there are times when i'd rather be in new jersey

For instance:

I need to work part of tomorrow (Saturday), and I feel such an urge to get in my car after that and drive somewhere  -- you know, maybe do an overnight.  I still haven't given my new car a really good workout, and driving, for me, can be very therapeutic and maybe I need something therapeutic.

But there is the usual dilemma of where the heck to drive to, especially in January -- or do I just drive aimlessly?  Everything is most directions from the Twin Cities is so the same!

Minnesota and the states around here are just so f-ing BIG!  Hence -- a benefit of New Jersey -- it is so f-ing SMALL that within two or three hours of driving time there is so much to potentially experience -- and it's not all the same!

Sometimes the same is good.  Sometimes the same is a killer.

how James is doing

We are under the same roof and sometimes like ships passing in the night, but I had a chance to catch up with James last night, have a nice dinner, hear how he's doing.

Over the past seven months, I've needed some self-imposed reminders of what it's like to be 18 years old and some reality checks of what it must be like to be 18 in the year 2012.  Trust me on this, I'm glad I was 18 when I was rather than now.

He seems to have settled into his life as a working college student, and I keep reminding myself how far he has come since June.  He was definitely meant to be a big-city kid.  His second-semester classes are off to an excellent start, and I'm proud of how he has eased into this winter semester.  He takes 'most everything in stride, maybe better than I would if I were in his shoes.

mitt romney's taxes, or lack thereof

This isn't about what a bad candidate Mitt Romney is, it's about what a bad tax system we have.

Much has been made of Romney finally releasing copies of his tax returns this week and what a relatively small percentage of his $21 million earnings (or whatever) went for taxes.  Then he went on TV to say that he doesn't apologize for being successful.

Nobody begrudges him success, I guess.  The complaint is that the bush tax cuts made unearned income (capital gains, qualifying dividends) taxed at a much lower rate than earned income.  So people whose income comes from W-2s, from going to work every day, often pay a much higher rate of tax than a zillionaire who just watches his money make more money.

Romney should be saying, "Hey, that isn't fair -- I should be paying more taxes."  Instead, his tax plan says that zillionaires should pay even less than they already are.  He then plays to people who don't understand taxes (the majority of voters, of course) and says "Lower taxes!", and they buy into it.  Hence, our economic catastrophe.

a little less evasive but not totally

I was glancing at my blog statistics and noted that my "page views" the past three days have been quite a bit higher than usual.  I can't help but wonder if a certain Facebook post on Sunday (I am beginning to hate Facebook, by the way) made some of my family and friends wonder what the heck is going on with me and thought that I might shed some light here.

So here's the deal in a nutshell:  Jerry has moved out for a while.  He needs some alone time, and everybody needs some alone time now and then.  There was no fight, everything is friendly, I'm optimistic that everything will work out okay.

And that is most of what I know.

And I thank people for caring about me and about us.

beware of soft shoe shufflers

The Concert for Bangladesh - 1971. Lead vocals by George Harrison and Leon Russell.

et tu, indeed!

a gloomy January Sunday afternoon...
... and my mind is still on Brutus a little bit... I realize Julius Caesar is just a play, but how amazing is it that the character Brutus loved Caesar as much as he did but could still be talked into pushing that fatal dagger?  Where was his higher loyalty?

praising, not burying



photo by Heidi Bohnenkamp

 As I lamented in my post on March 15, 2011 ("et tu, dudes?"), people aren't required to read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in high school anymore; thus, certain phrases have been lost to recent generations: "Beware the Ides of March!", "et tu, Brute?", "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him", "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears..."

Until last night, I had just seen Julius Caesar performed once.  It was back in my senior year in high school, a class trip to Princeton University.  That production was a traditional staging and very well done, as I recall, and I always prefer a period staging of Shakespeare rather than an updating to more modern times.

The new Guthrie Theater production, in association with the Acting Company, updates the story to present day.  It takes a little time to get used to seeing Caesar and his assassins in business suits, some rap music in the background, the protestors looking very current (even an "Occupy Rome!" sign), but somehow it all works.  The acting is top-notch, of course, especially Will Sturdivant as Brutus.  Brutus is always the star of this play, you know.  Or maybe you didn't know.

rest in peace, Etta

Etta James -- January 25, 1938 to today, January 20, 2012. Thanks for all the good music over the years.

the second mrs. gingrich

... a busy day at work today, but I just took a couple minutes to look over the internet headlines and had a couple chuckles over this afternoon's Republican presidential candidate tidbits... (I only chuckled until I realized that these are the candidates of one of the two major U.S. political parties and how embarrassed we should all be by them) --

-- Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, dropped out of the race today.  Oh what a loss.  He was the perfect candidate for those voters who want to feel smarter than their President.
-- Newt Gingrich's second wife, who he was hooking up with when he was divorcing his cancer-stricken first wife, has been interviewed by ABC News and says that Newt wanted to have an "open marriage" with her so that he could fool around with Callista.  The second wife said No and Newt divorced her when he found out she had multiple sclerosis.  Then he made Callista wife #3.

First thought:  Do we really need to hear all this, about Newt's philandering, insensitive ways?  Second thought:  Are all these joke candidates (Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, etc.) being staged just to make Mitt Romney somehow look palatable?

somebody else's dysfunction

I was going to look and see what year Tennessee Williams's play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premiered, but the Wikipedia site is down today to protest the pending SOPA legislation in Congress, which maybe we will discuss another day.  Suffice it to say that Cat premiered in the early to mid '50s and that a sanitized film version starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman came out sometime after that.

The Guthrie Theater has a new production of the play, and Jerry and I went to see it last night, thanks again to the generosity of the Guthrie Public Relations Department.

The Guthrie does Tennessee Williams well, as we found out in last year's production of A Streetcar Named Desire.  A story of a neurotic Southern family, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is steamy and provocative, and this is not the sanitized version.  It will keep you awake.  This show features Emily Swallow (pictured above) as Maggie, Peter Christian Hansen as Brick, and David Anthony Brinkley as Big Daddy.

ready for tennessee

Our visitor, James's cousin Danny, heads back to Jersey today, and we are relatively back to normal.

A busy week of entertainment is upon us, though, at a time when I probably should be working more, but oh well!!  Tonight Jerry and I head back to the theater for the Guthrie's new production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, followed by another night at the Guthrie on Friday -- Julius Caesar.  But we aren't just total theater geeks -- tomorrow we're going to the Timberwolves/Pistons game.

I'm hoping that a quiet evening alone at home is somewhere on the horizon.

what cooperation looks like

My friend Theresa pointed out this video to me... 23,000,000+ hits so far...

Five people on one guitar... It's a Canadian band called Walk Off The Earth. I kinda liked it.

brad and angelina are back in the audience

I'm coughing a little less, which should make you happy because how many blog posts can I really get by with talking about my cough?  So my cough comments are done, even if it kills me.

But I'm still mostly hunkered down on the sofa, having watched a couple of football games on TV today that I had only a marginal interest in and now having The Golden Globe Awards in front of me, as I patiently wait for Ricky Gervais to say something outrageous.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, a holiday for bankers and government employees but not the rest of us.  I'll be at my desk trying not to blog about cruise-ship sinkings.

as i continue to cough my brains out

... On a cold snowy Saturday evening, I'm just trying to stay warm... It seems like I cough less when I'm warm... and, as I cling to the hope that I don't have pneumonia, I'm doing some channel-surfing...

... There on CBS, the Patriots are murdering the Broncos, so Tebow can forget the playoffs and head off into an off-season fifteen minutes of celebrity...

... There on ABC, amazingly enough, is Miss America.  Wow, Miss America made it back to one of the main networks!  It's really horrible, what they have done to that program.  Bert Parks might be rolling over in his grave (Is he dead?).  But it's easier to make sarcastic remarks about this with Jerry and Danny than the Patriots game is.

...  And the 49ers beat the Saints!  Yes! 

(cough, cough, cough)....