THE JUKEBOX, Episode-3 – Fortunate Son (CCR) continued…
Bobby Ames looked like he'd been carved from the same stock as Coltrane, only meaner. Eighty-one years old, ramrod straight, wearing a faded SF ball cap and a look that suggested he'd fought in every war America ever had and
THE JUKEBOX, Episode-2 / SIMPLE MAN (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
Marcus spent the week trying to reach Bobby Ames. Three calls, two voicemails, one Friday night trip to McGarvey's, where Coltrane just shook his head. "Bobby's being a bastard this week. Try again next Friday. He'll show…or he won't." So, Marcus moved
THE JUKEBOX – Episode 1: Slot 001 “Fortunate Son” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
The first thing you notice about McGarvey's is that it smells like every old deployment tavern you've ever been to—stale Budweiser, decades of cigarette smoke that no amount of legislation could scrub out, and something else. Gun oil, maybe. Or
The Leisure Class Killers – A Very, Very Short Story – In the Very, Very Near Future
They called it Universal Basic Income, but Deuce called it “getting paid to do nothing,” which was fairly accurate. The government checks started showing up right around the time the robots took over the warehouse jobs, the coding jobs, the
MEETING DUG: When my hero turned out perfectly…human.
They say never to meet your heroes, and I’ve always understood the wisdom in that advice. Heroes are supposed to stay safely mythical, larger than life, untouchable in their perfection. Meeting them risks discovering they’re just regular, flawed people who
The Gospel According to Marcus – How to build the perfect Echo Chamber and destroy everyone in it…
Marcus Pemberton discovered his calling during a particularly expensive bottle of wine at a charity auction his daddy used to take him to before he passed and left him with the capital to start his own business: he was going
How I Lost $175K Doing the Right Thing…and why I’d probably do it again.
The billionaire's attorney called me back with the wonderment of a kid who’d just watched his first Pixar flick. "Well, I guess we should sit down and get this security contract knocked out. Every person I've called so far has
“‘Street Cred’ Lyrics – How society’s attention-hording exacerbates an American problem”
When I penned the song “Street Cred” back in 2017, I was writing about a gangster’s desperation and survival in a moment. Now, 8 years later, as I release it as part of an album of songs written prior to
The Tulsa Migration – What a disappointing zoo taught us about complicity in broken syste
My wife, Holli, and I had become creatures of habit over the years; homebodies who found comfort in familiar routines. We were the kind of couple who considered a trip to Nordstrom an adventure, so when a long-passed wedding anniversary
The Weather Inside my Head – Why Paradise is Overrated and Other Uncomfortable Truths
I'll never forget the first time I traveled to Southern California. I was a young musician in the '80s, set to open for some prominent artist whose name has been erased from my memory—either by time or by the traumatic






