Archive for 2015
Fidel Castro v. Che Guevara
I didn’t force Che Guevara to leave Cuba. That’s yanqui propaganda designed to impugn my loyalty and judgment and decency. I’ve loved Che since meeting him in Mexico City before the Revolución and admired him more than anyone because more than anyone I’d benefitted from his extraordinary talents. He accompanied Raul and me and eighty-two…
Read MoreWhere’s the NRA on Roseburg?
Naturally, when there’s another rapid-fire mass murder in an American public school, I look to the National Rifle Association for comfort and insight, and have been searching the NRA website for several days, since the slaughter of ten students at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, but have yet to locate an article – or…
Read MoreYogi Meets Winston
Right, I’m the gatekeeper now. Of course, in my case, that’s with a lower case g. The Big Guy says with the world’s population increasing so fast he’s got to turn the job over to someone else and tend to running this place. My instructions are pretty clear: don’t let in any bad guys, you…
Read MoreTiger’s Many Aches
About fifty years ago a wisecracking Brooklyn-born barber clipping in Sacramento took a yellow newspaper article off his wall, handed it to me, and said, “This is for you. And don’t forget, despite all these injuries he’s got more World Series home runs than anyone. How many does your guy Willie Mays have?” Uncharacteristically, I…
Read MoreHurricane
This story is from the rousing campaign book “King Donald”
Read MoreSaudis Defend Refugee Policies
We in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are most chagrined by quite ignorant insults about our unwillingness to accept refugees from imploding Syria. It’s unconscionable, say arrogant Westerners, that the Saudis can’t welcome some of their Arab brothers and sisters who’ve been displaced by an enduring civil war; these refugees share the same language and…
Read MoreCrazy Return to Golf
I didn’t know whether to blame Jason Day or Davis Love so I rebuked both for casting a curse I thought would never return. Only in hindsight did I realize I should’ve blamed myself. I’d chosen not to write or go out and do something fun on a recent Sunday, and instead reclined on the…
Read MoreYaqui Lopez Remembers
Please trust that people often used to tell me, “You have the best memory of anyone I ever met.” I could, and often still can, recall details of events decades ago and usually enhance the anecdote by noting the month and year: I moved to California in July 1958, I got my first car in…
Read MorePortraits on Glass
I’m a little nervous before talking to audiences about my work but usually warm up and tell part of my story and then am ready to improvise and answer questions. This morning they come nonstop from about a hundred visitors, quite a few for an art lecture, at Bakersfield Museum of Art, in the gallery…
Read MoreBathroom Slip
At age eighteen Bill tossed everything into his old car and moved to L.A, yearning for a life of wealth, women, and major league sports close up. He knew he was destined for distinction, he just had to figure how to proceed. He’d gotten a job sweeping concrete floors and stacking boxes in a south…
Read MoreLion Confronts Murderer of Cecil
Listen, I’m not going to lie that we lions are morally perfect creatures. We’re no better than humans, and neither is any other animal hungry for food and passion. Cecil wasn’t a saint but I prefer him to cosmetic dentist Walter Palmer who paid butchers fifty grand to shoot Cecil with an arrow and track…
Read MoreThe Las Vegas Lakers
Have to admit, I don’t sit courtside when I go to Lakers games in Staples Center. I suppose I could once a year, if I find two tickets, but it would lighten me a month’s salary, so I sit up about twenty rows and that isn’t cheap either but is doable a few times a…
Read MoreChapo Discusses Great Escape
This is Chapo Guzman’s first interview since escaping from the Atiplano high security prison fifty-five miles from Mexico City. His representatives blindfolded and administered narcotics to an anonymous journalist before taking him/her to meet the man. Anonymous Journalist – Congratulations on your thrilling escape. Chapo Guzman – Those cocksuckers were loco to think they could…
Read MoreChapo Guzman Escapes
I am at once humiliated and outraged that hypocritical Mexican officials have fired me as director of Altiplano prison in Mexico and loudly accused me of incompetence if not outright cooperation in the recent escape by celebrity mass murderer and narcotics trafficker Chapo Guzman. That is unfair. I am merely one decent man in a…
Read MoreAirport Taxi
Mark didn’t like late night arrivals at any airport especially in Mexico City where some people get hyper when they see a gringo. He should’ve been ready when a young man rushed up and in Spanish said, “Here, Señor, come with me.” “Where?” “To a place with no lines and low taxi fares.” “Taxis are…
Read MoreMental Steroids
A physician of renown I certainly am, though for a generation I have focused most of my intellect on the rather irrelevant albeit stimulating task of helping athletes run faster, jump higher, hit more home runs, and register more knockouts with shoulder pads and fists. Only in recent years have activists tried to persuade me…
Read MoreInvader Insect
Insect size of armored dachshund dashes across carpet where I pounce and thrice club with notebook and head to kitchen for paper towel. Insect has reincarnated and resumed running toward sofa I block into paper towel pressing to hear pop and feel lubricant taken to sink for thorough drowning and squeezing deposited into trash overturned…
Read MoreDrought is God’s Punishment
Until last week I thought the drought that’s squeezing California resulted from natural weather fluctuations, and didn’t want to be political or presume to have scientific insight so rarely mentioned climate change and then only as a relatively minor factor. I should’ve known there was a much simpler yet more ominous explanation, and Shannon Grove…
Read MoreStalin Makes Comeback
I hope you hypocritical Americans have read the recent article in the Los Angeles Times. If I had said these things, you wouldn’t have believed them. Now you have to accept that in the only place that counts, the vast Soviet Union, I am again a hero to leaders and peasants alike, and that those…
Read MoreOvereaters Anonymous
Friends, we are powerless over food and really shouldn’t be eating it but the alternative is even more perilous than gluttony so we must learn some skills of restraint. Ours is not a relatively easy addiction to overcome, like alcoholism, since people certifiably can survive without drinking, and I speak empirically as a former drunkard…
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