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“It’s like quitting cocaine by crazy gluing your nostrils together.” Snap. That was Bill Maher’s take on Chris Christie’s stomach stapling. And my thought is, what’s the problem with crazy glue? For those of us who lack self-control, people for whom abstinence is cheaper than moderation, sometimes the best way to block a punch is to not be there. In my experience, forcing yourself to live in a more black…

“We’ve shattered the myth that demography is destiny.” Last week I watched two documentaries about charter schools, Waiting For Superman and The Lottery. Both movies made me cry. The notion that families are pinning their hopes to a bouncing ball, that kids have to get lucky to get an education, and that destiny is determined by a draw, just breaks my heart. Ugh. Still, after visiting one of these charter schools in…

“You’re tough the way tofu is firm.” This joke from my favorite comic strip hits awfully close to home. Tough is a facade. It’s external. It’s the shell we construct to make sure nobody knows how vulnerable we are. In fact, the word tough means “not easily broken or cut.” And that’s pretty much the polar opposite of me. I take everything personally and cry all the time. So I’m…

“To learn what we couldn’t possibly learn if we were stuck in our own orbit.” What I love most about space exploration is, it’s the prefect metaphor for intellectual curiosity. We may not have uncovered alien civilizations on planet Zoltar, but our country’s space program helped advance the fields of communication, solar energy, videography and mechanical engineering, just to name a few. All because we admitted that our planet wasn’t…

“Everyone could listen and hear what was on their minds.” I love this article about Egyptian dance music. Unlike some countries whose pop music is talentless, forgettable shite, these guys literrally overthrow governments with their songs. So cool. Their music gives people the language they don’t have. It’s not a product to be bought, it’s an object to be socialized around. They’re real artists, who would rather be heard than paid,…

“Sucked into a social tornado.” Spending twelve hours a day online, pretending to be happy, is not art. It’s one thing to use the Internet to help your business, but the Internet should not be your business. During my entrepreneurial days, that was one thing I never understood about my contemporaries. They did everything under the sun to grow their businesses except the one activity that mattered: Actual, physical work. Not…

“Comfort is not a primary agenda item.” Isn’t convenient how our bills show up about two days after our paychecks do? Just when we start getting used to the idea of having extra bones in the bank, life chimes in with yet another expense. It’s almost funny, in a way. Like life is just fucking with us. Then again, that’s how nature operates. Every new beginning is some other beginning’s…

“As an artist, you don’t want a rear view mirror.” I’ve been writing music for twenty years. Every time I work on a new song, there’s only one goal: Do something you’ve never done before. Whether it’s a chord change, a turn of a phrase, a strumming variation or vocal variety, the song has to contain at least one moment that’s completely new, totally fresh and artistically surprising. The exciting…

“Sky and water create their own drama around her.” I’m amazed at certain people’s ability to attract useless drama into their lives. To them, life isn’t a glorious project to be lived, it’s a grand conspiracy to be battled. The minute they walk into the room, the tides of anxiety come crashing in. And everyone in their presence has no choice but to get their shoes soaked. It’s so pathological, it’s borderline artistic. And I’m…

“I came here to work, I didn’t come here to crawl.” Great passage from Working by Studs Terkel. Reading that book reignited one of my longtime bugbears: Not everyone is a hard worker. I came to that realization a long time ago, and it still bothers me to this day.  I wish there was something we could do about it, but I think it’s just one of those realities we have to deal…