This season, I tried to start biking around April 1.  You may recall Mother Nature responded by throwing up the most absurdly-cold two weeks I can recall in early April; snowstorms, howling winds, brutal cold.  Thanks, Ma.

But I finally got on the road, making my first bike commute to work around April 15ish.  I think I’ve missed three days since then; I’ve also taken to biking out to the station on Saturdays, and often getting some kind of ride in on Sundays.  Between all of that, I’m up to about 100 miles a week or so.  Nothing major, but not bad for a 45 year old guy who hasn’t biked a lot in the last couple decades.

Upsides?  I got my legs back, I think.  Biking (as I was taught it) is about rhythm; your legs are like diesel engines; they do better if you can just get them running and never stop.  The key (or so I was taught) is to find the pace you’re comfortable at, and use your gears so that you can keep that rhythm as consistently as possible on whatever terrain you encounter (high on the flats, low on the hills, etc).  Ideally, you’re not straining (steep hills aside) or pushing as much as just reinforcing momentum, for the most part.  And as it turns out my natural pace has always been pretty fast.  I get passed by those obnoxious Lycra-clad 20-30somethings on their $4,000 racing bikes, and the occasional freak of nature on an oval-racing bike (single speed, no coaster gear; you have to pedal every inch of the way) – but not many others. It’s not a competitive thing (much), so much as being just how I ride.

So yes – after three months, I’ve got my legs back.

The other upside?  For the first time in probably a decade or more, I can fit into (as the kids say these days, “rock”) size 38 pants.  That’s down a notch or two (depending on where you buy the pants).

The downside?  None.

Well, yeah, there is one.  I do get antsy if I can’t get a ride in every day.  Jitters, almost.

I’ve always hated humidity.  Heat, I’m fine with.  Humidity – especially the hot, stick garbage we get in Minnesota this time of year, the kind that hangs over the state for weeks and makes foetid morasses of every part of your body where two things rub together – is the bane of my existence.

The exception, since my mid-teens, has always been “unless I can be on my bike and riding like a madman”.  There’s something about a fast, intense ride on a muggy dog day that just feels…good.   Like it cleans your system out a bit – or at least makes the air conditioning at work feel that much better-deserved.  Either way, it’s about the only way I can stand humidity like this week.

So – thank goodness for biking.

Of course, in weather like this, and with as much stress as people these days have in their lives (gas prices, for instance), it’s good not to antagonize people.  Some of them are on the razor’s edge of civility to begin with.

Which brings us to “Critical Mass” the nationwide “group” of bicyclists whose stated goal is to promote bicyclists’ rights, but whose unstated one (if we ignore the likelihood that they’re really just hapless tools of other groups who wish to promote thuggery) seems to be to revel in the adolescent glee of pissing off “bad guys” – in their case, people who drive cars.

As someone who was biking long before most of “you” were born, please – stop your efforts “on my behalf”.  Please.  For all of the high-minded rhetoric accompanying your rides, it’s become a magnet in too many cities for antisocial, solipsistic jagoffs, and does the rest of us much more harm than good, to the point where plenty of people can see this sort of thing and be pretty damn sympathetic to the cop.

It was Monday, July 18, 1988.

It had been scorchingly hot all summer. It was a muggy, awful night out.

We had a new roommate; Shane, a singer in a speed metal band. He was nineteen, about 5’6, wore his hair in a white trash afro (long, frizzy and all over the place) and looked every inch the metal dude. He was a nice guy, though, and paid his bills on time. This became important, later.

Shane and Wyatt both worked nights. Wyatt worked as a bouncer at “Hot Rod’s”, a dive bar on University Avenue, where he basically sold pot, pilfered free drinks, picked up an endless stream of girls or, sometimes, just had sex with them in a storage closet back by the bar’s kitchen, or, not infrequently, both. Indeed, he’d brag on occasion about “trifecta” days; bagging Teresa at home during the day, banging one of the bartenders in the storage locker during his shift, and picking up one skeeze or another to bring home at night. Sometimes, rarely, he’d even toss an old drunk or underage Hamline or Concordia dweeb out of the place.

Shane worked the night shift at a foundry out on the East Side. The hours meshed nicely with his band’s rehearsal schedule. On non-practice nights – like tonight – he took the bus around 9:30PM.

Me? I had the night off. I noodled around on guitar for a while, and then settled down with a book I’d gotten at the library over the weekend.

And I heard the front door open downstairs.

My ears perked up – but it wouldn’t have been the first time Shane missed his bus and needed to bug me for a ride to work; even more likely was Wyatt to have gotten off work early, and probably picked up some skeeze or another (or, if all else failed, called Teresa).

I heard footsteps – two sets – downstairs. Option B, I thought.

And then I heard a male voice. Not Shane’s nasal Wisconsin chatter. Not Wyatt’s affected Arklahoma drawl.

And then I heard another male voice. A different one.

These were not my roommates.

I sat, frozen in my chair, for a moment, as I heard the two sets of feet moving around downstairs, now pretty loudly. They were moving through the living room, and into the kitchen. I heard something clattering.

I had no phone – the only one was downstairs in the kitchen. All the exits to the house were downstairs. The dogs – worthless as they were under normal circumstances – were both out back. My only way out was through my second-story window.

I had one option.

Panic.

Well, no. There was one other.

I got up as quietly as I could, and padded in my stocking feet over to my bed. I reached down into the gap between the wall and the mattress; I had a little box wedged in there, holding the mattress almost imperceptibly out from the wall. On it lay my pistol – an American Arms PK22. It had a magazine in it, with eight rounds (of .22 Long Rifle) loaded. (My rifles, in the closet, would have taken too long to load).

I turned, flipped the safety catch off, and started padding toward the top of the stairs. The old floor creaked loudly, and the footsteps downstairs stopped cold for a moment.

I crouched behind the thick wooden top pillar of the banister; I heard one of the voices below, sounding only slightly agitated. They started moving again – toward (I imagined, rightly or not, and I wasn’t about to ask) the stairs.

But it was all I had.

“You c*******ers come up the stairs, and I’ll f***ing blow your heads off”, I yelled – loudly, trying to will my voice not to crack.

More footsteps.

I took the slide and racked a round as loudly and ostentatiously as I could…

…which chambered with a not-very-intimidating tinny “tic-tic-schluck” sound that had me wishing for the beefy “KA-SCHLACK” of a 12 gauge shotgun, or the sharp “ksssh-LOCK” of an M1 Garand.

“Sh*t”, I heard one of them mutter. From my vantage point, I saw a pair of tennis shoes racing out the door. They left the door open.

I crouched at the top of the steps for what seemed like a couple minutes, hyperventilating as my heart pounded, watching the screen door drift aimlessly in the dank humid breeze. Then, slowly, I crept down the stairs, pistol in front of me, pointing where I was looking, making sure they were all gone. I shut and locked the door, checked the kitchen and basement, and then stopped and took stock. They’d made off with Wyatt’s boom box and some cassettes, and not much more.

My ignorant nutslap roommates had left the door unlocked.

And today, I became a big believer in self-defense shooting.

It was Friday, July 15, 1988. 

It was hot.  Blazingly hot. 

I’d been out biking since early morning.  Not the kind of fast, purposeful riding I do today getting to work or going places, mind you – more a sort of aimless rambling about the metro.  I went up to Northeast Minneapolis, by Broadway and Stinson, meandering about the tangle of roads that, today, are a thriving shopping center, but back then were just…well, it’s hard to remember.  There wasn’t much there, there, back then.

I ambled down Broadway down into the presidents (north-south streets in Northeast Minneapolis are named, in order from west to east, from Washington through Coolidge (including the little-known eighth president, Central, responsible for the Central Doctrine if I recall correctly). 

My level of motivation was dropping by the day.  Oh, I was trying to keep my brain moving; I’d bought a cookbook, “Cooking for One Or Two” – either a supremely optimistic title or a very depressing one – the other day.  I’d spent a few hours getting a big pile of beef and veggies cooked and stored in the freezer of the old wreck of a fridge in the house on Fry and Minnehaha.  That way, I could just grab as much of these staples as I needed to get a quick, modestly healthy mean for one (or two!  I mean, it could happen!) ready in a hurry. 

Baby steps, I figured.  Hang on to some semblance of normalcy, and normalcy will return.

And on I pedaled. 

There is nothing more miserable than a concrete vista on a hot, miserable, humid day, I thought.  The only way it could be worse was if I was walking, I thought, as the scorching mid-day turned into a steamy, humid morass of a late afternoon. I started pedaling home.  Gotta take a shower and get ready for another night at City Limits.

At least I had all the fixings I needed for stuffed peppers.  That’d be a nice treat. 

I got home.  Wyatt was “entertaining” upstairs – probably one of the bartenders from the bar he was working at. 

We had a new roommate, by the way, since early in the month; Shane, a singer in a speed metal band.  He was nineteen, about 5’6, wore his hair in a white trash afro (long, frizzy and all over the place) and looked every inch the metal dude.  He was a nice guy, though, and paid his bills on time.  This became important, later.  Anyway – he was off practicing with his band.

It was about 4:30.  I went to the fridge. 

I grabbed the handle. It felt kind of funny, but it didn’t register before I pulled the freezer door open.

Warm.

A blast of warm, dank, rank air met me as I looked into the freezer; a freshet of filthy, stinking water sluiced out onto the floor at my feet.

It was at least 120 degrees in the “Freezer”.  All the meat I’d cooked and frozen was warm, suppurating, and worse than inedible. 

I spent half an hour throwing out ruined food, and then went to the sink to wash my hands, grumbling about the $40 worth of food I’d lost – a  lot of money for me, back then…

…when I felt a drip from the cabinet above the sink.  I looked at the cabinet; a little stream of water was oozing out from under the cabinet door, collecting, and dripping into the sink.  The water looked brown, and smelled…also brown.

I opened the cabinet.  Filthy water was leaking into it from…

..above.  The bathroom.

So I’d lost a cabinet AND a freezer full of food. 

This was adding up to be a great day.

I called our landlord – a fella we’ve talked about before – and left a message. 

Then I stalked upstairs and started getting ready for work.

Another from Red:

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. Chips and Salsa
2. Nachos
3. Chex Party Mix (with excessive worcestershire sauce)
4. Key Lime Pie
5. Root Beer Floats

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:

1. Popcorn
2. Apples
3. Grapefruit
4. Homemade Yogurt
5. Soy Nuts

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Travel.  Europe, of course, especially the parts I haven’t seen (Norway, Ireland, Spain, Italy), but I’d love to get to the Near East – Turkey, Kurdistan, Armenia, Georgia – as well as India, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.  Then maybe start on South America.
2. Real estate.  I’d pay off my house (duh), get some sort of place in NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Colorado, San Diego and Edinburgh, and – natch – a lake cabin up north.
3. Support non-profits that resonate with me.  First and foremost the Salvation Army; they were there when I needed them waaaay back when, and I want to return the favor a thousand times over.  Heritage and Cato and the NRA, too, of course.  Every genuine conservative candidate for office in Minnesota could expect me to max my donation, naturally.  And my church, of course.
4. I’d set up a sensible, far-from-extravagant trust fund for the kids.  One that’d pay off when they turn 30.  Because there’s nothing in the world more obnoxious than teens and twentysomethings with scads of unearned money.
5. Buy a sailboat.  And sail.  A lot.

Five (non-academic) jobs that I have had:

1. Human Interaction Designer
2. Technical Writer
3. Nightclub DJ
4. Radio (reporter, producer, play-by-play, talk show host, music director, disc jockey)
5. Bellhop.

Five habits:

1. Waking up at 5:30 a.m.
2. Blogging
3. Biting my fingernails
4. Drinking lots of water
5. Whenever I see an airplane in the air, saying a quiet prayer for the passengers.  Not sure when or why that started, but it is virtually a reflex.

Five places I have lived:

Heh.

1. Rugby, ND
2. Jamestown, ND
3. Carrington, ND
4. Minneapolis
5. Saint Paul

Five people I want to get to know better

Like Red, I’m not sure who this refers to.  I don’t tag bloggers.  And this is one list I don’t really think about; there are zillions of people I’d like to know better (and a few from whom I’d happily distance myself).

It was Friday, July 8, 1988.As usual, I was working at City Limits, an innocent-looking hellhole of a bar in Rosemount.

It was a typical night at City Limits – “Slims”, as we at the sleazy DJ service referred to it. It was a bowling league night, so I’d play background music while bowlers filed through the place buying a steady stream of pitchers to carry out to the lanes. Then, as the leagues let out, bowlers would grab tables for an after-league beer and a burger. They’d mostly have filed out of the place by 10-ish, leaving a thin film of regulars at the bar, and – on a lucky night – some local girls who wanted to dance or, rarely, couples who would dance. The staff adjusted accordingly; after about ten, the place filed down to one bartender (a guy who looked and sounded just like Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall, but with frizzier hair), a waitress (Tammy, a cute, amazingly dizzy 18 year old – underage cocktail waitresses being legal in Rosemount at the time), and a “bouncer”, a 5’8 guy who ran maybe a buck forty and who, with his long stringy hair and spotty teeth, looked like he was fighting a meth habit.

Now, there were four kinds of male customers at “Slims”, ever, back then (aside from employees):

1. Bowlers.
2. Barflies – a group of maybe eight or ten guys who were there every night, occasionally to bowl, but usually just to hold down a stool at the bar and BS with the bartender. Most of them had tried and struck out with every female that walked through the door.
3. Bikers. At least, in the summer it was bikers. In the winter, they’d switch to snowmobiles. Either way – same crowd. They talked loud, they started fights, they acted like they owned the place. And they occasionally surprised me – although we’ll get to that in a much later episode.
4. Rednecks. It might be hard to see, going through the area these days, since the suburbs have completely engulfed the area in the past fifteen years or so, but in 1988 that area – Dakota County 42 and South Robert Trail – was still rural, teetering on the south edge of then-exurban Rosemount. There was a big rural clientele – guys who worked at tractor-parts stores in Farmington and feedlots near Elko and all the other niches in the semi-rural ecosystem that I remembered from North Dakota, and hadn’t seen much of since then. Rednecks and bikers frequently intermingled – but bikers travelled in groups, and “rednecks” travelled in ones, twos and fours, usually.

Anyway – things were going well. It was around 11PM, and for a summer Friday, it wasn’t half bad. There were maybe eight or ten couples – almost all girls, naturally – out on the tiny dance floor. I’m told it’s a Twin Cities thing; girls’ll hit the floor if there are no guys available (or worth bothering over). Not a big “floor”, but useful for marketing, since seeing a bunch of drunk twentysomething girls on the floor gave some of the drunk twenty/thirtysomething guys at the bar and among the tables something to hope for.

The key to keeping the girls on the floor? Play music they can dance to. In 1988, that meant dance music; Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, “Word Up” by Cameo, Run-DMC’s version of “Walk This Way”, Beastie Boys…all the Top40 dance stuff that was current at the time. It was simple; if you play music that drunk girls can dance to, they’ll dance. The music set the hook; I would then beat-mix it together so the beat didn’t stop for half an hour a time – making them hotter, drier, and more likely to keep beering up. This helps business.

This made the bartenders (and the bar’s owner) happy; girls who are dancing, and guys consumed by unrequited lust, drink. A lot. And in Rosemount, they might even leave a tip.

The key? The music.

Around 11:30, four rednecks walked in and sat at the table next to the DJ booth. They ordered Budweisers. They looked at the girls out on the floor. And one of them -wearing a sweat-stained white T-shirt and a scruffy beard that made his face look like Eddie Rabbitt, shuffled up to the booth.

“Hey”, he said, his breath smelling like a party that’d started after work and had just kept going, “you know what’d really get people on the floor?”

“Huh?”, I said, shuffling through the records, trying to set the hook a little deeper in the wan little crowd on the floor.

“If you got this n***er s**t off and played some white people’s music”.

I carefully controlled my face, not so much out of anger as to control breaking out laughing as I looked at the guy. His eyes were flitting around in that unfocused, jerky way of the very, very drunk.

“Whaddya mean?”

“White people’s music. Not this n***er crap. I bet everyone on the bar gets out on the floor if you play some white people’s music”.

I thought for a moment. “White people’s music? You mean, like Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry?”

“Yeaaaah!” he said, his head jerking forward like he was losing his balance, leaning against the formica tabletop around the booth.

“I’ll see what I can do”, I said.

I was not going to see what I could do, of course. Playing “Can’t Get Enough” or “Slow Ride” or “All My Rowdy Friends” would empty the floor – and drunk twentysomething girls don’t just leave the floor when the beat stops; they hit the doors and find a bar that won’t kill the buzz.

So the beat rolled on.

It took maybe fifteen minutes, but Eddie Rabbitt came back, bringing his friend – a nondescript, stubbly, potato-shaped man in a seed cap and a sweat-stained wife-beater.

“Hey” said the potato. “Didn’t we tell you to get the n***er s**t off?”

“Yeah, I’ll get to it – the girls are dancing, man”.

Potato looked at me; he looked angry.

“You’re a faggot”.

He and Rabbitt glared at me as they slunched back to the table. The four of them looked at me and shared a vicious sounding chuckle as I pondered a safer exit from the place at the end of the night.

As it happened, I didn’t need it. Another group of rednecks came in. One of them was apparently diddling one of the first group’s cheating girlfriends or ex-wives or something. A fight broke out. Meth-Head the bouncer hid behind the doorway to the bowling alley as the seven of them went at it. Tables and chairs flew, and I grabbed the sawed-off pool cue that was standard equipment in most DJ booths back then, just in case.

The police came in about ten minutes, hauled the whole lot away, and left us…

…with Tammy, the bartender, Meth-Head and I, along with one old regular who probably hadn’t noticed the fight in the first place. The fight had cleared the place.

I played nothing but requests the rest of the night. Tammy loved Madonna. The bartender wanted country. I beatmixed an impromptu Springsteen medley. The bartender let everyone but Tammy have a round of drinks even though none of us was supposed to drink on the job. We’d all earned it.  Except the bouncer, but hey, we were all in the same miserable boat.

I checked the parking lot carefully on my way out at 1AM, and started the long drive up South Robert back to Saint Paul.

I’ve long had a theory that people are best-acclimated to the weather they were first exposed to.

For example, when I left the hospital it was 25 degrees below zero.  I rarely button my jacket if it’s above 10 degrees, and love the winter (commuting and getting kids to school aside); the dog days of summer pretty much incapacitate me if I’m not violently and constantly physically active.

Dad, on the other hand, was born in the hottest summer in history.  The temperature stayed in the 120s in central North Dakota during that year, the height of the dust bowl.  And Dad, as long as I can remember, was immune to heat; on a 95 degree day he could play five sets of tennis, have a cup of iced tea, and knock out 18 holes without breaking a sweat.  Of course, if it got below 40 degrees, he’d start like a Fiat, but them’s your tradeoffs.

Of course, heat resistance is a thin claim to fame.  Dad has more claims, naturally.  Here’s a good story.

In 1986, I was working at KSTP.  I was producing “The Company Challenge”, a lame game show at the Criterion, a bar/restaurant in Bloomington.   During the break the host, Mike Edwards, phoned out to the studio.

“Hey, Mitch – there’s a couple of guys here who’re asking if you’re related to a Bruce Berg who taught English in Rugby, North Dakota in 1960”.

“Yep”, I responded.

“Ah.  They say he was the best ever…”

He was the best high school teacher anyone ever had; everyone in Jamestown ND either had him in class, and/or had kids who had him, and/or had parents who’d had him.  Sometimes two out of three (although Dad claims to have had no three-generation families), and everyone says he was the best ever.  Including me.

His signature subject was speech, which he taught as long as I can remember.  He took generations of scared, stage-shy kids and turned them into capable public speakers – and took at least one born ham and taught him some technique and love of the genuine aesthetics of the subject.  Everyone should have such a speech teacher.

Beyond that?  The only thing on earth that rivals his command of baseball trivia is my knowledge of music trivia.  And he’s got the book to prove it.

Anyway – happy birthday, Dad!

I’ve taken a good chunk of this week off from work. I don’t take a lot of vacations, and the ones I do take tend to be on the busy side.

This week? No big plans. Housework. Yard stuff. No biggie.

But yesterday – well, along about mid-afternoon, I’d had about enough.

I jumped on the bike, and did something I’d wanted to do for quite a long time:

1. Rode down Energy Park to the U of M Intercampus busway.
2. Took the bike path alongside the busway into the U of M.
3. Crossed from the east to west banks of the U on the Washington Avenue bridge. Spent some time looking over the staging yard on the west bank flats, down below; it’s where they load the barges with new sections for the 35W Bridge reconstruction, about half a mile upstream).
4. Over to Cedar/Riverside
5. Down the bike path along the light rail line
6. Over the “Sabo Bridge” – the big single-suspension bridge over Hiawatha, and thence onto the Midtown Greenway across town.
7. To Lake Calhoun…
8. …and then around Lake Harriett…
9. …to the Minnehaha Creek bike trail.
10. Then, up East River Road to Marshall…
11. and home.

Not sure how far it was, but it was a gorgeous day, and all in all it beat the heck out of vacuuming.

Nothing but one-word answers – and you can’t use any word twice:

1. Where is your cell phone? Bike.
2. Your significant other? Far.
3. Your hair? Shaddap.
4. Your mother? Enthusiastic.
5. Your father? Solid.
6. Your favorite time of day? Morning.
7. Your dream last night? Racine.
8. Your favorite drink? Smithwick’s.
9. Your dream goal? Happiness.
10. The room you’re in? Library.
11. Your ex? Which?
12. Your fear? Money.
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Studio.
14. What you are not? Mellow.
15. Your Favorite meal? Loukanikos.
16. One of your wish list items? SIG.
17. The last thing you did? Oatmeal.
18. Where you grew up? NoDak.
19. What are you wearing? Smelly.
20. Your TV is? Tiny.
21. Your pets? Voracious.
22. Your computer? Underpowered.
23. Your life? Stressful.
24. Your mood? Anxious
25. Missing someone? Yes
26. Your car? Taurus.
27. Something you’re not wearing? Shoes.
28. Favorite store? Willy’s.
29. Your summer? Decent!
30. Your favorite colour? Green.
31. When is the last time you laughed? Earlier
32. When is the last time you cried? Dunno.
33. Your health? Improving!
34. Your children? Vexing.
35. Your future? Rife.
36. Your beliefs? Freedom.
37. Young or old? Irascible.
38. Your image? Contradictory
39. Your appearance? Rare.
40. Would you live your life over again knowing what you know? Da.

(Via Red)

Zam is very much a teenager now.  Tall, lanky/scrawny, sullen, surly – and, lately, very much hygiene-optional.  With all the requisite olfactory problems that causes.

So I was walking through the “baby” section in WalMart for some reason the other day – and the smell brought me to a screeching halt.

They say smells are the most powerful triggers of memory.  I’ve a believer today.  I had this overwhelming wash of nonspecific baby memories; changing diapers, rocking a tiny Zam to sleep, waking up and checking on him in the middle of the night – complete with the smells that attended each; the relief of a whiff of Desitin on a hot, rashy day, the happy grin when the powder went on, the satisfied gurgle and the aroma of formula as he spit up…

I think God gives us memories like that to take our minds off the miserable present that teenagers give us for a couple of…months.

It’s gotta be months.

Gotta.

That, or I’ll be spending more time in the baby aisle.

I’m human.

I know, stop the presses.

And like any human, emotions will cloud my assessment of things on occasion.

Of course, being a blogger, I have my critics and/or amateur fact-checkers.  They, too, being human, can let emotions get the best of ’em from time to time.

This past week, we had a collision of emotions; I was generally very “up” (yes, I’m still stoked over Heller).  For whatever reason, some of those who disagree with me would seem not to be.  I dunno.

But this isn’t about them.  This is about me!

There were three different posts on local leftyblogs that purported to correct me on a couple of issues.

“Ollie” at Bluestem Prairie (what is it with leftybloggers and anonymity?) noted – correctly – that I’d mixed up a couple of bills and erred in connecting Rep. Bachmann’s domestic drilling proposals to those referred to a Marketwatch article last week; additionally, it was correctly pointed out that halving the price of oil will not half the price of gasoline.  Mea culpa as far as it goes.  Of course, neither criticism touches the important point; more domestic drilling will lower prices all up and down the supply chain in the mid-to-long term because of increased supply, and in the short term because of the psychology of markets.  Will it drop to $2?  Who knows.  Will it drop?  All other things being equal, almost certainly.  Which candidates and politicians support this? 

Any corrections there?

Charlie Quimby notes correctly that in my piece last week on the founder of the prototype for the Canadian health care system, I didn’t read the entire referenced PDF report, which was a little less depressed about the whole thing (and was written by the Quebec provincial healthcare authority).  I won’t pretend to be an expert on healthcare (and either should most “health care experts”, for that matter), but it’s a fair cop; the negative quotes of a leader don’t necessarily negate the reports from the troops in the field.

Please pass that observation on to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, OK?

It was Sunday, June 26, 1988.

There truly wasn’t much going on in my life around this time.

My nights involved going to work at one gawdforsaken bar or another, six nights a week.

The good news – I was the best “jock” the DJ service had, and they told me so; my boss said that “I can put you in any bar I have – R’nB, Rock and Roll, oldies, County Western, background music, whatever – and they love you”. And they were putting me in different bars, at least; after months of bouncing back and forth between “Jams” in Brooklyn Center and “City Limits” in Rosemount, I was starting to get into some more places.

The bad news – I got put in every bar they had. It’s not like they got any better than Jams or City Limits, for crying out loud.  You had your choice; sleazy R’nB bars, redneck Rock and Roll dumps, tired and empty Oldies bars, malignant “country” joints, and somnolent “none of the above” lounges. All of them equally depressing.

And, truth be told, that’s just what I was. Depressed. I’d been going at the talk radio job hunt for over a year, now. Nothing.

My station-calling had slowed to a trickle. Every week or two, I’d get a flash of inspiration…

…no. That’s not true.  It wasn’t “inspiration”. It was a flash of desperation – a sudden, searing flash of panic; “THIS IS HOW MY WHOLE F****NG LIFE IS GOING TO BE” would beat my eyes open at 9AM, and I’d race downstairs, a curdled ball of panic in my stomach that would impel me to an hour or two of frantic, despairing calling, more to say I’d done it, sort of like a ticket-punching ritual done for its own sake than out of any hope that there’d be anything on the other end of the line. Think of rebound dating.

I’d get to the end of these sessions feeling worse than when I’d started. And yet there I went – every week or so, it’d overwhelm me again.

Again – sort of like rebound dating.

———-

One change – Wyatt had finally driven our other roommate, Dan, out earlier in the month. Oddly, for as amazingly promiscuous a man as he was (he said with a straight face at about this time that “my goal in life is to f*** every woman in the world”), he had a very dim impression of gays. “I don’t like faggots”, he said many times. He did his best to live up to both statements. The women bit – well, that should be obvious.

As to Dan? His property – including several of his paychecks – started disappearing. By early May, Wyatt had taken to actively antagonizing Dan’s boyfriend. He did it when I wasn’t around – I heard about it all second-hand…

…but by the end of May, Dan had had enough. He gave notice.

A day or two later – in early June – Dan and a few friends showed up with a truck and moved him out in during the day, while Wyatt and I were out. He left me a note – he just couldn’t deal with Wyatt’s BS anymore.

So that made for an extra-large rent payment, and a payment to the Pioneer Press to put an ad in the “Roomates Wanted” section.

———-

But that was the closest thing to excitement that I managed. My days during this brutally hot summer were very, very circumscribed. I’d wake up around 9ish. I’d have something to eat, usually. I’d jump on my bike and ride most of the day – unless something was broken, which would involve a half-day quest to roll my bike laboriously to a repair shop. If I was feeling especially industrious or motivated, I might stop at the Dairy Queen, or the library, or ride down to Crosby Park, or…well, whatever rolled my way, really. If I was not feeling motivated, I’d ride to see how dry my mouth would get before I could take a drink, or how yellow my pee could get, or how many of my old apartments and houses I could reach, or how many miles I could ride without seeing anything interesting. Some days, I did nothing but ride box grids in different neighborhoods; others, I’d just pick a street and ride it to the end, or as far as I could get before I had to turn around to get back for work.

Looking back (because I’d never have put it this way back then) most days’ rides would have bookends of despair; at the beginning of the ride, I was pounding out the miles to forget about how awful it felt to be so…aimless. Such a failure. And at the end, there was the dull ache of knowing I had to wash up and go to yet another awful bar.

I’d have something to eat (usually a baked potato stuffed with cheese and onions), then off to whatever the bar of the evening was. I’d grab the traditional after-work drink at the bars that allowed it, drive carefully home, and check in for the latest in Wyatt’s game of musical women. About half the nights, Wyatt would have hooked up with some girl he’d met at his day job during the day, and would have Teresa, his hot blond “steady” girlfriend, over at night. On the other nights – when Teresa worked (she was a night nurse at a nursing home), they’d bump uglies in the afternoon, and Wyatt’d pick up some other floozie at Christenson’s or the Belmont or O’Gara’s for the evening’s entertainment. I figured that Wyatt was boffing, on the average, with between four and seven different women a week. Every week.

Which was, in and of itself, depressing.

I’d usually fall asleep reading a book, to the sound of Wyatt and whomever-it-was having thudding, drunken, arklahoma-inflected, drug-enhanced sex in the next room, or having a thudding, drunken, arklahoma-inflected, drug-enhanced argument about something or another.

And then I’d wake up, and it’d start again.

Every f*****g day.

Mitch here.

As you read this, it’s 9AM.  I’m cut off from the world, in a meeting.  I’ll be 150 yards from my computer.  And yet I might as well be at the bottom of a well, or in the Gobi Desert for all the good it does me.

By now, most of you probably know how the Heller decision came out.

But not me.  I’m ignorant enough to be a friggin’ MNBlue writer right about now.

So I’ll be…:

1. Working my butt off to reach an early consensus on the design issues that led to this meeting
2. Racing back to the cube
3. Ignoring all watercooler conversation, avoiding my conservative co-workers, and eschewing all comments on this thread until I can read the SCOTUS wire.

It’s gonna be news to me, dammit.

(And yes, I’m actually writing this on Wednesday night, and setting it to publish at 9AM sharp, in case you were wondering why I’m writing this and not looking at the wire).

That is all.

(more…)

I do this about every year and a half or so; note that I’d do this for free (which is true) and pass the hat, more or less like a typical guitar busker.
So if you’re so inclined, I’ll be everlastingly grateful for whatever spare electronic change you might toss in the pail. No pressure…

Or, if you prefer the anonymous route, click here to go to an Amazon Honor System page.

Either way, thanks for your patronage.

And thanks to the people who’ve already donated.  I appreciate it!

These blogthings just keep nailing it.

This test:  “Are you a PC or a Mac?”

You Are a NeXT Black Slab

You are way ahead of your time.  While the ininformed call you “monochrome”, you are really incredibly nuanced.  You are about the best there is, even if not everyone knows it or, for that matter, has heard of you.

Wow. Didn’t see that coming!

As I’ve noted in the past – I don’t do the blog for money, particularly. I get enough from advertising to cover the hosting and a few other minor things. Beyond that? That’s just fine.

However – about every 18 months or so, I “pass the electronic hat” around the room once or twice; I have a few projects waiting on me.

Don’t feel any pressure, obviously; it’s all in good fun. But if you’re so inclined, I’ll be everlastingly grateful for whatever spare electronic change you might toss in the pail…

Or, if you prefer the anonymous route, click here to go to an Amazon Honor System page.

Thanks.

It was Monday, June 13, 1988.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The first, pleasant hint of what was going to turn out to be a long, hot summer was seeping into the air.

Although we didn’t have a band going at the time, Bill the Drummer and I stayed friends. I’d occasionally drive over to the Band House to jam with one group of musicians or another, which was usually a great excuse to hang out at one of the bars in the area; Mondays were three-for-ones at Lyle’s (long before it was a hipster hangout); Wednesdays, we’d cadge $.50 drinks from girls at Ladies Night at the Uptown; Tuesdays were usually great nights to see and be seen at the CC Club and its a-friggin-mazing jukebox.

Monday was my night off from jocking. The service loved me; they had me working six nights a week. Typical; the job I loved, I couldn’t get arrested in. The job I hated, I was a raging success.

Life sucked.

Well, no. Not so much “sucked”, as “was very frustrating”.

And there’s nothing to blow away sucky frustration like a day at the range. Which is what I called up Bill to arrange, around 10AM.

———-

They say the most arrogant, rude, snooty, overly “enthusiastic” New Yorkers (or artists, or San Franciscans, or Greenies, or whatever) are the ones who come to it as adults. I don’t know that the same holds true for shooters – but Bill the Drummer would have been evidence of it.

Since his episode the previous spring – where he’d gotten mugged, and asked me to help him get into shooting – he’d become quite the gunny. Blessed with a $90/month rent payment, no car, almost no real bills and a job that paid decent tips, he had some disposable income (in that “living on a mattress in a converted three-season porch” kind of way). And for the previous couple of months, he’d spent it on shootin’ iron. He’d picked up…:

• An Enfield No. 4 Mk 1 – the classic British military rifle of the forties and fifties.
• A Colt M1911A1 – his father’s, from the war.
• A Walther P38 – one his father had brought home from the war. Like the Colt, I think he was happy one of his kids wanted to take it off his hands. Like a lot of combat veterans, he was deeply ambivalent about firearms.
• A Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum – a blued beauty with a five inch barrel.

I loaded up my car around lunchtime with my own arsenal – my Ljungmann (a WWII vintage Swedish rifle), my Remington Nylon .22, and my latest toy, a little .22 automatic pistol – and drove to Bill’s to load up his entire armory. Then it was off to Richfield Gun and Pawn for a grocery bag full of ammo, cleaning fluid and earplugs. Then, off to the range – “Moon Valley”, on the border between Eden Prairie and Chanhassen.

Of course, it took me nearly forty minutes to sort out the inscrutable maze of roads where 169, 494, Flying Cloud, Valley View and 212 all come together – a morass of concrete the bedevils me today, even after having worked at eight companies within three miles of that area in the past fifteen years – but eventually we got there.

———-

There are few better stress-relievers in life than sitting at the range on a gorgeous day, busting off caps. None of the better ones can be done without a person of the opposite sex along (or, y’know, the same, if you’re wired that way. Vive l’difference).

Part of it is the intensity of it all; you have to have your mind switched on, even when you’re just taking your spot on the line. If you don’t know that one dumb slipup can kill you, or someone else, you shouldn’t be there.

And shooting itself – the concentration, minding your breathing and the tension in your fingers and all the other factors – is all-engrossing, when you’re trying to hit a bulls-eye 200 yards away.

And it’s visceral. The sound of metal on metal and the implacable resistance as you pull the bolt carrier against the tension of the bolt return spring when you rack a round; the kick-to-the gut of the reports around you as other guns fire; the buildup of tension, the direct kick back to the shoulder (or the crease of your hand, with a pistol; the feeling of wrestling against the forces of physics to stay on target to get your next shot off quickly (if that’s what you’re trying to do); the smell of burned powder and hot oil and scorched brass, the taste of smoke – it consumes, and sometimes abuses, all five senses.

And the company is…well, interesting. Moon Valley catered to hard-core hunters, for the most part – guys from the third-tier ‘burbs who hailed from out back originally, who came in to zero their sights and practice up a little point shooting before they took to the field. They looked askance at some of the non-hunters – a guy who brought in an AK drew a scolding from the rangemaster when he busted off thirty rounds in a big hurry. The crowd wasn’t “gun nuts” – it was mostly marksmen.

And Bill and I. Although to be fair, after a little practice we were doing pretty well. I was hitting in the ring at 200 yards pretty nicely (20 years later, they all seem like the ten ring; grade my recollections accordingly).

———-

We hung out for 2-3 hours. We shot everything. I didn’t like the .44 Magnum one bit. And the P38 just felt wrong, and the SKS was kind of unpleasant. But I loved the Enfield – and my Ljungmann was a total hoot – a sweet-shooting darling of a rifle.

Finally, we ran out of ammo. We loaded up, and drove over to the Lyon’s Tap for what were, in their day, just about the best burgers ‘n cheap beer in the metro.

I dropped Bill and his arsenal off at the Band House, and drove home. 

Wyatt was waving goodbye to Teresa as I lugged my cases out of the car and into the house.  I hauled my guns up to my room, and taped a particulary impressive grouping to my bedroom door just for the fun of it. 

I grabbed my bike and turned around to take a little evening spin around Como as Allison – a petite, very underage blond that Wyatt kept letting into the various bars he bounced at – knocked at the front door. 

“Is Wyatt here?”

I rode until long, long after dark.

In order:

1. Rolling down Shep…Oh, sure, seeing my kids born.  That’s a given, right?
2. Rolling down Shepard Road from Ford Road down the gorge of the Mississippi River all the way to Sibley [*], with a howling tailwind behind you all the way, on one of the most beautiful mornings of the year.
   
   This’d be the view from Crosby Park, which is about 100 feet below the bike path.  Bear in mind, this is not the country; this is in the middle of Saint Paul, probably a few hundred yards south of the West End residential neighborhood.     

     So gorgeous that even I, a notoriously blase Scando-American who was also in mid-bike-ride, involuntarily went “Oh, wooooow” several times.

3. Driving your enemies before you and hearing the lamentation of his women.
4. Pretty much everything else.

That is all.

UPDATE:  Natually, no – that is not all.  What was this morning a screaming tailwind is, at the end of the work day, a howling headwind. 

Oh, well.  It was a great start to the day…

(more…)

The good news: Here’s an excellent article on one of the jobs I do, the “Usability Expert” (technically, I do two – I am also the “Interaction Designer” – although the two jobs really bleed into each other pretty heavily).

The ‘bad” news: It’s in German. Which isn’t a problem for me, but very well may be für euch.

The other good news: Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we have the Google translation thingie, which renders the German article into English.

The bad news:  There’s a reason I used the term “render” rather than “translate”.  It reads like something from Engrish.com.

I’ve been blogging for about six and a third years, now. In the world of blogs, I’m not Methuselah, but I was a few classes behind him in high school.

This blog has “succeeded” far beyond my wildest dreams; I’m around 2,000 unique visits a day (according to my server logs – which is down from the 3,000 I got a few years ago, but a fair chunk of that was hits on spam comments, which are largely gone now), with big surges on occasion. And as I’ve said for years, the rewards are even greater than the traffic; I’d still do the blog if I still had the 10-20 daily readers I had in the summer of 2002.

I’ve gotten a lot of great reactions, of course; recognition, fans of all kinds, and that feeling of satisfaction you get from doing something you enjoy, well enough to put your name on it with at least some pride. And of course, the blog has opened up things in my life that had been closed for a long, long time – since Twenty Years Ago Today, in fact; my “radio career”, a place in politics that I kind of enjoy – you know. The usual.

Of course, not everyone’s a fan. I have my critics; when they make a good point – and they frequently do, because let’s face it, I’m no Rhodes scholar – I appreciate it and learn from it (or try to). I have my detractors – a few people out there who just plain don’t like me or my blog. They don’t bother me especially; if I want their opinion, I’ll grant them the right to have one [*].

In fact, in six years and change of doing this blog, there’s really only one criticism that’s ever really rankled me; “Your blog used to be good, but it’s not what it used to be”.

Now, it doesn’t rankle me because of the implied criticism of the blog; the point pretty much invariably accompanies some sort of political screed. That’s fine.

On the other hand – no! The blog is not what it used to be! I’m not who I used to be! The only blogs that never, ever change are the ones that either publish five posts and go silent, the ones on some subject that never changes, or the ones written by groups so big that changes are swallowed up in the law of averages.

The last six years of my life have been a trip; rewarding, gruelling, joyful, excruciating, happy, depressed, fun and a freaking deathmarch – sometimes simultaneously. When I started the blog, my kids were nine and ten years old; today they’re 15 and 16. Since 2002, I’ve been a contractor at six companies, and am finally an employee at a place I think I like an awful lot. I’ve had dozens of first dates (and not a few second third and twentieth ones), a few breakups that were worthy of country-western songs (and one that was probably more speed-metal)…

…and there’s just no way on earth that anyone can do all that and not have something change. Usually for the better, sometimes not, but always just a tad different.

My politics are mostly the same; I’m a conservative. Some things have morphed; I’m less accepting of gay marriage than I was, but a stronger supporter of civil unions (and getting government the hell out of the marriage business). I still oppose capital punishment, but I’ve morphed from supporting concealed carry and the right to self defense to supporting mandatory gun ownership for the law-abiding and “make my day” laws. (I’m being tongue in cheek. Mostly).

So here’s a word for the wise; if you want to take a ding at me, I’m happy and not a little proud to tell ya “you’ve changed” really isn’t what you’re looking for.

(more…)

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the release of my favorite album of the rock and roll era, Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

Thirty years? Ooof.

Here’s what I wrote two years ago – a piece I’m still kinda proud of:

———-

Tonight My Baby And Me Are Gonna Ride To The Sea

It was 28 years ago today that Darkness on the Edge of Town came out.

For the past 25 or so years, it’s been my favorite album of all time.

Everyone remembers Born to Run, a timeless procession of suicide machines and old girlfriends and happy-go-lucky petty thugs and dresses flying in the wind and visionaries in parking lots dancing to late-night radio to the light of nearby billboards.

Darkness is the album for when the cruising’s over, and you have to grow up and live your life for real.

There’s a reason the album has stuck with me for almost thirty years – and why so many Bruce fans say that it, rather than Born to Run or The River or Nebraska, is their favorite Springsteen record.

There has never been a better record written about isolation – personal, geographical, cultural, and emotional – ever. Which may be why it resonated so much for a kid for North Dakota who desperately wanted to be elsewhere. In fact, “the Promised Land” is about exactly that:

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I’m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy’s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I’m gonna take charge

CHORUS
The dogs on Main Street howl
’cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land

Foreigner and Black Sabbath never wrote about being stuck in a small town, bored out of your skull. I was sold.

The first cut, “Badlands”, is a decoy; it’s almost “Born to Run”-ish, with its gleefully-sloppy guitar/sax interplay, big beat (almost danceable, by Springsteen standards) and exhortation that “it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive”. But after “Badlands” it’s clear – being glad you’re alive is no sin, but it’s something you gotta work for. “Adam Raised a Cain”, a brutal, plodding dirge, raises the ante; you can be glad you’re alive, but your past wants its due:

“Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames
Adam raised a Cain…

“Something in the Night” reads like an obituary to the teenage dream; like an almost-thirty-year-old is driving down the same route he covered ten years earlier – maybe the route “through the mansions of glory”, for all we know.

But he’s alone, this time:

I’m riding down Kingsley,
figuring I’ll get a drink
Turn the radio up loud,
so I don’t have to think,
I take her to the floor,
looking for a moment when the world
seems right,
And I tear into the guts,
of something in the night.

…

Well nothing is forgotten or forgiven,
when it’s your last time around,
and I’ve got stuff running ’round my head,
that I can’t live down…

So it’s been 28 years since I first heard the record, and about a quarter century since it’s been among my 2-3 favorite records ever. For me, it’s been a long stretch; a couple of careers, two and a half kids, a marriage that splintered like a Wal-mart dining room set, and a few dreams along the way that had to get wrapped up and put away for later, whenever “Later” is.

And at the end of it all – on the title and final cut on the album, the slow, mournful “Darkness on the Edge of Town” – a late-night tale by a guy who staked a big chunk of his life on a losing bet, a song that sounds like 4AM after a long bender, about the time when resignation gells into resolve:

Well, they’re still racing out at The Trestles
but that blood never burned in her veins.
I hear she’s got a house out on Fairview, now,
and a style she’s trying to maintain…

He’s been there. He’s thought about it.

He’s done:

Well, some folks are born into a good life,
and other folks get it anyway, anyhow.
And I lost my money and I lost my wife,
Them things don’t seem to matter much to me now.
Tonight I’ll be on that hill ’cause I can’t stop
I’ll be on that hill with everything I got
Where the lives are on the line, where dreams are found and lost,
I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
in the darkness on the edge of town…

The album has stayed with me like none of Springsteen’s other records – partly because I associate it so closely with that part of my adolescence when I was just starting to figure out who I was and where I belonged, but mostly because it’s about things that are pretty timeless.

It aint’ no sin to be glad you’re alive. It’s also something you have to earn:

Well everybody’s got a hunger,
a hunger they can’t resist.
There’s so much that you want,
you deserve much more than this.
Well, if dreams came true, aw, wouldn’t that be nice?
But this aint’ no dream, we’re living all through the night.
You want it? You take it, you pay the price…

So earn it.

———-

The other day, area blogger and fellow Bruuuuce fan Nightwriter left this comment:

I remember a friend of mine and I staying up til midnight at the end of term in ‘78 to hear the college radio station play the long-awaited new album on its release day. After all the anticipation I found it rather anti-climatic. I didn’t really like the album the first time through; there didn’t seem to be the “BTR” or “Rosalita” type anthem or a real party song. After the last cut finished my buddy asked me what I thought. I said it sounded as if Bruce had traded the city streets for the highways. I mean, how did he get from “E Street” to “a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert”? Didn’t stop me from buying it, of course, and it did grow on me.

I’ve found that to be true with a lot of music; a lot of my favorite albums ever – London Calling, Empty Glass, Tunnel of Love, Exile on Main Street, Pleased To Meet Me, Poor Man’s Son and probably quite a few others – didn’t totally grab me right out of the gate. Oh, there were songs I liked on each right out of the sleeve – but it took a while for things to really insinuate themselves into my brain, and deeper.

And while it’s been a long, long time since I first heard it, some of my favorites on Darkness today are the ones I skipped past when I was in high school. Oh, things like “Badlands”, “The Promised Land” and “Prove It All Night” grabbed me in my adolescent gut, but I remember thinking “Racing In The Street” was a lab project to cram in as many traditional “Springsteen” cliches – cars, girls, driving, the shore – into one song as possible. My friend Rich actually broke out laughing when he first heard the song’s opening verse…:

I got a ’69 Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor.
She’s waiting tonight down in the parking lot behind the 7/11 store.

…and, truth be told, I couldn’t really object. Not then, anyway. It took me years, and a lot of life, to really figure that one out.

Which may be why I love this album so much, more even than any other Springsteen album (and I love so much of that to begin with); there’s just as much there for me now as there was when I was 17.

(Note from Mitch:  I got this from my “evil” twin brother, Jed.  He believes in some funky stuff, including spiritualism and seances.  While I post his occasional pieces, I don’t necessarily endorse his views).

“It’s come to my attention that certain local bloggers have been trying to invoke classical psychoanalysis in critiqueing blogs – namely, in this case, my brother Mitch’s.   In one rather febrile case, a local blogger attempted to co-opt Sigmund Freud in order to “analyze” (via the “inundation with stereotypes” modality) last week’s “Hot Gear Friday” on World War II firearms.

So to set the record straight, I’m going to attempt to go to the source; I’m going to contact Doctor Freud himself in the next world

I believe this may be a blog first; certainly it’s a first among MOB blogs.

I’ve gathered some spiritualistic objects about me; I’m burning incense; I’m getting into a deep trance, attempting to commune with the spirits…

…wow.  He – or his spirit – has a Yahoo Chat account!  Who knew? 

I will include the transcript of the seance chat – the “chateance”, I guess – below.  This should be exiting.

SigFreud: Allo – wem hat mich abgewocht?

JedBerg: Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Freud. 

SigFreud: Kein Problem.  Was ist denn deine frage?

JedBerg:  Thank you.  I have just a couple of short questions… 

SigFreud: Schieß sofort!

JedBerg: Very well!  First question: does your theory of “compensation” have the faintest thing to do with enjoying shooting?

SigFreud: ROFMLAO!  Solche Quatsch!  Nee – regelmäsige waffeninteresse is gesund!  Es bedeutet ein wohle, gesunde…kraft in diesen welt!

JedBerg: “Kraft” – you mean in the sense of “Power, confidence, self-respect”, like that?

SigFreud: Ja!  Doch, natürlich!  Mein beliebte wort dafür is “Mojo”.

JedBerg: OK, thanks…

SigFreud: …anders zum glauben is…krank!

JedBerg: Really?  Do I hear you right – believeing otherwise is sick?

SigFreud: Ja!  Bring die männer in die weiße jacke!

JedBerg: The white jackets?  Wow.  That’s serious.

SigFreud: Doch.  Nächst!

JedBerg: OK.  So say someone likes to make snarky comments about others…

SigFreud: Das is ganz fabelhaft!  Wenn mann “speaks his mind” in seine eigene name, das ist gar gesund!

JedBerg: Healthy?  Sure – except it’s not “in their own name”.  They’re all either anonymous, or talking through fake personas – like animals.  Dogs.  That kind of thing.

(pause in transcript)

SigFreud: So viel arbeit – und so wenig zeit. 

JedBerg: That bad?

SigFreud: Es macht man müde und… nah, sowieso “depressed”.  Das ist alles.  Beinahe gefällt’s mir daß ich Tod bin!   Nächst!

JedBerg: Wow.  Harsh.  OK, final question; doesn’t your very presence here in a seance from the afterlife refute your premises from Future of an Illusion and Moses and Monotheism?

SigFreud: LOLOLOL!  Ja.  Schoiße, nicht?

JedBerg: Heh.  You could say that!  Well, Dr. Freud, thank you for your time!

SigFreud: Kein Problem!  Chuß, und auf wiederschauen!  🙂

JedBerg: And to  you as well!

SigFreud has logged off 12:02PM

The light is fading….fading…

Wow.  I’m back.  Let me read the transcript…

…oh, crap.  I forgot – Freud was Austrian!  Well, dang. 

I hope that’s of use to someone.  

(Jed Berg, Mitch’s “evil twin”, contributes periodically to this blog.  He is a forensic personal injury attorney living in Darrien, Connecticut.  He is a life-long liberal Democrat, but will likely vote for McCain if the Dems nominate a candidate who is pro-choice, anti-gun, and pro-withdrawal from Iraq)

Question for all your bikers/excursionmongers who know the Bloomington area.

Old Cedar Avenue runs south of Old Shakopee Road, southwest of the Mall of America. It’s west of the current Cedar (Hwy 77). On the map, and on Google, it crosses the Minnesota River on that old box-trestle bridge that is just west of the new Cedar bridge.

Now, an Hennepin County bike map says the old trestle bridge is closed – but a look at the Google Streetview looks like it’s open.

From the looks of it, Old Cedar links up to the foot/bike path on the new Cedar bridge, which would be a VERY handy shortcut for me.

Does anyone out there know if that old bridge is actually open to bikes?

Leave a comment. Thanks!

UPDATE:  Oops.  Asked and answered.

My little-known evil twin Jed writes:

When Mitch and I were kids, our teachers used to tell us – threatening the President, even as a  joke, was a bad idea; the Secret Service was always watching for these things.  Our fourth grade teacher, Miss Walburn, told us the story about the kid who’d written a joking threat to President Nixon, and gotten a visit from the Secret Service.   

Last Sunday I watched Family Guy.  It was the episode where Stewie takes over the world, and Lois sets out to kill him.

The “climactic” scene is a battle between the two in the Oval Office.  In one scene, Lois, firing a Minigun a la Jesse Ventura in Predator, chases Stewie with a stream of bullets along a wall of presidential portraits, leaving a stream of bullet holes in the pics of the last seven or eight presidents, as the “camera” “pans” along.

Then the shot stops when we get to George W. Bush’s portrait, with two or three holes in it.  Lois stops, pauses, and fires a long burst that obliterates the portrait. 

Now, while I am second only to Mitch in my support for real freedom of speech, isn’t this sort of scene covered by some kind of law?  Couldn’t the Secret Service grab Seth McFarlane just for a little?  Maybe rough him up for a while?  Knock out a few teeth with a tire iron or something?

I mean, remembering the vapors the media got over even the most trivial “threat” against Clinton, and the conspiracy-mongering they do and the “climates of hate” they find – nothing?

Just a question for your readers, Mitch.

There’s a reason we call him my “evil twin”, of course. I don’t necessarily endorse everything Jed says. 

It was Monday, May 16, 1988. 9AM.

It had been an interesting weekend. Wyatt was high most of the time. He’d gotten fired from Hot Rod’s, so he was looking to be even shorter on the money. And I was starting to look for a way to jettison his freeloading ass.

And my best way of doing that might just be arriving. Today, I was supposed to call Charles, the program director in Orlando, to talk about flying me down for a job interview for an evening talk show – the perfect next step in a career that’d been on hold for over a year, now.

I threw caution to the wind; at 9AM sharp, I dialled the number.

“Buenos Dias, Radio Espanol por Orlando!”, a cheery and not-remotely-Anglo voice welcomed me.

“Oh, I’m sorry”, I stammered, hoping it was a wrong number, even as I remembered enough high school Spanish to know exactly what she’d said. “I’m looking for Dave”, the program director.

“I’m sorrrry, sir”, said the woman. “Thees station is now Spanish rrradio”

Dave, the entire staff, and the plan for the evening news magazine were out on the street.

I hung up. And stood by the phone for a couple of minutes.

Finally, I put a leash on Mookie, and went out for a long walk. My legs felt like they had sandbags strapped to the ankles. My vision narrowed to a faint little tunnel at times. I felt sick, intermittently, with flashes of anger interspersed.

I walked for hours – at least until late afternoon. I came home as Teresa was leaving. “Hi, Mitch!”, she chirped, looking fresh and blond and beautiful, in her uniform for a day at work at the nursing home. “Hey, Teresa”, I nodded.

I took a shower, got dressed for work – City Limits, tonight – and passed Wyatt in the hall. “You got the rent money?”

“I’ll get it, man”, he said, going into the bathroom with his “night out on the town” clothes, sounding perfunctory and clipped and not at all like he was gonna get it, man.

F*ck it.

As I walked out to the car, Michelle walked up the sidewalk. “Hi, Mitch”.

“Hi, Michelle”.

I slumped into the driver’s seat and sat for a moment, my arms feeling too heavy to lift to start the car.

It feels like I’m watching someone else’s life, I thought. And it’s starting to suck.