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.

I Wanna Be Your Dog

Right from the chaotic opening that gives way to the raw sonic sludge of the main riff, I Wanna Be Your Dog doesn’t ask for your attention—it takes it. Iggy’s voice howls like a wounded animal, the music’s a dirty, filthy mess, and it’s glorious. It’s the sound of a broken man crawling through the gutter, begging for someone, anyone, to give him a scrap of affection. But it’s not love—it’s a goddamn fetish. It’s animalistic, desperate, and utterly raw. The Stooges don’t care about being pretty or polished—they’re here to drag you through the mud, make you feel things you probably shouldn’t, and leave you shaking in your boots.

And God, the chorus: Now I wanna be your dog—it’s not a request, it’s a command. There’s a sick pleasure in Iggy’s voice, like he’s reveling in the degradation, in the emptiness of it all. This isn’t romance. This isn’t tenderness. This is submission, and it’s ugly, and it’s beautiful in its own twisted way. The riff is as dirty as the lyrics, and the whole track feels like you’re falling deeper into a pit of self-destruction with no intention of climbing out. But you don’t care. You’re already lost. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the point. The Stooges didn’t make this for anyone who wanted comfort—they made this for people who wanted to feel alive, no matter how damn filthy it got.

 

The World's A Mess (It's In My Kiss)

This isn’t just a song, it’s a battle cry, a primal scream, a manifesto carved in blood, bone and concrete. The line, "The world’s a mess, it’s in my kiss"—it hits you like a sucker punch, a shot to the gut that doesn’t quite knock the wind out of you but leaves you feeling a little unsteady on your feet. It’s simple, it’s raw, it’s devastating, and it’s perfect. Because that’s the truth of it, right? The world’s a mess, sure. But it’s beautiful in that mess, chaotic and gorgeous in its shattered, half-destroyed state. And it’s in the kiss; the moment of surrender and defiance and connection all wrapped into one. And like every mess, it’s impossible to ignore, impossible to look away from.

But let’s talk about the place this mess comes from—my beloved city of Los Angeles. The land of eternal sun and smog, where palm trees grow amidst the wreckage of broken dreams and glittering false promises. It’s a city built on contradictions: hope and desperation, fame and failure, beauty and decay – where the ornate and the austere collide as mutually co-existing dualities. And out of that sprawling, burnt-out landscape, X emerged. They didn’t just exist, trying to make their name and way in late 70’s L.A.—they defined it, with every note they played and every word they sang. In a place that screamed "look at me" from every corner, X turned their back on that easy grift and dug into something far more real. They carved their sound out of grit and grime, the DIY ethos that punk wasn’t just a scene, it was a way of life. They built their own world with their own hands, rejecting the sterile polish of commercial music and giving the finger to anything that demanded compromising their vision.

And that’s the thing about X—they didn’t just make music. They made fire. They made you feel alive in ways you couldn’t quite explain. Listen to Billy Zoom’s guitar licks in this song—each one feels like it’s shot from a cannon, as precise as it is untamed. Billy doesn’t just play guitar; he hurls it at you, every note a spark that sets off a chain reaction. His leads are sharp and jagged, like shards of glass scattered across the floor, and every time he picks up the pace, you feel your pulse quicken, like the song’s about to burst into something even wilder. Zoom’s guitar isn’t about finesse—it’s about fire, it’s about raw, uncontrolled energy that surges up from somewhere deep inside, a sound that feels like it was created in the darkest corners of the universe.

As always, DJ Bonebrake (the nicest man in rock n’ roll) does what he does best: pounding that beat like it’s the very pulse of the earth itself. It’s the kind of rhythm that doesn’t just live in the music—it takes over your body. You don’t hear it; you feel it, deep in your guts, your throat, your hips. It’s the heartbeat of chaos, the undercurrent of fire, driving the song forward with an urgency that matches the rawness of everything else around it. His drums don’t just anchor the sound—they ignite it, making sure you’re locked into the chaos, forced to ride the wave of passion and sweat that’s crashing over you.

Then there’s Exene and John. Their voices are fire and gasoline, but it’s that primal chemistry between them that makes this song blister with urgency. They’re not just singing to each other—they’re fighting, they’re connecting, they’re tearing themselves apart and rebuilding it, and somehow, it makes this chaotic mess of a song feel real. Exene, with that growl in her voice, tells you to "take it like a man," and you feel it. It’s not just a line—it’s a challenge. It’s a gut-punch that dares you to own your own mess, to wear your flaws like a badge, to stop pretending everything’s okay when it’s clear the world’s on fire. It’s a rawness, a confrontation that leaves you no room to hide. That’s the kind of honesty X embodies—they are in the mess of it, not pretending they have it all figured out, but daring you to stand with them in that ugly, beautiful chaos and bring whatever fire you have to the table.

And, God, their live shows—if you’ve seen them, you know what I’m talking about. X didn’t just play punk rock; they embodied it. It wasn’t just a show, it was an experience. It was chaotic and uncontrollable, like a storm that just rips through everything in its path. They weren’t just a band on stage playing a set—they were creating something, brujos (and a bruja), conjuring something magical, untamed and electrifying. Every show felt like a battle, a war between the past, the present, and whatever the future would be, and you were right there in the middle of it, caught in the fire, baptized by the sound. Punk rock was never supposed to be clean or easy, and X showed you exactly why that was true. They were the lightning and the thunder all wrapped into one explosive package—roots music with a punk edge, rock ‘n’ roll at its core, but something far wilder and more dangerous. They way it was always supposed to be.

X didn’t just shape punk rock—they transformed it. They didn’t play the game—they rewrote the rules, and in doing so, they left a legacy that’s as untouchable as it is indispensable. They didn’t make music for approval—they made it for survival. They didn’t just sing about the mess of the world—they became it, with all its contradictions, all its beauty, all its rage. And in that mess, they kissed it all into something unforgettable. The world’s a mess. But, hell, it’s damn beautiful. It’s in their kiss. And in that kiss, it feels like the entire universe is spinning, and for a second, everything is right.

And all these years later, looking at the legacy they’re leaving behind as they wrap up a 48 year tenure as a band, one thing is for sure: X isn’t just a band. They’re a riot. A wildfire of sound, sweat, and desire. They are punk rock’s untamed Leviathan, roaring through the night and leaving nothing but fire in their wake. They didn’t just burn bridges—they set the whole damn world on fire, and they kissed it while it burned. They didn’t just change the rules—they rewrote them in hot, reckless ink. You feel that heat, you taste that fire, you surrender to it—and you never want to leave. There’s no question. X is as important as any band that ever lived, and with every riff, every line, every guttural scream, they remind you why. It’s in the mess. It’s in the fire. It’s in my kiss.

The Ephemeral and the Eternal: On the Vanishing of Culture

Whatever it is you hold dear—the television shows, the books, the music, the digital whispers that flicker through the web—will, in time, fade into oblivion. In twenty years, perhaps a century at most, the relics of our era will either be relegated to the obscurity of dusty university archives or become the detritus of history, discarded and forgotten, in some landfill. It is a sobering thought, but a necessary one.

What cultures choose to remember, and more crucially, what they do not, tells us far more than any historical record. History’s memory is selective, often cruelly so. Looking back, only a small handful of works—be they texts, songs, or visual art—are preserved across generations. There is a quiet violence in this forgetting, a process in which the bulk of a civilization’s intellectual and creative output is swept away like grains of sand in the tide. Much is preserved in the vaults of academic institutions and the minds of specialized scholars, but the masses, those who shape the present and future, hold only a fleeting few fragments.

Most modern people could likely name only one or two books from the 19th century; the ones that somehow survived the filters of time and culture. Those few that have been elevated beyond mere words on a page to become mythic, immortalized in the form of films, television shows, and repeated cultural references: Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. These titles are not simply remembered; they have seeped into the very fabric of our collective consciousness, like sigils charged with meaning that transcend their original form. And yet, the average person may not even know that these were once mere books. Few would even venture to name Great Expectations, and yet it too—like so many others—was once the cultural currency of its time.

It is a paradox—our historical memory is minuscule in bandwidth, and in that slender space, it clings to the few works that have come to speak for an entire era. Often, the works that are remembered are not the ones that were celebrated in their time, but rather those whose ideas, when revisited by future generations, echo the changing values of those who look back. It is not always the loudest or most famous voices that endure. Often, it is the writers and artists whose visions were dismissed or rejected by their contemporaries—those on the fringes of culture—who find themselves resurrected. These creators become, for a time, icons of a future that sees in them something of themselves. But of course, this too is ephemeral. For just as one era elevates these voices, another might tear them down.

The 19th century was a time of explosive cultural creation, but much like a Tibetan sand mandala, it has been scattered by the inexorable winds of time, leaving behind only a few works chosen to represent the era, often distorted by the very stereotypes we project onto them. These works are at constant risk of revision and sanitization. The current wave of historical revisionism sweeping across our culture—where older works are rewritten to align with contemporary sensibilities—is a reflection of a society cut off from its roots. We now live in an age where information and technology have severed us from the past, and the past is no longer something we build upon, but something we seek to erase, to revise, to rewrite. We see this in the recent censorship of writers like Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, and Salman Rushdie, whose works are now being rewritten to fit the ideological mold of the present. We see it in the ongoing campaign to remove the works of “dead white men” from the cultural canon.

This is not mere nostalgia for a lost past—it is something deeper, darker. A culture adrift, without the anchor of historical continuity, has no future but the one that the current powers, those who control the flow of information, deem fit for us. It is a culture of erasure, of rewriting the story of who we are. A culture unmoored from its past is, by definition, doomed to perpetual reinvention, caught in a cycle of intellectual amnesia. One can almost feel the shuffling of the sacred alphabet—the rearrangement of the symbols that make up the grand sigil of humanity.

As we stand on the precipice of this new century, awash in the endless tide of data and media that defines our information-saturated world, it is impossible not to wonder: what will survive? In a sea of content, from YouTube videos to streaming shows, from viral tweets to podcasts, what pieces of our cultural mosaic will be remembered by future generations?

I suspect that, against all odds, the Harry Potter books will endure. Though the winds of political correctness have already begun to blow fiercely against them (for good reason), these stories—a sweeping narrative about the battle between good and evil—will likely continue to be read and re-read, their magic undimmed by the fading prejudices of our era. Just as Dracula has lived on through the decades, so too will these books. They captured the collective imagination of their time, and I suspect they will retain their place in the cultural pantheon, albeit perhaps in a more diluted form, thanks in large part to the author's TERFdom. The Road, Cormac McCarthy's haunting meditation on survival, humanity, and despair, will likely stand alongside Harry Potter, not as a tale of triumph but of the primal endurance of the human spirit—an essential text for the dark days that may come.

Television, however, may be another matter. Perhaps Twin Peaks will survive, though not necessarily because of its historical importance or narrative genius. It endures, I think, because it was a product of its time—an era in which we, as a society, turned our gaze back on an America that no longer existed, one we rejected even as we fetishized it. It represents our desire to look at the past with both longing and scorn, to tell ourselves that we are smarter, more enlightened. Perhaps The Simpsons, too, will endure in some form, a cultural artifact of the postmodern age, capturing our era’s contradictions in a single animated frame. And let us not overlook The Wire—a television epic that unflinchingly revealed the underbelly of society, exposing the rot in our systems of power and control. Its exploration of the fragility of institutions and the complexity of human nature will likely echo far beyond its own time, enduring as a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand the nature of our modern urban landscape.

But in the end, I suspect that the true touchstone of this era will not be found in the sprawling, mass-market works we consume today, but in something far more ominous, more prophetic: the works of those whose voices were raised in warning against the consequences of our age—figures like George Orwell, whose exploration of the mechanisms of control and manipulation feels even more relevant now than when it was first penned. Orwell’s stark clarity about the forces that shape our modern world, much like the reflections of others who foresaw the rise of the machine and the perils of technological dominance, may ultimately become the touchstones of future generations, who will look back and see in them not just the critiques of their time, but the warnings that foresaw our present. It is, perhaps, in these works that the alchemy of history is revealed, the transformation of the base material of the present into the gold of future understanding.

The grand hope for the Internet was that it would serve as a vault for humanity’s collective knowledge. And yet, what we have instead is a landscape where our intellectual heritage is being sifted through the algorithms of corporate gatekeepers. What was once a vast and free-ranging space for creativity and discourse is becoming, more and more, a controlled narrative, curated and shaped by forces whose interest is not in truth, but in control. The work of preserving culture is no longer in the hands of individuals, of sages or scholars, but in the hands of corporate entities and the vast, anonymous machinery of artificial intelligence. What was once a flame of freedom now flickers in the shadow of unseen hands.

If we are to preserve any semblance of what truly matters, we must take it upon ourselves to safeguard our intellectual and artistic heritage. The books you love, the ideas that shape your worldview, the voices you hold dear—these will be forgotten unless you act. Hold onto them, share them, cherish them. For in the end, what is preserved by you will be preserved for you. The future, with all its possibilities and perils, will decide what is remembered. And yet, even amidst the decay, there are always those fragments of the past that will somehow persist, enduring as echoes in the vast hall of human experience, as the work continues—the sacred task that each of us, in our own way, must take up, adding brick by brick, until the edifice is complete. The stones are scattered, the symbols lie hidden—but those who seek will find the Light.

Let's Talk About DEI For A Moment..

I'm certainly not crying over the loss of everything DEI related. A lot of it seems to have more to do with encouraging self-flagellation among white liberals than actually helping marginalized communities. The never ending battle against your own internalized racism/phobias is just Catholic guilt repackaged and secularized by academics who spent too much time on Tumblr during their undergraduate years, and you absolutely cannot convince me that infantilizing language ("safe" and "brave" spaces) is genuinely useful or needed by the folks out there doing the work. It's that liberal hyperfocus on the individual as an individual, rather than the individual as a member of a community, which ultimately leaves it feeling patronizing rather than illuminating.

That being said, I would assume that the goals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion would be the goals of every normal, decent human being. I want diversity in my community organizations, because how the hell else will we know if we're actually representing the community? Of course I want equity, people should have opportunities to pursue their own happiness. Of course I want inclusion, because some of the raddest human beings I've ever met are from wildly different backgrounds than I am. Pluralism is a healthy and beautiful thing. 

I guess you can try and make that sound "woke" if you want, but behind all the needlessly academic language from the sociology department are the most basic, foundational ideas about being a good person and living among other people. It's the foundational basis for community. 

And that's why traitorous, self-serving filth like Donald Trump and his ilk can't stand them.

A Letter to the Youth of America: The Four Dragons You Must Slay

There comes a time, in the depth of any era, when the savage creatures lurking in the shadows of a society become so large, so impossible to ignore, that they are no longer just metaphors. They are real beasts, alive and breathing, their claws unsheathing with every passing moment, their snarls reverberating in the air. You, the youth of this so-called free and prosperous world, find yourselves standing at the precipice, facing four monstrous dragons that, if left unchecked, will swallow the remnants of your future whole. These dragons are not cloaked in mystery; they are the suffocating truths we have buried deep within our bones, truths that feed on our ignorance, our apathy, our blindness to the edge of the abyss.

The first dragon—the most ravenous, and yet the most invisible—is the hopelessness that has woven itself so tightly into the fabric of the lives of so many, it has become as natural as breathing. The poison that has taken root in the bodies and minds of this generation comes not just from the chemical substances that promise a reprieve but from something deeper, more insidious. It is the weight of feeling irredeemably lost in a world that demands constant production, constant action, constant "success," but offers nothing but an unrelenting grind toward personal annihilation. You’ve been fed lies about who you should be, about what your life must look like, but no one told you that the goalposts keep moving, that the game is rigged, that there is no golden prize at the end—just the quicksand of despair.

Opioids, pills, syringes, bottles—tools of your execution—are sold to you as temporary respite, a promise that the pain will subside. Suicide, that final, merciless silence, hangs like a dark cloud over you. You might laugh at the idea of these things in the face of your responsibilities, but you know as well as anyone that the crushing weight of your own soul’s collapse is no joke. In the quiet of the night, when no one is looking, when no one cares to witness your unraveling, the idea comes to you: Maybe it’s easier this way. But it’s not easier. It’s a lie. The real dragon is the emptiness gnawing at the edges of your existence. And it will consume you unless you face it head-on.

Next comes the dragon that has long since crossed the threshold of myth and is now all too tangible: the collapse of moral values that has rotted away the family, the bedrock of society itself. A family should be the first place you learn about love, trust, compassion, and responsibility. But for many, that foundation was never built, or worse, it was smashed apart by indifference, anger, and the decaying relics of false ideals. What was once the last bastion of belonging has become a battlefield, a horror show where relationships are transactional, and the human heart is a commodity traded for the next dopamine hit.

The family is supposed to be the incubator of identity, the space where you come to know yourself, but how can you form an identity when the very people who should have cared for you have traded their humanity for convenience? The truth is, no dragon can be slain without first knowing its true shape. And the shape of this dragon is cold, calcified, and indifferent to your very survival. You must look it in the eye and fight for the basic human decency that allows us to trust, to love, to find meaning.

Then there is the grotesque, ever-growing dragon that lingers in the food you consume and the lack of movement that permeates your sedentary existence. It is not just about obesity—it is about something more profound: the detachment from the body, the forgetting of what it means to be human. You are consuming synthetic, hollow "foods," as if by some divine trickery, and turning away from the primal rhythms of your own flesh. You are told that happiness lies in convenience, that pleasure lies in your next snack or your next streaming binge. The exercise that was once a basic part of being alive—of feeling your heart thrum in your chest, of lifting something heavy, of sweating your way through life—has become an afterthought, a nuisance, something to be avoided. Your body is not a machine—it is a living, breathing entity that requires care, attention, and respect. If you ignore it, it will not forgive you. This dragon does not just lay its weight on you; it suffocates you, traps you in a cocoon of numbness and self-doubt, only to emerge with a bloated, distorted version of yourself.

Finally, the dragon of nihilism, that seductive, poisonous idea that nothing matters. It is easy to swallow because it promises freedom—freedom from expectation, freedom from responsibility, freedom from the weight of purpose. But nihilism is not freedom. It is a prison built of apathy, a graveyard for the soul. The real enemy here is not meaninglessness—it is the absence of action, the lack of courage to shape your own destiny. Nihilism seduces you into believing that if nothing matters, nothing must be done. But in the vacuum it creates, you will find only despair. The greatest dragon you must slay is the belief that your existence is meaningless. It is the refusal to accept that you can create meaning in a world desperate for it.

All of us have struggled with these dragons. We have cowered in their shadows, unsure of how to fight back, unsure if we even could. But here is the truth: you are not alone. You are not powerless. The strength to fight, to rise above the suffocating grip of hopelessness, to rebuild the fractured, broken connections that should be your foundation, to care for your body as it deserves, and to reject the hollow promises of nihilism lies within you. Together, we can slay these dragons. Together, we can reclaim the world. You must know the dragons before they know you. And you must fight with everything you have.

They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)

“They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” isn’t just a song; it’s a resurrection, a gospel rooted in the grit of the block, wrapped in the elegance of a lost era, screaming “we were here” into the abyss.

First off, Pete Rock’s beat isn’t just a track—it’s a ritual. That sample from Tom Scott and the California Dreamers—the saxophone, it seeps through your skin like the ghosts of a thousand voices long gone. You can feel it in the air, the pulse of a lost generation, the history of struggle and celebration that hip hop birthed. This is the sound of a moment in time, etched in the city’s concrete, but it’s also timeless—forever. It speaks to the essence of a people who’ have known the depths of pain and struggle, but never gave up their soul. Pete didn’t just sample that shit; he blessed it, turned it into a platform for CL to stand on, a place where the past and present collide in a sublime, soulful protest against erasure. This isn’t background noise—it’s the heartbeat of an entire culture, a sound so deep you could drown in it, and still float back to the surface, reborn.

And then CL Smooth opens his mouth, and you know you’re listening to something that transcends bars and beats. His flow isn’t just rhyming words—he’s painting, he’s carving up his life with a knife made of memory, loss, and the truth. When he spits “I reminisce so you never forget this, the days of way-back, so many bear witness…” it isn’t just some throwaway line. Nah. It’s the sound of a young man holding onto every piece of him that’s slipping away, trying to capture that fleeting essence of a time that wasn’t perfect but was real. His reflection ain’t a search for nostalgia—it’s a reckoning. Every name he calls out is a bullet, every line a prayer to the streets, the crew, the family that helped shape him. In a world where so much is disposable, where so many are forgotten or swept under the rug, CL gives us a glimpse into a life that matters, that demands to be remembered. And it’s that very pain of remembrance—the cost of survival—that makes the track burn with such intensity. It’s the ache of knowing that everything you’ve loved is slipping through your fingers, even while you’re holding onto it for dear life.

But here’s where the real magic happens, where Pete Rock and CL Smooth shake the earth beneath our feet: the loss, the memorial, it’s all wrapped in celebration. This is a love letter to the fallen, to those who lived and breathed this game, but who never got to see it blow up to the stratosphere. The track isn’t just a solemn hymn—it’s a manifesto, a declaration of survival. “T.R.O.Y.”—that’s not just initials. That’s a brotherhood, a bond that can’t be erased. It’s a nod to Troy Dixon, the man whose absence haunts every verse, every bar. But this isn’t a slow march to the grave; it’s a defiant celebration of life, a refusal to let go of what’s real. It’s the spark of a fire that refuses to burn out, even in the face of loss. Hip hop isn’t just a culture—it’s a resurrection of the dead, a place where the names of the forgotten still echo in the rhythm of the beat, in the sound of the shout, in the pulse of the street. It’s a statement about lineage, about the ties that bind us to those who came before, the ones who raised us, the ones who struggled, and the ones who survived. CL Smooth is not just speaking to the ghosts of his own past; he’s retracing the footsteps of his entire extended family, his neighborhood, his culture—people who survived the grind, the demons of addiction, the streets, the trauma of displacement, and yet lived to see another day. In every verse, there’s a nod to the lineage that shaped him: the block, the corner store, the old heads who told stories about times that never quite felt like they existed. But those same demons, the ones that haunted every corner of the hood, are never too far behind. CL doesn’t shy away from them; instead, he faces them head on. He shows us the toll this life takes, the weight of history, and the collective trauma that echoes through the streets. But even through the darkness, there’s a fierce pride in survival. And once again, at the center of this magic, woven into this tapestry of memory is the heart-wrenching tribute to fallen B-boy Trouble T-Roy. He wasn’t just a friend—he was part of the family, part of the extended tribe of hip hop that formed the backbone of this culture.

And this is why “They Reminisce Over You” isn’t just a song; it’s a fire that refuses to be extinguished.

Chicago poet Kevin Coval said it best: “The street is the classroom; the hood is the university.” Pete and CL school you in the lessons of the block, but this ain’t no classroom lecture. This is the real shit—the pain of survival, the joy of remembering, the power of a culture that’s alive in the face of all that tries to erase it. It’s a celebration of what was, and an understanding that it can never die. It’s about more than the music—it’s about legacy. When Pete Rock flips that sample, when CL lets that verse loose, they’re building a monument to something that can’t be taken. Hip hop will never die, because the soul of it—the soul of them—will never be forgotten.

Love & Fire

The air in greater Los Angeles has been heavy with smoke for more than a week now, thick with the sorrow of flames that seem as relentless as time itself. These fires, roaring across various sections of our beloved basin, are more than just a tragedy—they are the heartbreak of a community, the loss of history, of lives, of places we thought would remain with us forever. The hills we climb, the homes we’ve built, the memories we’ve woven into the fabric of this city—all of it, consumed by a cruel and raging fire. As the wind carries the smoke across the horizon, we are reminded, in the most brutal way, of how fragile everything is. How quickly it can all be turned to ash.

There is devastation in the ashes—people lost, families displaced, lives interrupted, futures uncertain. But, amid this charred landscape, there are also embers of hope. Thousands of strangers, neighbors, and strangers who become neighbors have opened their hearts, their homes, their wallets. They have given time and money, food and blankets, supplies and shelter; done anything and everything they can to help those caught in the flames. There are people walking into the chaos, arms wide, ready to offer what little they can because they know this is what community is—showing up when showing up is the hardest thing to do. When your own home might be the next to burn, yet you still stand, shoulders back, offering comfort where you can.

It is, in those moments, that I feel the deepest gratitude for what we are capable of. For the deep well of compassion that still runs through the heart of this city, even when it feels like the world is burning. This generosity is the thread that will stitch us back together. It is the kindness that will hold us through the worst of the storm, and though it cannot erase the pain, it is the balm that soothes the rawest of wounds. It is the only way forward.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t speak the truth about what weighs heavily on my heart. Amidst the suffering, there are voices—many of them voices I know—that refuse to see the fire for what it is: a tragedy that demands our collective grief and our shared responsibility to help heal and rebuild. These voices, these people, are spreading lies, placing the blame squarely on the heads of public officials, politicizing the horror of this disaster. They point fingers in every direction but the one that matters—at the lives that have been torn apart and the community that needs healing.

It is as if they are so determined to be right that they cannot allow themselves to simply be human. They cannot stop long enough to see the faces of those displaced, the homes that have been lost, the families broken. It is as if their need to score political points and virtue signal to some sort of ideology is more urgent than the very real and tangible needs of those suffering. And to them, I say this: Your cynicism and your anger, your misdirection and misinformation, are only fueling the fire. They do nothing but widen the gap between us, pulling us farther from the truth and further from the compassion we so desperately need. If you can’t help, please consider shutting the fuck up. I mean this from the bottom of my broken heart.

What we need now is kindness, not division. We need hands reaching out, not pointing fingers. We need hearts open to grief, not hardened by a relentless pursuit of blame. We need compassion, not politics. The fire burns regardless of who you voted for; the people who are affected by all this horror care that we show up, that we stand together in the face of something far bigger than any of us can control. They don’t care which bumper sticker is on your car while you do it.

Somehow, some way, we will get through this. Community is the thread that holds us together when the world seems determined to tear us apart. It is the small acts of kindness, the quiet donations, the helping hand that, piece by piece, rebuilds the fabric of what is lost. But we cannot do this if we allow ourselves to be swallowed by the flames of bitterness and division. The fire is already raging outside; we cannot afford to let it rage in our hearts as well.

To those still clinging to the belief that cruelty is justified, that division is a cure, I ask this: Let go. Let go of the anger that binds you to the ashes. Let go of the need to be right. Let go of the cynicism that has taken root in your soul and see what is needed now. What is needed is the same thing that has always saved us—the love of each other, the tenderness we show when we stand in the ashes and say, “We are still here. We grieve with you. We’re not going anywhere.”

If we can do this—if we can be kind, if we can come together, not in our differences but in our shared humanity—then we will rebuild. We will heal. We will rise from the ashes not because we are perfect, but because we choose, again and again, to love and care for one another.

And in the end, that’s what will save us. The love we give freely to each other, the love we offer in the dark places, the love that rises from the ashes like a phoenix, bright and unyielding. It’s bigger than any fire could ever be.

I Only Have Eyes For You

"I Only Have Eyes For You” by The Flamingos is a spectral love letter, a frozen kiss from the past that still burns like the ghost of romance itself. You play it once, and it’s like stepping into a time machine, only instead of traveling through time, you’re unraveling it, dissolving into a world where love wasn’t just a word—it was an overwhelming force, as inevitable as gravity. The whole thing drips with the kind of lush, intoxicating melancholy that leaves you dizzy, longing for a romance that feels as unreachable as it does inevitable. It’s the sound of a love lost to time, captured in the purest, most haunting echo. The Flamingos weren’t just singing—they were channeling a time and a place that no longer exists, a time when romance wasn’t an algorithm or a transaction, but a spell that you fell under whether you wanted to or not. It was real.

The song opens with that crooning falsetto, and right then, it’s as if the world around you falls away, and you’re left with only the voice, the faint chordal plinking of the piano, and the fog that swirls between the two. “I only have eyes for you,” they sing, but it’s not a boast. It’s a confession—a quiet, tragic surrender to a love that is at once all-consuming and strangely ethereal. That line, repeated like a prayer, hints at a deep, fatalistic longing—a love that has to be, because that's all he can see. 

In an age where every sentiment is dissected and monetized, I Only Have Eyes For You holds up a mirror to our emptiness, whispering of a time when love was both a treasure and a tragedy, not something to be swiped left on in a second. It makes you wonder: did we ever really have that kind of love, or was it always just a dream? 

But the haunting beauty of the song doesn’t end there. There’s something ineffable about the way those lush harmonies sweep in and out of your consciousness like a lover’s touch that you can’t quite remember. The song speaks to an existential longing—like standing in a room full of people but only being interested in the object of your desire. Are they close or are they far away? Is it a real, tangible thing or is it that ethereal sense of a romance that lives on only in the mind, only in the faint traces of memory?

The lyric “The moon may be high, but I can’t see a thing in the sky” doesn’t just refer to the lack of stars—it speaks to the blindness that comes with all-consuming love, a blindness that makes the rest of the world seem irrelevant, even laughable. And yet, as the song unfurls, there’s something almost tragic in that blindness, too. It’s a deep, impossible yearning for the thing that was, the thing that should have been, but is lost forever in the fog of time. Or is it? The song becomes a meditation on what it means to love so completely that the world itself fades into the periphery. This is a love that feels pure, timeless, and hints at something entirely tragic at the same time.

And that’s the brilliance of listening to “I Only Have Eyes For You” 65 years later —it doesn't just feel like just a love song anymore,  it feels like an elegy about the death of romance, the unraveling of an ideal that no longer exists in the real world, and yet we still hunger for it, still wish for it like an old ghost that keeps coming back to haunt us. It’s the raw, aching wound of nostalgia that burns and throbs in your chest, a wound you want to pick at even though it can never heal. You can’t help but wish that romance was as simple as it was in that moment, when love wasn’t something to dissect or control, but something to lose yourself in, like a fever dream. It’s a moment that will never return—where love was both the question and the answer, the fire and the ashes. In a world where love is as manufactured as a brand, where “I love you” is reduced to a swipe right, The Flamingos remind us of a time when love wasn’t something you consumed, it was something you felt, even if it was a feeling so painful it could break your heart.

And in that ache, in that spectral longing, comes the song’s timeless power. There’s something about it that transcends its era, its genre, its place in musical history. It’s as if, in those few minutes, The Flamingos captured something that existed before time, something that will echo on long after we’re all dust. 

The beauty of “I Only Have Eyes For You” is that it never stops being relevant, never stops resonating with those who hear it. Because love, in its purest form, doesn’t obey the rules of time or place. It isn’t bound by the present moment or the latest trend. It’s eternal, it’s aching, it’s impossible—and it’s all contained in that gorgeous, haunting melody. That’s why it still lingers, why it still haunts us. This song, this love, is a ghost that will never fade. It’s the kind of thing you can’t fully comprehend, but you feel it deep in your bones, just like the faintest traces of an old lover’s perfume. It’s there, always, and it will never leave.

Gloria

From the very first chord, Patti Smith grabs you by the collar and throws you headfirst into the fire. She doesn’t ask for permission; she demands your attention. When she yells “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”, she’s not just singing a line—she’s detonating the whole concept of what’s holy and pure, flipping it on its head with the sort of reckless freedom that only she could summon. This isn’t just a rejection of the institution of religion; it’s a rallying cry for the untamed, the misunderstood, and the people who refuse to fit into the neat little boxes that the world wants to stuff them into. She’s here to tell you that she is the authority now, she is the one in charge of her own fate, and she’s not going to apologize for it. “Gloria” is like Patti sticking her middle finger up at a society that wanted her to be silent, to be small, to be tame. Instead, she stands tall, loud, unapologetic, breathing fire;  daring you to try to catch the spark. 

But what makes this song so potent is how it morphs into something far bigger than a punk anthem. It’s not just a statement of defiance—it’s a primal scream, a battle cry from the depths of her soul. As Patti dives into that second part of the song, when she begins to channel the full-throttle electric chaos, it’s clear: she’s not just reclaiming Gloria; she’s becoming Gloria. This isn’t about some man’s possession of a name or some woman in a state of passive desire—this is a full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall rebirth of a concept. “Gloria” is given her own voice, and with it, she’s giving a voice to every woman, every outsider, every freak, and every renegade who’s ever felt boxed in. Patti Smith’s beautiful androgyny was at the heart of this transformation—she could slip between the lines of rock god and goddess, effortlessly blurring the boundaries between masculine swagger and a fiercely primal feminine energy. It was her ability to be both raw and untamed, yet undeniably woman, that gave this song its electric charge. She didn’t fit neatly into the binaries of the world; she broke them wide open, redefining what it means to be and be seen in the world. It’s the ultimate subversion: she takes the most conventional thing and turns it into a visceral, powerful, and unapologetically primal declaration. Her Gloria doesn’t just bend to the will of others—she takes the world on her own terms, and that’s what makes this song not just a classic, but a goddamn revolution.

And let’s talk about Patti herself—let’s talk about the goddess who made this possible. Patti Smith wasn’t just a musician—she was (and still is) a raw, unfiltered force of nature that could tear down the walls of art, literature, and rock ‘n roll all at once. The beauty of Patti wasn’t just in her voice, her words, or her lyrics—it was in her embodiment of the truth. She was fearless in a way that no one else was at the time. You couldn’t cage her. You couldn’t tame her. She wasn’t just a muse; she was a creator, a shaman, a prophet of the ugly, beautiful, messy truth of being alive. And Gloria? That song wasn’t a trend or a gimmick; it was a raw, unvarnished testament to everything Patti was about. She wasn’t just singing the words—she was becoming the fire. Her voice wasn’t some polished instrument of perfection; it was a razor blade dipped in moonlight, sharp and dangerous and full of unbridled passion. Patti wasn’t just a voice in the crowd; she was the one who made the crowd wake up.

So yeah, “Gloria” is a punk anthem, a rock 'n roll explosion, and a literary triumph all wrapped into one. But most importantly, it’s Patti Smith doing what she does best: dragging the world kicking and screaming into the chaos of real freedom, real rebellion, and real truth. The song is a testament to what it means to be alive, to be unapologetic, and to own every inch of yourself, no matter who tries to stop you. You feel it in your bones. You breathe it in your lungs. Gloria is not just a name—it’s a revolution, and Patti Smith is the one leading it, headfirst into the fire. 

The question is --- Are you courageous enough to dance in the flames?