Monday in Linden Hills

I am on holiday and I am spending it close to home.   A good choice.  The afternoon weather has turned a bit overcast, but it doesn’t feel like heavy weather.  That’s almost a disappointment, actually.

I have the propensity to rally behind over-the-top weather.  If we’re experiencing a streak of snowy weather, I want more snow.   Heavy rain?  Why not some more?  Let’s go for a record.  Same for bitter cold, high winds, wild thunderstorms (a favorite), and dense fog.  Make it something to talk about.  That weather is best.

There’s something exciting about extremes.  In fact, other than stretches of heat, sunshine, and drought, I like extreme weather streaks.  And I only find heat and sunshine uninteresting because I lived in Tempe, Arizona, for ten years.  Droughts simply are not a good idea unless you live in a desert.

When I see the last bands of persistent heavy rain disappearing from a weather radar with only clear skies behind, I feel disappointed, almost a sense of loneliness.  So I hope for maybe just one more deluge before things calmer, more tepid days return.  Maybe some lightning and thunder, too.

Until then today has been nothing less than a decent one away from work.

Should I tell you about my walk in the woods?  Why not.

I notice from time to time deer tracks that appear to show a deer dragging a leg a little.  I have seen this before, not just recently, so I wonder if it is a way deer walk.  I doubt it.  More likely one of the deer is somewhat lame.  Although it is more common to see this dragging print in the snow.  Perhaps deer just get a little lazy and shuffle along like a bored kid impatiently trailing behind busy parents.

Not a warbler. It’s a cardinal.

The birds were out and so were the birders.  I chatted with two.  The first birder told me he was watching some sort of warbler.  I just nodded, pretending to know exactly what he was talking about.  He also corrected my owl identification.  I have been seeing — and hearing — barred owls, not great horned owls.  Although I do know for a fact that I have spotted great horned owls more than once in the woods and heard them in the back yard.

I took quite a few photos.  My camera works great!  But I need a tripod.  When on deep zoom, my ability to steady the camera doesn’t last long and with uncooperative birds that is proving to be a problem.  Still, I get a semi-decent picture from time to time.  As they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Going down the trail I noticed some bright white stuff on the ground beneath a tree.  I got excited.  It looked like egg shells.  Here was my chance, I thought, to find a hidden nest and earn some birder bragging rights.  Surely above these broken fragments of egg shell there was something special.  The pieces looked large, like potato chips. But no nest.  It made no sense until I got closer and saw that my discovery was a torn up styrofoam cup.

Barred Owl

Nonetheless, I think my instincts and logic deserve a compliment.  It could have been what I thought it was.

The second birder I encountered had a camera bigger than some beer coolers I own.  He had a tripod out of simple necessity.  (Have you ever tried to hold a beer cooler steady?  It isn’t easy.)  He told me he was photographing some bird nesting in a hollow tree.  Instinctively he seemed to know that the species would be irrelevant to me.

I did show him a couple of my pictures, however, and he seemed to be more than polite about them.  Feeling smug and chatty, in the whispering birder sort of way, I also commented on the “morning” warblers I learned about from the other birder.   When I came home and looked them up in my bird guide, I discovered they are mourning warblers.  I suspect the guy with the giant camera wouldn’t have noticed my mistake.

I do have a Sibley Guide to birds.  It is great, however I can’t really carry that in my back pocket.  I am thinking of getting a field guide, but I’m not sure if I really have the patience to stop and look up a bird.  And none of the serious birders seem to have a guide stuck in a back pocket.   I don’t want to look like a dork.

I wonder if I should get a photojournalist’s vest instead.

I’m not sure how I will finish my holiday.  Perhaps I will find time to embark on my Big Ambition.  I should probably check in at the bar, however, and make sure nothing has changed.  And I do have a couple clients I want to call.  Strangely, I tend to like making calls on my days off.  Those calls seem so unworklike.  I like that.

Whatever it is, I have to decide soon.  The afternoon is running fast and I have a very acute obsession with time, recently, especially the lack of it.  That Big Ambition can wait no longer.  To make something of a high art reference, these are indeed the days of our lives.

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Linden Hills Celebrity

Several days ago, I eavesdropped on a conversation at a local coffee shop between a realtor and an older couple.  She was trying to convince them to reconsider a house in my neighborhood.  The couple, however, was set on looking at other homes in an adjoining Edina neighborhood.

The realtor persisted, selling the neighborhood more than the house.  Obviously a couple that thought too highly of ever-striving Edina.

The realtor didn’t let up.  In a last ditch, allmost exasperated effort, she described Linden Hills as a highly educated, high-income celebrity neighborhood.  And that made a difference — to me, at least — it made me ask:  Why aren’t I a celebrity?

Quite a preoccupation, one burdened with deep responsibility.  But first, ff I am going to be a celebrity, I need to come up with something to do.  A guy definitely doesn’t want to become an accidental celebrity.  Even being Steve Harvey is better than being an accident.  No, you want to be in control of celebrity.  So I am seeking answers.

What shall I do?  I am open, however there are some restrictions.  First, I don’t want to be recognized as much as known.  I will only appear on The Charlie Rose Show.  And I will not be the Grand Marshall in any parade as a favor to an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend.  Other than that, what have you got?

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Maybe I Need a Project…

Writing slumps have become more frequent.  Like my pictures.  Look at the picture to the right.  What is wrong with it?  Aside from any technical or composition issues that might exist, it is just another picture of a tree-lined path.  I have taken thousands of pictures like this.  Usually of the same path, too!

Boring.

This reminds me of watching Kolchak:  The Night Stalker, a real weakness for me.  For no clear reason, I decide to watch an episode, then another, and then still one more.  Before long, I don’t stop Kolchak, Kolchak stops me.  I am numb and done.  No more Kolchak.  It fights me, wears me down, until I am an empty, drooling mess, dumber for the effort.

A Little Tour in Yellow feels that way right now.  I am an idea destroyer.  So it might be time to start a memoir or a play or a collection of racy short stories about coeds and their naughty mishaps at the olive oil factory.

Maybe political activism.  Investigative reporting.  Unicorn hunting.  (I only practice catch and release.)  Or how about a book-length study of Kolchak?

Until then, well, here is a picture of a railroad bridge crossing St. Anthony Parkway in northeast Minneapolis.  

And here is a picture of a train crossing St. Anthony Parkway on that bridge.  (You can’t hear it, but the engineer tooted the horn.)

Then here is a picture of a guy hitting golf balls into the Mississippi River.  I seemed to make this golfer uneasy, he wasn’t happy I had a camera.  I snapped this one in a hurry and scurried away with my prize.  That’s as good as it gets.

Feeling kind of Kolchakesque, isn’t it?

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Science Fiction is Made of This Stuff

In my experience, Republicans are not very smart or sophisticated, certainly not funny. It’s probably a fart joke.

Topsy-turvy world.  I wake up and my computer — the one that never holds a charge for more than 30 minutes —  is running, almost fully charged, and unplugged.  That is big news.  And very strange.  I expect a wife I don’t know to tell me breakfast is almost ready and see a bunch of cute, well-behaved kids quietly waiting for waffles in the dining room.

Alas, life is different, much less complicated, and feeling very much like it usually does this morning.  Certainly the computer working is strange, but I don’t ask metaphysical questions when things work in my favor.  Maybe the universe is paying me back for yesterday.  I was a good guy yesterday.

If generosity gives good karma, I have a little karma in the bank.  I am not sure what happened, but I felt giving yesterday.  I held open doors, gave up a cab, bought drinks, and handed out cash on whim.  I even thought about giving an old girlfriend or two a call.  I gave a pair of swindlers five bucks instead.

Later last night, I got one of my cab drivers to open up and start talking.  His wife is a nursing student at the University of Minnesota.  He and she work two jobs each.  (If you don’t live in a four-income family, that should make you think.)  He talked about was how exciting it is seeing her get a degree.  He said his wife feels so fortunate she cries and they laugh and they close their eyes and hope it will all really work out.   I felt alive simply listening to his happiness.  I gave him a tip on my fare plus $20.  It was worth many times that, but I am not a rich man.

When he thanked me he said most people are not friendly to him.  He said being an immigrant to the United States is very hard.  People are not nice.  He said it reassured him when he met a nice man.  Like me.  That made me feel really good.  Thank you.  Little gestures matter.  Remember that.

We’re all foreigners here, by the way.  Maybe being “a foreigner” is a hazing ritual.  Perhaps that’s it.  But bigotry and paranoia drive me nuts.

So then I ran into a couple ladies on the corner of Lake and Hennepin.  Somalis.  I gave them each five dollars.  And guess what.  They were offended!

Of course timing is everything.  I guess I understand why they were offended.  They probably thought I was a patronizing white guy shivering in the cold and had lost my mind, which is all true.  My gesture was out of context and probably inappropriate.  But I didn’t care then and just let it be.  I suppose I was set on making friends even if it meant offending people.  They bitterly took the gift and turned their backs to me.  It is part of the hazing ritual.  I’ll learn.

My twenty minutes is almost up.  Time to get on to other things.

I’m still waiting for the doting wife to tell me she and the kids are ready for breakfast.  If karma exists she’s wearing tight leopard-print capris and the kids are eager to go play in the yard.

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Because My House is Haunted…

I’m convinced my place is haunted.  No real big deal there and I don’t mean to sound all cavalier and cool about it but no big deal there.  Most places where I have taken up residence for more than a few months comes around to being haunted.  Usually it is just bump in the night kind of stuff, but I’m sure it is only a matter of time until I finally catch one of the little buggers in the other room nibbling on a doughnut.

Oh, how badly I miss my cat.  Klick Klack Kitty Cat feared nothing, except lightning and loud noises.  In fact, Klick Klack would get ornery an hour before a storm, giving that glaring “if you don’t do something I am not going to be happy” look I knew only too well.  But it took only one nearby lightning strike and an explosion of thunder and that cat disappeared like a genie in a bottle.  I never figured out where she went…or how she got there, literally in a flash.  (I really believe she disappeared, angry and disappointed.  And don’t we all have a little taste of that in our life?)

Other than that, Klick Klack Kitty Cat backed down to nothing.

Spooky

Cats, being supernatural beings, offer special guidance in things spooked, haunted, and unexplained   I always felt a little comfort having Klick Klack Kitty Cat nearby at night.

A stalwart negotiator, that cat, she simply stood her ground until she got her way.  Tonight, alas, Klick Klack chases birds in Paradise, having crossed over to the other side — permanently this time  a few years ago — and I am left behind to look after myself.

I’m especially tuned into the hauntings tonight because I wrecked my headphones, or at least the wire connecting the phones to a jack that gets plugged into my sound-making device.  The headphones were shorting out and I thought the best thing I could do was to pull apart some wires so I could get a look at the problem.  That’s when I remembered — too late — that modern gadgets aren’t designed to be repaired.  They’re designed to be replaced.  Now mine needs to be replaced.  A new cable plug in thing probably will cost me twelve bucks…

Ok, wait…Bring it back.  What the hell was I talking about?  The hauntings.  Focus on the hauntings.  Yes, I know headphones and all of this make little sense together, but hauntings don’t make much sense either.  Read on.

Perdita clears the cobwebs around here.

So as I was saying — or at least trying to say until I got distracted — an hour doesn’t go by without a boom or a crack or the sound of spilling glass pouring from an empty corner of the house.  Remaining focused is a challenge.  And I am getting jumpy.

And outside — oh, outside, what a scary place that is — thousands of sleepless birds — gulls, probably — gather in large rafts, bacchanal style, on the lake and really put an eerie, doom-is-looming touch to things.  Really quite creepy, especially when I think I hear something rummaging through my saltines.

No, no rodents.  No signs of them.  And I don’t expect it.  I really suspect that what I have here are little buggers.  You know, a clan of hobbits or maybe an incubus or two.  I’d prefer a sprite — what was Tinkerbell? — but I think I have buggers.

A teacher once scolded me, telling me “bugger” wasn’t a nice thing to say.  So I had to look it up.  (He was right.)

You know…no rodents, noises in the kitchen, invisible things falling in the night…could it be Klick Klack Kitty Cat, that furry prankster, visiting from the other side having a little fun?  Probably payback for the family Christmas pictures I took each year…

One of these nights — I know it is going to happen because I am taunting them (they must read my blog) — a shimmering milky plasma will call my name from the other room and then it is game over.   I’ll shiver like a school girl, teeth clattering under my sheets, and pray for an early dawn.

Hell, that sounds a lot like last night!

You know, I once knew a woman in Arizona.  She told me she had an aunt named Perdition.  I wonder if that was true.  Perdita I could accept.  Perdition seems like a cruelty.  But families get big in Arizona, especially Mesa.  Sooner or later someone will insist only Perdition could be suitable.

I knew another woman once.  She should have been named Hell on Fire, but she wasn’t.  Or Chop Sissy.  I like Chop Sissy.  It fits somehow, but Hell on Fire isn’t far from the mark certainly.

How much time do I have left?  Not much.  And I do appreciate you staying with me this long.  (You must value your time poorly.)  So now as the sands run thin and the night turns past the midnight hour, let’s complete the lead.

Because my house is haunted, I plan to have an old Scottish poem drawn in some suitable manner so I can frame it and place it on a wall in my bedroom.  And here it is:

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us!

Isn’t that delightful?  It is a must have for me and I think I know just the guy to draw it up for me, too.  My friend Scott Seekins is that guy.  Something dark, moody, with a touch of Gothic or Victorian…hmm, what to call it?…let’s call it dark innocence.

Damn, did you hear that?  Something just crashed in the other room!  Probably just a pad of paper blown off the table.  Or maybe a ghost.  Good Lord, deliver us!  Or deliver me, at least.

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Maybe It Is the Weather

I don’t seem to be getting much done and what I am doing doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.  I am reading a volume of Tacitus, for example, only because it happened to be available at my bookstore recently.  And when I am not doing that I am watching British period dramas featuring Joanne Froggatt.  Seems like such an odd mix of pre-occupations.

Maybe it is the weather.

I am a bad weather kind of guy.  If you cannot be a bad boy, be a bad weather boy.  I love the cold wet winds and heavy grey skies.  But maybe we’re getting just just a bit too much of it this spring.

Several days ago I took myself for a walk, an irresponsible absence from my day job, and composed a long and clever post about outdoor photography.  I never posted it.  I never finished it.  In fact — to tell the truth — I never started it.  I just took many pictures, pictures begging for attention and explanation.  Self-portraits, maybe, and each was more or less the same.

Interesting.

Even now I am writing only because I feel like I should…something about guilt, I think, and a sense of responsibility.  Plus I want a chance to admire a hat.  (See hat to left.  Where does a guy get a hat like Lord Grantham’s hat?)

And that’s all I can muster right now.

I cannot even pick on Republicans — as easy as that is — the fun isn’t in it for me now.  Besides some people do it so much better, proving that irony is nothing but a matter of perception if not perspective.  And no one wants to go to the bar with me.  That’s odd, I think.  Who could have anticipated that other people might enjoy my sober self more than myself?  Odd and dull.  Responsible, too.

So I take my found time and day dream of riding a bicycle down a Yorkshire lane.  It has to be the weather, hasn’t it?

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Primebar Minneapolis Closes and Who Cares

 

Primbar at Lake and Hennepin in Uptown Minneapolis Closes Abruptly

 

A lot of people sound genuinely surprised that Primebar closed Sunday night.  For my part, I am not sure how to feel…perhaps a tinge of guilt, maybe.  I have given up (most) drinking and bar-sitting for the Lenten Drinking Sabbatical Challenge.

 

(Every dollar counts, including mine, and think of all the other people who don’t bother to go out when I am at home.  Explains my guilty feeling.)

 

All joking aside, I’ll just say what too many people seem unwilling to say:  Primebar was a bore.  Even on those occasions when people almost filled the place, it had no life, no personality.

 

If you’re going to fleece someone for a drink, you better have more than the drink you’re serving to justify your place in town.  Primebar didn’t have it.

 

I don’t know…Did Figlio lose money?  I doubt it.  That place didn’t change anything other than toilet paper and light bulbs after it opened!  It was a popular, high-volume, high-energy kind of a place, a unique cross of neighborhood bar, restaurant, and nightspot.  Swingers mingled with your retired neighbor.  It was fun.

 

It was consistent, too; consistently reliable from the kitchen to the bar.  The staff was friendly, familiar, and just jaded enough to keep things down to earth and real.

 

Primebar had none of this.

 

Furthermore, in my humble opinion, Primebar got off to a bad start.  It didn’t understand that corner.  Like it or not, whatever would follow there would have a big hole to fill.  Il Gatto missed on a few points, but it had the dynamic right.  Primebar, on the other hand, seemed to go out of its way to miss the point.

 

Here’s the deal…if you want to open a successful bar and restaurant in that space, especially with cliché’s like Bar Louie popping up in town, cater first to the neighborhood and the rest will follow.  That means good value served in a design conducive to mingling and watching.

Easy.

 

Then throw a party!  Get people in the door early, impress them, give them a reason to come back.  Primebar mistakenly thought people would be come to them and shower the place with generous gratitude just for being there.  That was a mistake.  And it was a mistake they didn’t fix, they experimented instead.  By that time people were gone…to Bar Louie.  And elsewhere.  (To be fair.)

 

I would like to see a local independent turn that place around, but it sounds like the landlord expects a premium that likely won’t fit an independent concept.  (Perhaps we have a landlord problem, too…)  It is a big and expensive space.  So we might have to look elsewhere for concepts.

 

I lived in Arizona for a few years.  One thing they do well in Arizona is fill premium space like Calhoun Square‘s big, desirable corner well.  Don’t choke on your local cuisine, but a concept like a Redstone or an Ike’s — injected with some cliché mitigation — might fit nicely in this large, high-rent space.  Whatever it is, if it doesn’t cater first to the boozing and dining neighborhood foot traffic, I don’t think it is going to catch fire.

 

Learn from the aloof mistakes Primebar made.  Or better yet, remember your history.  What was there that worked well for 25 years?  We haven’t forgotten, have we?

 

My two cents.

 

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Anything is Possible Week: Day Three

Day Three

Think about this for a minute.  If other people were not such a pain in the ass, life would pretty damn great.

We know it is true, instinctively we do, but what can you do about it?  Other people can ruin the best and most promising plans.  And once upon a time, I had the best and most promising plans, at least for part of today, Day Three of Anything is Possible Week.

But then poop.  People got in the way.  Frustratingly simple bonehead people.   My head hurts and I look back on a day lost.

So, now…naturally…I am tempted to misquote Sartre No Exit when an unhappy hell dweller complains that “Hell is other people.”

Before we jump to misanthropic conclusions, however, we should ask, what would an existentialist like Sartre mean by such an idea?

He wouldn’t mean what I mean because first off he was a deep thinking guy and, second, I have no deep esoteric meaning in mind whatsoever.  I mean precisely and nothing less than what most people think it means.  Very simply:  Hell is indeed other people!

Take Day Three the way I have, take it hard and rough and deal with it.  Hell isn’t easy and it certainly isn’t easily understood.  I know, I have been there and back, and then there and back again…several times, in fact, all before noon.  Then I went back again — for the hell of it, naturally — to see if anything had changed.  (It hadn’t.)

Day Three as envisioned by me…yesterday.

Today was one of those frustratingly stupid days.  As a matter of fact, I dealt with stupidity on such an impressive scale  that I dared not take a call from my mother for fear that she too would say something intolerably stupid and further ruin my stupid day.

When the office called, I put cotton balls in my ears and chewed tin foil to create a pleasant, peaceful distraction.

And just an hour ago I ripped off a toenail and I wish I could do it again, such were the rare moments of pleasure for me today.

Day Three of Anything Possible Week?  It is Day Three of Anything is Possible Week and possibility spewed in abundance.  Damn it!

Being civil has been difficult.  Blissing out, impossible.  Getting out of bed pointless.  And this day — Hump Day — traditionally a good day, became a day of bozos and nincompoops!

Makes me sleepy…doesn’t it make you sleepy?  Such an unexpected lullaby.  Effective, too.  Angst and sugar plums, muddled in the head, makes a guy eager to hide in his bed.

But  before I let my dreams tumble hellward with the rest of the day, I thought I would try one last time to make something useful of Day Three.  And guess what, my computer trips up, crawls, and begs to be shot.

Dell Computers and Google Chrome?  How about before we put a man on the moon again or build a car that drives itself, we create a computer that works like they do in all those YouTube how-to videos?  How about it, I ask?  How about it, I demand!

Sour…just sour.  Bitter, cranky, and sour.  Like my day, like my week, like the girls I love.

This day just isn’t going as I imagined it should.  And who thought up “Anything is Possible Week” in the first place?  I’m sticking my finger in his eye.  But, first, I am taking that nap.    I’m going to waddle up in what are surely twisted sheets and beat lumps out of my pillows.

Who’s with me?

And as we go, here’s to making Day Four — that’s tomorrow — of Anything is Possible Week a winner!

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Looking Forward to Next Week. Anything is Possible.

A just read a Tweet that really made sense in a clear, lucid sort of way that hasn’t happened in a long while.  It simple said:  ”Looking forward to next week!  Anything is possible.”  And you know, he’s right.  I re-tweeted it.

I will undertake a short, week-long project and track what happens over the next week, declaring it “Anything is Possible” week and see what happens.  I’ll post it all here.

It might be a good week to choose, too.

I have several market deadlines to deal with this week, the first day of spring kicks in midweek, a former and lost girlfriend has a birthday this week, and I have an unusually empty calendar.  With all of that white space, there’s a lot of opportunity for Anything is Possible.

I might even have a beer.  (Still on my Lenten drinking sabbatical, you know.)

So let’s see what happens!  Anything is possible and I am ready for it.

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Why You Need to Know Me in Minneapolis

Editor’s Note:  Not sure what is up with WordPress formatting today.  Sorry.

I might not be exceptional and handsome (although, come to think of it…I am pretty amazing and not bad to loo at), but I am most definitely unique.

You can talk to every other person you can possibly find in Minneapolis, everyone from a law-abiding neighbor, school bus drivers, priests and nuns, school teachers, cops and fire fighters, certainly even the mayor and the dog catcher.  I don’t care who it is, none of them is like me. Why?

In Minneapolis I am the only driver who stops at stop signs.  The only person.  Period.  If you see a car stop at a stop sign, that is me driving.  (Your odds of so easily identifying me at this way at stop lights, however, go down, although not by much.)

I cannot explain it, but in Minneapolis slowing down at controlled intersections is good enough.  Stopping “in obedience to a stop sign” is the law in the state, but it simply does not happen in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s largest city.  And if you see a yield sign…watch out!  Minneapolitans don’t recognize that sign or don’t know what it means or both.

Over 73% of kindergarteners can guess the meaning of this sign. 100% of people in Minneapolis — less one — wouldn’t care.

Overall Minnesotans are among intelligent life’s worse drivers.  There are parts of Costa Rica, greater Samarkand, and rural southern Italy were driving is purported to be worse, but until I see it, I’m not convinced.

So, in review, if you want to meet me — or if you just want to meet someone unique for a change — come to Minneapolis, hang out at an intersection with a stop sign, and wait for a car that stops..  And when that  happens…you found me!

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