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River in My Head - On the Subject of Bipolar and Being Manic from Not Every Year There are things I’ve lived with for so long that I stopped calling them by their clinical names. Not out of denial, and not out of pride. More like: the language never fit the experience. The textbook waveform — the jagged up down...
The Shine - Bands and businesses alike, I kept my lane to branding, marketing, and PR. The art or the business — I stay clear. I only polish what I’m given. How they reflect the shine, that’s on the client. When I stepped into the performing‑arts preschool and its sister music academy, nothing was broken. It was just...
Raised by the 70s - I was born into a family already halfway through its story. My older siblings were children of the 1950s — raised in a world of stricter rules, tighter expectations, and parents who were still young enough to worry about everything. By the time I arrived in 1963, my parents had already lived through the noise...
Wendy O. Williams — The Walk - I was eighteen, I bought a ride on a church‑fundraiser bus from Guilford to the No Nukes rally in Central Park. Long‑haired country kid by himself, denim overalls, no plan beyond showing up. I stepped off the bus into a sea of people and somehow fell into stride beside Wendy O. Williams. Not performing. Not...
Fuel, Fame & Friction Modifiers - “Some folks talk… Some folks get things done.” — Bobby Likis I didn’t go looking for the automotive world. It found me the same way most things do — through a side door, half by accident, half by instinct. Sun Coast Chemicals, makers of X‑1R Performance Lubricants had placed an ad in the local Penny...
Holding Your Own - Every world I worked in required a different mask. Retail had one language. Construction had another. And neither one cared about the rules of the other. On the roof, subtlety was useless. Sly barbs, clever retorts, the kind of dry wit that worked fine in a store didn’t land the same on a construction site....
A Brother’s Advice - I was sixteen when my brother got me the job at the local drug store. I asked him what the job was, expecting something about stocking shelves or ringing a cash register. He gave me a line instead — one sentence that would outlive every job I ever had: “Don’t worry. Your job is to...
Bud’s War (The Battle of Leyte Gulf) - The main fleet had already pulled back. The Houston — crippled, listing, half powered — was deliberately left exposed to draw Japanese aircraft away from the carriers. This wasn’t a rescue tow. This was a ship still in the fight, still under threat, still being used as bait. And Bud was still on her. He...
CBGB Ghosts - The first thing that hit me wasn’t the noise or the lights or even the people. It was the smell. New York announces itself through the nose long before the eyes catch up — a hot, electric mix of diesel exhaust, garbage steam, stale beer, and something metallic you can’t name but instantly recognize. I...
Building Ferraris - Look who’s firing up the ole’ grift. I guess his new “real job” with that start‑up didn’t work out. I’m sad I ever helped him create that successful‑looking business. He’s offering a service he doesn’t know how to do. I know because he hired me to point out the single most impactful thing he could...
The One Who Arrived Quietly - He floated through my universe for a while, one of those musicians who lived half in the real world and half in the dream of what he thought his life could be. We talked a few times before he made his move. I tried to slow him down, tried to tell him—politely—that coming here without...
The Boutique Label Sidestep - There was a winter where I almost let myself get pulled into a record label. Not a real label — not the kind with infrastructure and a spine — but a boutique operation with more ambition than architecture. The person running it had the enthusiasm of a kid with a toy steering wheel and about...
The Foundation Sidestep - Weeks after moving to New Jersey I accidentally almost slipped into a pediatric‑cancer foundation chair seat. They invited me onto the board, asked me to help coordinate a gala, talked to me like I was already part of the inner circle. On the surface, it looked like purpose. Underneath, it was something else. The tell...
