I write at www.thepaltrysum.com
In my head Times Square exists in perpetual night. It doesn’t exist otherwise. It just springs into life at 9pm, with its lights and its hurry, and it’s bustle, the faces and the scenes and the dingy cafes and tourist scene hustle. Many years ago, I met Billy there, he was carrying a guitar, I […]
MoreIt always made me uncomfortable how the teeny bopper mags of the late ’60s tried to sell Neil as “Neil the Indian” when allegedly Neil has no native blood at all, a schtick, a pose, a sympathy at best. Magazines like Teen Screen and Teenset generally referred to him as “Neil the Indian”. In The […]
MoreGoing on down the road, Your hand inside my soul Your thoughts in my brain Your gypsy rags on my back Your scars tied in an Old kit bag Nothing is real and Nothing is right Nothing is the same Not even the same old game Of razors on pristine flesh Needles digging new holes […]
More“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 […]
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