One of David Cline’s closest friends in Vietnam was Ron Chingery. They lost touch after the war. Dave told me he tried to find Ron, but never had any luck. I tried helping as well. I uncovered a lead or two, but didn’t know what happened until today when I got email from Ron’s cousin saying Ron was looking for Dave!

How cool is that?

With luck, I’ll be posting a reunion photo some day.

Cold Case is a show that I sometimes like. There is something appealing about settling old scores (Hell, I’ve spent thirty years trying to prove that Alger Hiss was innocenent — he was — so I know what I’m talking about) and doing justice for people who can no longer help themselves, but in this newest episode the writers, who must have been born in 1975 and who think “The Big Chill” was a documentary, decide to focus in on the 1960s. They create a Big-Chill like group of unpleasant former radicals, now living comfortable generally values-free lives who have a secret, which I won’t reveal. Oh, what the fuck, why not? They were bombers, and one of their devices kills someone accidentally. Twenty five years later, the Cold Case squad is on the job — to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” yet — talk about committing and compounding a felony!

In the ten years or so that I worked on and off on “Generation on Fire,” I never met one former radical, who had been true to the cause back then, who was now turning his/her back on what it was all about. I just didn’t, and I looked. I’m sure they’re out there, but I can’t understand how Hollywood turns up these characters so easily. Well, maybe I can, because if they depict people who once fought against the war and for civil rights and supported the counterculture as establishment vultures, that makes the writers who create these hackneyed characters feel better about their own lives — getting huge paychecks for putting out crap that actually lowers the human IQ — and if they have to slander a whole generation to it to, all they have to do is get into their Priuses, turn up the XM radio, blast John Mayer and forget about it.

As if they actually ever listened to Dylan.
As if Dylan ever listened to Dylan. How could he consent to this?

I’ve never understood this: was it a yellow bikini that had polka dots on it or a bikini with yellow polka dots?

Here’s Gloria Richardson, Marilyn Webb, Verandah Porche and Barry Melton

Bob Zellner, Barry Melton and Lee Weiner share a laugh.

It is in this space that I confess that I am the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.