The Continuing Adventures Of Your Own Personal Jesus

As a kid back in the 1500s I remember reading how bands were formed.  I remember reading how John Paul Jones phoned Jimmy Page and asked him if he was forming a band, and if so, did he need a bass player?  Page said, sure, and mentioned how he was checking out a drummer and singer that weekend and would get back to him.  A rehearsal was set up and Led Zeppelin was formed.  Everyone got rich, famous and laid.  Queen simply formed itself; Kiss placed an ad in the Village Voice and got Ace Frehley as a result.  The Beatles were drawn together and bonded over a steady diet of violence, music, alcohol and drugs in Hamburg (where John Lennon would regularly berate his German audience, calling them “Fucking Nazis,” and Heiling Hitler from the stage during shows).  Bands were shored up on a foundation of mutual respect, if not outright friendship, the latter wasn’t always a requirement – as David Lee Roth once wrote about ...

You are the eldest of four children raised in a family where your mother was apparently physically and verbally abusive towards your father. They remained together until you and your siblings left home and then separated. -- Honour Judge Soulio 23 November 2011; sentencing remarks in the district court.   Today is White Ribbon Day, or, more to the point, it is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and White Ribbon Day, which urges men to speak out against violence against women.  Right up front I want everyone to know that I am not opposed to this, I fully agree with it, in principle.  Men who carry out domestic violence are the lowest of the low.  What irks me about it is the continual silence over domestic violence against men, by same sex partners and by women.  And that we have to have such a day in the first place, and that such a day is gender biased.  As a man I am looked upon with a degree of scorn by women when ...

History is full of unlikely encounters and bedfellows, and the 20 th century was certainly no exception.   If you can believe that the sex-goddess Marilyn Monroe would not only bed, but marry, Arthur Miller (who was about as sexy as a stamped bat) then you’d believe almost anyone would like anyone.   John F Kennedy had a strong liking for Frank Sinatra.   George Bernard Shaw was great chums with Harpo Marx, Salvador Dali liked Alice Cooper.   But surely the oddest of them all, and the most unexplainable, would have to be the meeting of President Richard Milhous Nixon and Elvis Aaron Presley. The beauty of fame in the 20 th century is that it was generally built around some form of charisma mixed with at least a dash of talent.   Sonny Tufts might not have won any acting awards, but he was entertaining to look at, and still is, in his movies.   The Legendary Stardust Cowboy made music that’d make your ears blee...