Blow Out The Lights

I've never been accused of not being motivated.

Focus? That's another thing.

I moved to the Twin Cities in 1985. I had no idea what I was going to do - I'd managed to get through four years of college without really thinking about what I was going to do afterward. Which is not to say I didn't work very hard in college. I averaged 23 credits and change for four years, and got a degree and two minors (with credits for three more minors, but with a few of the wrong classes). So while I wasn't really going anyplace in particular, I worked very hard getting there.

After I moved here, and started working at my first job (at KSTP-AM, as a $5/hour "associate producer"), I noticed something; as I drove home at night, once or twice a week one of the mercury-vapor lamps along the freeway would fritz out as I drove past; a quick flash, and it'd go dark. I'd chuckle to myself and chalk it up to my personality.

Years ago, an acquaintance of mine who was waaaaaaay into new-agey stuff said "Mitch, you have the most intense aura I've ever seen". I don't buy new-agey stuff, for the most part (I don't believe in Karma, but I do believe that what goes around comes around), and I don't know that you needed any "auras" to know that I"m an extremely intense guy.

Anyway, for a couple of years, as I worked on my talk show and as my various bands became more successful, the lights kept blinking out - once or twice a week, without fail, a light on the freeway would flash and go dark as I drove past.

I'm sure it was all plain chance. I imagine it happens to everyone, and frequently. And yet...

In about 1987, I got whacked at KSTP-AM, and spent the next couple of years trying to rebuild my radio and punditry careers (with absolutely no success). Then I met my future ex-wife, got married, had kids, changed careers twice, and began settling into a routine that stayed with me for probably 15 years. No new-agers were around to comment on my "aura", but whatever intensity I had was pretty effectively muted. Looking back, I was probably depressed, first from the career trauma, and then from spending years working in smoky bars as I tried to resuscitate my career, and then from a marriage that left me, for many years, a shambling desiccated husk of a guy.

And in that whole time, I noticed one freeway light blinking out - in 1996. Coincidentally, I was doing a one-off gig in a band with a couple of my old friends at the Turf Club at the time.

But that was it. And over the next 3-4 years - as my marriage collapsed in a divorce that had elements of "Jerry Springer" in it, and I settled into the seemingly-eternal routines of the single parent, all of the Twin Cities' freeway lights stayed blissfully lit.

And again, it could be all plain chance. But since I've started this blog back in 2002, I started noticing freeway lights blinking out again. And after I started doing the show, I've been noticing it more frequently.

Not quite once a week. But every once in a while, I notice a merc-vapor lamp fritzing out above my head.

And I grin, and say "Mitch is back!"

And my kids look at me, and then at each other, and make little "he's crazy" gestures, and giggle maniacally.

I guess it's my little secret.