Look What You Made Me Do (Newsletter)

“I think my dentist is a Klansman.” She was the CEO of a major company in Tennessee. She was, and is, white. We were friends and she had just gone in for a routine teeth cleaning. Always trying to mitigate the obvious I suggest perhaps she is mistaken. “Well…,” I said. “I mean, how do you know? Maybe he just has Confederate flags around or something…” “He has a framed certificate that says he’s a Klansman,” she frowned.

Did he fire five, or only six shots...? In all of this excitement he probably kind of forgot himself. But the sport’s dead just the same. Eddie Goldman was right. Took me 31 years to admit that the maven of Midwood Wrestling and one of the oldest journos covering what had formally been called NHB, or No Holds Barred, Brooklyn’s own Goldman was the first one to hep me to the fact that there should have been no joy in Muddville when the wife-beating Dana White came to town.

Silence is golden. The rebop that frames the backdrop of most of our discourse these days, the wallpaper of humming shit that lets you know that you’re among the chatterati, well, it’s good to find some place away from it. Which is harder than it looks when you consider that everything talks to us these days. Look What You Made Me Do is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Your phone. Your glasses. Ear buds. Your car.

Wire Magazine Festival. Chicago’s Empty Bottle. September 2004. Photog unknown. Miles Davis, name in the press a lot this week because of milestones connected to his artistic contributions and birth and such, said to some typically confused journo back in the 1960s that music was his constant companion. Like some people processed language he could claim that it’s physical presence occupied the room just as surely as did oxygen. Or the interviewer’s own face.

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In the face of (now) seemingly endless music press chatter about what punk rock means, or is supposed to mean, emerges a meme of the old guard vs the new. But how new and old is it really? 1982. Like minutes before our 1st show with the Circle Jerks. Courtesy of their magnanimity. (Photographer Unknown) Los Angeles is a weird place.

Five years ago, almost to the day, I got fired from a digital news company named OZY for starting this Substack. Five years later my ex-CEO Carlos Watson is a convicted felon but that's not all... Having his almost-10-year-sentence and $97 million in fines commuted by President Donald Trump for an undisclosed amount of bribe cash, convicted felon Carlos Watson, here staring at my crotch, believes Jews were out to get him.

When every punchline is "nigger" what's the joke? “Backstage” at a winery at my second ever bow as a stand-up comic. It was a “success”. So much so that they’ve asked me to never come back. Again. Like, ever. “You looking for something that goes with your TAN?!?” I guess he expected a healthy guffaw, this men’s clothing salesman, for the wit and wisdom that got him to drop that on me mere minutes after I entered the store where his job was to sell said clothing to men. Like me. Or maybe not.

This photo with Duane Denison, taken at Dour, was mere seconds before I refused to let go of his shaking hand and open-hand slap him with my left. At least that was the plan. (Photo by Chris “Fozzy” Holden) [Note: The emails have been consistent and clear. Though I believe these stories to be old and covered in both my memoir and the FIGHT book, enough haven’t heard them, so here’s some version of them, again. Enjoy.] “Oh man,” he was laughing.

“I know what you’re wondering…’did he fire five or only six shots?’ Well in all of this excitement I kinda forgot myself.” He was the nicest old guy. Outside of the cataract’d left eye, with a bluish, white film covering it, Billy looked like a central casting version of the kindly old guy who ran a news stand in some film noir potboiler. White, stooped and with a tight-cropped head of gray hair I made him for about 60 years old. A hard, old 60.