Seems like I have been missing the boat.

I come here to the G21 after work this last few days and things is happenin', Homies!

Bob Powers got two columns running at the same time; Thomas Hart is rockin' the house; Jeff Winbush is back in force; and even Rotney is doing serious journalism again. Me, I got nothing much to say. My RADIO ACTIVE column isn't moving forward.

So let me tell you why.

I got kindah --- hell! VERY --- depressed when Rod moved away from San Francisco. I'm supposed to be his friend, and I felt like part of the reason Blood was moving was because I had failed him, personally, as a friend. Maybe I had not done enough. Maybe I could have done more.

You don't know how many times I had to listen to his riff about how California friendships are easy and shallow.

I always thought that was a load of crap, and that he put his Out East friends on a pedestal.

The fact is, In My Humble Opinion, Rod doesn't have any truer friends than five of us who live here in California. Two natives(Mike Mallen and me) and three transplants(Bill Purcell, Terry Terrian and Joe O'Neill.) Three Irish-Americans, an Irishman, and a Brother. All of us stuck with the man through thick, thin, homeless, crazy, and his usual typical novelist, manic-depressive bullshit.

So I was hurt when he said he was going Out East. Going to New York City to find his name, his fortune, his karma, or yatta-yatta-yatta.

I was blocked. And maybe I still am, other than delivering this one more rant which is more a "Day One" article than one of my own.

But you know what, Homes? Today, after I got off work at the warehouse, it kindah dawned on me that NONE OF US can influence other people's Life Choices.

For good or ill --- And it sure looks like Rod's leaving his place in the city has been good for this magazine --- he's gottah do what he's gottah do. That's a man's perogative. It ain't my fault that Rod had enough of San Francisco and the Bay Area, anymore that it is to my credit that he's one of the best damned international writers I've ever seen.

I dropped my jaw when I came here today and saw that he had did the Sonia Gandhi piece while working on the Cambodian elections at the same time. I wish I was that committed and that good at it.

As far as I'm concerned, the Man should not even waste his time being an Editor, when he is clearly a Writer.

As all the other writers know, I'm a cheerleader for the G21 and for Rod. I ain't giving up on this dream. His dream. But I have to admit, I resent becoming another of his virtual friends, rather than somebody he can have a cold one with on an afternoon, or share a rack of ribs.