Drama Mater

NEW BLOG - Methods of Escape

2007-09-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

I've changed blogs, friends. Set your bookmarks for the Methods of Escape:

http://methodsofescape.blogspot.com

Thanks!
-cK

The Curtain Falls

2007-05-20T19:56:00.000-05:00

The lake shot I take each return to the cabin. I'll return there soon, but the Drama Mater is done. A new blog will appear, though--perhaps--in September. I'd say, "Don't try to find me!" but I'll probably be blowing trumpets.

Now my charms are all o'erthrown...

I love this vista. Always. I wish it was more apparent on film that the lake opens up there in the distance, that the wall of trees breaks and leads you into larger water. It isn't clear from this spot, not on first look. One might feel hemmed in. But if you know it's there...

This Drama, At Least, Is Done

I'm keeping this blog up for the sake of having my regular read links along the side and for keeping a commenting profile. But otherwise I will not be blogging for the immediate future.

If I take it up again, it will be with a new blog, new name, new look. (The Drama has been Blog #2, and maybe I need another three or four-month hiatus before inventing Blog #3.)

Too much going on. Sleep needed, no time to sleep, no want of sleep. Much work to be done, much more work needed to be secured. And serious non-work work (i.e., fiction) needed for sanity. I miss that writing dearly, and it's been kicking at the walls in my head a great deal lately, so time to dedicate my free-writing time to that (and actual letters to be sent by post) again.

For those of you still writing online, I'm still reading.

But everyone, hey: You are good souls.
-cK

A Passage I Adore

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

- Bill Shakespeare, The Tempest

Tick Check Weekend

2007-05-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

Off to the cabin this weekend! Back Sunday afternoon.
-cK

On Behalf of Illinois...

2007-05-16T13:04:00.000-05:00

On behalf of the state in which I was born and out of which I rarely strayed before age 27, allow me to apologize for this.

Dammit.
-cK

The Meaning of Sports

2007-05-15T19:30:00.000-05:00

Zero. Absolutely zero. Our CEO pay packages are ridiculous enough, but how can we live in a nation that pays a guy $28 million to work once every five days (that is, to pitch baseballs) for five months of employment?

How can we let our publicly-owned companies invest billions in "sports marketing"? in skyboxes and advertisements and clothing licenses?

How can we let cities and states subsidize the construction of stadiums that will now cost over $1 billion?

How how how can we do this when at the outset of summer, when on this night, May 15, when I'm not even looking to watch sports (I've too much work to even have flipped through channels once tonight)--how is this possible when our two primary sports networks, ESPN and ESPN2, are showing:

a. A rerun of the 2006 Poker Championships, and
b. A rebroadcast of the National Spelling Bee?????

Were I going to watch "sports," right about now I'd accept some beefy gentlemen named Magnus throwing kegs over walls or maybe men in kilts flipping cabers.

C'mon, ESPN. Really. You couldn't put even a glimpse of a sport up against American Idol? Are you serious?
-cK

Amanda Cello

2007-05-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Recent events of indulgence have left me wondering whether bruschetta or mini-quiche is a more-satisfying culinary achievement.

The bruschetta is in my mind due to the steak and jalapeno-mango salsa bruschetta made by a friend in San Francisco during vacation with the Muse. (She has since duplicated this recipe. It's awesome.) It was an entirely different variety of bruschetta than I've had before. I love the traditional (basil, tomato, fresh cheese). I love the wintry varieties (e.g., greens, feta, balsamic, duck confit). And this spicey steak-daddy version was outstanding. An absolute joy.

The mini-quiche is in my thoughts because they were part of the open house Horn O' Plenty at the pad of friends Katie and Sunday this past weekend in celebration of Phillip's instrument-making degree.

Ol' boy broke out some of his work: an electric guitar with bass range, an acoustic, a mando-cello hybrid, and a cute ukelele.

The mini-quiches were a treat. Classic, yes (e.g., broccoli-cheese), but really good. I ate probably six of them. That's like an entire slice of quiche disguised through the bite-sized delivery scheme.

Of course, one need not play favorites. But if one did....

A last look at the spread:

Big thanks to Katie, Sunday, their 'Rents, and Phillip for inviting the Muse and I. It was part of a busy Saturday--must write up a note about the symphony soon!--but very welcomed. And Phillip: Good luck with the Maine trip!
-cK

Conversations with the Damned

2007-05-11T12:25:00.000-05:00

In a former life, I worked for five years in a conventional office and grew a bit more bitter about the world day by day. Now the ghost of that person sits here and recalls, sometimes with real anger, sometimes with deserving fondness, moments from that existence.

The Damned

The communication approaches of my former co-workers were often outrageous. One of them, however, I suspect was actually a social comic planted in the office by some former intern or producer of Candid Camera.

Her deadliest approach was this: to instigate conversation, then participate in it by simply repeating a few words of what you've said and adding an acknowledging "huh."

Example:

Her: So what's cK's story?
cK: Just drinking my coffee.
Her: Drinking coffee, huh?
cK: Yep. Just getting my day going.
Her: Getting it going, huh?
cK (still trying to play it cool): Yeah, you know. A lot to do today. I--
Her: A lot to do, huh?
cK (beginning to panic): I've two articles due.
Her: Two articles, huh?

Most conversations would end when she seemed to have extracted your energy (perhaps absorbing it into her own central core for later utilization). She might then return to the beginning of things, much as comics do to tie off their sets, and say,

Her: Boy, I tell ya. Just drinking coffee.

And then she'd walk away laughing.

Now, I will say this: She was very sweet. Painfully sweet. And that's why you could tolerate it. You might do things like keep your hands on the keyboard in hopes this would sign "No time to talk" (No time to talk, huh?), but you wouldn't correct her, really. Because she was a nice person.

But that conversation style. Oy! It's well worth trying on your friends. Just see how long you can get away with it before they either clam up (having caught on) or you just start laughing.
-cK

Kittens and Questions

2007-05-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking today of a former neighbor who moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on his playwriting. He'd sold two one-act plays to theater companies ahead of this so packed up and headed west.

From what I recall of infrequent updates, he was happy and doing well and still writing, though not making his money or building a reputation with his theater efforts. (I recall the plays being very bizarre things that really couldn't take off. The sort of productions in which hosiery might be a character.)

So he lived across the hall from me. This was in southern Illinois. One day he went out and picked up a kitten from the animal shelter. He was really happy. The kitten was supercute. And he sat in his apartment smoking and watching the cute little kitten scampering about the cinder block and wood plank bookshelves, about the lazy-boy, about the second-hand, sextagonally shaped end tables.

He often stayed in his apartment and smoked. It worried me for a long time. I tried to keep the writers out and about and talking to one another. Reclusiveness, I thought, was a self-destructive trait for what was already a lonely pursuit.

After four days, I saw him outside smoking on the stoop so popped out to see how he was. He wasn't feeling very good. He'd brought the kitten back.

What was wrong?

It had been coughing, apparently, from the amount of smoke in his apartment.

Q & A

I submitted a number of questions to various bloggers. Their responses can be found here:

Country Mouse Tales
Mips, the Skyylark
Lollie's Follies
Jana

It's further along in the week than I want it to be. I want the weekend, yes. I want Saturday (open house for a friend who just earned an instrument making degree, drinks with my sister and her husband, going to the symphony with my Muse, and possibly meeting up with a writer friend I haven't seen for 7 years).

But I've much to accomplish in the next 24. Would appreciate Hiro's power from Heroes right about now.
-cK

You Been Served

2007-05-08T10:28:00.000-05:00

At Boulevard in San Francisco, our waiter was an oddity. He sounded as if he was from Louisiana, had a totally bald head and meticulously clean-shaven face, and something of a chickeny thinness. He had a habit of winking, half in jest, half seemingly because a light was in his eye. It was a wink that had a flinch. And he'd jut out his jaw, and he'd lean forth to take an order and his head would do a little upward hitch almost the way a pet's might when seeking to be petted.

And he was an awesome waiter. Very good. And perhaps that's one of the elements of a great dining experience. It isn't just the company (which was grand) or the food (which was letter-worthy), it may be the good quirks of a great server.

The triple chocolate truffle cake from Boulevard. Mmmmm.

I'll contrast that with the guy working at Pizza Luce on Selby the other day. It makes me sad for a place when the wait staff really isn't with it.

So I'd brought a bag of coins to the bank, thrown 'em through the change machine, and out popped a receipt for $19. Pizza money, I says to myself. I headed for Luce.

The guy working the bar took my order. He had a Jeff Spicoli aura. (Spicoli was Sean Penn's character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)

Things were good in general. I worked on the free wi-fi while waiting for food. Then it arrived, but I was not given any napkins or flatware. So I looked over at the servers. Three of them. They were talking animatedly, oblivious to the five tables or so in the room.

I wandered over. I stood in their circle. They kept on talking. To one another. Huh?

Finally the woman with the tattoos said, while stretching, "I need to go put peanut butter on my jelly...I mean jelly on my peanut butter sandwich."

She turned into the kitchen. Spicoli walked after her. He did this duck walk with his ass sticking out. "I'll peanut butter your jelly," he said. He added a countrified, "Hyuck, hyuck."

At this point the tall guy with the tattooed arms--the guy who seemed to be the sentient member of the bunch--noticed me. His eyes widened. "Ah, oh, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"Napkins would be good."

"Cool." He handed me napkins.

I returned to my table but realized that I would indeed need fork and knife. So I waited a couple three minutes. The PBJ girl was in the kitchen eating. One assumes it was a PBJ. The table she'd brought some waters to earlier looked around helplessly. Eventually, the tall guy with the tattoos took care of them.

I waited maybe three minutes. At that point, Spicoli returned to the bar. I walked up there and asked for silverware. The tall guy observed this. Spicoli handed me flatware wrapped in a napkin and said, slowly, stoner-like, "My faux pas."

When he walked away, the tall guy said to him, "You are the worst bartender ever."

He might be.

I will end with a fonder memory. Oh, that cake...
-cK

San Francisco

2007-05-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

Had to photograph it. Had to.

Finally I'm getting things in order. New accounting software has been purchased and 2007's fiscal year properly organized well-ahead of next year's filing (and next month's incorporation). More importantly, I'm finally getting around to recalling the San Francisco / Oakland / Sonoma trip that the Muse and I took April 27 - May 1.

A Few Notes, Mostly Visual

I should have used a macro setting on this photo of the Muse's dessert, but the real point is that the dinner and desserts at Boulevard are fantastic. Lord. The four of us--Erin, cK, Scott and Daniel--just sat there sort of blissed out by the end of the meal. We'd had a late dinner on that Saturday (Reservation at 9 pm), and we'd been a bit ambivalent about that, but the late dinner was really nice. The restaurant was still very lively with the 7 pm and 8 pm diners blissed out and laughing and the 9 pm reservations coming in with eagerness to get to it. We weren't fortunate enough to sit in the room with the wonderful Bay Bridge view, but that's no matter. It was a wonderful dinner. Erin and I are going to write a letter of praise to the pastry chef, Jessica Sullivan.

Our hosts in a moment of false suspicion. Daniel (right) owns an excellent hair studio. Scott suffers from Calculust.

We got to sneak in some brunch with friends Andy, Jakki and cute little Billie at the New Zealander in Alameda. We miss these kids in the Twin Cities!

Sunset burning through the fog and overcast sky as we took the ferry away from the city.

Alcatraz? or fog-borne boat?

I'm looking really ragged from the Sunday wandering in San Francisco and Monday's long day of touring Sonoma and drinking wine, but it was such a good trip. Aptly, we snapped this photo at the truly gorgeous Paradise Ridge vineyard. So very comfortable up there and great wine. Though they produce only 5000 cases per year, one of their distributors is in Minnesota. The wine shop on my block, Solo Vino, sells it. Mmmm.

More soon. (And those of you who asked for five questions will be getting those in the next 24 hours!)
-cK

Q & A

2007-05-02T16:47:00.000-05:00

Lollie recently participated in a Q & A blog thing. She invited a writer to ask her five questions. Then Lollie posted the Q & A with an invitation to her readers to invite five questions from her for them to answer on their sites. Here goes Lollie's questions to me:

1) Which has had a greater influence on your life: Paper or plastic?
Paper. True, a segment of the plastics industry has provided most of my post-college income, but I write obsessively. I could exist in other work situations, but I won't give up writing.

2) What celebrity hair could you envision on your head, and what is it that appeals to you about it?
I like the simple yet flexible styles seen on David Beckham's head. (I wouldn't mind having his face too.) I can't shoot for any celebrity hair that's too outrageous. My head won't cooperate with that...and I despise greasy hair (which is in stupid vogue these days). But if I followed Beckham I could sport the faux hawk you encouraged not long ago, Lol.

Of course, the celebrity hair style I tend to wear is something more like Edward Norton's. This is to say, "cleverly without style." (I think he may be aided by hair plugs.)

3) If you had to have a hand cut off, would you choose your useful right hand that you would miss terribly or your trainable left that would be less missed?
Wow. How did I get to Iran? Oh, well. Cut off the left, please. I know I might get a tv movie made about me if I had to learn how to write with my left hand, but I'd rather maintain functionality.

4) Where do you want to end your days?
I'm going to interpret this as a retirement question rather than an actual death situation question (in which case I might say, "Well-cared for in a hospital renowned for not killing patients either through malice or negligence" or possibly "standing cluelessly with a NYC map in the ever-expanding shadow of a rapidly descending grand piano"). I haven't seen enough places in this world to know where specifically, but I'd want it to be by a large body of water, I believe. (No bathtub drownings, thank you.) An ocean or a lake. Maybe even a major canal in a waterfront city, such as in Copenhagen. And I'd want to be either buried or have my ashes buried or scattered at the Madge Evergreen Cemetery in Washburn County, Wisconsin.

Then again, it would be fun to be snorted by Keith Richards.

5) What other normal girl name suits The Muse? Example: Could she get away with being named Susie?
Erin fits her quite well. And similar to Erin/Aaron, I think she could wear names that also have a homophonic male form. For example, Andie.

Though the name wouldn't be right on her, I think she could be Joanie, but only if I was Chachi.

Some women's names are so common in our generation though that they too could fit without question. Names like Amy or Jennifer. But I think there would be a vague sense that the identity was off. It might lead her to do silly, ostentatious things like insist on signing her name with branded initials.
-cK

NOTE:
So now it can be your turn. Just follow these simple rules.

1. Leave me a comment on this post saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

If You Go...

2007-04-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

While we haven't worn flowers in our hair (yet), the Muse and I are in the San Francisco / Oakland area. Back Tuesday eve so slim chance of an update until Wednesday morning.

Yes, that sound was your collective sigh of relief.
-cK

Odd Eaves

2007-04-26T14:15:00.000-05:00

I was droppin' some eaves over at the Frost at lunch. Dan served up a nice pinot noir (when I called for a wildcard red) and I housed the potato-puree pizza. Man that's good!

A power lunch was going on among eight people on the other end of the room. Dessert was ordered. They finished. Someone else was coming over for a quick chat so the youngsters at the table (the office wage slaves, one assumes) got up to leave. One man and two women would be left.

One woman called after the departing yout's, "And I'd like new spreadsheets."

"Alright," the poor guy said.

"This afternoon," she said.

Way to kill his lunch, lady.

So now it's the power people of the power lunch. The fourth shows up for the chat. Then the beefy guy at the table--the guy with the booming voice--says to the woman beside him, "I never would have said I noticed you wore a different shade of lipstick everyday. I didn't notice. Am I just dense?"

She said, deadpan, "Yeah."

"I had a feeling about that," he said. "The fact I even asked told me it was true."
-cK

In Brief

2007-04-26T08:53:00.000-05:00

Things of late I've written in the comments sections at other blogs (meaning: still seeking a balance between work, life and writing interests):

Rumpled
From Night Editor's blog:

I was at a writer's party in Carbondale, Illinois. (It wasn't exclusively for writers, but we were always the thickest knot at any party, and probably hosted 90% of them.) I had thrown on some wrinkled t-shirt. It was clean, I swear, but I'd neglected to fold my laundry.

Behind, a man said, "Writers are the most rumpled people in the world."

I turned. It was a poet. And he was drinking from a bottle of Night Train.

Fire in the Brain
From Jana's blog:

I believe it was April - May of 2002 (possibly 2001) when my trivia partner Christopher and I went on a crazy tear at the old old Molly Quinn's. We played under the name The Headless Norsemen and wound up winning something like 6 out of 8 quizzes before the Quizmaster, one Bill Watkins, took a summer break from quizzing.

Though Christopher and I rarely enjoyed victorious quizzes after that, those wins were immensely satisfying and gave us a smarty-pants mystique with some of the other players.

There are periods in life where the brain is really firing. And when you get multiple firing brains in one space: magic.

Steamers
from Lollie's blog:

...And I note that you chose to take the steamer to England but not Cleveland. Whither the Cleveland Steamer?
-cK

One from the Vault: "The Catch"

2007-04-25T10:17:00.000-05:00

I've been cleaning out some old writing files--including material I'd posted at the old Two Week Crush blog that I wrote with my friend Jen. One of my favorite entries was from 3 August 2004. It's called "The Catch" and recounts the wonderful story a woman told me as she ate dinner beside me at the bar of the now-defunct Molly Quinn's pub.

The Catch

It's amazing how people one does not know will launch into tales of heartbreak and all-around weirdness. But I guess there's no real risk of rejection or judgment when it's someone we don't believe we'll ever know. (It's that familiarity-contempt thing. Do you hate me?) And if we're lying, the chances of it getting back to people who can call our biggity bluff are greatly diminished. So:

The other night a woman told me a story while she ate steak. This was at the bar at Molly Quinn's. I was on my second lemonade--no joke, I been a good boy of late--and my bladder was ready to burst, but she started telling this story, and when the good vibe is there, I can't resist. I put my pen and paper away. I listened. Her story: She's 59. She's a teacher at a local school. Recently the storyteller found a cache of nearly 100 letters from an old boyfriend. She'd dated him when she was 17. He'd been 23 at the time. He'd asked her to marry him. She'd said yes. "But then, who knows?" she said. "It just didn't happen. I don't even remember why." So she reread all those old letters, and suddenly she felt as giddy as a teen. Love, sweet love! She used the internet. She found the guy. He's 65 now. She contacted him.

So 42 years later they get in touch. On the phone he says he still loves her, that he's always thought of her. He asks her to marry him. She says yes. He comes to see her, and it is right. But they begin getting angry phone calls. It's the man's ex-wife.

After nine days together he vanishes.

[About this point in the story I'm hoping she eats her steak more slowly. I don't want the story to end, and I get the impression it is only to last as long as the meal.]

Days go by. She's angry. Then he calls. He tells her about his ex-wife--"Some Korean," she says, "I don't know. She's got this problem with her legs. She's in a wheelchair. That's why she still lives with him, because he feels he's supposed to take care of her. Or so he says. They're probably still married. Who knows."

She chomps away. She spears a hard piece of lettuce.

"Now he comes back," she says. He drives into town with eight boxes packed in his old Nissan. This is it: they've got a real chance. He's opening up. He confesses to a brief stint in prison (twenty years since at least) for a financial scheme. "Ha!" she says. "Did you know I loaned him the money for him to visit? A f-cking con." She drops back into the tale, though. They are together. They are happy. All is forgiven. But more phone calls come. And now the ex-wife is calling the school, trying to get this woman fired. "That crazy Korean b-tch was trying to get me fired!" she says. She pauses with one of those can-you-believe-this-sh-t? expressions. "Christ," I say. "Christ!" she agrees, pointing with a piece of meat on her knife.

After three days of this high-stakes emotional exchange, he says he's going up north. He says something silly about calling his ex from up there so she'll think that's where he is now. The storyteller shakes her head. "Oh, yeah. That would throw her off the trail," she says. "What a f-cker."

She's almost done now. She's on her last bites. She says to me, "And you know what he said at the end? Keep in mind I haven't seen or heard from him since. He's going fishing while he's up north. He tells me, 'I'll bring you back some walleye.'"

"Oh my god!" I say.

"F-cking walleye!" she says.
-cK

The Rest Hath Arisen

2007-04-24T12:41:00.000-05:00

We've opened the pub (Merlins Rest), the Web site is coming along, and my buddy John Dingley (pictured above) can finally take in real money! Happy days, indeed.

An early 15 photos from our operations can be found here in a Flickr slideshow.

For those in the Twin Cities, the "official" grand opening happens Saturday, April 28. More information on events and such at the pub blog.

Back to work!
-cK

Perfect Day

2007-04-23T13:29:00.000-05:00

Why don't I carry my camera with me more?

Saturday was a perfect day. The Muse and I had brunch with a host of friends over at Costello's. Big thanks to Keith, Kym, Flannery and Mike for getting out the word. (Josh: great to meet Charles. Scotty: total shock and quite nice to see you and Louise again! Kassandra: Always grand to see you and Tempest. Janie: Who would have predicted you and Steve popping through? Gary and Alice: You're just sweet, you know? Yeah, you do.)

After brunch, the Muse and I got out in the early season sun. It was 80 when the sun peaked out from the occasional clouds. Beautiful day. We went leisurely about the 8-hole frisbee golf course in Highland, then stopped over at the Como Park Conservatory to look at some flowers. It was crowded over there, and we saw two unlucky girls who had lost their kite in a tree--it was quite windy in the Park--but all in all people seemed quite happy with the day.

Soaking it up further, we went from the Conservatory over to the patio of the Happy Gnome and had a glass of wine.

Then, lo and behold, the phone rang. It was Rene. She, Don and "Bomb Diggity" Hulles were on the patio at Dixie's. So we finished up and met them for a glass of white wine and some conversation ahead of Don and Rene's Sunday flight to Amsterdam. (I think Hulles stashed himself in a steamer trunk.)

A couple hours and a shower later, we were back out to meet Suzanne and Scott on the patio of the Riverview Wine Bar for a couple hours of catching up.

To top it off, we popped through to say hello to the kids down at Merlins Rest (which opened only on Friday--Congrats John and Lee!). Great to see the kids happy and the business humming along.

It was really lovely not to work for a single minute for the first Saturday in a long time--not to mention (but mentioning) getting an entire day with the Baroness. I am now dearly looking forward to this coming weekend's trip to see Scott and Daniel (and perhaps Jakki and Andy) in San Francisco / Oakland. Woo!

Back to work.
-cK

Purr Box

2007-04-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

Cats have this purring reflex. For lack of a vet's terminology, we'll call it the purr box. Their world is right: the cat purrs. You scratch behind their ears, you share with them your electric blanket in the winter: purring kitties.

But what if humans had an uncontrollable purr reflex?

You'd never be able to play it cool on a date. Your date would know exactly how you felt. Moments of silence? Nope. That's you with your wandering mind spoiling the moment with a throbbing purr.

The massive burrito I took on the other day.

Imagine the crises of teenagers as everyone discovers who the real nerds are! "I was in history class and we were talking about Abe Lincoln--and my purr box totally went off! I could have died."

The selection of a popular candidate for president at a national convention: imagine how creepy that auditorium would sound!

This thought sustains me.

Looking Forward To...

Meeting the Muse, Hulles and perhaps a few other roustabouts down the block at Frost tonight.
-cK

Ignore Me

2007-04-19T09:46:00.000-05:00

Moments ago I posted here that Merlins Rest, my friends' pub, will open on Friday, April 20.

Alas, it is NOT. Dammit. Will somebody please give me the updates? especially if I'm being asked to help with the communications work?
-cK

Ephemera

2007-04-18T10:14:00.000-05:00

While I'm finding hope a difficult thing right now, my jade plant keeps reminding me that we have blue skies and fresh air and that all good things are possible. Thank you, Bert (the plant). I appreciate you.

I had considered writing about violence in creative writing class material, because I've been through many workshops and have taught a class of writers, and all in all have read awful material (awful in both content and presentation). But I'll hold back on that. I'm not really sure what value discussing it is--though I admit I scoured the internet yesterday in search of copies of Cho Seung-Hiu's crappy plays.

And then I think about how horrifying and sad it is. And then I read the world news and find 150+ killed in this morning's bombings in Iraq. And I think that we'd need one of these Virginia Tech incidents to happen every day in order to understand better what the Iraqi people are feeling.

I'm not saying Americans don't feel for Iraqis or that we shouldn't mourn for what happened in Blacksburg. I'm certainly not saying, "Let's have some perspective." Jesus. It's just that all these things are together in my head.

We're walking through it, man.

So. I shouldn't be reading Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road right now, but I am.

Moving on...

Needed

The non-work things I want to accomplish before going to sleep today:

* I want to send ephemera to Johnny G. in Chambana.
* I want to eat a too-big burrito with avocado.
* I want to take a walk with the Muse in the late-day sun because we have late-day sun now.
* I want to find a book to read on the flights to and from San Francisco next weekend (April 27 - May 1). Something light. No more end-of-the-world stuff.
* I want to find out who got voted off American Idol even though I don't watch the show.

The Hit Parade

Ireland: I am thinking about you--and how your map shape looks like a Care Bear doing a belly flop.

The most popular way into this blog is through a link to the map of Florida I have posted here.

It has been an unintentional stat-maker (particularly for hits from government computers). This makes me think I should do other things simply to gain hits (rather than readers, for who doesn't like numbers in their favor?). I might, for example, ask: Did Sanjaya have a connection to Anna Nicole Smith's death?
-cK

Bonnie and Clyde Parallel Park

2007-04-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

Warm weather made it! It was warm enough that Elizabeth and Alanna (pictured above) were out in summer hats and having ice cream. Danette: Thanks for sharing the photo. Please don't move! I'll miss you, Mike and the girls bunches. Dallas doesn't deserve you!!

Credit Due: And big thanks to Elizabeth P___ for repairing my computer!! It was down Sunday and Monday, meaning I was down Sunday and Monday (most of the time, but never when I'm with the Baroness). Thanks, E. You are appreciated.

So. Yes. Along with the sunshine and ice cream we have gangs of robins. They played hell on my parents' car during their recent visit, and they really took it to this vehicle:

The Bonnie and Clyde Bird-Shit Death Car!!

As if the driver of this unfortunate vehicle heard my laughter, maybe even saw me remove my third-floor screen to hold out my camera for the photos, he got even as best he could by parking within an inch of the Muse's bumper last night. That's about two and a half feet closer than most people in Saint Paul parallel park to one another.

(Yes, we vastly under-use space.)

The view from Casa dela cK. Sunny days! Happy days, friends.
-cK

ps: Yes, it's cloudy and cool today, but it was sunny, wasn't it? The Muse and I even sat out on the patio at Frost and sipped some white vino last night. Or did I dream that?

If Cormac Were Sudanese...

2007-04-15T16:24:00.000-05:00

If Cormac McCarthy were Sudanese, his novels would be an awful lot like this story from the BBC.
-cK

The Delicate Ballet

2007-04-13T08:38:00.000-05:00

I slept only about 90 minutes last night. The Delicate Ballet, which is my financial system of survival, was performing thunderously in my head as I await the call that will tell me I can finally pick up my taxes and send them off to the feds and the state.

I was casting about numbers for the money that's departing on Monday--maybe, I don't know yet how much--the money that's coming in (so long as those three invoices are filled), the potentially disastrous mistiming that could occur, ways of sidestepping that timing problem, the secondary troubles that could result from that sidestep, etc.

A payment system emerged in my head, coupled with a work plan I've long delayed throwing in motion, and showed me how to be debt-free in two years. Ha! Was I delirious?

I took a break to think about square roots: 12 x 12 = 144 and 12 + 13 = 25; 144 + 25 = 169; therefore, 13 x 13 must equal 169. Again: 13 + 14 = 27; 169 + 27 = 196. Therefore, 14 x 14 must equal 196....And so forth. This is what happens in a head. Some heads. This head, at least.

Do fish itch? Ever? Or suffer dry-eye? Or feel cotton-mouthed?

I'm not sure if my feet are quite touching the floor today. The system of weights and measures in my head is off-kilter. My personal avoirdupois is all out of whack. The back left side of my head feels heavier. My face is thinner.

One summer while bussing tables at the country club the hostess, who was about 60, and who wore off-white clothes and had frosty-(and slightly yellow)-looking swept-up hair, and who used make up that gave her face a hint of a sparkle yet matte texture (just a ghost of a cousin of her muted sparkle lipgloss), asked me in a hushed tone if I thought that she had fatter calves than the 60-ish woman who had just sat in the dining room.

Diane had a way about her that made me think she kept a very clean home and always had full dishes of white mints.

With a look of incredulity on my face I said, "No." That put an end to it and Diane seemed happy.

This same woman once asked a guest--former Bears safety Gary Fencik--to sign an autograph. It was during a golf tournament barbecue. She handed him a paper plate.

And I'm sure I've mentioned this before: at her home, she kept the corpse of a departed bird, a parakeet, I think, in tupperware in the freezer. And from time to time she would peek in and remember.

Much as I do these people from the past. They are playing in the mist of my mind today.

When I was a child I loved standing outside while my mom or dad put gas in the car because I liked to breathe the air around a gas pump. When cars were warming up in winter, I liked to sneak back into the exhaust cloud for a moment. That lovely monoxide, you know.

(I was admonished for this habit, please know. I may be an idiot, but my parents aren't.)

Fumes, indeed, but intoxicating ones. I'm running on them. And my brain is on fire.

I want to send out article pitches but know I cannot do that in this state. Must sit with the article I'm working on. Be patient. Stay with it, this coughing baby. Sit in the steam beside the bath. See it through.
-cK

Vonnegut is Gone

2007-04-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Kurt Vonnegut has died. Sigh. He was a weird dude. I really did like a number of his books.

(I realize I can still like a number of his books.)
-cK

Blech

2007-04-10T09:01:00.000-05:00

This cold annoys me. I feel like one of those inflated head people on the Sudafed commercial....

Put that tiny violin away! I'm just sayin'.
-cK

Crimewave: Où est Shaft?

2007-04-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

Been gone, baby, gone with so many projects, so much to do for finalizing taxes, so little sleep, and plenty of little dramas--the freshest of which being the rather rude smashing of one of the Muse's car windows last night. This happened in the same parking lot in which one of my taillights was smashed.

Grrr.

I'm having revenge fantasies.

Boars Town

So prior to discovering the vandalism, Hulles, the Muse and I were at Frost, and Tommy was making drinks, and we started riffing on various songs and movies, replacing "boys" with "boars." I love this game. It left our faces hurting from laughter.

Examples:
"Boars don't cry"
"Boars on the Side"
"The boars are back in town"
"Where the Boars Are"
"I know what boars like (I know what hogs want)"
"Let's hear it for the boar!"

And my favorite, Duran Duran's classic "Wild Boars." I'm particularly fond of this one because I think about the deep, computer-altered voice drawing out "Boars..." after Simon Le Bon cries "Wild!" (with a slight echo effect).

All this laughter was wonderfully capped off by Tom's news that he hopes to put a version of this drink on his summer menu and name it for our friend Lol. The drink name Tom is suggesting: Dali Lollie.

Awesome.

Famous French-Dubbed Exchanges from American Cinema

Person 1: Ferme-la!
Person 2: Je parle juste de Shaft!

(Thanks to Lollie for helping on this)
-cK

The Tax Man Cometh!!

2007-04-03T09:43:00.000-05:00

It's tax season, I had my first meeting with my accountant, and am now putting together the final, necessary receipts to send off my schtuff. The accountant looked at his computer screen and said, "Go find those receipts."

"What do I owe?" I said.

"Find the receipts first," he said. "I don't want to tell you want I'm looking at."

(No worries, Mums and Pops. I reserved enough cash to cover the "no deductions" worst-case-scenario! I think.)

All in all, things are okay. I seemed to have almost understood what was needed in this process.

The Bird

As I met with the accountant, a small, plump, orange-beaked bird kept hopping into the tinted window. Finally I had to ask. The accountant told me that he'd done some research and found that some of the bird's antics were to collect bits of fibers, grasses and cobwebs that had built up on the window in winter and early spring. The bird then transports them to a nest in a nearby tree.

But sometimes the bird just stands there headbanging on the glass, having mistaken its own reflection for a rival bird in this the mating season.

So as we went through my finances the bird kept joyously flying into the window while in the larger office around the corner the owner of the firm was laying down a serious bluestreak about a client he'd lost it at.

He was saying, "Every year! Every year her shit is all fucked up! I've had it!"

I suppose this is every accountant after four months of handling taxes, but in the public's defense, we aren't accountants. If we were, we wouldn't be coming to you.

My accountant was sitting there with an expression that seemed to convey, "Let's pretend we aren't hearing this." And I sat there with an expression of bemusement and a quiet resolve to never meet with the top guy.

Frittata

This frittata, baked by the Muse, was AWESOME.

Unconnected to it: I will probably incorporate my business later this year for tax purposes. It'll cost $1100 or so, but it'll save me $3000 - $5000 in filing next year.

Any suggestions for an incorporated business name?
-cK

Almost Home

2007-03-30T15:16:00.000-05:00

We visited Lol's husband Ray's new office and found these decorative magnifying glasses. Weird.

Almost home. Long week, but rather productive (as I see it). Much good should come of it. Excellent.

Off to the PBI airport in a moment, then the CLT, then the MSP. Looking forward to seeing the Muse.
-cK

Miami Vice

2007-03-29T11:21:00.000-05:00

The view from our dinner table just off South Beach last night in Miami.

Good fun last night after a long long drive to Miami from Boynton Beach and a long long day of meetings. It took two hours to get there, and that included four hideous back ups--I'm referring to traffic, hey--but the night drive home had far more manageable traffic and took only a little over an hour.

Exhausting day, indeed, but all-around quite educational and worthwhile.

(Dear Muse, if you are reading this, please know some of the folks I was with tried in vain to get a pedicure because they dearly wanted a guilty escape during the work day. Alas, the appointments couldn't be made. Your news of indulging in one was a thing of envy here.)

Vertigo

I had that moment of business travel vertigo when one thinks of where one is yet cannot quite believe it. It isn't because you think, "Hey, look! I'm in Miami!" It's that you think, "I'm in Miami, yet I'm indoors. All day."

For a spell, it's no different than being back in the conference rooms of Bismarck or Reno or anywhere else you may have bunkered down and TCBed.

The engineering nerd in me could not help but photograph a landfill because it is the only type of hill you'll find in South Florida.

Escape was needed, so in the evening a good group of us went to South Beach and ate at a place called Mango's. It was, to say the least, a revealing establishment.

Good god...but good fun. We had a cluster of tables right along the road so got to enjoy snipets of the bar dancing (literally, dancing on the bar; both men and women employees took scantily clad turns dancing to the Latin music), some hot hot cars (including the bar owner's Bentley parked next to us), great weather, and plenty of people-watching.

There was even a bathroom attendant, though this practice seemed sorely out of place there and even the attendant seemed to wear an expression of, "If Fate is to place me in the loo, why is it Mangos' loo?"

For a moment, I was a citizen of Miami.

Drank mojitos and ate an avocado-chicken wrap. Good stuff and good stories all around. I must write more about Miami some day--it was such a curious place--but not today.
-cK

Humpty Was a Foodie

2007-03-27T15:57:00.000-05:00

Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance" has been in my head this week.

It's odd to think that a group--let alone a rap group--putting out an album titled Sex Packets can get anywhere with a band member who wears a Groucho-esque nose and glasses in all public appearances.

Perhaps a Hard Rap Cafe will one day emerge and you can marvel at Humpty's fake nose and Flavor Flav's clock behind glass as you eat a bacon burger and listen to old Def Jam tracks.

(I do miss having a copy of Def Jam's 4-disc anniversary album.)

And might I just remind you all that 2Pac was part of Digital Underground? It's sort of like imagining Justin "Bring Back Sexy" Timberlake as a childhood dancer on a Disney glee club show. And then you wake and realize it hadn't been a ridiculous dream afterall but the ridiculous life you're living.

But I suppose Humpty wasn't kidding when very early in his self-titled dance song he warned us that he's "about to ruin the image and the style that your used to." Indeed.

The Foodie Emerges

A further inspection of the song reveals that Humpty wasn't just a braggart about his sexual exploits, asanine dancing, and all-around craziness. He was also quite a foodie.

Exhibit A: He notes that he's going to "drink up all the Hennessey you got on your shelf." (But at least we had fair warning.) This drink emboldens him, apparently, for afterwards he introduces himself--and proceeds to coach us on how to pronounce his name. ("Pronounced with an umpty.")

Exhibit B: While other rappers might be satisfied telling us they like their beats funky--Who doesn't?--Humpty takes us a step further. He proclaims, "I like my oatmeal lumpy."

Exhibit C: You thought only your bottles of Hennessy were at risk around this modern-day Gargantua? You'd be wrong, friends. He further threatens to "eat up all your crackers and your licorice."

Exhibit D: His attraction to food is so intense that he "once got busy in a Burger King bathroom." Good lord.

Exhibit E: The lurid associations to food set in. He proclaims that his nose is "big like a pickle." He makes no clarification for the falseness of his stage nose, thus adding, I think, a dildo-esque line of thought.

Exhibit F: This isn't even the first Digital Underground tune in which his pants-splitting foodie interest is revealed. He takes a moment in his own dance song to remind us that in "Do Whatcha Like" he was "the one who sang, 'Just grab him in the biscuits!'"

Humpty = Foodie.
-cK

Scenes

2007-03-27T11:52:00.000-05:00

Too busy to write this week, but not too busy to update some scenes from this current Florida trip. Welcome to Boynton Beach!

Big thanks to Ray and Lara for letting me stay in this wonderful home. I sat out for an hour last evening reading and taking in the late day sun--just ahead of watching a bit of Dancing with the Stars. Hey, mambo! Mambo Italiano...
-cK

News from J & R

2007-03-26T12:33:00.000-05:00

Big thanks to Ryan & Jessi for the update! Tiny Jordan Elise has arrived in the world and is already charming the hearts of millions.

J & R: You are missed here in Saint Paul. Get yourself some teaching gigs up here! We'd love to reimport you and this new babens.
-cK

On the Road Again...

2007-03-26T09:43:00.000-05:00

Every office should have a baby for a mascot. We've got little Ryder, seen here with the Mom-E.

I'm in West Palm Beach working at the office, but I cannot brag about the weather to the folks back home (Saint Paul, Minnesota) for it's nearly as warm there. Good on ye!

Lol takes over.

And this is my baby: my con leche and the laptop set in the conference room with the AC cranked ostensibly to protect the server but really to protect my internal systems from overheating in this outrageous Florida air.

More soon.
-cK

Randoms

2007-03-23T13:54:00.000-05:00

Last film seen in the theater: Casino Royale

Last film seen on DVD: Strange Brew

It's around 60 today. Everyone is spacey. The urge for an afternoon beer is strong.

I haven't seen any of Days or Passions for weeks.

Pieces of the British press today

1. A parsnip is the root of all evil
2. An all female, asexual creature with a 100 million years of diversity
3. And the Hogwarts Express received a beating (BBC) at the hands of what the Sun entertainingly called "yob kids"

Enjoy your Friday, ye good folk
-cK

Smash and Dash

2007-03-22T13:55:00.000-05:00

Ah, bugger. One side of my car's rear lights was cracked last night in the side parking lot of the Dacotah Building on my block. The Muse and I had stopped at Frost for a nightcap after dinner at the Town Talk Diner--pretty good squash risotto and killer carrot soup. We'd stopped at Frost on the possibility of encountering our boy Hulles (who of late has parlayed his talent for lurking into a series of Chasing Windmills appearances).

No Hulles. After an hour, we departed. That's when we found my car with its smashed-in light and mildly loosened bumper. Dammit. After a bit we decided it would be best to get the report for insurance purposes. We called the police. Cool.

About five minutes later. A squad car rolls up to the corner. The officer looks over at us, I nod, he takes off--and goes right down the road to Fern's, where officers often take their dinner break. (Fern's serves large, affordable dinners that are usually pretty good. And they serve until midnight.) Fern's is within easy sight of Frost.

For an hour, I can see two squad cars there. We call the police again. The woman on the phone apologies and says there have been a number of emergencies in the neighborhood.

I hang up. Totally emasculated by the moment, I say, "More like an emergency on spicy meatloaf."

"You poor boy," the Muse says.

Another hour passes, and for half of it I'm watching a lone squad car at Fern's like a hawk. I'm convinced they're all down there on an extended dinner break.

"I know they've got to eat," I say, "but...but...."

What can I say? I'm at their mercy.

Finally, a very nice, wide-eyed officer shows, notes that the damage is probably going to be fixed for no more than the deductible anyway (Hence, "Can't we just let this go?") but after waiting two hours it seemed like a dumb idea not to just collect the official form and have it for a report, especially in the event something was actually wrong with my sweet sweet Altima.

The report was another 15 minutes. No biggie. The car runs as it has for ages. The basic lights (brake, blinker, and reverse) are still in view and functioning--but I've got a couple suspects and will be trolling the streets of Saint Paul in search of them.

Not even the sight of this sunflower takes the edge off my desire for revenge.
-cK

False Fronts

2007-03-21T12:21:00.000-05:00

Wow. I knew Woody Harrelson only for his hemp love, his Woody Boyd stint on Cheers, and a number of movies (most of which I didn't see). But I didn't know his pops had been such a suspicious character.

For instance, he claimed to have been involved in JFK's assassination--this after denying a role in a federal judge's murder (and for which he was imprisoned). At what stage in incarceration does one begin spinning a larger tale about one's life?

And is that any different really than the stories spun by the rest of us out of cheekiness, impishness, loneliness, compulsive lying, embarrassment, nervousness, the hope of advantage, the sheer joy of embellishment, or as is so often the case the unintended kneejerk response to which we must make all other stories match?

I recall a comedian saying, "Did you ever see the film with Meryl Streep and the horse?" And the comic says, "Yes," then thinks, "What the hell do I stand to gain from this lie?"

The Italian Non-Soccer Star

In an Italian restaurant in Florida, during a very good dinner, a 75-year-old host told us numerous tales of his former life in Italy. This included being the only member of a particular Italian soccer club (Torino) not to die in the infamous Superga plane crash that killed the squad (4 May 1949). But looking up that incident, the survivor's name is not his. So why does he tell it?

Maybe he was on the junior squad and would never have been on the plane anyway. Or maybe someone had told him he might be called up. There are many plausible scenarios. But if he had no chance to be on the plane, why so many years later would it become a truth to him that he narrowly escaped death?

Or was it a way for him to reconnect with an emotional event from which he's long-removed? Or was it just a yarn to make one's restaurant experience that much more memorable?

The truth is a country from which we all emigrate and, conversely, in which we become immigrants.
-cK

Signs

2007-03-20T13:38:00.000-05:00

Sign of getting older: I'm celebrating getting an appointment with my CPA to finalize taxes on April 2.

Really.
-cK

The Henry Within

2007-03-20T00:30:00.000-05:00

Henry's the smug one.

In the fall of 1998 I began a story with the words “Henry Burger was in doubt.” It wasn’t a good story, but it became an important one—to me, that is. Literature couldn’t give a damn, really. Even my writing director wrote upon it, “I’ve read this twice and still don’t know what it means. But I know it means something.”

At the time, Henry was in his 60s and the story’s original conception was something of an Americanized baby of Ionesco’s short novel The Hermit and Kurt Kusenberg’s short story “Meine Diebe” (“My Thieves”). You needn’t know either work. I don’t believe the latter has even appeared in English and am sure I can no longer understand its German.

Further confusing matters, Henry was in many respects a cousin of John Berryman’s Dream Songs poems.

I had big ideas then. I still do, but they aren't that outrageous.

So Henry was in his 60s. The story ran something like 60 pages. (I believe I edited down to 40 or so for handing it out to the workshop.) And while I never did anything else with that Henry story, and while Henry never had a thing to do with other workshop submissions, I kept on writing Henry.

Henry became an alter ego and creative partner. Whenever I didn’t know what to write, I started to write about my life but referred to myself in third person and by the name Henry. Soon, Henry would take over and fictionalize things. Soon, I lost track of the boundaries between us. I lost track of whose experiences I recalled, much in the way even an obviously fanciful dream can sit in the mind like a truth for a good spell.

The castle tour, the hawk you caught on your wrist. The beginning of an affair.

Henry grew younger. He became much more like me. (That was easier, I guess, than me trying to age 30 or 35 years to catch up to him.) He used to look like me but is now more of an Ichabod Crane. He's had money, been homeless, inherited a tidy sum. He's a shut in. He travels. He's uncontrollably happy. He's unhinged and suicidal. He rarely reveals anything about himself to others but they do to him. He tells himself stories about them, loses track of what he's invented and what they've told him. He feels forever in need of departure but finds himself, no matter where he is, greatly relieved to be home. He's in love with life. It crushes him.

Sometimes I think a good number of my secret smiles are Henry's doing. Henry isn’t talking out loud. He isn’t a voice moving around me. Let's not loose the medication. But he does seem to be part of a dialogue deep down inside my brain. He produces the cat-who-ate-the-canary grins. I’m sure of it.
-cK

Geek Alert

2007-03-19T10:49:00.000-05:00

I like this Jeopardy! news too much not to share. I like Jeopardy! There. I've said it (again).

Cheers, fellow geeks!
-cK

St Patrick's Day Images

2007-03-17T15:41:00.000-05:00

As it's happening:

-cK

Against the Grain

2007-03-15T08:01:00.000-05:00

Ahead of her family's arrival and my impending trip to Florida, the Baroness and I went out on a school night and feasted at downtown Saint Paul's A Rebours, which means "Against the Grain," I believe.

Glorious food! We drank cosmopolitans to start. (They were served with a rather refreshing twist of lemon zest.) We ate micro greens with goat cheese and blood orange slices. We ate steak diane and rack of lamb. We drank a gorgeous bottle of Jean Louis Chave Saint-Joseph--98% syrah, and with an acidity that evaporated shortly after pouring...I was stunned to taste wine that really did seem to open up; I'd thought that was just silly wine talk.

(Later, I realized that Chuck from Solo Vino was seated at the table next to us. Perhaps he sells some wine to A Rebours?)

And we finished it off by splitting a slice of ginger cake served with a raisin compote and a bit of lemon-buttermilk ice cream.

Dear god. Food like that....A Rebours was a wonderful experience. The server was intimidating in her knowledge of the wine list and the intricasies of the food (though we did wonder if her take on the "bacteria" argument revolving around fresh vs. farmed salmon was actually a miscue and she'd intended to say "mercury level"). The food was filling in that way that really well-prepared, well-presented, really really good food is--it sneaks up on you. You think you're eating a small portion. You eat slow. You talk too much. You cover your mouth when you laugh because there are other people trying to have conversations around you. You take another few bites. Suddenly, you know you've had too much. How did I get so full on what seems to be so little?

A wonderful night. And it afforded some photo opps later on...

The Jaded Scientists

Trying to Be Jaded

Never Jaded

Photo Tuesday #2

2007-03-13T10:19:00.000-05:00

My Euro 'hood finds itself unexpectedly on the cusp of spring and feeling sleep-deprived by the extended daylight due to an earlier onset of daylight-savings time.

It's another Photo Tuesday! Why? Because I've only time today to speak in 1000-word bursts. Some things that have happened:

My sister had a birthday!

I ate the gang dheng--AGAIN. I think I order that 99% of the time I visit Pad Thai. It's been this way for six years here. But that red curry is unbeatable!

The Baroness made some kickass pizza: a base of egg and sour cream, caramelized red onion, prosciutto, grilled pear, and goat cheese on a flaky, unleavened crust.

Even Kitty liked the pizza.

From now on, no one will make the World's Best Bartender do it without the fez on (just as Steely Dan pleaded).

And life's alright, you know? Messy hair and all.
-cK

Death Wish cK

2007-03-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

Oh, the possibility for revenge! Big thanks to c in Memphis for sending me this doctored photo (Duh!) of me in Charles Bronson-style facial hair...and holding the Axe of Revenge without Mercy (ARM).

This should help me reaquire my filched Iceland hat.
-cK

The Neocons Have My Hat!!

2007-03-12T11:20:00.000-05:00

Guh. In my haste to leave the pub work the other night and see my Muse, I left my Number 1 stocking cap--my Iceland hat--in the pub. One of the many total bastards I know left with it and is ransoming it back to me under the guise of being a revolutionary neocon group.

Ransom Note #1

"We have your socialist headwear. If you value your warm skull you will do as you are told. Await further instructions. Do not attempt to contact us. Our Neocon agenda will not be stopped."

The hat is even crying for help!

Ransom Note #2

I love this Patty Hearst in My Hat image. "He has seen the error of his former commie existence warming your socialist noggin. His now vicious behavior knows no bounds."

But like Mel Gibson in Ransom, I'm about to kick some ass. Give me back my hat!!
-cK

Before and After

2007-03-09T13:50:00.000-06:00

Working feverishly today but feeling like my world is loaded with progress. Good. Quick looks at the pub's progress in before and after modes:

Before

February 17, just prior to the interior tearing apart.

After

March 9, 12:15 pm. Plenty of cleaning still to do, but damn if it isn't a dramatic change. New paint. Revived woodwork and paneling. Loads of stuff put on the walls (and clean stuff!). And even daylight floods in...something the old bar seldom knew of. (They'd walled up two vital windows.)

And look! It's the living ghost of William Watkins in search of a Guinness!

Have a good weekend, friends.
-cK

A Closer Look at Rob Base’s World

2007-03-08T12:26:00.000-06:00

Though the Beasties' MCA is known for strapping on ear goggles, I put on some protective eyewear to tackle the Curious Case of Rob Base.

Many people have been gloriously clued into the wisdom of Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock. It makes perfect sense, really, that for things to go right two is better than one. Does Rob do it alone? Nope. Even he’s got back up (EZ Rock) and he acknowledges that as one should.

That diaper-wearing astronaut may have been more successful if she’d had a little back up, you dig?

This dynamic of two is especially important for making something out of sight.

But we can’t just focus on the central lesson of “It Takes Two.” Rob Base is a more complicated being than that. In fact, he’s quite grim, talking as much as he does about weariness (and inflicting it), dissin’, and not caring.

Lord. He even invites a lewd act upon an iconic corporate cheeseburger.

In truth, I think he cares if we hear his message, but, perhaps uncomfortable in his own persona, he disguises his feelings with plenty of misdirection. In order to find my way to the center of Mr. Base, I’ve dissected “It Takes Two” and divided its proclamations and seemingly rambling notes into the categories of Simple Facts, Desires, Likes, Dislikes, Boasts, Brutal Honesty, and Commands.

Hit it!

Simple Facts
1. Will neither “fess” nor wear a bulletproof vest
2. Rob’s up front, EZ Rock has back up
3. Rocks the mic with the help of EZ Rock

Desires
1. Rocking (right now)
2. Wants to share with you his idea
3. You to comprehend
4. Ducats
5. You to listen to his mission-oriented rhymes

Likes
1. Getting down
2. The kids--the guys, the girls
3. The Whopper

Dislikes
1. Communicable diseases and other contagious ailments
2. Smokin’ Buddha
3. Sess (huh? I just know he “can’t stand” it)
4. Dirty shirts (See Commands list)
5. The Big Mac (which he invites you to fuck)

Boasts
1. Known to rock the microphone
2. Gets stupid (by which he means outrageous)
3. He’s the winner (not the loser)
4. He chose to be an MC
5. Ladies love him, girls adore him (even the ones who have never seen him)
6. They (ladies and girls) like the way he rhymes at shows
7. Got a real funky concept
8. Will keep you (the listener) in step
9. Is bilingual (“number one, the uno”)
10. Will stomp all suckers
11. Puts you (the listener / follower) in rapture
12. Is a slick brother who can easily outfox you
13. Is “known to be” freshest on the mic (though provides no primary sources in support of this claim; only his own vocal performance)
14. Starting (I’m not sure what) shouldn’t be too hard
15. As he’s not a sucker, he does not need a bodyguard
16. Is the leader, aka “the man superior”
17. His rhymes are not counterfeit
18. Record sales make this song a hit
19. Listening to Red Alert won’t hurt you
20. Is the one who knows about things that make you weary
21. Has clout
22. Will turn out the party
23. Won’t stutter
24. Will speak clearly
25. Neither Rob Base nor EZ Rock is soft
26. Is cool and calm “just like a breeze”

Brutal Honesty
1. Not internationally known
2. Does not know why ladies and girls like him and his rhymes so much
3. Doesn’t care if you like his idea
4. Though bold and black he won't protect all his followers
5. Wants only respect
6. Is not a doctor
7. Is reluctant to lend rhymes not just to foes but even good friends because he’s “kindy stingy”
8. Though he’ll take care of you, you’ll get wearier
9. He’s all about dissin’
10. Not afraid to stand alone
11. Doesn’t need anyone
12. Just came to have fun
13. Doesn’t need friends who act like foes
14. Has an ego, bro

Commands
1. Take off your shirt but take care not to let it come in contact with the dirt
2. Don’t cheer him, just hear him out, dammit
3. Shout “Ho!”
4. Go to the Wiz, select his record, and take it off the rack but put it back, by all means, if you think it’s wack
5. Throw up your hands and go for what you know
6. Slack up (if you think either Rob Base or EZ Rock is soft)
7. Get busy (Note: This command is only for EZ Rock and is to be executed when Rob counts to three)

-cK

Paparazzi!!

2007-03-07T10:59:00.000-06:00

While this photo was taken in what Hulles endearingly calls "the redundantly named" Nina's Coffee Cafe, my paparazzi--or paparazzo, as there was only one--experience was at the Coffee News Cafe in the Macalester neighborhood.

I was photographed this morning. I was dressed in my big boy clothes having just come from a meeting and I was buying coffee ahead of my haircut. A girl sitting on a bench used some sort of camera phone thing. I turned, looked quizically at her. She turned her eyes down and slowly put the camera back in her bag.

As a celebrity, I'm almost used to this.

Other thing: Go get your drink on with Lollie!
-cK

2007-03-07T08:20:00.000-06:00

Off playing adult and all that today with an article interview and a haircut. Dressed in suit. Woo!

In the meantime, allow me to recommend chick pea curry (with extra spice), jasmine rice, and a bottle of Herdade dos Machados (Reserva 2001), which is a gorgeous Portugese red wine and quite affordable.

"Good at any price," said the woman in the shop.

"And the grapes are described as noble," I said.

She paused. Turning away, looking a bit depressed, and with her voice weakening as truth had to be revealed, she said, "That's actually a grape classification."

But it was really good wine! Thank you, Solo Vino. And thanks much to Erin for the chick pea curry.
-cK

Timmy Wing Update

2007-03-06T14:29:00.000-06:00

Timmy Wing has visited the post office. That is all.
-cK

Memory Stick

2007-03-05T11:49:00.000-06:00

That it is or was even real is and will be a mystery to me. Early evening in a warmer month, or mid-afternoon on an overcast day, Allison came by on some sort of scooter. A Vespa. Something like that. We were maybe 17.

She was showing off this new mode of transport in her life. She took off out my driveway, drove a block and returned. A police car pulled up.

The officer checked her license, told her she was not allowed to ride this thing without either a helmet or protective eye wear. We asked if that included sunglasses. He said it did.

So when she left soon after this encounter she left with a pair of my sunglasses (which would have been my only sunglasses as I detest the feel of glasses on my nose). Or maybe I had a pair of fake glasses (as even now in my 30s I still have perfect vision--THIS is what I'm bragging about! Lame--and must pretend I need them when I want to look like a smarty pants).

Or maybe I gave her a pair of clear protective goggles for working, say, on home construction projects. Maybe I gave her some of my father's protective eyewear.

But I recall her on the scooter, and I recall the cop. And I recall her driving away once (the initial event that drew the police officer to us). But I don't recall her on that thing again or even hearing about it.

Pilgrim's Progress

We've progressed a great deal at the pub. Here's a shot from a ladder looking down the bar side of the joint. (The restaurant side is about to be converted from a wood prepping and construction room to an actual restaurant.) We've much more to peg to the booth walls and quite a bit of post-demolition work to do around the bar, but the major stuff is out of the way on this side.

Bill's just about resolved the electrical crap and has the kits ready for the walls, John's just about finished the trim work, and Gary's almost done with the sanding, staining, varnishing and painting.

Big thanks to Kym, Jordan, Chris and Linda for stopping by to help clean up the joint. Frank and his wife continue to tackle a kitchen that no food should have come out of. (Dear god. This place won't have had food this clean since that equipment was first installed! Frank: You are a prince for strapping on those gloves and taking on the grease.) Keith: Keep working on the wi-fi, you magnificent bastard! And Walt, Dick, and Jennifer: thanks for dropping in to check on the progress. We appreciate your interest.

More soon and God bless the Welsh!

Happy days,
-cK

Good Vibes - CONFIRMED

2007-03-01T12:45:00.000-06:00

Big thanks to Abby for the positive update on our girl's surgery and recovery. Looks like the grim stuff has been caught and taken care of with no long-term treatment needed.

Awesome.
-cK

Good Vibes, Please

2007-03-01T09:48:00.000-06:00

Just received news that my former writing director is recovering from a cancer surgery. She's a grand soul and writer and her family was incredibly kind to me during my years in graduate school. Good vibes, please, to the ether. I love her dearly.
-cK

Letter from Afar

2007-02-28T08:47:00.000-06:00

Long ago I wrote a letter to the Australian band the Cannanes. I've followed them for years years years and have given them a couple mentions in this blog. (I was under the impression I'd posted my last communication with them, but perhaps I'd dreamed it? Does anyone recall this exchange?)

The letter Stephen O'Neill sent yesterday was really sweet. So I share here the letter I sent them and the letter he sent:

TO THE CANNANES

I feel like my shoulders are slumping today. My shoulders are slumping today, without reason. I realized this through the instant gratification (or horror) one achieves with digital cameras. Zounds! But one must persevere, nonetheless.

Please add me to your newsletter list, friends, if you can stomach the thought. I think your work is lovely.

A few years ago I went a whole week during which the only song I'd listen to was "Chosen One." There was no issue in my life from which I was seeking solace. The hammers in my head were not busy constructing a new wing to the bird-chatter fantasy world I normally kick about in. It was a fine morning, actually, a whole series of them. But I put that song on and suddenly was like, "No more songs but this." I was blissed out that week. Hey: Nice one. Thanks for that.

In short, you do fine work. I've listened for years and am really happy you continue to be obsessive about not just playing music but recording it. We appreciate it. May the music and good times continue to multiply.

All best from Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA,
-cK

FROM THE CANNANES

Dear Christopher,

Thanks for getting in touch and my profusest apologies for the length of time it's taken us to get back to you (bit of confusion over who was to check this email account).

Anyways, glad you wrote re- Chosen One, one of my personal favourites and one Fran has steadfastly refused to do live for many many years but I think your email may bring her round!

I'll add you onto our US newsletter list so hopefully you'll only get email if we are heading your way (possibly in May 2008) or have a new release (hopefully soon). If you'd like a copy of our latest EP [ie 3" CD] send your address and I'll try and zip one off to you in a shorter space of time than it's taken to reply to your email! - I
hoping to have some covers printed up in the next 4-6 weeks.

Thanks again for signing up and sorry again for our slackness in replying.
Cheers

Stephen O'Neil
per The C's

Neighbors

Saint Joseph's Academy is one of my neighbors--seen here just after the weekend's snowfall. More snow is on the way. It'll be hell to park here, but the neighborhood will look lovely.
-cK

Bad Boys

2007-02-27T08:38:00.000-06:00

What ya gonna do? Apparently I've been blogging only in my head, which is apt because the imagined vs the real me has been the subject of the post that was to have appeared today.

Will finish it tonight; ideally, in your world too, not just in mine.

Saturday Morning Songs

Ah, I used hop up at 5:30 or so, run downstairs in my Stars Wars pajamas, pour some cereal, and watch the end of The Gigglesnort Hotel, The New Zoo Review, and then the Superfriends. I did this for years (I think). I'd watch other cartoons too. And mixed up in it all were the Saturday morning songs.

Songs to have stuck in your head today:

* That "Exercise Your Choppers" song with the 1950s, harmonizing toughs reminding you that eating crunchy, healthy food is good for you. At end, the coolest tough, Chopper himself, is invited to run a few laps with the other toughs. But Chopper says, "Later, man. I'm eatin' a celery stick. This is hard exercise."

* The "Hanker fer a Hunk of Cheese" song ("I'm so hungry I could eat a wagon wheel!")

* Anything from Schoolhouse Rock

* Anything by Menudo (and bonus points for anyone who can remember a song from Menudo without using Wikipedia as a memory prompt)

* And just for good measure, that crazy-fun "Beef - It's What's for Dinner" song (from Aaron Copland's "Rodeo"). This is actually the one in my head today.
-cK

Resistance is Futile

2007-02-25T09:58:00.000-06:00

I adore you, friends and family and family friends. Please don't be hurt. It's just that you are all inferior to my muse.

It's Sunday. Be well.
-cK

How Soon Is Now?

2007-02-23T08:43:00.000-06:00

People are freakin' out here, man. A day-long dread is building in the souls of Saint Paul's citizens, patrician and plebian alike. Their eyes have gone glassy and white. Their faces have gone slack. They stare too long at their coffee, drink only half a cup.

It's just that it's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow, and somehow this go-round is really weighing on minds. Odd. You'd think we rarely see the stuff, and yes I suppose that's the case in recent winters and particularly in this rather uncharacteristically sunny season, but, really. We know.

We do.

Stay warm and be well, friends.
-cK

Gypsy Cab Rides, Part II

2007-02-22T00:30:00.000-06:00

Special thanks to Lucy for sending along a photo of Ollie. This dog is sweet as pie, but he puts a fierce lean into you if you take his seat, man.

Gypsy Cab Rides, Part II

When we last saw our intrepid, albeit incompetent, hero--which was, admittedly, a little beyond where last episode left off--he was leaving the Shanghai airport after a week in Korea. His bones are weary, though he's flown there only from Seoul, for only a few days earlier the Seoul police dropped him off at his hotel after a particularly riotous night in Incheon (which he might justifiably blame on his host). Never fear. The police dropped him off only after a cab driver refused to believe where his hotel was because our hero was traveling, against recommendation, without a business card to help direct the cabbie. Even Koreans carry the cards to help better direct one, as the road system is screwier than Saint Paul's (and that's saying something).

There he is, our bright-eyed American boy. He wanders out towards the cab bay but passes through a gaunlet of gypsy cab drivers--people living off the books. Some of them hold signs on which is written, "I drive specially for you." Things like that. They all look knocked about a bit. Most of them seem too depressed to offer a ride.

The little adventure voice pipes up. And, without the slightest hesitation, yer man leaves with one of these broken drivers. Why not.

(Right about now I'm reminded of the old "Bad Idea Jeans" commercial on SNL. And right about now I really think I should never have let my parents or siblings or anyone I know in on this blog!)

He crosses the road to the parking garage. This man's leading yer man's bag at a furious pace, as if he's a common luggage thief. In the garage, a second man is waiting. Sure, that should be a flag. But, no. Your hero sallies forth, that jackass.

And with a rev of engine and in the drone of an undercarriage in need of a bit of patching, off they go. Into a land of a different language. And an eerie landscape. And probably totally foreign ways to get robbed and left for dead in the vast, treeless, mist-covered expanse of former swamp between the Shanghai airport and the outermost developments of Shanghai itself.

There this friend--yes, as we said, we're not talking about any of us, but a friend--there this friend was in the back of a ratty old…I don’t know what. Think of something one might have considered sporty in the ‘80s. In Mexico. Age it 20 years and fill it with rust holes and an engine that quivers above 55 miles per hour. Your driving 80. The interior smells like motor oil. Your seatbelt is broken, and not just non-functioning. It looks as if someone smashed it with a chunk of granite, perhaps to free themselves and escape death.

You’ve got a driver who looks vaguely South American and whose Chinese seems as clumsy as his English. And you’ve got a talkative man in the passenger seat who isn’t missing teeth but has, it seems, enough black-lined gum space between teeth to measure out enough space for an extra tooth or two if those teeth just abutted one another.

He’s rail-thin. It really is like a skin-covered skull. He grins wildly. There you are racing through the reclaimed swampland on a highway that seems to have eight lanes in either direction but there’s not even the grey outline of a city on the horizon.

And you’re arguing about the price. You’re yelling. He’s grinning.

You know from the guidebooks and hotel information—it’s a new hotel, by the way, so no guarantee anyone knows where it is…and you’ve neglected to print out the address even in English, because you…WAIT, your friend…because your friend is an idiot who even at age 32 is still too willing to just wander into situations, often for no other reason than to call it writerly.

The Art of the Deal

I won this plaque for a school-winning short story in 5th grade, "The Taffy Terror." It was essentially a story of capitalist greed gone berserk as the machines of competing taffy factories break and flood the city. I could have used a deus ex machina ending during this goddamn cab ride.

You lie about what you’re carrying. They know. Adverse to traveler’s checks, you’re carrying a wallet that’s about as fat as a good ol’ American cheeseburger with all the toppings. And you’re meat, man. Your out in the swampland in a piece of shit car with your piece of shit luck and you’re sweating profusely through your shirt and into your suit, the suit you wore on the plane because you didn't want it to wrinkle in your luggage. And you’re arguing about the price of your illegal fare, because the two of you ran out of things to say about the Olympics. And because you didn’t even do the smart illegal thing and agree upon price ahead of time.

Any idiot knows that.

So the landscape keeps unwinding in a way that looks as if one is always passing the same field, the same hovering mist, the same lonely tree.

Finally, you come to a price that’s about three times what you’d pay in a cab. It’s an adventure, right? The deal is agreed upon when you toss in 5000 Korean won, which is basically like $5.

You hand him the money.

Now this deathmobile pulls over. Near an abandoned bus. At a future toll booth site still well-under construction. A few men in sunglasses, even though this is a cloudy day, stand talking outside their cars with tinted windows. They pause to eye you and your vehicle.

The gap-toothed man places a call on his cell. The other man watches the rearview. You look back at that bus, waiting to see the curtain move.

“My brother is coming,” says the gap-toothed man.

“Tong Mao!” your friend says, naming the hotel. “Knock this shit off and take me to the Tong Mao!”

Your friend is sweating terribly, totally unhinged. He's thinking about how he can get his luggage from the trunk and flag down a police car. "Calm down," the tooth man says. "My brother, he come to get you."

He puts the money in an empty space in the dash.

“Calm down, calm down,” he's saying.

The argument goes on.

“Tong Mao!”

These may be the only words in the language at this point. Frantic, your friend is watching the men in shades, then the bus. The guys in the front seat are watching behind the car too.

Ten minutes pass.

By this point, your friend has leaned forth, snatched up the cash, and is now clutching and pumping that fist at the tooth man. “We had a deal!”

He’s still grinning. “Calm down, calm down! My brother, you see.”

Soon, a cab pulls up. A man in what looks like a discarded butler’s outfit is driving it. His white gloves have holes in the fingertips.

All of you are outside now, arguing. Cars loaded with their Chinese dreams whip by on the highway.

"He take you there," the tooth man is saying. "He take you there. Tong Mao."

"Tong Mao!"

And, of course, yer man hands back the cash rather than demanding to pay on delivery at this point. But he's smart this time: he demands his luggage in the back seat with him, having already considered jumping out, should there be a stoplight anywhere in this country.

Endgame

An ancestral cemetery near Gardslov, Sweden. Not a bad place for a rest, I think.

Away he goes with "the brother," who looks very Korean, not at all Chinese like the tooth man. The brother doesn't speak. Only grunts.

You race along. You eye the dashboard. You take out a notebook and write down the cab driver number and do your best with the Chinese symbols around them. The driver grunts and eyes you in the rearview.

Tick tick tick tick...

Your paranoia really kicks in, now. You're watching the vehicles around you. You're looking for signs of other people in on this. You write down the license plate number of suspicious vans, like that black one with the black spray-painted back windows, the one that drove alongside your cab inexplicably. Raced right up, slowed to your speed. And then the driver took out a cell phone and looked over at you. Maybe he was thinking, "What the hell are YOU looking at?" But you know better. He's saying something like, "The bird is in the nest" or "The idiot is in the cab."

Abruptly you see what you think is the car you were first in. Two silhouettes. Shit. They are following. You write down that license number when it gets closer. Abruptly, that car exits.

The driver grunts.

Oh, but wait. A magical thing occurs in the next 15 minutes. Buildings begin to materialize on the horizon. You approach something like a neighborhood. There's a stoplight ahead. You grip the handle of the suitcase, give it a slight tug to make sure it is free of the seat it's wedged behind. You can do this. Just jump out.

But you stay in the car. You don't know why.

Any of these streets could be your last. You don't even know if this is Shanghai, man. People are appearing at corners. You try to get a bead on the neighborhood's character, but what do you have to go on there? This is a totally new experience.

Then you see it! The financial tower across the street from your hotel. You recognize the architecture from a Web site.

As if to punctuate the moment, you lean forward, point at the hotel (across from the tower) and say too loudly, "Tong Mao!"

Stress tourette's, I guess. The driver grunts. You notice that in one of his shoddily gloved hands he's holding 2000 won. Other won bills stick out from his pants pocket.

When you pull up to the hotel, a bright-eyed bellboy takes your bag and bows rapidly and welcomes you. "How is to you today!?" he's saying. "Welcome to Tong Mao!" With one arm he's motioning you inside, but you and your driver are having a mean staredown.

The driver creeps forward. Your stepping back with the bellboy, who seems a little confused but is trying not to show anything other than the pure joy of welcoming a guest, and you're craning your neck to get a look at the license plate. You take out your notepad and scratch down the numbers while the cab driver glares.

And then you're through the revolving doors. You're in the lobby. The bellboy tells you he'll wait for you at the elevators. He does. You're drenched in sweat, though no one else is. Why not. You're an American. And for the slightest moment the check-in girl's eyebrows furrow. Then her face is clean and bright again and she says, "Welcome to Tong Mao!"

After that I showered, changed, and went to the hotel bar where I discovered they had the Danish beer Carlsberg on tap. Had this hotel been built just for me? I'd been in Denmark again just a few weeks before my sweaty entrance to Shanghai. That beer was a welcomed reminder of more successful travels.
-cK

Gypsy Cab Rides, Part I

2007-02-21T00:30:00.000-06:00

My initial Swedish-language entry for Bonamy's (Trailing Twilight's) "Don't Forget Me" photo project. Glöm mig inte!! And I've been drawing that dang spaceship all over things since the NASA diaper experiment. Lord.

Gypsy Cab Rides, Part I

For Joy in Moscow, who is both far bolder and smarter than I…hence, definitely not the “friend” noted in this episode.

I’m not exactly sure what happens to make us seek out things that we know at the moment they’re occurring are not the things we necessarily ought to be doing. Because they pose real danger. Christ. There’s not even anything to disagree about here. They’re just not the things we ought to be doing. We know that.

But for a moment we live outside ourselves and sally forth as a stranger to our own actions.

I’m not talking about kid stuff. None of that “Ooo, you’re gonna get in trouble.” No sneaking a cigarette or staying out too late. No sneaking a peek at a pornographic movie at your friend’s house when you’re 12.

(The first one I saw, by the way, had been confiscated by the principal of an area high school. He’d kept some of that contraband—for research purposes only, I’m sure—and his son had discovered where they were hid, which was simply on top of a book case in the living room. We put one in the VCR. It opened with three women smoking cigarettes—though not with their mouths. I probably developed TMJ right that moment.)

Sure, you might note you’ve entered this moment of danger for certain drugs, especially since many of them come along when you really are sentient enough to know the stakes. Then there was that last drink—and the subsequent drive home, say, through the hills of southern Illinois’ wine country with its curving, tree-lined, shoulderless roads. At night. With only one headlight.

One could, no joke, hit a pig or wild turkey or 400-year-old sycamore out there.

Or maybe it was a different sort of danger, something more emotional or psychological, such as that kiss, or that restraint from a kiss one night, and everything it did or did not lead to. All that “I’ll never do that again” stuff. Vows to override the devices to which we cannot help but be left. But as we all know, anything about which we utter those grand and hilarious thoughts, well, those words usually take years to reach the brain and compel a detectable change in behavior.

But certain episodes do help a lesson crystalize.

All that serves as a hasty introduction. So.

To give one’s eyes a respite, and to provide a bit of cliffhanger drama, such as you'll find with an episode of East Enders, I'll reconvene this post tomorrow. And I promise: in Part II, an actual gypsy cab appears. And someone loses a bit of money over this. In a car barreling further into the mist of reclaimed swampland. In a foreign country.

Today's Cute Moment

Tyler in his "Future Heartbreaker" shirt. Thanks to Julia for sending this one over (and thanks in advance for giving me permission to post!).
-cK

Photo Tuesday

2007-02-20T00:46:00.000-06:00

Because I've no time to write today, I give you PHOTO TUESDAY!!

After five more hours working on the pub, the axe makes my eye even lazier, apparently. (Eeesh! I'm lookin' pretty rough here.)

Flannery and Mike at brunch on Sunday. When Flannery knits in bars, it makes me smile real big. And Mike: I'm liking the new Mountain Mike look.

Mike and Flannery with the Hamms Bear!!! (Is that snapped at the Groveland Tap?) Thanks much for donating this one to the Cause, friends.

A macro of the flowers Lucy brought us during pub interior demolition. That's so sweet!

I had it coming. I did.

With Paddy's Day sitting nigh, and Fat Tuesday upon us, the Mayor of Lake Street has reawakened.

Send your photos, friends!
-cK

Face Time

2007-02-19T10:22:00.000-06:00

I'm going to be staring at myself in the mirror for a bit. This is a science experiment, I swear.
-cK

16 Tons

2007-02-19T08:37:00.000-06:00

This has nothing to do with today's post, but it did make me happy during Friday's lunch.

It's oddly satisfying to find oneself having so much difficulty getting up in the morning following a day of (unforced) labor. Though a day at the computer can leave me feeling more than a bit sapped and with a drawing tiredness behind the eyes that makes me feel as if I've a face like an aging orange or a deflated pumpkin, it never makes the body struggle to rise from bed.

It may do that to the mind, and the mind can persuade the body that it just cannot get up, put on slippers, shuffle to the front room, and start the computer, but it's not the same ache.

All this ripping of wall board and flashing, and the passing of drivers (or drills), gets me to thinking about language. All this deconstruction of a room gets me to thinking about the parts of those walls and tools used to put them up or tear them down. And how little I know of it.

I was thrilled geekily on a recent visit to my brother's place (which is also Hope's place, of course) and he mentioned the desk he'd put together. He'd had to borrow a dremel and debur a bit of the metal.

I thought more about this after a friend recommended some Roethke poems. I hadn't pieced through poetry for a spell and was grateful to get back to it. Things like that get lost easily in the bustle of life (which is the clatter of a keyboard). I read "Lines Upon Leaving a Sanitarium" and it recalled to me Dylan Thomas' "Love in the Asylum" (though they are drastically different tales). I read "The Far Field", the opening stanza of which reminds me strongly of that Park Point or Point Park or whatever that spit of land in Duluth is called exactly. (I wrote about it almost a year ago.)

So I kept pulling books from the shelf--books by Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, John Ashbery, John Donne. A volume of poetry by the Romantics (by which I mean the period in poetry, not the '80s band you know mostly for "What I Like About You").

On it went. Words not so distant but poorly remembered and seldom used like wintry and quaking were returned to me.

And where the mind was perhaps weary a fire now burns.

Credits

Keith, Kym, Ben, Flannery and Mike: Grand to see you at brunch on Sunday. Thanks for the gathering (and Mike for the call). And Flannery: thanks for the hat. The Mayor of Lake Street shall rise again!

Jess, thanks for coming to lunch on Friday. But bugger all to your office arch enemies!

eR and jR: I hope you're enjoying Mexico.

Dingley: Thanks for the "Raptor Force" showing at the Dub. Good times. And Bob Anderson was great. Really nice to meet him and hear more about the making of that film.

eW: Thanks for the Roethke recs.
-cK

Feeling Chuffed on a Weekend

2007-02-18T00:30:00.000-06:00

Lucy and John pause during Day 1 of the interior "demolition" at the pub.

I was up at a decent hour today and feeling rather focused. Organized the day in numerous lists over breakfast then set out to mail a card, a bit of flotsam, and two bills. It was all progressing as planned.

And then I popped by the new pub to see if my buddy John was there. It was 2:30 by this point. I'd accomplished much but most of my day had just been the kindling and the afternoon was to be the conflagration of progress.

John was there. He'd just arrived. I helped him unload the van of tools and lumber and in we went. We set up the horses, had a quick chat, then drove over to Lee's to steal some tools from his garage and more from his basement (along with a shop vac). What was he going to do about it? He's in Biloxi.

Lucy wasn't home but her coat was there in the kitchen along with a lovely arrangement of flowers in which the daisies looked dandy on a winter day.

Thoughts of spring.

Hitting the Bricks

The world's most hideously yellowed "brick" tiles. You could get a nicotine fix just putting your hand to this wall.

Back to the pub we went. Quickly quickly my afternoon's plans were evaporating. I didn't try to fight it. There they were. There they went.

Someone pounded on the side door. "Who's there!?" we called through. "The man!" he called back. "Huh?" "The MAN!!" We opened the door. He grinned broadly, his three or four remaining teeth in play. We told him the place was closed. He was incredulous.

"Closed?" he said. "On a Saturday!?"

Away! Away with you! "We'll be open in a month," we said. The door was closing but he had one last thing to say. "A month!?"

John, in his ever-burning Welsh way huffed into the pub to attack the interior. "Jesus bloody Christ!" he said.

Not long after, Gary Owen showed. And then Bill Watkins. And the day began to take form as we took down a couple old televisions, sawed up some boards, busted up the bad tiles behind the bar. We undid some sheetrock and flashing. We used a tiny saw to make sharp cuts in the concrete fill between the tiles, and as John moved the saw forward I ran the vac head before the blade to pull in the powder and sparks, but little good it did for all that hit us in the face.

Still, it was satisfying work. Eventually, we experimented with drilling a couple holes to see what was behind the disgusting plastic "brick" panels on the walls. (They were at one stage of existence white; but 30+ years of being a smoking operation had left them gummy and yellow. Thank god Minneapolis has banned that air.) We found light from an actual window, something the previous bar seemed to have been against. We found warm-toned wood panel that could be sanded and varnished and which would serve as a wonderful backdrop for the British and Celtic images soon to be placed on the wall.

So we went about ripping out the yellow panels along one long wall. A fantastic change.

Alas! We discovered window blocks and warmer wood paneling behind the awful awful awful yellowed brick panels.

My friend Betsy once said that upon moving into a place a person should always change a wall. It was a way of making it your own.

We did, and the change was profound. "Well I'm feeling chuffed now," Bill said, smiling. It had seemed like such a daunting task when we had looked at the place earlier in the day, but after an afternoon (and evening, as I didn't leave until 9:30) we could see that, yes, this joint would come to be.

Big thanks to Lucy for popping down. She brought us dinner from Longfellow Grill and a vase in which she'd bundled some of those flowers from her kitchen. (Are we all connected telepathically? What am I doing with this cell phone!?) Thanks, friend. That was really sweet.

Alright. Must shower and scrape at my finger nails for a spell...though I'll destroy them again in the three hours I'll be working over there tomorrow.

I didn't sweat or cry real tears during today's work, but I did draw blood inside of three minutes of arriving at the pub.
-cK

Credit Where It's Due

2007-02-17T01:27:00.000-06:00

Thanks much to Erin and Hulles for the call this eve. They made an already golden Friday even better.

Loads of good work had happened. (Nice to feel the wheels are catching pavement, you know.) I'd had a really welcomed long lunch with a friend I don't see often enough, then caught up with Terry and Hulles at Frost early in the eve. Home again for a nap and dish-washing and staring with incredulity at a no-longer-functioning string of lights on the wall. I'd hung those lights the previous day. Natch to that.

>> Insert farting trumpet to sign defeat <<

So I was frowning at this when the phone rang. And there she was. And I was recalled to Moscow. And it was good.

It was grand.

(The Timmy Wing drawing is totally going on my fridge!)

This reminds me: I recently went back to reading Seamus Heaney's book of poems The Spirit Level. And then I saw a program in which a character picked up this book and read a passage from it. It was somehow connected to the mystery.

And now I think it was my dream from 6:30 or so (about the point in time I sadly missed the first call from Erin and Hulles). I was enjoying the show too. If only you could see the programming in my head.

Currently, thanks to a cringe-worthy date story of Erin's, I'm playing a rather outrageous dance troop's work. (It involves soil, eggs, and a bird-walk.) And, Hulles: great tale about the cocktail dress. I expect we'll see a full version for public consumption at your blog?

Happy and a little too alive in the mind for bed just yet....
-cK

There and Back Again

2007-02-16T00:30:00.000-06:00

Back then and perhaps before us the world was easier to puzzle out. It's just that this one point into which we've been born is the exact point at which it all goes to hell. The prophets were, you see, just way too early.

All politics. All social order. All defensible support of either Britney or K-Fed. There it goes. You heard it: the belching drain. Our manners are for shit. Our food supply haunts us at both ends--just ask anyone at Taco John's or Taco Bell or anyplace beginning with Taco.

Me? I'm going to lunch today with a friend. But it'll be free both of tacos and self-important, self-lamenting dire existential indictments. I've no place in my belly for that stuff today. Need I burble "Woop"?

Look. I'm not saying the gloomy complaints are useless. I'm not even saying the boarded windows on your compound are creepy (though I'm thinking that). But I am on a soapbox and, yes, I'll leave open the possibility that the water is warm and rising; but what I'm telling you is this: it's better to act irrational but to be rational.

I'll say no more on that point, because maybe someday when the world is rebuilding itself this blog entry and some old wrestling videos--maybe Big John Stud vs. the Iron Sheik--will be all that they, our three-eyed descendants, have to go on as they shuffle about in jute sacks and alligator shoes.

If I'm vague on Friday, I may one day be mistaken for wise.

Sudden Recommendations

That reminds me: Read the novel Riddley Walker.

And for the ever-expanding swatch of population unfamiliar with the film Strange Brew, get back on your duff and watch it.

$30

Erin, the calculations that occur in my brain are not really based upon any system of numbers that a slide rule or abacus can solve. I think I'm pretty much dealing with variables the world (beyond my brain) may yet have to discover. I'll be alright if the Nobel committees for mathematics or economics don't call, but I'm just sayin'. I'm okay with that.

But I think three drinks and a cheese plate = $30. At least. And then there's tip. I don't think I would have overbid if this issue were ferreted out by Bob Barker on the Price is Right.

Alas, no worries and none intended.

By the way, you had a mojito that night. Were you the one who broke out the defib pads on that trend here in mid-winter? Who brought that back just as Justin Timberlake--two mentions in two days!--wanted to do for sexy? even though Prince was like, "It ain't ever left, punk"? I ordered a Darcy's Coffee on Thursday evening but said, "Is that too much work right now?" It was pretty busy. Tommy said, "Are you kidding? That's nothing. This is a land of mojitos."

The Rest Shall Rise

I popped over to Lake Street tonight to haul liquor to the basement of a pub some friends just closed on. We spent more than a little bit of time wondering how the screwy electrical pattern in the place and the years of nicotine in the walls hadn't just up and combusted the joint.

And that men's bathroom. Oh, dear god. I swear they've been scrubbing the walls with urine for decades. The women's room? No foul scent. The men's room? Allow me to wither and just say, as my students used to, it was indescribable.

(I'm thinking of buying a Hazmat suit from Axeman, just in case I'm in the pub the day we're cleaning the toilets.)

Loads of work to be done before St Patrick's Day, but the Rest, as we'll know it, will rise and it'll be worth it. It'll be a blast. More on this in the coming weeks.

Wait. It occurs to me I hate following the word "more" with the word "on." Bugs Bunny had it right: "What a maroon!"

Happy Friday, friends. Mel Blanc is not a white wine.
-cK

ps: Hey, Trailing Twilight! I'm taking my first photo for the Flickr group this weekend, and I'm delivering it in Swedish style. Glöm mig inte!!

Domesticity

2007-02-15T11:46:00.000-06:00

I don't recall whether I've used this photo in the blog. I know I once intended to but removed the entry because it just seemed too lame. But the photo, I think, is quite funny.

The painting comes from the basement of my apartment building. In the laundry room is this weird scene covering the walls. Fields, frollicking squirrels with massive acorns, sihouettes of horses and riders on the horizon. There's a fox. There's a barn. It's all done in something of a joyous Hamm's woodland pastoral style.

(The beer refreshing!)

And then there's this white owl. On which someone, probably years before I moved here, has painted a boner.

Normalizations

The word domesticity seems like a mistake. I'm fine with the concept, but the word just seems like...hmm. Like "normalcy." My recollection on that one is that President Wilson uttered it post-stroke and people ran with it because it would have been mean to do otherwise.

Things get scrambled in my head, as they had in Wilson's head, I suppose. I've referred to shopping plazas as placentas. I've referred to curdling up with a good book. And I'm not even from the Isle of Meapos.

But lately I've been feeling rather domestic and enjoying it. Putting nails in walls. Hanging things on those nails. Sifting through boxes. Setting things aside for donation. Setting other things aside to hide within other things so that not even the garbage man might discover such embarrassing possessions. For example, an elf candle. Who gave this to me? Why did I keep it? It's not even something I'd burn just to watch its head melt. It's just too creepy.

(Alas! Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's soap opera swag! I'm keeping my Men of Days of Our Lives puzzle, thank you very much. AND the N'Sync sticker book, though I will send N'Sync stickers to anyone who would like one. Warning: my supply of Timberlakes is low, as he was my favorite to paste in empty cubes back in my office days. The Men of Days is available on loan, but only to the most trustworthy. Kitsch this powerful doesn't saunter along often.)

Along with my copy of Super Cat, I've unearthed many lost treasures, including a high volume of items sent without signature or explanation from Urbana, Illinois' Gehngis John.

The one that tickled me most yesterday:

This clothes drying rack schematic. At the top he's highlighted a copy error and added his commentary:

A 27-foot rack? Indeed.
-cK

An Epiphany

2007-02-14T01:00:00.000-06:00

Now you can set out for the mountain in hopes of reaching it by dark, but you shouldn’t be down if you don’t reach it. Just have enough to get through the night, man.

First Thing's First: Cancer, You Lost This Round, Jerk

Let us celebrate Lyn finishing her breast cancer treatment. She kicked cancer's ass and now Lance Armstrong can kiss hers. Get on your fucking ten-speed, dude, and pay homage to a fellow survivor. Woo! I love you dearly, friend. You're one cool chick. Please have Lara play the "Three Cool Chicks" song for you from the 5.6.7.8's.

The beer I drank in your honor last night as we marked the end of your treatment:

It was a Belgian beer, St. Feuillien, and imbibed at the Happy Gnome. Really really tasty. Could be a new favorite.

Magnificent Bastards

*I include "Magnificent Bastard" solely for old sport in Tennessee, should he be reading this. Rommel can go to hell!

Joyce, that magnificent blowhard, referred to his short stories as epiphanies. Ever since, writers have made a religion of our mostly secular trade. We debate our canon, our archangels and saints, the existence of the Devil (The answer is Yes and his name is ________, by the way), the requisite penance/study for being held in proper regard, etc.

But I’ve no soapbox to construct on this point really.

Regarding the writing of fiction, I’ve not lost the fire for that field. It heats my blood and thoughts, daily daily much too much (again I link to Schwartz's brilliant poem "Baudelaire"), but I no longer get buffeted about by bitterness or carried away on any particular platform. It’s so much nicer to appreciate writing than to dictate how one should appreciate it, for one should never stake any ultimate satisfaction in life on the actions of others. (We might make certain exceptions for during certain episodes of sex, but let’s be honest: that better be a particularly singular situation, such as the imminent destruction of the earth, or those better be some pretty serious miscues. For example, yodeling. Or the television left on for 60 Minutes. Or your mother calling to ask you what is a Cleveland Steamer, Jana.) But it took me too many years to discover this not-really-zen-but-call-it-zen approach.

Probably because I’m delusional.

Awakening

I woke this weekend with a rather amateurish revelation—or epiphany, dear J-man—about my fiction writing and why (perhaps) I have closed the gap on where I want to be but never get there. It was an amateurish one, but it was a welcomed one.

We’re talking about goals.

The thing is this: I have almost no goals in life. This isn’t to say I’m devoid of inspiration or ambition—I probably (which is to say, do) have too much. It’s just that life is a big thing. I may as well speculate on the number of hairs on the elephant’s back, but damn if the elephant has even a mildly hairy back. I wouldn’t know. I’m way too short to see up there.

So I tend to take things at face value. (In the case of the elephant, I might report back from his ass. And if the saying holds true, he'll remember that report!) I never think too long term. I plot things out, yes. Sometimes meticulously. I think so much about things that I wind up a little confused about the real and imagined conversations, and this causes me to hesitate or speak too far ahead of someone.

I can do the scrappin’ by things. I have a full-year’s budget, for example. Yay for me, sure. But I don’t say, “I want a big house. I want a dog named Gus.” We have very little control over that stuff, I’m sure of that.

Now you can set out for the mountain in hopes of reaching it by dark, but you shouldn’t be down if you don’t reach it. Just have enough to get through the night, man. And take note--painfully exact, painfully embellished notes--of what’s along the way, because that’s very well as interesting if not far more so than what you find on the mountain.

Am I writing an advice book? I don’t take my advice. Just keep that in mind.

Back to the Writing & Epiphany Thing

I don’t know. I just can’t cast a grand vision over life, perhaps because I think life is without tethers. (Do I think it’s tetherless?) It’s too transient to pin oneself only to static visions; that’s what I mean. Or perhaps because I’m just too hypnotized by it as it happens. Or perhaps because it frightens me that if I establish a gigantic goal—such as those blubbering fools who don’t make the cut for American Idol and who are finally escorted out by a plaintive mother who's dressed in matching clothes—I’ll be crushed to the point that I can’t do sensible things like change my socks or tip my waitresses and bartenders.

I think it’s the middle one. I hope it is. I adore life. I do. I don’t find it too difficult to find interest in life or the people who inhabit it. It's probably disastrously easy for me. The shiny object distraction problem--"My precious!" (Successful interaction is another matter. Dr. Phil’s goofy guess is as good as mine.) If something good happens to stick—a good job, a good relationship, a car that can make it through a Minnesota winter—then happy days, indeed.

So when I really force myself to name one goal, I come up with this: I don’t want to fail as a writer.

That's it, I think. That's the one, the one I can't handle not solving. That's strange. I think. Shit, that's strange. I don't want to fail my family either, but I think that's a brainless response. That is the me me, the eye of my I, regardless of who I want to be. That's life as it should be. That's what we hope we're born into.

I have been. I have a wonderful family and wonderful friends I consider family. I don't want to fail them.

But the one thing I have is not wanting to fail as a writer. It's the one thing I know is just me. Or what I think is just me. I'm not sure.

So. The epiphany: the real problem is I’ve never defined what success is. Because that hadn't occurred to me.

Is it publication of a short story in a particular journal or magazine? Publication of a novel by a certain publisher? (For example, anyone who didn’t publish Jim Crace’s Being Dead—obviously I still have some nasty thoughts!) Is that producing something that someday my parents and siblings and friends, who have extended me so much support and latitude, can look at and say without humor that they're proud of what I’ve done (not just that I’m trying to do it)? Or is it as simple as just making the turn? Of knowing the work is on the level for where it might be accepted by people who make those publishing decisions but without concern for whether the work ever is accepted? Or even reaches their desks or the desks of their underlings?

The epiphany got me only to the light. It did not show me what was illuminated. And hour by hour I change how I feel: outrageously happy, inconsolable. I promise to blog everyday. I imagine ending this site. I end friendships. I start new ones. I give up or never give up on America. I'm moved to tears by a photograph of Denmark. I'm moved to tears because I cannot keep Danish words together in my head.

That there's no such thing as settling; only a refusal to believe that things have grabbed you.

That all things remain incomplete.

That these things happen only in my head.

But there was this epiphany that's given me a very real challenge. And I am not afraid.
-cK

The Denis Johnson quote from Jesus' Son that hangs on my door for reflection each day before I go out: All these weirdos and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.

Too Good

2007-02-13T00:30:00.000-06:00

It amazes me how many good people I get to know for god-knows-what reason other than dumb luck or the luck of the dumb. Whatever it is, I wear it about. It quivers around me like that cloud around Pig Pen.

So on Saturday I was treated to dinner at a new friend's place. Too too good. Lord. I mentioned it two entries ago, I believe, and noted that my face hurt from smiling. It did. If you'd heard the stories your face would have hurt too.

(Note: Some of you may be receiving notes from Timmy Wing soon. Please know I have stolen this bit.)

But as I love love love food food food things--send your recipes, good people!--here's the menu:

Beef with a cabernet sauce (butter, flat-leaf parsley, capers, and shallots that made my weak eyes weep as I chopped them but nearly weep with joy as I tasted this sauce). Really good, though I couldn't persuade the chef of this fact. She was determined to put a negative review in my court, but being quite stubborn I'm holding my line. And I'm right in this instance, thank you very much.

I like the plates she filched from her grandmother too.

Asparagus (awesome) and squash with carmelized garlic (awesome).

Oh, damn. There was also a cardamon-orange cake, but I have neglected to upload the photo yet...and I've already consumed the rather large slice I took home. Please know it was intoxicatingly good. The cardamon made me want to get a mortar and pestel. It's like a little apothecary experiment each time one goes to work with it.

In lieu of a cake close-up, I'll give you a photo of Kitty:

Kitty apparently suffers from serious stagefright. So when the cat emerged to use the kitty-litter facilities, we had to freeze in our tracks. My host whispered (through tightened lips, as if aping ventriloquism--CAN one ape ventriloquism?), "Act like we don't see her."

All in all, a grand night. Thanks, friend. And fair warning: I've plotted my menu now.

Bonus Image

I don't know what year this is. Perhaps Christmas 1977. (My brother, off-frame because my mother sent me this copy with the tK cut out--HA!--is, I think, two in this one.) Now, look at that jaunty angle on the red cowboy hat. Look at that plastic rifle holstered in the pocket of my Toughskins. (Toughskins!) And look at that Donny Osmond doll in the other hand. He seems to be holding a microphone to my crotch.

Happy days,
-cK

This Guy Right Here

2007-02-12T14:29:00.000-06:00

Damn! I didn't get organized enough to post my intended post last night. Will do tonight. In the meantime, I offer up a self-portrait in crayon.

To judge by the style, this was drawn in spring or fall of '82. My third-grade art style (fall '82 through spring '83) generally involved more controlled, giant sideways-oval heads, but most of those were pencil. The crayon tracing over what I assume was penciled lines is unexpected.

Still, the #38 on the shirt may suggest this is from 1983. I have an occasional disgraphia problem (number inversion). The brain tells me one thing but the hand produces another. The eyes plead ignorance.

If this is from '83 and the number was to reflect that, this might be the oldest record of My Family's Darkest Secret.

(Dramatic music: DUN-Dun-dun)

Once had a dream in which my parents told me they'd long thought I was schizophrenic. It took me months to figure out the conversation hadn't happened. Perhaps the jury is still out.

But the cK still says: Thumbs Up.
-cK

Quick Take

2007-02-11T00:33:00.000-06:00

A right fine eve in need of greater words and photos. That'll be a mid-day project on Sunday, I hope. Quick take: I was fed and treated too well. I asked too many questions. A great many stories and photos--those photos!--were shared with me. A literary passage was read, the lesson of which was "wait and hope." That's just lovely.

All in all, my face hurts from smiling.
-cK

Super Cat

2007-02-08T10:17:00.000-06:00

"Super Cat" was written (and illustrated) circa April 1982. Mrs. O'Hagen's second-grade class. She was the one who got me writing stories. She put out two baskets, one for stories going to her, and one for stories she was returning (usually with some sort of "Great job!" or "Super stuff!" comment).

I give you: "Super Cat." And if you'd prefer a slideshow version, you may find it here.

"Super Cat" by Chris Kelsey. (NOTE: It says "Great story" on the cover. Awesome!)

It was Monday and Super Cat was flying over the city. He flew over the river dam. The dam sprung a leak. Then it broke. A big wave rose up from the water. Super Cat tried to stop it from hitting the city.

The wave hit the city. Super Cat dug a big hole in the park. The water flowed in the hole. Super Cat found a big rock and put the rock over the hole.

After he stopped the water, the side of the rock sprung a leak. The water was set free. Super Cat dug a tunnel in the street that was very long and deep.

1 mile away from where he started there was a fire hydrant and the water broke out of it. The water started to flood the city. Super Cat said, I will use my secret weapon, my cold blow!

When he blew, all of the water froze. Super Cat pushed the ice into the lake.

After that Super Cat flew back over the city to look for danger.

-cK

Scanning Project

2007-02-08T08:56:00.000-06:00

I've yet to use my scanner, but that'll change later today. Just found a story I wrote (and illustrated) in third grade: "Super Cat."

Prepare to be amazed.
-cK

Snow Day

2007-02-06T22:39:00.000-06:00

I'm listening to "Mary's Song" again. It's by the Aislers Set and is, I think, a nearly perfect song.

So. It was snowy today. The roads were iced. I drove a particularly nasty stretch of 35E out to Eagen to interview people who have accomplished more in life than I ever will, but that gets me to thinking on how in writing I'm given so frequently the opportunity to meet extraordinary people and hear their stories.

And how I hear their stories even when I'm not trying to earn a buck. Because they are everywhere, those stories.

It was icey and I drove listening to NPR not because I had any particular interest in what was on the mid-morning broadcast--I wasn't interested--but because I wanted to know about the roads and whether we were all dying on them today.

The snow was steady but the flakes were too thin to give us any grip over the black ice that had formed from so many days that had nipped below zero. There were all these dramatic moments of braking lightly only to hear the wheels cry in the way one imagines they will when you're spinning off towards a terrible event.

The lanes were largely masked by the blowing snow. Everyone had come to some sort of telepathic agreement about what we'd consider lanes, and occasionally you might encounter an exposed line and discover you'd been straddling a dashed turn lane or a sliver of shoulder, but you went on because you'd agreed to.

Slick Shoes

Years ago when I'd returned to Chicago for a visit I stopped at the house of former neighbors. They showed me their photos from a trip to China. This was before the woman had fallen too far down into alcoholism to climb out.

The man told me a story about driving along a rural Illinois highway one day while he was trying to make it to a business conference. At some point he'd lost his bearings. The road was caked with a thin hard layer of snow. There were no trees or telephone posts to give him guidance. There weren't even any trucks out, at least not right at the moment he decided to stop.

It was just that he'd started to wonder if he'd drifted from the highway. That sort of thing can happen out there. (It happened recently in Wisconsin. A news van fell through the ice on a lake after the driver got confused and was under the impression they were driving along a road.) So he stopped and got out to look around.

Quite a storm had developed. Lots of snow. Lots of wind. And as he walked around the car to feel by the wheel whether it was road or field a sharp wind caught in his overcoat and spun him.

He fought it but in his dress shoes he was helpless. He got spun another time or two, carried a few staggering steps, and finally went over.

When he looked up, the fierce snow blinded him. He couldn't see his car. He could not tell any better whether he was on road or field. He couldn't hear whether a truck might be coming, and if it was he was sure he wouldn't see it before it hit him or his car.

I don't know how long he waited. Not very, I suppose. He was afraid but needed to do something. In that near-panic he came up with what I think is fairly interesting solution to the problem: he began walking a circle. He widened it until his hand found the vehicle.

A number of other challenging and far less likely to be solved problems would greet him thereafter, but he made it through that outwardly dangerous, white afternoon.

It's a story that sticks in my heart as if it were my own.
-cK

Internet Gremlins

2007-02-05T09:53:00.000-06:00

Bad internet connection today. Can't blog. Sad face:(
-cK

Too Cute

2007-02-02T14:42:00.000-06:00

We may have reached the end of the Cuteness Universe, friends. Kittens in baskets be damned. Babies in peapods? Please.

Go check out the video at the most recent Night Editor posting. It's number 3 on the list and shows the effect of Joe Mauer on Minnesota's youth.

Big thanks to Elbee for (a) spotting a fake cilantro plant in a medical office and (b) spotting the Night Editor piece. Thanks, friend.

Ski-U-Mah!
-cK

Sleepy

2007-02-02T00:45:00.000-06:00

A Seoul cafe called Poem. That's sweet. I wish I'd gone up there.

I miss reading Chekov but I think he's a terrible writer for a winter, particularly on a weekend when we'll have a day or two when an air temperature of zero will be a reason to celebrate. But I'm sleepy from this week and that has me thinking of Chekhov who was, really, a fantastic writer.

But we've all got our biases in this world and I'm fascinated by ordinary things and the impact of a moment. I'm fascinated by watching people.

And in Chekhov's work there's a sense of habit--people who will relentlessly make the same mistakes or suffer the same hardships, but that's no reason to disregard them. They have qualities worth redemption. They have stories worth telling.

And true enough, the same things that are really worth appreciating are happening too. We ought not disregard that either. (I believe I've returned to Auden here.)

Many of us aren't too good at dealing with ourselves, and I'm probably in that lot, but we must deal with one another, and that's something too many of us willfully run from.

Though we sometimes must learn the same lessons, which questions whether we learned them in the first place and perhaps suggests we never can, we go on. That has its tolerable limits, true, but most often there's a glimmer of hope that we'll get it right this time. It's worth rooting for, dammit.

The Stress Shell

Back in the paleolithic era I worked in an office, and I remember my friend Betsy and I discussing how stressed out we were. I suggested that I never got sick because the germs were repelled by the nerve field around me. And Betsy suggested that our limbs might fall off if it weren't for the magnetic-like force of our anxiety holding us together.

I was thinking about that and Scooby-Doo this past week.

The stress shell around me reminded me of this electric abomindable snowman creature from an episode of Scooby-Doo. I don't recall how they explained away the electric field around the costume, and I think they actually used this plot device on two or three episodes, but it must have made an impression on me.

For when I hit these periods I feel as if the atoms are quivering (abominably?) against me.

(Sidenote: I still do not understand how in a chaotic universe two atoms don't actually bump against one another in a way that just once causes an atom to break open and start off an atomic chain of fire. I'm not making a god argument here. I'm just saying I don't understand shit about basic science. Electricity, really, baffles me. I don't understand what it is, man.)

In these times, my brow is often furrowed. My eyes feel hot. And I suffer numbness in hands or feet. I start Googling symptoms and diagnose myself with diabetes, liver failure, Raynaud's Disease, schizophrenia, Parkinson's, sciatica, MS, massive Vitamin B12 and thiamine deficiency, dementia, spinal tumors, and TMJ. I develop facial ticks.

I read things aloud, and as if to an audience, to reassure myself some sense of intellectual fire still flickers in my head.

There is a Light That Never Goes Out

Maybe I got it wrong, but I think plenty is still kicking up there. I'm happy about that.

And after a brief but really nice talk with Hulles at Frost earlier and spending a bit of time with Erin and Jim as they waited for the offer to come in on their place in downtown Saint Paul--Congrats on the sale!! Woo!!!--I feel things are returning to a reasonable perspective. I really got loads accomplished this week; I just wish I hadn't forced myself to do it all at once!

The tension in my hands has abated. I feel my feet coming back. And there's no longer a thin, tense fizzing in my head (that pressure of silence).

It's the weekend, friends. While I don't want to enslave myself to that Loverboy philosophy of working for the weekend, I will take this one happily.

By the way: Bears.
-cK

Nothing to See Here

2007-02-01T09:40:00.000-06:00

Just needed to see something other than my butt at the Drama today. Copenhagen, how I miss you....
-cK

Dancin' Machine

2007-01-30T22:32:00.000-06:00

Still too busy to blog, but never too busy to shake my booty for a wedding party...or simply for outrageous self-promotion.

And now for some miscellany:

Thankful for Defeat: One Story finally rejected my short story. It's about time! A great burden has been lifted.

Things I don't like paying for (Keep it clean, folks): wallets and garbage cans

Movie I'm Amazed Has Earned $413 Million Worldwide: Night at the Museum

My Most Hated Commercial Right Now: the DirectTV spot with Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future
-cK

It Is Happening Again

2007-01-29T13:38:00.000-06:00

Oh, man. I've killed the world's oldest person! I sent her that championship belt. Within a week, she's gone.

Now a Japanese woman sits in the crosshairs. Good luck to you.
-cK

Ratta-tat-tat

2007-01-28T15:59:00.000-06:00

We had an '80s party in Elk River to celebrate Erin and Jim's wedding from last week. Grand time...though I've no time to post about it! For now, I'm just posting this one image. Oh, the prom dresses.

Bought a printer / scanner / copier / fax machine today. Found an accountant last week. Feel very professional and, of course, professionally frazzled.
-cK

Reason #438

2007-01-27T14:42:00.000-06:00

Reason #438 I Should Not Have a Digital Camera:

Self-Portraits While Singing

This time it was to Wolf Parade's "Shine a Light." And I was probably singing aloud with the headphones on. My poor poor neighbors....

I look like I'm 1.2 seconds from getting shot or pushed out a window.
-cK

Prelude to a Nerd

2007-01-26T21:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday I have an '80s party in Elk River, Minnesota. I believe I'm going to go as a nerd, as in Revenge of the Nerds, though I don't believe that's much of a challenge for me. I'm a nerd, regardless. Huh? You want proof? Alright. Here it is:

(Costume? What costume?)

As part of my Friday eve, though, I popped by Frost (one of my block's locals) to hand Terry the third Arnaldur Indridason novel (who I know you aren't reading but you should be). It was a wonderful night.

Sol was a bit tired and testy, but fun nonetheless. And Terry is always a treat. Tommy's an unbeatable bartender (though please don't try to disprove me with a whooping stick). And I was amazed by the kindness, wisdom and humor of Erin, who told a great many really funny tales and asked welcomed "But why do you feel that way?" questions, to which I could not intelligently respond.

She's a grand soul. It was great to get to know her beyond a name. If you want to say something foul about her, evil dudes who might be reading this, fair enough, but please know I'll rip your face off. And I mean with my bare hands. Just ask the Harholdt Sisters. You insult them, you've got no face. End of story. So.

Such a night is welcomed, friends. (If you want to complain, please visit the Hulles.) We all need new perspectives in life. I adore that in my neighborhood I'm so consistently treated to them. This is such a good place to be.

I'm blessed in this way. Thanks, yous.

Happy days for the weekend and well beyond,
-cK

End of Days...I mean, Passions

2007-01-26T08:25:00.000-06:00

I'm coming to terms, slowly, with the cruel world NBC has put me in.

Is this the first of seven vials to be poured upon the earth and signal the coming of the Apocalypse? Passions has been canceled. The End of Days--but please not Days--is nigh.

Bugger.

And to rub salt into the wound they are adding a fourth hour to Today! Thank god I don't watch tv during the morning hours; but if I did, and this is what really bugs me, they'd be there: Matt, Al, Ann and Meredith.

I quote Chuck Brown: "Ugh."

And now I must close my cape dramatically and retreat to my mountain lair.
-cK

Championship Belts

2007-01-25T00:45:00.000-06:00

The world's oldest person just keeps dying.

On Wednesday it was Emiliano Mercado del Toro (115!!) in Puerto Rico. Before him was Elizabeth "Lizzy" Bolden (116!!) in Tennessee. (So close to Lizzy Borden! Nice.) Before her was Ecuador's Maria Esther de Capovilla (116!!).

So. Somewhere a person has inherited this title. And today I'm wishing a championship belt went along with it. Maria should have gone about wearing her Oldest Person Championship Belt. I think at her death it should have been flown to Tennessee and given to Lizzy. From there, off to Puerto Rico to award it to Emiliano.

And with Emiliano's passing the belt is removed and flown to Connecticut and placed upon 114-year-old Emma Faust Tillman (who is noted at the end of the BBC article about Emiliano).

>> Rocky theme <<

A Few Credits

* Joy: Thanks much for the wonderful (though slightly frightening) hitchhike story from Moscow. GAH!!
* MC: Thank you for introducing me to my new two-week crush, Maria Bamford.
* Carslon: You got the best of me on the Clijsters - Hingis match, indeed.
* Elbee: Thanks for the beautiful note the other day about the Family K and Erin's wedding pics and such. I owe you a response. This isn't it.
* Former Neighbor of Apartment 601: Your courteous presence is missed.
* Mouse: It's too quiet around here. Where are you?
-cK

Mousetraps

2007-01-23T00:45:00.000-06:00

After writing this post I discovered that a mouse had been at the peanut butter on the living room trap without setting it off...while I was out writing this. Score one more for Mouse.

The mouse has gotten the best of me so far. I left snaptraps for him as I departed for Wisconsin. I set one outside the hole his pioneering ancestor had carved into the kitchen wall years ago. It’s tucked back in an awkward space between the long sink cabinet and the wall. About 8 inches wide. It generally holds a narrow bucket in which I keep paper grocery bags for recycling materials.

In his defense, the mouse has never once crapped in that shadowed space. And though I’ve seen him on the kitchen counter—this was back when I’d been out of town for most of a month and he must have believed I’d left for good—I’ve never found crap there either.

In fact, the mouse has never actually left a tiny log in view. He either suffers stagefright or he’s very fastidious as rodents go. Or maybe I leave a weird scent around the joint, which might explain why the girl across the hall, who had been leaving her garbage out there until I filed a complaint has now placed a minute (Dare I say mouse-sized?) little scented oil jar outside my door. (What the fuck!? It's like a cute form of harassment.)

And Then There Were Three…

This guitar is dirtier than Mötley Crüe.

I set three traps because I broke the fourth (well, the first) trying to figure out how to set it. I’m not a mechanical genius. I’m not even remedially skilled in mechanics. But destroying one trap helped me understand its design enough to successfully bait the surviving three with peanut butter.

I placed one by that hole in the wall, one beneath the sink (the most recent place I’d found him trying to set up shop), and one behind The Dustiest Guitar in the World in the living room. Behind that guitar is a base-board hole. It had been an entry point for mice.

Back when I was out of town for much of a month (September 2006), a mouse had grown comfortable in that living room hole.

So there I was folding my post-travel laundry. I looked pathetic in my boxers, shirtless, slump-shouldered and feeling a bit punched apart by a trans-Pacific flight. I looked so pathetic that a very cute mouse emerged, eyed me, and hopped into the room to watch me.

He was one of those short hunched mice, much more of a ball shape. He seemed to prefer hopping to running. He seemed to keep his front paws just off the ground, as if they were reserved solely for holding before him in gestures of prayer and kindess. He stared at me from wide, innocent black eyes.

“God dammit!” I shouted.

He hopped backed a bit. Eyed me. So I dropped my shirt and stood and looked for a book to throw at him. By the time I had selected one—because I was thinking about what books I didn’t want mouse remains on—he’d scampered back into hiding. Yet, he watched me from the hole. So I went to the kitchen and found Scrubbing Bubbles and sprayed it in the hole. I’ve not seen a mouse use that hole since.

The Traps Failed

This round only one trap seems to have been visited. It was the one beneath the sink, a trap so sensitive it had gone off by my initial closing of the cabinet once I’d set it.

The mouse had removed the peanut butter without triggering it. Or he’d triggered it, consumed the peanut butter, and, wheezing with laughter, reset it.

A defeated cK reconsiders his strategies. Though he had bagged a live mouse earlier this winter, as the top of the entry indicates the mouse has defeated another trap. This makes the score Mouse 3, cK 1.
-cK

Downsville was Up

2007-01-21T20:20:00.000-06:00

We had a lovely time this past weekend at Downsville, Wisconsin's Creamery Inn. That's about six miles south of Menomonee. You probably do not know either town. That's alright. But if you find yourself near it some day, perhaps passing along I-94, consider stopping. It's gorgeous out there.

We'd gathered for my sister's wedding. (It was also her husband's wedding.) The eK is now the eR. She's now a Raivala. Perhaps we will bill all family gatherings as Friends and Raivalas.

(Ha!)

The inn was pretty cute. It had a gift shop (mostly local pottery goods and scarves) and a bakery with some kickass scones and fresh baguettes.

We had a bit of snow on the ground and the air was scented by the inn's numerous fireplaces. It was sunny for the wedding day. We woke today to a steady, quiet snow that fell upon the frozen lake.

I was perhaps the first of the party outside this morning as there were no tracks in the snow yet. It was a nice moment.

For the wedding we took over the inn. All the rooms were rented to us. There were two structures. Those of us in the primary building (which had a restaurant and bar) were given afterhours keys that worked the deadbolt on the front door. I'd expected doors with automatic locks. I was surprised to find we were responsible for making sure the front door was rebolted. No one manned the late-night desk. You can have that out there. That's refreshing.

So. Yes. A wonderful wedding. Great food (including a Kaluha cake, hey). The speeches from John (one of the groom's brothers) and my brother (the tK) were outstanding. Succinct, funny and touching. And the stories told around the reception were choice. And being that we were the inn some folks milled about in their pajamas. Shoes were shed. Ties were loosened. A number of people put casual clothes back on. One woman even remarked, "I'll be back. I've got to get rid of this bra."

I've an impossible amount of work this week, but I feel very good right now. And next weekend is round two of the wedding festivities: an '80s party in Elk River, Minnesota. It'll be epic.
-cK

Coffee

2007-01-20T06:00:00.000-06:00

I will be at Bon Vie this morning for coffee and french toast with crème fraiche, but you are welcomed to have coffee anywhere you please.
-cK

Wedding Weekend

2007-01-19T13:16:00.000-06:00

It's my sister's wedding weekend! Woo! This photo has nothing to do with my feelings about the wedding--I'm quite happy--but I did snap the photo during a flurry the other day and today my toes feel as cold as this scene appears.

Happy days.
-cK

Brass and Sass

2007-01-18T00:45:00.000-06:00

About a week ago at Reykjavik Harbor Watch--one of my most favorite blogs--E posted three links to videos by Baggalutur. I adore their songs. Their use of horns is just joyous. Really. Please watch the video for "Gamlarsparty."

The moment they draw straws (about 1:50 in) is priceless.

And their video (and song) "Brostu" is just great fun. The ending 90 seconds includes a hilarious incorporation of people singing/speaking lines over the video. I fell hopelessly in love with one of those guests too.

Man. I just adore those dudes. Yay for Baggalutur and E!!

Sassmaster

Sucker MCs beware! The mC is blogging now. Welcome, friend! Keep writing. I'm reading.
-cK

The Trash Heap

2007-01-17T00:59:00.000-06:00

Why should my family not have given me a digital camera at the holidays? Because in less than a month I've taken over 1000 photos and burned through 8 AA batteries. Like Maria Sharapova, I've made every shot a power shot.

My across-the-hall neighbor's apartment, 1:40 a.m.

I'm thinking of the Fraggles (Gobo, Mokey, Wimbley, Boober and Red) and Fraggle Rock. I'm thinking of the Gorgs "Dumb" song. I'm thinking that I'm going to meet my neighbor soon because she has put another fucking bag of garbage in my fucking hallway.

I accepted it in the first few days of her tenure because she was cleaning and getting organized in her new digs. But now? She's one of us. The only reason my foot isn't in your ass, Garbage Lady, is because I like shoes. I like my shoes. You better hope I don't acquire some throw-aways.

Yes. It's 5 degrees outside right now. Whatever. This is winter and it's Minnesota. None of us are surprised. So put on some fucking wool and take out your fucking garbage. I will not hold back my language on this one. Why? I'm from Chicago. I'm totally willing to soil my reputation first. My pants and my fucking living environment will remain plague-free.

Now, on Fraggle Rock it was cute when the Fraggles would scamper through the Gorgs' garden to get to the Trash Heap, where the Trash Heap would dispense wisdom. ("The Trash Heap has spoken!") But when my neighbor's garbage stands sentry, I think only of the plague and a serious failing of hygiene. Knock it off, you!!

The Mouse

Photo snapped in my kitchen last night. Behind the stove. The mouse is in the upper-left corner. And, actually, I wish that was my kitchen tile rather than this "taupe" (read, "color of brown stains and wet dust" tile) underfoot.

So. A mouse, if not THE mouse, is back. I'm such a wuss. I really just want to talk tough. I want to talk about getting not just medieval but Black Dahlia on this mouse. But what I really want to do is act like I don't know he's there.

I mean, in Wisconsin, there's so little one can do. At the cabin, once the mice come in, they're in. They don't care what you do. The last night I was there, mice shat upon the salt shaker in the raised cupboard. Think about that. They got inside the cabinet, climbed up on a half-filled cylindrical salt shaker, balanced themselves, and shit. They did not shit on the shelf. They cut cable on my seasonings. They shit on the shaker.

That's the unicycle of toilets.

(Ah, crap. My neighbor is probably FedExing her garbage to me. She now knows I'll just shake my head and write emails about it rather than confront her. Damn this Scandinavian restraint!!!)

C'mon, mouse. Must I become a killer? Must I?

You're lucky my sister gets married this weekend. But after that, I have no excuses. I'll have to evict you. Or tie you to stone and drop you into a hole I've carved into the ice of Lake Como.

Do NOT make me do it, mouse. Do not make me the Idi Amin of rodentia.
-cK

Barack

2007-01-16T11:38:00.000-06:00

I love the man. Barack, I hope you enter the presidential race.

His latest video message (in which he leans strongly towards running and notes February 10 as the day of his official announcement one way or the other).

Senator Clinton: You've got to make an open decision too. (And, yes, I love her too.)
-cK

Cute

2007-01-16T06:00:00.000-06:00

This is the cutest bottle of wine. Ever. Heather, did you give me this one? I still have the Imagery, Core and Madiran bottles you gifted. The Madiran, you'll recall, is the one with the blood-splatter font. Oh, that was good wine.

Cathedral Hill

This pillar always makes me feel a little sad. Give the girl a rest!

After a very long day--it was seriously longer than most days; I can't explain that scientifically, but it's true--I popped down the block to the cozy bar at Frost for a drink. I overheard the following uttered behind me. There were two people at the table but I only ever heard one. I thought maybe she was on a cell phone, but I think the man with her just spoke quietly. She said:

"No, no. I'm sorry. I can't invite you to my home. Sorry. I have plenty of friends, you know, but in 21 years in that house I've never had any of them over."

...Pause, as if something was being said to her.

She continues: "No, no. It's a we. We haven't had anyone over."

...Pause...

"Really."
-cK

Snow Day

2007-01-15T06:00:00.000-06:00

It snowed last night. It's lovely. It makes so much work okay, really, to look out and see it falling.

No time now. I'm outsourcing the fun side of my life to my doppelganger. And please please please do not decalre a snow emergency, ye snow emergency gods, because parking in this neighborhood can be hell on those days.

I'll take the good with the good, thanks.
-cK

Crossing Boredom

2007-01-14T16:17:00.000-06:00

My pizza surveys its kingdom ahead of the Bears overtime victory. The world is alright just now.

Tonight: torn. 24 or Crossing Jordan? I know, you're like, "Is there an issue here?" Yes, there is.

I used to watch Crossing Jordan every Sunday because it was on just ahead of my bedtime so I'd be up for Monday morning work. Plus, with Jordan I don't feel the pressure to be part of a "television event." I need not worry about involved conversations on the matter out and about. I'm insulated from the responsibility of genuine interest.

I'm no good at following tv. Yet, I very much like having one.
-cK

Bearing Down

2007-01-14T09:14:00.000-06:00

A color photo of a black-and-white photo in the winter light of Minnesota as diffused through a frosted window.

I adore Sundays in winter. I like baking a homemade pizza. I like the steadiness of football. I like watching Meet the Press. I like the sound and smell of the coffee percolating, and I like waking at 6 a.m., no matter what went on the previous night, to The Splendid Table on NPR then going into the kitchen to start the day by preparing dough while listening to Weekend Edition.

I went about it all patiently this morning, taking two hours (7 - 9) on the dough and base ingredients for the pizza: shallot, garlic, rosemary, roasted red pepper, hot pepper flakes, olive oil, green onion, shitaki mushroom, a minced chili pepper and a cute dollop of creamery butter. Later, I'll dice and salt the romas.

I did the dishes while waiting for the hot pepper-flake dough to rise. I showered while the red pepper sweated itself in a plastic-covered oversized mug. I swept. I scrubbed the sink.

Weekend Edition included a wonderful interview with Yo-Yo Ma, Liane Hansen (normally the host) sounding butchered by a cold and getting butchered (figuratively speaking) by Will Shortz during the puzzle segment, and a nice block of soundbites from the week.

Those soundbites, early on in the broadcast, are always one of my favorite points of the day; of the week, really. Puts things in perspective.

But I suppose any pattern will do that.

**

Today the Bears play the Seahawks in the NFC playoffs. For the most part, I'm able to regulate my blood pressure during a Bears game now, though it's taken 14 years of living away from Chicago television during football season to accomplish this calmer state. Yet, with the playoffs here and Rex Grossman's erratic performance, I can already feel the pressure building in my neck as I anticipate the game's arrival.

It's fitting that my living room radiator is huffing madly this morning.

But come gametime pizza will provide the steadiness. Or I'll wash the floor during the game to stay distracted. Or I'll frame the photo of baby Ryder that Elizabeth and Sasha sent. (Thanks for that, friends!)

Regimen will prevail. It's Sunday. It must.
-cK

Take that, Ronald!

2007-01-13T00:27:00.000-06:00

Each time I drive back to Illinois I tap the roof of my car as I enter my home state. I enter, always, in the little town of Big Foot to which there is little more than the Big Foot Inn (my alternator fried out there once), a used car dealership, a graveyard and a pickle factory.

But these last few years of Illinois returns have been difficult because Illinois, like many other places, strokes about Ronald Reagan. Highway 14 entering the state in Big Foot was renamed Ronald Reagan Highway or something like that.

There's a sign. I glare at it. I'm unsure for that moment whether I like being back home.

Now that Gerald Ford has kicked the bucket, we're finding out a bit more about what he really thought of various administrations. Still swinging from the grave!

His thoughts on Reagan make me gleeful:

"It makes me very irritated when Reagan's people pound their chests and say that because we had this big military buildup, the Kremlin collapsed....When you put peace, prosperity and human rights against poverty, a massive unsuccessful military program and a lack of human rights, communism was bound to collapse....No president, no Democrat or Republican, can claim credit for those programs. I'll tell you who deserves the credit -- the American people"

"...[Reagan was] a great spokesman for attractive political objectives...but when it came to implementation, his record never matched his words"

"[Reagan was] probably the least well-informed on the details of running the government of any president I knew....[He] was just a poor manager, and you can't be president and do a good job unless you manage."

Perhaps this will finally end that self-important Republican campaign to put Reagan on our currency.
-cK

Chilly

2007-01-12T11:46:00.000-06:00

It's very chilly today. I slept poorly. And AMC is showing Ronin AGAIN. Ugh.
-cK

Into the Bigger City

2007-01-10T17:54:00.000-06:00

I rode the elevator of the Minneapolis City Hall yesterday with Mayor R.T. Rybek. He had his coffee. He seemed to have just acquired it. Apparently, even a mayor starts the morning like the rest of us.

Were I witty enough (to regret it) at that hour, I would have asked him if he also put his pants on one leg at a time, but instead, I said good morning. Prior to that, as we waited, he was very quiet, a bit serious-looking, which is probably something that comes from having people so frequently approach one quite possibly to be rude because politics makes one rude. (I'm certainly not going to mind my manners if those dipshits Norm Coleman or Michele Bachman are waiting for an elevator with me.)

But I said hello as the doors closed and we were two people trapped for the ride to the third floor.

He brightened abruptly. He said, "Hey." He said, "How are you?" I was well, thanks. I was.

See, people in Saint Paul are generally a little quieter. But we really love people. We're just a bit more quiet about it, at least when people are strangers. When they're friends, we get loaded and fawn over one another's undeniable greatness and embarass ourselves because we've got only one life in which to do so (and an eternity to be reminded of it by more publicly controlled relations and friends, and we know this and it humbles us).

So going to Minneapolis for a 9 a.m. meeting with a Minneapolis councilwoman to discuss sustainable design and the city's iniatives, I was very much like a St. Paul resident even though Chicago is my home city. I got frazzled by traffic between the cities (because the 12 minute ride was taking more than 20) and called my sister who is wiser about Minneapolis and she told me where there'd been and accident and that things would be okay.

Then, I got into the wrong lane around the lightrail tracks and missed my parking garage. And because I was forced to turn right, I got spun off in the wrong direction, panicked, took an immediate turn, wound up needing to turn even further away...but only because I panicked again and wound up turning into a buses-only lane. Dammit. I was trapped in that thing for like three blocks because the only other lanes on the street went the other way. I could feel all the eyes on me. I could hear the thoughts behind those eyes: "St. Paul."

Finally, I got righted, only to encounter two full garages. GAH!!!! About five blocks from the city hall, I found a garage with space but it took like 5 minutes to get up to a level with open spaces.

I ran to city hall. Along the way, I called to let the councilwoman know I'd be there shortly. An assistant answered. He said, "Okay then. So you're calling to tell us you're on your way." "Yes," I said, breathless. "I'll let the councilwoman know," he said. Dammit.

But I made it. I entered through some door that seemed important but was off to the side. No one was around. Not a single security guard. And as I made my way along the corridors to the meeting, I didn't find a single security guard. Nothing to indicate concern. Ever.

It's nice, I have to say, to still find public places where the public is not openly distrusted. We are fortunate here.

I've been to a Saint Paul government building with it's dramatically poor lighting scheme and imposing sculptures and security guards who aren't having a bit of fun in life.

But Minneapolis's city hall was clean and well-lit. (Hemingway would be proud, so long as no one told Scotty.) Even on the drive in, despite my panic, I'd taken a look at the downtown skyline and found it looking a hell of a lot less space-agey and weird than I normally think of it as.

It was just a good morning, I guess.

And the mayor's a nice guy. (My brother, the tK, related a funny story of the mayor showing up at a local college that was having a theme t-shirt day, and while he put on a t-shirt, he did the total dork-politician thing and tried wearing it over his shirt and tie.) And I conducted my interview and learned a few cool things.

It felt terribly cold in the city this morning but I was really happy to be there.

I ought to explore Saint Paul a bit more too. I've been here long enough to grow complacent about it. Honestly, I just don't give downtown much of a chance. But Kassandra is having people over for cocktails and then skating at the open rink by the Landmark Center this weekend, so maybe it's time to get to know downtown Saint Paul a bit more too.

Agreed: We probably ought to order it skating then cocktails. But this is Saint Paul. We'll do things our way. We'll build our courage, and then we'll happily make an ass of ourselves as we fall upon our asses.

Happy days,
-cK

Art! Art! Art!

2007-01-09T23:36:00.000-06:00

This is a painting by Johnny Taylor, a real person in Memphis, Tennessee. He's even got a Web site. Way to go, Johnny!

I'm full of love when I think of Memphis (though, admittedly, I'm still pretty angry at Tennessee for some crappy voting decisions in the 2006 mid-term elections!).

I love Johnny Taylor AND his work. I hope you'll visit his page and adore his paintings. And please let me note that I love his incorporation of the Morton Salt Girl in some of his stuff. My dad used to work for Morton so I grew up with all sorts of Morton stuff in the house with images of Morton Salt Girls throughout the company's life. Coasters, magnets, coffee mugs, even canisters of salt. The Shirley Temple-like 1920s girl. The reserved 1950s girl. The way-too-short-of-a-raincoat 1960s girl.

Gorgeous.

I also love Johnny's sister, Betsy. And I love Betsy's husband, Christopher, who (from Memphis, mind you) gave me some lovely directions in a pinch to the alumni hall at the University of Minnesota today after MapQuest gave me a headache.

And I love their cat Fanny Nipper...and their pug dog Mr. Tuppence...and their friends Lori and Jared and Hank...and the Lost Sounds...and...

This is interesting. Johnny? Did you live there?

Somehow, I don't think THIS is from you. But it could be.
-cK

Big Boy

2007-01-09T07:54:00.000-06:00

Better put on some big boy clothes. I've a trade lunch-like thing to attend in Minneapolis. This is markedly different than a lunch trade.

Must. Buy. Lint brush.
-cK

Thumbs Up for Jana!

2007-01-08T16:13:00.000-06:00

While she'll probably use her powers of photography for good, whereas I use mine for a minutia of evil, I'm very happy today to find that Jana has started posting photos at her site! Or maybe she's just posting a photo and will never again.

But maybe.

A tired, article-whipped cK can dream.

Three things:

1. Why does my thumb look so weird?

2. That is a blanket behind my head; it's not a clandestine monk's robe. It's just very chilly in my apartment. Also, I'm not stoned, just sleep-deprived.

3. If I'm this pale now, imagine my pallor in March. You'll be able to read by me at night. (Reminds me of the Santamation in which the elf wants to be a dentist. The Bumble approaches at some point and the elf says to Rudolph, "Douse the light!")

It is frosty on the windows in the morning.

-cK