Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen in Ramones Cover Band Tour

Brownstein and Armisen are currently playing Ramones covers on a few dates on the East and West coasts as "The Return of Jackie and Judy." 

Buy tickets.

Glad to Be a Spurs Fan Again (Sans Popovich)

My mom lived in San Antonio for nearly 20 years, so SA was my team. I even got to attend one of the Finals games against the Knicks in 1999---a series the Spurs ultimately won (with both David Robinson and Tim Duncan). 

I remember how fun the atmosphere was outside the arena---Spurs and Knicks fans all good-naturedly taunting each other! And the owner of the team, Peter Holt, was actually on hand as we all entered the arena to thank everyone and hand out free T-shirts.

After 1999, Robinson/Duncan won the Championship again in 2003. After that, Robinson retired, and the Duncan-led team won again in 2005, 2007, and 2014 (along with Ginobili and Parker). In 2016, Duncan retired.

Head coach Gregg Popovich was in charge of the team from 1996 thru 2025. He did great in the Robinson/Duncan years. But starting in 2018, his record as a coach was pitiful:
2018: Lost in first round of play-offs
2019: Lost in first round of play-offs
2020: Missed play-offs
2021: Missed play-offs
2022: Missed play-offs
2023: Missed play-offs
2024: Missed play-offs
2025: Missed play-offs

Most teams would have fired his unsuccessful ass after 2020, but.... because he was also "President of Basketball Operations" for the Spurs (who named himself Coach in 1996), there was no one around who could actually fire him. It took a 2024 stroke to finally get him out of there.

NOTE: In new coach Mitch Johnson's first complete season as Head Coach of the Spurs, the team went from a 34-48 record to a 62-20 record. Johnson has been nominated as one of three finalists for Coach of the Year.

Why did it take a stroke to get Popovich out of there? A lesson to teams: Don't make any coach "President of Basketball Operations" so that it's impossible to fire him for poor performance (since he will, obviously, never fire himself). 

Enjoying the current Round 1 of Spurs vs. Trailblazers playoffs, currently 3-1 in Spurs favor!

Update: On 4/28/26, Spurs beat the Trailblazers to win the series. First time Spurs have moved on from First Round since 2018. Up next: T'Wolves or Nuggets. I think we lost ALL of our games played against Denver this year (!), despite our 62-win season (2nd-best in league, after OKC).

Andy Griffith: Police Department Blues (1959: pre-famous-show)

"Did I ever tell you about Miss Barbara Bray..." --- A shout-out to his first wife, Barbara Bray Edwards---married from 1949 to 1972.

The Beatles (1963-Royal Variety Performance): From Me to You

If I had someone to do stuff with...

FAMILY SITES:
(1) I'd definitely go back to Azle/Briar to see the old haunts. (3-1/2-hr drive north on I-35)
(2) I'd go to East Texas and visit my dad and see the areas that I have good memories of visiting when I was a kid: Lone Star, Longview, Lake O' the Pines.
(3) I'd go to Germany (where I haven't been since I was 18) and see my grandparents' old house in Wolfsburg. (Probably torn down by now.)

And then, aside from family things:

THE WORLD
(1) I'd like to tour England (Plath/Hughes and Thomas Hardy and Beatles areas, specifically, and then London for general historical purposes).
(2) Moscow; and then Ekaterinburg, where Nicholas II and family were murdered---where Russian religious tours are still held.

THE US
(1) Definitely Los Angeles! All Joan Crawford homes and studio sites, plus side road-trips to Manson Family sites (Spahn, Barker).
(2) Southern tour: Elvis's Graceland, some Civil War battle sites, and then Ginny's grave in Georgia.

What I've done for myself so far: New York City/New Jersey and San Francisco! Lived in both for about 2 years each. 

But everything I've listed above, I don't think I could do by myself. For instance, a trip back to Azle/Briar (where I'd want to re-discover that tiny graveyard that I once visited when I was 16) would be utterly depressing if I drove there by myself. Similarly, I wouldn't want to visit anything in England or Moscow or LA without a close person with me to talk about things with.

Guess I'm stuck for now, huh?! The above are all do-able. But I don't want to do them by myself.

"Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann (1927)

This piece is one of Joan Crawford's philosophical inspirations, and the below is as it appeared in her NYC Memorial Program in May 1977:

I remember reading, also, that Sylvia Plath's mother once asked Sylvia to remember the above. The line "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be here" was specifically quoted by Aurelia Plath.

"Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment it is perennial as the grass."

"With all its sham, drudgery & broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy."

Sleater-Kinney: Modern Girl (2005)

My review of Brownstein's 2015 book: "Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl"

Brownstein's book is literature rather than a "Sleater-Kinney" or "Riot Grrrl" tell-all. There ARE plenty of interesting details about "the local scene" in Olympia, Washington, and the whole NW music scene at that time (mid-90s to early 2000s), plus specifics about her own band and their triumphs and hardships, and the interesting often-lowly scenes of their initial creative processes. But what is most meaningful to me is Brownstein's ability to make the reader FEEL the things that she's going through (even when supposedly "triumphant" on the surface). For example: Her writing about her family, and about her pets, is heart-breaking. As is her ability to honestly communicate her innate sense of loneliness and absence---truly hard to do as writer, but she does it. I didn't particularly like Sleater-Kinney as a band back in the day, but I very much like, and admire, Carrie Brownstein as a writer.

My baby loves me, I'm so happy
Happy makes me a modern girl
Took my money and bought a TV
TV brings me closer to the world

My whole life
Was like a picture of a sunny day
My whole life
Was like a picture of a sunny day

My baby loves me, I'm so hungry
Hunger makes me a modern girl
Took my money and bought a donut
The hole's the size of this entire world

My whole life
Looks like a picture of a sunny day
My whole life
Looked like a picture of a sunny day

My baby loves me, I'm so angry
Anger makes me a modern girl
Took my money, I couldn't buy nothin'
I'm sick of this brave new world

In other "Ezilya" news...

I recently ordered a cool-looking mirror from eBay. But, alas, the seller didn't box it up properly, and only put one thin layer of bubble-wrap over the mirror. It arrived smashed to bits. Of course. Luckily, the seller immediately gave me a full refund, so the transaction wasn't overly stressful. BUT... I still can't help but wondering: Why would you not use a real box and not use multiple layers of bubble wrap when mailing a mirror? EZILYA!

Fast-Food Desert

I don't think a "Food Desert" is a real thing, unless you're intentionally living way off the grid (and thus growing your own food or only going into town every 3 months or so for canned staples). 

A "Food Desert" is basically defined (thanks to Wikipedia and AI) as: 
"An area where residents have limited access to fresh and nutritious food, often due to a lack of nearby grocery stores or farmers' markets. These areas typically rely on convenience stores or fast food outlets, which offer fewer healthy options."

#1: "lack of nearby farmers' markets" is utterly ridiculous and dismissable---total yuppie/media BS. 
#2: I've lived in very rural areas, in big-city areas, in suburbs of big cities---And I've never ONCE been in any place where fruits and vegetables were not available. Even my tiny corner bodega in Joisey had fruits and vegetables, along with their beer (plus there was the huge Pathmark supermarket within walking distance). And people who live in rural areas all have cars, obviously, and so can drive in to the nearest small town supermarket for veggies.

If locals aren't buying fruits/veggies, it's NOT because they're not available anywhere. So the "Food Desert" thing is absolute contrived left-wing fantasy about "eeevil corporations denying fresh food to the masses."

What I HAVE found to be a much bigger problem personally here in the metropolis of Austin, Texas, is a "Fast-Food Desert."

For instance: I moved into my current North Austin neighborhood in 2017---9 years ago. 
At that time, I was surrounded by multitudes of step-above-McDonald's restaurants where I could pick up food that I liked to eat:
Taco Cabana (San Antonio-based Tex-Mex; within walking distance)
McAlister's (deli sandwiches and also chicken-fried steak, within a 5-min drive)
Teno's (Mediterranean gyros and salads, within a 5-min drive)

And then there were a couple of fast-food places that I liked: 
The nearby Whataburger had good burgers, but I also often ordered the "apple/cranberry salad" with chicken.
And the Arby's---loved their roast-beef sandwiches and their fish sandwiches. And they used to have a good side-salad (which disappeared years ago, though).

Since 2017: The Taco Cabana has closed, the McAlister's has closed, the Teno's has closed, the Arby's has closed (which I just discovered last week when I drove there!). The Whataburger is still there, but no more "apple-cranberry salad" (apparently, apples got too expensive).

If I want fresh vegetables/fruit, I drive a few minutes down Burnet Road and get them at the HEB grocery store. But in between trips to my grocery store for staples, I miss being able to get a quick meal during the week. What's now currently close by to where I live: Only McDonald's and Dairy Queen. (Dairy Queen used to be a staple of small-town Texas, where I grew up: Their "Steak Finger Basket" was the best /most-delicious back in the 1980s---but those steak fingers today at the restaurant very near my apartment are inedible. None of their food is very tasty any more.)

So, yes, this post is in protest of the "Fast-Food Desert" that many of us are now living through! (Should I start a GoFundMe page for my suffering?! Please help sponsor my trip to a north-of-Austin suburb where there is still a McAlister's!)

Electra on "Ezilya" Path

I was recently going through Sylvia Plath's family tree on the findagrave.com site, beginning with the immediates, like Daddy Otto. At the top of each person's entry is BIRTH, DEATH, BURIAL, PLOT info. For Otto, the PLOT portion said: "Ezilya Path, Grave 1123."

EZILYA Path??

Now, "Electra on Azalea Path" is a pretty famous poem if you're a reader of Plath. 

And aside from the poem itself, she also writes about visiting her father's grave in her journals, and her autobiographical character "Esther" in "The Bell Jar" also makes the same trek. Her ambivalent feelings toward her father (who died when she was 8) are quite important in her psyche and, thus, to her work. (And she also noted in her journals the play on words "Aurelia"---her mother's name---and "Azalea" in the poem.)

So why on earth would anyone adding info to Plath's father's findagrave page be so unfamiliar with the famous poem title as to think that he was buried on "Ezilya Path"?? I mean, people who are interested enough in Plath to know where her father is buried have surely read the poem on the page, and not just LISTENED to it somewhere and picked up a phonetic spelling---right? (Even if they'd only heard Plath read it on YouTube or someplace, the actual poem name would still be WRITTEN there onscreen somewhere, either in the title of the video or the intro material!)

I then started to wonder: Maybe the real name of the location WAS "Ezilya Path" and Plath just prettied it up for the poem?? NOPE! Plath scholar Peter K. Steinberg has visited the gravesite several times, and posted a photo of the actual path marker in a 2022 blog entry:

I remain puzzled by where in the world "Ezilya" came from! What oddly ignorant type of person posted that?

But I DID take a moment to fill in the "SUGGEST EDITS" field on Otto's page. And to findagrave's credit, they fixed it to "Azalea" in only 2 days! THANK YOU, Intelligent Moderator! (Or I would have gone MAD!)  :)  
And YOU'RE WELCOME to my fellow Plath fans, who, thanks to me, no longer have to see "Ezilya" on that page! :)
 
Oh, and now that I think about it, here's a very minor "you're welcome" from me to myself: 
Back in the early 2000s, I worked as a copy editor at a now-defunct educational publishing company that distributed its books nationally. The literature books for older grades included some Plath poems, with introductory biographical material. As initially written and edited, the intro said that mother Aurelia was of German descent; smarty-pants me pointed out that Aurelia's parents were Austrian, not German. When the first editor marked out my suggestion to correct the facts, I felt compelled to take the issue to his boss editor, who thanked me and said "We should have known the familial history of a major American author." :)

(Unfortunately, I was not so successful when copy-editing a section that featured "I Believe I Can Fly" lyrics by R. Kelly. I pointed out that Kelly had been accused of child molestation for years, and charged with possessing child porn in 2002---Did we really want him in our textbooks? Apparently, we did!)

p.s. I hadn't read this poem in probably 10 years. But re-reading now---my god! This is every bit as well-sculpted and powerful as her later "Ariel" poems (while also much richer in language and mythological refs, yet still extremely intimate). One line has always been permanently embedded in my memory for some reason---it pops up in my head every few months, whenever something seems particularly off: "The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red." (Another line, from a different poem, that always comes to mind when I wake up with a hangover and am feeling sick both physically and mentally: "What have I eaten? Lies and smiles.")

-----------------------------------------

Electra on Azalea Path
Sylvia Plath (March 1959)

The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.

Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis,
Your speckled stone askew by an iron fence.

In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea Path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a bloody dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.

Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the stilts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.

The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said; you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting in my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.

Trump Deadline: Tues, 8pm Eastern

Younger people might not understand the recent history of Iran with the United States. 

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries took US embassy employees hostages, and held them for over a year. They were released upon Reagan's inauguration in 1981.

Since 1979, Iran has funded terrorism groups (Taliban, Hezbollah, Houtis, Hammas) throughout the Middle East. And Iran has attempted to gain its own nuclear capabilities. The Obama Administration returned $400 billion to Iran (previously frozen by the US as punishment for its 1979 actions)---which Iran subsequently used to both develop its nuclear weapons systems and to fund terrorist organizations.

Tuesday, April 7, 8pm: The Trump deadline to surrender the Strait of Hormuz once and for all.

Iran has been a terrorist state for the past 50 years. We just called them on it. Interesting to see what will happen on Tuesday.

-------------------------------------------

Post-script on 4/10: Trump backed down, extending his "open the Strait of Hormuz" deadline by 2 weeks. Sorry to hear it. We all KNOW the Iranian pattern of obfuscation. (And, sadly, much of the leftist world press is blatantly anti-Trump and anti-Israel---not explaining, for instance, that the "human shield" of women and children surrounding Iranian power plants were coerced by the Iranian govt. Nor did said press cover the massacre by the Iranian govt of over 30K of its own citizens back in January.)

So here we go again with another countdown...

Happy Birthday, Babies! 7 years old (2019: Born either April 6 or April 7---not quite sure!)

In 2018 in Austin, I started feeding some stray cats hanging around my apartment building.
I hadn't had a cat since 2009, when Gracie died in New Jersey. 
I was very lonely. And I've always thought: "It isn't a home without a cat in it."
These strays all looked like they were related, and once I started putting out food, they all liked to hang out on my apartment back patio. 

I lived on "Penny Lane," and so I named them accordingly:

"Henny Penny" and then there was "Papa Penny" (a big, gentle rag-tag big male cat, with part of his ear torn off), and "Li'l Penny."
"Henny Penny" (later "Hennessy" because I thought she was a wild little boy cat) would always be perched on my back fence whenever I arrived home from work. Once I came out back to put out their daily cheap food, this little cat would always jump up on my leg first and say "hi."

A few weeks later, Hennessy was pregnant. Which I didn't know, until she didn't show up one night for dinner. I called for her, but no answer. The next day, I called for her again---and this time, there was a yowling in response... She'd dragged her babies into my neighbor's backyard---not quite to mine... My apartment neighbor's kindly dog was looking down on the new batch of kittens...

 

On this day, April 7, 2019, it was raining like mad, and she and her new babies were sitting in a big mud puddle. I ran over to my neighbor's apartment and told him what was happening in his backyard, and to please not let his dog hurt them... His dog was nice. And my neighbor put a make-shift tent over the kittens to protect them from the rain. A day later, Mama Hennessy had moved all kittens into my backyard. And then I moved all of them into my home.

Mama Hennessy, Mini, Peter, Sasha.

Happy 7th birthday, Kittens! (And you're now officially "My Familiar," Mini!) :)

p.s. I never knew what happened to "Papa Penny"---a big, beautiful older boy cat, who couldn't hear so good. He disappeared soon after.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in the early '90s, I wrote in my diary (a real paper diary in a book back then, not online): 
"All I want is a home with cats and plants and books."
I've now got that. Thank you, Universe (God).

Nick Drake: Pink Moon

 We just had one. Thanks, Nick.

I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get ye all

Aw, who could blame me? My very first lover...

This 1989 shot was from a local Austin, Texas, gay magazine that featured her on the cover, 

about 6 months after we'd met, and the month before we moved in together.
(My first lover, and the only person I've ever lived with.)

She messed me up, mentally, for the next 10 years of my life.
But: Re-visiting this pic in 2026: You must admit that she IS very good-looking! :)
 

But, alas, also very, very stupid. She owned exactly 2 books: 

"Dianetics" by Ron Hubbard, and "Lolita." (Seriously.)

If you own over 1000 books (indicating that you've been thinking about various things), you simply cannot be with someone who owns only 2 books.
I said to myself then (and now):
"You are way too sexy for me. And I am way too smart for you."

Given how utterly dumb she was, I should have slept with her for 3 months or so

(and certainly never have been so upset about her for 10 years!).

But, hey: It was my very first lover. What are ya gonna do? 

I've been trolling online, and here she is, still posing as of 2018.

The heavy-set Hispanic woman at left appears in many of her latter-day Facebook photos. 
I'm guessing they're platonic roommates? 

Simply because my 70-something ex keeps posting online 

about how hot she herself is---and ageing gay boys from the '90s keep popping up to say

 "El Jefe! We still love you!" 
If the woman at left is a late-in-life girlfriend: My sympathies!
(Couldn't you have found a nice man to make a home with, rather than 
hanging around with this freak? What do you get out of this?)

 

Carrie Brownstein/Annie Clark: Nowhere Inn (2019)

 

The Best April Fools Joke

The only time my family ever lived in a college environment while I was growing up was in College Station, Texas, in 1972-73 (home of Texas A&M). While there, the neighbors included professors and professionals, and people of other descent. I had a Japanese friend for the first time, Miyuki Robinson, and a Hispanic friend, Anna---though when she insisted on pronouncing her name "ah-na," I obnoxiously said no, it's "aa-na." While in College Station, I also encountered for the first time two other friends who were not allowed to watch television! (I'd never heard of such an insane thing!)

My favorite April Fools Day joke (the best to this day) involves an older woman who lived right next door to us in College Station: Mrs. Lee. She was very, very large and always wore muu-muus. She had a smiling face, and she also had a steel-gray page-boy haircut with bangs. 

On April 1, either 1972 or 1973, my mother excitedly came to me: "Mrs. Lee is in her backyard in a bikini!" 
ME [I was very aware that this was April Fool's Day]: Nooo....
MOM: It's true!
ME: [thinking it can't possibly be true, but wanting it to be true, but knowing it couldn't be true, was it true? I wouldn't look, I denied the possibility for about 5 minutes. But then I HAD to go look!]

APRIL FOOLS!

Just Rec'd Chaplin Essanay/Mutual Set (+ my take on The Great Dictator)

I don't know why I keep going on with Chaplin. I think because "you're supposed to both love him and appreciate his brilliance" is so ingrained by past critics in anyone who is a serious film lover (which I am) that you're afraid to look stupid if you don't find him particularly lovable OR brilliant. 

I mean, he's relatively charming onscreen. (Nothing like the obnoxious Harry Langdon, for instance.) But after watching the mediocre "Modern Times" (1936) and its much-worse follow-up "The Great Dictator" (1940)----both admitted into the US Library of Congress National Film Registry (!)---I can't trust anything the so-called experts say.  (After all, the same US entity also enshrined the godawfully bad 1996 "Watermelon Woman.")

I wrote about watching "Modern Times" days ago, so won't mention it again here. 

But as for 1940's "The Great Dictator" (in which Chaplin plays a dual role: simple Jewish barber AND Dictator of Tomainia, Adenoid Hynkel): 
I don't care about the politics. I don't care that Chaplin somehow "dared" to "make fun of Hitler." (Hitler had been the pre-eminent World Villain in the press since he invaded Poland in 1939. The US wasn't in the war yet---and wouldn't be until bombed by Japan in late 1941---so I suppose that making an anti-Hitler film in 1940 was MILDLY daring? Not really. From the safety of the US, with the full support of all of the US press, making a film mocking Hitler was decidedly NOT daring in any way.)

I counted only a few interesting and/or funny bits: 
(1) The concept of a goofy-but-heroic soldier being in a coma since WWI and then waking up to WWII years, per Chaplin's Jewish barber's situation: OK, mildly interesting. (Though Chaplin's soldier was a Gomer-Pyle-style-screw-up and just became "heroic" by accident. But I could still see the premise.)
(2) The scene where the former WWI hero pilot (who now has conveniently and too-easily-per-plot escaped from a concentration camp after defying Hitler) tells the Jewish-ghetto male residents that the one person who finds a coin in his pudding will be the one who must assassinate Hitler---himself not included. Chaplin's and his fellow Jews' shenanigans trying to dump the coin into their neighbors' puddings is funny and human, as is the reality of the so-called pilot "hero" making excuses for excluding himself at the beginning.
(3) The scenes with Jack Oakie as "Napaloni" (Mussolini), the visiting dictator, are the best in the entire film. The problems with the red-carpet-rollout upon his arrival. The shortened chair in the initial meeting in Hynkel's office. The subsequent scene when the two dictators go to a barber shop and, again, there is a battle for who has the tallest chair! But the train arrival goes on too long (repeating the same bit), and the barber-shop scene is way too short---there's ONLY the chair battle, and that's it! (For a truly clever example of a "barber battle," see the episode of "The Office" when Michael and DeAngelo try to outdo each other while being shaved. Surely Chaplin was more of a clever writer than mere "Office" television writers? No?)

The famous scene where Chaplin's Hynkel bats around a balloon globe: It's been described as "balletic," but it's really not! He pokes the globe into the air a few times, bumps it with his butt once or twice. Nothing "balletic." Plus, how is this supposed to represent the real Hitler's attempts at world domination? This fey scene makes it seem like Hynkel/Hitler is rather poetic! (True, the balloon globe pops at the end, and Hynkel looks dismayed...)

And the film is topped off with Chaplin---allegedly in character as the Jewish barber who has now been mistaken for Hynkel---giving a plea for world peace at the end. But it's not "The Barber," it's Chaplin. And it's an ending that is even more overtly stilted and awkward than the whole rest of the film. By 1940, Chaplin had utterly lost it as a film-maker. (Early clever/cute years as "The Tramp" did NOT, up to this point, translate into being capable of directing and writing.)

I've seen Chaplin's subsequent films "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947) and "Limelight" (1952), so I know he got a lot better---more skilled and interesting---as a director/writer. But then I've also seen "A King in New York" (1957), which was even worse than "The Great Dictator," though similar in its badness.

So, having begun with Chaplin and his First National (1918-1923) and United Artists (1923-1952) films (and not being overly impressed with that overall body of work), maybe seeing his Essanay (1915) and Mutual (1916-17) early films will make me proclaim him as Great? Because at this point, "The Kid" and "The Gold Rush" and "City Lights" ain't gonna do it!