With nothing much to do, I spent some the morning writing and editing and proofing the month of April, which’ll be the next issue of the zine. Then I pooped in the communal john down the hall.

Someone had thoughtfully left yesterday’s Chronicle atop the toilet, and I spotted an interesting double feature playing at the Saint Frank. The next showtime: 11:15 AM. The watch on my wrist said it was 10:51. 24 minutes to wipe, get dressed, and get myself about a mile away, in downtown at nearly midday? Traffic would be slow, but irrelevant, since I’d be under the earth riding the subway.

So I made six cheese and onion sandwiches, stuffed ’em into my backpack with a bottle of tap water, and stopped at the store for a small sack of chocolate. Then I walked a block to the BART station, where trains run so often you don’t need to check a schedule, and I was at the theater with five minutes to spare.

It’s another advantage of living in San Francisco. You can get anywhere, pretty quick. And no car means no hassles, no traffic, no worries about parking.

And the movie was worth watching, too. Not Rumble in the Bronx, the Jackie Chan flick. That was meh — not good, but also not bad, a cartoon without the cartoon. I’m a Chan fan, but not this time. It’s a Hong Kong chop sockey that’s been badly dubbed in English, set in New York but it looks like it was filmed on Sesame Street. Cheesier than my sandwiches.

Chan’s made so many terrific movies — City Hunter, Super Cop, Armour of God, on and on, all subtitled and splendid, but this one’s been dubbed to death.

It’s the second feature that made the trip and ticket worthwhile: The Substitute. A high school teacher is threatened by a tough kid in class, who then hires a hit man to tonyaharding the teacher. While Teach is recuperating in the hospital, the teacher’s boyfriend comes to class as the substitute teacher, and he’s not just a tough grader; he’s a covert ops commando with some time between assignments. Some time to kill, you might say.

He’s Tom Berenger, and in short order he’s disarmed the class at this tough urban school, teaching them the inside history of the Vietnam War. And the kids are listening, so it’s The Blackboard Jungle with bullets, corrupt cops, and a principal who’s also a drug kingpin.

You’re supposed to take it all seriously, which can’t be done since it’s preposterous, but in weird ways it is curiously lifelike. The kids, for example, remind me of high school thugs I hated when I was in that prison, so seeing ’em get their asses Jujutsued was great fun.

It’s a big dumb testosterone movie, but the script is moderately literate, slightly subversive, and there’s even a psychotic assistant hero named Holland. Lotsa screaming back at the screen, lotsa laughs, lotsa fights, and lotsa stuff blowing up, in a joint operation between the CIA and the PTA. Also, gratuitous eraser fu, so The Substitute gets my highest lowbrow recommendation.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Back home, back to writing and editing and proofing the zine, but here’s fair warning too late: The next issue seems kinda lame, and of course, the sucky next issue I’m editing and referring to is the one you’re reading now.

I like my life, but the zine of my life bores me sometimes. Not sure I’d pay three bucks for this, but my sincere thanks for the suckers people who cough it up.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Needing a break from what I was doing two weeks ago, I looked at the movie calendars on the wall, for the several theaters in and about town that show old movies. There’s always something worth seeing at one or three of them, so another movie? Why not?

Today it was a 50th anniversary screening of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) at the Red Vic. A crosstown #33 took me there, to watch a drifter take a job at a diner, and take a shining to the proprietor’s wife. The camera slowly climbs up Lana Turner’s legs, and you should oughta know, there ain’t no sultry like black-and-white sultry.

Her goofball husband should have ‘cuckold’ tattooed on his forehead, and after the drifter floats into Lana Turner’s port they decide to off the husband. Hume Cronyn plays a lawyer you can love, and it’s the best film I’ve seen all day.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Note from a cheapskate: With my bus and BART pass plus a wallet full of Red Vic tickets someone sent for a Pathetic Life subscription, the total cost for all three of today’s movies, including snacks, was less than five bucks.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Waiting for the #33 to take me home, a green-haired man approached me, waving a pair of shoes. “Ten dollars, Doc Martens,” he said. “They’ll fit ya,” he promised, but I shooed the shoes away.

Another man held up a ridiculous purple hat, the kind pimps wore in the 1970s. Momentarily I was tempted, so he said, “Ten bucks,” and I smiled and held up an index finger to bid one dollar. He shook his head, and walked away. No bargains in Haight-Ashbury tonight.

Still waiting for the bus, I chatted with some of the stoner youth. They’re like the kids on Telegraph, only on Haight they’re younger, and into harder drugs than Berkeley’s marijuana. Several of them panhandled me for dimes and quarters, but I’m poor and stingy and said no.

One tooth-deprived kid in a badly-ripped overcoat didn’t ask for money, but instead said, “Can I sleep at your house tonight?” I told him my wino hotel has a rule against visitors, and he laughed, said that was the best answer he’d heard that night, but “it always comes down to ‘nope’.”

“Yup,” I said. “Nope.”

“So it’s back to Golden Gate Park,” he said, and trudged with his beat-up backpack toward the miles of green a few blocks away.

Countless kids sleep in the bushes and on the grass in the park, every night. It’s a problem, I think, but nobody in power gives a rip, and the kids are probably better in the bushes than in the awful homes they ran away from.

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our 77th 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.

4/25/2026

Anything goes

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Today I was back at Judith and Jake’s house for maid duty. Her son is coming to visit in a few weeks, so for the next couple of Tuesdays I’ll be there, trying to make the place habitable.

I started by changing the kitty litter, a task I’m not sure Judith has ever done. But the stink remained so I sleuthed the source and found a huge mountain of drying but still stinking cat turds behind some loose lumber on the porch, just a few feet from the litter box. Why the cat prefers pooping on the floor to pooping in the box, I dunno. I just scraped it up and then sponged the residue.

Washed all of the dishes, something else Judith rarely or never does. The sink and overflow on the counter were like an archaeological dig — bowls had been stacked but were still full of Fruit Loops and Alpha-Bits, which had hardened into a glop of sugar and stale milk. Someone had oatmeal for breakfast earlier this month or perhaps late in March, and didn’t finish it, simply adding the bowl of oatmeal to the tower of dishes. Several plates near the top of the pile had UPC stickers on the back, so when every dish in the house is dirty they simply buy more dishes?

Cleaned the bathroom, tossing ten pounds of old mail-order catalogs I’d always hesitated to toss when I lived there, but jeez, some of them dated back to 1990. They’d been stacked atop a plastic mini-table that was kinda disgusting, so the table took a hot shower for ten minutes.

Scraped muck and yuck out of the sink and tub.

Scrubbed the toilet, though it’s so shit-stained you can’t really tell.

Beat huge quantities of dog hair and dust out of the shower rug.

Scooped three armloads of dirty laundry off the bathroom floor and piled them in what used to be my room, because there was no space in the laundry room.

And the bathroom looks much better. I’m seriously proud of Judith’s bathroom.

When I came out of the john, though, and saw the rest of the house again, all my energy drained away. Told Judith I was done for the day, and she paid me and offered me dinner at Jack in the Crack. A Jumbo Jack for Judith, two for me, three for the dog. We got ’em to go, and ate at a tiny park on the waterfront, where there’s a fabulous view of both bridges.

I played with Lugosi the giant dog, but he’s bitten some people, so by city edict he has to be leashed and muzzled whenever he’s outdoors. It’s basically a dog park, though, and Lugosi gets along well with other dogs, so Judith was non-compliant. No leash. Lugosi wore the muzzle, though, so we couldn’t play fetch, but me and the dog ran everywhere, and I hid behind rocks and bushes, then leapt out and scared the monster.

♦ ♦ ♦

BARTed home pretty well tuckered out, and it occurs to me that Judith and Lugosi are the only flatmates I miss from the house in Berkeley. And that yesterday and today, friends took me to dinner. Who’ll buy me food tomorrow?

I’m digging it all — odd jobs between easy days at the the rez hotel, lazy nights, old movies, a typewriter that works, BART and MUNI instead of a car, lots of time alone but also a few but real friends.

Nothing about any of it isn’t an improvement over the straight-laced responsibilities and life left behind in Seattle, and also over working at Macy’s a year ago.

Maggie called my life “pathetic,” but I like who I am and especially where I am. It feels good and keeps getting better. No complaints from me if April of ’96 in San Francisco lasts another 25 years, and when time’s up I’ll die happy, wrinkled, and alone, in a cheap room in the Mission.

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