Walkabout Thoughts #80

Thoughts & Stream of Consciousness, rough and ready, from an award-winning filmmaker and author you’ve never heard of, while walking off long Covid, and listening to podcasts…walk day was Thursday 5/30/2024

Tomorrow is my oldest son's birthday! So much has happened in 36 years!

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UPDATE: --- 

30 May 2024 Thursday 2pm

After I got home after this walk today... 30 May 2024 Thursday 2pm Donald Trump is now officially a convict. Officially a criminal while he's been a career criminal all his life.

Now convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the 1st degree.

I said in 2016: Trump is a career criminal.

I'm on my 3rd pint of Guinness now.

Slainte! Cheers!

"34 for 45"

34 felony counts against failed FPOTUS45.

I truly take no joy in our having to convict a FPOTUS.

I resent his initial election, knowing it could end here.

I do take joy in the functionality of democracy & Justice.

Hold onto that.

Donald Trump's a mob-type boss corrupting all he can and that which he comes into contact with.

He corrupted our Legislative Branch as POTUS45 & since.

Corrupted our Executive, for a time. Pres. BIden has been cleaning that up from the day he took office. Is Biden perfect? No. But he's at least trying to be an American President and not a fascist wannabe dictator.

Trump tried to corrupt our judiciary & succeeded somewhat.

But not all. 

Our Rule of Law held. So far.

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OK. Back to our regularly scheduled program...

Weather for the day… starting out, 56° nice sunny day starting out

Podcast "Hacks" Ep. 8 “Yes And?” with Carl Clemons-Hopkins and Johnny SibillyEp. 8 “Yes And?” with Carl Clemons-Hopkins and Johnny Sibilly and Ep. 9: “Bulletproof” with Hannah EinbinderEp. 9: “Bulletproof” with Hannah Einbinder

WTF? Marc Maron episode.

About long Covid... exercise really helps it and it's a big sign now of how low level or gone, it is in how I can now eat sugar or drink alcohol again. Back deep into Covid, drinking alcohol might’ve killed me or would feel like it. But I drank a bottle of wine with lunch over two days this past week. I had a couple Guinness on Memorial Day with lunch. I’m loving it. I never drank all the time. I grew up, you know, drinking at parties or going out and having drinks, maybe throwing darts at a bar. It's just been one of those things in Covid where you're restricted from doing it and so you want to do it more.

Whenever I’ve not felt well or I've been ill, alcohol had been an aid, something to take that edge off of the discomfort. Something long Covid disallowed.

It's now the fifth month of 2024 and I still have no motivation or desire to do any work. Fucking Covid broke me good.

I have been thinking more lately that maybe I should contact that free legal aid for filmmakers at an East Coast University to see if they can help me with my music licensing issues for my film “Pvt. Ravel's Bolero.“ A film with 78 Official Selections worldwide and 63 Film Festival Award Wins.

I’m trying to finish the film companion book for it and I’m so close. I was working on it end of December 2023 when I started getting much more ill from Long Covid. I really need to get back to editing and actually finish writing it. That is a book I could sell. NAXOS owns the copyright on the main song (1930 version of Ravel conducting "Bolero" in its first recorded public performance), and American Music owns the sheet music. I was sure it was public domain when I started that project and was surprised to find I t wasn't. 

If I can get some kind of a deal from those two, I can perhaps make use of this documentary. Or if nothing else, I may just open it up on YouTube. I can’t make money off it there, but it might bring me some kind of notoriety. When you put that much time and effort into a project, when it's that well received worldwide, I think you deserve something for those efforts.

The reason why I don’t share on my blog here, Instagram posts I used to make during my walks is because I got tired of it screwing up when I tried to shoot something and post it. In 2016 I retired as a software engineer in IT on a front-line engineering support team. When our company's websites went down, I would be on call every few weeks as the point person to be sure the website went back up. I have an extensive background in many computer IT things. 

I spent the 90s studying books on PC architecture, back when I was working on a VAX mainframe at two Seattle hospitals. I have to say though, that lately I’m finding it more confusing to use software than ever before. Instagram has done nothing but make it more difficult to use, in my view. I’m kind of sick of it. I’m hoping that AI eventually will make things easier. It's about time. I mean, I've been waiting for many of the things that are finally happening in the realm of computers and machinery, since I was a kid in the 1950s/60s.

I’m looking forward to my Alexa answering my questions better than merely super simple ones. I use my Alexa all the time. Watching something on TV, I can just ask a quick (easy) question, get an answer, then go along with the program, film or show that I'm watching, being better informed. I find it a great aid to myself and people in general.

Anyway, on my last walk I did shoot a short video for an Instagram post but it wouldn’t upload and by time I got home, it was just gone. I’ve done that before where I’d get home and it would upload off of my wireless internet connection once reconnected. But something's changed. So I’ve just kinda had it.

I have to say, I’ve never been one for social media about fan-based stuff. But I do love behind the scenes stuff about the making of films and shows and such information. I guess some kind of fan based stuff then, about the actors and filmmakers of such products. I mean, I grew up learning to love film and TV at first vicariously through my mother, who saw Hollywood stars, especially Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, as America’s royalty. And I've always found structural filmmaking interesting, especially now since I am a filmmaker. And a screenwriter. You’re welcome to check my IMDb listing, or my website jzmurdock.com, or y Linktree, which lists all my links.

I really been enjoying many of these podcasts about working talent and "the making of".

I really enjoy the podcast for the Foundation show. I’m really liking this podcast for Hacks. I very much enjoy Marc Maron‘s work on his WTF? podcast because it explores so many things I find interesting. I like his comedy and observational humor. And I like his acting, even if he does just act himself.

I originally got into Podcasts because of Covid. Especially when I started walking to fight long Covid off. I tried to listen to podcasts based in art, but I didn’t find a lot I liked. I got to where I was watching the news all day every day because Trump was president and Shit just wasn’t good with that moron. So when I started walking, I listened to political podcasts like Pod Save America and their "Crooked Media" brand podcasts. Intelligent people who worked in the world of government and had a sense of humor.

When I started feeling like maybe people, and I, had had enough of politics, which I had, I started looking more for artistic oriented podcasts and found Marc Maron and the Foundation podcasts and I’m happy to say I’ve been able to lean more into that. It’s my hope Trump doesn’t get elected again so we can move on from Trump's MAGA idiocy in our White House and not just authoritarian criminals trying to rule us as they rip us off. Right now the jury is in their six or seventh hour to decide on what to convict Trump for in his criminal trial. While he’s obviously guilty, it just now needs to be officially proven appropriately and evidentiarily, and I think it has been.

I’m so sick of these people like Trump and his MAGA and their conflations and exaggerations and outright lies and utter bullshit. False equivalencies, disinformation, propaganda...it’s just so far over the top that it’s in another universe.

So if Trump becomes president again? I’m afraid I’ll fall back into watching the news all the time out of fear for protection and being prepared for the next fucking nightmare he pulls on us, while his MAGA praise and cheer the demise of both us and themselves. And in a second term there will potentially be an endless Trump term of office, God knows whatever he’ll try to pull that next time. So let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

Back to the Hacks podcast… They just played a funny scene where Jean Smart’s "Debra Vance" character's estranged sister arrives to her Christmas party that she finally invited her to. The dogs are barking at her sister and who says it’s almost like they were trained to do that. And "Debra" laughs and says, "They were." Flashback to my childhood with my mother...

Our mom was a character. She’d be married every time for each one of us born. All four of us. She miscarried on her first pregnancy and so didn’t get married. But she used to tell us kids that it was, “Me and my kids against my husbands and the world!“ I grew up with our dog since first grade, a mixed collie, medium size breed named Bruno and she used to “joke “holding one of our stepdad's dirty socks up to his nose and tell him to attack, or something. I don’t remember. Feigning training, our family dog to attack our stepfather who worked two jobs. We are always happy he wasn’t around much and I think so was he. The guy she said she hated most of her husbands was the one who lasted the longest and whom she married like three times. Divorcing once after four years of putting up with him, and then a year later remarrying him. Then having a recommitment ceremony with him years later. We all thought it was nuts. And I never liked the guy since I was 4, before they got married. But then he was mentally abusive to me growing up, while treating my older and far prettier sister like a princess, who never really experienced what I did with him, but did experience their tumultuous and scary arguments that our parents would have.

So in my walking here...that chest tightness ss back today that I’ve mentioned before lasted until just after about a half mile today. WTF? (Not the podcast) So I don’t know, I wonder if I died, does that mean my books are worth more? And films I’ve made? Cuz, that'd be cool

I got an invite today to send two screenplays to two different contests. So I did. "Colorado Lobsters" (MIT grad on drugs at a nuclear generating station his dad had died (been murdered) at, and "The Teenage Bodyguard".

I’m so sick of this damned "speech-to-text" app. I was just recording. Got a sentence out and I looked at what it had transliterated and it didn’t record any of it. Plus, I have to keep turning it off and back on to get it to respond.

Dammit, it just did it again!

I’m done submitting my films as they both had a several-year run and won some awards and my documentary won a lot of awards. So now I’m just submitting my writings. I should send some short stories off.

I’d love to have someone survey all my writings and maybe films and write up an analytical review of what all of its orientation is (my orientation). What I’ve been doing, saying in my writings. I wonder, if I started a contest and charged $500 or $1000 to do that for someone if they win. Could be an enterprise. Or maybe someone else should do that.

Had to put on a fleece shirt today because it was so cool out bu now the sun is coming out and it’s warming up. PNW weather, layer when you go out so you can adjust as all the seasons can happen in a single day.

Here’s a teachable moment…

I’ve had moments in my life where I was confronted with something I didn’t know how to deal with, or couldn’t deal with, or didn’t want to. 

Looking back on those times I really regret them. I prefer to always have the right things to do or say. 

I became good friends with my girlfriend's best friend, a guy, when I got out of the Service. They had gone through school together and graduated high school. One afternoon I was driving him somewhere or he was going with me somewhere in my car and he tried to tell me he was gay. 

We wondered for years after that if he was gay (he later laughed and asked me how we could NOT know?). But I so didn’t know how to deal with what he was telling me at that time. I thought about it later. I was 25, just out of years in the service and clueless about dealing with such things. And this was 1979. So I avoided. I just said, "Guys don’t talk about stuff like that." I feel so bad about that now.

A few years later, after moving to Seattle and talking one day with my, at that time ex-girlfriend, I decided to let him move him in with myself and my apartment mate, and we gave him a job. We thought if he really is gay, he needs to get out of Tacoma. So. Got him set up. Got him a job. Actually, my roommate got him the job where we worked, who was also my manager at Seattle Tower Video. 

After six weeks of him, sleeping on our couch and my new girlfriend being there a lot (who worked at Tower with us) and my roommate's girlfriend there and sometimes his daughter, the bathroom started to mildew because it could never dry out from all the showers. 

So we threw everybody out. Except his daughter. Our friend found a place with a guy we worked with and they had a good time. Everybody was much happier. Then after a while, we decided we’re gonna move out and in with our girlfriends. Whom we both ended up marrying. Then both ended up divorcing them. They both ended up having affairs on each of us. 

It was after I moved in with that girlfriend, that I got a new job and left the whole Tower Records family after more than half a decade which got me through college. At that point, my friend disappeared for about 18 months into Capitol Hill's gay community. Next time I saw him he was doing much better. So we had saved him from getting beat up, murdered or committing suicide living in Tacoma. Which at the time wasn’t real gay friendly back in the mid 80s.

Another time… decades later, my oldest son about to graduate high school, had his girlfriend move in with us. One day she was so happy with her life with us, which had previously been pretty broken, said she loved us both so much that she would be pleased to do some rather questionable sexual act for us which I’d never have conceived her offering. 

Now I came to my sexual maturity in the 70s. I’d had plenty of interesting sexual encounters with women & girlfriends (or maybe with a couple of girlfriends at times) but this one threw me. Partly because it was my son’s girlfriend. When she said that, I looked up at him down the hallway past her, and he’s just staring at me also not knowing what to say. I looked at her. We were in the hallway and I tried to say something. Come up with some response. But I was completely at a loss. I just shook my head, and walked into my home office. I'd been standing by the door for it.

I heard him ask her "Why would you say something like that?" And I heard her say, "Because I mean it, I really love you guys." And I mean from that perspective it was for her a wonderful thing she was saying about how she felt about us.

How would I handle that now? I wish I had just given her a hug and said, "Thank you. I appreciate the feelings behind your offer. But you don’t have to offer anything like that. Just enjoy your life."

About that particular girlfriend of my son. Apparently, she had begun living with us for a month before I knew about it. And I worked from home in my home office directly across the hallway from my son’s room. That door was shut all the time when he was gone. There had been a thing between both kids about going in the other's bedroom and he started keeping his door shut. Then the other started doing that in response. But apparently, the girlfriend had been in there. silent while I was blasting music and coding, or working on servers remotely, or whatever.

So one day I got a call from my ex-wife, my son‘s mother in Portland. Oregon. She says, "I just thought you should know his girlfriend has been living with you guys for a month now and I didn’t think you knew about it." And I said, "No, no one’s living here." But she was adamant. So when my son got home, I asked him and sure enough, he fessed up. WTF? (Again not the podcast)

Someone else also called to tell me that. A friend of the family, a woman who had been taking care of my son's girlfriend before she moved in with us. He met them both on the same day, one thing led to another and he gave her a place to live Fine, but next time ask dad FIRST? 

My older son’s mother had called me once before, years before, about my last wife, the one after her. Sigh... yes, this is at some point, confusing.

At that time some years previous, I was divorced from my youngest’s mom (the one who more recently had called about the hidden girlfriend living in my house). that was back when we lived in the first house I'd bought with my last wife. The kids were younger, my wife was a horse trainer who traveled around the country to horse shows for from 1 to 3 weeks at a time. 

Something I’ve never been good at dealing in having an absent spouse. Partly because of my college girlfriend, in having had an affair on me and then leaving me after we'd been together for years...that was my first time, at the age of 30, for a woman to break up with me. I had no mechanisms then for how to deal with that. Which devastated me for about 18 months, putting me in a downward spiral of partying, until finally, I pulled myself out of it, with my oldest son’s mother's help at that time. Back in the 1980s. What a mess.

So while I was still in my last marriage, my oldest son‘s mom had called me to tell me that my wife told her she was having an affair at horse shows with some guy. I told her that I didn't know if I could believe her or not. Maybe she was just trying to screw up our marriage. But she said, "No, I’m just trying to tell you the truth." She told me she had been on the phone with my wife one day, setting up getting our son for the weekend, and said my wife was drinking wine on our bed and she was giggling about how she was having an affair one me with a guy at a horseshoe. Apparently thinking she was talking to a kind of compatriot, to my ex, who'd get a kick out of it. WTF? (Yeah, right, not...whatever)

I had told both her and my current wife at that time, if they ever wanted to leave me, please don’t have an affair on me. One doesn't do that to one's one-time best friend. Especially when they still think they are YOUR best friend. It's just uncool. It's so, as I put it then, "common" to do something like that.

So to this day, I don’t know. But I do know that now ex-wife does have a mental condition called, splitting. And she very well could’ve been having an affair and then when she’s with me, simply not remember it. She/we used to joke about the "black hole" her memory had where she wouldn't remember things she obviously should be able to remember. I hadn't realized until after we broke up, it was a mental condition perhaps from multiple concussions having grown up riding horses.

She has now descended even further in her issues after divorcing the next guy she had married after me, after I had warned her that he was not good marriage material. Even the kids could see that. Even one of the kid's friends saw that actually he saw it first. I tried to warn her as her one-time best friend, not as her ex. It wasn't indicative. I truly was worried about her, and out kid. If she married him. She did, she found out I was, we all were, right about him. A guy who now has been convicted of Washington state's largest restaurant tax fraud in state history.

And she’s gotten now so toxic her entire family doesn’t want to talk to her, or so I hear through the grapevine.

I’m currently single and the drama and stress here are quite low. Cheers!

Just thinking about the T-shirt I'm wearing today and it’s my "That Metal Show T-shirt. I've worn it around different places and events and no one has ever come up to me and said anything about it. So does no one know that show? Been off the air for a while now. But I loved it. All those rock bands I have listened to for so many years and finally got to see their bandmembers being interviewed by three rock aficionado’s, one brilliant rock historian, and two comedians. What a fun show if you’re into Rock and especially heavy metal.

I think I should also mention that yesterday I was wearing my Gogol Bordello T-shirt from the Ukraine concert. Love those guys. Gypsy rock. That was the first concert I took both my junior/high school aged kids too I think at the Showbox SoDoShowbox SoDo in Seattle south of Pioneer Square. 

I was pretty annoyed to find out my youngest child’s new stepfather had taken them to a concert. I think it Bumpershoot (local Seattle festival). I’d also found out he took her to something else I should’ve taken them to at their school for an event. Pains of being a divorced parent. Anyway that was the loudest bass I’ve ever heard at a concert. I have all their albums and I do like their music. What a concert! The documentary about Eugen Hutz, going home that was very good: "The Pied Piper of Hützovina."

I just moved to the next episode of the Hacks podcast and they said that Barbra Streisand is into the show and listens to the podcast. So I’m not sure if that’s true. Sounds like it might be somehow. I don’t know but that’s pretty cool.

You know one of the nice things about Hacks? They address the protagonist being older. What’s going on in our culture as far as generations. Having a trans son myself I’ve had to deal directly with the gender rules issues and the political issues and I basically try to stay out of it as much as I can so I don’t screw up. 

I felt bad about that until I realized that even those people who are in the middle of that because they have no choice, also have difficulty with Issues of how to address people in different things. So as I was told... as long as you have a good heart and you mean well, you can make mistakes. The problem comes in when you’re an asshole in general when even if you don’t mean to make a mistake in that area, when you do, you’re gonna get attacked. Because basically, you are after all, just an asshole.

Anyway, they just played one of my favorite lines from Hacks about those issues. On episode eight where somebody does a Super cut of the protagonist's older stand up as pretty cancelable humor. Which is so problematic today. It’s weird to cancel someone today for them simply doing what no one understood was wrong decades ago. Especially when so much of this has only transpired in the last 10 years. 

So lighten the fuck up. The only thing worse than people needing to be canceled is over canceling people who don’t need it, or who may be on your side, and yet you make them...not. As with the Trump MAGA thing. You wanna smack them in the back of the head because they’re being so stupid sometimes, maybe with a baseball bat, but you’re never gonna get them over to your side or to even consider they might be wrong at any time. Ever.

Last walk yesterday 2 miles because of weather. Today I’m starting now on my 4th mile. Woo hoo!

“I can’t be woke. I’m tired. I’m exhausted." yells "Debra" on the show.

This brings me back to reflecting on my own writings and works from my past which really started in the early 80s while at University. But I don’t think I’ve written anything that's offensive. Man, I’m hoping now. On the other side of that, I used to write horror, so a lot of offensive things there as far as killing human beings. I never shot a dog, though.

I guess I could mention that "Gender Bender" article about me that another writer wrote  on Indies Unlimited. She read one of my stories and wanted to know if I was male or female. Because of the "JZ" thing (doesn't help the "J" stands for "Jean" in the French, not the English as too many think, as "Gene"...nope). 

So I sent her a short short story she read and came back and said, "About the woman protagonist in that story… ", and I asked, "Why do you think they are a woman?" And she said, "Well it is." I said, "Go back and reread it and tell me what gender the protagonist is again." She came back stunned and said, "I can’t tell you." Because she was so sure a guy had written the first story of mine she read and was so sure a woman had written this next one, she said, "Don't tell me your gender, I'm going to write an article about this. Then you can tell us on the article." And so she wrote an article about. I don’t know how talented I was to be able to write either gender like that, but she thought I was, so, I’ll just take that as high praise

And then, as an adjunct to that story, she must’ve liked the article so much that she republished it again as, "Gender Bender Again", when she didn't have an article to publish once.

Reminds me of the first time I got quoted internationally by a guy down in Australia. I had posted the telling of a fight I got in back in the 70s. I think at first I pulled out my knife to offer to the guy saying to him that he's really gonna need it. He declined but looked worried. I had advanced in my martial arts at the time to where I found weapons were just in the way for the most part. 

Also, at that time in America I found nearly always, if an opponent in a street fight was using almost any kind of weapon, other than a gun, it tended to disable them from fighting effectively. Because so many people thought a weapon looked and seemed cool, but if you don't know how to use it well, better you don't use one at all. 

Let me just say here, I'm no "tough guy". I'm just me. Many of the things I've done were scary to me, but you learn to maintain and follow your training. Train and maintain. Persevere to the end and try to be successful. It's paid off for me all my life. Sometimes it's just about a hard project at work, finishing writing a book, or exercise, or learning a new skills. 

Yes, yes, someone will say something like, "Well, you never had a fight where I lived." That's really beside the point. I'm talking about a specific time and place and my experiences and reality...not anyone else's. 

I just ran a few times into guys who thought they were tough and I don't know, maybe watched a lot a martial arts movies but had little training or experience actual fighting. That was a time when few people in America were trained and Karate dojos were only starting to get a foothold in our country. Today, it's different. I have no desire to get into a tangle with some MMA guys. 

For some reason, there was a short period of time when I'd go into a bar and get harrassed Usually if I was with my girlfriend or wife. Couple of times with my wife and her girlfriend. Couple of times two guys were giving me crap. They were alone, I had two good-looking women. they were drunk and stupid. I had studied martial arts and was carrying a firearm. Not that I'd pull it out, unless they pulled on out. I was always able to talk them down, diffuse the situation. One time they went over to the bar, bored with being unable to push me into a fight. 

They actually argued with me about how a good fun bar fight is fun! I said the trouble is, if you have fun, you can actually kill someone, accidentally. And it's hard sometimes when you do want to kill someone, but they can be very hard to actually kill. Had they pushed it, I would then have told them we can do this, but I'm going to try to kill them as quickly as I can. One or both of us are going to the hospital, one of us may not survive. I do not fight and if I'm pushed to, well...that's how I see things. 

When I was a kid, our sensei said he'd prefer we run from a fight than harm someone. So I'll do what I can, but if I can't get away or end it, I would fight back. I don't fight hard, just smart, if possible. As Bruce Lee said in his book, your entire surrounding environment is a weapon.

When I started in Karate in the 1960s, I'd wear my gi on the bus to the dojo sometimes and the looks I got from citizens were mixed and comical. Many hadn't a clue what was going on but some older perhaps WWII guys had bad looks on their faces. I guess just seeing a racist version of the Japanese and wondering why a white kid would mimic them. And perhaps understandably so. But I stopped wearing the gi on the bus after that.

Anyway, back to the Australia reference about a fight...at one point, I threw the guy down and realized he was about to slam his head into the concrete. I realized as I started the movement on him, I could speed it up and kill him. But even at that point, I might unintentionally kill him. So I grabbed his arm and yanked up so his head didn’t hit the ground. 

I had said in my online article that there’s no reason one cannot be a gentleman, even when someone’s trying to kill you. I used to say that sometimes. Perhaps "gentleman" is the wrong word nowadays and I would instead use there’s no reason you can’t be "decent" or polite in a fight. IF you're good, you can be. So train. I taught my kids that concept. Decency even in having to kill someone who tried to kill you. But you also have to be good enough to have that option.

My last post mentioned missed opportunities, and I just thought of another kind of a weird one. In my senior year at university when I was getting a minor in creative writing and playwriting, and script and screenwriting, aside from my major in psychology and phenomenology… I took intro to theatre because I wanted to learn about the stage and the proscenium arch and the technical aspects but it wasn’t a technical class. Though I’m sure that was part of it. 

The Harvard grad student who taught the class, which always irritated me as at a university you’re only supposed to be taught by doctorate-level professors… he had us count off by threes. We were all sitting in the theater seats while he was sitting on the edge of the stage. After we counted off, he said "OK you’re gonna come up here by numbers and act out who you are on stage." About eight guys got up and walked out immediately. I looked around and it was all these really good-looking girls left with one or two other guys. I just sat there terrified. The other guys had scared looks on their faces too. The girls all seemed fine and relaxed. He talked for a bit and said about the guys who left, "Good, we don’t need them. Best to get rid of them right off." 

Then I really felt like a shrinking violet. 

Finally, it came up to our going to the stage and I couldn't take it.  I got up and walked out too. And, all the women moaned, sad to see me go. That surprised me. Somehow I was apparently considered pretty good-looking on campus. Ahhh, the good old days, so sad when such things fade. 

But my missed opportunity was that within a year of graduation, my girlfriend would leave me so we could’ve separated in college during that last year, and being in that class, had I just had the balls to get up on stage and make a fool of myself, things might have gotten interesting. I mean, always wanted to act. I just didn't have the self-esteem or the courage. Part of getting my psych degree, before this theatre class, was taking a psych class about group therapy. Basically, doing group therapy as you learned about it. Which I objected to, but no class, not degree. So I did it, and I loosened up quite a bit. it was really pretty good for me to have done.

I’ve done some acting in recent years. I don’t give a damn much anymore. All my life I never had a problem jumping out of an airplane or any sort of dangerous thing, or facing down a gun stuck in my face, which is happened. But acting? Putting your soul out there for people to hate, or love, maybe? Meh. It wasn't happening.

By the way? Today I remembered to bring my collapsible umbrella but, I didn’t need it, still, better safe than sorry. Wish I'd had it yesterday.

I was talking to my oldest son yesterday on the phone about my life orientation and trying to help him with his, since he’s in a tough space right now, times are just kind of hard for him. I’m trying to entertain him from hundreds of miles away, as I can and offer advice, which you know, he often doesn’t want to hear. But I told him I think I was never focused on money in my life and maybe I should’ve been more so. I just never focused on business because my mind simply doesn’t work that way. Too bad, really.

If I had a better business mind, the art I have produced would’ve made money. But I always was concerned for myself, my life, relationships over working 24 hours a day, being concerned for others and having good experiences. Being the best person I could be and always looking for the Truth. Not my truth. Not a religion's truth. Not a political party's truth, not an ideology's truth, but the actual, and as best as you can find it, objective as can be truth. What I’ve learned through physics and philosophy is that there is an objective truth. While there also is no objective truth, as what's objective is subjective. How’s that go? "Objectivity is subjective and subjectivity is objective"?

And... I got in my 5 miles today!

I just got home at 59° and the Trump criminal trial jury has been deliberating for 10 hours.

Wrap it up people.

[And as we now know and as I said up top, Trump is now finally officially... a convict.]

On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…

And I’ll leave you with that. It’s noon and time for lunch.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #77

Thoughts & Stream of Consciousness, rough and ready, from an award-winning filmmaker and author you’ve never heard of, while walking off long Covid, and listening to podcasts…

...walking day is 5/22/2024 (I would have had this out sooner, I just forgot about it and got wrapped up in watching the Kevin Spacey doc, and the 2 parts of The Jinx, and associated "All Good Things" film that I thought was better than its ratings).

 
Weather for the day… starting out, 56° cloudy, cool starting out 59° when I got home at noon.

Podcast WTF? Marc Maron Episode 1540 - Daniel Stern.

Then, Pod Save America, Ep., Trump Promises "A Unified Reich"

So, a little cool today. This week I noticed I’m not really feeling long Covid anymore. A few days ago I had a couple of glasses of wine with spaghetti for lunch. After a day's break from alcohol, I then had the rest of it with lunch yesterday

But I’m noticing a core feeling of feeling good. Like I’m feeling healthy again in spurts, every once in a while, a few times a day, a flash of better health. Just this deep feeling of...normal. Today is the day, it's been six weeks since I had a 3 day course of Paxlovid for my 3rd Covid infection. So I’m hoping it stays this way.

It was really hard to do the 1st mile today. At the beginning of every walk lately, there’s a... I don’t know, a tightness maybe, in my chest? After the first half mile or so it goes away. Not sure what that is. I think it’s a lack of exercise.

I’m now finishing my 3rd mile, after my first I didn’t feel like doing another mile. But I'd like to do 5 miles today.

I was really sick of this past winter and I’m really tired of this spring so far. Another week or two and this weird schizophrenic weather should settle down into summer, or so it looks anyway.

I noticed there's one book in the free little library kiosk today. Really makes me wonder if somebody sketchy didn’t just take all the books one day and sell them at a used bookstore. Maybe hitting a bunch of kiosks on the same day. We have some meth addict types around. You can’t miss them when they’re lurking through the streets looking pretty bad and obviously casing cars and houses. 

On this podcast, it’s a pretty good one because just about everybody knows this character actor Daniel SternDaniel Stern (most famously from Joe Peschi's accomplice in "Home Alone"). His stories about who he’s worked with and how he got started are pretty fun and interesting, especially if you’re into film.

I realized I’m very good at and have skills for a couple of things that have been very handy in my life. I’m very good at taking some thing that’s "there" and seeing its weaknesses and gems within that need to be polished. And that’s really all writing is. I mean you have got to write that first draft. Even if it’s a shitty first draft, on the second go around you can fix that. Only a couple of times in my life have I written a first draft that was just unfixable.

I realized that’s kind of what I did with my kids in raising them. Trying to take what they had and helped them make it better, rather than force them into what I wanted them to be or think that they should be. Thought I do think a parent needs to do a little of that, too.

I do want to mention that Saturday or maybe it was Friday night, I was looking for something to watch and started the Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended edition, which is like four hours for each movie. When I finished that on Sunday, I started on The Hobbit and finished that yesterday. I think I'd forgotten the last 40 minutes of The Hobbit movie.

I realized that I first read The Hobbit 54 years ago. I was 14 in 10th grade in my first year of high school. My cousin, who went to a different school, was a year behind me even though we’re separated by only three months. My mother said when she found I could start 1st grade because of my birthdaite, that was it, I was starting school to give her a break at home.

My cousin had suggested I read this book she thought I would like, "The Hobbit". I had been reading books incessantly for years. I would get grounded a lot as a child and would just go to my room and pick up a book and I’m suddenly... not in my bedroom. 

Anyway, I started showing up early to school and would go into our theater on the balcony at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington and would sit there and read until the bell rang. When I finished that book and raved about it, she said, "Well, since you loved The Hobbit so much..." and she gave me Lord of the Rings to read. Which was a shock. Because I loved The naivete The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings was a starkly more grown-up book. But after I got into LOR, I eventually grew to love it.

Getting drizzled on every now and then. I have to say I like it a little cooler. When it’s too warm out anymore, when I used to love hiking in the heat… Probably because of my age now it doesn’t react on me very well. I figure 1 mile in this weather is like 2 miles miles when it’s 70 something.

On the podcast...it’s interesting to hear him talk about the movie "Diner" (1982). And what he has to say about Paul ReiserPaul Reiser on that and how the Director Barry Levinson almost tossed the script. But they ended up sitting and shooting for a month, the actors talking in the diner, kind of following Paul Reiser‘s lead, who just came up with great shit in the moment. Then when he saw the film, finally, he was surprised to see that most of the film was just them riffing at a diner while embedded within the plot.

Finally, at the end of the podcast, they get to the reason why he’s there, which is that he wrote a book: “Home and Alone”.

For some reason, I was just thinking about missed opportunities...I've mentioned before some of those in business/art. I'd written a mainframe word processing manual when I worked for University of Washington's MCIS that was successful at two major hospitals (the then UW Hospital, now UWMC and its associated Harvorview Medical Center both now UW Medicine). But Digital Equipment Corporation killed it, because I broke the cardinal sin of pointing out "bugs" in their software. they could be vindictive as their company slowly disintegrated back in the late 80s. 

But here I was thinking of romantic missed opportunities...

In the mid 80s I worked in Seattle at the Tower Video, Mercer Street store with Jeff AmentJeff Ament of Pearl JamPearl Jam. Back then he was with Green River. He was our media buyer. I’ve told the story before. Jeff turned his position over to me as I was taking that on additionally since I was also a supervisor and I lived with the manager. 

Mark and I had moved up from Tacoma Tower stores where we had worked at Tower Records together and then Tower Video when he opened it and I had just graduated from Western Washington University up north past Seattle in Bellingham, near the Canadian border. Mark began at Records while I was still in the USAF. 

I began at Tower Posters next-door to earn some extra money aside from my VA educational benefits check. I got my AA degree at Ft Steilacoom Community College (now Pierce College),  with full college accreditation which we knew it was headed toward when I was going there. It was rated the best Comm. Col. in the state then. After I graduated I was done. I was surprised I'd even gotten a college degree. My girlfriend was going to go to a university so I thought I'd tag along. I had also promised her I'd get her through college. So we moved up to Western in Bellingham.

Anyway, Jeff said he wanted make a real effort at being a musician. So he was quitting his Tower job. I’ve always wanted to see him play, but I wasn’t making much money and I had no money for a concert ticket to see his band. Which obviously I regret, now. I kept hoping he would say, "Hey if you want to come see the band, I’ll get you in." I would’ve definitely gone. But he was very humble and maybe too humble to think I might want to see his stupid band. Which is funny because he’ll never know how bad I wanted to see his band. Living with the manager I held a weird position in the store. People were intimidated by that. Which I eventually won people over. But it took a while.

Anyway, I went down the street from Tower at lunch one day to get a gyro at the Greek place up Mercer St., and had a Celebrator Doppelbock beer (a beer that always made me feel very good and happy).It some with a plastic goat on a string and I would tie them to my buttons. An employee one day confessed they could tell how easy going I'd be after lunch by how many goats were tied to my shirt. I stopped doing that.

When I returned from lunch that day, an employee came up to me and said, "Hey Jeff was here looking for you." I questioned him on that because it didn’t make sense. But he said, "Come on. I know Jeff and he was here looking for you. I told him you were at lunch and so he left." I was bummed. I'd always liked Jeff.

So there is an opportunity I will never know what the hell it was about. As I remember it most of us at Tower were partiers. But Jeff didn’t smoke weed and said he wasn’t into drugs and stuff. He wanted to be a serious musician and I always respected that and his desire to go on to be one and get somewhere. And I told him that the day he told me he was quitting, that "Of everybody who worked at our three tower stores, if anyone could make it, it would be him. He seemed touch deeply by that. He looked down and thought and then looked at me and said “I really, really appreciate that man. Thanks” and I told him, 'Well it’s true and I really believe it."

Another missed opportunity…

When I worked at Tower Posters this really attractive redhead started working there. Summertimes she would put on a bikini and at lunchtime go out and lie on her car good, on a blanket in the sun, in the big parking lot. It was kind of intimidating to the other girls who worked at the store who would complain about it. But  none of the guys who worked there had a problem with it.

Then I switched to Tower Records next door. One night she showed up on a late shift on a slow night and tried to talk me into driving her to Seattle to see a band at the Paramount Theatre.

I was living alone at the time. My girlfriend had gone to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, south of Spokane.. She wanted to be a veterinarian but going through some things, being 18 and her firs time away from home. She was seeing guys and it kind of hurt. So we took a break from our relationship in order to possibly save our relationship. I'd been married and divorced, through the USAF. So I felt she just needed to get her freedom exercised if we were going to have a relationship at all. 

So that night that really good-looking redhead and I drove to Seattle. We park and go to the theatre and then she tells me we need tickets. I was like, "Wait, you brought me up here and you don’t have tickets?" Did I say she was really good-looking? So we (that is I) bought some from tickets from a scalper on the corner, two tickets I think were $20 (and left me nearly broke). I warned him, "If these are counterfeit, because I know that’s going around, I’m coming back for you." But he said, "No man they’re real," and he just seemed honest, so I bought them and we went inside and MotorheadMotorhead was playing. Lemmie, right there on stage. I didn't really know them at that time but at least I can say I was at one of their concerts and saw Lemmie on stage! All we saw was a sea of long black hair banging up and down in unison. Your traditional "headbangers" concert in 1981. I wasn’t as much into Motorhead then as I was somewhat more years later. But we just stood there in the back for about 15 minutes until she finally said, "Do you want to go? This really isn’t my taste of music." I wanted to stay, but I also really wanted to "get to know her better." So we left.

So I drive her home. I was having high hopes for us getting together that night. I know my girlfriend at a university far away was seeing other guys and I kind of wanted to build a buffer to that by dating some women myself. So when we got to her place, I walked her to her door when she said, "Thanks goodnight." Hey, I tried to talk my way in but it wasn't going to work. She was very cute and flirty, but it wasn't happening.

So I said goodnight and drove off. But I only got about a mile away when the car ran out of gas. I used to have that problem with that old 67 Impala beater. You had to guess about when the tank was actually empty and I never had much money. The days of putting a dollar or two in the tank, when gas was about about $1.19 a gallon.

I had grown up, first started driving in the early 70s when gas was around 30 cents a gallon. Good times in high school when you literally COULD search your couch for spare change that fell out of people's pockets and find enough to go for a drive. Now you seem to need to take a loan out for that. I went through the gas shortage years when the price bounced up to around a dollar a gallon. And people were not happy about it or OPEC.

So humiliated, I walked back to her place. She wasn’t buying that I ran out of gas. But I convinced her. Apparently, she and her younger sister lived with their dad and he was away on a business trip. She made me promise to stay in his bedroom. I was like, "Yeah fine whatever I just don’t wanna walk home at like midnight." So I got up the next morning and this extremely cute younger girl maybe 15(?) comes walking through and it’s her younger sister. They made me breakfast and I walked to the car and then walked to a gas station, got some gas and drove home.

Cut to that next year. My girlfriend had trouble with alcohol ("Wazzu" is a famous party school that Playboy that next year rated as a "professional party school that was not eligible for rating in their annual university party school rating", and she was up for two DUIs. Wazzu students would drive across the Idaho border where the drinking age went from 21 to 19. So her lawyer got her a deal and she moved home with me where I promised I would get her through the next three years of college. And I did. So we were then living together, and I’m working at night, and guess who shows up but the redhead. I'd always and since had a thing that I avoided redheads as "trouble". Good and fun trouble, but would ineventialy lead to not so great troubles. And I'm half Irish, so... 

So she shows up at work at Tower Records and wants me to go with her again. It seems obvious this is the night that I’m gonna get lucky with this woman. Finally. But too late.

I point out to her, "you’re too late. I live with my girlfriend now and I can’t do this. Had you gone for it last year it would have been an entirely different thing." That was painful. But I have self-respect so...I was polite and then went back to my cash register shift with my back to the giant glass pane window, front wall of Tower Records. I swear to God… I and another guy were at the register and it was a very slow night which didn't help things. As she sat in her car just outside the window behind me for a half hour, pouting and staring at me. Until finally I noticed, she had left. I never saw her again.

Missed opportunities…

Just switched over to Pod Save America because the WTF? podcast is over

We need to add some standards to our government requirements. Like you shouldn’t be able to be president if you’re convicted of a federal crime. I am for forgiveness, but with Trump...come on. 

And with the Supreme Court Justices there have to be ethics rules and with some fucking teeth.

OK, I did it. I made 5 miles again, finally! It’s been a while.

Two other things the podcast just mentioned. There’s a lot of Trump forcing his attorney's hands on his defense team and it’s pretty obvious because they keep doing things like asking for dismissal, which is just making them all look stupid.

And second, if you swap Biden in Trump‘s place for this trial and the shit Trump's pulled during his trial, the double standard would be obvious as Biden would be getting incessantly attacked because he's supposed to be the adult and actual law and order person between the two of them. Even though for decades, the Republican Party claimed to be THE party of law and order. Even though it’s actually just a party of toxic, capitalism and big business. Whatever...

On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…and leave you with that. 

It’s noon and time for lunch.

As always, I wish you all, all the greatest success and good health!
Just put in the time and effort for those successes.
Until next time!

Cheers! Sláinte!