Introduction

Fuck this Shit, I’m Moving to Mexico

I just finished reading “The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed“. Every 5 page chapter took me an hour, spiraling out on every song mentioned, their musicians, their musicians’ friends and influences, and their counterparts. That book, or any book that challenges your love of music with the same documentation driving introspection, is a must to dive into and swallow sluicing out.

Amy and I were watching an episode of “Ozark” featuring music from Nas, who I’d never heard before. Ruth Langmore contemplated executing her enemies for the entire 45 minute episode, while a catalogue of Nas’ dark hits played. Saying “dark” and “Nas’ hits” is redundant, as they drove the entire episode leading up to a cold-blooded shooting. After the episode, I asked Amy “is this Mobb Deep“? Some quick research revealed Nas and Mobb Deep were contemporaries and close collaborators from Brooklyn in the 90’s. Two wrongs don’t make it right, it make it even, bitch. The music, the show, my mindmeld with my awesome wife Amy — these form the underlying tones to the chorus of a great song or a great show or a great book. Its what makes it timely and effervescent to its time and the fans who love it. I was subsequently tickled to see that Nas missed out on the top song of 1994 to Biggie’s “Juicy”, and Mobb Deep missed out on 1995 to Tupac’s “Dear Mama.” Another connection, a thread subtle but so nuanced and intriguing to me roiling around in the nerdisphere. Amy and I discussed it for an hour.

Amazon calls “The Rap Year Book” an anthology, but its so much more. Its art, and passion, and history, and ratings backed by data. And a gaggle of additions to my Spotify playlist.

There are dozens of lists from Rolling Stone, Spin, The Source, Rock The Bells that list the 20 or 40 or 100 greatest rap songs ever. What made this book a New York Times bestseller was the depth and the dimensions and ardency, wrapped up in a chronology. I was drawn into the story of the music, year after year, speaking to my 80’s with “Sucker M.C.s” and “New Jack Hustler” and my 90’s with”So Whatcha Want” and “C.R.E.A.M.” and my 2000’s with “Golddigger”, while connecting me to songs before and after. It was days of joy to read it and listen and diffuse down rabbit holes.

As opposed to an anthology, a travelogue is very bossy about what you must think and feel. GO TO THIS TACO SHOP before they close at 6 for the spiciest chorizo. BOOK THIS TOURING company to see the real Nyhavn from the water. FIND FEDERICO in Venice, he wears a barber-shop shirt and will tour you under all 435 bridges. It makes you feel like you missed out if you don’t obey like a German soldier in 1942, and devolve into here-and-now competition with every other tourist. I don’t want to kill anyone over Instagramable snaps, I want to visit miraculous places and enjoy the experience however brief or narrow, not cage fight over them.

A travelblog is too ephemeral, and cheap. TODAY I SAW a vulture eating a cow on the side of the road, here is a picture of the carcass that became my taco. TOMORROW I WILL climb 400 steps up the tallest tower in Copenhagen, the line before me and after me down the narrow spiral staircase will make me claustrophobic. I WANT TO get a photo eating gelato while crossing a footbridge in Venice. Where is the insight, or the yearning? What compels me to care about this story?

I like the idea of something more free form. I don’t like the idea of something being restrained by its own scaffolding in temporality and non-fiction. I just want to write, and make dirty jokes, without a gaggle or rules. I love tacos, tall towers in Scandinavia, and the way the Grand Canal laps at the entrance to the water taxi stand at a swish Venetian hotel. I want to talk about my girls, my bikes, my honeygirl, the things that I love before I even know I love them, as the writing makes me discover how much I do love this Baja life. Nonetheless, there needs to be some direction or vector to create a story out of ramblings. A friend who took a film course once told me that every movie needs two things: a ticking clock and a lit fuse. It underscored for me that there needs to be a point to writing. Bono’s autobiography, for example, was among the worst books I ever read — with apologies to my brother-in-law Vincent, it was an incredibly thoughtful gift that I don’t regret reading after 30 years loving U2. Who would have thought that such a beautiful lyricist of 4 minute masterpieces would write such a directionless, mind-numbing tome?

Instructions, observations and impressions working together into some plot are my goal.

At 56 years old, I have conceded that I can not write a novel. I have ideas, that will appear later in this book, and they will disappoint as they disappear. In high school I had an idea for a parody of Dante’s “Inferno“, in the vein of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“, about a man not unlike Arthur Dent waking up in the mouth of Satan on the 9th Circle of Hell, and walking his way up and out with someone contemporary as his Virgil. I never picked who, but I think I envisioned Alan Alda. That idea went nowhere. Why it still sits in my brain either reveals its legs, or my fundamental incompetency. I can’t do characters. I’ve never done characters. My characters would be about as deep as a sitcom. It might work for 30 minutes but not 300 pages. All the writing I’ve ever done has been short-form about raising my kids on a prior blog “Parenting for Gnarness“, stories about biking, quips and snark on social media, or political PR.

I listened to the audiobook of “The Sex Lives of Cannibals” for 500 miles driving north up the Baja. It is the second biggest inspiration for this book. It is a novel and a journal, with playful insights and inspirations and cameo characters that drive the loose year-long plot and build empathy. At Amy’s urging I just bought a copy of Under the Tuscan Sun, which I think will also shape my voice. I also draw on Lab Girl, for her writing and personal and scientific volleys that kept me fixated. Hope Jahren mixed chapters of academic erudition with autobiography, and the blend kept her pace lively within its scientific density and tales of mom-dom.

My number one inspiration of all time is Moby Dick. I’ve read it three times. I was introduced to Moby Dick as a sophomore in High School by my English teacher Mathew Carr. Everyone I know who had Dr. Carr’s class – dozens of National Merit Scholars who went on to Ivy League colleges and founding companies – remembered Dr. Carr as the best teacher in our four years of High School. He brought the book to life, to feel the claustrophobia of the boat and the rank crassness of the sailors, the vastness of the ocean, the illusive madness of Ahab — for kids who had no kinship with any of it. I read Moby Dick twice more, by choice, each time a decade apart, thanks to the indelible imprinting Dr. Carr left on me. I hope he knew, his family knew, how amazing he was to the kids at Cherry Hill HS East. Moby Dick’s plot, pacing, adventure, details, data, characters, confusion, empathy, revulsion, morality and judgment were unrelenting. Moby Dick came heavy. Every sentence was 100 words of structurally, grammatically correct language that could be diagramed down to each indirect object and participle, if one had a big enough white board. “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” Every bulbous clause and pregnant paragraph, Dr Carr showed us exactly what a masterpiece contained and why you should deconstruct it and crawl over every verse, whether it was Herman Melville or Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon was another one of Dr. Carr’s lectures. How did us high school kids stumble into such pedantic brilliance?

This is a journal, desperately trying to be a novel, disguised as a travelogue feigning as a blog. A literary travel memoir. Its the story of moving to Mexico, with details and reflections and introspection and cries for attention. I did things, and I feel them, deeply, and I want to believe I can be better and grow everyday through writing and sitting with the ocean. There are themes that run through this blog like a novel, about my daughters, and my sense of underachievement, and the meaning of love and its deserts, and failure, and imperialism.

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon. And if there is no room upon the hill. And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

BLOG: Today I played pickleball in Mexico, and put on shoes and underwear for the first time in a month.

JOURNAL:  3x a week I play pickleball in the mornings in Mexico, and put on my only pair of lace-up shoes and only pair of underwear. They show the dust, but were an excellent purchase for $75. Except they are black, and by 8am my feet get hot from the equatorial sun blasting down on our court overlooking the ocean.

TACOS AND TOPES: I play pickleball 3x a week and love my neighborhood group of friends. We play and chirp and have so much fun together. They have encouraged me to work on my belief in a wicked serve. 50% of the time I ace, 50% of the time I hit the net. Every time someone dies, and I am an agent of destruction! All fear me, especially my teammates. I love their love. Each day I wonder if I should feel guilty for enjoying my morning, for not volunteering harder on political campaigns back home, or feeding the poor or fostering cats, while Trump burns the world around us. I miss my daughters, I love my wife, I have only 20 years left and fear I will die learning to kitesurf or studying Spanish. My dogs love wading on sandy beaches on hot afternoons, and they should guide my emotions more. Tengo mucho miedo. Some nights I can’t sleep the anxiety is so bad and I wake up screaming for my estranged daughter or my aching knees. Then I go snorkeling at a beautiful spot just down the street, where the pelicans watch from the boulders and the underwater rodeo never fails to calm me.

For this book, I’m going to post drafts in real-time. They will be posted as blog entries and update as I tweak them regularly. The latest edits will rise to the top of the post list. I need 100,000 words. I will keep this on the downlow until 30,000. Give me your comments. They will make my chapters better. Open Mic Night is the genesis of creativity, if you can grab the stage time.

Originally published: January 30, 2026
Last updated: July 27, 2026