Capturing Happy Days of Yore in the Irish Catskills

I got to write a little something...OK, not that little a something...about a place that was very special to me as a very pasty kid.
If you're wondering just how pasty I was, click on the link. 
It's an essay on summers spent in the Irish Catskills--not just by me, but by Irish immigrants decades before that, and those who continue to visit the diminished, but still active, Irish community a few hours north of NYC today.
A snippet:

Every year, we would spend a week at the O’Neill House, one of around three dozen Irish resorts in East Durham at the time. We would wake up groggily with the breakfast bell, spend hours in the pool, hike the mountain behind the ball field, build rock dams in the creek and play baseball until the crickets came out. Our parents would then put us to bed and, along with the rest of the grown-ups, walk up the hill to the pub for live Irish music and dancing.

Three decades removed from those vacations, there I was, driving my own children to the Irish Catskills. Or what’s left of them.

The Times ran it on the front page of its Sunday "Metropolitan" section in late August.

My Novel is Out!

Betsy Town, which is book No. 3 of my Tompkins Trilogy, three standalone novels set around Tompkins Square Park, is out. Unlike the first two, much of Betsy Town is set in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which gives the novel its title.

The main character is David. Three decades before, his mentally imbalanced mother stood on the train tracks at Elizabeth Station, her baby in her arms. David survived.
This is his story. 

Wrote John Roche, author of "Bronx Bound": “From the first page to the very last, readers feel as though there’s a speeding train heading right for us as we accompany David Campion on his complicated quest for sanity, happiness and wholeness. Michael J. Malone’s gift for dark humor makes this madcap journey even more worth the ride.”

If you're curious about, ya know, reading the book, you can grab a copy here. 

I'll be having my book party at Captain Lawrence Brewing in Elmsford, NY Feb. 21.

Labor Day, Then a Day of Labor

I'm a lifelong baseball fan.
Actually, my connection to the game extends beyond my life on earth, at least by a day or two.
Call it "womb with a view"--my essay on the heroic double play my mother turned four and a half decades ago, a day before giving birth to me. 

U2? Me Too.

Including their performance on July 31, I've been going to U2 shows for 30 years. That makes me old, and U2 older.
I wrote a little essay for Medium.com about some of those concerts, and what it all means.
One I left out by mistake: 1987, hitch-hiking after class on a Friday from Kingston, Rhode Island to Boston to see U2 at the old Boston Garden.
We made it to Boston; I recall riding in the back of a pickup truck. We got tickets off a scalper. It was pouring when we found the way to Boston College on the T, surprised a high school friend, and slept on his floor.

Rhythm & Brews in Pleasantville

My weekly "Notes From the Captain Lawrence Tasting Room" franchise went on the road this past weekend, as I conducted business from the Captain Lawrence beer tent and stage at the Pleasantville Music Fest.

People were fairly blown away by Lions on the Moon, a classic-rocking band of teens, and one pre-teen--the mind-blowing axman axkid by the name of Brandon "Taz" Niederauer. The 12-year-old, from Dix Hills, Long Island, could flat-out shred.

His was a tough act to follow. The main stage featured some bands you sort of, kind of liked 15-20 years ago, including Fastball and the Gin Blossoms. G. Love and Special Sauce had a surprisingly huge and rowdy contingent of hardcore fans in front of the stage, and G. gets either a thumbs-up or a demerit, depending on how you view things, for keeping it real with some lethal f-bombs from the stage--kiddos in the crowd be damned.

All in all, a fun day in Pleasantville, and people in the Captain Lawrence beer tent--many enjoying the O'de to P'ville saison made especially for the day--were more than happy to share.

Such as Luke and Laura from "General Hospital" Darien, Connecticut.

“Our daughter is at camp and our son is at work,” said Laura. “We are out!”

“We’re on the express,” added Luke. “And it just rolled in.”