I didn’t know anything about Bruce Wagner before I heard him on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. I read all kinds of books, but whatever the genre, always gravitate to the culty, weird, out-of-step authors. If I tell you that all my favorites have at least a little Kilgore Trout in…

“Quitting on your own” is the most common method of quitting anything — before we find a program or system or whatever, everyone tries to quit on our own first. No matter if it is a behavioral or addictive issue, the path of least resistance is to simply walk away…

This is how I would have written the song had the same shit happened to me. Holy fuckballs, some dude on the train died sitting right across from me. I watched his life snuff out right there. I mean at first I was like, what’s that shit smell? And then…

These roses are crack pipes. They’re sold at corner stores throughout the country, in neighborhoods where they’re needed. It’s illegal to sell drug paraphernalia, but it’s completely legal to sell these roses, and encase them in glass-tube packaging. They’re right by the register, otherwise they would be stolen constantly. If…

In my early 20s, I read a lot of writing by ex-cons, from poetry, to crime fiction, to plays. I think it started with Jack Henry Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast, a great prison memoir. Then came the poetry and drama of Miguel Pinero, the crime fiction of…

A rusted-out Trans Am pulled up beside me on the street, and Bambi Lake stuck her upper half out the passenger window, like a mermaid on the front of a pirate ship. “We’re going to MEXICO!” she squealed. I could see the meth in her eyes, I knew where she…

Prop 15, on the November ballot in the California Election, aims to redefine the way property tax is assessed. The selling point is the big numbers posted of estimated tax revenue. The real cost, however, will be in accelerated gentrification throughout the state, primarily in urban areas and in rural…

She’s the “godmother” of them all! The baddest one-woman hit squad that ever hit town! — text from the Coffy movie poster [Note: I’m working on a series of reviews of older and obscure films I like that are on streaming services but don’t get much attention. I’m always surprised…