David Kronemyer

Ancient Greek civilization and that of the ancient Israelites are the templates for much of Western culture. Two of their patriarchs are Agamemnon and Abraham. I started to wonder what might have happened had they been friends. The first thing that occurred to me is that they both were called on to sacrifice their children. [...]

I am against the war in Iraq. Rather than set forth the reasons in a post, I decided to write a song about it, and here it is:

It was a beautiful Monday morning in Los Angeles, and I was excited. I was going to work at RAND! Somehow, I had talked myself into a position there, to head up a proposed Institute for the Study of the Economics of Culture. It seemed like a great opportunity, because it would give me a [...]

For some time I’ve been interested in fashion models, like those who appear in the pages of Vanity Fair. I don’t necessarily like them as women, or even as models, for that matter. Rather, what’s strange about them is their being-in-the-world. They aren’t really people, because they’re supposed to be transparent to the clothes they’re [...]

So Judy’s mother flew over from “the zone” for Easter. We went to 10:30 mass, together with the other lapsed Catholics (actually, Judy’s not all that lapsed, nor is her mom, but that’s another story; although, some of our brethren in attendance clearly qualify for that status, seeing as how their doppelgangers are absent at [...]

I totally am into swingin’ chicks of the 60s. Two especially perfect iterations of the genre were Sharon Tate and Natalie Wood. They have several things in common, including: they both were beautiful; and they both met strange and untimely ends.  I wrote a song about them, which you can play right now:

Gather ‘round while I tell you the tale of the bread machine and the lap-top computer. A true story it is, and a woeful one, too! So pay heed, you may achieve some edification with regards to the proper role, nature and function of all of these here new-fangled computational devices. Once upon a time [...]

In the late 1970s I was promoting concerts, managing bands and working with schizophrenic patients in San Diego. Somehow, for a reason I don’t know, I ended up being a beneficiary of an old gentleman’s will. The actual language of the bequest went something like this: “To A if he is alive at the time [...]

This is a no-brainer, my hands-down favorite is Thomas Haslem v. William A. Lockwood, a case arising in the great State of Connecticut in the year 1871. It concerned who had the right to possess a large quantity of manure that apparently “lay scattered along the side of a public highway.” The manure was made [...]

A. Archtop Guitars It was 1968 and the band I was in played covers of current pop songs. This was the high watermark of the swingin’ 60s, so our repertoire was eclectic. I knew only one style of playing, which was intricate finger-picking arrangements. Basically, this still is all I can do! I prefer heavier [...]