When I wake up, I’m never a bundle of either fire or joy. I don’t like mornings, never have, and I’ll leave greeting them up to anyone who wants that onerous task. That said, last Sunday morn was a real dupa-dragger, even by my standards. The previous day I’d had a magic gig at the ...

According to the cliché, old age is not for sissies. And now that I am, by any measure old, I couldn’t agree more. Of course there’s all the slippage and slopage of both mind and body. And while I don’t like them, I expected them in one form or another. But what I didn’t expect, and ...

For me, learning a new magic trick is a long and tedious process. First, of course, I have to go over the instructions. When I started doing magic back in the Stone Age, all the instructions were in print. Now in Brave New World, almost all of them are on videos. Though most magicians ...

The French have an expression (at least according to Raymond Chandler): To say goodbye is to die a little. While not meant literally, there is a grain of truth in it. Still, few goodbyes are crushingly final, and most seem not much more than a verbal tic. But the longer I stumble through this ...

As far back as I can remember — which, if ya must know, was right after Ike took office (Eisenhower, not Turner) — there were three focal town-wide events. They were Winter Carnival, Memorial Day and Fourth of July. Each holiday was chock-full of activities that ran the gamut from the ...

Western civilization’s traditional day of rest is Sunday, but for an uber-retired Dope like me, they all are. So it’s doubly ironic that last Sunday was a day of activity for me. Then again, there was no way I was gonna be home, sittin’ on my dupa and miss our Pride fest in Riverside ...