Dried cockscomb.

I was given three cockscomb from my best friend from high school, Justyna, for my birthday. Little sneak left them at my doorstop (she drove in from Chicago) while I was at work. Gorgeous. So I tried them and voila!...they look as though she just left them.

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Cockscomb.

Or "Celosia cristata", as Justyna calls them. A birthday gift from her. She dropped them off while I was at work. Sneaky little bitch.

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2009: A PASSION = TRUTH Retrospective.

End of an old year. Beginning of a new. It's retrospective time. PASSION = TRUTH style. The following highlights aren't PASSION = TRUTH highlights as much as they're highlights in my life over 2009. Just click on the colored links and you'll be whisked away to the post as it appeared in PASSION = TRUTH...in no particular order.

1. Dear California: I'm dumping you. My letter to the state of California upon my departure mid-September and subsequent move back to Wisconsin.

2. Best thing about California. My best friends in California - Donovan & Maria McCann-Glover, and their daughters, Grace, and my goddaughter, Gwyneth.

3. Jeff named "Godfather" to Gwyneth McCann-Glover. First time I've been chosen to be a godfather - and a very proud moment for me.

4. Concerts, concerts and more concerts. The Zombies at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, Cali., Terri Nunn and Berlin three times in 2009 and Gordon Lightfoot at the Canyon Club. Can't tell you which one was a highlight 'cause they were all highlights. Top-notch performances by every artist. And I got to meet with Terri Nunn. One of the most engaging solo artists (apart from her band Berlin) I've ever witnessed (I'd toss Minnie Driver in that category but I saw her perform three times in 2008).

5. Keeping with the live performance theme theme, I saw Brian Wilson perform at the Hollywood Bowl in late 2008 and then again in Milwaukee a couple months ago. In between that, I met one of Brian's back-up singers, Taylor Mills, via Facebook - then I met with her personally at her husband's gig (Todd Sucherman of Styx) in Manhattan Beach. I got to introduce her to my brother, Jason, at her Milwaukee gig. Very nice person and a great singer.

6. My award-winning, 10-minute play, "Pass the Salt, Please." was performed at festivals in Miami and Seattle. Very, very successful runs in both cities. If you're bored, you can type in "Pass the Salt, Please.", in the search box in the top left corner of the blog and all the related posts will pop up for you, including reviews. You can also type in that search box, "Grace Notes from a Bohemian in Wanderlust" and every post associated with my 3-week vacation in May will pop up.

Above: Me, Bo and brother Jason, day before I moved from California, September 2009.
7. Jeff knows Bo. Had the pleasure of striking up a friendship with actor Bo Svenson, "North Dallas Forty", "Walking Tall II", "The Great Waldo Pepper". Very, very nice gentleman.
8. Brett Favre signs with the Minnesota Vikings. The Ironman. The Legend. The future Hall of Famer. 19 years in the NFL. Owns every meaningful QB record that is and has never missed a start all that time. After one season with the New York Jets, Brett signed with the Vikes, who sit at 11-4 and are in the NFL playoffs this season. Like #6, type in "Brett Favre" and every post I've ever written, including this season, will come up.

9. My visit with Tina in Chicago. I usually visit my best friend from high school a couple times a year. Our time is meaningful and priceless.

10. Walleye fishing trip. This happens every May in Lake Tomahawk, Wisconsin. Going on...well, it's over 20 years. For some reason I can't find the actual fishing post but I found the golfing post.

11. "Dia duit, Eire!" Visited Ireland at the end of September. 3rd trip. Visited Galway, Ardfinnan, Cork, Waterford, Dublin and Cahir among other towns. Good food & drink great weather and as hospitable people as you can get. FYI: I set this particular blog up separately from PASSION = TRUTH.
12. Santa Barbara. My favorite spot in California. We have family there (by marriage) so I try and spend some time up there. I don't have a post here, but if you're on my blog, go to that search box in the upper left and type in "Santa Barbara", "Tom or Greg Nowak", "wine tasting", "Solstice" or "Fiesta" and you'll find a few posts. Beautiful country up there. And good wine (hiccup!).
BONUS: 13. Notes from Lost Man's Lane by Richard le Breton. I took a trip to Nashville, Indiana to visit my friend Katie and we had a ball. This is the first post in the series and, though the trip occurred in November 2008, it was a cool series of posts so I'm including it anyway. Again, if you type "Notes from..." in the upper left search box, the entire series of post will pop up.
There it is...2009. A lot of shit happened. These are just some of the special ones. You can check out the rest of the blog by searching topics toward the lower section of the right panel. Been doing this since March 2007 - with over 2,000 posts, you're bound to find something that's of interest. Happy New Year and a better 2010 for us all!

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Happy Birthday, Justyna!

Justyna and I in Chicago, May, 2009. Have a happy birthday, baby.

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Separated at Birth? Naomi, Claire, Betsy and Justyna.

Top left, clockwise: Naomi Watts, Claire Danes, Justyna and Betsy C. Betsy's an actress who I saw in City Theatre's Shorts 4 Kids! while my play was performing in the Undershorts portion of the festival. She was excellent - one of the best actresses I've ever seen (I keep saying this but in one sketch she was a fish and there were moments when I simply forgot I was watching an actor). She WILL make it big. Justyna is my best friend from high school and is also in the entertainment field. Keep in mind Betsy's the youngest and Justyna's the oldest. See it? No? Yes? I do.

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#38 - "Grace Notes from a Bohemian in Wanderlust." Justyna's Garden in Irving Park.

("Grace Notes from a Bohemian in Wanderlust" is a series of posts about my 3.5 week May vacation in Seattle, Chicago, Milwaukee, Lake Tomawk, WI and Miami. They are in no particular order.)

Justyna’s my best friend from high school. I thoroughly enjoy the time we spend together for many reasons – common values and politics, intelligent conversation, appreciation for history and our family’s roots, music tastes, etc. We can sit and look at each other for an hour and not say a word. She has a beautiful garden on her property in Irving Park – the Victorian she lives in was refurbished from the ground up. Whenever I’m there I feel “at home". And whenever I leave I feel a sense of angst. We did a bit of gardening on this last visit – pruning and mapping out her next gardening project she needs to tackle.

Click on READ MORE! and take a walk through Justyna's garden - and enjoy.

Justyna and I at some fancy schmancy Italian restaurant in downtown Chicago.

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Happy Memorial Day. 2009.

Irving Park - Chicago. Lest we forget. Visiting my high school friend, Justyna. It is peaceful here.

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Goat cheese, raspberry jam, & wine on our porch. Redcross. Co. Wicklow. April 2006.

Seems like I was just there, in Ireland with my friend, Justyna. Takes your breath away. The LAND, I'm talkin' about ya idgit. I need to get back there.

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"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle", by David Wroblewski.

This was just recommended to me by Justyna this morning and I purchased it at Amazon (make sure you click on the Amazon banner at the top of this blog whenever you make purchases from that site!). The book is written by a fellow-Wisconsinite (like Justyna and I) and the setting is Northern Wisconsin. Tell me - what wouldn't I like about this book?

So far, Justyna and I are 1 for 1 on book recommendations - we both thoroughly enjoyed "The Devil in the White City", by Erik Larson.

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Justyna's Christmas card.

As I've mentioned on numerous blog posts, Justyna is my best girl friend from high school. We've known each other since we were 14. This was the first year in a while that we didn't spent time at her home in Irving Park (Chicago, basically) for the holidays. It was odd - that, and not being with my family as well. She gave me a great gift - the latest CD (an emotional and poignant one at that) from Lowen & Navarro, "Learning to Fall". I met Eric (Lowen) and Dan (Navarro) through Justyna a couple years ago and have seen them in concert twice.

My review of their latest work is forthcoming.

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Glendalough, Ireland. And..."The Dead".

Glendoalough, Ireland, May 2006. Founded in the 6th century by the hermit

priest, St Kevin, and destroyed in 1398 by English troops.

Met with my playwright friend Jerry Small today to discuss a play of his that I'm reading in. We got to talking and he read me these last two paragraphs from James Joyce's "The Dead", the final story in Joyce's collection of short stories called, Dubliners, from 1914. Got to thinking about the musical version of "The Dead" I saw in Hollywood with my friend Donovan - and of my trip in 2006 to Ireland with my friend, Justyna, for the reading of my play, "Stan's Addiction".

"Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

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Why purchase from Wintersilks' catalog? Justyna...of course!

My very close high school friend Justyna is a featured model in Wintersilks magazine - has been for years. That's why. :)

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"In Bruges". See it.

I finally got a chance to watch playwright Martin McDonagh's film, "In Bruges", with Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. Brilliant.

Gleeson and Farrell play two present day hitman hiding out in Bruges, a town located in the northwest part of Belgium, in the Flemish Region. Now, the packaging of the DVD would suggest this is a comedy - as would the coming attractions trailer seen in movie theaters or on television. Even during the opening sequences which contained tight shots of the city and its architecture, my friend Donovan (who's a teacher and screenwriter) commented, 'this is a comedy?'.

It's actually a dark comedy, which is a whole nuther ballgame. So you have to listen closely and pay attention throughout. God - the city itself is gorgeous. Any writer's haven (like Ireland wouldn't be...but that's a nuther...whole nuther subject).

My friend Justyna, who spent 10 days in Belgium with her mother recently but never made it to Bruges, raved about the country. The added footage on the DVD includes "Fooking Bruges"" - an edited 2 minute piece containing all the swearing and verbal assaults on the good city of Bruges (which was funnier than the gag reel on the DVD), as well as a visually aesthetic boat ride throughout the canals of Bruges from the rider's perspective.

McDonagh is known for his critically acclaimed Irish trilogy which includes the plays: The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and The Banshees of Inisheer. Equally as well-known are the plays The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West. He won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for Six Shooter. A film I watched and, though interesting, couldn't figure out why, of all the films entered into competition, it came to win the Oscar. Anyway, "In Bruges" is a great flick with sharp, intelligent dialogue and a great premise. This is the comedy I prefer to watch, act in and write in my plays. Dark.

Rent it. And go to Bruges if you get a chance.

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An Eagle (Hole-in-One) and a Double Eagle and I golf once a year!

I golf once a year Up North in Wisconsin when I go fishing in May. I suck.

But lil' ole Jeff Ircink didn't suck yesterday, friends. Read it and weep, bitches! A Double Eagle on a Par 5 and - AND a hole-in-one on a Par 3, which is another Eagle by the way. Exactly. Go cry to your momma, girlie man.

Granted, I was playing Tiger Woods' Wii Golf but isn't my performance indicative of the golfer I could become if I played it long enough?? No? I disagree.

Donovan and I had a grand old time creating our golf characters - about an hour and a half spent but that's because we were encumbered with the incredible details you can get into when creating your Wii persona. We tried to make them as disturbing as possible and I believed we succeeded.

That's me - "Laird". Definitely a "missing link".

There's Donovan - how would you like to have this guy as your cell mate? Donovan's wife, Maria, created her Wii golfer that looked incredibly like my friend, Justyna, in Chicago (see Wii Justyna and real Justyna below).

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Happy Birthday, Justyna!

Tina's on your right.

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Vacation: Part 2 - Chicago.

Short but sweet trip to visit Justyna, seen here in her little alcove either contemplating why she's constantly inviting me over to her Victorian in Irving Park OR thinking about her upcoming trip to Belgium with her mother (they left last Wednesday).

It has to be the second one...right? You know seeing this picture brings to mind an anecdote I recently saw painted on the ceiling of the Skylight Theatre in Milwaukee:

"To forget some things, to remember others and to refresh the dry places in our spirit."

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"Ice Harvest"

My best girl friend, Justyna, appeared in "Ice Harvest", with Oliver Platt and John Cusack (2005). She was excellent in it - especially her non-verbal reactions to Platt assailing her with a turkey leg. Nailed it! I'll be seeing her in Chicago before the big fishing gig.

Justyna, this isn't microburst weather, is it?

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Erin go braugh! 2 years since Ireland

I can't believe it's been two years already. Huh. I wanna go back. 'Course, I never wanted to come back to the States in the first place, but....ahhh, shit. I miss Ireland and the whole experience with my travel partner, Justyna. I'm headed to Chicago May 5th (part of my Wisconsin walleye fishing trip) so I'll see her then.

I suppose that's the closest I'll get to Ireland - for now. That's OK, too.

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"So these two Polish models walk into a bar..."

"And the one says..." Forget it. I got no joke. All I have is two, hot Polish models. Period.

I stumbled upon the current issue of the magazine Nylon and the model above, Anja Rubik, was featured on the cover. So I did some digging and found this shot of her on W - and it reminded me of a shot in Lake magazine of my close friend from high school, Justyna, who models in Chicago. Similar looks, styles, attitudes...they're both models and they're both Polish.

No? Well it's really all about what I think, right? That's it. Just my observation.

(Photo of Justyna taken by Michael Voltattorni, 2007)

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Ireland.

'Tis Saint Patrick's Day, so I thought it fitting for a stroll down memory lane when I was in Ireland, April 2006. Not a day goes by when I don't think of this country - or the trip. I want to go back now, yesterday - whenever. I think I left a piece of me over there. Anyway, that's what it feels like somedays.

God, the land's beautiful. Takes my breath away. Redross - in Co. Wicklow. A view from our porch.

My friend Justyna (we've known each other since we were 14) accompanied me as one of my plays, Stan's Addiction, was being read at a festival in Belfast. You know how when you go on trips and certain songs remind you of the trip 'cause you heard them...on the trip? Take a listen to our song - though we picked it out before we got to Ireland. Is that cheating?

The Irish Sea at Brittas Bay.

It's not difficult to find one of those famous Irish doors to lean against.

Justyna and I in Avoca.

Lynhams of Laragh - in the Village of Laragh, near Glendalough. Founded in 1777, it was the coziest of all the pubs we'd been in.

Me and my Guinness in Waterford, Co. Waterford. Happy St. Patrick's Day and "Caed Mile Failte", or "A thousand welcomes".

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