I have an old car.  And I love my old car.  But its funky old sound system consists of only a tape deck — not even a CD player let alone an iPod axillary port.  So now I’m forced to play only old-school Books-on-Tape that I check out from the Berkeley Public Library every time [...]

Who the freak ever wants to get older?  Certainly not me!  So about ten years ago, I started searching around for some really hard-core reason to actually want to start looking forward to celebrating my birthday each year.  And what could be more exciting and wonderful than having dinner at one of America’s very top [...]

In 1773, a bunch of colonial patriots in Boston got totally pissed off at King George because they were being taxed severely by Britain and yet had no say in the matter.  “No taxation without representation!” these brave American colonials cried.  And then they dumped several bales of English breakfast tea into the Boston harbor.  [...]

Consider this message in your inbox to be like a vacation e-mail response.  “I’m going camping this weekend — roughing it, so to speak.  No electricity.  No automobiles.  No computers!  No heating and cooling units, no public library, no TV and no Berkeley Bowl Marketplace for food.” Just me and a tent and the great [...]

Some people are always unjustly accusing Israeli neo-cons of learning their rather barbaric occupation strategies (of torturing, killing, harassing, stealing from and jailing Palestinians) from the Nazis — but that’s just not true!  Israeli neo-cons actually stole their barbaric, inhumane and uncivilized methods and ideas from America!  And I have the maps to prove it [...]

“Would you like to play Charlie Chaplin’s mother in my new movie?” a film student at UC Berkeley asked me recently.  Of course I would.  Yeah.  Sure! Did you know that Charlie Chaplin’s mother suffered from and finally died of tertiary syphilis, which she contracted while being forced into prostitution in the gold fields of [...]

The Berkeley-Albany Bar Association has been on a huge roll this year.  First we had a local expert on the U.S. Supreme Court speak at our January monthly luncheon, giving us the complete 411 regarding what the court had been up to this past year.  Not a pretty picture.  It’s really hard to eat rubber [...]

While my apartment was busy being renovated, re-habbed and fixed up for most of last month and a good chunk of this one, I had been forced to find “alternative housing” — staying with relatives, living in cheap motels, house-sitting for strangers, sleeping on various couches and futons, renting rooms-by-the-night in other peoples’ homes, staying [...]

It’s not at all hard to believe that our most popular national priority right now is to see how many more new and effective weapons of death we can supply our troops with, supply foreign dictators with, supply our cities’ paramilitary police with, supply every rabid gun-nut and gangsta in the country with and/or also [...]

Did you know that one of the first American naval battles fought in the South Pacific against the Japanese imperial fleet during World War II took place in the Solomon Sea, off the shore of some god-forsaken volcanic outcropping called Savo Island — and right next to another god-forsaken rocky island called Guadalcanal? And that [...]

Been anywhere near an active construction site lately? I have. And the first thing that you will probably notice on almost any construction site in America these days is that almost everyone there is both skilled and hard-working. And the second thing that you might notice at each construction site in America is that almost [...]

My friend Gordon Lau works for a charitable foundation in Jakarta that tries to help the poorest of the poor — and so he decided to see exactly what his clients are going through by being “Poor for a Day” himself http://www.grameenfoundation.org/ I wanna be poor for a day too — and have just been given [...]

David Pratt, my favorite war correspondent (besides myself, of course), just wrote an excellent article describing the BBC’s recent interview with Tony Blair — wherein Blair repeatedly made embarrassingly ineffective attempts to excuse and defend his indefensible and inexcusable actions regarding the illegal invasion of Iraq ten years ago. But one particular thing that Pratt [...]

A good friend of mine just passed away — and he was a Baby Boomer.  Plus I know of at least three other Baby Boomers who have died during the last few months. This whole Baby Boomer generation may be historically unique.  They were all born at the same time, got jobs at the same [...]

Have you ever found yourself in the following awkward situation?  There you are, hanging out at a peace rally or something, chit-chatting with some perfectly sane left-wing progressive who hates war and loves democracy — and you both are happily nodding your heads in agreement regarding how mega-corporations, greedy neo-cons, avaricious war mongers and all [...]

What’s not to like about Barack Obama?  He’s educated, erudite — and even cute.  He gave a dynamite State of the Union speech. His family is perfect.  Michelle is intelligent, suave, beautiful and compassionate, and Sasha and Malia look like an African-American version of the Brady Bunch.  Plus every racist, wing-nut, fanatic, truther, birther and [...]

Me and my son Joe and my granddaughter Mena finally got a chance to go see “Beasts of the Southern Wild” the other day.  That whole freaking movie deserves an Oscar.  It’s definitely got my vote.  Wow! And the movie’s main plot-line (which involved people idealistically working together to save their small town) reminded me [...]

How come so many right-wingers, neo-cons, corporate RepubliDems, NRA lobbyists, Fox News commentators and radical-extremist talk-show hosts are currently getting all up in our faces about how wonderful the Second Amendment is?  “Second Amendment!  Second Amendment!” they cry night and day.  That’s all we ever hear from these guys.  You would think that they might [...]