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My Mom Is Bad-Ass

Mine is a family of teachers: parents, grandparents, siblings, nearly all of us. I’m so proud of that fact, it feels boastful to say it. I’ve always regarded teaching as the most honorable of professions. It’s inherently selfless: offering what you have to others.
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My Fall Tour Playlist- New Faces, Self-Loathing in McDonald’s

Fall Tour 2012 is over, and I didn’t write a single post from the road. In the immortal words of Disney employee Han Solo: “It’s not my fault!” This tour was the busiest tour I can remember. We all did our best to stay on top of things and do our jobs as well as […]
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Five-Day Tour

Tonight, The U.S. Army Field Band concluded a five-day tour of Ohio and West Virginia. We left on Monday, played Clarksburg, West Virginia that night, East Liverpool, Ohio on Tuesday, Parkersburg, West Virginia last night, Zanesville, Ohio (plus a brief video shoot) tonight, home tomorrow. For a band accustomed to five- and six-week tours, this […]
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Aurora, Alex Teves and Why We Need Superheroes

On July 17th, 2012, without evidence or provocation, a high-profile pundit went on record trashing The Dark Knight Rises as a politically charged propaganda piece. As a Batman devotee, I was annoyed, maybe even a little offended. When I said so, a friend told me to lighten up. After all, he said, “Batman is just […]
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Listen, Stupid

When I was a college freshman, my school’s music department brought in acclaimed jazz trumpeter Marvin Stamm as the guest artist. As an 18-year-old trumpet player who barely knew which end to blow into, hearing Marvin changed my life. One night that week, Marvin hung out with the trumpet studio at a local bar and […]
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Comic-Con, Hall H and the Line From Hell

Comic-Con International 2012 took over the city of San Diego last week, drawing more than 130,000 patrons. It ran from July 12th through July 15th, with July 11th as a bonus “preview night.” But people were lining up a lot earlier than that. Seating 6,500, the infamous Hall H is where all the biggest panels […]
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Comic-Con Is Really Big: A First-Timer’s Perspective

I just wrapped up my first Comic-Con International, often called “San Diego Comic-Con” by fans, and just “Comic-Con” in the press. It wasn’t my first convention. I frequent Cons on the east coast every year, Baltimore in particular. But this was my first San Diego, and for sheer size and scale it definitely warrants the […]
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American Splendor

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an essay comparing the art forms of jazz and comic books. I decided I wanted it read by a larger audience than my blog posts usually reach, so I contacted Ron Marz. Ron’s a comic writer of many years, and he also writes a great blog called Shelf […]
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