The Advocate

So, my latest collection has FINALLY arrived for your reading pleasure! Available in Kindle, NOOK, Apple ibook, and other ebook formats, as well as traditional softcover from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , and Ingram. This collection has been a loooooong time in the making -- a lot of writing, editing, rewriting, reediting, scrapping, emotional upheavals, existential crises, and cash-strapped budgeting. But, after almost eight years of hard work, it's done. (Seriously, I could give GRRM a run for his money when it comes to the wait between books.) I certainly could never have done it without the support of my wife, my brother, and a lot of inspirational artists I know in real life as well as not in real life, including/especially Melanie Matranga who contributed the cartoon artwork for this collection. I also owe a big thanks to Amber, and all of the Dog Ear Publishing team who helped me turn this collection into the electronically as well as physically bound reality before y...

Okay, so a lot has already been written about how Pokemon Go has literally taken the world by storm, whether it's going to save our souls or destroy mankind as we know it. But, nonetheless, here's my two cents. Spend them how you will! First of all, I can't seem to find any goddamn Pokemon! I've been trying at the mall, at my office, at the supermarket, at the park, along the freeway, down sketchy alleyways in the dead dark of night wearing black leather. (Well, that escalated quickly.) But nope, I haven't found any. I'm still level 2 for crying out loud! Meanwhile, some people have already beaten the game! And here I am, can't even get a PokeStop or a Gym to respond to me half the time. Why? ...Why? WHY??? I blame my spoiled Gameboy-playing ass. I'm used to handhelds where I don't need decent WiFi or an LTE connection to catch some Pikachu. I'm not used to having to micromanage a battery pack, a GPS, and handheld camera to snag a Ratt...

Status update! Sad Bastard Poetry, my latest collection has completed it's proof pass phase and is approved for printing with Dog Ear Publishing!! I anticipate having a solid release date for ya'll soon. In the meantime, here's another sample of the original artwork I had commissioned for this collection, as well as the back-cover description to give you an idea of what you're in for: "Since the very first quasi-mythological scratchings of the written word, and probably long before it, people have been sharing stories of the tragicomic concept known as Love. Those heights, and depths, were plundered no more infamously than by a writer named Billy the Bard, also known as Willy the Shake and Old Bill (unless you count that incestuous paedophile E.A. Poe). His gratuitous impact sparked the name for this collection in which you will read about the grotesque, photographic, melancholic, eviscerating, and hilarious faces of Love in all its forms, from romantic and sweet, ...

Has there ever been an anime more perfect than the Space Opera meets Western meets Jazz solo known as Cowboy Bebop ? Rhetorical question. Obviously the answer is no. I started watching circa September 2, 2001, (merely a week, or so, before Nine-Eleven destroyed my nations uniquely American sense of invincibility) on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim . It was the first anime I ever seriously watched an anime. I think it may have been the first time I ever seriously watched anything . And fuck, the show was cool, in every sense the word was ever meant to evoke and invoke. As an awkward teenage boy, the gunfights, spaceships, and frenetic saxophone, mixed with tantalizing bits of fan service captured my imagination in a way perfectly designed to tap that angst and loneliness so pervasive amongst young White men . (Though, being Jewish, I wonder if I was less predisposed to devolve more towards sappy blog posts instead of violent mass murder.) It touched just the right nerve at just t...