Why do I loathe what is happening around me in Allen-Hummerville, while oddly enough enjoying every sunny day in this bourgie loony bin more than the last one?
I believe it is because I have a sense of humor-my own kind, granted, but I can laugh.
For example, a lawyer friend of mine who lives on the side of Queen Anne Hill and reads this column said once about me to friends, "The trouble (emphasis added) with going to the movies with Dennis is he sometimes starts laughing when nobody else is. And he can't, or won't, stop."
Well, it's my contention the scenes that make me laugh in the movies wouldn't be in the final cut if the director didn't know there were people like me sitting in darkened theaters across the land.
I was reminded of said attorney's quibbling comment the other day while watching Bent Hamer and Matt Dillon's darkly wonderful filmic tribute to outsider writer Charles Bukowski, "Factotum." (Bukowski, by the way, was the only author whose books we had to keep behind the counter at the old Tower Books, because otherwise kids would steal them all.)
For reasons that would take too long to explain in this tiny space, Dillon/Bukowski and his girlfriend, played by Lili Taylor, lose their seats at a racetrack to a puffy little man who brags that he is in real estate and makes $500,000 a year.
After leaving the seating area, getting a drink and thinking it over, and then urged to respond by Taylor's character, Dillon returns and assaults the smug little fella.
I started laughing and couldn't stop. My friend noted later that people were peeking to try and see who thought a realtor being assaulted was funny. But, he added, no one else laughed. I beg to differ. You could tell by the way it was played Dillon and Hamer thought it would play funny. I wish to reassure them about their artistic judgment. It was funny, fellas, trust me. WHY, IN A COUNTRY WITH 45 MILLION FOLKS UNABLE TO AFFORD HEALTH INSURANCE, does the middle class that runs Seattle worry about things that never even occur to me and my friends? Latest proof of this: the news announced last Monday that the Seattle Library was hiring a "wayfinder" to guide people who can't find their way at the downtown Seattle branch.
How in God's name could you get lost in that building? Not briefly confused, but lost?
And why do we need a person to help those escape who cannot read or even walk to the light?
Abandon them in the alleged maze that is the library.
I think we ought to hire someone to take the names of everyone who asks the wayfinder for help, and then take their driver's license and cellphone away from them for life.
"Honey, I won't be home for dinner, I am lost in the fiction room."
It boggles the mind. IN A FOLLOW-UP TO A SUBJECT discussed here earlier this year, none of the folks who allegedly assaulted an off-duty police officer who was riding his motorcycle through Post Alley in June and struck or brushed up against a female pedestrian, whom he then allegedly shoved into a wall, will be charged with assault.
This is a just result. But sadly, the cop who shot an attorney witnesses claim wasn't physically involved in the mêlée the off-duty cop at least partially precipitated with reckless motorcycling, won't be charged either.
Serve and Protect Whom?
ONE OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE who I never met died last week.
Steve Irwin, the Aussie known as the Crocodile Hunter, perished after being stung in the heart by a stingray.
Irwin was only the fourth or fifth Aussie to die from stingray sting in 45 years in those Down Under waters.
Now, according to reports from the scene, Irwin may have been wrestling with the ray, and no one who ever watched his show would question that possibility.
I wasn't always a fan of Irwin's judgment but the vitality just oozed off the man, even when filtered through the cool medium of television.
And he started an Australian National Zoo that rivals the San Diego Zoo.
He was a lively, funny, crazily daring man who will be missed.
How can an allegedly All-Loving God take Irwin and leave Saddam, Mike McGavick and Tyra Banks still above ground? Another Wilken mind-boggler.[[In-content Ad]]
