The amazing true story of how a tourist bumming around Cambodia in the mid-1990s, inadvertently launched the careers of many musicians, including the Cambodian/American hybrid Dengue Fever.

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Late at night, lying in the bed of a tent cabin, the entire island of St. John comes alive. Waves regularly rinse the beach. Frogs call out to each other. And somewhere nearby, a spastic iguana slowly crunches through the forest, before suddenly falling off a branch. This isn’t $1000-a-bed resort citadel living. This is Maho Bay Campgrounds, where for 100 bucks you can spend a night in the world’s first eco-resort. Read the rest of this entry »

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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