Brad Zellar —James Dankert I need some new links. I love most of the folks over there in the column to the left, but they’re all pretty much holdovers from my old site, and I’ve noticed lately that some of them are no longer active –a lot of them, actually, which I’m sure is a reflection of … Read more
–Illustration by James Dankert Here’s the deal: years ago —years ago– I spent a few holiday seasons working at one of those sausage and cheese kiosks at a local mall. I did this, as I do most things, purely out of laziness. The employee discount was attractive to me at the time, and I thought: … Read more
The guy who pumps the music through the Metrodome speakers during Twins games is a fellow by the name of Kevin Dutcher. I have no idea how much attention people pay to that sort of thing during baseball games, but I started noticing a few years ago that the selection of tunes at the Dome … Read more
The head running slow, churning, moving up a long, steep hill in the last hours of darkness. Already a few early birds, noisy, to keep me company. Here, take a look at my disaster movie, my shoebox full of footnotes, my personal wasteland. All my sleepless nights. While you are sleeping, while you are dreaming, … Read more
I’m not even going to bother to try to reconstruct the haywire play-by-play from the last four games. I was intending to go back over the game logs at some point tonight, but the prospect is frankly just too exhausting at the moment. All I know for sure is that I saw more variations of … Read more
–J.A. Whipple, early daguerreotype of the moon. February 26, 1852. From the Harvard Daguerreotype Collection. People who frequent low drinking resorts eight nights a week are liable to get –vulgarity says it best– they get fucked up. They are assaulted by too much truth and, at the same time, too many lies; they lose their … Read more
–Ralph’s Barber Shop, Okmulgee, Oklahoma –Bateman Park, Okmulgee, OK —On the tube in Ralph’s Barber Shop, Okmulgee, OK: Twins clinch 2004 Central Division title It shouldn’t be possible for nine hits, seven walks, and a hit batter to add up to four runs. That’s the sort of line the Twins regularly threw up last year … Read more
One might think that the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular would be a disorienting experience for someone with eighteen years of sobriety under his belt and only the haziest recollections of unnumbered adolescent evenings spent hunched over a power-hitter and listening to Dark Side of the Moon on the eight-track player of a 1972 Cougar. That … Read more
My dad loved a buffet, or, as we used to call them growing up in Minnesota, a smorgasbord. These giant, mind-blowing restaurant spreads were still something of a novelty for a Midwestern kid in the 1960s, even if the basic concept wasn’t that far removed from those familiar church basement potluck suppers and extended family … Read more
As I was driving around town today I was writing this country song in my head. I had the whole damn thing worked out –verses, chorus, tune, the whole shebang– and it was shaping up to be a real humdinger of drunken regret, a first-class jukebox classic, and something of a comeback record for me. … Read more