Blog Posts
The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future—Stephen March
It has only been three years since Canadian writer Stephen March took a hard look at his country’s downstairs neighbor and found us… well, let’s just say that we aren’t going to get our deposit back. Like a tenant that has decided to start cooking meth in the kitchen at…
From Big Change to Big Crime in 229 Days
In January of this year, two days after President Biden’s Farewell Address, I flipped on YouTube to catch up, having long given up on network news. The first thing I saw is what looked to be an agricultural landscape complete with a tiny tractor slowly moving under a text overlay…
Happy 80th, Van the Man!
Belfast’s beloved son Van Morrison has been a recording artist longer than I’ve been alive. Them’s first, and penultimate, album—having dropped in ’65—preceded me by a full year. This is to say that the mystic blues shouter has always been around as far as I’m concerned. Growing up on AM…
Shit from an Old Notebook: Odds and Sods
Sometimes when writing a long-form piece like a novel, you find yourself wandering down paths that don’t end up going anywhere, at least anywhere that helps the story. This one of those digressions that I rediscovered while cleaning out an old laptop that is not long for this world. I…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Squid Game
While sitting at my favorite taqueria, enjoying my tacos dorados and reading the ruminations of Billy Collins on the death of the masculine hat, I overheard this dadaist conversation: “Squid.”“Have you ever had a really excellent squid steak?”“Negative, ghost runner.” Either the conversationalists in question were spies and were sizing…
Post #100—Looking Forward
Well, the ol’ materfamilias has said a lot of goofy shit since… well, since I’ve known her, but I’m going to take this little piece to heart from now on. I think I must have been breaking her balls over Mother’s Day or something, and I prodded, “When is my…
The Prince is Dead, Long Live the Prince (of Darkness)
John “Ozzy” Osbourne made quite a career out of the moniker, “Prince of Darkness.” The guy knew a good hook when he saw (or heard) one, but he was more than that to a few generations of fans now. Ozzy was a hero to every misfit who struggled to find…
Submission (A Correspondence in Three Parts)
(1)Greetings XXXX XXXXXXXX editors, I wanted to thank you all for sending my return envelope back; I’m just not sure what kind of message you were trying to send. Was the empty envelope a metaphor for the howling void that we all must someday face? Or perhaps my submission just…
What’s in a Name? [Pt. 2]
I was born Raymond Andrew Larsen in late-July of 1966, closing in on six decades ago as of this writing. Raymond is a family name, after a great-uncle on my father’s side, one of five born to an immigrant couple from the Azores. I think he helped keep my father…
What’s in a Name? [Pt. 1]
I was enjoying the dubious honor of teaching English to Vallejo freshmen when, while getting ready one morning, a national news program featured a fellow word warrior from somewhere in the Midwest who had been fired when it was discovered that she had the temerity to have been writing Harlequin…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Open Letter to the Guy Playing James Taylor Covers at Peet’s Coffee
I’m sorry if my wife’s inappropriate comment and our sudden departure may have upset your delicate sensibilities, but what you are doing, sir, is an affront to nature. Just because you play a Taylor guitar does not mean—under any circumstances—that you need to run through the catalog of a similarly…
Black Cats and the Rocket’s Red Glare
I was 10 years old in the bicentennial year of 1976. America had just been through the Watergate-spurred spin-out of the Nixon presidency, the fall of Saigon, an oil crisis, and the resulting economic stagflation. We needed a reset, something to celebrate, and along came our 200th anniversary. My father…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Boomerang Fins
There are few situations more awkward than someone who wants to collar you to tell you about their weird dream. Nothing can jinx the old water cooler vibe than an unexpected plunge into your cohort’s psyche when all you want is a cup of coffee. That said—bear with me, now—this…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Springtime Haiku
I had been student teaching 12th grade English at a high school in Vallejo for a couple of weeks. It was a relatively new campus built close to the last vestige of green hills left in that part of the Bay Area. To celebrate the first day of spring, the…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Dancing with Mr. D
So, I’m sitting on the patio of a coffee shop in Arcata… and I know what you’re saying, “Of course weird shit is going to happen, it’s Arcata,” and that’s fair, but hold on. I’m outside with my wife and the pup, just kicking it after a stunner of a…
Shit From an Old Notebook: The Future of Music
The music magazine where I used to work once received a questionnaire on the future of music from a group of college students doing some sort of art project. Somehow it fell to me to fill it out and send it back. I approached it in my usual flippant manner,…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Somewhere Under the Rainbow
It was our last morning on Kaua‘i and I was determined to get a photo of the sunrise over the beach at Kapa‘a. I set the alarm on several other occasions, only to awaken to the sound of rain—which, for Kaua‘i, is not wholly unprecedented, unexpected, or unwelcome. This was…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Beset by Slugs
I got home from band practice tonight and found that in the four short hours I was gone, one of the tomato plants I have growing in an EarthBox had fallen over on its side. Upon closer inspection, I found a friggin’ slug munching on the base of the plant.…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Love is… Car Bombs and Margaritas
When a milestone birthday approached like a runaway Peterbuilt on the downhill grade from Tahoe, my soul-daughter Annalise decided to either try and lessen the impending impact by helping me create a protective layer of fat, or mercifully take me out of the equation all together by means of a…
Shit From an Old Notebook: One Man’s Manifesto, #1–36
About 10 years ago I endeavored to jot what, if anything, I had learned in almost a half-century of not dying. Looking back, I think these “life squeezin’s” have not only held up, but are now cask-conditioned for your edification and/or pleasure. Contents may have settled. Objects are much, much…
Shit From an Old Notebook: Pour One Out For the 24
Before the pandemic shook the world like a snow globe full of goat piss and tears, I was enjoying being chauffeured practically door-to-door from our home in the Mt. Tam watershed to the Big City and back by the 24 bus. Taking public transportation to and from San Francisco every…
Shit From an Old Notebook: I Wish…
Buried among my collection of black T-shirts emblazoned with sardonic sayings, an old favorite surfaced the other day. The well-worn shirt has a small graphic of a penguin helplessly flapping its wings while underneath it reads, “I wish I could fly.” I pulled it on without a thought before walking…
If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
— Ken Kesey
Román Leão 