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Sex & Coffee: A Bitter Little Time Capsule of Love

“Well, it's certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love.” — Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth *** Friday, June 14, 2019 My Dearest Matthew, In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “If you want people to like you,” he instructed me on countless occasions over the course of years, “be very interested in everything they have to say. Act like you really care about their lives.” He also advised me to pay close attention to the casual words folks utter when first you meet them. “If you pay close attention,” the old man assured me with a twinkle in his blue eye, “ people will tell you who they are and what they’re going to do. It’s subtle but they’ll tell ya. Listen.”  What seemed more abstract than obvious when first I heard it grew explicit as time wore on. Turns out, Pops was on to something. Ornery old bastard made everything about hi...
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The Mixtape: An Urban Love Story

A new play with  music  in two acts. Were you abused as a child? Do you struggle to transcend the residual anger and resentment toward the people who abused you? Do you have addiction, self-harm, and/or codependency issues? Me too. Well enough of that crap! Let the healing begin...              ⇨ GET IT HERE   ⇨   
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A Good Planet is Hard to Find

"If there's a hell , this is it." -V. K. Roach      I WAS a friendly 7th grade student  at Precious Blood Catholic Elementary in Banning when it happened — when I became obsessed with two disturbing things: (1) Mark Thomson , my drop dead gorgeous dark-eyed paramour  one grade behind me and (2) nasty old chewing gum plastered underneath restaurant tables.  Inexplicably, after being seated at any public eatery regardless of where beginning around age 12 — my mind, body, and soul would suddenly be seized   by tormenting  currents  of joy and disgust. Joy, because e ating out is my favorite thing in life. Always has been and will be. Especially when the ocean (Chart House, Malibu) or bean and cheese burritos are involved. And disgust, because the act of sitting down for a meal at any public table grew increasingly unbearable ,  causing me to unravel on the spot from the inside. On the rare occasion there was a tabl...
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The Devil Inside: Shakespeare's Medievalism

“Men should be what they seem; Or those that be not, would they might seem  none!” -- William Shakespeare Though thematically timeless and unforgettable in style and execution, the plays of William  Shakespeare aren’t entirely to his credit. But while it’s true that he drew inspiration  from previously existing tales and texts, and often modeled his plays after Roman  tragedies, there's no denying the fact that he put a decidedly secular stamp on whatever  source/structure he appropriated. Nowhere is his creative licensing more true to worldly  form than in his 1603 tragedy, Othello: The Moor of Venice . Tapping the Medieval morality  play a la Everyman and Mankind , Shakespeare drops notions of envy, jealousy, and  mercy into a 17th Century Italian Navy . Unlike the  Medieval tradition, however, Shakespeare offers no moral resolution for his characters . What he does do is put a chilling new spin on dramatic conventions...
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