James Campion

In Praise of Death of a Salesman at the Barrymore Theater

Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I...

Exile On Main St. Turns 40

I gave you diamonds, you give me disease.

On May 12, nineteen hundred and seventy-two, the greatest rock and roll album by the greatest rock and roll band, smack dab in the middle of the genre's golden age, hit the streets. Recorded...

Guitar Legend Dick Wagner Bears His Soul in New Memoir

In a 1975 interview, conducted when he was musical arranger, band leader and co-lead guitarist for rock legend, Alice Cooper's record-breaking Welcome to my Nightmare world tour, Dick Wagner, then 33 years-old, told the New Musical Express,...

It is futile to fight against, when one doesn't know what one is fighting for.
-Ayn Rand

For all intents and purposes, the Republican Primary season is over. The unprecedented victories in both Iowa and New Hampshire by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney have taken the starch out...

Iowa & the Soul of the Grand Old Party

Soon the nation will learn where the Republican Party stands.

In less than three weeks, the Iowa Caucus will begin the painstaking selection of a presidential candidate. This is when polls, punditry and prognostication become fact. So... who...

In Praise of A Riveting New Biography on Howard Cosell

May you live in interesting times.
- Ancient Chinese Proverb

My disposition demands the immediacy of translation of effort into result.
- Howard Cosell

I last sent words to press on the subject of...

Bored, Drunk & Hiding In Mexico While The World Spins

Mid-afternoon in Salsita's Café, a garishly authentic dive near the historic town square of San Jose, Mexico. The glorious quiet is accented with an aroma of fresh salsa fresca and bean spices wafting from its kitchen, inspiring...

Discovering the Truth in Lying With a Rare Folk Trio

I am riding shotgun in a rented van crawling up Fourth Avenue with Common Rotation, a road weary L.A. folk trio who has taken a one-day respite from supporting the Indigo Girls' American tour to back their favorite songwriter...

"Sometimes you get lost and you find something new." -Dan Bern

Yeah, sometimes the reality check comes home.

It's bound to happen.

We spend a lot of time slashing and burning around here, so of course it gets hard to differentiate between the slash and the burn;...

Pissed Populist Resistance Shifts Left

Some is rich, some is poor
That's the way the world is
But I don't like lying back
Sayin' how bad your luck is

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
-- Eric Hoffer

Not sure why I felt the need to drag that one out. Mainly, I think, because it's apt. For what? How about everything. Very apt. Right on. Corruption is a...

In the 6/22/11 submission of this space, "The Courtship of Chris Christie," I referred to several members of the New Jersey governor's staff emphatically repeating the same thing; under no circumstances would Christie be running for president of the United States next year. Period. In fact, the further the conversations...

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.
- Lewis Carroll

Let it be known that on 9/8/11 at 7:10 pm in a joint session of congress on Capitol Hill, the 2012 presidential election campaign of Barack Hussein Obama began in earnest. The 44th...

Suckered By Messy Democracy Masquerading As Melodrama

Ho-ho, fans of democracy; we have ourselves a deal. No crisis, as if there ever was one, and no belly up for the debt-addled United States of America. Armageddon avoided. Spin doctoring for all.

Nothing shocking. It is how the sausage is...

Desperate Republicans Beg New Jersey Governor to Beat Obama

"I'm 100 percent certain I'm not going to run," New Jersey's Governor told CNN this week. It is the same thing he's told the local press for months and what Chris Christie told the Republican elite this past winter. It is...

The Continuing Saga of Congressional Dipshits

I'm not sure a middle-aged man whose penchant for taking lewd photos of his body and sharing them with college students, and thus, through the magic of Twitter, the entire planet, can reasonably continue to present himself or his ideas, arguments and principles in...

Okay, I think I get it.

Fourteen months ago, a majority of Americans, anywhere from 52 to 58 percent depending on the politically bias nature of the polling, were against government-run health care. Today, anywhere from 60 to 74 percent of Americans polled are against the Paul Ryan plan...

I've been listening to Harold Camping on Family Radio since the early nineties; tooling along Route 84 in the wee hours - half soused, eyes weighting heavy and deep in contemplation about my mortal soul and some girl I was trying to bed. These were heady times, and Camping, with...

Osama bin Laden, the seminal figure of the new century; who's incredibly complex and improbably successful mission to destroy the World Trade Center (a symbol of American financial might) and hit the Pentagon (the symbol of America's military might) while murdering as many civilians as possible on 9/11/01, who forever...

How Hunter Thompson and The Stones Drove a Spike into Hippie Hearts

Did you ever wake up to find/ A day that broke up your mind/ Destroyed your notion of circular time/ It's just that demon life has got you in its sway. -- The Rolling Stones Sticky...