Writings. Thoughts. Musings.
Dear friends,
As you might imagine, the website is something of a money-pit, so I’m looking to defray some of the costs with a teespring.com T-shirt campaign. As Independence Day approaches, help me to declare financial independence by purchasing a Patriotic Thomas Jefferson T-shirt. Perfect for anyone who loves God and country.
I need to sell three dozen in ten days for the campaign to be a success. If not, no one is charged. For further information and to place an order, click here. Thanks.
I wrote this story 12 years ago while I was teaching high school and was reflecting on the stark contrast between the opulence of the idyllic Marin County environs in which my students were living and the urban decay of the 1970s in which I had grown up. This story is an unsparing look at young people who were not granted the luxury of innocence. It portrays the crude, violent and tribal relationships of young teens in an urban setting.
Readers should be advised there is coarse, foul language and brutal violence. But I believe it accurately reflects the times and the people I grew up with some 40 years ago, if not the actual geography of the old neighborhood. Enjoy.
I’ve always loved westerns, ever since I was a small boy playing cowboys and Indians. The Long Ranger was one of my earliest TV heroes. I still love the saga of the frontier, of brave men battling an untamed country, savage enemies and themselves to carve out a life of freedom. The saga of the Old West is a metaphor for our national journey as well as each individual’s inner struggle for integrity in the face of temptation.
The Western is a beautiful entertainment form because it lays bare the human soul and forces us to accept that moral choices must be made. Perhaps because it is so elemental, it is also a flexible form that can be married to others. Witness Westerns as action-adventures, melodramas, histories, revisionist histories, tragedies, comedies and musicals. There are tales of epic quests, desolate isolation, damned perdition and sweet redemption. There are heroes archetypal, reluctant, ethereal and illusory, villains irredeemable and roguish.
This tale, Los Lobos del Malpaís, is a horror story. It features what is probably the favorite monster of my youth. I wrote it originally as a film treatment, because I thought it would make a fun popcorn-muncher. Unfortunately, Roger Corman is no longer with us, and B-movies are now made with A-List stars and $100 million budgets, meaning there are fewer a fewer all the time. Like the Old West itself, Hollywood is vanishing before our eyes. The price of progress I suppose. Fortunately, we’ll always have John Wayne on celluloid. A good thing, too, since there will never be another.
This story is a love letter to a small borough on the Hudson. I first wrote Stoop Talk Radio as a pilot for a sitcom. The pitch (“It’s WKRP in Mom’s basement!”) never made it to the networks. I even wrote lyrics for a theme song. Whatever happened to the TV Theme Song, anyway? (“Flintstones, meet the Flintstones….”)
Enjoy.
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