“They placed a wreath upon his door” – George Jones I figured out the mystery behind why old men cry: They’re closer to death. It isn’t some blood-brain barrier between machismo and sentimentality and is much simpler and less interesting. Like in “Sling Blade” when Billy Bob Thornton is dubbed some kind of savant for […]
Category Archives: Posting
Stayed In Cobble Hill A Day Too Long
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Your days are numbered, so are mine – Dylan “Mississippi” I used to jog; now I walk but retain hope of getting back to jogging. Mostly I try to stay in motion. I’ve never been that guy forever trying to “beat his best time.” I see these older runner dudes, tanned and skeletal, compulsively checking […]
Step Light On Old Toes
Sunday, May 17, 2026
I make the drive, two hundred miles, for an insurance inspection. Property taxes, colonoscopies, insurance inspections: all increasingly relevant concepts. The woman says my place is “cozy” while snapping photos with her iPad and raving about the spread she just inspected at Olympic Village. She’s pleasant enough but it still feels like something that could […]
Shortchanged
Friday, April 24, 2026
Cheap is small and not too steep But best of all, cheap is cheap – Ray Davies Cheapness is an interesting if often contextual phenomenon. The man without much to give may not be cheap in his economizing; he could be trying to make rent. Similarly the guy in a group dining scenario who insists […]
Tattooed Love Songs
Saturday, February 7, 2026
I’ve been working on the guitar parts for “Kid” by the Pretenders. I’m what I’d call a “good shitty guitar player,” having stuck with it since fourteen. The song has an exceptionally pretty solo penned by James Honeyman-Scott. Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr incorporated it into his warmup routine prior to every show. The song has […]
All Sixes and Sevens and Nines
Saturday, December 27, 2025
I was talking with my niece about Rolexes on Christmas night. I developed an interest in watches some years back as one does when he runs out of things to be interested in. I’ve purchased quite a few of them but never a Rolex. I could probably afford a low-end one if I pooled the […]
Green Onions
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Neil Young, like all deserving of the title aging iconic rocker, has turned into a bit of kook. Not that there’s anything wrong with this. He’s performed with everybody, including the fabulously understated Telecaster player Steve Cropper who died this week at 84. Cropper knew a few things about what to leave out, a trick […]
Late Night Thursdays
Saturday, August 23, 2025
I had a vague plan back in 2004 to move to Scotland. It came to me while sitting in a mostly empty Upper West Side sublet on West 86th in New York City. I liked the place and added some tall red curtains to cover the large street-facing windows. I also bought a few dishes […]
And In Walked Den
Saturday, May 17, 2025
The trouble with eulogizing Denis Munro is that one wants to consult Denis Munro. His prose was lean, his words precise and his recall phenomenal. He enjoyed language in all forms and saved newspaper clippings for humorous reference. Of particular interest were the obituaries in the Perthshire Advertiser and bereaved family members who, much to […]
Spears
Saturday, February 8, 2025
John Spears died a few Saturdays back. He had various handles: “John Costin Vincent Spears,” “JCVS,” or, more often than not, simply “Spears.” I knew him well and yet could probably count on one hand the number of times I called him John. There were other less formal tags, some but not all applied by […]