Author: Colleen Kruse

Wisconsin Estate Sale, Antiques, Collectables, Linens, Furniture. Quality Household Miscellaneous. Pole Barn Full of Tools. Everything Must Go! Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write one of those ads. But let me tell you, it’s pretty hard to make the words “household miscellaneous” jump off the page. And I had a personal stake in it, too. My parents, their sale. Last November, and I’m still having nightmares about it. But when I catch a case of the sweats at 3 a.m., it’s not my father’s illness I’m thinking about, or the inevitability of his physical decline. I’m not thinking about my mother’s heart, either, which breaks a little more each day as she tries to ease her husband’s suffering. I think about those things in the daylight, in my world, where it seems safer: A world of belligerent teens and gassy old dogs, of crackpot schemes, and my own husband, who I’m beginning to realize just might love me as much as he says he does.

In the daylight, as tough as things can be sometimes, it’s easier to put life’s trials into perspective. It’s possible to look at them more as rites of passage. But the thought process that I employ to force my fears into submission dissolves as soon as I hit the sheets. In dreams I’m racing through a field of lidless Tupperware containers, chasing after buyers and screaming “ONLY FIFTY CENTS! FIFTY CENTS! FIFTY CENTS!”

I get it. It’s the futility of the situation that haunts me. In sleep, it’s just transferred to a related event of tangible effort. I can’t make my dad better, and I can’t take away my mother’s pain. Any more than I can put a dollar value on a rusted coffee can full of nails.

I decided to run my parents’ estate sale when I found out that the only person who ran sales in their community would demand 35 percent of the take. I did a mental tally of what they had left at their house, and in the words of Ed Kruse, well, the hell with that. Any and all profits could stay with my folks. I took a week off from work to get the sale ready. Dear friends and family rallied to the cause. Heavy lifting was done. Coffee was made and drunk. Eye-catching groupings of mom’s tchotchkes were arranged and priced. Joyce, a church friend of my mother’s, enlisted the help of her handy husband Dwayne, and he personally knocked signs in the grass along the highway, five miles in each direction so that no one could miss them.

One of my biggest concerns was the pole barn. It was, indeed, full of tools—some old, many new and never used. It was also full of dreaded Halloween bugs, those nasty ladybug wannabes that crawl into every last crack and corner and never ever ever die. They go dormant, like Cher. There was no way I could hope to empty the barn—much less run outside to staff it anytime someone wanted to buy a pitchfork or a mower. The day before the sale began, a wiry little man arrived early in a big truck. Delbert said he’d heard there were some tools for sale, and wanted to know if he could take an early look. I walked him out to the barn and told him I’d give him a deal. Five hundred bucks if he hauled everything away: my dad’s landscaping tools, his fishing tackle, the jigsaw and workbench. And the bugs. There was a moment of silence while Delbert calculated the merchandise versus the job at hand. Then he turned to me and said: “I ’spect I’ll take it.”

The sale was a huge success. I worked in a white heat, re-arranging wares after each wave of shoppers swept through. In the waning hours of the last day, the new owner of the house showed up. A single man with a classic car collection. My sister Tracy had brought a bottle of champagne, which we poured into paper cups. The three of us stood out on the deck, and toasted good old times and new ones to come. The man told us how nice that pole barn was going to be for his cars, and I laughed in relief, thinking of Delbert.

We cleaned up, ran a vacuum, said our goodbyes. I was the last to leave, but not the last to see the place. Tracy would come back in two weeks with our mom, for the closing. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that everything must go.

Orange Alert, everybody. Avoid crowds. But go shopping. Keep the economy strong. Have an emergency plan in place. A central location for you and your family to meet in the event of, oh, I don’t know…an explosion? The deadly release of a new Ben Affleck movie? Wash your hands, please, but masks are for the Jackson family.

September 12, 2001, I went to the gym. I have a lifetime membership to Bally’s Total Fitness. As it turns out, a person can live a lifetime in just under five hours a year, three of those in the hot tub. But I digress.

I had resolved that my life would forevermore be one long act of virtue. I hit the treadmill, then the weights. As I struggled to switch plates on the barbell, a rather studly man took pity on me and offered his assistance. He had flawless skin, the color of Ceylon tea, and his arms swelled in beautiful rounds out of his T-shirt. His back, held strong and straight, moved gracefully into powerful legs. His body was a temple, a sculpture, a shrine to decent living and strength.

He set the bar and stayed to spot me. He talked a little bit about the use of free weights and I noticed that my friend had an accent. Now, I’ve never been off the continent, and I am not what you’d call a citizen of the world. I am, however, in the people business, and I like to hear of other places, even if I can’t go there.

So I gave Handsome my best line. “Sounds like you got an accent there. Where are you from? North or South Dakota?”

His eyes clouded over and he said, “Why? Are you afraid that I am a terrorist because I sound different? I am from here, same place as you.”

I was horrified that I’d offended him and I tried to explain myself. “I was just curious about where your accent comes from. About where you come from and—”

“I’ll tell you where I come from,” he said quietly, still angry. “I come from a place that has known true devastation, true terror. Look, what has happened, it is tragedy. But it is not devastation. If it were, you and I would not be here right now; we would be fighting to live, to eat. Let me tell you about where I come from.

“Where I come from, people have the grace to starve to death. Here, if catastrophe reigned, the rich would eat the zoo animals, the middle class would eat their dogs, and the poor would eat each other.” And with that, he stalked off.

I looked down at the fat pooling in my waist and thought, “I don’t have the grace to starve myself for two hours.” Then I thought: “Oh my God, he’s right!” And, like it or not, that man’s words haunted me as I feebly completed my workout, mind reeling, my eyes furtively darting round the room. Bally’s turned into Cub Foods.

At first, I settled on the Costco-size person, and then I realized that my normal bulk shopping habits wouldn’t fly in the event of grid failure. Fun-size people would have to do—a more “European” shopping pattern, just buying enough for the day ahead. And suppose there were no market. Could I go “Ventura” and hunt the deadliest prey of all? Honey, I can’t stalk celery. And the only thing I’ve ever killed is time.

Extreme situations force the strength or weakness of a person’s character out of the spider hole. One thing’s for sure: Disaster will come, be it up close and personal or worldwide and cataclysmic. Is it possible to duct-tape your heart to withstand suffering? Can you buy enough batteries to keep it beating until it heals? How do you go about your life while being prepared?

This past holiday season under Orange Alert I thought about my gym buddy. Since then, I read the papers a little more carefully, and I still wonder where he comes from. Thing is, it could be a few different places, where grace lives.

I swear to heaven that it sounded like a good idea at the time.

Hypnotized by HGTV, we took a perfectly good kitchen (if not our aesthetic ideal), ripped it out by the seams, and have for the last four months given a painful, bloody Lamaze-style birth to the placement of each pantry cupboard, each major home appliance, each light fixture.

We have weathered swirling Iraqi sandstorms of sawdust as new floors were placed and finished, fled clouds of toxic polyurethane gas as wooden surfaces were sealed, and watched the dumpster in our front yard fill up with the shattered remains of our once calm lives. My husband estimates that it’s also half full of hundred-dollar bills.

Our entry in the brutally competitive South Minneapolis home-remodeling derby got out of control in a classic example of mission creep. The kitchen remodel begat the brainstorm of knocking down the living room walls and making everything flow. That led to the inspiration to replace the first floor’s retirement-age windows with modern ones. The great new light and sightlines made the old fireplace look frowsy, so we ordered a radical facelift. Each project dominoed into a half-dozen others.

We can hold no one but ourselves responsible for this, our own personal Alamo. We cannot indulge in a soul-exfoliating self-pity party, and neither can we finger-point our way to blamelessness. Note to the contractors: Please send all future invoices and correspondence to Husband and Wife, Chumptown, USA.

Our household consists of three teenagers, two adults, and a predictable stream of neighbor kids. That makes for one busy kitchen. Oh, I promised in the beginning of this unrest that I’d drink Slim Fast and Instant Breakfast every morning, and hand the kids piping hot toaster strudels on the way to school, then make it up to them nutritionally with crisp, sweet apples and a balanced, root-vegetable-laden slow-cooker meal in the evening. But no. Pizza it is, three times a week, and pizza it will be, until this is all said and done with.

Not all the feathers in our humble nest are ruffled. The mini camp kitchen in our basement TV room is like a dream come true to our kids. Now, they need only slog five feet’s distance from the beanbag chair to the microwave oven, jab at the buttons blindly while keeping both eyes focused on the Cartoon Network, and in thirty seconds yank out a salty, yellow gravy-rich Santa Fe chicken pocket. The middle teen eats a diet that consists of Wonder Bread, peanut butter sandwiches, and microwaved bacon. While he remains Keith Richards-thin, we’re convinced that he’s on his way to total cholesterol collapse. We’re thinking of stirring a Flintstone vitamin/Lipitor drug cocktail into the Skippy. It’s chunky style; he’ll never notice.

We actually bought the components of this dream kitchen last year. They sat out on our breezy sleeping porch during the warm months, ruining our summer. And now, rested by their vacation, they’re ruining our winter, disrupting the school year, business trips, and major holidays.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. On the last two holidays we’ve hosted, major snafus have gone down. Last Christmas, we forgot to turn the oven on and we served up a fully frozen ham for dinner. And the Thanksgiving before that, I set the turkey on fire. I was trying to save time, using one of those newfangled Reynolds Oven Bags. The fire department tracked the problem to me shoving a twenty-two-pound turkey into a fifteen-pound bag. Old habits die hard, I guess. That’s the same logic I apply to my wardrobe.

Or maybe it’s just that our kitchen space is cursed. I should look at this project as an exorcism. A healing time to clear out the bad culinary juju and begin afresh. The next holiday we’re set to host is Easter, and if all goes well, we might have the countertops in by then. We’ll say a prayer of Thanksgiving. Jesus saves. And Domino’s delivers.

Aw, hell. You won’t believe what I got myself into. So I’ll just tell you. I’m going to be a guest speaker at my old high school for career day.

Delicious irony #1: I never completed high school.
Delicious irony #2: Either they never bothered to check this fact, or they don’t care.

My dilemma came about innocently enough. Last week a favorite old teacher of mine (Home Economics—easy A) contacted me through the dark magic of the Internet and asked if I’d like to share the secret of my success. Hmm. Instantly, a cartoon devil and a cartoon angel appeared on my shoulders. The demon, as always, spoke first. “Righteous! That is soooo cool! You have to do it—just make it up as you go along—half of those snot rags won’t be listening. And you’ll get welcomed back to your old stomping grounds as a hero! You’ll probably even get to drink crappy coffee in the teachers’ lounge!”

And the angel whispered: “No, Colleen. It would be wrong. The other half of the snot rags would be listening, and it would be unethical for you to pretend that your creative successes in life have had anything to do with basic education.”

In the face of such brutal logic, the proud demon raged. He puffed out his little cinnamon-colored chest and scraped at the filthy sawdust floor of my brain with his cloven hoof, kicking up dirt and leaving all rational thought clouded in a sandstorm of bitter, congestive arrogance. “Don’t be lame!” He bellowed. “What are you, chicken?! BOK-BOK-BOK-BOK!”

Reeling, I hit reply, typed in an affirmative, and hit send. The angel shook her head sadly and floated away in the turquoise mist of higher aspiration, to the place where DVDs are returned on time, and vegetables are eaten at every meal.

“Wicked sweet, chica.” The demon paused and gave me the thumbs up before heading out the door. “I gotta go. Got to…uh, polish my horn—but when you get to school, tell the lunch lady I said hi. And tell her to keep playin’ that Powerball, ’cause ya never know!” Poof.

Now I’m stuck. The only way to redeem this situation is to tell them the truth. So here it is, kids. I hate to puncture those rock-star daydreams with a sharp economic truth, but your teachers are right: No high school diploma + no secondary education = twenty-odd years of minimum wage. Folks like me in the non-graduating class are more likely to bear children outside of committed relationships, and those children are susceptible to a veritable Russian roulette wheel of bad fortune. Substandard health care. Dangerous neighborhoods. Neglect. And the longer you wait to go back to school, the less likely it is to make any sort of difference in your income. (Pretty tough luck in the job market to be a forty-five-year-old with a brand-new associate’s degree.)

I can tell them about the regularly recurring intervals of social fear that I encounter in conversation with minds more educated than mine. How I pray the frozen smile and glassy stare will cover my ignorance until I can change the subject to something I’m well-versed in, like back issues of People. How I’ve made a spare living from tips, and from making comedic sport of every foolhardy choice I ever made. That when you make five bucks an hour, you can’t afford to be too proud—because wearing that neon dunce cap has paid the rent for me more than once.

Would I be on a different career path if I had earned my diploma all those years ago? I suppose not. Would I be better off? I’m sure of it. That little piece of paper is a building block, a support beam. A place to plan, to nurture life passions that can sustain us through to the end of one goal, and then another. I’ll tell them that in life, rarely are things so beautifully cut and dried, so simple, as showing up between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. and working hard. Earning your marks. And if there’s one thing I learned to be, it’s a hard worker. It’s what makes me what I am. An unqualified success.

How many shopping days left until Christmas? Well, whatever it is, it’s not enough. Cry all you want during your next trip to Target about the Bleeding Skull Halloween costumes hanging next to the icicle lights and the faux-fir tree display. Do you hear what I hear? It’s the rat-a-tat-tat of mass merchants gunning for our rummy-tum-tums.

Every year around this time I kick myself for not starting earlier. Like, oh, I don’t know: maybe in August? The idea would be to try to spread the financial strain over weeks and weeks rather than concentrate it into one hellish month of gorging and gouging. Like dental work, I put it off until it’s too late, or till it hurts. Forget credit card purchases and “deferred billing.” All over the department stores the cheery signs declare, “No payments until February 3rd!” What a good idea. I can see myself now, coming to in the aftermath of holiday parties and get-togethers with an extra layer of gelatinous chub quilting my jowls, and, surprise, about five hundred dollars in the hole. It won’t just seem like the darkest day of the year, it truly will be.

There’s also an intricate system of checks and balances involved in gift giving. Who to buy for? How much is too much? How little says, “This really is the least I could do?” It’s not the thought that counts anymore, but the deliberation. What you give says so much about what you think about the other person. Last year, my sister’s gift told me that she thought I was the kind of person who made her own doughnuts.

Some couples give detailed “wish lists” to one another. This is wrong. The only acceptable time for a person over the age of twelve who is not a bride to request a specific gift is when they’re asking for bone marrow, a kidney, or primary custody of the children. Which is essentially a form of re-gifting.

And then there’s the gift of gab. Some people just give till it hurts. You know you’ve been there. Office party: knocking back a styrofoam cup of warm, nutmeg-speckled sluice while eyeing the cutie-pie standing at the buffet table near the pumpkin squares. But before you can make your move, darkness descends in the form of a boring coworker. You try to escape, but the air around you is quickly converted to sleeping gas, and soon a coagulated topskin forms on your egg, milk, and booze treat. Initially you listen, then move on to presenting an outward show of listening (which is just as good to your captor) while your eyes glaze over like a holiday ham. Meanwhile the sugar plum over at the buffet has wandered out of flirting range.

Among my extended group of friends, we try to have a little fun with tradition. This year, instead of “Secret Santa” gifts, we’re having “Surprised Santa.” We’ll meet for dinner and drinks at a lovely, expensively priced bistro. We will imbibe to our heart’s content, and at closing time, in ones and in pairs, stealthily sneak out of the cafe until there is only one of us left holding the check. Santa!

Budgeting for a family during the holiday season can be tough. When I was a kid, my mom used to stuff our stockings with toiletries, things she was going to have to buy for us anyway. Years later, I imagine her raiding the medicine cabinet well past midnight on Christmas Eve: While her family sleeps, her vision clouded by exhaustion, she desperately tries to decide which one of us kids would appreciate the extra toothbrush versus the Doan’s Backache Pills.

Bestowing gifts on family and friends now is more of a challenge. Most people I know have too much swag already. Our houses look like Pier One. The things we could all use, like patience, goodwill, and faith, are in short supply. Most of us wander through this time of year wound as tight as a spool of curling ribbon. Be sure to make time for yourself. Maybe do a little retail therapy.

September 12, 2003, 1:37 p.m. Two days over deadline. Behind in not only this job, but all of the other part-time jobs that create this dubious, ever shifting “whole” of self-employment. OK, Colleen, get a grip. Don’t subdivide your anxiety; just concentrate on one thing at a time.

3:41 p.m. Staring at the screen for hours won’t help. Must…finish…column.…Oh, for crying out loud. It’s only 750 words. It’s not rocket science.

4:02 p.m. Friend calls. Says she’s sorry she didn’t “remember” to invite me to her birthday party. Well, take this one on the chin. Maybe she’s getting so old that she is having cognitive thought degeneration. Make note to send her flowers, an info packet from the Alzheimer’s Association, and a sample of Clinique’s total turnaround eye-repair serum.

4:24 p.m. Why did I quit smoking?

4:25 p.m. Maybe I should get my tongue pierced.

4:29 p.m. Partial list of things I hate: The Madonna–Britney MTV French kiss. (She’s old enough to be her mother! Bad! Wrong!) George and Laura Bush. (Pay-per-view should get those two to French kiss.) George Sr. and Barbara. (She’s old enough to be his mother! Bad! Wrong!) The Denny Hecker ads on MTC buses. (Did Franco Columbo inflate Denny’s head?) Cell phones. (If you get mad at the person you’re talking to, you can’t slam the phone down into the cradle for dramatic effect.) Bennifer, Pilates, and Mary-Kate Olsen. (Ashley seems like she might be OK.) “Mean People Suck!” buttons. (Some of my best friends are mean.)

4:49 p.m. My big show is coming up. Pantages Theatre, October 3, 4, and 5. Will anyone call for tickets? I think I remember the number. It’s (612) 673-0404. God, I hope they call now! (NOW!)

4:53 p.m. Maybe I can just write about odd stuff in the news. Like that sad, freaky deal with the bank robber/pizza guy who had the bomb locked to his neck. No, that’s not funny for sure. The only way that could be funny is if it were a scene in a Coen Brothers movie. Who would be good to play the sad, freaky pizza guy? Steve Buscemi? It would be more fun to see him being played by Tom Cruise. Smug bastard. Boom.

5:17 p.m. Maybe I should read The Rake for ideas. What are the other columnists up to? I wonder if they’re blowing the deadline too. What’s this—a new column? Sex & the Married Man? Dude. Men frequent any and all branches of the sex industry for one reason only. It’s business, baby. It’s a direct path to paradise that requires only an ID and a little cash. It does not require any outlay of personality, or social-emotional compromise that a relationship—even a one-night stand—would take. It is not for the sake of variety. If it were, there are plenty of social clubs for variety-lovin’ folk. Oh, but then a guy would have to go to the trouble of developing those relationships, huh? Or, more important, would have to admit to himself that what he really wants is not an exclusive relationship, but an all-you-can-eat trip to the booty buffet. Women aren’t frigid if they don’t condone this behavior. They aren’t necessarily threatened either. Think of it like business. Supply and demand.

C’mere. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Women can have sex anytime they want. It’s true! I could cram fried chickens into my mouth until my can was the size of a papasan ottoman—walk out my front door, and, within fifteen minutes, have sexual intercourse with a man.

Hell, there might even be a fetish site dedicated to papasan-sized rear ends. The point is, I could always be somebody’s prom queen. All women could. And we know this. Therefore we do not value sex above the other good things that life has to offer, like luxury hand towels, or artisan cheese. Or a hilarious one-woman show: (612) 673-0404.

Men, on the other hand, never know when or if they will ever get to have sex again. The booty business exists so that men can purchase what they have never been able to achieve on their own. Sexual sovereignty. So, Tiger, don’t kid yourself that your rabid libido is blazing a path to Dream Girls. It’s your innate fear of being left high and dry. (Thanks, Stuart. I owe you one!)

6:54 p.m. 742 words. Over and out.

1972. I don’t remember the month, but it was warm enough for me not to be wearing a jacket, just my head-to- toe Garanimals red outfit. A T-shirt and jeans in my signature color. I was four years old. I could dress myself, and when I put on that outfit, baby, I meant business.

Everybody in my family was busy moving their stuff into our new house. I was told to stay in the yard, but the hell with that. I started knocking on doors up and down the block as soon as I could slip away, determined not to waste an instant of the first day in the new neighborhood.

I saw a likely place right at the end of the block; white stucco with pretty purple flowers and a front yard littered with toys. The big front door was open, and through the screen door, you could hear a TV on too loud (just the way I liked it) and kids yelling.

I marched right up to the screen and because you can’t knock on a screen, I mashed my face right up against it and yelled, “Hey!”

Instantly, a big boy and girl and a littler boy and girl appeared at the door. We all stared at each other for a second, and I pointed at the littler girl (because she was closest to my size) and said, “I’m here to talk to her.” The others shrugged and went back to the TV, and the little one opened the door and came outside.

She had long, dark-brown hair and black, glittery eyes that were shaped like crescents. We stood looking at each other, and the excitement was almost more than I could bear. “Well, what do you want?” she asked me.

“My name is Colleen.” I told her. “Today, I moved into the yellow house over there.” I pointed, and then turning back to her with a wide baby-toothed grin, “I’m here to be your friend.” And so we were.

At that age, I guess, it can be that easy. During my school years, my friendships were largely based on who I had classes with, and later on, who had a cigarette. At work in the foodservice industry, I have met and served alongside a revolving mélange of people who I sometimes have very little in common with, other than the task at hand. What turns an acquaintanceship into a full-blown friendship is the sharing, of course. Whether that comes in the form of a favorite (or abhorrent) teacher, a smoky treat, or marrying the ketchups while griping about the craptacular tippers at table twenty.

2003. I watch my new friendships like an anxious gambler. I’ve only got so much to put on the table. Now that I have a husband and children, the time I spend on my established friendships is usually relegated to a hurried, misspelled Instant Messenger paragraph or a weekly session of voicemail tag.

When I talk to my friend Roxanne, who moved to New York City three years ago, I cradle the cordless phone between my ear and shoulder while conquering Mt. St. Laundry. By the time I make it from the base camp where the unmatched socks live to the summit of unfolded bath towels, both of us are out of oxygen. She’s cleaning too, doing her dishes. (In a tiny Manhattan apartment, doing laundry means scraping the gunk out of your panties in the sink and drying them in the microwave. Ah, big-city livin’.) We’re staying in touch, but we’re not giving it our full attention the way we used to before life filled up with priorities. Chris, who just moved to New Orleans, has vanished after a single magnolia-scented email gloating about the sensuous pleasures of his new home. It’s warm there. I don’t expect to hear from him again.

Now I’m bombarded by popup ads from Classmates.com and it seems friendship has evolved into something artificial and pushy and strained, like a Pampered Chef party.

Whenever I meet somebody who’s new to the Twin Cities, they tell me how hard it is to make friends. They blame the frigid weather or the families that have lived here forever or Scandinavian reserve. Even if you’ve been here all your life, it can be daunting.

So take it from me. Don’t be afraid to knock on some doors. But don’t come to my house. I’m busy.

Hallelujah and amen! You know what time it is. I can smell the cornmeal and sizzling fat in the air already. Set aside petty concerns of the pending apocalypse and don the raiment of joyous festival! Bring me my cutoff jeans, and my baseball jersey that depicts the beer swilling cartoon bear! Unearth my novelty cheese wedge hat! And hand me my sunglasses. Yes, the holographic American flag ones.

The time has come to join the sweltering flock of humanity that bleats and lows while rounding that Mobius strip between Snelling and Dan Patch. Attendance is required. And the second I get there, what will my poison be? A half-gallon pail of Sweet Martha’s chocolate chippers? For breakfast? And gimme a Summit to wash it all down while I snag a foot long and a sack of minis on my way to the KARE 11 Health Hut to have my cholesterol checked, not because I truly want to know—only because it’s free.

Then I’m off to find a DFL Party yardstick. I get one every year, even though I’ve never had use for one. Someday, I’ll side my tool shed with them. But for now, it’s just the thing for a mite of self-flagellation in front of the Pawlenty/GOP tent. The backhanded passivity of Minnesota Nice fades when the collective blood sugar of the crowd rises. It’s definitely a chemical reaction. Give a Swede a cake-dough-battered, deep-fried Snickers, and opinions are made known. I believe the official diagnostic term is Sudden-Onset Insulin Spike Attitude.

Last August, a dreadlocked, blue-eyed Mac student angrily splashed her red raspberry Slurpee across my Uncle Jim’s back while howling, “Fur is murder!” only to realize seconds later that he’d been strolling Machinery Hill shirtless in the noonday sun.

The Great Minnesota Get-Together is not only about junk food and trashy politics. There’s a little something for everybody. For swinging single folks, what could be more titillating than a promenade down the Mighty Midway? That half-block of diesel-fueled terrain holds more prospects than all the singles bars, personal ads, and blind dates you’ll ever see—I guarantee it! You know why? Everybody looks good under neon light.

It evens out the skin tone. Plus, at least half of the hotties are lightheaded from the rides. Picking up a date in front of the Matterhorn coaster is about as tough as trolling for crappies on Lake Itasca. And the same rules apply. Don’t talk loud; it’ll scare the big ones away!

For sensitive artistic types, there’s the Fine Arts Building. For non-sensitive artistic types, there’s the Dairy Building, with its astounding sculptural installations.

For you out-of-towners, here’s how the story goes. Each year among the rural folk a princess is chosen. She is always beautiful, and of smiling temperament. The kindly town elders will select their royalty only from girls of common birth whose fathers own a cow. Once the crown is laid upon the shining head of the girl, she is whisked in covered chariot to Falcon Heights. Because she is from the sticks, we have to have a little fun before we let her go. A lush fur cape is draped over her satin shoulders, and she is handed over to the elves. She is made to enter a crystal-clear tomb of bitter cold. Rough hands cruelly sit her down on a hard-backed chair. A crowd gathers, mocking. A demonic mechanism is triggered and the frozen crypt of windows begins to rotate slowly on its axis so the frightened girl can fully marinate in the goggling eyes of the slothful townspeople.

The top craftsperson of the village is called in to document this curious ritual in an even more curious fashion. A block of grade-A premium butter is carved in the exact likeness of the princess’s head. If she is truly pure and simple, she remains smiling politely and is released upon completion of the lactose-based effigy. The creamy trophy is kept on display for the duration of the fair, where young and old alike can stand, licking their cones, staring blankly into the hollow yellow eyes of the princess’s visage, wondering what it would be like to roll their corn in her hair. The End.

Josh Hartnett is cute, sure, but he’s a little green for us gals in the Been Around the Block Club. Plus he’s got a girlfriend anyway, duh! So, for those of us who like our hometown heartthrobs with a few rough edges and a checkered past, not to mention killer timing, may we present Minnesota’s newest star, Dave Mordal.

Mordal is from Elk River and he’s 42, and he’s currently starring in Last Comic Standing, an NBC reality-TV program. Last winter, just for the hell of it, Dave drove down to Chicago to audition, and he got on. Here’s the premise: A group of stand-up comics from across the country are trapped in Heidi Fleiss’s rat-infested Los Angeles mansion. When they’re not fighting for the toilet, they are pitted against each other in stand-up showdowns. It’s sort of like Survivor, Fear Factor, and Star Search all rolled into one. The winner gets an NBC development deal for his or her own sitcom, along with a Comedy Central special. Mordal became one of the early favorites in a sequence that showed him trapping a rat and dumping it over a neighbor’s privacy wall.

The Rake caught up with him recently at the Acme Comedy Club. Dave strikes you as a guy who’d help get your car out of the ditch on an icy morning. A guy you’d hang out with, but you’d be a little leery about letting your sister date him. The funniest guy at work.

Which is precisely how he got started in comedy, nine years ago. “The whole thing was pretty straightforward. I just fell into it. At work, I was always more of a practical joker than anything else.” Examples? “A comic I know from Seattle was coming to play Acme a few summers ago. I told him he was arriving on the day of the Minneapolis Harvest Day Parade (which doesn’t exist). I said he’d have to ride on the Acme Comedy Club float, since he was that week’s headliner. I picked him up at the airport a couple of weeks later, towing the Acme Comedy Club float. Me and two of the waitresses from Acme made it in the pole barn at my dad’s farm. Took us 80 hours. It was a beaut! I took him all over the city, towing him behind my truck, out on the highway and everything, pretending that I couldn’t find the street that the parade was supposed to be on. Had him convinced we were lost. Rattled his nerves good. He left town early!”

Though he’s sworn to secrecy about the show’s final outcome, Dave confesses that he enjoyed the experience—which in the world of comedy probably means he killed. “My favorite thing about being on the show right now is knowing what happens. My least favorite thing is the stupid questions people ask.” Like what? “Did you win? Are you still doing comedy? That sort of thing.”

“But the kicker has to be when I was at my brother’s house watching the premiere with my family and friends, and at the first commercial break, I’m sitting right next to them, looking right at them, and someone says, ‘Is this live?’”—Colleen Kruse

I’ll come clean. Though I produce my own small bit of pop culture, I am not a big fan of the stuff, particularly not movies. On average, I see about three movies a year. I watch about two hours of television a week. And most of that is accidental viewing. My channel surfing is akin to driving past a ghastly, five-car pile up on Interstate 494. It leaves me powerless to do anything but slow down and gape at the carcass of American entertainment. It’s enough to make you turn on the radio, listen to Garrison Keillor, and think “Guy Noir” is funny.

If only I could lose a few more brain cells and get with it, perhaps, my life would be a lot more interesting. I would be more informed, part of the Matrix, with my finger on the pulse of humanity. It would be so easy to open my eyes and ears wide and take it all in. The snap and crackle of pop-culture references and imagery boiling down my consciousness until my inner monologue becomes a thick, greasy roux of prurient joy juice. A serotonin/Prozac cocktail party, nonstop diversion as colorless, and as easy to digest, as the Wonder-Bread goodness of a Jim Belushi sitcom one-liner. It’s tempting to join this uncomplicated world, where the most common exercise of free speech is a prime-time half hour of nubile Red Lobster waitresses in thong bikinis, cantering in front of Lorenzo Lamas on the prospect that he will decree them, by the power infested in him, as a bona fide, blow-dried son of Fernando, once and for all, HOT. (What happens after this? Do the girls get diplomas? Lifetime backstage passes to Whitesnake concerts? Is it like transferable life-experience credits that you can apply to your major? What they deserve is just a swift kick in the glutes, a souvenir wet T-shirt, and their name on the short list for fluff girls on the next Snoop Dogg video.)

You’ve come this far, so gather ’round and I’ll tell you what put the quarter here in old Grandma. Last week, heading out to the Cineplex to indulge in a couple hours of air-conditioned distraction, I settled into the lazy back row with a magnum of Sprite in one paw, and a five-gallon refillable grocery bag of popcorn in the other. (I can never finish either, but I am incapable of buying the smaller size for a dollar less when you get so much more for your money the other way. That’s either the retail sucker in me, or the Lutheran—you decide.) The theater darkened, and after a half-hour of commercials, the Coming Attractions began. The trailers, in most cases, eliminate the desire to see the film at all, as they typically contain the movie’s best three jokes, the entire plot-line, including the surprise twist ending, and the best cut on the soundtrack, blasted at air-raid-warning-siren levels.

After the commercials, I reached the zenith of the phenomenon of pre-ejaculate movie trailers. Freddy Versus Jason. My eyes bugged and glazed. I tried to lift myself out of the plush chair, but the popcorn had me pinned in place. Graceful arcs of blood spouted from sexy victims whose anguished, terrified screams rose in operatic unison to the techno back-beat. Beloved monsters wielding Sears Craftsman chainsaws and Flo-jo miracle-blade manicures guffawed in butchersome glee.

Later, my ironic friends laughed at my stunned response to the gorefest. They explained that it’s simply a mass-media reaction to our brutal, insecure world. A safe, pleasurable, R-rated way of mirroring and digesting real violence, making it more palatable and, therefore, less nerve-racking. By combining that pair of consumer-tested mass-murderers, the studio is merely treading a profitable path of least resistance. Call it the regurgistory.

Still, that last trip to the movie-house was enough for me for awhile. I probably won’t get lured back until after Thanksgiving, probably won’t turn the TV on until the new crop of network shows comes out. Maybe someone in development at ABC will decide to put real homeless people in the Big Brother house. Give ’em a wet bar and let America choose whom to vote back onto the streets each week. You know, kick it up a notch—Bam!