Dear Mike

So, last week in unexpected news that hit way harder than I expeced (not sure really what I "expected" I guess I didn't expect to hear our old pal, our French guardian angel, our saving grace died last Sunday. Once again sending me into a deep, rough spiral that makes me just flat-out sad. Is that what getting old is really? Just getting progressibely sadder until you are like my mom, the only one left alive with no one to talk to about the things you used to love, the experiences that made you? I pulled the ol' tour diary off the shelf again and aside from being pissed that I wrote absolutely NOTHING down about our time with the Vicious Fishes, it hit me this time how many times I referred to thinking we were surely gonna die due to some sort of risky behavior or because we were trusting the help of people we did not know. Honestly, Marc really was the guy who epitomized for me the best part of being involved in punk rock - cause he, like so many of us, let a buch of

This is a bit off topic for us Mike, but still I think you would appreciate it (what's weird is that I think Kjell might even get what I'm thinking - how weird is that?). So this global superstar that I have recently become a bit of an acolyte of - (and who I genuinely find fascinating on several anthropological levels) played his 5th night at whatever the major arena in Austin is (a town I could visit, I think and have people to stay with even!) and the night before he had made this very typical (for him) statement about "don't let anyone tell you what you can and can't do with your body" - which is of course a great sentiment, but kind of ineffectual when said in a state run by a redneck Trump-wannabe who recently shoved a bunch of anti-abortion laws through their statehouse. Anyway, I feared he was gonna be just another fucking joker who sits on the fence saying vaguely political things but never actually taking a stand with his music or personae, and then

Hi Mike, it's me again. So, as you are certainly aware, the Queen is dead. As is my will to live, at this point. There just is so much noise in this world, and all I want to do is climb in a van and drive away. Dunno where to, honestly. Just away. I don't know how I'd pay for gas, but I guess I would just drive until I run out? Even writing this seems useless. Every morning, I think: today I'm gonna start writing again. Then, by the end of yet another pointless excercise in helping rich people order ridiculously priced sandwiches in order to pay the rent, I get home and just want to ingest any damn substance that will dull my awareness of how shitty life generally STILL is. I mean, it's not bad on the surface - in fact, by most metrics I'm doing way better. But inside I cannot stop the voices in my head. Karen came up for a long weekend and we went to the penninsula and I spent four days literally talking about the same shit, which was not my original plan. I di

Dude, I dont' know what even to write, think or feel anymore. Mike...you would be so fucking pissed. I assume pissed enough to buy a ticket to DC and strap youself to a big ass bomb and wait for Mitch M to leave his fucking serpentnest and run up to him and pull the trigger. And the thing is: that wouldn't fix it. Sure, it would stun the snake for a minute, but these MAGA loons are all getting elected. We were, unfortunately, right. The planet is filled with too many goddamn idiots, and I am not kidding when I tell you: it's the internet's fault. Sad, really, that Humanity, resented with access for everyone to all the information decides to eat it's own shit. I mean, for fuck's sake. Oh, and your kid has decided they are a boy, and damn if they don't look just like you (but with the mother's hair, of course). I can't stop following her mom because I am so curious about how things unfold. That being said, as I was driving to work yesterday, I was over

Here's the thing Mike, Now that you are gone, I find being the keeper of Agent86 history awkward at best, because to be honest it should fall to GL right? Especially since she actually visited Arcata with you and I haven't been back to that vortex of weirdness in decades. None of the people in the Humboldt Punk group on the FB mayhem-generator even know who the fuck I am. Well, except for Dario. That's right, I said (wrote) Dario. Yer pal, my on-again, off-again buddy (I thought we were on the skids again because I mistakenly sent him a link to what I thought was an online sale on L&R merch, but instead was a link to online books and he was, as is sometimes apparently still a thing with him, pissed off). So I had assumed it'd be a while before I heard from him - and I guess it has been about 6 monthes. Anyway, every now and then he pops up in my FB feed, which I don't really patrol much. To my surprise when I saw the alert, he is a member of the Humboldt County

It's a damn good thing you aren't here to see this Mike. It's all falling apart. Super-late stage capitalism is way more horrifying than I ever expected. Roe is going down, and once that domino falls, it's curtains for this country...though I still often wonder if the sheer size of this social experiment that masquerades as a superpower will save it from full-on Handmaid's Tale, Taliban, full-on slavery for women nonsense at the hands of the raging christian lunatic nazis who apparently are so incredibly terrified of melanin that they are willing to live in the literal stoneage. I mean, what do I do, 30 years down the line with more of this insane Phyllis Schafly gender traitor bullshit. Women who are convinced they are lesser, dumber, not worthy of being fully-functioning members of society? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, MIKE??? Or George Orwell was right. Wait....we already knew that. also, after the Depp-Herd trial, now defamation of anyone with status or $ (same thing,

It involves daily deep dives into pop music from the early Teens that I completely missed as I was busy being a debauched Seattle chef. But now, in my mostly heartbroken and uninspired middle-aged crisis, I find solace in what appears to be some pure seratonin in pop form. Thanks to Harry and his pals, you guys (and my local KEXP djs) are the raft I need to get me through this part to whatever happens next.