I like to visit the graves of people I admire. I've hit some big ones, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Voltaire and Arthur Rimbaud. I like walking through cemeteries to find the grave of someone whose life and work I greatly admire because it reminds me to...
(1) Comments | Posted July 4, 2012 | 8:00 AM
In The Doors version of 'Back Door Man," Morrison sings: "You can eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans. I eat more chicken any man ever seen, yeah yeah! I am, a back door man."
Years after first hearing that song, I discovered that the original version by Willie...
(135) Comments | Posted March 5, 2012 | 7:30 AM
I'd left a lot of asphalt in the wake of my old BMW to get there, so I savored the saunter through Tombstone's dusty downtown, pausing to imagine schools of bullets swimming up the street toward me. In my mind, Val Kilmer channeled Doc Holiday with the whiskey grumble and...
(0) Comments | Posted December 19, 2011 | 5:04 PM
Simon Schama in his brilliant BBC series "The Power of Art" first introduced me to the Italian artist Caravaggio. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's use of light in his paintings could only be compared to modern dramatic movie lighting and his patrons were among the highest ranking Cardinals at the Vatican....
(18) Comments | Posted October 13, 2011 | 9:50 AM
Strolling around Seattle my wife and I happened upon the Occupy Seattle protest in West Lake park as the cops were just about to bust it up. There was a tense stand off as the police stood firmly in a circle around 8 young men seated around a tent with...
(5) Comments | Posted September 8, 2011 | 10:34 PM
Two weeks after 9/11, I was booked to perform in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth. I checked with the American embassy before I left London and they said I would be safe, but that I should be vigilant while in Jakarta.
Upon my arrival the newspaper...
(12) Comments | Posted September 8, 2011 | 10:34 PM
Two weeks after 9/11, I was booked to perform in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth. I checked with the American embassy before I left London and they said I would be safe, but that I should be vigilant while in Jakarta.
Upon my arrival the newspaper...
(22) Comments | Posted August 19, 2011 | 5:58 PM
I was booked to perform in Ireland before my sister died and there didn't seem to be any point in not going. It was, after all, the perfect time to be going to a place filled with people who like to laugh and drink. I'd gotten married at my sister's...
(18) Comments | Posted January 28, 2013 | 7:00 AM