Peerless Life in Allston Rock City

[Allston Rock City: Corner Harvard/Brighton, circa 2005] Allston is a thickly settled multi-generational, multi-cultural Boston neighborhood off the Mass Pike. It's a student ghetto, situated on the 57 and 66 bus routes, and the B train from Boston College to Boston University to Kenmore (Red Sox territory), and onward into Park Street, where you can change trains and get pretty much anywhere you want to go. Lower Allston, or "LA" so dubbed...

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Ode To Star Market (2002)

This was a poem that I wrote in 2002 about the insanity that is the Porter Square shopping center parking lot. It's chaos all the time. The poem, such as it is (I'm no poet) had an original title of Ode to Star Market (How I Did Not Get Sushi Last Night And Made This Up In The Car On The Way Home). Ode To Porter Square Star Market Star sells sushi a la carte, that's why I'm bound to go there Otherwise I stay away from Supermarket Nightmare  Homeward...

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Straddling the Great Digital Divide

What I love most about being a true blue Gen X'er is our passage from analog to digital. There's something comforting in the shared experience of taking a flying leap together across a great technological chasm. From Etch-A-Sketch to iPad, from wall-tethered telephones to iPhones. Technology moved fast during our lifetime. We climbed the mountain, we surfed the wave, we sped along the information superhighway with all the windows open....

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Any Other Sunday (re-dux)

  Saturday, June 16, 2012 “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul Father's Day. My day to reflect upon the fact that I've never turned any man into a father. Certainly not a dadd...

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Music Makers and Dreamers of Dreams

When I was 24 years old, I found it necessary to retract and re-submit my *theory about musicians and just what the hell is their deal anyway. This happened all in my head, in the high seats at Foxboro Stadium at approximately 8 o’clock on May 20, 1994. My theory? Please note, I was a wee bit baked, and Pink Floyd, on the Boston stop of the Division Bell tour, had just opened with Astronomy Domine, from their tragically underrated 1966 album Piper...

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Trigger Warning: Fucking Guns

In the wake of yet another senseless mass shooting, social media has erupted in the expected din, self-righteous advocates on both sides of a hot button issue feverishly posting their little hearts out. It's a futile loudness war fought online with Tweets and memes and platitudes flying high, nobody winning and nobody backing down. Candlelight vigils, thoughts and prayers. Fuck the candles. Ban the gun...

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Taco Monday

Make your fresh guacamole and salsa while your tortilla dough rests....

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This time it's Joey who's got jury duty

♯ Joey was already gone when I woke up. Jury duty -- that shit starts early. He brought a book. It's Mel Torme's tell-all, The Other Side of the Rainbow: Behind the Scenes on the Judy Garland Television Series. Because of course it is. I got him that book from someone online. It's actually an old library book, so at first he thought we had to return it to the library. "You mean I get to keep this?" Yeah, baby! It's yours! He loves Mel Torme,...

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