Author: Mark Alexander

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Tiedrich Thursday

imagine you’re a war correspondent for a major American newspaper. you’ve been assigned to cover the war in Ukraine. conditions totally fucking suck. there’s no heat, electricity or running water.

but you’re not bothered by any of that shit. you love your job — because it’s enthralling. there’s nothing else like it in the world.

now imagine you’re in the middle of doing all that, when out of the clear blue, you get an email telling you that your job’s gone fuckity-bye.

if you’re Washington Post reporter Lizzie Johnson, you don’t have to imagine — because that’s exactly what just happened.

“I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I’m devastated.”

oh, lovely. how the fuck is Lizzie Johnson supposed to find her way home? what the hell?

and it wasn’t just Johnson who got told her job had been sent to a big farm upstate, where it will have lots of room to run around. over three hundred of her Post colleagues got shitcanned yesterday morning.

here’s just some of the carnage: metro DC news, cut way back. the sports section, gone. book and theater reviews, gone. podcasts, gone.

but perhaps most egregiously, they’re cutting their foreign bureaus. if you want to know what’s happening in places like Kyiv or the Middle East, don’t look at the Post. it’s no longer their responsibility.

how the fuck can you even call yourself a major newspaper if you’re not covering what’s going on in the world? this is the Washington Fucking Post we’re talking about, not the Podunk Pennysaver.

here’s how devastating the cuts were: Peter Finn, WaPo’s International Editor, demanded he be fired on the spot, rather than take any part in this fuckery.

Peter Finn, the section’s editor, requested that he be laid off rather than be involved in planning the cuts once he learned about their scope, according to two people with knowledge of his decision.

the Washington Post’s corporate overlords claim they had no choice but to make these cuts, because the paper lost over one hundred million dollars last year. but these same overlords want to make one thing perfectly clear: these mass firings are actually good news.

do you want to know the real reason the Post is doing this? it’s because they love you — the reader — so much!

I shit you not. check out this dollop of industrial-strength bullshit-speak.

“The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company,” the Post said in a statement. “These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”

oh, I see. the Post is gutting its staff and reducing its coverage in order to make it all better. sure, now that you’ve explained it, that makes perfect sense to me.

there are really only two words that come to mind when faced with this level of piss-on-your-head-and-tell-you-it’s-raining corporate-ese. the first one rhymes with fuck, and the second with you.

let’s lay the blame for this atrocity exactly where it belongs: at the feet of Jeff Bezos, the Donny-snuggling gazillionaire who laughs like some fucked-up cartoon villain.

it was Bezos’ own disastrous decisions that led to the Post bleeding money.

first, a week before the 2024 election, Bezos phoned up the editor of the Post and told him not to run their planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. Bezos didn’t want to make Donny mad, just in case he happened to win. hundreds of thousands of angry Post subscribers canceled their subscriptions in response.

then, in February 2025, Bezos announced the Post was no longer going to tolerate ‘left of center views’ on their editorial page. instead, they were going to focus on ‘personal liberties and free markets.’ once again, hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled their subscriptions.

why would Bezos deliberately antagonize his readership? because doesn’t give a shit. he’d rather curry favor with his new despot snugglebunny, Donny Convict.

Jeffrey Beez is not a newspaper guy. he doesn’t bleed black ink, as the saying used to go. he’s a business honcho. the Post is a just line item on a spreadsheet.

listen to your Uncle Bernie Sanders.

“If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don’t tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff. Democracy dies in oligarchy.”

democracy dies up Jeff Bezos’ ass.

let’s be clear here. Bezos spends his money like a drunken sailor. he flushed $75 million down the shitter on that bogus ‘documentary’ about Dear Leader’s Slovenian rent-a-wife — and didn’t think twice about how much it cost. sixty million got pissed away on a wedding for his personal flotation device.

Jeff Bezos’ current net worth is TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE BILLION DOLLARS. think about this: Bezos could give every person on the planet a billion dollars each, and have $253 billion left over. that’s still more money than he could possibly spend in his lifetime.

the hundred mil that the Post lost is a rounding error to someone with that much moolah.

if he wanted to, he could personally fund the Post and give it away for free — and not even notice the money missing from his bank account.

fuck it, Bezos could sell the Post to someone who would care about putting out a quality product — but he won’t. he’d rather destroy it. owning some hallowed institution and clownfucking into irrelevance is the hip new thing. all the cool oligarchs are doing it.

I swear, these morbidly wealthy shit-kazoos are so easy to hate. and they wonder why people walk around wearing Eat The Rich t-shirts.

heroes, that’s what we’re in desperate need of right now.

no one ever went to bed with fascism and came up smelling like roses. no one ever said ‘gee, I’m so glad the Washington Post partnered with Nazis.’

fascist regimes come, and fascist regimes go. when this current nightmare finally runs its course, no one is going to say ‘wasn’t it awesome how Jeff Bezos slobbered all over Dear Leader’s ass?’

the people we’re going to look back on with admiration are the ones who stood up said ‘take your Nazi bullshit and stick it where the sun don’t shine.’

which bring us to today’s hero of the day: Jordan Perry, the manager of the Lake Theater & Cafe in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Perry booked the Melania ‘documentary’ into his theater (as a bit of a joke, he explained in a blog post) — and he advertised it with a marquee that read ‘to defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.’

 

apparently this caused heads to explode all over the Amazon corporate offices, and they angrily pulled the film from Perry’s theater.

undaunted, Perry changed his marquee to ‘Amazon called. our marquee made them mad. all Melania shows canceled. show your support at Whole Foods instead :(’

in a world of Jeff Bezoses, be someone who antagonizes the shit out of Jeff Bezos.

meanwhile, if any of you know of any war-correspondent jobs that are available right now, you’d really be doing Lizzie Johnson a solid.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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Torturing Myself

Despite weeks of therapy, getting solid food down the normal route remains…elusive. I can sip my morning iced caffeinated beverage, but it takes me all day to make it through a 16 ounce cup. But don’t worry…it’s not like I’m not getting any regular food; it’s just getting pureed to within an inch of its life and going in the g-tube. My therapists remain hopeful, however, and won’t let me sink too low into depression, so there’s that.

(And TBH, since I’ve added real food back to my diet the cravings have subsided substantially and I’ve stopped losing weight. The worst part now is the expected attendance at social events where eating is the primary reason for gathering. Lately however, I’ve been avoiding them altogether because—my personal hunger aside [I order everthing to go]—it’s just too difficult to sit there and watch people eat.)

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I Could Live There

Linework Architecture: This project is a substantial remodel and addition to an unassuming 1940s single-family ranch in Northeast Seattlewith a focus on sustainability, durability, indoor-outdoor living, and generational flexibility.

Designed during the COVID quarantine, the family realized they needed to rethink how their home should function in the “new normal” and beyond. The owners wanted a house that would serve them now and into the future, no matter the shape of their family, requiring us to rethink how the traditional house is programmed and laid out.

PROBLEM SOLVING

The main house was built on the existing foundation and extended to include a larger kitchen and primary bed and bath. A new garage/DADU was introduced at the rear (northern) lot line and is currently used as a family room above and a flexible work-space below, but could be re-programmed to meet the family’s needs as they change over time.

The new one house/two structure design serves up a multitude of readings. While it currently functions as one for a nuclear family, either structure can be self-sufficient as a rental but also have enough separation to finely balance independence and togetherness for an aging parent or the owner’s handicapped brother.

The 2,250-square-foot house is uniquely situated on a through-lot. While the original house and its neighbors had historically neglected the northern side, it became a defining opportunity to reconnect with the street and form a central garden court by placing the DADU at the rear of the property. Large sliding glass pocket doors open to the central garden court expanding the perceived interior volume and provide a seamless indoor-outdoor experience.

The flow and sequence of space was influenced by the owner’s experience living in a Japanese temple complex, where spaces relate and connect to each other through a common courtyard and garden. The functions were intentionally distributed between the two buildings, pushing the occupants outside and connecting them with nature.

The owners were not interested in formal certification but sought to make the house as sustainable as the budget allowed. The house was converted to 100% electrical with a 15kW solar array, and both buildings are conditioned and heat water by heat pump. The main house is ventilated with an HRV. The exterior envelope is clad in exterior insulation, thermally treated wood requiring no recoating, and the windows are U-0.23. On a holistic level, the home is built small—the house is only 1600 square feet, and the DADU adds another 650 square feet. Together, these moves reduce the net energy use to a verified 3,800 kWh per year, or a 73% reduction from the national average.

Efficiency isn’t all or nothing. By building small, building durably, and integrating sustainability features where possible, the result is a design that dramatically reduces the building’s lifetime carbon cost. Most clients do not have the appetite nor the budget for PHI certification or Living Building Challenge, yet there are still opportunities to make a huge difference when

these measures are applied incrementally and across a portfolio of work.

[source]

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I Won’t Crap Out

From Blobby, because he expressed this so much better than I could:

I don’t know if this is true or not – nor do I care.

MAGA and the GOP are fine with making up stories and lies to further whatever agenda they might have – or just for the fun of it.

But it is said that BLOTUS became VonShitzinPantz a few days back – in the oval office filled with people.

There is allegedly auditory and olfactory “evidence” of this event.

I hope to g-d it’s true.

Say what you will about Pappy Joe and his age, I never heard that he fell asleep in meetings or behind the desk, let alone crapped his trousers.

It got me thinking how many identical suits, shirts and ties VSP has in closets all over the White House. Plus the power washer to clean out that crevASSe. Oh, and the incinerator to put all those Depends and bio-hazard bags into the fire.

I mean you know he probably shits himself several times per day. So, there has to be this huge wardrobe and on-site dry cleaner working 24/7 – though they probably LOVE it when he goes golfing. Open the windows and air the place out.

I understand they do (or can) change out the carpet in the oval office – and I hear it matters which way the eagles head is facing and which talon holds the arrows et al. But now, they probably just have to swap that out now and again to Bissell the fecal stains out of the fibers.

Truth be told, I did search out the video, but I couldn’t hear “the accident”. Though people in the room were ushered out quickly.

g-d, I’d love to see the résumé of these aides whose sole job it is to scoot people out of harm’s way.

And let us remember that years ago Bob Woodward already let the world know this.

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Well, That’s A Relief

When I got my new old Yamaha CD player back in December, I was kind of disappointed to discover it didn’t like playing CDs over 74 minutes in length (the original CD standard) or CDRs of any length.

I wrote it off due to the vintage of the machine. Built in 1990, 80-minute CDs were just starting to show up, and CDRs were still a couple years away. Yamaha can be forgiven, I kept telling myself.

But it nagged me, y’know?

So the other day I pulled out the stack of CDRs I’d burned prior to my MiniDisc obsession to take with me to work. I tried playing one (a different one than I’d tried initially when I got the CD player) and wouldn’t you know…it read the table of contents and played just fine. I threw in another. And another. And yet another—and they all played just fine. It was only that one particular disc that I’d initially tried that had issues.

It was more an experiment than anything else, because I don’t have anything on CDR that I don’t have an original CD copy of—with the exception of that one disc that wouldn’t play (a mix CD sent to me by a friend several years ago).

All this got me thinking about the commercial 80-minute CD issue this afternoon. I don’t have that many; in fact, they’re all from the Euphoria house/dance music series. I threw the original disk I’d tried back in the player, and yeah, it still lost its mind somewhere around track 14 (which pushed it past the 74-minute mark). The same thing happened with Disc 2 from that particular release.

But then I tried a different release: Ibiza Euphoria And wouldn’t you know, both CDs in the set played perfectly from beginning to end. I tried another Euphoria recording, and yup…played perfectly. So it wasn’t the player at all; it was just that particular release and it affected both discs in the set. Factory pressing issue? Who knows.

All I know is that I’m relieved that it’s not hardware, but in this case, the software is what’s at fault.

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Sometimes you don’t have to work to figure out where the racists are. Sometimes they out themselves.

Back in the Fall, within nanoseconds of the NFL announcing that Latin rapper Bad Bunny would be performing the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the Trump cult tore itself away from Charlie Kirk martyrdom, MAGA church shooter retcons, restaurant logo crusades, and pro-ICE posturing to launch into a full-on frenzy of performative histrionics in protest.

Since then, they’ve continued their tortured pearl-clutching unabated, with the white supremacist stalwarts at Turning Point USA recently announcing an “alternative” halftime show (called, of course, The All-American Halftime Show), featuring Olympic-level cultural appropriator-turned MAGA bootlicker Kid Rock and an undercard of similarly pigmented, patriotism-peddling, Bible-brandishing, shameless deep South virtue signalers.

You see the “alternative” they’re offering here, right?

If you’re over 25 and, like many older white folks, have remained permanently trapped in the amber of Classic Rock radio, you may have never even heard of Bad Bunny, whose birth name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. (I’d be willing to bet my house that 90 percent of the Conservatives who are currently rending their garments online hadn’t, either.)

Born and raised in Puerto Rico (which a terrifying number of MAGAs don’t seem to know is an American territory), his father was a truck driver and his mother a school teacher. He spent his formative years singing in the choir in a Roman Catholic Church his family attended, and began writing his own music at the age of 14. Bunny was signed to a record label at the age of 20 after being discovered online.

Today, Bad Bunny is an international superstar, the second most-streamed artist of all time, with 100 billion streamed songs. He is a multiple Grammy winner, has crossed over into professional wrestling and acting, is a coveted brand ambassador, and does millions of dollars in philanthropic work through his Good Bunny Foundation (Fundación el Buen Conejo), which he started in 2018.

Ocasio is the literal embodiment of the American Dream that the GOP has spent decades waving in our faces and flying up the flagpole.

So, what’s the problem?

Let’s just say it’s primarily a melanin issue, with a side order of MAGA cultism, a heaping portion of Christian nationalism, and a healthy dash of homophobia thrown in.

As a self-described gender-fluid Latin musician who sings predominantly in Spanish, has previously criticized Donald Trump, and repeatedly lamented the inhumanity of ICE as recently as during his Grammy acceptance speech last week, Ocasio must be condemned, vilified, and eradicated because membership in the mindless death cult of white American intolerance they now call home requires it. This asinine mob mentality vitriol is what Trump’s movement has fostered and fomented, and what it demands.

Ocasio opened his recent Grammy speech with these words:

“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say: ICE out,” he said. “We’re not savages. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”

This is supposed to be what America stands for: decency, diversity, humanity, and yet it is precisely the message MAGA is burdened to shout down and suffocate.

The fact that the Right feels compelled to create an “alternative” to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance speaks eloquently about their desire to secede from a culturally and racially diverse nation, how committed they are to perpetuating the myth of oppressed white Christians, and how determined they are to manipulate every event into a racist holy war in order to keep their rank-and-file foaming at the mouth.

Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said in a statement that the show “is an opportunity for all Americans to enjoy a halftime show with no agenda other than to celebrate faith, family, and freedom.”

But whose faith are they celebrating?

Not the spiritual beliefs of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Unitarians, or non-MAGA Evangelical Christians.

Whose family are they talking about?

Not Latino families, or black families, or immigrant families, or LGBTQ families, that’s for damn sure.

And exactly whose freedom will take center stage on Sunday?

Not the people with brown skin being relentlessly terrorized by ICE, not the thousands of sexual assault survivors brutalized by Jeffrey Epstein and his collaborators, not the tens of millions of women who deserve autonomy over their own bodies, and not the migrants and refugees being persecuted by these cosplaying Christians.

The Turning Point halftime show, like every venture in the MAGA/Trump ecosystem, is a grim, sinister, mean-spirited fight against progress, evolution, and diversity disguised as sincere virtue.

This isn’t about Bad Bunny.
This isn’t about a halftime show.
It’s about who we collectively want to be, the kind of nation we dream of living in, and the future we want those who follow us to inherit.
It’s about the cost of standing up to the bullies, of rejecting racism, of being intolerant of intolerance.
This is about what we will demand and what we will not accept when it comes to the rights and voices of people of color.

Trump and his supporters don’t want an alternative halftime show; they want an alternative white, gated community nation where only they benefit.

In these days, we are in a brutal battle for an America where everyone will find opportunity, safety, and welcome.

It’s time we all got in the game.

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And So Begins Another Week…

OH MY GOD, YES! Go ahead and sue, you orange bag of shit. Discovery will force the release of all the Epstein documents!

 

it’s one o’clock in the morning. the world’s most-fragile diaperload is awake — and he’s melting all the way down on his shithole app.

oh dear, it seems that someone’s hurt the colicky rage-baby’s fragile fee-fees again.

The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!

and yet the stupid shit sat there and monitored the whole thing, so he could find out if anyone was talking about him. and, sure enough—

Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!! I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close.

now, because I’m a responsible journalist and everything, I googled ‘where is Epstein Island,’ and I learned that it’s a tiny island within the Virgin Islands, and its actual name is Little Saint James Island.

according to Donny, he’s never been ‘anywhere close’ to Epstein Island. so he’s never been to Christmas Cove, and he’s never been to the St. Thomas Ritz-Carlton — and he’s never been to Chocolate Hole, which, I’m sorry, but that definitely sounds like a place Donny’s been.

Donny’s handlers should never let him watch awards shows. he always ends up cranky, because he absolutely cannot deal with seeing other people receive awards — awards which, in his impaired mind, should rightfully be going to him. never mind that the Grammy awards are for music, and Donny’s only contribution to that field is the pungent aroma of ass music he creates every time he falls asleep in public. where’s Donny’s Grammy, goddammit!

FIFA could actually be doing the world a huge solid right now, by announcing that Donny has won their FIFA Music Award for Most Melodious Farts, and then invite him on stage to hang another dumb-ass medal around his neckgina.

because that would shut him the fuck up for at least a day or so.

by the way, this is Trevor Noah’s joke that had Donny power-loading all the diapers.

“that is a Grammy that every artist wants… almost as much as Trump wants Greenland. which makes sense, I mean, because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton, so…”

big fucking deal, am I right? it was one throwaway laugh-line in an hours-long broadcast full of throw-away laugh-lines. any normal person would have heard it and then gotten on with their lives — but we’re not talking about a normal person. we’re talking about the most broken-inside burst trash bag of personality defects ever. so, naturally —

Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast. It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$.

Donny’s gonna sue the shit out of Trevor Noah, for ‘plenty$’ dollars — as one does, when one is the thinnest-skinned bastard ever to walk the face of the earth.

he’s such a fucking embarrassment, throwing childish tantrums in the middle of the night, and siccing his lawyers on a comedian, for telling jokes.

oh, and let me just put this here, for no particular reason.

“nobody gets angrier than a narcissist being accused of something they definitely did.”

now, because I’m still wearing my Responsible Journalist hat, I looked it up. the internet tell me that’s a quote from Omar Hussain’s ‘Thoughts and Feelings, Volume One’ — but the internet also tells me that such a book doesn’t exist.

what the fuck? can I borrow one of Donny’s ace team of parking garage lawyers and sue the shit out of the internet?

Omar Hussain is real. maybe I’ll sue him.

so, for those of you keeping score at home, Donny is suing Trevor Noah. at the same time, he’s suing The New York Times — also for hurting his feelings.

Donald Trump has said he is expanding his defamation suit against the New York Times after an unfavorable opinion poll.

He wrote: “The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times.”

fuck me, Donny’s not only a sore loser — he’s a sore winner. and if this ‘I’m suing you for bad polling’ business sounds familiar, that’s because he’s also suing the Des Moines Register for — you guessed it — hurting his feelings

A Polk County district court judge heard arguments Friday about whether President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register can move fo

rward.

Trump sued over a November 2024 poll that found likely voters preferred then-Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump days before he won the election and carried Iowa by 13 points.

His lawsuit says the poll is consumer fraud.

my god. could people please stop hurting Dear Leader’s precious fee-fees? we’re in grave danger of depleting our National Strategic Reserve of Lawyers.

and then there’s Donny’s lawsuit against the IRS. he’s demanding they pay him TEN BILLIONS OF PLENTY$ for that time a former IRS contractor leaked years of Donny’s tax returns to the media — hurting his feeling in the process by revealing that for years, the cheater got away with paying only $750 in taxes.

President Donald Trump is suing the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion, alleging they failed to take necessary steps to prevent a former IRS employee from improperly disclosing his tax returns, and those of his sons and his company, to news outlets.

The Times published exclusive reporting in 2020 that showed Trump had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

of course, this lawsuit is pure corruption at its finest. Donny is basically suing his own administration. no way they’re going to fight this fucking lawsuit in court. the current head of the IRS is Frank J. Bisignano — one of Donny’s cronies. Soybean Scott Bessent is the Acting IRS commissioner. these loyal flunkies are going to roll over and hand Donny whatever he wants.

Donny’s come up with an all-new way of funneling money from the Treasury, straight into his greedy pockets — by suing the shit out of, basically, himself.

don’t you wish Dear Leader would work this hard to make life easier for average American? you get two dolls and five pencils, while Donny uses the US Government as his own personal ATM.

and don’t forget that Donny’s also suing his own Department of What Used To Be Justice, because that mean old poopy-head Jack Smith hurt his feelings by trying to convict Donny for the very real crimes of insurrecting and stealing state secrets.

I mean, what’s the point of even being president, if you can’t rob the country blind, and enrich yourself at the public’s expense?

isn’t it great how Dear Leader has combined two of his favorite activities — filing nuisance lawsuits, and forever grifting — into one neat and tidy profit center?

who says America isn’t the land of opportunity?

and now, it’s hero time.

yesterday, Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro traveled to the hellhole detention center where five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father Adrian were being confined, and personally escorted them back home to Minnesota.

thank you, Congressman.

in any sane country, it wouldn’t requite the concerted effort of a government official to spring a five-year-old from prison. but like the man says, shitty timelines gonna shitty timeline.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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I Could Live There

“Despite the efforts of pedophile and felon Trump and his fascist cult followers, racism can not be denied by taking down signs in Philadelphia or anywhere else! February ushed in Black History Month and I am hornoring Paul Revere Williams (1894–1980), the pioneering African American architect who helped shape the look of Los Angeles, but was not allowed to live in or even stay overnight in many of the premier, white-only neighborhoods and homes he designed. Despite being one of the most celebrated architects for Hollywood celebrities, he was restricted by legally enforced, racist land covenants that held sway in LA until the late 1940s and early 1950s.”

[source]

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Some ‘Ships I Get…

…and others I simply do not. Buck and Eddie from 9-1-1, yes. The attraction and the chemistry is obviously there even if the writers never go in that direction. But Robbie and Whitaker? I don’t see that at all; just a lot of wishful thinking on the part of fangirls. But I do enjoy the fangirl artwork…

BTW, if you aren’t watching The Pitt, you should be…it’s damn good television.

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Sunday

An old friend and former housemate from San Francisco currently living in Oregon came to town to attend a family funeral yesterday. We managed to steal him away for a few hours today to share coffee and reminisce a bit. But surprisingly, “two old retired guys who’ve known each other going on 35 years” had very little to talk about since we text each other almost daily. But it was still great to physically see him again. That’s been twenty years or so…

I met Michael in San Francisco one morning in June ’92 on the J-Train heading downtown. He got on, we made eye contact multiple times and I finally got up the nerve to hand him one of my “Woof” cards (yeah, they actually had that printed on one side with my number on the other). He called shortly thereafter and we started hanging out and even had a brief affair. I don’t remember why it didn’t work out on that level, but we remained good friends over the years and after I’d moved back to Tucson in 1995—and six months later realized what a horrible mistake I’d made—he offered me a place to stay until I got resettled—and even flew down to drive my car back while I piloted the U-Haul.

Even after I’d found work and had a steady income again, we remained housemates. The location wasn’t ideal (he lived out in the Avenues), so the commute downtown became a pain in the ass, but the rent was reasonable, the company (including three adorable pugs) was excellent, and most importantly, we simply got along.

Wanita, Francesca, and Carlotta

Everything was fine until Michael met his future husband in ’97. Raymond and I did not get along, and while Michael was hoping for a “Three Muskateers” sort of friendship, it proved impossible (at least for me). I ended up moving out and back to Phoenix in ’98. Tensions were high, and I didn’t even say goodbye.

We remained incommunicado for many years, even upon my return to The City a year later. After my first cancer diagnosis, bygones became bygones after I returned to Phoenix again (for the last time) and we reconnected.

Funny the directions life takes you…