On the advertising timeline, it’s 1991. Or 1992. Whatever. I didn’t have a car and I remember riding my bike home from a day laborer job I had with a small remodeling outfit, and I’m cranking up one of the steepest hills in Seattle, from the Madison Valley below 23rd and it seems like Smells Like Team Spirit is blasting out of every house. And I’m thinking to myself, what has become of my life. Everyone is getting signed, and all the good song titles are taken. Loser. Creep. Etc. I’ll never get a real job.

Anyway, Nevermind came out on September 24, 1991. So it must ‘ve been right around there.

Back to the advertising narrative. I was still and perpetually taking portfolio classes at the School of Visual Concepts, or SVC, in Seattle. I still hold the indoor world record for most portfolio classes taken without getting a job. Almost three years I diddled away, having my little chicken-scratch ideas, and working at restaurants, cafes, caterers and a string of low-paying moderately-demeaning construction jobs.

Yep. An English degree is really good preparation for graduate school, barista school and/or journaling your discontent while making minimum wage.

I was stuck in the proverbial early-to-mid-20’s whirlpool. I couldn’t get a job without experience, and I couldn’t get experience without a job.

But that was the miracle of advertising! No one cared about my resume (a joke) or my GPA (mediocre) or about my juvenile arrest record (wiped from the books, so let’s keep that between us.)

All I needed was a portfolio! And they could be “spec” ads. And the spec ads were much more real seeming when they were real assignments from real creative directors that had real jobs at real advertising agencies.

That’s what made SVC so magic. All of the classes were taught by people in the Seattle advertising community. So you were not only learning, you were getting to know people and they were getting to know you.

There were not a lot of agency jobs in Seattle at that time - especially at agencies with a creative culture.1 There was Cole & Weber – the venerated stalwarts that had the big regional-institutional accounts, like Boeing and Weyerhaeuser. There was Livingston & Co, known for their legendary Alaska Airlines work. They had a bullet-proof formula - write a funny bit about crappy airplane travel, and then hand it to Joe Sedelmaier to shoot. The result? Classic work, impeccably cast (often with real people) and a liberal use of tubas. (This was back in the day when advertising was allowed to be both funny and smart - more on that later.)2

To continue the rundown of the early 1990’s Seattle agency-scape, there was McCann, run by Jim Walker - he was later joined by Jim Copacino from Livingston. They had a lot of momentum during this time. And then there was Borders, Perrin and Norrander, run by Larry Asher.

It was not easy to break in. Maybe three legit jobs for juniors would come up per year. A pecking order developed. I was not the best writer, and barely housebroken and back then advertising agencies had nice offices with carpets … so I bided my time.

I was getting jobs and losing jobs. Playing in bands and not. In and out of relationships. But one thing stayed steady. I kept taking classes. I met a young Art Director from Nebraska with serious design chops, Lonnie Weis. Temperamentally, Lonnie was steady where I was wild, and detail-oriented where I was sloppy and impulsive. But we had the same hunger for great ideas and the drive to match. It was a good partnership.

So, la-dee-da, I’m plooking along, doing my construction menial labor thing during the day, making ads at night, when someone at SVC calls and says “Borders, Perrin and Norrander is hiring a copywriter intern.”

My number had come up! In the delicatessen of life, Max, your sandwich is ready? Hello, paging Max!? Are you still here?

There was only one problem. All of my brilliant ideas were in no shape for presentation. They were scribbles on paper. Like so:

I called Lonnie Weis.

It was maybe 6 pm on a Tuesday. My interview was at 9 a.m. Wednesday. The clock was ticking. We went to Kinko’s and pulled an all-nighter.

We got the book together. Maybe fifteen ads, 5 campaigns of 3 executions each, all mounted in color on matching black presentation boards.

I can still remember what the comps looked like on the computer screen over Lonnie’s shoulder. I was drowning in the cesspool of broken dreams, and he pulled me out. I am forever grateful.

As for the actual work <insert shrug emoji> I don’t remember much, other than the smell of glue that held the color comps down to the black presentation boards.

I had one pretty solid retail campaign for Alaska Airlines:

I also had a campaign for fat-free ice cream. I only remember one headline:

“This ice cream could have saved Redd Foxx’s life.”

Redd Foxx had a show called Sanford and Son where he played the owner of a junk yard. One of the running jokes was when something upset him, he’d hold his hand to his heart and say “This is the big one! Hold On Elizabeth, I’m coming!” He actually did die of a massive coronary while cracking jokes on set. Everyone thought it was part of the bit. This is so not funny, it’s funny. Or vice versa.

Anyways, so we stayed up all night at Kinkos putting together my portfolio for a 9 a.m. interview. My friend Leighton - you’ll remember him as the inventor of Barf music, web-based grocery store delivery and online music sharing – gave me this weird headset with flashing light arrays that was supposed to mimic sleep stages. I put that on, slept for 45 minutes, woke up refreshed – and off I went to join the professional world of applied arts.

Getting me out of career bardo was a real team effort.

The creative director I met with, Larry Asher – laid back, sierra-dry wit – probably thought, “Guy seems pretty intense. But his portfolio has complete sentences and the alluring scent of fresh chemical fixative. Let’s give him a chance.”

Thank you Larry, for the chance. That’s all some of us need. Just a converse sneaker in the door. (Ouch. Wish I’d worn my Docs.)

And so now I had a internship at Borders, Perrin & Norrander.

The rest, of course, is Advertising History. And there will be more of the rest of Advertising History in the next metalude: Max actually has a job. Whoa.

Just when you thought social media was 100% useless, I see a post that Colson Whitehead will be at Montclair State 6/22/26. We had no excuses to not leave the house. This wasn’t Brooklyn or even through the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan. This is less than a mile away.

Arriving at the auditorium, we found full house of adoring NPR-listening liberals. As Colson pointed out, this is Montclair, after all. We all received signed copies of his new book - pictured above.

If you haven’t read either Harlem Shuffle or Crook Manifesto, start now and start at the beginning, with Harlem Shuffle. You will be treated to an underworldly walk through Harlem and Manhattan history, trailing two of the most compelling characters in crime literature. Ray Carney, and the aging enforcer Pepper. Ray is a Harlem furniture store owner and family man. He’s also a fence. He aspires to middle class, and finds that he just can’t make it without a deal here and there on the side. Pepper is everyone’s favorite muscle. With a strict code of conduct, Pepper walks his own path, because no one else is badass enough to stop him. Immovable objects, meet Pepper.

Each of the three books of the trilogy are broken into three parts, with a focus on a specific heist.

Harlem Shuffle - 1959, 1961, 1964.

Crook Manifesto - 1971, 1973, 1976.

Cool Machine takes us into the 1980s.

At the event at Montclair State U, Colson started off at the podium, treating us to a short bio. He kicked off with a dry, hilarious nod to Steve Martin’s The Jerk (“I was born a poor black child”) and finished with a brilliantly nuanced take-down of AI - winner, Colson Whitehead by TKO. I don’t think AI is getting up from this one.

I can’t summarize Mr. Whitehead’s talk without being somehow reductive and not doing justice to the humor and insight, but perhaps the conclusion is worth sharing.

If you’re artist, you make stuff. So do the work. Make stuff.

💻 💻 💻

Along his meandering, clever way, Colson talked about growing up in New York, weird punctuation in 1970’s-era black sitcoms, (Diff’rent Strokes. What’s Happening!!) Going to college and failing to get into the Creative Writing program - which taught him all about rejection. He led a sing-along of Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park. He talked about working at the Village Voice in the 1990’s. And then starting to write novels.

After the podium part of the proceedings he sat down with Kate Tuttle and they had your more traditional Q&A about the book, his methods, and characters. And I gotta say that it was one of the least boring hours I’ve spent in a college auditorium ever. It made me glad to be a writer (of a sort), glad to be part of the Montclair community and maybe even glad to be alive to enjoy one more day of breathing, coffee and books.

I started Cool Machine while I was sitting in my seat, and I’m going to wrap this up so I can dive back in.

Have a great day, and a good read.

You couldn’t get a job without having a portfolio of work. And since it was impossible to get produced work without actually having a job … well, you see the conundrum.

So, the only way to become copywriter or an art director was to create a portfolio of “spec ads.” There were only two legit schools with a national presence that would help you put a book together. One was AdCenter in Richmond, VA - which was loosely associated with VCU. It later became VCU Brandcenter.

On the West Coast, there was ArtCenter in Pasadena, taught by the talented and charismatic Mark Fenske. His voice – as a copywriter and as the actual deep, deadpan voice on commercials – was a source of endless inspiration and painful imitation.

In New York, of course, there were Art Schools - like Parsons and the New School - as well as informal night classes. So they had their own talent pipeline. And in Seattle, we had our own version - The School of Visual Concepts, at 500 Aurora Avenue.

Now that we’ve set the stage, let’s return to our story, currently in progress.

When we last left our aspiring Advertising Copywriter, he had just witnessed a car wreck. A brilliant woman, well-versed in symbology, pointed out that this wreck was his adolescent life, and he had walked away unscathed.

So I arrived at The School of Visual Concepts out of breath. I talked to Cherry Brown and Linda Hunt. Told them of the accident I’d seen. They gave me a glass of water, a pat on the head and told me to take a seat.

The instructor for “Introduction to Copywriting” was Steve Johnston, a copywriter at Cole & Weber. Steve was an ex-school teacher. He’d burned out teaching fifth graders, and here he was, teaching us grown adults nouns, verbs and punctuation. I was completely in awe of his laid-back coolness. I mean, he was just dripping with smart guy writer vibes. However, I had a tough time concentrating on what he was saying because there was a young woman sitting next to me. Wearing a mid-length skirt, she had her legs crossed. She had on navy blue tights and those sort of clunky early 90’s mules, and one shoe sort of teeter-tottered slightly with each bounce of her athletic calf. Her profile was mostly hidden behind a cloud of auburn hair. When I finally caught her eye, I found that she had an easy smile and an infectious laugh as happy as church bells. I didn’t have a job yet, but now I had a girlfriend. Thanks SVC. It was a start. Young Max was getting his life together.

Of course there were weekly assignments. Though not required reading, I became a voracious reader of the history of advertising. I especially liked the books about the 60’s. My favorite was “George, Be Careful” by George Lois.

I loved the 60’s advertising wildman ethos. Bill Bernbach and others showed how advertising could impact pop culture in the same way that magazines and shows and movies did. Advertising wasn’t just selling green beans and cures for headaches. Brands could have a personality, an ethos and a point of view. To play a positive part in the media stream wasn’t just a possibility, it was a responsibility. I loved the passion for the art and the business. I loved that George Lois would go to the mat – or even stand on a ledge, threatening to jump – to sell an idea. I also loved Jerry Della Femina’s “From those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.”

And, though a bit more staid, Ogilvy’s “On Advertising” was memorable and influential. I still quote it to this day.

I dug into the 50’s, with Rosser Reeves, who invented “scientific advertising” with his USP – Unique Selling Proposition. His core insight holds true. And it’s still hard as heck to get a client to say just one compelling thing in a powerful way.

I even dug back to the very beginning of advertising, and P.T. Barnum – The first guy to create buzz with hyperbole and “teaser” advertisements.

And I still think about this advertisement for Jordan Automobiles, which is widely regarded as the first “brand” ad. It’s deceptively smart, because the writer/entrepreneur decided to write an ad for a new target audience - the free-spirited woman. The writing was so powerful that it created its own market. It worked like gang-busters.

In short, I was hooked and I just couldn’t get enough.

After the intro course, it was time to pair up with an Art Director and start creating a portfolio. Mercifully, most of my initial portfolio is lost to the sands of time. But one particular piece was so memorable, I will recreate it for you here. The assignment was to promote a radio station. Back then, KCMU – which later became the much more mainstream KEXP – would play local bands, like mine, but also played a ton of weird global music. When you tuned in, you never knew what you were going to get. So my brilliant line that summed up everything that the University of Washington’s campus radio station meant for Pacific NW pop culture was - KCMU. We rock hard.

I’ll give you a moment to take that in.

Take your time.

Okay, ready to move on?

So I did manage to get an interview at an agency – maybe Sharpe Hartwig? I dunno. I remember sitting in a kindly, generous Art Director’s cubicle, and how flustered he became, attempting to explain to me how hopelessly crappy my book was, and how earnestly he struggled to give constructive feedback. This poster, in particular, was so indescribably wrong in so many ways that he simply ran out of words, looked me in the eye, waved his arms weakly, and sighed.

Absolutely unconcerned, I was like, “But duuude. It’s funny, right?”

I’ve never had any interest in being responsible. My heroes remain the pranksters and risk takers, the base stealers and the moon-shotters.

(Not surprisingly, this hasn’t always worked in my favor.)

Stay tuned. In the next episode, I might actually get a job.

A memoir, masquerading as novel, all wrapped up in social commentary with some random tips on grammar thrown in. What the heck is this book?

What other writer can flip back and forth between first and third person, mix reality with fiction and make it all work? Who can be absolutely self-involved, and still compellingly readable? Points for difficulty.

Inside Story starts out as a novelized version of Martin Amis’ own life, keeping us all at an ironic distance. “How reliable of a narrator am I, really? Can you trust me?” It’s the breezy life of the clever literary man-about-town until it isn’t. When the planes hit the towers on 9/11, it gets very real. We experience the 9/11 attacks through the eyes of friends, the US, Britain and his young daughters.

Along the way, there’s a great deal of sexual obsession and exploring of relations to and with women, a summary dismissal of religion, personal and heartbreaking accounts of dementia, cancer. Old dad reflections on parenting and generational dysfunction - including a surgical tear-down of toxic masculinity – and this from a guy that calls women ‘chicks’ no less.

And as we close in on the end, he fearlessly writes about the unthinkable. The deaths of his good friends Saul Bellow and Christopher Hitchens. He unpacks their lives and we are there bedside to say goodbye. In addition, the poet Philip Larkin is a looming shadow throughout with his biography related and poems constantly quoted - almost as if he were a father figure (wink)?

But don’t be scared away by the heavy literariness of it all. I didn’t go three pages without laughing my ass off. What surprises about this book is not the prodigious skills and intellect of Amis – anyone who’s read London Fields or Zone of Interest knows that he was Michael Jordan but with words. What surprises is the heart. The love and compassion for humanity and life itself.

And I/we can’t have too much compassion and empathy - especially now.

I won’t go down a rabbit hole quoting passages. There is so much wisdom and thoughtful prose that I will return to. But I will share one idea that my wife and I can’t stop talking about – that of the “Destined Mood.”

Amis puts forth a theory that at a certain point a person settles into a “Destined Mood” and that’s just who they are for the remainder of their life

Kurt Vonnegut never recovering from his house burning down with all of his belongings and became permanently bitter. Saul Bellow settling into a rageful and jealous dementia. Because Martin Amis is writing this in his late 50’s into his early 60’s – basically my stage of life – this hit me quite hard. Rageful or pleasant, Bitter or not. What’s it going to be?

What will be my destined mood? Do I have a choice? Have I thought too many bitter thoughts, breathed too many depressed breaths? Been triggered into impotent anger too many times? On the other hand, I’m an optimist person by nature, and lately I look forward to waking up like a kid looks forward to Christmas morning. I’m hopeful that I’ll settle into a grateful warmth. I aspire with all my heart to be as boring as that – to go gently into that good night.

The scope of Inside Story is on another level – it could have been 6 books by a normal writer. And he mostly makes it work.

Should you read Inside Story? Despite my love for this book, my recommendation is equivocal. For me, it was the right book at the right time. IIt’s a bit convoluted and self-involved, dealing with the emotional maze of dementia, cancer, and our love/hate relationship to written word. But those are the issues I’m dealing with right now.

At some point, I will write about my mother’s dementia and my aunt’s battle with cancer, pneumonia and the resulting memory loss. But for today, I think I’ll spend the day in the woods. And updating bank information on the IRS site.

“Keep your head in the clouds, and your feet on earth.”

Indeed, here we are, our hearts and minds full of eternity, but with our bodies and everything and everyone we love facing the inevitable tides of time. The new-agey version of buddhist mindfulness urges us to be in the moment - but isn’t that actually what we want to escape? To take the next step into timelessness?

Spending time with a good book - and a masterful writer like Martin Amis is a gift for all time, and does take us beyond time, to timelessness.

As always, peace.

Have a great day, and a good read.

Never been a better time to call out that yes, we are still de-evolving. In other news, Fu Manchu never stops touring - proving that four guys and a TASCAM 4-Track can singlehandedly hold the Space Age Oligarchs and AI slop at bay.

Have faith, brethren and sistren and themren: As long as we can lift even one middle finger at everything that sucks, and use another finger to point and laugh at the green algae of it all, the human project is not dead.

Long live humanity. Yay, earthlings.

I’m not by nature a political guy. I look forward to someday, once again not being on full-alert about the deadly ineptitude going on inside the beltway. But with all these made-for-tv poseurs hard at work ruining everything - Greed all about it! …

This is a grand time to highlight the most clever protest song of all time, Freedom of Choice.

Freedom of Choice isn’t just a reminder that we have a choice. It’s an insightful tear-down of the two-party system. The lyrics talk about a dog that can’t make a choice between two bones and runs in circles.

This is an adaptation of “Buridan’s Ass” from the writings of Aristotle. But Buridan’s Ass (god I love typing that) was paralyzed by indecision - stuck between two bales of hay, this Ass couldn’t decide. The dog, however, licks one bone, and then the other, and runs in circles. Reminiscent of a populace that chooses between two things every 4 years, never really stopping and asking - is there a more nuanced approach?

Yep, this pup chasing his tail is a good illustration of our two-party system. Sure, there are good and bad candidates, but the parties themselves simply exist to be in opposition to the other. To expand upon this, instead of being a Republican, one might just as well say “I’m a Not-Democrat.” And no one is really a democrat nowadays, only a “Not-Republican” or more likely “Anything but the Orange Unpredictable Old Angry Guy.”

Thus we end up bundling all of our choices into one camp or the other. So just for instance, I can’t vote small government and pro-environment. That choice is not on the ballot.

This state of affairs is perhaps best summarized by a brilliantly reductive advertising line from the last presidential campaign. “He’s for us. She’s for they/them.”

Is he really? How about she? And as for they, aren’t some of them, us?

Anyway. I’m not one of those people who think “all politicians are corrupt.” There are idealistic people in public service that are actually there (gasp!) to serve the public. They have forgone bigger paychecks in the private sector to try to do some good.

What I’m saying - and what Freedom of Choice is saying - is that the Us vs Them nature of our current public dialog is a false choice. If the USA had a therapist, she would look us in the eye and ask, “Is this relationship serving you?”

And then she would check her watch and say, America, time’s up for this week.

Here are the lyrics to Freedom of Choice so you can sing along to these rousing renditions.

Note the subtle twist at the end from “Freedom Of Choice” to “Freedom FROM Choice” - Do any of us really want freedom? True freedom is a heavy duty responsibility. True freedom is not this-vs-that, or even multiple choice. True freedom means creating our own answers to our own questions, and then following through on whatever our heart and mind decide to do. Sounds exhausting.

I don’t know about you guys, but I just want the freedom to work from home, so I can watch the world cup soccer game.

(break)

The original, by DEVO!

Secondly, from San Clemente, CA, Fu Manchu. The band that just keeps finding an extra gear, every year.

Okay, I’ll cease with the adding of more echoes to the socio/politico echo-chamber, and relate a couple quick stories about Devo and Fu Manchu.

First, Devo.

As you know, I’m an advertising writer/creative branding genius-for-hire. Now I get to relate my very favorite brand activation of all time, where my passions for music, running and pop culture met for a big party in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

In 2003, Nike threw the first “Run Hit Wonder” Event.

So basically the idea was that you’d run a 10k with a few thousand other people wearing this same shirt, and at every mile a “one hit wonder” from the 1980’s would play. At Mile 1, you guessed it - A Flock of Seagulls was playing “I Ran (So Far Away)”. And the crowd ran wild. We finished running into and onto the field of L.A. Coliseum. And we’re wandering around, doing what runners do after a run, drinking water and being glad we don’t have to see our own hair. And then DEVO comes out on stage. They’re not in costume. Mark Mothersbaugh and the boys look like they just got off the LA Metro. And they totally deliver. Shockingly good. Self-aware, socially aware, entertaining as hell. If you haven’t cancelled Netflix, check out the new documentary.

As a passing note, Joan Jett played the following year. We are all lucky to be born in the era when Joan Jett walked the earth. Centuries from now, people will look back and call this the Age of Joan Jett. A truly inspiring role model for punk rockers and womankind everywhere. Who gives a damn about your reputation. Personal brand, riiight, blech.

And as for Fu Manchu. I blew out two sets of speakers cruising the streets and highways of SoCal listening to Fu Manchu’s The Action is Go in my black GTI. But that’s not the story.

My Fu Manchu story is a heartwarming tale of parental devotion and nurturing love. The first concert I took my daughters to was Fu Manchu at the Troubadour.

And now, the promised bonus content. Here is Fu Manchu’s version of Blue Öyster Cult’s Godzilla. Another transcendent cover, and a reminder of how

As always, have a good day, and great read (and listen).

Peace my friends.

Framed in the doorway by the sifted floury light of a spring morning, he thought she looked like a still from a movie. Blonde hair with ambitions toward red, the morning sun lit up her highlights like a halo. Yep, she looked like a girl in a movie – a movie where he was the star. He smiled as he thought of the golden road that they would be privileged to travel together – that he would provide. One day, when he received his birthright, he would be king – and she’d be his queen.

But wait – something was missing.

“Hey, where are your golf clubs? We’re going to the driving range, you know.”

“Oh yeah. I don’t feel like playing golf. Not today,” she replied.

Henry let his clubs slide off his shoulder. “What? Well, what then?”

I was thinking – you know that tattoo parlor out on Branford Parkway?” She didn’t even know why she said it. Just to say it maybe. To see what would happen. The tattoo shop had a big mural – she’d seen it on the way over. Marvin Gillespie, Mr. Tattoo, it said with a portrait of Mr. Gillespie himself, smiling, his flexed biceps a tangle of barbed wire, tribals suns and Chinese symbols.

“You want to get a tattoo.” An incredulous statement, not even rising to a question. A vision flashed in his mind: her name, Emma, in a heart on his arm. Then, just as quick, the name crossed out. He smoothed the sleeve of his polo shirt reflexively.

“No, of course I don’t want to get tattoos. But there is a fortune teller right next door? Let’s get our fortunes read.” Again, she had no idea why she said it. She vaguely sensed that she was pushing back, introducing randomness into a controlled, clockwork universe. But mostly it was just one of those days when her mouth was going faster than her head, and she’d have to run to keep up. “Let’s get our fortune’s read,” she said. And then, softening “then we can go to the golf course.”

“Golf range.”

“Huh?”

“We are going to the golf range. So you can work on your swing. I’ve arranged to meet our club pro there. And we are wasting time,” said Henry Wainright III, impatient and authoritative, foreshadowing the landed scion he would become. He picked up the bag of golf clubs, and they shifted with a titanium clank.

Emma backed up and off the Wainwright’s porch, down the stairs, and back, and back. She just kept backing up, not taking her eyes off him. She knew she was putting on a show, but so be it. She backed up until she could take in the entire façade of the four-story colonial - and the house could see her. Who was watching from those windows? His sisters? The maid? His childhood nanny? Cousins? His mother? Crossing her arms, she turned to face the street and Henry’s new black BMW convertible with the top down. It was parked in front of her aunt’s Buick Roadmaster station wagon, the car that she’d driven over. Why hadn’t he just picked her up? Because he wanted her to see the house – the in-town house. To be reminded.

She turned around once again, searching the upper floors. Maybe they were all out at the other house, the Big House, the Wainright family ranch house.

She got the message. Everything you had before isn’t exactly wrong, but just okay. And this – all this – is very right and good. Aren’t you blessed. Oh, you lucky girl you, aren’t you glad we found you in the dumpster.

Henry wa a good guy. She wouldn’t have been dating him for the past three years if he wasn’t. And it was absolutely flattering when he asked her to prom, junior year. She had no idea any seniors – much less Henry Wainright III – would ever see or notice her. And he was as respectful, kind, and well-mannered as one could hope to find in this town. If not in the state of Texas. It was just that – he assumed things. He’d never once asked if she had any ideas about what she was going to do with her life. Never asked a single thing – except what kind of Prada bag she liked in the catalogue.

Long story short, that’s how they’d ended up in this position. Whatever position that was, she wasn’t sure.

Henry sighed and followed her to the curb. Hoisting his clubs into the backseat, he slid in behind the wheel. “You really want to go to the fortune teller?”

“Why not?”

“Because your golf lesson is at eleven.”

“Give me your phone. I’ll call … Roy isn’t it? and let him know we’ll be a little late.” Henry shrugged. She picked up his phone, a Motorola that looked like something from a TV sci-fi show. She put on her best southern belle, well, gosh, I’m so sorry and bless your heart. Roy of course was understanding and said he would wait.

The ultimate driving machine delivered them to the strip mall storefront quick as advertised. The took the lone customer parking spot next to a late model yellow-and-rust Mazda GLC. A pink neon sign in the window advertised “Psychic.”

The door opened with the jingle of a tiny bell. Inside a worn blue tweedy-textured couch invited them to sit. A low table with an unlit candle and an ash tray containing three old butts. No psychic in evidence. After a spell, a middle-aged roundish woman parted the bead curtain and emerged from the back. She greeted them and said that she could only see them one at a time, not together.

“Ladies first,” said Henry. “I’ll be out front.” With obvious relief, he stepped back outside. The door jingling once again, and then silence.

Emma felt a sudden pang for taking the morning in this direction. It was like when you pretend to throw a ball for a dog, and then don’t. They don’t get the joke.

She hadn’t expected the woman to be so nondescript. No turban, no flowing sari, no kohl encircled piercing black gypsy eyes. Steel-colored hair pulled back in a bun. Her sallow skin sagged at the jowls. A sweater of a noncommittal tone, not sure if it wanted to be blue or gray. All in all, about as exotic as a trip to Walmart.

Emma perched on the edge of the couch, knees together, afraid that if she sat back, she’d be mugged by dust mites. The woman sat opposite in the kind of chair you see abandoned in alleys. Emma tried to smile but it just made her face ache.

“You’re a Sagittarius.”

“Taurus,” Emma lied. She didn’t want to give the woman the satisfaction of being right. And besides, astrology was a crock.

“You’re a skeptic.”

“I’m a pragmatic,” Emma replied.

The woman cleared her throat. Something cracked or popped in there. She lit a cigarette – without asking, Emma noted.

“It’s twenty-five dollars for the card reading, and thirty-five for the palm and the card.”

“I guess we’ll be doing the cards, then.”

Not taking her eyes off Emma’s face, the women set her cigarette in the ashtray, reached for her deck of Tarot cards and began to shuffle slowly.

“So what would you like to know.”

“Oh, just the regular stuff. Will I be rich or poor. Will I be famous. Will I be on MTV? In a video or on The Real World? Will I find true love? The usual.”

The woman spread a few cards out in front of her.

“Who’s the young man you came with? Perhaps he could answer your first question.”

“That’s Henry Wainright III.”

“Ahh. The oil family. He’s your boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Um. We sign our Valentine’s Day cards with hearts.”

The woman began to turn the Tarot cards over. “Break up with him.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Break up with him unless you love him. It’ll be easier now than later. Make something up. You’re going off to college – something.”

Emma didn’t reply. The fortune teller continued, “I sense there’s someone else?”

“Huh?”

“Another friend, another boy friend?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“No. My life isn’t a soap opera. I’m 20. I live with my aunt.”

The woman looked out the window. Henry leaned against his new convertible, twirling a Callaway Hawkeye iron, taking an occasional practice swing.

“Okay, there is this guy I play guitars with, Troy. He’s from Seattle but his mom lives here with his stepdad. He was playing in a band out there but he got into drugs or something so he came back here to clean up. Now he’s going back. He keeps bugging me to go with him.” Emma stopped suddenly. She always talked to fill the space, to put people at ease. This lady was supposed to be a psychic. Let her do some of the work.

The woman nodded. “A journey then.”

Sigh. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. A journey.”

Emma looked down at the cards – really looked at them for the first time. Medieval-looking creatures, some part animal she recognized, some simply fantastic. She felt the fortune teller’s eyes on her forehead like a warm lamp. As far as she could tell, the woman still hadn’t looked at the cards.

“I sense someone, your mother perhaps, is concerned about you.”

“My mother’s dead,” Emma said curtly. Adding silently, that’s some more bad ESP, if you can’t see that.

“You live with relatives.”

“My Aunt Julia. My mother’s sister.”

“This Aunt Julia, she is concerned about your future. Have you discussed this journey with her?”

“I haven’t discussed it with anybody. Not even myself.” Emma exhaled. “Aunt Julia wants me to go to college now.”

“You’ll got to college then? Are you an artist? Perhaps you are talented?”

“The only classes I really liked were computer classes. And I like to read books.”

“But you play guitar and you sing?”

She’s got me there, thought Emma. “Yes, ma’am.” She paused. “How come you haven’t looked at the cards?”

“Oh yes.” The woman picked up her reading glasses and looked over the cards in a perfunctory manner. “I see only options here, possibilities, a crossroads. That is why I ask so many questions.”

Emma could see one thing, for sure. In the future, she’d never go to a fortune teller again. “What about that one. What’s that one mean?” Emma pointed to the Grim Reaper.

“The Death Card. He’s not so scary. Simply the end of one thing, and the start of something else. A point of change on the eternal circle.”

And that’s enough of that, thought Emma. She looked in her purse. Out of cash. “Will you take a check?”

“Why don’t you let your boyfriend – your ex-boyfriend – pay? He’s been so patient. He looks generous. And he has a nice car.” Emma looked back over her shoulder through the picture window. Past the glowing psychic sign, there he was. Henry, behind the wheel of his new convertible, wearing Raybans, doing his best to look like Tom Cruise. He was generous. And he did have a nice car. And he did look a little like Tom Cruise. How in the world was she going to do this?

“No. I’ll pay for me.”

“Good girl.”

Emma got up to go.

“One more thing –” the woman said, holding a card.

“Yeah?”

The woman started to speak and then seemed to think better. The door jingled. Emma turned. Henry was framed in the doorway.

“Who’s ready to hit some balls?”

“It’s your turn, young man. Don’t worry. We’ll be quick.”

Five minutes later, Henry emerged from the fortune teller with a smirk on his face. It wasn’t his happy smirk. It was his snarky, I’m-trying-to-rise-above-this-and-failing smirk. Henry punched the gas impatiently and they shot into traffic but didn’t get far. Branford Parkway was the old main highway, and still the commercial loop through town. At noon on a Tuesday it was chock full of concrete mixers, oil tanker trucks, semis, construction contractors in pickups and plumbers in their vans. Anyone in a mere car obviously had time to waste. After seven minutes, they’d progressed past two lights, a motel, a car dealership and the Dairy Queen. Henry finally broke the silence with a little guffaw that telegraphed he was about to make a knowing and ironic observation about life on earth. He grinned. “You know what that woman said to me? She said you were going to break up with me. I said you’re crazy, lady.”

Emma’s stomach clenched. “What else did she say?”

“She said to tell my Dad to get money out of the stock market. People really act like the world’s going to end, Y2K, whatever.”

“Henry, we need to talk.”

“You’re kidding.” His smile faded.

“I think she’s right. I think we should break up.”

“You think we should break up because the fortune teller told us to break up?”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?

“I don’t know.” Emma found she couldn’t look at him. “I just think we should break up.”

“Oh come on.” Henry kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Is this about that scrungey drug addict that you play guitars with?” He reached over to touch her arm. She shook him off.

“Not …exactly.”

“What?!”

“I mean no! Troy It’s not about that. Not in a thousand years. And Troy’s clean.”

“He doesn’t look very … clean.”

Henry had only been seasick once, while crossing the English Channel in his cousin’s yacht. And right about how, he was ready to hang his head over the rail. “This is the most screwed up day. We should never have stopped. We were just going to the driving range, and then, and then … we were going to get married!”

“We were?”

“You can’t leave me.”

“Why?”

At this point, Henry did two very uncharacteristic things. He swore. And, he was ungentlemanly. But you’ll have to excuse his anger. Henry Lee Wainright III had never been refused anything. Because everything in this one Dairy Queen town, was his – as far as the eye could see. So the feeling that was welling up – that normal mortals like you and I know as anger – was completely unfamiliar. Setting his cleft jaw, Henry stomped on the brakes and jammed the new BMW 328i into park.

“Because you won’t have a fucking ride home, that’s why.”

Emma got out of the car. So this is what it felt like to break up with someone. She couldn’t feel her legs. Her arms. Anything. She looked down at the calluses on her fingers from playing guitar. She could push down, and if she really dug her nails in, she could maybe sort of feel something far away, but no pain. Only numbness. She thought about having a blizzard for some reason. When you’re a kid, ice cream fixes everything. She watched the passing cars, immune to the looks from truck drivers eyeing the young woman in the white golf skirt, as out of place on the side of a Texas Parkway as a White Egret in a muddy swamp. She thought about raindrops, even though the only clouds in the sky were cotton white puffs, friendly as Caspar. She thought about when she was a child, she imagined that raindrops were angel’s tears. Someday she would cry again, she knew that, but not now and not about this. She thought about how nice it would be to be at home with her flame-tipped Siamese cat Virgil on her lap, reading a book. Awake once again to her surrounding she thought she could settle for a blizzard after all and started walking toward the Dairy Queen.

No kid ever says, “When I grow up, I wanna be in advertising.”1

And that’s why advertising is a jumble, an island of misfit toys. It’s practitioners are often brilliant. Creative. Energetic. Idealistic. Impulsive. Obsessive. Sensitive. Perfectionistic. They are always interesting.

That’s what makes advertising great. The people. And I’m always curious to hear their advertising origin story: how they got into the business.

Here goes mine.

Everyone knows that before I was an insanely successful advertising copywriter, I was the bass player in two of Seattle’s least successful “grunge” bands. When the first one broke up - that would be My Eye …

- we tried even harder to fail with Stomach Pump.

Actually, the music could be quite good in both cases. The guys were talented. Kurtiss Loftstrom, the guitar player in My Eye was on a par with anyone. Duffy Drew was my drummer in both bands, and we were a locked-in wall of rhythm that allows singers and guitar players to yip, gloat, screech, rhyme, dance, sing, play and put on truly worthy show.

The problems wasn’t the band, or even band-management. It was self-management.

I personally wanted to take the Keith Richards Expressway straight to where we record Exile on Pike Place or whatever the Seattle version was - preferably at a Castle in France. I was tortured by thousands of anxieties and insecurities, which I bluffed my way through by wearing trench coats, dabbing my eyes with Maybelline black eyeliner, and self-medicating with alcohol and a variety of substances. The cliché crash and burn was inevitable. The whole thing would be sort of adolescent and droll, if it wasn’t for the tragic finality of the casualties.

As I was attempting to pull out of this live-fast-die-young nosedive, I suddenly awoke to find myself graduating from the University of Washington. I’d somehow earned an English degree with a “creative writing emphasis.” The is one of three things I have in common with Mark Arm of Mudhoney.

I’d always supposed that my protracted youth would include graduate school, or law school. I liked books after all and writing had always been what I did, ever since I’d written a short story about donating plasma, featuring an out-of-shape middle aged man in a Superman suit wearing combat boots.2

Writing was how I interpreted the world. It was my lens and my mirror.

What I didn’t count on: the day I walked off the UW campus, a huge, Atlas-sized weight left my shoulders and dissipated into the misty northwest air. I realized I never had to step foot on a campus again.

Freedom! But freedom has a downside. I had a degree, I was mostly clean and sober but I was absolutely directionless. The wind blew me this way and that. I painted houses. I parked cars. (That’s one way to learn to drive a stick.) I waited tables at the legendary Piecora’s Pizza. I worked as a day laborer, digging ditches and learned the difference between clean dirt and unclean dirt.

I had no car, no future, and no idea what the heck to do with myself.

I tried different writing projects. I turned a short story I’d written about a suicidal self-involved drug-addled college student into a one act play. (Absolutely NOT auto-biographical!) This was formative. I discovered that there’s no greater thrill than having people read the words you’ve written. It was in my head, then it was on a page - and now it’s coming out of their mouths! During our first rehearsal my eyes burned with joy. This thrill has never worn off.

I’d written for The Washington Daily and of course the Seattle Prep High School paper, so I tried writing for some community newspapers.

Anyway, none of it seemed quite right. I settled into a grinding, ugly, depressive early 90’s Seattle loser existence. I was not a “cool” loser of the brooding, cutesy-noir Singles variety, but an actual depressed loser that couldn’t get out of bed. I had this electronic backgammon game that I would play while I laid there. I played that game so much that I understood the mind of the person that had programmed it. I knew their appetite for risk, what they would do with a 4-3 and whether they wore boxers or briefs. (Briefs.)

A quick montage of representational moments, to telegraph the space I was in:

OPEN ON: Max standing out front of Humperdick & Boondockers, or whatever that restaurant was called where I was parking cars on Broadway, and my friends are driving by. Jason Wells shouts, “How’s that college education working out now, Max?” SERIES OF CUTS: of Max applying for jobs. Max getting let go from jobs. A manager points at the door. Cut to Max in an interview, the interviewer asks “Why don’t you do something with your degree?” CUT TO: Max riding his bike up the steepest street in Seattle, blue jeans and ripped t-shirt covered with paint and drywall dust. He’s coming home from another day making minimum wage, while Smells like Teen Spirit blares out of every house. Cut in tight. Sweaty, breathing hard, the look in his eye says it all – how did it come to this?

So one day I’m over at my parent’s house looking into the fridge – remember, this was before cell phones and Tik Tok, so young men would go over to their parent’s house and just stare into the fridge – and the phone rings.

It was Leighton Beezer on the line. Leighton was the guitar player in my band, Stomach Pump.3

Leighton was working as a advertising copywriter at an agency called John Brown & Partners. John Brown’s claim to fame was that he’d written “There is No Finish Line” for Nike. This was in the days before Wieden & Kennedy had the Nike account.4

So John Brown wrote the greatest line in athletic advertising history despite – or perhaps because of? – the fact that he was a chainsmoking copywriter who never ran three steps in his life.

So at John Brown & Partners, the art directors and the copywriters worked the old-fashioned 50’s way. The writers would write a headline and their little essay (see above) and slide it under to door to the Art Directors who would put the advertisement in a layout. So Leighton was working alone and he was used to collaborating with me, so he gave me a call. And that’s how the ad gods work. They are sneaky with inspiration and opportunities.

We started to knock around ideas. My brain just sort of locked in. It was a creative endeavor, yes, and involved the clever arrangements of words. But it was also problem solving. Writing + Problem Solving. I liked it. I became obsessed.5 I knew what I wanted to do next.

Leighton recommended that I take classes at The School of Visual Concepts. So I signed up for an introduction to copywriting class. At that time, the school was down off of Aurora, north of downtown and south of Lake Union. I’m forever indebted to the Seattle powers-that-be that no one tried to dub this area NODO or SOLU.

The class would be taught by Steve Johnson, who had an actual job in advertising, at the prestigious firm of Cole and Weber.

At that time, Seattle was loaded like the 5:50 Bainbridge Ferry with talent. Livingston, Borders, Cole & Weber, McCann – all these agencies are long gone.

So I signed up. I was bailed out of the life cul-de-sac I’d driven into.

So I’m pumped up and I can’t wait to get to class. I have a direction, but you’ll remember, I don’t have a car. So I’m walking across Capitol Hill, down Denny Way over I-5 and across this intersection (thanks for the screen grab, Googlemaps …)

When suddenly, a car speeds through the intersection going 70 mph from right to left and sideswipes a pickup truck going straight on Denny Way. The pickup truck flips over and skids another 30-40 yards on its collapsing cab. I can still hear the metallic crunch of the collision, the screech of metal, and then silence.

I’m thinking, isn’t the cab of a pickup truck where a person’s head is supposed to be? Does this mean the person’s head got rubbed off while the truck was skidding upside down on the pavement? I don’t really want to know, I hate blood, guts, brains and innards – that’s why I’m a vegetarian.

Regardless of what my head thinks, I find my legs sprinting toward the vehicle to see if the person inside needs help. Just as I reach the truck, the driver slides out the side where the door used to be, stands up, and we grab each other, and for a moment look into each other’s wide unblinking eyes. He’s unhurt but understandably freaked out. Other people start showing up. A woman says she’s a nurse and sits the driver down on the curb. Flashing lights arrive. Authoritative voices tell people to back up. I melt to the back of the crowd and start walking away, even as people are asking, “Did you see what happened? Did you see what happened?”

Look: I’ve got an advertising copywriting class to attend. I’m on a deadline. I can’t be late.

Now, if this were a novel, this car wreck on the day that I am beginning my advertising career would be a dark omen. A sign that danger lies ahead.

(ominous piano arpeggio) Or is it?6

I love this Knicks team. I love the way they come together. I love the way they come back.

I’m certain I wasn’t the only guy that turned game 2 off when they were down 29. And watching the game 5 foul-fest, and seeing how out of sync they were, around our house the chant began: Knicks in 6! Knicks in 6! It had a nice ring to it, and besides, it would be great to win at “home”1

But this team has taught me, the Spurs and every one else on planet basketball - don’t ever count them out.

The reason: Jalen Brunson. This guy is 6’2” of never-say-die. He never smiles. He never gets down. Jalen Brunson is the Irresistible Force. Whether his team is up 10, or down 30, his intensity never wavers. He is a steady as a metronome, and as relentless as the tides. He’s fearless, never flashy and is the definition of grace under pressure.

Jalen Brunson time and again put the team on his shoulders and wills them to victory. Game 5, everyone’s fighting hard, Karl Anthony Towns is in foul trouble and once again, Jalen Brunson takes up the slack - and then some. He scored half the team’s points in the deciding came - the Knicks had 94 and and Brunson had 45 of those points.

The defining moment: with 6:30 to go and the Knicks down 83-77, Wemby is guarding Brunson on the perimeter. Wemby’s the NBA defensive player of the year - a title he will retain for the next 10 years. Wemby’s been intimidating and altering shots all night - when he’s not outright swatting them away. 6’2” Jalen jukes this way and that, leaving all 7"‘3” of Wemby in a tangled mess, and scores 2. In the 1-on-1 duel of the two stars, advantage Brunson.

Off the court, he inspires as well. Here’s a guy that left $113 million on the table, so that they could have room under the cap salary. In other words, he put the team and his goal of winning a championship in front of greed. Apparently, he believes in legacy more than riches.

Whether you’re in the .01%, or you’re the guy with the Trump sticker on the back of your beat up red Nissan Versa that I saw on my bike ride this morning?, take notice.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a way to approach our current problems as a team.

In the post-game interview, Jalen Brunson didn’t say much - but what he did say, spoke volumes. He said that he’d been working toward this all his life. He thought of all those days and nights working in the gym. And for him, an NBA title was a dream come true.

How refreshing. A man of few words, who let’s his actions do the talking. A man who’s humbly willing to do the work, whatever it takes, to achieve his dream.

And I don’t gotta say it but I will: it’s fitting that this team brings NYC a championship while Mamdani is in office. Mamdani’s got charm. He’s got that ability to put into words what swimming around in everyone’s heads. And as far as I can tell, he bases his actions, conversations and compromises on the simple proposition that since we’re all on the same team here in New York, let’s act like a community.

So it fits.

Thanks Knicks. Very much appreciate the hard work.

You won in a New York way, in a way that all New Yorkers can appreciate - from Larry David (the other guy besides Brunson that never smiles) to Spike Lee to the guys at Joe’s serving up your slice.

This is a title that’s built on determination, shared struggle and the idea that if you work your ass off - you too can make your dreams come true.

That’s what makes New York - and America for that matter - truly great.

Green leaves shudder and rustle. Diamonds of sunlight form, disappear and reform. I walk from light to dark to light in the late spring heat. Feel the moisture in the cool green grass underfoot in each stalk, as I walk, as I stalk, each foot set down silently slow and soft.

Above the green canopy birds chatter and caw. Birds have the air. I have the ground. I can leap and for moments rule, but gravity’s leash retrieves me. So they twitter and taunt. Ca-ca-cawnstantly.

Beneath the glinting diamonds of sunlight, the shuddering green leaves, on green cool grass, I freeze. Blend in. Lose my me. I feel the world in me. Every birdcall a separate itch. The leaves moving with the wind’s breath, a shiver that raises the hair on my spine.

Back inside now. I can smell the small ones scurry. Behind the wall. Catch them later. Let them go and catch them. Catch and go. Catch and go. Watch them hurry scurry, play the game. But first lick. Lick, lick, lick, lick all over. Curl up, sleep.

Stretch. Up.

O, yahn, jawsnap. WhI’m I so tired.(?) hmt. Mrow. Lemee morowwt! Neeow.

Wanna go outside? (the high voice is always meant for me)

Mrow.w. Mrout now. Morrrout …

into the night.

Cooling night air invades nostrils. Shimmering simmer of katykids, the soundtrack of summer warmth. Same old world, hello, brand new me. Senses baptized, enough in each moment to last nine lives.

Is everything where I left it? Are the stars still here? Do the trees still grasp the earth with their roots? Do the ants still go about their ceaseless work? Are the spiders still waiting patiently for dinner to be delivered? Have the dandelions progressed in their slow march across the lawn? I hear the creak of a fence door hinge, a faraway siren, the shout of a children playing in the distance. Yes, the sky is still up, the ground beneath. Everything is right where it’s supposed to be. Happy tail-swooshing figure eights around your legs, world. So nice to see you again.

Down the porch stairs. Hey, what’s up grass. With countless fingers, you tell me: the sky is up. Recent rain, all is green. But soon you’ll be dry and brown. Forward, round the house the newly different same old way to the foot of the side fence. Grass in clumps, tall enough to almost hide. Cool night’s coming on, the moon is out. The human world wanes and I wax.

Eye through the slats to the yard next door. No big black dog. I sometimes sit on the fence and he barks and barks. Or puts his head down close to the ground, eyeteeth flashing, growling deep back in his throat. Sometimes I’ll set on the fence and stretch. Make a real show of it. Taunt him, like the birds taunt me. But dogs don’t understand the game. Just chase, bark, destroy. Rip it to pieces. Nothing of the artist. And so easily distracted. Any call from the house, bound away, eat more. Eat anything. Everything.

Got me that once. Wince at the memory. I was on his wrong side of the fence. Curious had to have a look-see. He knew and was waiting. Tackled, aimed for the back of my neck, dodged and tucked. He got his jaws around, my head in his mouth, listening to the heavy breathing of eternity. No pain, to surprised to feel. Flailed and I got his eye real good. He let’s go, I run, he got my tail. Krinked now. Points ever forward, letting the world know my intention. This way.

Spring to the top of the fence. All clear. Should I? How can I not? No sign of the dog. No sight, no smell, no sound, no remains. Down we go, softly.

There’s nothing so alluring as unfamiliar open window. Neither sound nor light on. Up and balance a moment and then in. High acrid smell, dank and dark down here under the house. Faint mildew. Old scent of human food lilting down from above. But the shadows are still and unmoving.

The door at the top of the stairs is cracked slightly. Pad up the stairs, whiskers sense the side of the opening, with a gentle push it gives way and I’m through.

So. What’s new around here?

“Twee”

What’s this?

“Twee”

(As if I don’t know.)

Alright. We got us a bird in this here house. Paws no pause and pad on down the hall. Here we go. Oh, he’s quiet now. Senses me. Up there. The cage swings slightly and beckons.

I can get there if I just on the -

And then on the –

From here, there’s room to sit between the human objects. I can survey the surroundings. The mission is clear. Bat at the cage. Bat at the cage. Bat at the cage. Panicked but protected. More than mentally sharp now, claws extend. Flip flop flying he goes, back and forth. Initial dusting of flowers, like a first snow. Always happy but it will get ugly soon enough. Alright then. Bat again. Flippety flop flapping, back and forth inside the cage. Free as a bird. But not. What you think is your jail actually keeps the big bad world out. Flapping about like an unexplainable thought, on the tip of a sandpaper tongue, there’s always a way home even when you don’t know the path. Even when you’re lost. Or so lost you don’t know you’re already there. I’ll show you the way. Little bird, come out to play. Bat and the cage swings and bat harder and harder still.

And the door swings suddenly silently open. Just like that. Open.

So nice to share this quiet moment, just the two of us.

He looks at me out of the side of his head. Never noticed. Birds only see sideways. Going through life never knowing where you’re headed, only what’s around. Imagine that.

Come on birdy I want to taste your freedom. Reach with my paw inside. Can’t quite touch. Overall strategy is good, change tactics. Back up. Bop the cage again. Rush in Panic, my silent partner. He’s out and flippity flapping to the corner of the room, ambition frustrated by ceiling. I crouch. Get my backlegs under me. Trip the spring.

Got him. Cats know how to land, but not with a bird in the mouth. Tall objects, small objects, bird and cat crash, but don’t let go.

Bird neck: fck. Lights out. My little bird. That was a good game.

Let us depart and leave these two alone, in the afterglow of death’s quick passion. Unlike people, birds have wings while still on earth. But a soul, mind, beauty and all the accoutrement of Gods and angels can’t save us from living the life we’re meant. We fly, but fate always brings us down to earth, sometimes with a gentle bat of the paw, more often, with claws extended

.

Ten minutes is a long time between heartbeats. The doctor said he’d know more in 72 hours and share a forward-looking prognosis on Tuesday 6-2. We booked tickets and packed our bags.

Next morning’s call - letting us know he’d passed away - wasn’t unexpected, but still a shock to the system.

We hadn’t talked in a while. But now we’d never talk again.

We stuck to the plan and flew out Monday to make the final arrangements.

My wife and her brother were close growing up, but they’d fallen out of touch. Their last interaction was at the death of their father. Her brother was distraught, and, as was often the case, very much in need of money. He received a sizable chunk of change - by pre-boom Texas standards - and his father’s well-maintained Genesis sedan. He was not an extravagant person and we figured he’d be set for the duration. We were looking forward to seeing him and having him be a part of family events once again.

He lived a timeless slacker bachelor lifestyle in an old-school Austin apartment, even as Austin boomed around him. Even when he lost jobs he was always able to get another one. He’d started his career as a contract worker in IT and tech support and after a first job at Apple, he worked for Texas Monthly for quite some time and his most recent gig – within the last couple years – was with Google.

But – you can probably guess where this is going – only a few months had passed when my wife received a panicked email asking for money. Was it even real? Was it phishing? And if it was really him, where did the money go?

She didn’t respond. Her brother never called back. And that’s where we left it. That was more than five years ago. She sometimes imagined the worst, but figured he’d call when he pulled it back together – as he always did.

As it turned out, there would be no apartment to clean out. No cats to find homes for. All of his earthly belongings were in an aging Green Honda Accord. Between hospital stays, he’d been living in his car in the hospital parking lot.

How did this happen? How did someone I know, within my sphere of influence, end up homeless, dying of complications from drug and alcohol abuse?

Austin, Texas. June 1, 2026.

We land in Austin, and it’s humid. The heat is like an undertow, dragging us under. Dank, morbid, oppressively nostalgic.

At 9 a.m. on Tuesday we pick up my brother-law’s best friend and the only person he’d had recent contact with. We follow the Googlemaps blue line. 52 minutes it says. Despite the new construction, and the fact that the South Congress neighborhood of Austin is now called “Soco” - (I shit you not) complete with a Nike store, a Marine Layer and even a Hermes, Texas is still Texas. As we drive it’s a mixture of nature and trash, new corporate chains and rundown ramshackle, endless space and claustrophobic clutter. Used cars on blocks, barbed wire fences, billboards for gun shows and adult shops, and signs pointing the way to new housing developments. Oak Ridge Estates, “La Casa perfecta para ti familia.”

As we pull into the parking lot of the funeral home, we exit reality and enter into a Coen Brother’s movie.

We’re greeted by a friendly and efficient fellow in a clean Wrangler shirt. He assures us that the paperwork is nearly complete, and that after the formalities of the paperwork, we can view the body. We take a seat and wait while he and the other efficient fellow answer the phone, processing the bodies. “Chronic Nephrosis, COPD, time of death 12:41.”

The building itself is new construction, not built to be a funeral home, but has a sort of warehouse-turned-chapel vibe, with a garage out back where they do the cremations. At 20-minute intervals, they check back in, apologize for the delay, saying the paperwork isn’t ready. In addition to the two guys in Wrangler shirts doing the logistics there’s a bald older gentleman wandering about in a jet back suit with a daffodil-yellow dress shirt underneath. Once again, they ask each other if the paperwork is done. Finally, the young gentleman who first greeted us apologizes and tells us that we’ll get to the paperwork after viewing the body. We can go in now and spend as much time as we like. And do we have any questions?

No.

Then be aware that the body may appear to be perspiring, due to the humidity, as it’s been in a cold environment and today it’s humid.

We go in, and my brother-in-law is there, covered in a blanket up to his neck, with an ID tag protruding. He looks enough like himself, but bad enough that my wife asks – did he look like this at the end?

“No, he looked like himself.”

So I’m there - just there - with my brother-in-law, his best friend and his sister.

My brother-in-law’s nose starts to bleed. It’s running down his face. The blood doesn’t look like a dead person’s blood, but just like my red living blood, when I cut myself shaving.

We wipe it off, using the tissues we’ve been using to wipe our eyes.

It’s a miracle says my wife, dryly. And we fall back into a stillness broken only by the sound of the fan, office noises, and an occasional pickup truck on the road outside.

No one says anything. No speeches prepared. No platitudes or excuses, no acknowledgment of a divine presence or a plan, no bible quotes or poetic dedications. What is there to say? It’s just the four of us, and now there’s one less. Damn it hurts and that’s closure enough.

After the viewing, we’re ushered into an office with the man in the black suit and the flower-yellow dress shirt. The walls are lined with various types of urns. Mercifully, he doesn’t try to upsell us. He shuffles the paperwork, and says “sorry for your loss” in a practiced undertone. I realize who he reminds me of – it’s Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. The bald head. The circles under the eyes.

More not-comedy of errors ensue. They don’t have the right social security number, so they need to re-run the paperwork. They have the numbers for the price of the cremation transposed, and overcharge us by $650 – so, to avoid more paperwork and a possible shut down of our credit card, they pay us out in cash.

As they count out hundreds and fifties into my wife’s palm, I’m ready to charter a plane – or e-bike, or covered wagon, burro, whatever – I want the hell out of Texas, now. But we’ve got one more errand.

We drive around the hospital parking lot until we find the car. It’s what you’d expect, and like nothing I hope you ever experience. One window broken out, and the back filled with blankets. Trunk packed with the detritus of a life – folders of pictures and letters, song lyrics and journal entries, loose mementos, a tangle of charging chords, a replica KC Chiefs helmet, memorabilia of better times, artifacts of hope, all warmed to the temperature of a convenience-store display case, slow-baked by the Texas sun.

I for one will never see another homeless or “unhoused” person quite the same way again.

The phrase that keeps coming to mind, is “falling through the cracks.” Our modern lives can appear picture perfect and suitable for sharing on Instagram. But within our collective made-for-Facebook reality, there are cracks - and people are falling through.

In my brother-in-law’s case, another misfit of artistic temperament fell through the cracks. Despite his talent and gifts, his snarky jokes, his good-times prankster demeanor and his love of cats, he never found or made his place in this world, much less a Facebook page. His emotional pain, his inability to move past blaming and why-me into true adulthood, the disconnection endemic to Gen-X, coupled with our culture’s worshipful regard for personal independence - as opposed to human warmth and inter-dependence – was fertile soil for a sense of futility and isolation that only grew worse as the years went on.

He died as he lived - alone - his hand held by a kind nurse that was a stranger, moved in his last moments to acknowledge their shared humanity.

His gifts were a gift to us all. And now they’re returned to sender. It’s sad. It’s death. And it’s final.

I was chipping away beneath the layers of trauma, anxiety, old advertising awards and journals, doing a little personal archaeology, and what did I find?

An unfinished novel from twenty five years ago. A novel I thought I’d lost. Here’s the cover page. I printed it out the who package to send to someone. Who knows.

In case your eyes are as bad as mine, here’s what it says:

The Green City.

(Self-Absorbed Analysis by the Writer.)

This is a collection of short stories that make up one big story about the Seattle music scene. Four young musicians travel to Seattle, that wonderland of rock and drugs, only to find that it’s not really what they wanted. Happiness isn’t to be found over the rainbow, but rather, in your own backyard.

Sound familiar? Well, yeah. Basically, I just picked up the ball and ran with it.

The stories are arranged on the “album” like “tracks.” Almost as if it were a concept album called “The Green City,” and the stories are the songs. This works on a couple of levels: A) it’s about music, duh! And B) Just as our modern <media> life is increasingly becoming a pastiche of images, so the stories are a mosaic, snap shots along a narrative timeline, that can exist separately, but when combined create the proverbial great whole.

And then it goes on the list the tracks, or chapters. Each of the musicians and the singer’s cat “Virgil” gets a track. There’s also an ethereal muse named Cleo who inspires the band, and has a crush on the singer.

It’s a bit rough and some sections and dialogue leaves me self-conscious - I feel their just a little inappropriate in this post-Denis Leary, pre-Armageddon phase of civilization. But the overall cringe-factor is a minimized because there’s detachment and a sensation discovery. I don’t remember writing a lot of it. I found myself surprised and LOL-ing quite a bit.

It’s such a time capsule - personally, and culturally. It’s set mid 90’s … - ish.

And everything in this package is just as I left it. Structural questions and suggestions in the margins. Unaddressed notes from the writing group. A belated thank you to Barbara, and Willow - where ever you may be.

I just dropped it like a kid drops his backpack when he hears the last schoolbell of the year and ran … where? So what happened?

Well, I was living in San Diego, which is sort of like Seattle but with more career Navy personnel, and less rain.

I was newly married to a wonderful, brilliant and athletic wife that loved all the activities I did. We ran. We biked. We camped. We had potluck dinner parties with friends. We had a an exotic cat that looked like Bob Dylan’s Leopardskin Pillbox Hat with ears, eyes and a tail. I even got her to crew for me on the Snipe - and she only jumped overboard once.

We had a Garden of Eden in the backyard, with tomatoes, cantaloupes, figs, guavas – and no dangerous Tree of Knowledge. Are you sensing any euphoric recall here?

I was surrounded by everything and everyone I ever wanted – all had to do was sit at my Mac SE and type.

But my insecurities were circling like rabid hyenas. And just then, my freelance copywriting career really took off.

San Diego county provided a mixture of home-cooked agency work along with direct clients. An historic hotel. Real estate. Fashion and tech. I was busy.

And then my work took me more and more to LA. First, at Deutsch, which was on fire during the late 90s - filled with blazing talent, it was a new biz machine, bursting at the seams.

On Mondays, I’d pack up my black VW GTI and drive the 120 miles North - cardboard box in the hatchback, filled with my cereal bowl and coffee maker.

The team at Deutsch made numerous offers - and despite my gratitude, I turned them down. I just didn’t want to move. And I wasn’t producing, either.

Then I started working more and more at Saatchi & Saatchi.

I’ve had a few jobs where I was really happy and successful, and I made a mark right out of the gate. That campaign or piece of creative became the keynote, that everything else built on. From first hand experience and observing others, I think this is a must for advertising job happiness. If you don’t make your mark in the first month, you’ll always be playing catch up.

At Saatchi, I was killing it from the get-go. I sold a launch campaign for a new type of SUV called the Highlander. Toyota, in their wisdom, looked around America and said - what these people really need is vehicle for the epic journey to Costco. Basically, a tall stationwagon without the faux-wood sides.

The line I came up with was -

“The Highlander. A little but of comfort in the rugged world of the SUV.”

Everyone thought this was the best thing since drive-thru tacos. As a freelancer, I didn’t get to produce the commercial. If we’d had emoji’s back then, mine would have shrugged. They were happy, I was happy. I handed off the the on-staff creative directors, headed back to San Diego for the holidays.

The spot is pretty funny really. It makes me nostalgic for the days when not every script started with “open on tight shot of truck badge”. (Thanks to the Analog Archeologist for this archiving this one.)

Anyway, Saatchi & Saatchi called me back in January. Within two weeks I had presented and sold 15 print ads and a package of six television commercials - one for each of the Toyota sponsored racing teams. I was on a roll.

The rest is advertising history - in other words, the kind nobody remembers.

There’s so much about advertising that I love. It’s like sports. There are different teams, called “agencies.” There are awards and online voting to keep score. When your stock is up, you can declare yourself a free agent and move.

As you move up the ladder, you become a sort of player coach - inspired by the young people, and hopefully helping them in return.

It’s a rush, utterly intoxicating – and competitive in the very best way. Other people’s work pushes you, and your work push them.

My friend Kathy Hepinstall - an accomplished writer that didn’t need to be in advertising, but still was - said that the culture of advertising is the only industry where your work is judged and approved by other creatives. In other words, within the confines of the creative department, it’s purely about ideas. That’s what makes us creatives tick - and of course then the game becomes, how do we translate the idea to the civilians.

Consequently, I love the type of people that are attracted to advertising. Creative gunslingers. Artists. Corporate misfits. People that care about the craft, when no one else does.

We’re thrown into it, because we’re creative problem solvers and in our society, Branded content in all its myriad forms is what bankrolls creative. In 1520, maybe it was the Medicis the Borgias and the Church. 500 years later, the applied arts are commissioned by Apple, GM and Geico.

I’m grateful to the people that took the time to mentor me. (And just as grateful to the people that put up with my mercurial b.s.)

I could go on - and I will. At length. Elsewhere. The point is, I got caught up in it. And for a ne’er-do-well Day Laborer that could never keep track of his tools or hold a job at Starbucks, I’m grateful for the ride.

But I do remember at different points along the way thinking - wasn’t I supposed to finish a book? Or something?

But there were kids to raise. Games to coach. Deadlines to meet. Planes to catch. Commercials to be shot.

I’d tell myself it’s ok. I’d justify. No, I’m really happy and glad to be an artist without the starving part.

One day, I thought - so we’re doing this Super Bowl commercial … A Super Bowl commercial will be seen by roughly 125 million people …

Compare that to a novel … let’s pick one at random off the shelf … how about Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.

Since it was published on February 1, 1996, Infinite Jest has sold roughly 1.25 million copies. More back-of-the-napkin math. Infinite Jest is over 1000 pages long, with a load of digressive footnotes and asides. So the people that have actually finished Infinite Jest? We’ll be generous and say 1/3 …. that’s approximately 400,000 … round up …. that’s 300 to 1.

So for every person that has finished Infinite Jest - - 300 people saw my Super Bowl commercial. And I did a few more than one.

But there was always that little itch at the back of my cranium, a little hole in my heart, a clench in my gut. The yellow brick road not taken.

Okay, let’s wrap this up.

The blank page is an open invitation. But the page is also mirror. Writing is how I process reality. Writing is as much a part of me as … my love of furry animals, birds and the Rhododendron, the majestic Douglas Fir, A spring northerly, Banana Slugs, the singular scent of Lake Washington on an August Day, the Rolling Stones “Hot Rocks” and my strong Irish chin (thanks Dad.)

You get the idea.

But to be honest – and at this point, what have I got to lose – I’ve always been a jam musician first, and a writer second. My creative process goes like this. Let’s get the band together, plug in, and see what happens.

I’m not really interesting in narrative arc, or story, or endings. But I’m eternally excited about possibilities. The simple question, “What if?” always gets my blood pumping “What’s next?” Eh. Whatever.

Maybe I’ll finish this book. Maybe it will spark something else. Probably both.

This bold prediction is based on the fact that I did finish Infinite Jest. Twice.1

I’ll start dropping some tracks. “Stay tuned.”

In the long illustrious history of the lost soul/young writer coming-of-age story, we have a new entry. Gorgeous writing. Sympathetic, memorable characters that are so real, you feel like you’re going to meet them at the Dunkin Donuts. The story begins with Hai - young, talented, Vietnamese, stoned - about to jump off an icy Connecticut bridge to his death. Just in time, he’s saved by an old Lithuanian woman named Grazina. From there, we’ve got trips down dementia-memory lane, deep dives into Civil War history, The Real Lives of Fast Food peeps (not coming to Bravo network any time soon) - The economic, social and emotional fallout of American culture is all here, even grassroots pro wrestling. Symbolism is abundant, and the social commentary is oblique enough that everything stays naturalistic, rather than becoming parody. I’m not going say any more, because I don’t want to spoil it.

Enjoy. Booksmaxxer rating, must-read, 9 out of 11.

Next: Martyr, By Kaveh Akbar.

Can’t help but compare these two. Two stories of gay young men. Addicts. Immigrants. Both books written by writers that were poets first, so the language is a sensual pleasure, but unlike Baghlava, you can enjoy whole paragraphs over and over again, just lick the plate clean, enjoy! Maybe read them to who ever is in the room with you!, and you won’t suffer from a sugar crash or spoil your dinner.

Martyr! is more pointed in its commentary and instructively Persian in its viewpoint. The hero - aptly named Cyrus Shams - is Iranian by birth, and so if you’re going to read one book that gives emotional context and continuity to what’s going on the Middle East right now - this book is a must read. A tonal note: Martyr! does not have the warm humor of Gladness; It’s as heavy as a waterlogged Persian Lenj sunk in the sea of the unconscious. But haunting as a modern-day Hamlet, and as worth your time.

And now for something completely different.

Children of Ash and Elm, by Neil Price.

Neil Price has spent his entire life digging up Viking burial sites in cold-ass frozen bogs, so you don’t have to.

The narrative is academic, but the subject matter is so freakin “out there” it needs to be grounded to keep it all straight. Your usual histories of the Viking age just start with the raids on England, then we have Wessex and Alfred, and then some mention of the Vikings going up the Seine to attack Paris, etc. By contrast, this book spends nearly as much time on the Eastern expansion of the Viking culture. I had no idea that Vikings crossed the Baltic to Lake Lagoda - the largest freshwater lake in Europe - and from there, they followed the Dneiper all the way down through the Ukraine and Russia to Constantinople. In fact, the word “Russian” came from “those that row.” Vikings even became the personal guard of the Emperor in Constantinople, because they were huge and baddass.

Neil Price doesn’t romance the Vikings though. They were despicable, violent, slave-owning pirates who were Viking-first. But aside from that, somewhat different from modern humans, with an utterly alien world view.

Children of Ash and Elm also has a rundown of what we know about Viking/Pagan spirituality. Like, did you know that Vikings believed that they had basically four or five souls? One spirit was “Your true self” - which was who you really were, deep down, doesn’t change. #2 was you outside self, and that could change. Vikings stories are filled with known shapeshifters and other magic. For example, your husband Björn could turn into a bear, or your wife Gudrun could cast spells. And why they gave up all that fun “Lord of the Rings” stuff for Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis’ term, not mine) is anyone’s guess.

Spirit #3 was the spirit of your family - this had continuity through the generations. And finally, there was a sort of Anima that was your Luck. So in battle, if your Luck deserted you - that was a real thing. Or someone said, I don’t feel like this is going to be a Lucky voyage, they’d fold the sails and stay home.

The book ends with a discussion of Iceland, Greenland and Vinland - which was the Viking outpost in North America, at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. It’s an actual archaeological site. I could drive there. I just might.

I was so intrigued by the whole thing, I’m now reading the Icelandic Sagas - which is like the Land Beyond the Wall of Game of Thrones, but with a few less white walkers and dragons, and more talented bands, like Sigur Ros.

Have a great day my friends, and a good read.

Next on Booksmaxxer: The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver.

This past Mother’s Day, we bought my wife flowers, made brunch and watched American Psycho. It was amazing. We might make this a Mother’s Day tradition.

A movie about the 80’s, based on a Bret Easton Ellis book, released in 2000.

There are many admirable things about this movie, a spot on send up of the 80’s, it’s fascination with appearance and vapidity over substance, and just the sheer power of the language. One of the most memorable proclivities of Patrick Bateman, played brilliantly and indelibly by Christian Bale, is the way that he talks about music when he’s priming himself to kill someone.

During these pseudo-intellectual music critiques, he analyzes the vapid artists of the most cringe-worthy period of music history with the depth usually reserved for a 87 Bordeax, or a Shakespeare Play.

And I’m thinking – eegad. This is is how men are. Yep. Guilty as charged.

I’ve always thought of myself more like Shrevie Schrieber, from Diner. I mean, I don’t care of my girlfriend touches my records, fine, have at it. But just understand, it’s important. Certain songs mean something. Albums mean something.

And whether it’s a coin collection or writers or bands, I’m a completist by nature. And while there are a lot of albums and songs I love, there are a few bands that have warranted their own phase, Who I’ve dug into enough have weird B-sides and boxed sets stuck away in the basement. With these artists, I have understanding of the different movements of their career and solo careers. For each of these bands and artists who I can roughly associate a period of my life to – a time and place.

I had a Brian Eno phase. I had a Ramones phase. I had a Brian Wilson/Beach Boys/Pet Sounds phase. The same can be said of the Beatles, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Led Zeppelin (definitely), The Sex Pistols, The Wrens, Redd Kross.

Honorable mentions: Verbena, The Flaming Lips, Blondie, Nirvana, The Velvet Underground, Pavement, John Coltrane, Blue Oyster Cult, Queen, Black Sabbath, Scream.

And then there’s Frank Zappa.

For me, Frank Zappa was a coming of age ritual for our rock-n-roll tribe. There was life before Frank Zappa, and life after. I had a cycle of 15 albums including Sheik Yerbouti, Zoot Allures and Uncle Meat that I had bought from the used Record Stores on the Ave, and I would play in continuous rotation.

He and a friend got us stoned in the back of a 70’s era van, and when I walked into that concert I was in a Frank Zappa was the first concert I ever went to, thanks to Victor’s Dad. world. So many interesting characters. Guys platinum blond Rod Stewart hair, girls in leather pants. I knew this was something wrong going on here, and it felt so right.

This was the Joe’s Garage era, and Zappa and his band blew me away. It was a big arena rock show, but so much more. It was soul. It was noise. It was comedy and social commentary. It was Mingus style jazz, orchestrated and composed.

And Frank’s guitar solos were things of beauty – a marked contrast to the potty humor and sexual gross-out innuendo and other questionable exercises of free speech he was prone to.

I have a three disc set called Shut up and Play Your Guitar, which – along with the rock opera Joe’s Garage – has gotten a lot of airplay over the years.

Zappa was prone to doo-wop parody. 20 minute narratives about Billy the Mountain, who was married to Ethel, a tree growing out of his left shoulder. Or working with the London Symphony orchestra. So much of what he did was not just different, it was differently different.

And yet, later in his career, he covered Tied to the Whipping Post, by the Allman Brothers. Why would he do such a thing? Why would such an iconoclast cover a straight-up blues-based, classic rock song? Not a hint of parody. Is the answer in the lyrics? I could ask the internet. But I don’t wanna hear the Patrick Bateman’s of the world. I just want to sit with the mystery. Frank was an avowed article, but there’s a bit of the god particle in this solo. Music, like the Brahman of the Hindus, is that one thing from which words turn back.

Here’s the original, live at the Fillmore East, hallowed ground.

It was on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday in the cultural desert of the 80’s, when Chris Peppard pulled our an album by Redd Kross, Teen Babes from Monsanto.

I had no idea that the album was entirely made up of covers. I just thought it was great.

It’s more than an album. It’s a sort of a master key to an alternate universe, a completely different way of viewing music and pop culture.

Each song was doorway to a realm - an untapped catalog with its own mythology. Bowie, Iggy, Stones, Kiss.

In particular, I liked Deuce (of course, epic); Citadel (Love the Stones, but this is a huge upgrade on the original) Heaven only Knows (The Shangri-Las) and most of all Blow You a Kiss in the Wind.

Blow You a Kiss in the Wind has all of my sensibilities wrapped up in a spritely 2:07.

It’s part romantic pop. It’s part punk. It’s a perfect. To paraphrase Napoleon Dynamite - this is the Ligar of songs, and totally my favorite animal.

And when you get to the surprise chewy center of this bubblegum classic? It’s not just a cover, they comes from one of the great television shows off all time - Bewitched, which I used to watch all the time with my mom.

And it just keeps getting better, it’s a bubblegum cover twice over, sort of like getting the archer shooting the star on the wrapper of a Tootsie Pop. Because it’s not just a song on Bewitched, performed by Elizabeth Montgomery, masquerading as her own cousin, Serena. During the show, there’s a guest appearance by Boyce and Hart, the original composers, who have been kidnapped and taken to the witchy alt-world.

Which I really have never left.

Peace my friends.

My first memory of really hearing War Pigs is a bit personal, but here goes.

After another night of running around with my buddies Victor, Ivan and Mike, doing teenage boy stuff, I crept noiselessly (or so I thought) back into my house and up the stairs to my bedroom. As dawn leaked into the windows, I was not yet ready for sleep. I put Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on my turntable, laid down in bed with headphones on.

It wasn't the first time I heard it. I owned Paranoid - Black Sabbath’s second album - along with Zeppelin 4, Aerosmith Live Bootleg, a Mattel electronics Baseball game, A poster of the SuperSonics, along with all the other stuff every boy kept in his room in 198___? whatever.

War Pigs is the first track.

The first power chord falls, like the hammer of God, heavy as death itself. The air raid sirens commence, the real deal, just like the big yellow one in our Montlake neighborhood that was tested every Wednesday at noon. A reminder that if we heard it at any of the other 10,079 minutes of the week, it was time to duck and cover, as Russian ICBMs rained fire and death from the skies.

I was dragged under, like an alligator drags its prey down to the deep. The Swirl of Iommi/Butler/Ward had me. Virtuosity isn’t how hard and fast you play the notes, it’s the spaces between. And then Ozzy starts in, with his unearthly howl.

Generals gathered in their masses … just like witches at black masses …

Oh, I think I forgot to mention? I'd taken about 3 1/2 hits of green pyramid - a type of LSD popular at the time. So I was definitely feeling the spaces between notes.

I’m the last guy to romanticize (or condemn) psychedelic mind expansion. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything. All I’m saying is that this was a memorable and perhaps even pivotal experience in the life of young Max.

I was the kind of little kid that would sit in full lotus just for fun. From the get-go I was intrigued by the idea of expanding consciousness. I’d read Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception.We were too late for the hippy thing. Too early for Burning Man.

Regardless, we were ready to launch into orbit as unknowing as Ablik, Verny, Gordy, the other monkeys the Russians sent into space.

Back to the music.

After the digressive spin-down of “Luke’s Wall” the record speeds up, right at the end, before falling into silence. A little studio trickery that the boys from Birmingham put in just for me. I panicked, thinking my spirit was leaving through the top of my head. And maybe it did. Maybe it did.

The river of life flows on. Bananas grow browner, the rich grow exponentially richer, and losers from Seattle clean up, get jobs, move to SoCal, fall in love, have children. Etc.

Ozzy left on his own Crazy Train, and the Clash, the Pistols, Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth came along. The whole Seattle thing came and blipped out, and War Pigs receded to cultural wallpaper, mere Stoner Arena Rock.

In 2014 I had the opportunity to work with The Flaming Lips. About that time, The Flaming Lips released a cover of War Pigs - an iTunes exclusive - and performed it on the Late Night circuit.

One thing I LOVE about the Flaming Lips is that they are really fun and funny. They’ve got a tongue-in-cheek take on everything.

However, this cover of War Pigs is notable for its complete lack of irony. It is straight-up, sincere, even reverent, and note-for-note faithful to the original. Pay special attention to the drums. An extraordinary display of musicianship.

And, as social commentary, it’s a gut punch. They take a headbanger classic - the proverbial sing-along anthem at the big arena show - and force us to re-hear words we’ve heard a thousand times.

…
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
…

Politicians hide themselves away
They only start the war
Why should they go out and fight?
leave that to the poor.
Time will tell on their power(mad) minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgment day comes, yeah.

The only thing that the Flaming Lips add is a plaintive, voice-like sound effect repeating

Why?

Why?

Why?

further reading:

A really great history of Black Sabbath, from the Birmingham Ballet. (yep, of all places)

I know there’s been a resurgence in interest in the possible positive effects of psychedelics. My take .. in the words of Robert Plant, “I know to trip is just to fall.”

I have zero interest in microdosing - but hey, no judgment.

More about Walpurgis, here.

The best way to get to know a place is to go for a run. Have a goal in mind, start running, and get a little lost. That’s the way you discover things. One of my favorite runs in the Washington DC area is the run around the Tidal Basin – seeing the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt memorials ... and their little dog, too.

On this visit to DC I decided to mix it up. I’d run down 34th, over the Francis Scott Key Bridge to Virginia (wow, I really ran all the way to Virginia!) hang a left on the bike path and over to Theodore Roosevelt Island.

I’ve always felt an affinity for Teddy Roosevelt. We’re both nearsighted, bookish, frail asthmatic boys who became fitness and outdoor enthusiasts. Teddy loved National Parks. I love National Parks and I’m grateful to Teddy for founding them. Teddy loved to shoot animals. I love to pet animals and scratch them under the chin.

OK, you can’t agree on everything.

There’s a footbridge to Theodore Roosevelt Island and it’s perfect for trail running. Classic urban wilderness, with a dense tangle of scrub and second growth forest. Down the length of riverside of the island runs a long boardwalk through a marsh lined with hundreds of Yellow Flag Irises.

In the distance I heard a wild turkey gobble, as well as the local denizens - Cardinals, Robins, Sparrows and maybe a Northern Flicker. I passed two groups to birders, shouldering binoculars and photographic gear. They eyed me with annoyance, with my labored breathing and plodding footfalls.

Completing the loop, I came upon an expansive memorial to Teddy Roosevelt.

This is just the sort of accidental discovery that used to happen before we liked and instagrammed every place on earth into banal familiarity.

All alone, I had that feeling of quiet discovery, like coming upon a lost monument in the wilderness.

Teddy asked about my Team Cuba shirt. I said I was just there. He said, I’m so glad I liberated the Cuban people in 1898! I said, I hate to break it to you, but it’s a little more complicated than that. He listened, and sighing, said if all took was riding up the hill with his Rough Riders then he’d do it all over again, in a heartbeat.

But it even “splendid little wars” can have oversized consequences. The Spanish American war was short and sweet, but like eating a second piece of Orange Cardamon Bundt Cake, there are ramifications. Not my best best analogy, but you get it. Imperialism means shouldering responsibility. Freedom for people doesn’t necessarily follow from freedom for, say, sugar corporations.

Enough with the light infantry. I turned and charged valiantly over the Theodore Roosevelt bridge and back to the District of Columbia.

As I ran, I wondered. Hey, what’s that huge white edifice to my left? Ohhhh, it dawned on me. That’s the Kennedy Center, soon to be knows as the Trump Center for Predictive Market-Enabled Reality Show Competitions and Mixed Martial Arts, Brought to you by BitCoin.

I stopped to chat with JFK and so, the Team Cuba Shirt came up. I told him I was last plane out before the oil blockade went into full effect. The blockade that he first signed off on in 1962, and which the Cuban people have suffered under ever since. (With a few moments of respite, as noted in earlier posts.)

Sore subject, the Bay of Pigs. But the lesson of the years is that not everything can be solved with PT boat diplomacy. Not too duck responsibility, but it was Eisenhower’s plan. And let’s not forget the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aren’t you glad we stood our ground, and Cuba didn’t start spark WWIII. You could have been telemarking through the radioactive fallout of a nuclear winter, instead of playing tourist in Cuba.

I see your point, I said.

I continued my run, up Rock Creek. I passed bikers. They smiled at my Team Cuba National Soccer Team shirt. I passed fellow runners, and they smiled, too. I passed a secret service SUV. I don’t think they smiled, they were just scrolling Tiktok or something.

As I ran, eyes passed from my Team Cuba shirt to my face red with exertion. A question hung in the air.

“Why is this pink complexioned guy wearing a Team Cuba shirt?”

In answer:

"Obviously I’m not from Cuba. I believe in the Cuban people. I like their music and I like their style. I’m inspired by their quiet resilience, their gallows humor and their unbreakable will and resourcefulness under hardship.

Besides, who doesn’t love an underdog?

I am definitely Team Cuba.”

America’s relationship with Cuba didn’t start with the Spanish American War.

For starters, Columbus never set foot on “America.” on October 28, 1492, he discovered CUBA.

Ever since, the story of America and Cuba has been intertwined. It’s the story of Sugar, Tobacco, Race, Class, Exploitation, Money, Resilience, Revolution, The Mafia, Rum, Music, Gambling and Power. In other words, todas las cosas buenas.

Let’s hope next time Cuba is “freed” it’s for the people. Freedom is more than free markets.

I’ve seen first hand what the Cuban people can do with nothing. I can’t wait to see what this ingenious culture can do with the proper resources.

If there’s a positive analogy, no one ever believed that Ireland could escape the vicious, retributive entanglements of centuries of cruelty and hate. But here we are, Troubles behind us.

It can happen, and I believe it will happen. And I don’t care who gets the credit.

Blessing to all those suffering under the ravages of war and institutional economic deprivation.

Peace to all.

further reading:

Cuba, an American History by Ada Ferrer.

further viewing:

Adventure Elliot has a great video series on YouTube, and he was just there. His experience lines up with mine + answer my question - what happened after I left?

The first time I heard the Green Manalishi with the Two-Pronged Crown I was in 8^th Grade. They would play it all the time on KISW and KZOK, which were the Rock stations we grew up with in Seattle, circa 1980, dawn of the age of MTV and hair metal. Of course, it was the version by Judas Priest from their Unleashed in the East (1979) which was getting a helluva LOT of well-deserved airplay at time.

Seattle. What can I say. We like our guitars loud and Marshalls stacked high.

Their version is so iconically Judas Priest, with Rob Halford’s Ültra-Metal-Mänly Howling Operatic Oütrö, that I thought it was an original. And it might as well be. It’s about the most Judas Priest song of all. (With the possible exception of Diamonds and Rust, which is another Cover Story.)

Imagine my surprise when once I’d emerged from my middle and high school MDMA-and-Schmidt Beer fueled haze to find out that Green Manalishi was actually a cover. This was a two-pronged revelation. First of all, it was a Fleetwood Mac song. And secondly, (what?!?) there was a Fleetwood Mac before the Nicks/Buckingham/McVie Fleetwood Mac era.

It was a very different band, initially founded by one of the most expressive, influential blue-eyed bluesmen ever, Peter Green.

Peter Green founded the original Fleetwood Mac in 1967. They were a four to five dude blues-rock outfit that had a short string of hits in the British charts, including the instrumental Albatross and most memorably – Oh Well. And well, you know what they say about the thin line between madness, genius and copious use of psychedelics and other forms of mind-expansion. The Peter Green version of Fleetwood Mac was cut short when Peter Green started wearing monk robes on stage and talking to his Higher Power. And so Mick Fleetwood and John McVie absconded with their namesake band and Fleetwood Mac became the girl/guy icons of Rumours that we all know and love.

Gotta be the only band ever named after the drummer and the bassist. But ah, where was I.

The Green Manalishi lives!

There’s always some truth to the mythical characters that haunt our dreams. They inhabit worlds below the level of consciousness. They are the unseen forces that drive us, and therefore just as real as a doorknob, refrigerator or the nightmare on the White House lawn. But I’m talking about Dragons, Ogres, Elves and their emotional reality. Sometimes it takes a book series, or movies, comic books or entire cultures mythic backstory (as in the case of the Vikings) to bring them to life.

Peter Green only needed one song to make a creature of our nightmares real. The Green Manalishi, representing that evil succubus, Money and Greed, came to him one night in the form of dog, and thereafter hounded him through decades of schizophrenic madness. You can hear its footsteps in the drums and its howl in the vocals, through a solo that wanders through a blind maze and fades finally into a dark silence.

An eerie incantation called this creature into being and it haunts us still, if I’m reading the tea leaves right.

Green Manalishi - Fleetwood Mac / Peter Green Studio Version

Live in Boston, 1970. If you have the time, stick around for the 6-string bass solo. This is what blues rock is capable of, following modal Jazz into the heavenly orbits of improv.

In 1970, Fleetwood Mac leader Peter Green walked away from his band, saying that he wanted to give all his money away, and make music that would bring us closer to God. Nuts, right? People that bring us closer to God don’t always end up living happily ever after. A belated thanks to Mr. Green. I believe you accomplished what you set out to do - at least in my understanding of that energy to inspires us to seek the universal creative sap that flows through limbs and branches of life, and inhabits every cell.

Rob Halford and Judas Priest version, heartfelt and heavy as metal can be.

Peace, my friends.

You see things when you're not looking at your phone. A smeared fingerprint on the bus window. Outside the bus: Plants. Some I know the names of, most I don't. Curbs and sidewalk. Pavement. Clouds, sky, a late model Ford pickup. A dog looking at all the same stuff I'm looking at while his owner looks at his phone.

Inside the bus, across from me: A large box of Lay's Chips. Variety Pack. It's on a woman's lap.

- That's smart, I say. Bringing your own snacks on the flight.

- Well, she says, nodding to a woman to her left, two people over. She wanted to leave them. But I said, those are good chips. There's no way I'm letting those go to waste. (brief pause) What's your favorite?

- Among the Lays expanding family of chips, I'm a plain Lay's man myself. They're a classic. The one that started it all.

- Would you like a bag?
I briefly consider.
- No. I'm set. You see, my Aunt Karen was going to throw away my favorite kind of corn chips. So I took what remained and I packed them in my suitcase. I even left some pants and underwear at her house to make extra room.

We share a nod at our shared priorities.

- You know what you gotta try? she asks.
- No, tell me.
- Lays "All Dressed" flavor chips. I can't even describe them.
- Hmm. All Dressed. Is that like an everything bagel?
- Sorta, It's like salty-tangy-sweet. Sour Cream and Onion. Bar-B-Q. Regular. All the flavors in one bite. It sounds terrible but it's amazing!
I'm thinking, this is like Willy Wonka. But for chips. Oh those heroes of the Lays test kitchen. Sheer magic.

There are two people between chip-woman and her friend. A mother and her daughter caught in the conversational crossfire. Their reactions to this impromptu Chip Summit divide along generational lines. The mom is smiling along, eyes thoughtful, considering her favorite chip. The teenage daughter is shrinking into her seat, thinking just when you thought a shuttle bus ride full of people from the rental car center couldn't get any worse. These people keep talking. OMG I'm like literally dying. But she hasn't been around long enough to know. Chips are important, and not just because they power our computers. They taste good.

- How about you, the woman offers to a man standing by the door. You want a bag of chips?
- Nah I'm good.

He probably has his own chips in his suitcase I reason. He's wearing a blue business sport jacket over a zippered athletic-style cardigan and shorts. Because he too had to make room. ​

That's a veteran traveller.

******

If this were an actual social post, on actual social media - a poll would be forthcoming. What's your favorite chip? Has it evolved over time?

And/or
What kind of conversations do you have with people when you look up from your phone?
What do you see "IRL," in real life?

I’m fond of coincidences. And really great musicianship. Both are glimpses into the mind of the Great Design.

Jazz Alley is a niiice venue. When I lived in Seattle, the places I’d frequent with my grade of musicians and fans were not nearly so classy. Haha. Ahem.

Good acoustics. Respectful, enthusiastic audience. They made an announcement to just put the phones away and enjoy. And people actually heard the announcement - another benefit of not over-amplified music.

It’s the Emmet Cohen Quintet - but as Emmet said during intros - all of the players are band leaders in their own right - so it was kind of all-star night.

The set list went kinda fast/fast/slow/fast/fast/slow alternating Miles Davis & John Coltrane. Mostly standards but a few obscure gems and one original mixed in.

In traditional jazz combo fashion, each got their moments to shine with multiple solos. The crowd was completely lost in the improvisation. Vibes were rapt and appreciative.

They started with an extended version of Budo, from Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool. They followed that with an inspirated and athletic Two-Bass Hit - Birth of the Bop, if you will.

Next, they slowed it down with Amandla from Miles Davis’ 1989 album of the same name. I loved the version they did - I hope they take it into the studio at some point.

Next - Emmet did a piano vamp intro that eventually wandered ashore with the familiar first notes of Coltrane’s Giant Steps - Again, they were off the the races. I loved that Tivon Pennicott did not jump on the solo. He did not try to out-Trane Trane - he settled in and worked it out and up to a fine crescendo, before handing off to Jeremy Pelt. Watching both of the horn players on Saturday night, one word came into my mind. “Serious.” Even “important.” Sure, music is a fun night out, but when Emmet introduces these guys as generational talents, it’s not hyperbole. Ruben, Joe, Tivon, Jeremy, Emmet - are triple black belt master level. Cirque de Soleil, but with breath, sticks, fingers, rhythm, tone, pause. They guys have done the work. And we, the audience, reap the rewards.

And of course, there’s no greater joy than tapping into the Flow state - turning 30k+ hours of practice into groove-based, collaborative improv.

From Giant Steps they slowed into a smooth breakdown, which Emmet announced at the end was the Emmet’s Place Theme. It must have been in the same key because it felt almost like a improvised post script.

Last, was My Favorite Things. Fitting.

I put together a little playlist of the original tracks they played, as well as a film from earlier in the tour in Massachusetts, for a taste. Felt like they were really on when we saw them, but maybe it’s just the magic of live jazz. Nothing like it.

Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life. - Art Blakely

Peace to all.

Because there’s an app for that. EasyPayPark.com, or something.

It has nothing to do with the civic government. Someone thought “this outsourcing of prison systems is going so well, as well as the privatization of military, let’s apply that same smart thinking to the parking process.” So the real adventure begins.

I take a breath and I’m careful to exhale longer than I inhale, just like the optimization podcasters told me to do. I begin. The cloud icon with arrow tells me that I have had it before, but it was offloaded at some point. I re-download the app. The wheel pie chart slowly fills in.

There are a series of friendly pop ups welcoming me to the experience of paying for parking. The first says “Parking is now Effortless!” and then blah, blah blah, I swipe to the next page. And the next till I get to the part where I actually pay. Now I have to input my phone number and sign up for paying for parking, which is so effortless.

Now the first decision, and my first chance to make a mistake. Do I have an account, or not? I choose “new account” – hoping against hope that I can just start over. Because there’s no way I can remember a password from 6-7 or even 12 years ago. But I get kicked back. There is a phone number associated with this account.

Okay, have it your way, PayByPhone app.

I take a flying chance, input my phone number and a password I’ve used for everything for a while.

A message comes back. “This account has been suspended. Please call 1-800-Udum-ass! (or whatever the number was.)

My vision briefly turns red and I have a vision of two evil toddlers, the devil’s cherubs, little horns poking through their untrimmed locks, rolling in laughter somewhere on the other side of the internet.

To be an aging curmudgeon is one of my deepest fears. I don’t want to be Andy Rooney – remember Andy Rooney? Or worse, my half-crocked Dad complaining about how the TV remote control doesn’t work.

I work with technology. In fact, I get paid to have fresh ideas that often involve technology.

Here’s a new idea, for free. How about a metal trinket, small enough to fit in your pocket, that you could drop in – idunno – some sort of meter? For your individual parking space? And walk away. Done. Maybe this small trinket could hold universal monetary value, and you could use it to buy other things. Like a donut. Or a cup of coffee at 7-11.

Just an idea. I got plenty of ‘em.

Peace, friends.

*****