Weekly Dose of Mark

Friday, April 24th 2026 • 04/24/26

The last couple of weeks got away from me keeping up on the Weekly Dose. One week at Freelance Fandango, we had a full table with James Stowe in attendance, thanks to spring break. The next week, I enjoyed my Onion Scone by myself while catching up on a couple of projects. I also worked on another project while pondering over why the check engine light is on one day and off the next.

The second Monday of each month is dinner at the Pythian Lodge. The cooks went a little strange with the menu this month. On the table was spaghetti and meatballs decorated like eyes. Pigs in blankets of various sizes, macaroni and cheese, mashed sweet potatoes, raw broccoli, and a serving shaped like a well-used litter box. Tootie rolls should never be made to look like they came out of an ill cat. Oh, and candied bacon. It was quite an eclectic meal. I took home some of the litter box for Krista. I skipped stepping on the scale the next morning.

I finished making a Freddy vs Jason poster and sent it to Travis. He added a bit more of his magic to it by adding chains to the design. That added flourish truly pulled the poster together. He also layered a knee in front of a hand when I had it the other way around. While I was tempted to move it back, a combination of trust in Travis and my own laziness left it alone. I texted Allen Gladfelter and asked if he’d like to come to the theater that night and help me sell prints

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Friday was a long day for me. I prepped my bins for the OddMall show in Burien. This was the first time I’d done the show, and my friends say that it would be a good fit for me. Burien is a 70-minute drive when traffic is clear, but a nightmare during rush hour. So I decided I’d head out early Saturday to set up.

My first stop for the evening was the TRIpod slideshow, where I was the second presenter. Lynn DeNino was the first presenter, and Sharon Stryer was the third presenter. Our themes were medical themes. Lynn’s was around hospital stays and the yellow socks with the white treads on them. My presentation, “X-Ray Confidential,” was about how people loved oversharing their conditions on social media. I posted a request for folks to send me their X-rays, and, within 24 hours, I had enough material for a slideshow. Sharon Styer’s presentation was one on how folks with canes and walkers were both invisible and resilient. She was inspired by the water aerobics she started after breaking her femur, the x-ray of which was in my presentation. There was a lot of laughter as the topics were presented with large ladles of humor.

Doug and Lynn Mackey were at the slideshow. Lynn has retired but still has a strong urge to do graphic design. Doug is contemplating taking Social Security, but is still working within the system’s limits. It’s starting to sound appealing.

The next stop was a bar on Proctor. Allen was enjoying a drink, and we passed the time waiting for the currently playing movie to end and clear out. Travis, Anthony, and Beth joined us at our table. We were able to head over and set up early since the last movie was short. I couldn’t remember the last time I watched “Freddy vs Jason” in its entirety, if ever. Allen asked why we always sat in the same seats, and Travis informed him that his literally had his name on it.

When I sell stuff at Friday Night Frights, I limit my display to just movie posters and pins. All of the posters are spread out, overflowing on two tables. Sales come fast and furious during the 60-minute purchase window. Travis was kind enough to bring some sleeves when I couldn’t locate any earlier. I also saved time by presigning the new poster, but I still have to sign most of the old ones. Travis and Allen were busy bagging the posters for me while I signed and ran credit cards. After the movie, I took a little longer to carefully put the posters back in the legal suitcase, alphabetized, so they’d be ready for the next day. I thanked everyone and went home where I loaded all the bins, bags, table, and cart for the show the next day.

I managed to get about four hours of sleep before getting up at 5 a.m. Once I showered and double checked everything, including recharging the Square gizmo I use for credit card transactions, I drove to Burien. Northbound Interstate 405 was closed for maintenance, so I drove up Interstate 5 instead. I arrived before the loading doors opened, which gave me a chance to unload the car and park it in the designated vendor’s lot. There I found Warren Montgomery II climbing out of his van. He recently converted it so that he could sleep in it at events like this one. He’d bought a Jackery battery to power his CPAP machine, but the charge didn’t last the night. It arrived charged,, but I’m guessing it didn’t have a full charge. He was going to see about getting it charged during the event. By the time we finished jawing and walked to the event hall, the doors opened. He helped me raise my poster backdrop, which is a lot easier to do with two people.

Other folks I knew arrived. Eli Wolfe and Chad Scheres had already set up their tables. Matt Youngmark arrived and was tabling in the next aisle over. I didn’t chat with them long. I only had ninety minutes to get my table put together. Once I had a chance to look up one of the other vendors, I gave it other puzzling looks until a mental lever flipped. Paul, of Paul-Bearer of Oddities, lived on the same college dorm floor some forty years ago. His corner setup was full of the type of stuff that Odd Mall is known. You should visit his menagerie of weird at www.paulbearerofoddities.com. Back in the day, Paul was in a band that I saw a couple of times. He was a theater major, so our social circles, including dorm life, would occasionally intersect. We had fun catching up and mourning the loss of our professors and, later, our fellow alumni. I’ll be seeing him in a couple of weeks as he, too, is tabling at Crypticon.

Saturday night, I went out to dinner at Kegs and Cues, a local pub recommended by Warren Montgomery’s friend and one of the minions at the convention. There, we met another minion and chatted about the show. When I finished my perfectly acceptable cheeseburger, I said goodnight as I was craving sleep. The Fairgrounds Inn is the cheapest motel nearby. But as I only needed a bed and a shower, it suited my basic needs just fine. After calling Krista, I quickly fell asleep and was only roused once by the train roaring past the back edge of the parking lot. The complimentary breakfast, served at a counter by the front desk, included a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a cup of yogurt. Which actually hit the spot.

On Sunday, a new fan came to the table. Amongst his other purchases was a rabbit skin, and one of the largest tiger eye pendants I’ve ever seen. I commented on it as such. He was from India and asked me for the name of the stone. It was the first time he’d heard it. When he bought it from the merchant, they had not discussed the stone. I informed him that the stone could only be found in a couple of countries. I mentioned this man because he’s one of the reasons I love doing shows. A person goes to a show with curiosity and a willingness to explore what wonderful things capture their imagination, inspire, and bring them joy. I enjoyed the show so much that I bought a table for the November show. Last year, I did Art at the Armory on that weekend. But with the Armory not available this year and not hearing that the event has been reshaped or relocated, I decided to allocate the weekend to OddMall’s Creepness Show.

I told Larry and Penny about this and my other show experiences on Monday. Penny informed us that her car window was not broken after all. I assumed when she said she found it broken, she meant shattered. But it wasn’t shattered; it had fallen down, and she couldn’t get it to roll back up. When she went to get it repaired, the mechanic hit the window’s button on the door, and it rolled back up just fine. No repair needed.

Alley News
It took a couple of days, but I finally completed the first mowing of the season. Restarting the lawnmower was less of a challenge this year. A longer turnover and a puff or two of black smoke, and it was chucking along like a trooper.

Decades ago, our neighbor Joe died while taking a shower. It took a couple of days for the neighbors to convince his sister that Joe wasn’t on a road trip, and to let the police use a blacksmith to go inside and conduct a welfare check. Llyod, a neighbor at the time, was a locksmith and did it for free. Joe had turned into soap by then. The sister never went inside the house, just locked it back up again. It eventually fell into such disrepair that the house was torn down. For a couple of more decades, all that sat on the property was a garage, boarded up to keep the riff-raff out. This week, a crew came in and tore down the garage. They didn’t bother clearing it out first; they just knocked it down. The debris went into a dumpster along with all the other stuff left by drive-by dumpers. There was a large cottonwood stump from when they cut down the tree last year. The stump was massive, a good six feet tall and eight to nine feet across. They had to bring in a large, heavy rock-moving truck to get that out of there, and they spent a good day grinding out the roots. Now, a couple of different foundation forms are being poured. One section of the lot has a wide, four-foot-deep moat dug around it. My best guess is Joe’s reclusive sister (she never had a phone because that’s how they get you) must have died. Her estate must have decided to sell off the lot to a developer.

Jason, a fan of mine who lives a couple of blocks away, asked if I could meet up with him so he could buy the “Freddy vs Jason” poster. He’d been called into work at the emergency room that evening, but still wanted the poster. I walked down to the corner where my art graces a utility box and met him there. We saw numerous police cars at the local Quick-E-Mart, where I buy my lottery tickets. Jason knows the owner’s brother. Earlier that morning, the owner got into a gunfight with someone. The report he received said this occurred outside the store. Both parties went to the hospital. The owner was shot twice in the lung and once in the kidney, but will recover. The other guy wasn’t so lucky. All other details remain unknown, at least to Jason and me.

Last week,, my neighbor Pat asked me to set out the squirrel trap because a squirrel was trying to get under the eaves of his house. He heard this inside as the squirrel was trying to dig into the space through his gutters, making a hell of a racket and bending the gutter. I caught one within a day and relocated it. But Pat said that wasn’t the right squirrel. The squirrel I relocated made his nose raw while trying to get out of the trap. The one he was threatening with a broom was smaller and didn’t have a raw nose, just a hell of an attitude. I reset the trap, but this time I left it on his porch so he could check it, since he was going to OddMall the next day. When I returned, I learned that he’d caught two young squirrels at the same time. A friend of his had dealt with the squirrels. A third squirrel was seen outside the trap, looking at the two who were caught. Pat has yet to return the trap, so I can only assume he’s still trapping them.

I had a bunch of dreams:

April 6. #IDreamt I dreamt I grew up on an overcrowded, ramshackle generation ship that was far from pristine. Oddly, I knew most of the same people, but our occupations were different.

April 7. #IDreamt I was taken in by a traveling carnival that specialized in loud, heavy metal pop-up concerts. I wasn’t into the music or crazy lifestyle, but was grateful for the shelter.

April 8. #idreamt the Beatles stayed together a little longer. Long enough to make a song about Bigfoot and cryptids, released years later on their “Forgotten Labors” album.

April 8. #idreamt the ghost of a French WW1 General afterlife reassignment found him located at a small civil center located in a modest park in Tennessee.

April 9. #Idreamt I was startled to find a hypothermic person at the edge of the woods by the shore. I took them to my hut to warm them up. I knew it was important to keep them awake.

April 10. #idreamt a break during an impromptu road trip with family members was finished after the painting was cleaned up and the sandwiches packed.

April 13. #idreamt a large mouse-sized fly flew into the paper shredder. A thin cloud of tiny black particles kept puffing from it. A piece of paper was placed on top in an attempt to stifle it.

April 14. #IDreamt an adolescent bat had yet to fly. It didn’t want to leave the cave. It didn’t want to conform. When it fell to the cave floor, it found itself in a shitty situation.

April 15. #IDreamt I was a public official at a public event that was tastelessly being held in a damp basement. I was dusting spider webs along the cornice and kept hitting my head on the ceiling.

April 16. #IDreamt I joined a tourist-formatted Bigfoot hunting party, which was just an excuse to do a day driving excursion. Yet, my driving partner and I saw a huge Bigfoot step out of the woods.

April 17. #idreamt Adam J. Manley and I helped his friends load a few pieces of furniture into a car and then went to the friend’s fancy family gathering. I felt underdressed. Along the was I met Sally Fields.

April 18. #idreamt the Roman Empire never failed. Yet, slavery in that reality ended earlier. There were also fewer wars.

April 20. #Idreamt of a high school girl who lost an arm in an auto accident. She successfully distracted people from her prosthetic by always using it to carry a small dog.

April 21. #idream my wife and I were sleeping in a bed at a department store where hundreds of travelers were waiting for their canceled flights to be rescheduled. We were lucky.

April 22. #idreamt an emissary from another reality’s timeline appealed to me not to do an illustration of five generals to prevent them from gaining power.

April 23. #idreamt I watched as a shrine maiden’s outfit changed color from red and white to two shades of blue. People said those were always the colors.

April 24. #idreamt of an alternate reality where I was trying to unmask some scam artists by proving they were not Graphic Designers. Sadly, their lack of knowledge about printers wasn’t a tell.

Krista and I finished another anime:

There was a Cute Girl in the Hero’s Party, so I Tried Confessing to Her, aka: Yuusha Party ni Kawaii Ko ga Ita node, Kokuhaku shitemita. (2026) 12 Episodes. Rating: 5
Krista and I finished watching this completely average anime. It had a promising premise but dived quickly into the sap-filled end of the pool. It started off as an Isekai, but didn’t use that to follow through on that premise, so it might as well not have been part of the script at all.

I’ve been watching some movies:

44. April 7. Troll 2 (2026) Rating: 6
First, I must point out that this is the Norwegian “Troll 2” (2025) and not the American “Troll 2” (1990). The latter is one of the worst movies of all time. I’m not saying this “Troll 2” is a great movie. I gave the original Norwegian “Troll” movie a 6/10, and this sequel is every bit as good as the first, by not claiming to be anything other than a Norwegian Kaiju movie. “Troll 2” brings back many of the same characters. I chortled quite a bit while catching the inside joke during my viewing on Netflix. I give it the same rating as the first.

45. April 8. Pretty Lethal (2026) Rating: 7
Who doesn’t want to watch a movie of a troupe of ballerinas showing that they can be ruthless and use their talent in a stay-alive-melay? I’m giving a point for the writer’s ability to figure out a setting for this to occur, with some functionality. At times, the dialogue is thin but has enough quirkiness to compensate. I’m giving another point for the hotel’s interior, which has some nightmare-fuel aspects only seen on horror movie sets.

46. April 10. Outside the Wire (2021) Rating: 6
I watched this movie on Netflix. It is a wonderful example of how you can improve the quality of the movie and the storyline through judicious use of design and special effects. Take that away, and you have a well-worn trope used in many guy movies: gunfire, explosions, fistfights, stabbings, and explosions. Who am I kidding? Even with the special effects, it’s a guy action movie. I’m giving it an extra point for having robots as a main theme.

47. April 10. Conan the Barbarian (1982) Rating: 8
I saw this in the theaters when it first came out during my first year of college. I had a blast seeing it then. I just watched it again at the Grand Cinemas in Tacoma in April of 2023 with friends, some of whom created movie posters for it. And again, it was a blast. One point for old memories, one point for new memories, and one point for Arnold.

48. April 14. Silent Night (2023) Rating: 7
I’ve been on the lookout to watch this Vigilante Action film since it was released. I finally located it on Peacock. The bold premise of having an action film with no focal dialogue was interesting. You mentally review other vigilante movies to see just how necessary dialogue is to the theme of emotionally fueled retaliation. I’m going to give it an extra point for doing something new with the genre, and another point for doing a Christmas tie-in.

49. April 17. Freddy vs Jason (2003) Rating: 7
I watched this movie as a Friday Night Frights Presentation at the Blue Mouse Theater in Tacoma. I created a movie poster for the event, and I’m very proud of it. It’s possible I’d watched the film before, but over the years, those memories might have been confused with all the clips and death-count videos I’ve watched on YouTube and other sources. The script is a pinball machine designed to give us more than a couple of fights between Freddy and Jason. Also, get your trope counter ready. I’m giving it one point for those and another point for being able to see it in a theater with a crowd that loves this genre.

50. April 21. Dust Bunny (2025) Rating: 9
I watched this entertaining movie on HBOMax. I was going to give it a solid eight, with a point for the textured, dreamlike sets, another point for the casting, and another point for the superb script. Then I realized I would have loved to have watched this movie with my wife, and I might just watch it again because this movie deserves to be watched with someone who gets your vibe. Any movie that inspires that desire deserves another point, so I’m giving it an eight. Good date night movie.

51. April 23. The Lazuras Effect (2015) Rating: 6
I watched this “let’s bring the dead back to life because isn’t that a good idea” movie on Kanopy. This time, a group of scientists is trying to increase the survivability window in near-death situations. The movie gets an extra point because it has a dog with a name that is actually part of the plot, not just a pet sitting on a couch. I give it another point for having people use a record player in a horror movie. I love that trope. I feel there are sections of this film that are missing, perhaps due to editing. I took off a point for the overuse of flashlights, because that’s a trope I dislike.

More next week,
Mark