Like Johnny Cash, I’ve been everywhere, man.

At least in London.

I had the opportunity to witness history as it unfolded. I was in the raging music clubs of London in the Sixties before Bowie got big and Pink Floyd was getting there. I saw and was part of it all: The drugs, the sex, the rock ’n’ roll. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, and more.

When punk rock came about a decade later, nothing changed, other than I got older. I was there for that, too. …

It’s been almost three weeks since I confronted a cold hard truth.

Or should I say, a steaming hot truth brewed with freshly ground Arabica shipped from the farmlands of Colombia.

I’m a caffeine addict and have been for years.

I’ve been drinking coffee since I was sixteen. I vaguely remember having coffee-flavored items like tiramisu a handful of times when I was a child to only find it bitter.

Things changed either during the last semester of junior year or the first semester of senior year. Sometime during that period.

Our debate team, which was in its infancy when…

I spent my Friday night, and most of this weekend for that matter, reading Utopia Avenue, which I heard about from Terry Barr. After reading the book for hours at a time, I took a break from it so I can read about something else.

That something else was Muse.

I loved Absolution and felt like I listened to it enough times. Amidst a personal renaissance for listening to new music, I figured, why not listen to a different Muse record? It was settled: Last weekend I jammed Black Holes and Revelations.

When I first listened to the album, I…

The Salon

I am too good to use colored pictures of myself on the internet. So, I use a black ’n’ white picture of myself for my profile.

Mad that I say “black ’n’ white” à la place de “black and white”? I’m sorry, I guess I’m too rock ’n’ roll for your rock and roll tastes.

I use black ’n’ white because, like the voices of Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke, I am the embodiment of mystery.

As Sarah Paris once pointed out, when an ad works, it works. This piece of content marketing technically did not work as I did not make a purchase of the product it promoted, but man oh man, this video is glorious. Call me a sucker. If that’s what you think I am, I definitely am one for this ad.

In the video, Tim Armstrong, a founding member and frontman for the punk band Rancid, plays two tunes on his tenth anniversary Hellcat acoustic from Fender: East Bay Night and Telegraph Avenue. When doing research for this article, I pondered…

Warning: Spoilers; film NSFW.

It was a Monday morning and I was lamenting for the weekend to continue. Pajama and bed-ridden, I continued my weekend by doing nothing but reading.

A week or so before that, I encountered Sara Benincasa’s work for the first time and read a few of her pieces, to my enjoyment. When I Googled her, finding that she had an eclectic catalog of comedic work ranging from books and essays to chillin’ with Donald Glover in a bathtub. I also found her short film — The Focus Group — and saw this Medium piece of her…

1947–2021

Last night, I learned that critically acclaimed producer Jim Steinman died from kidney failure at the age of 73.

I never followed Jim proactively but that doesn’t mean that his work never impacted me. Because it did.

When I was in college, I listened to Bat Out of Hell tens of times. I would listen to the title track before I went to shifts interning at a tech startup in DC. It got me motivated for the day to come and the music made me feel like I was this superhero on a quest to kick ass at work. My…

As I opened this draft, I just finished listening to Absolution from front to finish. Wow. I’ve listened to this album before, but this time around was unique compared to others.

The past few weeks I’ve been nonstop doing shit; for work, The Riff, my writing, my reading, my music playing, my tutoring, my walking, and various personal life happenings. So much has happened in my life during this time and it feels like every day that I’m living in something new is occurring. I am always in a moment — a moment that I’m here to enjoy and pursue…