Playing nine holes of golf with the mystival Shivas Irons Society, who spice up the game with meditation, classical music, and alternative methods of keeping score. Originally published in San Francisco magazine Read the rest of this entry »

Some years ago, I compiled a bunch of research hoping to write a story about screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. It didn’t work out for some reason. So I wrote this instead, which was published in an entertainment website called Mr. Showbiz. Read the rest of this entry »

My version of Montana turns out vastly different than Tom McGuane’s. This was performed at the Litquake literary festival, along with a snippet of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” Read the rest of this entry »

A column for SF Weekly about spending Christmas in Reno turns into a hellish nightmare, with vicious snowstorms, and the Blues Brothers tribute band Rubber Biscuit. Read the rest of this entry »

The eerie similarity between my dog’s coprophagia and American foreign policy. First performed at San Francisco’s Progressive Reading Series, on a bill with Jane Smiley and Jonathan Franzen. A more family-friendly version was later published in Bark magazine. Read the rest of this entry »

A delightful lunch in London devolves into a bout of Gwen Stefani-induced bile. Read the rest of this entry »

Winston Churchill’s baby clothes. A 10-foot-tall toilet. UFO abductions. They’re all part of Ireland’s most eccentric castle.
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Being chased by a bull is Martin Kiff’s job. And yeah, there’s an art to it. But the bigger question is, how does Martin Kiff fit 26 rodeo clowns into one truck?
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The Melting Point
Whether or not you believe in global warming, the fact remains that a vast majority of the world’s glaciers are shrinking.
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Fray publishing, 2008.

A new quarterly from San Francisco’s Fray storytelling community.

“Fray began as a website. We presented individually designed, true first-person stories. Each one ended with a question that prompted the audience to tell their stories, too. Then it evolved into a series of live storytelling events, Fray Days and Fray Cafes, that took place all over the world, attended by thousands of people. And now Fray is evolving again – this time into a quarterly series of independently produced books. Each one will be on a central storytelling theme, and include personal stories, articles, and original art. They will come out quarterly. They will be awesome.”

Buy copies here.

Penguin, 2009. Since December 2006 I’ve been working almost full-time on an oral history of punk rock in the Bay Area. My co-author is Silke Tudor, and we’ve interviewed nearly 200 people, from Green Day, Rancid and Operation Ivy, on back to Maximum Rock n Roll magazine, the Dead Kennedys, Flipper, The Avengers, Crime, and The Nuns. Check out our myspace page for a nice swath of Bay Area punk!

I haven’t written much about this era of my life, and I don’t know exactly why it feels time to post a few things about it. Probably because if something isn’t available online, it automatically doesn’t exist for a lot of people. And perhaps because enough time has passed. And maybe because I’m publishing a new book about punk rock history, and people aren’t sure if I was ever a punk. Anyway, here goes.
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An exclusive inside look at London’s legendary Abbey Road, recording studio for Sir Edward Elgar, Glenn Miller, Beyond the Fringe, Pink Floyd, and some group called The Beatles. A new music television show, Live From Abbey Road, was taped at the studio and premieres June 2007 on the Sundance Channel.
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Media star, cocktail creator, and Las Vegas bartender extraordinaire Tony Abou-Ganim, the world’s first monarch of the bar. And the snappiest dresser I’ve ever met.
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Big-wave surfer Zach Wormhoudt inherited his father’s love of skateboarding — and his company. Today he’s head of the industry’s top skatepark design firm.
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How did a 40-year-old woman fool the world into thinking she was teenage prostitute and wunderkind author JT LeRoy? As a punk rocker, porn writer and phone sex operator, Laura Albert had been inventing herself for years. This story first appeared in Salon, and was the basis for a screenplay commissioned by the Weinstein Brothers. Not that I got paid anything.
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Inside Vietnam’s remarkable economic renaissance. One reason — lots of catfish.
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Some are for singing, others for fighting. Some tell you the temperature. As a collective bunch, they indicate when it’s time to plow a field. Maybe that’s why the right cricket in China can fetch nearly $13,000.
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America may be the birthplace of jazz — and of such legends as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong — but it’s the Parisian radio station TSF that’s keeping the passion for it alive.
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Yes, another story about pirates. This is an overview of piracy on the high seas, as it pertains to what eventually became the coastal United States.
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The strongest hair! The youngest sumo wrestler! The longest pencil! In Malaysia, making your mark - any mark - is a matter of national pride.
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The best deal in online office supplies just happens to come from a band of Cistercian monks.
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A short compendium of stolen loot, stashed about the globe and waiting to be discovered.
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American millionaire Bernard Keiser has spent six years of his life, digging for buried treasure off the coast of Chile. He’s survived government red tape, skeptical locals, and competition from a metal-detecting robot. And still no treasure. So what keeps him going?
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This one focuses almost exclusively on the legendary “Bus Uncle” video.
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The Father of the Batmobile made Tom Wolfe’s career, and he’s still alive and kicking in Los Angeles.
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On the trail of Mundaca, the Yucatan’s lovesick pirate.
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America’s first capital of cigars was Tampa, Florida. This is what happens when a visitor attempts to smoke as many stogies as possible every day.
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What began as a simple joke posting to my website blossoms into a strange correspondence with three members of the 70s band Foghat.

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A short story about the dotcom rise and fail, told entirely through emails from a publicist.

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A short story based on San Francisco’s legendary community of archivists and collectors. Includes gratuitous Star Wars reference.

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A quest through the streets of Paris to find the heart of Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire.

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I traveled to three of the Hawaiian islands to learn more about local superstitions. And just scratched the surface.

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Frank Zappa’s notorious home in Laurel Canyon goes up for sale after 30 years. Alice Cooper, Eric Burdon, John Mayall, Pamela Des Barres, and members of the Mothers of Invention remember the days.

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An inside look at the Google search engine, the last refuge of Silicon Valley zaniness. (pre-IPO)

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A visit to San Francisco’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, and a portion of its 22 warehouses stuffed with pornography from all over the world.

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Two stories about the nation’s obsession with souped-up “Fast and the Furious” import cars.

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A look at the Mecca of NASCAR fans—Mooresville, North Carolina, aka “Race City USA.” They were thrilled to be interviewed for Playboy.

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Iraq is the world’s largest junkyard of UXO (unexploded ordnance). These are the guys who clean up the mess.

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A comprehensive look at our nation’s obsession with all things poker.

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Tollecting friends online has never been so easy—and so, I don’t know, ephemeral?

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Kamikaze surfers attempt 60-foot waves, 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. It’s only been surfed four times, and with good reason. You’d have to be insane.

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Outside Japan, the hotbed of amateur sumo wrestling is in the Czech Republic. Sweaty wrestlers, a sumo-themed hotel, and beer for breakfast.

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Godzilla-style creatures battling each other inside a steel cage. This is Boston’s oddball comedy/performance act Kaiju.

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The Texas comedian who makes the Blue Collar Comedy phenomenon actually funny.

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Published by Feral House, 1997. This was my first book, a socio-anthropological dig into America’s heterosexual revolution. The one I missed. Includes the histories of waterbeds, hot tubs, communes, nudist resorts, swingers, and all sorts of adult and mainstream pop culture. Tons of rare images.