What it’s like to grow up the son of a sexual predator.

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Thanks to everyone who reached out to share condolences after the death of my father, Zane Parzen.

I loved my father. I also saw what a destructively toxic and even outright evil person he was. And while I was never sexually abused by him, the emotional abuse I suffered as his child was only rivaled by the awful way he treated my mother and my brothers.

I was 15 years old when the San Diego Reader, the city’s weekly rag, published a front-page story about my father and one of the women he abused while she was in his care, including the photo above.

It was just the tip of the iceberg. His case became a national sensation and even inspired a Hollywood movie.

After my mother died in October of last year, I finally read the book that Evelyn Walker, one of his victims, wrote about him. It was published in 1986 while I was a freshman at UCLA. I also discovered that much has been written about him in the meantime. He became the “textbook” case for sexual malpractice.

Through my research, I also learned that what had happened was much worse than the adults told us when we were children. Much worse.

Even after he left our family, I always stayed in touch with him and visited him often. After he made Tracie cry at a family reunion in Texas, I cut him off from my family. But I would still go visit him when I could. As he lay dying last week in Plattsburgh, New York, where he lived with his third wife, no one came to visit him but me. No one.

It’s been a really tough week for me. One of the hardest things is that I have no one to share my mourning. That’s the saddest part: after all he did to his family and to his patients and G-d knows to whom else, no one came to say goodbye… except me.

I plan to write more about him and his legacy here. Thanks for all the words of support and solidarity. As my friend Shawn Amos once wrote about a parent, I never met anyone who could be so mean and mean so much to me.

Zane Parzen, psyschoanalyst whose sexual malpractice case set legal precedent, dies at 92.

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Zane Parzen, whose 1981 sexual malpractice case set a legal precedent, has died from complications from dementia. His death in Plattsburgh, New York, was confirmed by his wife Tanya Parzen.

Parzen was a prominent psychoanalyst in San Diego when he was accused of having sexual relations with multiple women who were in his care. It was later revealed that he had also been giving patients a dangerous cocktail of drugs. The emotional toll led some of the women to attempt suicide.

In the late 1970s, after Parzen had been practicing medicine in California for a decade, one of his patients, Evelyn Walker, formally revealed that she had been in a years-long sexual and romantic relationship with Parzen.

The $4.6 million settlement in her 1981 lawsuit against Parzen set a record for amount awarded in a sexual malpractice case. It also prompted insurance companies to discontinue sexual malpractice coverage. During the trial, Parzen admitted in open court that he had abused Walker and multiple other women. While the insurance company was ultimately forced to pay a reduced amount, Parzen faced no criminal charges. His medical license was restricted but never revoked.

In 1986, Walker published an account of her experience titled “A Killing Cure.” In the book, she describes the abuse, including graphic details of their relationship.

Zane Parzen was born in 1933 in South Bend, Indiana, to Louis and Ethel (Levy) Dribin. Parzen’s father died of cancer when he was eight years old. His mother remarried a rabbi, Maurice Parzen, who adopted Ethel’s sons. Parzen graduated at the top of his class at Central High School and attended Harvard for two years before completing his degree at Indiana University. He attended medical school at the University of Chicago where he was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst.

He is survived by his wife Tanya; and three sons from his marriage to Judith Parzen: Tad Parzen, Jeremy Parzen, and Micah Parzen.

More notes about his life and legacy to come.

Remembering Italy’s (almost) “first” McDonald’s.

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The passing of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini last month opened a torrent of memories for me. I started following Petrini’s writings in the late 1980s and even met him on a few occasions during the seven years I taught at Slow Food U., also founded by him.

But the news of his death also triggered a powerful memory from my early years in Italy: McDonald’s in Rome.

According to legend, Petrini was inspired to create the Slow Food movement after he protested the opening of the “first” McDonald’s in Rome. It was actually the second. The first was launched, quietly, in Bolzano that same year. But the one in Rome became the arch nemesis of terroirists and anti-globalists because the American behemoth had planted its first highly visible outpost at the foot of one of Italy’s most iconic landmarks — the Spanish Steps.

When I first got to Italy to study in 1987, my American classmates and I craved American fast food, partly to assuage the homesickness. After all, the world was way less connected back then. Email was just beginning to emerge. International calls were prohibitively expensive, especially for students. You felt entirely disconnected from your home.

America fast food was a way to “feel” like home for a fleeting moment.

Italian students liked fast food too. At the time, the only option was Burghy, a McDonald’s like restaurant. The only one we could access was the location in the Florence train station. Trips to Rome always included a visit to the Spanish Steps franchise.

Three decades later, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I arrived at the Milan train station to see the above ad for Joe Bastianich’s line of sandwiches.

A genuine peripeteia! A restaurateur who made his name by serving rich Manhattanites authentic Italian cuisine had now gone to the “dark side” of food. Incredible.

It all seems laughable, especially today. But it does make me sad to remember what a 13-year-old told me some years ago. She was the daughter of a friend from university days. They live in downtown Milan and summer in the alps. When I asked her what her favorite food was, she told me it was the new sandwich from KFC.

Bravissima Georgia!

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The day Tracie and I first kissed. The day we were married. The days our girls were born. Georgia’s 8th grade concerto. Best days of my life. Bravissima Georgia! What a gift you have given your father. Your hard work and devotion to your music… you are an inspiration to me. Now on to HSPVA! @tracieparzen I love them so much! I love you! Thank you to orchestra director Tim. Thank you to all her wonderful teachers over the years. Thank you to all of the teachers who came to hear her. Thank you to our wonderful and fabulously supportive group of parents and awesome PTO. Thanks to my Levy, Kelly, and Branch families for sharing this unforgettable performance and evening with us. Too many blessings to count on a beautiful spring morning in Houston. (JC Bach, viola concerto in C minor, Meyerland Middle School, May 28, 2026)

Ken Paxton is no “gift” to Democrats.

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A lot of eyes turned to Texas last night as Ken Paxton’s U.S. senate primary win over John Cornyn suddenly prompted political observers to claim that “Texas might now be in play” for Democrats (despite decades of unfulfilled wishful thinking that the state might turn Blue).

For those who are just beginning to wrap their minds around Paxton’s rise, let’s be crystal-eyed clear: Paxton is no “gift” for Democrats.

In 2023 Paxton, the state’s attorney general, was impeached by our Republican-dominated house of representatives. The impeachment was led by the former speaker, Dade Phelan, one of the most conservative politicians in the state (we follow him closely because he represents the county where Tracie grew up, Orange, a conservative bastion). The vote to move forward with the senate trial was 121-23. At the time, 60 of 80 Republicans — in Texas! — voted to impeach him! That gives you a sense of just how loathsome Paxton is in this Red state.

Paxton’s own staff of lawyers quit on him after accusing him of bribery and misuse of his office. His own hand-picked staff! Paxton has associated with a convicted, corrupt Austin real estate developer, the same one that let the attorney general use his Uber account so that he could meet with his adulterous love interest and then gave her a job.

Tracie and I were eager to watch the primary returns last night. Beyond the Cornyn/Paxton fight to the death, there were two contentious races in Texas where rabid antisemitism was a key element (one of the racists, a Democrat, lost; another, a Republican, won).

It’s exciting to believe that Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. senate, might have a chance to beat “the most corrupt politician in America,” as Talarico’s team has already branded Paxton in their ads this morning.

But it’s also saddening to think that we may be represented in the senate by two of the most hated politicians of our era, Cruz and Paxton, both in lockstep with MAGA.

Daunted but not deterred, Tracie and I will be working hard for Talarico by block-walking. We can’t afford to lose this one.

Carlo Petrini, a man who changed the world with one word: Slow.

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After news broke last week about the passing of Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement, people reached out asking me about my experiences at the Slow Food University, also founded by him.

In the years I taught there, I never interacted with him directly beyond a passing hello. But every day on campus I saw firsthand the way he indefatigably inspired those who worked and studied with him.

I’ll never forget what one of the students said to me.

“I want to make the world a better place to eat,” he told our class. It was as if the young man had distilled the entire Slow Food manifesto, published by Petrini in 1987.

Ultimately, I believe that Petrini’s greatest gift to us was language. He gave us the words we were searching for to describe a fast-changing world where we no longer knew our culinary place.

The phrase “slow food” alone! Some will be remembered for 1980s-era idioms that entered the cultural firmament (wax on, wax off; where’s the beef?). Petrini gifted us a single word that forever changed the way we eat and think about eating. Slow.

One of his campaigns over the last decade called on Piedmont grape growers to stop grubbing up less lucrative grapes like Dolcetto and Barbera as they made way for the all-powerful Nebbiolo.

In 2016, he published an opinion in the Italian daily La Repubblica where he noted that Nebbiolo monoculture was degrading the area’s biodiversity. As a result, the character of the wines was changing.

“When I hear of producers who rip out their Dolcetto and Barbera so they can grow Nebbiolo,” he wrote, “it breaks my heart. This negates the true value of viticulture in Langa. There is a diversity of soil types here. Over the centuries, they, like the growers, have adapted to the grapes in different ways as those varieties evolved. Together, they have given their very best.”

A few years later, I started to see winemakers across Italy replanting the “village grapes” as some called the local varieties. It was the umpteenth example of how he used the written word to make us reimagine the power of agriculture.

In today’s world of unending, head-spinning change, we could use some more Slow in our lives.

A more lighthearted political taco kerfuffle in Texas.

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Just when I thought that the nation’s taco culture wars were subsiding, yet another political taco kerfuffle took shape after James Talarico and Barack Obama shared breakfast tacos in Austin earlier this week.

“Talarico’s Taco Order Turns Into a Texas-Sized Debate” was the headline reported by the Times: “What started as a taco stop with former President Barack Obama quickly turned into a very Texas debate over the proper breakfast taco order.”

At one point in the story, Governor Greg Abbott, the mini Texas Trump, insinuates that Talarico is a closeted vegetarian. Yes, you read that right. Vegetarianism is now a political liability, at the least in the minds of some Republicans. Oh my!

All this talk of breakfast tacos inspired me to head to my favorite Houston breakfast taco place and enjoy a couple.

Those are the “egg/potato/cheese tacos on corn [tortillas]” at Tamales Don Pepe not far from where Tracie and I live.

I first got hooked on breakfast tacos when we lived in Austin (where the girls were born). Those who have never visited the state capital might be surprised to learn that “breakfast taco” is a synecdoche for an entire culture there.

There are breakfast tacos everywhere: at modest taquerias, at bougie breakfast restaurants, fancy restaurants for rich folk, at gas stations…

In my view and experience, the whole point of the breakfast taco is that you customize it to suit your tastes. It’s a personalized expression of individual liberty

This morning, I got the classic egg/potato/cheese but I ordered mine “on corn” tortillas. Flour tortillas are arguably the default vessels.

Some people criticized Talarico, a native of central Texas (where Austin is located), for ordering a breakfast taco at 2 p.m.

Anyone who’s ever lived in Austin — “the live music capital of the world” — knows that musicians often don’t have breakfast until the early afternoon. (I used to be a musician in Austin, myself.)

There’s another best-kept-secret about breakfast tacos that only musicians and late-night revelers know: they’re a great hangover cure.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Enjoy some breakfast tacos with someone you love and share a laugh at the superciliousness of our political class.

When a taco isn’t just a taco… Signs of the absurdist times we live in.

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Ceci n’est pas un taco.

One of the most ridiculous things I’ve read this week: a political kerfuffle in California over the meaning of “street taco.”

“Steve Hilton,” the Republican front-runner candidate for California governor, “called a Crunchy Del Taco a ‘street taco’ in California. The backlash was instant,” reported the Times.

Hilton “posted a video of his Del Taco order. Social media users accused him of misunderstanding the state’s Mexican food culture.” (Evidently, “Crunch Del Taco” is a menu item at the southwest fast food chain restaurants.)

Hilton has a point when he notes that journalists should focus on the issues and not the taco.

But his detractors are also right to call him out for what he is: a carpetbagger, in the most literal sense of the term. (I mean, come on, he’s a Brit who identifies as a Republican. What could be less Californian than that? Tacos aside, of course.)

The reason why Hilton might become the leader of one the largest leftist states in the Union is because the democratic shoo-in fell by the wayside after revelations of his sexual predation.

These days, it feels like the whole world has been turned on its head.

In Maine, Democrats are making moral excuses for a Senate candidate whose previous Nazi-sympathies are on full display.

In Texas, a San Antonio Democratic candidate for Congress openly spews ugly antisemitic rhetoric.

And just this morning, I read about a candidate for Texas oil regulator who has brushed off claims of antisemitism despite countless racist outbursts.

He had posted a poll on social media asking his followers to weigh in: Jews or Muslims, the biggest threat? he asked them.

When challenged over the post, he “said that last year’s social media poll question, which he deleted, was meant to show Islam ‘is the bigger threat‘” (Times). Talmudic or Sharia law, it’s probably all the same to him.

Oh, how I pine for the days when a taco was just a taco!

Happy Mother’s Day, Judy. Memories and gravlax.

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Mom, my goodness, happy Mother’s Day!

How long has it been since you’ve been gone? Not even a year has passed since you left us.

I found this photo deep in the trove of papers I recovered from your apartment before it was cleaned out.

Wow! That was 1995 and I’m pretty sure, based on my memories, that the image was captured in Siena, just off the Piazza del Campo. It was 1995 (a date recorded on the verso), probably January, while I was still on winter break from my Fulbright year at the Scuola Normale and Vatican.

Look at your broad smile! Look at how eager you seem to meet the day!

We sure had some good times in Italy during my years there. I’ll never forget that first dinner at the Osteria del Leone in Bagno Vignoni (in Siena province).

But then again, we also had exquisite brunch at Las Mañanitas relais in Cuernavaca, an evening repast in the same dining room as Henry Kissinger at Ducasse (not long after it opened), lunch across from Kofi Annan at the U.N. mess, supper served by a sommelier with a tongue piercing at Alinea… A Thousand Cranes in LA, Petrossian (back in the day) in NYC, sweetbreads followed by famous flan at La Puerta del Sol in Tijuana…. man, those were the days!

If you were here with us today, I know you would remember each and every one of those meals and occasions. I know I remember them, and a million more, so gladly.

You weren’t so fond of taking pictures. And when you were coerced into posing for one, your smile appeared only reluctantly.

But buried deep, under a pile of photos from your trip to Israel, I discovered a secret stash of photos from that Sienese sojourn, many of them with your beaming smile.

Oh, to share some of your favorite gravlax at Barney Greengrass on this first Mother’s Day without you! I can hear the servers carrying on about the freshly fired latkes now…

Parzen family updates and music this Saturday night.

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Folks may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much lately.

That’s because I’ve been busy with a book project and I’ve been finishing up my coursework to get my realtor license.

Tracie’s real estate business has only continued to grow (poo poo poo!). I’ve already been helping out with all kinds of tasks (media, staging, handiwork). But with my license in place, I’ll be able to support her to an even greater extent.

Now that my studies are complete, I’m just waiting in the queue to get my exam date (the process is painfully slow).

I’ve also been doing a lot of music. I upgraded my recording rig this year and I’ve been helping out with kids’ video auditions and helping a couple of music friends demo their original music. That’s been super fun.

On Saturday evening, Bela and the Bangers (above) will be performing at our beloved Emmit’s Place, our local dive bar/music club. The occasion is Bela’s birthday and a ton of her friends are coming out to jam. We’ll play a set on the early side, followed by appearances from the gazillion awesome musicians Bela plays with. It should be a super fun evening and there will be great food as well. Come on down if you’re looking for something to do and want to support local music and local business.

It’s incredible to think that I haven’t been back to Italy in more than a year. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help out with travel recommendations for friends. But at this point, I don’t have the intel anymore.

What else? The girls are both doing well and are looking forward to their summer camp (music) and summer vacations (Florida and California).

I have so many things that I want to write about and share here. Please don’t give up on me! And thanks for being here. I’ll get back to posting regularly soon. And hope to see you on Saturday night at Emmit’s!