Everyday after work I slowly grind up the hill back to the train station to begin part two of the roundtrip that is my epic daily commute. Many of those days I’m waylaid for a pint at Big Time. Then I get back on my uphill line from 42nd to 43rd. I never take the Ave, sometimes I take Brooklyn, but I prefer to take the alley. It’s like a rite of passage, running the gamut, running the gauntlet, a garbage-strewn shitshow defining the U district. The seedy unsightly smelly underbelly behind the scenes with unappetizing dumpsters overflowing everywhere behind all the restaurants on the Ave and between a handful of pay-for-parking lots that will all be 15 story apartment buildings soon enough. My line adapts, overcomes and changes depending on the delivery trucks or the posse of Uber Eats-Grub Hub bros in their cars waiting and clogging up the South end.
The day before yesterday in the alley I had thoughts of pausing and leaning my bike on a dumpster for a photo depending on what just right light through yonder building breaks. Looking to sum up the U district in one digital snap shot. But as I rolled up to an ideal spot, there was a guy pissing by a dumpster. He was in no hurry and wasn’t trying to disguise it at all. So I kept rolling on to the station and waited for the elevator with my bike.
got on the elevator and pressed the PLATFORM button. The doors were almost closed when someone pushed the down button and paused the elevator. Two more passengers got on. One of them was the piss alley piss guy. The toe of his right shoe (his downhill foot) was still a little wet dappled with piss. I shook my head and said to myself “welcome to the U district”
Yesterday I was grinding up the alley until a delivery truck clogged up my line. So I took a left through the parking lots over to Brooklyn where I paused and took the symbolic photo above. As the ideal U district piss alley underbelly shot exists only in my mind.
this morning at the mothership I tossed this journal into the Math Department’s mail cubby. And that’s all happened before, but today I began to consider my own ill-posed problems and the inverse proportional relationships in my day-to-day
travelling salesman story problem paragraphs rolling out in real time Monday through Friday… …it’s the same on the weekends as the rest of the days
the talk being talked
occasionally
coincides
with the walk
being walked
when it does
the syzygy
appeals to me
alignment & authenticity
Polar opposites don't push away, it's the same on the weekends as the rest of the days and I know, I should go, but I'll probably stay and that's all you can do about some things
Early this morning as I was screening this shirt for Mr. Hella Corndog Classic himself, I was trying to recall what year it was when I busted out a batch of HC/DC shirts and that spiffy Hella Yellow Jersey for the race winner, Stacie Bain.
This was not the epic Monorail Kevin Cool Guy Hella cracked sternum Corndog Classic...
this was 2009 perhaps? Hella Hella
April 26 did fall on Sunday that year...
Soon this throwback will be on its way to Rip City.
On Saturday I was hoping to find The Copywriter in the Peak Pick section at the library, but this book found me instead. It jumped my reading list queue and became the al la carte book of the day. The number one book of the weekend.
After I finished it, I found its book review in the New York Times. Then I realized if I had read the review a couple weeks ago I would have no motivation to read the actual book.
I recommend this book and if you want to read it, please don’t read the review yet. If you don’t really care to read this book then the review will sum it all up for you, too well.
There’s an authentic satisfaction that comes with actually reading a book. It’s a feeling that’s quite different from the hollow jibber-jabber empty chit-chat that comes from only reading a book review and pretending like you’ve read the book.
Yesterday I made this postcard on a scrap of matboard that Heather gifted me the day before. Today it’s on its way to a penpal in Palo Alto.
The working title is “shift” as if you’re reaching down for your downtube shifter to get another cog on your 5-speed freewheel, the chain guided by a trusty Suntour derailleur. And all of that is OK. Literally. In a simple retro road grime work-a-day refurbished BikeWorks bike kind of way.
However, the “shift” that I find more interesting occurs with the changing light as you hold the postcard in your hand. Given center stage the silver and gold arrows take over and it’s kind of a jumble, a tangle, a mess. But as you turn the card, changing the angles of incidence and the angles of reflection, the arrows recede and the white paint of the derailleur shines through clearly.
It’s hard to describe at 4:33 in the morning, on my first cup of coffee, with just a couple slap-dash digital shots. But you get the picture.
This my current reading list. Bouncing between these two...
“Show Don’t Tell” by Curtis Sittenfeld is a collection of short stories. You may have seen her name in the New Yorker or on one of her several other books.
I got this book from Molly months ago and now I’m finally into it. Good stuff these stories are. Good stuff.
“Football” by Chuck Klosterman. This book is not for the average football fan. I’m confident it would not appeal to the Seahawk fans I saw last week crowding my 5:30am train on their way downtown to stake out a spot on the curb on 4th Avenue to wait six hours for a chance to see the superbowl trophy roll by.
I’m a Klosterman fan but I need to take his work in small bites. He knows his shit and can talk about anything for a long time. He talks about football and a wide range of other things as well. It brings to mind a fictional metaphorical road trip in a minivan from Flagstaff back to Grinnell listening to whatever radio station came in clearly across Nebraska when long-time KEXP DJ Kevin Cole, one the backseat passengers, couldn’t stop commenting on every song that came on the radio, expressing his amazing knowledge of music, bands, musicians and the music industry, until one of the other passengers finally told him to “shut the fuck up and just look out the window or take a nap or something”
I consider myself a football fan but not “an average football fan” and therefore I’m within Klosterman’s target audience with this book. I’m taking it in small servings. When I got to a passage on page 182 where Klosterman mentions Public Enemy’s “She Watch Channel Zero” I had to pause and smile and give an imaginary fist pump ::: two seven five four eight she watched she said all added up to zero and nothing in her head
It might be hard to watch a game with Klosterman if you wanted to actually pay attention to it. But he points out several times in the book, a three-hour televised football game contains only 11 minutes of actual live play. Klosterman would have no problem keeping you entertained for those other 169 minutes of down time.
This is my next next next book. I've only read a review of it but I can already recommend it to you two too.
This track was on their slick LA produced major label album Don’t Tell a Soul, released on February 1, 1989. George HW Bush was just getting settled into the White House after 8 years of Ronald Reagan. My roommate at Grinnell had this album and Dave Troy kept it in heavy rotation.
In 1989 income disparity was a thing. But nothing like what it is on this day in 2026. I’m a lot closer to getting drunk than I am to getting rich.
Here’s to retrospect and black & white pictures with all their grey bunk. Here’s to broken clocks that are still spot-on twice a day. Here’s to ONE LESS CARE at 3:33.
Today is Two Six Two Six and that's Adam Vinatieri with Two Six Seven Three.
He's the NFL all-time leading scorer with 2,673 points and was just selected for the NFL Hall of Fame. Vinatieri holds several other NFL records. I believe his scoring record is untouchable. The top 27 NFL scorers are all place kickers and only two of them are still active, Matt Prater 1,908 and Nick Folk 1,826.
Vinatieri wore #4 for the Patriots and the Colts and his birthday is one two two eight seven two.
Erika Krause’s Save Me, Stranger is now available in paperpack. I got mine a few days ago and I’m wrapping it up as we speak. This is a collection of 12 short stories that really pack a punch, each in their own way. Depth far beyond their brevity. Nearly every one of the stories had been published previously in various literary journals and magazines like the Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, Crazy Horse and Glamour.
Krause is a Grinnell College graduate. Coincidence? No nada nunca nicht. Correlation is not causation but there’s a connection. All roads lead to Grinnell. And not just on RAGBRAI. Try wearing a Grinnell College hoodie one day and see how it affects your elevator conversations.
I’m sure you recall our book club from a few years ago when we discussed Krause’s Tell Me Everything, an award winning memoir and literary true crime story. The subject matter and release of the book timed well with the arrival of Coach Prime at Colorado. Perspective on major college football is just one piece of that puzzle. I recommend that book to you.
I recommend this book to you too. The Seattle Public Library has 8 copies in circulation. You could also buy your very own copy to have and to hold HERE
Put two stamps on it and dropped it in the mail. This upcycled 18-pack scrap is now on its way to my postcard-penpal in Palo Alto. It took me a moment to get the Rainier Vista on the electric ass map to line up with the real deal real life Rainier Vista, but when it did, it made me smile.
The first time I saw this I kinda glanced at it and kept moving in a counterclockwise direction around the cute little lobby gallery at the HENRY with its quirky acquisitions. The second time I saw it, I took a moment to read the wall text and I said FUCKIN A+. The third time I saw it was on this day we call today, I took a picture to make it last longer, as you can see that’s me reflecting off the glass in the 20 ⅜” x 16 ⅜” x ¾” frame. I have been known to talk some shit about Kenny G but I believe they should rename Franklin High School——>Kenny G High and UW music should obviously be known as the University of Washington Kenny G School of Music. All that being said, this piece of artwork speaks to me on a 7 layer dip level. The artist is my age and cassette tapes were in our wheelhouses in our formative auto-reverse mix tape loop to loop years. And even though I’m just a square white kid from Spokane that played the violin in 3rd & 4th grade I hear what Jennie C Jones is saying… ...and I admire the way she's saying it.
