Feb 03
In the Summer of Short Pants and Flannel So, here’s a story. This one goes way back, thirty plus years, back in the summer of short pants and flannel when I was beginning to dig what the boys from Seattle were laying down but couldn’t quite turn loose of Skid Row, Queensryche and Saigon Kick. …
Jan 27
Wintry Mixes and Arctic Vortexes “It’s supposed to get bad this weekend,” Milt says. “Looks like we’re going to be iced in for at least a week.” Ten minutes later. “There’s a possibility it’s going to miss North Alabama totally. Michigan’s gonna be under fifteen feet of snow, though.” Milt sits in his Catnapper Laz-E-Boy, …
Jan 20
Big Az Sammiches It’s a sad fact of factory life that eventually you find yourself eating a Big Az sammich out of the vending machine. For me, in this instance, it was a Big Az country fried chicken sammich I subjected myself to. It was the first break of the day. I was hungrier than …
Jan 13
First They Take Your Tortillas… “Make this make sense! Make this make sense!” Cracker McCracken is incensed about something. I can hear him bellyaching halfway across the factory floor. Five hours into the first shift following a two-week holiday shut down, and he’s already lost his goddam mind. He’s standing in front of his welder, …
Jan 06
What the Hell Did I Just Live Though? 2025, A Year I’m Not Comfortable Reviewing With 2025 a corpse shot in the head and dumped in a ditch, and 2026 racing out of the gate like a retarded child piloting a missile-laden Chinook, it is tempting to piss this column away just reviewing bullshit that …
Dec 30
Learning at the Feet of Self-Taught Idiots “Son, life can be good if you just let it treat you right.” My son reacted to this bit of news with a skeptical eyebrow arched across his fore like the world’s most dubious caterpillar. Maybe the last few months have been horrible. This monkey pile …
Dec 16
There’s This Syndrome Going Around, But It Only Affects Imposters My wife says I’ve been leaning too heavily into the wore down working man persona, lately. Not in my written work, mind you. She doesn’t bother to read that shit. Just in how I comport myself during the natural course of my everyday life, hobbling …
Dec 09
If I Should Die Before My Shift Ends Ever since the great erectile dysfunction hysteria of the last week of August, 2013, I’ve written very little about my health in any public forum. I always figured my next medical update would involve a double foot amputation because I can’t leave those fucking gummi bears …
Nov 25
Holy Toledo (pt 3 of 3) My wife would like me to mention straight away that I got lost several times on the way to Culture Clash Records the morning of the Lit Fest. That is simply not true. I turned down the wrong streets several times. I wasn’t lost, I just jumped the gun, …
Nov 18
Holy Toledo (pt 2) I woke up the morning of the Underground Lit Fest snuggled in a warm bed, absolutely ecstatic I didn’t spend the night in the backseat of my Jeep, which seemed a very real possibility less than eight hours earlier. My wife roused herself, stretched, asked me what poems I intended …
