Holy Crow, the roller coaster. (Of love.) (SAY WHAT)

Sorry, I did not mean to channel the Ohio Players. No-prize to all who sang along with that funk classic, which my friend Kent in high school played all the time, along with Led Zeppelin. Go figure. Eclectic tastes. He’s the fellow who’s a jazz instructor at a Texas college, so it paid off. ANYWAY. I went back to The Fred today to walk through one of the units that’s open. And it is . . .

Okay. It’s really, really okay. The shift from woody warm Arts & Crafts to Nordic Industrial Minimalism is jarring, but perhaps apt. The amount of sunlight is extraordinary; the view . . . the view gently presses its incisors into the wax tadpole, although I was assured by the leasing agent that my unit would be higher up and the nighttime views are great, sunset’s great, an expanse of trees beyond, and you’re not level with the industrial HVAC machinery on the roof of the building across the street. So there’s that.

It will have room for a small dining table, which I require, because of the way I live: like a civilized human being who does not hunch over his phone at a counter, but hunches over his phone at a proper table. Not sure it’ll look right, but we’ll see.

The more I look at it the less I like it.

In the afternoon I took Current Wife to a doctor’s appointment in the suburbs, went to a coffee shop in a strip mall, and looked out the window at the very definition of Bleak Midwinter. Don’t even know if we’re Mid yet.

Then I picked her up and we went to Costco. Since she can’t walk much, she sat in this new-fangled cart - at least I’d never seen them before - in which the adult sits facing the pusher, like the carts that have a space to plop the toddler. Hilarious. You might think it is odd to be pushing around someone who wants to separate and you’re looking right at each other, but it was fun, and we had a grand time. We had samples of curry. Some delicious coconut confections. No one would say “boy there’s a couple on the rocks.”

Anyway, I got a call from the leasing agent, and it’s unlikely the units I want will become available in the next six months, and there are two other people behind me in the queue who’ve requested visits. I took the apartment. It’s only a year. Who knows. I could get one of the nicer units should they become available, or find a townhome, or move to another city, or die, or all in sequence.

Oh for a normal day again.

Something I snapped at the airport as I was leaving for England. A series of paintings along a wall in an area under construction.

I cannot tell you how much I loathe this style. And I am not alone.

But hey it's art-historically legitimate

Corporate Memphis, commonly referred to as Alegria art, is an art style named after the Memphis Group that features flat areas of color and geometric elements. Widely associated with Big Tech illustrations in the late 2010s and early 2020s, it has been met with a polarized response, with criticism focusing on its use in sanitizing corporate communication, as well as being seen as visually offensive, insincere, pandering and over-saturated. Other illustrators have defended the style, pointing at what they claim to be its art-historical legitimacy.

Aka Globohomo.

Why such tiny heads and exaggerated, flabby, bloated bodies?

You would run in fear from these creatures:

Fights would end quickly because you could crush the opponant's head with your hand

Everyone's always smiling

This might be the worst.

It's the dreamy look in panel 3 that makes you wonder. Also: "our leading Chinese citizen."

I'm stumped, but I'm also marveling again at the way Lance can size these guys up in 20 seconds. Solution here.

I was days late in preparing the special cookies from England, which required you to unroll very delicate baked things topped with chocolate and put them on a plate and leave them alone for 24 hours in a non-humid environment. I was supposed to have done it a few days before, but I hadn’t, but I felt bad and hope nobody noticed even though the holidays were gone.

I also had to do jury duty at 8 o’clock in the morning, which is a problem because I spent the last 40 minutes writing an interesting little pop song. The problem was was that instead of being eight bars long it was seven and it ended anticlimactic. When I was trying to figure this out I realized I should leave for the courthouse, and I thought I should bring the cookies, but they weren't ready. I left the cookies behind and the next thing I knew I had been rejected for the jury.

AI depiction of the dream: not entirely accurate.

I think this year will be different than the last two. Better. More diverse styles, interesting failures, missed-shots by big names, one-shots by up-and-coming bands or groups that went nowhere, all with 80s styles and distinctive sounds. Or, maybe I just like the era better.

I'm using the rankings from the Whitburn charts.

The song charts low in '86 because it charted high in '85, reaching the top 100.

That will do. What a week. Thanks for your patronage, and I hope you're a paying customer who will enjoy the Friday column, which I will write now.

Time to be FUNNY! Wish me luck.