Books & Writings
As the editor of the Bohemian, Pacific Sun, and North Bay Magazine, I’ ve learned something about deadlines—they’re addictive. So, when I’m off the clock, I publish books (essays, how-to’s, neo-noir) and my own one-man magazine, Press Press, exploring how creativity becomes culture.
In Print
Columns
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Roadside Attraction
I’ve been scaling my media biz. Like, literally. I am—for seven seconds in a rotating loop—a billboard. Or at least an image of my face is—and by face, I mean the one made for radio, and by radio, specifically The Drive 95.5 FM, which I host from 3 to 6 pm, weekdays. As a concept,…
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And the Award for Best Oscar Speech Goes To…
Every year, the Academy Awards promises glam, glitz, upsets, and vindications, and surely, this Sunday will prove no exception. That said, where stars either shine brighter or begin their inevitable fade is with their acceptance speeches. Apart from Sean Baker’s acceptance speech for Best Director of Anora, which was a rousing call-to-arms for the theatrical…
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The Cockroach
Every generation has its own uniquely terrifying metaphor. For Boomers it was the Bomb—fallout shelters, duck-and-cover drills, and the resultant mutant monsters that visited their radioactive wrath upon them at the movies. For Gen X, it was the cockroach: that indestructible, allegedly nuke-proof pest that can survive anything. And like everything we learned as feral…
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Your Phantom Punch
On Feb. 25, in 1964, 22-year-old boxer Cassius Clay beat the odds-makers by dethroning world heavyweight champ Sonny Liston in a seventh-round TKO. This set in motion a series of events mired in controversy and still hotly debated to this day. It also revealed a principle anyone facing long odds would do well to cultivate.…
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Petrichor
Of all the “cores” our culture has whipped through in recent years (cottagecore, normcore) the one that never gets its due is petrichor. Sure, I know that petrichor isn’t technically an Insta-worthy aesthetic trend. It merely, if magically, describes the earthy scent produced when rain falls on soil—but given the recent deluge, I think it…
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Spring Thing
The poetical season beckons Poet Edward Estlin Cummings, perhaps better known as e.e. cummings, loved spring nearly as much as he despised using his typewriter’s shift key. The man was notorious for pioneering new frontiers for lowercase letters—he rarely used capital letters, enough that academics covered for him by framing his aversion as a “radical…
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The Case for Outlining
Whenever I start a long-term project in earnest—be it a feature film, novel, or bank heist —I begin to embody it in various ways. Or, more specificually, the work reflects existing embodied phenomena in my life—like the werewolf in my most recent film, inspired by the weird hairs and haggardedness of middle age. Now, I’m…
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Calendar Conundrum
Time is Not on Your Side In a bookstore yesterday, I clocked a stack of calendars going for 90% off. Albeit, it’s February, and calendars have about as much shelf life as the bananas one buys in a fit of virtuousness in the produce aisle, only to watch them blacken on the countertop. But still,…
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Curtains for the Editor
It’s been three decades since I went pro behind a news desk (yes, this year marks my 30th anniversary) and I’m still hustling the escape velocity to jump into a bigger pond. I’m not even a big fish. I’ve been here so long, I’ve evolved into a fucking Jesus Lizard. Memory: When I was the…
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What/When the Hell is Imbolc?
Forget what Punxsutawney Phil indicated on Monday—Spring is coming. If the balmy, near-70-degree weather isn’t enough to convince you that springtime is upon us, consider that the perceived predictions of an amateur rodent meteorologist is hardly a source of credible information. You could get better data on what season it is by strolling the greeting…
