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Nostalgia and the Beautiful Return to Pain
What is nostalgia? How can it help us? How can it hold us back? And what are it’s origins? A song, a smell in the air, a taste in your mouth, or even an image and suddenly a part of you has traveled through time and space. Sometimes we hold these close to us for…
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One Cent Record Clubs and Predatory Discovery
What’s the value of music when your life is falling apart? How did that “ten albums for a penny” deal really work? And could a kid’s mail-order music club from the 1980s have predicted today’s subscription trap? In the summer of 1983, I was a wreck. My grandfather pulled into a RadioShack parking lot and…
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Em Dashes and Witch Hunts With New Literary Inquisitors
It’s 2025, and I find myself caught in an ironic 21st-century witch hunt. Only this time, the torches and pitchforks have been replaced by AI detectors and self-appointed “sleuths” sniffing out supposed machine-written prose. After months of hearing horror stories from fellow authors and academics I found my audiobook in the crosshairs of being deemed…
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Love My Way: The Psychedelic Furs and the Marimba That Woke Me Up
What if one song could tell you it was okay to exist exactly as you are? What if it came from a group of straight guys who decided silence wasn’t an option? And what if that song , of all things, started with a marimba? Let’s talk about “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs!…
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When Free Speech Fought Back in 1985
Are we safe if a comedian does not have free speech? Were we safe when musicians did not have free speech? Did the executive branch always hate the first amendment or is this a new trend? In September 2025, ABC/Disney abruptly suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly denounced Kimmel’s political…
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Pee Wee Herman: Lessons From a Manchild
By Rachael Price Nowadays, one does not usually understand the term “manchild” to be a compliment. Whereas it once denoted a young person who had to deal with adult challenges early in life, such as the autobiographical protagonist of Claude Brown’s landmark Civil Rights-era novel Manchild in the Promised Land, it now tends to invoke…
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Chrissie Hynde Taught Me How to Listen
What do a Midwestern punk queen from Ohio and a Beauty Queen from Chicagoland have in common? How would they intersect in a young man desperately trying to be better? Can combat boots and leather impact high heels and lace? Let’s talk about Chrissie Hynde and Lauren. Before I had a vocabulary for feminism, before…
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Surviving the Cold War (Again): A Gen Xer’s Guide
If you were a Gen X kid, you remember the Cold War and may be having a familiar feeling right now. Global tension you didn’t fully understand but could feel. We didn’t learn about the Cold War from history books. We learned it from Sting songs, Stallone movies, and being told by our teachers that…
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Generational Fan Fusion Heals My Heart of Glass IRL
In my years as a journalist I have covered Fan Cons with press pass in hand in Baltimore, Washington DC, Chicago, Joliet, and Milwaukee. But I have never been to one as a vendor. The experience would change me and that change came at the hands of Millennials and Gen Z. That change would come…
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Sample Chapter of Hearts of Glass & An Open Heart
Hi Readers, I’m back this Friday. Earlier this evening I started writing “Hearts of Glass Fade Away and Radiate”. It is the second book in the Hearts of Glass series and it releases black Friday of this year. To get back into the writing seat I needed inspiration. I got it a few ways. The…
Recent Posts
- Nostalgia and the Beautiful Return to Pain
- One Cent Record Clubs and Predatory Discovery
- Em Dashes and Witch Hunts With New Literary Inquisitors
- Love My Way: The Psychedelic Furs and the Marimba That Woke Me Up
- When Free Speech Fought Back in 1985
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Comments
It was new information for me not too long ago. It all started seeing a young gay man dancing to…
Thank you for writing this. I couldn’t agree more with your points about the absurdity of “AI witch hunts.” For…