About me and my work
I’m an author and writer whose work has appeared in Salon, Radar, Wired, the UK Guardian, Reason, L’Ecran Fantastique, Mother Jones, and Australia’s HQ. After graduating from the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, I became a crime reporter for the Modesto Bee. I’ve appeared on CSPAN’s BookTV, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” CSPAN’s “Book TV,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “On The Media,” Pacifica, Air America, Canadian public radio and elsewhere, and made international headlines in 2004 after exposing a Senate scandal.
Book & Short Film
“Stunningly good. Stylish, exquisitely researched, and morally courageous, it reveals corruption to a depth and breadth unimagined by mere novelists.”
– Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland
“Your public presentations are crafted too much like a stand up comedy act. the moonies are serious, dangerous nazi stuff, not jokes.”
– CSPAN viewer e-mail
Articles
The Producer from Hell. Kim Jong-Il, dictator of North Korea, has a passion for cinema. But he could never find a director to realize his vision. So he kidnapped one from South Korea, jailed him and fed him grass, then forced him to shoot a socialist Godzilla. Salon.com
The Man Who Sold the World of Warcraft. Before YouTube, a dot-com vampire and a former Disney child star vowed to crush television forever with Chad’s World, the Internet’s first TV show. Then, hiding in Spain to evade an Interpol manhunt, they started a new industry. Radar
Berkeley Radicals. A night with the College Republicans, who’ve just been informed by Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin that the Japanese and Arabs are conspiring to destroy America. The Gadflyer
Lights, Camera, Apocalypse. Mr. T, Gary Busey and other ’80s actors find work as Christians facing the end of the world in new wave of evangelical films. Salon.com
Dan Bunten, Computer Game Martyr. The old school computer game M.U.L.E. inspired the best brains in the game design business. But the life story of its beloved, transsexual creator is a testament to how an industry lost its way. Salon.com.
Bleep of Faith. Smash-hit quantum physics “documentary” seems, on closer inspection, to be an infomercial for Ramtha, Shirley MacLaine’s spiritual guru who claims to be from Atlantis. Salon.com.
Bad Ambassador. The distressing record of our envoy to Italy, who made his name running a chain of teen drug rehab clinics shuttered for cruelty. AlterNet
Dear Playwright. Team America is not Kim Jong-Il’s first foray into musical drama. Reason
No More Nightmares at Tranquility Bay? Lone congressman takes on harsh boot camps that mistreat American kids overseas. AlterNet
Who’s the Sucker Now? Spam victims turn the tables on Internet conmen, fooling them into embarrassing webcam antics. Wired
Interactive Humor
“[B]rutal, dead-on cultural criticism masquerading as throwaway mindless-surfing-at-work entertainment.” — The Village Voice’s Rob Harvilla
Newspaper Days
Cases Go Cold As Authorities Seek Chandra. Not everyone from Modesto who disappears gets a media circus. While working for the Bee, I looked into others.