Weekly Dose of Mark

Tuesday, August 4th 2025 • 08/04/26

]One of the topics we discussed at Freelance Fandango was the Perseverance Effect. This immediately led into a conversation on how we, as creative types, both take advantage of and suffer from this effect. We also discussed what our plans for the week include. Stowe is going to travel to escort his in-laws to live in or near Tacoma. Greg Spence Wolf has been absent from our group for several weeks. He’s been taking courses on teaching and has just a little farther to go. We recycled a couple of different Kit Kat flavors: Sakura, Strawberry Chocolate, and Orange Chocolate. And yes, I ate a cheese bagel.

Stowe finished his movie poster for “Polyester” and sent it off to Minute Man Press. He then began working on lettering as part of another project. Just as we were leaving Manifesto, he asked if Larry and I would mind stopping at the printer on the way home. Minute Man had already completed the project. We admired it in the car. The colors looked even better in person than they did on the screen. Stowe gave me one to add to my personal archive of all the Weird Elephant movie posters we’ve created.

Krista’s sister Becca, Becca’s boyfriend John, and Becca’s son Benson came to visit this week. It won’t be able to capture everything, but I will capture some highlights.

We went to Seattle on Friday; it was Benson’s first time in the Emerald City. There were so many destinations to choose from. After we culled the list to a reasonable plan, we landed at the Seattle Center.

All the adults in our group share a love of music and pop culture, so we got tickets to MOPOP, the Museum of Pop Culture. The last time Krista and I went to the museum, it was known as The Experience Music Project. There have been some significant changes over the years. There was an exhibit featuring programming and gaming where attendees did their best to figure out how to play games and saw games created within time limits and unique themes. What grabbed my attention was the section given over to horror movies. I could have easily spent a lot more time in there. John and I enjoyed most of that exhibit together. I took photos of various movie props as inspiration for upcoming art projects. There was a prop of a Crit from Critters, and one of the stunt costumes from the original Alien movie. There were details I always wanted to draw but could never clearly see on the screen and didn’t trust other artists’ renderings. I also took notes on some horror movies to add to my must-see list. In the sci-fi section, I took a photo of the list of authors to double-check and see which ones I might have missed. In another section of the museum, there was a timeline that showed the development of soul and jazz in its various forms. I took so much time in the horror section that I never did make it into the fantasy section. I think Benson liked the video game section the most.

Hunger drove us onto the Monorail for our afternoon snack destination, located in the Pike Place Market. The best Hum Bow in the world can be found behind a counter there. We took our buns to Victor Steinbrueck Park, located at the end of Pike Place Market. Once fortified, we took a tour of the market. At the market, I bought Benson a large fresh scallop, which he enjoyed. Originally, we were going to check out all the levels of the market, but we’d underestimated our endurance. We did complete our goal, which was to get a family photo at the brass pig, something we did with Becca when she was the same age as Benson. We completely forgot about checking out the Fremont Troll in our haste to get out of the city before traffic got too nasty. We were pleasantly surprised to find traffic wasn’t bad and we got back to Tacoma within an hour. Our dining experience that night was robot-delivered sushi and Sumo Sushi.

We were coming back from our trip to Seattle when John mentioned a Reddit posting in which it was reported that a Crumbl Cookie truck cut off someone. What followed for the next ten minutes was an exploration of pathos, contempt, and despair that one would not normally associate with cookies. I should mention that Crumbl Cookie is a franchise whose specialty is giant oversized cookies. Krista and I once stopped by a franchise at a mall. Like Cinnibun, their smell lured us over. Unlike Cinnibun, their price tag had us skittering away. Apparently there are several stores in Denver, and a fleet of Crumbl Cookie trucks with auto-wrap artwork advertising the store on them. Becca’s biggest beef against the franchise is that there is always a Crumbl Cookie truck parked in the spaces designated for the ATM she visits. Too often she’s had to circle looking for parking or give up on getting cash because of the vehicle blockade. So when John mentioned a Crumbl Cookie truck cutting off someone, it triggered her into an epic rant. John informed us that Reddit continued the report with posts saying they’d call the company to complain, and the receptionist blithely saying that the CEO of the company was the driver of the truck. Becca was not surprised by this at all. How this foul company not only showed its colors by blocking parking spots but also by easily informing against its own CEO. The level of jerk was deeply embedded into the core of Crumbl Cookie, not chocolate chips. All agreed it, for we didn’t dare to disagree, that the management of Crumbl Cookie would benefit by a corporate culture that focused on reducing the prevailing sense of entitlement that results in lack of employee loyalty, basic driving and parking courtesy, and overwhelming greed in asking outrageous prices for oversized cookies

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Friday, Krista took our guests on a ferry ride to Vashon Island. While on the ferry, they got to see a whale perform fluke splashing. They also got to eat some delicious fish and chips. I, on the other hand, got up earlier in the morning to set up for the Proctor Art Festival.

The Proctor Art Festival was an adventure this year. Fifteen-mile-an-hour winds with gusts up to twenty-five miles an hour nearly blew my tent up and over, even with the weights. I kept having to take my walls off and then put them back on, like trimming the sails on a boat. I did my best to keep the misting rain off display, but it was a challenge. Thankfully, my neighbors allowed me to bungee my tent leg to theirs so that we could use the combined tent weights to hold our tents down. Sadly, I had to take down my hanging display of prints because the wind kept trying to tear them apart. I was doing so many repairs I ran out of duct tape. I used a grid rack system to assemble a display on my table. Even weighed down with books and horror movie bingo cards, my table display was flipped over twice during the day. I spent most of my time reassembling, repairing, and literally holding down the fort. I did make sales, but my profits were modest and not the best one-day sale record I normally take in during the show.

What made the day for me were all of my fans who stopped by. I love doing little things with them, from an occasional celebratory gift to a caricature. It’s way more fun to be interactive with folks and make their trip memorable than just to sit quietly and nod at folks. A group of fans stopped by to tell me how they formed a movie-watching club during the pandemic and have kept the tradition alive. Each month the group picks a theme and one of them selects a movie that fits that theme. I asked what the themes were for the last three months. I guess the titles of two of the movies they watch. One of my fans from this group, Natasha J. insisted I watch “Widows Bay.” I confessed that Apple+ was one of the few streaming services to which I don’t have a subscription. “But you must watch it and give me a report! Here! I’m sending you $13 on Venmo. Now you can get a one-month subscription, watch the movie, and report back to me by the time I see you at the next art show! I thanked her profusely. I told her that my wife and I have been very eager to see “The Murderbot Diaries” on Apple+. I’m also looking forward to seeing a slew of Tom Hank films that are also only available there. So, even though all of the vendors were glad when the show ended, we packed up with a sense of pride that we survived. Now I have to get additional weights in preparation for the Art on the Ave show next Sunday.

We enjoyed a very hearty breakfast at the Poodle Dog the next morning. Krista made the mistake of having buttermilk pancakes, and her lactose intolerance had her staying at home when evening came around while the rest of us went for Italian at The Flying Tomato. The best dish was the custom pizza Becca ordered. One of the benefits to having family over is that Krista and I spent the week before getting the house into shape with some spring cleaning. Out came the hammock for some shady lounging. Most of our meals at home were taken outside. I never did get around to putting up the table’s umbrella; the weather was cool enough that it wasn’t needed. Washington’s temperate climate was a relief for our visitors from California who had been suffering 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures.

We had a grand time together. Lots of stories, both known and unknown, were shared. We discussed favorites in movies, books, music, and reels. And there was comforting hang time when lounging on a couch with a book, or playing a game on Switch was just the ticket. As we dropped the gang off for the departure home, we promised that it would be us traveling to Denver next.

Alley News

I briefly saw my neighbor Don before our guests arrived. He had a wound on the top of his ear. Always curious about Don’s injuries, I asked how he got this one. Some years back,, he had a worrisome bit of skin removed from the ear, just in case. That bit grew back, and once again the doctors saw fit to lop it off. Don grumbled that it bled for a week and only stopped the night before, for which he was grateful. He was so relieved he didn’t even grumble about the neighbor’s apples once again falling into the alley.

I had a few dreams this week:

July 27. #idreamt the lads from Top Gear drove my car into a lake while test driving it around a golf course. The man who retrieved it, who was on a boat, looked like Brad Pitt.

Aug 28. I was a college student who rented a house only to find an empty lot as an address. I didn’t know a glamour was on the house.

Aug 29. IDreamt a man was kung-fu fighting a bunch of men. Most were after him for an overdue loan. He was after a man who owed him money.

Aug 3. #idreamt I walked from an unloved office job down to the factory and asked a foreman for a shovel to scrap up the blue gel on the floor.

Aug 4. #idreamt I came home to find a construction crew tearing down half the roof and some outside walls of our house. They had the wrong address.

I only watched a couple of movies:

96. July 27. Hunting Season (2025) Rating: 5
There is plot armor in this movie I watched on Kanopy. The marketing made this man and his daughter sound like they were off-grid in a cabin deep in the woods; that was not the story. Maybe a little standoffish, but not an all-out kook. The plot armor for this movie I watched on Kanopy was deadly; shenanigans didn’t seem to have any consequences. It made writing the script a lot easier.

97. July 28. The Vault (2017) Rating: 5
The story seems to have some structure at the beginning, but then gets disoriented halfway through. It might have been meant to cause unease, but it felt sloppy. I had to take a point away for pouring gas on concrete. I mean, what’s the point of that? I couldn’t go farther than a five.

97. July 29. Apocolypto (2006) Rating: 7
I can’t believe I kept this movie on the must-see list for over twenty years. It’s a pretty damn good action film in a seldom-explored historical setting. What it doesn’t have in explosions, it makes up for with poisonous frogs. It’s lush, lavish, unsettling, and brutal, just like the period it was set in, which I watched on Amazon Prime. The movie shows that Mel Gibson is one hell of a director.

98. Aug 4. Ick (2024) Rating: 7
I thought I was going to be disappointed by this movie. I was prepared for yet another apocalypse-type film with zombies caused by a virus. What I got was somewhat like that but far funnier and cleverer. The film takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, starting us out in the 2000s with its fads and pop culture and jauntily brings us to the present day for a nostalgic parody look back. The humor allows for the premise to bear the weight of the suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy the film. And you need to have a fair tolerance for an abundance of CGI. I caught this gem on Amazon Prime.

More next week,
Mark