Oxbow's Eugene Robinson chokes rowdy concertgoers

While Robinson may not have been making much money during his early punk- rock and Birth of Tragedy days, it did give him the opportunity to publish work, and his magazine released a record featuring Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. (It was called The Birth of Tragedy Magazine's Fear Power God Spoken Word/Graven Image.) Through Lunch, Robinson met and befriended Dean Kuipers, now deputy editor for The Guide in the Los Angeles Times.

"There he is with this long-barrel .44 Magnum," Kuipers recalls. "Totally Dirty Harry." He describes his friend as the worst nightmare of the other men, who also seemed disconcerted by the way Robinson wrote names on the targets with a Sharpie before firing at them. However, on the way home Robinson was as cheerful and smiling as ever and cooked the pair a huge pot of hamburger and peas for dinner. "Great day, yeah, great day at the range," Kuipers says with a laugh.

Yet Kuipers worries that Robinson's love of fighting may ultimately prove to be his downfall. "I'm trying not to encourage that side of Eugene; I think it has limited potential," he says. "How can that end well? Somebody is going to karate-chop his arm off ... or he's going to kill someone."

For every story Robinson's friends have about his abilities as a fighter, they have multiple (often more interesting) ones about the less obvious aspects of his life. They seem a bit bored by the stereotypical tales of asskickage. As Scott Kelly of Combat Music Radio — who met Robinson and Oxbow through his own band, Neurosis, nearly two decades ago — puts it: "He's the real deal, no doubt. But I've seen him fight viciously with his intellect. ... His physicality is incidental, really."

And Robinson's day job emphasizes his brains over his brawn. He is a senior editor at MacLife magazine, a rather peaceful aspect of his existence. In the Editors' Blogs section of the tech magazine's Web site, there's a photograph of a mild-mannered-looking Robinson gazing out under the headline, "A Neat Hard Drive Is A Happy Hard Drive." This particular entry details the steps Robinson used to organize the data on his laptop, citing another entry in which he learned a difficult but important lesson: Back up early and often. "They were all gone Johnson but it was not my fault," Robinson writes of the experience of losing all his files. "Like a hurricane or an earthquake or a record by Kelly Osbourne."

On a recent weekday, Robinson emerges from the elevator into the sterile South San Francisco office-building lobby where he works. It would be a stretch to say he looks at home amid the corporate office parks, but with his big smile and bear hugs — his muscles and tattoos covered by the professional attire (often a sports jacket or button-up shirt over black jeans or dark pants) he wears to his day job — it's hard to imagine why words like "dangerous" and "crazy" are so often used to describe him onstage.

In addition to editing, writing, and hosting a podcast for Combat Music Radio, Robinson also writes the "Ask Vinnie" sex column for www.skullgame.com — the most recent contribution to the sex-advice column genre. A virtual cultural ambassador of sex columns, Robinson has written "Guy Spy" for Mode magazine and "Avi Baby" for a Jewish newsletter in New York.

As open as he is about sex and violence — topics that inspire discomfort in most people — Robinson is fiercely protective of his personal life. When asked about his private life, he declined to discuss it.

When Robinson does get going, it's his ability to hop to and from so many different subjects that has helped to earn him the billing of Renaissance Man. "Funny, well read, an excellent writer, very loyal," Salvatore Russo says when asked to describe his friend. The pair met about four years ago at a basement fight club, the same night Robinson was knocked out by professional fighter Chris Sanford.

"It was like the Fourth of July," Robinson writes in FIGHT. "There was a silvery burst of light and then ease. And quiet. And tremendous ease. The mat was cool against my face, and as unseen hands lifted me upright I hear myself murmur. Almost whisper, even, 'I'm okay. I slipped. I tripped.'"