Rock and Roll Love Story : A Novel

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Schizo-Affective
2009-09-06 13:42:00
Megan Fox is a gorgeous, rich Hollywood superstar. If she really does have schizo-affective disorder, a mild form of schizophrenia which is closely related to bipolar disorder, she can easily afford the psychiatrist and highly effective drug cures which are available these days.She's been on a bit of a ramble lately, and it's hurting her mercurial career. If she's really sick, I urge her to get help as soon as possible. If she's not, she should grow up; mental illness is not a joking issue. It can be a debilitating 24-7 agony caused by bad brain chemicals, and it has nothing to do with weak character, morals, criminality or bad attitude. Not to say however that are some really bitchy people out there who suffer from no obvious mental illness who display all those characteristics.Newer drugs like Geodon and Abilify have totally revolutionized the treatment of psychotic disorders. Unlike drugs like Risperdal and Zyprexia, there is no weight gain or diabetes associated with Geodon ...
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Time
2009-09-05 19:07:00
Weeks are flying by here and as you can tell from the posts, I've really slowed down my blogging. The book is in the same state it always has been. We're all much too busy here at home to commit large chunks of time to editing the book, and an agent and publisher with a solution has not appeared on the scene to help us. Not like I really want an agent or publisher to get very involved in my book. This is my book. I remain open to editing but I don't want to just publish a book to publish a book and I have been with it long enough and it's been seen by enough objective people for me to know that I know I don't have a runaway best seller on my hands. People who understand these things tell me it's a nice little book with a good plot and it is at the moment, somewhat overwritten. I'm not particularly worried about that because cutting it down to size is one of the easiest problems for a good editor to fix.
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The Lion Sleeps Tonight
2009-08-26 14:32:00
JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama -- Ted Kennedy's political life spanned 10 presidents and almost 50 years, and in that time he may just have had more impact on the legislative record than any President in that time. Whatever his flaws, he was a very rich and very powerful man who championed the cause of the poor, the working class, the sick, the old, the downtrodden, the average man, the consumer. While his life will be forever marred by the tragic, irresponsible melodrama on the bridge in Massachussets, I have no doubt that he is in Heaven tonight.
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Les Paul
2009-08-13 18:45:00
The master guitar make has died of complications at 94.The man invented the electric guitar. His signature Les Paul Custom is the axe played by everyone from Eric Clapton and Duane Allman to Slash and Jimmy Page.Ronnie DeRenzo of Rock and Roll Love Story lusts after one.
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By the time we got to Woodstock
2009-08-11 04:13:00
Forty years ago was the Woodstock Music Festival. An 11 year Ronnie DeRenzo started out for the concert with his best friend's hippie older brother and then turned around on Route 17 when the traffic jam was too long.It's also the anniversary of the death of Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. It's hard to believe he has been gone so long now.
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40 years ago
2009-08-09 00:42:00
Its the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road, the Beatles last album and Woodstock this August. What tremendous music there was at that time.There's still lots of great music but it isn't hitting the airways. You have to look in the clubs, the libraries and festivals to find it.
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Busy
2009-07-26 21:55:00
The way things go with this blog and this book is that when long stretches go on the blog without a post, you can usually be assured that something is cooking with the writing of the book.My writer's group is assisting me in diagnosing the problems with my book as the long looked for help in actually editing it is at hand. My significant other is promising to help me with this thing, and as she has been there from the very beginning, her help will be immeasurable.We are however going back to mystery as the launch date begins a countdown.
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Liars
2009-07-20 16:50:00
I really don't know whether Obama's version of health reform will solve the problem without exploding the deficit. There are about 5 plans out there for the Democrats and they are going to have to settle on one.I do know this. I do not know of any reason to believe Republicans like John Boerner or Mitch McConnell. They cunning, out and out liars, and they are the forces of stagnation, represssion and special interests. The Republicans will say anything and do anything to scare you about whatever kind of health care reform gets out there. There are a number of people, like the HMOs and the hospitals and the doctors, who say they are for health care reform but really are not for it all.We can't listen to these people. They've been frightening America while the crisis explodes and gets worse every year. If you don't think it's a crisis, try buying medicine and paying for surgery if you have diabetes, heart disease or schizophrenia without insurance.You'll wake up in a big hurry.
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Good Boys
2009-07-05 03:42:00
Please on this Fourth of July as we play and celebrate, let us not forget our great, brave troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who are risking their lives doing a miserable, thankless job to keep us all safe and happy. We really do not do enough for these wonderful boys and girls.
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Allen Klein dies
2009-07-05 03:24:00
Manager to the Beatles and the Stones, Klein was a "shark's shark to keep away the other shark's" and he did his job pretty effectively. He had the Beatles and the Stones through their most incredible, ground breaking days and he drove them relentlessly. Perhaps he wasn't the most sympathetic person in rock and roll, but he was definately a player. The Stones and the Beatles both wound up much richer after hooking up with him. What can you say? It isn't pretty but that is exactly what a good manager is supposed to do? He was 97.
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Compassinate Conservative?
2009-07-05 03:00:00
Colin Powell is a great American. In all difference to Colin Powell, he urged me to vote for Barak Obama and I did not. I did not vote for John McCain either. In my mind, "keeping government as small as possible" does not mean that we spare no expense to take of the eldest, most non-productive Americans, many of which are affluent and living in comfort, and the CEOs of the banks, insurance companies and finance companies, as was the case under Bush.The rest of us need affordable, accessible health care, something that the Republicans and the right wing don't think is a responsibility of government. However even the AMA, the HMOs, and big businesses like Wal-Mart know that we need health care reform.Government is not just for the old and the well connected. It is for everyone. It seems to me that we have a right to an effective government that can secure a profitable economy for all of us.
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The King of Pop
2009-06-29 00:52:00
Michael Jackson's career began in the mid 1960's but as a 51 year old he is really part of my Squeezed Generation of the 70's and 80's, which spawned the punk rock drama Rock and Roll Love Story, which is set in New Jersey and a grimy neighborhood in New York City in the late 1970's.Michael's kind of mega-Hollywood meets Motown music, and his gaudy gold-plated West Coast showmanship are epilets and crowns and tiaras and miles and miles away from the alternative bands that wore flannel shirts, sneakers and blue jeans and slammed out blues and punk on the East Coast. But Michael was quite obviously the biggest rock star of my generation, right up there with the Beatles, Stones, Dylan and Hendrix, and I cannot just let him pass without pausing to reflect.I wrote several different versions of his obituary for this blog and you know as someone who writes about mental health and struggling over adversities, I just didn't have it in my heart to bring up the terrible, nagging pedophi...
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Reserve Judgement
2009-06-27 00:37:00
Earlier in the day, I had a picture of a happy 8 year old Michael Jackson up on the site, with a sentence that said that this is the way I would prefer to remember him. He was a sad, unhappy man and I am not so sure tonight that he will be in his eternal rest as I was in the morning. He may even have been a child molester. I'm not sure I want to honor him, in this ignoble death. Were he alive, I would pray that he get some professional help. His money, it seems, brought him all the wrong kinds of help, as it appears he died from an overdose of Demerol, a prescription drug. I don't know what more I can say about Michael Jackson.
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The King is Dead
2009-06-26 04:13:00
This is the way I prefer to remember Michael Jackson. He was an incredible talent; who didn't buy Thriller?He was so weird and unhappy at the end.Rest in peace, Michael. I know you are in heaven with God now.
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Progress
2009-06-06 00:48:00
Actually a lot has been happening with the novel lately but I have been much too busy with job and family to blog about it. My eldest, my son, is about to graduate high school and my youngest just started finished her first year of middle school.I've been networking with a group of writers in the Highlands and a lot of important decisions have been made about the novel. First, I am going to self-publish, I am going to edit down the first couple of chapters, and I am going to leave the forward you see here on this page pretty intact.If you're an aspiring writer and there's no writer's group in your area that you can join, I urge you to contact your local librarian and see if you can't start one up in the Library's meeting room. That's how I started my group and we are all very happy that I did.
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Easy does it
2009-05-10 01:58:00
For the first time in about 15 years, my job, my health and my family are all doing splendidly and I am enjoying some very busy, hectic but basically peaceful days. I'm buying lots of lottery tickets because I would really rather be home with the wife, kids and new dog instead of commuting. But like a lot of people who have a relatively stable job in their profession right now, I am counting my blessings.Contentment does not make for great art however. This novel was conceived in turmoil and I am afraid that by over-editing it now in peacetime, I may be messing it up. So I am leaving it alone. As soon as my wife can proof read it, I will get it ready for on demand publishing. It may be published imperfectly but I am growing tired of this in between stage.I hope you will bear with me until then.
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Fight the Power : Onward with the Revolution
2009-03-03 16:17:00
I am encouraging everyone with a book to sell to make use of the free and low cost technologies like blogs and on demand publishing. The "risk adverse New York media" is what is rapidly going out of style, not new ideas and new artists. Once, a "risk taker" took a chance on a young Ernest Hemingway, who changed all the rules, and four working class lads from Liverpool. It's a sad fact that "mass market" and "mainstream" today means the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus and endless cartoon spin-offs. These 70 year old farts in their suits think everyone out there is 9 years old....
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Back to Square
2009-03-03 03:06:00
Well the big literary agent who lives in town read my synopsis and he called my autobiographical novel about the 70's rock star "wonderfully nostalgic and a lot of fun," and he said that it had "merit" BUT he didn't think the risk adverse New York publishers would bite on this. I don't find that too surprising of the people who control our media, music and books these days. In the Sixties and early Seventies, we had real geniuses who would invest their time, effort and money in artists and the result was a fantastic outpouring of creativity that still resonates today. I have a CD collection that numbers about 80 compiliations of the greatest rock bands of the modern era. About 5 of them are from the 80's, two from the 90's and one, Green Day, is from the Millennium. When was the last time a really good rock band came out of nowhere to capture our imagination? In the Sixties and Seventies, it was happening every day. Frankly I have tried to read the best sellers, and I have been...
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Movement
2009-02-22 15:18:00
As has been typical with this blog, more is actually going regarding the publication of this book when the posts stop or thin out, and there's an uptake in posts in between the action.The copyright is secured and my agent now has a copy of my synopsis. We'll see what he says in a few days or so. If he doesn't like it, I have two choices. Either I make significant changes in the plot according to his advice, or I go ahead and start looking for an editor who can get it into better shape for me.We're tapped out at the moment on money to pay this editor, so we shall see.

Death of an old friend
2008-12-15 02:30:00
Gary DiFelice was a good guy.He deserved better than what he got in life. when i was a freshman linebacker, he was one of the upper classmen who used to look out for the freshman football players. he was a starter at QB as a junior when fred ernst graduated. he was probably the first highlands quarterback ever in history that could really pass. they won the championship in his senior year. it was the best football team that highlands ever had. he played a year or two at colgate on full scholarship, the web says, and then he had a car accident that broke his hip and ruined his career.yeah he was cocky and he was a tough guy and he would bust your chops but he was a good teammate and a good quarterback. he had this wry sense of humor. he and vinny calitri, who came a few years later, were the two best QBs that highlands ever had to this day.its horrible to die so young, 52. it was not as I originally thought lung cancer from smoking. it was a fast growing lyphamatic cancer : he did no...
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Success
2008-11-16 18:46:00
I received word this week that my copyright has been registered with the US Copyright Office. If you're searching the database for my title, it may not be in there yet because I still don't have the certificates but it's been almost a year and it should be coming through any week now.
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New Edition
2008-10-01 22:16:00
I've been networking with a bunch of unpublished writers in the Highlands, and I've read a lot of book chapters at this point. I always knew that the introduction, prologue and first chapter were much too long. By the time the real action started, you were at page 60 and nobody would have stayed with it that long. Reading other people's stuff, good and bad, sent me back to my word processor.The introduction is completely gone at this point. The prologue about the Highlands of my childhood is down to just eight pages.The first chapter is where we meet Ronnie James DeRenzo up close and examine his situation. Since this chapter is also the place where meet the Fabulous Shelly, the chapter works just beautifully. By the end of the chapter, the real action starts and we meet the band.I was a lot easier to make these changes than I thought. I agonized for eight years over them. I always knew there would be cuts once we met an editor. But no editor, publisher or agent has appeared just...
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Thought Police
2008-07-28 02:39:00
The original subtitle of my book was "Edging Ever Closer to Personal Responsibility : And Never Quite Getting There."And I think that is the crux of the problem with people like Britney, Miley and Lindsay. This is rock and roll! This is the land of Make Believe! This is Hollywood!Who the hell are the people out there who really think that a pop star has to be a perfect role model for America's youth? Were the Beatles? Were The Rolling Stones? Were the guys in Led Zeppillen?Come on now, of course they were not role models!I think we've all become too serious and yes too irresponsible ourselves at the same time. We're looking for actors and actresses and sports figures and rock stars and politicians to be the role models for our kids, and we're not working hard enough to be role models for our own kids. And then we all leap on these obvious and by definition all too imperfect celebrities, and come crashing down on them with our crap, when they do what rock stars and Hollywood peop...
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Madame Marie
2008-07-04 00:34:00
Marie Castello, otherwise known as the Asbury Park Boadwalk gypsy, Madame Marie, has died at 93. It was Madame Marie who first foretold the stardom of Bruce Springsteen, New Jersey's rock and roll patron saint.In 1984 she told me that the girl I was after was not the one, and that another woman, a life partner was close behind and I would have two children. Two years later, I met the Abby Warner figure, and twenty years later we have two kids.Madame Marie was a kind hearted seer who was truly gifted in the psychic arts. She told me a lot of things about myself that no one could know about me walking in off the Boardwalk like that.In Rock and Roll Love Story, Rocket and the boys summer in Asbury Park and he meets Madame Marie.
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Dreams
2008-05-06 03:16:00
I spend half my day at work fantasizing about living out of one suitcase in hotel somewhere. The only toys I have with me are a Martin acoustic guitar and an EV-DO laptop with Open Office Writer and Mozilla Firefox on for my email and my novels. I get fed up with the locale, I hop in the Ford Mustang GT (red) with the MP3 player loaded with all my favorite songs and I drive...Sometimes I have a pretty girl with a bag and harmonica with me, and sometimes I don't...
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It aint cool unless your chrome shines
2008-05-03 19:21:00
Says Jimmy Dario, Rocket's Italian Stallion cuz from Paterson. Then the gas crisis hit and chrome was too heavy, replaced by 5 MPH plastic bumpers from Japan.Rock and Roll Love Story is a tale from the 70's but it could be about today. Rocket was tooling around in a 1968 Ford Mustang GT with 302 HP and he got about 11 MPG.The car I am driving today gets three times that mileage. But my dream vehicle is a Ford F-150 Super Crew 4x4 pickup truck. Unless I strike it rich with this novel, a dream it will remain....
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Microsoft
2008-04-28 00:47:00
Ronnie James DeRenzo is a 19 year old college sophmore hell bent on a career as a reporter or lawyer; his father, an ace telecommunications engineer at giant Western Union looks at the newspapers and he doesn't see any jobs for history and English majors. What he does see on the horizon is a 21 year Harvard dropout named Bill Gates programming an operating system for IBM personal computers.When fate intervenes and agent Allan Huston offers Ronnie a shot at a tour, a record contract and a regular gig at Maxwell's in Hoboken, where REM and Blondie are headlining, Big Ronnie goes into action. Drop out of college, go on the tour, sow your wild artsy oats -- and when you come back go into computers and work with me...This is a choice my own father gave me when faced with that very situation. However, in reality I chickened out. I stayed in school and I quit the band and eventually I went to work for the Bergen Record.Book One up to the point where Ronnie and Madeline have their first d...
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Casting
2008-04-27 04:32:00
Because I am interested in copyrights, I can't post pictures of stars I think could play my characters anymore as I did in my earlier, adventurous days. But I can mention some names, to give you an idea of what characters might look like :The pro-antagonist, Ronnie James DeRenzo, otherwise known as Johnny Rocket, is a young Italian American guy who some people think looks like Bruce Springsteen. Keanu Reaves is getting a bit too old to play a 19 year old, but these days Shia LeBoeuf might be a good choice.When Rocket sees the Fabulous Shelly for the first time he cries out that she looks like Morgan Fairchild. Morgan is pushing 60 now but 18 year old Taylor Swift has the modern look that was inspired by Shelly.Abby Warner, who becomes Rocket's first wife, is described as a short blonde with a cupid bow mouth and a strong chin. Reese Witherspoon comes to mind, and a younger actress closer to age 19 is Hayden Panitierre.Morgan Fairchild and Reese Witherspoon don't look anything ali...
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What kind of music did the band play?
2008-04-27 04:25:00
It was 1978, and the great era of rock and roll of the late 60's and early 70's had just ended. After a dismal few years, new bands were creating punk rock and New Wave music, and the band in my novel played it all.Ronnie, the guitarist, was a great fan of Eric Clapton, Keith Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Neil Young and Jimmy Page; while Charlie, the drummer, and Dom, the bassist were fans of the new music from Slade, Cheap Trick, The Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls. Together, they mixed classic rock, New Wave, punk and originals with a bluesy, alternative and heavy guitar, bass and drum sound. And it all seemed to go through a Doors prism.Today we would find bands like Green Day and the White Stripes performing this kind of music. But of course back then, it wasn't retro. It was still new.
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Karma
2008-04-01 21:52:00
I just received notice that I was honored with a major, statewide annual award by a definitive professional literary group for the writing I do in my new job.I get the award on April 30th, which is my 20th anniversary with the woman who inspired the Fabulous Shelly and Abby Warner characters. This, the day before May Day, is in the old Celtic religion a major holiday of rebirth.This is even better than the Who's Who, because is recognition by my peers after a recovery from a devastating set back.We have had a lot of struggles and battles in our 20 years but we're still standing.
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