Geography Class

My sister in Texas sent this to me: a place the state game. It is harder than you'd think. At least when you do the first ten states.

I did the intermediate level. The website gave me a score of 94. My average error was ten miles. And it took me 428 seconds.

Word.

Random Thought

Whenever I go for a walk, be it with my dog or to the bus stop, I am careful not to step on a crack out of respect to my mom's back. Lines are also avoided for fear of breaking my dad's spine. Sad but true, all these years later, I still find myself following the golden childhood rules of walking on a sidewalk.

But when I go running, I don't follow the rule; Scoliosis of the Parents be damned. And now that there will be a matted inch of snow on everyone's sidewalk between now and March, walking just got a lot easier. The lines and cracks are nowhere to be seen.

As a sign of some maturity, I did give up knocking on wood not too long ago.

I also stopped holding my breath when I passed a graveyard. However, I was holding my breath more out of a personal "Can I Do It?" challenge than a fear of being buried in a specific cemetary. But I really let go of that superstition a few years ago, when Emily and I used to live by a cemetary. We drove by it at least twice-weekly. It became tiresome to hold my breath each time, especially since we drove along one side of it, took a turn and drove along another side of it.

Well now that I think of it, I first broke that superstition in a college cross country meet that had us running through a graveyard. Running close to oxygen debt makes it tough to hold your breath; so I breathed, DEEPLY, through that random cemetary that was somewhere in Wisconsin, Iowa, or Illinois. Does that mean I'll be buried in that cemetary, wherever it was? Was it Missouri?

Actually, I've always had trouble embracing this superstition. My understanding was if you couldn't hold your breath all the way past the cemetary, you'd be buried there. This has always troubled me, as you had little to worry about if you simply breathed in front of multiple cemetaries (unless, of course being drawn and quartered was in your near future).

This has become a grim post. Maybe it's because my annual employee review is tomorrow in less than 12 hours. I have little to worry about as I have done my job well this year, as I do every year, but still. Ugh. Do I really need to be blogging about being drawn and quartered at this time?

Question I Have While Emily Talks On the Phone With Her Mom

Emily is talking to her mom on the phone about Lord knows what. I assume the topics are what Emily wants for her birthday dinner that her mom is cooking her tomorrow night and what each of them has been up to the last 72 hours.

Meanwhile I wait for her to finish her conversation so we can eat our homemade pizzas and watch more of Arrested Development Season 2 on DVD.

While I wait, I surf the web. I read Emily's blog about some cookies she made and leave a comment about how I much I enjoyed said cookies. I sign my name as "Cookie Monster."

Then I am left to ponder the following:

Who has less pride, Cookie Monster and his slobby, greedy eating habits, or Winnie the Pooh, and his shirt but no pants attire.

Those of you who know me, know that I should hardly be the one to cast the first stone in this question. I have a sweet tooth bigger than Dallas, half of my food ends up on my face at mealtime, and my personal attire can be, shall we say, lacking at times. But I'm talking about fictitious charachters.

I will have to give Pooh credit. He is a bit more complicated and layered than Cookie Monster. But Cookie Monster's issues may be neurological. I wonder if somewhere in his file is a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome. Look at the signs: Issues with hyposensitivity, obsessive behavior, poor eye contact, pedantic speech centered on his interests, and an inability to monitor his peers' needs relative to his own (i.e. eating everyone else's cookies and/or not sharing).

Even so, I still think he has more pride than Pooh bear. Next time your getting dressed put your shirt on first, and nothing else. Check yourself out in the mirror. Then tell me how much pride you have.

Plus there's that one Pooh story where he ate so much fucking honey and got so damn fat he got stuck in Rabbit's hole. And his name is Pooh.

Seriously. Have some pride.

The Great Minnesota Get Togethers

Tonight for the first time in the nine-plus years I've lived in Minneapolis I went to the Mall of America (MOA) for the sole purpose of shopping. I've been there to meet Emily, gone to movies there, and used to go to some of the restaurants on the third floor before they all closed down.

But never have I gone since to be a shopper. But it just so happens MOA is the closest mall to our house. So unlike the tour buses that ship people up here from Iowa, I went there to buy my wife a birthday present because it was the most convenient.

But I went after 8 p.m. and it was not very crowded. On the way in, I walked through Sears and they had hastily-made signs that said "MERRY CHRISTMAS" taped to the door. The writing was ALL CAPS, Times new Roman, 24 point bold. Black font on white paper. Take that Christmas hatas!

But as per usual, I digress. And I found the MOA to be phenomenal. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but the MOA is basically a more expensive year-round Minnesota State Fair (MSF).

The MSF has the midway; the MOA has Camp Snoopy.

MSF has a lot of fried tasty food that you feel guilty eating, and so does the MOA.

MSF has the farm animals and Miracle of Birth animal center; the MOA has Underwaterworld, an aqaurium.

MSF has tons and tons of vendors selling lots of weird, useless shit. So does the MOA.

The MOA has hayseeds visiting from Iowa; the MSF has farmers from outstate Minnesota showing their animals.

And this leads to my final point. The MOA has all walks of life, just like the MSF. Tonight while I was walking in the mall, a middle-aged couple was passed by a cocky 20 something yapping on his cell phone and a girl in front of me was wearing black pants so very tight you could see the crease of her butt crack. One cheek had the letters LO and the had VE. Yeah, nothing says love like an ass crack.

Only at these two places can you see these walks of life within 20 feet of each other. Great get togethers indeed.

¿Donde Esta El Cuarto De Baño?

Spanish was the cinematic language of choice in our house this weekend.

This weekend I watched Maria Full of Grace and Amores Perros. Holy crap was Amores Perros brutal. But it was as good as it was gritty. I was watching it with my dog Pancho. He was very intrigued by all the dogs barking. But when they started fighting, I had to shield his eyes, much like an over-protective parent shielding his son's eyes from the blue cinema.

I eventually sent him up stairs to be with Emily, safe from the influences of doggie rated R movies.

Regardless, Amores Perros is a great movie, even if I did have to watch a few dog fights and worse in fast-motion. Oddly enough, I tolerated people being shot in regular motion.

Maria Full of Grace is a lot less gritty, which is saying something since it had several scenes of girls swallowing heroin. It was not nearly as layered as Amores Perros, but certainly a lot more fun to watch and just as excellent as Amores Perros.

I Need A Life--Part II

Yet another post about Caribou Coffee's trvia. I have four unrelated areas to cover.

1. I am curious what question Rachel W answered at the airport when she was the only to get it right.

2. An engineer living in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities metro area, who likes to protect his anonymity, has brought it to my attention that George Washington is on the quarter and the dollar bill, meaning there are THREE Presidents on two types of US currency, not just one ( click here to see for yourself), making the question from my previous post the worst question of all time. And that is saying something, as about a week ago, the question was "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

3. Caribou does need to raise the discount for getting the question right. The discount is based based on 1996 dimes, not 2006. I used to pass on answering the question because it was only a dime. But then I figured over the course of a year, I passed on 20 to 30 questions that I knew the answer to. If there was a three dollar bill (I think Roosevelt is on the three dollar bill--shit that makes FOUR Presidents...) laying on the ground you'd pick it up right and away. So go ahead and answer each and every trivia question. It will eventually add up.

4. And now for my primary point of blogging today. Wednesday morning the question was "Which planet has the most moons?" In tribute to my childhood geekdom, I knew right away the answer was Saturn. Fair enough.

Thursday morning the question was "Cape Horn borders which African country?" Well I had no idea how to answer this one since I always thought Cape Horn was in South America and bordered either Chile or Argentina (which one, I had no idea), but clearly I was wrong. So I figured it had to be South Africa or Somalia, assuming that big notch sticking out of the eastern end of Somalia could be called a cape, despite its large size. And it looks like a shoe horn. So Somalia seemed like the guess to make. Plus I was pretty sure the southern cape of Africa was called the Cape of Good Hope.



So I guessed Somalia and was told that I was wrong. I was too embarassed to ask for the right answer and asssumed it was South Africa. My coffee cost ten extra cents that day.

As I walked to work from Caribou, the irony was not lost on me that I knew the geography of the solar system better than my own planet. I even had a title for a future blog about this experience,

Think Interplanterily, Act Locally

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But the need for such a title vanished when I got into my office and looked at the world map on my wall. Well of course Somalia was the wrong answer. Cape Horn isn't even in Africa. It is in South America, just where I had placed it. So I guess to make up for the question earlier in the week that had three correct answers (you just had to guess which of the three they wanted you to say), they chose a question that had NO correct answers.

The Caribou I frequent happens to be by Sibley Plaza. Sibley Plaza deserves a blog post all to its own. Emily and I drove past it this morning, in fact, and she called it "the strip mall that time forgot."

What is relevant to this post, however, is that Sibley Plaza and most of lower Highland Park (a neighborhood in St. Paul where I work) is heavily populated by Ethiopians and Somalis. They are known to enjoy a cup or two from Caribou like the rest of us. So I was wondering, the rest of the day, if someone with more confidence than I about Africa's geography went in there and set the record straight. I was going to stop in at the end of the day to see if they ammended the question, but I didn't have time if I wanted to catch my bus.

Cripes. Who does the fact-checking for this particular Caribou branch? Jayson Blair? Is this the best job he can find since the New York Times fiasco?

To help me through my angst, I need to harken back to my college days, and the wise words often spoken by a young man we called "Donkey Balls" for reasons I won't go into. But to put your mind at ease, it has nothing to literally to do with his testicles, donkeys, or a donkey's testicles for that matter. Although when we did call him Doneky Balls we were implying that he was, indeed, the testicles of a donkey.

But, as per usual, I digress.

Back to Donkey Ball's words of wisdom. Like most college kids, we always had a hard time squaring completely up after a night at the bar or the Pizza Hut (we were in Grinnell, Iowa, what kind of nightlife were you expecting?) because at least one of us would inevitably be absurdly short on cash. Each time this happened, Donkey Balls could always magically end our squabbling over who owed whom what amount of money and we'd move on to the next activity, which usually involved copious amounts of Busch Lite in cans and some form of public urination (again, we were in Grinnell, IA, pop. 8200, what more can you expect for a nightlife?).

But none of this post-Pizza Hut awesomeness would have happened if Donkey Balls, wise beyond his 18 to 22 years of age, hadn't said "It all comes out in the wash." Hell, to this day, we'd still be arguing about whether or not Strawman and Nitro were square now that the Klassmaster was paying for Donkey Balls' share of the bill, because that would make up for the seven bucks Nitro owes Klassmaster from Wednesday night and the three dollars and change Donkey Balls still owes Strawman from last week's sortie to Pizza Hut. "Seriously. Let's not worry about it. It all comes out in the wash," Donkey Balls would say, as if he were Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid. A gong would softly sound in the background. End of conversation.

I need to remember such sage thinking. For every bullshit, unanswerable question this Caribou has offered me, I have also easily answered the following:

Why did the chicken cross the road? (I know I already said this, but I want to make it clear that this was a real trivia question)
How many days away is Thanksgiving?
What is the distance of a marathon?
What Aldous Huxley novel featured alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons?
The first Caribou is in what city?
What are the five great lakes (Hint: the first letter of each one makes up the word HOMES)?
And a lot of either/or questions giving you a 50/50 chance, worse-case scenerio of getting the question right.

So I agree with Rachel W. I love Caribou. The snob in me, that turns his nose up at chains, and mocks poorly written trivia, does indeed love everything about the Caribou experience, corporate chain mentality, drive-thru service, suspect and cheaply discounted trivia, and all.

For Want of a Dime...

If a chain of events leads to my ultimate loss of house, job, family, and friends, we can trace it down to today, this historic day.

Anyone who lives in Minnesota and drinks coffee has inevitably spent some money at Caribou Coffee and probably tried to answer the daily trivia question. For those of you who haven't, there is a trivia question that changes each day and is unique to each location. If you get the question right, you get ten cents off your order.

When I ride the bus to work it drops me off right in front of a Caribou Coffee and part of my morning routine is to get my cup of coffee there and try and save a dime.

Because I am a nerd, I get excited about the trivia question and try to set personal records for how many consecutive days I can save a dime. My record is nine days, and my hitting streak came to an end when I was stumped by the question "How much dirt does a human consume, on average, in a year?" That's a bullshit question, because anything over say, half a centigram will be alarming and disgusting and we all know that the answer will be much higher than that.

So the question might as well have been "Pick a random number between .5 centigrams and 12988347 kilos and if you are right, you get ten cents off your order." I refused to answer that question out of protest, thus breaking my streak. I sure showed them with my silent protest!

But in the interest of full disclosure, at the Caribou I go to, the questions are usually quite easy for anyone with a high school diploma and a functioning long-term memory. Typical questions are "What is the capital of New York?" or "What story is attributed to Homer besides The Oddessy?" and things like that.

So my most recent streak is up to four days and today's question was "Who is the only United States President whose face is on two separate types of US currency?"





I thought it over for a few seconds, made my coffee order and said the answer was Thomas Jefferson.





The guy at the counter said, "Sorry. Good guess" Then held up a penny and five dollar bill from the cash register to show me the correct answer was Lincoln. Very dramatic.

I am the horse's asshole when it comes to all forms of competition, and I was about to prove this. I said, "Do you happen to have a two dollar bill and a nickel in there?"






I was half-joking, and was going to leave it at that. But he went ahead and told me that Thomas Jefferson's presence on the two dollar bill doesn't count because it's not in circulation anymore. I was satisfied with that answer even though I had no idea if that was true or not. But then his co-worker said, "Actually the two dollar bill is back in circulation but the book was written before that happened."





Now I have no idea what The Book is. I assume it's either The Bible (which I'm pretty sure was written before the two dollar bill was re-circulated by the US Treasury) or Caribou publishes a book of possible trivia questions for employees to use.

Either way, I'm back in this conversation, trying to get my dime back. "So Thomas Jefferson is also correct!" I say.

"Well we have to go with what the answer in The Book says," she answered, pointing vaguely to some object under the cash register, which I assume is either Gideon's Bible or Caribou Coffee Inc. Official Daily Trivia Manual. And the conviction with which she said this made me think maybe it was The Bible afterall. She clearly was not going to go against the authority of the answer in The Book, no matter how illogical it was.

Either way I got screwed. Open letter to Caribou Coffee: I want my freaking dime back.






So back to my origninal point, for want of a dime, the bus fare was lost, for want of a bus fare... Well you can connect these dots all the way to me losing wife, dog, house, job, and friends if you please.

In working with adults and teens who stutter I have found that those who feel they are victims and were let down by God have the absolute worse prognosis. I would say the degree to which a person plays The Victim is the number one factor in how much he can improve his or her own life. This is true in all realms of life. Not just stuttering.

However, I am here to say, that if my life goes to the shitter over the next, oh, 50 years, I blame Caribou.

It's A Boy!

Emily's sister gave birth to a boy this morning. Like me, he has been born without a pre-determined name. Unlike me, I am sure his parents will name him before he leaves the hospital.

This is the fourth kid whom I will be an uncle to, but the first on Emily's side. It is very bittersweet for me. It is so awesome and exciting to be living in the same city that this kid was born and to be around while he grows up. But it also makes me wish I could live in the same city that my sisters' kids live in.

But mostly I am very excited for the Emily's sister and her husband. I cannot wait to meet their new kid tomorrow night and see the new parents. Pictures will likely follow.

Check Me Out

I really to read in other people's blogs what books they are reading, a list of ten random songs on their iPod, or what movie they just saw. I don't know why. It's like you get to read their personal mail or rummage through their underwear drawer. Not that I do those things. Or want to.

Seriously. I really don't. Those of you that know me can still invite me over without feeling like you have to put your utility bills and tighty whities in a safe.

I think Netflix should have a feature where you get to show your queue to the world. Our queue is now 250 movies long. It's almost like a status or pissing contest. Who can have the longest queue? A friend of mine has a kickass underwear collection, oops, I mean Netflix queue. He has over 400 movies in his Netflix queue. Something to aspire to.

Right now we have Spanglish, Maria Full of Grace, and (here comes the dirty underwear) Pilates for Dummies. My wife chose it. It's for her. I swear. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I did take a pilates class last spring. The instructor congratulated me for being the first male graduate. I still am not sure if I should be proud of this.

I will say this, the same guy who has over 400 movies in his Netflix queue, took yoga and dropped out. I'm not sure what that means. I think we're still both a couple of sissies, with or without a diploma from an exercise class populated mostly with women, or an endless Netflx queue.

I also wanted to list the other pop culture goings ons in our household.

The three most recent CDs I bought were: Liz Phair (Somebody's Miracle), Dwight Yoakum (Blame the Vain), and The Hopefuls (The Fuses Refuse to Burn).

The Hopefuls CD, I already have. I bought the second copy for my sister, whose birthday was over seven weeks ago. We'll see if I actually mail it before 2006. Anyway, it's a great CD. Guitar pop good and trivial enough to make you feel young again. Incidentally, Emily and I saw them play Wednesday night with this sexy baglady. They were awesome, as was hanging out with her yoga school dropout of a husband.

I am reading Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country.

There you have it. I'll let you know how I like that pilates video.

Son-In-Law

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Today I am taking the day off and enjoying the fact that I am still wearing my pajamas, while it snows outside, and Emily reads the paper.

Pancho is watching us wondering when the hell he gets to do what he wants to do. I keep telling him to lick his balls. He usually seems to enjoy that, but I guess he's bored with that for now. Fear not, my four-legged friend. We'll go for a nice, long, lazy run soon.

Last night we went to Emily's uncle for Thanksgiving. There were about 20 of us there and I enjoyed talking to everyone, but no one is as entertaining as Emily's mom. Here are some highlights:

"I think guys [men] are so retarted. There's no doubt about it."

"Who really trusts experts anymore?"

Emily's mom spends a lot of time lamenting how times have changed and how crazy it is that kids are surrounded by hi-tech toys and electronics. She also spends a lot of time at Value Village, which is like a local Goodwill. But lately, most of her engery is spent getting ready to become a first-time grandma (Emily's sister is expecting a child any day now).

So I asked Emily's mom if she feared this grandchild may be one of those kids "spoiled" by things like iPods and X-Box 360s.

She said, "Oh I don't see this kid getting spoiled by stuff from Value Village."

Little tidbits like this make me laugh.

Ents Rule

I want to make this perfectly clear before I begin this post: I love trees. I love the gigantic maple tree in our back yard, and the ample shade it provides in the summer. I think we have an awesome backyard, to be honest, but it would be a godforsaken patch of dirt and sun, if 80% of it wasn't shaded by the maple tree. So I also love the tree's leaves.

I read and saw The Two Towers, so I know it's a bad idea to piss off the Ents by hatin' on their brethren the maple tree. I'm not about to suggest we tear our maple tree down to clear space for some ogre-making factory like that evil wizard tried to do.

But I will say this, I do hate 50923784023 dead maple leaves in our backyard. We have a tiny city lot and I still managed to get 23 bags full of leaves from the backyard alone.

My childhood home was on a lot twice the size of where I live now, and on a corner. So there was a side yard to rake as well, and at least seven pecan and mesquite trees in our yard. I don't think we ever eclipsed 30 bags of leaves raking all three yards. And I got 23 bags from one freaking tree.

I never thought I could dislike a sports team, based on its logo. And I never thought I'd have any opinion about any hockey team, ever, because I don't get hockey and don't really want to. But now, after two falls of raking, I really don't have a lot of good things to say about Toronto's hockey team, the Maple Leafs. And shouldn't they be the Maple Leaves?

So to summarize:




Treebeard and the Ents: GOOD

Toronto Maple Leafs: BAD




I'd rather offend this hockey fan (or even the ones with slightly more testosterone) than Treebeard. Hell I'd rather offend the entire hockey team than one Ent.

The Thrill of Victory

That would be Paul Tergat, as you see below. The close observer will note the agony of defeat, Hendrick Ramaal, in the background. Lying down on the ground. After losing the New York City Marathon. By less than a second.




What an awesome picture.

What an awesome race.



Images from http://www.photorun.net/.


The race was actually last week, but these pictures are so good, I thought it was worth talking about. A friend of mine has Dish TV and gets the New York station that covers the whole race. So we watched the whole thing live. It was such a great race from to start to finish. Who knew watching skinny guys run for over two hours could be so fun?

Jungo Jemba

Last night Emily and went to a party thrown by a friend of mine. He moved into his house six months ago and just bought furniture so he figured he'd finally throw a party. So he had a "DDR, Giant Jenga Party." Once I promised Emily that DDR is "Dance Dance Revolution" (a dancing game for the PlayStation) and NOT Dungeons and Dragons, she agreed to go.

For anyone who thinks they are the ultimate lover of games, this guy can put you to the test. He and a few of his friends are obsessed with Jenga and he knew there had to be something more. So he came up with Giant Jenga. He went to Home Depot and had them cut 30 4X6 10" pieces of wood. The result: Giant Jenga in his garage. We'd typically get the Jenga tower up to seven or eight feet before it would crash. It was awesome.



Image from http://www.hasbro.com/jenga/


Emily got a little stressed out. But you always had ample warning before the tower was about to fall.

Up next on this guys docket: he wants to design Jumbo Operation. I think they already have that though. It's called First Year Med School Student Gets a Cadaver.

Get Out the Vote

Tomorrow is Election Day. I hope everyone gets a chance to vote.

Our friends have a compelling idea. It would be interesting to see how much our political landscape would change if this became a law.

Our underlings in Puerto Rico are also onto something.

Why Buy New When Slightly Used Will Do?

Why watch a DVD when it's on TV?

Emily and I are half-watching Pirates of the Carribean on ABC right now. Complete with commercials and the crappy reception we get for ABC.

We have the DVD, which is commercial and fuzzy-reception free.

But that would somehow ruin the movie-watching experience.

As an aside, Emily has an uncanny knack for recognizing supporting actors and connecting them to previous shows and movies. In this case, she recognized the guy playing British commodore in Pirates of the Carribean as the same guy who played the straight man role in the BBC version of Coupling. Nevermind that he's wearing one of those goofy British military uniforms in this movie.

ALRIGHT ASTROS!!!!

Call me a fair-weather fan, but suddenly I feel emotionally attached to the Astros, even though I haven't cheered for them since I was in college. But I have come to realize they still occupy a special place in my heart. I grew up on JR Richard and Nolan Ryan in the early 8os. I brought my Walkman to high school my freshman year so I could follow their series against the Mets.

But my favorite Astros memories are confined to a minimum wage job I had before my senior of high school. I worked the dinner shift at a salad bar, Souper Salads, that year. I don't know what the official title of my job was, but I was basically the guy who made sure all the salad bar and soup bar items were topped off.

My esteemed associate at Souper Salads was Richard, a long-haired, pot smoking dish washer, and a crazed Astros fan. Our conversations all summer were limited to the following eight talking points:

1. Did I have any pot?
2. Last night's Astros' game.
3. The current Astros' game on the radio.
4. Why I didn't smoke pot.
5. The liklihood that I might have some pot to give to Richard, even though I didn't smoke pot.
6. What Richard was doing when he watched last night's game. This story usually ended with him shouting "Alright Astros!!"
7. The merits of smoking pot.
8. How smoking pot with Richard could make me a better runner.

At this point in time I still liked the Astros, but was more of a Rangers fan since that was who Nolan Ryan was pitching for. But I was satisfied with talking points 1-8 with Richard and didn't feel we needed talking point #9, "Why the Astros are better than the Rangers." So I passed as a die-hard Astros fan.

One night I was re-stocking the salad bar with some vegetable or another. The Astros were far from first place but locked in a close game with some random National League opponent. It was near closing time so there were maybe three tables with customers.

All of a sudden the ten of us in the dining area could hear someone shout "ALRIGHT ASTROS!" This was followed by the classic restaurant sound of procelain plates hitting a tile floor. A lot of them. It was the sound of a tall stack of dirty dishes hitting the floor after being knocked over by an animated dish washer.

Then it was very quiet for a few seconds. Awkwardly so.

The silence and tension was broken from the kitchen when we all heard Richard shout "ALRIGHT ASTROS!!" one more time. When I finally made it back to the kitchen he let me know that the Astros had indeed scored a go-ahead run.

And this is one of the many reasons the Astros have a special place in my heart.

I returned to Souper Salads the following summer and Richard was still there. Well at least in body. He had turned his life over to the Lord. He wore t-shirts that said "Property of Jesus Christ." He no longer bullshitted with me. He had given up the argument that pot would make the "fastest fucking runner ever man."

Instead he tried to convince me to go to church with him, and told me "the Bible predicted AIDS man." And the Astros were no longer on the radio. Instead I was treated to Christian rock every time I went back to the kitchen.

Souper Salads was never the same again. And since that time I have been a Red Sox fan, Cardinals fan, and now have settled down as a die-hard Twins fan. But when I think back to that meaningless $3.35/hr job I had at Souper Salads, before the Lord crushed Richard's soul, I am a born-again Astros fan.

Debbie Downer

A woman was raped at 9 a.m. last Monday in or near the Minnehaha dog park, about three miles from our house. It goes without saying that this pisses me off. I am posting an e-mail from a friend of mine who I go running with. I am including all the information just to alert those of you who use the trails near our house to be extra carfeful.

I just received this information about the incident. Since so many of us run in that area, perhaps we can be on the lookout for this individual.

Facts:
Minneapolis police are investigating the attack of a woman Monday morning, Oct. 17, who was riding her bike in the Minnehaha Falls off-leash dog park. The suspect approached the victim with a gun and sexually assaulted her.

Suspect information:

The suspect is described as a white male, 35-40 years old, six feet tall and 35 to 40 years of age. He has a heavy/muscular build, shaggy dark hair, and no facial hair. His eyes are described as closetogether, and he has heavy jowls and a thick neck. He was wearing a dark blue, zippered, jogging-style jacket, white tennis shoes and dark cloth pants. The suspect may have used a bike that possibly was red and silver.

If you have information about the incident, please contact Sgt. Nancy Dunlap, 612- 673-3782, or the MPD Sex Crimes Office, 612-673-3657.

Some obvious things jump out at me when I think about what happened. First of all is how angry this makes me. Secondly, we should all be extra careful. Even though I probably don't have too much to worry about, this incident has made me stop wearing headphones when I run. We should all do this because it does not only make things more safe for ourselves, but also so wee can hear if someone else is yelling for help.

These are obvious points to everyone, and for some reason my final point isn't. What strikes is that this woman was on her bike. Until this happened I always assumed a woman is not vulnerable if she is on a bike. She can bike away from all danger, right? Not when the asshole has a gun. I would love to hear from some NRA types and know how they can justify conceal and carry over strict gun control laws. Using their logic, the solution to the current problem is for all women to go running and biking with guns. Here's a better idea, with or without gun control laws: it is time for the park police to increase their presence along the parks that abut the Mississippi River.

Yet Another Sports Post

I will add this post to the burgeoning canon of on-line opinions about the nutty ending to last night's White Sox/Angels game. Aside from the fact that I think the Angels got robbed on that one call, I have some other thoughts.

1. The Angels were affected by the umpires, but they lost that game on their own. The umpires put a runner on first with two outs, but that is it. Sure it meant Angels' pitcher Melvim Escobar had to pitch four outs that inning, but it was Escobar who continued to pitch from the stretch with a man on first. And it was Escobar who left that 0-2 pitch over the plate for Crede to hit.

Holding the umpires responisble for a blown call is fair game, but to pin this loss on them is not too far removed from blaming the Cubbies' demise a few years back on that fan who tried to catch a foul ball.

2. I am so glad I am not a fan of either team. I'd be so very pissed if I were an Angels fan and feeling pretty sheepish as White Sox fans.

3. Last year it was David Ortiz. This year it's A.J. Pierzynski. It is hard as a Twins fans to watch these ex-Twinkies play huge roles in their teams' playoff success. A.J. is having a great playoff run, with or without the umps blown call.

Of the remaining four teams, I'd love to see the Astros or Cards win. GO NL!!!

San Diego Steelers

Did anyone watch tonight's (Monday) Steelers vs. Chargers football game. Why were there so many die hard, vocal Steelers fans watching?

It reminds me of when the Spurs sucked back in the 80s and it would seem like there were just as many fair-weather Laker fans cheering as loyal Spurs fans. I wonder if those jackasses who cheered for the Lakers over the hometeam are still doing the same these days.

Who Wants To Be An MVP?

A Rod just hit into a double-play with a runner on, in an elimination game, in the top of the ninth, with his team down by two runs. He has done nothing the entire post-season. I'm not ripping on the guy. He'd get my vote for MVP. It just goes to show how meaningless the MVP award is.

I have never understood why the regular season MVP gets so much attention. The only other MVP candidate, ex-Twin David Ortiz, playss for a team that was eliminated from the playofffs last week.

The Red Sox and Yankees can have their MVPs. I'm pretty sure the White Sox and Angels will gladly pass up that award for a World Series ring.

The Pride of Urbana, IL...

...was born 34 years ago today.

Ever since I was a little kid, I was always rowdy and loud.
Now here I am, thirty-four, still runnin' 'round with the wrong crowd.

-Ray Wylie Hubbard

I spent my 34th birthday cleaning the garage with Emily and mowing the lawn with my dog Pancho watching. Not exactly running with the wrong crowd. But that's okay. I have 364 more days to find a few bad eggs to get rowdy and loud with.

Morons Know Best

If you live in Minnesota and half an interest in sports, it is impossible to ignore the Vikings. For the past five years, people have been calling in to sports talk radio shows complaining about Dante Culpepper. And for five years the talk show hosts would smugly dismiss these complaints, just stopping short of labeling these callers as idiots. The talk show hosts would say these callers had no idea what they were taling about and how Culpepper was a great quarterback, end of story.

I wonder what the radio talks show hosts will be saying Monday. It looks like all the idiot callers were right: Randy Moss is the primary reason for Dante's success. The offensive line has been terrible for the Vikings, but that doesn't excuse Culpepper's performance this year. Until he shows otherwise, it is clear Randy Moss, despite his awful behavior, has been the reason for the Vikings' success over the past five years. I can't believe I'm typing this, but the Vikings miss Moss more than I ever imagined they would.

Happy Thanksgiving

Some friends of ours from college, Jason and Meg, were in town this week. They are touring the country from San Francisco to DC introducing their two-month old son Keenan to the world. They're also going to DC to protest the war. Friday night Emily stayed home from work and she and Jason made Thanksgiving dinner because it is damn good food and there really is no reason why we have to have Thanksgiving dinner only once a year.

The dinner was awesome but as we started eating we had a few complaints about politics, crappy movies, and things like that. So we decided we were having Notsgiving. Clearly Notsgiving is alive and well, as Jason decided decide to leave a Notsgiving comment on my previous post.

Thank you Jason.

Check out Jason and Meg's blog of their trip. It does not suck.

Red Letter Day

I have been waiting for this weekend for a long time. Not because it's the opening weekend for pro football, but because James McMurtry's latest album, Childish Things is finally available.

I've heard one of the album's songs on his website, and he sang it at his show when he passed through the Twin Cities last spring. The song,"We Can't Make It Here," as far as I can tell is the first overtly political song of his. I've heard snippets of the other songs on iTunes and they don't disappoint.

But don't take my word for it. Click here for a review.

And better yet, click here for one of the better features I've read about the man.

For the likes of Steve Earle and the select few elitist Minneapolitans who openly rip the state of Texas just because George Bush gets his mail there, I'd like to give them a copy of this interview and James McMurtry's latest album and quote Ray Wylie Hubbard.

"Screw you. We're from Texas."

Funny Stuff

Due to lack of blogging it is unfortunate that my first (and so far only) post about Katrina is steeped in levity. There is no way I can express the sickness I have been feeling the past week. It has hit me harder than 9/11. Public restrooms are hard for me to use because all I can think of is the Superdome. But here goes...

Via dailykos.com:



Link

Figthing the War on Terror

Emily and I bought new commuter bikes this week. They look like this:


Image from www.bayareabikes.com


I had a ten year-old mountain bike that was big and clunky. But I love my new bike. I think Emily lovs hers too, but I can't speak for her.

So now I'll be biking to work regularly.

Take that Haliburton and the House of Saud.

Canyon Lake

This weekend Emily and I went up north to the Brainerd area, to a friend's cabin on the Whitefish chain of lakes, in northern Minnesota.




The lay of the land is so very glaicial. But this is hard to imagine when it's in the mid-90s two hours north of Minneapolis. Sadly I forgot my fishing license and our friends couldn't find theirs. But we still had fun tooling around in the boat and going swimming. It was weird though, because it really felt like we were on Canyon Lake in south Texas. I had to keep reminding myself we were up north.

Our friends have a three year-old daughter who recently cut her own hair. The result was a mullet. So whenever the boat got up to a decent speed, I'd encourage her to shout "ROCK AND ROLL!!" She was more than happy to oblige which really complimented her haircut.

Grinnell College Cross Country RULES!!!

One more link update.

I can give no shouts out to Carleton College, as they were one of our Central Region rivals, and they consistently out-recruited us during the four years I was at Grinnell.

One of the jackasses that picked Carleton over Grinnell was Gaio Lakin, despite the fact that we had plans to name a set of relays after him, due to the kickass nature of his name. A teammate of mine (we'll call him the Klassmaster) came up the Gaio Lakin Relays, a party to be held out at the track, then night after our home track meet. We even had the innagural Gaio Lakin relays my freshman (or was it sophomore?) year, and it was a smashing success. But then the jackass decided to go to Carelton and we changed the name of the event to the Horse's Asshole Relays (I made that last part up).

I've run into Gaio a few times since living in the Twin Cities (literally, while running and at a few parties) and then he came over to my house last summer, drank all my beer, ran home, and I haven't seen him since. So the dude stands up our team after we name a party after him and ten years later shows up to drink all my beer and then disappears like Kaiser Soze from The Usual Suspects. So it speaks to the kickassedness of this Gaio charachter that I've added a link to his site, after he broke my heart twice.

You may want to wait awhile before visiting his site. He says he needs to update it. I agree. But I remember he had some photo on his site that was getting tons of hits. Something about how he took a picture of his bent leg and looked like a hairy butt, so he named the picture "hairy butt" and a whole bunch of people who wanted pictures of real hairy butts ended up looking at a picture of Gaio's bent leg.

So all you hairy butt fans out there, don't be disappointed by Gaio's site.

And I am hereby requesting Gaio start up the hendecathalon again. Unless he's afraid Grinnell Cross Country will fuck his shit up!!!!

By the way, good luck with the triathalon Gaio. xoxoxo

Alamo Heights Football RULES!!!

Shouts out to my alma mater. I still need to update the links at the side of my blog. But I have added the link to Gabriel Mann's band 's website. A quick Google search will show you that there are two Gabriel Manns. Apparently one of them was in Bourne Supremacy. But the other Gabriel Mann is the one I am concerned about.

Check out his website. Listen to his songs. The dude's got golden pipes. Buy a few CDs. I also went to high school and junior high with him. Off the top of my head I can remember going to some poorly attended Spurs games with him, back in their mid-80s suckiness. Jon Sunvold. Cadillac Anderson. Walter "The Truth" Barry. Ed Nealy. Albert King. Damn I loved the Spurs even at the depths of the shittiness.

And I remember walking next to Gabriel at lunchtime when two guys had the following conversation in front of us (both were poorly dressed for the cold front that had moved in somtime between 8 a.m. and noon).

Guy 1: "Dude this is bullshit! Someone get me a heater!"

Guy 2: "I know right!?!"

I'm not sure how to punctuate the phrase "I know right," but it was damn ubiquitous back in the day. And I don't know why that specific conversation is burned in my mind, but it is a good one. But I doubt Gabriel turned it into a song.

All-Star Game Thoughts

I watched most of baseball's All-Star Game last night while doing some wild and crazy shit like folding and ironing clothes. And I came away with the following thoughts:

1. How in the hell do the Florida Marlins have four All-Stars on their roster and are barely above .500? Who's their manager, John Lucas? Bob Hill? Only die-hard Spurs fans will get those references.

2. The only All-Star game I'll watch, let alone look to see who won, is baseball. I really don't know why I still watch it, but I still enjoy it.

3. The frustration I get with Bud Selig never dulls with time. I still cannot get over how incredibly stupid it is that the World Series home field advantage is decided by the All-Star Game.

4. Wasn't Christian Guzman once an All-Star?

5. The Twins acquisition of Brett Boone is meaningless if Brad Radke and Johan Santana aren't dominant the second half of the season. I love the Twins. But the way the AL West teams are coming on, and with the awakening of the BoSox and Yanks, I don't see the Twins making the playoffs this year. No one wants me to be wrong about this more than I do.

How Can You Heartbreak A Stranger?

Those of you who know me well, know how much I love to find random photos, ATM receipts, notes, grocery lists... So you'll be happy to know my cell phone struck gold for me over the weekend.

If there is a moral to the story you're about to read, it's don't drink and text message. Especially when the message you plan to send is pathetic, groveling, and bares your soul as a stained, hole infested pair of tighty-whities.

At 3 a.m. on Friday night (Saturday morning actually), I got a message on my cell phone. It was a text message. When I read it at 3 a.m. this was all I read:

The pain you cause me is really unfair and unnecessary.

Then when I looked at it again the next day, I found a bonus. There was more! I just hadn't scrolled down.

The pain you cause me is really unfair and unnecessary. Why do I tolerate you? I know... I know... Because I love you. But this is ridiculous. Good night.

An FBI profiler I ain't, but I judge the messenger to be a 23 year old white male who assumed his recipient was a 22 year old white female. Little did he know his message was actually sent to a 33 year-old white male. If I was a bolder person I would have called the phantom text messenger back, but I'm not going to do that. So I guess he/she will have to wonder why his/her boy/girlfriend never replied to his/her pathetic 3 a.m. text message.

My cell phone: a modern day dead letter office.

Throw the Bums Out

I figure if I get this out on a blog, Emily won't be have to hear my rants about the freaking state shutdown caused by the Minnesota legislature. Two quick points and then it will be off my chest.

1. I actually voted for the Green Party candidate, Ken Pentel, in the 2002 gubenatorial election. In the months that followed I wished I had supported Tim Penny more and voted for him. I could not ever imagine voting for Roger Moe, the Democrats' nominee. He seemed like an old deal maker and power broker more than anything else. He was uninspiring to say the least. But I wish I knew then what I know now.

I think we really could use Roger Moe either as governor or to take the place of that nitwit Dean Johnson. Moe would have brokered a deal long ago. I dislike Dean Johnson for the same reason I distrust Joe Lieberman. Both those guys were bought and sold by special interest years ago, but they are too self-righteous to admit it. At least with Moe, you knew what he was up to. He was going to put the heat on his fellow DFLers to vote a certain way by brokering deals with them or by flexing his muscles. We could use that now.

2. I am sick of all the blaming. Sure the GOP, DFL, and governor should all be pointing the fingers at themselves instead of at each other. But I also think we should stop blaming them and start blaming ourselves. Why the hell is it that the legislature was able to broker a last-minute bill to keep the state parks open during the shut down, but couldn't compromise on weightier issues? One reasons might be because the backlash of closing the parks the day before the July 4th weekend would have been 30 times what they are suffering right now.

"Sure it sucks that some state employees don't have jobs right now and that business of poor folks losing MinnCare stinks, but there will be hell to pay if you guys ruin my July 4th plans." I'll be honest, this is about how I feel. The rest areas being closed is the only thing that I can see affecting me by the shut down. And that's my point. Jackass voters like me don't raise hell unless the government's screw ups happen in my back yard. And I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

And this why we only have ourselves to blame. I have told Emily I am voting all Green and Independent party in the 2006 elections, at the state level. We'll see if my memory of this shutdown can last that long.

There Goes Our Neighborhood

Everyday I find a new reason to feel so very fortunate to live in the neighborhood we do. The latest business to crop up is Sea Salt, which is right by Minnehaha Falls in the concession and picnic shelter. They have fresh sea food for absurdly cheap prices. Click here to see for yourself.

Then go check it out.

Twin Cities Rocks

The Taste of Minnesota seems a little over-the-hill, but Emily and I went to see the Olympic Hopefuls followed by Bob Mould on Sunday night.

Damn, the Olympic Hopefuls are so very good. Very solid power pop rock. Anyone who gets a chance needs to check them out. But apparently that applies only to those of us who live in the Twin Cities, according to their tour calendar.

Bob Mould was a little disappointing. His show was billed as a solo acoustic act. But he left his acoustic guitar and brought an electric guitar instead. I have never been to a solo electric guitar show, but it was hard to hear any melody. We left after about five songs. I'll give Bob Mould credit, he is always experimenting and trying new things, and this was one more example.

Are You Shitting Me???

I will not bore you with the physiology of running, but trust me when I say this: there is a definite benefit to getting glucose into your system at the end of an endurance run or marathon. And the simpler the sugar to break down the better. For example, some people buy fancy glucose goo , and others, like me, save money and buy gummy bears or any other gummy candy.

Like Jelly Beans.

Jelly Belly knows this and is now marketing Sports Beans, which its website says, is "a first-of-its-kind jelly bean formulated to energize the body during exercise, [and] is the newest way to keep competitive."

Click here for the link.

I don't think I could shit out more bullshit, even if I was the mascot for the Durham Bulls wearing a Michael Jordan jersey. Jelly Beans' benefit to running is they are mostly pure, simple sugar. That's it. End of story. There's no need to make a special formula for them.

This is as stupid as that performance water, Propel, from Gatorade. But I don't blame these companies for marketing this crap. The consumers only have themselves to blame for buying all these products. More power to Gatorade and Jelly Belly if they can make a profit.

My Impersonation of the Spurs

This weekend I went fishing, just like the Spurs are doing now that they are NBA champs. There's few things I love more than fishing in the summer, and watching the Spurs win a title is one of them. The Spurs' titles from 1999 and 2003 were sweet, but not as sweet as 2005's. This is partly because the Spurs had to face a tough opponent this time around and mostly because it was game seven.

Also, the 1999 and 2003 titles were very lonely experiences for me. I was stuck up here with a bunch a Timberwolves fans who were either apathetic or bitter about the Finals. I watched the games by myself.

Well, this year I learned that misery loves company. A friend from high school was in town for work and had to watch games 6 and 7 with me. Clearly we both wanted to be in south Texas to celebrate the title; we felt trapped in Minneapolis. But we made the best of it, and had our own victory parade through the heart of the Longfellow, Phillips, and Uptown neighborhoods of Minneapolis.

Emily took some pictures of our celebration and posted them on her blog. Once I learn how to use Flickr to post photos, I'll put some pictures of my own up on this site.

It has been an awesome week. I finally have been able to celebrate a Spurs title with a friend who loves the Spurs as much as I do. I have talked to several old friends from high school as a result. And even though life supposedly got back to normal after the playoffs ended, I still had an ultimate escape weekend and went fishing up north.

The weather was perfect yesterday. At the watering hole near the lakes were fishing on, I had beer, fries, and a cheeseburger for lunch and then again for dinner. In between burgers, I caught about 20 fish with a friend (most of which were bass and none of which were keepers--but a northern did snap my line). And we made like an Old Milwaukee commercial in the evening drinking beer and bullshtting over a bonfire.

Maybe reality will kick in tomorrow.

Life Is Beautiful

SPURS RULE!!!!!!!!

So much to say and no time to do so. I was up until 2:30 am last night and didn't fall asleep until 3 a.m. I was so amped. And I probably woke up ten times last night with one word ringing in my head,
"

SPUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURS

"

Eddie Rubber, Meet My Freind Johnny Road

Or, "Eddie Shit Just Hit Johnny Fan!!"

Or, game 7 is tonight.

No need for any platitudes so I'll make a few observations and move on.

1. This is the first time the Spurs have been in a game 7 since 1990 against the Portland Trail Blazes. Most Spurs fnas remember this game for the The Pass. No need to revisit that heartbreaking game again (Spurs lost a nail biter in overtime).

2. I am not feeling good about tonight's game. How can I? My team is the one who lost three of the last four. The one thing that gives me confidence is Manu has shown he is Mr. Clutch time and time again this year, dating back to the Olympics.

3. For the first time ever Tim Duncan is the so called "x-factor" instead of a known entity. He was awesome in 1999 and 2003. Not so much in 2005. Sure he has bad ankles and David Robinson is in row 7 of the crowd and not playing next to him. But that doesn't excuse the missed free-throws. Manu can keep the Spurs close on his own, but he'll need a solid performance from Duncan in every aspect of the game for the Spurs to win. If it wasn't for Robert Horry in game 5, I would have suggested all Spurs fans get a cute little goat costume for Halloween and tell people they were dressed as Tim Duncan.

But no matter what happens tonight,

SPURS RULE!!!

Rock and Roll Lifestyle?

Soul Asylum's bassist, Karl Mueller, died at age 41 this week of throat cancer.

When I was in high school I was enamored with the Twin Cities' music scene (so maybe it's no coincidence I live here now), and Soul Asylum was at the center of it. They also used to come to play at Grinnell once a year.

Soul Asylum was such a great band in the late 80s and early 90s. They struggled with their bout with fame but Hang Time, Made To Be Broken, and And The Horse They Rode In On were required listening for me on a daily to weekly basis back in college in high school.

Anytime you hear or read that a rock and roller dies young, you figure he was living a crazy Chris Farley life of self-destruction. While throat cancer is usually tied to the self-destructive habit of smoking, what struck me in reading about Mueller's life is how he was pretty much just an average guy.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Another longtime friend and local music maven, LeeAnn Weimar, said: "Karl was an intelligent guy and had a dry, sarcastic, sardonic wit. And he was a damn good cook. He and [his wife] Mary Beth liked to entertain. He was a really good friend."...

...Said Minneapolis singer-songwriter Paul Metsa: "Karl was blue-collar and a barroom buddy in the best sense of the word. He had a tremendous work ethic. I will never forget seeing him on a Friday night on David Letterman and the following Monday working the kitchen at the Loon Bar and Café downtown."

As for Mueller's bass playing, Metsa called it "both deceptively effortless and incredibly powerful."

Said Hart(Grant Hart of Husker Du fame): "It was never a flashy thing, but that was the core of his humility."

Pat Montague, owner of J.D. Hoyt's restaurant and bar, where Mueller's wife used to work, knew him "as a guy who did crossword puzzles at the bar every day. You'd never know he was in the music business. He was a down-to-Earth guy."

Mueller could often be seen walking his two Scottie dogs -- one black, one white -- around his south Minneapolis neighborhood. But he was famous for what he did with Soul Asylum for more than two decades.

Click here for the whole story.

94! 94! 94!

One final post from Emily's ten year reunion. Technically, it was my 11 year reunion, but I was the only representative of 1994 present. Am I the only guy who robbed the Class of 1995 cradle? I must be.

One part of reunion weekend at Grinnell is when they take your class photo. Seeing as how this was the class of 1995's reunion, I didn't have to worry about the photo this time around. But as Emily and I were leaving one party to go to another, we stopped to take the....

THE CLASS OF 1994 GROUP PHOTO

If the picture above could have a dialogue bubble above my head it would say, "The class of '94 will fuck your shit up you class of 93 and 95 sons of bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah and to all the other classes before and after, eat it you beeeeeeeeaaaatches!! 94 is in the muthafuckinhouseyall!!!!!! 94! 94! 94!"

Bad Influence

Since Emily and I have been married, there has been a disturbance in the force. Not my force, but hers. Specifically, when she goes on trips with or without me she sometimes packs the day she leaves (sometimes even hours before). I have been doing this since I first packed to go to summer camp at age eight. But Emily used to pack like seven months in advance.

But episodes like last-minute packing did little to prepare me for...

THE ROLL OF TOILET PAPER THAT NEVER GOT SECURED IN ITS CUBBY


Behold the empty roll of toilet paper...



This seemingly obscure toilet paper tube is a historic artifact in that it never made it to the cubby of our bathroom. We ran out of toilet paper and I got some more and didn't bother putting it onto to the toilet paper holder. That just seems like too much damn work to me.

Every fifth toilet paper roll or so, I'll notice that Emily has decided she's not going to do it either, and I'll end of doing it myself. But this last time I decided what would happen if I let it go. Would she eventually cave and put the damn roll on its holder herself? She didn't blink either and the result is Emily is the first wife in the history of time, and I am the 3248842309th husband in the history of time to use a roll of toilet paper until its bitter end without ever putting it in its holder.

It's scary how much I'm influencing her, and in all the wrong ways. I am known for my lack of powers of observation. But last night we went out and I showed her the hat I was wearing and she said "cool." The I went and switched hats 30 seconds later. She didn't notice until four hours later. Pretty soon she'll be getting mad at Spurs games and letting the dog lick her face.

Ford vs. Chevy

Matt's vs. 5-8.

One of the cool things about south Minneapolis is it is home of its own culinary phenom: the Jucy Lucy. A few neigborhood joints in St. Paul have gotten on the Jucy Lucy bandwagon, but the source of the Jucy Lucy is deeply rooted in south Minneapolis. Either the 5-8 Bar of Matt's first created the Jucy, depedning on whom you talk to. My gut tells me Matt's is the kind of place that would spawn a Jucy Lucy.

If you are unfamiliar with what a Jucy Lucy is, click here for a nice historical overview.

Emily and I have been to Matt's at least a dozen times. I love their fries and on occasion have had two Jucy Lucys in one sitting. We've also been to the 5-8 many times, but last night I had their Jucy Lucy for the first time.

It's a tough call deciding which is better, but Matt's is probably the winner based on overall dining experience. Both places have lousy service, but it's easier to forgive Matt's since they typically staff only one server and cook to run the whole place. I liked the 5-8 Jucy Lucy because it was a little bigger, so you got more hamburger flavor, but this wasn't enough to overcome the superior fries you can get at Matt's.

Then there is ambience. Now that Matt's is smoke free, you actually get the fun of being in a dive bar without all the smokey side effects. The 5-8 feels like you are in any other sports bar. Like a smaller Champps. But either way, you can't go wrong.

Now the question is, do I go check out the Jucy Lucy imitators? There's Adrian's (we used to live 50 feet from the place, literally), Williams (not likely, I think you have be under 23 to hang out there), and the Cardinal (the closest Jucy Lucy to where we live now). Or do I leave it to this guy?

My arteries and heart would probably prefer the latter.

Blog to the Rock

Last weekend Emily and I went back to Grinnell for Emily's ten year reunion.

On Saturday night we went to a party at the Harris Center and it felt like we were back in 1993. As we were leaving a few members of the current cross country team were breezing through. One of the guys recognized me. We shot the shit for awhile and I was able to talk one of the guys into going for a run with me the next morning.

This was a very good way for me to feel old in a hurry. As we were running and I was struggling like hell to keep up, he said it was "kick ass" to see a guy my age still running, which I guess was supposed to be a compliment. Then he asked me what it was like in Grinnell 20 years ago.

"I don't know. I was 13 and lived in Texas," I said.

That ended that conversation.

At some point during our run he told me to check out The $lum. The $lum has been an off-campus house that members of the cross country team have lived in for the past 20 years. And to be honest, the place is a shit hole and the $108 monthly rent we paid (per person) back in 1994 was a rip-off. Anyway, he said to check it out because "it's been all fixed up."

Emily and I did check it out and it looked exactly the same. Debris from a party nights before. Drywall dust mingling with sofa lint. Empties of Busch Light strewn with empty Gatorade bottles. Bikes on the lawn. Shitty DVD boxes (well back then we had VHS), enjoyed all in the name if irony, sitting on the Goodwill sofas. And a few skinny runners slowly getting their synapses up to speed, after handicapping them by partying well past a 33 year-old has-been husband's bedtime. I guess The $lum never changes. Even the Talk to the Rock picture was still on the wall (unfortunately, that is indeed me in the picture below).





Click here for a larger picture.

This is the original document, from which about 474784389 copies were made and pasted to every available window, bulletin board, phone poll, tree, outhouse, henhouse... on the Grinnell campus.

It all started one day when I mailed a week-old tray of nachos to my friend via intracampus mail.

These nachos were controversial as another housemate had made them for all of us during the World Series. But none of us ate them. In his mind since he cooked the nachos, he didn't have to clean them up. In our collective mind we figured, "we didn't eat your shitty nachos or even ask that you make them, so you clean them up, Mr. Nacho Chef."

In an Olympic passive-aggressive battle of four wills against one, those nachos sat there gathering $lum bacteria and dust for a week, until I grabbed them and stuffed them in an envelope meant for mailing newspapers. My grandma had just mailed me a months' worth of sports pages so I could keep up with the south Texas sports scene, especially the San Antonio Spurs. So I emptied out the sports pages and put the bacteria culture of nachos in the envelope.

I was about to take passive-aggressiveness to a Hall of Fame level and mail the nachos to Mr. Nacho Chef when the Nacho Chef himself came walking up the steps, back from a class.

"What are you doing?" asked Emeril of the Nacho Kingdom.

"Ummm mailing these nachos to...." and then I rattled off the name of another housemate, who I had absolutely no beef with whatsoever, although I found his obsession with Rush to be quaint.

In retrospect, direct confrontation would have been the best way to solve Nachogate. But I didn't have retrospection back then. Hell I didn't even have introspection. All I had was a fear of confrontation that was only matched by my alpha male stubborness.

This is a bad combination, because then you end up in situations like this one: you're mailing Rubella Nachos to Grinnell's biggest Rush fan. Nevermind that Rush Fan is not only your ally in Nachogate, but one of your closest friends.

But the prank was too good to pass up. So I ended up mailing the nachos to Rush Fan knowing he would have a sense of humor about it (although I knew he'd get me back somehow).

The whole mail room stunk the next day because of my prank. I can see very clearly why college kids are sometimes despised by the rest of the public. I am very sorry to the mailroom man and the HazMat team who had to deal with the Bird Flu Nachos and the stench they rode in on. For those of you who regularly read Emily's blog, you now can get a whiff of why she thought I was obnoxious when we were in college.

So it was nasty and gross and the guy who worked the mailroom knew he'd never catch the perpatrator. So to vent he gave Rush Fan a good talking to. Revenge did come to me. In the form of Talk to the Rock. Rush Fan grabbed the most white trash looking picture of mine he could find (there were a lot to choose from) and made the poster you saw above.

So one fall morning as I was walking to class I was very shocked to pass 28434 pictures of me and that I was running a group therapy session three nights a week.

Professors would make jokes about it in class. One history professor suggested all questions during his lecture be directed to me, or the "talk the rock guy in the back row" as he called me. Funny stuff.

Some people were put off, thinking it was serious, wondering where I got off trying to solve the campus' problems with masturbation, sexuality, stress, and alchohol in no particular order.

Emily thinks I should mail an 8X10 frame to the $lum so they can preserve the historic document behind glass.

Well I guess the moral of the story is: don't mail rotting nachos to your friends as a prank, especially when your friends are funnier and smarter than you. Or maybe the moral has something to do with directly facing conflict and striving for compromise (can the Minnesota and national legislators learn from this?). Nah, fuck that deep shit. The moral is that it's not cool to mail Staff Infection Nachos and SPURS RULE.

Spurs Rule

From the way Hubie Brown was calling game 1 tonight you'd think:

a) The Pistons were up by 30 at halftime

and

b) The Pistons were the only team on the court.

But then Manu went to work and suddenly the Spurs did indeed exist.

Game 2 will be much more intense and stressful. If Rasheed Wallace is a bigger factor, or any factor at all in game 2, the Spurs will have their hands full.

Damn. I was disappointed the Heat lost. I wanted Shaq the Villian in the Finals. But this is just as stressful to watch. So intense. So physical.

GO SPURS GO!!!

The People Have, I Mean, A Person Has Spoken, er Typed

An e-mail from a crazed Spurs fan in south Texas:

You better get on the stick with your blog, Bub. I finally found it and you refuse to update it. Come on, they won the Western Conference Finals, doesn’t that deserve some kind of entry? The coverage here has been great. Academy Sports ran out of their Spurs paraphernalia the first day (they sold a million dollars in Spurs gear). The caps look pretty nice. People have gone Spurs nuts, but as usual, they express this as emphatic waving, smiling and cheering. Got to love San Antonio.

Spurs fans are as great and compassionate as any group of fans I know, although I may be slightly biased.

And I do have a lame excuse for not blogging, even as the Spurs blazed past Phoenix. The computer was in a bag for over a week as I sanded off all the joint compound in the office. There is still a lot of work to be done in this room (Bob Vila I ain't), but at least there is a place to hook-up our laptop again. And then I was in Chicago and was at Grinnell's Ten Year Reunion weekend for Emily's class (she graduated in 1995, so it was technically my 11 year reunion, although I was the sole visitor from 1994).

I have a few things worth posting from the reunion weekend, as does Emily, I'm sure. Eventually I'll get around to that.

But that is neither here nor there. The point of this post is to say I hope to start posting with some regularity and

SPURS RULE!!!!!

Where's Shaq? Where's Kobe? Bring on the Pistons!!!!!!

This should be a great Finals. I don't know if I can take the stress. When the Spurs were in the 1999 and 2003 Finals it was foregone conclusion they'd beat the inferior Eastern Conference opponent. Not so this time. Detroit is tough, battle-tested, and there defense is a good as any north of the Alamo.

Ironically, the Pistons/Spurs series will feature two of the greatest defensive teams in recent memory. The irony being they both share nicknames of things that make things go.

To hell with irony. To hell with the Pistons.

GO SPURS GO!!!!!

Emily ROCKS!! Reason #7234

Life imitates art.

Does anyone remember an episode from The Cosby Show where Denise makes a shirt for Theo? Emily loves her Cosby Show and claims that episode is a classic.

And as I type this, she is making like Denise, and making a shirt based on a designer shirt she saw in the store that cost three figures. She is using $3.00 worth of scarves (give or take a dollar) to make this shirt. Only rather than making the shirt for someone else, Emily is making it for herself. And also, this shirt should turn out much better than the one Denise made for Theo.

I don't think too many people in south Minneapolis are in the basement right now making a shirt out of scarves. In fact, maybe only one person is, and she two floors below me.

SPURS RULE part 2387

Anyone following the Spurs/Sonics series remotely closely has been subjected to stories of Ray Allen (a Seattle guard) complaining about the rough play of Spurs' defensive specialist Bruce Bowen. Hell, Allen's been crying about Bruce for two years now.

Click here for just a teeny sample of Allen's whining.

Well, his pissing and moaning paid off, sort of, as the refs called five fouls on Bowen last night and he played only 17 of 48 minutes.

The result? Spurs win by 18.

And here's my point. Allen is the leader of the Sonics, and no team will ever get anywhere with a leader like him. He has spent the last week chirping about Bruce Bowen, but hardly mentioned the 11 other guys on the Spurs. So the message he sent to his team is "this series about how Bruce Bowen guards me."

Bullshit. It's about how your 12 guys match-up against the Spurs' 12. Bowen was taken out of the game last night. So you got what you wanted, Ray Allen, and you got run out of the gym. Cliches have staying power because they are true, like the cliche, "basketball is a team game."

What has bothered me about this entire Bruce Bowen vs. Ray Allen drama is that not one person from the Seattle, San Antonio, or national media outlets has called Ray Allen out on any of this. There's been a lot of "Is Bruce Bowen a dirty player or not?" chatter, but no one, to my knowledge has asked, "Is Ray Allen being a selfish by focusing only on how Bruce Bowen plays him too rough?"

Maybe in Ray Allen's world he won last night's game: Ray Allen 25 points, Bruce Bowen 2 points. But the real score would actually be Ray Allen 25, Spurs 108.

Michael Jordan. Larry Bird. Hakeem Olajuwan. Magic Johnson. Tim Duncan. Those are true leaders. I challenge anyone to find me one occasion where any of those guys spent three fucking days bitching about one player, let alone two years.

This is why, as pretty as Ray Allen is to watch, he'll be in as memorable as Tom Chambers and Dan Majerle when his career is over. Never heard of or forgot about those guys? My point exactly.

Go Spurs Go

More Sadness

Symbols rarely evoke emotions for me, except for one. One of the absolutely saddest sights for me is the American flag flying at half mast. And that is what I saw out my office window all day, as St. Paul had to bury one of its police officers who was killed in the line of duty. I could never find the courage to be a cop. Especially one who goes undercover to bust human and drug trafficking rings.

Today, this letter was in the Opinions sections of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

A true hero

As director of PRIDE (from Prostitution to Independence, Dignity and Equality) at Family and Children's Service, I have to tell you about our experience with Sgt. Gerry Vick.

He was a remarkable human being. I can't begin to tell you the number of women and teens Gerry helped get out of prostitution.

And do you know how he did it? He genuinely cared about them -- about their lives, their children and their futures.

He listened to their stories and wanted to know about their families. He even shared things about his family and his life with them. He treated everyone the same: with dignity and respect.
When the news hit the streets about Gerry, we all cried. How could someone who had saved so many be gone?

The PRIDE women and teens he had helped and our staff are all devastated. Our hearts go out to his family.

We know the work that he and the St. Paul Police Department are doing to end the vicious cycle of prostitution will continue.

But it won't be the same without Gerry. He personally changed lives every day, and many days, he literally saved them.

Lani Suarez, Minneapolis.

Click here for the link.

Also, a college fund has been established for the children of Sergeant Vick:

Sergeant Jerry Vick Memorial Fund
C/O City and County Credit Union
144 11th Street East
Saint Paul, MN 55101

Chung Chung

There are only three things that I go out of my way to watch on TV: the Twins, the Spurs, and Law and Order. I watch Law and Order for the same reason I eat beef jerkey. It's solid, thought-free, guilt-free entertainment. But I never thought I'd see a Law and Order good enough to blog about.

So did anyone else see tonight's Law and Order? Damn, it was good. It was about a guy who was arrested for murder nine years after the fact. He came awfully close to having his charges dismissed, all because he became a born again Christian after he committed his murder.

He had atoned for his sins in the highest court possible, the eyes of the Lord. He could serve society better on the streets, than behind bars. Or at least that is what his lawyer argued.

The judge threw the motion to dismiss out, and the murderer decides to plead guilty after all because the Lord showed him, nine years later, that was the right thing to do. All's well that ends well, but the defense attorney made a chilling comment at the end of the show.

She said, and I paraphrase, "If that case had gone to trial, the way things are going in this country, I'm sure I could have had a hung jury."

It's scary becasue it's true. This morning, for the first time since Norm Coleman beat Walter Mondale/Paul Wellstone, I felt depressed about the state of affairs in this country and state. I can't stand to see how many American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are being killed in Iraq, but I stay hopeful that we will see that mess through to a good end. But this morning, as I read the paper, I felt that for the first time corporate America and the religous right have indeed taken over our country and we, the real silent majority will never get it back. Tonight's Law and Order was a fitting conclusion to today.

I was really turned off by Steve Earle in his last swing through Minneapolis. As a wise woman in St. Hedwig, Texas said to me, "He just seems like an angry little man." But I do like his cynical optomism. As he concludes in his liner notes from his latest album, "Yours for the motherfuckin' revolution."

Happy Mother's Dawn

The St. Paul Saints, the Twin Cities' minor league baseball team, offers many things the Twins don't, like 80 mile per hour fastballs and piss poor fielding, but no one goes to see quality baseball. The go for all the other fun things a Saints game offers:

Outdoor baseball
A pig that brings the balls out to the umpire
A nun that gives massages
Haircuts
A hot tub party in the outfield

The Saints slogan is "Fun is good." They forgot that sleep is good too.

On Mother's Day, they had an exhibition game that started under the lights at 5:35 a.m. Some 200+ crazed fans spent the night at the ballpark and 2000+ went to the game. The rationale for the early start was that this would allow fans and players alike to have the rest of the day to spend with their family.

The Saints is a remarkable organization. The baseball is mediocre on a good day, and management knows this. So they find other ways to sell their product that don't involve comparing their experience to the quality of play at a Twins game.

Click here for the story.

Reason #98748 Why SPURS RULE

The Spurs' All-Star forward, Tim Duncan, is also a huge geek. It turns out he is a wicked dungeons and dragons player. Sure the story is from 1997, but it's still funny.

From Spursreport.com

San Antonio Express-News (Texas)

November 30, 1997, Sunday , FINAL

HEADLINE: Duncan's unusual hobby and more unusual request

BYLINE: Jerry Briggs

Tim Duncan has a couple of obsessions not usually equated with today's hip-hop NBA: Renaissance fairs, samurai swords, and most importantly, Dungeons and Dragons. Known as "D&D" among afficinados, the fantasy role playing game engages players' imaginations as they trek through the imaginary world of GreyHawk. Along the way, players encounter friendly and hostile dragons, elves and a variety of otherworldly beings.

"It's a great escape from the rigors of the NBA," Duncan said while rolling his lucky 20 sided die while casting a spell of invisibility.

"I got hooked on D&D at Wake (Forest). Me and some buddies would play for hours at a time until I had to go to practice. My character is a 13th level lawful evil sorceror named Merlin (after the magician from Arthurian legend). Today, he has 98 hit points and an armor class of 2. My Charisma is 21. That's perfect."

The game's jargon aside, Duncan has made a more permanent commitment to his love of D&D.

"I have a tattoo of Merlin. He's like my alter-ego."

D&D's traditional player community is often labelled as "nerdy," but that doesn't faze Duncan.

"If playing D&D and dressing up in my purple sorcerors hat, velvet cape and magic wand is nerdy, call me a nerd. Though I'd prefer you called me Merlin," he grinned.

His obsession with Merlin and the black arts led to Duncan's quiet feud with the NBA this off-season. Wanting the back of his jersey to read, "Merlin," instead of his last name, Duncan sought the help of the NBA Players Association. Citing the NBA uniform code, Duncan's unusual request was rejected by the league.

Click here for the link.

Cottage Cheese

Emily's uncle has a blog now. Last weekend the Minnesota Men of Emily's family went to Wisconsin to open her family cottage. The coolest part of her cottage is that it is on the very land that was homesteaded by her great-great, hell I don't know how many greats, grandfather, 150 years ago.

So Emily's uncle documented the weekend on his blog. If you want to peep into what my weekend was like, click here.

Sometimes Only Platitudes Will Do

David Hackworth passed away today. I am not big on using words like "hero" or "good man," especially since I never met the guy. But if I ever had to apply those terms to complete strangers, he'd be right at the top of my list with Paul Wellstone.

Click here for more on his life.

Be Careful What You Wish For II

So we are now beginning chapter 274908 of the Build The Twins A New Stadium saga. For those who don't know, but for some reason care, the county that Minneapolis is part of (Hennepin County) is likely to have a .15 sales tax increase to fund the Twins an outdoor stadium. Click here for the story. Here is my take on the deal:

1. The seven Hennepin County commissioners will decide if this stadium funding bill will pass. There will be no general election by we the people of Hennepin County on this tax hike (which translates into three cents for every $20 spent). I for one am not opposed to the fact that we don't vote on this, even though I am opposed to this tax money going to the Twins and not cops, teachers, kids, health care, libraries... But so it goes in a representative government.

Our commissioner is Peter McLaughlin and it looks like he'll support this tax. Something to remember that when he's up for re-election; but we can't expect a county-wide vote each time the commissioners vote on something we dissapprove of.

2. For this stadium bill to pass, our governor, Tim Pawlenty will ultimately have to sign off on it. It will be interesting to see how Mr. No Taxes will spin this one, because there is no way in hell he's going to veto this bill. He'd rather be known for breaking his NO TAXES pledge and put the screws to one county (even if its the most populous county in Minnesota), than being known as the governor who killed the Twins new stadium deal.

3. The Twins will pony up $125 million for a stadium that will ultimately cost $478 million to bill. This is, amazingly, as sweet an offer we can expect from Carl Pohlad, the Twins owner. Lost in all this is the fact that the Twins get all the money for the naming rights. We pay for more than have of this millionaire's new stadium, and he sucks up all the profits. It's good to be the king isn't it, Carl Pohlad?

4. But there is one more important part about the whole stadium deal that has also been lost in the shuffle. Has anyone parked in the parking lot behind the Target Center that is the proposed site for the new stadium? If you have, did you notice the huge garbage incinerator right by it? Have you parked there when it is giving off the ripe odor of trash? It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, you want to get away from that parking lot as soon as possible. The last thing you think, "This would be a nice place to have a beer and watch a baseball game for three hours."

So imagine the dog days of August, with a hot wind from the west blowing the scent of the garbage incinerator into the stadium. You'd better pray for a pitcher's duel. Like I said above, be careful what you wish for. Suddenly that OPEN AIR stadium idea stinks.

And I thought it might be annoying to hear the trains blast by you at Safeco in Seattle. I'd take a bleeding eardum over spending $20 to smell buring trash for nine innings

Vast WRight Wing Conspiracy

This story is older than my wild turkey story, but I've been meaning to tell it for awhile. It goes all the way back to Opening Day. On Opening Day, as any other day, I took the dog for his walk so he could piss on every tree between Lake Street and the Ford Bridge. We walked past many sidewalks decorated with sidewalk chalk. Those crazy kids. But one sidewalk artist's work caught my eye. What was notable about this house is the yard had the a "NO WAR IN IRAQ" sign in its yard. This was in stark contrast to the big "W"s that the kids who lived there had drawn all over their sidewalk. At first I was a bit perplexed.

But these were cursive W's. Not the bold, print W the GOP uses to market its George Bush product. More like the cursive W found on the Washington Nationals hat. It turns out those kids were crazed baseball fans, not Bush fans!

But this got me to thinking. Why did the Nationals choose to put a W on their hat instead of an N? Sure it's hard to make an N look as cool as a W, and at best it was a 50/50 chance the owners would choose an N over W.

But I say it runs deeper than that. I say the owners, who are surely fat cat GOPs, chose their hat design wisely. Now they've tricked a bunch of Beltway Democrats into proudly walking around DC in RED hats decorated with a big W.

Bill Clinton had it right all along about the vast right wing conspiracy. So I say all the progressive Nats fans trade in their newly minted W hats for a BLUE Durham bulls hat with the big D on front for Democrat. Actually fuck that. Fuck the Democrats. They aren't the solution to our nation's ills. They're about 25% of the problem. Instead, dye your Nats hats green and tell get the word out: the W stands for WELLSTONE!



Image from http://www.yellowstonemagic.com


To quote Fred Willard from This Is Spinal Tap, "I'm joking of course."

Bob Vila of the Compost World

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I built something from scratch. In fifth grade I built a plant box for my mom, but that was from a kit. Anything we buy that reqires assembly, Emily does. I am sad excuse for a manly man, I know.

But yesterday I built a holding cell for our compost. We already have one, but we bought that one. It's too small and doesn't ventilate, so we needed a second one. So I got some chicken wire, two posts, and hooked the chicken wire to the posts and the backyard fence with bailing wire. It's very ugly. But the good news is, even Bob Vila can't make a compost pile look good, if he is only allowed to use the rudimentary supplies I used.

Next up: how to hang a picture.

Jackassalope Food Review

This weekend Emily and I did some fine dining. Friday night we went to The Craftsman, on 43rd Avenue and Lake Street. Many moons ago I blogged about the loss of Molly Quinn's an Irish bar in our neighborhood that was evicted by a greedy landlord. Well, Molly Quinn's moved down the street and The Craftsman is now in its old space. And they imporved tbhe ambiance of the place tenfold. So all's well that ends well. Anyway, we had smoked salmon appetizer and I had a flank steak. Emily had a fish that resembled a snapper. I can't remember the name of the fish, but I definitely had the better food. We'll go again. It is worth checking out. It's yet another business that makes me think our neighborhood will be a very hip place to live in a few years (when we'll be too old to be hip, not that I ever was hip).

Click here for a more thorough review.

Then on Saturday, Emily was watching the morning news to see the temperature, so she would how warmly to dress for her morning run. In the process she saw a story about a breakfast spot that makes creme brulee french toast. It turned out to be a coffee shop, Wilde Roast Cafe, but a coffee shop with some of the best damn breakfast food I've ever had. I had an egg quesadilla. We were really there for the creme brulee french toast, but they were sold out, due to the publicity on the TV I guess. They also have a dinner menu that looks awesome. I can't wait to go back.

Click here to see what you've been missing.