Archive for the 'Obligations' Category



Back in the days before media saturation, folks relied on their own resources in order to amuse themselves. You could find people clustered under awnings, along roadsides and behind bus stations — notebooks in their laps, ball-point pens at the ready — all chuckling to themselves over their latest doodle or humorous cartoon. I miss [...]

I recently had the pleasure of contributing to the 365 Days Project, hosted on the WFMU site. Despite the hate mail I received from a certain camp who felt I offered too little respect to my subject, the experience was otherwise benign. Bostworld gained no surge in hit counts for my effort; in fact, I’ll [...]

I first discovered Michael Monti’s “100 South Mill Avenue” blog after he dropped some praise on my scans of an old menu from his family’s La Casa Vieja restaurant. “As a restaurateur and history buff,” He wrote, “I can assure you that these will be appreciated as a goldmine of nostalgia and useful information about [...]

Thirty years ago, life ended for The King of Rock and Roll. A decade later, an obsessive fan published a couple of obscure puzzles in a little-known Bay Area fanzine. Now, that same fan shares these ancient artifacts with you, the Bostworld visitor. Coincidence? I think not.
Of course, my encyclopedic knowledge of trivial Presley minutia [...]

“My world is just that small,” as my wife would say.
A couple of Tuesdays back, I got a new job — a promotion, actually. Nothing too amazing there; getting it was the easy part. The tough part will be filling the position I just vacated. Unfortunately, I can’t hire myself, so I guess I’m [...]

Tucson merchant Jack “The Color TV King” Fitzgerald carved out a name for himself back in the mid-70s with a series of distinctive late-night television commercials. Standing among a pile of teevee sets and packing crates, he would harangue the viewer with a pitch that always began with a simple, effective, “Hi folks…” You could [...]

I met the editors of the Bay Area humor zine Breakfast Without Meat in the mid 80’s. Bonding commenced forthwith. We quickly determined that I must contribute to the magazine. Over the course of the next half a decade or so, I supplied them with comics, interviews, spot illustrations and other bits of nonsense. But [...]