Broken Record

I want to start by saying this morning I came across the recent GQ interview of Mick Jagger . Note the article is listed under the GQ department of "Wellness."  "Mick Jagger’s Guide to Longevity Includes High-Intensity Exercise and No Drugs: It’s a no to saunas and cold plunges, and a yes to laying off the drinking after 40. Ahead of the release of the 33rd Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues , GQ spoke to the legendary frontman about staying alive." Well, Jagger doesn't actually say "No drugs." He says no drugs all the time or no drugs in excess . But that's splitting hairs here because at the point I read a headline like this I feel like I'm in the movie Clue walking alongside Madeline Kahn, Leslie Ann Warren, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean and Martin Mull, going door to door with a spent-up soul finding dead bodies in every room. Celebrity wellness is relevant to me because I've been writing a lot about celebrity h...

First let's give a quick sky-point to Peabo Bryson who just passed away recently. We were just talking about him recently here on the Celine Dion post with his songs like " A Whole New World " (with Regina Belle in 1992) and " Beauty and the Beast " (with Celine Dion in 1991). There's also his big hits " If Ever Your In My Arms Again " (1984) and " Tonight I Celebrate My Love " (with Roberta Flack in 1983) and this song I discovered recently and love, " Feel the Fire " (1978).

  I was gone for five minutes. Like five minutes. (Not really five minutes.) And so much happened from my musical favorites list. Unbelievable. Like I was gone for 10 days at most. And all this new stuff was both stressful (because I couldn't attend to it, tied up as I was with family arriving for my mother's interment, that being the end itself of a five-year long transitioning) and yet it was also very comforting, that I would have something to look forward to afterwards and that something would go on when all the realizations of my mother finally being gone were ready to set in.  Actual Funeral Music  This is not actually a post about music for funerals. But my mother did have requests for music, particularly Andy William's singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in 1968 (her final political sayonara)...  ...and a recording of a my Dad's cousin (no longer with us) singing "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" which she loved and which is played digitally and ...

This is an updated version of a piece previously published in 2003 in the pop-culture magazine Ape Culture .  This is going to be a long haul. Just like life. Anything worth having is worth working for, I say. As far as religion is concerned, I was raised with the very simple yet highly effective mantra for being good: don’t be a selfish asshole. And literally that was it. It was easy to follow because it was both easy to remember and not open to vague interpretations. No weekly sermon was required. No bizarre rituals. Hypocrisy was easy to spot within its parameters. It’s worked so well, I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket. (I've since gotten a speeding ticket.) In fact, it’s possible I go overboard from time to time. For example, before Thanksgiving of 2003 while I was transporting my new pet fish home from his office fishbowl in downtown Los Angeles, I turned down the volume on my car radio in sudden dismay that ‘maybe Basho doesn’t like Abba as much as I do.’  (B...