From The Associated Press (yeah, those bums):
Stocks tumbled in morning trading on Wall Street Tuesday as a trade war between the U.S. and its key trading partners escalated, wiping out all the gains for the S&P 500 since Election Day.
“Only I can fix it,” the other bum sez. He’s fixin’ it, a’ight. Tariffic.
I just searched my 2025 training log for “rain” and came up empty. Just like our rain gauge.
Until this morning.
As we began puttering around the Compound, getting our Sunday started, Herself said she thought she heard sprinkles tippy-tapping the skylights. But I said naw, warn’t nothin’ in the forecast.
But suddenly there it was, on the walkway. Not much, but it’s all good, amirite?
As news goes it certainly beats a hummer I saw in The New York Times this morning about some bloated sack of shit whose claim to fame — beyond boinking Madge Toilet Grout, that is — was asking President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine why he wasn’t wearing a suit to his ambush by — pardon, “meeting with” — that other, better-known, bloated sack of shit, who also gets too much press.
I got asked a similar question once, by a supervisor, during a performance review. It was majorly annoying, as I had been busting my hump for that two-bit cage-liner, which couldn’t keep its city and copy desks staffed, and they should’ve been delighted that I showed up for work at all, much less wearing a button-down shirt and tie.
Shit, they were lucky I didn’t show up butt-nekkid, knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk. But I was, after all, a professional. I was always fully clothed.
I fled that rag as soon as I could find another job. Any old asshole can wear a tie, and plenty of them do. Especially on TV.
So, we’re not supposed to buy anything today?
That doesn’t sound like much of a rumble on the Richter scale of resistance to me. “Dang The Man?” Seriously?
A lot of us have already been sold a sizable bill of goods. And as we should’ve known, it’s not the initial cost, it’s the upkeep.
This “grass roots” call for an “economic blackout” feels like a reverse Dubya (“Don’t go shopping.”). It also reminds me of a line from Marc Maron’s 2020 Netflix special, “End Times Fun,” in which he neatly skewers us for smugly slipping our shopping fingers into the crumbling dike of environmental catastrophe:
“All of us in our hearts really know that we did everything we could. Think about it: We brought our own bags to the supermarket. Yeah, that’s about it.”
Elon Musk doesn’t care if you don’t buy a Tesla today. He’s too busy downsizing Social Security into a median and a cardboard placard on a rainy day.
And Jeff Bezos couldn’t give a shit if you skip your Friday visit to the Foods Hole. He’s launching his plastic fuck-puppet into orbit with a couple other “female celebrities.” It’s gonna be like “Sex in the City,” only in space, and with Mister Big down here on earth giving The Washington Post some pillow therapy in its bed at the nursing home.
“The Right Stuff” this isn’t. In fact, it sounds like something the Democratic National Committee would do, if it did anything, which mostly it doesn’t.
Anybody seen the DNC lately? Maybe they’re out shopping for a clue.
Stupid warm in these parts.
On Monday I watered turf, trees, and shrubs. On Tuesday, I enjoyed my first ride since making my Denver pilgrimage, in shorts and short sleeves.
And on Wednesday, it seemed everything was springing to life all at once. Juniper, maple, alder, you name it. Pollen out the wazoo and right up my snout.
“Screw it,” I thought, examining a sodden Kleenex for signs of brain tissue. “I’m taking drugs.”
And lemme tell you, that behind-the-counter Non-Drowsy Claritin-D 12-Hour with the pseudoephedrine frosting will kick the tires, light the fires, and set your eyes out on wires.
During Wednesday’s Geezer Ride, after I spun past a few guys on a short hill, one asked, “Why aren’t you even breathing hard?”
“I’m on drugs,” I replied. I felt like Ol’ Whatsisface ’fessin’ up to Oprah, only without all that annoying money and fame.
Maybe it was spending an afternoon with my old college cuates, but I was reminded of a “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” cartoon by Gilbert Shelton.
Freewheelin’ Franklin wants to borrow Phineas’s car to go buy a couple pounds of weed, but he’s sold it and bought a bicycle. So Phineas offers to pedal him out to Country Cowfreak’s place to make the buy.
On the way home they decide to take an illegal shortcut via the freeway, and the law takes an interest. No problem. Says Franklin: “First, I’ll snort a whole buncha cocaine … now,. you steer while I pedal.”
For the punchline, you can read the whole strip here.
Jim “Jethro” Martinez has gotten canned for the final time.
I should’ve taken a picture. It would’ve been one of the few times when someone pointed a lens in Jim’s direction and he didn’t immediately point to his johnson just as the shutter clicked.
Because I was at a celebration of my old amigo’s life. And Jim was in a Chock full o’Nuts coffee can.
It was a nod to “The Big Lebowski,” of course. Also, there were “The Blues Brothers” — brother Larry and Jim’s son, Kelly — who wore dark sunglasses on Saturday as they spoke of their loss to a standing-room-only crowd at the Bull & Bush Brewery in Glendale, Colorado.
Hey, it could’ve been worse. Jim and the El Rancho Delux gang watched a ton of “Miami Vice” Back in the Day®, so it’s nothing short of miraculous that Larry and Kelly weren’t stylin’ like Sonny and Rico.
Or maybe costumed as characters from another old favorite, the Firesign Theatre’s “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye.”
“Where am I?”
“You can’t get there from here.”
Me, I went for the “Outside Bought REI and Went to Whole Foods” look: Santa Fe School of Cooking cap, Timberland fleece vest, Patagucchi flannel shirt, Levi’s 505s, Darn Tough wool socks and low-rise Merrell hikers.
One of the many things Jim taught me was how to dress more like Possibility and less like Probable Cause. Another was how many times you can play your favorite Merle Haggard cassette in your own truck without Jim snatching it out of the deck and tossing it out the window at 85 mph somewhere in Utah. (The answer: One time too many.)
Anyway, it was good that I stepped up my fashion game a bit for the celebration of my old friend’s too-short life. Because this wasn’t just the old El Rancho crew, even though we were all in the Bull, shouting at each other over drinks as in daze of yore.
Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife, Wilma, were in the house, as was the mayor’s former press secretary, Andrew Hudson, who got us started down memory lane with tales of working (and goofing) with Jim.
Hizzoner likewise delivered a fond remembrance of his longtime fixer, whom he called his “Luca Brasi,” as Jim’s cigar-puffing pals from the Smoking Cave lined up along one wall like an honor guard.
For me, the sentimental journey reached its peak when Kelly backstopped Larry as emotion took him off-script during his remarks. Whenever someone told Larry how fortunate Kelly was to have his support after his dad’s sudden passing, Larry replied that it was the other way around. His nephew is a remarkable, self-possessed young man, running smooth on a strong blend of dad and mom.
Mom — the love of Jim’s life, Teri Sinopoli — was in the crowd with her sisters. So were Jim’s sis, Betty Jo, and her husband, Tom; Larry’s wife, Sherry, and their sons, Stefan and Will; Stan the Man; Rudi Boogs and his wife, Tanysha; cousin Guillermo. Lots and lots of cousins, real and aspirational.
I was honored far beyond any merit of mine to be called a brother on Saturday, though anyone who didn’t know the backstory must’ve wondered how this blue-eyed, baldheaded old gabacho with a mug like a dried-up creek bed could’ve been any kind of kin to these beautiful people.
“Oh, one day we thought we smelled a dead raccoon in the attic and found him up there in a nest of old girlie magazines, mumbling something about where was his daddy the mailman. Didn’t seem right, so we brought him downstairs, gave him a little chile. Bad idea. Never feed a stray perro. He ain’t all there, and he’s too often here, like evil tidings from DeeCee.”
I wish Jim’s mom, Lucy, had been there to chide me for making myself scarce in recent years. But she has a lot of mileage on the odometer, even more than the rest of us, and wasn’t up to the journey. And anyway, I wasn’t really a franchise player.
Her son had a deep bench, and never more so than on Saturday at the Bull. Friends and family. Young and old. Colleagues and co-conspirators. Politicos and pendejos. Tales were told; photographs submitted as evidence; the legend rewritten and amplified.
Chris James “Jethro” Martinez always left the light on and the door open. What a blessing it was to have crossed his threshold, to be made welcome, to feel at home; to feel like family.
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