Chris Z

Joined January 2021

74 stories

Bio

My opinion column garnered more reader responses than any other contributor in the paper's 40-year run. As a stand-up comic, I performed in 16 countries & 26 states. I've written 2 one-man shows, umpteen poems, songs, essays & chronologies.

Stories (74)

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Red Sparrow Americano
Spring, circa 2014... I was idling outside my local SBUX, when a lovely Asian lass flung my Hyundai’s front passenger door open and popped in. Too busy texting, she overlooked the wide-eyed, slack-jawed stranger seated in the driver’s seat. Lucky for her, I wasn’t some Jame Gumb type whose cellar serves as a black site for renditioned coeds. Though, I’ll confess, gazing upon her pearl-white teeth, silken tresses, and pristine complexion, I couldn’t help but wonder: “How long until ‘finders-keepers’ kicks in? Will a ‘possession is 9/10ths of the law’ defense hold up in court?”
By Chris Z2 years ago in Humor
Psalms Are Not Alms
Psalms Are Not Alms Every day’s a new day Pollyanna types are known to say Platitudes rub me the wrong way. One helping hand changes more than
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
"YOU Gave"
You Gave Shepherds guarding sheep from wolves. Walls against the outside world.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
Whiskey Bend. Content Warning.
Whiskey Bend Some 16 years ago, I dropped by Burbank’s Whiskey Bend for their weekly open mic night. LA’s soul-crushing open mic scene is the first gauntlet starry-eyed standups must traverse.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Criminal
Beware the Ides of March
Last March, early morning March 15th, to be exact, Doctor Steven ****** went where no man had gone before. If you’re me, you clean house like Christ is coming to dinner before the maid comes. Way I see it, you’re not a packrat or a Pigpen until others know you are, any more than a tree falling in the woods unwitnessed makes a sound. Ditto for dental visits; I never brush or floss more diligently than I do in the days before seeing my sultry Persian DDS. Likewise, I clear-cut the dark side of my moon the day before my colonoscopy. If you took that candid confession to mean that I Brazilian waxed myself, you were half right: from the taint forward, conservation; from the gooch back, deforestation.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
"Short King Spring"
Approaching Storms In every direction, overhead a firmament fulminate, slate and lead nimbus clouds compelled to shed
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
The Devil You Know
The Devil You Know Sure as The Lord’s Prayer Culminating in an “amen,” Sisyphus always dies in the end Starting the show all over again.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
Full Circle
Full Circle Prologue I’d lived in LA five years, give or take, when the Great Recession reached peak “greatness.” Weekly auditions had waned to monthlies. Cash-in-hand “actor jobs” had ebbed from feast to famine. Rock bottom found me bleeding my IRA, tax penalties the proverbial insult compounding injury. Desperation drove me to wait tables at a first-rate Mexican restaurant’s second-rate satellite. There, I met Nayeli.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Families
Catacomb Conscripts
Catacomb Conscripts Carriage collisions, cartridges chambered, coronary cessations, catalyze carbon composting.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
Premature Souls
A war hawk's rattle, A chickenhawk come battle; back out the saddle. The change was profound, Goliath to David bound.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets
Middle Age Lament '23
Middle Age Lament I turn 40 next month. I’m not old enough to remember where I was when JFK was shot, but I am old enough to recollect where I was when Mister Burns was shot. Decades removed from adolescence, I’ve embraced my mother’s sage, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” By 30, I was supposed to own my own home; At 40, I’m happy just to rent my own room in someone else’s.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Confessions
Wait for Sugar Man
Wait For Sugar Man Always second best Never the love interest Put me to the test.
By Chris Z3 years ago in Poets

Chris Z

Bio

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Filter by community

Red Sparrow Americano

Psalms Are Not Alms

"YOU Gave"

Whiskey Bend. Content Warning.

Beware the Ides of March

"Short King Spring"

The Devil You Know

Full Circle

Catacomb Conscripts

Premature Souls

Middle Age Lament '23

Wait for Sugar Man

Stories (74)