Tag: opiates

  • Holidays and Gray Hair

    My birthday flew by, squashed between three holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas/Chanukah and New Year’s Eve. While time was having its way with me, I had to go to the dermatologist to have various blemishes checked out. The older I get, the more I hate going to the doctor, even though, as my wife Mary Esther says, it’s…

  • Kyle Ploof: Local Comic Mines Local Issues for Jokes

    From Steve Martin to Eddie Murphy to Bill Hicks, some of comedy’s heaviest hitters knew what they wanted to do—or were, perhaps, destined to do—from a very early age. The same cannot be said for Kyle Ploof. While he was growing up in Weymouth, Ploof despised stand-up comedy because he didn’t relate to grown men…

  • At The Speed of Life

    I was late to graduation, just like I was late for everything. Flying down the right-hand lane on South Livingston Avenue, doing close to 90 miles an hour with my 1958 Plymouth Belvedere convertible top down, when I heard a police car hit the wailers and saw the lights in my rear-view mirror. I pulled…

  • The New Prohibition

    The New Prohibition

    I’ve been reading articles in the Boston Globe about the massive increase in overdoses almost every day. Then I found myself reading an article about the giant influx of fentanyl, with machines to convert it into pills identical to pharmaceuticals from China. Everybody used to blame Mexico; everybody blames prescription pills that are diverted; everyone blames…