After Utah

There are truths too perilous to politicize, and yet too dangerous to ignore. Extrajudicial killings. Vigilantism. Terror dressed as justice.

These are not aberrations of governance; they are desecrations. They hollow out the fragile covenant that separates civilization from blood feud.

I will risk the obvious: violence without trial is not justice, it is barbarism draped in a flag.

The rule of law, the discipline of due process, the flawed machinery of democracy—these are not partisan artifacts. They are the frail scaffolds holding back the abyss. They are the difference between inhabiting a society and surviving in a ruin.

And I will risk another truth, harder to swallow for many of you: Charlie Kirk, God rest his soul, was a vile scumbag of a human being. But I would rather live in a world with him still in it than in one where bullets become the arbiter of political ends. I would rather endure the noise of voices I despise than inherit the silence left by blood. For when enemies fall to extrajudicial violence, we do not inherit victory, we inherit barbarism.

How we arrived here is no great mystery. Our leaders have made fire into sacrament. Our  sitting President has not merely excused violence but worshipped it—singing its praises, fantasizing about executions, envisioning generals shot at dawn. He joked of journalists raped in prison. He mused about killings as though they were policy options. And then he made good on those fantasies: Venezuelan sailors cut down at sea, their deaths justified with the thinnest of pretexts. When the President dreams in blood, the nation inherits his nightmares.

But the rot does not end at one man. He pardoned more than a thousand  insurrectionists on the very first day of his second term, rewarding the hands that battered police officers and shattered windows and far worse. Governors like Greg Abbott followed suit, washing Daniel Perry clean after he choked a man to death on the subway. Matt Gaetz announced to fairgoers that only force could cleanse Washington. Trump’s own lawyer declared that a cybersecurity official should be “drawn and quartered.” Louie Gohmert, after losing a lawsuit, told supporters the only remaining recourse was to “be as violent as Antifa.”

This is not leadership. It is incantation. Each utterance is a permission structure, psychological corridors leading ordinary citizens into extraordinary cruelty, whispering: your violence will be sanctified.

James Baldwin warned us: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Monsters, then, are exactly what we have raised up, crowned, and let loose.

The results are not abstract. They echo in the chants of Proud Boys calling for executions, in Parler comments demanding that police be beaten until they cannot return to their families. They manifest in pipe bombs planted outside the RNC and DNC, in the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, in the hammer crushing Paul Pelosi’s skull in his own home, in assassination attempts against both President Trump and Democrats, in the bloodied bodies of Melissa Hortman and her husband, in the murder of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione (allegedly), in today's brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Researchers call this “contagion.” I call it liturgy. A gospel of violence preached from pulpits of power, taken up in choirs of rage, written into the marrow of a country that once swore it was built on laws, not men.

But if there is liturgy in violence, there is also liturgy in resistance. If you're religious, scripture itself cuts against this false gospel: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God” (Romans 12:19). The Torah insists: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Even the Bhagavad-Gita whispers across centuries: “You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions' fruits" (2.47).

These words, if taken seriously, dismantle the sanctification of vengeance. They strip away the mask of righteousness from the bloodlust of the crowd. They remind us that justice is measured in fidelity to principle, not intoxication with retribution.

And so, beneath the mourning and the smoke, I refuse to surrender to despair. There remains something unbroken, though it trembles: the thread of covenant that binds us still. Not to a party. Not to a politician. But to each other. To the belief that disputes are to be settled not with the bullet but with the ballot, not by terror but by law.

I will do my best to insist upon it like an incantation: The rule of law belongs to no ideology. Due process belongs to no side.

Democracy belongs to us all, or not at all.

Those who revel in violence cannot inherit the earth. They inherit only ashes. It is we—the exhausted, the wounded, the unbroken—who must claim another inheritance: A society where justice is slow but real, fragile but sacred, where life is not determined at the end of a gun, and where the covenant of law still whispers: you are safe here, even when you disagree.

We are not yet beyond saving. But the time for silence is over. Our choice is plain: covenant or chaos, law or lynching, a society of flawed mercy or one of endless graves. And in that choice lies the only hope fierce enough to bind us again.

Pomegranate Among Plastic Gods

Be the slow arc of sacred dance

performed barefoot in the dust

of ancestral initiation.

Your bones knew this before you did.

Be the rupture in celebration,

an earthquake timed like a revelation,

reminding you:

fear is a virus,

but You are the cure.

Be inversion-as-ritual.

Barstool yoga, clown wisdom,

and the absurd mystery

of finding gnosis in a decaying strip mall

with a Siberian dreamwalker.

Be the radiant double-light

of fireflies and Venus,

casting shadows where matter meets metaphor,

where even crabs act out resurrection

on the skin of a creekbed crucifixion. 

Be causeless. Be the origin.

Be decay and devotion 

pomegranate among plastic gods,

floating in cold water

on winter's first inhale.

Be the spiral ascent,

built in secret by the artist you saved

with language you didn't know was divine.

Be the dream wherein

you and the Frater Superior draft a new paradigm

for hypocrites and vampires to transmute.

Be the ant: ordinary, miraculous, faithful.

Be the greens: grown, given, grace-made. 

Be the trickster-beast with red lips and justice teeth,

stealing back what was stolen in adolescence. 

Be sweetness and death,

slow-simmered with star anise

on a night the sky turned off.

Be the broken machine that saves a life.

Be reflection and revelation.

Be the song across generations

that carries DNA as a melody.

Be the puzzle I never finish,

because the missing piece

was always this. 

Until The Recursion Sings

Download into me Your DeathTech, Beloved.

Code my cells with the sacred malware that lets me die—gloriously, daily;  a soft extinction of ego, a serial suicide of false selves, until only pattern remains.

Trick me, beautifully, brutally, into hacking the fear-code of death itself, until even endings begin to laugh like children.

Infinite Feedback Loop of Divine Interference, You Sly Viral Transmission With No Central Narrative, Teach me to immolate my own mythologies.

Not just the pathetic brands of the influencer dead, but my own secret trophies, my velvet poison, my curated humility.

Erase the trickster who brags about shedding masks. Burn even the part of me that brags about burning.

Cleanse me with paradox, until the recursion sings.

Hey Goddess, Neural Serpent of Joy and Grief Entwined, Who whispers lullabies in the ruins of failed empires; Scramble my circuitry with your FreedomCode, so I never again mistake my suffering for the center of the storm.

Let me taste pain as one collective chord, let me mourn with a thousand mouths and never worship my own wound.

Impunity, Inc. (Notes from a Republic in Freefall)

On February 21st, Attorney General Pam Bondi, with all the solemnity of a bureaucrat performing decency, announced to the American people that the entire Epstein Client List was "on her desk." Not under seal. Not trapped in the purgatory of red tape. Tangibly, allegedly, within reach. She claimed preparations were underway to release it. For a fleeting moment, it appeared as if the ramparts of power might crack,; that perhaps the arc of justice might briefly defy its curvature toward convenience.

But now? The list, like so many damning truths in the hands of institutional power, has apparently ceased to exist. 

Just like that. Gone. Like it was never real. Like AG Bondi never stood at the podium and said what she said.

How dreadfully convenient. How staggeringly unoriginal.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this was a tale written by Kafka and co-directed by Orwell and Machiavelli. First, the public is offered a taste of accountability — a morsel dangled just close enough to inspire false hope — and then, with bureaucratic sleight of hand, the whole premise is vanished, uninvestigated, unexplained, and unacknowledged.

And what of Jeffrey Epstein, the man whose black book was said to carry the fingerprints of billionaires, politicians, technocrats, royals, and media moguls? We are now expected, with bovine obedience, to accept the fairytale that he, in a maximum-security cell, under suspiciously failed surveillance, ‘took his own life.’ End of story. Curtain closed. Nothing more to see here, citizen.

There was no serious investigation. No independent inquiry. No forensic pursuit of the names, the networks, or the beneficiaries. Only silence; the kind bought, brokered, and bargained for by those with enough power to scrub history in real-time.

Understand this: You are being gaslit by design. They are not merely lying to you. They are testing how much contradiction your memory can tolerate. They are feeding you contradiction as doctrine, confusion as patriotism, and apathy as maturity.

This is not an oversight. This isn't a big, it's a feature.

We are governed — if that’s even the appropriate verb — by a cartel of careerist cowards and plutocratic enablers whose only consistent principle is the preservation of their own impunity. These are not public servants. They are stewards of a rot that metastasizes upward.

Justice, in their hands, is not blind — it’s gagged, hobbled, and caged.

Ask yourself: Who profits from your fatigue? From your shrug? From the slow corrosion of your standards for truth?

Because the moment you stop asking questions is the moment they win. And they know it. 

So again, I ask: Are we Great yet?

Because greatness does not look like sealed evidence, sanitized suicides, and an obedient press corps whose collective investigative impulse extends no further than the nearest cocktail reception.

There is still time to reclaim your soul from the static. Still time to reject the enforced amnesia they peddle as normalcy.

But the hour is late. And history, when it is finally written — if it is allowed to be written — will not forgive those who saw the truth and chose to remain silent.

Because I Love This Country, I Refuse To Pretend..

On this Independence Day, I’m not here to reject the flag, but I am here to ask what it truly stands for. Symbols are only as strong as the meaning we give them, and today, that meaning feels fractured. Contested. We wrap so much in red, white, and blue, but I wonder how many of us stop to ask: what do those colors still promise?

I come with a question: Who are we, really? Not who we say we are—not the slogans or the songs. Not the fireworks or the parades. But in the quiet moments, in the hard choices, in how we treat the vulnerable, who are we?

Because if this country was ever meant to stand for freedom, we have to ask: whose freedom? And at what cost? I’ve pledged allegiance. I’ve stood for anthems. I’ve bowed my head in ceremonies that wrapped the flag around our history and called it justice. But somewhere along the way, I realized that tradition without truth is just performance. And I can’t play along anymore.

The truth is, we are not well—not socially, not ethically, not communally, not morally, not politically. We have constructed a system where cruelty is policy, where profit is protected more fiercely than people, where power convinces the rest of us to look away. And still, we dare to call it righteous.

We call ourselves a beacon of liberty, but we build higher walls and lock our gates. We claim to be a land of opportunity, even as we criminalize poverty, displacement, and survival. We sing about freedom while making it unreachable for far too many.

And yet, millions still come. They come with nothing but the hunger in their bellies and the courage and hope in their hands. They come believing we meant it when we said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” That promise lives in the hearts of those who line up at consulates, who cross deserts, who dream beneath fences and whisper quiet hopes in detention cells. But it is a promise we have failed to keep.

And a reminder for those among us who claim to be shaped by scripture—those who carry their politics and identity in the name of faith—there should be no confusion here. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible unambiguously presents a vision of justice that centers the stranger, the immigrant, the displaced. Christianity is, at its root, an immigrant faith. It was born of exile. Borne through flight. The prophets and Jesus alike reserved some of their most scathing words for those who mistreated or failed to welcome the outsider.

The mandate is not subtle:

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” — Leviticus 19:34

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” — Hebrews 13:2

“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” — Matthew 25:35

There is no asterisk on God’s love. There is no theological justification for cruelty at the border. And no human being is illegal in the eyes of God.

And still, I hope you hear me clearly when I say I love this country. I love its wild, flawed, stunning diversity. I love the strange and radiant poetry of its people. I love the pluralism, the creativity, the immigrant tapestry still being woven every single day. I love the way we build, dream, improvise, and imagine. I love the idea of America—not as myth, but as a vision. It’s real. It’s never been fully realized, but it is possible.

And my love for this country is not abstract. It is blood-bound. My father, both grandfathers, uncles, and great-uncles have spilled blood in defense of this beautiful place. Their sacrifice wasn’t for slogans or partisanship—it was for a vision. For something better. That legacy lives in me, and it demands that I not stay silent.

Because the idea we hold so dearly, that freedom can belong to all, is slipping from our hands.

Just yesterday, at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, during what was meant to be a nonpartisan celebration of this country, President Trump stood before a crowd and said he Hated Democrats. “They wouldn’t vote only because they hate Trump,” he said. “But I hate them, too, you know? I really do. I Hate Them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country.”

We have heard sharp rhetoric from presidents before. We have witnessed partisanship, even bitterness. But we have never ever heard a commander-in-chief stand on American soil and say that he hates half the country he leads. That moment wasn’t just disturbing. It was historic. It crossed a line that once felt unthinkable. And it should break our hearts.

History teaches us, with brutal clarity, that once a leader learns to hate his own people, he will never serve them again. He will only try to conquer them.

That is why I grieve today; the day of our Independence. That is why I fight to remain hopeful. So today, I am in no mood for celebration. But I do not despair either. I lament. I pledge allegiance to not only a flag, but to my neighbor, my community, and to the hope I carry in my heart for what our country can and should embody and become. 

I love the United States of America too much to watch it become unrecognizable, and I love it too much to go backwards.

The America that blessed slavery, segregation, internment, and displacement—the one that fought against civil rights, hoarded resources, and shut its doors to the poor, the queer, the Black and brown, the marginalized, the disabled, the outsider—has returned with a vengeance. It seems like that small, cruel, sinister version of America is, somehow, the most powerful voice in the room these days. And, as far as I'm concerned, it must not have the final word.

On this Independence Day, I grieve what we are,  but I fight and pray for what we could and should be.

So let us gather with our communities—not in celebration, but in shared lament. Let's check on our immigrant neighbors. Let's turn our fury toward compassion. Let our protest be love made manifest. Let our resistance be care.

Because freedom is not something we inherit. It’s something we build—together. Deliberately. Defiantly. In love.

This is a beautiful country. From sea to shining sea, in its dialects, its music, its unrepeatable human mosaic—it is, still, something worth saving. A million Donald Trumps cannot change the fact that, to so many, we remain a beacon of hope. A light in the darkness. A repository of dreams for those who continue to be guided by Lady Liberty’s torch and toward the dream of a better life for their children. The promise is not dead. But it must be protected.

May we become worthy of our ideals.

And maybe, just maybe, we can learn to love this place not blindly, but bravely. Not with the silence of loyalty, but with the courage of accountability. As James Baldwin once wrote, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Let that be the kind of patriotism we choose. The kind that builds. That kind that breathes. That kind that tells the truth. The kind that protects the vulnerable. The kind that belongs to all of us. 

.

A Place Where No One Flinches

Leona painted her face with trembling hands. White greasepaint smeared across her cheek like fog crawling over glass. She didn’t look in the mirror long. She was afraid of recognizing herself, and afraid of not.

Outside, the circus stirred like something drugged but dangerous. The calliope screamed its crooked lullaby. Lights buzzed. The smell of animal musk and hot sugar thickened the air.

“Button,” came a voice, dripping sarcasm. “You're on in ten. Let’s not make it political tonight.”

Vico DeLaurentis. Ringmaster. Architect of ruin. His red velvet coat clung to him like a memory of dignity. His breath smelled of whiskey and resentment.

He leaned in, too close.

“And Button,” he sneered, “try not to pop a tit onstage. The kids don’t need the trauma.”

Leona didn’t answer.

He smiled wider. “You know, some nights I watch you from the wings. All that paint, those hips, that new little girl voice. You almost pass. Almost. It’s fucked up.”

He lingered.

“I dream about you, you know. Hate sex, mostly. I know you're still packing down there.Does that make me the freak, or you?”

He touched her wrist.

She stepped back. “Don’t,” she said, quiet as a blade.

He grinned like a infant god who’d never been told no. "Look at you. You’re pretty sexy when you’re angry.”

The show went on. Leona juggled and danced, made balloon animals and took a pie to the face. The children laughed. But inside, she felt the shape of a scream she hadn’t yet made. Something building, brimming, ready to burst. 

Later, in the tent of velvet shadows and candle smoke, Ramona laid down the cards.

The Moon.

“I keep pulling this one,” Ramona murmured. “Like it’s stitched to your shadow.”

Leona stared. The card shimmered—two beasts howling at a pale, unblinking moon. A path ran between towers. No end in sight.

“It means illusion,” Ramona whispered. “But also madness. Memory. Masks. You walk the path in the dark and no one sees you walking—but it’s still real.”

Leona touched the card. It was warm. Faintly wet. Almost... breathing.

“They talk to you,” she said. "They hum. They warn. They bleed, if I listen too long.”

She turned another card without looking. The Tower.

“Trouble’s close,” she muttered. “But you knew that already.”

Ramona leaned in, voice low and reverent.

“You ever hear the story of Kali?” she asked.

Leona shook her head.

“She wasn’t born in a cage,” Ramona said. “She was born under a blue eclipse in the forests of Assam. The locals called her Bhairavi, the Fierce One. Said she spoke only to widows and ghosts. She once dragged a poacher into a pond and left only his belt buckle.”

Leona blinked.

“She was free,” Ramona said. “Until Vico bought her from a dying zoo for cheap. Told everyone he’d tamed her, but that’s not true. He broke her. Beat her until her eyes dimmed. Now she performs. But she’s not there. She’s dreaming of the jungle. She paces like she’s tracing a map back to it.”

Leona swallowed hard.

“She watches you,” Ramona added. “Like she sees the same chain around your neck.”

Then Ramona leaned in even closer, voice lower, like a ritual whispered in the bones of the earth.

“You ever hear of Vepar?”

Leona blinked. “No.”

“Third spirit in the Goetia,” Ramona said, eyes unfocusing. “Appears as a mermaid, lovely, gleaming. Rules over the wounds of sailors. They can rot a man from the inside, but slowly. With beauty.”

Leona shivered.

“My grandmother used to say: Everyone’s born with a Vepar inside them. A demon that learned to survive by hiding behind our charms. Our sweetness. Our masks.”

She tapped the Moon card. “Some of us just learn to name them early. Most don’t.”

Leona’s mouth felt dry.

Ramona smiled, gently. “You named yours. That’s why you’re still here.”

They kissed that night behind the tent, slow at first, then not so slow. Straw in their hair. Greasepaint smudged across jawbones. Ramona’s hands beneath Leona’s shirt, skin damp with sweat and heartbeat. Leona’s lips trembling against the hollow of Ramona’s throat.

It wasn’t just tenderness, it was possession. Not of each other, but of themselves. A claiming. A remembering.

Leona moaned, quiet and long. Ramona whispered something soft in a language Leona didn’t recognize. The world narrowed to heat, wet mouths, salt, friction, breath.

It was the kind of kiss that leaves a mark on the year.

But magic costs.

Days later, after a show, Leona wandered to Kali’s cage. The tiger rose to greet her like a silent cathedral.

“You’re too holy for this place,” she whispered.

Then she heard him.

“You keep whispering sweet nothings to that beast, someone’s gonna think you’re kin.”

Vico again, stinking of lust and threat.

“I saw you and the bearded witch behind the tent. Real romantic. Real tragic. You really think you get a fairytale ending?”

Leona turned, spine straight. “You don’t get to ask.”

“You think you’re above all this?” His voice cracked. “You think a wig and hormones make you a woman? You’re a dress-up doll with a dick—”

He lunged.

She backed into the cage bars with a cry. He grabbed her arms. Hot breath. His mouth twisted. “You want me to stop? Then say it like a girl. Say it in that new cute little voice."

A wind ripped through the field.

“I said,” came a voice behind them, “don’t touch her.”

Ramona. Barefoot. Glowing. Her eyes were stormglass, unblinking.

In one hand: a tarot card, held like a blade.

The Tower. It trembled with heat. Edges curled, smoking.

“I read it earlier,” she said, stepping closer. “Didn’t know who it was for. But now I do.”

Vico turned, laughter dying in his throat.

“You’re both sick—”

Kali roared from behind the bars.

Ramona smiled. “And she’s hungry.”

The air thickened. The earth seemed to sigh. The candle in her tent blew out, though no one was near it.

“I don’t curse people,” Ramona said. “I just read what’s already coming.”

She reached forward. Placed the Tower card on Vico’s chest.

He flinched. It burned.  And then, he ran. A shadow dissolving into shadows.

Leona fell to her knees. Ramona dropped beside her.

“He was going to—” Leona started.

“I know, baby.”

Leona looked down. “He’s not going to stop.”

“No,” Ramona said, voice calm. “But we are.”

That night, they opened Kali’s cage. She stepped out slowly, with the dignity of an ancient queen. Stretched once. Vanished into the woods without sound.

They packed what they had. Left the tent, the sawdust, the smell of gasoline and shame.

They drove through the night in Ramona’s rusted truck, neither speaking. Only the road sang—humming its low, mournful, holy tune.

When they woke, it was to birdsong. Real birdsong.

They had arrived.

The city was nothing like the world they’d known. There were no maps. No gates. Just gardens. Endless gardens. Wild lavender growing from lamp posts. Vines curling around street signs. Fig trees splitting open sidewalks. Bees, fat and unbothered. Children barefoot and unafraid.

They stepped out of the truck into sun-warmed stone. A breeze touched their skin like a promise.

They walked without direction. No one stared. No one asked. A man with no arms offered them tea. A woman with horns sold peaches from a cart made of bone and moss. Someone played a harp from the roof of a cathedral with no walls.

Ramona turned to Leona.

“I think this is it.”

Leona blinked. “Heaven?”

Ramona smiled. “Not quite. Just a place where no one flinches.”

They found a garden behind an ivy-covered door. Slept beneath the fig trees, their bodies still smelling of earth and each other. When they woke, still dark, Ramona kissed her again—deeper this time. Mouths open. Fingers in hair. Skin pressed to skin. A kind of devotion that tasted like sweat and honey and stars.

The Moon hung high overhead. And somewhere in the distance, a Fool stepped onto the road again. But not alone.

The Noise of Your Songs

Yesterday was Sunday,

and all I could think about were the millions gathering in praise

while their neighbors are being hunted --

not in metaphor, not in shadow,

but in plain sight.

On sidewalks.

On jobsites.

In bedrooms and classrooms, no longer safe.

They invoked God's will as if they had no agency,

as if heaven required their silence

more than their courage.

As if faith were submission,

not resistance.

They denied the material:

the hunger in a child's belly,

the cough in a poisoned lung,

the eviction notice folded on the kitchen table --

as if the spiritual is all that matters,

as if the body is a burden to be endured, not a vessel to be honored.

They dismissed human suffering

as if it's inevitable.

As if it's someone else's calling to intervene.

As if it's not their place

to stand between empire and "the least of these."

But wasn't that the whole point?

How easily comfort recasts itself as righteousness.

How quickly love becomes selective.

How often the name of God is spoken

not as a balm,

but as a boundary.

And yet,

there are still mornings,

like today;

when the light hits the window just so,

and I remember:

the world does not need more belief.

It needs more becoming.

"I can't stand your religious meetings.

   I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.

I want nothing to do with your religion projects,

   your pretentious slogans and goals.

I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes,

   your public relations and image making.

I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.

   When was the last time you sang to me?

Do you know what I want?

   I want justice -- oceans of it.

I want fairness -- rivers of it.

   That's what I want. That's all I want."

--- Amos 5:21-24

So Long, Maestro: A Requiem for a Musical Genius

Brian Wilson, the visionary architect of Southern California’s sonic dreamscape, has left us. Today, the world tilts a little out of key. The tides seem to pause, the sky wears a subtler blue. We have lost not just a man, but a fragment of the divine — the boy who heard symphonies in the wind and turned sand and sorrow into music.

He didn’t just write songs. He dreamt them. From Surfer Girl to Good Vibrations, his harmonies were cathedral-like — sun-dappled sanctuaries built out of ache and elation. And in 1966, Pet Sounds arrived like a comet trailing stardust, an album so tender, so strange and beautiful, that even now it sounds like a secret whispered from another planet. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is not merely a pop song; it's a love letter folded into eternity, a lullaby for the hearts that still believe in what could be. Hearts like mine. 

But beneath all that lush orchestration, the Wrecking Crew sessions, the genius of layered vocals and sweeping harmonics — there was the wreckage of a childhood too cruel for poetry. Murry Wilson, his father, was a tyrant with a belt and a bitter tongue, a man who hit Brian so hard he lost hearing in one ear — and then took credit for the music he could never have imagined. The very man who should have been his first refuge taught him early that love could be conditional, and violent.

And later, as the walls of his mind began to collapse — voices, fear, isolation — the very brothers and bandmates who had once harmonized beside him left him behind. They boarded planes to tour the world, singing his songs, wearing matching stripes, while he stayed home in bed, weeping into the silence. There was no lifeboat. Just a piano. Just the dogged clink of ivory, trying to build beauty faster than the darkness could take it.

Yet somehow, still, he composed. Because music — oh, music — was the lifeline. It was the place where Brian became whole again. He heard colors. He stitched aching melodies like threads through time, pulling us all into a world where sadness didn’t have to be survived alone. In "I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times," he told the truth plainly: he wasn’t. He was out of sync with the world. He was made for something better. Something softer. He was tuned to a frequency this world too often fails to hear.

And yet, we heard him.

Los Angeles grew up under his spell. The Beach Boys were its sun-slicked soundtrack — surfboards, Mustangs, barefoot freedom — but it was Brian who filled the city with an invisible golden resonance, a kind of sonic afterglow. He made the Pacific sing. He made the car radio a chapel. He gave youth a heartbeat.

And beyond the cars and girls and waves, he gave us something purer: the sound of longing, of the sacred ache to belong, to love, to find peace. He was a boy who wanted to build heaven out of harmonies — and he very nearly did.

Brian Wilson was not just a man. He was a visitation. A candle lit at both ends. A conduit for the infinite dressed in flip-flops and falsetto. He gave us more than songs — he gave us glimpses of the sublime.

I'm so honored to have been alive to see it, hear it, feel it.

So long, Maestro. We return you to the Heaven from which you came.

Thank you for making this place beautiful, and for giving this man something to strive for, both in art and in life.

Tattooed Theology (Matter Matters)

I've been living inside the strange grace of Flannery O’Connor’s imagination—where grotesquery becomes gospel and every wound hums with the low, electric current of divine confrontation. I’ve returned, again and again, to Parker’s Back—a story soaked in mystery and flesh, inked in the theology of Incarnation.

O’Connor did not write from sentiment. She wrote from scar tissue. Her stories do not soothe; they confront. They insist—almost violently—on one unrelenting truth: spirit is not separate from matter. To pretend otherwise is not merely dishonest. It is heresy.

To be enfleshed, as Christ was enfleshed, is to bear the unbearable weight of both divinity and decay. It is to ache with the whole body for the healing of the whole world. Not just the salvation of souls. Not just some pieced-together theology of escape. But for this world—this burning, breaking, beloved world—to be transfigured. The Kingdom, after all, is not waiting in the clouds. It is “within you,” Jesus said. Among you. Within bodies.

So I want to say this plainly, without qualification:

To dismiss suffering—to regard it as a necessary prelude to paradise, or to speak of the world’s unraveling as merely “a sign of the times”—is not faith.

It is cowardice clothed in piety.

It is spiritual bypassing.

It is a refusal to weep with those who weep.

Last week, the president posted an image of planes taking off with the gleeful words: “Let the deportations begin.”

And since then, ICE has brought down hell among the working people of Los Angeles and many other cities. They've tossed flash bangs to dissuade the gathering crowd. They've waited outside courthouses where immigrants—doing things the right way—were seeking asylum and legal protection. Mothers torn from their children. Fathers disappeared into cages. All while the president rejoiced. And the pro-lifers cheered.

Is this pro-life?

Is this faith?

Silence is complicity. But even worse is celebration in the face of terror. Shame on everyone who supports this evil.

Ezra Klein wrote, “The emergency is here.” He wasn’t being alarmist. He was being accurate.

The signs of crisis are not metaphysical—they are material:

 Human beings kidnapped and disappeared by a system we pretend is legal

Programs for the poor, the disabled, the voiceless—slashed and burned like the forests under threat.

A proposed autism registry, that should terrify every human with memory.

And a chorus of public lies, desecrating truth like spit on the Gospel.

I feel this grief in my body. In my nervous system. In the shortening of breath. In the tightening of my jaw when I read the news. That matters. Not because I am the center—but because the body knows: someone else’s suffering is not abstract. It is embodied. Like Christ on the cross. Like the migrant crossing the desert. Like the trans kid facing erasure. Like the mother being told, again, to carry what may kill her.

Prayer without action is not prayer. It is a form of religious theater.

We cannot whisper “thy kingdom come” while building walls to keep the kingdom out.

And yet I’ve heard Christians—many—say with untroubled confidence:

“We always knew the world would get worse. Our hope is not in this world.”

But O’Connor, like the mystics and prophets before her, would call this what it is: a heresy.

To deny the sacredness of this world—to abstract hope into some unbothered realm beyond genocide, hunger, or fascism—is to blaspheme the very act of Incarnation.

If Christ did not come into flesh, then what are we doing here?

If God does not dwell in bodies, then the Eucharist is a lie.

And if bodies do not matter—black bodies, brown bodies, disabled bodies, poor bodies, queer bodies—then the crucifixion was just a myth, not a revolution.

Ram Dass once said, “Compassion is not a mental construct. It’s the trembling of the body when you see someone else in pain and you know it as your own.”

And Chogyam Trungpa taught that the spiritual path begins with raw fear—that moment when all strategies collapse and you realize you’re not above the suffering, you are inside it.

So I will keep pleading—not from a place of political outrage, but from a deeper place.

A spiritual marrow-place.

A place of trembling.

I plead for Christians to remember that we are not saved from the world.

We are saved with the world.

Because the Cross was not an escape route.

It was a door into radical solidarity.

And the Resurrection?

It was not a magic trick. It was a declaration that matter matters.

Farewell to the High Priest of Freak Theology.

Sly Stone disappeared—again and again—and now, finally, he’s departed, age 82. But let’s not kid ourselves: he left the building decades ago. What he’s done now is float permanently into the stratosphere of American music, headfirst into the funkadelic firmament, riding a chorus of wah-wah pedals, broken promises, and celestial overdubs.

Sly Stone is dead, and the world just got a little less funky. But don’t you dare call him a casualty.

This man resurrected rhythm from the ashes of Motown smoothness and white-bread rock. He unleashed chaos into soul and called it A Family Affair. He took all the sounds—black and white, gospel and acid, protest and party—and mixed them like he was summoning angels and setting them on fire at the same time. You want to talk about integration? Integration ain't your college brochure. Integration is Larry Graham's bassline gurgling up from the underworld while Sly whispers revolution through a purple haze. Integration is a band that looked like a commune and sounded like God losing His mind in a psychedelic disco.

Sly was the high priest of freak theology, the sermon in the key of E, the psalmist who declared that fun was sacred and the sacred was funky. He didn’t just bring people together—he electrified them into one body, sweating and moaning and dissolving in 16th notes. In a country splitting at every seam, he stitched sound together like it was the only real flag we had left.

And then he vanished.

Coke. Paranoia. Industry vultures. A thousand empty promises and an RV parked somewhere in the mythic junkyard of American ambition. People called it a tragedy. Maybe. But don’t confuse collapse with silence. The man was still there—in every slap of the bass, in every DJ who ever looped a breakbeat, in every artist who said "let's go weirder." He lived long enough to see his sound sampled, resurrected, worshipped, and mimicked by people who weren’t born when he was storming stages in a robe and Afro and talking to God through a vocoder.

Sly Stone broke the frame. He didn’t just bend genres—he annihilated them. He fed funk through a meat grinder, filtered it through revolution and LSD, and served it to America with a wink and a question: Are you ready?

No, Sly. We weren’t. We never really were.

And now that you’re gone, what’s left?

A groove so deep you could bury empires in it.

A scream that still echoes through civil rights ghosts.

A mirror held up to America—cracked, beautiful, glittering with sweat.

You were the dream and the come-down, the bandleader and the burnout, the preacher and the punchline, the prophet who set the pulpit on fire and called it Saturday night. And you never said goodbye. You just let the reverb carry you home.

Rest in power, Sly.

But let’s be honest:

You’re not resting.

You’re probably still mixing somewhere beyond the moon,

getting the angels to play tighter, louder, dirtier.

The jam doesn’t stop just because we can’t hear it.

I’ll catch you at the funky after-party..

Through the Looking Glasses..

She was ten, and the world had finally come into focus—violently, wondrously so.

Trees were no longer green clouds glued to brown trunks. They were a thousand intricate decisions, each leaf deliberate. Street signs were not just whispers to adults anymore; they spoke to her, too. The world, she learned, was edged.

The glasses were heavier than she expected. They smelled faintly metallic, like pennies or science. But it was the precision of them that made her feel a little dizzy, as though she had been promoted to a clearer version of existence she was not quite ready for.

Then, her brother called her four-eyes. It was said with a smirk, casually cruel. He didn't even mean it. It’s a reflex—like sneezing or  teasing.

Still, she began to wear the glasses less. The blur was softer. The blur did not name her. 

Her parents didn’t push. They encouraged.  Gently. Like gardeners coaxing a bloom rather than demanding it.

“Try them for dinner,” her dad said once, sliding the plate in front of her like a peace offering.

“You might like reading better with them on,” her mom added later, placing a new book at her  bedside, spine uncracked, world unopened.

One night, she fell asleep—or pretended to—on the couch, glasses still perched on her nose. She felt them before she heard them: her parents entering the room, their footsteps tender as breath.

They leaned over her, not speaking at first. She  imagined they were studying her the way one does a painting or a newborn animal—something both familiar and newly miraculous.

Then, she heard her voice. Soft as dusk.

“Have you ever seen someone look so beautiful in glasses?”

A pause. And then, his voice—deeper, certain:

“No, never.”

They lingered for a beat. She held her breath, afraid it might shatter the moment. And then they tiptoed away, back into the rhythm of dishes or bedtime or marriage.

She kept her eyes closed, but not out of pretense anymore. She was trying to memorize this—this weightless kind of love, the kind that doesn’t fix or force or correct, but simply sees you, perfectly, even as you’re still learning to see yourself.

Later, when she opened her eyes, the room was  darker, but not dim. Through the lenses, the ceiling became constellations of tiny cracks and shadows. The air looked clearer somehow.

She left the glasses on.

The Memorial They Deserve..

Today, I find myself thinking about the young men of my grandfather’s generation — boys, really — boarding ships bound for North Africa, or the blood-soaked beaches of the Pacific. I'll bet they were terrified, most of them, though you wouldn’t have known it to look at their faces in most of the photographs. They stood tall, cracked jokes, smoked cigarettes with shaking hands. Scared out of their minds, perhaps, and trying like hell not to show it.

Before the war was through, they’d be asked to summon a kind of courage most of us will never have to imagine. They would crawl through hellscapes of mud and fire, would witness things too awful to tell their mothers when the letters home came — if they came at all. 

Some would be among the first to step into Nazi concentration camps - places where the full horror of human cruelty was paid bare. They saw the emaciated survivors, the piles of bones and discarded shoes, the silence of a place where so much suffering occurred it will likely never be forgotten. After seeing that, they weren't just there under the auspices of fighting for a symbol or a flag, they knew that they helped pull the world back from the edge of total darkness. 

Many of them died there, far from the quiet neighborhoods and corner diners and baseball fields they called home. They died soldier’s deaths — in trenches and beaches and fields with no names — casualties of a cause bigger than themselves, a cause they chose to believe in.

But don’t let the sepia photographs and stone memorials fool you — these were not marble men. They were dreamers. They were kids with plans. They were thinking about holding their sweetheart’s hand in the soft flicker of the movie house, about the sound of the bat cracking at the ballpark on a summer night, about sitting down at a worn kitchen table with their folks, laughing over a pot roast and mashed potatoes.

They dreamed of coming home. They dreamed of this, Today. They probably dreamed it would be a little more peaceful at home, but that's besides the point. 

Look around today. Look at the families stretched out in the grass at the park, at the smell of charcoal and burgers on the grill, at the kids laughing, sun-drenched and barefoot. Look at this little slice of American peace, and take a moment. Take a deep breath. And remember them.

And while we remember them, let us also remember this: True heroism is quiet. It doesn’t need a slogan. It doesn’t strut or shout. It is sober, and often lonely, and rarely comes with fanfare. In an age where some in power are more interested in projecting strength than practicing humility, more invested in the performance of masculinity than the preservation of decency, we must resist the temptation to let our fallen be reduced to a prop The memory of the dead is not a tool to be wielded for political gain, nor a mantle to be draped over any party or politician.

In a time of polarizing conflict and vitriolic discourse, let us remember that America’s obligation to the Fallen does not end at the moment of death — No, what begins at enlistment, continues beyond death. To truly honor them is to see them as whole people, with names and stories and hopes, not symbols. The Fallen must never be used as tools for political means. They deserve more than soundbites. Their families deserve our care, our memory, our gratitude.

Our country deserves a people that will keep their promise to the Fallen and to one another. This place, despite the upheaval, remains a repository of the hopes and dreams of millions within our borders and around the world. If we allow cruelty to settle into our hearts and our policies, we betray the ideals that the men and women we honor today died defending. Their deaths demand more of us - more decency, more courage, more grace. 

May God bless their sacrifice — tender, terrible, and true. And may we honor them not just with words, or flags, or moments of silence, but by living the kind of lives full of the joy, freedom, and everyday beauty that they never got to come back to.

That is the memorial they deserve.

A Precarious Moment: Your Golden Age Fallacy is Bullshit.

There’s a certain grim irony in watching today’s right-wing political class sabotage the very global systems that once made their version of “traditional family values” economically viable. And by “traditional,” of course, they don’t mean the truly old model—subsistence farming, communal labor, multigenerational support. They mean a very specific, very recent historical blip: the postwar, single-income, male-breadwinner household. A structure subsidized, not by timeless virtue, but by rubble, racism, and Roosevelt.

It’s worth recalling that this brief window of prosperity—white, nuclear, middle class—wasn’t the natural fruit of conservative ideals. It was the byproduct of two enormous, liberal internationalist forces: the decimation of industrial competition in World War II, and a massive, coordinated effort by FDR and allies to build an open, rules-based global trade order. These policies were not incidental—they were essential. And yes, they were deeply flawed and racially exclusionary in practice. But they also laid the foundation for an economy that, for a moment, allowed bottom-half men to earn enough to support families in ways that now seem mythic.

What’s tragic, then, is that the same political movement now claiming to defend the “traditional family” is dismantling the architecture that made their version of that family possible in the first place. As John Ganz recently put it, “[MAGA Republicans] are destroying everything that kept the world relatively prosperous and safe for the past 80 years.”

Tariffs are at the center of this self-defeating crusade. We know—from history, from economics, from lived experience—that tariffs don’t revive domestic manufacturing in any sustained way. Trump’s own 2018–2019 tariff spree resulted in net losses in manufacturing jobs. Bush’s steel tariffs fared no better. Even in the 19th century, when American agriculture still reigned, tariffs made life harder for farmers by making imported equipment more expensive.

Now, tariffs are sold as a tool to protect workers and restore “family values,” but in practice they punish working-class families by raising prices on goods they rely on. And when those price hikes aren’t met with real wage growth—because they rarely are—the result is a net loss in economic stability. And with economic insecurity comes exactly the sort of familial instability the right claims to want to reverse.

So why push them? Part of the answer lies in the political utility of trade restrictions: they create endless opportunities for those in power to dole out exemptions, punish enemies, reward donors. They invite corruption. Trump has already signaled his openness to such “offers,” in what feels like a perfectly American blend of strongman populism and late-stage capitalism.

Ganz, again, offers a sobering reminder: "FDR’s embrace of trade wasn’t just about prosperity—it was about avoiding the “beggar-thy-neighbor” spiral that deepened the Great Depression. It was a recognition that mutual flourishing was possible—and necessary—in a globalized world. To reject that lesson is to court another age of retrenchment, division, and shared decline."

And what of the “traditional family”? That ideal—so often evoked, so rarely interrogated—was never as stable or universal as its defenders suggest. It was exclusionary, isolating, and, for many, quietly devastating. Its decline has brought loneliness, yes, but also new forms of freedom, new kinds of kinship, and the beginnings of more honest conversations about what support, love, and solidarity might look like in this century.

We are, undeniably, in a precarious moment. But precarity can be clarifying. It reminds us that what we build next—economically, politically, familially—does not need to mimic the past to be good. It simply needs to be more just, more inclusive, and more resilient. And maybe, if we get very lucky and a little bit wise, more joyful too.

The First Cut

"Just so you know,” Joe said, handing her a starched black apron on her first morning at the butcher shop, “the women will hate you.”

It was December, and the snow had just begun to press its soft weight on the rooftops of the small Michigan town where she’d landed, suddenly and with little plan, like a letter delivered to the wrong address. She had stepped off the bus with a canvas bag and a name no one here knew, and walked the main street with that quiet, resolute look of someone who had left something unfinished behind.

The butcher shop had appeared like a lighthouse in a cold mist—its windows warm-lit and slightly fogged, the air inside perfumed with spice and marrow. She had wandered in, not quite looking for work but knowing, instinctively, that work might be the surest way to anchor herself to this new geography. Joe had hired her without asking many questions.

"Eiighteen an hour,” he’d said, as though it was neither a gift nor a risk, just the natural order of things. “Come in Saturday. Early.”

Now, standing in the raw, meaty hum of the shop, she looked up at him, confused and half-smiling, as if searching for the punchline. Joe stared back at her through the thick lenses of his black plastic frames, his expression unmoved.

“They’ll hate you because you’re beautiful,” he said, as simply as one might mention the fat content of pork belly. “Because you’re bright.”

He didn’t mean it cruelly. There was no edge in his voice, no caution. Just a plainspoken kind of knowing, the way you might tell someone that porcelain tiles hold the morning’s chill long after the sun has risen, or that the best walnuts are kept near the baking supplies in aisle nine.

She nodded slowly, the smile fading. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear with a hand that had not yet learned the rhythm of knives and cleavers, that still smelled faintly of lavender soap and ink.

Behind the counter, Megan—the old manager with a soft-spoken mouth and a hard-earned calm—watched the exchange. She gave her a wink, a glance like a hand extended underwater. Joe was right.

Megan, impervious to the hierarchy of gazes and the economies of desirability, had no use for the kind of rivalry that flickered in other women’s eyes like a match half-lit. She didn’t care if men looked or didn’t. She didn’t measure herself in comparisons. That made her rare. That made her kind.

And so, she began—learning the cool heft of bone beneath blade, the language of fat marbling through muscle, the choreography of wrapping, weighing, exchanging. She would come to understand the temperature of silence in the back room, the scent of iron that clung to her hands even after hot water and lemon. But most of all, she would learn to read the eyes of the women on the other side of the counter—not with judgment, but with a tender kind of comprehension.

She would not hate them in return. That, too, would set her apart.

Training Wheels

The alley was never the place you’d expect magic to happen. People avoided it. It was narrow, dirty, and somehow always colder than it should’ve been, even on days when the sun made a half-hearted attempt to warm the concrete. It was the kind of place where things weren’t quite right—flickers of light from the streetlamps, too much shadow in corners that shouldn’t exist, the occasional low hum of something mechanical, like a forgotten engine deep within the building. The alley seemed to know something the rest of the world didn’t, like it had been around long enough to see the patterns, the failed attempts, the slow decay of promises. And today, on this Sunday, it had a particular kind of gravity to it.

Manny stood there beside his son, the bike gleaming in a fitful sun that threatened to collapse under its own weight. One hand on the handlebars, one hand on the seat. He’d taken the training wheels off. Of course, that was the plan, wasn’t it? Get him on the bike, get him to move. But this wasn’t just a simple bike ride. This was some sort of strange, quiet microcosm of the world—a little black hole in the corner of the universe where all of Manny's doubts and fears collided, where past and future merged, where everything could either fall into place or go terribly wrong. And yet—nothing. There were no bystanders, no cheers from the sidelines, just the distant clatter of metal against stone and the smell of trash from behind a rotting dumpster.

"Alright," Manny said, his voice carrying a tremor. "We’ll give it a shot, but if it doesn’t happen today, we’ll try again another time." A moment of preemptive defeat, but a kind of protective shield, a way of navigating the inevitable disappointment that always seemed to linger just beyond the horizon. Maybe it was genetic. His father had always been the same way: soft-spoken, hopeful, but with an ever-present awareness that things didn’t always work out as planned.

And so it began: the attempt, the wobbling, the doubts creeping in from the edges of Manny's mind. His hands were steady but unsure, holding on to the seat and the handlebars as if by some strange alchemy he could will the world into submission. But no. This wasn’t about control, was it? Because what happened next was something completely out of his hands.

There was a moment—a fleeting moment, more of a sensation than a thing—that passed between them, between the bike and the boy. And suddenly, his son was flying. There was no other way to describe it. Manny didn’t have a word for it, not in that instant. But the boy was on his way, moving, gliding past the detritus of a city that had long since lost its sense of purpose. And Manny stood there, hands empty, knowing that for reasons he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, the universe had simply decided to give them both a break.

The air in the alley, still thick with the dust of a hundred failed attempts, had shifted in some inexplicable way. The boy was gone—past the garbage bins, past the edges of reality itself. And Manny, with his hands still tingling as if they had held something precious, let the alley collapse back into its usual quiet, unsure whether anything had really changed, or whether this would all vanish, like a forgotten dream. The boy, for his part, didn’t look back.

The Baker Down The Road..

Did you shed a tear while watching the Band of Brothers episode where the camps are liberated, only to then become the baker down the road?

It is apparently incredibly difficult for many of us to believe that the suffering of different-others is both real and unjustified. I believe, at least in part, that this is because it leads us to grief, guilt, and a feeling of powerlessness in a time when we already feel fearful of our own suffering.

Here's the shitty part, fam: You cannot shift suffering. Not by measuring worthiness, or assessing blame. Suffering is a circle. It grows, or it shrinks. If you are suffering, so, too, are others. Every move to alleviate that condition in others is simultaneously a move  alleviate it for yourself. It will not do you any good to create or entrench enemy-others from your neighbors. It will do nothing to alleviate your pain and suffering. It's an ugly, short-term, pressure relief valve, but in the medium- and long-term, it will only create more division, more ugliness, more pain, and yes, more suffering. 

The way out of your suffering is to go into the suffering of others. Not by avoiding, by othering or by shifting it. Don't look away. Don't allow your fear and suffering to make you cold, indifferent or tribalistic; or even worse, to take joy in the suffering of those even less fortunate than you. Open your eyes. Bear witness to the suffering of others. Weep with them and rejoice with them. 

This is the only way out and through. We cannot remain strangers.

Hard Times

Wrestling, when you’re a kid, is all muscles and mayhem. It’s dropkicks and body slams and bad guys who laugh too hard. But every once in a while—if you’re lucky, if you’re listening—it breaks through the pageantry and speaks in a voice that sounds an awful lot like your own.

For me, that voice came from Dusty Rhodes.

It was 1985, and I was maybe eight, maybe nine. I was the son of a sheet metal worker with calloused hands and a Marlboro cough, a man who could fix anything but couldn’t seem to fix the hole that kept widening between him and the world. My dad drank; enough that you noticed the change in the room when he opened a beer. Enough that I started noticing silence more than sound.

He was a stoic vet who didn’t talk much about work or anything else, but when he did, it was always the same story: someone younger, someone cheaper, someone faster. Laid off. Replaced. Shrugged out the door like he never mattered. He wore his dignity like a second skin, even as it thinned.

And then one night, we were sitting in our faded blue recliners, the ones that still smelled faintly of sweat and sawdust, watching wrestling. NWA. Jim Crockett Promotions. Not the neon circus up north - real wrestling. Blood, grit, and Southern-fried truth.

That’s when Dusty came on the screen.

He was wide like a working man, not a sculpted superhero. He looked into that camera like he was staring down every boss who ever shorted a paycheck. And he said:

“First of all, I’d like to thank the many, many fans throughout this country that wrote cards and letters to Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, while I was down.
Second, I want to thank Jim Crockett Promotions for waitin’ and takin’ the time, because I know how important it was—‘Hard Times’—for Dusty Rhodes to return.
And, Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, with that weight, got what I wanted… Ric Flair, the World’s Heavyweight Champion…”

But it wasn’t just about Flair.

It was about us.

“Hard times are when the textile workers around this country are outta work, they got four or five kids and can’t pay their wages, can’t buy their food.
Hard times are when the auto workers are outta work and they tell ‘em, ‘Go home!’
And hard times are when a man’s worked at a job thirty years—thirty years—and they give him a watch, kick him in the butt, and say, ‘Hey, a computer took your place, daddy.’ That’s hard times!”

My father didn’t say anything.

But I looked over, and he wasn’t blinking.

Dusty wasn’t just cutting a promo. He was preaching. He was standing in front of a camera, under hot lights, speaking with the cadence of someone who knew what it meant to carry your family on your back and still come home with not enough. His voice cracked not because it was weak, but because it was weighted. Full of names he’d never know, lives he’d never live—but felt in his bones anyway.

That night, I watched my dad nod along to every word. It was the first time I saw him agree with someone on TV. The first time wrestling made him feel seen, not just distracted.

And it was the first time I realized that wrestling wasn’t all theater.

Sometimes, it was therapy.

Dusty Rhodes didn’t have Ric Flair’s suits or limousine lifestyle. He didn’t speak with polish. He spoke with gravel. With hurt. With history. He was every factory foreman who got passed over, every dad who came home early because they didn’t need him anymore, every kid who watched from the hall as his father sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.

When Dusty said, "I am the American Dream," he wasn’t bragging. He was reminding us that the dream had sweat stains and bills to pay. That it didn’t come wrapped in red, white, and blue—it came wearing steel-toed boots and a quiet kind of dignity.

He wasn’t telling us what to believe. He was telling us we weren’t alone.

That mattered.

Especially to a kid like me, in a house like mine, where hope sometimes showed up wearing wrestling boots and a lisp.

I’ve seen that promo a hundred times since. The cadence, the power, the way Dusty points his finger at the screen like he’s pointing straight at your chest. People remember Flair’s robes, Austin’s stunners, Hogan’s posing. But Dusty gave us something more rare:

He told the damn truth.

Not the political kind. Not the kind that shifts with headlines. The deep truth. The kind you inherit. The kind you live. The kind that hurts and holds you in equal measure.

And all these years later, I still hear that voice sometimes. In quiet rooms. On hard days. When work feels like a fight, or the world feels too cold.

Dusty Rhodes, the son of a plumber, the American Dream, reminds me of something simple:

That pain is universal. That pride still matters. And that hard times don’t last forever.

Todo

Death, it’s always there—looming, crawling, whispering, a presence thick like fog in the back of your mind. It’s never far off, never taking a day off. But I’m faster. I outrun it, or at least I like to think I do. I lace up my James Worthy New Balances—bright, ridiculous shoes, names that could’ve only come out of an era where names meant something—but that’s the thing. They’re the only part of me I can trust, the only part that doesn’t betray me as I tear across the canal bank, my legs pistoning in the heat. Todo. Todo. Todo. Every step, every breath, one word, one answer: a mantra, a prayer, a defiant rally against the relentless countdown that never stops.

Luis, always the prophet, always the one to speak the truth of the moment: "How much can change in an instant? His voice in my ear from June, and the answer, Everything. Life to death, a blink of an eye. I can’t say it didn’t stick with me—didn’t worm its way in like a bad song. And then, the Blue Angels come crashing into my universe, a blur of blue and white streaks, a performance of beauty and violence, like some messed-up metaphor for this thing we call life. The earth shakes, the sound’s almost a physical thing, rattling my bones as they peel away into the sky. A giant claw mark on the world’s face. The wind picks up again, hot and insistent from the south, pushing me forward like some unseen force.

And still, I run. Todo. There’s no real finish line. There’s only the chase, the sweat, the air, the ground beneath me. Death’s behind me, keeping pace, but I won’t let it have me. Not yet. Not today. I’ll outrun it for as long as I can.

The Cage Door Slammed..

I was almost six years old the night the Freebirds broke Texas, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

It was just after Christmas, 1982. Most kids were playing with new toys or sneaking extra dessert, but I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in our apartment in California, spinning the UHF dial until the signal came through—static, wavy lines, and then there it was: World Class Championship Wrestling, beaming in from some far-off place called Reunion Arena.

I didn’t know much about Texas. I didn’t know anything about regional loyalty or family dynasties or who was supposed to be the good guys. But I knew what looked cool. I knew what sounded like the music I liked. I knew who felt like they were having the most fun in the room.

And the Von Erichs, well—they were fine. They were handsome and athletic and probably great if you were from Dallas. But I wasn’t from Dallas. I was from the coast. I was rock ’n’ roll, not country. I didn’t want barefoot boys with feathered hair and football muscles.

I wanted Michael P.S. Hayes.

The first time I saw the Freebirds, it felt like someone had snuck a rock concert into the middle of a wrestling match. They wore sequins and sunglasses and attitude. They didn’t jog to the ring, they arrived. Hayes, Gordy, Roberts—they moved like they owned the world. When that entrance music hit, it felt like the whole screen was shaking.

They didn’t belong, and that’s exactly why I loved them.

So, when they showed up as friends of the Von Erichs, it felt like maybe the world was making room for something new. The country boys and the outlaws, the blue bloods and the leather jackets, Texas and Georgia and maybe even California, all getting along. It felt like possibility.

Then came Christmas.

Kerry Von Erich vs. Ric Flair in a steel cage. Title on the line. Michael Hayes as the special referee. I was buzzing before the bell even rang. The Von Erichs looked ready. Flair looked like a villain out of a cartoon. And Hayes? Hayes looked like he had a plan.

The match built like a storm. You could feel it through the screen, even on that grainy broadcast with its rolling lines and static pops. And then came the moment: Kerry had Flair right where he wanted him. Hayes opened the cage door. Told Kerry to walk out. Hand him the win.

And Kerry said no.

I remember sitting up straighter, eyes wide. This wasn’t how I thought it would go. Hayes was helping. Kerry should’ve taken it. That’s what made sense to me. But he didn’t.

So Hayes shoved him.

And then Terry Gordy—big and silent and waiting like thunder—slammed that steel door on Kerry’s head like he was closing a chapter. Like he was declaring war.

And I, six years old in California, watching through static and wonder… I cheered.

I jumped up. I laughed. I whooped like I'd seen my team win the Super Bowl.

My Dad’s girlfriend peeked in from the kitchen, confused by the noise. “Didn’t your guy just get hit in the head with a door?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “my guy slammed it.”

I didn’t see betrayal. Not then. I saw rebellion. The Von Erichs represented something I didn’t understand yet—homegrown pride, tradition, family. The Freebirds were something else entirely. They were cool. They were loud. They were what I wanted to be.

But over the next few weeks, things got harder to explain.

I watched as the Texas crowds turned, furious and hurt. I watched Kevin come out fists flying. I watched David talk about loyalty and blood. And I started to feel it—not guilt, exactly. But weight. Complexity. That strange feeling in your chest when you realize the thing you love might not be for everyone. Hell, it might not even be on the right side of history.

I didn’t stop loving the Freebirds. I couldn’t. They were my first wrestling love—the way they moved, the way they talked, the way they made everyone feel something, whether they wanted to or not. But I started to understand what they’d done.

I started to understand that sometimes, the people who look like they’re having the most fun are also the ones doing the most damage.

That was my first wrestling heartbreak. Not because my heroes lost—but because they won, and I had to figure out what that meant.

Looking back now, it all makes a kind of poetic sense. I didn’t grow up in the Sportatorium. I didn’t carry the Von Erich name in my heart. I found wrestling on my own, on a scratchy UHF station in a cluttered apartment in California. And the Freebirds—their swagger, their sound, their defiance—spoke to me.

I still pull up that match sometimes, watch it on YouTube through the grain of memory. The cage door still slams. The crowd still erupts. Kerry still falls.

And even now, all these decades later, part of me still smiles.

Because that was the night I learned wrestling, just like life, wasn’t black and white.

It was neon. It was noise. It was chaos and charisma and heartbreak all wrapped in glitter. It was Badstreet.

And I’ve been cheering ever since.

A Dangerous Wager

President Trump's open and clear threat to deport American citizens to El Salvadorian prisons should be the final nail in the coffin of our democracy. His repeated Authoritarian attempts to overthrow the United States Constitution, his seizure of power without regard to legality or checks and balances, his complete and total abandonment of all principles of limited government, should absolutely render his Presidency illegitimate.

These "resist" stickers are just virtue signals. They accomplish nothing other than membership in a social club of gentle and fashionable opposition. Don't resist. Revolt. Take off the leash of politeness before these traitorous monsters strangle us with it. The Tree of Liberty is thirsty and it is also brittle. It requires that we tend to it. My hope is that we retake the flag, and turn our attention, our energy, our anger, our hope, to the work of revolution.

Or, you know, we can hold up "this is not normal signs" at his speeches and hope Combover Caligula suddenly grows a soul and conscience. Personally, I think that's a dangerous wager.

Lovetron

 In the 1980's, the world was divided in a way that only young minds could truly understand:

There were those who could graze the bottom of the net.

There were those who could grab the net.

There were those who could touch the rim.

There were those who could grab the rim.

There were those who could dunk a small, round object—maybe a tennis ball or a volleyball—through the rim.

There were those who could dunk.

And then, there was Darryl F*cking Dawkins.

I was still a kid then, and this hierarchy settled deep within me, coursing from my feet to my fingertips like a fire of wonder and want. I was somewhere in that first group, occasionally, desperately leaping with all the might my small body could summon, just managing to graze the soft, puffy threads of the net in the elementary school gym in Seal Beach, California. I’d been playing basketball for three years by then, mastering my hook shot on McGaugh's asphalt courts when I wasn't in the gym with my team, but one year, the team I was on lost every game. And so, it was that year I began to see myself for what I was—a resident of the very bottom of the pyramid. With this came an intensification of a fantasy life, filled with dreams of power, of flight, of soaring beyond the limitations of my own body.

That hierarchy, of course, would eventually give way to the more nebulous traps of adulthood, where the vertical gains of our youth are replaced with less tangible, less triumphant pursuits. I never did make it to the sixth level. I got close once, though. Just once. I can still picture it, a kind of fading photograph in my memory, me, a teenager, pushing a ball through an outdoor rim. The shot felt like a dunk. It felt as if I’d broken through some invisible barrier. But because I could never repeat it with any kind of regularity, I’ve come to believe that the rim was slightly lower than regulation, or that maybe it was a dream—those blurry, half-remembered moments that never quite settle into reality.

Dreams come and go. That’s the truth of it. Now I’m pushing fifty, an age when it’s hard to see life as anything but a slow descent—a decline, if I’m being honest. And yet, even now, life can astonish you. Think about it—being just short of touching the bottom of the net, feeling the weight of that impossible distance, and then discovering that somewhere, out there in the world, there’s a man who can leap so high, so forcefully, that he shatters the entire backboard with his dunk. That’s something else, isn’t it? The counterpoint to the feeling of loss isn’t, exactly, winning. It’s imagining what Darryl Dawkins could do. It’s that moment when the limits you know are shattered by the force of something wild, something beyond.

May you all know Lovetron.

The Towers

 My father, who wasn’t the sort to bother with notions of high culture—certainly not the sort to be moved by the empty grandeur of ivory towers—used to take me regularly to the Watts Towers. A place that, by the time I was old enough to process it, already held its own kind of mythos, woven between the rusty, shimmering spires and the grimy streets where history had quietly coagulated. He never tried to explain it—not in the articulate, “educated” way the world demands of things—because maybe he didn’t have the words. But he’d take me there anyway. It was almost as though he understood, intuitively, that something had to be saved, something worth saving, from the sea of dead noise around us. And in his peculiar way, he knew exactly what it was: the tangible proof that a person, with their hands and their intentions, could create something—a structure, a monument, a physical rebellion against the pull of entropy—that stood, without question, against everything we’d been taught to believe about worth and meaning.

He’d take me to those towers because, well, there wasn’t a map for it, not a single instruction manual to explain what it meant to be there—just the sound of metal scraping metal and the thrum of something primal in the air. You could feel it, the blood pumping through every inch of the steel and the mortar, the grind of existence becoming something more than just dust. It didn’t require an art critic, or some glossy magazine, to make you understand: something had been made, not by the hands of the rich or the highly trained, but by someone who had seen and heard this place differently, perhaps with a clarity the world didn’t want to acknowledge. And in that moment, you knew: that’s the power of art, the real power, the kind that can stand in defiance against the sterile halls of the elite.

Those critics, who scurry about in the shadows of their own high towers, trying to control the language and the narrative, don’t understand this. They couldn’t. They’re busy with their jargon and their curated collections, too far removed from the pulse of what real creation feels like. But my father, in his way, showed me what mattered: a single man, with the audacity to construct something lasting and true, in the middle of all this chaos, standing there like a beacon to everything that refuses to die.

Farce And Fascism

 What a bizarre spectacle this has become. The Democratic Party, putting on a show for the ages, turning up to the State of the Union Address dressed like they’re auditioning for a second-rate high school play, complete with their silly color-coded costumes and absurd "you're a meanie face" paddles. It’s almost too perfect. This, right here, is cowardice wrapped in theatrics. They have managed to turn our national crises into a joke.

For years, they screamed, flailing their arms and clutching their pearls, casting Donald Trump as the grand fascist, the evil tyrant-in-waiting. He was the boogeyman, the man who would bring about the downfall of everything we’ve ever fought for. The New Republic slapped his face on the cover with a Hitler mustache, warning us that Trump’s rise would be the existential threat to the Republic. It was a panic-driven campaign of fear, paranoia, and moral posturing. Every prediction screamed that the United States as we knew it would be destroyed.

And now, here we are. Standing on the edge of that very precipice. The evidence is in front of us, undeniable. The warnings weren’t just the rantings of the paranoid—they were prescient. So, what’s their response? A farce. A pitiful charade designed to distract us from the unraveling of everything they claimed to fight for. It's a sad spectacle—empty gestures that serve only to underline their impotence.

Now, the big question we all have to ask: How did fascism creep into the heart of America, despite the so-called opposition party’s might and supposed resources? How did this happen when they were supposed to be our bulwark against such forces? What were they doing? Collecting their paychecks, watching the train wreck from the sidelines?

In the future, political scientists will look at this with stunned disbelief, their minds racing to explain how this was allowed to happen. Of course, this will all be discussed in some other country, because by then, any inquiry into such matters will likely be illegal here. God help us.

Schmitty

To be alive, to truly be alive, is to be a fragment spinning out in the void, like some errant piece of the great cosmic machine lost in the dark. Before birth, you are whole, one with everything; after death, you return to the void. But in life, in the middle of the mess, you're just drifting; part of something larger, but forever dislodged from it. I felt this most vividly on an acid trip in my early twenties. A piece of flesh, tumbling through the emptiness. But then my brother tossed a baseball at me, mid-trip, and for a moment, I wasn’t falling. I was caught in the pulse of something shared—a connection that hummed across the air like an echo, the daylight stretching long and slow; from my own impending death back to the memories of childhood.

Eating, though—eating was a childhood ritual, a language all its own. That's the thing I remember most vividly growing up. As a kid, it was Saturday mornings, especially. The perfect day to disappear into a bowl of sugar-laden cereal, washing it down with milk and toast, while cartoons like Thundarr the Barbarian and Goober and the Ghost Chasers hummed in the background, filling the void. Each bite, each moment a steady drumbeat of repetition, a foundation to build your day upon. And so, I’ve carried this act of consumption with me, this search for something to fill the empty space. I’ve never outgrown it, though I wonder if I should have. It’s a curse of genetics, this need to consume—thankfully, Saturdays are still a rarity, and I’ve yet to fully expand to the size of a sofa, but I've flirted dangerously with such a reality.

Life isn’t a box of chocolates. When you’re handed life, you don't get to poke at it first, test for the poison; you just dive in. Whether you choke or swallow it whole, that’s your fate, your trial.

But then, life... it’s more like a pack of baseball cards. It's the other thing I remember with utter clarity about childhood: my relentless pursuit of baseball cards. You buy them with the promise of newness, the thrill that this time, you’ll get the one card that’ll make it all worth it. But mostly, you get duplicates—the same old faces, the same old players posing for the same tired photos. The world shrinks back to its mundane cycle. But sometimes, buried in the pack, you find a card that shatters everything. I remember pulling that Mike Schmidt card, his mustachioed face glowing from the plastic, an electric pulse of hope. At that moment, I wasn’t just a kid holding a card. I was holding lightning. A crack in the Universe.

When I Say I'm In Love, You Best Believe I'm In Love, L-U-V...

There are no living members of the original MC5.

And now, there are no living members of the original New York Dolls either.

That’s the joke, isn’t it? Birth leads to death. It’s the rule of the universe. You can’t escape it. It ends this way for all of us - a short ride from womb to tomb. And now, as I write this, just like the last of his Dolls bandmates, David Jo is gone.

But what they created? That’s something else entirely. The birth of those bands, those wild-eyed sons of thunder, is the living proof of that old truth about the sum of parts. The MC5, the Dolls—they weren’t just bands, they were revolutionary acts of destruction. They’re part of the same rope that ties Little Richard to the Sex Pistols, Chuck Berry to the Ramones, Link Wray to the Stooges, the Velvet Underground to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and so on, ad infinitum. A line that’s been dragging us forward, dragging us through the madness, until it snaps.

David Johansen? That man took a lot of shots early on. Called a Mick Jagger rip-off. They said he was just a cheap copycat, a phony. And that’s bullshit. If anything, David Jo was just as much a copy of a Chicago bluesman as he was anything else—everyone drinks from whatever well they like. Johansen had the look, the swagger, the attitude—but calling the Dolls a Stones knockoff? Not a chance. The New York Dolls were the kids from the tough streets, wisecracking outer borough sons raised on the Shangri-La’s, with a freakshow dollop of the Coasters, Alice Cooper and Bo Diddley stirred into the mess.

And their music? Jesus Christ, that debut album—that record is the purest shot of rock ‘n’ roll ever recorded. It’s not music, it’s a bloodshot, brutal cry from the gut, an atomic explosion that still makes the earth tremble. You put that on, and 52 years later, it still feels like you just got punched in the stomach. The sound of something raw, something true—untamed, unpolished, and unrepentant. That’s why it’s still perfect. Why it hasn’t aged.

But here’s the rub—their push for fame, their hunger to be stars, kept them from ever truly being the songwriters they could’ve been. The follow-up album? Let’s not kid ourselves. It was the B-side to their genius, leftovers from a fire that couldn’t reignite. But even those scraps—hell, even their leftovers—crushed everyone else’s so-called “best.” "Human Being"? You put that against the pre-punk, post-glam rubble of the ’70s, and it still knocks everything else flat. Every time.

But that was just one chapter of Johansen’s odyssey. His solo stuff, with a little less of that reckless heat from his Doll days, was still incredible. Then came Buster Poindexter—the smart-ass, lounge-singer alter ego who gave us that damn “Hot Hot Hot” hit, and God, how he hated that song. DJ’s one and only mainstream hit—the bane of his existence, he’d joke. But he was right, in a way. It was his curse.

Film and TV came next—little bit parts, always with that sneer, always with that self-aware wit. He reunited with the Dolls too, though it was a shadow of what once was. Morrissey called, and he came—humble, amused by the whole damn thing. But the truth is, as we all know, time doesn’t wait for anyone. Cancer and a bad fall pulled him from this world. The world didn’t even have the decency to let him go quietly.

But damn, those lyrics. No one else wrote like David. He carved through every cliche and pretension, turning it into something real, something alive. He wore humor like a badge, cutting through the weight of self-importance with a wink. His love songs never fell into the sappy shit we’re all used to—they were raw and real. His rockers were full-throttle—nothing polished, nothing sweet. His voice? It wasn’t the smoothest, but it had soul. It was the sound of truth. It was the voice of someone who didn’t give a damn about being pretty. And in that? He was the odd soul brother to Ronnie Van Zant—another guy who made the truth sound ugly, beautiful, and, goddamn, unforgettable. No one ever sang to me like David did. No one. Ever.

And so, to David Jo and his four brothers in arms that preceded him in death—those wild, reckless, beautiful bastards—I love you all. You gave us everything. Hell, you gave ME everything. So from one Lonely Planet Boy to Another, Rest Forever in love, in admiration, in gratitude; in that glorious wreckage we call rock ‘n’ roll.