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Posts published in “Essays”

Eat, Get Poisoned. Don’t Eat, Starve.

I’ve always thought the fastest way to make a bunch of money is to steal a U.S. Mint printing press and start running off 20s in the garage. Not so sure anymore.  A car wash…

The Swap: Butterflies For Ladybugs

We returned to Ukiah for a limited time but long enough for me to fret over my missing Swallowtail butterflies.  For the past 20 uninterrupted summers wife Trophy and I have been quietly thrilled at…

Sounding Out Renfield

In the movie business typecasting can be as much of a curse for composers as for actors. Marco Beltrami made his name in Hollywood with his score for Wes Craven’s satirical slasher movie Scream back…

Eyeball To Eyeball With The Jesuits

At various times during the checkered decade past (the 60s) I have been called licentious, a profligate, and adventurer, a sensationalist, a wastrel, a capitalist guerrilla, a boozer, a corporate wrecker, a degenerate, a wheeler-dealer,…

Law & Disorder & Disinformation

A violent knife killing of a well-known and well-liked “techie” in San Francisco exploded onto the front pages of papers that still have pages, and all over online: “San Francisco is a terror zone, a…

Crazy People

Going to Pasadena City College and taking over 18 units, somehow the paperwork got all screwed up and I got a draft notice. Viet Nam here I come.  I decided not to fight it. After…

The Morning

Weinstein’s wife is crying. They just made love and she is crying that soft silent way women cry when what is wrong, or what’s right for that matter, is not yet a wordful thing. Weinstein…

Buck Clark

Buck Clark admits to having been an occasional participant in what he called “the fightin’ and the fussin’” during the county’s logging boom of the 1950s, but it never got in the way of a…

Dangling Plutonium

Continuation of  “Working the Mare Island Nukes.”  Three men in their early thirties, James, Kevin and Gerry, are telling a reporter about defueling and refueling nuclear submarines. The “head” is the top half of the…

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