I hope this gets published before midnight because today, July 31, is my birthday. And it's not just any birthday, I'm now officially the same age as Jack Benny --- again. It's my second year of being 39. Okay, enough with the bull, I'm forty. Whoo hoo...

I was born in what has been called the most tumultous year America has known: 1968. In that year, America faced: the Tet Offensive, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson's adamat refusal to stand for re-election, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., The Beatles self-titled album The Beatles more commonly... Read More

I was a 70's punk rocker.

Now, in middle-age, I look back and wonder - Who was that skinny kid? The one in the photo taken in girlfriend Tessa's bedroom, where she dressed him up in a skinny tie and tight-pegged pants tapering to a pair of high-heeled Beatle boots, christening him "the hottest trick in Noe Valley."

Was he: An aspiring writer and journalist? A wayward, college-educated youth in search of himself? A promiscuous lothario prowling the corners of the punk underground in search of casual sex, so easy to come by in the free-wheeling San Francisco of the 70’s? All of... Read More

My parents were marked. I should say the place where my parents resided was marked on the map. How nice. Since my car was in a paid parking lot, I asked if I would have to pay for the time there. The woman behind the visitor's desk stared at me as if she thought I might be an idiot or just plain stupid. She advised me that I would not have to pay. I just needed to take a little piece of paper that she now handed me and present it to the parking attendant. She suggested I ask the traffic attendants what to do from there. What I wanted to suggest to her would not at all have been polite. But... Read More