10 Songs for Remembering Barry Sears
R.I.P. Barry Sears, a friend since kindergarten who changed my life over lunch
Barry Sears, one of my oldest and dearest friends, died unexpectedly in...
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 81: In 2025, the heaviness got me...
Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part 80: Running Gravity Head’s daunting gauntlet (Act I: 1999 – 2009).
“I tell ya, my whole life is pressure,...
From 2009: “Senior editor graces inner pages of Today’s Woman magazine, world gasps”
Egads.
I’d completely forgotten about this one from NA Confidential (August 5, 2009). Noting that for the moment I cannot gain access to my NAC...
1970s-era albums for December, 2025
Updated December 10, 2025
Nostalgia regularly afflicts me, and as a result, I endeavor to keep it at arm’s length.
But 2025 has been such a...
John Lennon: Life (and death) is what happens to you while you’re busy making...
(An essay originally published at NA Confidential in 2005, and often repeated. It has been lightly edited.)
On the morning of December 9, 1980, I...
On making the San Fernando Valley one’s home sweet home
I’ve been to California only twice, in 1978 and 2006, for no more than a few days each time.
Often it occurs to me that...
From 2015: “Budweiser explains the Doctrine of Trojan Geese Island Transubstantiation”
Photo credit: The Guardian.
From the moment in March of 2011 that the papers were signed formalizing the purchase of Goose Island Beer Co. in...
Unleash your inner pagan at Saturnalia MMVI, a winter solstice draft fest (2006)
Damn, I was good in my prime. The following dates to 2006 (cover art credit: Anthony Beard) and is self-explanatory. Shortly thereafter, we got...
Black Friday ain’t nothing but a memorable song by Steely Dan
(This post originally appeared at NA Confidential in 2017. Photo credit: Library of Congress, via PBS.)
For the past four decades, any mention of “Black...
The book that wasn’t, why it won’t be, and really, that’s all right with...
Today’s bullet point is borrowed from Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers (1930): “Hello, I must be going.”
Regular readers will recall that earlier this year, I...