So many adventures, ultimately revealing emptiness

I paint. I work. I stopped being a vegetarian. I went to Disneyland. I put loud headers on my El Camino. The earth still turns. I hope that the future is tolerable. There is something in my eye.

Disneyland was fun. My son is an interesting guy who I like a lot. The fascist irony and comforting familairtiy to the realm of the mouse makes a fine short holiday. 

Melinda Gates sat here. She is smart.

I am the natural successor to Ashleigh Brilliant

The most pampered beater in America.

Male Bonding with Bullets

Nothing in the world quite like taking your 17 year old son to a military base rifle range with an uncle and two cousins to shoot a variety of handguns and assault weapons. Here is my son Ned firing a clunky Serbian SKS at a threatening piece of cardboard 50 yards away. The weather was mixed- rain and occasional sunshine. Ned's response was mixed to shooting as well- neither excited by it or disinterested. He enjoyed the experience without judgement.

Adulthood

It occurred to me that I am now about 12 years away from being of retirement age. This is troubling because I have yet to gain the knowledge I always assumed would be instantly given me upon reaching middle age. 

I some times wonder if I am going to make it to retirement.

Vaguely ashamed of my menial servitude, partially elated.

Due to the impending crisis of college tution, retirement on the horizon and global warming reeking havoc upon our lives, I have decided my days must be spent earning something when my relatively lucrative self employment is not happening. I have taken a part time job working on the renovation of a friend's new building, an industrial space destined to be used as a manufacturing facility. Demolition is a little bit fun, and very filthy.

Before

After

Return to the Orgy of the Strange Oblong Ball

I get paid to do field audio. Sometimes it is a long grind of many hours. Sometimes it is a boondoggle. The NFC Championship for some audio guys was a grind. I spoke with one mixer whose call time was 2:00 AM and he was there until 9:00 PM wrap, and worked his ass off much of the time. My experience was the opposite: our call time was 1:30 PM and we only had to do post game, leaving us to partake of the full buffet lunch in the press box and wander the field and stadium, enjoying our all access photo field passes. Sort of like getting to eat just desert for dinner. It was a strange intersection of celebrity and wealth and sports. All the standard sports talking heads: Joe Buck and Troy Aikman (both overly made up for camera),  multiple suited and expensively over coated league officials and 1% masters of the universe strutting around. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were everywhere. Watching the Macklemore halftime show from the end zone. I was vaguely aware of a guy in a 49ers hat and coat standing next to me. A guy from the SF bench walked by and shook his hand "Hi Mr. Wilson!" I immediately thought of Dennis The Menace next door neighbor. I turned and looked and it was in fact Owen Wilson. The post game in the Seahawks locker room was surprisingly sedate.

End result Seattle millionaires beat San Francisco millionaires to the pleasure of the masses in Seattle.

Operation MINOTAUR is GO

I have purchased a cruck. A 1981 Chevrolet El Camino. Be it man? Or beast? 

It was retrieved from the netherworld of Yelm, WA, (home of Ramtha- ancient mystical spirit warrior and for-profit gift shop) by myself and Johnny "the Boot" Pai on Sunday, January 5th, 2014.

Crank up Zeppelin, fire up the Lucky Strikes, and get me a beer: so begins my midlife crisis

I have chosen to name the car "Harry Dean" after Harry Dean Stanton, the poster child of 1980's independent film:

2013 Burning Elf

 It burned well. Laurie lit the elf this year. The fireworks did not set anyone's hair on fire.

The head count was about 75

It's a strange thing we do.