When I was back in Seattle circa 2003, I stayed for a while with Michael Rosellini (previous post), followed by Jeff Toce and a crew of people whose main bond was that they had either gone to Carleton, or Burning Man, or both (that place, known as Zhouse, still exists). This trip, I visited Jeff in his new abode, startlingly similar, but much bigger. We had a great dinner out on the deck.
A week after my high school reunion, my friend Michael Rosellini had a fantastic, intimate birthday party in Seattle. Since I was already halfway there (from New York), it worked out well, travel-wise. Above, he’s with girlfriend Amanda at the dinner table at Spinasse. Read the rest of this entry »
Circa 1996, when I was in my mid-twenties, I decided, already for the umpteenth time, to get in shape, and to develop a healthy relationship with food. Here’s the strategy I chose:
I became a hardcore vegan. No meat, eggs, dairy, or fish.
I made my food from scratch as much as possible. Which, since, I was a part-time student supported by my parents, was a lot.
I avoided fats of any kind. Most of my cooking used recipes from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. At the back is an index of vegan recipes, and another index of fat-free recipes. I methodically went through them both, creating my own modified index of recipes that were both fat-free and vegan, and those were the recipes that I made.
I worked out for several hours per day, six days per week. I used the exercise program in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia Of Modern Bodybuilding (now apparently out of print). Read the rest of this entry »
Editor’s note: If you haven’t read about Kari before, some of her further adventures are being discussed here.
I met Kari Ferrell six years ago, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. She was sixteen then. She almost got killed trying to save a kitten from getting run over by a mail truck. The truck swerved and the driver shouted. Kari stayed there, kneeling in the street, holding the kitten to her face and sobbing. I helped her up and offered to walk her home. She kept the kitchen clutched in her arms. A few steps later, she named it Mahatma.
We hadn’t made it past Pike and Broadway before some heroin-chic suburban high-school dropout accosted us and asked us for spare change. The kid walked alongside us, muttering some ridiculous story about lung cancer. Kari stopped, opened her purse, and gave the homeless kid everything she had, which looked like it amounted to about two hundred dollars. When I realized what was happening, I tried to stop her, but the scammer had already taken off. (I saw him in line later at Dick’s, waiting on a hamburger.)
As we walked on, I stole glances at this beautiful kid walking beside me. She had so much heart, so much potential. She could be anything, really. But I also knew it wasn’t going to be long before the cold cruel world swallowed her up. I figured I’d do something nice for Kari, while I still had her in my orbit.
“Do you like movies?” I asked her.
“I’m not allowed to see any,” she said. “I’m being raised on a commune run by a sociey that hates all technology. I just ran away yesterday, because it finally got unbearable when –”
“Oh, shaddap,” I said, giving her a friendly smack on the back of her round little head. “I’m gonna teach you a few things, kid.” Read the rest of this entry »
Editor’s note: If you haven’t read about Kari before, some of her further adventures are being discussed 
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