a taste of san juan

Way back when, Jerry lived in Puerto Rico for a year -- a year in which he rented out roller skates and organized a failed rock concert that almost got him killed (I'll let him tell that story sometime) -- but one thing that stayed with him from that year is his Puerto Rican cookbook. Tonight, we're attending a church-group pot-luck dinner to which everyone is supposed to bring an ethnic dish (other than your own ethnicity), so Jerry is making one of his signature dishes, Puerto Rican-style rice and beans. It's always quite good. Even you might like it, Ruthie! My concern, of course, is what will the other ethnic dishes there be? If I taste even a hint of cilantro in anything, I'm outta there!

don't ask, do tell

The U.S. Senate a couple days ago nixed the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell", 17 years old now and one of the silliest laws of all time. It's still fine to be gay or lesbian in the military as long as you never say those words out loud about yourself ("Freedom of speech" and "bearing false witness", re-defined).

My fantasy that will never happen: One day, all on the same day, every gay man and lesbian in the U.S. Armed Forces vocally "come out of the closet". Think about it. What if 10% of the military is gay or lesbian (which may be a conservative number)? There are 2 million people total in the military, so that would mean that the country would suddenly be dealing with throwing 200,000 people out of the service? Not only would the brass (and Congress) be shocked by the sheer numbers, they'd find that they were facing the prospect of firing many of The Best that they have.

the bristol stomp

Last night I was waiting for Jerry in the condo lobby -- we needed to run over to St. Paul -- so I stopped in the condo office and chatted with Judy. In addition to all the security cameras she was watching, there on one of the screens was Dancing With the Stars, a show that I've never seen (I do have my limits, you know!), and there was Bristol Palin dancing with some partner. I'm not a pro at dance technique, so I don't know if she was any good or maybe a total klutz, but the idea of her current celebrity status still grates on me and it even annoys me that I'm writing about it. In addition to stints like this on TV, she now gets $15,000 - $30,000 per speaking engagement to advocate for "sexual abstinence". It's hard to see how she can have much credibility in those speeches, however. Pre-marital sex turned out to be the best career move she ever could have made. That and being born to a mother who became a big-mouthed governor of Alaska for about ten minutes.
*****
Took the day off today to go to the Twins noon game later. I went over to the coffee shop early and found it to be a totally different atmosphere than the weekend mornings that I'm used to there. Weekends are quiet, with a few old guys like me here and there. Today there were lots of students from the community college across the street -- books open, laptops going, nobody past their twenties. A great energy. Life.

hawaii five-o

Blame it on the HDTV that we bought last spring, but I'm finding we spend more evenings than we used to being Couch Potatoes. We've gone from knowing zero current TV shows to knowing a few of them.

Now the "new" TV season has started, and we actually found ourselves looking forward to a couple shows last night -- the season premiere of Two and a Half Men and the series premiere of the re-make of Hawaii Five-O. It's kind of scary that we even knew what time they came on!

And even though the original Hawaii Five-O was on TV all those years, I didn't realize until yesterday that the "Five-O" part of the name was because Hawaii was the 50th state. Anyway, this remake is well done, although we probably mostly enjoyed seeing familiar Hawaii scenes in High Definition. We're going back to Hawaii for a visit in November, you know, but I'll save that story for another time.

witchy woman

It drives me crazy that the more outrageously incompetent a political candidate is, the more that person makes the news and the blogosphere. The latest is that Tea Party favorite, Christine O'Donnell, who is now the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Delaware. This woman, believe me, has zero credentials to be a Senator and is mostly known for her extreme religious-right statements and for being an "anti-masturbation" crusader on MTV in the '90s.

Her headlines in the "news" the last several days have been that her religious backers are shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that Christine "dabbled in witchcraft" a few years back. They are demanding explanations -- in other words, is she a pure-enough "christian" for them? This would all be hilarious to watch if it weren't for the fact that this unqualified whack-job could end up in the United States Senate (Actually, in this case, "whack-job" might be an inappropriate term to describe her!).

visitor from the mosque

I live in a district that elected the first Muslim U.S. Congressman, Keith Ellison. There is a fairly large Muslim population in the Twin Cities. We are used to diversity in our midst. Presumably because of that, there doesn't seem to be the Islamophobia here that there is in much of the country at the moment -- the people being stirred up by by religious pseudo-leaders, Fox News, and desperate politicians who need fear to operate.

This morning in our church -- admittedly, one of the most progressive Protestant congregations you'll find anywhere -- an Imam from a North Minneapolis mosque was an invited guest to speak for a few minutes and read a passage from the Qur'an. It was a very moving service, celebrating inter-faith beliefs in common rather than hatred based on ignorance.

I was proud to be there.

not quite ready for 'freedom'

Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, is getting lots of attention: Excellent reviews, a cover story in Time magazine, #1 on the bestseller lists, and now the ultimate assurance of selling zillions of copies -- being selected for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. What makes the Oprah selection particularly noteworthy is that she picked Franzen's book, The Corrections, in 2001, and then Franzen apparently gave the impression that he was conflicted about being an Oprah pick, so she rescinded the offer, all of which produced plenty of media attention and guaranteed the sale of zillions anyway. Apparently now all is forgiven, and good publicity is produced for all involved.

My sister Joan and I were talking about it over coffee at Barnes and Noble a few minutes ago. She is on the waiting list for Freedom at the library, and I'm debating whether to buy a copy. There is something appealing about being part of a group reading, even with Oprah fans, and I liked The Corrections quite a lot, and the Freedom story even takes place here in the Twin Cities. The downside: It's 576 pages, and I've become such a slow book reader, which of course is why I can't borrow it from the library and be expected to read it in three weeks. This might have to wait for cold winter nights. Although they are quickly approaching. Darn! Another weather reference!

the thousand-mile disadvantage

My parents both had lots of brothers and sisters, and almost none of them lived more than a half-hour away from us. When they needed each other, they were nearby for each other.

Now families seem to be scattered all over the country or even all over the world, and people get used to relying on people other than family in times of emergency and crisis and they often grow away from each other emotionally.

My five siblings and I are still close -- except in distance. My brother-in-law John in New Jersey is right now going through all kinds of hell with pain from cancer plus surgeries and treatments, and it's hard to not be more immediately available to him and my sister Mary. It's a helpless feeling being far away at a time when I feel like I should be following my dad's example and being there for family, in person and not just in spirit.

the social/anti-social network

I've been seeing trailers for a new movie that's coming out in a couple weeks. It's called The Social Network and is the story of the founders of that contemporary Internet phenomenon, Facebook.

If you use Facebook, and you probably do, then you know that it can bring chuckles and tears and pleasure and irritation. It can bring reunion with people you've lost contact with over the years or it can cause family fights or it can bring viruses to your computer. You name it.

Lately, I've seen some nasty family fight stuff going on, which mostly has to do with people finding out more about each other than they're comfortable knowing. Or political opposites within the same family. Or how about this: a fairly distant cousin (who I probably haven't seen in 40 years) who this week dropped all of her Facebook friends that hadn't publicly (meaning, on Facebook) consoled her on the recent death of her dog. Being dumped as a Facebook friend is the ultimate put-down these days, you know.

Then there are the Facebook friends that you maybe used to have some loose connection with and now have become a good cyber friend. The high-school classmates, for instance, that you maybe never once in high school had a conversation with and now you find yourself caring about their daily lives. And they care about yours.

It's all very strange. It's all quite new, yet it already feels so familiar.

the ides of september

The pace of my work life seems pre-determined by calendar dates, and the 15th day of certain months -- especially March, April, September, and October -- causes anguish and too many hours in the office, blah blah blah.... the worst part of that being that time goes too fast, and, look at us, the beautiful month of September is half gone.

But I finished work late last night and went with Jerry over to Eli's Bar and Grill, a couple blocks from our place, and had some tasty late-night dinner and some fun talk and, in my case, a couple of Tanqueray-and-tonics, and life was good again.... And I went home and crashed, while Jerry tried to plan the next vacation. 'Got to get it on the calendar somewhere in between deadlines!

the bush tax cuts

The next two months will be filled with nasty politics before the mid-term election in November.

And one of the issues that will be twisted into perversion rather than contemplated in rational discussion will be the expiration of the "bush tax cuts" at the end of 2010. Unless a new tax law is enacted before the end of the year, the tax rates will go back up to what they were in 2000. President Obama has suggested, Hey let's keep the tax rates as they are except for the wealthiest taxpayers. After all, we have huge budget deficits to get under control and continuing economic problems, and the wealthy have had good rates for ten years.

But the Republicans, the Party of No, says there will be no compromise. They have wealthy friends to protect, and they want all the bush cuts to stay in effect. They apparently would rather have everybody's taxes go up in 2011 and then blame that on the Democrats.

Money is very much involved, so this will be the dirtiest politics we've seen in a while. I sometimes am amazed at people who say they are Republicans because they are "fiscally conservative", when it's obvious that they are more and more fiscally irresponsible and destructive, with the focus only on power and the next election and the short-term. Pity the generation that is just now coming of age. They will inherit a disaster.

drawing

a blank today.

My brain is crammed with work stuff that if I tried to articulate any of it, I'd drive you away forever.

Something else tomorrow.

toccata and football in d minor

In some churches, "Rally Sunday" is the Sunday after Labor Day when the church year starts after a somewhat sleepier summer schedule. The church where I'm a member but where I'm sort of hit-and-miss about attending has been around for 157 years, and one of the many long-time traditions there is that the organ prelude on Rally Sunday is always Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach, so this wasn't a Sunday that would be a "miss" for me. The Toccata is the classic piece for pipe organ, and the organist at this church is the best I know, so I relished every minute of hearing it. I've played this piece (rather ineptly) on pipe organ, and I know how challenging it is to play but also how much fun and how motivating it can be!

Then back home for another September tradition -- Sunday afternoon football. My son Tom is here and had a game on TV when I got home, and we ordered a pizza and here we sit vegetating and enjoying the moment....

09.11.01

A little earlier, I was having coffee downtown with my sister Joan, and we talked, among other thigns, about 9/11 and how that date still haunts us all. It is certainly a day every year when our country remembers the people who died in the attacks that day and the policemen and firemen and rescue workers that were the heroes that day, and it's right that we do that. But, as we were chatting and I was thinking, it was also a day when a lot of people were heroes: the people who just went to work that day, as stockbrokers, secretaries, clerks, restaurant workers, maintenance people, and were just normally doing their jobs that day.

We never heard much coverage that day about how New Yorkers found ways to get home to their families even though mass transit was paralyzed and communication was disrupted and nobody knew for sure what was going on. Or how about all those people in airplanes in flight across the country that had to be landed at the nearest airports and were potentially stranded for days? The country could have descended into chaos that day, and it didn't. I think there were a lot of heroes, ordinary people, who were never recognized or acknowledged and that there were many stories that were never heard.

09.10.44

My mom and dad were married 66 years ago today. It's strange, but even though they've been gone for 23 and 21 years respectively, certain dates -- their birthdays, anniversaries, the dates of their deaths -- still pop up in my mental calendar every year. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. I hope that if you're out there somewhere, that somehow you're together.

acceptable levels of violence

You know I'm a non-violent person -- very anti-war and against all forms of physical abuse -- so my love of football sometimes must seem like an obvious exception to my principles. But we all have exceptions to our principles, do we not?

That NFC Championship Game last January between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints almost made me re-think football. The obvious game plan of the Saints was to injure the Vikings quarterback, Brett Favre, to the point of having him carted off the field, perhaps permanently. It was brutal to watch but at the same time, realistically, maybe just an extreme version of what football is. Football has been compared to war -- men fighting for territory -- and it has left many football players in pain and with disabilities for the rest of their lives.

Yet the season officially starts tonight -- a rematch of the Vikings and the Saints -- and I'm anxious for it and I hope the Vikings smash the heck out of those rotten Saints. So maybe football is just another of those Guilty Pleasures of mine. Are you keeping track of these?

another religious war would make for good headlines

I was going to write something innocuous about what a beautiful day it is and how near-perfect, weather-wise, it should be for the Twins game tonight we're going to, but now I'm too annoyed by the news media to think about all that mundane stuff. What has me fired-up is all the attention that a nobody idiot preacher in Florida is getting this week because he and his sub-moronic congregants (a measly 50 members) plan to burn copies of the Koran (Quran? Qu'ran?) this Saturday, September 11, in an apparent attempt to piss off the entire Muslim world.

Now, think about it: News reporters could have ignored the fool, figuring he's just another lunatic-fringe nut case, which of course he is, but no! They had to make this into a "news story" which has now caused international outrage. International outrage, of course, will not keep the dweeb from getting his 15 minutes of fame and becoming a hero to ignorant fear-addicts and becoming a talking-head on Fox News. His weird little church will be bursting at the seams, he'll get all kinds of offers for speaking engagements, and maybe he'll run for office as a Tea Party candidate. The sky's the limit.

I heard somebody the other day say that all wars have been caused by religion, directly or indirectly. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I do have the feeling that the next one will be a doozy. If only just the religious extremists could fight each other and knock each other off and leave the rest of us out of it! Or isn't that a big enough story?

the day after summer vacation

There is something about the day after Labor Day that brings on some sense of the blues or impending doom. It could be just the realization that we have to go through another long winter before we ever see summer again. For me and for some other people, I don't think that's it. Going back in time in my case several decades, it was always the day that school started up again, and that feeling of dread still pops up annually in my psyche, just out of habit. School wasn't exactly the Prime Time of my life, although, now that I think about it, I'd be hard-pressed to name the period that was Prime Time. Geez, maybe it's now... although I'd rather think it was a time when my eyes, my knees, and my prostate were a bit more dependable!

last day for white shoes

Labor Day. There should be more holidays like this. Ones where there are no particular places to be or things to do or presents to buy or any obligations at all.

We thought maybe we'd get up early and go to the last day of the State Fair, but the idea sounded less appealing when we woke up this morning (although we might still end up at the Fair later). Instead, we went to the Spyhouse Coffee Shop over there on Hennepin Avenue in Uptown (probably the "hippest" part of Minneapolis) and sat outside while I drank coffee and read my Nick Hornby book (Juliet, Naked) and Jerry drank herbal tea and read the newspaper. The weather today is cool and kind of cloudy, and as we sat there we thought, Hey, this feels just like Amsterdam! ... and how could life ever feel more perfect than this?

Amsterdam, our favorite city in the world (so far!) is where we went several years in a row this time of year -- late August, early September -- and the memories are good: a week on a houseboat in the middle of the city or sitting at outdoor cafes drinking coffee or smoking a joint (Ha! No, I didn't really say that). One day we'll get back there, but for this morning at least, Minneapolis felt awfully good.
*****
For those of you who would ever wear white shoes, remember that it's been decreed by the Fashion Police that you can't wear white shoes after Labor Day, so enjoy your white shoes today. Fortunately, I've never had a white shoe on in my life anyway, unless you count sneakers, for which I hope no fashion rules ever apply!

a junket

We got back home to Minneapolis yesterday, where suddenly people are wearing sweatshirts and jackets. (Fall couldn't wait until after Labor Day? [tomorrow?])

While I was at the coffeeshop this morning, I was thinking about this trip down South. We took advantage of that free gambling-junket offer mainly to travel through four states, but what about the gambling part of the trip? Well, believe me, we are only occasional and low-end casino gamblers, but I had a vague awareness that there were such things as gambling junkets and yet didn't know what to expect.

Most of the people on the casino charter plane from Minnesota (about 120 people) had done these trips before, so for them it was Old Home Week seeing each other again. All very nice ordinary people and none of them obviously wild-eyed ravenous gamblers, so I'm not sure exactly what drives these invitations. The casinos obviously know what they're doing, though, and are good at the red-carpet treatment. Since we don't get out of control in the casinos themselves, I'd do one of these trips again if we get the offer, which we probably will. I'm hoping for an offer to Biloxi, down there on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We could have some good driving trips out of there!

Until then -- no more casino thoughts for a while. Or road trips.

46 in the 47th

We're on our way home after a definitely worthwhile and fun trip. Plus, I'm able to add four states to my States I've Visited List, am up to 47 -- three to go after this (Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas). The 47th was Alabama yesterday, where we spend exactly 46 minutes -- long enough to pee and have some coffee and apple pie. That gives Alabama the distinction of being the state, of the ones I've seen, that I've spent the least amount of time in, replacing West Virginia. More exciting Howard trivia to come.
*****
For Instance:
THE STATES THAT I'VE SPENT THE MOST TIME IN:
1) Minnesota (How did this happen?).
2) New Jersey (Which is maybe where my heart has sort of always been).
3) South Carolina (Don't ask).
4) North Carolina (2 months of Army basic training at Fort Bragg, plus several other trips to the state).
5) Louisiana (2 months of Army jungle training at Fort Polk, with no return trips ever!).

on the road again

Where we're staying, in Tunica, Mississippi, is just south of Memphis, Tennessee, and just east of Arkansas, so yesterday we drove through the countryside of this part of Mississippi and into northeast Arkansas and from there into Memphis.

What we noticed: That this part of Mississippi and Arkansas, except for the casinos here in Tunica, are unbelievably poor, especially in the little towns. In fact, Tunica County was the poorest county in the U.S. until the casinos were brought here. I guess that's the reason that casinos were plopped down in an area that otherwise has nothing else -- that and its promixity to the Memphis metro area.

Also noticed: That if I lived in the South, I'd be fat as a pig. I have such a weakness for Southern-style comfort food and I'm eating such good food on this trip that it's a good thing we're going home tomorrow.

Today, we head east to Alabama so that I can cross that state off my States to be Visited List. We won't stay there long, will then head up north through Alabama and cross through southern Tennessee to Memphis where we will have a BBQ dinner in one of the great restaurants there.

the magnolia state

Ah, Mississippi.... Of the 50 states, it's the one that is usually last in education, in income levels, and a lot of the other good stuff... But today we explore it a tiny bit at least, then will wander over into Arkansas a little and then up to Memphis for dinner....

john grisham's neck o' the woods

The early John Grisham novels seemed to always take place in steamy Mississippi and/or across the Tennessee border in Memphis. Grisham novels might have mostly been a '90s thing -- his newer books are kind of lazy and I might be done reading Grisham forever -- but it used to be that readers eagerly anticipated those once-a-year legal-intrigue books.

Anyway, we are on our way to Mississippi for three nights, not because of John Grisham but in spite of him (he never made it sound very appealing), and we wouldn't be going at all except that it's a free airfare, free hotel trip paid by a Mirage-related casino that has been deluded into thinking that we'll gamble enough to make it worth their while. Since we were just in Las Vegas last week, gambling is (mostly) out of our system for a while, so instead we're renting a car while we're down there to drive into the backwoods of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and maybe Alabama, at the same time hoping not to get killed by rednecks. Wish us luck!
*****
My favorite John Grisham books: The Firm, The Chamber, and A Time To Kill.

dumb and dumber

I've been carrying around this Blackberry since last November, and I still mostly just use it for a cell phone and for some email. I know it's capable, in theory anyway, of a lot more functions but I'm a real klutz when it comes to this stuff, so when I was at Barnes and Noble (another guilty pleasure) the other day and saw the book Blackberry Storm for Dummies, I bought it. There on the shelf next to it was The iPod for Dummies and that book even came with an hour-and-a-half DVD, so I bought that too since I know my knowledge of my iPod is basic and on that day I must have been in a super electronic mood.

But, as I struggle through the Blackberry book, I'm realizing that a bunch of it is still way over my head, so I'm not sure what level of dummies these books in particular are made for, and that makes me nervous. Or I think I might just have a mental block toward cell phones in general. Yeah. Let's say that's the answer.

Sometimes I wonder if there will be ever be a backlash against being plugged in all the time and there will be a movement to disconnect from these gadgets and go "back to nature". Probably not in my lifetime.

leading us through the wasteland

My niece Ruthie needed someone to watch the Emmys with last night. The Emmys are the awards for TV shows, you know, and I hadn't watched those awards in a number of years. "You realize, Ruthie, that the only current TV show we know is 'Two and a Half Men'?" She assured me, though, that the reason to watch awards shows with someone else is to have somebody to make sarcastic comments to, so we of course were up for that.

But it turned out to be fun watching with her. She knew most of the nominated shows and the celebrities, so she was our interpreter for 2010 television. She also is a huge Jimmy Fallon fan, and he was the host for the program, so she was filled with Glee about that. Without her telling us who everybody was we would have been Mad Men. Or Lost.

leave the driving to them

As I was walking to the gym this morning, a guy stopped me and asked where the Greyhound Terminal was. I pointed to it, it was right down on the corner, and as I walked on I started realizing that as many times as I go down that street, I've forgotten that some people still take the bus for long trips. That's only surprising because I worked for Greyhound for a couple years while in college, in Mankato, Minnesota. It was a low-end, minimum-wage job, mostly selling tickets and schlepping luggage, but I learned a lot there: Geography -- mostly Upper Midwest, or at least those cities that have bus service; The quirks of how people travel; and the colorful Street People that like to (or least used to) hang out at bus depots.

I'd like to think that we all have learned something valuable from every job we've ever had.

After leaving the gym, I decided on my way home to stop at the bus station (I don't think I'd ever been in the Minneapolis terminal) to have a cup of coffee and mingle with passengers waiting for the bus to Chicago or wherever. No dice, it doesn't work that way anymore. Signs: "Passengers only beyond this point." Darn. I guess they don't want the wandering Street People there anymore, and today I was One of Them.

the books i've read this summer

1) BEAT THE REAPER, by Josh Bazell (Fiction, 2009). This might be the only novel I've read so far this year (I used to read mostly only novels). My bookgroup (that I basically attend just now and then) picked this one, and I must say I loved it -- a perfect summer beach book, without the beach in my case. It's about a former Mafia hit man who goes into the FBI's witness protection program and becomes a doctor. It's written in a very conversational style and has all kinds of surprise twists and revelations.

2) LAST CALL, by Daniel Okrent (Non-fiction, 2010). A very well-written and informative history of the Prohibition Era -- how the heck it ever happened and how useless it was. I learned a lot from this book.

3) MAYFLOWER, by Nathaniel Philbrick (Non-fiction, 2006). All about the Pilgrims and what came after the mythical first Thanksgiving.

4) THE POLITICIAN, by Andrew Young (Non-fiction, 2010). This is about the political rise and fall of John Edwards, written by his assistant. Our condo has a library, and I saw this book there -- wouldn't have read it otherwise -- and I found it fascinating. I couldn't put it down and read it in about two days.

5) THIS TIME TOGETHER, by Carol Burnett (Non-fiction, 2010). A total time-waster, but -- hey -- I've wasted time on worse things that Carol Burnett. And after all, this was summer reading.

spaghetti-and-meatballs on a stick

The Minnesota State Fair, a/k/a "The Great Minnesota Get-Together", started yesterday. It is the largest state fair in the U.S. in terms of average daily attendance, and conversations between Minnesotans this time of year, without fail, start with "So, are you going to the Fair this year?"

And I do go every two or three years, and it's usually a spontaneous kind of thing if the day happens to have State Fair feel to it. Today is one of those days, the weather is cool and perfect and I can see us strolling around the fair discovering what new foods are deep-fried and on a stick this year (If you ever want to gain weight, all you have to do is walk through the gates of the Minnesota State Fair). But I'm stuck in the office today, so the Fair urge might not last.

The downside of the Fair: It ends on Labor Day, which means this is the goodbye to summer --a definite reason to dread the opening day of the State Fair. It's no wonder that everybody drowns themselves in empty calories while it lasts.

jesse

On the flight back from Las Vegas to MSP yesterday, we were bumped up to First Class, where I found myself sitting in front of Jesse Ventura -- former high-profile professional wrestler ("The Body"), former Governor of Minnesota, current outspoken celebrity. He is a character and an interesting, even sort of likeable, guy to share a flight with. He loves to talk, as the people sitting around him can tell you, and we heard him sharing some of his Jesse words of wisdom. Some examples:

-- That 9/11 was an inside job;
-- That massive sales of bottled water will end up draining the Great Lakes;
-- That Sarah Palin is an idiot and that, if she should ever become President, we should all leave the country;
-- That he no longer is an advocate for third political parties (He was elected Governor as a third-party candidate) because a third party would become as corrupt as the Republicans and Democrats are (He thinks that candidates should be listed on the ballot without party affiliation so that voters would have to become more educated about the candidates and their positions).

He can go on and on about government conspiracies, and that is sort of fascinating to listen to, but keep in mind that he currently has a best-selling book on the topic -- American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us, which I now have a morbid interest in reading just for the entertainment value.

Ain't life grand? 24 hours ago, I never would have guessed that I'd be devoting an entire blog entry to Jesse Ventura!

that's enough

OK.. Three days in Las Vegas is the limit. It's time to get out of here and head home. No more days of slot machines and gin-and-tonics for a while now, thank goodness. Well, that is, not until next week in Mississippi. Damn!

wading ever deeper into shallowness

It should be obvious by now that anything I write from Las Vegas will never win a Nobel Prize for Literature. A person's perspective changes, the brain metabolizes, gets a bit loose and mushy. For instance, I caught Jerry and Tim, professional men in their fifties and sixties respectively, talking yesterday about how much they would like to go to a Lady Gaga concert. Can you picture that, us at a Lady Gaga concert? But Jerry is convinced that Lady Gaga and her boyfriend (with a mile-high Mohawk) were checking out next to us when we were here at the Mirage in April. Now I admit that I wouldn't know Lady Gaga if I tripped over her, but Jerry would (thanks to the National Enquirer), and the woman checking out certainly dressed and looked like a celebrity of some sort, and the hotel workers were falling all over themselves kissing her butt, so who knows?

*

And on this particular visit I've noticed one -- well, maybe two -- things that I hadn't particularly paid attention to lately: cleavage is certainly very in right now, isn't it! Or maybe it's always been in and it's just more, well, out in the open these days. I'm so slow to catch on to some things.

*

And if I were being my usual grammatical self, I would have titled this blog entry correctly -- "wading ever more deeply into shallowness" rather than "wading ever deeper into shallowness." Or is "deeper" acceptable? I don't know. It's the Vegas effect.

*****

Last night, we went to the big show here at the Mirage -- the Cirque du Soleil show Love. What an enjoyable show, certainly my new favorite of the Cirque shows that I've seen. I had sort of low expectations for this one, expecting it to be kind of light and silly. Instead it's spectacular and beautiful, and with all Beatles music how can you go wrong?

*

I Should Have Known Better!

a mirage in the desert

I admit that it's one of my guilty pleasures. The Mirage Hotel is twenty years old now, but it was the trendsetter for what came later to the Strip in Las Vegas. When I come here, it's still where I stay, even though it's aging a little and there are glitzier and more over-the-top hotel/casinos now. I know I'm kinda boring, but I like the familiar feel, one of those home-away-from-home places. Fortunately, it's also (like Vegas in general) a place where three days is more than enough.

**

But the best part of vacations for me is always the early mornings. I never waste a vacation sleeping in late. I still have time-zone confusion, but I was up early and headed downstairs to Starbucks (another guilty pleasure) for some coffee and to read the paper. It's a beautiful morning. We'll see what the day brings. So far, we've been lucky.

catchin' the 2:15 to sin city

It's early on one of those Sunday mornings that I love...

My son Tom stayed over, as he usually does on Saturday nights. He and Jerry actually let me win at cards last night, and I'm hoping I didn't use up all my luck on that one game. I need more.

In a few minutes, we need to take Tom home in St. Paul, where we'll stop first for some breakfast on the outdoor patio at the Day by Day Cafe. Then back home to pack up the remaining necessities of life (the laptops, the cameras, the iPods, the cords and the chargers), meet Tim and Judie downtown at the light-rail station, and take the train out to the airport. Then we're leavin' on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again (actually, Wednesday evening), and we'll be off to wallow for three days in the hideous excesses of capitalism.

Viva Las Vegas, baby! I'll hook up with you there!

but it's a DRY heat

Saturday morning...

Walking over to the coffeeshop and from there to the gym, I could feel the humidity starting to push in. It's been an unusually hot and humid (and stormy) summer in the Twin Cities -- lots of days when it feels like we're walking through hot soup -- and it sounds like it will be pretty muggy here while we are out of town over the next several days.

When we made the reservations for Vegas, my fear would be that we would be facing temperatures of 115 - 120 in the Nevada desert in August. Looking online at the forecast, I'm seeing predicted highs of 102 - 106 degrees. Piece of cake!

As defenders of summers in places like Las Vegas or Phoenix always say, "But it's a dry heat!"

And as Jerry always responds: "So is a microwave!"
*****
Editorial comment: I try so hard to avoid writing about the weather. I mean, it's so predictable (the topic, not the weather). But if you had a blog and lived in Minnesota, you'd write about the weather too. Trust me on this.

the hard-core gambler

We were in Las Vegas in late April, first time there in several years, and had a great time. Vegas is such another world! Soon after we got back, we met our friends Tim and Judie for Happy Hour and talked about the trip, which somehow, thanks probably to the Happy Hour drinks, led to Jerry and Tim deciding that, Hey, we should all go to Vegas! Tim had only been to Vegas on business and Judie had never been to Vegas, so ,before that evening was over, we had reservations for a trip in August. We leave this Sunday for three nights.

(Meanwhile I was thinking, do we really want to go to Las Vegas twice in one year? and who goes there in August?)

Soon after that, I started getting email offers for free stays and other free stuff at certain Vegas casino hotels -- the Aria (the newest), New York New York, etc. I had done some playing in April -- and I'm talking quarter slot machines -- and had only done as much as I had because I kept winning enough to just keep playing, but it apparently had all added up to enough to make me look like a serious gambler to these places. I'm not.

Recently, though, I got an offer that was even more tempting. Free air fare for two persons and three nights at a MGM-related casino in Tunica, Mississippi (Did you even know that Mississippi had casinos?). September 1 to 4.

I say to Jerry: "We can't go on gambling trips two weeks in a row!" Jerry, on the other hand, would go on any trip anytime anywhere.

The clincher, after much soul-searching, was that Missisippi is one of the seven states that I haven't been in yet, and it's very close to three other states that I haven't been in yet (Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama). So we might rent a car there, go on the road (hoping to not get lynched somewhere in backwoods Mississippi), potentially knock off four states on my list, and avoid casino-burnout at the same time.

But I'm also thinking -- If somehow these people are considering me some sort of high-roller, then the gambling industry is in deep trouble indeed!

lunching at a new old place

One of the benefits of working (and living) downtown is the great and always evolving choice of restaurants. Of course, I'm always on a half-assed diet of sorts, so the temptations can be a curse too. And there are so many that I'll never be able to do them all.

Today, I lunched with a couple of co-workers, Carolee and Jeff, at a newly opened restaurant named The Forum. The space has been various incarnations of restaurants since the 1930s, and the remarkable thing about the place is the Art-Deco interior, which has been beautifully preserved and/or restored. The food, featuring a very Minnesota menu, ain't bad either!
http://forumrestaurantmn.ringorestaurants.com/

the best country in the world

I still read Newsweek and Time magazines. Or maybe I should say, I still skim Newsweek and Time. Those formerly upstanding magazines are now mostly fluff, dumbing-down the news for the masses in efforts to compete with the Internet. For instance, in this week's Newsweek, you'd be surprised how many times that Jet Blue flight attendant who freaked out gets a mention.

Both magazines these days love lists -- for instance, The 100 Most Influential People in the World. Who comes up with these lists I don't know. This week's Newsweek cover story is the Best 100 Countries in the World, listed from "best" to "least best", I guess, based on factors of health, education, economy, and politics. And the Best Country in the World, or so they say, is Finland! 2nd - Switzerland; 3rd - Sweden; 4th - Australia; 5th - Luxembourg. The U.S. is generously listed at #11, somehow just ahead of Germany and the U.K. (Our education and health systems would obviously keep us out of the Top 10). Of the countries I've been to, I'd rank the Netherlands as the Most Civilized (it shows up as #8 on the Newsweek list), but I do admit that I'd love to visit Finland sometime. It has become perhaps the most literate country on the planet. Kippis!! ("cheers!" in Finnish, I think).

Here's the Newsweek list (not sure how long the link will be on line): http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html.
*****
I sort of wish that Jet Blue flew in and out of the Twin Cities. What an entertaining airline!

whatever happened to joe cocker?

I was just sitting here and suddenly a vision of Joe Cocker popped in my head (maybe because I saw part of the movie Woodstock on TV recently), and I began to wonder what the heck he's doing these days. These days, of course, you don't have to wonder about such things -- you just go to Google and find out.

Joe Cocker was one of those wild-looking-and-acting rock stars that in 1969 we never would have predicted would still be alive in 2010 (Of course, we wouldn't have predicted that we'd be alive in 2010 either). Good news, though: He is alive and well and performing often. His next tour is in Russia and Eastern Europe (Joe Cocker has fans in Russia??). He ever has a website -- http://cocker.com/. Funny thing -- he looks nothing like he did at Woodstock. 41 years does that to a person.

Here's a link to one of my favorite Joe Cocker songs, that old Lovin' Spoonful song "Darling Be Home Soon". Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqeOlQEW5SU

*****
This afternoon's news flash: Brett Favre's plane has landed, he's back in town.

summer sports update (mostly)

Even though it's hard to think about football yet, mid-August in Minnesota this year, like last year, means wondering, "Hey, Is Brett Favre going to play for the Vikings this year or is he retired?" I think that most Vikings fans would care a lot less than they do, and in some ways it would be good to be done with these annual guessing games, except that the other Vikings quarterbacks suck. Most everybody is feeling over-Favred by the news media, here and across the world, and I'm thinking that this season won't be as much as fun as last season was, Favre or no Favre, but ya never know. I sorta hope he plays, even if he is a total media hog.

Meanwhile, on the other side of downtown, baseball continues, and the Twins are back in first place. They're three games ahead of the Chicago White Sox, and the White Sox arrive in town tomorrow for three games. The new Twins stadium is an enormous hit, and most games are near-sellouts. The stadium crowds are generating tremendously good energy for the city, at least as long as we have a winning team.

Out there on the East Coast, my other home team, the Philadelphia Phillies, have been doing better, are creeping up in the standings against Atlanta, and might yet make it to the baseball playoffs. Go, Phils!

*****

33 years ago today, Elvis died. I got a reminder email about that this morning from my cousin Beverly, who has been the ultimate Elvis fan since the very beginning. She's still in mourning.

(Brett and Elvis. Two good guys that came out of Mississippi, of all places.)

minneapolis sunday mornings

Summer Sunday mornings are the times when I wish I could be in a few different places at once. Sleeping-in doesn't seem to be an option anymore (another weird thing about getting older, I wake up early regardless of how late I stayed up the night before), but there are so many things I want to do to make the most of those too-infrequent Sunday mornings and I can't make up my mind which thing to do and often end up doing none of them.

This morning was beautifully cool after days of heat and the downtown streets were quiet and I walked over to the coffee shop -- drank coffee, read my book -- and decided to go to church. I came back home, where Jerry had turned off the air conditioning and opened all the balcony doors. The breeze was blowing through the condo and, across the park, the Sunday morning bells at the Basilica were sounding, and it would have been cool to just sit there on the patio and enjoy. I stayed on task, though, and made it to church (hadn't been there in 2 or 3 weeks), came home and Sunday morning was gone again. I'm kinda glad I've become a person who doesn't sleep through them anymore.

*****

P.S. FYI -- When I go to church, it's Plymouth Congregational, a few blocks away. http://plymouth.org/.

stelllllaaa!!

We're lucky to have such great theater choices in the Twin Cities metro. The Big Kahuna in the local theater scene is the Guthrie Theater, and, even though I tend to prefer the smaller theater companies, we see most of the sometimes-overblown Guthrie productions. Some of their choices are debatable, but at the moment there are a couple of remarkable plays being performed there, and, if you're anywhere nearby, you should try to see them.

The first is that Tennessee Williams classic, A Streetcar Named Desire, a near-perfect drama in some ways but maybe difficult to attempt because so many theater-goers, because of the 1951 film version, can only picture Marlon Brando as Stanley, Vivien Leigh as Blanche, and Kim Hunter as Stella. For a mortal stage actor, that's a lot to live up to without seeming to imitate. And while nobody will ever be able to put the same raw emotion into screaming "Stelllllaaa! Stelllllaaa!" that Brando did, these Guthrie actors are thoroughly believable in their roles. The Guthrie staging is world-class, as always.

Down the hall from Streetcar, a new musical, The Scottsboro Boys, is on a pre-Broadway run. It's the last collaboration of Kanter & Ebb, the team that brought us Chicago and Cabaret (Fred Ebb died in 2004). The show is based on a downer of a subject -- a true story about nine black men wrongly accused and ultimately ruined for life in the 1930s in Alabama -- but all presented in a kind of minstrel style. Much of the show is very light, with amazing choreography and good music (although with no show-stopping songs that I noticed), all leading to a depressing yet hopeful conclusion. Not sure how it will do on Broadway. I don't think it's a show that a person would go back to see over and over. Worth seeing once? Definitely.

friday the 13th part 2010

The dog days of August, day after day of hot humid weather... and Minnesotans hesitate to complain, knowing that in January or February they'd kill for days like this....

I've had bad luck on various Friday the 13ths -- car accidents, traffic tickets, etc. -- but I've had plenty of bad luck on days other than Friday the 13ths too, so I'm not going to let this one bother me. Hoping for a drama-free weekend.

*****

Reality check: Is it a slow-news year? I wouldn't think so! But somehow the Palins and their baby-daddy Levi Johnston keep filling up the news. Now Levi is running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, with the hopes of getting his own reality-TV show. Does he have fans, or are people just attracted to a bizarre story? Has mainstream news become the National Enquirer? Little did the dweeb know that screwing Bristol Palin a couple years ago would lead to fame and potential riches.

blessed are the peacemakers

It's odd that fundamentalist Christians never quote from the Gospels when they try to use the Bible to justify their own bigotry. Instead, they find isolated, out-of-context verses in Old Testament or Epistle books of questionable origin (which is not to imply that the Gospels are not of questionable origin), twist them into whacky interpretations, and convince the willingly-deceived believers in the pews that they are "preaching the Bible".

When I was in the my late teens, circa 1966, temporarily waylaid in the Deep South, I heard a sermon that used scattered Old Testament verses to come to the conclusion that racial segregation is Biblical. How convenient for a racist congregation! That was the moment I realized that a person can make the Bible, a very big book, say anything you want it to say. The Gospels and the perceived ministry of Christ are an inconvenience to such people.

That was my theological thought for the day. You won't get too many of those.

today's sentences

I came back to blogging with the intent of writing something on it every day, even if it's just a one-sentence nothing. My niece Ruthie reminded me today that I hadn't done added anything the past couple of days, so I'm off to a bad start. She says it's okay that it just be a quote or a song lyric -- just something.

Quotes and song lyrics for the past several days would have been a bit negative, though... about betrayal, about hypocrisy, about sadness. Better to skip days like that or acknowledge them? We shall see.

a not-so-easy target

A couple weeks ago, word leaked out that Target Corporation (headquartered two blocks from where I live in downtown Minneapolis) had donated $150,000 to a candidate for governor of Minnesota, using the reasoning that this candidate was "pro-business". The problem for Target, a company that generally has had a reputation for giving back to communities and for being very tolerant and supportive of its diverse employees, is that this candidate is also a right-wing nut case. He, for instance, has had ties to a "Christian" organization that has advocated for the extermination of gays.

This endorsement from Target created howls of protest from its employees and customers. A boycott of Target was organized and started, both in Minnesota and across the country. Finally, Target apologized for the contribution, although some issues related to the company's intent still remain.

Several things came to my mind during the Target mess, especially the question of, If you boycott Target, where do you shop? WalMart is obviously an unacceptable choice. K-Mart/Sears, are they any better? The sad eventual realization is how little shopping choices we have outside the "big-box" stores, all owned directly or indirectly by mega-corporations. There are hardly any local stores anymore -- the "mom-and-pop" stores -- that used to be plentiful all across the U.S., and the ones that are left are struggling to compete because the big stores can charge less for similar items, and the American consumer will go for the deal that costs three cents less.

If we wanted to do all our shopping at independently-owned stores, is that even possible? Even in a large city like ours?

And when Target and Best Buy and the other guilty corporations try to impose governors on us that are "pro-business", how pathetic it is that they want elected officials who are "pro-" businesses like theirs and not for the small-business owner and entrepreneur. Competition used to be a good thing. Eventually there will be one store to choose from, since all mergers and consolidations get approved these days, and fears of monopolies are never voiced. The Soviets would have loved it.

views from a different coffeeshop

My sons Jon and Tom are currently in England for two weeks of sightseeing. Got an email from Tom yesterday that they had just been to Stonehenge, which he says "rocks!". Good to know.

Here on the domestic front, it's a Saturday morning of a long holiday weekend, the weather perfect. Jerry and I wandered over to the Espresso Royale coffeeshop, which has sort of become our new coffeeshop hangout, just a couple blocks from our condo. Now that spring is here, we are loving our neighborhood, where there is so much variety of downtown life nearby. Tonight we're going to a Minnesota Orchestra concert, Orchestra Hall being just a block away, with our friends Tomoko and Norm, who are visiting from Seattle.

The condo feels more and more like home, a home where we could live for a long time. I hope! I don't need any more years as disruptive as the past one has been.

And I'm feeling more and more like I'm getting back to normal. Whatever normal for me is.

dusty, rainy

We're in the new condo finally, even though some of the work by contractors is still being finished. It's hard to keep up with the dust. I'll be so happy when the last one of them is gone and we can give the place a good cleaning.

Meanwhile, around us, it's been raining here for several days. Rainy and chilly. April was way nicer than May has been so far. Earlier this evening, it stopped raining but the skies were still very threatening. I decided to take a chance and walk over to the gym, six blocks away at Target Center. Target Field, the new Twins stadium, is next door to Target Center, and when I came out of the gym, the straggler scalpers were trying to get rid of their last tickets for tonight's Twins game (The game had already started). A scalper talked me into spending eight bucks for a decent ticket, and I thought, what the heck, why not?

So I went to the game, spent nine bucks on a brat and a bottled water, and sat among the huddled masses in their blankets and hooded sweatshirts. The new stadium, everybody agrees, is great. An outdoor baseball game on a beautiful summer will be perfect, but this was not one of those perfect nights. I enjoyed the outdoor-baseball ambience for several innings until my hands got too cold and the White Sox scored five runs in one inning, and I was out of there, walking quickly back to face the dust.

I guess I'm one of those fair-weather Twins fans you hear about. But I do admit, I love having the stadium nearby.

the shortest month

Gotta have at least one entry in February... It might be a disjointed one, just like February was...

There are still several weeks ahead of us before we move into the condo... (Contractors suck)... Am really tired of the temporary living situation -- and anxious to put some new things into play, like the new TV that we have bought (plus blue-ray and all kinds of things that I've never heard of) -- but won't set up until we are moved. Need some permanency again.

Work is relatively permanent, as in it feels like 24/7. Might drive out of town one of these days just to get some perspective.

Still fighting the winter. So sick of cold temperatures.

Seeing some of the Oscar-nominee movies before next Sunday's Academy Awards. They sure don't make movies like they used to.

After working some late nights, I must say it's been refreshing to be able to come home and watch some Winter Olympics. Sad to see them end... And I've learned to love Canada's national anthem -- O Canada! It's a catchy one!

my last football comments for a long time, I hope

Last Monday morning was just so weird. There was a cloud over downtown Minneapolis, throughout the skyways, within the offices, as people tried to come to grips with the trauma of having witnessed the Vikings choke, a few inches once again from reaching the Superbowl. It was one of those shocked-but-not-really-shocked kind of things, where you actually expected the Vikings to blow it but yet you kept finding reasons to hope. And just when you became a believer again, there was another kick in the face. You know?

And, for me at least, that game became a reason to permanently despise the New Orleans Saints. Several things were obvious in that game -- first of all, that the Vikings were the better team... and, more obvious, that the Saints coaching team had based their whole game plan on injuring the Vikings quarterback, Brett Favre. Let's face it, football is a rough game, sometimes almost violently so. But I had never seen a game where injury, maybe serious injury, was so recognizably the intent.

So I can't think about football for a few more months.. The Superbowl? I hope we don't even watch -- Let's all go to the movies instead that day.. But if I do develop a smidgeon of caring between now and next Sunday, I'll have to look to the other team, the Indianapolis Colts, to show the Saints how football is really supposed to be played.

last nights with CoCo

I usually don't watch much late-night TV... I'd rather go to sleep reading a book. OK, maybe I take an occasional glimpse at David Letterman, but a person can only take so much of David Letterman.

But then all this controversy happened with NBC pushing Jay Leno out of his failed prime-time spot and back into late night, and the late-night duels got interesting. I hadn't paid much attention to Conan O'Brien since he inherited The Tonight Show until all that started. Conan ("CoCo" to some) started pushing back at NBC when they wanted him to take a back seat to Leno again, and he did it in a classy, amusing way.

So I started watching some Conan O'Brien and discovered that the guy is great. He is funny, entertaining, inventive, and irreverent. Compare that to Jay Leno whose idea of a joke is, "Why is it that men always want to be the ones holding the remote?" Jay Leno is tremendously unfunny and is a terrible interviewer, so how did he ever get a talk show in the first place?

Tonight is the last Conan O'Brien show, and now I'm feeling sad about it. I should have kept my nose stuck in a book. Guess it's heading back there.

counting crows

It's eerie.

We're up here on the 26th floor looking down at Loring Park, downtown Minneapolis, and for the last few weeks, on certain nights and certain mornings, there are thousands of crows flying over the park and hovering on various apartment buildings down below us. The contrast of these black crows flying over the white snow is startling. Their shreiky cawing, thousands of them, woke Jerry up this morning.

A neighbor told us that the crows come back like this every few years.

It's like the movie The Birds. When will they attack? Or are they trying to tell us something?

*****

The mid winter sports update:
Minnesota is on a sports high this week after the Vikings beat the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff game and have advanced to either lose to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday or to go on to the Superbowl. So next week -- an even higher high or a low low as football here ends for another season as we know how close we came to the prize.

Jerry and I were at the Vikings/Cowboys game, along with 63,000 other screaming fans, one of the most fun games I've ever attended. There are all kinds of things wrong with football as a sport, but, wow, the energy generated by that many exuberant people is hard to describe. It's a shame that day to day life can't generate that kind of excitement and that kind of a rush.

hatless and gloveless

Halfway through January, and I made it through days of below-zero temperatures without a lot of my cold-weather stuff, which is mostly still in storage. When we moved into this apartment in July, I don't think it occurred to us that we would still be here through the coldest part of the winter.

But the condo that we bought won't be ready until at least late February. Demolition and reconstruction are under way.

And the temps are back in the 30s after several weeks of a lot of below-zeros. Maybe I can make it through a Minnesota weather without my gloves and stocking caps.

*****

Who can complain about anything these days, anyway, as we watch the struggle of the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti? The most amazing thing to watch, though, is the reaction of the extreme right-wingers in our country, like Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, who are either blaming the victims, like Robertson is doing, or saying we're only helping the Haitians, as Limbaugh says, because they are mostly black and we have a black President. Wow. Pat Robertson says that the Haitians are being punished because their ancestors made a deal with the devil. I loved a Letter to the Editor in this morning's Minneapolis Star Tribune responding to that absurd claim:

"Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll. You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just , come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan.
LILY COYLE, MINNEAPOLIS."

Definitely one of the best Letters to the Editor I've ever seen. And now, let's all be together on this, in support of the Haitians as they endure this horrible ordeal.

ketchup, part two

It was a surprise to me when a long-time client wanted to fly me to Paris last month for a meeting with him, but -- hey -- it's Paris and it's a good client, so why not? He said that Jerry was welcome to come also (paying his own way, of course), and when has Jerry ever turned down a travel offer? So off we went, via Air France, in business class.

I had been to Paris once before, Jerry multiple times, so we had seen the basic tourist stuff: this time we could just get to know the city better. My client wined and dined us, had a driver pick us up and drop us off, and we spent some time at some very high-end places. He put us up in a very nice hotel, not far from the Champs Elysses, and we stayed a couple extra days at a hotel in the Latin Quarter. We got to know some new neighborhoods, got really good at taking the Metro, all in all a trip that was very Paris. Came back, Paris to New York, on the new Airbus 380, which was phenomonal...

Then, soon after we got back, we had a trip planned to Tucson, Arizona -- a pre-busy season, relatively warm getaway. I had never spent more than ten minutes in Arizona and had low expectations, but Tucson turned out to be a good match for us: un-pretentious, easy to navigate, plenty of access to the desert sun.

And then back to the Siberian Minnesota winter, which is where we are now... Temperatures for tonight, New Year's Eve, could hit minus 15 degrees.

And I'm done catching up. Anything from here on will be current and will hopefully not include any references to Tiger Woods or to the disintegration of the Minnesota Vikings.

Happy New Year to all! I'm hoping that 2010 will be more settled than 2009 was.

ketchup, part one

I need to do some catch-up (ketchup?). That's why it becomes hard to start the blogging thing again after falling behind. It's sort of like when you stop going to the gym for a while, how hard it is to get motivated again.

This might take several installments.

It's just that my brain has gotten all jumbled. I think it will be better once we move out of this little apartment and into our little-bit-bigger condo. When that will be, I don't know. There is demolition to be done first. And maybe that's the problem with this year: too much anticipation of demolition of things as I knew them. I need to get back to the re-construction mindset.

I'm starting to at least be able to settle my mind enough to start reading again. But -- another problem: there isn't a real good cozy, comfortable place in this apartment to read. That has to change in the new place.

I started reading the new John Irving book, Last Night in Twisted River, more than a month ago. Remember, John Irving is my favorite author and I've been looking forward to this book, and I took it with me to Paris last month and Tucson this month and it's a good book, and still I'm only a couple hundred pages into it.

Part of the problem with this book, I think, is that I went to see and hear John Irving last month when he was here in Minneapolis. I had low expectations, anticipating that even though I love his writing I wouldn't like him, but even so was disappointed that I really didn't. As I am reading the book, I can still hear the smugness in his voice and remember how he made no effort to actually interact with the audience (which was made up of adoring fans). We have seen plenty of famous authors -- Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Richard Russo, Wally Lamb, and others -- all of whom have been personable and going out their way, one on one, to shake hands, sign our books, chat a little. John Irving was just too far above us for that sort of thing.

I guess that writing great books has nothing to do with being good at being a celebrity. I'll try to forget the celebrity part and get back to just reading and somehow enjoying.

random thoughts while having a root canal

First of all, that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) is a wonderful invention.

And while a two-hour stint in the dentist's chair may have been the low point of the week, the week was balanced by good stuff too, as they all are.

You know, don't you?, that Jerry and I are buying a condo here in downtown Minneapolis? We did this temporary, in-between rental apartment in the Loring Park area, with all the amenities of downtown at our doorstep, and decided that we love living in this area (About ten blocks from my new office). So we bought a condo in the building next door. We close on the purchase later this month.

Of course, we have to have a bunch of updating and remodeling done before we move in there, then another move is on the horizon, maybe later in January. And we are getting along so well without all the massive amount of things we have in storage that we wonder if we even want it all back.. Except for my piano, of course, which I miss.

So we're going to be downtown boys permanently, or at least as permanent as anything can be with Jerry.

Other:

Heading to Paris on the 18th.

Going to see John Irving, my favorite author, Monday evening.

And baseball is over for another few months. November is too late for baseball anyway. The Phillies did us proud, though, even though they lost to the team that destroyed baseball as we knew it.

i'd rather be a hammer than a nail

OK, the intermission is done.. Let's all have our seats.

It's been four months of change -- home, business relationships, day-to-day life... But it's no time to whine about all that. It's time to celebrate choices and positive alternatives. And now heading back into a new normal, a revised but manageable routine. Sometimes ya gotta run a marathon before you get to take a nap.

The new strange normal: Sitting here watching the Phillies in an unusual role: defending World Champions in this year's baseball playoffs... So far so good... The Dodgers look pathetic.. Are the Yankees on the horizon?

Jerry and I are still sitting in this "temporary" apartment. We have been looking at houses to buy, condos to buy, townhouses to buy... Not too close to a decision -- or are we?... It's not about the home, it's about the lifestyle. We have options.

But at least the blog has limped back into existence. it will get better from here.

intermission

OK, here's the deal:

My office is moving in a few days, and it's one of those times when there aren't enough hours in the day... The details are overwhelming, on top of the normal work load.... But our new office downtown is really shaping up and will be quite beautiful. That at least makes it somewhat easier to leave my current office, which I love.

Am still feeling good from the vacation I had last week with Jerry, Nancy, and Joan... We all traveled well together, covered 2000 miles over four states, saw magnificent scenery and cities and towns that were new to us.

... and now fall is here, and the days go fast.

hangin' out with the Mormons

Greetings from Salt Lake City, Utah, which is actually kind of a nice city (for a couple of days, anyway)... We had some preconceived notions about this Mormon-headquartered state that have been de-bunked -- for instance, that because Mormons don't ingest caffeine that we would have problems finding coffee or Pepsi, but there are plenty of Starbucks and other coffee outlets everywhere. We have gotten a good flavor of the city and did some Mormon stuff too -- my favorite part being attending a recital on the beautiful Mormon Tabernacle pipe organ this afternoon (Remember, I'm a pipe organ freak). (click on the photo at right).

***

We're staying at a hotel across the street from the arena where the Utah Jazz NBA team plays (The "Utah Jazz" to me being the funniest name in major league sports, in this unjazziest of states). Am having a good time traveling with Jerry and Nancy and Joan.... Finding some interesting things out about these two sisters of mine -- that Nancy is sort of attracted to guys who drive Harleys (!) and that Joan is very attracted to clean-cut 20-year-old Mormon boys in their white dress shirts (Although I'm not sure she'd like to keep them all that clean-cut)... :-)

***

Heading tomorrow to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.... Staying tomorrow night in Jackson Hole...

a brief perfection

Something happens on Labor Day. It doesn't matter what date it comes on or what the weather is like. For me, it's the end of summer, and that's a bad day.

Jon, my son, says that no, Labor Day isn't the end of summer. Some would say it ends on the 20th (21st?) of September, the first day of autumn. Jon, I think, would say it ends at the first hard frost, whenever that might come, because suddenly Jon's life changes on that day. From early spring to first frost, his life centers around his garden and his yard. I should take some photos and put them here: His garden is absolutely beautiful, down to the most minute detail. How he emotionally handles one day seeing it all dead I don't know. I guess he focuses from then through winter on planning next year's plantings.

Me, I look back and think that this was probably the most beautiful summer I have ever seen, even though it didn't arrive until late June. I never had so many days where people would be commenting on how perfect a day it is. When I look forward, I think what we have to go through before we have summer again (and will it be as half as good a summer next year?): Football, Christmas, snow, basketball, below-zero temps, tax season, hockey, colds and flu, down jackets, baseball spring-training... and then, finally, Jon out planting and hoping there won't be a late-spring snowstorm...

.... and meanwhile, even though Labor Day is several days behind us, the weather is still perfect, and we hold our breath. Now we are leaving town for a week, heading to four western states that I have never set foot in, where in the mountains we will need sweatshirts... and come back to sweatshirt weather in Minnesota, I bet.

... but oh, what a great day it was today.

the 'best health-care system in the world' fiction

In the middle of this most recent blog silence, we spent four days in New Jersey, mostly to be there to attend a benefit fundraiser for my cousin Bev, who recently was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed financial help. The fundraiser turned out to be quite an amazing event. Bev is the kind of person who has always taken care of everybody, the person everyone always knew they could count on, and all those years of caring and loving came back to her in spades.

The probable reason why Bev needed surgery for her breast cancer instead of a less drastic (and less costly) treatment option is that she for financial reasons has not had health insurance for the past several years, so has had no doctor visits, mammograms, etc., during that time and so there was no early detection of the cancer. She is one of the reasons, for me, why the so-called health care "debate" in this country this summer has been so grating -- the town-hall shouting matches, the lies from the right-wing, the billions of dollars being spent by the big insurance and pharmaceutical corporations to misinform easily fooled people. Real debate has become an impossibility in this country. It's embarrassing -- I hope the rest of the world isn't watching.

minnesota chuckles

Mankato is a city ninety miles southwest of the Twin Cities... Maybe we weren't in such a hurry to get back home from our road trip or maybe I wanted to show Jerry my college alma mater, but we took the time to stop in Mankato and hang around there for a while on our way home from Iowa yesterday. I graduated from Mankato State University (now inexplicably renamed Minnesota State University Mankato) many years ago, of course, and some things have changed a lot, some things not at all, but I've always kinda liked Mankato and the university.

After touring the campus a little, we drove into downtown and stopped at an outdoor restaurant on the main street for some dinner... The live entertainment was at the next table: two guys and a girl who were obviously college kids who shared a house. We sat there for an hour or so and listened the whole time to the girl telling the guys what slobs they are to live with and the guys saying they weren't going to change and she was being unreasonable. For an hour! Talking about dirty dishes in the sink! It was hilarious to listen to, they were all so serious and earnest. Made me wonder if I would go back to that age again or not, if I could. Ha! Of course I would.

Mankato is also the place where the Vikings work out in the pre-season.. Didn't see them, but today we are seeing Brett Favre all over the news, as he has arrived here in the Twin Cities today to -- is anybody shocked? -- sign with the Vikings. Oh what a media hog! When will his next retirement be?

So anyway, here we are back at home. A nice little trip.

the monks in iowa

Here is some trivia for you... "Des Moines" in French means "The Monks", and apparently there is no reliable historical account of why this city was named for monks... But here we are, staying in another nicely restored old hotel, this time in downtown Des Moines -- that's the lobby of this hotel (the Renaissance Savery Hotel) in the photo...

***

and so far we like Des Moines, but our criteria for liking a place usually come down to whether a place has friendly people and some things to see, a diner that serves a good greasy-spoon breakfast... extra points if there is a gay bar or two... So all the cities that we stayed in this trip, La Crosse, Dubuque, Des Moines, met all those standards.

***

Today we head north, through backwoods north central Iowa -- we are avoiding all interstate highways on this road trip -- back into Minnesota. Did I say backwoods?.. Not many woods anywhere in this state... we'll drive through backfields Iowa.

a taste of philly in dubuque

Still traveling along the Mississippi... Stayed the night in a beautifully restored old hotel (the Hotel Julien) in Dubuque, Iowa -- a very friendly city, as it turns out... Nice people, a riverboat casino across the highway and a great local place for breakfast down the street... Last night, we found decent cheesesteaks at a strip-mall restaurant called A Little Taste of Philly.... Today we'll do the river a bit more and then start heading northwest and try to find something interesting in interior Iowa... Might be a challenge. Home tomorrow.

highway 61 revisited

Our long weekend out of town... We ended up heading down Highway 61 along the Mississippi, staying for a night or two in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, do a daytrip further down the River, and from there who knows where.... We of course love living in the Twin Cities, but oh how nice it is to be gone from there for a while...

Other thoughts:

Wisconsin: It's strange to see people smoking in bars and restaurants again.

Football: Oh, how could my beloved Eagles have hired Michael Vick??

get out of town, dude

We're thinking we need to be out of town for a weekend -- somewhere.... Just drive out of town, stay somewhere... Be somewhere other than here.

But then, for me, the guy raised on the East Coast, the dilemma is where do we drive to?.. From southern New Jersey, there were all kinds of places within easy driving distance -- the city, the country, the mountains, the ocean...

But from the Twin Cities, in a region where everything is so far apart, what kind of trip can we plan that doesn't include any airplanes? The normal default is up north a couple hours -- Duluth, the north shore of Lake Superior, whatever... It would be so nice to do something different than that for a change, though. How about south? Iowa? Des Moines?.. Well, actually, Des Moines is under consideration. So we could drive and drive through about five hours of corn fields, and what do we have to show for it?.. Des Moines! and what do we do when we get there?... Turn around and come back?

Or travel east through Wisconsin?.. to where?.. Milwaukee? Five hours of driving to see the brewery tours? (Milwaukee is also under consideration, sad to say)

And the option of traveling west is hardly worth even mentioning -- There is nothing but prairie for as many miles as you can even imagine.

Or does a destination even matter? Or should we just stay here and turn off our cell phones for a few days?

i just adore a penthouse view

What a week, but it is done.

***

And we didn't move that far, maybe a mile, just across the river to the other side of downtown Minneapolis, but the view, the perspective, is totally different. In our old neighborhood, we had many places to walk to, and now we have new places to walk to and get to know better and feel a part of. And we're above it all, here on our 26th-floor apartment, where we can take stock and figure out what is next. Or maybe not think about what is next, not yet anyway. Maybe just enjoy a simpler life for a while.

***

Saying goodbye to the old house was emotional, but I'm over it. The move itself was exhausting, but we are recovering. I just want some time to read a book again and to enjoy what is left of this beautiful summer. My feet are propped up on the ledge on our balcony in the sky as I enjoy the view and the sounds of the city. Maybe I can even get my brain working again.

the morning after the fireworks

It's a perfect Sunday morning here on our deck. Except for the fact that the movers will be here in about an hour to take away the deck furniture that I'm sitting on.

Last night, we took a break from the final packing and sat here on the deck with Tom and watched the Aquatennial fireworks, which are always the best fireworks of the year. Before that, we had dinner with our friends Dina and Norby and their two little boys, Lucas and Dante. They thought we needed that dinner break too, and at this point we are taking advantage of any breaks we can get. We took them over to see the new apartment (that we have started moving in to), which of course is just a basic apartment, but they liked it and envied the freedom that we have right now, that we are in such a good position to take our time to find that great new home.

(Then last night when I went back to the apartment, I was talking to two people in the elevator, and they told me they too had moved into their apartment for just a couple months -- and that was two years ago, and they're still there.)

So I will miss this house terribly, but I know we got a good price for it, I know we have lots of great memories.... and now it's time for the next adventure.

And the next time I blog from these deck chairs, it will be on our balcony at the new place.

oh, what a circus!

Much of our packing for this double-move is done, but it's hard to make that final push.

***

Three sets of movers will be arriving within the next week: first, Sunday, the guys who will be moving some of the larger stuff that we're taking to our interim (or not so interim?) apartment; then, Monday, the piano movers to gently (I hope!) move the Steinway into climate-controlled storage somewhere; and finally, next Wednesday, the company will pick up all the rest of the furniture and boxes that, at least in theory, we will not be needing for an unknown number of months.

***

Tomorrow morning, we pick up the apartment keys. Our plan is to start setting up there so that on that final moving day, next Wednesday, we can go just collapse into our new temporary home (but, really now, aren't all homes temporary?). Sometime after that, we'll house hunt. After we catch our breath.

***

We took a break from the ongoing moving stresses last weekend to take Tom to the latest visiting Cirque du Soleil-in-a-tent show, Kooza. That's me, Jerry, and Tom in the photo, in case you just happened to stumble onto this blog and are wondering, who the heck are these clowns? Jerry and Tom, Tom especially, are big Cirque fans. It was a great show and a nice diversion. Life under a tent riding a unicyle on a high wire? There are worse things.

sneaking me across the border

I spent a couple days this week at a conference in Chicago, and when I say "in Chicago", I use the term loosely. It was held at a hotel out in the suburbs by O'Hare Airport, so all I saw of Chicago was the hotel and freeways and airplanes flying overhead. Downtown was of course nowhere nearby. It was kind of good to get out of Minnesota for a couple days, but somewhere along the way in my life I became an urban guy, and, if I have to spend too long in the 'burbs, I get the shakes.

Which brings me to a situation.

Jerry and I, as you remember, are moving into a furnished apartment very temporarily (we think) while we house-hunt. We've looked at some houses and condos, mostly without specific direction but presumably (in my mind!) within the city limits of either Minneapolis or St. Paul. Jerry, though, has a certain kind of house -- a 50's-era rambler -- that he loves. The problem is that very few of those homes are located within the urban core. So he talked me into at least looking at 50's-era ramblers in Golden Valley -- a suburb. "But it's the first suburb west of Minneapolis!" he says. "Parts of Golden Valley even seem like they are part of Minneapolis!"

So I looked. And there are some cool houses. But it's still the suburbs: Chain-restaurants and a higher-than-desirable number of Republicans per capita. Get in your car to go across the street.

But we didn't find just the right house in Golden Valley. So he showed me a house just a couple blocks outside of Golden Valley, in Crystal -- two suburbs outside of Minneapolis. Do you see a pattern developing here?

So as I push for "location! location! location!" and he searches for a certain style of home, we may find ourselves staying in that downtown apartment (26th floor, not 20th) longer than we would have predicted!

billie jean was not his lover

I'm home for lunch, so I've switched on the Michael Jackson memorial service.

It's been interesting over the past several days to see the overwhelming worldwide reaction to the death of Michael Jackson. I was never a major fan (to me, the Jackson 5 marked the unfortunate end of the great Motown sound of the 60s), although I had my moments -- I thought "Billie Jean" was a great song (and video), and I thought that Michael was the best part of the movie version of The Wiz. But the story of Michael Jackson, with all its musical milestones and bizarre behind-the-scenes personal behavior, perhaps made him not a real person -- more like a product or an institution. Maybe that's why people are so affected by his death.

And the stories will continue, as long as his supporting characters live on -- the strange family members (Joe Jackson? LaToya?), the ex-wives, his children, the doctors who wrecked his face and those who medicated him to death. And his fans, as long as they live and remember the music they once loved, never can say goodbye.

(wow, Mariah Carey looks awful)

(but Queen Latifah is cool).

Cheers, Michael the person: a bit screwed-up but kind, which is a whole lot better than screwed-up and unkind, and there's plenty of that out there.

meanwhile, back at the coffeeshop (again)

It's another 4th of July at the coffeeshop. The Bolshevik-looking guy is at the table by the window with the professor-looking guy, both talking nonstop while the professor's teenage daughter looks on. The cops are sitting behind me having their coffee and muffins, and other familiar faces are scattered around me. Jerry is sitting across from me reading one of the local weekly papers.

A year ago right now, I was sitting in this exact spot ruminating about whether the British were really all that bad. Compared to george w. bush, Queen Elizabeth was looking pretty good. But things change (thanks, Barack!), and it's been a whole year that quickly flew by, and Independence Day is on a Saturday and everybody seems confused about which day to celebrate. Some people were off work yesterday, some on Monday, and for some reason the grocery stores are open today, so some people didn't get off at all.

The week was wild, but the merger of my business happened painlessly on Wednesday and, on the home front, we think we have found an apartment downtown (20th floor) to live in as we house-search over the next several months. I've slept better the past couple nights. A Tylenol-PM helped.

untitled, part two

As I'm looking around this house, I'm thinking, Should I start packing? Where the heck do I start?.. Should I think about selling some of this stuff on Craig's List? How does a person even sell stuff on Craig's List?.. Does anybody know? Do I really want people calling to ask if they can come look at the junk I have to sell? And how much downsizing can I, a sentimental person, handle?

Or, instead of writing to you good folks, should I be on the web trying to find us a place to live as of a month from tomorrow?

It's funny, though, people have ideas for us. "I have a friend who has a friend who is looking for renters", that sort of thing. We could end up living with a State Senator for a couple months (Really). And we have friends who have offered to have us move in with them for a while. Probably not a good idea?

And what we will do is probably live in a short-term situation (month-to-month furnished rental?) for a while, with our furniture and our boxes and, gulp!, the Steinway in storage somewhere, so that we can take our time and find exactly the right house for us.

But it was a long day and I'm tired, so these decisions are just going to have to wait. Is there some room on the checklist for some chilling-out??

untitled, part one

And you thought maybe I hadn't blogged lately because I had nothing to say?.. Ha!

You knew I had a merger of my business coming up July 1st, which is taking scads of my time with details and catch-up and stress. It's been a while since I've gotten a whole night's sleep. I wake up way too early magnifying some minor business tidbit in my head and can't get back to sleep. You can understand that, right?

And you also knew that Jerry and I own two townhouses, one that we live in and one that we used to live in, and that we had both of them on the market for quite a while with the intention of eventually living in the one that didn't sell, letting fate decide our future. Then fairly recently we took the house that we currently live in off the market and decided to stick it out right where we are.

Well, the house where we used to live sold a couple weeks ago, with a closing the middle of August. Good news. We didn't get as much for it as we wanted, but, hey, it's a down market. So we were happy with that.

But then, this past week, people who had looked at our current home while it was on the market came back and made us a pretty good offer, and, for some ungodly reason, we accepted it. For this, a house that we love (but which has a mortgage balance that is more than we would like to have). They want to close the deal on July 30.

So what am I saying? I'm saying that we have sold both our homes and that we suddenly have a month to find somewhere to live. A month that happens to be the first month of my new business venture, which already had me stressed.

And we are telling ourselves, as best we can, that this is a good thing, that we will be able to re-group, to maybe downsize, to make our lives somewhat simpler and less financially precarious. But these days, it is hard to wake up early and realize we have to move on to what right now is a great big unknown.

sometimes the ending is the best part

I hate those weeks when I'm either too busy to blog or wearing a head filled with garbage unsuitable for my blog-reading public... This was one of those weeks, juggling between a merger that I need to make happen by the first of July and the normal real work.

But it's a beautiful Saturday here in Minneapolis, and I spent most of the morning on the deck reading a book and drinking coffee and un-cluttering my brain. This afternoon I went to the gym and worked off some of my week's frustrations and then, what do you know?, ran into my sister Joan downtown as we were both waiting for busses home.. (Is the plural of bus buses or busses?) And here I am, sitting on our front patio writing to you all. The week ended nicely.

Say, did you watch the Tony Awards last Sunday night?.. Of course, you didn't, and I bet you can't name one new Broadway show from this past season, can you?.. But we always watch the show, and this year my niece Ruthie and my grandnephew Corey came over to watch with us since Ruthie never has anybody to watch the Tonys with, and what good is watching an awards show if you have nobody to make sarcastic remarks to? So we had fun with it and shared throwback Pepsi (which of course Ruthie hated) and potato chips, and maybe that was the highlight of the week, sad to say. This week will be better.

and since you, like most of the world, missed the Tonys, here's a clip of the highlight of the show: Neil Patrick Harris, the host, singing the closing number:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-cB2HpNQ2k

tschaikovsky, kushner & plath

Tschaikovsky, Kushner & Plath?.. a local law firm?.. No, it's sort of a summary of what I've been able to squeeze in in-between a busy work schedule the past few days: Two Minnesota Orchestra concerts -- one last week showcasing Tschaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 and the other (tomorrow night) doing his Piano Concerto No. 3 (I didn't even know there was a #3); a series of plays by Tony Kusher (who wrote Angels in America) being done at the Guthrie Theater; and, somewhere in between, I read that novel about depression, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Good escapism?.. actually, yes!