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My boss insisted I take the day off. I think his prime motivator was when I told him I’d punched a wall following a phone call with one of my, um, thicker colleagues. “You’re the happiest guy in the building, Ben. If you’re stressed out, I know we’re in trouble.” So I took today off.…

Phew. For a minute there, I wasn’t sure I’d ever write a new song again. Well, I guess I just needed some free time.  And I got some today.  I had the day off.  So I picked up my guitar.  And while the chords I was playing weren’t exactly innovative, they sounded new enough.  So…

I caught a story on the local news as I pulled on my running shoes this morning about a mother of two from Staten Island who died when her minivan rolled off a cliff at a state park. That story was followed by one about a Brooklyn livery cab driver was killed in when his…

Ask me how I’m doing and I’ll tell you, “Fine.” Ask me again (“No, really, how are you doing?”) and I’ll tell you the truth. I’m feeling kinda lost. My life of late has felt like sound and fury, signifying nothing. My goal was to take this year easy, to stay off the road, play…

It was Family Weekend at Chez Wagner. My cousin Luke arrived from Bangkok Saturday morning. He’d been volunteering in a Bhutanese monestary for the last eighteen months. So his parents flew in from Colorado to greet him. His brother flew in from Chicago, two of his best friends from Los Angeles and Seattle, and with…

I have the best ringtone ever. I was a senior in high school when R.E.M. released its first Warner Bros. record, “Green,” on November 8, 1988. The band had (of course) crawled from The South, releasing five sonically and lyrically unique pop albums on IRS Records and setting the bar for what would become “alternative…