by Bill LaBrie | Dec 29, 2015 | Essays
My Lemmy Memory: Lemmy Kilmister died yesterday. You might not be familiar, but trust me: he lives on in all of us. Lemmy accessed a deep reserve of antisocial anger and rebellion somewhere beneath the sheen of good times and prepackaged adolescence most know as Rock...
by Bill LaBrie | Dec 16, 2015 | Essays
I was born old. You know the thing old guys say to young women to try to get them in bed? “You have an old soul.” Actually, that might be me. I’m the one with an old soul. I think it’s rarely some 22 year-old nailtech in a bikini who’s...
by Bill LaBrie | Dec 7, 2015 | Essays
Black wingtips: That’s what I noticed first. Worn and curled with time, polished in a way that couldn’t hide their age. They shuffled along the dirty, dimly-glittering concrete. Then, the loose, brown woolen trousers hitched almost chest-high, the...
by Bill LaBrie | Nov 9, 2015 | Essays
It’s easy to feel too-cool-for-school about Phil Collins. This was the guy who was in “Oliver!” as a child. He transformed Genesis from Peter Gabriel’s weird-ass prog rock wet dream into the world’s top purveyor of music-on-hold in the...
by Bill LaBrie | Oct 26, 2015 | Essays
“Would never eat another living being,” said the man. “What’s that in your salad?” I asked. “Carrot.” My brow flexed. “A carrot isn’t a being. It’s not alive,” he said, stabbing it harder...
by Bill LaBrie | Oct 13, 2015 | Essays
Almost twenty-five years ago — back when I was in college — a professor of mine mentioned how Shakespeare’s love stories were losing their impact. Students in the 90s weren’t as able to relate. Something had changed even in the thirty years or...
