Muggsy's Brain

Marty Sundvall (12/12/1965 - 5/13/2012) WARNING: Some of this post may be too graphic for some readers. My friend Marty was looking pretty bad back in February. His legs and feet got so swollen he couldn't even tie his shoes and his skin and eyes were taking on a sickly yellow hue. In his words: I had been feeling weird for a couple weeks. In that time my energy was zapped, I was very disoriented, my abdomen and feet started to swell and my eyes were an ugly shade of yellow. Being a stoic Minnesotan, he ignored it and continued life as usual, teaching classes at SCSU and the Minnesota School of Business, and having a few cocktails at the White Horse. But his Saturday and Sunday sojourns to the bar left him feeling sick and he was in bed by early Sunday evening. Monday morning he could barely walk. I got up in time to catch the bus to St Cloud State and opted to tough it out. Well, the bus stop is probably 500 feet from my office and I had to stop 4 times to be...

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...

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 shou...

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, ...

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 b...

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 ...

Wow. I'm just stunned. Anyone who has had anything to do with community theater in St. Cloud in the past 20 years has worked in some capacity with Seth Parent. And I am sure there are many people who drive around here who saw him riding around on his custom 3-wheel motorcycle with the quarter-barrel beer kegs as gas tanks. Seth always got the bad guy roles. Well, just look at him, the dark eyes, the goatee, the dark hair... he also had a love of medieval weaponry and a penchant for magic. He made a great bad guy. But he also had a funny, intelligent part that we all got to see in rehearsal and read in his writing. When he wasn't acting he worked. When I first met him he was working as a skinner at the Long Prairie slaughterhouse. He had to quit when his wrists just couldn't stand the strain anymore, I don't think anyone had thought of carpel tunnel syndrome back in those days. So he left the glamorous world of the abattoir for the bindery at Quebecor. I didn...