My hair used to be REALLY long. Cliff Burton long. Conan the Barbarian long. Born-in-the70's-hit-puberty-in-the-80's long. There was nothing ironic or unusual about this. In my day - and at a burly 38, I feel entitled to an occasional in my day - if you were a young man who knew how to rock and roll all night and party every day, this was barely a choice at all. Growing your hair was as much a conscious decision as wearing jeans or eating fast food. It wasn't a question of should I grow it out?, it was a matter of how fucking fast can I grow it? Later it became a matter of how high can it go?, but I'll save that for another installment. Some of my hairy proclivities were nothing more than an offshoot of my unconditional worship of 70's...

In The Tenz, we fly in hovercars fueled by laughter and rock n' roll. We've adopted a single global language, which is a hybrid of all known languages with a sprinkle of jazz theory. Consequently we're all getting along much better, and everybody can dance. Moral and religious disputes have gone the way of Disco, praise Gawd. World peace sets the stage for tolerance, innovation, and a new cultural renaissance. Creativity and intelligence are valued over celebrity and convenience. Our elected leaders are true shepherds of a collective vision for equality and the pursuit of happiness- and they can all cut a rug. You know what else? In The Tenz there are no political parties. That's right, the only kind of parties we're interested in are the kind where asses are shakin' and the music's loud. We're quite comfortable with a Prez...

Brown. Everything has to be brown. Definitely. Black speakers won't do. If you get black speakers, it's all you'll pay attention to. You'll be miserable. Dude, I'm right there with you, brown all the way. Brown laminate and if it's a little greasy and chipped, all the better. Hang on, what's this... (I click furiously on the listing title, too-eagerly watching the little rainbow-spinny thing next to my cursor, my credit card vibrating in my wallet.) Bose 201 Series 3's...dude check these out... Interesting...what's that thing on the top? Hold it I'm looking. Oh shit check it out - you turn that thing and it moves this little flap in front of the tweeter so you can like, aim the sound or something, No shit? That's crazy. They look good though. How big are they? You don't want something tiny. Small is fine. Tiny is not fine. Nah...

There are geniuses at work over at Amazon. Don't let the overpriced, first-gen-iPod looking Kindle 2 fool you.  Jeff Bezos may never talk me into believing the Kindle is worth the hefty $360 tag, but last week they almost snared me. Amazon's sticky web of relevancy and impulse-buying intelligence has gotten to me before (users who purchased Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Two also bought Angel, Seasons One through Five!), but never before has my consumer willpower been so tested. It began three weeks ago with an email from John, a coworker who knows I'm a Stephen King junkie. The truth is, anyone visiting my "library" at home would immediately recognize it as a Stephen King shrine. Proud first-editions gloat on the best shelves, lording over obviously less-favored books. The email's subject read Stephen King sells out again with Kindle.  Looking past the...

What you see pictured here is probably my zillionth Tall Pike's Place coffee, which I generally sneak out of the office to enjoy around 2 or 3 pm with my buddy Joe. The ritual goes something like this: Dial Joe's extension. Continue to be amused by Joe's trademark "Yeahp?" of an answer. "Got time?" I ask. "Can't do it. I got a 3:30 and I'm in the shit." "That's crap. Come on. Ronnie James Dio wouldn't put up with this, it isn't civilized. We're grown men. We can have a cuppa goddamn coffee. Fuck your 3:30." Or some such exchange. Inevitably we walk a short portion of Boston's Freedom Trail, which seems to begin at the Borders at Downtown Crossing and within 20 paces leads to a bustling closet of a Starbucks. It's staffed with twenty-somethings who to me resemble teenagers. They listen to singles,...