Last week I found out an old friend of mine, a woman I have known since high school died from an accidental drug overdose. She had relapsed after 7 years sobriety. I felt compelled to write about her, as she was an extraordinary person. Rest in peace, dear friend.
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Let me start by saying what pretty much anyone who has known G*l* will also probably say, and that is… in all my years I’ve never met anyone even remotely like her. Continue reading “Requiem for my Dead Friend”
When people asked me as a teenager what I wanted to do when I grew up I, at some point developed a stock answer. “I’d like to be one of three things,” I’d say. “A Butthole Surfer, A Beastie Boy or a Pogue.”
Continue reading “That Time I Took LSD and Got Kicked in the Head at a Butthole Surfers Show”
Or – an alternate title – “Boston, The Racial Valhalla I Never Knew”
My wife and I went on a trip to New England, where I grew up, to visit my parents. It was pleasant in many prototypically New England ways; the leaves were turning and the angle of the sun painted the world in that most flattering light. Continue reading “A Veiled Love Letter to New England”
Or a less salacious title: Chris from Rosi, Rest In Peace My Friend
Fuck man, it sucks leaving some dudes behind. Chris, I wish you could have stuck around. You were a good dude. I feel like we would have stayed friends…
Los Angeles, 2015
I used to have this friend. Like 20 years ago now. He wasn’t my best friend or anything, but he was a good dude. He was from Boston like I am, and he’d gone down to New York for college, also like I did. That’s where I met him, down there in New York. He’d gone to Columbia where he was a friend of my friend, Kyle – that was how I originally met him. I knew Kyle because he dated my good friend Adelle from high school. Adelle was my connection to that whole crew up at Columbia in the first place. While I was at NYU, I’d go uptown every now and again to hang with those people.
Marnie looks fucking unbelievable as she steps from the shadows into the late afternoon sunlight. She’s gorgeous; a goddess in red crêpe creepers and a floral print dress. She‘s happy to see me and shows it, with a smile that envelops her zit-free, porcelain face. The smile is a gift and if I’m struck dead at this moment I feel as if I will have served my purpose in life. As we walk, I do my best to not look over at her. I want to reach across those electric 3 inches between us and hold her hand. Instead I just stare down at my high-top Nikes. Continue reading “A Goddess in Red Crêpe Creepers”
When I was twelve years old, I fancied myself a serviceable breakdancer. This was before the existence of the Alfonso Ribeiro’s “Breaking & Popping” video with accompanying breakdance board. Oh fuck it, why lie? I knew I was terrible. Continue reading “My Breakdancing Triumph”
It’s “Think!” for short, or “Think for Yourself!” if you want to say the whole thing, the whole slogan. It’s kind of our city’s motto. Well the motto for us hardcore kids anyway. I wrote it all over my Chuck Taylors and you see it spray painted all over Boston. It started with the skinheads I think, maybe down in DC, but fuck, who cares who started it? I figure it’s just as applicable to me and my skate crew as any shithead skin. Continue reading “Think for Yourself!”
The lunch truck, aka “the roach coach” pulls up around 11 every weekday morning. The diabetic old man that drives the thing, honks its horn – which sounds like that Mexican cartoon character, “Speedy Gonzales” – to let us know he’s arrived. Everyone comes out from their cubicles and offices and rushes down the fire exit stairwell. They stay orderly but there is no mistaking the very serious intention here. The entire company pours out into the parking lot and swarms the truck. Continue reading “Sully’s Dead”
Rodney King died a few weeks back. He was found at the bottom of his swimming pool on a Sunday morning in June. You probably know who Rodney was and if you are older than about 30 or so, you also remember where you were the night he got beaten by the police on the side of a highway back in 1991. Besides his recent death, he was one of those people who would pop up on the news every couple of years or so. In more recent times it was usually for doing something illegal or just unwise; say for frittering away large sums of money or a DUI. Continue reading “R.I.P. Rodney King”
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