Jeff Kouba at TvM has a few pet peeves:

1) “Door Close” buttons on elevators that don’t work

2) Poorly done bridges in pop songs

3) Having to wait to pay for the food in restaurants. In a perfect world, you’d pay as soon as the food came so you could leave when you’re done.

4) Reporters who say “we’re following the story” when they really mean they’re hitting the Refresh button on The Drudge Report the same as you.

5) Bloggers who say “I reported” such and such when they just cut and pasted from an article online.

Or anyone – from bloggers up through Geraldo Rivera – who ever uses the phrase “this reporter” in any unironic sense.

6) Books with prologues.

7) Refrigerator doors that keep closing on you when you’re getting something out. Stop helping me. I’ll close the door myself.

8) Drivers who treat a crowded, rush hour freeway like the Grand Prix, just to go from two cars behind you to two cars ahead of you.

Hoooyeah. Absofrigginlutely.

A few additions of my own:

1. Pronouncing the word “processes” “Pro-ses-SEES”, with big emphasis on the last syllable.  Ick.
2. Anyone wearing those Celtic Thorn tattoos around their arm, that doesn’t have Celtic Warrior’s Union card in their wallet.
3. Guys in pageboy haircuts.  Thanksfully, this fad’s bus seems to have left the station.  For now.
4. Guys with pony tails and earrings.  Either one is acceptable.  Both are not.

And oh so many more.

UPDATE:  Justin emails:

> Also, here’s a linguistic pet-peeve of similar ilk: “matrix” instead of
> “chart” or “table.” Not every Excel spreadsheet is a “matrix.” I did
> four sems of calculus; I’ll show you a real matrix! 

Jeez, yeah.  I hate that one too.

Oh, yeah – and let me add to that:

Companies that incorporate “being 10 minutes late to meetings” into their corporate culture

and

Replacing “meetings” with “phone conferences”.  In my experience, no “meeting” that was comprised of people sitting around in headsets ever ended with anything getting done. 

That is all.

(Or…is it?)

I’ve written a lot about my mother’s father, Don Hall. 

In his almost ninety years, I learned a lot about him.  He’d been a superstar athlete at Jamestown College in the thirties; he’d worked on a CCC project to build the college stadium that still stands there.  He coached the last undefeated regular season/playoff/championship string (1940, Grand Forks Central) in the history of North Dakota high school hoops.  I drove with him at least once as he drove about the hinterlands of western North Dakota, selling drugs [*].  I had the benefit of being nearly forty when he died; I spent plenty of time with him; long enough to introduce him to his great-grandkids. 

I was never that lucky with my Dad’s father, Oscar Berg, who’d be celebrating his 114th birthday if he were alive today.  He – along with my grandmother – was the proprietor of “Berg Studio”, a photography shop in Jamestown for 30-odd years.  Oscar was a great photographer; some of his work still floats around central North Dakota, in thousands of senior photos and wedding pictures hanging on walls crammed with shots of peoples’ grand and great-grandparents, and panoramic shots of towns and National Guard units and Masonic Lodge picnics hanging in local museums and city halls.

He died, apparently of a heart attack, in March of 1942, leaving my grandma to run the photography studio and raise Dad.  I know him only from photographs; my brother Jim inherited the looks, the lucky sod (and my son Zam got his eyes, I think). 

He’d done a bunch of other things – I’m still not entirely sure about what, although I know he lived in Saint Paul for a while; my Dad has an old photo of him in a streetcar conductor’s uniform. 

 He was born on this date in 1893.  It’s strange, sometimes, thinking I’m just two generations removed from the nineteenth century. 

[*] to pharmacists, of course.

…for the battle royale, as it were, with King “King” Banaian, I’ve decided it’s time to let some other old feuds die natural deaths.

More later.

Maybe.

Or maybe my next birthday present to myself…

…I do have a post written for the morning of September 28, 2025, that starts:

It was September 28, 2005. I started writing about what I’d done twenty years ago that evening.

People have asked.

That is all.

It was Wednesday, November 4, 1987.

The U2 concert I’d waited for in line for hours to get tickets for had finally arrived.

Fact is, I only remember so much of the show; it was chilly out; it was dark when I arrived at the show; the girl I’d asked to come to the show – someone I’d met at a B. Dalton bookstore in Maplewood and had been talking with for a few weeks – had bowed out the day before, so I’d sold my extra ticket to a friend of a friend.

I walked into the old Saint Paul Civic Center, and found my seat; it was the seat on the far right of the first row of bleachers, in the section closest to the walkway between the stage-left side of the stage, probably six feet from the stage itself.

The BoDeans came onstage first; Rolling Stone had been raving about them for months (they were going to be voted “Best New Band of 1987” in a few months), but I’d found their single “She’s a Runaway” dreary and irritating; I expected the worst…

…and was surprised that I actually liked ’em a lot.

After the BoDeans’ set, I hunkered down for the long grind as the stagehands turned the stage around for the headliner. My seat was elevated a few feet above the floor, so I had a pretty decent view of the audience. The thing that struck me about the sell-out crowd was that there were so many people waving signs. Now, this isn’t unusual in and of itself; all sorts of people waved signs around at concerts. Most of them involved trying to get the singer’s attention; I remember all sorts of signs from real and imagined “Jersey Girls” at the Springsteen concert I’d attended in ’84, before Julianne Phillips pretty well gutted that fantasy.

But the signs at the U2 gig were…serious. Air-from-the-room-suckingly serious. I suppose we just accept today that U2, or at least Bono, are as much a social advocacy group as a rock band, but it was still kind of new back then.

So the auditorium was sprinkled with signs condemning apartheid, calling for a freeze on the homeless and food and housing for nuclear weapons (or something), bashing Reagan (some things never change).

The one that I remember? At the front of a block of seats on the floor sat a couple of girls in impeccable punk-chic; perfect hair, impeccably-scrubbed, they looked like Saint Thomas kids. Not victims by any stretch. They carried a banner between them; “I Shall Be Released”.

I tired of watching the crowd, eventually, and turned to the stagehands and the contortions they were going through to get the stage ready for the show. U2’s later tours – especially “Pop” – were famous for the campily excessive staging, so it’s easy to forget that the Joshua Tree tour brought (as I recall) the biggest light rig that had ever been stuffed into the Saint Paul Civic Center; huge trusses of fresnels and leakos hung over the stage, while the mezzanine was ringed with follow spots. As the stage itself came together, a group of guys – six or eight – climbed up chain ladders into the huge truss hanging over the stage, looking not a little like sailors manning the rigging of a man o’ war of the sail age, to work follow spots right above the set.

Eventually – I think it took nearly 90 minutes to clean up the BoDeans gear and set up for the headliner – the lights dropped, and (after another long delay) the long-familiar synth line from “Where The Streets” have no name started over the speakers. I looked up and to my right. Adam Clayton walked out, carrying a maroon Fender P-Bass (or a Jazz. I don’t remember). Then Edge started the tinkly guitar part (with a gorgeous cream-white Les Paul)…

…and they threw a concert.

The rest of the setlist, I had to get online:

1. I Will Follow,
2. Trip Through Your Wires,
3. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (which had a snippet of “Exodus” in it)
4. MLK,
5. Gloria (always my favorite U2 song, it didn’t disappoint)
6. Spanish Eyes,
7. Sunday Bloody Sunday,
8. Exit (Bono inserted a bit of “Riders on the Storm”, which spoiled that song for me forever more)
9. Silver And Gold,
10. In God’s Country,
11. People Get Ready,
12. Bad (Bono slipped in bits of “Ruby Tuesday” – which he kept in the song for probably a generation – and “Street Fighting Man”)
13. October,
14. New Year’s Day,
15. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

And then the encore, with:

1. Bullet The Blue Sky,
2. Running To Stand Still,
3. With Or Without You,
4. 40

And that, as they say, was all she wrote. The band looked tired. The show looked like it’d been done to death (and indeed the Saint Paul show was toward the end of a very long tour). But it was U2, for crying out loud.

It was freezing as I walked up Cathedral Hill, looking at the green-rusted dome of the Cathedral.

Surely there must be some place in downtown Saint Paul that makes an edible Cuban Sandwich…

 …mustn’t there?

Por favor?

I got an email from my evil twin brother Jed:

I read Robin Marty’s evasive, straw-addled non-review of Indoctrinate U, and had to comment when I read this bit here:

As an English major, I picked electives that introduced me to many multi-cultural works. Yet my required classes instead embraced the “white, heterosexual males,” Norman Fruman opined in Kersten’s column that colleges were rejecting. I was given the works of Robert Browning while we skipped over his wife, Elizabeth, or even stranger, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was better known as a painter, over his sister, Christina. Complaints regarding the complete rejection of women writers for study in that class convinced our professor to give us a handout of “A Room of One’s Own” and the declaration that we can go “have a study group with it, or something.”

One simple explanation for this “disparity”; if one is teaching a required survey of Western Literature, Robert Browning and Dante Rossetti are both vastly more important figures than Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti. They matter more.

For someone who’s majoring in literature – toss ’em all in there! But if you’re talking about a survey to show people where Western Lit has been and what it’s done? There’s no excuse for ignoring important authors (whiteness and maleness and straightitude notwithanding) in preference to usually-trivial female authors.

Jed, having been a lit major, has strong opinions about these things.

I was pretty smug about what I believed when I went to college.

There, I encountered a number of professors who agreed with my smug, self-satisfied beliefs – and one who challenged them, assaulted them, turned them on their heads.

Of course, I went into college a liberal – and Doctor Blake was a self-described “monarchist”. Doctor Blake cajoled me into reading Crime and Punishment, Modern Times by Paul Johnson, The Gulag Archipelago, and PJ O’Rourke’s essays (the ones that later became Republican Party Reptile). I entered college as a kid who had been just too young to vote in 1980 – and in 1984 I voted for Reagan (and in 1996 may have done it again, although I don’t remember).

The challenge to my “beliefs” was a whack up side my intellectual head. It was also one of the things I went to college for in the first place.

Of course, Dr. Blake wasn’t on a mission to create young Republicans – indeed, I barely remember him discussing current events or politics in class. He was not on a mission to indoctrinate kids, and while when called upon he did talk about why he was a Republican and why the Democrats were wrong, it was never as an abuse of his position, at the front of a classroom.

Which is where the line needs to be – and all too often isn’t.
So as I join with King Banaian and Janet Beihoffer in hoping you can attend Indoctrinate U at the Oak Street Cinema starting this evening, I’ll also draw your attention to the latest Katherine Kersten piece. Not every professor, it seems, is as forebearing as Dr. Blake:

t’s become a common complaint that U.S. campuses are home to a stifling liberal orthodoxy where contrary beliefs are persecuted. Doyle says it’s no illusion.

A new film, “Indoctrinate U,” documenting that atmosphere, opens near campus tomorrow.

Bethany Dorobiala, a senior political science major at the U of M, knows just what Doyle is talking about. Dorobiala was one of the few students who agreed to speak on the record about the problem.

In many courses, Dorobiala says, professors load up reading lists with books that reflect their ideological agenda. “If you speak up in class and present an alternative view, you may risk being ridiculed by a professor twice your age with a PhD.,” she said. “Students who agree with the professor’s politics are regularly praised and encouraged.”

Dorobiala has encountered this disregard for intellectual diversity in classes outside of political science. “In geology class, I had a teacher who made side comments bashing President Bush,” she said. A rigid orthodoxy prevails on issues as disparate as the death penalty and global warming, she says, and some professors regularly pontificate on topics outside their discipline.

Read the whole thing. Check out the movie.

Challenge is good. Abuse is bad.

So the Twinks made it to Game Seven.

I can’t say that I expected much.

I went to a party that night, at an upstairs duplex near Franklin and Pleasant, in South Minneapolis.  There were maybe a dozen of us – my pal Rich, my guitar player Casey, another guitar player and expat from Jamestown, Mike, and a slew of people I didn’t even know then, much less now.

And I’ll never forget the action – in the [fill in inning], when [fill in player] caught that [what kind of hit] at the [foul line/warning track], or when pitcher [pitcher’s name] caught [batter] in a [type of pitch], or the grand finale, when [play by play announcer] almost [vocal condition] as [Twin] got a [type of play] against [a Cardinal] as [one of the managers].

OK.  I’ve never cared much for sports trivia.  The main thing I remember is, as the game ground toward the end, and the Twins remained in the chase, feeling light-headed – almost high, with the communal excitement of the moment. 

I remember the final call – the immortalized pileup at home plate…

 …and running out onto the street and practically jogging all the way downtown, up Nicollet, seeing downtown glowing in the distance, feeling the crowd converging downtown as much as hearing it.

It was a gorgeous night; a little cool, but perfect.

I got downtown toward 11 or so; I lost the other people somewhere around Ichiban, and wandered around on my own; above 11th Street, the crowd was Calcutta-like. 

What did I do for the next six hours?

• Had a beer at the Little Wagon.  Or three or four.  I can’t remember.
• Watched as about 100 people piled onto a moving fire truck that was trying to get through the crowd on Hennepin.  Unfortunately, it was trying to get to an actual fire, as the driver kept yelling over the PA system.
• Took a bunch of beers that people were handing out from coolers in the street.  Passed most of them on.  Was too happy to be drunk.
• Felt, rather than heard, the noise on the street as tens or hundreds of thousands of people teemed through the streets.
• Talked about the odds of someone actually burning a police car with a couple of yobs from Brooklyn Center. 
• Made out with some girl by the entrance of the Plymouth Building.  No, really.  Musta seemed like a good idea at the time.  This, I do not believe, has ever happened again.
• Wandered down Hennepin at 5AM back toward my car, with a group of random other people, warm and snug in the cameraderie and good will that wafted through the every corner of the Cities for that night at the next couple of days.

I made it home around 5:30AM, with three conclusions:

• I’d never see another night like that as long as I lived in the Twin Cities.
• I needed to kickstart my life.
• I should have gotten the number of the girl at the Plymouth Building.

This morning, commenter Angryclown noted in my piece on  my travels:

 Respectively, Mitch’s imagined Berg for America 2008 electoral map and the nations that would continue to have diplomatic relations with the U.S. under a Berg administration.

So I thought – I do tend to make a decent first impression on people.  So let’s say that that first impression COULD be turned into electoral gold; that if I run for president, every state I’ve ever visited would fall for my charms and give me an electoral plurality. 

I counted ’em up:

Mitch: 315

Non-Mitch: 223

I think the GOP’s choice is clear.

(Or, if we don’t count Nebraska, which I merely drove through, you can transfer five points.  But I think the ‘huskers are pretty sharp people, so let’s not go crazy here…)

It was Saturday, September 24, 1987.

The Twins, against all odds, had gone from the AL cellar in ’86, through an improbable rally to carry them to the AL Pennant.

When it comes to sports, I’m like one of those Jewish people who never goes to Synogogue, drinks, eats non-kosher food if he feels like it, dates goyim, but hangs on to the “Jewish” heritage. I enjoy certain sports (baseball) and teams (the Bears, the Cubs, the Twinks) just on principle, because I like saying it, and because it brings me occasional insight or the occasional stray shaving of pleasure.

And like anyone who’d ever been anywhere near Minnesota sports, I’d learned to rely on the insights, since the pleasure was pretty sparse. With the Bergmanian pessimism that lies behind most Scandinavian life, I figured the ’87 Twins would, eventually, flop.

So with the Twins down 3-2 going into Game Six, I figured it was basically all over – that we were set up for a classic Minnesota “close but no cigar” at the final wire. I figured I’d forstall the disappointment and take in a movie.

I drove to the Roseville – then as now, a “dollar” theatre. As I parked in the lot by the Rainbow Foods, I flipped on WCCO…

…as Carneal (or John Gordon or whomever the F) set up the call – Ken Dayley or some other pitcher from the “who the hell was he” list pitching to Herbie. It was, of course, the grand slam that became one of the big highlights of Kent Hrbek’s career. I sat in the car and listened, grinning like a hummel, totally missing my show.

As the game ended with a big, surprising Twins win, I figured they’d choke tomorrow – but it’d be fun while it lasted.

UPDATE:  Yeah, I got your emails/comments.  In response, feel free to check the post for evidence of how little I care about sports trivia.

I mean, that was fairly clear, no?

…is that neither this map…

create your own personalized map of the USA or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

…nor this one…:

create your personalized map of europe or check out our Barcelona travel guide

…has appreciably changed in recent years.

Just saying.

It was October 23, 1987. A Friday night.

My big diversion from the grind of job-hunting came on Friday nights. I’d go to “Phoenix Games”, a store on Lake between Bryant and Colfax (which, astoundingly, still exists), around six-ish to do “Naval Gaming”; groups of guys (and occasional gals) would recreate historical naval battles, or do hypothetical ones, on the shop floor with little lead minatures simulating ships from the sail era, World Wars I and II, and occasionally modern-day battles.

After the evening’s activities, after the shop closed – usually around midnight – some of us would adjourn to the Embers on 26th and Hennepin for a late-night snack.

———-

A quick aside that might seem utterly irrelevant, but whose relevance will become clear later.

Back in high school, I acted in a lot of school plays. I enjoyed trying to be someone else; it was more interesting than being me.

But I digress. There was a small group of guys who were “best pals” with all the girls – James, Charlie and Brad [*]; they’d sit with them before and after play practice and belt out show tunes and talk about clothes and…

…and I didn’t really think twice about it. Charlie was a talented artist; Brad was a great musician; James was on the Speech team with me. I thought they had terrible taste in music, a fair flair for clothing, and were perfectly fine guys. No big whoop.

I was probably well into college before I put two and two together. And then yawned. In the couple of years intervening between high school and college, gay guys had gone from being a fairly threatening mystery – not unusual in small towns at the time – to pretty much a non-issue.

I couldn’t stand show tunes, but otherwise, their sexuality – and that of any other gay people – was a whole lot less important than trying to do something with my own.

Which, I occasionally mused in frustration, was probably a good reason to quit hanging around at Phoenix on Friday nights.

———-

It was about 2AM, and time to pay the tab. I walked to the front of the restaurant and grabbed a fiver to pay for my Coke and slice of pie…

…and ran into Charlie , the would-be comic book artist.  I noticed him, first, before I noticed the clothing; He was wearing black leather chaps, a vest, a harness-y thing that looked like lederhosen, some sort of black leather speedo thing, topped off with a black leather Greek fisherman’s cap.

Charlie noticed me pretty much simultaneously.  And I was gratified in the split second before I spoke that he looked just about as awkward as I must have.

“Hey, Charlie!”

“Hey, Mitch”.

How to follow up, when you’re talking to an old high school pal who’s standing there in S&M gear?

“So how ya doing?”

“Great”

“Still working at…” the restaurant where he’d been waiting tables the previous year, according to a mutual friend.

“Yeah!  And are you still in radio?”

“Nah, I’m freelancing”.

I smiled and nodded.  So did he.

“Hey, great seeing you!”

“Yeah, nice running into you!”, he responded, pointing sotto voce to the three other leather clad guys who were walking away to sit at a table.

“A friend of yours?”, one of the other gamers asked, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

There’d been a time when I’d probably have smacked the guy for suggesting it.

“Yeah, ol’ high school bud”, I responded, turning to talk with the hostess.

(more…)

…if I should buy this piece of real estate as a very, very, very relaxing vacation home…

The Missile Base consists of 57 acres of real estate. The center secured portion of the property is protected by the original barbed-wire-topped chainlink fence. There is a paved road leading into the property with dual entry gates.
Above ground is the original 40 X 100 shop building, two concrete targeting structures, two manufactured homes, two 8 X 8 X 40 storage containers, and the silo tops of the three missile silos, two antenna silos, one entry portal and a few other misc structures.

…or a safeguard against a Hillary Clinton adminstration…: 

Below ground is a huge complex consisting of 16 buildings and thousands of feet of connecting tunnels. The major underground structures are:

• Three – 160′ Tall Missile Silos
• Three – 4 story Equipment Terminal Buildings
• Three – Fuel Terminal Buildings
• Two – 6 story Antenna Silos
• One Air Intake/Filtration Building
• One 100′ diameter Control Dome Building
• One 125′ diameter Power Dome Building
• One – 6 story Entry Portal Building

and a few other misc buildings and areas.

Decisions, decisions.

(more…)

…as a matter of fact, I do noodle about the odd Wikipedia article. 

I mean, all you had to do was ask.

I found a record of a night I unaccountably missed a year ago in writing my “Twenty Years Ago Today” series.

I’ve been to a fair number of concerts in my life. Good ones (U2, Saint Paul Civic, 1987; Ian Hunter, First Avenue, 1989; Stevie Ray Vaughan, Riverfest, 1986), fair-to-middlin’ ones (Hüsker Dü, First Avenue, 1987), awful ones (The Butthole Surfers, First Avenue, 1987) – and a few that are drilled into my head as great moments in my life; Los Lobos and Warren Zevon (different nights a week apart at First Avenue, 1991); Bruce Springsteen (several times, but especially on the second night of the Born In The USA tour at the Civic in ’84 and on his greatest hits tour in ’99)…

…and, 21 years ago tonight, Richard Thompson at the First Avenue, touring in support of Across a Crowded Room.

I went to the concert with my usual gig posse from back in that day; my fellow Don Vogel producer Dave Elvin, and his college classmate, whom Twin Citians now know as MPR’s Chief Political Correspondent Mike Mulcahey. It was a chilly night that kept whispering “winter is coming”.

“Rue Nouveau”, a local band led by art-pop-rock stalwart Gary Rue, opened. They were actually really good, although I don’t remember much; I point it out merely to show that I do, in fact, remember they existed.

And then – a set-change and two beers later – Thompson took the stage, playing (as I recall) “Little Blue Number“.

And I’ll have to confess – while I was a huge Thompson fan, at that moment I really only had two of his records – Shoot Out The Lights, the 1982 classic I wrote about at some length last year, and I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, an equally-classic 1972 album that was my introduction to Thompson and his by-this-time ex-wife Linda. At any rate, I didn’t know an awful lot of the songs, which spanned what was already almost two decades of recorded output.

In a way, it was a good thing; sometimes hearing something for the first time, without preconceptions, enhances the impact. At least, that’s one possibility for why that concert, 20 years later, is still pounded into my head.

The band was one of the most fascinating ensembles I’d seen. Clive Gregson played guitar and keyboard; Christine Collister, about 5’0 and 105 pounds (and five were hairdo) played acoustic guitar and percussion and contributed improbably-big, booming contralto backing vocals along with Gregson (with whom she recorded several albums apart from Thompson); Dave Pegg played Bass, Dave Mattacks was the drummer, and Danny Kirkpatrick sat on the drum riser playing the three-row button accordion.

And, above all, Thompson himself, the most amazing guitar player I’d ever seen. He played a brown Fender Strat, and had a peculiar picking style; most guitar players either play a flatpick (between the thumb and forefinger) or they fingerpick (using their fingers, or, like Nils Lofgren, metal picks perched on their fingertips). Thompson did both – held a flatpick, and also picked heavily with his middle, ring and pinky fingers…

…all of which sounds technical and clinical, and explains nothing about the impact watching him play had on me, standing there, swaying limply back and forth, trying to absorb it all, vowing to repent of everything I’d ever done on the guitar and start over from scratch later that night.

The rest of the setlist? I didn’t know most of them in the first place, other than the ones from Shoot… and Bright Lights, and the titles of some albums (“Hand of Kindness” stood out), so the only thing that still registers, twenty years later, was that it was all amazing. Thompson is either the world’s funniest depressing artist, or the world’s most depressing funny artist; his music swerves from odes to hope and joy (“Wall of Death“) to harrowing trudges through the darkest of nights (“Shoot Out The Lights“) to keening pleas for forgiveness (“For Shame of Doing Wrong“).

Two moments stand out, still, though.

One – very late in the night – was a long, gorgeous version of “Calvary Cross”, the centerpiece of Bright Lights; the lights dimmed, and the song started, quieter and more subdued than the original (it’s the audio track on this Youtube video, although the video itself has nothing to do with Thompson or the song), with Thompson weaving the vocal through his reedy guitar part. Collister and Gregson hummed the background parts from dim backlight as the song – about the unpredictability of a writer’s muse – swelled through the second verse and then through a long, inspired improvisation on the guitar that left me pretty well physically drained.

And then – as the clock closed in on 1AM, and after two encores that left the crowd cheering for still more, Thompson took the stage alone, holding his Strat, and played “End of the Rainbow“, also from Bright Lights, the most depressing song in the history of the English language. It didn’t “clear the room”, per se – he knocked the song dead – but the audience was subdued as the lights came up; they filed out pretty quietly.

Dave and Mike dropped me off at the house. I went downstairs and started on my mission to re-learn the guitar.

For a sense of what the night was like, check out this series of Youtube vids, pulled from a video Thompson released from that tour. Same band, and much of the same setlist.

Via the miracle of the IPod, I can actually listen to the Dennis Miller Show. 

My new weekend project: figure a way to altern my DNA so that I can replicate both Miller and Jason Lewis.

DNA replication is, indeed, the sincerest form of flattery.

Red strikes again: 

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning?  After my email?  Usually Lileks.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? I’m not sure that I have many “guilty” pleasures. 

3. What job do you fantasize about having?

Dennis Miller’s talk show.

4. Last movie you saw?

Ahem; South Park, 1999.

5. Last book you read? House to House, David Bellavia – the account of an Army squad leader in the Second Battle of Fallujah.  I liked it so much, I interviewed him.

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter.  There are a couple.  Timothy Leary playfully hip-checked me back in 1986, in the “green room” on the Vogel show.

And back in 1999, after Springsteen’s show at the Target Center, I waited out on Seventh Street by the loading dock until about 3AM for his customary trip out to meet the hardcore fans and get my ancient copy of Darkness on the Edge of Town autographed.  I got to the front of the pack, and handed Bruce the slipcover as Patty Scialfa and Chuck Plotkin looked on in the background.  “I’m such a huge fan, I named both of my kids after you”, I said.  Bruce looked up, seeming mildly alarmed.  “You did?”  

“No, no”, I replied.  “I’m a fan, not a stalker”.  The three of ’em got a good laugh. 

7. Proudest media moment?

Good question.  I mean, I’ve worked in or around the  media on and (mostly) off since I was 16.  I’d say the big ones were:

1. Interviewing Rochelle Olson on NARN
2. Smacking down Marjolyn Bijlefeld of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns on my old KSTP show in ’86
3. This incident from the Vogel show
4. May 27, 1980, at KEYJ in Jamestown – my junior year of high school.  I was in noon-hour orchestra practice, getting ready for graduation the next day.  The fire alarm went off.  Ozone and smoke laced the air as everyone evacuated.  I slipped away from the rest of the group, found the fire chief, got the story (there was an electrical fire, and a woman was trapped in one of the elevators), and called it over to Darrell Williams, the station’s news director.  Got major kudos – heady stuff for a punk kid.

8. Ever had a brush with the law? Describe.

In the winter of 1990-1991, my at-the-time wife and I were flat broke.  We also had no space in our garage, so for one reason or another we ran up like 14 snow emergency parking tickets.  We couldn’t afford to pay ’em – we were donating plasma to buy diapers, for crying out loud.  Unfortunately, I didn’t go to court or anything.

A year later – the day after I started my first decent-paying job as a tech writer – a couple of deputies were waiting for me at home with 14 arrest warrants.  I spent a couple of hours in the lockup, until my at-the-time father-in-law came down to bail me out. 

That was about it.

9. If you got a unicorn what would you name it?

“President Hillary”

10. What does your TiVo think about you?

I don’t own a Tivo.

11. Character of fiction you most resemble?

Not really sure there is one.  I’d like to think Dolokhov from War and Peace, though.

12. Who plays you in your bio-pic?

I’ll shoot for the stars and say John McGinley. 

13. What’s your ringtone?

The one that my cell phone came out of the box with.

My kids’ phones have the “Techno” tone.  I think an ex-girlfriend has some Euro thing, but I haven’t heard it ring in a long time, and may have trashed it.

Oh, and I can’t find my cell phone.

14. Favorite electronic device?

Today?  The IPod I bought – used – two days ago.  I’m finally able to listen to the Dennis Miller show!

15. What do your friends say is your best quality?

Ooof.  Hopefully how I listen, but I have no idea.

16. What do your enemies say is your worst?

My enemies?  As distinct from my friends?  That I crush them mercilessly yet easily.

My friends might say it’s that sometimes I’m pretty cluelessly insensitive.

17.What natural talent do you wish you had?

Domestic talent.

18. What’s your theme song?

“Gloria”, U2

19. Do you believe in love at first sight?

I could be persuaded.

20. When’s the last time you volunteered? Where?

Neighborhood cleanup day.

Posting has been light the last few days, because…well, I’m too tired to blog.

No, nothing debilitating.  I’ve just been burning blowtorching the candle at both ends for a couple of weeks.  That, combined with the change of seasons, means my usual up-at-5AM blogging schedule has been honored only in the breach, pretty much, all week here. 

It’s not like I don’t want to have stuff up…y’know.

But I think I’m getting back on top of my game here.  And there’s tons of stuff to write about – so expect a virtual deluge tomorrow.

I have spent most of the past four months biking to and from work.  I’ve loved it; it’s a great way to kick off the morning; a little fresh air, a vigorous workout, a few existential threats to focus the mind. 

But since the kids have been to school, it’s been more of a twice a week pleasure that I snatch if everything goes well with getting kids up and to school; if it’s warm enough for Bun to bike, and Zam actually gets out the door and walking or skateboarding on time. 

When I can’t bike, I usually take the bus.  But that stinks during the school year, since there are exactly three options for the bus that runs down my street; one that I can catch and get to work half an hour early, if everyone is out the door and moving five minutes ahead of normal, which I make about 10% of the time; one that gets me to work in plenty of time (even to stop at the coffee shop), if everything goes well, which is about 80%; one that gets me there 10 minutes late.  Or I drive, and pay for parking.

This isn’t really intended to be a trip through my domestic life; there’s a point here.  Whenever I hear urban transit activists extol the virtues of biking to work or mass transit as viable options, I try to find out; do they have kids? 

Anecdotally, most seem not to.  And it shows. 

On a regional politics discussion forum, one of the contributors frequently posts reviews of the various bus rides and routes she takes, taking some pride in her ability to get to places in (relatively) little time.  Which makes for interesting reading, and even more interesting speculation; if she took an hour and forty minutes to get from her house to a job, using three transfers, how would get get a kid to a doctor appointment?  How would she pick her kid up if he/she got sick at school?  How does she get home in time to help out with homework?

Simple.  She doesn’t.  No kids in the picture.

I’m not saying that none of the New Urban utopianists don’t have any answers.  I’m just completely bumfuzzled to think of what they’d be.

Seven posts this morning. Granted, two (the X-wing and the Twenty Years Ago bit) were written over the weekend and banked for today, but that’s still five (other than this one).

All in about 90 minutes.

I do love having a computer in the house again.

It was Monday, October 5, 1987. 

I was pretty much on top of the world. 

I’d sold three stories to Saint Paul neighborhood papers the previous week – $170 in income – plus a voice-over job (another $150), which pretty much covered my bills for the month. 

And now, it was gravy.

I got a call around four in the afternoon from one of the talent agents I’d been talking with.  She told me there was a gig in Edina at 7 that evening, for a regional group of Ford dealers. 

Of course, I’d take it.

I jumped in the car and raced to a little studio just off of France Avenue and 494.   I walked into the studio; a producer and engineer were waiting, editing some other audio. 

The producer – an attractive fortyish woman – handed me the script; just a single :30 second read – and asked if I wanted to pre-read it while they got a tape ready. 

I read through the copy.  The woman and the engineer smiled “Perfect!  Jeez, I wish we’d have had tape rolling!”

The engineer spun up a tape on his console, and I took a deep breath and ran through it again.

She nodded her head. “Perfect!”. 

And that was it.  I worked all of three minutes for $150.

Less the commission, of course.

Still – I could learn to love working like that.

Still could, come to think of it…

I’m prone to carrying out little experiments on my kids.

For their own good, of course.

For instance, when my kids were in first and third grades, my son’s reading scores were lagging a bit.  So late that May, about the time school let out, the TV broke.

No, really.  It did.  And I pled poverty, and let it sit unused all summer long, until late September.  The kids had nothing to do all summer but play and read.  And the kids’ reading scores improved; Bun went back to school reading at a ninth grade level, and Zam was way ahead of his level, too. 

So the following summer, the TV broke again.  OK, this time it “broke” – a cable broke, and rather than replace it I pled poverty again, and let it sit for four more months.  The reading scores improved quite a bit again.

Late last spring, my laptop and the family’s desktop broke down almost simultaneously.  Part of the problem was gross overuse; the kids were just online too damn much.  So I let ’em stay broke again.  And it was a generally good experiment.

But it kinda played hell on my blogging.  For the last three or four months, I’ve been blogging at coffee shops, libraries, and on the occasional break at work. 

Well, no more.  I got a computer put together last night.  And was able to actually blog at home for the first time in quite a long time, quite a long time, quite a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. 

My output today probably was your first clue, though…

There’s a local radio personality who lives in the Midway, not all that far from my place.  I’ve known this personality off and on for quite a while.

I run into him periodically at one of the neighborhood coffee shops.  We exchange the usual pleasantries – it’s one of the fun things about having lived in one place as long as I have. 

Still, radio is a strange business.

It’s just weird, for example, running into a neighbor and saying “How’s the first trend of the ol’ summer book going?”