kvetching up

The Brothers Grimm fairy tales are a master class in horror. Evil and terrible outcomes emerge in every page turn from the original tales. I read them for the first time when Leiney was a baby and I bought an old hardback edition at Goodwill. I had no idea how truly discombobulating they were, how shitty it would have been to live in a world where monsters and many of the heroes alike were murderous. I read stories like Snow White, Snow White and Rose Red, Rumpelstiltskin, The Fisherman and his wife, to the kids. Was that child abuse? Or was it, more likely, setting them up to better understand the world we live in today?  As a kid, I was so grateful not to have lived through the atrocities committed by the Nazis, to have missed Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the annihilation of indigenous peoples, naked imperialism and colonialism, the second-class status that women had been relegated to, DDT and the draft, among other things. Then, I grew up. I watched Reagan and the country asc...

Pike Place Market, June 6. Saturday Abby and I went downtown and finally got to The Frye. We tried to go last summer during Pride and decided that was dumb. We tried to go a couple of more times last summer, but it never happened.The Frye is free. I've been walking past it for over 45 years and weirdo me never bothered to go. I was curious, but younger me didn't bother. Weirdo.  Given that Abby is entering her third year leading tours at MHCAM (where she just got a promotion!), I was especially excited to go. She could explain to this Philistine art that I may find inaccessible. Mostly, I just sounded like a boomer complaining about lazy millennials as I made fun of the installation. I tried to keep my mouth shut. I didn't take a picture, not because I think you need to go see the art for itself, but because I don't typically take pictures of garbage. I should have, I doubt you'll likely believe that 10 inches of cassette tape mangled and scrunched and put on a can...

I snapped this over the weekend as Abby and I were driving through West Seattle to avoid traffic on the way home from our weekly hike. This photo tells me that the final nail in the coffin of professional photography is dead, as is the work of expert manipulation of images. This picture was snapped by me, no training but I've been taking pictures using everything from a 35mm and camera phone. I'm not the best or the worst--at least my thumb isn't over my lens. But this picture isn't a pristine snap. All the power lines have been removed. The image in the glass is altered insofar as it is enhanced to be more visible. The most interesting question isn't what will professional photographers do--that job has been dead since Kodak released its first chrap digital camera back in the late 1990s--I think we paid 200 bucks for a one megapixel unit.  As much as I hate James J. Hill's raping and Iron Goat Trail, 2026. pillaging of the Central Cascades and his exploitation ...

For the first time since Omi died, I was in Freelard last night at Chris and Judy's for Noah and Kate's baby shower. Aging is always the most apparent seeing all the friends of Chris  Worn to embarrass the younger child. and Judy I have known for 35 years. My age, or a little older, it's hard to deny thearch of time. Abby drove, she insists on driving my car whenever we go anywhere, and hell, I don't care. (Right now she is driving us up to a hiking trail for what I expect will continue to be a weekly event until she returns to school.) I am shown in the shirt I wore without announcement or fanfare to Abby, because I am still trying to do a little dad torture here and there. She made no comment. Still, I must claim mission accomplished. Columbine, Iron Goat Trail, 5/2026. Last Sunday we were in the  Central Cascades at Iron Goat Trail--built along the old Great Northern Railroad. For a near-geezer with a defective knee, it was largely perfect for me--thanks to Abby care...

  Not even a knife from the business itself could cut through the stench. Friday night we went bar hopping. I think bar crawling would be more accurate. We hit 2 bars--maybe 3, if I am not mistaken. I had almost no food in my system (save for the exquisite mushroom and leek quiche made by L), thank you GLP-1. 2 or 3 drinks later I was hammered. No idea the name of the first bar. Next, we went to the great-uncle's famous Admiral Benbow Room, where he was karaoke king---I learned only at his funeral 23 years ago-where his music was played exclusively during the viewing of the body (why do we do that viewing thing, anyway?). He had a helluva voice, Gene Smith did. I wish I would have known his talent--it would have been fun to sing a duet with the man I didn't know whatsoever, but with whom we spent a few holidays and saw at family weddings and funerals, until the last funeral he attended---his own. We had so much fun, laughing at terrible jokes told by the bartender and me--I sta...

5.16.2026 2014 was the last time I was under 150. I can say with certainty that I was walking 6 miles a day then, and the experience was far more pleasant than using a GLP-1 . That I am taking it to address diabetes is something of a consolation. The fact I was nauseous after eating a meal yesterday and unable and uninterested in eating today given I am at peak nausea makes this milestone less appealing this time. Also, isn't this weight drop dangerous for my heart? After 4.5 months I am down 23 lbs, and still falling. I am so food averse today that the trip to the all holy Costco on samplepalooza Saturday only made me more nauseous. Yuck. OTOH, I am down about 5 pant sizes. 5. I bought a pair of 30w pants today, and they are still too big. I haven't worn a pair of pants less than 30w since I dated Margy back in the mid-1980s. I attribute this to the loss of muscle mass attendant with the use of a GLP-1 . 

"The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone." -George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life , 1858   If I Needed You My mom was many things. She was a nurturer, a kind and caring woman to the world. Jenny and Brian circa 1996, MDA Camp at  Camp Waskowitz . She was a binge alcoholic bipolar mess when I was growing up--and could be cruel and dismissive as easily as she could give a hug when I scraped my knee. Both aspects can be true, I know. It is rare to find people that can be almost or completely one or the other, we are all some sort of admixture of fuckery and kindness at one point or another. Your mileage may vary, I am speaking only of my own experience.  I have been a person who so desperately wants to believe in the innate goodness of humanity and fails over and again to latch onto that view. When I see things like the mass disenfranchisement of black voters, t...

In a collection of match books I was exploring last week, I found two things, neither of which would have been very interesting to me absent the internet and AI. First: Mementos can be invaluable. Imagine if you had find these just three years ago, you'd have no idea what these were from,  not any simple way to find out. Perhaps a day at Suzzalo Library in the archives may or may not have produced answers. I snapped a picture and not 5 seconds later, ChatGPT told me that these were from "No Time For Sergeants." tIt is the play which thrust Andy Griffith into the role as a PLO (Permanent Latrine Officer) and stardom. Moreover, it told me the theater is on Broadway and is now called the Neil Simon Theater. So, someone saved these as mementos and then later forgot about them. I likely would have tossed them away, but knowing their provenance makes me find them worth keeping. The second discovery found among the matchbooks was still close to its original shape, was yellowed a...

  Done Up In Blue Print Blue Willow and I back before she was born. This isn't the Spanish Prisoner con--now the Nigerian Prince con-- but is, instead, artificial intelligence. I read recently you can get a pill to extend your dog's life for a year. We must be getting close with humans and life extension. You think oligarchy sucks now, wait until the oligarchs can live to be 200. Wm. Gibson foresaw this in Mona Lisa Overdrive back in the 1980s, that day is approaching, as is the immigration of the masses--The Sprawl as Gibson called it. Substitute the Japanese for China, and Gibson makes Alvin Toffler look about as prophetic as a Magic 8 Ball.  Back in the very old days--the 1980s, one of my go to restaurants was Franco's Hidden Harbor over on Westlake. I last went there in the mid-1980s--I loved it's old Seattle feel. When I moved Franco's in the mid-1960s, windows looking onto the covered marina that I loved so much. back to Seattle from NYC back in 2003 and tried...

Jenny never shared this with me or I forgot about it in the moment. Excuse me if I am sobbing. What lovely friends. I honestly stumbled across it on YouTube by accident, kismet or serendipity. Love you Ed and Jorge.     

  This picture of me lying in my hospital bed proves that home may not necessarily be where the heart is. I was released a couple of days after this picture was taken. I had just been moved to a room on the gurney I am lying on and awaiting transfer to a hospital bed. I was there at UW Hospital longer than usual because an artery had accidentally been nicked by the surgeon when they were either sticking a balloon in my artery or one of a constellation of stents, and the medical team feared I might bleed out. I was so high on Versed and morphine that I feared nothing. Of that, I am grateful.  I was kept pretty tranqued when I was admitted at Harborview, and my memory is that my tranquility was maintained via a PICC line attached and inserted into my arm. The wildest part of the stay is the food they offered on the menu wasn't what would be called heart healthy or heart smart. Repeat business must be good.

The only way I would jump out of a plane is if both the plane and I were on fire, let's be clear. At least ChatGPT kept it real by leaving me in my work clothes.

In 1971, when I was very little (about a little more than a year after my dad died), my mom saved up enough money from her job as a computer programmer at West Coast Drug to buy a home in Rainier Beach--4910 S. Rose Street. It was a lovely home, with a very large cherry tree, an ill-placed grape arbor (always in the shade), a separate garage, 4 bedrooms a breakfast nook, and more. It did albeit, have  a bit of a carpenter ant problem, but it will always be a repository of happy memories. For reasons I cannot explain, there was a large black and white television on wooden legs IN MY ROOM. I was certainly an early adopter of that trend. Until Jenny died, it's also the last time I had a television in my room. I digress.  Next door to us was a duplex, where a single mother lived with her young son, next to her a black Metro bus driver, likely one of the first ever-I presume one of the first, who kept an very unfriendly Afghan dog chained in the yard  A house stood next to us ...

Things change. The Donut Shop at 1st and Pike went away well before I finished high school. I still haven't gotten over it.  Penneys on 2nd and Pike also closed back then. All the creepy X-Rated theaters and sex shops on 1st Avenue left. The SROs and all the old sailors and dock workers that lived in them gone the way of the dinosaur. Richard Peterson no longer wanders the downtown with his trumpet, a beloved figure for so many of my generation. As a kid who traveled on the bus downtown to get lunch delivered via electric train at the old Iron Horse and to the  old wax museum, the Zoo, the Seattle Center on weekends via Metro,  etc.,  I could continue to list all the change. I abhor what Seattle has become.  That said,  one loss puzzles me the most. For all of my childhood there were two things that Daydreaming. marked the advent of warm weather and impending summer, the University District street fair in mid-May, and the Pike Place Market Street Fair which...

29 days of vacation burning a hole in my pocket.  Where to? Fridays. I generally love Fridays--what worker chained to work Monday-Friday doesn't love the end of the week? Truth be told, however, I cannot wait for this Friday to pass--the my last one before Abby comes home as a rising senior from MHC.  I'm not sure if she is home all summer or for a brief amount of time--today is the day she will begin hearing back from museums she has applied to around the country with regard to paid summer internships. Summer is nearly upon us. I want to go somewhere, see things I haven't seen before. I am dreaming of Italy. Milan, Rome, Palermo.  .   . Or maybe just Parkland. I've always wanted to be on Cops.  .   .  

  " Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli. "                                                          -Peter Clemenza from Mario Puzo's  The Godfather   My life has not always been boring. I have a habit of being on the edge of a chasm, only to walk across on a board that just fell from above, never knowing the risk I had taken. Mr. F@%king Magoo. I missed 9/11 by a day, boarding a plane the day before for a much safer, Montgomery, Alabama. I left Seattle the day before the WTO. I left Seattle the day before the last big earthquake. I always find such coincidence funny. Blessed? I don't know. There are two other wild coincidences in my life that I think about a lot more. First, back when I was a freshman in high school--two of the guys I spent a lot of time with were Robert Huffman and Rey Baruso. We had a lot ...