On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen is temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" - The Bible (2 Cor. 4:18) as quoted in John Bunyan's Pilgrims's Progress I'll be debuting a serial novel called "The Quitters" in the first week of January 2022. It's a fictional account of a punk rocker who played in 1977 at the nightclub and restaurant, Mabuhay Gardens, which was located on Broadway in San Francisco, and was the center of the city's punk rock scene. The first part will cover a time period from the fall of 1977 to January 14th, 1978, the date of the Sex Pistols last performance at Winterland, which I saw and afterwards felt that the first wave in SF had begun to peak and to make way for the more successful second. After this, the story moves down to Southern California.  The chapters are tentatively set to be uploaded bi-weekly, and there are other details whic...

"For those who pass their lives afloat on boats, or face old age leading horses tight by the bridle, their journeying is life, their journeying is home." - Matsuo Basho (The Narrow Road To The Deep North, 1702) It was a dark day when Yahweh (now known as God), passed judgement on and sentenced the three culprits in the apple munching incident at the Tree Of Knowledge (Now known as The Internet), located in Mesopotamian Edin, located in what is now Iraq (now known as The Garden Of Eden). The serpent (now known as Satan) got off the easiest; he was condemned to stay slithering about for eternity, which didn't cramp his style, as snake legs had been ditched during the process of evolution. Adam was condemned to work the soil for his food, and could no longer just pluck it off trees in Paradise (know known as Man Caves). Menkind later fobbed off most of the food preparation tasks on women to ease the pain of the "thorns and thistles" (Genesis 3:18). Which is why wo...

"...I rode away, thinking, I confess, not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind me, as of to-morrow, and all the wonders it would bring." - William Makepeace Thackeray ("Barry Lyndon," 1844) "Coming of age" rites for young men and women have pretty much remained the same throughout history; men endure epic tests of strength and will, while women are trained in the sacred roles of motherhood, parenting and how avoid getting a case of the ass from dealing with men. Some cynics have suggested that a woman's parenting training applies to both men and children, while others indignantly insist that following a man's orders requires no special skill. While accurate attribution for such insights isn't possible due to the degraded condition of the ancient source material concerning motherhood discovered in the Chicago 5th Street Salvation Army Store book section in 1989, the debate appears to be divided along male and female lin...