Book and No Movie: On the Rocks

 The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake, Grand Central Publishing, previously known as Warner Books, a Division of Hachette Book Group, 1970.

Provenance: Apparition Books, Renton, which has an excellent collection of esoterica, plus solid SF and mystery sections. After discussion of caper films among my Saturday night group which mentioned the movie version, I found this copy, its spine uncracked, on its shelves. 

Review: I've talked about Donald Westlake before in these pages, and how he balances both hard-bitten, hard-boiled protagonists with lighter, more human-sized, comical characters. The Hot Rock is an example of the latter. I was attracted to it because, many years ago, I saw the movie version with Robert Redford and George Segal, and when the subject came up in our group, I kept my eyes out for a copy.

This is the first of the novels featuring John Dortmunder, a very good thief with very poor luck. He goes free from prison and an old buddy picks him up in a stolen car with MD plates. The old buddy, Kelp, has a job for him - stealing a large emerald belonging to an African nation on the behalf of a rival African nation. Dortmunder is uncomfortable with the idea, but lacking a lot of options, throws in with Kelp. 

They put together a team: Dortmunder is the planner. Kelp is the contact. Murch is the driver (who obsesses about driving), Chefwick is the locksmith (who is model train fan), Greenwood is the all-around, the utility outfielder of the group, a hapless romantic. They're all mugs who have had their run of hits and misses, but never a big score. They meet in the back of a bar and plan out the heist from the New York Coliseum. No small thing. The heist works, until it doesn't. Greenwood gets caught with the emerald. 

So now the plan becomes how to get Greenwood out of jail with the emerald. And they do, but they don't. Author and screen critic Robert McKee refers to this as "the gap" which drives character development - the space between character expectations (Greenwood gets the gem) and reality (The cops catch Greenwood). That sets up the next part of the heist (getting Greenwood back) and ratchets up the tension as a result. This happens a number of times - where they succeed until they fail. And as Gilda Radner's character, Rosanne Rosannadanna says, "It's always something."

And so it is. Dortmunder is the pessimist and ready to walk away several times. Kelp is the optimist, and keeps bringing him back into the fold. The risks get bigger with every iteration, as do the resources. The plot bounces along nicely, the characterization is good, and Westlake has an economy of style that plays out incredibly well here.

Anyway, after talking about it in our Saturday night group, we went hunting for the film version from 1972, with Redford, Segal, Paul Sands, and Zero Mostel. And we couldn't find it. Anywhere. Not streaming. Not on Amazon. Not even at the venerable and incredible Scarecrow Video. which is the last local outpost of rentals. In our overheated, overproduced, content-heavy modern times, it is not to be found. I found a Spanish-language version, but that's not the same thing at all. I remember seeing it in the theaters fifty years ago, and seeing it on TV once or twice, but the ground has opened up and swallowed it whole. Would love to know the story of why.

Maybe we have to plan a heist.

More later, 

 

Book and a Movie: Canary In a Coal Mine

 The "Canary" Murder Case by S.S.Van Dine, Fawcett Publications, 1927

The Canary Murder Murder Case, written by S.S. Van Dine, Albert Shelby Lovino, Florence Ryerson, Herman Mankiewicz, directed by Malcom St. Clair, Paramount Pictures, 1929.

Provenance: The novel is from the collection of Sacnoth, who provided a large number of mysteries for my late mother-in-law when she lived with us, and which I have been slowly burrowing through over the years. The book itself became a shop-worn volume tucked in my jacket pocket, to be read at the moments when I was waiting for someone or something else (the rest of you use phones these days, so you understand the principle). Nearing completion of this particular mystery, I inveighed upon my Saturday-Night crew to watch the film version (we had previously watched The Kennel Murder Case, another Philo Vance mystery. 

The Reviews: The "Canary" Murder Case (the original put the name in parenthesis, and I'll use it here to separate it from the film) lived for several months on the best-sellers lists, and was regarded as being a definitive advancement of the genre. Its detective, Philo Vance, was a erudite intellectual dilletante who is good friends with the New York City DA, Markham, and is allowed to tag along on investigations. A Broadway actress is slain in her locked apartment, and all clues point to an interrupted burglary. Vance, who is more concerned with the psychology of the criminals than mere apparent evidence, disagrees with the prima facie appearances. And the fact that all the initial evidence points to a burglar only strengthens his opinion. The crime scene is, in his opinion, "too perfect". 

It turns out that the Canary had numerous suitors and former suitors and a taste for blackmail, and that her apartment building had more visitors that evening than the news stand at Penns Station. Suspects are gathered, solid alibis are established, then shattered, and it all leads up to an unreasonable poker game with Vance, Markham, and the suspects. Vance knows who the killer is after that game, but the evidences shows it impossible. Until in the final pages, Vance discover "how he did it", with a bit of high tech wizardry (for the time) which left me shaking my head. 

The writing is engaging, though I had a hard time putting William Powell (who is Vance in the movie - more about that later) into the mold of Vance of the book. Instead I kept getting Frasier Crane as Vance - he would quote Latin, refer to obscure artists, and noted that he had to dash out to the opera or a Monet showing. Vance of the books is extremely elite and dilettantish. As a result, he also codes gay - his encyclopedic knowledge of art and disdain for the commonplace, his elaborate mode of speaking, his fondness for NYC Clubs, plus his relationships with the other male members of group (Markham, the rougher, doubting Chief Detective Heath, and the narrator) gives off strong gay vibes in the modern age. (Of course, Van Dine himself believed that romance had no place in mysteries, so this may account for some of that attitude).

And then there is the matter of the book's narrator - supposedly Van Dine himself, who is presented as Vance's lawyer and constant companion, but who vanishes as a character whenever Vance has someone else to chat with. Indeed, all of "Van Dine's" conversations with Vance are along the lines of "I tried to convince Philo to tell me what was going on, but he remained tight-lipped".  Narrator "Van Dine" is effusive in his praise of this great detective. And the "Van Dine" of this volume was living with Vance in Manhattan, since his own apartment was being renovated. So yeah, the aura of "more than just friends" hangs heavy over their relationship in a way that those of Holmes/Watson, Wolfe/Goodwin, or Poirot/Hastings does not. 

So, with twenty-some pages to go in the book, and with me confident of whodoneit and having an idea of howhedidit, I sat down with my Saturday night group to watch the movie based on it. And it is pretty bad in movie form. We get that The Canary (The OG Flapper Louise Brooks) is a nasty blackmailer right off the bat, and she vanishes from the film upon her demise. Vance (William Powell) is already on the case, investigating her on the behalf of a local banker, as she was blackmailing his son. The son was innocent and one of the young ingenues with Mary Astor, herself in an early role (and therefore innocent as well). Most of the bits of gathering the suspects were shortened, but it concluded in the same unreasonable poker game where Vance tests the mettle of the suspects. He realizes who the murderer is, but that murderer perishes before they can confess, and Vance must find out the howhedidit on his own (though better than the way he did in the book).

I say it was pretty bad - it was slow, pokey, and there were odd shifts in the filming. The reason for it was that it was originally filmed as a silent movie, and then retrofitted with dialogue and additional scenes afterwards. This was Powell's first appearance as the lead, and his theater training gave him a natural diction and movement that was missing from the silent-scenes filmed earlier (There was a lot of held shots of people looking grim). And Louise Brooks herself refused to participate in the reshoot, so a lot of her lines were dubbed and in many cases her face obscured. 

This is Powell's first gig as a leading actor in the movies, his first talkie, and and an early establishment of his film character as a hero as opposed to a villain. His calmness and comfort really stands out here, and while he does not have the wit and savoir faire of the Thin Man and other roles yet, neither does he come off with Van Dine's eliteness and esoteric nature. He is dapper, mannered, and restrained.

So, the end result - both movie and book are verging on their centennial. They're of their era (The movie in particular has a couple black actors in supportive, comical roles  - yeah, cringeworthy). They are both worth revisiting, though know that you may face disappointments in their resolutions.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: The Odd Lot

 So it has been a while, but new games continue to accumulate here at Grubb Street. Some are Kickstarters, but others are from various stores in the area. And I have to say, it's a good thing. There are more game stores operating in the Puget Sound region now than there were 10 years ago, and I am pleased to see brick-and-mortars even as I take advantage of funding new products in advance. 

Some of these new projects that have shown up push back the standard limits of what is a role-playing game, and reflect the wide diversity found in the hobby. Some cleave closely to one version of D&D or the other, or have that heady whiff of nostalgia to them, while others challenge a lot of basic assumptions and tropes in the play-style. So this is a mix of old and new 

Let' see what's here: 

Elder Mythos Deluxe Edition by Michele Paroli and Marta Palvarini, Mana Project Studios, Boxed RPG containing a 240-page digest-sized hardbound, 2 Card Decks, 9 dice, GM Screen, and 10 scenario maps, 2025, Kickstarter. This is a Lovecraftian game where you play. not a cultist or an investigator, but a Mythos Entity itself, both competing with and collaborating with other (player) Mythos entities. It is listed as using the Year Zero engine, but that is pretty much just using that system's dice pools and a card-based initiative session. As an Elder God, you use your turn to manipulate lesser entities (including mere mortals) in the play field, and to mess up the manipulations of the other players, then describing those manipulations in detail. There is a GM/Eldritch Master who is supposed to corral the whole thing. The game play feels like a brain-storming session where there are no bad ideas, but there are bad ideas. The entities you represent stand outside of time, space, and traditional role-playing tropes. The book itself has variable fonts, white on black printing, and a lack of index to help you navigate. So this one would be a learning experience.  

Pendragon Gamemaster's Handbook by Greg Stafford et. al, Chaosium, 238-page hardbound, 2024, Wizard's Keep Games. I mentioned there's been a rising tide of game stores in the area, and I was happy to see one of the locals, Wizard's Keep Games, carrying a deeper level of Chaosium products. This Gamemaster's book is a toolkit-style of book on diverse subjects, supporting the core book -- court life, religions, and the supernatural, as well as new rules for running large battles, plus a goodly collection of NPCs and creatures. The presentation on parchment-ish paper is as solid and the art styles are appropriate for the period, and should become a browsable book in my collection.. 

Call of Cthulhu The Sutra of Pale Leaves: Twin Suns Rising, by Damon Lang, Andrew Logan Montgomery, Jason Sheets, Yukihiro Trada, et al, Chaosium, 192-page hardbound, 2025, Wizard's Keep Games. The past is another country. Japan is another country. An adventure set in Japan in the go-go eighties (40 years ago) is several countries removed. This particular adventure establishes a new manifestation of the King In Yellow and its infiltration into Japanese society. The book deals with Japanese mythology, manga, and the Yakuza, and sets up for a SECOND volume of adventures, Carcosa Manifest. The primary designers come out of the Sons of Singularity, who did The Sassoon Files, and The Blessed and the Blasphemous, and the design here shows a lot of their approach in the form of flowcharts to guide the adventure and confidants to use as plot hooks to bring the players in. 

Orbital Blues by Sam Sleney (writing) Josh Clark (art) and Zachary Cox (more writing), Soul Muppet Publishing, 206-page digest-sized hardbound, 2021, Mox Boarding House. An impulse buy, as I note that Mox has slowly be growing its RPG selection over the years, and bringing in some more esoteric titles. Orbital Blues has been out a few years. It is a pretty straightforward game system - a character has three stats (Muscle, Grit, and Savvy) and uses d6s to resolve tasks and combat. Its genre is "Space Western", which includes Firefly, Mos Eisley, and in particular Cowboy Bebop. It's a dystopian setting, where the future has passed through the planets and satellite settlements and then moved on, leaving poverty and oppression in its wake. You're outlaws on the fringe of society, trying to make a dishonest credit by smuggling, bounty hunting, and heists. Also picked up a copy of A Starborne Resistance,  a slender 48-page squarebound, which provides a planetary setting of a dying colony ignored and oppressed by a once-mighty Confederacy. The books have that art-book look, in that no two-page spread looks like any others. Lack of an index means you're going to have to remember where you read that particular useful rule. Looks interesting. 

Orders of Inquisition by the RPG Professor, Self-published,  120-page softbound, 2025, Kickstarter. This is the sort of product I enjoy, and one that kickstarter excels at bringing to a wider audience. It takes the traditional tropes of gaming fantasy and turns them on their heads. As opposed to the gods (of all alignments) being player-supporting forces, the gods are distant and cruel, and their agents in the world fanatics. The book rolls through the alignment godheads presenting the negative side of faith, followed by specific orders, new classes, spells, and relics. In general, its crammed with some really nice, non-standard ideas. It would be an excellent addition to the more grimdarkish campaigns.

(And as an aside, I always wanted to develop a Good-aligned cult that believes fanatically that the dead should stay dead. Which is a really good thing when talking about vampires, and a really bad thing when you're talking about your fighter who has just been resurrected.)

Mythic Bastionland by  Christ McDowall, Bastionland Press, 208-page hardbound, 2025, purchase at PAX. This is the weirdest book of a weird lot. It looks great, but you really need to bore into it to understand what is going on. It's a fantasy Pendragonish setting, where you are a knight with powers and a mentor. You travel the land (hex-crawling to create the Realm) and encounter stuff, until you are powerful enough to go to the City and join the Round Table. I think. The presentation is the challenge - a collection of  one-page summarized followed by detailed descriptions of the various knights you can be. It wraps up with a series of dialogues between DM and players which to make some sense of it all.. The is beautiful, the presentation is compact, but it requires a lot of engagement just to wrap your head around. 

Random Jottings 22 Omnibus by Michael Dobson, Canal Press, 202-page softbound, 2025, gift of the author. Mike Dobson was my boss for several years at TSR, and following his tenure there he continued to write histories, books, articles, and commentary. A lot of that can be found here. This is a personal fanzine in which he talks about his travels, Wikipedia, and most relevant to this audience, his time at TSR and other gaming companies, and includes an article in the Comics Journal. Good bits of history. 

The Planar Codex by Cody Faulk et al, Daggerwood Games, 200-page hardbound, 2025, Kickstarter. Coming from my Manual of the Planes background, I always find planar books interesting. And this is a 5E (2014) product and is Great Wheel adjacent, and you'll recognize versions of the Feywild the Nine Hells, the Seven Heavens, and Mechanus (formerly Limbo). That means that they can be supplement old-school and Planescape-style settings, or be used to create a new planar arrangement. The approach is nice and very player-centered - new subclasses for all the original classes, new spells, and new races. My only gripe is that the fiction that headers each section is printed in an italic script font, which makes it slow going for these old eyes. 

The Medieval Fortress by J.E.Kaufman, H.W.Kaufman, Illustrated by Robert M. Jurga, Da Capo Press (Perseus Books Group), 320-page softbound, 2001, from the collection of Sacnoth, but actually purchased from Barnes & Noble in Tukwilla in 2005 (The receipt was being used as a bookmark). OK, NOT a gaming book per se, but the type of book I really like - a comprehensive reference work on medieval fortresses and walled cities. So this is browser's book for me, to be picked up and leafed through, and a reference if I'm doing any serious historical castle design. Good illustrations, though the photos are a bit muddy in black and white.

Draw Steel Heroes Book One: Heroes by Matthew Colville, James Introcaso, Willy Abeel, and Robert Djordjevich,  MCDM Productions, 402-page hardbound, 2025, Kickstarter; Book Two: Monsters, 378-page hardbound. This one demands a LOT more attention that this brief write-up can provide. This is a deeply impressive re-imagining of the D&D-style of game, reconfigured from the ground up, showing origins in 4E in its crunchiness. It is quite specific in its goal - it is about combat encounters, and the rules reflect that at every turn. No base assumption of D&D is left unchallenged - use of 2d10s instead of a d20, you always do SOME damage in combat (the only question is how much), Characteristics are refashioned with a small spread of scores. The archetypical classes are rethought, as well and while recognizable, function in different fashions. Spell are are rethought as abilities. Everything has shorthand box. 

The game is more than combat, but will function best at a table with a battlemap or online, as opposed to everyone in comfortable chairs scattered across the living room. The monster book contains new versions the reliable and recognizable foes, along with high level baddies that do some world-building for us, and rethought alternates for the TMed creatures like the Mind Flayer and the Beholder. There is a lot of lore in the game, but most of it is parked in descriptive text of the character classes and creatures, so it bears a complete reading. My one nit in presentation is that the excellent art for the monsters needs to be labeled, so I know which of four stat blocks on the page is applicable.

In short, Draw Steel is an adventurous reincarnation of the traditional TTRPG, and if you bemoan the lack of crunch in a lot of modern incarnations, this is one to check out. Its the one I'm going to be moving through in the next few weeks. 

And that's it for this bag of stuff, mixed though it be. I really like the spectrum of projects that come out of roleplaying, and while not all of them are my particular pipe of tea, I am glad they're available, and if they strike your fancy, you should hunt them down.

More later,  

Theatre: Creature of the NIght

 Dracula Adapted from Bram Stoker's novel by Nathan Kessler-Jeffrey, directed by Brad Lo Walker, Renton Civic Theatre, through November 2nd.

Many, many years ago I wrote a short play and staged a reading at the Burien Actors Theatre with five readers. Two of them were friends, but three were recruits that I had never met before. All did a wonderful job at the time, but I noticed that one of my then-readers was in a play down at the Renton Civic Theatre, which is just down the hill from Grubb Street. So I made a rare evening excursion into Renton to a theater I had never attended before.

And a word about the Renton Civic Theatre, which is community theater at its best. From the street it is an unassuming theatre marquee sandwiched between a realty company storefront and a Japanese restaurant. The venue inside is excellent, the house and stage both larger and more comfortable than the Taproot's. The lobby is small, and has handbills from the 40s when this was a motion picture house. There is a bar this particular evening there was no alcohol, because the only volunteer at the counter was underage and could not serve. It's really a nice place. On this Friday night the house was mostly full, and there were more than a few attendees who ignored the whole "turn off your phone" warnings. Ah, well. 

The play itself is an excellent adaption of the original novel. The novel is epistemological in nature, which is to say that it is presented as letters, diary entries, and other first person accounts. Moving it to the stage results in a series of vignettes where the characters recite the letters, then move seamlessly into scenes with the other characters. As a result they're doing a lot of their own stage management as they haul chairs, tables, and coffins on and off the stage. 

Adapting to the stage also involved other changes. Quinton Morris, the cowboy in the book (and you did read the book as a kid, right?), gets a slight mention but never appears on stage. Neither do the brides. The finale remains in London as opposed to fleeing back to Transylvania. Yet that doesn't change the story itself, and helps retain the sense of the characters being overmatched by the Count. The production also gender changes Renfield, which actually works better.

The actors are all excellent. My reader, Michael Yichao, is the hapless Jonathan Harker, the lawyer dispatched to Castle Dracula to help Dracula move to London. The heart of the play belongs to Mina (Dani Davis) who hits everything precisely and sharply.  Angela Martin does double duty as the manic Renfield and the supportive Sister Agatha. Lucy Westenra captures the coquettish nature of Lucy. David Breyman posts an almost-comic Dr. Seward, Cameron Widmark is very British nobility and honor as Arthur Holwood, Lucy's fiancé, and Phillip Keiman is an endearing Abraham Van Helsing. And Tadd Morgan is our Count, shedding the Hungarian accent early as he modernizes for London and makes himself a holy terror. 

There is humor in the horror, and most of it comes from the characters themselves - Harker's naivety, Lucy's shallowness, Seward's moroseness. It is subtle and effective. And that's a challenge given that Drac himself has been parodied to death over the decades. There's one sequence that created inadvertent giggles among the audience, contrasting Jonathan and Mina's wedding with the death of Lucy, but in general the actors kept the audience in check and enthralled with a story that many of them knew since childhood. 

You want a Halloween play? Here's your Halloween play. Go enjoy,

More later. 

The Political Desk: Summing Up

 Go Vote.

Yes, I know it's not as exciting this year. And it's a short turnaround . And in my case, there are a lot of unopposed races (a dozen on my own ballot - your mileage may differ). 

Go Vote anyway.

And if you're planning to mail in your ballot (it's free), do it sooner than later. There is no guarantee that it will be postmarked in time. Otherwise, go drop it off at a hopefully nearby ballot drop box.

Go Vote early.

There are a lot of races that I don't have any say in. Mayor of Seattle (Katie Wilson). City Attorney (Erika Evans). Districts that I am not living in (Edwin Obras in the 33rd, Vandana Slatter in the 48th). That's the nature of our system. I can deal with it.

But for you? Go Vote.

I listed a bunch of the sources of recommendations and endorsements earlier in my blog here. And for those interested, here are comparable endorsements of the Stranger and the Times.  Otherwise, here's my summary from the past few days:

Proposed Constitutional Amendment: Senate Joint Resolution No. 8201: Approved

King County Proposition No. 1 Medic One - Emergency Medical Services Replacement of Existing Levy: Yes

King County Public Hospital District No. 1 Proposition No. 1 Levy Lid Lift for Health Care Services: Approved

King County Executive: Claudia Balducci

Metropolitan King County Council District No. 5: Stephanie Fain (The Times this morning launched an editorial against her opponent for claiming the Times endorsed him, which it did not.)

City of Kent Council Position No. 2: Satwinder Kaur (Her opponent sent out a late attack mailer on her. The return address for this mailer on a non-partisan position was the Washington State Republican Party).

Kent School District No. 415 Director District No. 4: Teresa Gregory

Kent School District No. 415 Director District No. 5: Laura Williams

OK, that's it. I'm going back to theatre reviews and talking about games, but I will pop back in with the results. 

Do I need to say it again? Sure. Go Vote. 

More later.

The Political Desk: Kent

 So, Kent. My home town. We're a community in the Green River valley, South of Seattle tucked between Renton and Auburn. Most of the industry (light) and government are in the valley floor, along with the large mallish Kent Commons, but spilling up both the East and West Hills (Grubb Street is on the East Hill, in the Panther Lake area, which was sucked up by the city more than a decade ago). It's a very diverse community, and ranges from mildly urban through suburban to exurban, particularly as you move towards the growth boundary to the East. The town was originally known to settlers as White River (before that river was diverted to the south), then Titusville (after a local settler), and finally settled on Kent, since it became a major producer of hops, which at the time weren't doing so well in the original Kent, England.

Anyway.

Most of the positions in Kent are unopposed, but there are a few contested races. Here's a quick guide:

City of Kent Council Position No. 2. The incumbent and current president of the council is Satwinder Kaur, who has done a good job and pacts and ton of endorsements, including the mayor and the rest of the council. We've endorsed her before, and she's helped see Kent through a lot of challenges. Her opponent is Neet Grewel, who is running on "Cleaning Up Kent", which is a nice play on her first name (Neet. Clean. Yeah). She says a lot of good and proper things in her Candidate statement, but adds to it support for AI and crypto (which is concerning, but not part of the job she wants) and espouses anti-vac propaganda on her socials (which is concerning and may have an effect on the job she wants). And the Kaur campaign has sent out pictures of her having out at Marlago and hobnobbing with RFK Jr. So, yeah, I'm going with Satwinder Kaur.

City of Kent Council Position No. 6. We're back in the same position of hard, good choices. Sharn Shoker and Andy Song are both at the progressive end of the political spectrum. Shoker is a director of a Seattle-based non-profit, while Song is the present head of the Kent School Board. Both are good, and I recommended Song in the primary. But looking at it again, I'm going to say take a good look at Sharn Shoker for this position.

Kent School District No. 415 Director District No. 4 Teresa Gregory is the incumbent, but only for a little while, but has done a good job so far.  Her opponent doesn't even have a web site to make her views widely known. The school district is facing budget cuts because of hacked federal funding, and I think I want Teresa Gregory there to make the decisions.

Kent School District No. 415 Director District No. 5 Laura Williams is a veteran teacher and union leader with a fistful of endorsements and a plan for the future. Her opponent does not have a website, so my only exposure is through her candidate statement, which has some red flags and conservative dog whistles. So, yeah, Laura Williams.

And that's it. Now we sum up. More later,

The Political Desk: County Positions and Tough Choices

 I've got two county races to decide on my ballot. One is for County Executive, the other for Position No. 5 on the Council. And these are the most frustrating items on the ballot for me, in that there is no bad choice for one, and no great choice for the other.

Both are open positions, in that their predecessors have gone on to other things. Dow Constantine was the County Executive forever, and moved on to head up Sound Transit. Dave Upthegrove was on the council for position 5, but was elected to run the Department of Natural Resources. And the thing is, either one could have just stayed - it is harder to vote an incumbent off the council than just wait for natural erosion. Reagan Dunn, the conservative counselor from district 9, has been there ever since his mom got him the posting, and they have even redrawn the borders of his district to keep him. 

Anyway,

King County Executive has two very competent and talented candidates. They are both former council members themselves, and they are both in the progressive category. They're voting records are pretty much identifcal. The good news is you're going to get someone worthwhile. The bad news is you have to choose. 

Claudia Balducci is a former mayor of Bellevue, and has been instrumental in pushing mass transit, including getting the Eastside line running, even though it not connected with the rest of Seattle. She has experience and a reputation for getting things done. Girmay Zahilay rose from incredibly humble beginnings, clerked in the Obama administration, and has leaned hard in renter protection, first responders, and increasing the minimum wage.

 Both are solid politicians: Balducci has the experience, while Zahilay has the endorsements. The Times recommended Balducci in a meek endorsement that summed up everything they hated about the council, but hopes that Balducci could fix it. The Stranger went in for Zhahily in part because Balducci has been courting the moderate/centrist wing of the party. But neither are radicals.

Me? I'll opt for Claudia Balducci, but to be honest, either one would do a fine job.

Metropolitan King County Council District No. 5 has the opposite problem, in that neither of the two candidates, Peter Kwon or Stephanie Fain, feel like particularly good fit, and brows are furrowed about what happens when either gets in. Kwon is a former council-person from SeaTac, while Fain has ben president of the Harborview Medical Center's Board of Trustees for 5 terms.

 In their attack mailers, both have accused the other of being Republicans in sheep's closing. Kwon is getting the support of the local Republicans, while Fain is married to a former GOP State Rep who stepped down over accused sexual improprieties. Kwon also said one thing to the Republicans, and another to Planned Parenthood (which pulled their support, but he hasn't admitted it yet). Fain has deep pockets supporting her. Kwon has the experience, while Fain has the endorsements, including getting the nod from both the Times and the Stranger, though it sounds like the Stranger is whistling past the graveyard on this one. 

Regardless, whomever gets the nod will likely be more in the centrist camp than a progressive force. Fain, though, is pushing healthcare, while Kwon underlines effectiveness in moving things forward without new taxes. Both sound like rational human beings and capable leaders, so that's good. I'm going to go in for hope this time, and recommend Stephanie Fain, though my opinion has changed three times as I wrote the past three paragraphs. Yeah, democracy is a challenge, sometimes. 

And that's the toughest decision for me on this ballot. Next up, we get specific with the City of Kent, my home town.

More later,

The Political Desk: Ballot Measures

 Let me whine just a bit. Our election processes allows us to vote on finances. SOME finances. Not the whopping 10% sales tax, but rather situations where we are asked to weigh in on public goods and services which most of us like. So we DON'T get to vote directly on things like, say, salaries for elected officials, putting electronic billboards on the sidewalks, or creating a AI-powered holographic Dr. Martin Luther King to talk to you about breakfast (not making that one up). But we DO get to vote on things like EMTs, Hospitals, and care for the elderly.  Which makes me roll my eyes just a tad.

Anyway ...

Proposed Constitutional Amendment: Senate Joint Resolution No. 8201 This is to change our state constitution to allow the government to play the stock market to help fund WA Cares for elderly care. Good plan, but it admittedly has risks, in that the stock market (or just the part of the stock market that you've invested in) can go down as well as up. Most of these funds are invested in bonds, since they are more stable (but lower-paying) Most recently the markets have trended upwards, but they have been highly volatile because, well, you know. On the other hand, the State Investment Board has been pretty cagey do date about investments, so they aren't exactly getting into AI and crypto. I'm going with an Approved on this one, but it becomes one more thing to keep an eye on.

King County Proposition No. 1 Medic One - Emergency Medical Services Replacement of Existing Levy This is a replacement for an expiring levy, and lowers the rate on the property taxes (but will raise more funds because your property value has likely gone up). Its for EMTs and 911 calls. No one even filed an entry against it. So, yeah, I'm good for that. Vote YES.

King County Public Hospital District No. 1 Proposition No. 1 Levy Lid Lift for Health Care Services  This is Valley Medical, which is about 2 miles from here, and the ER/OR that we use (most recently for the Lovely Bride's shoulder replacement). This will allow them to raise more money for operations and capital improvements. Yeah, I'm down with it. Go with Approved.

That's it for the funding issues - on to the candidates.

More later,