i'm an a**hole

(thinking of that denis leary song from decades back)... since james started turning the basement into a podcast studio, i've been down there a few times more than usual. the usual used to be to go down only when doing laundry, & then never to the basement back-40 w/its serial killer shadows, certainly venomously-infested wood piles, creepy shelves. recently, i peered back that way & noticed vermin nests in the shelves where i had stuffed my Lifetime Boxes. rats; this meant action was in the future, messy, emotional, time-consuming action... today i finally donned a mask & hauled the disgusting boxes up to the long porch, our nawlins porch of wrought iron & wrap-aroundedness. five hours later, the boxes i brought up were all separated: 1) keep; 2) give to others; & 3) sell at the antique shop. yep, i'm so vintage now, the stuff from my teenage yrs, 20s, & 30s are collectible. to continue with the numerating, those five hours brought these discoveries: 1) i used to have about 40 more IQ points than i currently do; 2) was super-arrogant about always being the smartest person in the room; 3) had absolutely no common sense; 4) completely objectified the men in my life as if they were figures i was drawing or were players in a movie i was watching; and 5) tho now dumber, i prefer who i am now, not who i was, the young female who somehow didn't overdose or get murdered... those boxes full of rodent poop & vermin nest piles contained many emotionally-sobering items, but so many wonderful ones, too. 1) our dad is a droll, absurdist deadpan artist & always has been. 2) friends' & boyfriends' correspondences -- considerable in those pre-cyber decades -- were bright, witty, troubled, but so brilliant! at the time, i had no idea of all the brainpower by which i was surrounded! 3) there were cards from family & friends no longer in this realm, 4) drawings from students & family members now adult, 5) obsessively photographic artwork by me, young, talented me, her head so far up her a** i'm surprised she could see to draw. by the former inhabitant of this somehow-same (at least similar) human suit, 6) obsessively worded articles, hundreds and hundreds of them, no exaggeration!! i wrote a lot!! she wrote a lot!!! she loved to write, draw, observe & analyze... all in futile attempt to control other people, places, & things. nice try, young one, but i am glad you are gone -- though i wish i still could write such elaborate sentences & draw with such acumen! -- in the end, it's a plenty-good trade to now have mental health & (mostly) times of peace & gratitude. "alcoholics tend to confuse chaos with adventure," i've heard. this calmer life is the way a person gets to make it to old age, & i'm glad for it.. related to the boxes but decades ago, my then-best friend marc & i used to ditch high school & drive from bakersfield to hollywood. we always went to hollywood book & poster. in those days, it was a big dusty mess of boxes over-spilling with lobby cards, movie posters, film memorabilia, a real junk heaven of movie paradise. on one of those trips, i got (among other stuff) a signed gary leonard photo of phil alvin with the gun club's jeffrey lee pierce. it had to have been in the dollar bin; that's the only place i really shopped, being a kid with no job... well, i thought i had lost that photo forever, but there it was, in one of the disgusting boxes!!... and now here it is for you to see, too...

the next pic, also gary leonard but not an original, shows a kid in the audience who looks suspiciously familiar, but james sez it ain't him. this would've been right around the time he met phil. what do you think?