More Random Thoughts

Welcome to the Murder Capitol!

Only in the D!

On one of my trips to Michigan this year I was at my friend John Eloff's for his famous Pig Roast/BBQ, always an epic time, I went with him down into the belly of Detroit to the Eastern Market where we picked up the pig from the butcher.  This part of the D is not good, not that there are any good parts anyways, but you go in, get your stuff and leave immediately, leaving skid marks on the pavement if needed.  It's not a safe place, anything and everything you might have read or heard about Detroit, it's all true and probably even worse.  It is the murder capitol of the USA and one of the most dangerous cities in the world you know, although I suppose you won't see that on any Detroit Chamber of Commerce brochures. We parked in an alley around the corner from the butcher shop next to this graffiti.  Maybe it's my low-level sense of humor but I found this extremely funny, the fact that someone would take the time to spray paint Poop Juice and Queef, of all things, next to the gang tags.  Some of the other stuff we saw, well, I don't feel comfortable even mentioning, other than a mannequin was involved, let's just leave it at that.  So John being the great friend that he is, had to go into the city for work recently and went out of his way to go by the alley and the graffiti was still there so he had his co-worker take this picture, which makes it even funnier to me as the likelihood of an investment banker, in a suit in an alley in the D, well it's generally not a good combo for survival.  Book your trip to Detroit now!  Thanks for risking your life Johnny!


From the D to a beautiful Island...

My cousin Matt enjoying some pancakes with non-Vashon Island strawberries..

I am fortunate that even though I am new to Seattle, that I have family here, my cousin Matt.  We grew up together and after college went our separate ways and now here we are, years later, back together again.  Matt lives on Vashon Island, a cool place where you can live and still work in Seattle as the ferry goes every hour to downtown in about 20 minutes, which he has done the last 4.5 years.  Vashon had their annual Strawberry Festival so I headed over to the island to take part in the festivities including their annual 10K/5K race.  The race was early in the morning and I was running the 10K and Matt was going to do the 5K.  This was the 33rd year of the race in honor of legendary Vashon Coach, Bill Burby.  The race went well and I ended up 10th overall and placed in my age group despite the extreme hilly nature of the course.  As a cool highlight at one point you run along the eastern ridge of the Island and you get a clear view of Mt. Rainier.  After the race we headed over to the pancake breakfast and had the strawberry pancakes where I then learned that Vashon used to grow strawberries by the truckload but not anymore.  So despite it being the Strawberry Festival, the strawberries actually come from elsewhere.  Not unlike the Traverse City Cherry Festival where the cherries are not yet harvested in time for the festival and are then flown in from Washington, ironically.  So there you have the dirty little secrets of two festivals.  I guess you never know what's in a name.

Matt and I Pre-Race.

From the wayback machine...

Trent and me 20+ years ago "on set" of one of our films.

In a previous blog I mentioned how my brothers and cousins and I made movies when we were little kids.  Well when I got older I bought a video camera and my friend Trent Tollstam and I decided we would make our own films.  During these years we used to go up to my family's property in Northern Michigan, 40 acres of woodlands, for weekend trips in the middle of winter.  The old cabin was quite rustic and in the winter there was no running water and only a wood stove, but for some reason we thought it would be fun to make movies and so we would drag all of our stuff down the 1/2 mile trail, trudging through knee high snow and then using a guerrilla style of film making we ended up churning out some quasi-decent works, especially considering we had zero budget, no acting ability whatsoever and we were even light on creativity.  However our first masterpiece, "Hunting Season", a 5-6 minute tale about being stalked and attacked by turkeys, and easily Trent's tour-de-force,  turned into "The End", a 5+ minute tome in the vain of Brian's Song, which then spawned the remarkable "Long Walk", a 20 minute sojourn with an absolutely unbelievable scene in the middle that still makes no sense to this day, but it definitely makes the movie. Along with the movies I also have hours of tape of us doing Jackass style things long before Jackass existed.   I share this now, not merely for personal embarrassment, but because I recently came across my old camera and these movies I converted to VHS and it got me thinking that I should put them on DVD, or should I?  The movies were only shown to a very limited audience; family, a few co-workers and even the family of the Senator we both worked for at one time, so with apologies to Trent's wife Amanda, I'm glad you're already married to him because after watching some of our antics, you may have had second thoughts.  Intrigued? At any rate, anyone that wants to see any of these classic works, you'll have to visit me in Seattle and even then it'll cost you. Or wait, maybe it will cost me, is there a price on humility?



The hills are alive with the sounds...... of me cursing!

Yes, I draw like a 5 year-old, but you get the point.

Where I live now is supposedly on the Sammamish Plateau.  I say, supposedly, because it's the hilliest damn plateau I've ever come across in my life.  In every direction from my place I have enormous hills, enormous!  Maybe I don't understand the definition, but to me a plateau means flat lands.  At any rate, I was telling my dad how hilly it was and that when I run it's always a challenge because there are so many extreme hills in every direction.  Not to mention that I live on top of a hill on the plateau.  Needless to say, I am getting in a lot of hill workouts, like it or not.  Not usually good times.  At any rate I drew this rudimentary picture and sent it to my parents to explain my plight, feel free to laugh at my lack of drawing skills. But the hill from my place to the lake is about the same height of the Space Needle, 600 feet, so virtually every day I am up and down that thing.  Fun.  You know what they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger..........or it just kills you, we'll see which comes first.


Oh Portland, here we go again.

Hmmm, sometimes words just aren't necessary.

I keep getting contacted by a recruiter for a job in Portland, Oregon.  In case you haven't been paying attention to my blog, Portland is not my kind of city. So I find this funny, although the headhunter that has contacted me twice already doesn't seem to get the joke.  Too bad for her, I've been trying to be tactful,  I may have to be more blunt next time.  Portland go ahead and stay weird, but just stay away.


More Cougars, YES!!!

Cougar Mountain on a summer morning.

Since I moved I was almost chased by cougars, not the right kind though :(, but now I live in the shadow of Cougar Mountain.  Seriously.  This the view from my place looking South at Cougar Mountain on a recent morning.  So far I have not had any animal cougar sightings, although I'm told the park to the west of me has black bears.  Whatever.  I sure do wish it was this kind of cougar though, then I'd be at the Cougar park daily:

Jennifer Aniston, still making it happen.  Although she's not chasing me either.  Dammit!

Let the College Football season and scUM hating continue!!!!

Looking good bro!  But it's not "Hail to the donuts" dumbass.

I am so happy that the college football season is all but upon us.  The fact that they are in training camp has me bursting with excitement.  One of my greatest joys is not only cheering for my beloved Chippewas and the Spartans, but vehemently cheering against and hating anything and everything scUM.  They have the worst fans, an enormous and crappy stadium and arrogance off the charts, mostly from dickheads like the two above who I guarantee did not attend scUM, at best they graduated from some crappy downriver or shitsville town high school yet they will forever profess their love for all things scUM.  Screw them and Screw the Blue!  It makes no difference if CMU or MSU have a bad season, I'll hate scUM no matter what, if you can't understand that, I don't know what to tell you.  I'll be having my own Spartans-Wolverines battle in Seattle on September 7, more on that later.  Time to play some football!  FIRE UP CHIPS! Go Green!


Accents aplenty.

Why thanks for stopping by Miss Russia.  Be sure to tell all your friends.

In a previous blog I mentioned how my blog seems to be frequented by people in many different countries.  At the time I posted that, Germany had the most readers(outside the USA), however since then the Russians went on a mad tear and are now leading the charge, considerably, for the international sect.  Although in addition, many more countries have found their way to this site, for whatever the reasons.  Again, I don't advertise and only post the blog on my Facebook, so it's amazing to me how it not only finds its way across the world but readers in those countries keep coming back.  I'll never understand why I guess because I certainly don't pander to any other countries or to anyone to read my silly little blog, however I do seem to attract accents, but that's another story.  At any rate thanks for reading, hopefully you find something enjoyable about it from time to time, if not, too bad for you.  Here is a full list of all the countries that have repeatedly stopped by the blog:

Russia
Austria
Bulgaria
Canada
China
Cyprus
Ecuador
France
Germany
Indonesia
Italy
Malaysia
Mexico
Morocco
Netherlands
Romania
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Ukraine
United Kingdom

That makes 21 countries besides the USA.  Now that is Portland Weird.  Who's next?


Cousins, through the years

The Original Six cousins, 1976.  Readers really seemed to like this photo, so here's a follow up.

Reunited and reposed, 1996.

The bottom row back together again, 2013. My cousin, Trucker Todd, visited Matt and I recently in Seattle,  I mention this now because it was an epic night and there is a tremendous story that will be told soon.  Stay tuned.
Can we get all 6 of us together by 2016?

Thanks for stopping by!

 It's not Arizona, but I guess living here isn't so bad, it's no Detroit..
Poop Juice!