Muggsy's Brain

Energy and Toxins

2012-01-10T13:16:00.002-06:00

One of the things that has always bothered me in the world of "woo" is the bandying about of the terms "energy" and "toxins." Energy, in the world of "woo" is a positive or negative influence, it can effect one's emotions and health, and can have an effect others. A bad day can be attributed to "having bad energy," an illness can be caused by "a blockage of energy flow," and getting picked last for the kickball team can be blamed on either your own "bad energy" or that of the people doing the picking (losing the game could be blamed on "bad energy" on the part of the whole team). I'll address "toxins" later.

In science, specifically physics, energy is:

...the capacity of a physical system to do "work," the product of a force times the distance through which that force acts. In physics, energy is a term to express the power to move things, either potential or actual. Energy is not a thing itself, but an attribute of something...
-- the Skeptic's Dictionary

Energy is not a substance any more than "mass" or "volume" are, and nothing can be "made of" energy any more than something can be "made of" mass or "made of" volume.

In physics, energy can be measured, calculated and even manipulated and harnessed and it is not measured in terms of "good" or "bad." In the "New Age" world there are no measures, no joules, no footpounds, no volts or calories and it is classified as either "good" or "bad." Also, "New Age" adherents claim that such energy can be "channeled" or "influenced" by such things as crystals, sounds, pyramids and even colored lights.

Let's say that someone goes to a New Age healer and they are subjected to a series of soft, colored lights while they are told to lay motionless with their eyes closed and relax. At the end of the "treatment" they may feel more rested, perhaps more energetic and they get the sense that their "energy" has been "cleansed" or "redirected." But laying down motionless and relaxing with one's eyes closed for a half-hour can elicit the same relaxed and energetic feeling with no colored lights required, it's called taking a nap. The feeling that one's "energy" has been "cleansed" or "redirected" can easily, and more likely, be attributed to both the placebo effect, confirmation bias and good old ignorance -- one believes that colored lights will help so they do. There is no scientific basis for believing that colored lights will do anything, positive or negative, for a persons well being, likewise for crystals, pyramids, and a myriad of other so called "treatments."

"But," say the woo-meisters, "the subtle energies of the universe cannot be measured." Then how do they know they're there? How do they know they are manipulating them? How do they know that it is the manipulation of these "subtle energies" that bring about their desired results and not something as simple as the subject/customer just took a nap? If they want to use terms like "energy" and borrow terms from quantum physics then they have to adhere to the terms and measures defined by quantum physicists.

The subject of "toxins" takes less time to debunk. There are a number of "New Age treatments" that are supposed to "remove toxins from the body." Ear candeling (the burning of hollow candles that are placed, obviously, in the ear), cupping (glass cups are placed on the skin and the air inside is heated), and even foot pads are said to "remove toxins" from one's system. Unfortunately, the exact toxins are rarely or never named nor are they measured, exactly how the candle/cup/foot pad "removes" said "toxins" is never explained and where the supposed "toxins" go is never clarified.

The only way to ascertain whether these "New Age" practices were effective or not would be to first define exactly which "toxins" are going to be removed, to confirm the presence of said "toxins" and their quantity and then to measure them again once treatment was completed. Since no one takes these steps, the claims that the treatments are effective is anecdotal at best.

There is a perfectly sound way of removing toxins from your system however, it's called your liver, kidneys and urinary tract.

"What's the harm?" you may ask. People spend millions of dollars every year on quack cures like ear candeling, light therapy and crystals, and that's their prerogative, but if one person gets sicker or even dies after believing they have been treated by a "New Age" cure, when all they've actually done is waste their money and ignore the actual cause of their illness... well, that's harm a-plenty.

I Ain't Scared of No Ghost

2011-11-21T13:03:00.001-06:00

Around Halloween ghost stories come out of the woodwork and get told and retold, news organizations send reporters out to the area’s “most haunted” places and do fluffy, one-sided “news” reports about the ghosts that people have “seen” or “experienced.” I saw one recently that took place at one of my favorite venues in St. Cloud, the Pioneer Place Theatre/Veranda Lounge. Now I hear tell that there is going to be a “documentary” made about the so-called “ghosts” that “haunt” the place.

The theatre’s artistic producer and all around great guy, Dan Barth, was interviewed and he stated that the theatre had hired four different psychics to come in and each of them said that, yes, indeed the place was haunted. One of them said there were four ghosts, I don’t know if any of the others came up with a specific number, but four has become the accepted number.

Now, I will say nothing bad about Dan, he is one of my favorite people in the world, but I will say something about supposed psychics. Of course the four people hired by the theatre are going to come in and say they “feel” something, that’s how they get paid, so right away I am dubious about their motivation and their findings. No psychic in the history of their profession has ever been shown to actually have psychic abilities (Don't believe me? Look here), their methods are unproven and using a unproven method to measure an unproven phenomenon is of little scientific value.

Everything else about the supposed haunting of the Pioneer Place is based on stories (anecdotal evidence), feelings and other equally unmeasurable, ambiguous and non-confirmable phenomenon. Flickering lights, cold spots and things that go bump in the night can be caused by a thousand different things, especially in a building that’s 100 years old.

A few years back I worked downtown, two doors down from the Pioneer Place, and I once saw movement out of the corner of my eye at 3:30 AM and another time heard strange thumping noises coming from the floor above. Some would cry “ghost” if they had the same experiences. Not me, I’d require proof and there is none.

The question I like to ask people who have had “ghostly” experiences is, “how do you know it was a ghost?” People who believe in ghosts will take a spooky, unknown thing and turn it into a ghost in their mind, “what else could it have been?” they ask. Well, it could have been some other equally fictitious creature like a leprechaun, a fairy, a unicorn or Santa Claus. It could have been Harry Potter wearing his Invisibility Cloak or someone doing a Jedi Mind Trick. Bring that up and you’ll usually get, “but I know it was a ghost!” Sorry, that’s not evidence, it’s an appeal to ignorance and it’s one of the oldest logical fallacies in the book (I don’t know what it was, so it must have been a ghost). Where does a True Believer draw the line between what they believe is real (a ghost) and what is patently ridiculous (Harry Potter)?

Ultimately I have a problem with the “documentary” that is going to be made because it will take a narrow, one-sided view of the Pioneer Place “haunting” and will not look at the other side, the skeptical side. Stories, anecdotes and the findings of so-called psychics will be held up as the only evidence and no one will bother to look into more plausible explanations of the experiences that are based on science. An unbalanced view is not a documentary.

I fully understand that “sex sells,” and a scientific response is like a cold shower to a nice sexy ghost story, but I think that accepting the “evidence” as it is delivered and believing that something unconfirmed is responsible is doing a disservice to critical thinking, and it ultimately makes us more ignorant and more open to the type of chicanery that is practiced by psychics, those who “speak to the dead” and people who “channel” 45,000 year old warriors from Atlantis.

Awesome Chili

2011-11-13T19:11:00.001-06:00

No two of my chili recipes are the same, they are variations on a theme, but this one I just had to share. You will have to take it as given that the peppers are all fire roasted, skinned, peeled and diced.

Ingredients:

1 poblano pepper
1 cherry bomb pepper
1 serrano pepper
1 jalapeño pepper
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 can chili beans
1 can red kidney beans
1 can diced tomatoes
1 cup whole kernel corn

1/2 cup cashew nuts

1 lb. 80/20 ground beef
1 slice bacon, diced

1/2 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tbsp ground cumin
1/2 tbsp cilantro
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp cinnamon

2 bay leaves

1/2 can (6 oz.) Coca Cola

Heat a large, deep pan and add the bacon, fry it until the fat just starts to melt.
Add the peppers, onion and garlic, sauté until the onions start to turn translucent.
Add the ground beef and bay leaves, brown the beef.
Add the dry ingredients (chili powder, etc.) and stir.
Add the cashew nuts and stir.
Add the canned ingredients (beans, etc.). Don't bother draining them, you're going to want all that moisture.
Add the Coca Cola. Make a mixed drink with the rest.

That's it. Heat it and eat it. The cashews add a little crunch, the cinnamon adds a little wonder and the Coke adds a little sweetness.

It's one of the best chili recipes I've ever done.

Mystical Woo

2011-10-25T12:54:00.000-05:00

I ran into an old friend recently, back "in the day" I wanted badly to be her boyfriend but that never worked out. I hadn't seen her in years and she's still as pretty as she was then. She's also still a big proponent of what I call "mystical woo" and that just doesn't sit right with a skeptic like me.

Let's start with the so-called "Law of Attraction," wherein a person thinks of something and that thing happens, or a person thinks of someone and then sees that person for the first time in years. Obviously, that subject came up, especially the second part.

The first thing you need to know about the "Law of Attraction" is that is was made up around the turn of the century by William Walker Atkinson, an attorney, merchant and publisher -- you will notice a profound lack of the word "scientist" in his list of occupations. Like many people, he looked for some divine or mystical principal that drives something as simple as coincidence and "found" it (easy to do when you know what you want your outcome to be and you cherry pick your results).

The second thing you should know about the "Law of Attraction" is that it has never been independently verified or confirmed in any way.

To be considered a "Law" an observed phenomenon must be consistently repeatable and invariable. Let's take Newton's Third Law as an example: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Row a boat into the middle of a lake, stand on the edge and dive into the water... you'll do a belly flop because the force you apply as you jump pushes the boat in the opposite direction. And it will happen every time you try it.

If the "Law of Attraction" were a true Law a person would just have to think of something to make it happen. Hungry? Think of food. Thirsty? Think of water. Poor? Think of money. Lonely? Think of company. Ridiculous! If something is going to be a law, the expected outcome has to happen every time, if it doesn't it's no law.

Now, an adherent to mystical woo would probably suggest that only thoughts of "True Merit" would manifest themselves, but to me that implies that there is someone or something that is weighing the relative morality of each thought. If so, that entity is an evil son of a bitch. You can't tell me that a starving person doesn't think of food, and to deny a starving person food is an immoral act.

Or they might say that the person doing the thinking didn't "do it right" which directly flies in the face of the "Law of Attraction" being an actual physical law. That also sounds an awful lot like "you pray wrong," one of the main reasons wars have been fought.

Next on her list was the Mayan calendar. Dozens of Mayan scholars have figured, and they all agree, that the end of the Mayan calendar will fall on December, 21, 2012, but there are a few who think it's actually October 28, 2011, and those are the ones she listens to. I'm positive that her interpretation was extremely flawed because she was talking about levels and triangles, yet every Mayan calendar I've ever seen is disc-shaped.

Somehow, one of these people has figured that the Mayans knew the exact age of the universe and that it is 16.5 billion years old. However, current estimates based on actual observable science estimate the age at between 13 and 14 billion years. That's a rather significant difference. Thankfully, she doesn't believe that the world will end, but that the human race will enter a "new level of consciousness" -- another unmeasurable phenomenon.

There was some other stuff in which she told me about a "scientist" who is finding that the Power of Thought can affect the outcome of experiments. I looked him up, his methods are scientifically flawed -- he is out to prove something instead of experimenting and recording his findings, his findings cannot be replicated or verified by other scientists, and he has published no peer reviewed papers in any scientific journals. But that doesn't stop her in believing that what he is reporting is valid because he is supposedly on the "cutting edge" of science. No actual scientists think so.

When she got on the subject of "water memory" (a big part of homeopathic "medicine") I had to stop her because that's one thing I've done some reading about. Water doesn't have memory and they guy who claimed it did had all of his findings falsified by actual scientists.

So why the burr under my blanket? It was the pitied pat on the arm she gave me while being accusing me of denial of something Bigger Than Us. I wouldn't take that from a religious person who believed in God and the Bible and I won't take it from a friend who believes in mystical woo.

I am a skeptic. I refuse to accept things that cannot be measured, predicted or verified by actual observable phenomenon. Things like the Law of Attraction and water memory have been discredited by science, yet people still believe in them. I cannot, I will not do so. I come to this decision with as much passion as the most fervent and devout worshipper of the divine or mystical.

Show me a new estimate about the age of the universe based on science and I will accept it, "figuring" that the Mayans "knew" the "actual" age of universe won't suffice. And if the science comes in that puts the age at 16.5 billion years it will mean that new, observable information has come to light, it won't mean that the people who figured the Mayan thing were right -- it will mean that they guessed right.

(Let's take a jar filled with marbles. I can state that there are 120 marbles in the jar. If we take them out, count them and find 120 it doesn't mean I knew how many marbles were in the jar, it means I guessed correctly.)

I love science fiction and the Jedi Mind Trick, telepathic communication or the Vulcan Mind Meld are fun things to imagine, but I don't believe in any of them any more than I'd believe in a "Law of Attraction" -- they are all equal ideas, having been dreamed up by someone. And just because something sounds believable doesn't make it real.

Okay, Calm Down

2011-08-12T12:41:00.001-05:00

Back in 2009 I wrote about a guy in Florida who is a member of the same online forum as I. He was young, arrogant and had a chip on his shoulder the size of Gibraltar. Later he mellowed out, became a thoughtful if not a bit snarky person and became one of my favorite posters. That all changed again recently when the subject of "lane-splitting" on a motorcycle came up.

Lane splitting is when a motorcyclist weaves in and out of traffic congestion by driving between lanes and between vehicles. Any space they see is fair game. I see the practice for what it is: stupid and dangerous. Any motorcyclist who engages in this practice is asking to get side-swiped, hurt or killed. Any motorcyclist who engages in this practice and is side-swiped, hurt or killed is getting exactly what they asked for.

Dude in Florida believes that he is entitled to lane-split merely because he is driving a motorcycle. "Why should I be stuck just because you're all stuck in your cages?" he asks.

Because you're driving a motor vehicle, you stupid fuck. You don't get special treatment because you happen to be on a motorcycle. There aren't a separate set of rules for you and you aren't entitled to anything.

I hate people who think they are entitled to something just because of who they are or what they own. That's selfish and childish and I can think of no worse kind of person except maybe a serial killer. There is no difference between a lane-splitting motorcyclist and a jerk in a BMW who thinks he can go 90 mph because he has money. Fuck them both and their sense of entitlement.

Reckless behavior endangers everyone, not just the guy on the bike. The driver who kills the lane-splitting motorcyclist has to live with that death for the rest of their life, even if it was the idiot on the bike's fault.

There is no good reason for lane-splitting and I have no sympathy for the person who does it and gets hurt or killed.

Latest Roaster Saga

2011-07-30T13:31:00.002-05:00

I had a gig down in Rochester on Monday of last week so I didn't make it in to work. On Tuesday morning I fired up the roaster, waited an appropriate amount of time and went to check on the pre-heating process only to find that the temperature was holding at 350 degrees. I need between 415-450 to roast beans so I had to figure out what was wrong.

Looking at the burners I saw that several of them weren't firing at all, so I cleaned them all off with a wire brush and tried again. No dice.

I started thinking that maybe the thermometer was wrong, since it was cracked (has been for some time) and a little bent. It hadn't been wrong in the past, but I wanted to make sure so I ordered a new one. It came on Wednesday, I installed it, preheated the roaster and got 350 degrees again. I tired contacting Probat, but no one called me back.

Thursday I called them again and they suggested that maybe there were some gas valves that were acting up, which happens sometimes to a roaster with as many hours on it as mine. So I order the two they suggested, one was $18, the other was $130. I didn't want to pay a ridiculous amount for over night shipping, but I asked them to send it the next fastest way.

Friday I knew I wouldn't see them. Monday I expected them, but they never showed. A call to Probat for a tracking number was met by a voice mailbox and no returned call.

Tuesday I sat around until 11:30 and called them again, got the voice mailbox again. I called again an hour later and was told that everyone was out to lunch, but that the guy who I had been leaving messages for would call me back when he got back. At 2:10 my parts showed up. At 2:35 the guy called and told me that the package had been delivered and signed for. Fucking jerk.

Wednesday the plumber came and installed the one of the new valves (the expensive one), he looked at the other and said it was fine. When we fired the roaster up again we had the same problem and that's when we determined that the gas jets were clogged.

It took a little doing, but we were able to remove the entire burner assembly. I took it apart and brought it to Ickler Co., a local machine shop that does incredible work, and they said they could clean them up no problem.

So another Thursday came and I got the parts back. They were beautiful! I had no idea they were made of anodized zinc and were gold in color, they'd always been black to me. I put the burner back together and with the help of the plumber (AAA rocks!) re-installed it. When we fired up the roaster it came back to life like it was ready to work hard. The flame was good, clean and strong and -- most importantly -- adjustable.

I was able to catch up with all my roasting and I'm back running at 100%, in fact the roaster is behaving better than it has in years!

It figures that the $50 fix would be the one to do it after I'd already spend hundreds on other things.

Pork Chop Qapla!

2011-04-24T11:31:00.001-05:00

The cast of characters:

A big ol' bone-in pork chop
Jerk Rub
Apple-Raisin-Pepper Salsa
Parsnip puree
Bourbon-brown sugar reduction

The salsa is a mixture of finely diced jalapenos, Serranos, poblano, orange bell pepper, red onion, garlic, Fuji apple, raisins, salt, pepper, sugar, cilantro, cumin, white vinegar and lemon juice.

The parsnip puree contains a couple of medium parsnips, a small potato, butter, white pepper and chicken stock.

The bourbon-brown sugar reduction contains pork drippings, brown sugar, salt and pepper, white vinegar and flour.

I rubbed the chop with my homemade jerk rub a couple of hours before dinner to let it really set up in the meat. The jerk rub is as follows (this makes a LOT more than you need, but then you have some around for other meals):

1/4 cup brown sugar; light is best
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp allspice
2 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper

First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F.

The pepper part of the salsa was put together a while ago when I made a mess of burritos that I freeze for a quick dinner, I just added a half a diced apple and a handful of raisins to it. I cut a small slit in the side of the pork chop and moved my knife around until I created a large pocket with a small opening. I then stuffed the chop with the salsa until no more would fit.

Then I peeled and cut into small pieces the potato and parsnips for the puree and put them in a small pan with salted water.

I took a large cast iron pan, added a little olive oil and let it get good and hot. I then seared one side of the pork chop for about 2-3 minutes until it got a nice, brown crust. I flipped it over, put my handy-dandy meat thermometer into the thickest part and stuck the whole pan into the oven. Then I started the puree a-boiling.

When the meat thermometer read 150 degrees F, I removed the pan and put the pork chop on a plate to rest. About this time the potato and parsnips were nice and soft so I strained them and tossed them into the blender with a tablespoon of butter, some white pepper and a couple of tablespoons of chicken stock, set the whole thing on "puree" and turned back to the pan with all the delicious pork drippings in it.

Over medium high heat I whisked in about a 1/2 tablespoon of flour into the drippings until it was nicely mixed and then added about two ounces of bourbon, a 1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar, a tablespoon of white vinegar, some salt and pepper and a little bit of lemon juice. I kept whisking it until it reached a gravy-like consistency.

The parsnip puree went down first, then the pork chop on top and I drizzled the bourbon mixture over the whole thing.

Served with green beans on the side it was possibly the best composed dish I've ever made. It was sweet, savory and hot at the same time and super tasty! Too bad I was cooking for myself. I can't wait to make it for Kate.

First Homemade Pie Crust

2011-04-04T12:42:00.001-05:00

I found a blog called Cooking for Assholes that has some pretty good recipes in it, but can be way too snarky. If you're not into being insulted as you try new recipes you probably should avoid clicking the link. Seriously, the guy has this "if you can't do this you're too fucking stupid" attitude that gets old pretty quick. Too bad, because the guy knows food and his recipes are, for the most part, pretty awesome.

Anyway, reading one of his posts the other day got me thinking about making another quiche, so I looked at his crust recipe, which I am going to reproduce here without all the profanity and only about half the snarkiness.

Ingredients:
1-1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
(If making a sweet crust add 1 tbsp sugar)
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold butter, cut into small cubes
3 tbsp COLD water

Use your food processor -- don't have one? Get one. If you don't have one you're on your own for the rest of the recipe. All I know for sure is that if you're not using a food processor you should use your finger tips to mix everything so that you don't melt the butter.

Use your food processor, put in the flour and salt and pulse it a couple of times to mix it all together. Add the cubed butter and pulse a whole bunch of times until the dough looks something like oatmeal. Add the three tablespoons of COLD water and pulse until the whole thing forms into a cohesive mass.

Flour your work area, form the dough into a ball and then roll it out with a rolling pin until you get your desired thickness.

That's all there is to it.

Use the rolling pin as a tool to pick up the crust and place it in your pre-greased pie pan. Fill with your favorite ingredients and bake at 375 F for 40 minutes or so.

My quiche had bacon, asparagus, roasted Serrano peppers and a multi-cheese blend.

My mistakes: I didn't see "salt" in his recipe (it was there, I just didn't see it) and I used unsalted butter so my crust came out tender, golden, flaky and bland. I also didn't let the quiche cook long enough, funny because the knife test came out clean. I let it sit for almost a half hour and when I cut into it I got runny eggs in the middle. Fortunately, eggs are pretty forgiving and I was able to put it back in the oven for about ten minutes and they solidified up real nice.

The crust recipe is so easy, and, by the way, it is about a million times cheaper than buying pre-made crusts, that next time I'm going to try making my own pot pie.

Oh, and don't give me that "real men don't eat quiche" crap. That book was a parody.

Pasta From Scratch

2011-02-18T12:08:00.001-06:00

My first attempt at pasta from scratch was a huge failure (except for getting engaged, that part rocked). I figure we did several things wrong, using bleached all purpose flour instead of unbleached or semolina flour, using eggs that were too cold and too small, and not having the correct moisture content. We made two attempts that night and they both wound up in the garbage.

Last night I tried again, this time with semolina flour and jumbo eggs -- which I left sit out on the counter for a good hour before cracking. It took two eggs because the first one just disappeared into the flour without a trace.

I kneaded the dough for a good long time and let it rest for 10 minutes or so. I came back to something that still wasn't right, but I wasn't willing to throw it out because semolina flour is so expensive. I wetted my hands and went back to kneading, wetted them once more and kneaded... finally the dough starting taking on the right consistency.

I cut a small amount of the dough ball and started to run it through the pasta machine. My god what a huge fucking pain in the ass! That damn thing needs to be bolted down to keep it from sliding all over the counter. I finally managed to make to headway by bracing the top of the machine with my left forearm while feeding the dough in with that hand, my right hand operated the crank which constantly came out of its little guide hole.

Oh my did I swear a lot!

But damn it! I was getting something that resembled pasta!

The second third went better, but it was still an exercise in frustration, especially with the machine sliding all over the place. The third batch went about as well as I could expect! The moisture content was perfect (well, damn good anyway) and I wound up with a strip of pasta that was long and wide.

Lesson learned so far: let the dough rest longer. Those flour molecules need time to absorb all the moisture they can before you start manipulating them.

My filling rocked, but still needed a little spice. I took a chicken breast, braised it in vegetable stock, ground it, added an Italian five cheese blend and some chopped cashews, and added a little of the veggie stock I'd used to give it some moisture. I built a piping bag out of a zip-lock with one of the corners cut out and went to work making ravioli.

The second lesson I learned is that ravioli should be small, I made some things that were gargantuan and boiled them in a pot that was too small. Still, they came out really nice.

So next time I'll know what to do: mix the pasta dough, WAIT until the moisture is fully absorbed before manipulating it, spice the filling a little more, make my ravioli smaller and boil them in a larger pot. If I follow my own advice I'll come up with something really tasty!

I'M ENGAGED!!

2011-02-16T11:15:00.001-06:00

Kate and I have been dating for four years now. I have never known anyone like her and I love her deeply. I proposed before, but she has never accepted before now and I wanted to record how it happened.

We have been volunteers for a 50-hour trivia marathon on the local college radio station, KVSC-FM, for years (the contest itself has taken place annually for over 30 years), I record song parodies with the Shake a Hamster Band, she works the phone bank where the competing teams call in their answers.

Across the hall from the phone bank is the food station (we are very well fed throughout the whole contest) and this year they had a big bowl of Necco® Sweethearts, which I love (I know a lot of people who don't). Sometime during the weekend, it had to have been Friday or Saturday, I grabbed a handful and wandered across the hall to the phone bank to say "hi" to Kate and give her a kiss on the top of her head. As I walked I would read a heart and eat it, read and eat, read and eat... I found one that said "Marry Me" and I put it in front of her, kissed her and went back down to the recording studio.

I was certain that she would ignore it, seeing as it was a silly way to ask.

Monday after Trivia Weekend is a day of recovery. During the weekend sleep patterns get thrown in the trash and bedtimes of 4 AM or later are not uncommon. This year it also happened to be Valentine's Day. After laying around on the couch for most of the day we decided to start making dinner, but first she presented me with a card.

"Shit!" I thought to myself, "I didn't get her a card."

Inside the envelope, inside the card was another candy heart that said "Yes Dear." I asked her, half jokingly, if that was a response and she said, "Yes."

"Really?!"

"Yes."

I leaped to my feet -- I felt weightless. We hugged, we kissed... I cried. I am the happiest I have ever been! I am so in love with that girl and I am looking forward to making her my wife and of building a life together.

That's the story, it's silly, it's romantic and I wouldn't change a single moment of it.

Cooking Error

2011-02-04T12:22:00.000-06:00

I got all the ingredients I needed to make spaghetti last night -- almost. I got meat, onion, garlic, mushrooms, a red pepper and a can of diced tomatoes. Notice that I didn't get any sauce, which I realized when I was getting ready to start cooking. I didn't feel like running to the store just to get a can of sauce, so I decided to reduce the recipe size and use the can of diced tomatoes as the sauce.

So I got out the blender, poured the can of diced tomatoes into it and hit "liquefy." Everything was going just fine until I noticed that some of the liquid was leaking out of the bottom of the pitcher.

"Oh, you're bleeding," I said, and started to remove the pitcher from the blender's base. The bottom came off completely covering the blender and the counter with tomato sauce.

I cleaned up the mess and ordered a pizza.

More Work Stress

2010-12-30T12:25:00.001-06:00

The saga of the drive chain continues.

I listened to one of my coffee roaster's main drive chains buck and kick for months before finally biting the bullet and getting it replaced. The owner's manual for the machine says that the chain could be lengthened or shortened at any bike shop. I assumed that meant the chain was a standard bicycle chain. Turns out that's not the case.

Yesterday while I was preheating the roaster I heard a loud "CLUNK!" and feared the worst, I have had the drive shaft from the flywheel snap off twice before, but that wasn't it, the upper drive chain had slipped off its sprocket. So I threaded it back on, oiled it and returned to pre-heating.

A few minutes later I heard another loud "CLUNK!" and ran in to look. The chain had slipped off again and was nowhere to be found. I felt around, poked around, looked... it was as if the chain had never existed. I posted this fact on Facebook and a friend suggested that maybe it had wrapped itself around the drive shaft. I felt around again and sure enough it was tightly wound around the shaft on the back side of the sprocket. I pulled it out with some effort and decided the problem couldn't be with the new chain, but must lie with the old, worn sprockets.

I removed two of the sprockets and brought them over to a local machine shop to see if they could manufacture some new ones for me, but the shop foreman said they were fine and suggested that it might be using the wrong size chain. He told me to go to a local store that sells industrial chain, and not the bike shop again. So off I went.

In the meantime I had tried contacting Probat, the manufacturer of my roaster, to see if they could just tell me what kind of chain I needed. I got a busy signal (I didn't even know those still existed!) a couple of times and finally got through to their voicemail, I also left a message through the contact form on their web site. Finally someone called me around 4 PM and told me that I needed #36x1/8" chain.

I called the chain store again and he had to look deep into his catalogs to find #36 chain listed. It turns out its a non-standard size and that he'd need to special order it. I told him to go ahead, he took my number and told me he'd call me back. A little while later he calls back, "I had a heck of a time getting a hold of anyone there! Finally a security guard answered the phone and told me that everyone is out for the rest of the week due to the New Year holiday." He will order it on Monday and he told me that my best bet would be to put the original chain back on. It might be a little stretched out, but at least it's the right size.

So this morning I came in and started putting my machine back together only to find that the original chain was one long length, instead of a loop. The guy at the bike shop had taken it apart so he could measure the length when he sold me the new one. Off to the bike shop to get the chain put back together, but wouldn't you know it, they don't open until 10 AM. Back to my shop to kill a half hour, back to the bike shop to re-loop-ify my old chain, back to my shop to install it and I'm back up and running.

Next week I'll get the new chain and install it. A couple of other adjustments and I should be good to go for the new year.

This is just another example of the stresses that I have to deal with at my day job. I got into the business because I wanted to roast the best beans possible, I never wanted to be a bookkeeper and a mechanic and a delivery boy and all the other things I have to be. I know, the tiny violin you have is playing just for me right now, and I do consider myself blessed to be able to have a job in the first place, and to be doing what I love. But stress sucks no matter who you are or what you do and it seems like stress is all I've been feeling about this for weeks now.

C'est la vie.

Thanksgiving Head-On Collision

2010-11-25T23:45:00.001-06:00

I was coming back from my brother's house and Thanksgiving dinner.

Young dude in an Audi heading south suddenly swerved about a half a car-width into the oncoming lane. The other driver in a green minivan or SUV (it was dark) swerved to miss him, they hit drivers side to drivers side. Suddenly I see a car going sideways (the Audi) and he winds up on the shoulder facing north.

I stopped to see if he was okay, I noticed that someone else was checking on the other guy. He was a little scratched, but he was conscious and seemed fairly coherent. I called 911.

All sorts of cars pulled off and about a half dozen of us or so made sure everything was okay. One guy grabbed out a snow shovel and started clearing debris, another guy said that his wife, an RN, was attending the other guy.

My guy is sitting there amongst deflated airbags completely dazed and he starts digging around for his insurance card. His front left tire is completely missing, it just flew off somewhere into the adjacent farm field.

Another guy who witnessed the event gave me his number in case the cops wanted to talk to him, but he had to get going. Yet another talked to the guy in the Audi, shielded him from the wind (it was 6 degrees F) and waited for the local Fire and Rescue.

Cops arrived en masse, two ambulances and a couple of wrecking vehicles, too. In less than an hour they had both parties out of their cars and into the ambulances, the wreckers got both cars removed from the road and a few of the cops left.

Finally a sheriff's deputy talked to me, "You'll want to talk to the highway patrol, I told him you saw it... oh, I guess he's leaving and doesn't need to talk to you. You can go."

I asked him if everyone was okay, and he told me they were, "This is why we tell people not to text and drive," he said. "The young guy was texting and swerved out of his lane."

"Happy Thanksgiving," I said, and came home.

So there's your lesson, kids: DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE!!!

Going Once... Going Twice

2010-11-05T10:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Jeff & I had a gig at the St. Cloud Civic Center for an education fund raiser and awards ceremony. We were hired to play from 4:30 - 6:00 PM during the silent auction. Afterward the "regular" auction would begin. Well, either someone forgot to tell the auctioneer or he just decided on his own to start early -- really early, like 4:45.

He didn't start selling things right away, he interviewed a few people who were looking at the items for sale and a couple of other people from area schools who had booths set up showing processes that had won them the awards they would be given later. Then he started selling things.

We didn't know what to do at first, so we stopped playing and took a small break. The contact for the gig asked us to keep playing so we got up on stage and got back to work. The auctioneer had started the auction so early and the room was so empty that I watched an Adrian Peterson autographed football go for $75. That same football would have gone for over $500 in Minneapolis or St. Paul.

He keep auctioning, we kept playing. We found it really hard to concentrate, but we kept going regardless. Finally, with about 10 minutes left on our contract he finished the auction, thanked the audience and said his good-byes. He came up on stage to return the microphone he'd been using to the podium and decided, before he put it on the stand, to interview Jeff & me.

It wasn't a simple "you've been listening to... what are you guys called?" He added, "which one is which," and "Muggsy's not your real name, is it?" and one more "thank you" to the crowd. By the time he was done, so was our song and so was our time.

We've played in a lot of different situations for a lot of different clients. We've done everything from playing in a loud room full of people who don't even know we're there to playing at a county fair next to the grandstand while a tractor pull was going on (a one, a two, a one, two, three -- RRRROOOOAAAAARRRR!!!!), this is just another one for the books and another story.

Election 2010

2010-11-03T10:18:00.002-05:00

I am very depressed about the results of the 2010 midterm elections. With the Republicans in control of so much of the government I feel like all I have to look forward to is the next election when we can remove them from office again. Until then it will be more of the same bullshit thinking that comes from that side of the aisle.

They deny the science of evolution and global climate change, they want to legislate from the Bible regarding who people can marry, they want to treat big business like they can do no wrong and they will work to repeal Obamacare -- one of the best things to come out of government in my lifetime (although I think that even it didn't go far enough). They will continue to build up the military, gut public education and bring abstinence only sex ed back. We will probably see something akin to the witch hunts of the 50s with every crazy Birther idea (or worse) getting its own investigative committee, too.

Gone are the days of progress. Every step forward that we've made in the last two years will be either negated with a couple of steps back, or blocked from progressing further. And it's all about politics, not about what's best for the American people. They have an automatic knee-jerk reaction to anything Democratic. Obama could try to pass a resolution saying that puppies are cute and they would block it just because it came from a Democrat. Right or wrong, good or bad -- it doesn't matter, they are obstructionists when it comes to ideas that come from the left.

I see nothing good coming for the next few years of US governance and I only hope that the Mayans were right and that the world will end in 2012.

Cooking for Many

2010-08-28T16:24:00.003-05:00

I have four days to perfect and then multiply a cold carrot soup recipe. I've done a bunch of hunting and research and finally decided on the following recipe for Cold Carrot Soup with Orange and Cumin.

INGREDIENTS
1 teaspoon canola oil
1/3 small onion, cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 teaspoons ground cumin
5 medium carrots, diced
6 cups vegetable broth
1 teaspoon sea salt, optional
1 cup fresh orange juice
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, optional
1 teaspoon grated orange zest for garnish
6 sprigs of fresh dill for garnish, optional

1. Heat the canola oil in a medium-sized pot set over medium-high heat. Add the onion; sauté, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes or until soft and translucent.

2. Stir in the cumin; cook for about 2 minutes to bring out the pungent aroma of the spice. Stir in the carrots, stock or broth and salt, if using; simmer partially covered, for 30 to 40 minutes or until the carrots are tender. Remove from the heat and let cool.

3. Transfer the soup to a blender or food processor, fitted with a metal blade, and process until smooth. Blend in the orange juice and lime juice, if using. Transfer to a bowl or storage container, cover and refrigerate until well chilled.

4. Serve cold in chilled soup bowls. Garnish with orange zest and dill, if desired.

Makes 4 servings.

In my research I noticed an awful lot of similarities between the recipes and I've started thinking I could do one from scratch with no recipe whatsoever.

This recipe is very simple compared to many others that called for more exotic ingredients. I've worked with fennel bulb only once before and don't want to try it here. I wanted to avoid the seemingly unavoidable chicken stock as I will be feeding some vegetarians (which also ruled out any recipes involving sour cream or its like).

The problem I am having at this point is trying to size this recipe up to the Herculean portion that is required. It says it makes "four servings" but it doesn't exactly say what a serving size is. If I go with the industry standard, it's an 8 oz. cup, but I can't see how 6 cups of veggie stock, 1 cup of O.J. and all the moisture from the carrots could reduce down to 32 ounces of liquid. Certainly you will lose some moisture as the stock boils, but I really can't see it reducing down that much.

Eventually I'll have to size this thing up to make 3 gallons of soup!! That's what I was asked for, and that's what I want to deliver.

I have come to the conclusion that the only way I can work this out is to make one batch of the soup from the recipe and then measure it. After that is will be a simple matter of multiplying everything up. And no, I don't plan on making all three gallons at once, but will make three one gallon batches. It'll just keep things simpler that way. But I still need to know how many ingredients to buy.

And as mentioned before, I only have four days...

ADDENDUM:

I made the recipe at a party and it came out almost perfect and produced a little over a quart of soup. I am going to add some sweet potatoes because the soup wasn't as thick as I would have liked. I've got a kitchen lined up (mine is a little small) and now all I have to do is buy the ingredients and get cookin'!

Characters

2010-08-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

St. Cloud has its characters, every town does. I wanted to blog about a couple of guys I saw this week. I'll start with the second guy because it was a very sad thing.

I was dropping off some equipment at the Pioneer Place on Fifth early on Sunday afternoon and saw a guy rummaging through one of the recycling bins in the alley way behind the Raddison and DB Searle's. He was carefully checking each unbroken bottle, swirling the contents around ... and then drinking them. What a sad thing to see.

The story of the other guy is one I have told many people already.

Kate & I were having coffee on my porch on Friday afternoon when we spied a young black man somewhere in his early 20s walking down the street next to my house, he was wearing the modern fashion: baggy pants with underwear sticking a good 4 inches out of the top of his pants. He didn't seem to be in any hurry, he was just sauntering along. He obviously didn't know we were there because he slowed down and started looking down into his pants. He seemed pretty intent on whatever was down there and he suddenly reaches in and with an audible "sploop" he pulls a condom off his pecker, drops it casually on the ground and continues on his way.

I would really love to know the back story there. Did he just have a fully clothed quicky? Why would he keep that thing on? Was he with a mistress when her boyfriend just came home? Why wasn't he hurrying? Why would anyone want to keep one of those things on while walking around in public? It's a mystery that will remain unsolved, I'm afraid.

A Debate: Natural Selection v. Intelligent Design

2010-08-08T20:57:00.002-05:00

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS PRESENTED FOR PERSONAL ARCHIVAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT HERE TO CONTINUE THE DEBATE. THIS POST IS NOT OPEN TO COMMENTS. THANK YOU.

The following is a debate between a dear friend of mine who lives in Texas and I regarding Natural Selection vs. Intelligent Design. He is of the opinion that the concept of Intelligent Design should be taught as an "alternative theory" to the evolution of species. I think that Intelligent Design, or ID, belongs in the philosophy classroom if it belongs anywhere. The following is a little debate we (and some others) had online, and I wanted to save it in my blog before it gets lost into the constantly changing pile of useless data that is Facebook.

I need to acknowledge a couple of websites that helped immensely in forming my arguments: The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and Rational Wiki (which is rather snarky, but full of valuable information).

He says:

I can't force anyone to believe in or love God any more than I can tell them how to love their own wife. But I will tell you this, there is more evidence for intelligent design than there is for the vertical transition of any species within the theory of evolution.

I'm sure you've heard the argument for the intelligent design of the eye within multiple species. It just can't happen within the odds of evolutionary chance. Monkey's banging on typewriters. Those kinds of odds. But if that is easier to swallow, I understand. Been there.

Anyway, any decent classroom will teach you the pros and cons of both, of which we do, in Texas.

Pure Liberalism is a failure. Pure Capitalism is a failure. Why? Because greed and power will corrupt them both, and there are but mere men at the helm of either. I just refuse to follow mere men.

I reply:

But ID isn't science, not by any stretch of the imagination. All the so-called "evidence" presented by the IDers ...is not evidence at all, but an argument called False Dichotomy: I can't explain it, so it must have been God. It relies on only two possibilities and that's not science.

Take the game of Bridge, any hand of 13 cards dealt comes to you with the odds of less than 600 billion to one. Bringing the ID argument to the card table would state that "since the likelihood of being dealt any hand is less than 600 billion to one, my hand must have been created by a supernatural force." That's an Argument from Personal Incredulity (I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true), but it's not science.

Science is rooted in the physical world, we observe, we report, we test, we repeat. ID is rooted in the supernatural and has one argument, "I believe it, so it must be true" -- another logical fallacy called Ad ignorantiam and that's not science.

The main problem with ID is that its believers start with the premise that God exists and they will not waver from that stance regardless of the mountains of actual scientific evidence presented to them. Scientific theories change if the evidence points in a different direction, ID is stagnant and forever unchanging. It starts with a gigantic assumption that it will not dismiss and that's not science.

Finally, the burden of positive proof falls on the person making the statement. Evolution does this by offering scientific evidence gathered by thousands of people. ID makes a very bold statement with no actual evidence to back it up, but instead relies on a string of logical fallacies. That's not science.

ID fails every scientific test, it is based on beliefs and nothing else. If ID must be in schools, it should be placed in the Philosophy classroom and not the science classroom.

I am all for alternate SCIENTIFIC theories being presented in a science class. ID isn't science, it's religion.

A friend of his says:

Muggsy, may I suggest you read John Polkinghorn, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, regarding the science of intelligent design.

I reply:

I have. It's philosophy, not science regardless of his credentials. See my statement about the burden of positive proof, Polkinghorn offers none and falls into some of the same logical fallacies as I mentioned.

Look, I am not saying "don't ...believe in a God creature." If that's what gives you peace and fulfillment then have at it. But don't go putting your non-scientific creation myth into the science classroom. It doesn't even fit the definition of "science" and the only way to make it do so is by redefining the word. That's called moving the goalposts.

He says:

Intelligent Design should remain in the science classrooms, and here’s why.

Let’s say you’ve never met my wife, which is true, and I bring to you a plate of muffins. You eat a few of them and comment on how great they taste. I say “Thanks.” and then offer you a challenge. My challenge is this, by using science and these muffins, prove to me that Mandy exists.

You will be able to call in anybody from all the realms of the physical sciences, such as forensics, microbiology, molecular biology, chemistry, you name it. You can run all the tests for as long as you wanted, but all of your evidence must conclude that she exists. Sounds easy. They are only muffins.

But my wife is amazing with her baking. Everything is from scratch. She buys nothing from stores that you could trace, she’s imported some of the ingredients from the most remote places around the world. Every detail is purposely determined. She has even grown her own wheat for the flour and grinds it from a stone found only in the Lhagba Pool, the berries are from Floreana in the Galapagos.

She leaves no physical DNA on them, her kitchen is spotless, a clean room as it were. And she takes careful care to keep everything pure. Every detail is about her muffins, and their passionate perfection.

Finally, after many tests and tons of research, you realize that you cannot discover the answer to my question. So all of your evidence can only conclude, actually force you to conclude that she must not exist. The muffins just are.

Since your view of science can neither prove or disprove even a physical creator in this or any creation universal instance, you by no means have the authority to make the call if it should remain in a science classroom or not. If proof of evidence then becomes our task, I present to you the muffin itself. Or, in this instance, the universe itself.

But you take the problem deeper by assuming the “ingredients” actually assembled themselves. Sounds foolish looking at a plate of simple muffins. Sounds even more-so looking at the 1.8 million named species that currently populate the earth. So let’s go way back to where the “ingredients” of the evolutionary theory originated from.

I’ll start with the “scientific” conclusion that is accepted by those who only believe in that which can only be proven by science. Summated: “From out of nothing, everything came.” That itself a dichotomy of mythic proportions. I don’t think I can overstate the absurdity of this cornerstone to which it all resides. But maybe we can shake logic by adding in some numbers.

So over 4.6 billion years ago, everything sprang from a hot dense mass that exploded. Agreed. (I am pretty much with you on big bang, and old earth) But where did the hot dense mass come from? Who made the muffins?

But evolutionists don’t like to spend much time beyond the hot dense mass from nowhere, somewhere, that just was.

What was the force compressing all of this? What was there 1,000,000,000 billion years ago? Mathematical infinity is a proven scientific fact. Why do evolutionists only want to deal with 4.6 billion of those years? How did the ingredients of the hot dense mass assemble?

Within this hot dense compressed mass, which is under so much immense pressure – because it’s going to have the power to explode out into light years worth of space– is the impossibility of sustaining even a bacterial microbe. It is nothing but a geological dead mass. All of it is non-living matter.

Kaboom! Then about 1.1 billion years later, spontaneous generation occurs. Though it’s not called that anymore because that theory has been proven wrong, but still, this is an important moment.

A dense non-living mass that has exploded with Universal force has just spontaneously spawned, prokaryotes. But since “spontaneous” has been proven false, it’s replaced with “Abiogenesis” (which itself is just spontaneous generation wrapped in a theory within a theory within a new package) to cover for the unprovable. So who made the prokaryotes? Let’s just say they did just appear (which sounds like creation) from non-living matter, like the microbes they have found in glaciers. You’re just starting over with a new set of ingredients. Who made the muffins?

Now, at this point an actual law of science has to be set aside. That pesky Second LAW of thermodynamics. (ie: things of a lower order cannot generate things of a higher order). Can a law be thwarted by single cell bacterial microbes? Shouldn’t we have perpetual energy by now if over-coming this law was possible?

But let’s come back to the present for some physical evidence, since you insisted that from me.

I’d like to see the actual mountains of evidence you are siting. I’m sure there is stuff I haven’t been exposed to. I’m assuming it’s ...the lab dish experiments where microbes are reported to be evolving. They are changing in the adaptive sense, not migrating to a higher order. Can we duplicate billions of years in the lab to see it through to our conclusion? It’s like an illogical stream. Like the beaks of the finches in the Galapagos.

Within a species it’s adaptation, to a new species is evolution. To which again, I state the Second LAW of Thermodynamics. Order to chaos, not chaos to order.

And how about the fossil record not having and evidence of the vertical transition of ANY species. Out of how many that have existed? (1.8 million + all the extinct ones) Darwin himself admitted that this was his weakest argument. But he “had faith” that the fossil record would bear him out. 150-some years later...still practicing faith. Sounds kind of religious.

So if you want me to prove the existence of God to you by only using science, all I can say is “Who made the muffins.” You’ll never find Him within the ingredients He is using. But what he has created IS the evidence. And that is why the evolutionists want the question of His existence to remain within their control and end here. Where they know they won’t find Him.

So if the burden of proof falls on me, I submit to you the trees, the ocean, this giant ever-expanding time-piece we live in, the vary microbes the evolutionists are trying to use to prove He doesn’t exist, and even you and our relationship. Oh, and the muffins.

So why is ID in science classrooms? Because the evidence is the muffin. Since science can’t prove the existence of a physical Mandy, it doesn’t have the authority to say which theory should be disallowed. And us IDers are open to what science is learning, but not the agenda of the evolutionists. It’s blurring their objectivity...need I site the Global Warming e-mails? Tell me the truth. Don’t mix it with your agenda.

My body is made up of many things, but it isn’t the true me. You could discover all the physical and biological things and make a scientific list of my chemical make up, where I came from, what I ate too much of, why I have blue eyes and such – my ingredients. But my family would say that wasn’t who I was. The real me cannot be discovered by science either, and I’m not supernatural. Nor am I Omnipotent. There’s the word. It’s easy to laugh at supernatural, it sounds like a magic show. Omnipotent, that’s what drives the evolutionists to not want to find Him anyway. The desire to be our own god is a powerful motivator. I can give you mountains of proof for that from the world, daily.

To tell you the truth, I’d rather start with muffins as my evidence anyway, because it’s the simple observations that bear that question out. Variations on a theme prove there is a single designer present. Like eyes, flight, pollination, reproduction, energy, the cycle of life, relationships, love. Actually, variations on a theme can be used to identify any designer, or an artist, such as my self. It reveals our style. And I recognize His style.

It’s like listening to a Muggsy deep and rich hollow body solo at Jazz Night through a warm retro amplifier. Without even seeing you play, I would recognize it was you by it’s tones, it’s similarities, it’s variations on theme, how you approach your scales, your passion, your art, your creativity. Expressing yourself, your love for music and the friends around you through the science of your guitar and sound. From just these few little things, I’d know it was you. Science is just the ingredients you used to express yourself.

Or, I could make your music cold and lifeless by just describing the cycles of vibration and the effects of air temperature on a classic amp when heard by a tone deaf drummer. I’d rather talk about the Muggsy behind it all. That’s the guy I know. So, I know.

About 10 years ago, a good friend of mine named Andy Hastings challenged me to name the 5 foundational facts of science. Of course, I didn’t know them off hand, so I had to look the up on the internet. Once I found them, I read aloud. “Time, Force, Action, Space, Matter.”

Andy then opened his Bible to Genesis 1:1 and read aloud. “In the beginning, (Time) God (Force) created (Action) the Heavens (Space) and the Earth. (Matter). I sat there amazed. That has been there for 4000 years since Moses scribbled them down and as we believers say “inspired by God.” Scientist Herbert Spencer didn’t state this observation as science until 1867. Ahead of the curve, baby!

Those words prove nothing scientifically unto themselves, other than that they are the opening words that have introduced million of people the Greatest Scientist of all. The one who shares that science with us, but also invites us to participate His passion, his solo as it were.

Just a second...

Mandy’s wondering why you never just read the journal she left on the table. It would have told you everything you wanted to know about her, and then you would have understood why she made the muffins.

Oh, and your card analogy is lacking. You’ve stated a static. What you receive isn’t amazing odds, it’s if you would have called the exact hand you were going to receive 4.6 billion times in a row, as the deck was constantly changing and appeared from out of nowhere. At what point the impossibility?

But if you’re willing to bet, I’ll take it. Easy money.

I reply:

Your examples are flawed in every case. We KNOW that muffins, jazz solos and the rest are all created by human hands (Mandy's first attempts at muffins, and certainly my first jazz solos, were probably failures). There is no argument on tha...t point. However, if we were presented with a muffin, but had never seen one before, we could take two roads to determining its origin: study, measure and experiment on it, or we could simply say, "Someone must have created it," but offer no actual proof.

Your entire thought process revolves around one idea and one idea only: God exists. It is based solely on faith and nothing else. You can point to amazing thing after amazing thing and say, "look at the consistencies, look at the complexities! Nothing in the natural world can explain it, so it must have been God." Take God out of the equation and your claim crumbles like a building with no foundation and it cannot recover. That's not science.

Science grows and changes. If a scientist finds something that changes or even destroys his theory, he will change his theory accordingly or come up with a new one altogether. ID doesn't do that, it states, in essence, "I believe it, therefore it is true." (Ad ignorantiam.) They examine everything through that lens, ignoring any other possible explanation or theory, and state their opinion as "truth." That kind of thinking doesn't belong in the science classroom, but in the philosophy classroom instead. ID is a crutch, it is a shortcut through the scientific method to an unknown and unprovable conclusion.

If I could prove to you that God doesn't exist (a logical fallacy, I know, because you can't prove a negative, but let's just go with it for the sake of argument), would that change your opinion about ID? Or would you conclude, through nothing but your faith, that my conclusion was wrong somehow and go on believing?

On the other hand, if you could prove to me that there is a God and that it created everything, I would accept that, and so would every scientist on earth. Until then it is based on nothing but faith with no actual physical, repeatable evidence to back up such a fanciful claim. The Bible is not a scientific source, it is a book full of parables, teaching lessons and philosophy and ID is nothing but a backhanded way of getting the Judeo-Christian creation myth presented in the science classroom. Any other non-Adam and Eve ideas are rejected without consideration.

Try telling an IDer the following story, "God created the first person out of clay and baked him in an oven, the first one stayed in too long and came out dark and that's where black people came from. He tried again, but didn't bake it long enough, and that's where white people came from. On his third try he baked it the perfect amount of time, and that's where brown people came from." Your average IDer would foam at the mouth at the mere suggestion, but it offers exactly the same scientific proof -- none -- as their own idea. Yet it is a creation myth from a different (non-Christian) culture, equal in every way to ID.

So if we used the scientific method and were able to prove beyond a doubt that someone (maybe not Mandy specifically, but someone or something) must have created the muffin, we, as scientists, would accept that conclusion. The IDer would say, "I knew that all along," but they'd be wrong. They didn't KNOW anything, they just guessed right. Until that day ID is nothing but a guess with nothing to back it up. Nothing.

In short: faith ≠ science.

His friend chimes in again:

Your premise underscores that everything scientific can be proven, or it is not science. Your premise is incorrect; therefore, your argument that follows is in error. The "science" of Intelligent Design has been deduced using the properties of physics. Whether or not the Intelligent Designer is God is another matter entirely. The faith component comes into play with the belief that the intelligent designer is the God of the Bible.

I reply to her:

With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. Science is based on natural, observable phenomena. Nothing about ID has ever been "proven" because you can't prove your biggest statement: God exists. You want to argu...e the mathematical probability of a God? Fine, I'll grant you that, but then you have to grant me the possibility of 100 gods, or a thousand. All are equally likely using only mathematical probability. But when it comes to measurable, repeatable results ID hasn't got a leg to stand on. Sorry, but that IS science.

He posts:

Alright Muggsy, I got your argument the first time. Now defend your position.

1. From out of nothing. Everything sprang.
...2. Abiogenesis. (Non-living matter spawns living matter)
3. A LAW of science has to be ignored. Explain how this happens in reference to 1 and 2. PLUS. Why would "Scientists" ignore a law to hold onto a theory?
4. No Physical evidence. Explain the lack of physical evidence if we are to only remain in the seen physical world.

If you cannot PROVE all of this, beyond a theory, then, on your premise, evolution must be taken out of the science classroom as well. Evolution crumbles.

Physics tell us that waves carry energy, but not mass. Until instruments of measurement are invented for such waves. (ie: something as common as gravitational waves). Could it not be said that we just haven't discovered the instrument that could detect a more complex living energy force?

To Melinda's point. You need to stop looking at God from the perspective of a guy with a long beard and white robes. We find God in indisputable laws. But since you are arguing against a Law, the onus is on your viewpoint.

And I make my final point:

1. You want to talk origin of the universe or evolution? When we're talking origin we're on almost equal footing -- neither of us knows for sure, but at least science has natural, measurable, observable data on its side. ID has is a belief... system: "God did it," but can offer no proof whatsoever. Something out of nothing? Are you telling me you're not making that argument, too?

2. Understand that the Theory of Evolution is not concerned with the origins of life, but how it has grown, changed and evolved.

3. Your "2nd Law of Thermodynamics" argument is only true in a closed system. The Earth is not a closed system, so no "laws" have been broken.

4. No physical evidence of evolution? Excuse me, but you don't know what you're talking about. There are mountains of evidence supporting the theory. In addition, evolution was directly observed in the laboratory by Dr. Richard Lenski in 2008 (as part of a 20-year long experiment involving E. Coli bacteria).

The basic argument here is this: Should ID be taught along side of Natural Selection in the science classroom? And to that end one question must be asked: Is ID science?

The answer is no. ID begins with an explanation that it is unwilling to alter — that supernatural forces have shaped biological or Earth systems — rejecting the basic requirements of science that hypotheses must be restricted to testable natural explanations. Its beliefs cannot be tested, modified, or rejected by scientific means and thus cannot be a part of the processes of science.

Instead ID also relies on a string of logical fallacies from false analogy (nothing so complex could have evolved by chance, so it must have been designed), ad hoc arguments (it begins with a made up premise), false dichotomy (either Natural Selection is true, or ID is true, there is no middle ground), negative proof (you can't prove it's NOT God), appeal to ignorance (it can't be proved false, so it must be true), argument from authority (Dr. Polkinghorne says it's true, so it must be true), begging the question ("proof" based on an unsound premise), and cherry-picking (accepting data that proves its hypothesis while rejecting that which does not), all the way up to ad hominem attacks (You know, Hitler believed in evolution!!).

Natural Selection, on the other hand, adheres to all the rules of science. It is based on natural, observable phenomena, it has been subjected to peer review for the past 200+ years and has changed from its modest beginnings as new data has become available and other data has proved false. Its claims are verifiable and can be replicated. And there is overwhelming evidence -- and even direct observation -- that supports it.

Simply put, ID is not science and has no place in a public school's science classroom.

It is obvious to me that I am not going to change your mind, so I am going to stop here. I have made my case based on what science is actually all about. You "grew up" and accepted a non-scientific idea as something true. I think that your understanding of what science is, how it works and many of its concepts is lacking. And I strongly disagree with you about teaching ID in science class.

That being said, I still have a kidney, half a liver and a bunch of bone marrow for you if you need it.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation - 2010

2010-06-29T00:14:00.001-05:00

BWCA

Me & Kate

DAY ONE - June 24th, 2010

Getting to Ely was the easy part. Even getting the canoe into the water was fairly easy (180 r.) compared to what was to come.

Wood Lake has five campsites, all of which were occupied. In an attempt to get us to the portage to Hula Lake I got us turned around and we wound up in the most northeasterly point of the lake, rather than the most northwesterly point. That wasted a good hour or two.

The seemingly simple 40 r. portage into Hula Lake was complicated by a sudden and rather intense cloudburst that soaked us to the bone.

There are no campsites on Hula, so we headed north to Good Lake in hopes of finding one of the two sites there. We were running out of daylight, we’d run out of fresh water and the second half of the portage (150 r.) turned out to consist mostly of ankle to shin deep mud puddles. It was the worst portage I’ve ever done to date and Kate and I were literally in tears at points.

We were very fortunate to find one of the campsites open or we would have been screwed. The next lake, Indiana, is another 100 r. portage, has only two campsites and there was no guarantee they’d be open.

There was an osprey waiting on the shore at the campsite, I’d like to take that as a good omen.

We set up camp and proceeded, the two of us, to experience a kind of catharsis. I cried again and had to pull a small leech off my toe. We were so exhausted we couldn’t even eat, which was fine because the fucking camp stove wouldn’t pressurize and was unusable. We’re going to have to cook over open flame now, and fires will be tough to build due to the rain.

DAY TWO - June 25th

I got up early enough to wander around the area, gather some wood and build a small fire to boil some water to brew coffee -- there are some things I refuse to do without. Kate got up and by the time we ate a little dried fruit and an oatmeal bar to make up for last night’s lack of food, it started to rain; a light, steady rain, the type that would end a picnic.

The idea of breaking down camp, repacking everything and, worst of all, portaging in the rain seemed a little overwhelming considering yesterday’s slog through Hell. It was on both our minds, but I suggested it first, “Let’s stay here today.”

The original plan was to portage over to Indiana Lake and see if we could nab one of the two campsites there. One of them is a five-star campsite, we heard tell, and we were anxious to see it. But I’m fine with staying here today, hanging out in the tent and relaxing. A few games of cribbage and a glass or two of wine sounds much better than slogging through the rain and mud.

LATER

And a good day it’s been, all things considered. We laid around in the tent, Kate read, I wrote, we played a game of cribbage (I beat her by a mere 11 points), eventually the rain let up and we were able to venture around the area.

There wasn’t a lot of wood available to build a fire, but we managed to find enough, supplemented by an ample supply of birch bark.

It seemed to take forever to cook some red beans and rice (with some sliced up leftover brats that we’d grilled last week added), mostly due to the fact that we couldn’t keep a consistent flame under it.

A light rain came and went, and came and went but it wasn’t as heavy as it was in the morning.

After we ate we took the canoe out and explored the lake a little and the hiked the portage to Indiana to see what we’re in for tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain too much.

If all goes according to plan we’ll get the five-star site, stay the night and take a creek back to Hula Lake, thus avoiding the Hell Slog. Then it’s just a simple 40 r. portage back to Wood Lake. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a campsite there and then we’ll come out Monday, a day earlier than we’d originally planned. Frankly, the sound of Chinese delivery and lounging on the couch sounds pretty good right now.

THE SUN! BLUE SKY!!

I didn’t think we’d see ‘em! And what a beautiful sight to behold! It’s like an instant battery recharge! Despite the fact that on this dull, dreary, grey, cloudy day, and me thinking that it would probably get dark at any moment, we estimate that it’s actually only about 4:00.

I’d like to think that maybe Fate drove us forward yesterday (seems like it was days ago) to this site. It’s not the greatest campsite, it’s well used, there are nails driven into many of the trees and we even found a trio of fishing lures stuck into the trunk of one of the birches near the water (they didn’t look like casting errors, they looked like they were placed there on purpose), and some fuckhead named “Waldo” decided it would be cool to carve his name into one of the bench/logs that all the campsites seem to have.

The landing is wide and shallow and is covered mostly by pea-sized gravel. On a hot summer day it would be a great place to swim! The campsite itself is surround by very dense birch and pine.

I’ve had a great time today watching some crayfish crawl around the rocks next to the landing and as I write this a pair of loons are fishing not 50 yards away from me. This is why we come to the BWCA. It’s quiet here. There are no traffic sounds, no “boom cars,” no jets overhead. Kate let out a “Whoop!” when the sun came out before that echoed across the lake and into the surrounding woods and hills! The time right now is why I like to come here. It’s worth the Hell Slog.

DAY THREE - June 26th

The full moon put be to bed last night and a calm, blue day greeted me when I crawled out of the tent this morning. Today’s plan: portage to Indiana Lake (100 r.) and get the five-star campsite.

LATER

The portage was a little tricky, but not really bad. We split the canoe duty because we’re both pretty sore. We realized on the far end that we’d left one of our paddles behind, Kate must have sprinted the distance because it felt like I’d been sitting there for only a few minutes when she got back.

As I sat there I scanned the far shore to see if I could spot the five-star and my eyes kept falling on this single pine standing there, dead but perfectly intact, its bright red needles standing out in stark contrast to all the lush green around it. Kate arrived with the truant paddle and we made our way around the lake to where we figure the five-star was.

Wouldn’t you know it? A family was already set up there! CRAP! The next site was just a little farther on and that is where we are now. I have to say, if that other site is a five-star this one is certainly a four!

A large, solid rock face juts out of the water to a terraced, pine studded site. It’s very open and the southerly breeze we are getting today is blowing through the campsite giving us an opportunity to air out all of our damp gear.

We made some coffee -- the previous tenants left a generous supply of kindling and small firewood -- and we came down to the water to survey the “beach.” I waded in a short way, when I turned around I was surprised to see that lone red pine I’d been admiring from across the lake earlier!

I hereby dub this campsite “The Red Pine Inn.”

LATER

This is the kind of weather you dream about when you’re planning your trip to the BWCA! It’s been warm, breezy, sunny ... perfect.

We went exploring around earlier and found the portage to Basswood Lake. Talk about a toughie!! We were really glad we were only hiking it and not carrying all our gear. It’s only 90 r. but it goes up, up, up, up, up and then down, down, down, down, down. The view on the far end, though, is spectacular!

Basswood is one of the biggest, if not the biggest lake in the BWCA. On a calm day like today paddling across it would take quite a bit of time. Crossing it on a rough day would be terrifying!

So today is Full Relaxation Day. The hammock is up, we mixed a cocktail (yes, we brought both wine (boxed wine sans the box) and vodka (in a Nalgene bottle) -- and more than each of us could possibly drink in the time we’re spending up here, but I figure alcohol is like T.P., you’d rather pack some out with you than run out while you’re here), and we’re lounging.

We took a nice swim before our hike and I must've spent a half an hour lounging around the campsite naked. As mentioned before, this is why we come to the BWCA.

But all is not total relaxation, one must always keep an eye skyward watching the weather. We could get rained on tonight, some clouds are moving in, but I'm determined to have a nice fire before it does. And I really would love it if we could see the moon again tonight.

LATER

I took a nap in the afternoon and had a kind of revelation about the camp stove, so I decided to give it another try. I don't think my revelation is what did it, but suddenly the tank started to pressurize! It's amazing what a small victory like that can do for morale! I did a victory lap around the campsite.

We cooked dinner, which took far less time with a functioning camp stove, ate it on the shore and then settled around the campfire until we were just too tired to stay awake.

Day three is by far the best day I've had on this trip, in fact I'd say it was one of the best days I've ever had up here.

DAY FOUR – JUNE 27th

It's another dull, grey day, but at least it's not raining … yet.

Kate is very optimistic about our plan of taking the small stream between Indiana and Hula Lakes, but although I haven't mentioned it to her, I don't share her optimism. Yes, I would very much like that idea to work out, it would eliminate two portages, one of them the Hell Slog, but there are only about a million things that could go wrong: the flow could be too strong and we're going against it, it could be too shallow, it could be blocked by downed trees, etc., etc., and that would mean turning back and going the way we came. But the plan as it stands now is to traverse the stream to Hula, take the 40 r. portage to Wood Lake and hopefully find a campsite there. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

SLIGHTLY LATER

Kate's still asleep and now it's starting to rain. It's a light rain, but it's rain nonetheless. I'm really feeling some pre-moving dread.

THE REST OF DAY FOUR AND THE END OF THE TRIP

If you asked me to pick a worse travel day, I think I'd still pick day one, but this one was very nasty. At least the weather was nice.

There was a short, supposedly 15 r. portage to the stream, but I'm pretty sure it was longer than that and it went through swamp. Kate dropped the canoe twice because she sank up to her knee in what looked like mostly solid ground. I had the same thing happen to me while carrying the personal pack, I was helpless and pinned under its weight until she came and rescued me.

The open part of the “stream” was hardly a canoe width across and was surrounded by swamp. Kate went up to her waist in muck and I went balls deep as we tried to push, pull and prod our way to where we hoped the water would open up enough for us to paddle again. But we wound up in an impassable area and, exhausted both physically and emotionally, we had to make our way back to Indiana Lake. Kate pulled several leeches off of her legs. We both hope we never have to spend another second in a swamp again.

I don't know which was worse, finding that our ingenious plan was a waste of time, or knowing how much time it wasted, but we were faced with but one option: go back out the way we came in. So off we went across Indiana, 100 r. to Good Lake, the 150 r. Hell Slog (only slightly less hellish due to a couple of days with little rain), across Hula Lake, a 40 r. portage to Wood Lake and then a hunt for one of the five campsites there.

Going that distance was particularly tough on me, I think. Kate is so strong. At the end of the 40 r. portage I collapsed in a pile, emotionally wrecked, but knowing that we had to keep moving.

Of course, there were no sites available on Wood Lake. We could travel backwards again, back to Good Lake, but that would be ridiculous considering how hard we'd worked to get where we were and the emotional toll it had already taken, so we worked our way to the exit. On the way I got us turned around again and we took an un-wanted detour down Madden Creek. That was the last straw for me and now I just wanted to get the fuck out of the BWCA.

Kate had suggested earlier that we stop and eat and I had ignored her thinking that we wanted to get to a campsite on Wood Lake first. Our only fight on the trip was as we neared the exit. We pulled a couple of Snack Packs out of the food pack and sucked them down like frat boys doing shots and portaged our way back to the car.

We drove to Ely, found a brew pub and ate bacon mother-fucking cheese burgers and had a couple of beers. Our final night was spent at a $90 campsite with a king sized bed called the Paddle Inn. The lady at the desk said that a lot of her business lately has been from people who haven't been able to find a campsite in the BWCA. It's getting crowded up there these days due to the economy, so anyone reading this and planning a trip up there, consider yourself forewarned.

The BWCA is a place to experience a whole pallet of emotions, from the glee you feel when you first get there to the relief that you've made it back out. In between there's fear, joy, anger, elation, giddiness, determination, self-motivation and relaxation. You thank Mother Nature for making clear water, warm sun and beautiful trees and you curse her for making mud, leaches, mosquitoes and deer flies (and those little mother-fucking biting black flies!!). You test your limits and you know that no one can get you out of any situation you might have gotten yourself into but you, and when you get home you look at your tired, sore, sunburned, bug-bitten, scratched and bruised body and you feel good.

I'm glad we went, I discovered that I love Ms. Kate Scamp even more than ever and that we can work through difficult situations together, but next year I want a vacation where all we have to carry around is a towel.

Zombies!

2010-04-19T10:32:00.004-05:00

Several years ago, when I lived on the south side of St. Cloud, my landlord, who lived downstairs from me, enlisted my help moving a china hutch that he had just purchased at an auction into his house. It was an old and unwieldy piece of furniture, it was heavy, but the two of us could move it without too much trouble.

We wrestled the piece out of the moving truck he'd rented and were taking a short break in the front yard before we attempted to get it into the house when we were approached by a black man somewhere in his 40s who struck up a conversation with the two of us. It started out normally enough, the weather, the fact that the china hutch looked heavy and the like, and then it took a turn into the weird.

The man started telling us about all the zombies in St. Cloud and how they were going to try to take over the world, and that he was apparently the only person around who knew.

"They're envious of us," he said, "because we have life and they don't and they want it. They try to be just like us, but I know what they look like."

Then he told us about his upstairs neighbor.

"He's one. He stays up all night and sleeps during the day. I don't know where he gets all his money from, but it's got to be the same place that he gets all that pussy."

He didn't seem agitated or frightened. I know I would be if zombies were out and about. He was very matter of fact about everything. In fact, the only thing that seemed to bother him was the fact that his upstairs zombie neighbor seemed to have a lot of spending cash. And a lot of girlfriends.

We shortened our break and found that a great work motivator is "getting away from the crazy guy" is, and had that hutch moved into the house in no time.

That's almost 10 years ago now and I'm still waiting for the zombie apocalypse.

Relgion Boldly Goes Where It Isn't Wanted

2010-03-26T12:12:00.001-05:00

A very dear man I know died this week of cancer. He made it long enough to see his son get married, the new year and spring. He was a loving, generous man with an infectious smile and a wonderful attitude. He was also non-religious, and when his wife died a few years back he made it quite clear that he didn't want, "any of that religious shit" when he died.

So there will be no church service, but that won't stop the religiously minded from imposing their ceremonies on the memorial gathering that is happening tonight. The gathering goes from 4 - 8 PM, but there's a "Celebration of Life" that starts at 7.

This "Celebration of Life" will, no doubt, be a very thinly veiled Christian religious ceremony. They will invoke the name of Jesus, they will invoke the name of God, they will talk about Heaven... in direct opposition to the dead man's wishes. I have a huge problem with that.

If people want to pray to God or Jesus or who/whatever they should do so silently by themselves. This "Celebration of Life" is just another example of Christians forcing their will and belief system on everyone in the room. I won't be there, I will walk out because I don't want to be subjected to that, but I shouldn't have to. They're the ones who should have to go elsewhere if they want to all get together and pray. I stress again: it's not what the deceased wanted, so they shouldn't get to do it.

So let me be very, very clear: When I die I, too, don't want "any of that religious shit." No praying, no Christianity disguised as a "Celebration of Life." If the Christians want to pray over my ashes, let them do it silently by themselves or, if they need to be in a group and need to do it aloud, in a completely different venue. Those are my wishes and they trump the Bible.

Cost of Doing Business?

2010-02-24T10:28:00.002-06:00

Two days in a row I had someone come into my shop in order to hit me up for money. I am used to the solicitations from non-profit organizations such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Humane Society, the March of Dimes, etc., and they typically use the "soft sell" technique of sending you a piece of mail. These couple of organizations sent people.

First was a man from a group called National Write Your Congressman, he was a very nice man who was from the area, has kids in the school system and all that. The group he represents gathers opinions on the concerns of the day from business owners (and others, I would assume) and then sends them all to your representatives. His sales technique bugged me, he wrote down my opinions, showed me the print material he had with him -- and then asked for money. They want a minimum of $425 per year for you to belong to their club. Why would I want to spent 1000 times the cost of a stamp to have someone else write my congressman for me? I had to apologize and send him on his way.

Next was a guy from the National Federation of Independent Business, he was also a very nice man. He represents a lobbying group that goes to Washington, D.C. and, well, lobbies members of the House and Congress on behalf of its members, who are typically small business owners. He would have taken as little as $100 from me, but would have preferred more.

I am continually astounded at how much money I could spend in a year to be a member of the various groups and organizations who would love to take my money. Directly related to my business is the National Coffee Association ($275 per year), the Specialty Coffee Association ($405 per year), the Roasters Guild ($225 per year) and Fair Trade USA ($750 per year), and that doesn't include the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce ($350 per year). So all tolled I could be spending somewhere around $2000 per year to belong to these groups, add the two guys who visited me this week and it would be closer to $3000.

But the other dilemma I'm experiencing is trying to balance what I believe as an individual who leans pretty damn far to the left, and a businessman who has concerns that lean a little more to the right. For example: from an environmental standpoint the Carbon Tax sounds like a great idea, make those who put CO2 into the atmosphere pay for it, but that could raise the price of energy for my business up to 80%.

A simple thing like raising the minimum wage, which is great for workers, takes money from the pockets of business owners -- and I'm not some big, corporate entity who can swallow something like that, spending more means not being able to buy new equipment or not being able to expand. Of course, it's kind of a moot point, seeing as I am my only employee, but the concept is the same, and I don't want to remain the only employee forever.

Regardless of all that, these visits threw me off my stride because I sat around with each of them for an hour talking politics before they asked me for money. I don't like that and I wish they'd both been more upfront about it. The first one really bugged me because he took down all my opinions before he told me he worked for a for profit group, that would be akin to showing someone a menu, cooking the food and placing it in front of them before you mentioned that they'd have to pay for it, and that it was going to cost a shit-ton more than you thought it would.

I tried to warn the second guy, I told him I'd been visited the previous day by someone who wanted money from me, and I wasn't prepared to give him any either. He said, "Well, that depends..." and went on with his pitch.

I think I'm going to go get a "No Solicitors" sign and put it on my door. If you want to buy my product and give me money, c'mon in. If you want money from me, don't bother.

Worst Gig Ever

2010-02-05T10:29:00.002-06:00

The time was somewhere in the early 2000s, I'm not sure exactly when, but my band, Collective Unconscious, had a gig at the Norshor Theatre in Duluth, MN. We were led to believe that we would be playing as a part of a big, multi-band music event in the main theater, when we got there we found that was not the case.

We wound up in the middle of a community art jamboree that was going on all over the building, there were bands in the main theater, but we weren't one of them. Instead we wound up in the upstairs lobby sharing the stage with several smaller groups, right before us was a blues band. We also got exposed to what I call "teenage girl poetry:"

My love is like dry, blowing leaves...

UGH!

The blues band got done playing and moved their instruments and amps out of the way, fortunately a sound system was provided. Unfortunately it was out of phase with the outlets we had our amps plugged into.

Old buildings, like the Norshor, have old wiring and sometimes that wiring is either poorly grounded or not grounded at all. Unscrupulous people will put 3-prong (grounded) power outlets into non-grounded holes in the wall, or if they don't you need to use a ground-lift -- one of those things that turns a 3-prong plug into a 2-prong plug. Anyway, if the grounding isn't solid the electricity flows around until it finds one. If you get close to the mic, your lips act as the ground and you get zapped. It's not enough to kill you, but it's pretty unpleasant. If everything is on the same circuit, you're fine, but if you're out of phase you're not.

The way I had things set up in those days was to have my electric guitar plugged through my distortion pedals, etc. and into my amp, and my mandolin plugged directly into the sound system. As a result, I was in-phase with the sound system when I played my mando and could approach the mic without fear, but was out of phase when I played my Strat and would get zapped.

Throughout the course of the evening I got zapped in the lips, through my toes when I was playing the mando, but brushed one of my guitar foot pedals with my foot, through the elbow when I accidentally brushed up against our bass player and finally at the end of the night when I went to turn off my guitar amp while holding onto my mando and I got zapped through the hands.

I'd had it. I threw my mandolin to the ground (secretly hoping it would break, piece of shit that it was) and yelled, "Get me the fuck out of here!"

Funny, we didn't get paid for the gig that night (I think they promised us all of $100) and they never asked us back.

Possibly the Best Day at Work Ever

2010-01-28T16:53:00.001-06:00

Four times a year we deep clean the roasting machine, it's long, involved, greasy & dirty and it takes a bunch of hours. Today I was fortunate enough to have the Fabulous Armadillos use my roastery as a rehearsal space for their upcoming Motown show at the Pioneer Place in St. Cloud. Sorry, folks, it sold out weeks ago.

So all day I was treated to a live band playing songs like Respect, Natural Woman, The Tears of a Clown, Shotgun and many more.

Okay, that's not such a great video. But this one is! His name is Julius Andrews IV and he won the pre-teen division of the Minnesota State Fair Amateur Talent Contest in 2009. Having him there brought tears to my eyes it was so cool and beautiful!

All in all, I had a GREAT day at work!

Chicken Lasagna

2010-01-20T16:43:00.004-06:00

Tonight's menu is a chicken lasagna, since I haven't done it yet it's not so much a recipe as it is a plan. It's pretty much just your standard lasagna made with diced chicken. Usually I'll use browned hot Italian sausage when I do this.

Ingredients:

1 lb. chicken breasts, skin & fat removed
1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes
1 can (29 oz.) tomato sauce
1/2-3/4 cup baby portobello mushrooms, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
medium sized onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2-1 tbsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp (seriously small amount) fennel seed
1 egg
1 small container part skim ricotta cheese
1/4-1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
1-2 cups shredded mozarella cheese
9-12 lasagna noodles, par-boiled
salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 350° F

I've already taken the chicken breasts, washed them and patted them dry, added a sprinkling of salt & pepper to both sides and fried them in a heavy pan using no oil for about 2 minutes per side. They're nice and caramelized, they might not be cooked all the way through, but it doesn't really matter at this point because they'll be spending quite a bit of time in the oven later. I put them on a plate, covered them loosely with plastic wrap and they're sitting in the fridge until they cool down. Later, when I'm putting the sauce together, I'll dice them up.

For the sauce, I'll dice the onion, garlic and mushrooms and saute them in olive oil in a large sauce pan until the onions are just starting to get translucent. Then I'll add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, fennel seed and diced chicken and stir it all together. No need to heat it, it will be in the oven soon.

I'll boil up a bunch of water and cook the lasagna noodles until they're half-cooked and rinse them in cold water (I know you're not supposed to rinse your pasta, but those things are too hot to handle!).

Finally I'll make the "cement." I'll take the ricotta cheese, scoop it into a small mixing bowl, add one egg and stir it up until it's well mixed, add the parmesan cheese and maybe a handful of the shredded mozarella, and stir it all up again.

Building the lasagna:

I'll take a ladle and put a single scoop of sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 12 inch baking pan, carefully place three lasagna noodles side by side and then use a spatula to spread a small amount of the ricotta cheese mixture on each noodle. I'll add a couple of ladles of sauce on top and finally, sprinkle some shredded mozarella on top. I'll keep repeating that until I've run out of either room or noodles. I'm going to keep a handful of mozarella cheese aside for later.

Then I cover the pan with foil and bake it for about 45 minutes, then uncover, sprinkle with the remaining mozarella and bake it for another 10-15 minutes, or until the cheese just starts to brown.

If you try this at home, let it sit for at least 10 minutes before you cut it.

I'm assuming this will be delicious.

Post-cooking addenda:

Sure enough, the chicken was pink in the middle when I diced it, but it cooked the rest of the way in the oven.
Next time I think I'll add some baby spinach to each of the layers. It will add not only veggie matter, but sweetness.
I wound up with extra sauce and ricotta mixture. The sauce will be easy to use.
Another success!!

Chicken Wild Rice Soup

2010-01-12T23:10:00.004-06:00

A week or so ago I bought a whole chicken and decided to cut it up myself. I'd never done that before, so I looked up a couple of videos on YouTube and went to it.

It's an incredibly economical thing to do! I spent about $6 and got about $10-12 worth of meat out of it, and a nice carcass to make soup, which is what I did tonight. I never make the same soup twice, but there are always similarities, in this case, this is what I did:

1 chicken carcass, breast meat, thighs & wings removed -- don't worry, there's still plenty of meat
several cups of water (5 or 6?)
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
4 medium carrots, sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can white beans -- including that nice, starchy water
1/2 cup frozen yellow corn
1/2 tablespoon salt
a good dose of ground pepper
1 tsp dill weed
1/2 tsp turmeric
1-1/2 tsp dried parsley
A few shakes of red pepper flakes

Most of my measurements are by eye so I am only guessing the amount.

In a separate pan prepare a 1/2 cup of wild rice according to directions. My rice came from Bemidji, MN and I took 1-1/2 cups of water, brought it to a boil, added the 1/2 cup of rice, reduced the heat to simmer, covered it and let it sit for about 20 minutes. It didn't have to be made perfectly because it was destined for a large pot of hot liquid.

Take the carcass and put it in a large pot or stock pot, add enough water to almost cover it, add salt & pepper.
Place on medium-low heat, cover and allow to boil for a little over an hour.
While that's going on you can chop all your veggies and put them in a container for later use.
Turn off the heat and use tongs to remove the chicken carcass and place it on a plate, or in a large bowl and put it in the fridge to cool down.
Put all the veggies, the tomatoes and the beans in the broth -- DON'T ADD THE RICE YET! Turn the heat back on medium and cover.
Once your chicken is cool enough to touch you can break it apart with your fingers, it's messy and fun! Remove all the skin and bones, put them in an old plastic shopping bag (you know you have plenty) and put it in the freezer until garbage day. You don't want that stuff sitting in your trash for a week, the smell will kill you.
Add the meat to the soup and let it heat back up.
Finally, add the rice, remove the pot from heat and let it sit for 10 minutes or so, that gives the rice a chance to heat up without cooking any more.

The garlic and the red pepper flakes definitely gave this soup a bit of kick, but the sweetness of the corn and carrots and the nuttiness of the rice added little flavor treats that came out and surprised me!

Of course, now I have soup for about a dozen people, but it'll freeze just fine.

Holiday Season 2009

2009-12-05T10:48:00.003-06:00

And so the Holiday season is upon us and for me, not being a Black Friday shopper, it begins today. The George Maurer Trio is heading for Crosby, MN tonight for a gig entertaining the local hospital staff, we stay overnight and then head for Roseau, MN in the morning for a nearly identical gig entertaining the staff of their hospital. If you didn't look at the map, Roseau is a mere 9 miles from Canada in mid-western Minnesota and the route from Crosby to Roseau takes around 6-1/2 hours. The drive back to St. Cloud on Monday morning will take around 7-8 hours. There goes working on Monday.

Tuesday (12/8) sees me playing holiday music with Andrew Walesch, a talented young singer who is out pimping his new holiday CD. We play two shows, one at 2 PM and one at 7:30 PM.

Thursday (12/10) is a private party for General Mills at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis.

Saturday (12/13) is a concert at St. Edwards Catholic Church (I'd link to their site, but it's a piece of crap) in Princeton, MN.

Monday the 14th is our annual Holiday Concert on our "home stage" at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud. This is always a great time and we tend to pull out all the stops with an 18-piece big band, dancers, tons of singing and, of course, the annual coffee toss where I throw 2 oz. sample bags of coffee into the audience.

On Sunday the 20th we play our annual gig at Faith Lutheran Church in Spicer, MN. This one tends to be fun, too, although since we use the church's sound system, with the speakers in the ceiling and no monitors, it's a little hard for us to hear. The audience does just fine.

Christmas eve eve (12/23) brings us back to the Dakota for another holiday tradition, another coffee toss and an cramped, but intimate stage (we bring the big band onto a stage more suited to small combos).

And we wrap up the holiday season with on New Years Eve at the Grandview Lodge in Nisswa, MN.

All in all it will be a very busy holiday season playing my guitar and I wouldn't have it any other way. Personally I'm glad that, apart from this weekend, we don't have to do any long-haul traveling.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

New Vehicle!!

2009-10-22T11:26:00.002-05:00

Well, I was able to do it, I got a new car for the business. It's a 2006 Chevy HHR, it has plenty of cargo space and it drives like a dream. My landlord and friend, Randy, was able to get me a screaming good deal, the bank was able to swing it through my existing loan without changing what we're already paying ($8 more per month) and it all took less time than I thought it would.

Special thanks go out to Kate for allowing me to use her car to get around while we worked everything out! Kate rocks!

This is by far the newest vehicle I've ever owned and I plan on driving it until it doesn't go anymore.

Gosh! How exciting!

The Demise of the 92 Ford Tempo

2009-10-14T14:48:00.004-05:00

My car's transmission has started slipping in and out of consciousness. The other day it suddenly shifted into second while I was going 30 mph. I was only two blocks from my destination so I babied it into the parking lot and turned it off. When I got back it drove and shifted just fine. I added a couple of quarts of transmission fluid because it has had a slow leak since I got it in December of 2007 and I haven't had the time or money to fix it. That usually does the trick.

Today I got to work just fine. When I went to run an errand the speedometer read "0" and the car wouldn't shift out of second. Again, I babied it to my destination hoping that maybe things would clear up when the engine got warm. Nope. First gear all the way back to my shop.

I decided the best thing to do would be to baby it all the way home and park it in the driveway. It shifted just fine for the first six blocks until I got to a red light, once it turned green I was stuck back in first. I drove home slowly on every back street I know, borrowed Kate's car and was able to do my coffee deliveries.

So now it's time for a new car. I am hoping I will be able to funnel this one through the business, because it has more money and a better credit rating than I do as an individual -- plus it's tax deductible! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for now and I hope that soon I can get the Tempo and all of it's quirks out of my life.

Holy Soap!

2009-10-02T10:41:00.002-05:00

The date was Sunday, July 9, 2006, the trio had a gig at a festival held at Phelps Mill near Fergus Falls, MN. It was a great day! We played well and we got to jump off the old bridge and swim in the river. At some point during the day I bought a three-pack of oatmeal soap from one of the vendors, expecting to use it in the shower.

Unfortunately, it contained perfume and I don't like using perfumed soaps, so the three balls of soap about the size of billiard balls got relegated to hand soap. I've used it daily since and -- I just used the last of it this morning. That's practically 3-1/4 years!

My hat is off to the lady who made that soap!

It's All Gonna Burn!

2009-09-13T09:55:00.003-05:00

Kate & I were sitting in the living room talking, commenting on how much noise there is in the neighborhood since the college kids moved back into town, when we heard a guy a little too close for comfort yelling, "It's all gonna burn!" We both stood up when we realized that the dude was in my yard, we got to the kitchen when we realized that he was mounting the steps to the back door. Kate got behind me as he started pounding on the screen door, the main door was open, since it was a nice night and I went to close and lock it when dude opened the screen door and started to come into my house! I headed him off and asked him what his problem was.

"It's all gonna fuckin' burn," he repeated as he pointed vaguely in the direction of my yard, or the alley, or the garage -- it was hard to tell. I looked out to make sure nothing was on fire.

"Why don't you just get out of here?" I suggested.

"It's gonna burn, it's all gonna burn!"

"Well, let's not burn it tonight, okay?"

He started mumbling something else, so I added, "This is my home and you're not welcome, get out of here now because I'm calling 911."

I closed and double-locked the door and went back to the living room to find Kate standing there with my iPhone ready to call. I dialed 911 and calmly told them what had happened, what the guy looked like (he was way over 30 and definitely not a college kid), and asked them to send a prowler around the neighborhood.

Like after a car accident I was able to replay every second in my mind and freaked out about it. Fucker tried to get INTO MY HOUSE!!! I've never had anything like that happen before!

Here's my theory: he was actually a concerned citizen -- concerned about the fact that we have a lot of dry wood piled up next to the garage from when we trimmed some dead branches off the black walnut tree in the backyard this spring. He was worried that if it somehow caught fire it would take the garage with it. So, yes, it would all burn. Unfortunately, he wasn't very tactful at voicing his concern.

And that's the plan after all, it is all gonna burn, but we're going to do it in a controlled series of small burns in the fire pit this fall.

Stress in My Workplace

2009-08-31T15:30:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I was cooling a batch of Nicaraguan Organic when I heard a loud CLUNK! come from my coffee roaster (the Probat L12 pictured above), I ran into the roasting room from my office to discover that the main drive wheel in the back of the machine, also known as the "idler wheel," had snapped off at its shaft where it connects to the machine's body. I knew what had happened before I looked because it had happened before back when we first moved into our current location about three years ago.

A call to Probat down in Tennessee, an overnight package, $180 and a few hours of tricky labor and we were back up and running.

The machine was making a particular rhythmic throbbing sound just before the part snapped, and after the repair it is still making a similar sound. I am waiting -- half-expecting it to snap off again at any second. I am under a kind of stress that I've never been under in over 15 years of coffee roasting, and it's taking a physical toll.

My knees hurt, especially the left one that I injured an unfortunate butterfly accident*, and my left arm is sore from the shoulder to the elbow, I keep noticing that the back of my neck is sweating when the temperature in my office is cool and comfortable. No, I am not having a heart attack, I know exactly what those feel like, having had a mild one back in 2003. I can't continue like this, but I am very busy and can't afford another day of tearing the roaster apart again. But that is what I must do.

The machine was built back in 1994 and has thousands of hours of roasting time on it (a very conservative estimate is around 25,000 hours), but I worked on another Probat once that was over 75 years old at the time and it is still in operating condition. I can only assume that when we did the repair we didn't do it right. If that shaft is out of alignment by just a tiny amount it could cause another failure.

I can't live with this stress and I have to do something about it. I only hope that when I'm done re-repairing her, she'll be back in top shape and ready to carry me through the next 15 years. She has to, a new machine would run me somewhere around $20,000. She is the heart of my business and I need her!

* the unfortunate butterfly accident: was running out of my office to rescue a batch that was about to get too dark, when my left foot was planted I caught flying movement out of the corner of my left eye -- something that shouldn't happen inside -- I shifted my weight to quickly go the opposite direction and wound up straining it a bit. I thought initially that it might be a bird or a bat. Nope, it was a butterfly.

Playing for Lawyers

2009-08-20T14:59:00.002-05:00

We were supposed to leave St. Joe at 3:15 PM, that would have gotten us to the Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, MN and set up with plenty of time to spare. George took the Tahoe full of sound gear and offered Jeff and I the chance to drive his Camero -- and who would pass up a chance like that?

It took some doing, but we got our gear into the tiny, little trunk and practically non-existent back seat area -- we had to put the top down to get Jeff's bass amp in the the back, but everything fit snugly and we were ready to go. Jeff ran into the coffee shop to get an iced latte for the road, when he got back to the car he was on the phone.

"Take everything out of the Camero and put it in my car," he said, "we have to go back to St. Cloud to pick up the lights."

So down came the top again, and out came our gear which we quickly loaded into Jeff's mini-station wagon. We drove to the roastery in St. Cloud, where we store most of our gear, picked up the lights and were ready to leave. We stopped at a gas station to fuel up and Jeff noticed his son's overnight bag that was supposed to be left at the roastery for a overnight trip to grandma & grandpa's and that's where everybody was going to meet. So we turned back again, dropped off the bag, said goodbye and were finally on the road at 4:25 PM, a full hour and ten minutes later than we'd originally planned.

Our contract said we were supposed to be set up by 5:30 as the patrons, a group of lawyers, would be showing up between then and 6:00. Jeff and I got there at 5:35. George had already set up most of the sound system and we were able to move our gear in and get the system checked and ready to go. We walked out just as the first lawyers started to arrive. Perfect!

We were scheduled to start at 8:30, but these things rarely go as planned. Speakers make speeches, one of them goes on a little long, so does the next, etc. After waiting in the hallway and goofing around we were finally on stage at 9:15. Our contract called for four 45-minute sets, but I find that usually if the speechifying goes on longer than it's supposed to the event ends earlier than scheduled. That wasn't the case.

We are very accustomed to 3-set gigs. 4-setters get long and we get tired. This one seemed like it was never going to end. Some people danced, others sat at their tables and drank and talked, the one person in the room who was having a really good time was one of the bartenders, a woman somewhere in her 60s. She danced and sang along, she thanked us and complimented us at set-break. If everyone in the room would have been having as good a time as she was the place would have been on fire!

Finally we finished. We were tired and we were thirsty. It was 1:00 AM. Jeff quickly ran to the bar and asked our biggest fan if she could set the band up with a round of beers.

"I can't," she said, "we're closed."

Now, I don't blame her, she had probably counted out her till and inventoried what she had left and was ready to break the bar down and go home, but it still sucked. A beer, that's all we wanted.

No dice.

Why The Hell Do I Care What Some Idiot From Florida Thinks?

2009-07-08T12:18:00.004-05:00

I post frequently at a couple of online forums. Most of the talk is about Macintosh computers, at least that's the major reason the sites exist, but there are sections that talk about politics, society and other decidedly non-computer related subjects.

There is a guy who lives in Florida who first came to my attention when, at age 20 he claimed that the 21 year old drinking age was nothing short of discrimination and that as a legally under-aged person he was being subjected to Draconian laws specifically designed to keep him and other under-aged people under the thumb of The Man. He went so far as to say that he knew what "real oppression" was all about.

I found that statement to be patently offensive. I can't see how any logical thinking person could equate drinking laws with the Nazi persecution of Jews or the Jim Crow laws of the United States. You can't drink a beer, boo hoo. That changes as soon as you're 21. Jews couldn't own property or businesses, black people couldn't drink at the same fountain as white people regardless of their age.

Personally, I don't agree with the 21 drinking laws, but I don't really see any pressing reason to change them. People who do should work to get the laws changed. Bitching about them and claiming that they are some part of an organized "War on Children" accomplishes nothing.

The "War on Children" statement (his actual words) came to light again in the story of a high school senior who was denied his diploma on graduation night because he did some showboating, blowing kisses, showing off his track medal and waving when both he and his mother had signed a Code of Conduct written by the school promising not to do anything of the sort.

At the same ceremony a graduate tossing a beach ball through the crowd was taken aside by a sheriff's deputy, was calmly asked to stop throwing the ball around several times. He became agitated and upset, started yelling and finally removed his gown, threw it at the deputy and stormed out.

Florida boy's take on the situation was that the school district was being oppressive and dictatorial and that the sheriff's department had no business being there at all. Yes, it was all part of the War on Children.

My take was that kid #1 signed an agreement saying he would be quiet and respectful, but wasn't. The school administrators were perfectly within their rights to refuse him his diploma that night. Now, if they refused to graduate him at all I would strongly disagree, he did the work, he earned the right to be graduated and he should be allowed to. He was guilty of nothing more that disrupting a ceremony (a needless ceremony in my opinion). The long and the short of it is that it was the school administrator's choice to interpret their own rules as they saw fit and that the kid should bite his lip and accept his punishment.

As for the beach ball thrower, he shouldn't have done it in the first place, but he was perfectly within his rights to walk out on the ceremony.

The fact that the sheriff's department was there is simple, they were providing security just like they would at the 4th of July parade or at a concert in the town square. There was nothing discriminatory about their presence at a high school graduation.

That's not how he saw any of it. The cops were there to oppress free expression and the school administrators were waging the War on Children.

A discussion about radar detectors and internet sites that list speed traps turned ugly when I suggested that it would be easier to just go the speed limit rather than wasting time, energy and money to try to thwart the law.

He has pretty much admitted that he would rather shoot and kill a person than have them steal his TV. I find that kind of thinking nothing short of repugnant.

And finally, a 20 year old who killed himself and his two passengers in an illegal street race (the passengers weren't wearing sear belts) got me labeled "sanctimonious" when I said that I didn't really feel sorry for the idiots involved. If you're doing something stupid and illegal and you're killed as a result you will receive no sympathy from me.

He seems to have no concept of self-responsibility. Traffic laws are there to personally inconvenience him, drinking laws and curfews are "an atrocity and a travesty and an egregious abuse of human rights." But does he work for change? No. He goes apoplectic and spouts hyperbole as fact.

He is an idiot. A very young, very immature, very angry idiot. So why does he make me so angry? Why do I give a shit what some immature, unworldly, naive hothead thinks? Why does my blood pressure rise every time I read one of his tirades?

I try to think rationally and ignore him. I realize that he is young and inexperienced and has no idea how things work, which battles to fight and which to ignore, but then he says something that is just so outrageous and preposterous that it demands a response. Teen curfew laws an "egregious abuse of human rights?!" What the fuck?!

I guess it all boils down my outright hate of stupid people, those who see their own opinion as Absolutely Right and see everything and everyone who doesn't agree with them 100% as Wrong -- and not just wrong but evil, oppressive, dictatorial, tyrannical... He refuses to see reason, he refuses to even see reasons he disagrees with and that makes him one of the most impossible people I've ever been exposed to.

I realize I don't have to go to those sites, but I've been a participating member of one since 2002 and I find most of discussion to be informative and entertaining. Sadly, the "ignore" button that would prevent me from reading any of his posts was removed several years ago.

So I guess I will go on reading his posts, laughing when he says something ridiculous and trying to ignore him when he says something outrageous. Fuck him, he'll learn (or at least I hope he will). And if he doesn't he'll probably die doing something stupid and I won't have to feel sorry for him.

How I Learned to Drink Tequila

2009-06-20T12:18:00.003-05:00

My friend Chuck loves tequila. During trivia one year, he drank one shot per hour for the whole 50 hours, he said after a while he didn't get any more drunk, he just leveled off. I, on the other hand, don't like tequilla so much, I find the taste to be somewhat unpalatable, but I think the same thing about Jägermeister and drink it anyway.

Only once did I ever have a truly exceptional tequila. My friend Jeff had been in the wedding party of a college friend who married a Mexican girl whose family business was making the stuff and each of the groomsmen received a silver hip flask filled with the family's private reserve. That stuff tasted like ambrosia! It was smooth and delicious, there was no need to pollute the taste with salt and lime. If I could get a hold of some of that again I would do so gladly.

Back to Chuck. For several years in a row he would show up at my birthday party with his bottle of tequila in hand and would insist that I do a shot with him. I hated it and avoided it for as long as I could, but he would insist and he would persist until finally I would do a shot just to shut him up. Finally, after the third or fourth year of this I had had enough and when he walked through the door the next year I grabbed a shot glass and said, "Let's get this over with right now so we can both enjoy the party."

I think he marked that day as a success because he hasn't had to badger me since.

This training paid off one day at a gig at the Mendakota Golf Club, which remains my least favorite place to play. The place is full of egotistical rich bastards and their trophy wives...

I got rid of that bitch and married me a young one," said one, speaking on relationships.

They've got money, they want to show off to their friends and they treat the "hired help" like non-people. For the most part.

One guy, who was avoiding the speech section of the evening's whatever ceremony (the grand prize was a set of golf clubs, I remember that) engaged us in conversation -- in fact, I think he was the one who said that lovely thing about his ex-wife -- and finally offered to buy the band a shot. We learned long ago to accept such offers.

We all head off to the bar and he orders a bunch of shots of Cuervo 1800, the bartender pours the shots and starts gathering limes and salt shakers. I grabbed my shot, downed it, said, "Thank you," and started to walk away.

"Wait!" he says, "You have to do the salt and lime!"

"Thanks, but that won't be necessary," I replied.

Inside I was thanking Chuck for getting me out of that situation.

I still don't really like tequila, I will never order a shot for myself. Once in a great while I'll take a pull off a bottle if one happens to be near, it is, after all, the social thing to do. I'll stick with beer, if you don't mind, but at least now, thanks to Chuck, I know I can drink with the big kids.

The Bob Hope Story

2009-06-15T13:08:00.003-05:00

This has to have been almost 20 years ago now, it was a whole career ago for me and I was still driving a delivery van for the St. Cloud Times so I'd have to put it in the early 90s, I got a call from a friend of mine asking if I wanted to play a "pick up" gig in Montevideo, MN backing up Bob Hope. Who wouldn't say yes to that?

A whole bunch of us from St. Cloud piled into a van and drove there for an afternoon rehearsal led by Mr. Hope's musical director named Jeff. We only saw Mr. hope for a few moments at the end of the rehearsal to run a gag he'd do during the song Buttons and Bows.

As Music Director Jeff explained it, the gag went like this: the band would kick into Buttons & Bows and vamp the first four measures while Bob would talk to the audience, Bob would then cut off the band, tell a joke and count the band off again. This would happen as many times as Bob saw fit, and then he'd continue with the song. Near the end of the song there was another vamp which Bob would cut off, he'd tell one last joke and we'd finish out the song.

As I explained before, this was almost 20 years ago which would put Mr. Hope one side or the other of 90 years old, and he'd recently gone through some health problems that kept him off stage for a while. The Montevideo show was his first in quite a while, which would explain what happened that night.

The show is going along just fine, Mr. Hope is charming, Delores Hope, his very lovely wife, sang beautifully and the audience was thrilled -- as was most of the band -- to spend an evening with a true comic legend. It comes time for Buttons & Bows, the band starts playing, Bob talks to the audience about where the song came from (the movie The Pale Face) and comes to the point when it's time to cut off the band and tell a joke. He cuts off the band and -- he goes blank.

He looks over at the Music Director and says, "Jeff, give me a joke."

Jeff suggests, "The one about the [insert joke subject]."

Bob tells the joke, the audience laughs uproariously, the band starts again, Bob talks some more. He cuts off the band a second time and -- he goes blank.

"Jeff, give me a joke."

"The one about the [insert joke subject]."

And it happens again. And again! He must have stopped the band six times or more with the same result. I was on stage as a true comic legend was "going up on two wheels!"

Finally he sings the song until the moment when the last gag is coming up. He cuts off the band, looks at Jeff, Jeff shrugs -- he's out of jokes! But Mr. Hope, the consummate professional just continues the song to the end.

[Joke subject:]

A guy goes to the doctor for a checkup, the doctor says, "You've got to stop having sex. In your condition, if you have sex again you'll die."

So the guy goes home and explains the situation to his wife, "Just to be on the safe side, I'd better sleep downstairs on the couch."

Halfway through the night he's getting so hot and frustrated thinking about how much he'd like to be making love to his wife. Finally, he can't stand it anymore and starts to climb the stairs to the bedroom, halfway up he's met by his wife.

"I was just coming upstairs to commit suicide." He said.

"Really?" she replied, "I was just coming downstairs to kill you."

And so it went... each joke had a similar theme, a guy going to a doctor and the result having some impact on his marriage, but that's the only one I remember. I'm sure Mr. Hope told it much better than I wrote it.

The rest of the show went just fine, the audience was thrilled, I got to add a line to my resume and apart from getting a speeding ticket, we made it home safely that night -- just before I went to work. It was an experience I'll never forget.

Itasca State Park - June 2009

2009-06-13T20:29:00.004-05:00

My Itasca State Park trip didn't start the way I wanted it to. I got up and cleaned the house as planned, took care of the cat box, recycling, got the garbage out to the alley and just needed to run a few errands in order to be out of town by 1 or 1:30.

I gassed up my car, took it in for an oil change, ran to the roastery to pick up a few essentials and then headed to the grocery store and liquor store to provision up for the trip. The last thing I bought was a 20 lb. bag of ice which I put it in my trunk, all ready to go home and pack up the cooler. I got into my car, turned the key and was met with a click.

"What the fuck?!" I wondered, and turned the key again. Click. "No fucking way!" My car wouldn't start.

I'd had a recent bout of forgetting to turn off my headlights and draining my battery -- twice in one week, so that was the first thing I checked. There was no way I could have been in the grocery store long enough to drain the battery, and sure enough it seemed just fine.

It was in the ensuing moment of panic that I was almost reduced to tears. This was supposed to be my vacation! I was going to see Kate and wanted to get there as soon as I could. Car trouble was not part of the plan!!

I ran down the list in my iPhone and tried calling several people to see if they might be able to help me, which wasn't easy because it was 1 pm on a Thursday afternoon and I had to think of people who probably wouldn't be at work. I talked to several answering machines and a couple of people who just couldn't get away to help. Finally I thought, "I have to at least get my perishables home and into suitable storage, then I can figure this out."

For some reason, my friend Bobbie popped into mind, she's retired and she doesn't live too far from the grocery store, maybe she could help me get my stuff home, so I called her. It turns out she was at the very same grocery store at a different entrance. She came around and helped me get my ice, butter, milk and beer home and asked if I'd like her to call AAA for help.

So it was back to the grocery store and she called the AAA number to get some help. Unfortunately, the people there assumed we were having battery trouble and sent out the "battery truck," a small-sized pickup truck that's ready to either give you a jump or sell you a battery out of the back. We needed a tow, not a jump. He ran a battery check and as suspected it was just fine, but he also noticed a wire hanging from where the starter attaches to the engine.

"That's probably your problem right there." he said.

He called a tow truck and we were soon at R&L repair. Sure enough, the only problem was that the ground wire that runs from the starter to the ground had fallen off.

"Did we do this job?" asked Matt, the mechanic, "Because if we did, someone is in trouble."

I assured him that R&L hadn't done the job and he stated that he'd never seen such a shoddy job in his life. Rather than using a wire connector to run the ground wire, the previous owner had used electrical tape, the engine's oil had eaten through the tape's adhesive and when I got the oil changed it got bumped and disconnected.

R&L properly reconnected the wire, and while they had the car on the lift quickly rotated my tires. The whole thing ran me $20 and I after stopping at home to pack the cooler and my things, I was finally on the road by 4:00 pm.

I arrived at Itasca several hours later than I had planned, but Kate and I got to take the wilderness drive and climb to the top of the 100 foot fire tower on the park's western end in time for sun set. What a view! And the music of the woods was quite a thing to hear with frogs croaking everywhere, loons calling in the distance and birds of all types singing their evening songs.

The next morning we headed to the U of M research station where Kate is doing her internship and grabbed a canoe. We took a trip around Schoolcraft Island, the far side of which Kate informed me had a loon's nest that was easily seen from a small bay on the far side. When we got there the wind caught the canoe and we wound up rowing into the bay backwards, because I couldn't see exactly where we were we suddenly found ourselves within only a few feet of the nest! The nesting mother was instantly in front of the canoe taking on a very aggressive posture and shrieking excitedly!!

"Let's get the hell out of here!" Kate yelled.

"I'm working on it," I replied, but briefly looked to see where the nest was and spied two leathery brown eggs about the size of a hand ball. We booked it out of there and apologized to Mama Loon, but I mark it as one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

We continued our canoe trip to the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi River. I've seen it before, but that doesn't diminish the wonder of the spot. Every drop of water that falls over the rocks that children clamor over at that point travels over 2300 miles, and takes approximately 90 days to get to the Gulf of Mexico. Cool!

We canoed back, had lunch at camp and then hiked a couple of miles through the woods, saw the pioneer cemetery and returned to camp as the sky in the west grew darker and darker. There was an afternoon squall that took the heat out of the air and made for perfect napping weather. After dinner we drove down to Peace Pipe Vista and watched as the sun sank toward the western horizon. We had a nice evening watching flames dance in the fire pit, drinking tequila and laughing about the simplest things. We went to bed early and set an alarm for 4:30 AM in hopes of traveling to the fire tower again in time for sun rise.

Unfortunately, we were about 5 minutes late, but we enjoyed the view regardless (the photo above was taken at that time). We headed back to camp and slept for a couple more hours while an intermittent light rain pelted the tent, and the campgrounds awakened.

The on and off rain, coupled with our sore bodies made today a low key day. I broke my coffee maker brewing up some Camping Blend, but was able to salvage a couple of good cups and we stuck close to the "tourist-y" areas of the park, the swimming beach and the museum. Finally, it came time to say goodbye and Kate headed back to her life up there and I drove the three hours back to St. Cloud.

I really wish I could have gotten there as early as originally planned, but my car had other ideas. It's hard to pack a weekend into 1-1/2 days, but I think we did pretty well.

And I can't wait to see Kate again. Just a couple more weeks.

Garden 2009

2009-04-26T00:27:00.003-05:00

Inspired by Cari's blog I thought I'd show what's growing in my yard.

The 30 year-old Bleeding Heart is about ready to bloom.

The Raspberries will be back again this year, no doubt with the same vengeance as last year.

Gas Plant anyone?

This is sedum which I stole from someone's overgrown garden.

The Daffodils I planted last year are ready to bloom!

My most successful plant, commonly known as Cheddar Pinks. Soon they will have pretty five-petal flowers that smell faintly of cloves.

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Driving: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

2009-04-21T11:14:00.002-05:00

Percentage of adults who said they had done these things in the previous 30 days:

Sped up to beat a yellow light: 58%

Exceeded the speed limit by 15 mph on major highways: 45%

Exceeded the speed limit by 15 mph on neighborhood streets: 15%

Deliberately ran red lights: 6%

Source: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety Oct. 25-Jan. 10 survey of 2,509 adults.

Amanda Cooke, 21, a computer teacher in Running Springs, Calif., says she used to drive so aggressively that her boyfriend was afraid to ride with her. "I'd cut people off to get into the lane I wanted to get in," she says. "I'd tailgate them if they were going too slow or blink my lights if it was night." Cooke says she stopped driving that way after crashing into another driver. "I didn't think it was as risky as it was," she says.

Source

I spend a lot of time on the road and I see shitty drivers everywhere. I will never understand why people feel that speed limits do not apply to them, in fact yesterday I got passed by some idiot going at least 60 in a 40 mph zone. They speed, they don't seem to notice that traffic is going slower than they are, they slam on their brakes when they get to a slower moving car, get mad and exchange hand gestures with the person who was not breaking the law. Don't even get me started on people who speed through residential areas -- killing or injuring a child would not be a good addition your day.

I see people weave in and out of traffic without signaling their turns, people who think that stop signs don't apply to them (one jerk went around me on a two-lane residential street and crossed oncoming traffic while I waited at a stop sign to to turn right -- the oncoming cars had to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting the stupid bastard).

I see people paying more attention to their cell phones than the fact that they are controlling a ton of glass and steel (like the woman who almost rear-ended me this morning as I turned onto the street my business is on). I see people who think that creeping up on a stop light will make it change green faster, and then when it does they sit there in some sort of daze.

And I'd bet that most of them are like the Ms. Cooke mentioned above who honestly don't think that their driving habits are dangerous.

I was taught to never take the other driver's skill as a given, I treat every car like it's a potential threat to my vehicle and try to never make a move without making eye contact when possible, when I know I am seen I am more secure. I've had too many close calls with people who think they're the only driver on the road to give anyone the benefit of a doubt.

Traffic laws are not there to inconvenience anyone. Speed limits, turn lanes, yield signs, stop signs and traffic lights are there to make the roads safer for everyone. When someone ignores the speed limit because they were too distracted (or just plain stupid) to leave enough time to get where they are going, they are endangering not only themselves, but everyone on the road. Being late is better than being injured or getting killed.

People get behind the wheel and turn into selfish monsters who think that everything and everyone is in their way and that needs to stop. Start driving safer today. Slow down if you speed. Pay attention to your own vehicle and those around you. Above all remember that you're not alone on the road. If we all do it, the roads will be safer.

Meatloaf avec Left-overs

2009-04-01T10:48:00.002-05:00

I had the feeling that my oven runs a little hot and subsequently cooks everything a bit too fast, dishes that should take an hour were done in about 45 minutes, etc. I mentioned this to Kate, so for my birthday she bought me an "outside the oven" meat thermometer. It's funny how a little thing like that could make me so excited! "What to cook? What to cook?" I kept asking myself, and I finally decided to start simple and make that prince of comfort food, meatloaf (tater tot hotdish is the king of comfort food).

I don't have a standard recipe for meatloaf, in fact I don't really have a standard recipe for anything, so I threw one together using a few leftovers, set the oven at 350° F, inserted the thermometer's probe, set the alarm to go off when the inside had reached 160° F, opened a beer and waited.

I didn't time it, but it sure felt like it took less time than times when I'd used a timer (nice sentence!), and it came out perfect! I'd never tasted a better one of my creations, it was so juicy and tender! What a treat!

My thrown together meatloaf:

1 lb. extra lean hamburger
1/4 lb. left-over uncooked stew meat cut into smaller pieces (it helps if its slightly frozen)
Several left-over slices of turkey pepperoni (not enough to make a pizza) cut into smaller pieces
One slightly beaten egg
1/2 cup bread crumbs (left-over from a recipe I was going to try, but never did)
1/4 cup left-over shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup shredded Asiago-parmesean blend cheese
2-3 tbsp ketchup
1-2 tbsp spicy mustard
approx 1 tsp garlic salt
approx 1 tsp ground pepper

The stew meat adds a texture you don't find in meatloaf, all of the sudden you're eating a small piece of steak. The turkey pepperoni adds a little taste surprise, and it was good to get it out of the fridge.

Now, what's next? A chicken? A pork loin? The possibilities are endless!

Losing My Religion

2009-03-16T10:48:00.004-05:00

I gave up Catholicism for Lent. The last time I went into a church for religious reasons was probably around 1980, and even then it was because it was how I was raised, not how I felt or what I believed. I began questioning my own beliefs when I was a freshman in high school, and ultimately decided to leave the church. And I am not alone.

The recent American Religious Identification Survey by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut found that more and more people are moving away from organized religion, some moving towards a more "spiritual" view, while others are giving it up entirely. Similarly, the Christian Science Monitor recently printed an article entitled The Coming Evangelical Collapse which suggests that Evangelical Christianity will all but disappear within the next 10 years. Good riddance, I say.

Personally, I think Karl Marx hit the nail on the head when he said that religion was the opiate of the masses. I believe a person's spirituality should be a personal journey and that when one person tries to convince another that, basically, they pray wrong they are committing a very wrong act. I think that groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, who protest at soldier's funerals with "God Hates Fags" signs should be outlawed, and I have nothing but utter contempt for Christian Missionaries, who carry the "you pray wrong" message to the most remotest corners of the globe.

I do not understand people who adhere to a religion that spurns or condemns them, Gay Catholics top my list (Gay Republicans are next on my list, but that's not a religion per se). Why would anyone want to belong to a group that wants to limit or remove their personal rights and freedoms? I understand that there are more "liberal" Catholic congregations, and that the Catholic Church in here in the U.S. is not like the one you'd find in Vatican City, but to me that's like choosing to drink bleach instead of drain cleaner.

Ultimately, I understand that it is an individual's choice and if they choose to be Catholic or a member of the Westboro Baptists, that's entirely up to them. But there are so many who don't think they have a choice, they were raised in the church and they stay there because that's all they know, and I reserve the right to question their decision in my own mind.

All that being said, an acquaintance of mine recently wrote a list of 10 simple things that religion, especially Evangelical religion could do to keep from losing any more members, and perhaps even attract others. I reprint them here because for the most part I agree with him (my apologies for not de-Internetting his spelling, punctuation or grammar):

1. The Ten Commandments are history; not words to live by.

2. Matter of fact, TTC were used as bait to try and stumble Jesus. He showed up these morons by saying there's only two commandments; and they easily summarize and give purpose rather than be a set of arbitrary rules.

3. Put up or shut up about the so-called Gay Agenda. Give us something other than "because the Bible says so". Especially since the loudest dissenters can't even tell you where. Matter of fact...

4. Stop calling NIV and or KJV the infalliable, irrefutable word of God. I get that it's a Living Word, I do, but it sucks the power out of YHWH when you commit idolatry within the pages. Especially when...

5. They consider Paul to be canon. Really? Guy who writes letters to churches telling them to shut their womenfolks yaps and to cut their goddamn hair and you say he's God's mouthpiece? I've got more stock in Balaam's donkey having some residual holiness as compared to the greatest con artist of the era.

6. Dump the culture war. Puppets simulating oral sex didn't destroy society, Tinky-Winky didn't turn your kids gay and giant blue cock will fall short of generating mass sexual immorality, too. Telling people to not go see movies that you yourself haven't watched because you heard a rumor won't stop Hollywood from generating tripe. Letting themselves burrow into the ground and YOU show us how it's done. But not with the reasoning of "like {something} but with less violence"; use The Greatest Story Ever Told as a template and prove to people that you love smart stories and are willing to make sacrifices for it. "Joshua" was a step towards the right direction. Anything with Kirk Cameron in it thus far is not. Speaking of violence:

7. Stop giving society mixed signals. You cry for ass blood when society nabs a child molester, and lament for the days when the Old Testament God would rain fire on nations, but cry foul when entertainment is packaged up for your blood lust and sold to you. Jack Thompson is in the fight for the money; he uses your beliefs as a podium and you let him. Then he goes on to wish death and rape on people who disagree with him, and you turn a blind eye. You freak out over fiction and allow reality. Matter of fact...

8. Darfur should not be an issue. The second we hear the word "genocide", prayers, money and manpower should be poured into stopping it, instead of this pansy-assed missionaries to places where you're comfortable bait and switching resources for converts.

9. Placate the people that can't be ignored and ignore those that can't be placated. Celebrities that "found Jesus" need to be roped in when they publicly say it and discipled in some meaningful way. Mr. T and M.C. Hammer of all people are exceptional examples. Mel Gibson is not. This goes for spiritual leaders turned celebrities, too. The second someone says that God hates anything other than sin? Cut them off. Don't seriously devour another word until they are cleansed. Are they not adhering to the laws of the land? Jesus said give to Caesar what is his. If they so much as give the vibe that they are unashamed at accumulating massive amounts of wealth and saying that they report to a higher power in regards to it, lose them. They love money more than you or your Lord.

10. Dump Evangelism entirely. No leaflets, no Chick tracts, no "enjoy the meal/concert/clothes? Let me tell you about my friend Jesus...". No. Live your life. If you're truly interested in saving people, live your life like Jesus did. With a fucking smile. People will know if it's real or not. And if it is? They'll ask you. They want to know what separates you from the pack. What your secret is. The fear is that evangelical Churchianity knows the world will not because they aren't happy and don't truly know love and salvation as they writhe at mentions of homosexuality, and gently caress the flag.

When you mix religion and politics, you get religion.

And Jesus wept...

Mortality

2009-03-09T10:42:00.002-05:00

Last week I came face to face with another bout of mortality. I found out that my old friend Nina is dying of lung and brain cancer, and another friend's mother, for whom I had great respect, died of breast cancer.

I met Nina through some guys I had played with in college and through the years we did a whole slew of small "noise in the corner" gigs, played in a whole crap load of pit bands for musicals from Jesus Christ Superstar, Nunsense and Little Shop of Horrors to a little known show called Baby. In fact, it was on a trip to Mankato for a gig at a convent that I bought my Stratocaster. I learned a lot of music and a lot about being a professional musician from Nina.

She had a weekly gig at the piano bar at a place called Charlie's until Karaoke took her job away. To this day I hate Karaoke because of that, and I'm sure it wasn't just Nina, but piano players across the country who lost some gigs because of it.

She told me stories of her early years, playing rock-n-roll, folk, jazz... whatever would pay the bills. There were stories of whiskey and cocaine, of bad love affairs and a few good ones. I watched her get divorced and fall in love again, I met her mother, her sister and brother and was treated like part of the family for a long time.

Unfortunately, we had a falling out when I took a Music Director job for a show that she really wanted to do. I didn't feel like I was going behind her back, but she did and our friendship suffered. But some friendships are stronger than petty things like jobs and we eventually made up, although we never worked together again. Her moving to Hackensack, MN didn't help matters there.

As I think back I am inundated with a cornocopia of memories...

I remember sitting in a practice room when we were both in the SCSU jazz band going over the tricky unison part of Chick Corea's Spain over and over again until we nailed it.

She told me that her father had been a POW in a Japanese camp in WWII and how he refused to have anything in his house that had been manufactured in Japan. But since he had been, she was able to get her mother a ride in the POW/MIA balloon for her birthday.

There was her admission that piano tuners (of which she was one) got "cranky" from hearing the same notes over and over, which became the butt of many of our jokes to each other.

She was in the balcony of the Paramount Theatre tuning the piano one afternoon as my friend Steve and I worked on painting a set, after about a half hour of hearing first one note repeated over and over and then the next she yelled down to the two of us, "Are you guys hypnotized yet?" Without missing a beat, or stopping what we were doing we droned in unison, "Yes, master."

And the memories keep coming.

She commissioned a mutual friend of ours to make the urn for her ashes. I can't even imagine that, but it is totally Nina.

The result is that I have come to think of my own mortality again. I think of Kate and my age difference and I realize that, barring some tragic turn of events, I will make a widow of her. I wonder if I could face my own imminent death with the same composure that Nina seems to be and my admiration of her has doubled in just the past few days.

I don't know how much time she has left, and I will cry when I hear the news.

A Story of Incredible Stupidity

2009-02-03T13:29:00.002-06:00

The following is a true story related to me over the Internet. I have attempted to calm the style down a bit and provide a more coherent time line, giving the original something of an "OMG-ectomy." The setting is a small business in St. Louis, what kind doesn’t matter.

The cast of characters:

Boss 1, not the brightest bulb in the pack, as will become apparent.
Boss 2, much smarter than Boss 1.
Client X, someone who has a very substantial and overdue bill.
Kelly, from Accounts Receivable.

It has become apparent to Kelly that Client X is a deadbeat and that the company will never see the money he owes, he has changed his cellphone number numerous times and his mailing address doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, Boss 1 doesn’t see it that way and one Friday decides to call Client X yet again to try to get him to pay his bill.

Client X apologizes profusely and says that he can pay by the 28th of the month. Then he makes a suggestion, “I was thinking it would just be faster if I did a wire transfer from my bank to yours. I’ll have my bank fax you over the form now.”

A few minutes later a fax arrives and Boss 1 brings it to Kelly to have her fill it out. The first thing Kelly notices is that the fax came from Client X’s office, not from the bank. The form requests not only the business account number, but also the beneficiary account number and the name and social security number on the account. Kelly smells a big, fat rat and calls the bank.

“First of all,” asked the bank, “how well do you know this guy who's initiating this request? If you don't fully trust him you shouldn't allow this to happen. Second, the only thing you need to share with him is the account number and routing number if he's only depositing, he can't withdraw anything if you only give him that much.”

Kelly brings this information to Boss 1 telling him, “The only numbers he needs are the ones you’d find on a deposit slip.”

Boss 1 gets angry and loud and tells Kelly just to do what she’s told!

Boss 2 overhears this heated exchange and goes to investigate. When he is told he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Boss 1, are you fucking insane?! You seriously think this guy is not just some scammer?! Well this is your proof that he is! This is NOT a bank form you moron! THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA!”

Boss 1 storms out of the room and Boss 2 hopes that’s the end of it.

Not much later Boss 2 had to go to a meeting somewhere in town. He hadn’t driven that day and Kelly gave him a ride. Along the way a still fuming Boss 2 says to Kelly, “Ten bucks says Boss 1 does it anyway and we're out all the money in the bank by Monday.”

When they return they find that Boss 1 did indeed fax the information to Client X. Boss 1 then proceeds to go ballistic on Kelly about not obeying his order and how dare she not respect his authority! Boss 2 jumps to Kelly’s defense and the two of them proceed to scream at each other for a half hour about how Boss 1 is hiding things from Boss 2, etc.

In the meantime, someone at the company has done some searching on Casenet, the online database for the state criminal courts, and it turns out Client X has a four page record that includes breach of contract, embezzlement, corporate theft and other charges. And Boss 1 gave him their banking information.

Kelly is left to go home and wonder over the weekend how she could work for someone so pig-headed, egotistical and stupid.

Boss 2 apparently called the bank because on Monday Kelly overheard another argument between the two, Boss 1 was wondering why the account was frozen.

I apologize for the lack of declining action in this story. Unfortunately, the person it came from is only an employee at the small business in this story and doesn’t hold a position important enough to know how the story ended. The company is still in business, so one can assume that cooler, smarter heads prevailed. It’s amazing what can happen due to one man’s greed and another one’s stupidity.

Membership Dues

2009-01-16T10:37:00.002-06:00

When I became a Certified Fair Trade™ coffee roaster things were different, there was an easy online way of reporting how many pounds of FTO beans I had bought from my supplier and I was required to pay about 10¢ per -- and most importantly, membership was free.

Now the reporting method involves filling out a spreadsheet and emailing it to them, which is a bit more confusing. C'est la vie, I can adjust. What I don't like is the sudden annual fee to simply be a member of the club, the dues are $700 per year, and that's on top of the 10¢ per pound fee. Last year my per pound fee was over $1000.

So these days I find myself in a dilemma, I can't really afford to pay $700 a year to belong to a club right now. I am required to put a Certified Fair Trade™ logo on any bag of CFT coffee that goes out my door, they supply them for a limited time, then it's up to me to incorporate it into my own labels, which they have to approve. I can get stickers, posters, door signs, etc. from them for free which is great.

What it all boils down to is marketing and product recognition, if you see the little black logo you know instantly that it is a Certified Fair Trade™ product. And whereas that is an important consideration I know that I could still label my coffee as "Fair Trade," note the omission of the word "Certified." Would that be enough? Is a single word worth $58.33 per month?

It's nickles and dimes and that's pretty much all we have around here. If money weren't tight, it wouldn't be an issue.

The Show Must Go On (Must it?)

2008-12-14T10:17:00.002-06:00

I understand the concept behind "the show must go on," people have taken time out of their busy schedules to see you and paid good money at the door, it is your job as an entertainer to do everything you can to see that you're holding up your end of the bargain and put on the best show you can.

And then there's today.

The first winter storm of the season is rolling across Minnesota today. Two days ago the weather service said that the worst of it would be north and west of St. Cloud or the Twin Cities, yesterday it was updated to include St. Cloud. We're talking 6-10 inches of snow, wind chills of 20 to 30 below zero, and the National Weather Service suggesting that you travel only in the case of an emergency.

'Tis the season, and people want to hear their cheesy Xmas songs and so I have to endanger my life driving to Minneapolis today so that they can hear me sing "Dig That Crazy Santa Claus." Then I have to drive back because I can't skip work tomorrow, I'm behind enough as it is.

The idea of spinning out on the highway, winding up in a ditch or worse is not appealing in the least. I've done 360s on I-94 before and it is NOT fun. I don't like driving in heavy snow, drifts scare the hell out of me... and then there are the 4-wheel drive vehicle owners who think they are bulletproof and drive like fucking maniacs endangering everyone else on the road because they don't think they have to slow down for conditions.

I don't want to go to Minneapolis, I don't want to have to spend all day there watching the roads get worse and worse and I absolutely fucking dread the commute. So today I find myself thinking that "The Show Must Go On" is just one big pile of bullshit!

The Arts

2008-11-27T10:46:00.003-06:00

Since my last post, I’ve been thinking about the ways the arts can be found in our culture. Things like paintings hanging in a museum or a sculpture in a park are obvious, and they are the things that quickly get pointed to when someone who is anti-art wants to complain.

Shooting at a big target is easy, the anti-arties can point to Piss Christ, or the painting of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung, declare their outrage, demand that something must be done and conclude that all art is bad, and they will complain bitterly that their precious tax dollars were used to fund such an atrocity.

They don’t understand that part of art is how the viewer interprets it. For every person offended by Piss Christ, there were others who saw something more than a beloved religious icon, a Savior, submerged in urine. Sister Wendy Beckett, an art critic and Catholic nun, stated in a television interview with Bill Moyers that she regarded the work as not blasphemous but a statement on "what we have done to Christ" - that is, the way contemporary society has come to regard Christ and the values he represents. [source]

One of the comments regarding the article about the Wallace Foundation grant said:

I don't like art, so quit making me pay for your crap. I like to drive my truck up north to my cabin and go deer hunting.

Let’s examine the art that lies hidden in that statement. The truck was designed by people who could draw and who had an understanding of what good design is. It was tested in a wind tunnel using a model made by people who could sculpt. The road was designed, again, by people who could draw, the road signs were designed to be clear and concise, even the paint on the road came from knowledge of pigments. His cabin was drawn before it was built, it is painted and there might even be curtains in the windows. He listens to his favorite country music star on the way, a person who may have learned their first notes in band and choir at school. The design on his deer rifle’s stock was drawn and carved by artists. The clothing he wears was designed by people who understand fabrics, color and fashion. If he decides to celebrate his kill with a trip to the local strip club, he’s watching someone who either took dance herself or copied the moves of someone who did. The label on his beer was drawn, even his haircut relies on balance and ascetics. There are movies and TV shows that he watches and maybe he even reads a book now and then.

One doesn’t need to be a Vincent Van Gogh or an Andres Serrano to be an artist. There are thousands, even millions of artists who never have their work displayed in a museum. Our deer hunting friend relies on people who draw, paint, sculpt, print, dance, write, act and carve, who understand ascetics, balance and design. He relies on these people everyday of his life without realizing it. Yet he complains.

The arts aren’t a waste of money, they are vital. To borrow a phrase: without art, life itself would be impossible.

Here We Go Again

2008-11-14T11:40:00.003-06:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I sometimes check out the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the vitriolic comments that follow each article. I hadn't been there in a while, I got tired of being labeled "clueless" and worse for stating facts and for stating the obvious.

The latest one to draw my ire is an article about the Wallace Foundation giving $7 million to the Minneapolis Saint Paul Arts Community. Money from this foundation will help MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Minnesota Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Northern Clay Center and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra amongst others.

Here is a sample of the bullshit that comes spewing from the minds of my fellow Minnesotans (complete with original mis-spellings and crap grammar):

Stop your philanthropy now. The citizens of MN are pooling 91 million dollars a year and a good chunk of that will go to the arts! For goodness sakes!

Sounds like free tickets and services to people who would not otherwise be interested. Obviously if ther eis a need to "build" the audience what they have to offer is not that intersting or valuable in the first place. It is self evident. Sounds like a waste of money. What a classic example of a fleecing. Take a situatiuon where there is no interest (or a lack of interst) and throw money at it to drum up an audience that isnt there. Sounds like a an expensive exercise in self preservation-ism.

what a waste of money

Wonder where the Wallace Foundation, a non-profit, gets their money to redistribute? I would venture a guess it's the same way the Clean Arts Bill gets funded.

We're getting f'd in the drive-thru forwards and backwards.

Well, seeing as how Minnesota has the 2nd largest population of gays in the country I am not surprised by this story at all.....way to p-i-s-s away money...

My response: If you don't like the arts you should turn off your TV and throw away all your books and magazines (writing, acting, directing, lighting, etc.), take all the pictures off your walls (painting, photography), and turn off your radio and throw out all your CDs (music). Then you can live an "arts-free" life.

Also, the Wallace Foundation is privately owned and receives no tax money, so quicher bitchin'!

GOD! I hate stupid people!

Bye Bye, Baby

2008-11-03T12:10:00.003-06:00

I finally got someone to haul away my old Aspire. I got her from George in lieu of a royalty check for Groovitis. She had over 100,000 miles on her and I put on another 90,000 myself.

My favorite trip was at the end of the summer a few years back. I drove her to Appleton, WI for a gig with George. If I remember correctly, he had to go elsewhere the next day and Jeff was gigging in Duluth or something, so I wound up driving myself. The next morning I picked up a copy of the NPR radio theater version of Star Wars on cassette tape, popped the first episode into my tape player and started driving to SOMS in Hibbing.

View Larger Map

I stopped briefly in Cloquet to buy a mug and continued. The final episode finished just as I was driving into the front gate.

Eventually the poor old girl started dying. When it rained or was cold with high humidity her electrical system would fritz out and reset the radio and clock. The headlights stopped working due to an electrical meltdown. The blower for the heater never worked.

She spent most of the last year in the parking lot of the roastery waiting to be hauled away, and I promised Jeff I'd have her out of there before the snow flew this year, and seeing as that could be by this weekend, I finally went and made the call.

Her next stop is the crusher. Her next shape is rectangular. I got $25 for her.

Bye bye, baby, you were a good car.

Did You Ever See a Nervous Beer Drinker?

2008-10-30T15:34:00.001-05:00

This is from an ad from the early 1900s that Erin has framed and hanging in her kitchen:

Nervousness comes from two causes. One is half-fed nerves.

The malt in beer is a food to them; the hops a tonic. The slight percentage of alcohol is an aid to digestion, and that means more food.

Another cause is the waste that clogs the nerve centers. That waste results from drinking too little to properly flush the system.

The habit of beer drinking gives the body the needed fluid.

That is why beer is prescribed for nervousness. That is why beer-drinking nations scarcely know what nervousness is.

But drink pure beer -- Schlitz beer. Bad beer may be worse than the lack of it.

Half the cost of our brewing goes to making Schlitz pure. Ask for the brewery bottling.

The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous

Oh, the Irony!

2008-10-27T11:51:00.003-05:00

At the end of the week I didn't have much coffee sitting around the shop. I had the usual leftovers from the previous week's roasts, but less than I typically would. Saturday morning I got a call from Jule's Bistro begging for coffee to be delivered that day! I went to my shop and fortunately had just what they needed with nothing left in my shop but a bit of Ethiopian Yergacheffe and some decafs.

Sunday I met the Vorks for lunch and brought Ken 2 lbs. of the Ethiopian I had, leaving only a little over a pound. Jeff and Stacie apparently came in either late Sunday or early this morning and took the last of it.

So I got here this morning and didn't have any coffee to brew unless I wanted to drink decaf, which I didn't. I called Stacie and she brought me a cup from the Local Blend while she did other errands.

Yes, we have no coffee -- until I roast more.

Winter Blahs

2008-10-24T10:43:00.002-05:00

I think I might be setting myself up for a bad case of the winter blahs this year because it's already starting to set in. The weather lately has been cold, wet & rainy. It seems like 2 seconds after I get home in the afternoon the sun goes down. When it's like this it's hard to motivate myself to do anything: go for a walk, do the dishes, shave.

I find myself thinking of the long winter ahead and I dread it -- for the first time in my life. I like winter, for the most part, it's got it's own beauty: frozen lakes, snow-covered hills, and once in a while hoar frost that makes everything look like a frosted cake. But it also has bitter cold, biting wind and tons and tons of darkness. Those are the parts I like the least.

There is a beauty that can be found on winter nights, to be sure. The skies are never clearer, and if there are clouds they sometimes seem to glow.

So I know I can find the beauty of winter, it's there all the time if you just look. I hope we get a lot of snow for two reasons, it only snows when it's relatively warm and I like the days when we get snowed in,

"Oh, sorry, I can't work today because I can't get out of my driveway."

Plus the sight of the world blanketed in snow is a wonder to behold. And even if the car won't move, my snowshoes will carry me downtown to the White Horse.

Okay, I believe I've pep-talked myself into not hating winter this year. Besides, come March it will all be over.

Just Damn Angry

2008-10-14T14:13:00.003-05:00

I am very angry at my brother for his bullshit parroting of the radical right. I hear it all the time from others and it annoys me, but when it comes from my own family, and from someone who, up until now, I had always thought of as being thoughtful it really makes my blood boil. The whole thing started on Facebook, but I am ending it here. One thing I've learned is that you can't change the mind of a fucking sheep.

The block quotes are what he said, the others are my responses.

Did y'all know that slobamma accused our troops of bombing villages and murdering civilians? He did. He doesn't support the troops, he thinks we're war criminal.

Why not check your facts rather than parroting what the radical right tells you?

Because he actually SAID it. I don't care if it was "out of context", he SAID it.

What he said was this: "We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."

And he had the numbers to back himself up: The Associated Press concluded: "As of Aug. 1 [2007], the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can't be attributed to one party." Even President Bush admitted that there were too many civilian casualties, saying: "The president [Afghan president Hamid Karzai] rightly expressed his concerns about civilian casualty. And I assured him that we share those concerns."

As far as the right wing is concerned; how am I a radical? I'm only telling the truth.

You are not telling the truth, you are merely parroting what the radical right says.

A vote for that muslim bastard is a vote for the end of this country. He is NOT the man for the job. He DOES hang out with terrorists, and has a minister that hates America. His ... Read Morewife [sic] said that she has only become "proud of her country" since Barry started running. I don't know about you, but that sounds like she doesn't like this country too much.

HE IS NOT A MUSLIM!!!!!!! If you learn nothing else, at least get that one fact through your thick skull. There is NO PROOF WHATSOEVER that he is, was or ever has been. And even if he were, so what? This "all Muslims are terrorists" crap belongs in the sewer because it is complete shit.

Regarding Rev. Wright, you need to look at all the white, conservative revs who've said EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

Regarding Michelle Obama, her comments were taken out of context, she used the term "really proud," not just "proud." And why shouldn't she be? For the first time in her life a black man has an excellent chance at being elected President.

And the criticisms I hear about Sarah Palin are the same ones I could make about slobamma. HE doesn't know enough to be a GD dog catcher. At least Palin has solid conservative values, you know; like smaller government, lower taxes, more friendly to businesses both big and small, an aversion to having the government pay for everything people don't want to pay for themselves.

Another bullshit argument. Obama is a sitting US Senator for the state of Illinois and a community activist and organizer. Obama's VP choice should have enough experience for you. As for conservative values, then vote on that line, not on bullshit argument after bullshit argument. GW was the governor of Texas, big fucking deal.

Allowing people to make choices about how to use their own property without interference from the EPA, or the GD Sierra Club, or f**king PETA.

PETA will never influence national policy. The EPA is a governmental organization, not a PAC. The Sierra Club is a lobbying organization, just like your beloved NRA.

If we have two plots of land next to each other I wouldn't want you launching poison into the air and into the ground water just because you can -- and that's what happens without regulation.

The flip side is to have influence from Big Oil, the pharmaceutical lobby and all those fat cats. When is the last time de-regulation brought about anything positive? *cough* $700 billion bailout *cough*

Allowing the free market to develop alternative energy without government hand outs (free markets ALWAYS to better than the government).

Where did you get that tidbit? Tax incentives are not handouts.

Ending welfare as a way of life instead of assistance for hard times... Read More.

I won't argue that more steps need to be taken, but Clinton made great strides towards that goal when he was POTUS. And NEVER FORGET that YOUR OWN MOTHER was on welfare as a child.

That the people have a say in how their children are educated without having the GD PC police breathing down their necks.

So children should be taught that God made the earth 6000 years ago? That there is such a thing as Intelligent Design? That being gay is a lifestyle choice?

Children in public schools should be taught facts, not religious dogma. People who want to have their children learn anything listed above need to send them to private schools that teach only what they want, without any pesky facts getting in the way.

You used to be a scientist, what happened?

The realization that the Constitution does not GRANT rights, it PROTECTS them from government interference, because the rights are God given (as per such nut bars as Tom Jefferson).

When you start legislating from your Bible you lose. Read the Constitution. Also, Tom Jefferson was a Deist, not a Christian.

THOSE ARE CONSERVATIVE VALUES. Not mean spirited, nor "racist" nor "jingoistic" or any other "ism" you might care to attach to us. I came be these beliefs honestly, and with intence [sic] examination. And I find that these principals are far more logical than 90% of the liberal crap I've been hearing since the 60's.

I rest on what I've said.

Please give me SOME credit for being smart. And give me some credit for being dedicated to the succsess [sic] of the greatest country God ever granted us on earth.

How can I when you recite verbatim the crap you hear on so-called talk radio? And God had nothing to do with it.

Go ahead and vote for your boy McCain. But vote because of something you actually believe in and for reasons that are sound and true, not because of something you heard someone else say in a commercial or on Faux News.

Voting is the important part, not repeating slanderous bullshit.

Update! No Longer Worried

2008-10-13T11:35:00.001-05:00

I just heard from Jewel. Although everything is not 100% fine, there is no need for drilling or surgery. She has a mild concussion and a little whiplash from when she passed out at work (must've hit the floor pretty hard), but there's no sign of an aneurysm or a tumor.

She should be able to treat this whole thing with drugs (which she probably won't take for long, she's stubborn, remember?). Between her daughter, her mother, her friend Tracey and me we'll make sure she takes them if we have to go there and poke them down her throat.

What a relief! Now I can look forward to having her outlive me.

Worried

2008-10-10T11:13:00.001-05:00

My dearest friend, Jewel, the friend I've known the longest, the friend who knows me best inside and out, is going in for an MRI today. She has suffered from migraines for as long as I've known her and she stubbornly doesn't allow them to slow her down much. Yesterday she was at work and she passed out and hit the floor, she "coded" for 32 seconds. Her co-workers did CPR and brought her around and drove her to the Emergency Room at the St. Cloud Hospital.

Long ago she had a skull fracture, I can't remember how it happened, if I had to guess I would say it was from fighting with one of her brothers, but I could be wrong. Regardless, it has left her with bone spurs on the inside of her skull and they are apparently poking her in the brain. That's the most likely cause of the migraines. One of them is located near the base of the skull where all the nerve endings travel through. They need to do an MRI to see if that is indeed the case, or if it is potentially something worse like a brain tumor.

She refused to be admitted to the hospital (I mentioned she was stubborn, right?) and spent her day gathering wood for the winter. She worked slowly, admittedly, but still worked. Then she made sure all her life insurance papers were up to date (they weren't, they hadn't been changed since before her daughter turned 18). The doctors at the hospital prescribed a drug with the possible side effect of heart attack(!) and something to help her sleep.

Today she goes in for the MRI to see what's up. After that they can discuss treatment options, but from what she told me they aren't that wonderful. The drug option is something that would dissolve the bone spurs, but for a woman approaching 50 the idea of taking something that reduces bone mass isn't so wonderful (I told her I'd rather see her on crutches than in a coffin). The more drastic option is to drill into her head to release the pressure. The problem there is that she won't do that (I told her I'd put her head under a fucking drill-press and do it myself if it meant keeping her alive).

Jewel has DNR printed on her drivers license, that means Do Not Resuscitate. If she is in a coma or if she's experiencing some sort of cardiac arrest she is supposed to be left alone. Left to die. That means no drilling.

I'm not a praying man. I generally expect the worst, but hope for the best. I hope she's okay. I hope this is magagable. I hope she doesn't die! I love her dearly and this whole situation scares the hell out of me.

Upstaged by a Damned Kid

2008-10-03T10:34:00.001-05:00

Ann Michels sent me this in an email. The later research is from here. Enjoy.

Caldonia
Uploaded by redhotjazz1

SUGAR CHILE ROBINSON (By Dave Penny)

Born Frank Robinson, 1940, Detroit, Michigan

The history of 20th century entertainment is littered with child prodigies; from Shirley Temple in the 1930s, Toni Harper in the 1940s and Frankie Lymon in the 1950s. On the whole, although precociously talented, child entertainers were usually saddled with inferior, childish material that, while perhaps cute at the time, were usually novelty acts that grew tiresome pretty quickly. Some couldn't handle the swift drop in popularity and turned to drink or drugs, while others retired gracefully and concentrated their energies in other directions. One such was that tiny bundle of Detroit dynamite, "Sugar Chile" Robinson. Born Frankie Robinson, the youngest of six children, in Detroit in 1940, "Sugar Chile" began pounding on the family piano as a toddler - he reputedly banged out a recognisable version of Erskine Hawkins' Tuxedo Junction at the age of two - and by 1945 he had been "discovered" by pianist and bandleader Frankie Carle. Within a year he was asked to play at a Whitehouse party for President Harry Truman, had guested with Lionel Hampton's Orchestra and even appeared performing the title song in the 1946 MGM romantic comedy film "No Leave, No Love". It was not until July 1949, however, that he made his first records for the Capitol label, when, in the consummate company of jazz veterans Leonard Bibbs on bass and drummer Zutty Singleton, Robinson took his first two releases into the Billboard R&B chart in late 1949; Numbers Boogie made it to number four, while Caldonia (What Makes Your Big Head So Hard) only reached number 14. His subsequent national tour broke box-office records eve rywhere and it is claimed that his appearance at Chicago's Regal Theatre remains the biggest one-week attraction of the theatre's entire history, easily beating the jazz royalty of the day like Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Robinson toured with Basie in 1950 and made a celebrated musical short with the Basie Sextet and Billie Holiday in Hollywood in August to showcase his hits. The Christmas season of 1950 witnessed Sugar Chile's first European release and Christmas Boogie c/w Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer sold well enough to spark a European tour in 1951, including rave reviews for his spot at the London Palladium. He was a big hit on US radio and TV all through 1951 and then, while still in his pre-teens, Robinson's career was suddenly over; his last single release was issued in August 1952, shortly followed by a 10" compilation LP of boogie woogie that featured many of his 1952 recordings.

Apart from a few radio transcriptions and film soundtracks, "Sugar Chile" Robinson's complete recording career - a period of just under three years - has been reissued in its entirety on one 2003 CD compilation, "Chronological Classics 1949-52". If he really was only nine years old at the time, the performances from his first session such as Vooey, Vooey Vay, Caldonia and Numbers Boogie were quite astonishing. As with other child stars, like Toni Harper, Robinson was frequently burdened with immature material, but even nursery rhyme knock-offs such as Sticks And Stones, Christmas Boogie and (Rock-A-Bye) Baby Blues were transformed into entertaining performances with hip and clever touches. The youngster acquitted himself as a pianist exceptionally well on the few instrumentals, particularly Lazy Boy's Boogie, and for variety he occasionally switched to organ or celeste on later sessions.

Once the hits had dried up and he was released from his Capitol Records contract, there were one or two more reports in the trade papers of the day - he was reported in August 1954 as playing The Blue Note in Chicago with modern jazzer Gerry Mulligan (!) - and then nothing! What happened? Did his voice break? Did the novelty of an infant boogie virtuoso suddenly lose its appeal when he hit 12? Was he really found out to be an adolescent midget in disguise? Last year it was announced that a 62 year-old "Sugar Chile" Robinson had been rediscovered living in Detroit, where he has worked mainly outside music for almost 50 years (although he is rumoured to be the same Frank Robinson who co-owned the obscure Detroit-based soul label, Lando Records, in the 1960s) , and was brought out of retirement to pound the ivories once again at a music festival which celebrated pre-Motown music from the Motor City.

Robinson graduated from Olivet College in Michigan in 1960 with a degree in psychology, but went into his Uncle Frank's chiropractor business instead. He worked there with his uncle until the latter died in 1992. While still working at the family business, he also ran his own Lendo/Lando and Autocap labels in the 1960s, having minor hits with Rufus Wonder (Little Stevie's cousin) and The Superlatives, and between 1962 to 1996 worked part-time selling television commercials for local broadcaster WGPR-TV. Since his retirement, he plays piano and organ on Sundays and Festival Holidays at the Christ Temple, Church of Christ Holiness in Colgate Street, Inkster, Michigan, but has been tempted over to the dark side to play a couple of Detroit blues festivals in recent years. In November 2007 he performed at the Rhythm Riot in Camber, East Sussex, England.

CD: The Chronological Sugar Chile Robinson, 1949-1952 (Classics 5052, released in 2003). 24 tracks.

Nice Merchandise!

2008-09-18T15:04:00.001-05:00

I found this at the Gopher Bargain Center in St. Cloud, MN today.

The price says it all, except maybe to add, "Good thing it's just flavored."

Bitter Truth

2008-09-04T11:31:00.004-05:00

All my life I've supported my oldest brother. When I was a kid he was my best friend. When he joined the Marines I was proud of him. When he got married I cried tears of joy. When he got divorced I cried again. When he fell into the bottle, I was sad. When he admitted himself into the alcohol and chemical dependency unit of the Veterans Hospital I was thankful. Throughout his sobriety I have been as loving and supportive as I can be.

He is my brother. We share the same blood. And I love him.

Recent discoveries have brought me to a point of confusion and rocked my view of him. I will not go into them here, but they have brought things to the surface that have been long kept buried.

He joined the Marines when he was only 17 years old. He had to get special permission from our parents to do so. He went through basic training and came back strong, lean and tanned, as all Marines do. He had a confidence I'd never seen in him before.

He got his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty -- "job" to you and me) and was stationed in San Diego doing warehouse stuff. Seems like a pretty skate job to me, but he hated every second of it. He hated the place, he hated his job, he hated his superiors and he hated the Marine Corps. Every time he called home he cried to mom & dad to get him out. My dad finally contacted our senator, Dave Durenberger to see what he could do. The Honorable Mr. Durenberger was able to get my brother Honorably Discharged after only about 2 years of service out of a 4 year commitment.

He never talked proudly of his time in the service, but he still called himself a Marine. I guess they all do, you could talk to a WWII vet and he'd still say, "I am a Marine," and not, "I was a Marine." They do a good job of brain washing that into their inductees and volunteers. "Gung ho!" is what it's all about. But my perception is that he tended to ignore his service and tried to put as much distance between himself and it as he possibly could. Until he admitted himself to the hospital. Until he needed them again.

Since then he has re-embraced his Marine-inity with the gusto of a born again Christian. (In fact, he became a Christian while going through AA, replacing his brilliant skeptecism with a dependence on the Holy Trinity.) He proudly joins Marine related online forums, wears clothes with the Marine Corps emblem emblazoned on them, and he has the seriously disturbing practice of traveling with his medals, which amount to a service ribbon (you get one for joining), his shooting badge from basic training (rifle marksman), and the unofficial Cold War Victory ribbon.

And all I can think of whenever I see any of this is, "Dude, you fucking quit. And that's the bitter truth."

I got an email from him this week saying, in essence...

I am no longer going to be online, I am not longer going to answer phone calls, I am no longer going to answer letters. I am tired of checking my inbox and seeing it empty day after day.

He forgets that people have lives outside of his personal space. I am so pissed at him because it is so typical of him. Shit, he even forgets that tenet of military life, "You gotta write 'em to get 'em."

Fine, pal, take your ball and go home. I'm tired of playing. I'm tired of being supportive. I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of trying.

But you can still have one of my kidneys if you need it.

Oops! Wrong Venue!

2008-08-17T11:23:00.001-05:00

We had one of those huge-ass long gigs yesterday. We were scheduled to start with a couple of sets of jazz outdoors at 5 pm and finish with three sets of variety/rock ending at midnight. The gig was, as far as we knew, scheduled to take place at Cragun's Resort on Gull Lake.

We got there with plenty of time to set up and get things ready. I went in and talked to a young woman at the front desk, I asked her if there was a wedding or some sort of event scheduled and she directed me to the North Beach.

The beach? Where the heck are you supposed to set up and rock band on a beach? Sand and musical equipment are not a good combination as we've found out in the past, the infamous End of Summer gig at the Pioneer Place didn't do anything good for any of our stuff. But ours is not to question why, so off we went to the beach.

An employee suggested that we set up right by the beach on a patch of lawn. The wedding party was going to end with a bonfire and that would be the best place for us to be. We pulled the van up and unloaded a few items: some of the smaller drums, three monitor speakers, the bass amp, the lights, the sound board and power amp, a couple of guitars. A man in a tuxedo walked up to us.

"I didn't hire a band," he said.

"And you look like the guy who'd be signing the check if you had," Jeff responded.

He smiled, we apologized and reloaded the van. We called our contact and found that we weren't even supposed to be at the main building at Cragun's, but at their world-class golf course called The Legacy.

We got there with just enough time to set up. We weren't playing for a wedding after all, but for a car dealership. They treated us very well! They fed us, they bought us drinks, they let us quit a half-hour early and tipped us $100! And they loved us and want to hire us for an event they have in February.

All in all, the day was long but great!

Lead Guitarist

2008-08-01T22:47:00.002-05:00

I've been asked to sit in on lead guitar for Bobby Vee tomorrow at a private party at his son's house. It's a low-key gig but I'm pretty nervous.

Stick me next to Tommy and I should be fine. That and a mantra of, "don't fuck up" ought to do it.

Later in the night it's Collective Unconscious jamming. That's always fun.

Don't fuck up… Don't fuck up… Don't fuck up… Don't fuck up…

Music Gone to the Dogs

2008-07-29T10:44:00.003-05:00

On Sunday night the George Maurer Trio had another gig at Crossings Gallery & Gift Shop in Zumbrota, MN. We love it there, it's part concert space, part classroom, part art space, part cool stuff store, all housed inside one of the (former) libraries that Andrew Carnegie built between 1883 and 1929. The Zumbrota Carnegie Library was built in 1906 and has the distinction of being the smallest of them all.

Each time we play there we see a lot of the same faces, and some new ones, too. The audiences are enthusiastic and surprisingly not jaded, when you look at some of the other acts who have performed there: Prudence Johnson, John Gorka, Dean Magraw, Michael Johnson and others.

Marie, the owner, used to have a part Chow Chow named Biscuit who would roam the audience during performances, and maybe even make her way to the stage now and again. Biscuit died not too long ago and has been replaced by Odie, an old yellow lab mix that she got from an animal rescue group. Odie is as friendly as Biscuit ever was, and like his predecessor, roams the audience looking for a scratch or a pet. And Odie likes to bark.

Each time the audience applauded, Odie would bark. The louder and more boisterous the applause, the louder and more boisterous the bark. It became a joke from stage as we would bark back at the dog.

When we do trio gigs, we generally close with the old standard Caldonia, which features the lyric:

Caldonia, Caldonia, what makes your big head so hard?

Which I changed to:

Odie, Odie, bark bark bark bark bark bark bark!

During the scat solo, I just started barking, trying to match Odie's pitch and rhythm. Odie obligingly barked back. I started "trading fours" with him, I'd bark, he'd bark back, it was almost like we had rehearsed it somehow. The audience went crazy, laughing, smiling, clapping... it was an amazing moment!

After the concert I gave him a good scratching.

A lot of different people asked if I had planned that, which I hadn't, it just came to me on the spur of the moment. Oh, how I wish I had said that the dog and I had talked it over beforehand!

Car Repair: the Next Generation

2008-07-15T22:34:00.002-05:00

My car broke down today. I was sitting at a red light and she just up and quit on me. I remained calm. Hurridly calm. I tried restarting her a bunch of times to no avail, she'd turn and turn but never catch. Finally I tried an old trick I learned driving my mom's Chevy Impala, I floored it as I turned the key and what do you know, she started right up.

I quickly turned into the nearest parking lot at a new bank and went inside to borrow their phone book so I could look up the number for R&L Repair. I went outside and thought, "what the hell, I'll try it -- maybe it was vapor lock." The engine started immediately, but I didn't think I was out of the woods so I decided to drive home using back roads. I made it about a half mile and she died again. I was able to coast into the parking lot of a sports bar and into a space by the road. I walked home.

Birkenstock sandals are not meant to carry a person two miles in 90° heat on hot asphalt and I now have a couple of pretty little blisters forming on the balls of my feet. Son of a fucking bitch.

I got a hold of a friend with a truck and another friend with a towing strap and after a few phone calls I got Hazzy to help me get the car to R&L. Yeah, Hazzy!

If I'm really, really lucky it was vapor lock. It was hot and I had made a short stop before it happened, those are sure-fire ways to make vapor lock happen.

If I'm merely lucky it will be the fuel filter, a quick, easy and relatively inexpensive repair.

If I'm less than lucky (and what I think is most likely) it's the fuel pump, not a difficult repair, but much more expensive than a filter.

And, of course, if I have a cloud of dismal darkness over my head it will be something fatal to the car and I will have to find a new one.

Not bad though, in 28 years of driving that's the first time I've completely broken down.*

*I am not counting the numerous times I've been with someone else when their car broke down, nor am I counting when I ran out of fuel or when my car overheated (god! I miss my Rabbit despite its foibles and quirks!), and it most certainly does not include the infamous van fire.)

Starstruck

2008-07-11T12:10:00.001-05:00

I don't usually get starstruck. I don't care what you've done, where you've been or who you are, we have the same bodily functions and that makes us equals. But in this case I'm letting it happen.

Tonight we play at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis and our special guest will be Doc Severinsen!! We're talking a musical legend here! Before the tonight show he played with Charlie Barnet, the Dorseys and others. While musical director for Johnny Carson's Tonight Show he backed up probably every musical artist I admire: Stevie Wonder, Carole King, B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald... the list goes on and on. And on!

I want to have my picture taken with him and I want to place a copy on my mother's grave. She would be so proud!

I'm thrilled and I can't wait!

Racism

2008-07-09T12:10:00.003-05:00

I have recently started reading the news on the St. Paul Pioneer Press web site. I don't know why I picked them over the Minneapolis Tribune, but I did. I also registered so that I could leave my comments about stories. Now I'm not saying that everybody who posts there is an idiot and a racist, but I am shocked at the number of idiot-racists who do post there on a daily basis. Frankly, I didn't know such people lived in Minnesota.

It started with the story of a Somali man who was shot to death outside a hotel in Brooklyn Park at 4:30 in the morning. I've left for jobs at 4:30 AM with George if we had to get to the far side of Wisconsin or we had to drive deep into Iowa, and a couple of those times we've met at a place of business, a cafe or gas station, so my first reaction is to give the guy a benefit of a doubt. The racists, on the other hand follow a twisted path of logic that ends with this guy being a gang-banger who was shot by another and good riddance to him.

He was black, therefore a gang-banger
It was 4 am and he obviously had no legitimate reason to be there (because he was black and a Somali)
It was in Brooklyn Park, which everyone knows is full of ne'er-do-well black people

My sister lives in Brooklyn Park in a curvy-roaded suburban area full of happy, smiling white people. I know the whole city isn't like that and my blood freezes every time I hear of another murder there (three homicides in 2007... three too many), but I simply will not assume the worst. If it comes out that the guy was a gangster and all that, I'll be very happy to say I was wrong.

The worst was a comment about a story of a man in Madison, WI who had been tortured by some drug dealers for money:

...that's what white people get for mixing with africoons...

I fucking couldn't believe my eyes!

Any story that has to do with a Muslim or a person with a Muslim-sounding name is riddled with, "he/she should go back to where they came from," or the one I always get a kick out of, "in 30 years we'll be under Sharia law and you'll be beheaded for being a liberal."

Democrats and liberals of all stripes are "demoncrats" and are mentally unstable. Anyone who protests the war or the war machine is an unwashed, unemployed hippie (woe be to the war protester with a Muslim-sounding name!). A woman who died in a car wreck, leaving three children behind, is labeled as a welfare cheat because her children all have different last names! A black man who holds three full time jobs to support his family is shot outside an after-hours club in St. Paul, well, he never should have been there in the first place (and he was probably affiliated with a gang).

Recently a guy in Lakeville was rousted out of his bed by two cops in his bedroom shining flashlights in his eyes because he left his garage door open and his front door ajar. The cops say that the neighborhood had had a bunch of break-ins recently and they were just checking. The guy is upset and has gone to the city council to ask them to change the policy on how police should behave in such a situation. The commentors blame him for being a liberal, filing a frivolous lawsuit and wasting taxpayer money. Nowhere in the article did it mention anything about a lawsuit, and when I pointed that out I was labeled "clueless."

The icing on the cake were some of the comments about the convicted felon (prostitution) in Little Falls who was shot to death while holding the County Commissioners hostage at gunpoint. He was just a small businessman trying to make it vs. the liberal, nanny government. (Anyone who has ever been to Morrison County would never call it liberal.) Unbelievable.

Oh, and Barrack Obama will bring the nation to it's knees, whether that's the topic of the story or not.

Like putting your tongue on a sore tooth or looking under a bloody band-aid I keep checking back. I guess I want to see just how bad bad can get. Certainly not everyone who posts there is a narrow-minded fool, but there are a lot of them. Some people are actually very thoughtful, informative and caring. I want to be one of them.

But it makes me sad to think that some of my fellow Minnesotans can be so cruel, so intolerant, so shallow. I thought maybe we'd grown beyond that kind of thought, this is the 21st century after all, but I guess I was very, very wrong.

Road Rage 2

2008-06-24T17:03:00.001-05:00

Today I was making coffee deliveries and was the victim of road rage.

The closing of the Division Street (Hwy 23) bridge in St. Cloud has left only two bridges open, one is the University street bridge, the other is the Saint Germain street bridge. Traffic piles up along both those routes, so I try to avoid them when possible or to travel there at less busy times. Sometimes I have no choice.

I was in the right-hand lane of Saint Germain, waiting to turn right onto Lincoln Avenue, which is how the detour is routed, traffic was piled up in both lanes for about 2 blocks behind me. When the light finally turned green a young black woman in a white car started to try to change lanes in front of me.

"Oh, no you don't." I said.

Because our windows were all open she heard me.

"Fuck you, bitch!" she yelled, "I'm gonna fuckin' turn...blah, blah, blah..."

I didn't listen to the rest. I wasn't doing anything wrong except not letting my "Minnesota Nice" shine through. Fuck that, if she knew she was going to have to turn right she should have gotten into the right lane farther than a half-block back.

She cut off the guy behind me and I could hear her cursing a blue streak at me. I ignored her. But that's not to say that my blood didn't start pumping a little faster.

I made my right turn, she made hers. She immediately got into the left lane and hit the accelerator. I turned on my blinker to make a legal lane change. She hit the horn and forced me back into the right lane, as she passed me she flipped me the bird and continued her verbal assault. She flew into the lane in front of me and hit her brakes. I changed to the left lane, she changed to the left lane, continuing to drive aggressively.

When we got to Hwy 23 we hit a red light. She was going straight, but I needed to turn left. Fortunately there were two cars in front of me in the turn lane while she was first in line in the left lane. I knew what was coming, or at least I thought I did, so I rolled my passenger side window up and waited for the light to turn green. When it finally did she didn't go, she had one more thing for me. As I passed her, still ignoring her, she flipped her bottle of water at me. It splashed harmlessly on my windshield.

After it was over I called her every nasty thing I could think of: bitch, cunt, slut, asshole, motherfucker... I even dropped the "N" word and I don't like saying that. I cursed and cursed, but none of the words made me feel any better.

Anyway, I hope she got to fucking Shopko or whatever on time. And I hope she eventually realizes what a stupid bitch she'd been.

And next time I play Minnesota Nice and let the girl go first.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

2008-06-13T17:02:00.003-05:00

I usually keep a journal on my vacations, here's what I wrote about my most recent:

• June 10, 2008

A new vacation! This time with Kate. We're on our way -- we actually got on the road before noon, 11:53 am, to be precise. We still have to make a beer stop, but we'll do that in Sauk Centre, then it's off to Glacial Lakes State Park near Starbuck, MN (I wonder if there's a Starbucks in Starbuck?).

• Later

The campground is deserted save the two of us. When we got here they were just finishing up mowing all the grass, that, coupled with the towering oaks that surround us, makes for one of the prettiest campgrounds I've ever been to. It looks more like a well-groomed city park than a state campground.

We did a couple of miles today after we set up camp. The park is mostly prairie, which isn't really what I wanted, I prefer hiking in the woods, it's cooler there. Prairie hiking has its charms though, hot as it can get. We hiked to the highest point in the park (1352 ft) and the view was stunning! We could see for miles and the terrain rolls in smooth, graceful yet dramatic arcs.

• Even later

We just got a visit from the park ranger, he said that all the employees will be "in training" tomorrow and no one will be here. That rocks! Unfortunately, he also said that it is probably going to rain all day. Crap!

We were hoping to do around six miles on hiking tomorrow. I guess we'll see.

• June 11, 2008

We haven't even gotten out of the tent today because it's storming and raining like mad. That made me think: this is the first time I can remember in all the times I've gone camping that I've been stormed and rained on.

When we got here yesterday we realized that I'd forgotten the propane for the camp stove (fucking idiot) and it's raining too damn hard to try to build a fire. I'm thinking about running into Starbuck to try to find some. Then at least we could make some coffee.

As it turns out it stormed really hard, our camp site turned into a mini river that fortunately turned just before it hit the tent. That didn't stop water from starting to pool up on the vestibule of the tent. I ran into Starbuck and got some propane, came back and made coffee. The weather report I managed to hear said it was going to rain all day, all night and probably for the next two days as well.

We stood there under our measly little "Casbah," a 5'x7' tarp tied to trees on one side and staked to the ground on the other. Why we thought a little tarp like that would keep is dry is totally beyond me, I'd chock it up to being excited to get out of town, and it was one of our last purchases before we did. We decided then and there that we didn't want to spend the next three days holed up in the tent, so we broke camp and changed our plans.

The lady at the store in Starbuck said that if we changed our minds about staying at the park that we should come back and have omelets. That seemed like a good idea while we figured out what we were going to do next. We sat there as she made a crap load of hamburgers for the local treatment center's lunch. We sat and sat. While we sat we looked at a map and tried to figure out what we were going to do next. And we sat. After about 40 minutes, with no sign of omelets in our near future, we decided to continue on our way.

We took a county road that turned to dirt after about two miles. There's nothing like driving on saturated dirt to scare the hell out of you, but we made it to the next highway and drove to Brooten to fill with gas and have lunch.

As I was leaving the Veranda after that week's Monday Night Jazz, I had mentioned jokingly to Ken and Gretchen Vork that if it was raining, we'd probably visit them for beer, so that's what we did. Ken met us there briefly, but had to go back to school to teach lessons, so we took a little nap on the couch until he got home. We had a beer with him and then went back to my house.

Ah, vacationing at home. Not my first choice, but we had limited options. We wound up watching the first DVD from the Firefly box set (damn good show!) and went to bed before midnight.

Thursday we woke up to beautiful weather: a sunny, blue sky with big, puffy white clouds, it was clear and clean smelling. We started regretting our decision to leave Glacial Lakes. To make the best of it we went to nearby Lake Maria State Park and spent about four hours hiking through its wonderful woods. We saw a couple deer, some swans, a bald eagle and dipped our feet in three lakes and a stream. It was wonderful! We came home and had a fire in the portable fire pit in the backyard and watched a storm brewing and pass through in about 15 minutes.

Kate checked the radar on the TV and we saw a huge, dark, concentrated cell of storms centered right on Pope County, where we would have been had we stayed at our camp site. We were suddenly very happy that we had split when we did.

Today our vacation ended. Kate had to get back to Minneapolis to start her new job, I have a gig tomorrow. The whole week was nothing like we'd planned, everything got tossed out the window with the rain, but we wound up having a wonderful time.

Next time, though, we don't stay home, we find someplace else. Apart from the time off from work, this didn't really feel like a vacation to me. Next time will be more fun!

Hiding From the Past

2008-06-08T10:07:00.006-05:00

I haven't dug my fingers into the earth yet this year and was itching to do so. My friend, Naomi, brought me a catnip plant to replace the one I had that didn't come back this year (can you imagine that? A fricking catnip plant!) and after planting it I wanted more! I also have an area of the yard right on the front corner that is a pain in the ass to mow and have been thinking about converting into a small flower garden. So the other day I went to Home Depot to see what they had for plants. I picked out a Blanket Flower, a Coreopsis and a Speedwell and went to stand in line to pay for them. This is when the hiding started, I saw my ex-ex-boss, the guy who taught me how to roast coffee, the guy who fired me for being "too efficient."

I haven't spoken to him since the day he fired me and this in only the second time I've seen him in 13 years. The first time was a the funeral of Marge Hams, who, with her husband Al, ran Al's Music in St. Cloud since the mid-70s. I was talking to the guys from Slip Twister, who had just played a rockin' version of Spirit in the Sky, per Marge's request before she died, and I saw him come around the corner in the line of people going to the basement of the church for cookies and coffee. I made a hasty exit from the church before he could see me.

I worked for him for 2-1/2 years. I roasted beans for two of those years. I watched him take this lovely little coffee house with pineapples on the carpet and the flag outside (an international symbol of welcome) and crystal containers of sugar cubes at every table and turn it into a piece of shit. I swear, he must have lived by the motto, "Treat the Customer as the Enemy," because he drove people away in droves.

Tracto mos ut hostes hostium

The stories of his martinet-style of employee management are numerous, from penciling small "X's" on the floor of the kitchen area to make sure the employees were mopping, to telling an employee who was making drinks for customers to stop what he was doing and hang some shelves instead.

For a long time we got along great, I thought I understood his brand of crazy. I didn't agree with him on everything, but we got along just fine. The day he fired me came so far out of left field I would never have expected it.

It was a Friday, by this time he had closed the coffee shop because he didn't like people coming and going all day, but we were still roasting beans. He was out making deliveries, I was working at the roastery. I had finished all my work for the day, the shelves were full of bags of coffee, all alphabetized and organized, and I had everything prepped for Monday. It was 2:30 pm. I usually worked until 4:30, but there was nothing left to do. I sat there for a while doing nothing and decided to go home, better that than make him pay me for two hours of sitting around. Keep in mind that I pretty much set my own hours, we had no time clock and I had left early before with no problems.

Apparently he had forgotten some product and needed to get back to the roastery for more. Even though, as I mentioned before, the shelves were full and everything was well organized, he wanted me to be standing there handing him what he had forgotten. Instead he had to get out of his van and do it himself.

That Monday I had been working for a few hours by the time he came in. Normally we would banter a bit and then go off and do our own thing, but this time he paced the back hallway and the back room for about 20 minutes. I knew something was up, but what happened next took me totally by surprise.

He finally walked up to me, full of purpose and said, "Things just aren't being done to my satisfaction. I'll pay you to the end of the week, but you're fired." And he walked away.

I sat there stunned for several minutes.

Then I gathered my personal belongings into a small box and walked out the back door. He was doing something in the back of his van and as I walked by he said, "I love ya, man."

"You picked a really fucking strange way of showing it," I said.

I walked out of his door, around the corner and into the door of the new Meeting Grounds coffee shop. I asked them for a job and, because they knew who I was, was hired on the spot. I spent all of 30 seconds unemployed. I stayed with them for the next ten years until they went out of business and I started up Muggsy's Beans.

So I just stood there in line at the Home Depot as he and his wife shopped for gardening supplies while I alternately hid behind my plants or stood facing away from them. I didn't want them to see me. I would have nothing good to say to him, except maybe, "thanks for the great career, fucker."

I took my plants home and got them into the ground just before it started to rain.

Eh? What's that?

2008-05-22T13:44:00.001-05:00

Last Friday, after our gig at the Whitehorse, my left ear started to feel plugged. Saturday was annoying and Sunday was pretty bad. It stayed on all week, so I went to the doctor today. Turns out it's related to allergies.

I spent every day hoping it would suddenly clear. I spent every night with visions of every urban legend I've ever heard about some insect or spider crawling into someone's ear only to become trapped and die (or in the really bad stories, hundreds of baby spiders come crawling out eventually!), or thinking about an infection that could potentially diminish or destroy my hearing.

Losing my hearing is something I've thought about before. I've noticed in recent years that I can't make out higher-pitched sounds, like a woman's voice, in a crowded room. That makes it hard to talk to people. Lord knows I've spent enough time around cymbals and loud guitars to have some effect, add that to the fact that I am a 40+ year old male and it just stands to reason that I'd experience some hearing problems.

Beethoven could hear the notes in his head, he knew what he wanted before he even put pen to paper, and as a result was able to continue to compose even after his hearing was completely gone. But Beethoven I ain't. If I lost my hearing a major part of my life, and one of my greatest loves, would be cut off forever. It's a scary thought.

I'm glad my problem is easy to fix. It would probably have cleared up in a few days, but these types of things can last as long as 3 months!! I got a prescription for Nasonex, and that should help.

Happy spring!

Retrying Hated Things

2008-04-22T12:42:00.002-05:00

When I was in second grade the art teacher would put us to work on a project, like wrapping paste laden string around balloons or working with tempera paints, and while we were busy working she would turn on the record player. In my memory we only had two records, one was Little Willie Won't Go Home by Sweet, the other was Killing Me Softly (with His Song) by Roberta Flack. Every day we had art class we listened to those two records over and over again. I learned to despise those two songs and for years afterward would turn the radio to a different station upon hearing the first few notes.

Every once in a while I like to force myself to retry something I don't like, every couple of years or so I try a bite of raw tomato on the off chance that maybe my tastes have changed. I still don't like them. I do the same with music. If a song comes on the radio that I previously didn't like, I will force myself to listen to it to see if I was right about it the first time.

I remember driving back from somewhere up in Northern Minnesota and Little Willie Won't Go Home came on the radio. I resisted the urge to change the station and listened to it. I can see why it became popular, it has a great "hook," but it's still a stupid song. So I was right about that one, for me at least.

I was playing my guitar the other day, strumming songs out of the Real Book, when I came across the song I Feel Like Makin' Love as sung by Roberta Flack. I played it, sang it a little and had some fun putting my own spin on the melody. That got me thinking about Killing Me Softly, so I looked it up online. I was way off on that one, it's not a shitty song at all, I just got tired of it through sheer repetition. I bought it off iTunes.

That has lead me into the world of Roberta Flack, who I had never really listened to at all, for obvious reasons. Turns out that Killing Me Softly won her a whole curio cabinet full of Grammys for song of the year (1971), album of the year, female performer of the year, etc. (Hmmm, kind of like Amy Winehouse at this year's ceremony.) I looked her up online, half expecting to find either an obituary or a "where are they now?" article, but she looks young, healthy and beautiful and she's still performing and recording.

So retrying hated things has paid off this time. But I don't think I'll be trying tomatoes any time soon.

RIP Chris Mitchell

2008-04-15T21:52:00.002-05:00

I received news tonight that Chris Mitchell died on Friday the 11th of April. He was one of the people who first interviewed me for my job at KVSC, waaaay back in 1983. In recent years he had formed his own marketing business and employed a friend of my roommate's. He left behind four children and one grand daughter.

Back in the mid-80's, there was a power struggle at KVSC between the folks that wanted it to become a Top 40 station and those of us who wanted it to be an alternative source of music and news. Chris was in the middle. Ultimately, he sided with the alternative camp and was therefore indirectly responsible for what KV is today.

Chris was 44 years old. I just turned 44 a couple of weeks ago. Man, if that doesn't put the frailty and temporary nature of life into sharp focus... it is really a sobering thought and it makes me think of the people I would leave behind if it had been me in that accident instead of him.

George, Richard, Scott and Ann who have been at the very heart of my musical adventures for the past umpteen years, and who share my love of creativity. Jeff, who is my counterpart, business partner, friend and confidant. Nathan and Cari, who take care of me and love me. Ken, Gretchen, Erin & Lauren, my newest family, who consistently amaze me with their immense talent, creativity and warmth. My nephews, Robb, Mike and Tyler who are such a source of comfort and wonder. My brothers Mark & Brian, and my sister Kathy who are such a wonderful source of encouragement, support and love. Jewel, my dearest friend for almost 25 years...

And Kate, my dearest, who I love more than anything.

The bond I feel for each of them is very special and very important to me.

I am deeply saddened at the death of Chris. Even though I hadn't spoken to him in years, I respected who he had become and his obvious love of what he did and, more importantly, the people in his life.

RIP, Chris. You will be missed.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, part V: the End

2008-04-05T21:44:00.001-05:00

Well, it's over … for 2008, at least. We closed the show in Zumbrota last night in front of a sold out house in a 90 year old theater. We had a really good show, the audience was very responsive and everything sounded really good.

Last week's mini-run of Pet Sounds took a lot out of Jeff and me. Nature seemed just fine, but we were both tired and over-extended, vocally speaking. That morning was the first time in a week that I actually felt good, up until then I'd had a very strained set of vocal cords. Those of us who know him realized that Jeff was really holding on for dear life whilst singing the title track. He said he concentrated on every vocal lesson he'd ever had so that he could remain in control. He did and it was great -- not his best, but great nonetheless.

It was so nice to come back to such a comfortable show. Pet Sounds is like playing some kind of orchestral piece, everything has to be note for note and perfect. BOTW, on the other hand, has a lot more rock-n-roll to it, despite the fact that it is a folk album, and rock is a lot more forgiving of small errors. The title track, So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Boxer and Song for the Asking all require great concentration, glossing over any part of them would make the performance suffer. But on the rest of the album you can relax and have fun!

The run at the Pioneer Place was wonderful, of course, but the State Theatre in Zumbrota has a charm about it. In both places, seventeen musicians and a multitude of instruments take of a lot of stage space and we are jammed in pretty tight, but I could hear things in Zumbrota that I couldn't hear in St. Cloud. The strings players singing backups on The Only Living Boy in New York were just wonderful, I had seen them, but couldn't hear them in St. Cloud. Although I heard it every night of the run, Richard's backstage "So long, already!" during So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright was particularly clear at the State.

I am amazed, once again, by the level of musicianship of the people I know. None of the albums we've done have been walks in the park and each one presents its own challenges. It is our job to rise to that challenge and I am astounded by the lengths we will go to in order to achieve our goal. Gretchen played the trumpet and Erin played the trombone (shit, Erin learned the trombone just for the show!), I learned the charango, Al Asmus dug up a bass saxophone, everybody wore multiple hats, from multi-instrumentalist to background singer ... and at the end of the night everybody stuck around and helped the sound guys wrap cords and load out. They commented to us that nobody does that. It just seems to be the right thing to do, I think.

It will feel good to have a few days to decompress, we've all been concentrating pretty hard for the last month or two and a little down time is very welcome. The next challenge is to re-learn Abbey Road and to try to make it even better -- we've learned so much since we first did that album! But I hope we revisit BOTW, that album is such an old friend to me! I'm sure this isn't the end, but only time will tell.

Road Rage

2008-03-19T23:37:00.002-05:00

1. To the guy on the bicycle: you have to obey the rules of the road, too. I saw you on the corner of MN Highway 23 and 10th Ave. S. in Waite Park, MN[map]. You were heading west on 23, but you were at a stop light. Cars from the left turn lane of 23 east were legally turning onto 10th because they had the green arrow. You, on the other hand, were at a red light, which means you were legally bound to stop and wait until the light turned green, just as if you were another vehicle on the road -- which you are! You didn't have to stand there swearing at every car that passed in front of you. Yes, I know it was cold, but you should have thought of the before you left and bundled up accordingly, and if you were late for something, that's not anyone else's fault but yours. Next time calm the fuck down, and maybe acquaint yourself with the rules of the road for bicycles. (Rule 1 might interest you!)

2. To the guy in the black Jetta: Ha ha, fucker! You tried speeding down a frontage road to pass me and six other cars because you thought you could outrun us all and be able to zip in front of us at the next intersection. Too bad you had to slow down so drastically at the end or you might have been successful! I think that every one of us deliberately drove just under the posted speed limit just to piss you off. Here's the deal, dipshit: you're not more important than anyone else regardless of the car you drive.

3. To everybody: use your fucking blinkers! I can't read your mind, you know.

There. I feel better now.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, part IV: Opening Night

2008-03-13T00:46:00.006-05:00

It went very well tonight! It wasn't perfect, there are some chords in Only Living Boy in New York that I have to go to school on, but on the whole it was a GREAT concert!!

I have to say, I was amazed at the response that my song, Sky, got. Several people marked it as their favorite original song of the night and that just blows my mind, especially next to Nature's new one and Jeffy's Dark Days of Rain -- both of which totally fucking rock! I guess simplicity has its place. (It one of what I call my "Taoist" folk songs.)

I wish this could be my 40-hour-a-week job -- well, this mixed with the Shake a Hamster Band. The projects we do are by far the most rewarding experiences I've ever had, from Abbey Road to Pet Sounds to BOTW. Each one is a unique experience and a lesson in songwriting.

I am looking forward to the rest of the run very much, and I will be sad to see it end.

King Asshole

2008-03-09T23:19:00.002-05:00

I was driving to St. Cloud from Minneapolis this afternoon and was unlucky enough to have had my trip affected by a rather nasty accident which occurred just a few minutes earlier on I-94. A state trooper, who had stopped to help with an accident got hit by some idiot doing 60 mph. He claims he must have dozed off, having come off a 16-hour shift at work.

Many of us were stopped just short of the Dowling Avenue overpass because the accident had happened just a little to the north. A state trooper came along the left shoulder and announced through his bullhorn that we should all back up and exit onto Dowling because cleanup was going to take too long for us to wait. So we backed up on the interstate. I had to back up about a quarter of a mile and then everything cleared just enough for me to make a U-turn and get myself situated to join the throngs trying to get onto Dowling.

Some bald-headed cocksucker in a champagne colored Toyota Highlander, who had not been one of us who had to back-up, but was traveling on I-94, got himself situated mere inches from the car ahead of him -- he wasn't going to let anyone in front of him. I got in right behind him in the left hand lane of the exit. He somehow managed to cut off someone in the right lane, passed about three cars and then cut someone else off to get back into the left lane. People were honking at him because he was being a dick. He continued on, window rolled down, arm and middle finger extended.

I officially name that guy King Asshole! We were all in that mess together but he obviously thought that he's more important than anyone else and that he didn't have to fucking wait in line like the rest of us did. I wish there was some pox or curse I could place upon that dickweed motherfucker that would cause him to lose the ability to drive.

Fucking jerk!

Bridge Over Troubled Water, part III

2008-03-03T11:44:00.001-06:00

We had our first rehearsal with pretty much the whole band last night, we were only missing our lead trumpet player… more about him later… I must say, I was a little nervous about this whole thing until last night. I wondered if we were really going to be able to do this wonderful album justice.

There is so much going on for as simple as everything sounds, and there are some studio tricks that would be hard to reproduce live, but I don't miss them. There's something about the immediate visceral response that your body has to live strings, brass and reeds that makes up for the loss of a "special effect" or two. Although I still don't know quite how we're going to reproduce the HUGE snare sound in Bridge Over Troubled Water and the Boxer. That will be the sound man's job, and we've got Dean Boras, one of the best in the business.

Last night was the first opportunity we had to hear Jeff sing Bridge Over Troubled Water and he sang the shit out of it!! Ken Vork told me that when he first heard the album way back when that the entrance of the electric bass at the beginning of the last verse was like a bell going off in his mind and that it opened a whole new world to him. When that point came in the song, even though there was no electric bass at rehearsal (my job -- I'll get to it!!), tears welled in his eyes and started falling down his cheeks. That did it, I started tearing up, too. Jeff and I agree that that song is the center of the whole show. It is the song that means the most to people and carries an incredible emotional wallop. If we nail it every night, we will probably see a lot of tears.

I know now that we will have an incredible show and I can't wait to get started! My only worry left is our lead trumpet player. He blew us off for the George Maurer Holiday Show in December without an explanation and I'm afraid that he might do the same thing for BOTW, despite the fact that he said he was excited to play it with us. If he blows us off he's used up all his chits in my book and I won't hire him again. If he doesn't want to do the show, or if he feels we are under-utilizing his talents he should let us know now so that we can find a replacement. I want him on the show, he a great, funny guy and an incredible player, but I can't abide people who are unreliable. Hopefully he will make it to the next rehearsal and I can rest easy, there aren't that many more with everyone.

But right now I am looking forward to opening this show like I never have before. It's going to be great!

Flixster

2008-02-26T10:50:00.004-06:00

I've been on Facebook for a while now and I have come to the conclusion that it is just a gigantic marketing tool. In fact, the Pirate and Zombie and Werewolf applications were invented by marketers to see how the Facebook community works and how they could exploit it. It must've worked because Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, recently sold a small percentage of it to Microsoft for $246 million. Still, it is a handy way to keep in touch with friends and I'm not going to delete my account anytime soon.

One of the applications (or apps) that I use for movie review and sharing is Flixster. I am consistently amazed at the stupidity of some of the users. I understand that taste is subjective and that one person's trash is another person's treasure, and that's not what I find so odd. No, it is people who give a 4-star rating to movies they don't like, or the people who rate a movie based on the attractiveness of the leads, like this one, an actual "review" of the movie Stardust,

"i freakin love this movie itz like the best the dude is freakin hawt and robert de niro is freakin funny he is like soooooo adorable...lol".

I understand, only slightly, the attractiveness of the leads angle. I myself posted a blog back when I was on Myspace "reviewing" the movie Underworld, which was simply, "I'd let Kate Beckinsale bite me on the neck." But that was on my blog, not on a movie review site. But the practice of giving a 4-star rating to a movie you don't even like confuses the hell out of me.

Have these people never seen a really good movie? Possibly. 90% of what comes out of Hollywood is crap, crap, crap. I will never understand how movies like Meet the Spartans can be the "#1 movie in America" or why they feel like they can recycle stupid ideas like Underdog and expect people to buy it. But buy it they do, even really crappy movies can make millions, and ultimately that's what Hollywood is all about.

So here's a comparison between Flixster, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and my own ratings on the movies I have just mentioned as well as a few of my favorites: (Sorry about the gigantic white space, if you see one)

Movie	Flixster	IMDB	Rotten Tomatoes	Me
Stardust	4/5	8.1/10	75%	2.5/5
Meet the Spartans	3.5/5	2.5/10	3%	NA*
Underdog	3/5	3.8/10	15%	NA*
Underworld	4/5	6.6/10	30%	2.5/5
Citizen Kane	4.5/5	8.6/10	100%	5/5
Plan 9 From Outer Space	3/5	3.5/10	60%	3/5
The Princess Bride	4/5	8.2/10	95%	5/5
Das Boot	4.5/5	8.5/10	96%	5/5
Saving Pvt. Ryan	4/5	8.4/10	94%	5/5
Shooter	4/5	7.1/10	47%	.5/5
Home of the Brave	3.5/5	5.4/10	23%	1/5

The lesson learned here is that I should get my movie info from Rotten Tomatoes, they seem to be closest to my own tastes.

*I don't want to see these, I will not see these.

Devil Cat

2008-02-20T12:18:00.001-06:00

Yes, yes, I know I asked for it when I got a kitten. Kittens very quickly become "tweens," which is roughly equivalent to teen-age years in humans. When your cute, playful little kitten becomes a "tween" he becomes the Devil.

Frank has decided that toilet paper is the enemy and must be destroyed. My roomie bought one of those bajillion packs of TP, Frank broke into the cabinet and attacked the outside of the package. After we opened it he somehow attacked all the middle rolls. They are almost completely shredded and are pretty much useless. In the process a paperback book that must have gotten a little too close got a some collateral damage as well. I put an 8 lb. weight in front of the cabinet door. He won't be shredding any more packs of TP anytime soon.

Last night I heard a noise coming from the bathroom (he seems somewhat fixated on the bathroom) and I went to see what the hell he'd gotten himself into this time. He had managed to get himself up on top of the bathroom door. "You got yourself into this," I said, "get yourself out." A little time later, poor Rusty must have gone in there to see what was up and got ambushed from on high. He doesn't yowl much usually, but he sure did then, poor bastard.

This morning really got me, though. I heard a crash come from my room. He had crawled up on the topmost point of my computer desk and then made a leap for the bookshelves that are above it. In the process he knocked down my three-tiered "in-out" box which had all my printer paper and about 150 plastic page sheaths as well as a bunch of miscellaneous mail. I pretty much wanted to skin him on the spot.

I can't wait until he outgrows this phase, it's stressful to me because I never know what he's going to break or destroy. I almost feel like locking him in a kennel when I leave, but that would be cruel. I keep telling him that if he keeps this up I'll wind up killing him.

But he's just too cute to kill.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, part II

2008-02-17T20:19:00.001-06:00

Now that trivia is over I can start concentrating on learning the music for Bridge. Nathan, Jeff & I had our first real sing-through on Saturday night and we got together with some of the horn players on Sunday. Unfortunately, I am fighting a case of the "creeping trivia crud" and my concentration and vocal ability were left wanting.

I've spent the last few weeks getting "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" and "Song for the Asking" under my fingers, they are by far the most challenging things I have to play. Most of the album is pretty simple from a basic musical standpoint, Simon was and is a folk singer, after all. He throws a curve at you now and again, but if you know basic folk and blues chord progressions you can find your way through most of the music without too much trouble. The challenge is going to be finding the nuance within the song and to try to recreate it live -- instantly. They spent months in the studio perfecting each song, we have to do it right the first time, every time.

I am very excited about having the strings play with us, we've got some very good players on board. Ken has been transcribing a lot of the string parts and he says they're kind of "odd." If you listen to the album very closely, and you have to because they're buried so far down in the mix, you can hear that they are indeed playing some rather strange lines, but they fit so well into the song. The strings are what will bring "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" and "Song for the Asking" to life! I can't wait.

So now I will spend the next few weeks making sure that I listen to the album every day. The trick is to listen -- just listen -- to not sing along. Mouth shut, ears open. That's the only way to learn.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, part I

2008-01-25T11:24:00.001-06:00

And so, we begin another project. This time it's the brilliant album by Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Since this is going to be a major event, and a great challenge, I thought I'd start blogging about it, starting with my general thoughts about the album.

In 1970, when BOTW was released, I was only six years old. Seems strange to see that number in front of me, I hadn't really figured it until now, I thought I was more like eight. I remember listening to it a lot, seems like it could have been daily. Sometimes I'd listen to it alone under headphones -- big, ungainly, late 60s headphones that pinned your ears to your head -- sometimes I'd listen with my brothers and sister.

We learned every word, which was easy, because they were printed on the back of the album jacket, and sang along. We'd argue about who got to sing Simon and who got to sing Garfunkel. Basically, everyone wanted to sing the lead.

The music spoke to me, not in the poetic verse sort of way that Paul Simon is known for, but on a much more basic level, I liked it because it was fun and it appealed to me on an emotional level. Even if you didn't understand a word of English, you'd still be able to find the emotion in each song, and it runs the gamut from the heights of elation to the depths of loneliness and despair.

So now, 38 years later I find myself singing that album again, only this time there's no argument about who gets to sing lead, some songs are right up my musical alley, some need to be sung by either Nature or Jeff. In fact, I can hear no other voice but Nature's on So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, I know he'll sing it beautifully, and I am very much looking forward to hearing Jeff sing the title track.

And, at 43 years old I can finally hear some of the things in the lyrics I missed the first time around. For example, this excerpt from Baby Driver:

There's no one home,
we're all alone
c'mon to my room and play
yes, we can play
I'm not talkin' about your pigtails,
but I'm talkin' about your sex appeal...

Those lyrics went completely over my head. At six or seven years old, those words mean exactly what they say, "C'mon to my room and play," suggests an afternoon with Legos, and sex appeal was something that toothpaste was supposed to give you, or so the TV told me.

The Boxer has a whole different meaning to me now. At six it was a song about a boxer, at 43 it's a song about a man -- any man. I find more and more in the lyrics each time I listen to them, each song is a little jewel.

I am really looking forward to this project. BOTW was and remains one of my favorite albums of all time, and getting to play and sing these songs with my friends and colleagues is truly a dream come true!

Brief Car Update

2008-01-04T17:16:00.001-06:00

$429.90 for the tie rod ends.

Running total so far: $1381.34.

And I will eventually need to replace the head gasket and one of the axle seals. That will run another couple of hundred.

Meh, better than buying a $1500 car and having to put in $900 in repairs...

Semi-More Reliable Transportation

2008-01-02T23:50:00.001-06:00

I bought a new car on the day after Xmas.

It's a 1992 Ford Tempo with about 173,000 miles on it. The Tempo replaced the Fairmont and preceded the Countour. It was the grandfather of the Taurus. Whatever. I found it in the newspaper listed for only $495, it was on some land a little north of St. Cloud. A guy named Larry sold it to me.

When I said I wanted to buy it he insisted that we transfer the title immediately. He said he had a couple of things happen that convinced him that was the best way to go. One car he sold wound up in the Hennepin County impound lot before the title got transfered. Another car was involved in a drug bust.

He drove me into Foley and we took care of it right away. It cost $38.50.

When we got back to his house he said he would knock $20 off the asking price because the muffler needed to be replaced, but that he wanted cash. I only had $75 on me so I said I'd go home in the vehicle I drove out there in (Jeff's van) and return with the remaining $400. He hemmed and hawed and finally offered to follow me in my newly purchased vehicle to my home where I would remit the remaining balance, he would then bring me back to his house so I could retrieve the van. Done and done, and pretty nice of him, if you ask me.

So now we're up to $513.50.

After a month of driving Jeff's van (thank you, Jeffy) I had my own car again. The poor old Aspire has seen its last miles, and it served me very well!

On Thursday I was able to get it to MG's Exhaust for the badly needed muffler. The old pipe scraped on the ground. That ran $146.

Now we're up to $659.50.

On Friday I drove it quite a bit, from home to work to downtown, and a few other places. When I was finally on my way home I smelled something melting or burning. On Valentine's Day in 2005 we watched Jeff's previous van burn down to a metal hulk and that's how it all started, with a burny-melty smell. I started to panic.

When I got home I parked on the street, well away from the house, the garage and any electrical wires. If it was going to burn, I wasn't going to destroy anything but the car. I opened the hood and saw a wisp of smoke climb up from under the battery. I grabbed everything I owned, including my guitar, amp and music (I left the tux) and headed for the house. And I had a PTSD attack. I thought my new purchase was about to go up in flames.

I kept looking out the window. The car was still white. It wasn't orange. It wasn't black. I called R&L Repair, George takes his Tahoe there and trusts them, I found out they're the best! Ron looked at it and thought it might be that the emergency brake had locked and was melting due to friction. When they got it up on the lift they found that the brakes needed to be replaced. If I hadn't brought it to them my brakes would have ceased up at some point, stranding me along the roadside. They were able to do the work that day and it ran me $291.94.

Running total of $951.44.

But that wasn't the only problem they found. The tie rod ends also need replacing, which will cost me another couple of hundred dollars, bringing the total so far up to around $1200.

Hopefully, I won't have to have the head gasket replaced or anything else major. There is a small leak in the transmission, but it's manageable. I am going to replace the spark plugs and plug wires, it could probably use them.

Fuck, I hate cars, but I need one.

This may be one of those purchases that comes back to bite me in the ass. It wouldn't be the first. I've already spent $1200 bucks, I really hope this isn't a little money pit. Well, even that would be a lesson, wouldn't it? I just have to keep reminding myself:

It's already broken.

Michael Johnson Concert

2007-12-29T09:08:00.002-06:00

I went to see Michael Johnson in concert at the Pioneer Place on Fifth last night -- what a thrill! I remember seeing him for the first time in the Stewart Hall Auditorium back in the mid 80s and sitting a mile away, last night I was in the front row.

He hasn't lost a thing, although his voice was a little weak at times, but that's understandable seeing as he just had quadruple bypass surgery only 4 1/2 months ago. His guitar playing, on the other hand, is still up to snuff, in fact it's beyond snuff, he's one of the best guitarists I've ever seen.

He played an Irving Berlin song that I simply must learn, but I forgot the title (grrr!). Berlin wrote it for the woman he loved, but back in those days it was unthinkable for a Jewish man to marry a Catholic woman. It's something like "That'll Do" or "It'll Have To Do," I just can't remember -- I even asked him after the concert, but it was gone by the time I got home. Sometimes it really sucks being ADD.

He'll be back again next year, maybe I can find out then.

At one point I was in the bathroom washing my hands and the guy next to me asked what I thought of the concert, I told him I was thrilled because I am such a fan of Michael Johnson.

"What did you think of the opening act?" he asked.

I told him I didn't really like them. It was a husband and wife team from Duluth, I didn't catch their names, and they did cutsie folk. One of their songs was "Matching Baggage" and it told the story of how they met. I found it way too cute and walked out after it in order to wait in the bar until the main act started.

It's just a matter of personal taste, he used simple chords and simple melodies and both their singing voices were very weak and thready. But he was very entertaining to the crowd and very engaging to them.

It just wasn't my cup of tea, I told him.

"That other fellow can sure play the guitar," he said and I agreed, "but I'll bet he can't fish." That was such a non sequiter I had no response.

Later I saw that fellow talking with the opening artists, his body language told me he was a close friend or possibly family. I didn't feel bad, though, I didn't diss the guy, I just said it wasn't for me.

Now, to figure out that Irving Berlin song…

Dakota Xmas Show

2007-12-24T11:04:00.001-06:00

It took us 2-1/2 hours to get to downtown Minneapolis last night for our gig at the Dakota Jazz Club. As usual, Jeff & I meet at the Clearwater Travel Plaza and travel the rest of the way together. When we were about a mile and a half from the Hasty, MN exit traffic slowed down to 5 mph. We crawled along, looking at all the four-wheel drive vehicles in the ditch (those people are idiots, they think because they have four-wheel drive that they can drive normally when there's 2 inches of snow on the ground) with a plan: we'd take the Hasty exit (I know, I know) and take as many back roads as we could. We must have passed 100 cars or more!

We rolled into downtown Minneapolis, late for a meeting we were going to have with a guy who wants to rep my coffee in the twin cities (keep your fingers crossed), but on time for our gig. We played from 7 until 11 pm... and made $100. That fits in perfectly with what we call the "Engholm Corollary" (yes, we know it's not really a corollary): The more they're listening to you, the less you get paid."

We have played "wallpaper" gigs in a room full of conventioneers and gotten paid ridiculous amounts of money, but when we play one of the premiere jazz clubs in the nation, we get $100. And half price drinks, to be fair.

All in all, though, it was a very fun night, but a little long. I would have been happier playing only two sets instead of three. But it's such an honor to play that stage. The piano is signed on the inside by a veritable "who's who" of famous jazz players, I never feel worthy of being there.

That was the last holiday show of 2007. Now onto New Year's Eve...

Cats of My Life

2007-12-21T16:43:00.001-06:00

The new addition of Frank to my life has given me a chance to think back on the cats I've had in my life. I never thought I'd be a cat owner... well, that's not true, I thought I would probably, eventually own a cat, but I didn't know when that might happen.

I wish I could remember the exact year… it had to have been around 1990 that Tristram came into my life. I was musical director for the dreaded boy orphan musical, Oliver, in Elk River, MN, I was living with Kim. One night, I needed a rehearsal pianist to fill in for a night, so I asked my friend Linda to help out (that woman could sight-read a Chinese newspaper), I offered to drive here there and back and stopped by as she was just finishing up doing the dishes. She asked me to make myself at home, I sat down and this little gray streak darted out of the living room onto my lap. There sat a stripey gray kitten, only a few weeks old, he rolled onto his back, looked into my eyes and started purring.

It's an odd feeling knowing you've just been picked, I can't explain it, but I knew at that moment he'd be with me for a while. I sat there dumbstruck, simply knowing that I had to have that cat for my own. I don't remember when I said it, but I told Linda that if she wanted to "get rid of the gray kitten" I would take it off her hands. I suppose that was the most nonchalant way I could think of to let her know I needed to have him.

She explained that her daughter had picked that cat out of the litter of barn cats in their, er, barn to be her house cat. I said I understood and wondered if I would be separated from this wonderful little fuzzball.

A couple of days (weeks?) later Linda called and said that since her daughter was going away for college anyway, and that she, herself, really didn't want a house cat, I could come out and pick up that gray kitten if I wanted to. I enlisted the help of my good friend, Eric, and he and I grabbed a cardboard box and left immediately

Tristram came to me with an upper-respiratory disease, I poked a pill down his throat every day for a couple of months (how he could "ack" it up 20 minutes later -- still dry -- is totally beyond me) while he sneezed vile green goo on me every morning. He got healthy while his mother and siblings all died of it. So he became my little orphan boy.

He and I had a relationship that was beyond owner/pet, I called him my familiar. Mages, wizards and witches have familiars, they are connected to them in a magical, spiritual way, that's the way it was with he and I. I could merely think about him and he would appear. He was such a constant companion that I would not even notice, I'd look down and he would be sleeping on my lap and I would have no recollection of when he got there, it was just normal.

He was with me for only ten years, and he got very sick, very fast. When I got him to the vet, it was too late, his liver and kidneys had already shut down and it was just a matter of time before he would either die on his own, or let me know it was time. He picked the latter. I came home from work today, there were puddles of clear vomit everywhere and he said, meekly, "now."

I took him to the vet and had him put down. I breathed his last breath into me, kissed him and said goodbye. He is buried up at my friend Russel's beneath a cairn of stones.

Callie poo came into my life rather accidentally, my girlfriend brought home a stray that she found behind Cub Foods, where she worked. Turns out that cat was pregnant and it wasn't too much later that we had a batch of five kittens in our back room.

We had another cat at the time named Zodie. She was a gray and white long-hair who hated everybody but Christy and me. She got along rather well with Tristram, but nobody got along with the mother cat, Billie. After the kittens were born she would have screaming fights with Tristram and Zodie, I guess she was just protecting her own, but it made for some rather nasty times. Callie was one of the kittens, we kept her even after giving her mother to away to some friends.

Callie grew up to be a very sweet cat, but very aloof. She would find the highest point in a room that she could and view the world from there -- the top shelf of the closet was her favorite hiding place.

She would hide, it is true, but when she wanted lovin' she would make it very obvious, I called it "okay, you may pet me now" time. When she was really content she would show me "Miss Happy Hand," a presentation of her paw and claws as stretched and spread as she could make them. Some cats "cush," kneading whatever is under their feet as kittens do when they are drawing forth milk from their mother, Callie would "cush" the air. And drool, when she was happy she could leave wet spots.

She was a hider, and not likely to show up unless it suited her. I didn't notice until it was too late that she was sick. She died in November of 2007 aged around 12 years or so.

I didn't have the connection with her that I had with Tristram, but I loved her dearly. She is buried at Jeff & Stacie's near Kimball. I miss her.

Frank is my new cat, I got him at the Humane Society last Sunday. He is everything I've wanted in a cat since Tristam died, he is friendly, cuddly, inquisitive and a complete love! I don't want to compare personalities, but he is almost like a reincarnation of Tristram. I believe in love at first site! I got picked again! I am so thrilled to have another cat that I can totally connect with.

He likes to sit on my lap and he sleeps with me at night. He's teething right now, so he tends to chew on my fingertips, he also may be looking for milk, but nipples my fingers ain't. He's a very sweet boy and I look forward to many years together.

And his name is going to stay Frank... like Sinatra. Ol' blue eyes is here to stay.

New Kitty!!

2007-12-16T17:35:00.002-06:00

Here's my new baby! I picked him up today at the Tri-County Humane Society. He's 4-1/2 months old and very friendly.

I know I said I wanted an older orange cat, but he kind of picked me. The minute I took him out of the cage for a "test drive" he started purring and butted his head into my beard. That did it. Tristram used to do that.

He's got blue eyes, so he has some Siamese in him, and a pink nose. He's cream colored with orange on his ears, tail and the backside of his rear legs. He'll need to be neutered in February.

I brought him into the house and introduced him to Rusty. There was a little low meowing and a couple of hisses at first, but they were running around the house playing about an hour later.

His name is Frank, but that will probably change. I usually let my cats pick their own names. Frank does seem to fit, though. We'll see.

I'm pretty happy! This is my Xmas present to myself.

Holly Ball 2007

2007-12-04T15:19:00.001-06:00

This was the first year the St. Cloud's Holly Ball was held somewhere other than the Holiday Inn. Aparently it got too big and they we're turning thousands away. I'm not sure what the Holly Ball is all about, a friend of mine called it the Old People Prom. All I know for sure is the St. Cloud's "Movers and Shakers" are there (I remember seeing Stearns County Prosecuting Attorney Janelle Kendal -- she's a babe!). the mayor was probably there, too. Anyway, there's a whole lot of money floating around in that room, tables go for over $2000 and there were a lot of tables!

We were hired to perform in various forms, the end of the evening featured the George Maurer Variety Group trading off sets with Bella Diva. We're a good match, GMG does 50s, 60s & 70s rock and Motown, Bella Diva, a group fronted by three women, features more 70s, 80s & 90s with a strong emphasis on disco and other high-energy dance stuff. The early part of the evening had us split up, George playing solo piano at the front of the room and Jeff, Scott & I playing trio at the back of the room. It's a big room, 105 x 265 feet.

The problem was, they also asked some of the players in Bella Diva to also play trio music, and another pianist, too. They put us all on the same end of the room about 30 feet from each other, meaning we were about 60 feet from the other trio with the pianist in the middle. I could hear the other drummer, and I really feel sorry for the piano guy who had to try to concentrate on his own music while hearing two different jazz trios play different songs -- all seven of us playing simultaneously! I can only image what it sounded like in the middle of the room. Cacophony! We won't let that happen again.

Anyway, the gig, apart from that little nastiness, went over like gangbusters and we've already been asked back for next year! It's nice to know I'm booked in December of 2008!!

Ladysmith, Wisconsin

2007-11-30T11:15:00.001-06:00

Yesterday we traveled to Ladysmith, Wisconsin. We left Minneapolis at 8:30 am so that we could give a short performance for the students at the high school at 1 pm. There were about 400 teenagers in the auditorium and they were surprisingly well behaved, quiet, as attentive as teenagers can be and inquisitive. We took questions from the audience, and as expected, my Minnesota Vikings jacket drew some fire.

"Who's the Vikings fan?" asked one of the younger ones, "You know the Packers play the Cowboys tonight, don't you?"

"Yes, yes," I replied, "I know the Packers are better than the Vikings this year," (wild applause), "all I care about is that they beat Dallas, because I hate the Cowboys." (more wild applause).

Afterwards one of the teachers was talking to me, "Not many of these kids will come to tonight's concert. The Packers play the Cowboys tonight, so most of them will stay home to watch it."

We spent the afternoon at the motel resting and cleaning up. We went to dinner at the local pizza place, Grandpa's Pizza.

As we were chatting about the set list a lady in the next booth asked if we were the musicians who were playing at the high school tonight. It turns out that her daughter and George went to high school together in Sun Prairie, WI and she remembered his name, that drew her and her husband to the concert.

"Well, you know," said her husband, "there's a Packers/Cowboys game tonight, but we're coming anyway!"

A few minutes later another patron of the pizza place came over to us and asked if we were the entertainers for the evening, "You picked kind of a bad night. There's a Packers/Cowboys game tonight, you know."

At the concert, the emcee referred to intermission as "halftime."

The gig was alright, but the piano, sad to say, had seen better days. We tried spot-tuning it in the afternoon and again right before the concert, but it was just too far gone. George and I spent the night staying out of each other's way because the piano was so flat and just plain out of whack that all our chords clashed.

My favorite moment of the evening was after the concert when a little girl of about 8 walked up to us and said, "Thank you for singing and playing for me tonight! I really enjoyed it!"

I'm glad she did, that made the whole night worthwhile.

Sadly, the Packers were defeated by the Cowboys 37-27.

Cat Addict

2007-11-24T17:40:00.001-06:00

I've come to the conclusion that I am addicted to cats. I have felt so empty since Callie died. I've had cats since the late 80's when I first got my dear, dear boy Tristram. This is the first time I've been without a little furry for around 20 years!

Rusty wants a cat, too. Poor little bastard has been carrying around an old boot lace like Linus van Pelt with his blanket and he follows me from room to room, or he meows mournfully as if he's looking for either Callie or Minky (she died one year ago today).

I want to get an orange male, but I don't want a kitten. Kittens go through what I call the 'tween years, which is somewhat similar to teen age years in humans. They go crazy, they git into shit they shouldn't and they're generally annoying for a month or two and I just don't want to deal with that. So I'd like to find a boy who's a year or more old. Orange boys have always been my favorite kind of cat, I've never met one who wasn't a complete lover.

I am going to get myself a cat for Xmas.

RIP Callie

2007-11-18T14:23:00.001-06:00

I found my poor little sweet poot today. She's dead.

I knew she'd been sick lately, she'd lost so much weight and gotten that ratty, sick cat fur. I knew she was going and the vet would only cost me money I don't really have. I can't spend hundreds of dollars keeping a cat alive like my sister could.

I saw her the other night and she was so weak and wobbly. I told her how much I loved her and what a great cat she'd been. I told her it was okay to die. I watched her not much later gingerly walk to one of her favorite living room spaces, under the end table -- she would sleep there for hours. And that's where I found her.

She was such a sweet, sweet girl. I keep thinking about our lives together.

My girlfriend at the time, Christy, brought home a stray cat one night that turned out to be a pregnant female, Callie was one of five kittens who were born a couple of weeks later.

We kept them in the back room of our apartment, a three-season porch that you had to walk down a couple of steps to enter. I would lay on the floor of that room and Callie and her siblings, Owange, Sunshine Face, Petite Guillame and Dottie, would crawl all over me and play with my hair and clothes. It was such fun! The day they figured out how to climb the couple of steps was they day the apartment got infested with kittens! We gave all the others away, including the mother, but kept Callie. She was with me for over 10 years.

She wasn't much for being held, instead she had what I called "ok, you may pet me now" time. When it was time for lovin' she'd jump up on my lap and purr. When she got happy she'd lift one of her front paws and flex her claws in the air and when she got really happy she'd start to drool from the corner of her mouth.

She wasn't the most social cat in the world, she'd hide for days without me seeing her. That's why I didn't notice anything wrong with her until it was too late. I was used to not seeing her, so not seeing her didn't seem odd.

My poor, poor baby lasted a couple of weeks, which was far longer than I thought.

I am so sad. I loved her so much. My poor, sweet baby...

Equipment Malfunction

2007-11-16T10:15:00.001-06:00

My packaging machine started malfunctioning this week. Normal operation is as follows:

Pour roasted beans or grounds into the hopper.
Set the code for the weight needed
Start operation
Beans or grounds flow into weigh bucket
Weigh bucket stops when correct weight is reached
Place bag under spout
Press foot-switch to open hopper
Operation continues automatically

Everything still works like it should, but the foot-switch is operating as if someone were standing on it, that means it fills and dumps, fills and dumps, fills and dumps just as fast as the machine will go.

The other day we had 25 cases of 36 to fill -- that's 900 bags. Normally one person can fill one box in about 5 minutes. The machine was working so fast that two of us had to work in tandem, one person filling, the other sealing, and we were completing boxes in about 3-1/2 minutes (our record was 2:55)!!

I had an electrician come in and look at the machine, he said it's not the foot-switch, it's probably a circuit board in the machine. I looked at the manual, in 1998 that part was $275. I wonder what it's going to cost in 2007?

Ah, life's an adventure. Good thing we made the work fun because it could have easily sucked.