I'd been craving buffalo chicken wings for weeks when I found myself sitting at an overpriced airport bar at LAX, clenching the free meal vouchers the airline gave me for effing up my flight. So it wasn't difficult to choose an item from the menu. And as everyone knows whenever you eat wings, you have to drink beer, so I ordered one of those too.

Now typically whenever you eat food in a bar, people tend to leave you alone. They're busy drinking and socializing and having a good time. But airport bars are different. People drink in airport bars not out of choice, but out of boredom. They have a long time to wait, so they decide to tie one on simply because it beats sitting in the waiting area listening to announcements and staring at the fat couple in matching Indianapolis Colts sweatshirts. But even though they're in a bar and even though they're drinking, they're not having fun. Despite the disco hits pumping out of the jukebox at deafening levels.

What I'm getting at is that as soon as my appetizer arrives, I come to two terrifying realizations. 1) Buffalo wings are extremely messy and extremely difficult to eat. 2) My fumbling attempts to eat buffalo wings are now going to be the sole source of entertainment for this entire bar.

With this in mind, I dig in. And it's even worse than I expected. These are some saucy wings, and the three or four napkins the bartender provided might not be enough. With every bite, my face gets covered in buffalo juice and ranch dressing, and I have to mop it down. I don't even bother wiping the orange grease off of my hands, except when I need to take a swig of beer.

And all the time, the Asian couple across the bar stares unapologetically. The guy to my right watches in furtive, darting glances as he pretends to read a sign, but I can feel his eyes on me. All around the room, every last person stops staring into space and starts watching me eat. I realize then that quickly this will either become extremely annoying or extremely funny. Then I start giggling uncontrollably and morph into an orange, greasy madman.

It's about then when I'm saved by someone even more entertaining than I am. This guy who looks a lot like the principal in The Breakfast Club comes in, already drunk off his ass. "I want the biggest beer you got and a Jack Daniel's on the rocks!" he shouts. "And make it a double! What time do you close? How much time do I got?"

The bartender tells him they close at 12:15, but the guy's not even listening to the bartender. He's noticed the juke, which is playing "Word Up" by Cameo and now he's dancing.

I finish my wings, tag off, and let Principal Vernon run the show from here on out. I got a plane to catch.

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Just as it was when I attended high school, there are three high schools in Duluth. There are also high schools in the neighboring towns of Superior, Proctor, and Hermantown. Of these six high schools, my alma mater, Robert E. Denfeld High School, is the only one that had its very own hairstyle for girls.

It's not that none of the girls at the other high schools had Denfeld Hair. (Good Lord, they certainly did up in Proctor!) I'm saying that it was at Denfeld that this hairstyle was perfected. Also, the term "Denfeld Hair" was coined not by students of Denfeld, but by all the other kids in the community. Also, at the time that I attended Denfeld, nearly 98% of girls in attendence had some version of Denfeld Hair.

My introduction to Denfeld Hair began not at Denfeld, but at Morgan Park Junior High, when certain girls were secretly apprenticed by older, much-cooler girls who taught them the art. These girls immediately became, and continued to be, the most popular girls in school. The message hit hard and it hit during the most formative years of adolescence: If you are a girl and you want to be popular, then this is the hairstyle that will be required of you.

In junior high, classes began at 7:45am and most students had at least a 30-minute bus ride. If you were a girl and you wanted to be popular, you'd have to get up at at least 5am to prepare your Denfeld Hair.

My high school yearbooks show nothing of the secret rituals, but the junior high yearbooks do. There are frequent snapshots of girls posing proudly with cans of Aquanet, much as later in life they'd pose proudly with bottles of Seagram's Golden Wine Coolers. There are also photos of girls sitting on the floor next to their lockers using curling irons which had been clandestinely plugged into the school's power supply. This was a common site back then. I'm sure that these days such behavior has been outlawed.

How to describe Denfeld Hair? It was often but not always long, and certainly curly. But the essential part was the bangs -- an enormous roto-tiller of bangs complete with cantilevers and flying buttresses, somehow defying gravity and hanging above the girl's beautiful, twinkling eyes. A few girls had straightish hair on the sides and in the back, but many went even further and spread the grandeur all about the entire head. The only other place I can think of where you might find hair like this is at a beauty pageant in the state of Texas.

Some of the worst days of my secondary education occurred on humid, rainy days. Days when Mother Nature deemed that Denfeld Hair would be difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish. On these days, girls would come to school with "flat" hair. They would scream at you for the smallest indescretion. They would cry constantly. It was horrid.

There is one memory of high school I will always carry, and that is of a certain hockey game I attended in my junior year. It was Denfeld against Central. There was this girl from Central there; I remember that she was blonde and was wearing a letter jacket. One by one, we all noticed her. We'd motion to her and say, "Wow." Then, when it was established that she was white hot, we started talking about why she was white hot, because it's not like we could make out her body and it's not like she was any prettier than most girls.

It was the hair. She didn't have Denfeld Hair at all. Her hair was straight, blonde, with very little product. She certainly didn't use hairspray or a curling iron. If you were to touch this hair, it would feel soft. You could run your fingers through it without getting them all snagged up in it. And if she liked you, you could imagine that she'd actually let you touch her hair. Unlike with a Denfeld girl, touching her hair would be an act of affection. It wouldn't be a ceremony for a fat lip.

This (our adoration of this girl) was to me, one of many indications that the world I'd grown up in was changing. I've heard that Denfeld Hair hung on for many years after I graduated, but considering my memory of the incoming freshmen girls, I don't believe that it hung on for all that long.

Very rarely, I still see West Duluth women with Denfeld Hair, just as I still see guys with mullets and people wearing acid wash. But it's rare.

If you're gonna do it, you might as well go all the way. If you're gonna make yourself look like something from Falcon Crest, well, then you better well own it. Make the whole fricken metropolitan area name it after you.

I'm so proud. DHS, muthafukka. DHS.

\m/ UH!

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A few days ago, I found a folder full of poems and stories I’d written 10 or 12 years ago, before I had weblogs and newspapers and comic strips to satisfy my creative jones. The stories were all two- or three-page fragments that had some potential but never got off the ground. The poems were fairly boring exercises in language.

Still, it was a lot of fun to read. I’m pretty certain that I never showed any of this stuff to anyone. I barely remember writing it, except for one story fragment about an elaborately entangled pair of non-friends. I remember thinking about that one a lot.

I’m still not going to share most of it with anyone, because it’s either just works in progress or else of interest to no one but me. But I will share the following prose poem, which made me smile. I don’t remember writing it at all.

Beige

A man walks out of his house all decked out in beige. Beige shirt, hat, jacket, trousers, hair, and eyes. Hops into his little beige car and zips off to his little beige job where he’ll sip a steaming cup of beige java, flip some paperwork in front of himself and sigh in delight. Meets some buddies for lunch, beige boys just like him, they slip on down to the Beige Room or, no, maybe today he’s just beige-baggin’ it. Before long, he returns to that little beige home, (Did I mention it was beige?) where his beige little wife gives him a beige little peck on his beige little cheek. And after serving him up a plateful of beige, she slowly squeezes into a hot little beige number, tears back the beige comforter from their little beige bed and mounts him like he’s a beige stallion, screaming, “Fuck me, beige boy! Fuck me ’til I’m brown!”

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ME: Hey, did I tell you I solved my laundry problem?
HER: How so?
ME: I had to admit to myself that I’d never be able to keep up with the elaborate systems I previously had in mind. Now, it’s just clean or dirty, with no gray area.
HER: Interesting.
ME: Anything clean gets hung up in the closet. Anything dirty goes down the hole [a trap door in my closet floor that leads to the basement].
HER: Wait, wait. So what if you wear a shirt, but think you might wear it again without washing it?
ME: It goes back in the closet. It’s still clean.
HER: But what if you wear something to the bar…
ME: Down the hole.
HER: But what if you’re going to the bar again, and you don’t want to get your other clothes smoky?
ME: Down the hole. There’s no room for argument. If it’s clean, it’s clean. If it’s dirty in any way, I cram it down the hole. All bar clothes go down the hole without hesitation.
HER: Hmm.
ME: The thing is, I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m not going to efficiently sort my clothes by stages of dirtiness. I have no tolerance for dinginess in my life, and I’m tired of being surrounded by it. From now on, if something is less than immaculate, I cram it down the hole and that’s that.
HER: Sounds good.
ME: I’m not just talking about laundry.

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This is a story my mom told me on my most recent visit to her house. Let me just say, I was pretty shocked, even though she related it in the most mundane way, as if she was talking about a new recipe for egg salad. There I was half listening, paying more attention to the Dawson-era Family Feud on the Game Show Network to tell you the truth, when suddenly the point of her story hit me.

"Wha? Hey...wait, WAIT. BACK UP."

There is luridness in my genes, folks. Anyway the story goes like this.

A long time ago, I'd guess in the late 1920s, my grandpa's brother got a girl pregnant. The trouble was, he was married to someone else at the time. And while divorces may grow on trees these days, back then they were a little more difficult to arrange.

Now, getting pregnant out of wedlock was a scandalous thing back then. But it happened and people understood that. However, even more scandalous -- downright immoral and unforgivable in fact -- was giving birth out of wedlock. That could not be tolerated. If you got knocked up, you had to get married. No questions.

My grandpa's brother really wanted to get a divorce and marry the new girl, who he preferred to his wife anyway. But time kept passing. Birth was imminent. There was only one solution.

My grandpa, who was single at the time, stepped in and married the girl for him.

"Wha? Hey...wait, WAIT. BACK UP."

Think about that situation for a moment. Imagine being married to your brother's mistress, who is pregnant with his child. Meanwhile, your brother is married to someone else, but wants to be married to your wife.

Eventually, the brother got his divorce. Here's where things really get interesting. My grandpa and the girl then divorced each other so that the true lovebirds could finally be together.

My family tree is full of stuff like this. My dad's two brothers, at one time, were married to a mother and daughter. My eldest sisters married two brothers. Likewise, my other sister and my brother wound up with a brother and sister as mates.

No wonder I'm single. Sheesh.

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Re-reading that last post, I was reminded of this game I made up when I was a kid. It was called "Really Really," and it went a little something like this.

I'd hold my head in my hands, and think about how I was really, really inside my body. I was really in there. Really. I could look in a mirror or at a picture of myself, but I could never really look at myself. Not really. All these other people around me were likewise really inside their bodies, too, and I could never be them.

Even more mind-blowing was that life was happening "Right Now." Think about it; and I don't mean any of this in the abstract sense, I mean think about it literally. Freaky.

The whole thing was fun and scary and dizzying. Before long, I didn't need to think out the details anymore. All I had to do was sit somewhere quiet and repeat the words "Really Really Really Really" and/or "Right Now Right Now Right Now" over and over. If I had a few minutes before Seseme Street, maybe I'd rip off a quick game of Really Really, and then sit down for some Oscar the Grouch action.

I was probably 6 years old at the time. The thing is, if I had a kid who was doing junk like this, I think I'd be seriously worried. But to me, it was just fun.

Really Really. I don't think I've ever told anyone about that.

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TV news does a lot to piss me off. And it really is my fault, because, well, why am I even watching this crap?

But one thing that truly chaps my ass is when they talk about "your weekend," or when they discuss "your work week," or when they talk about "what to expect on your holiday." Listen: this artificial schedule of yours has nothing to do with me. For me, weeks, weekends, and holidays are meaningless.

Like a whole lot of other people, I don't get up and go to work in the morning. I don't drive during so-called "drive time." I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to buy at Home Depot this weekend or what I'm going to eat at Applebee's. I don't own a dog. And I certainly don't get three days off to honor Christopher Fucking Columbus. So please, stop talking to me as if I do.

There are so many people -- cab drivers, waiters, nurses, and yes, postal workers -- whose lives exist completely outside the schedule officially deemed as "normal." What do these people do with themselves? What do you do when you get off work at an hour when, aside from bars, most businesses are closed? Do you go to sleep immediately, then get up early? Or, like me, do you stay up all night putting weird shit onto the internet?

I have always been nocturnal. I remember my dad talking to me about it once when I was about 12. "It's not good for you," he said. "Why?" I asked, halfway appalled. "Because you're spending too much time alone. You don't get to interact with people."

That sounded pretty good to me. I had five brothers and sisters, a mom and dad, and a grandpa. I was tired of interacting with people. I wanted to interact with Showtime After Hours and my Commodore VIC-20.

Now, things are a bit different, however. While I still love B-movies and microchips, lack of socialization is my number one complaint. Oh, sure I do plenty of awesome things like go to shows and to bars and random peoples' apartments. I do have days off and I don't get off work that late. But I'm talking about quiet socialization. The "Hi, how was your day?" kind of socialization. The "Let's just have a sandwich and watch TV" kind of socialization. Until you're deprived of it, you'd be surprised how much that kind of stuff builds up, and you don't appreciate how nice it actually is.

Which brings me back to my original point: I know there are tons of people out there who are in a similar predicament of being forced into a kind of solitude by the established schedule. Not that I expect an answer on this blog, but I wonder what they do about it. And I wonder how I can meet them.

I suspect that a lot of people give up. Maybe it doesn't seem like giving up to them, but to me it does. Maybe they stay home all the time and play with their cats. Well, if that works for them, that's great. But it wouldn't work for me. It would seem like giving up.

Most of my co-workers have families. I imagine that they come home and talk some with their spouse and that is probably pretty nice. They're probably frustrated for other reasons, like maybe they don't get enough time with their kids or their spouse. This problem of mine probably doesn't even occur to them.

It's awful. It truly is. But I have to say that personally, it is not nearly as awful as having to wake up to a screeching alarm clock every morning, or having to wear a tie every day, or having a job that gives you a fat ass.

Or having a job that doesn't pay a million dollars an hour, for that matter.

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I want to talk about this album, because it's been one of my favorites for about 12 or 13 years, and because I have always known that whatever it is about this album that appeals to me, it will not translate to others at all. I would never recommend this album to anyone, and I would never make a copy of it or put any of the songs on a mix. Yet I have been obsessed with it for over a third of my life.

The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking was the first solo album from Roger Waters after he split up wth Pink Floyd, and in fact, Roger Waters presented the idea to his bandmates at the same time he presented them with The Wall, but they rejected it. Like many of the Pink Floyd releases, this album is a "concept album." Each of the songs titles is a time followed by a parenthetical subtitle, beginning with the first track, "4:30 A.M. (Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad)" and ending with "5:11 A.M. (The Moment of Clarity)" The songs unfold in real time, and tell the story of a man having a dream.

It's a dumb idea, yes. Yet somehow, Roger Waters convinced Eric Clapton to rip it up on guitar, which he does incredibly.

The dream starts with the man and his wife travelling on a road trip through Germany. They pick up a couple of hitch hikers, and somehow, when the wife and the guy hitch hiker fall asleep, the guy screws the hot girl hitch hiker. We hear the great/stupid line:

"Fixed on the front of her Fassbinder face was the kind of a smile that only a rather dull child could have drawn while attempting a graveyard in the moonlight."

Suddenly, then, we're thrust into a chase scene with "Arabs with Knives at the Foot of the Bed," which somehow eventually morphs into a great single, "4:41 A.M. (Sexual Revolution)," that contains the ultra-sexy line:

"Hey, girl, as I've always said I prefer your lips red, not what the good Lord made, but what he intended."

And yet ends with the line:

"I awoke in a fever
the bedclothes were all soaked in sweat.
She said 'You've been having a nightmare,
and it's not over yet.'
She picked up the doggie in the window,
the one with the waggily tail,
and she put him to bed
between two bits of ... bread."

WTF? After the word, "bread," we hear the sound of the woman eating a sandwich. I repeat, WTF?

"4:50 A.M (Go Fishing)" is by far my favorite song on the album, and even prompted me to take a road trip to Devil's Tower back in 1996. In this portion of the dream, the man packs up his wife and kids, and "a trunk full of books about everything: about solar devices and how nice natural childbirth is," and moves to the wilderness of Wyoming. They build a cabin, and rough it:

"We cut down some trees, and trailed our ideals through the forest glade. We dammed up the stream and the kids cooled their heels in the fishing pool we made. We held hands and we exchanged bands and we practically lived off the land."

Things soon go south for the young couple, however. The kids catch bronchitis, which probably marks the first and only time the word "bronchitis" is ever used in a rock song. The wife has an affair with a "friend from the east, rot his soul." The couple splits up, they abandon the cabin, and the man sets out on the road, hitch hiking of course.

After the song with the best title, "4:58 A.M. (Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin)," we get another single, "5:01 A.M. (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking)" wherein we meet a Hell's Angel (portrayed on the album by Jack Palance, who at the time this album was recorded was also aptly hosting "Ripley's Believe it or Not" on TV) and a housewife from Encino with "sweet vodka and tobacco on her breath ... another number in your little black book." The man thinks about suicide, encouraged by Yoko Ono, despite that fact that he is "too scared and too good-looking." After some samples from the movie Shane, we're ready for the denoument.

Aside from the generaly weirdness of it and the rippin' Clapton guitar work, there's also the ongoing, barely audible dialogs provided by Palance and a crew of actors, not to mention the female background singers, sound effects, and even more general weirdness.

Since releasing Pros and Cons, Waters has put out two other albums: the severely dated Radio K.A.O.S which doesn't do it for me despite the fact that it contains the greatest verse ever*, and Amused to Death, which by all appearances seems to be about watching TV. He has a new album due out at the end of this month. You can bet I'll buy it as soon as it's available. And you can bet it will be unintelligible, difficult to listen to, and weirder than hell. Who are these albums made for? Me, I guess.

I'm not proud of that.

* "You wake up in the morning, get something for the pot.
Wonder why the sun makes the rocks feel hot.
Draw on the walls, eat, get laid.
Back in the good old days.

Then some damn fool invents the wheel.
Listen to the whitewalls squeal.
You spend all day looking for a parking spot.
Nothing for the heart. Nothing for the pot."

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Here's something that only one or two people know: When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend. It wasn't anything like the imaginary friend relationship you see on TV and in movies. My friend didn't have a name or even a face. I would never think of saying something ridiculous like, "Mom, don't stand in front of Jean-Claude!" In fact, I held those kids and their idiotic friends in contempt.

At the time, if someone had asked me if I had an imaginary friend, I would have said no. I never thought this being was real. And as I said, it never had a name. But in retrospect, that's what it was.

My friend was a blank slate. It had no personality whatsoever, and knew absolutely nothing about the world I lived in. So in my head (never out loud) I would have to explain whatever I was doing or whatever was going on, in terms that were simple at first but eventually extremely detailed, really thinking about whatever task it was instead of just doing it. Maybe there would be questions and maybe I would answer them. It was fun to think about things in this way.

This friend stuck around a lot longer than you would think. Most people think that imaginary friends are a toddler thing, and maybe they hang around through kindergarten. This one stuck around well into my teens, and beyond. In some ways, it is still here.

At some point, when I was about 10, the explaining stopped and transformed into a more general type of fantasizing. I guess you would call it daydreaming. But it was still the same feeling -- a feeling of stepping outside of real life and thinking about things from a different perspective. Questioning things. Examining things and wondering why they were as they were, if they couldn't be different, and what if.

To this day, if I don't get some good quality personal time every day to just live in my own head, I kind of go nuts and feel extremely stressed. I've come to the conclusion that daydreaming is essential to my well-being.

This website is a product of my relationship with this imaginary friend. If you think about it, it isn't much different from the one-sided dialog I had when I was 7. The time I spend writing here is a sort of productive, public meditation, among many, many other things.

I've explained on this site before that when I write, I go right out to lunch. The world around me dissolves, and I completely enter a trance which is, not surprisingly, a lot like the trance that you enter when you read a good book or get absorbed in a movie. Suddenly you are no longer sitting on your bed in the lamplight. You don't physically exist at all anymore. You are pure energy.

I think a lot of people have stuff like this, but no one discusses it. Which is understandable because, well, why would they? It's a personal thing.
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Since tomorrow is Sunday, I have a recommendation for everyone. You know those glossy coupon-magazine pull-outs that come in the Sunday paper? I love those. If you get the Sunday paper, I recommend pulling those out, examining them in detail, and really thinking about the products advertised inside. If these ads are any indication of the state of our society, then, wow, I really don't know what to think.

Here is a list of things I found in the glossy coupon ads in the past:

- pudding that tastes like pie
- pills for losing 14 pounds in 5 days
- sausages endorsed by the host of Family Feud
- statuettes of John Wayne and Judy Garland under glass domes
- big plastic frogs that ribbit when someone walks by
- real turkey meat ground up and reprocessed to look like a turkey breast
- sweatpants embroidered with flowers
- hot dogs with pasurized process cheese food injected right inside
- men's slacks up to waist size 60
- "three-dimensional" corn snacks
- tartar control cat food
- cat clocks that meow on the hour
- chocolate flavored vitamin shakes
- one-size-fits-all bras
- oatmeal with "dinosaur eggs" in every bowl that hatch before your very eyes
- salad dressing made to taste like pizza
- breakfast cereal made to taste like donuts

Once I saw an ad for cereal, milk, and a plastic spoon all in one package, promising to eliminate preparation and cleanup, thus making breakfast easier. Apparantly, people aren't eating enough cereal due to the intensive prepapation and cleanup involved.

There are all kinds of ads for people "on the go." This is true: I actually once saw an ad for pretzels that said, "ready in seconds." Who knew that good food is so easy to make?

My favorite ad is for a radio that is about the size of a silver dollar and is attached to an elastic band, which you stretch around your head. Earbuds dangle from the elastic band, and the whole works is waterproof. The device promises to relieve the boredom of swimming.

The boredom of swimming.

Think about that for awhile, and try not to have a seizure.
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- WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
- Mom said to take this turkey out for tomorrow and clean it.
- DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING?
- No. I've never done it before.
- LET ME DO IT. I KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO DO IT.

[20 Minutes Later]

- WHAT THE HELL? WHERE ARE THE GIBLETS?
- You probably left them inside.
- NO. I HAD THEM ON THE COUNTER WITH THE NECK. WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY?
- Well, here's the neck.
- YEAH, BUT WHERE'S THE FUCKEN GIBLETS?
- Maybe you threw them away.
- NO. THERE'S THE BAG IN THE GARBAGE. THEY WERE IN THAT BAG. I TOOK THEM OUT AND PUT THEM ... SOMEWHERE
- What's this?
- THAT'S THE ASS.
- You cut off the ass? Aren't you supposed to leave that on?
- HELL NO. I ALWAYS CUT OFF THE ASS.
- Mom, what do you do with the ass of the turkey? On or off?
- It depends. If anyone wants to eat it, leave it on.
- My grandma said it was the best part. It's all fat.
- YEAH, YEAH. "IT'S GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU."
- No one here is old enought to want to eat the turkey's ass.
- ARRGGGHH! WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN GIBLETS?!
- Oh, hey. I bet I know. [Points at the dogs, who immediately look guilty]
- Yee. Haw. Dogs eating raw giblets. We're gonna have an adventure tonight. Hope you got a lot of paper towels.
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Halloween is coming up soon, and that's the second-best reason to run out and rent Motel Hell immediately. The best reason, of course, is that this movie is so awesome I can hardly contain myself. I came home from work at 5am and threw this DVD in for some pre-dawn relaxation. Little did I know I would be in hysterics for the next hour and a half.

The first of the big belly laughs comes about 5 seconds into the movie. Even the credits are funny.

Rory Calhoun is old dude who was in about a million cheap westerns back when they made such things. Nancy Parsons is best known as Ms. Ballbricker from Porky's. Wolfman Jack is Wolfman Jack, and apparantly was such a star in 1980 that he gets top billing, even though he only has a cameo.

The plot is both familiar and ridiculous. Farmer Vincent (Calhoun) lives in the country with his sister Ida (Parsons), where they run a farm with a couple of sideline businesses. First is the ominous Motel Hello, with its flickering neon sign. Second is Farmer Vincent's Smoked Meats, which are best smoked meats in the world.

I think you know where this is going.

The secret recipe, of course, uses human flesh mixed in with the pork to spice things up. "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's Fritters." The humans (or "animals" as Vincent calls them) are kept buried alive up to their chins in the "secret garden" with sacks over their heads. When Vincent and Ida "plant" them, they cut their vocal cords to keep them quiet. Vincent is kind enough to play 8-tracks for them so they don't get bored.

But none of this even matters. What matters is they way this stupid scenario is delivered. This movie is a study in how to make a B-movie, and everything is executed perfectly.

The unhidden, unforgiving backbends that the movie takes purely for the inclusion of nudity is a prime example. Why the hell does the sheriff take this girl to lover's lane so they can watch a drive-in movie with binoculars? Well, so that when the squad car pulls up to the make-out spot, the naked people in the cars will panic and do the natural thing, which is jump out of their vehicles and run around frantically jiggling. Of course. Who wouldn't do that?

Other scenes are just shockingly lurid. For instance, there's a scene with a kinky couple who show up at the motel with a tacky little pamphlet, wanting to know if the place is "cool." I can't and wouldn't even describe what happens next. It's too outrageous and too funny. You need to see it for yourself.

Also, there is the sympathetic attitude toward Farmer Vincent. He's not a bad guy. He prays to Jesus every day. He refuses to have premarital sex. Even the canniabalism, he does out of social concern: "There's too many people in the world and not enough food," he says. "Now this takes care of both problems at the same time."

Really, Farmer Vincent has only committed one sin in his entire life, which he reveals at the end. It's the punchline of the movie, really. Don't miss it.

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OK, so these fine people did it. That means I must do it as well. Because I follow all the trends. But check back again tomorrow, too, for I might just set a new trend. You never know.

The 1970s.

I am living in a three-bedroom house with my parents, my five brothers and sisters, and my grandfather. When it comes to music, there is a policy of "equal time," meaning no one gets to dominate the hi-fi.

My parents listen to Charley Pride, Conway Twitty, and Loretta Lynn. My older sisters listen to "devil music" such as Nazareth, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. The rest of my siblings listen to John Denver, England Dan & John Ford Coley, and other forms of pansy music. My grandfather only listens to the constantly droning AM radio in the kitchen. He sings along to "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon & Garfunkel. Sometimes we get to hear his old 78s played on the Victrola, which you have to wind up by hand. These are special times.

I like all of this music. But equal time in my case means I get to play my Cat in the Hat album, which is kind of scary to me at the time.

My older sisters get married and move out, and my youngest sister discovers disco. My brother buys a kick-ass system. They start throwing parties, and, to keep me out of the way, they always let me be the DJ. I like the song "Ring My Bell" by Anita Ward, and I play it all the time even though my mom gets mad because it's "dirty." This is my first experience with rock-n-roll rebellion. I play nothing but disco until some guy informs me that disco sucks. Then I become obsessed with The Cars and Blondie. Deborah Harry's heavy rouge excites me. I play "Another One Bites the Dust" and some stoner explains the "meaning" to me. I think that's cool.

The Early 1980s

MTV is everything. I discover Van Halen, which is better than anything I've ever heard. My sister takes me to see Purple Rain in the theater, and to see Joan Jett in concert. I like Motley Crue, but not as much as my classmates. I hate Boy George, but secretly not as much as I let on. Michael Jackson's "Thriller," Duran Duran's "The Reflex," John Cougar, etc. Madonna. Good lord, Madonna.

My brother gets heavily into making mix tapes -- both on cassette and reel-to-reel. His record and tape collection becomes huge. Sometimes he gives me money and tells me to go buy him a record; any record will do. One day my insane cousin shows up with a giant stack of records. They play them so loud that it is literally painful to be in the house. Of the artists they play, I am very impressed by The Ramones and Willie Nelson. I play the resulting Ramones tapes all the time, and my mom actually agrees that they are cool. They remind her of the '50s. This embarrasses me, but makes my life easier.

Eventually, all my siblings move out, and so does my grandfather. I get a boom box to fill in the void of my brother's awesome stereo. I go to his house and transfer my favorite albums to cassette -- Van Halen's "1984," Blondie's "Autoamerican," and Eddie Murphy's first stand-up album. I make a mix tape of my favorite 45s -- "Our House" by Madness, "Jack & Diane" by John Cougar, and "She Bop" by Cyndi Lauper.

Whenever there is a top 100 countdown on KZIO, I tape the songs I like. It pisses me off that there are snippets of DJ talk at the beginning and end of every song, but there's nothing I can do about that.

I hear Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It" for the first time, and my mind is blown. It is a blend of my two favorite things -- music and comedy. I ask around at school and find out about the Dr. Demento radio show, which is on Sunday nights from 10-12. I begin listening and taping religiously. I meet Lundgren, who is into the same stuff. We comb Young at Heart Records and Carlson Book looking for novelty music. I gradually forsake normal, popular music and start listening to the likes of Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, Barnes & Barnes, and Cab Calloway. I join the Demento Society, and start exchanging letters and tapes with other kids interested in the same music (plus one guy in New York who's like 30).

Sometimes I dig out my grandpa's 78s, because they now fit my musical tastes. Billy Jones & Ernie Hare.
-"What are you kids doing in that apple tree?"
-"Well, we might be playin' marbles but we ain't."

The Mid/Late 80s

Junior High is a nightmare. I still like novelty music, but not exclusively. I see Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video on MTV, and instantly become a Dylan fan.

When Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" comes out, everyone thinks it is the greatest song ever. Until MTV starts playing it every five minutes. Everyone loves "Parents Just Don't Understand" by DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. For some reason, George Michael escapes being called a faggot, and it's OK to like him. I agree with all this, but not with everyone's obsession with the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, or the movie Top Gun, for that matter.

I briefly believe that Michael Jackson sucks, until "Dirty Diana" comes out. This is something I can stand behind. Also, the "Bad" video is no "Thriller," but it is still good. I recite the opening dialogue along with everyone else. Even kids with nothing else in common enjoy the exchange, "Is that what they teach you at that little sissy school of yours?"

High school. The decline of western civilizaion: the metal years. At first, heavy metal is all I listen to. Mostly, I like classic metal such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. But Metallica is in there too -- I buy all the CDs. I see Metallica in concert. I am not above hair metal, and it figures prominently in my rotation. I watch Headbanger's Ball every weekend.

I pay a guy I know to steal CDs from Kmart. He gets busted on his second run.

Metal tapers off toward the end of high school. I hear Ministry's "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste," and discover a whole new way to piss my parents off. I start admitting some things to myself that I never would before. I like U2, the B-52s, and REM. This is rough to admit, for some reason. Pink Floyd makes its first appearance in my collection, and it fits late adolescence perfectly.

The Early 90s

The whole Nirvana thing happens, of course. I see Tori Amos' "Silent All These Years" on MTV and start liking her as well. I go to college and meet people from Other Places who know Other Things. My soundtrack is Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails (Pretty Hate Machine), The Breeders, and Pink Floyd. I go to Lollapalooza II & IV, and see Ministry, The Breeders, Pearl Jam, Cypress Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Porno For Pyros, Smashing Pumpkins, Ice Cube, George Clinton, the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, et. al. On the drive down to Lollapalooza II, we have two tapes: the first Violent Femmes album, and a cassingle of "Jump Around" by House of Pain. This is just fine by us.

I get a summer job in a factory, where they play the radio all day. I hear the Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" approximately 10,000 times during those three months.

I am very poor. I wear clothes that I have found. I have one pair of jeans, which are hand-me-downs from my girlfriend. I joke about how I'm lucky that MY grunge period is coinciding with THE grunge period. This is funny.

At the end of college, I start going to bars. I go to RT Quinlan's every week for open mic night. There is not much live music in Duluth, but my favorite band to see is Puddle Wonderful, which is an early Hog Damage band.

The Mid 90s

Perhaps because I am too old for my years, I stop listening to popular music altogther. I do not have cable, so I do not have MTV. I am completely unaware of anything happening in music. Sometimes I ask people I know what is good now, and most of them say "nothing."

I start listening to jazz. My favorite is John Coltrane. I listen to Coltrane, drink a lot of coffee, and read fat Russian novels. I am unhappy. This is my life.

The Late 90s

Live music begins to take off in Duluth. The Norshor (the Stage Door Lounge) starts having live shows. The Brewhouse opens. Random Radio starts. The Northland Reader begins publication, followed by the Ripsaw. I write and draw for the Reader and start frequenting the Norshor and the Brewhouse regularly. I meet people who are Trying To Make Things Happen. My unhappy period ends.

Low is wonderful. I listen to "I Can Live in Hope" over and over. There is live music happening all the time, and I get in free to stuff most of the time.

I see Split Lip Rayfield at the Norshor and become infatuated with Bloodshot Records. I get into the Meat Purveyors, Trailer Bride, and the Sadies. I miss the Sadies' historic show at the Norshor, where only 4 or 5 people showed up, but I see them in their hometown of Toronto, where they blow away a packed house.

I intentionally start to get into the music I missed during my Coltrane period. I discover Portishead, and through them, trip hop. Suddenly all the music in my CD changer makes you want to have sex. Tricky, Mono, Air, and Alpha are my favorites.

The 00s

Two of the best shows I've seen locally happen around the Millenium. Low's "A Very Duluth Christmas" show -- when people actually danced to Low -- was the first. The Millenium party also rocked, simply because no one died.

I buy a computer, and eventually install a CD burner. I start downloading music illegally. I only have a dial-up connection, so I queue up about 15-20 songs every night before I go to bed, and in the morning I check to see if they worked. Eventually I give up downloading as I get tired of it.

I start borrowing CDs from people and burning them, and also buying CDs to trade in return. I acquire a lot of music this way. It turns out that I will listen to any kind of music. Music simply grabs me or it doesn't. I am not picky. I am not snobbish.

The trend continues, however, as my next computer has a huge hard drive, for the specific purpose of being my home jukebox. I install iTunes and plug into my stereo. I purchase an iPod, and inject this entire musical history directly into my brain.

Life is good.
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OK, I threatened to tell this story to a couple friends of mine on Tuesday night, and they covered their ears and chanted "not listening not listening not listening," so restrained myself. Then I realized, hey, this would make a pretty good blog post, because it ends with a startling twist. They replied that they didn't want to hear about any dog killing, and if I posted it, they would not read my blog until this post dropped off into the archives.

What I'm saying is, consider yourself warned.

My sister used to have this cute little lap dog named Daisy. I liked dogs of all kinds at that point in my life, and I thought Daisy was pretty cool. So when my sister moved to Germany, she left the dog at our house and I had the general responsibility of taking care of her.

I should mention that this occurred at the same time that I acquired the bedroom with the magazine pictures on the ceiling. Since my three sisters used to share that room, it had three beds--a regular bed and a set of bunk beds. I could sleep in any of these beds, but I most often chose the regular bed.

The thing about Daisy was that she liked to chew things. In particular, she liked to get up in the night and chew things. Consequently, I was supposed to tie her to my bed post with a leash at night, so she would just sleep in my bed and not chew up all the furniture.

OK, I think you can tell where this is going. One night I didn't sleep in the regular bed. I slept in the top bunk bed. And, stupidly stupidly stupidly, I clipped the leash on Daisy's collar and put the loop over the bedpost, as usual. Ugh. In the middle of the night, she leapt off the bed, and, since this was the top bunk, instead of landing safely on the floor as she normally did she was hung and instantly killed.

All of this was very traumatic. But. I promised a twist and here it is.

My sister was heartbroken, but eventually she moved into an apartment in Germany that allowed pets, and she got another dog, a huge male golden retriever named Reuben. When she moved back to the US, Reuben came with. This dog was in our house for probably 20 minutes before I started wrestling around with him. He seemed to be having fun, but suddenly he just snapped and completely mauled me. One of his teeth went halfway through my left hand, and he ripped a decent gash all the way around my right forearm. For some time, I had bandages on my arms and hands, and I looked like I'd attempted suicide.

So, while I still feel guilty for making a mistake that cost the life of one of my sister's dogs, I sometimes look down at the scars left by her other dog, and I feel like I've paid my dues.
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When my sisters were teenagers, they had pretty bizarre idea for decorating their room. One afternoon, when I was about five or six and our parents were out of the house, they clipped hundreds of pictures out of magazines and glued them to their ceiling. They completely covered the ceiling with overlapping photos taken from magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour. Our parents were furious, but what could they do?

A few years later, my sisters moved out and I inherited the room. I hated that ceiling, but my parents were old and not really motivated to remodel. So I lived with it for years. I didn't need magazines of naked women -- they were all over my ceiling. But by then they were out-of-style women with feathered hair and blue eye shadow. Friends would come over to visit and want to know why I had ads for Loreal and Maybelline all over my ceiling. I'd be mortified.

At night I would lay there forced to look at the pictures and, worse yet, read the words in the ads. "If my man can't wear English Leather, he wears nothing at all." When there are words in front of your face, you have to read them. It becomes a sort of OCD. "If I don't read the English Leather slogan nine times before I fall asleep, I do not sleep at all."

Once, I tried to clip my own pictures from magazines and glue them over the old ones. But it was an insane task. I didn't have many magazines except for Mad and Discover. And it wasn't worth the effort to cut out and paste up hundreds of pictures of Alfred E. Neuman and the Space Shuttle. I did about 1/8 of the ceiling before I gave up.

Eventually, when I got a bit older, I acquired some sheets of chip-board and screwed them to the ceiling to cover the magazine photos. This lead to even more OCD behavior, but it was much more pleasant. Every night before falling asleep, I'd look at the various patterns in the chip-board and see all kinds of images and scenes. It was kind of the white-trash equivilant of looking at constellations. "There's the guy with the huge eyes. There's the donkey. There's the Winnebago. There's the couple humping. There's Gene Simmons."

These days my bedroom ceiling has lots of glitter embedded into the textured paint. Once again, this was not my decision, and when we first moved here I thought it to be incredibly tacky. But now I sort of like it. The light from the street makes the glitter look kind of orange, like all the stars and planets have turned into Mars. It looks best in candlelight. When I look at it each night, I don't have any OCD routines. I just look.
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OK. It's been almost 24 hours since this happened, and I think I'm ready to talk about it now. Bear with me -- I might break down at any point.

So yesterday I came home from work and decided to make a tuna sandwich. I opened a can of tuna over the sink, and proceded to drain out the water. You know what I'm talking about; you push the lid of the can down to squeeze the water out of the tuna. Well, I must have pressed way too hard, because the lid of the can suddenly bent in half, causing the tuna to quite literally explode out of the can. Instantly I found myself wearing half a can of tuna. There was tuna on the wall, tuna on the floor, tuna all over the clean dishes. But mostly there was tuna all over me.

My natural response was to go absolutely apeshit. I tore off my shirt and plunged it under the tap. (At this point, your mental image of me should switch to Walter Matthau, as he's my official nude stand-in.) I started screaming and swearing, and as I was doing such, Ca-chee walked in, home from work. As I cleaned up the mess, I was slamming things down and thowing things and cussing like mad. Every time I thought I had it all cleaned up, I'd find more. The last glob I found was on the top of my foot.

Finally, it was all cleaned up. Ca-chee just looked at me and said, "Well, at least you're a passionate person."

Fucken-A. From now on I'm buying that tuna that comes in a sack. That is, if I ever eat tuna again.
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The first time I watched two gigantic animals fuck, it totally blew my mind. I can't remember how old I was, but I was just old enough to have a vague knowledge of the mechanics of sex, and of sperm and eggs and reproduction, etc.

See, every now and then, my brother's girlfriend used to take me to either her parents' house or her uncle's house to ride horses. So one time we came back from riding and I was told not to go into the barn. Let me tell you, I had absolutely no desire to go into the barn, because it sounded like a horse was being tortured in there. It was screaming in that eerie way that horses scream, and kicking its stall and stomping. So I just stood under a nearby tree and watched what transpired next.

A couple of guys trotted out this horse that was acting really weird. It was obviously agitated for some reason, and it wouldn't stand still. They did everything they could to make it stand still. Then, some other people trotted out a huge horse, and when I saw the ... uh ... size of it, I probably looked very, very funny. All the horses I had ever ridden were girl horses. This was obviously not a girl horse. How can I put this delicately? Its boner was bigger than me.

Some teenager saw me standing there gaping, and smirked. "If you think he's got a big one, you should see mine," he said. This sent me into gales of laughter.

It took a lot of people to keep these horses under control. And even then, it was a rough struggle. What I remember most is how literally insane the horses were. They both were screaming and obviously out of their minds. These normally docile animals had been turned violent and dangerous by lust. I had no idea that such a thing was possible. It didn't shock me or confuse me or scare me; it just amazed me.

Of course, it wasn't until I was much, much older that I found out that the same principle applies to people, and that it's a lot of fun.
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I sat at the local greasy spoon with the Devil, eating omelets and watching the rain. The Devil chose the taco omelet, whereas I, not being a flesh-eater, chose the vegetarian. The two of us sat in comfortable silence for a long time, until finally I brought up the subject of television game shows.

"Did you see Price is Right yesterday?" I asked, taking a sip of coffee to punctuate my question. I've found that such physical punctuations help to create a friendly, casual atmosphere between mortals and demons. "This sailor spun the wheel and landed right on the dollar. Then, when he got the extra spin, he landed right on the dollar again. I thought he was going to have a seizure."

"No, I didn't see that," the Devil said, wiping the grease from his Van Dyke beard with a paper napkin. "I stopped watching Price is Right after that scandal between Bob and his Beauties."

"I thought that was all a hoax," I said, tearing the crust from a slice of muffin toast, folding it in thirds, and popping it in my mouth. "At least that's what Bob said on Letterman."

"Well, even if it was a hoax--which I don't believe for a second--what bothered me was the way Bob let his hair turn gray." He paused poignantly, resting his fork on the edge of his plate and leaning forward. "As if a gray-haired man is any more innocent than a black-haired man. An insult to intelligence!"

"So what game shows do you watch now?" I asked, dumping pepper on my omelet with a vehemence unmatched in our lifetime.

"Well, sometimes I catch Jeopardy," the Devil said, peeling back the edge of his omelet to inspect and inventory the ingredients inside. "And I watch Wheel of Fortune pretty regularly. But what I really enjoy is my complete video library of Press Your Luck."

"I remember that show," I said, brushing crumbs from the front of my shirt with a mule-hair brush that I carry around specifically for that purpose. "That's the one with the Whammies. It aired back in the 1980s. I loved that show."

"Well, if you want, you can come over Friday night and we can watch a few episodes," he said, pretending to be spreading wild berry jelly on toast while actually sharpening a hunting knife and staring hungrily at an old lady�s Reagen-neck.

"Sounds great," I said, removing my clothing, getting down on all fours, and rubbing up against the table like a cat. "I'll bring a twelve pack of Mickey's Big Mouths."

"It's a date then," said the Devil, plunging his weapon into the old lady's windpipe. "Maybe we can even order some Chinese."

"My all-time favorite was Family Feud, back when Richard Dawson was the host," said the old lady, spraying blood from her neck and collapsing on the floor.

"What I wonder about," said the cook, zipping on a rubber jumpsuit and breaking out into a rash, "is whether these game show hosts ever fear for their lives. I saw Richard Dawson picked up and tossed around by one boisterous family."

"What about the time on The Price is Right when that woman was jumping up and down and she lost her tube top?" said the waitress, transforming herself into a red-winged blackbird and pecking sesame seeds from the top of a bran muffin. "Now that was funny."

"I'll never forget the time on The Newlywed Game," said the Devil, chopping up a potato sausage, rolling it in cash register tape, and smoking it, "when Bob Eubanks asked this woman 'Where is the strangest place you've ever made whoopie?' and she replied, 'In the ass.'"

"Well, I've got to go," I said, cutting two deep slashes in my back, pulling my lungs through the holes, and flapping them like wings. "It's already eleven o'clock, and I'm afraid the fish in my aquarium are starving."

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I would like to thank everyone who let me bowl with them last night. I had a wonderful time, and bowled a 129.

I would like to thank Whiplash, for insisting that everyone who got a strike do a shot of Jagermeister, and I would like to thank myself for seconding the motion. I'd like to thank fate for making my first ball of the night--which was also the first ball I'd bowled in ten years--a strike. I'd like to thank everyone who escorted me to the bar and purchased the many Jagermeisters that followed that. And I'd like to thank Whiplash again for wearing pants that were plaid, corduroy, and glittery all at the same time.

I'd like to thank the fine folks at Stadium Lanes, for charging only $1 a game, and for still having the same monochromatic scoring computers they installed in 1982, which look like something from NASA. I'd like to thank NASA, John Glenn, the crew of Apollo 11, and all the eggheads who made it possible.

I'd like to thank my nephew Bob for coincidentally being there, for purchasing an undeserved shot of Jagermeister for me, and for telling his teammates that he loved them like an uncle.

I would like to extend special thanks to the people at Culligan for providing me with fresh, cold water this morning, and to the folks at Arco for providing metallic-yet-life-giving coffee. Really, if I had a bagel right now it would be nice, but I could live without it.

Most of all, I'd like to thank the gods for letting that #10 pin stand, so that I didn't get a turkey. Had that happened, I might not be here today.
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I have always wanted to write/direct/produce a series of absolutely lurid, terrible, and offensive low-budget movies. Perhaps it is because I spent much of my teenage life watching "Up All Night" on the USA network (not to mention spending much of my pre-teen life watching Up All Night's predecessor, "Commander USA's Groovy Movies") or maybe I'm just a sick bastard. But here are some ideas I've had for treatments.

Escape from Retard Mountain | Sort of a Deliverance-type story about a troup of cheerleaders on a field trip, whose school bus runs into the ditch in the middle of the Appalachians. The girls are chased through the woods by raving inbreds, and progressively lose more and more clothing. Lots of nudity, slapstick comedy, and gratuitous girl-on-girl action.

Clusterfuck! | Some people say that the musical is dead. Well, if it isn't, this project would certainly finish it off.

Attack of the Shitheads | A chemical spill causes insanity and mutations among sewer workers. As putrid-smelling zombies come crawling out of the manholes, it is, for some reason, up to a sheriff and a waitress to save the town.

Inflate-a-mate | A lonely man purchases an inflatable love doll through the mail. At first, their relationship is idyllic. But as his fantasies grow more and more obsessive, the doll begins to take over, resulting in a mass-murderous outcome.

Stake My Wife, Please | In the spirit of TV's "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie," this is a comedy about a straightlaced man whose life is turned upside-down when his wife becomes a vampire. The entire soundtrack would be lifted from Starship's Greatest Hits.

Four on the Floor | Life is all about two things for John and Susan--auto theft and hot, hot sex. But when they hook up with another couple with similar interests, their interests expand accordingly.

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Or, as one former building manager put it, "The Nightmare Continues..."

- Flies. And bats. The first autumn we lived here, this place was infested with flies and bats. Though no bats ever entered our apartment, the flies came in, literally by the thousands. They'd cling to the windows, and every morning I'd awake to their buzzing and go around to kill them. To put this into perspective, every day there would be around 10 flies on each window, and we have seven windows. That's seventy flies per day, for about three or four weeks. It was pretty biblical. Now, the exterminators come out at the end of the summer and hose down the entire exterior of the building with chemicals. The bats were eliminated by a bat specialist, who actually put little one-way doors on all their holes, which allowed them to leave the building but not to get back in.

- Speaking of windows, sometimes it's nice to have seven 10' x 4' windows. But there are four or five days every winter when the wind blows really hard at just the right angle, so as to make it seem like you are living outside. Last winter, there was a week when if we shoved foam into all the cracks around the window, turned the heat up as far as it would go, and turned on all the stove burners and the oven, the temperature would rise to about 56 degrees, during the warm part of the day. At night, forget about it. You have to pile on all the blankets and sleeping bags, and cling to your partner. In the morning, you rush to the shower, turn it on, rush back to bed while you wait the 5 minutes for the water to heat up, and then rush back into the shower. When you're done in the bathroom you leave the apartment immediately. In the summer it's the exact opposite, of course. Those windows turn this place into a greenhouse.

- On a final note, I would like to thank all the people who stole our clothes from the laundry room, all the people who stole our mail, all the people who pulled the fire alarm for fun, all the people who wrote gang signs on the walls, and all the people who smashed eggs on and/or shit on the carpet in the common areas. God bless you all.

I've been focusing on the horror stories, but here's some of the best things that ever happened in our building.

- We've had quite a few homeless people sleep on the benches outside the building or just hang out on the lawn. But one time, two old, old men sat on the patio all day and got drunk. The great part about this was that one of them, a scrawny, ancient, filthy guy, was wearing a skin-tight Mr. Bubble t-shirt.

- I wish I had a picture of this, but I'll try to describe it. There used to be a little kid who lived down the hall, who'd wear a towel safety-pinned around his neck like a cape, and a Honey Nut Cheerios box, with eyeholes cut into it, over his head as a helmet.

- Speaking of kids, once we came home with a giant 10-pound bag of apples from Bayfield. Two little girls thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen, and started taunting us. "What are you gonna do with all those aaaaaaapples? That sure is a lot of aaaaaaapples. You must liiiiiiiiike to eat aaaaaaaapples. Maybe they're gonna have an aaaaaaapple party where everyone bobs for aaaaaaapples."

- We had this great couple who lived next door to us once, and one night they had themselves some screaming, wailing, headboard-slamming-the-wall sex, over and over all night. At one point, the little kid (about age 5) who lived on the other side of us came out of his apartment, walked up to their door and yelled, "we can hear you."

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Since I am moving at the end of the month, I'd like to present some memories of the nice people I've shared a building with for the past seven years, and the fine things they've done to make our little community a friendlier place.

- One time, a woman screaming "We're gonna shoot the stars out of the sky tonight!" tried to get into my apartment. Luckily the door was locked. She said, "If you don't open up, I'm gonna call your commanding officer!" Then she took off her pants, and started beating them on the floor, holding them by the cuffs. Soon the police came, and forced her to the ground and cuffed her. I watched the whole thing through the peephole while eating oatmeal.

- There used to be an older, retired couple who lived down the hall from us. Every morning, you'd see them in front of the Kom-On-Inn waiting for it to open. They had a quilted bag in which they'd carry their booze home from the liquor store, usually holding each other up as they walked. When the manager reprimanded them for drinking on the lawn in front of the building, the guy grabbed the manager and started choking him. They were evicted, and before they left, they pissed in the elevator.

- We once had some next-door neighbors who were evicted 37 days after moving in. Those were 37 days of pure hell. They were three 19-year-old boys who threw giant, vomit-filled parties for high-school kids. Every time they'd leave their apartment, they'd scream "Whoooo!" because the hallway has an echo. So, you'd hear "Whoooo!" about eight or nine times a day. They also liked to use the hallway as their personal space for talking on the phone in their underwear. When they were thrown out for underage drinking, pot smoking, and forcing the police to come to the building over five times per week, they called the building manager a nigger and smeared a bunch of garbage all over his door.

- One tenant's ex-boyfriend showed up one night, broke her jaw, then smashed about four or five car windows, including Cathie's.

- What do you do when you're mad at your boyfriend who's down the hall at his friend's apartment? Why, you lock him out of your apartment, then climb out the third-story window, manage your way down to the ground, and escape into the night, of course. What does the boyfriend do? Why,he calls the cops because he thinks you're dead inside the apartment, of course. What does the management do? Why, they give the cops a mile of red tape and refuse to come down to the place and open the door, of course. What do I do? Why, I sit there listening to the cops pounding on the door from 2-4 a.m., until the boyfriend realizes what she probably did, scales the building and climbs through the open window. Of course.

- I am not nearly good enough of a writer to describe the tenant known as "The Picker." But, I'll do my best. The Picker was a 6'6", 275-pound schizophrenic/insomniac with white-blonde hair like a 1980s pro-wrestler, who got his name for going through the Dumpsters. He wasn't looking for cans, or anything like that. He was just interested in looking at other people's garbage. Other hobbies included: 1) sitting in his car in the parking lot for hours on end, 2) listening to extremely loud death-metal, 3) wearing mirrored sunglasses, hockey jerseys, and handcrafted ensembles such as jeans with the knees cut out and replaced with spider-web of black yarn, or matching bandanas tied around his head, knees, and elbows. All of this was just plain creepy but tolerable, until he stopped taking his meds. Then he became horrifying. He grew he hair long and developed a crazed, maniacal, potentially violent expression. They took away his car. Rumor has it he was evicted after telling some little kid "Come over here and let me kick you in the nuts" or something like that--I'm not sure of the details, and it's heresay anyhow, but it's completely believable.

- Then there's Dogboy. I don't remember how Dogboy got his nickname, but it fit him well. The funniest thing about Dogboy was that every morning when he got in his truck to go to deliver Domino's pizza, he'd bring a huge mixing-bowl full of cereal, a quart-sized glass of juice, and a colander full of grapes into the truck. It would take him a while to logisitically place all these items in the car so that he could manage them while driving. But there was nothing funny about the truck--a black minitruck with neon green "Peeing Calvin" decals, and the worst car alarm in the history of electronics. Some nights, the thing would go off all night long. Actually, it wouldn't go off, it would threaten to go off. It would say, "Alarm will sound if you don't back away. Last warning. Alarm will sound if you don't back away." Over and over. The owner of the vehicle, of course, had no idea this was going on. And no one knew what apartment he lived in, so they couldn't go get him and tell him to shut it off. I once went out and climbed on the truck and rocked it, so that the alarm would go off, so that he might come out, so that I might "speak" with him. He never came out, but the Picker stood and watched me. Eventually, he had to be threatened, which reduced the alarm incidents by about 95%.

- Many people know about the highly publicized meth-freak incident, and I wish I had a link to the news story. Last winter, this guy who was high on meth scaled the outside of the building. He broke into an apartment window where he found a baby, which he tried to smother, because he thought the kid had the mark of the devil on its head in barcode form. I'm unsure of the details, but I know he scaled the building again the next night, this time completely naked, carrying his clothes, in sub-zero temperatures. He broke into a different apartment, where he took a woman's keys. He stole her car and escaped to Hermantown, where he was eventually found and arrested.

I think that'll be enough for now. But this is only the beginning.
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