The part of being a pajama wearing guitar player pundit which has never escaped my attention since day one is of course the credential. Compared to Frank Rich you are Chance the gardener. Compared to Anthony Lewis you are "hello Bob from Hoboken - what's your question for Dr. Kissinger?" Compared to Russell Baker, well, pfft.

If it takes journalism roots, the experience of a lifetime of well edited attempts at objectivity and a style your publisher favors, in order to be a real pundit, what conclusion can one draw but that these pages are of the fake variety?

Instead of a career spanning crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, foreign correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and twenty years of political reporting for The New York Times, I have been a dilettante at epistemology and aesthetics while engaging in the abstract/random adventures brought on by the coincidences, necessities and indulgences of life. You know, savvy reader, exigencies.

The first joke I remember making up as a kid was that people like I just described were "probably vaccinated with a phonograph needle." Humorous to this day, or not, I find a certain, oh what's a six syllable word for irony?

So from where does The Paxton Pundit originate? During a period when I wasn't working the road houses and honky tonks, adding on the entryway to our no-mortgage situation or something like that, we joined the local El Morro Area Arts Council. (Though the acronym "EMAAC" rolls off the tongue like a hairball. Hggah!)

We live among the art mob here in Arcadia, and word spread quickly. At the big rollout, back around '98 or '99, we donated $50.00 toward turning an old, rural, one-room schoolhouse into an arts and crafts gallery and performance space.

Soon, the inevitable open-mic nights started and I volunteered to launch a website. I did the design work and posted to my wife's dial-up, educator account. Eventually, when the board saw the potential, they sprang for dial-up service of their own (with free web page).

While I hosted the page, I figured my neighbors would be checking out the gallery's on-line calendar and photos which I had posted. On my other pages, I posted my image gallery and thought I would try to start one of those, oh what's the word, blog.

Long story short, there was a grand total of three people who ever e-mailed back with a comment.

The most comment-producing post was one which asked the savvy reader to settle a dispute. The bass player had changed my poster for an up-coming dance (bass, me, and Chip, the automatic drummer) from "the blues is alive and well in western New Mexico" to "the blues are, etc." To deaf ears I protested that one was an artform and the other was, well, just a depressing thing to consider.

One day, at the publicity committee meeting, a young turk pastelist (I can't help but read that as did the spellchecker's suggestion - rhyming with "haste list"), with a burgeoning knowledge of Microsoft Front Page wizards, finagled the job of webmaster. I was asked to put up posters thirty miles away. Whoopti-do.

I tried to donate my band's services to a no-cover, donations-only Halloween dance, but the bass player had negotiated too much money (for any band with an automatic drummer) plus, without consulting me, he hired a sax player from Albuquerque to help us sound good. (Compared to what? was the obvious question.) My worldview is that if your drummer is an Alesis SR 16 with two footpedals, you play for beer and groceries. Sax or no.

Their web site has been back in good hands for a while, but for years, the calendar was three years old, links were dead - it was disappointing.

The Paxton Pundit began as a conversation starter, though the accompanying cricket sounds were to become an extension of that overall disappointment.

We dropped out when I was made to look like the bad guy for refusing to play that gig. Very few of those people are our close friends anymore. Life has gone on. And the Pundit has survived.

Volume One, Number One set guidelines for the conversations which never were generated. In addition to a snarky, tongue in cheek exhortation to remain gossipy and anonymous, it contained an example of trying to keep it positive, overall.

The grumpier/angrier you are, the more disciplined you will have to be to remain positive. For example: The manager of a major food chain told me I had nothing to worry about when my ATM card was double dipped for the same purchase in October of 1998; I should just call my bank and have it straightened out. OK Ray (I mean Gwendolyn) I did have the second charge removed from my account, only twice! Once was right away and then again after you or your corp-o-plex sneaked it back onto my statement 5 months later. My bank was so embarrassed that you did that, that they credited me from a special customer satisfaction account.

Thank you for stocking iodized salt. The Paxton Pundit.

Before long, I became just like every other Mr. Cranky out there who thinks writing Ak Ma Dinner Jacket on his pages makes it any more clever. I needed a hook.

Fake punditry!

In time, I gained an advantage which otherwise prolific writers and "gets" on the 24/7 need to purposely allow themselves. The absence of blowback, I believe, turns you into a different kind of writer. Unanswered prayers and all.

In all things, you become what you practice.


In addition to being an avid C-SPAN viewer and browser of the major papers on-line all week long, Saturday's, I would be spending the better part of the day reading and writing, not so much a blog, but an essay in the style of pamphleteering. It's as different as apples and oranges.

I decided to post before anybody had a chance of reading Frank Rich, though the masthead says "every Sunday morning" - it's been Saturday's before bedtime if at all possible.

Then, fresh with my coffee, I'd check him out and, just for fun, entertain an accusation of plagiarism, often surprisingly applicable, a logically and aesthetically impossible proposition to be sure.

It's almost nine years later, and seven of them proved the maxim that no good news ever comes out of Crawford in August. You see this accidental fake pundit still writes from pattern recognition and anecdote. Any actual reportage is hyperlinked as much as possible.

Methinks, still to this day, that a lot of the blogosphere bargains with ideas the way high school cliques bargain with friendships. But I've come to appreciate that, if it's a site where good writers live, you can tolerate.