Glories, Beads, Etc

Red and NormNorm did it. Certainly I must.

I love high school reunions. At least, my high school reunions. My class - Jamestown ND High School, 1981 - was a particularly close-knit bunch, even by rural standards; I think we got 70% of the class back for the 10th reunion, and about the same for the 20th. I always look forward to them, and I always am glad I went. Some of my classmates are absolutely inspirations (most of them in a positive way).

I love Dave Ham's guitar solo on Badfinger's Baby Blue; it's probably the most perfectly-realized guitar solo ever. (Runners-up; Elliot Easton's solo in "Bye Bye Love", Eddie Van Halen's on "Running With The Devil", David Gilmour on "Mother", Johnny Ramone on "Blitzkrieg Bop" and Steve Morse in "All I Really Wanted"). There's another whole post there.

I am crazy for anything lime. Lime tastes like happiness. Except gimlets. Gimlets taste like someone broke a car battery in your mouth.

As I've written before - I love blind dates. I mean, every blind date has infinite possibilities. As it happens, it usually means "infinite possibilities for disappointment, rejection or humiliation", but work with me here. No, I don't always like the way they turn out, but I like the general anticipation involved in meeting someone new.

I really love the vista that opens up as you go west of Casselton on I-94 in North Dakota, where the land changes from the pool-table flatness of the Red River Valley to the rolling drift prairie. The land is a minimalistic line drawing, interrupted by tiny details - wildflowers, a few fenceposts, the occasional farm in the distance. The sky, of course, is more spectacular than any mountain range. And on a clear night, the stars above and the widely-scattered farmhouse lights blend together in the dark, giving you the feeling that you're cruising through space. The occasional small town even looks like a passing galaxy. I always figured I could make a billion dollars flying people up from Berkeley to Fargo, having them drop acid, and taking them on a night-time bus tour of eastern North Dakota.

I hate to admit it, but I love doing talk radio again. There's a certain adrenaline buzz to not only being on the air, but having to fill time with the force of one's personality (as opposed to playing music) that doesn't happen anywhere else. It's a two-edged sword, of course - radio is a mistress that parties with you until noon the next day, whispers sweet nothings in your ear as she picks your pocket and hands your ATM card to her cousin Hammerhead, and then cleans out your bank account as she has a gang of thugs beat you to a pulp and toss you in a dumpster behind a Tires Plus in Richfield, hung-over and bloody and wondering what you have to do to get another date. And yet doing the NARN show is genuinely one of the highlights of my week, which might be evidence of how pathetic my week is, but still, I enjoy it a lot. I'm exceedingly thankful for the opportunity that the show has been.

I love Lake Josephine, a lake in the middle of Roseville, just north of Saint Paul and a ten-minute drive from my house. A week ago last Sunday I took my son there, around dusk, and sat and built a sand castle as the sun set on one of the most perfect evenings I can ever remember in Minnesota, and I thought about what a treasure that lake has always been; as fun and wet as any of the big Minneapolis lakes, without the crowds and the traffic.

I think it's cool that my son still gives me a big hug goodbye in the morning. I know it can't last long, which is why I pay more attention to it, I think.

I love the city of Saint Paul. I mean, I've talked for years about how it has all the advantages of Minneapolis plus a city government with some common sense, how I love the neighborhoods, yadda yadda. But the town itself just feels right to me, and that's coming from a guy who never really feels right anywhere.

I love the fact that there are still people out there who can tell the story of the Holocaust from first-hand experience. The Nazi inner circle is all gone, but they're still here. Cool.

I like looking at the kids' faces and being able to trace how they've developed over time - and how they've stayed the same since they were babies.

I REALLY love the fact that if anyone should refer to this post as "navel-gazing", I have the ability to make a photoshop of them gazing at...well, let's just say I'll let 'em off at navel-gazing if they're very lucky and they beg.

And I love having a social life, attenuated as it is, for the first time in about fifteen years.

That should do it for now.