I write at www.thepaltrysum.com
“Say banzai!” and every child in Japan raises both arms so mama can pull their shirt over their heads and get them ready for the day…or night to come, it is a call to physically raise arms up, a sweet homely thing, which is strange considering Banzai is a war cry meaning ten thousand years […]
MoreDear Alan Ginsburg Alan Ginsburg, I can never remember where I’ve heard your name always said twice, but for the longest time his name has always exited my lips in the double incantation, conjuring you up with a nod and a smile from whatever plane you now exist on. He had his strange ideas, but […]
MoreSome songs just aren’t meant to be sung, they are too personal, too raw, too dangerous, too honest. I’ve done it. I wrote the lines “I told him I didn’t like driving across water/He told me he had a daughter, and was married to someone who wasn’t me.” It’s unsingable, it takes too much bravery, […]
MoreIt is hard to do this, but there was a time where the Girl was still…was still….when the Boy was young and dreamed of playing second base for the Yankees in pinstripes and cleats instead of calmly, mannishly informing me if the worst came to the worst he would just join the military, when Billy […]
MoreEveryday I get up and take my clothes to the bathroom. We are incredibly lucky, despite it being a shelter, the full bath is for our sole use, just me and the Boy. Every single day I am grateful for a toilet and shower that is inside. Five years on the road will do that […]
MoreI am headed off to my evening feeling a bit depleted. Even playing along to Pissing in the River, giving it my very best unabashed Lenny impression couldn’t make me feel less empty. Maybe if I could plug in my guitar and make some electric noise I might feel more alive. That isn’t going to […]
MoreOk, I do KNOW. I do know..I know intellectually it is barely a Radiohead album, I know In Rainbows is superior, I know OK Computer is a meisterwerk of immense proportions. I know some of you might even accept it if I said I dug the Bends, but Pablo Honey as the best Radiohead album […]
MoreThe royal road, stripped of it’s original name “El Camino Real”, and designated 101, route 1, the Coastal Highway, made virtually obsolete except for the towns and communities that still dot its’ route, mostly catering for tourists and hippies, it’s job taken over by the staid, dull, ugly, boring 5. I don’t care if I […]
MoreI persuaded my dear friend Ruth to listen to Johnny Thunders. I am not going to try and sell her on Royal Trux, it might be a step too far. Royal Trux are an on again off again band that ran from the late ’80s until very recently consisting of Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty […]
MoreGoodnight from me..Lover you shoulda come over playing in the background and the end to a day that coulda gone better really. You can trust Jeff to make things feel even more nostalgic and tender than they even are, that waver in his voice and that sad whine of the guitar, and the heartfelt sadness….It […]
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