out of thin air can hold more credence than one standing at your side, yammering in your ear?”

    “I don’t know about that.”

    “Sure you do. Let’s say you are having a shitty day and someone, an invisible hand, plays several glorious minutes of Otis Redding. Something like that can turn your whole life around. Did you know that scientists are now saying we are nothing but vibrations on the molecular level? Now imagine another vibration is introduced into the system, resulting in a better, more harmonious tone. That’s powerful juju.”

    “What about television?” Perigo countered. “That seems to gaining some serious ground on the national psyche. What about the Nixon/Kennedy debate? You can’t discount image.”

    “Television?” Anderson exploded. “Fuck Television! I’m not talking about flashing shadows on the cave wall! I’m working on the spiritual level. I’m talking about something that seeps in through the bones, something that has the power to alter the spin of nuclei.”

    “OK, you win,” Perigo laughed. “Where is all this going, chief?”

    “I was a Specialist, E-4, but that’s neither here or there,” Anderson said. “This is it.”

    Perigo looked up. Realizing that their talk had brought them to the base of the lighthouse, he was powerless not to scan the tower to its apex and back down. Anderson opened a black-painted wooden door and motioned his friend inside.

    “As much as I use this thing as a landmark while flying the chopper, I have never been to the top,” Perigo admitted.

    “We aren’t going up there,” Anderson clarified. “At least not yet.” The men entered a dimly-lit hallway that bisected the building’s bottom floor. On either side, an interior door guarded a half-circle chamber, giving the men the impression of walking into the tower’s respiratory system.

    “Right, this way,” Anderson motioned to the left, leaving Perigo to open the door himself. “The light is on the right.”

    Inside, Perigo was treated to the sight of a monk’s cell, that is if the mendicant’s order was dedicated to spinning records with a single-minded commitment. Against the far, curved, cement wall sat several tables built from heavy timbers evidently scavenged from a shipwreck in which the tower was held blameless. A pair of turntables and what he took for a repurposed amplifier and field transmitter sat among a scattering of Olympia beer cans and an overworked churchkey. Turning around, he saw shelves filled with music albums covering the flat wall.

    “What is all this?” Perigo asked, suspecting the answer all along.

    “Welcome to K-RTO!” Anderson exclaimed. “The number one pirate radio station for the Mendocino Coast.”

    “Number one? You mean there are more?” Charlie watched in interest as Anderson powered up the desk.

    “Not yet, my boy,” Anderson futzed with mysterious dials with the shining eyes of a zealot. “But I do hope to help democratize the airways, the way that the Good Lord intended them to be.”

    Picking up his cherished copy of The Quintet’s Jazz at Massey Hall, Anderson placed it on one of his turntables as if delivering the Eucharist. Donning a well-duct-taped set of headphones, and looking all the world like he might call in an air strike, Anderson dropped the needle, and essentially does just that.

    Suddenly, the sound of Max Roach’s drums thunders out of monitors Perigo hadn’t noticed were there, setting the pace for Gillespie and Parker to chase each other through the opening changes, Dizzy scatting, marking the jump in octave with the seemingly nonsensical phrase, “Salt Peanuts,” his incantation inciting inference patterns that when they collide, open a channel just wide enough for Bird to escape through, with Bud Powell’s delicate piano fills following him into the glorious void, all the time, Mingus sitting back solid as a mountain, ready to receive them all back into his imposing magnitude when their flight is finally exhausted.

    “Far out,” Perigo declared, simultaneously meaning nothing and everything.

    “Salt Peanuts,” Gloria Lynne, who had flown off to her corner perch, agreed.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts (Pt. 1) [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    Floyd Anderson opened the door to the Quonset hut serving as the temporary home of the Point Arena Veteran’s Hall since the historical location on Shoreline had suffered a small fire. If he was pressed, Anderson preferred the corrugated metal building to the mustard-colored stucco affair that looked like a Swiss chalet doing a stretch in San Quentin.

    As he and Gloria Lynne approached the bar, a country band in the corner was doing their best to work with the fact they were essentially playing in a giant tin can by leaning hard into the unnatural reverb. The guitarist was throwing out lead Telecaster lines like sharpened knives as their singer embraced the mournful wail of a somnambulant who had suddenly found himself at the bottom of a dry well.

    “What are you drinking, beautiful?” Perigo asked from the stool he had been keeping from flying away for most of the morning.

    “If you’re buying, I’ll have a Harvey Wallbanger,” Anderson said, licking his lips.

    “I was talking to the bird,” Perigo pointed at Anderson’s parrot who was currently giving him the stink eye.

    “Sorry, Charlie,” Anderson bemoaned. “I’m afraid she’s driving.”

    “Pity. I was looking forward to hearing what she might say after a couple of drinks. I guess you’ll have to do, Floyd. Benita, bring our baron o’ the beacon a Harvey Wallbanger, por favor.”

    “We are fresh out of Galliano, gentlemen,” Benita Palacios announced with a flair of feigned regret. “Let me pour you a beer on the house, Floyd.”

    “My favorite!” Anderson declared, letting Gloria Lynne hop down to the redwood burl-topped bar.

    “I tol’ you, that bird is not supposed to be on the bar, cabrón,” Palacios warned as she pulled a tap.

    “And I told you, Gloria Lynne is better trained than most of the ground pounders you let in here,” Anderson argued.

    “Who you calling a ground pounder, old man?” Perigo joked. “RTOs spend more time pounding ground than a stick ever will.”

    “Here we go again,” Anderson took a deep draw of his draft. “Benita, can I buy another so Charlie here has something in his mouth besides bullshit?”

    “Pounding ground! Pounding ground!” Gloria Lynne entered the conversation.

    “Floyd, you aren’t getting anything until that bird gets off of my bar. It’s unsanitary.”

    “Alright, alright,” Floyd pulled up another stool and the parrot hopped down on it as if following the conversation. “No need to get personal. I’ll have you know that Gloria Lynne is fastidious in her grooming. Unlike Charlie, here.”

    Perigo shrugged at the fair point and accepted the beer from Palacios with a warm, “Gracias.”

    “Drink up, Charlie, I have something to show you back at the lighthouse. I think you’ll like it,” Anderson drained his pint glass and reached for a peanut for his parrot. “Benita, these are the unsalted ones, right?”

    “Not to worry, Floyd,” the bartender offered her warmest smile, “your friend there licked all the salt off of those before you got here.”

    “I am as God made me, Floyd,” Perigo avowed in response to the looks he was getting from both man and bird. “Who’s this band, anyway? They’ve got the Bakersfield sound down pat.”

    “Some shit kickers from ’round Marin,” Anderson allowed the abrupt change of topic. “This week, they are calling themselves the Prickly Pear Pointillists.”

    “What’s a ‘pointillist,’ other than a thorn freak?” Perigo twisted around on his stool to better see the band.

    “Benita!” Anderson called down the bar. “You were an art major. The ‘point’ guy; who was the ‘point’ guy?”

    “How do you know I was an art major, Floyd?” The beleaguered server demanded.

    “Please. The ‘point’ guy! I’m trying to educate our young friend here. Inoculate him with some goddamn culture before he becomes a total savage right before our eyes.”

    “Too late,” Palacios pronounced. “You mean, Seurat?”

    “Yes! Yes, goddamn it, Seurat! The point guy,” Anderson jumped up and clapped his hands so hard it almost threw the band. “Stick with me and learn something, my boy. We might yet save you from a wholly Philistine existence.”

    “Give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!” Gloria Lynne intoned.

    “The fuck did your bird say to me?” Perigo unconsciously moved his beer closer in.

    “Don’t worry about her,” Anderson appeased. “She is going through a fundamentalist phase. I think she may be molting.”

  • Angel Down—Daniel Kraus

    I was not emotionally prepared for Daniel Kraus’ 2025 book, Angel Down. I can’t remember what drove me to pick it up in the first place, although it lives firmly within my wheelhouse. Man’s inhumanity to man? Check. The utter indifference of heaven? Check. Biblical allusions that don’t turn out like what you’ve been led to believe. Oh, yea.



    Had I looked up Kraus’ CV before jumping in, I would have noticed his bona fides as a past collaborator with such masters of the filmic horror genre no less than George A. Romero and Guillermo del Toro. Even so, I should have been tipped off by the cover blurb by one of my favorite authors of this decade, Stephen Graham Jones.

    There is a scene in Jones’ The Only Good Indian that still haunts me five years after I read it. Perhaps the saving grace of the depth of real horror that Kraus serves up from the trenches of the Western Front is that the senses become so overwhelmed that nothing sticks. In the immortal words of Johnny Cash, speaking on yet another war, Drive on, it don’t mean nothin’. Can you become shell-shocked from a novel?

    My favorite stories all have a memorable anti-hero, this book has five… well, four and a total innocent that is unfairly lumped in with the rest. These doughboys are saddled with a suicide mission precisely due to their expendability. Their vainglorious commanding officer, the only character that rings a little hollow, sends the mismatched quintet out to the middle of No Man’s Land as the division retreats as a way to rid himself of them all in one fell swoop.

    The relentless style that Kraus employs, as if the entire book were one run-on sentence, propels the reader headlong through the narrative, as if you, too, were scrambling over the broken pieces of men and machines in a desperate bid to save… oneself? A wayward angel? All of mankind? In the end, the effect is one of exhausted fatalism. “Them that die’ll be the lucky ones,” as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver famously stated.

    Krause is capable of dark flights of poetic abstraction as well, as shown when our final antihero is driven into the center of the Earth—to Hell itself—to peek behind the curtain, a vision of the machine behind the scene that rivals the mechanical dread of Ken Kesey’s Combine, which lurks beneath the dread of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

    Angel Down has since won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction which is great for speculative fiction, and even better for the numbers of readers who may otherwise have missed this book.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On (1958) [ficção]

    
SOHO, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1958

    “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” A lanky, teenaged Lucious Cole sidled up to the edge of the Berwick Street Market in Soho, his pegged jeans and blonde hair carefully tortured into a quiff like his latest American hero, Jerry Lee Lewis.

    “Time for you to nick a watch, Louie,” Chas Woodrow good-naturedly chastised his longtime partner-in-crime. “You are late.”

    “There was a holdup on the Tube,” Cole explained, removing the cigarette from behind his ear and waiting for Woodrow to flash his cherished Zippo. “It wasn’t me, I swear.”

    “Should have taken the Transport,” Woodrow leaned in and lit the bent Player’s Navy Cut. “Run into any Teds?”

    “Nah,” Cole took a drag off the unfiltered smoke and upon finding tobacco on his tongue, spat it into the street as disaffectedly as he could manage.

    “You should upgrade, mate,” Woodrow needled his best friend. “‘Get together with Player’s Bachelor-Tipped,’ as they say.”

    “The minute I start smoking those posh fags, I’ll deserve getting stomped by Teddy Boys,” Cole groused. “I might as well dress like a cowboy and smoke Marlboros.”

    “Says the bloke dressed to marry his own cousin.”

    “Rumor and conjecture!” Cole protested. “I won’t stand for it.”

    “It’s true, mate,” Woodrow lit his own Navy Cut, inhaled, and blew a huge cloud of smoke as if smudging the area of negative energy. “My cousin—whom I do not plan on marrying, thank you very much—saw the whole thing go down.”


    “The next thing you’ll tell me is that Richard’s really a poof,” Cole jibbed.

    “Tutti Fruiti, loose booty!” Woodrow sang as flamboyantly as he could manage.

    “Look, I didn’t call you down here to tear down my idols,” Cole pitched his butt into the gutter where it self-extinguished with a hiss.

    “What are we doing here, if not taking the piss, then?”

    “We are going to start a band,” Cole explained.

    “Are you off your chump?” Woodrow laughed, but upon looking at Cole’s face, quickly realized that he was serious. “How do we intend to do that, now? I’ve no money for instruments, let alone talent.”

    “I’ve got readies,” Cole stated. “And we have time.”

    “Oh, do we now? Who tol’ you that, your bald-headed gran?”

    “You leave my gran outta this,” Cole turned conspiratorial. “Here’s how it’s going down; you and I are going to start a band, achieve more success than we can imagine, and then piss it all away.”

    “That sounds grand,” Woodrow agreed. “Where’d you get the dosh?”

    Cole looked around, taking note that all of the action was down the street where the outdoor market began. “Can you keep a secret?”

    “You havin’ a bubble?” Woodrow asked, incredulous. “I ain’t a muppet. You, of all people should know that. I haven’t let on that you’re a right poofter!”

    “Alright, alright,” Cole relented. “What if I told you that I know everything that’s going to happen to me… to us?”

    “I would say the pomade in that duck tail is soaking into your loaf, mate.”

    “That is exactly why I haven’t told you,” Cole groused.

    “Told me what, that you are going off your nut?” Woodrow lit another Player’s and took a good look at the one person in his life that he thought that he could trust and wondering if that time was passing in front of his eyes. “I’ll bite, Nostradamus, who has hipped you to the jive, so to speak?”

    “I wasn’t sure at first, but now I’m pretty sure it was me.” The utter lack of a snappy comeback from Woodrow made Cole think he might be digging himself in deep, but he rolled right along, carefully avoiding his friend’s eyes. “Do you remember when I fell into that basement when we were wee lads?”

    “I am five seconds away from giving you a right clout,” Woodrow bristled. Who do you think helped pull you out of that hole, you ungrateful prick?”

    “I know, I know,” Cole conceded. “It’s just… while I was down there, I had an experience that I never told you about.”

    “An experience?” Woodrow mocked. “In the ten bloody minutes you were down there?”

    “That’s just it, it was ten minutes for you; but for me, it felt like an hour. There was this weird metal structure in the other room, and when I walked into it, I was sitting there waiting for me.”

    “They call that a mirror, you nutter. Funny thing, I’m always waiting for myself every morning when I go to wash my face.”

    “I knew this was going to be hard,” Cole bemoaned.

    “Said the actress to the bishop,” Woodrow quipped on cue.

    “Is this proof enough, then?” Cole pulled out a roll of blue five pound notes from his jacket.

    Woodrow jumped forward, blocking any prying eyes from Cole’s stash. “What are you doing, Louie? Put that away! If you didn’t nick it, someone else is about to. Where did that come from?”

    “I won it,” Cole explained. “I told you, I got the inside track on everything that is going to happen to us, including who was going to win the Grand National last week.”

    “Who?”

    “Mr. What.”

    “What’s on second,” Woodrow resorted to slapstick, having completely lost control of the conversation.

    “Right,” Cole tossed off, ready to put his plan into action. “Let’s go buy some instruments, we gotta get good.”

    “Naturally.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Spiral Architect (1953) [ficção]

    CRIPPLEGATE, LONDON, ENGLAND  |  1953

    The Sun uncharacteristically beat down on the still-broken streets of London’s Cripplegate as a call went up among the children gathered in a bombed-out corner lot slowly on its way to being reclaimed as a proper English garden.

    “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” The small gang inquired. The wolf in question turned slowly, leering at the tasty morsels who dared to edge ever closer to his imagined fangs and deadly claws.

    “One o’clock,” the wolf replied, in this case, the wolf being a snap bean of a nine-year-old boy named Lucious Cole. An illicit thrill surged through the assembled sheep as they crept nearer to their natural predator who eyed them hungrily in turn.

    “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” The question was restated, this time, with an undercurrent of trepidation.

    “Two o’clock,” the wolf replied, carefully watching the crafty sheep who, to be fair, had designs of their own. The neighborhood variant of the game called for a quick reversal of fortune if any of the flock had the luck and temerity to touch him before he uttered the magic phrase, thus releasing his baser instincts, and allowing total carnage to commence. The wolf might decide to feast anytime between one and twelve o’clock, causing the sheep to scatter with the carnivore in reckless pursuit. The last sheep standing, would then become the wolf, and the game would start again.

    Once again the query was raised, the flock ever closer to the ravenous engine of their own destruction. “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?”

    “It’s… time for dinner, and I am going to eat you all!” The wolf proclaimed mid-jump, the sheep running for their wooly lives. Giddy with chase, Cole cut through an uncleared corner of the lot, hoping to cut off a few of his fleeing cohort when, from below his feet, came a hollow cracking.

    As a stout young man named Chas Woodrow would later tell the constabulary, it was if Cole had just disappeared. One moment he was in hot pursuit, the next, vanished into the foxgloves and delphiniums. It wasn’t until the sheep stopped running and turned around to investigate that they found the hole and, at least three-and-a-half meters below the brick-strewn ground, a prostrate Lucious Cole.

    “Go get help!” Woodrow commanded his friends as he simultaneously shouted down into what looked like the deep basement of a building long knocked flat. “Louie! Y’alright?”

    Cole, hearing the voice of his best friend, sat up, shook his ringing head, and looked around his new environment.

    “A-OK!” He called out, his own voice echoing into the dark. “Nothing broken as far as I can tell.”

    “Oi! Catch!” Woodrow tossed Cole the precious Zippo lighter he had inherited from an American GI. “I’m going to see if I can find a rope or something.”

    “Ace,” Cole answered as he caught the Zippo. Stepping out of the shaft of sunlight now streaming into the forgotten room, he flicked open the lighter and upon striking flint was bewildered by what he saw. The underground bunker he had so ungracefully entered appeared to have been a laboratory of some sort. Exotic-looking electrical equipment ringed the perimeter of the room, thick cables running from tables crowded with dead meters of every kind. The wires that led down across the floor were all covered in thick dust, attesting to their disuse at least since the German Blitz had buried the whole operation.

    Cole followed the closest rat’s nest of cable through a reinforced exit, the heavy steel door designed to keep something well out, or in; but judging from the dog’s dinner of wires crossing the threshold, had never been used for either task.

    The adjoining space was nearly the same size as the one he fell into, with one important difference that made it seem much larger. Whereas what he was already thinking of as the lab looked like a yard sale at Dr. Frankenstein’s flat, the new space was spotless except for a massive riveted spiral of sheet aluminum resting up on one flat end.

    As Cole approached the structure, his distorted reflection gazed back at him in the convex side of the standing silver surface, the tiny flame from the Zippo dancing hypnotically in the mirror. His twisted twin looked at as much of a loss as he felt. Peering into the open end of the structure, Cole felt an intoxicating buzz, recalling the time that he and Woodrow broke into his uncle’s liquor cabinet and each had their first nip of gin.

    Bolstered by the exciting feeling, Cole followed the curved panel inward and found himself surrounded on either side by the reflections the lighter threw against the polished walls. The further he walked into the spiral, the better he realized he could see. Against his own better judgement, Cole snapped the Zippo closed and could immediately discern a dim glow emanating from further within the assembly. It was as if the thing was responding to his presence and was somehow powering up.

    Forgetting about the rescue that was surely about to notice that he was missing, Cole felt drawn to the center of the contraption. He ignored a growing feeling of agitation, chalking it up to having fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole into one of the science fiction pulps that he favored. A loud buzzing assailed his ears as he turned the final bend into the center of the spiral. At what he would later learn was its mathematical origin point, sat a simple metal chair, and having nothing better to do, he sat.

    The dim light suddenly intensified as if the act of occupying the proffered seat had completed some secret circuit, awaking the mysterious machine from its slumber. Cole gazed at his reflection in the concave side of the polished aluminum wall, and straightened his dirty blonde hair, thinking that he looked pretty good for having dropped a fair piece into some dusty nightmare.

    “The hair looks good, kid,” came a voice out of nowhere. “Always has.”


    “Bloody hell!” Cole cried out as the wall in front of him began to fade into a foggy chimerical forest scene where a disturbingly familiar-looking older man sat cross-legged in the grass.

    “There you are,” the phantom spoke. “I have waited a long time until things on this end were just how I remembered them. I have so much to tell you.”

    “Who the hell are you, then?” Cole demanded.

    “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together,” the phantom sang.

    “What are you on about, mate? What’s your game?”

    “Oh, that’s right,” the figure remembered, “you wouldn’t have heard that one yet. Forget I said anything.”

    “Forget? You haven’t said a single word that has made any sense at all. None of this makes sense.”

    “You always were a cheeky little bastard. Look, they are going to find you down in that hole any minute, now. Listen very closely to what I am going to tell you, and most importantly, don’t tell a soul.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Death & the Back Catalog

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    It was still dark when Karoline Rosenda unlocked the front door to the offices of Celestial Records. The thick fog smothering the Outer Sunset had long begun to seep into her bones as well as her spirit. Without bothering to turn on the overhead lights, she made a beeline for the small kitchen to start a pot of the toxic black coffee she was famous for.

    It was gearing up to be the worst day of her short career, if not the last. Z was not going to take the news that she had lost their star artist to the tide very well. She wondered if she should just start boxing up her desk before he came in, and decided that there wasn’t really anything she needed to remind her of this particular episode of her life. At least her boss was not traditionally what you could call an early riser. Rosenda wasn’t sure what other pies Avidan’s fat fingers were stuck in, but certainly most of them were still cooking late into the night.

    Rosenda was wrestling with the rusty chrome can opener and a new three-pound can of Maxwell House when she caught a muffled sound of laughter coming from the back office. Suddenly hit with the realization that she might not be around to drink a pot of coffee, she gave up the fighting with the tinplate steel canister and went to face the music, so to speak.

    Approaching Zev Avidan’s office, she noticed a strip of hellish red light seeping under the closed door. From inside the office, Rosenda could hear the sound of a party going on. The raucous laughter of intoxicated young women was punctuated like a cymbal crash by the crystalline splash of a dropped glass.

    What the hell? She mouthed, grabbing the nearest heavy three-hole punch before confronting what was sure to be intruders. Suddenly the door slammed open and a weary bacchanal in its final thrum revealed itself to her. A woman in high heels and the wide-eyed look of a racehorse just cut loose from the starting gate, tottered past Rosenda to what she hoped would be the company ladies’ room.

    “Karoline, get your tush in here!” Avidan shouted over Cole’s last album blasting out of the large office stereo speakers that faced his huge oaken desk.

    “Mr, Z,” Rosenda struggle to find words. “What is all this? It’s not even 7 o’clock. Have you been here all night?”

    “Dammit, is it morning already? Hang on, I need to get Monarch on the horn. We are going to need them to drill a goddamn oil well for all the records they are going to be pressing! What time is it in L.A.?”

    “Oil what?” Rosenda stepped over the legs of a young Italian man in a rumpled suit sitting on the shag rug smoking a cigarette with a girl in a orange A-line mini skirt on his lap. The pop art pattern barely wrapping the girl’s ass was a shapely field of bloodshot eyes all staring at her. “It’s the same time as… will someone please tell me what is going on here?”

    “Signora, it seems that the unfortunate demise of your so-called rock star has been quite the stroke of luck to ‘Mr. Z.’” The man rolled the girl off of his lap and stumbled a bit as he stood. “Marone! Giulia you need to go on a diet. I can’t feel my leg.”

    “That was your leg?” The young woman stood and straightened the eyes. “That is a disappointment. I should go find Vanda. Which way was the… ”

    “Straight down the hall, dear,” Avidan searched in his jacket for a match. “Karo, is your roommate still looking for a job? Ring her up and see if we can get her down here to make us some coffee.”

    “Am I fired, then?” Rosenda cast her eyes down to the beleaguered shag.

    “Fired?” Avidan, having found and a struck a match, began to laugh until the flame burned his fingers. “Ouch! Absolutely, not! I need you on a plane to L.A. immediately. We need to repackage the back catalog and get it into production. I can’t trust that shmegegge at Monarch not to fuck this up.”

    “The back catalog?”

    “Yes! I want every note, every belch, every wet, juicy fart squeaked out by that son-of-a-bitch Lucious Cole to flood the market,” Avidan decreed. “Record label one-oh-fucking-one: There is nothing like death to boost the back catalogue.”

    “Your boss here owed some people quite a bit of money,” the Italian man straightened out his suit and looked around for the women to begin his leave. “Against all odds, it looks like his problem has resolved itself. We were just celebrating his good fortune. And ours.”

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Chae Burton 2

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    I guess Lucious Cole was just on our minds that night. He was all over the radio as he had just been reported missing. The pirate radio station out of Boonville had been playing nothing but National Loaf records all weekend. It was a weird soundtrack to the founding of Girassol.

    I was seeing Charlie at the time and he was helping Zongo and Enrique move a bunch of lumber and building materials up to the scene. I was a big Lucious Cole fan in those days, and was probably driving Charlie crazy by moping around his pad so he took me with him on some of the runs.

    You can say what you want about our generation, but when we set our minds to something, we can really get things done. I had never seen so many groovy people in one place working so hard.

    Everybody there had given up on the plastic lives that the prevailing death culture had prescribed for them. There was a real feeling that we were starting something authentic, for lack of a better word.

    I had just really gotten into astrology, and it was a new moon that night, the perfect time to be starting a new venture. So when this groovy chick brought out what we starting calling her Moon Juice, it was to celebrate the birth of a new society. It probably sounds naïve now, but we really thought that we could transcend the trips that our parents had laid on us.

    There were about a dozen of us all sitting around the bonfire, partaking of a little pakalolo, when the morning glory started coming on. I don’t remember who dug it first, but pretty soon we were all seeing a huge meteor streaking across the sky. It was so big and so close that you could hear it tearing through the atmosphere, and then as quickly as it came, it was gone.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 4

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Once we decided to renovate Girassol, I figured I ought to let Mrs. Chaves know what was going on; that way if we ran into a hassle, we would be coming from a place of righteousness.

    I had to go into town and call her from the payphone at Sammy’s. Once I told her that the big house was still standing and in amazingly good condition, she actually wept on the phone. I told her the other buildings were a loss, but she was cool with us building some new ones. There was no electricity out to the property, but the gas lines were somehow still intact and the same company that provided it back when Mrs. Chaves lived there was still around.

    I got her to call the company and let them know that she now owned the property and wanted the gas back on. They said it might take a while since they would have to check the hookups, but it would be all right to put it in my name so that we could pay the bill. In the meantime, we had plenty of firewood from the tear downs.

    In fact, when we finally finished loading in all of the salvaged building materials, a girlfriend of Enrique’s brought out a jug of morning glory wine she had made and we had a huge bonfire.

    The acid-like effects of morning glory seeds was one of those things I had always heard about but never tried as they had a bad reputation for making you really sick as well as really high. For me, there’s nothing worse than losing your lunch while tripping balls, but this chick had figured out a way to extract the good shit and filter out the part that makes you nauseous.

    We were all tired from schlepping salvage all week but also had the mellow feeling of a job well done. We built a big pile of lumber we knew we couldn’t use again and all took a big drink of the wine. She called it wine, but had actually used Everclear in her process so it packed a punch like a smack from a bat.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Enrique Bravocado 4

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    When Zongo and I first got our thing together out at the ranch, it was paradise, man. It took a lot of elbow grease to clean up the property, but once all the heads starting showing up and pitching in, it went really quickly.

    And the big house, don’t ask me how, but we hardly had to do anything to it. It was like it had been waiting for us. The other structures on the property were pretty much tear downs, though. To tell the truth, they probably weren’t all that much to start with.

    Luckily, Charlie knew some guy that had a contract to dismantle the buildings at an old hot springs resort not too far away. There was a lot of good salvage: lumber, windows, pipes, the works. We just had to work out a way to get it all to Girassol.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Charlie Perigo 4

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Once we put the word out on the street about what we wanted to build, it was amazing how quickly it caught on. There were a lot of heads that had been at loose ends, which was causing them heat in some of the small towns around the Bay Area. Small towns? What am I saying? They were all small towns! Still are, when it comes down to it. At least in the head.

    A boonie rat buddy of mine named Ikaia Keala—we called him Sticky Icky in-country—used to do under-the-table construction jobs around the county and had somehow pulled the gig to dismantle the buildings on a crumbling old resort. I think local kids kept breaking in and the county was afraid of getting sued if some drunk teenager got himself parboiled in the hot springs.

    Sticky said that we could have the salvage if; one, we helped him take it all apart, and, two, if we got it all the hell out of there. You should have seen the ragtag caravan of pickups, flatbeds, vans—whatever we could get our hands on—heading further up into the woods once we finished tearing those places down. We were like an army of ants all carrying pieces of some giant dead bug back to the nest.

    We hadn’t had time to improve the way in, and there had been some genuine—and well considered, in my opinion—arguments against it. It would be harder for the county to sweep in and hassle us if we left the road impassible, so it ended being up to me to lift the salvage up and over the tangled growth with the chopper. It was really weird, I felt like I was back in ’Nam again, helping to establish an LZ.

    Once a stick, always a stick.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Police Chief Warren Burton 1 [fiçcão]

    UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

    Of course I remember when that so-called rock star disappeared in San Francisco. I still had some friends on the force out that way. You can’t believe the stories they used to tell me; drug addicts from all over the country pouring in to the City and the city government refusing to deal with it.

    How would you like it if you got up to go to work one morning and some filthy young runaway was breast-feeding her malnourished baby on your front stoop?

    Girassol? That was something else entirely. At least we had them all in one place; out of the way. It was almost like they sent themselves to their own refugee camp.

    It worked for a while, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This SFPD friend of mine that I knew in Korea got the call that night of a possible drowning out at Ocean Beach. That strip has a notorious riptide, especially around ebb.

    The way my buddy explained it is there are billions of gallons of water that come pouring out of the Bay between high and low tides and it meets an unbelievably massive wall of sand just outside the Golden Gate which shoots the water both north to Marin and south to Monterey. Get caught in that and you’d be wishing you fell into a Mixmaster instead.

    He got a call that some morning joggers found a paint-spattered pair of coveralls that matched an APB for a possible suicide. It was Lucious Cole. The two yahoos that were supposed to be taking care of him called it in, saying that he had been talking about ending it and had somehow gotten away from them. Of course there were drugs involved. That’s no real surprise, is it?

    They never did find the body. After a while, everyone just figured that Cole ended up shark food and called it a day.

  • Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Meets The Stick (Pt. 2) [ficção]

    POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA  |  1971

    “What about you, man? So, you’re a cook?”

    “Shit,” Khumalo groused, as he grabbed the passenger assist grip, “I was a cook. There was an… incident this morning. With a goose.”

    “OK, now you have to tell me,” Perigo laughed as he downshifted and swung into a turnout at an inappropriate speed and vector.

    “Fuck this thing,” Khumalo pulled the scratchy polo up over his head and tossed it into the weeds on the side of the road. “There was a wedding party this morning. I was cooking my ass off as my prep neglected to make it to work. All of a sudden, the bride’s mother comes barging into my kitchen. A sacred space.”

    “Amen,” Perigo sympathized as he rooted around in the center console for a cigarette.

    “This broad starts yelling about how this Canada goose took it upon itself to join the festivities, uninvited, and was now honking up and down the rows of friends and family pecking at ankles and shitting all over the place.”

    “Sounds like a goose, alright.”

    “That’s what I said! ‘That’s what they do, lady. What do you want me to do about it?’ That’s when the owner pops his fucking head in… again, his place, my kitchen.”

    “I can see where this is going.”

    “Both of them started tag teaming me about how this goddamn goose was ruining the wedding and somehow it was my job to fix it.”

    “What did you do?”

    “What could I do? I put the chowder on low simmer and went to out to deal with it. By this time, the whole ceremony had come to a halt and everyone watched as I tried to shoo the fucking bird off the deck. To it’s credit, it had moves. Every time I got it going toward the gate, it would pull a head fake and scramble past me.”

    “Daaamn.”

    “I finally cornered the bastard against the railing and it tried to bite me, so I got a hand around his neck and my other arm around his body and and tossed him over into the water.”

    “Power move.”

    “That’s what I thought. I was ready to go back to the kitchen when all of a sudden the wedding party turned into an angry mob. Apparently, the goose—somehow forgetting that it knew how to fucking fly—hit the one concrete piling sticking up out of the water. Knocked it cold. The crowd started calling me ‘goose killer.’”

    “They did not.”

    “Like it was my idea to come out and dance with the fucking thing! I told them all to kiss my ass.”

    “An understandable response.”

    “A-fucking-men. So, here I am, an ex-cook.”

    “I’ll drink to that. Sounds like you have the day off, I’m buying.”

  • What I Saw On the Parkway On a Cold Autumn Morning

    Upholstered cane back chair (1)

    Dead opossums (2)

    Sheet of aluminum that is going to be a real problem when the wind kicks up (1)

    Witch (1)

  • Samson’s Jawbone (Vallejo Ferry to San Francisco, 8:30 a.m.) [poema]

    From the mouth of the Napa River
    The white tank farms look like molars
    Stuck in a bleached jawbone

    Tossed on the shore buy a passing Nazirite
    As he strode up the middle of San Pablo Bay
    His long hair streaming free behind him

    I almost swear I can hear the Dead echo
    As the hydrofoils begin to lift us above the waves
    If I had my way, I would tear this old building down