That’s all I’m going to post about yesterday.

Tonight, Phil goes live at 7PM. Primarily because today is the anniversary of 9-11. But also, because of Charlie Kirk.

Check here later to confirm, but I seriously HOPE he does not cancel.

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Okay.

I’m posting late because Bobby McGee and Freddie McFee had their post-surgery follow-up visit to the vet this morning, and they passed with flying colors.

They are now free to go on with their frisky little lives!

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Okay.

So as of this moment, I have the rest of the day off.

I’ve already taken my walk — and, wow, what a gorgeous morning it is out there. Unbelievable.

I sure could use an afternoon, hanging with my Q-following friend at Tequilaville — yesterday wore us both out.

But as luck would have it, we’re having lunch together on Monday — to belatedly celebrate her recent birthday — at Three Tigers Brewing Co in Granville!! So I’m just going to hang around here today and write.

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Here’s this.

From Instagram yesterday–

I’m posting this because he was my cousin. He was actually first cousins with my Grandma — my favorite person on Earth. Their fathers were brothers. They all came over from Poland together, in the early 1900s.

Star of stage & screen in the 1930s & 40s, John Garfield:

Oh, and here’s this:

“…Near the end of his life, in an effort to clear his name, Garfield began work on an article for Look magazine, in which he would denounce communism without “naming names”; his lawyer advised him to concede that he had been “duped” into contributing time and money to communist front groups.^[11] He then arranged to meet with the FBI to press his case. At the meeting, however, the FBI representatives showed him a dossier on his wife Roberta (known as “Robbe”), which included her old Communist Party membership card and cancelled checks to events sponsored by the party, and said that the FBI would clear him if he signed a statement betraying Robbe as a Communist. Garfield instead responded with an angry expletive and walked out of the meeting.^[11] Writer and director Abraham Polonsky, who worked with him on two films, stated that Garfield ‘defended his street boy’s honor and they killed him for it.‘”

[Hmmm… murdered for his alleged politics. Where have we heard that before?]

Oh, and here’s a photo of me and my older brother with my Grandma, my above-mentioned favorite person on Earth, on the shores of Lake Erie, in Cleveland, in 1966.

And just for your information — she was raped to death (her heart exploded) in her hospital bed, after open-heart surgery, at age 89. In Cleveland. My favorite person on Earth.

The shit never stops, does it, gang?

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Onward.

Okay.

From last night’s sold out show in Luxembourg!

The alleged set list, but it seems that sometimes they veer from the official list. Still, the fantastic enocre (sometimes known as “an encore”) continues:

And Nick (and Colin) apparently took in some art yesterday. Here’s Nick:

And also —

Nick with a happy fan yesterday:

Okay! And from the actual show!!

And tonight, is the FINAL show of the tour!!

I suddenly got extremely tired…

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And here’s this again, just because, gang, you have no idea how much this is helping me move forward around here! It’s taped to my wall now, by my desk, and I read it constantly. And I work on the novel.

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And that’s it for now.

I love you guys. Let’s just hang in there.

And enjoy our Thursday, wherever we are in the world.

Thanks for visiting.

See ya.

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Again, from the playlist of 5 years ago!!

Kind of suits today, doesn’t it?

Don Henley, “The End of the Innocence”. 1989. From the album of the same name. Play it quietly. Look up at the sky. Remember everything you’ve ever known in your life. And then enjoy, gang.

“The End Of The Innocence”

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn’t have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standin’ by
But “happily ever after” fails
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go
That’s still untouched by men
We’ll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass waves in the wind
You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O’ beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They’re beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We’ll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass waves in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we’ve come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say goodbye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

c – 1989 – Don Henley, Bruce Hornsby

Yes, I have another day off!

And this one is even better than the other 2 I had this week, because I have no chores to do at all. I’m gonna sit at my desk and work on the novel-in-progress. Yay.

Until my neck starts hurting, from being hunched over for hours. Then I’ll take a break and do yoga.

And it’s a moody sort of day — grey, light rain, a little cool. I’m okay with it, for now. My main focus is having a whole day ahead wherein I have nothing whatsoever to do but write.

The weather doesn’t matter.

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Yesterday started out a little strange.

My favorite 95-year-old Japanese man woke up in an odd mood. He was being very hard on himself, from the moment he got out of bed. It was hard to get him to snap out of it, but he eventually did.

ME (emphatic): “What are you talking about, you’re a really, really nice guy!”

HE: “No, you’re infinitely nicer than me. You’re a million, trillion times nicer than me.”

ME: “No way. There’s something faulty in your math — let me see how you came to this conclusion; show me the mathematical equation you used to come up with this.”

HE: (smiling, finally.)

And so we sallied forth to Peony Bistro to get sashimi, sushi and sake. And by the time our fortune cookies arrived, he was in good spirits. (Sake, I’m guessing, had something to do with it.)

However– our fortunes were both sort of appropriate! At least his was, for sure. Mine, I can only hope!! But now he is 3 for 3 — meaning, he has liked his fortune 3 times in a row — he related to it, since it kind of summed up his whole life.

His is the top one:

To say he was successful in life is putting it almost ridiculously mildly. Let’s look at it this way: His monthly Social Security check is 70 times what mine is. (I’m not joking, either. It would take me almost 6 years of Social Security checks to equal what he gets in one month.)

And he has had a wooden leg since he was 12 years old. (He lost his leg in a train accident on his way to school one day, back in Tokyo during WWII.) And it never ever stopped him. He considers the loss of his leg one of the greatest blessings of his life, because it set him on a whole new path.

Anyway.

As far as my own fortune, that word “unpredictable” has sort of been my life story thus far, so we’ll see how it goes!

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I don’t really have anything else to post about today, although I have to say, that course I’m currently taking about the Reformation in the mid-15th to early 16th Centuries, is really intense. So much information. I have to keep rewinding it to make sure I’m catching everything the Professor is saying.

We are up to Zwingli. and the Protestant Reformation in Zurich. It led to things that I found sort of shocking, but it gave me a lot to think about when the lecture was over — most specifically, why did I find it so shocking? Was it because of my 21st Century perspective? I’m still trying to figure that out. But it definitely affected my dreams last night, for sure.

And, also, yesterday, I ordered the classic, The Praise of Folly, written in 1509 (in Latin). I think it will be very illuminating. Erasmus (of Rotterdam) was just fascinating and I don’t know very much about his work:

“Praise of Folly is considered one of the most notable works of the Renaissance and played an important role in the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.”

So — so far, we have Erasmus in Rotterdam, Martin Luther in Germany, and Zwingli in Zurich…

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But for now, back to Germany!

Nick Cave’s Solo Tour of Europe, with Colin Greenwood on bass, resumes tonight, for the first of 2 sold out shows in Baden-Baden, Germany.

Here’s hoping that the kind folks of Baden-Baden just LOVE to take their cellphones to concerts and take photos all night long, posting them immediately to Instagram!!

We shall see.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this! A favorite, for obvious reasons —

From Nick Cave’s Solo Tour with Colin Greenwood on bass, September 2023: Cleveland!! (What an amazing show.)

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From James Tabor– more about the speakers at the upcoming 3-day Conference about Jesus, that you can take ONLINE!

You can find out more and register HERE ($79 until Sept. 13th).

Prof. Goodacre: Why the Missing Pieces in our Gospel Stories are so Important (52 mins):

And that is it for today.

Oh. Phil is supposed to be live tonight, but he has had to cancel the past 2 nights, so check here later to confirm.

Enjoy your Thursday, wherever you are in the world!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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I leave you with this!

Back in the mid-1990s, I was a backup singer for the gay Country duo, Y’All. There were quite a few of us girl backup singers — we were officially called the Cowgirl Chorus.

Y’All put out 2 CDs in NYC, including a wonderful Christmas album “Christmastime in the Trailer Park”, before moving to Nashville. But, wow were those shows FUN to perform in, and those 2 guys wrote some really great songs.

Here is a 2015 re-issue of one of my favorites: “God Bless NYC (My Big Apple Pie)”. The backup singers are not on this version, this is from a documentary film, but it’s still a really fun song. Enjoy, gang.!

℗ 2005 Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer and James Dean Jay Byrd

Periodically, I scour the Internet, looking for sites that are illegally offering my books for free downloads. (There is currently one site that is doing this with one of my eBooks from the UK, so I’m trying to get that taken down.)

However, I think this site is cool:

Internet Archive

Even though I’m still alive and the rights to these 2 books technically belong to me, the books are indeed out of print. The original publishers have long since closed down, but you can now read these books for free.

You have to be on their site, and you can only read them for an hour at a time (so read quickly!!). And since I can’t see myself going through all the publication and PR work it would take to try to re-publish these books on my own, I think it’s cool that they’ll just be housed there, online, eternally.

In the Secret Hours: An Erotic Romance (2003)

Lust: Bisexual Erotica (2004)

There are a number of out-of-print titles in the archive that are collections of erotica, that my stories are included in (along with stories by other terrific erotica writers from back then). I’m not sure how you search for them. But the titles were all published in the early 2000s.

PLEASE remember, these books are intended for adults only!! “Thank you for your attention to this matter!!” — DJ Trump.

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Here is a photo I just LOVE!

Ross K. Nichols included it in an announcement he sent out to his private Patreon group yesterday.

3 men that I just adore!! All sitting at the same table:

James Tabor, Ross K. Nichols, Simcha Jacobovici

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And here’s this!

The photo was accompanied by a letter Peter Orlovsky wrote to Allen Ginsberg from overseas, back in 1963. (Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg were life-long life partners.)

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And don’t forget!!

Tomorrow, Nick Cave and Colin Greenwood continue their tour with 2 sold out shows in Baden-Baden, Germany! (And then there are 2 sold out shows in Luxembourg the following week, and then the tour is OVER!) (Wow, I can’t really believe that. It means the summer is basically over, too.)

While we wait for tomorrow to arrive…

Here’s another one from my desktop stash!

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And, honestly, that’s it for now, gang.

I gotta scoot and head to town to take my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man out for sashimi & sake!!

It’s another really beautiful day, so he should really enjoy getting out and about! (I always take the long way home with him, through the village of Granville, which is just a beautiful little town, so that he can at least see it all again. He has lived in Granville for 23 years now, and most of that time, his 2nd wife was alive and they were very, very active. Even though his short-term memory is not good, his long term memory is great, and he still has tons of memories from his years in Granville with her.)

Okay!

Have a wonder-filled Wednesday, wherever you are in the world!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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I leave you with this!

Another song that my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man just loves! He quotes the chorus to me quite frequently.

The classic “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)”, by Doris Day. 1956. Sing along and enjoy, gang!!

Wow, another gorgeous morning!

And look what happened yesterday, as I was leaving for town. The lawncare guy and his friends got started a day early. (See yesterday’s post.)

I don’t have a before photo, but here are a few photos he took during and after. They did a fantastic job. However, the asphalt underneath was just too ruined to be worth saving, so I’m not sure what my neighbor and I will do about the basketball hoop. But I’m thrilled to have all those weeds and the dead tree GONE. After 7 years.

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And I did get to chat briefly with Wayne after I got home from my shift yesterday. He absolutely LOVED Cambodia. He’d been there before, briefly, but this trip was just a great one. And he loves the people there. He said they are warm and kind and very, very sweet.

A total success.

Each summer, for the past 5 years or so, Wayne has flown to the Far East for his summer vacations. I cannot even imagine being in a plane that long anymore.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog — those who have been with me since the 5G War, when I was considered a “Domestic Terrorist” and so refused to fly anywhere, let alone even leave town in my car — know that I am only recently getting back to being okay about flying. (When I wasn’t arrested in Toronto, I finally let myself breathe and knew for sure the war was over.)

But I really only have an interest in going to NYC these days. Overseas, even back to Europe, I just don’t know, gang.

Perhaps you recall that the last time I flew to Paris (for a book signing), I left Paris rather suddenly, changing my plans at the last minute, and I flew into the Exeter airport in Devon, instead of to London. And I was held there in that little airport in Exeter by Customs for “questioning.”

It was extremely uncomfortable. I knew exactly what the Customs guys were looking at on their computer screens — my FBI record.

THEM: “What were you doing in Paris?”

ME: “I had a book signing.”

THEM: “Exactly what kind of writer are you?”

I played dumb and picked a harmless story and stuck to it — “I just write romances, nothing important.”

And I stuck to it and stuck to it and stuck to it because they kept asking me that same question over and over and over….

THEM (finally asking a new question): “What are you planning to do while you’re here?”

ME (just prior to receiving my Oscar nomination): “Just visiting some friends.”

I left out the part about the friends being war exiles from Dubrovnik and ex-pat Australian journalists wanted for questioning in Beirut, Lebanon…

And as soon as they let me go and I got to Bristol, said friends/colleagues assured me I’d be followed on those CCTV cameras everywhere I went…

Yes, being a world-renowned pornographer erotica writer/editor/publisher/producer has had its heady perks!

Anyway. I’m still not thrilled with the idea of going through Customs if I don’t absolutely have to for (what’s left of) the “career.”

But one happy thing Wayne said yesterday is that as soon as I finish the draft of The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, he wants to read it!!

So, that is really cool!! It gives me that impetus to complete the novel before I’m 91 years old…

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Before I forget–

Phil continued his PHAPP Q & A on his telegram page yesterday. Click this LINK and then scroll and scroll and scroll!

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I had such a great time with my favorite now-95-year-old Japanese man yesterday.

I had brought him a birthday card that he seemed to absolutely LOVE, gang. It kind of astounded me. He kept re-reading it all afternoon, he held it to his heart several times. He even kissed it a few times. And, occasionally, he would look at the card, look at me, and say: “You’re Marilyn, right? You gave me this card? Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

It really was kind of incredible.

And today, is officially his birthday.

And in the endless series of coincidences revolving around him and me — I realized that today is the anniversary of the death of a man who was a very close friend of my family’s — an artist, from back in Cleveland, he meant the world to me. He would have been 92 now, had he lived.

If you’re keeping track of the tons of coincidences– my dad and the Japanese man were born 4 weeks apart, in 1930; separated by 500 miles, vastly different cultures, and ultimately, the Second World War. But in the 1960s, they attended the same annual electronics convention in Chicago. The Japanese man’s 2nd wife (a war exile from Latvia — my adoptive maternal grandparents, in Cleveland, were also exiles from Latvia), died on the same day that my dad died, but in different years. And the Japanese man’s dad, my dad, and I all had birthdays close together (very different years! 1870, 1930, and 1960).

And now it turns out that one of the most profound father-figures from my childhood died on my favorite Japanese man’s birthday.

It’s too weird, gang. I’m guessing some day I’ll write about it, if only to try to figure it all out.

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There were some beautiful photos of the Macedonia concert from Friday night on Instagram this morning. Same photographer, Stefan Rajhi, took all the photos, but I’ll only post a few of them here:

The tour continues in 2 weeks, in Germany. But tickets are sold out.

And while we wait… here’s this. Another one of my favorite photos ever. Nick with his son Luke:

And here’s this — the “lullaby” Nick wrote in 1991, after the birth of Luke, while living in Brazil during very turbulent political times:

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And I think I’m going to close this now and enjoy what’s left of this gorgeous morning before heading out later to see the retired Minister and his lovely wife!

Have a beautiful Sunday, wherever you are in the world!!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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Driving-to-town music from yesterday!!

Everyone’s gone now, right? All of the NY Dolls are gone now. Jim Carroll’s gone. Lou Reed. Mink DeVille. David Bowie. Marc Bolan.

I miss all of these guys but, wow, such great memories remain….

Anyway, I still rejoice when this song comes on my driving-to-town playlist!! From those incredible days when I worked at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC —

David Johansen aka “Buster Poindexter” — “Hot Hot Hot” 1987. Rejoice and enjoy, gang!!