our 81st weekly open mike

Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.

5/23/2026

Anything goes

itsdougholland.com 
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I was writing my review of yesterday’s movies, when I felt someone’s footsteps from the next room — someone fat, walking heavy. Which is weird, because the guy who lives in that room isn’t fat. 

That was my first moment’s thought when the earthquake hit, but not even a fat guy could shake the floor like that, so I darted to the door of my room, and stood under it like you’re supposed to.

I was wearing a t-shirt and nothing else. Hey, you want me dressed, I need advance notice. I wasn’t gonna stop to put on pants, so my butt was exposed to the hallway, while my willie looked into my room.

A stack of zines toppled off the edge of my bed, and the floor visibly moved just a little. I’ve been through several 3s and a few 4s since moving to California 5 years ago, but this morning’s quake sure caught my attention. It was either a Richter 5, or this building is flexible enough to make even a trivial temblor feel bigger.

When it seemed to have stopped, I put on pants and walked to the fire escape, but there was the same view as yesterday — no buildings were missing, no smoke in the distance, nobody screaming, no crowds assembling in the street, and only one siren in the distance, but there’s always at least one. So what the heck, I went back to the typewriter.

(Addendum: Wednesday’s paper says it was only 4.8. That makes it the biggest quake I’ve been through in SF, but it was nothing much, really.)

♦ ♦ ♦

Took a few sandwiches to a nearby park for lunch, and while eating noticed a pretty woman approaching. I do notice such things.

A man walking the other direction looked at her and put a surprised look on his face. “Didn’t you go to Mission High?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, with a small smile.

“Neither did I,” he said, “but you’re sure beautiful—” but he was talking to the empty space where she’d been a moment earlier. Her smile had disappeared just before she did.

This was right in front of me, so I said to the guy, “Does that line ever work?”

At that his body started shaking like this morning’s quake, his arms rolling around like an episode of Soul Train, and he answered me with a rapping rhyme:

    “I’ve always got a line
    for the women who so fine
    might like to squeeze my lime…”

There was more to it than that, but that’s all I jotted down, after he’d seen another pretty woman across the park and trotted toward her.

Other than that, nobody interrupted my lunch. Nobody tried chatting me up. I’m not sure anyone in the park even noticed that a fat man was eating sandwiches. It was perfect.

Something I know I’ve written before and will probably write again: I’m sure glad I’m not a pretty woman, so I can be invisible my entire life instead of always being pestered by men who imagine they’re charming.

At Black Sheets, I prepped the outbound mail, and then swept and mopped and scrubbed everything that needed sweeping, mopping, or scrubbing.

After work, I tacked up a few of my “I’ll do anything” flyers in four different laundromats, came home to pack a few peanut butter and vanilla frosting sandwiches, and walked to the Roxie for a double feature:

In Downstairs (1932), a wealthy family hires a new chauffeur, and he’s a cocksure charlatan who soon boffs the cook, seduces the butler’s bride, and blackmails the master’s wife.

John Gilbert, who also wrote the story, is all too believable as the cad. The script is gritty, grown-up, and offers wickedly keen observations on class, along with a few deliciously modern surprises. The only thing dated about Downstairs is a brief but moving monologue from the head butler about taking pride in one’s work.

When Ladies Meet (1933) starts off as a screwball comedy about high infidelity. Myrna Loy stars as an author whose next novel is about a woman having an affair with a married man, and coincidentally the author is having an affair with a married man. It’s a ribald, funny sex farce, until Myrna meets her lover’s wife.

At that point, the movie turns suddenly serious, a shift of mood and pace and point that can’t work, but does. Everything becomes so different, When Ladies Meet feel like a double feature all by itself. The conversation between wife and mistress is stirring, and it’s one of those rare old movies that’s such a masterpiece, I wonder why I’d never heard of it.

If you’re lucky enough to have a theater in your town that books this pre-Code series, Downstairs and When Ladies Meet are two movies not to be missed.

♦ ♦ ♦  

I don’t do much cooking, and at my old place in Berkeley, Judith kept the kitchen stocked with incidentals. That’s why I’ve had no salt & pepper in my room at the hotel.

Today, though, eggs were on special at Jose’s Produce, so I bought two dozen. And you can’t do eggs without salt & pepper, so I also bought one of those super-cheap disposable sets of cardboard shakers, manufactured by Morton.

Then I came home and microwaved an 8-egg cheese omelet, or at least I call it an omelet, but it’s just microwaved eggs. They get tall and fluffy.

I was ready for my delicious eggy dinner, but disaster struck. I unwrapped the salt & pepper to season my marvelous meal, but it was salt & salt — two shakers of salt.

The omelet was good, but not as good as it would’ve been with pepper. And I was annoyed, so after eating, I walked back to the store to trade Morton’s mistake for salt & pepper.

Calmly and politely I explained what had happened, but the clerk wouldn’t let me exchange it, because I hadn’t kept the receipt.

A receipt? I had opened the egg carton in the store, so I knew none were busted, and surely nothing could go wrong with a factory-filled salt & pepper set wrapped in plastic. I don’t keep the receipt for anything unless it’s a big-bucks purchase.

Why does the store need a receipt anyway? Is Morton gonna quibble over 79¢ when the store wants their money back? Most of this I said, first to the clerk, then to the manager, and also to some jerk working behind the meat counter who kept nosing into the conversation. The angrier I got, the softer I spoke, but the answer remained no.

Fuck you, you fuckers, but I didn’t say that on my way out. Already a plan was percolating, but I didn’t want to make myself too memorable.

There are four small and three big bodegas within very easy walking distance, and for 79¢ Jose’s has lost me as a customer. I will be back, though.

Instead of killing the roaches in my room, I’m now trapping them. It’s fairly easy, and I’ve done it before. You take an old, empty but not washed jar of peanut butter, and wrap strong tape around the mouth of the jar, making a short sticky walkway that leads to the PB residue. The scent of the peanut butter attracts the roaches, but the tape snags their tiny feet on the way to their supper.

My little homemade roach motel now sits next to the toaster, where the bread crumbs already attract roaches. In a few days, several will be stuck on the tape.

In the past, I’ve then microwaved the roaches, but this time they get to live. I’ll shake the captured cockroaches into a baggie, and discreetly deliver them to Jose’s Produce, somewhere near the meat counter.