Frankman

Ex newspaper editor/writer fella. Cultural crank. Spiritual dilettante. Music snob/music junkie. Family dude. Pet crazy. Craft-beer jerk. Coast craver. Short sometimes of fuse. Short always of fuel. Very tall on paper.

anthony bourdain, and the dark in light places

Tributes have been piling up for Anthony Bourdain since news of his death last Friday morning in a luxury hotel in Strasbourg, France. As tributes will when death intersects celebrity, particularly when suicide is the culprit. Tributes in this case are requisite, however. This was Anthony Bourdain, for chrissakes. Anthony Fucking Bordain! Former chef and …

Gimme the purty lights, those purty holiday lights

Even as a raging heathen, I do love me some Christmas. My favorite holiday, hands down (and that’s even taking into account the Hadaka Matsuri guys-in-sumo-loincloths-competing-for-trinkets festival every February in Japan). I dig Christmas not just for the purty lights, that phenomenal Pogues/Kirsty McColl song and the excuse to put liquor in sweetened egg froth and …