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169. Since I Packed Up and Left On My Own
Life settled into a pauper’s groove. I enjoyed Record Bar but the pay was terrible, so I tried to hustle up a better job wherever I could. The guy at the end of our block ran a stained glass business out of his Victorian. I tried hanging around, pretending that my artistic ambitions involved lead…
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Paste Drink Review: Pranqster Belgian Ale
This week’s beer review on the I-Still-Can’t-Believe-The-Suckers-Are-Letting-Me-Write-For-Me Paste Magazine is a Belgian-style ale named Pranqster. Do I like it? Well, how about you give me a read and answer that for yourself.
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Deep Cuts: Ghost Songs
Was I visited that night by my grandfather’s ghost? The reasonable answer is no, of course not. My dreams were simply projecting the enormous psychic weight of finally understanding his story and not knowing what to do with that. All I can tell you this: I felt lighter when I wrote the last paragraph…
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WIM Meets Paste Magazine (Kind of)
Are you a fan of Paste Magazine? I am, dating back to the days of their print edition. My old Guys In Black Tee Shirts Who Jam buddy Hal the Drummer turned me onto Paste during a visit back home, and I was hooked. So yeah, I’m thrilled to being doing a little bit of…
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168. Last Lions Roar Before They’re Tamed
We drove to the Elks Lodge in Evergreen. The bar television blared coverage of a plane that slid off of the icy Denver runway a few hours earlier. “We need to get the hell out of here before this storm gets worse,” my father said to my mother. At the far end of the room…
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James’s Big Irish Adventure
On a scale where 1 is dinner in Hell with Hitler and 10 is an infinite number of individual pudding cups, my recent visit to Ireland courtesy of Jameson Whiskey was Bo Derek naked on a unicorn (with infinite individual pudding cups). It made for a really solid travel piece, too, combining local color, whiskey,…
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When Should You Stop Calling Yourself An Aspiring Writer?
I met Kurt Vonnegut once. Don’t be too impressed with my brush with greatness: I paid a week’s wages for the privilege.
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Sim Carter’s “Beach Music”
The following story was published by a good friend of mine years ago in the LA Times. It’s such a wonderful Why It Matters piece that I asked permission to rerun it and she kindly agreed. While I was dreaming about California girls, Sim was living a Beach Boys song. How cool is that? Sim…
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