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February 27, 2026February 27, 2026

The Time We’ve Constructed

If time is a construct, why is this the lifestyle we’ve constructed?

Enjoying some downtime in Southern California with my dog, Max.

I have a friend who won’t stop side hustling.

To be clear, he is not a good friend or even an online friend; he’s a former gym basketball friend, meaning I know him slightly more than my mailman and have a scouting report for how to guard him (can shoot from deep with limited visibility, force him to put it on the ground and try not to get beat to the rim, he’s quick).

This friend (let’s call him Joe) is very sociable, with a winning smile and a self-deprecating sense of humor, which has made him a top salesman at a cell phone carrier for several years. I imagine that job is easy and fun for him. But I guess that’s the problem, because he won’t stop trying to develop a side hustle. A side hustle he wants to make him famous and/or rich?

November 7, 2025November 9, 2025

What is a friend in 2025? A requiem for a Calgorithm compatriot

*The tailgate that started it all, before Miami on Oct. 5, 2024*

Recently, a friend of mine died.

Was he a close friend? No. Was he a good friend? Yes. What’s the difference? Well, I guess that’s what I’m trying to suss out here.

I know Draculaic was my friend. I had never met Drac and I didn’t even know his real name (I asked someone recently). But I interacted him with more than most of my friends and family, simply by virtue of us always being online. Specifically on Twitter (I’ll never call it X). I think he’d be ok with me writing about this for that reason: he also worked shit out by posting about it. That’s honestly my goal: to understand this through the process of posting.

June 19, 2023June 19, 2023

How long is something supposed to last? A requiem for baseball

*Jordan and Fernando arrived early and lost their voices during the Reverse Boycott on June 13, 2023.*

After an endlessly toxic relationship, Major League Baseball is breaking up with Oakland. I have no intention of staying friends.

I realized it immediately upon walking into the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on Tuesday – practically the second we walked in. This is not a team that is intending to stay.

As one of the few, proud Oakland A’s fans remaining, I was in attendance for the Reverse Boycott game on Tuesday night – I hope you’ve come across some video from that day. It was an incredible cathartic experience that was more of a protest than a baseball game. One of the greatest experiences of my life. But I confess: I left that game convinced the A’s were gone.

September 24, 2022September 30, 2022

What Money Can’t Buy

A canvas featuring Hornet staff members in 2008 — *State Hornet Newsroom 2008* on canvas, as seen in the current State Hornet Newsroom in Del Norte Hall. Illustration by Paul Rios. Courtesy of Holly Heyser.

In a world where everything has a price tag, there are still some things money just can’t buy. Like coming home.

The idea that money can’t buy happiness is pretty absurd on its face, and was likely not invented by a poor person. A June survey found that 64 percent of Americans are now living paycheck-to-paycheck. I bet money could buy some happiness for most of them.

“Maybe money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a jetski” comedian Daniel Tosh once said. “And have you ever seen somebody unhappy on a jetski?”

The old cliché doesn’t really mean you can’t purchase happiness; it just means money alone won’t bring you fulfillment.

(But money could bring me to Fiji, and I think I would be pretty fulfilled by a nice long trip there!)

In the era of late-stage capitalism, it’s hard to say “money can’t buy happiness” with a straight face. I don’t think we need to trash the whole idiom, we simply need a little tweak. It’s not that money can’t buy happiness; there are just some things money can’t buy.

January 21, 2022January 21, 2022

More/Less

I’ve toyed with the idea of this blog post for a while, but I haven’t found the will to write it. Maybe it’s the brutal subject matter. Maybe it’s the fact that (as my friend Jordan Guinn says) there’s already so much discourse; what can I possibly add?

Well, a blog shouldn’t exist if the person has nothing to say. So I guess I better say something.

More or Less

I was lucky enough to visit the “Death Star” (Allegiant Stadium) in Las Vegas last year with my sister Marie, the person I hold directly responsible for making me a Raider fan (thanks a lot). I greatly enjoyed the game, where the Raiders walloped the Eagles, and despite what you’ve heard, the opposing fan noise isn’t that bad. Is it the Coliseum? Absolutely not and it will never be. But as a former season ticket holder, I promise you, it felt like a Raider game; more or less.

July 17, 2020

“I Believe…” An Open Letter to my New Journalism Students

Hi! You might be here because you’ve heard I’m the new journalism adviser at Contra Costa College. If so, welcome, this open letter is for you!

If not, you’re welcome to stay and learn more about me. But you’re not the target audience.

January 18, 2020March 17, 2021

You’re not going to miss the Coliseum, Raider Nation; you’re going to miss the party

I’ve been putting this off for a while.

Now, as any writer will tell you, this is normal. Writers hate the writing process, and the easiest way to get a reporter to clean their house is to assign a deadline. We procrastinate by nature, and we’ve all convinced ourselves that we write better under the gun. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant: it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don’t know if pressure actually makes us better, and no writer has ever turned anything in early so we could test it. I guess we’ll never know.

November 10, 2019November 13, 2019

What does it mean to be a leader? (the second part of Spring Break dispatches)

(Ed. Note – A previous blog was about managing my coed softball team, and it was supposed to be part one. Then a lot of events happened, so it got delayed until now. Here’s part two:)

What makes a good leader?

This is something I have spent many hours thinking about. What makes a good leader? I can tell you exactly the first time this thought crossed my mind. Working at Lowe’s, in college.

Let’s start with a couple of hot takes:

October 21, 2019November 13, 2019

Running out of gas, filling up on barbecue and overdosing on baseball

(Ed. Note – This is a special guest post by friend-of-the-blog Jordan Guinn. Get more of his acerbic humor on Twitter.)

Twice in the last three years I’ve been fortunate enough to take a week out of my summer to tour baseball parks across the country with Fernando. The trip involves a rental car, lots of energy drinks and many disagreements about whose playlist we should be listening to.

October 18, 2019August 19, 2021

The last of a dying breed: Baseball Fans

Baseball is doomed.

Utterly, hopelessly doomed.

I don’t remember the first time I realized it, but I’ve known it for quite a few years. The end of professional baseball in the US is near. I expect before the end of my lifetime, baseball will become America’s 4^th or 5^th favorite sport – if it’s not there already.