“OH, MAAAN — DON’T FALL INTO that trap.”
Tag: “Bob”
Cult of the Hidden Joke.
Well, I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong —
It seldom turns out the way it does in the song.
Once in a while, you get shown the light
In the strangest of places, if you look at it right…”
— Robert Hunter, a”h
Confessions of an Earnest High School Dropout
IT ENDED LIKE THIS: “MRS. J—–,” I said evenly, “you should work for the city sewer department instead of teaching English — because you know more about scat than you do about good writing.” Except I didn’t say “scat.” And…
Words to Bring Back: “Pink”
– Definition (per SubGenius usage): adj. Happily and/or militantly vapid and mediocre; commercially soulless n. One who or that which exhibits these traits. – Used in a sentence: adj. “I’m surprised to see the otherwise excellently talented Tom Hanks in…
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.”
— Salvador Dali
5 Thoughts: Comix with an X
1. CRUMB. GRIFFITH. SHELTON. THESE (AND other “sequential artists“) were the visual architects of my immediate post-adolescent universe; whose spare-but-dense works were strewn reverently on the couches and mattresses of my very late teens and very early 20s; whose fractured…
“For My Next Trick, I Will Unite the Universe…”
A FUN WAY TO ENTERTAIN and enlighten early adolescents is via the following exercise: “What’s the first dimension?” you’d ask. They’d answer, “Length.” “The second?” “Width.” “Third?” “Height.” “Fourth?” “Time!” “That’s right. Now, for my next trick, I will unite…
Ask Me Another
IT’S HARD TO STAND OUT from the billions of people using social media — but you can do it in a small way, at least among friends. I’m speaking as a self-appointed Facebook Questioner, posing queries every Monday through Friday…
ORL Interview: Ivan Stang
INTERVIEWING ONE’S CULTURAL HEROES IS one of the greatest thrills of a career in journalism — even of amateur journalism. Such was the position in which I found myself while working for Obscure Research Labs in the early-to-mid-1990s. It gave…
On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)
IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate for me how our species loves to tell stories. First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and…
Street Light (Fourth Indigent Sketch)
HE WAS A FLORID, BEEFY man in his mid-to-late 30s, perched on a high concrete bench in San Francisco’s lunchtime-crowded Justin Herman Plaza, and wearing a grey beltless trenchcoat tightly buttoned up to his thick neck. Every minute or so…
Why I Love: Robert Anton Wilson
IT’S THE WAY HE BLOWS my mind. It’s the way he mixes conviction with doubt. It’s his searingly funny prose. It’s his search for Ultimate Relativity. It’s that he taught me some important Latin phrases, like “Cui bono?” and “Non…