- Recipe: Maple Clam Chowder (3/21/2018) - I'm a finalist in a cooking contest! As my friends know I'm a proud home cook. I make my own stock and spice blends, maintain an herb garden and a whole pantry system. So when I found out that our local newspaper, the Staten Island Advance, has a cooking contest I had to apply. I chose to submit a recipe for "Maple Clam Chowder' because it's at once familiar and just different enough to be… …
- The Cost, not the Cure (8/25/2017) - Chris Brooks has an excellent piece in the new issue of New Labor Forum that grapples with the question of whether unions should cede exclusive representation if the country goes "right-to-work." As the title of his article, "The Cure Worse than the Disease: Expelling Freeloaders in an Open-Shop State," suggests, he's against it: Ceding exclusive representation to “kick out the scabs,” as Richman would have it, might be okay for a high-functioning local with high… …
- “I’ll miss you when you’re gone away forever.” (9/15/2016) - I finally listened to Nick Cave's new record, Skeleton Tree, on Spotify. It's good. Really good. I hesitated because all the reviews I read had these lump-in-the-throat moments when the writers recounted the horrific death of his teenage son last summer and how the family is coping. That sort of thing didn't really affect me until I became a dad. Now, it's devastating. I think because the lyrics were completed before his tragic loss, listening… …
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- The Pre-Posthumous Recordings of The Artist (4/21/2016) - I'll be the millionth writer to note that 2016 has been absolute murder on legendary musicians so far. And now Prince is gone. I don't have a full obit, a critical reappraisal or anything terribly profound to add; just a few musings on record shopping that are too long for a Facebook status update. Many artists of Prince's stature and longevity usually leave behind a trove of posthumous recordings, so that they remain platinum-selling artists… …
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- The Terrifying Prospect of Trump vs. Clinton (3/13/2016) - There is no prospective match-up for the November presidential election that is more terrifying than Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton. The violence and "Heil Hitler" salutes practiced by his supporters make any semantic debate about whether his politics can be defined as "fascist" kinda moot. Ask yourself why he even bothered to schedule a campaign rally in Chicago when the likelihood of protestors outnumbering Trump supporters was all but certain? How long until the open… …
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- Why “Comrade?” (11/18/2015) - A friend and, dare I say, comrade wrote me and asked why I use the word “comrade” so freely, instead of the more accepted “brother” and “sister.” Won’t people associate you with James Bond villains and bomb-throwing radicals when you use that word? And it’s true. I do throw it around a good deal, both as a warm expression of solidarity and friendship and, a little bit, to make people a bit uncomfortable in otherwise… …
- A Robo-Survey from Rep. Donovan (11/9/2015) - I just received an official telephone survey call from my newly-minted Republican Congressman, Dan Donovan. The 20 or so questions ran the gamut from raising the debt ceiling to abortion rights to putting troops on the ground in Syria. I've been exposed to the sausage-making of enough surveys that I know the wording of this one was designed to produce the highest percentage of support possible for Donovan breaking with his party on issues of… …
- Trump and the Art of the (Union) Deal (9/20/2015) - The ascendency of Donald Trump's presidential campaign is a joke that both bores and terrifies me, but that is not the subject of this blog post. An article in today's NY Times, "Donald Trump and the Art of the Public Sector Deal," provides an interesting insight into his shrewd use of public/private deal-making to build up his real estate empire, but misses an even more interesting story about an early example of Trump's pragmatism around… …
- Tuli’s Archives (6/28/2015) - Gothamist has a pretty incredible story about some newly discovered Bob Dylan lyrics, to a song-never-recorded about Robert Moses. It's easy to assume that the lyrics sheet is a hoax. But, because, it was discovered in the Tuli Kupferberg files, I'm inclined to regard it as legit. Tuli was a true American character. He was a member of the musical avant garde jug-band the Fugs, an early progenitor of the Village underground, a leftist and… …
- “What’s next here, Jay-Z?” (6/19/2014) - The reunited semi-replaced Replacements are coming to NYC. I feel slightly uneasy about that fact, but I'm quite excited about the venue: the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium! The old home of the US Open is a legendary rock concert venue. It's legendary mostly for time and place. The sound system was apparently awful, the aisles and backstage cramped and the streets and train stations overwhelmed by the throngs of rampaging kids. But at a time… …