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Posts published in “Essays”

Three Bus Rides & One Train Ride

At a quiet residential corner, a young man stood on the curb offering his favorite obscene gesture on each hand to all passing vehicles. It's my favorite gesture, too, so I appreciated him holding it…

Hearing the Jan. 6 Hearings

If they stick to their announced schedule, the House of Representatives’ January 6 Committee will hold public “Hearings” seven times. The stated goal is to provide a better understanding of who was involved in the…

How I Played Hooky from ‘High School Musical 3’

Recent reports that Zac Efron, who rose to stardom as the teenage heartthrob lead of Disney’s three High School Musical movies, is eager to do a to do a fourth film in the series sent…

Our Times: Watergate at 50

I went to see Woodward playing Redford Dustin Hoffman played by Carl Bernstein Martha Mitchell, who really blew the whistle never got mentioned.  She got no credit on the silver screen. Barry Sussman, whose obit…

Comic Opera: The Splendid Anachronism

“If you don't like opera, why do you go?” People have been asking me this over the years because of this tendency I have to make fun of it. It so happens that I like…

Society of Spectacle

The televised spectacle of the January 6th hearings will not restore democracy or halt the rise of the far right. The hearings are a desperate ploy by a doomed political class. The Select Committee to…

A ‘Perfy’ For The Claremont

For planting this item in the East Bay Express, the Claremont Hotel in Oakland deserves a Perfy (the PR industry’s coveted Perfumes-of-Arabia award for best cleansing of a company’s image): “Some cities have wine trails.…

And The Beat Goes On

They’re driving on South Dora, arrive at the stop sign at Observatory Avenue and watch a man tug at his belt buckle, drop his trousers and squat a few inches above the sidewalk. The driver,…

Eros Bound

When I walked into the day room of the Bay Area board and care facility where my friend Sally lives, a pall of gloom had descended on the place as bored-looking residents sat in front…

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