Once upon a time there was a local music magazine called SLAMM, which was the predecessor to San Diego CityBeat. The Editor in Chief of SLAMM was a man named Andrew Altschul who I wrote under for several years.

Aside from being an effective Senior Editor, Altschul was a prolific and persistent writer, clearly on his way to doing something bigger. Since then he has had his short fiction and essays published in national periodicals (including Esquire and StoryQuarterly), has contributed frequently to The Huffington Post, won a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, and in April, against the odds, released his debut novel on Harcourt called Lady Lazarus.

“It's about poetry, punk rock, and suicide,” says Altschul. “It follows the life and career of Calliope Bird Morath, a young poet who is the daughter of a famous [San Diego] punk rocker who killed himself when she was very young.”

Continue reading "Mister Lazarus" »

I watched the Pope’s recent appearance at Yankee Stadium with great sadness. The reason for my sadness was because I missed an opportunity to do some good in the world.

See, I had a fantastic plan.

Ever since I learned the Pope was going to hold mass in front of nearly 60,000 Catholics in Yankee Stadium, I had this idea to invent a bomb and drop it on them. Not an exploding-shrapnel-death-and-destruction type of bomb—rather, a bomb that bombs only righteousness and goodness to mankind.

The plan was to make a device that, upon detonation, releases some sort of intelligence gas, then fly it over Yankee stadium and drop it, thereby bringing common sense and rational thought to a stadium-full of Catholics at once.

And I almost succeeded. I actually created a bomb that would release a gas that is concentrated with the molecules of rational thought. The only problem was that the gasses also boiled your bone marrow, so the effin FDA—always the sticklers—didn’t approve it. Thus was my golden opportunity lost.

Continue reading "Bombing Catholics
(Passing the gasses of rational thought)
" »

Click here to view my guest appearance as "Bartender of the Week" on The Hangover Show with Jesse Egan

Hey friends, I just thought, since I was involved, that I’d give you all a follow about the Performance Slam we had at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. I wanted to fill you in on how it went and who took home the grand prize.

And the winner was….

It was me!

Can you believe it?

Me me me me me me me!

I won!

Me!

Seriously, I NEVER thought I had a chance at winning this thing. Ask Michael. I told him I was certain the crowd was going to drag me off the podium and dismember me alive after I read my piece.

Here’s the back story, please forgive the braggadocio.

Continue reading "Follow up of Perfomance Slam at California Center for the Arts, Escondido" »

Today, while working in my home office, I heard the sweetest sound of my life. It was my wife, howling from the kitchen.

“Where’s my goddamn brownie!?” she shouted. “I will slice your gizzard into bite-sized meat snacks if I find out you touched my brownie!”

I knew, right then, everything was going to be OK.

Allow me to explain:

My wife and I dodged a large bullet recently. It’s a delicate subject, so let’s just say we had an accident. And by “accident” I mean I forgot to put on a condom. And by “forgot” I mean that I was too drunk to realize I hadn’t.

Continue reading "The Crimson Twister" »

An Open Letter to Yankee Fans Who are Upset about the David Ortiz Jersey Prank

Dear Yankee fans,

Get a freaking grip. Any of you who are whining about the Boston fan (Gino Castignoli) who buried a David Ortiz jersey under a cement slab in the new Yankee stadium, needs to look up the word “prank” in the dictionary and take a freaking pill of chillness.

C’mon, you have to admit, for a Red Sox fan with limited cranial capacity, that was a pretty good one.

So stop yer cryin. You’re a Yankee fan man! Time to do what a real Yankee fan would do, which is plan a little payback prank of your own.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Secretly replace all the urinal mats in Fenway bathrooms with new urinal mats that have the Red Sox logo on the underside.

2. During Yankee games at Fenway, hire a plane to fly a banner over the stadium with the following two words: “BUCKY DENT.” (For Mets’ games, the banner should say, “BILL BUCKNER.”)

3. Tell Manny Ramirez that the league has decided to allow 4 strikes for every at bat. Don’t worry, Manny’ll believe it.

4. At the next Fenway home game, bind and gag and stuff into a closet whoever is supposed to throw the honorary first pitch. Have David Tyree throw it instead.

And last but not least,

5. Bury a David Ortiz jersey under a cement slab in Fenway – with David Ortiz still in it!

That’s all I have for now, anyone else?

By now, you’ve probably heard about the 14-year-old South Pasadena boy who recently lobbied to have profanity banned in his hometown. Apparently, the City Council liked the idea so much that they officially proclaimed the first week in March as No Cussing Week.

Now keep in mind, No Cussing Week is not law. It’s an official proclamation, which means—it don’t mean squat. It is unenforceable, un-punishable, not in violation of the First Amendment and, therefore, not deserving of our contempt.

It is, however, deserving of our ridicule.

Forget the obvious reason, which is that swearing is a valuable element of human communication. Anyone who doesn’t know that has never had their plane stuck on the tarmac for three hours, their shampoo bottles leak into their suitcase or their hotel reservation misplaced—all during the same trip. You just try to tell me that having access to a couple of choice obscenities at that moment wouldn’t save at least a couple of lives.

But the main reason No Cussing Week deserves our ridicule is because it’s retarded.

Continue reading "No Cussing Week
(Saving the lives of puny little twerps)" »

I was flipping through the TV channels the other night and came across The Ring 2. I tuned in just before the scene where the horse flips out on the boat. It is, for me, the scariest part of the movie.

In the scene, Rachel is traveling by ferry to the house where Samara, the creepy, dark-haired, damp girl, lives. At one point, Rachel notices a horse in a trailer and approaches the animal, which, as if it sensed something malevolent living inside Rachel, goes utterly berserk. The horse kicks its way out of the trailer, rises on two legs, stomps a car, chases Rachel to the edge of the craft and leaps over the rail into the black water.

The reason the horse scene scared me so much, even more than evil Samara herself, is because I can relate. Horses hate me, too. There have been multiple incidents in my life when a member of the equus caballus species has tried to hurt or murder me. It’s a great mystery because animals usually love me: Dogs like me. Cats like me. Hamsters totally dig me. Goldfish and I go way back. Iguanas don’t get me, but we maintain a civilized rapport. Even piranhas are kinder to me than equines.

Continue reading "Horses Hate Me" »

Here is the atrocious political comment du jour by a presidential candidate. It’s from Senator McCain about Senator Clinton’s war plan she laid out at the last debate:

“…The statements made by Senator Clinton,” said McCain, “about setting a specific date for [withdrawing troops from Iraq] is the first time, I think, in American political history, that a candidate of a major political party has advocated surrender.”

He’s been throwing around this, “Democrats want to surrender” crap since the start of the surge.

Apparently John McCain doesn’t know what the word surrender means. Because Senator Clinton is not suggesting the troops lay down their weapons, throw up their hands and deliver themselves to the mercy of the enemy. Nor does she propose that we abandon our overall war against extreme Islamic terrorists.

We’ve been told over and over that the war on terror has many fronts and that Iraq is just one of them. If that’s true then getting out of Iraq isn’t surrender. It’s a strategic retreat. Because if things on a particular front are hopeless, or, if that particular front is worthless in terms of military or strategic value, or, both -- as is the case with Iraq -- then the smart thing to do is retreat from that front and put your resources where they can be more effective.

You think a war hero would know the difference between retreat and surrender. Actually, he probably does know the difference. I’m quite certain McCain knows “surrender” is not what Clinton is advocating. But it doesn’t matter to him because it serves his agenda to portray Hillary as weak, timid, and afraid.

I don’t care much for Hillary Clinton, but she’s far from weak, timid or afraid.

Apparently, Major League Baseball is seriously considering adopting the instant replay. I sure hope so. After several decades of having my heart routinely stomped by the brutal boots of crappy umpiring, my thumper is beginning to look like a jelly donut smushed through a spaghetti strainer.

There are many arguments against instant replay in baseball, but I won’t bother disputing them, because it’s not a question of right or wrong—rather, it’s a simple matter of preference. Some people want to preserve the purity of the game. My sensibilities tend toward preventing aortic rupture. Nobody is wrong.

Continue reading "Instant Replay
(10 quick and easy ways to expedite baseball)" »