See ya, brother...

     It was a year ago right about now that I was heading for Russia. 

     I highly recommend leaving your comfort zone and challenging everything that you once thought or assumed; embracing yesterday's predictability while wearing tomorrow's wildly uncertain mask, then packing a homebody's hesitant suitcase.       

     There is nothing like trying to learn how to read an alphabet much different than your own, and knowing nothing other than you'd best believe in the kindness of strangers.

     I can attest to the fact that strangers are as kind to you as you are to them.

     Never underestimate the power of a simple smile.

     Russian security guards had no choice but to smile back.

     Nick Cave's "People Ain't No Good"---an old favorite---ain't no good for me anymore.

     With or without irony, intended or otherwise. 

     However, his "Where The Wild Roses Grow" is etched in my eternal memory, as I heard it every single morning at breakfast (although it was pirated, and not Nick at all...)     

     I wasn't the most humble man when I arrived, but I grew more in one summer on Sakhalin Island than all my other years combined.

     It was such a beautiful thing.

     While I was away, online, I read that Boots had died. Boots owned the block in Hermosa Beach that you see if you've ever watched world-class beach volleyball on TV, or---better yet---jockeyed there for a beer, sweaty, and in-person. 

     That's the block that the Poop Deck is on.

     After he died, his family put it up for sale for $27 million. I think you could steal it now for $24 million.

     It fell out of escrow a few weeks ago.

     Good. 

     Don't ever sell it. 

     At least while I'm still here, alive and yappin'.

     My beautiful niece Suzanne and her stellar Maine man Pete and I tipped a couple over there; Pete, happy that they flew a Red Sox banner outside; Suzanne, sparkling, and the most lovely, positive being that the South Bay had seen since the Hermosa surfer whose statue stands close by was atop that last wave, and whose name escapes me.

     The Poop Deck is known for crusty, old Vietnam-era bartenders.

     It's as a bar should be.

     Pigeons live in the pool table.

     Seriously.

     In it. Not near it.

     Anyway, Mark worked at the Poop Deck ever since I've gone there, which is over 20 years. 

     In those 20+ years, he smiled at me once, and that was a few weeks ago when the naked chicks I wrote about in a previous post were in the back. 

     I never told him what was happening back there, but I think he knew something was askew.

     Mark died a couple of weeks ago. He lived like Keith Richards without the Rolling Stones' health care plan.

     Mark was a boatless pirate.

     Dude, it's fine with me that you didn't smile.

     I think I can pick up the slack...