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Son of Sasquatch in the Suburbs
For a couple of years I’ve been walking my dog through a path in the woods. There’s a creek in there too, and where the path wends through it’s flat, so the creek flattens out. It’s more like a...
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The Best Thing I Overheard Today
It’s somewhat ironic how often I struggle to get out the front door to walk the dog, because there are plenty of days that that walk is the highlight of the day. Last week I saw a blue heron in the...
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Friday in Austin, Texas: Pool, Country Music, and Chicken Shit Bingo
I happened to be in Austin, Texas last weekend, which bills itself as the “Live music capital of the world.” I was visiting my friend Rob, who took me out to a local honky-tonk to hear some. We went to...
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Saturday in Austin, Texas: Frosty and the Amazing One-Handed Drum Solo
Last Saturday I was in Austin, and my friend and I went to Antone’s to see a few bands. One of them was Mike Flanigin, who was groovin’ on a Hammond B-3 organ. Since I play the drums, so I sidled up...
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Superman Teaches Ethics, Through Music
Let’s throw together some highly unlikely elements for a song: We’ll take a male singer with a startlingly deep voice. We’ll have him sing lyrics over a funeral dirge, complete with lachrymose cellos....
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The Hot New Real Estate Trend? Guitars
Although I am a paragon of virtue 99.9% of the time, I will admit to occasional procrastination. One way I do it is looking at real estate. If I were seriously in the market for a house that would be a...
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Movie Review: “The Wrecking Crew,” by Denny Tedesco
On Monday night I went to see a screening of a really good documentary called “The Wrecking Crew,” about a group of little-known Los Angeles studio musicians who played on hundreds of hit records in...
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My Son Attempts to Spend Donald Trump’s Money
Just before dinner tonight, I was watching the news about Hurricane Sandy, fretting about all the destruction, and wondering if people were all right. My son was in the room doing homework. He glanced...
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I Must Be Crazy: I Signed up for NaNoWriMo
I signed up for NaNoWriMo. In case you haven’t seen it, that’s a mashup of National Novel Writing Month, and it’s a thing among some writers (usually the ambitious ones). The idea is to write like a...
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“Moneyball” and the Case of the Copycat Song
I saw “Moneyball” this weekend. It’s an excellent movie, but I still think Michael Lewis’ book is even better. My suggestion: Go read the book. Then go see the movie. But one thing the movie has, which...
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Son vs. The Grizz
I know it’s a bit of a social media no-no to post photos of your food, but this was a wager. It happened like this: My sons and I have been going to a local diner for months, and on one visit, my...
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Bernard Purdie at the Cadence Jazz Festival
I went to the last night of Cadence Fest on Tuesday. Cadence, a well-respected jazz magazine, has been reborn thanks to the efforts of jazz pianist David Haney (left), who put on the festival as an...
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Book Review: The House of Silk, by Anthony Horowitz
The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Anthony Horowitz My rating: 4 of 5 stars Two points about THE HOUSE OF SILK (and the notion of writing a Sherlock Holmes story in general): Sherlock has...
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Traveler vs. Hotel Room
I’ve been traveling a lot for work, which often means a bad night’s sleep. For complicated reasons involving hotel no-vacancies, my only room option last week was on the other side of the machinery at...
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My Canada Day Memory
Happy Canada Day! When I was 16, I worked for a company that did special events. On July 1 of that summer, my one-day sent me to a mall where I took turns with another guy, wearing a 7-foot Mountie...
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Little Victories
My friend has multiple sclerosis. MS is a nasty disease, which has robbed my friend of the ability to walk. She gets by with an electric scooter and a wheelchair, but for someone who has traveled...
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John vs. Capitalism, the Soccer Shoe Edition
This is what happens if you oppose our marketing juggernaut The Cast: The Great Multinational Shoemongers hire platoons of designers, analysts and marketers to fine-tune their zeitgeist-piercing value...
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Surprising High Jump Lessons at the Track Meet
I high jumped for about nine years, from age 10 to age 19. I was never all that great at it, but I loved the sport and I learned a lot. Now that I’m older, I’ve been having a great time coaching...
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Misadventures in Alt-Mobility
For complicated but unimportant reasons, I’m in Los Angeles this week, and today instead of renting a car, I tried an appallingly large number number of ways to get around that did not involve renting...
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Select Roles from the Dick Butkus Filmography
The other day our lunch conversation turned to Hall of Fame NFL linebacker Dick Butkus, who was a legend in Chicago when I was a little boy. But my kids didn’t know who he was, so I explained: was a...
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