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Gaiser Conservatory, Manito Park, Spokane, Wash.

This is a very fine appreciation of the man behind Parker, who shows up yet again on the big screen this week. It includes this beautifully formatted footnote: A list of Westlake’s most prominent novelistic pseudonyms: Richard Stark (Parker, inspired by the actor Richard Widmark), Alan Marshall (erotica), Edwin West (erotica), Curt Clark (science fiction), Tucker Coe (private-eye series featuring detective Mitch Tobin), and Samuel Holt (about a former TV detective named … Sam Holt). This does not include several more he used for one-shot books and magazine stories, including Ben Christopher and Grace Salacious. Grace Salacious! Has there ever been a finer pseudonym?

This news flash just in from Melbourne by way of our La Crosse office : A Southern Health dental hygienist ceased work a day after being told dozens of images of her posing explicitly in the Cranbourne clinic were posted on a members-only internet porn site. Which is as if ripped from the pages of Bird’s Nest in Your Hair , the latest publication from Korrektiv Press: It took them a couple of trips up the elevator, but other than a dropped item here and there, everything went off without a hitch. While Tom and the others set up cameras and the rest of the equipment in the examination rooms, the performers sat on couches in the lobby, smoking cigarettes and thumbing through copies of Highlights and Ladies Home Journal . One fellow wearing a white lab coat was fiddling around with a tank of nitrous oxide, pressing a mask to his face with one hand while turning a dial with the other. A couple of guys in tool belts were in the final stages of clearing out one of the overhead lights, ...

He rose up from a farm near Portland And ranged a Lutheran college north; Seattle beaconed down, and heartland Unmindfulness propelled him forth Beyond a war of naval typists, Their visions rival solipsists Undoing; lately in the man Arriving here to make Spokane The house of his body, snowing lightly, A lucky crime, the crime of luck , But mercy holds his hand; he’s stuck For now but angels come fortnightly To sing him over heaven’s bridge From jagged ridge to jagged ridge.

— to Denis Diderot When that last king is strangled With the guts of that last priest Then who will stay the whip-hand? They talked of law and love, at least (However much they mangled The charge left in their care) If God’s a deaf and dumb thing And the hungry masses, kings Then our spires sink in quicksand And the stupid poet sings To tell us we are something More than spleen and hide and hair

Evelyn Waugh, er, Hugh Bonneville. Dammit, will someone please let me make this movie? “I know I’m not a wordsmith,” Bushnell said, the afternoon sun shining on her face through a wall of glass doors. “And I don’t write poetry. Sometimes I think I should, because it’s really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels. I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.’ ” – from Edith Zimmerman’s “Candace Bushnell’s Fantasy World, Starring Candace Bushnell” in The New York Times Magazine Waugh’s masterpiece, “A Handful of Dust,” is one of the finest English novels of the last century, both hilarious and catastrophically sad. And it contains a climactic scene that I just don’t buy at all, a scene I detest, a horrible scene that bowls me over with the beauty and skill of its telling every time. – from Maria Bustillos...

J. Johnson came to Spokane’s urban Environs tracking mud across The academic carpet, carbon Dating mastodon s of loss Put up for sale in Fairbanks’ paper, Domestic, edgeless, Great Lakes clipper Delivering Jonathan to our town, A mountain man in poet’s gown, Intense, awake, a patient teacher, A husband, father, one who knows The shape of silence and what grows From silence into human nature. Dear J, it’s nice to see you here– When will we drink that promised beer?

          -written in solidarity with Spokane In Soldiers Grove the Kickapoo has Entwined among its piney banks The shady form of greening mythos, Which takes as motto: “Thanks–no thanks!” Where once the village taverns numbered In double-digits, floods encumbered The pour, and city fathers moved To move the village. Once approved The people cast their lot with science To capture solar-paneled fire Upon a hill. Now higher and drier Than amber bottled self-reliance– Our thirsty tongues can still recall How shadows made the sunlight fall.

Or if you’re tired of watching Kramer shave with butter or Elaine selling Muffin Tops, the sitcom of all sitcoms has been resurrected as a Twitter account. All new episodes @SeinfeldToday

That’s when Wendell B takes a shot At all the folks that hold that marriage means Just one man and one woman They were reared to pledge their faith Somewhere down the line they chose To stand howe’er the wind blows Stand howe’er the wind blows from he Thanks for the heads-up, Mrs. D .

Prologue Spokane’s the place where water falling From Idaho runs through with thoughts Unconsciously unwinding, reeling The poets in from inland squats To take their places at the river’s Bedraggled edges. Poets’ livers Can’t filter all that they abuse Themselves with for the lovely ruse That lines of words can make unhappy Inhabitants of Coeur d’Alene Cease for a moment feeling pain Or leastwise help them feel less crappy When turning towards the Cascade heights With thoughts of oceanic nights.

If this, our Rome, evades destruction, Let seven times our seven-hilled Seattle glory! Though every mountain Is toppled, every valley filled – The county’s cussing heights on First Hill Has heard from Renton Hill a passel Of claxons sound to Yesler Hill; And come just now from Denny Hill I see, though flaming Capitol Hill Defers its head to Queen Anne Hill For sun and air, still Beacon Hill Presents Rainier to all Seattle…. Can such a view survive the day? What hills will tell no eye can say!

Indeed, a final look, descending Familiar hills, I thought to climb Again – to view the proud unbending Horizon, parsing passing time: These seven points that crown Seattle, Observe, like Rome, their city battle Advancing flames. We make our stand – Defend with blood this contraband Of jewels. What time nor man deleted Becomes empiric testament – Both hell’s reproof and heaven’s taunt. For Rome’s but Carthage mistranslated; And both are tagged and each recast In calque: “Seattle non delenda est.”

Descending Denny Hill, and turning Around to look once more, my mind Was uphill all the way, and burning To race ahead, and through the blind Discoveries of chance, my fortune Created here. So pay attention, My father said, and dividends Of water, fire, air and lands – As far as eye can see – will tender A promissory cashiered in fame. The everlasting hills by name And lore inflame the child with wonder: As suns will set, so smoke will rise – Why do they seek no compromise?

In the future, everything will be on YouTube. This is from Tom Waits’ 1978 appearance on Austin City Limits . I have a VHS copy of this show – a gift from my uncle. Burma-Shave.

Perhaps the Prince of Popinjays? The Duke of Dunces? In any case, Happy New Year, Korrektiv. Here’s to a prolific and wildly profitable 2013.