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  • ODDS and ENDS: Parking with the Dog, Old Pants, and Joe Don Baker

    (What you know is true…)

    Here is the dog, and she came with me to do the Alt Side Parking this morning. She has a dog bed in the car, as we take her on roadtrips, and the car bed makes it easier on her. Anyway, I didn’t feel like leaving the dog alone at home while I moved the car, so she came with. All she did was lay there, looking at me, wondering when we were going to go some place.

    The other thing about this morning is that I found an old pair of pants that I had forgot that I owned. It’s a pair black colored pants that I believe I bought for puppeteering purposes. For whatever reason, these pants got lost in the shuffle, and this morning I found then again. They had been hanging in my closet for so long, the pants had a line of dust on the hanger fold. I easily brushed them off, and to my surprise, the pants fit. (Maybe I am losing weight?) I used to wear black clothes often in my deep and dark theatre phase – you know, when I was a real misunderstood artist and acting was the only thing that would save the world – but since moving to New York, I have actively gone out of my way to wear as much color as possible, and most of that color is blue or navy. But today, with this rediscovery, I decided that I would go forth with black pants today, and I already feel more somber and serious.

    I learned last night that the actor, Joe Don Baker had passed away. He is most famous for his role in “Walking Tall” and in the MST3k world, he will always be our “MITCHELL.” Yet, for me, Joe Don Baker was a good old solid character actor. He was a Texan, went to the University of North Texas, served in the Army, and went to New York City and became a member of the Actors Studio. He worked solidly his entire life, usually playing heavies in TV and movies, but he was also in comedies. Hell, was in three James Bond movies, playing two different characters. He was a good guy who did good work, and was very entertaining. So, thanks Joe Don; you will be missed.

  • Earworm Thursday: Disco Duck

    This is a fun one to try to explain to my kid. And EVERYONE was doing drugs in the 70’s.

  • Short Story Review: “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

    (The short story “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh appeared in the May 5 th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    I like this story a lot, so I’m not gun’na fart around with some cute opening here. “Nocturnal Creatures” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a very good story and you should read it.

    Overly Simplified Synopsis: A exterminator meets a single mother and her son while on the job, and they all become involved.

    To start with, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh crafts this story very well. Every time I have read this story, I keep coming to a better appreciation of how all the pieces of this story are laid out, how they interlock and interact. For example, the first section of this story establishes the character of the exterminator, how he views himself and his job. Then going into the next part, when he meets the mother, we are shown the ways she tries to take care of herself and her son which leads us to understand, from the previous section, why the exterminator would identify with her. It’s a little cheesy to say this, but Sayrafiezadeh does an excellent job of “showing” us who these characters are, and not “telling” us. (And somewhere in the world, a creating writing professor just got his wings!) But seriously, each section builds on the previous, creating a momentum in the story with their actions. The narrative never gets mired down in explanations, because Sayrafiezadeh provides a clear understanding of these characters motivations by what they are doing.

    And these are characters that have lived, and maybe they haven’t had the best breaks in life, but they aren’t broken either. There is an optimism to them, but also a melancholy. Are they repeating past mistakes, or trying to make amends for their past? I was fascinated with how the exterminator never said he cared about the mother and her son, but his actions were that of a guy who wants to take care of them. The fact that he gave up his day sleeping time to be with them, wasn’t lost on me. And this was a mother who hadn’t given up on her ambitions, but she knew she had responsibilities which she did her best to uphold. I felt I knew these people, and wanted them to succeed, to carve out the happiness they deserved. But there felt like a little dark cloud hung over their lives, keeping the story grounded in realism, because life’s not always fair, no matter how good intentions attempt to be.

    I wanted it to work out. I wanted them to be happy, but there isn’t a clear, concrete answer to what happens next, and that’s okay. I’m good with the decision that Sayrafiezadeh made to end it the way he did. Maybe it’s a bit of a ploy – yet I would argue that over the course of the story, we have been shown how these characters continually make choices to be together. So why would that change at the end of the story when they reach the crux of their situation?

  • 10 Best SNL Cast Members of All Time (In No Particular Order)

    1. Bill Murray
    2. Jane Curtain
    3. Eddie Murphy
    4. Jan Hooks
    5. Phil Hartman
    6. Will Ferrell
    7. Kenan Thompson
    8. Kristen Wiig
    9. Maya Rudolph
    10. Kate McKinnon

    I was up later than I should have been and I saw a video of two ex-SNL cast members trying to decide who their top five were. I thought it was a fun game, but five is just too difficult, so I decided that ten was a better number.

    I could go into more detail, but why. You can look up their best sketches on YouTube, and if anyone were to take the time, I am sure they could point out someone who was so epic, that I am a fool for not putting them on my list. If that’s the case, then I’ll fight you in the parking lot by the dumpster.

  • A Manic Laundry Monday

    A Manic Laundry Monday

    In case anyone has forgotten, I am a stay at home dad. Though hard to believe, blogging don’t pay the bills, and as such, I take my responsibility as the primary caregiver of my family very serious. Well… Serious enough. I’m not great at this stuff, but I do get the job done.

    And the one jobs I do on the regular is my families laundry. I do lots of laundry, and as the kid keeps getting older and bigger, I am doing more and more laundry. I have started to fear and dread the teenage years, and the amount of clothing that will be coming my way.

    Now, I have only been the stay at home dad for the past five years, but my mastery of all things laundry has been ongoing for eleven. Even before the kid was born, I took care of out clothes. Sometimes I would drop it off at a wash and fold service, sometimes I would get up early on a Sunday morning and take care of it. But for whatever reason, be it through decision or frustration, I became the laundry guy.

    And full honesty, it is my least favorite chore. Cooking, cleaning, doing the finances, going to the school meetings, dropping the kid off/picking her up – all of that I am fine with. Just not the laundry. It’s a thankless task, and no one likes it, and it eats up so much of my time. I try to get it all done on Monday, as no one likes Monday, and I have found that at my local laundromat, Monday is the least busy day.

    But I have started to wonder of late, that I can’t keep this up forever. I have to carry the laundry to the mat, and as I pointed out, each year, more and more clothing gets added to the task. I fear that at some point, the laundry chore will become so big that I will either have to split it up over two days, or I am going to have to beg my landlord to allow us to have a washer/dryer hook up. Not that we have a place for it in this tiny apartment. Surely, I don’t want to be that old man carrying a sack of dirty clothes, or worse yet, have to use a granny cart…