This is from way-hey-hey long ago, 1996 I think, my newspaper column period, in which I turned out literally thousands of the things. How w...

We all knew it had to happen. For the past several years, reports on her health had been increasingly bleak. At the end, all we had were a f...

I don't know if it's really gonna be like this, but Cavalia, a travelling horse show which is billed as a kind of Cirque de Soleil w...

This is the best of times, and the worst of times, all glommed together. Things are particularly sweet with my grandkids. For Ryan's 5t...

The "It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It" polka.

Guess I better say something about this. Before he became a total self-parody and general all-around show biz phenomenon, Shatner liked to s...

Do I know anything about Dorothy Collins? No. Except that she kicks the hell out of this song. I heard Cleo Laine sing it many years ago and...

There are things I just don't get. As a writer, getting publishers to give me the time of day is extremely difficult. It's even hard...

Rain fell on Skagit Valley. It fell in sweeps and it fell in drones. It fell in unending cascades of cheap Zen jewel...

Today I found out that dragon floats are a traditional feature of Mardi Gras. This one's a doozie, isn't it? I think it's all ...

When I flipped my calendar today, I noticed that this isn't just any old Tuesday. Y'all know what Mardi Gras is, right? Those folks...

Did somebody say Tom Waits? Did somebody say Bob Dylan? This guy combined the best of both. I mean. . . "Wheeling, West Virginia, with ...

(So howcum I'm posting this-all? I got reading Positively 4th Street again, maybe due to taking the guitar out of its dusty case for th...

Caitlin's musical tastes are along the lines of American Idol and Taylor Swift, whereas mine are steeped in classical music (from childh...

"February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday ...

Rah, old dolly.

I confess I am a recovering k. d. lang addict. Recovering, because I'm starting to think she's falling into her own cliches: the lit...

So. This Alabama song has nothing to do with Alabama, surprisingly, but is the best-known ditty from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's dar...

In making inquries about my Harold Lloyd novel ( The Glass Character), I scraped up my nerve and sent an email to Kevin Brownlow, who is wi...

You wouldn't believe how long it takes (and how much experimental printing it requires) to make one of these little "Grandmark"...