Having never started a club before, more than half of me — the paranoid Scorpio side — wanted to just keep the whole thing basically a secret, in case it failed. But of course, how can you get people to join something if it’s secret? How can a secret organization put on public shows?

I’ve always wanted to be a dead legend. “I’ll never see 30, man,” I said to my brother. He said, “Um, Scott: I think you are an expert on Janis Joplin, and you can imitate her, and we all know you like her a lot, but…” “What? Are you ashamed to have a rock star who died of a heroin overdose in the family?”

A scout from our group came running down the driveway yelling that a mass of strangers was making its way to our territory from the next street over and they wanted to have a war with us.

I plan to be a nightmarish Stage Uncle to both KP’s Luke aka Li’l Dub and to my real nephew, MC Shrake. Kids + talent = money. Let’s get ‘em onstage sooner rather than later. And I’m keeping 20% of the $.

The final hand gesticulation I made was to pull my wallet out with a flourish to pay for my pie. That’s when she leaned toward me, winked and said with a side-to-side sweep of her hand: “All these crusts are kosher, by the way.” For once I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded. Now I knew what being profiled feels like.

In Metro Detroit, the night before Halloween is called Devil’s Night. Bad kids go around throwing toilet paper in the trees, egging people’s houses, or, in the neighborhoods of downtown Detroit City, burning houses down. On Halloween morning you always ventured outside nervously to investigate the aftermath. If your house was vandalized, you felt the [...]

1986 Up in my bedroom sitting on the floor playing an audiocassette I got for $2 called “Gospel” by Aretha Franklin. Very lo-fi recording of her when she was a teenager (like me!) singing at church, New Bethel Baptist in Detroit, and accompanying herself on piano. I am horrified by what I think I hear [...]

From a 1970s re-imagining of the “Gay ’90s” (1890s) — Farrell’s … to a gay bar in the next “Gay ’90s” (1990s) — Doug’s Body Shop — playing disco music and seating people in classic car shells from the 1970s… Retro, nostalgia, and tricks: blur, blur, blur. Where is the thread?

When I was 15, I used to listen to the “urban contemporary” radio station in Detroit, WJLB. “Strong songs, back to back!” was their tagline. They illustrated this quite down to the letter on their TV commercials, which featured a song whose name I can’t remember (the chorus said “Ah ooh, ah” and then the [...]

It’s hardly a secret that I am endlessly bitter. I’m also angry, very angry. I have temperamental disorders for miles. Sooner or later a couple of them had to be professionally diagnosed, and so they were. A very popular diagnosis that was offered to me as though off a tray of canapes at a cocktail [...]