It’s Blake’s birthday. I think he was born on the day I got engaged.  We drove to Tarzana Medical Center and looked at him through the window, trying to pick him out amongst the newborns.  I remember exiting the hospital and feeling that I was beginning a new life.  But that was half a decade […]

I hate the holidays.  It’s the way the routine is broken up, how everybody stops and does…something special? Not being Christian, I don’t quite understand the whole Xmas thing.  All those presents purchased for one day.  All that family niceness.  Actually, I’m down with the carols.  If you don’t take it too seriously, if you’re […]

Meet me at the back of the blue bus According to the Wikipedia The End (The Doors song) this line from the Doors’ "The End" "is almost certainly a reference to Indian mystic Meher Baba’s ‘Blue Bus’ tours of the 1930s."  Are you buying this?  I certainly ain’t.  Because every L.A. musicologist believes that although […]

We’re all adolescents at heart. Although I’d been planning to visit the British Museum, since Harry and Richard kept raving about the slides in the Tate Modern, I followed their instruction.  Crossing over to the Jubilee line, which is SO far underground you figure you’re immune to warfare.  Assuming, of course, the whole thing doesn’t […]