Weekly Dose of Mark

Sunday, July 26th 2026 • 07/26/27

James Stowe and I carpooled to Freelance Fandango on Monday. Allen Gladfelter came in the door right behind us. I ordered a cheese bagel. I’m getting addicted to those. We had a couple of new faces join us, and a frequent attendee, Chris. It made for a full table of conversation as we exchanged information and several recommendations for the various resources in town available for artists looking for work

.

There were a couple of design jobs I passed on. The Weekly Volcano was looking for a designer to do their page layout. Everyone at the table groaned when they heard this. I think it’s a common experience for designers to all suffer the thankless task of doing newspaper layout. Thankfully, I did it back in college. Back then there were no computers, just a lot of physically cutting and pasting. It was tedious, but thankfully the amount of work was curtailed by the need to have the layout boards photographed and the negatives that would then be used at the printer. Last-minute editing and tweaking was out of the question. The others at the table had page layout programs that allowed for dozens of on-the-fly tweaks in minutes. This actually increased the workload for the production person, as if there was time to change anything, something would end up needing changing, when it really didn’t need to be changed. It’s grueling, non-appealing, thankless work. And by thankless I mean it pays next to nothing. So it’s not a surprise that most freelancers will quickly learn from this torture how to avoid it. It’s the type of job position that was constantly being refilled back when newspapers and weeklies were more of a thing. I do hope the Volcano will find someone, but it’s not going to be me.

Alley News

The mystery moat in the lot down the alley has been filled in with concrete. In the last couple of weeks, a structure with a slanted roof has appeared. It’s a four-plex. The construction crew has been blocking the alley, and residents have taken to driving the long way through. There has also been a fair amount of grumbling about what the parking will be like in the future. Over the years, more and more renters have taken to parking their vehicles illegally along the alley rather than in front of their houses on the street.

Cathy Smith reports that Pat Smith has caught eight squirrels so far this spring and summer. They like the location of the trap, and I’m more than happy to let them use it as it means the squirrel problem as taken care of without my having to deal with the varmints. They haven’t caught any in the last two weeks. But we also haven’t seen any in the last two weeks. No stray cats have walked in; neither have any possums or raccoons. That might be more of an end-of-summer thing as young are sent off to fend for themselves.

I’ve been doing a lot of weeding. The backyard was taken over by long, dense wild grass. In my efforts to remove it some plants planted at the edge of flagstones were destroyed. My efforts resulted in me being in the doghouse.

I had some dreams this week:

July 20. #idreamt my wife parked the car deep inside a parking garage. I would have parked closer to the exit, but I didn’t say anything. I never backseat drive my wife, even in #dreams.

July 21. #IDreamt my brother Randy was showing a class of high school students how to perform a breathing exercise to de-stress before taking a test.

July 22. #idreamt my parents asked me to get them drinks. But I found myself in a crowded outdoor restaurant during San Francisco’s gold rush trying to collect three glasses.

July 23. #IDreamt upon falling back to sleep, I checked in with the front desk and updated the ledger for when I woke up earlier in the night. #dreams

July 24. #idreamt I was driving a VW bug up a muddy hill to a ferry terminal, not convinced that they would give me priority boarding by saying I was on contract with the feds #dreams

July 25. #idreamt students from different high schools partnered at a library to select from published profiles of other students the profiles on which they would do a report. #dreams

Movies I’ve seen this week:

91. July 19. Normal (2025) Rating: 8
I’m a big fan of Ron Odenkirk and Henry Winkler, so I’m giving the movie an extra point for that. It has a dog with a name, so an extra point for that. I thought the dialogue and crazy violence were a perfect tone of funny, so an extra point for that. I’d watch this one again and do my best to have a kill count.

92. July 20. The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017) Rating: 7
It took me forever to watch this movie. I missed seeing it at the theater; then I would start watching it on a streaming platform only for it to leave and go to another. I was finally able to finish it off on Kanopy. I like the film’s smooth pacing, which is as dogged as the main character. I think this western deserves more praise than it has received. I’m giving points for Peter Fonda’s last film performance. I’m also giving points for the portrayal of the other four main characters.

93. July 21. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026) Rating: 7
I was a big fan of “Ready or Not,” which combined violent deaths wth comedy and a splash of comedy of errors. It set a tone for other films that came later. I was extremely pleased to see it get a sequel. You can find both streaming on Disney+. The second film didn’t carry through on the unintentional mayhem as strongly as the first film, which is a shame, as that was part of the charm. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still mayhem and lots of it, comedic, but I sense that some was left on the cutting room floor for pacing. Definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of the first movie.

94. July 22. Without Love (1945) Rating: 6
This Audrey Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movie also has a dog with a name. I decided to rewatch it because it was leaving HBOMax for parts unknown. I remembered snippets from watching it years ago. Lucille Ball had some good lines in it. Oddly, it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. I don’t think it aged well even when it was being shown.

95. July 23. Ruthless (2023) Rating: 6
I watched this vigilante film on Amazon Prime. A high school coach seeks to retrieve a student from human traffickers. He’s a little hell-bent for leather, as his daughter was killed four years prior. It has a low-key, grim humor that works. I like how this film doesn’t pretend to be anything beyond what it is.

95. July 24. Cold Storage (2025) Rating: 7
I’m a Liam Neeson fan, but I wanted to watch this movie when I saw a clip of the first few minutes. I liked the premise. It’s light on the small stuff, and well dipped in the gore. So the gore factor is top-notch for an infection-themed zombie movie. I was really surprised to find this on Kanopy. I was on the fence with the seventh point but went there because there was a cat with a name and a really messed-up deer.

More next week,
Mark