Folks, we need to talk about David Friedman. We did so in an earlier blog (February 23, 2026), but we need to invoke him again because he is (or was) a font of information, even though I didn't know it when he was alive. Friedman visited me a lot during the time I was Pearl's caregiver, usually accompanying me on CSUN walks, often on a Saturday night. The poor man was woebegone, always worried about his job and his failing marriage. He didn't talk about much else; it was difficult being his sounding board on these occasions.
Nowdays, in this era of ridiculous infotainment life and outrageous prices, I extend my CSUN walk up to Ralphs market in Granada Hills. I do this to save gas money, and I get my nightly exercise at the same time. On my way up to Ralphs, I pass the giant CSUN parking lot at Lassen and Lindley. About six months ago (apprx. November 2025), something about that parking lot triggered a memory of a walk with David Friedman.
One night, perhaps ten or twelve years ago, he came over and instead of going southeast through the campus, as we usually did, he wanted to walk down Halsted toward Lindley, and when we got to that street, he asked if we could turn north toward Lassen. He seemed nervous about something - not his usual domestic angst but something that was happening in the moment. As we passed the Lindley dorms, I asked him what was up: "Why are we going this way?" He said, "Let's just cross the street first. I'll tell you when we get across."
I said, "Okay" and when we reached the big parking lot, he said, "We're being followed." I said, "What do you mean, 'we're being followed'", thinking it was just more Friedman paranoia. I should point out that he wasn't on drugs. He'd even quit smoking pot by this point. But he was on edge, and kept checking his phone. I repeated: "Whataya mean we're being followed?" He said, "Well...it's not 'we.' I'm being followed. But in a way, you're the one being followed because they're using me to follow you."
By now, I'd had enough. I said, "What is this about?" and he finally explained what was going on. A group of people - bad guys we all know - had being following Friedman in his car, all the way over to my building. He used to park about a block away, and I would meet him and we'd walk through CSUN, but on this night he had been followed, which was why he suggested an alternate route. He referred to this following practice as "tagging" and he seemed to think he was in trouble that night: "for some of the things I've told you".
I wasn't aware that he had "told me" anything.
"Tagging", according to Friedman, was a form of triangulation where a number of cars (two or more) follow a subject and triangulate his position by using electronic devices. An operation of this type was apparently underway on the night Friedman led me on this walk. After letting me in on what was happening, he tried to link me to his trouble by asserting that I was in trouble too, by association. "You're in trouble because you are with me". That is paraphrased, but close to verbatim, and Friedman was couching his terms. He didn't want me to know the extent of the trouble he was in.
When we crossed Lassen at Lindley and reached the huge CSUN parking lot, suddenly there was Pat Fordyce. He must've driven up in his car, but he may have parked somewhere (perhaps in the lot). I say this because I can't remember for certain if he was on foot or in his car when we encountered him. But he was definitely there, and he warned Friedman that his pursuers were nearby. Pat was also versed on this "tagging" business. On a side note, recalling the Pat/Friedman Tour of October 2010 (described in a recent blog), we again see Pat "assisting" Friedman on this occasion at Lassen/Lindley (perhaps in 2014), when in real time they didn't seem to know each other. Of course, we now know they were both cult members, involved in sex and cocaine, and they may have known each other a whole lot better than we realized.
Getting back to the incident, after Pat warned us about the automotive "taggers", Friedman suggested we should turn right at the top of the parking lot. In my memory, part of his reasoning was that we would be out of range of the bad guy's devices by being away from Lindley Avenue. Another part was that, according to Friedman, "they couldn't enter that section of the parking lot without chancing arrest" (perhaps because it was outside the bad guys' area of protection).
It is important to note that the bad guys (who we ALL KNOW) are protected, at least to an extent, by an Authoritative Entity, be it a police department, or a corrupt State system, or by links to Influencial Cocaine Suppliers. The point is that they are protected...to an extent Thus, they know they are not going to get arrested for merely "tagging" and following someone with their iPhones or electronic devices. Heck, they didn't get arrested for torturing my Mom in 1988 at the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
So it's not unusual that the bad guys in this situation did not get arrested or detained.
What did happen, after Pat warned Friedman that the bad guys had triangulated our position, was that a car appeared and pulled into the parking lot. It rolled down the northern entryway we were on, the east-west strip just south of the hill.
This is the part of the story where you need to fasten your seatbelt, because in that car were Two People We All Know, and they were involved in a cocaine transaction that went bad.
(to be continued)
Meanwhile, Rolling Stone has released their All Time Top 100 Guitar Solos, of which maybe 20 are deserving, but of course that's Rolling Stone, a magazine so corporate and lacking in ideas that it named itself after a famous rock band. Let's do our own guitar solo list, every one deserving of its place, because unlike the clowns at RS (where the Hipster Factor figures in), we truly know us some guitar, and we are experts on guitar solos.
Here are the Top Fifteen:
1) "Burn" Ritchie Blackmore
2) "Comfortably Numb" David Gilmour
3) "Rock Bottom" Michael Schenker
4) "Still So Many Lives Away" Uli Jon Roth
5) "Desert Rose" Eric Johnson
6) "La Villa Strangiato" Alex Lifeson
7) "Starship Trooper" Steve Howe
8) "Crying to the Sky" Bill Nelson
9) "Something" George Harrison
10) "Riding on the Wind" Tipton/Downing
11) "Blue Sky" Dickie Betts
12) "White Room" Eric Clapton
13) "Just One Victory" Todd Rundgren
14) "Lady Fantasy" Andy Latimer
15) "Phoenix" Powell/Turner
Of course, there are the legendary FM radio solos: "Stairway", "Watchtower", and "Freebird", which I saw the original Lynyrd Skynyrd perform in 1976 in San Bernardino on a bill with Black Sabbath and Peter Frampton...who himself was about to chart the biggest selling live album of that era, "Frampton Comes Alive".
Rock lives. So does truth.
God bless and tons of love.
