The Rake Magazine

Author: Todd J. Smith

  • Rake Against the Machine

    Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, has the rugged good looks of a guy who’s been in his fair share of scraps. With his bawdy East Coast accent and bulging nose, he’s definitely not a man to mess with. When he got up on stage at the press conference for the Take Back Labor Day rally, a festival of music and activism, you could tell he was ready for a fight. "This is a time when our government awards wealth but not workers," the labor leader told the crowd of journalists, politicians, and union folks. "We want the kids of working parents to be taken care of. We want workers to be able to retire with dignity."

    The Take Back Labor Day rally was taking place on Harriet Island, directly across the river from the Xcel Energy Center which is hosting the Republican Convention. The SEIU had deliberately hung a massive thirty foot long banner promoting "Health Care for All" that was in full view from all points of the convention. The festival was a pro worker rally that promoted universal health care, higher wages that could support families, and the creation of an America that worked for everyone. But with the money grubbin’ conservatives right across the river, Take Back Labor Day was basically a giant stick in the Republican eye.

    A collection of rock n’ roll hell-raisers flanked Stern on all sides. Framed by a beautiful stone arch and high vaulted ceilings, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, alt country pioneer Steve Earle, Imani from rap group the Pharcyde, and world renown protest singer Billy Bragg sat on the stage like a guitar smashing Justice League. While the temperature outside was pushing 90, the tempers inside the Harriet Island pavilion were even hotter.

    "I’m here to physically take back Labor Day," Morello said. No one in the room doubted him for a minute. With his riot inducing rock group Rage Against the Machine, Morello pounds out legendary guitar riffs filled with a sound so angry Molotov cocktails seemingly explode out of his amps. "I find it insulting that the Republicans would choose to start their convention on Labor Day. They support companies that have sweat shops all over the world. And I heard Bush and Cheney aren’t here (in the Twin Cities) because they are heading to the Gulf Coast. I think it’s because they heard Rage was playing on Wednesday."

    The musicians and union leaders discussed how wages for working men and women were steadily going down, all the while CEO and executive salaries have been skyrocketing. Almost everyone in the room – Liberals and Conservatives and tattooed punkers – agreed that the voice of the worker has never been quieter. "In today’s world, standing alone is not an option," Mr. Stern said, his face bristling with emotion. "We are stronger together."

    After a round of rather serious questions, I capped off the press conference with an important one of my own. Since I’m a full blooded blue collar worker and have the scars and early stage arthritis to prove it, I asked a question that the common people of this country would want to know.

    "My name is Todd Smith," I said nervously. "And in honor of Labor Day, I would like to know what the worst job you have had was?"

    The Labor Day Revolutionaries let out an exaggerated groan. "Oh, man," the panel collectively sighed.

    "I worked a horrible shift at a petrol station in England," Billy Bragg said, as he spoke directly to me as I nearly pissed myself in shock. "I was literally living to work. Besides working my shift, the managers would call me at all hours to work for someone that didn’t show. And mind you, I drove a tank in the military once. The petrol station was worse."

    Steve Earle grabbed the microphone and didn’t know where to start. Earle is a former heroin addict and has done serious jail time for drug offenses. Now clean, he just wrapped up his remarkable roll as Walon, a Narcotics Anonymous sponsor on the hit HBO show "The Wire." Earle has lived through a pile of shit and my question was basically for him. "Um, that’s a good one," he grumbled, stroking a hand through his giant woolly beard. "I got to say… the time that I worked at a place where I was both a dishwasher and the ring announcer for the boxing matches that went on in the back."

    Morello went next and everyone in the room buckled their seat belts. He spoke of numerous soul crushing jobs that he has worked over time. Two in particular were awful: a professional alphabetizer and a painter in rooms with no ventilation. "But I think the worst job was when I was working for a Senator in Washington," Morello said. Besides being one the greatest guitar players of all time, Morello is also a Harvard honors graduate. "One time, I answered the phone and a woman was bitching to me about all these immigrants that were moving in to her neighborhood. I told the woman to ‘Go to hell.’ Later, I was yelled at, up and down by everyone in the chain of command. I decided that I didn’t want to work a job that I’d get in trouble for yelling at a racist."

    Stern, the President of the fastest growing union in North America, looked me straight in the eye and simply said, "Digging ditches for the Sussex county mosquito control."

    "You win!" Earle exclaimed. The room erupted with laughter and then emptied. Everyone moved outside to hear some music.

    Backstage, I spotted a man in a pea green Army T-shirt that had the words "Support G.I. Resistance" on the front. The man was extremely muscular, but with his shaggy hair and smooth draw,l he had the demeanor of a surfer/ grad student. He was surrounded by a group of burly men and they all were in various forms of camouflage.

    "Are you an Iraqi war vet?" I asked him. "Yeah," he said. We shook hands. "Names Hart Viges. Served in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq."

    "If you don’t mind, can I ask you why you are here?" I asked nervously. It’s not a regular occurrence that a dumbass like me gets to talk to his musical heroes and his real life heroes in the same day.

    "Not at all," Viges responded kindly. "I’m here because I support unions. I see a direct link between war and poverty. When you provide good wages, health care, and the ability to get an education, why on earth would a city kid join the military? You stop the raft of poverty, you stop the war. These poor kids feel like they have no options and are taken straight out of poverty and put directly into a war." The whole time Viges talked he was measured but passionate. "I talk to kids all over Austin, Texas, where I am from. They always ask me, ‘Are you the guy who is going to tell me not to join the military?’ I tell them that I am the guy that will tell you the whole picture and then let them decide for themselves. They need to know that when they join the military, they are legally the property of the United States Government. Then they have no rights."

    He explained to me that when he got back from proudly serving in Iraq, he immediately filed to be a conscientious objector. "It was the finest moment in my entire Army career," Viges told me. He talked at length about his belief in his country and the words of Jesus. As we chatted, I noticed a large black phone number scribbled across the inside of his forearm. I had also noticed the same phone number written on several of the Vets that were standing around me. He chuckled when I asked him what the number was for. "There is a good chance that I will get arrested this week," he said. "And this is the phone number of our legal team."

    For the rest of the afternoon, Viges stood there soaking in the afternoon sun and enjoying the great music. He was the true American Dream. Hell, he was America. He was a soldier and a pacifist. He loved Jesus but planned for anarchy. He wa
    s a personal guest of Tom Morello and loved every minute of it. There are no parades for our vets when they come back from Iraq or Afghanistan. There are no marching bands meeting them in our airports. Why is that? It was nice to see at least a handful of our vets getting their fair share in the sun. The music rolled on, beach balls bounced all over the crowd, and the cool kids swilled beer under the glorious summer sky. Tom Morello finished his set by ripping into a song titled "The Ghost of Tom Joad," which is cover of a Bruce Springsteen song that has lyrics lifted straight from John Steinback’s classic Dustbowl novel The Grapes of Wrath. As Morello pounded down on a guitar that had the words "Whatever It Takes" scribbled on the face, a small group of B-Boys break danced on a sidewalk and a man on giant stilts bounded across the grass.

    It was freedom at its finest.

  • Whores, Hags, and Meth Mouth

    At the Minnesota State Fair, the food gets all the hype. Cram something edible onto a stick and it will get front page coverage. That’s good and all, but the main attraction to the fair is the people themselves. It’s not just a cross section of America; it is everything from the sewer to the penthouse. Take a seat anywhere at the fair – a curb, a bench, a stool in a beer garden – and watch a parade of whores, hags, fatties, skinnies, greasers, wankers, wonks, red necks, and cake eaters. Here are a few scenes from my recent fair experience:

    -An obese man, wearing what looked like a bed sheet with a hole cut in it for his head, drove one of those invalid go-carts down the middle of the street. A giant fried onion blossom was resting in the basket attached to the front. Every couple of feet he would stop the cart, peel off a layer, and then inhale the piece with one suck.

    -A woman who had a face like Nick Nolte walked by me wearing a T-shirt with the words "Sugar and Spice" on it. Those two whimsical words were crossed out and the words "Gun Powder and Lead" were written over it.

    -In the Swine Barn, an entire row of monstrous pigs was waiting to be fed. Their empty food pans were laid out in front of their respective cages and the pigs were literally foaming at the mouth. Then the pigs let out a series of horror show squealing sounds. My son turned white with fear and whimpered, "It smells like dirty pig in here."

    -Up by Machinery Hill, a woman with an ashtray face had used so much hair spray that her bangs and crown had been molded to form a shiny black globe resembling Darth Vader’s helmet.

    -Two punkers walked past the bombastic entrance to the Midway. The dude had so many piercing in his face he looked like "Hell Raiser." The woman wore leather short shorts with fishnet stockings underneath. A pack of party boys fresh from Lake Minnetonka watched them walk past. "What the fuck was that?" one of them said in horror. "I wish I knew," replied another.

    -Outside of Axels food stand, a man in a Vikings jersey bit into a hash brown-on-a-stick and looked gob smacked. He slowly chewed the potato, sour cream, chives, and bacon combo balls and let out an orgasmic moan.

    -Chris Mars, former drummer of the Replacements and now a world renowned artist, stood patiently at a fair-sponsored Park and Ride bus stop near the U. Two rad looking skate boarders did sidewalk ollies behind him, making the whole scene look like a commercial for the State Fair’s new "Come to the Fair. It’s not just for Farmers!" campaign.

    -I was standing in the middle of street and going to town on an ear of fresh roasted corn. Butter was smeared across my face and my eyes were closed with concentration. I only eat corn once a year and it’s always at the State Fair. People like me who have spastic colons really shouldn’t be eating food that is considered to have "scraping qualities." Corn kernels were stuck in every crack of my teeth, giving me the appearance of yellow Meth Mouth. My sister looked over and said, "You really should never let people see you eat corn. Ever."

  • The Citidiot

    My friend Nick and I strolled into the Looney Bean coffee shop in the tiny northern town of Crosby, Minnesota. We were grabbing some morning coffee and inquiring about the town’s upcoming community festival that we thought was called "Crosby Days." It was taking place that weekend and it sounded like a fun thing to do with our families.

    "Where do we go for the Crosby Days celebration?" Nick asked a Looney Bean employee.

    "It’s…called…Heritage Days," the teenage boy replied snidely.

    Then the kid frothed Nick’s mocha with an extra shot of bitterness. All we wanted were some details on the event and some coffee. But since we were stupid tourists, we inadvertently insulted the local kid’s civic pride by calling his town’s festival by the wrong name. When we left the shop and walked down good ol’ Main Street, Nick popped off the coffee cup lid just to make sure there wasn’t a fistful of toenails in his coffee.

    "Do you know what we are?" Nick asked me, as he clutched his beloved morning mocha.

    "Nope," I replied.

    "We’re Citidiots," he said. "City. Idiots."

    Nick had a great point. During the summer months all across the country, there is a mass exodus of city dwellers that descend onto quaint small towns, picturesque beaches, and pristine wilderness. We migrate to places like Cape Cod, The Hamptons, and National Parks, trying to get a little rest and relaxation. But mainly, our vacations just irritate the hell out of the local folks. We arrive clueless and slap happy, completely forgetting that people actually live in these sunny locales.

    In Minnesota, we head up north. Memorial Day to Labor Day is cabin season. From Nisswa to Ely to Grand Marais, we flock to resorts and lake shores, bringing with us the baggage from our sad silly Twin Cities lives. Citidiots (like Nick and I) treat every vacation destination with ignorant bliss. As we drove away from the Looney Bean in shame, we passed no fewer than fourteen massive signs hailing the upcoming "Heritage Days."

    That afternoon, we Citidiots went four wheeling. I climbed on top of a brand new Honda ATV that had a serious engine and mean looking tires.

    "That beast is a man’s ATV!" Nick said all pumped up.

    I should’ve been psyched. I should’ve been stoked to ride such a kick ass ATV through the beautiful north woods. But I wasn’t. I kept thinking that a real man should be driving this thing and not me. A real grizzled man who wore flannel, had chewing tobacco crammed into his lip, and shouted things like, "America! Hell Yeah!" For crying out loud, I’ve seen every episode of "Project Runway." And I loved every minute of it.

    I manned up, though. We plopped our four year old sons into our laps on our respective ATVs and took off down a heavily wooded path. I drove cautiously through a huge grove of ferns and White Pine trees, careful not to tread on something I wasn’t supposed to. I lolly gagged across several miles until my son finally had enough of my slow foot.

    "Bring it on!" Murphy snapped at me. Apparently, I wasn’t driving Miss Daisy. My kid wanted speed, so I tentatively opened the throttle. We tore through the woods and shot out into a clearing that was filled with wild flowers, a blueberry sky, and a herd of deer. It was a magical ride, a true father and son moment.

    Sadly, though, my Citidiot tendencies took over. Back in the thick woods, I tried to single a turn. When we returned to our cabin, I caught myself trying to parallel park the ATV in the open spot closest to the front door. Nick stood there laughing.

    "Do you want me to get the valet?" he asked.

    To complete the Citidiot Trifecta, the next day we tried to take the boys fishing. And as usual, it was a complete disaster. We had a boat but no boat license. We had a motor but no gas. We had boat cushions but no life jackets. We had fishing rods but no bait. The two boys stood on the shore, dumbfounded by our incompetence. I made an unfortunate decision to just go ahead and fish off the dock. That lasted about two minutes before the kids realized it was a total suckfest. The boys shrugged their shoulders, set down their rods, and went off and found their own fun.

    "Well, at least we tried," I said in defeat. And once again, a perfectly beautiful Minnesota summer day was ruined by a pair of Citidiots.

  • Reefer Madness

    I was patiently standing in the ticket line at the Fringe Festival. Then the middle aged man right in front of me abruptly took off his pants. When he began to twist and turn and fidget with his belt, I nervously stepped back. Personally, I didn’t think that when I signed up to cover the Fringe Fest it meant I would be within tickling distance of another man’s ball sack. The throng of theatre goers at the Bryant Lake Bowl hardly even noticed the disrobing right in front of them. I guess this was just normal Fringey behavior. I took a long hearty gulp off my beer. Then I realized that the man was only taking the lower half of his pants off. He was wearing those camping pants that can convert into shorts with a quick flick of a zipper.

    "Oh, that’s much better," the man said, refreshed. He folded the calf parts of his pants and tucked them into a large backpack that was slung over his shoulder. The man was a theater nomad. He purchased an Ultimate Pass Ticket and was travelling across the Twin Cities attending as many shows as possible.

    "I’ve been to forty shows this week," he boasted to me. "I’ve attended three today!" I took another pull of my beer because I had nothing to say to the guy about the Fringe Festival. The brain trust at The Rake chose me to review some shows during the city-wide acting festival. I think they like me because I’m a bit rough around the edges. I’m the kind of guy who enjoys hockey fights. It’s not exactly Shakespeare.

    As we waited in line, the man lectured me extensively on the nuances of the different venues in the Festival. He gushed about this Fringe superstar named Alexis and how she has once again taken the Festival by storm. Then the man killed our pleasant conversation by asking me what my interests were in the highly regarded performing arts festival.

    "Ugh, I chose the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater because it sold beer," I said rather bluntly. "The BBQ pork sandwiches are awesome, too."

    His face turned bitter. He ruffled his limbs like a pissed off peacock. When theater patrons talk about their appreciation for stage acting, pork sandwiches usually aren’t a factor. By the time we got to the box office, the show had sold out. Without a single hesitation, the Fringe Fest Freak whipped out a map and a showtime schedule. He moved quickly through the bustling restaurant/bar/bowling alley/theatre and was out the door towards the next gig. I had no idea what to do. So in the sake of good journalism, I put down my pen and notebook and went bowling.

    The next night, I attended Reefer Madness: The Musical. The pretentious theatre crowd from the night before was gone. The bar was now filled with an alternative class of theater folks: stoners, rockers, and dipshits. Needless to say, I fit right in.

    As I waited at the bar for my sister Becky, this Genghis Khan looking mofo thumbed through a well worn novel next to me. Then a dude with a spiky pink mohawk and a "Punisher" T-shirt saddled up next to him. They fist bumped, got their tickets, and went into the theatre. In a nutshell, that was the true beauty of the Fringe Festival. It was an awesome collection of local and national talent that had been brought down to the street level for everyone to enjoy.

    When a rolly polly man with a giant white beard waltzed in to the Bryant Lake Bowl, I knew it would be a good night. With his rosy red cheeks and Hawaiian shirt, he looked like Santa on vacation. He heartily back slapped several patrons and they all moved into the theater. My sister and I took our seats in the back.

    The musical remake of the infamous anti-marijuana movie was being put on by a local Twin Cities youth acting company. There was a funky house band kicking out jams on the wing of the stage. Although the play was about the evils of smoking weed, the majority of the patrons were thoroughly stoned. Everywhere I looked people was munching on heaping plates of nachos. Midway through the play, people started letting out cat calls. They playfully hooted and hollered at all the righteous anti-drug rhetoric in the script. When an actor sang the line, "We will bring down jazz musicians and immigrants!" the place bristled with good humored outrage.

    The play ended with classic Fringe flair: President Roosevelt performed a death row pardon on a young dope fiend and girls danced in bikinis.We left the quaint theater and headed back to the bar. A long line had formed for the next dramatic performance. Obscure hip hop music bumped out of the Bryant Lake Bowl sound system and washed over the patrons anxiously waiting for the box office to open. My sister and I had no idea what was showing next, but that didn’t matter at all. We ordered two more beers and got right back in line. Who knew theater could be so much fun?

  • Why Stop The Funny?

    I’ve reached a new low, which is amazing, because I’ve had my fair share of low moments in my life. There was the time in college when I had an explosive stomach issue while wearing a Halloween costume. On my wedding day, I had a dress shirt "malfunction." I had to wear a tie and a short sleeve button down shirt, which made me look like a Hardee’s manager on the most important day of my life.

    But when I recently wore a rubber hat that had a giant dolphin head on it while watching an actual dolphin show at the Minnesota Zoo, I officially reached a new low. As if my gray socks in gray running shoes and grotesque sweaty lather weren’t enough to make me look like a total dipshit. My son thought it was hilarious when my wife jokingly put his new novelty dolphin hat on my head. Every time I tried to take off the hat, my son looked utterly dejected. So I kept it on because I’m a team player. While the dolphin hat on my four-year old looked rather cute and whimsical, it just looked completely stupid on a grown man.

    "Why stop the funny?" my wife asked when I tried unsuccessfully to remove the silly hat for the umpteenth time. "You’re a dad. Who do you have to look good for?" I left the aquatic center in shame, the dolphin hat perched on my head like a loser’s crown.

    The next stop on my trail of humiliation was the newly remodeled Central Plaza that now featured a $24 million dollar expansion called the "Grizzly Coast." The new exhibit is a replica of the rugged and beautiful terrain of Russia’s East coast, a land where forest meets tundra and spills into the Pacific Ocean. Among the awesome display of architecture and landscaping, there were massive boulder walls, evergreen and birch trees, and wild vegetation around state-of-the-art animal sanctuaries. We watched four hundred pound bears tear through fresh salmon, otters playfully spin in frigid water, and lava bubble up from simulated volcanic hot spots. As my son watched the mud squirt and sizzle, I slyly removed the dolphin hat.

    We watched the Amur Snow Leopard prowl stealthily in and out of the rocks and trees. A hoard of frenzied visitors pressed up to the glass to see the elusive cat in action. One snotty kid broke through the railing barrier, climbed on top of a rock ledge, and did an obnoxious taunting dance.

     

    "Malachi! Malachi!" the child’s frantic mom yelled at him. "Get down now!" I sat in the back of the pile and took complete satisfaction that it wasn’t my kid. I judged this poor woman without mercy.

    My wife remained silent. Sarah simply pointed towards our son and said, "Check out our little Einstein." My son stood off to the side and casually jabbed his right index finger up his nostril. Murphy was ten feet from the rarest wild cat on the planet, but apparently nothing beats digging for booger nuggets. I pulled a complete "dad move" and started calculating the amount of money I had spend that day just so my son could enjoy the taste of boogers. I told him to stop and he did. He switched nostrils.

    What started off as a nice leisurely day at the Zoo quickly became a game of "Parental Survivor." My hyper son dragged both my wife and me across every inch of the massive park. He badgered us with questions and military-like instructions, waiting to see which one of us would drop first. We walked through the Farm, the Minnesota Trail, the Jungle, the Butterfly Garden, and back to the Grizzly Coast. When we finally ended up outside by the Mongolian Camels, it was 90 degrees and we had been at the Zoo for five hours. I had a cramp in my leg and a slight hint of vomit in my mouth.

    My still-chipper son looked out at the huge meadow and saw a pack of smaller horned animals grazing in the distance. "Hey Dad, what are those things?" Murphy asked eagerly.

    "I don’t know," I replied with dire exhaustion. "Deer or some shit." My wife erupted with delirious laughter. Not only is Sarah gorgeous, but she also is the coolest woman I’ve ever met. She fully understands that I spend my work week toiling with a bastardly array of scallywags and sometimes bring home my choppy profane blue collar dialect.

    Before Murphy could even soak in his daddy’s verbal slip-up, Sarah distracted him by yelling and pointing, "Buffalo! Buffalo!" As Murphy scampered off to see the Bison, I gave Sarah an apologetic look. "Sorry bout that," I told her. "No problem," she lovingly replied. Then she paused. "But I am going to have to ask you to put this back on." She handed me the dolphin hat. I begrudgingly put the aquatic dunce cap back on. And so, I finished my day exactly how I started it: looking stupid.

  • The F Word

    I absolutely loves me some Facebook. And I know what you’re thinking: What the hell is Todd Smith, the Spazz Dad, doing on Facebook? Isn’t he the guy with the Vagina Eye (Chop It Off) and the overactive colon? You are totally right. I have about as much right of being on the hip social networking website as I do in joining the Harlem Globetrotters. But so be it. I’m logged on and Facebookin’ the hell out of things.

    I was invited to join the website by an 18 year old coworker, a hyper college student named Joshlynn. She excitedly told me that “Oh, My, God, Everyone’s Doing It” and that it would be a super awesome way to keep in touch with my friends, since I’m like…old and stuff. Joshlynn said that me and my buddies could send each other pictures and notes back and forth… on our computers! We could even trade virtual gifts.

    I was extremely hesitant at first. Joshlynn didn’t fully understand that my friends are different then her friends. While her friends have raging indie-alternative college lives that are filled with gallery shows and Arcade Fire concerts, my friends are all middle aged and sweaty and have shitty jobs and even shittier kids and live on Cultasacks in Eden Prairie. I really didn’t need to see the progression of my friend Peter’s rapidly receding hairline every time I turned on my computer.

    Plus, it was a little awkward explaining the whole deal to my wife. She already puts up with enough of my shenanigans. And now I was about to take all my blarney and put it online for the whole world to see. Not a good idea. The conversation went something like this:

    “Hey, honey. Yeah, so …I’m going to join this social networking website, where I will be emailing and sending pictures to college age girls and boys.”

    Sarah cupped her hands around her mouth and mockingly booed me.

    “That’s really funny,” Sarah said, nearly out of breath with wheezing laughter. “You are trying soooo hard to stay cool.”

    She had a good point. The kids at my work do actually think I’m cool. What they don’t realize, of course, is that besides my seemingly limitless knowledge of Dave Chappell skits and pop culture in general, I’m really just an uncool 35 year old dad who before work douses his crotch with Gold Bond Medicated Powder and takes Metamucil on a daily basis.

    Undeterred, I joined up. Soon I had to choose a profile picture that the whole world would see every time I was using the website. Selecting my profile picture had all the drama of my senior year high school portrait. What do I wear? Do I look fat in this picture? Can they see my goiter in this one? As I deliberated the choices, my sneaky wife went ahead and downloaded an awful looking fake portrait I had done a few years back (which was titled “The Dirty Sanchez”) where I had a bad comb over, opened shirt to showcase chest hair, a greasy mustache, and looked exactly like the type of guy that would actually apply a Dirty Sanchez. Needless to say, it wasn’t my first choice.

    Shortly after my icky porno portrait hit the World Wide Web, I was immediately befriended online in my Facebook by the gaggle of twenty something hipsters at my work. It was like Junior High in a box! They posted comments on my wall (a message board like thingy on my main profile page), sent me growing gifts such as donut trees and cherry blossoms, and cute little pictures of cans of whoop ass and shamrocks. We played online games where I was attacked by werewolves and zombies and fought street gangs. They sent me bumper stickers that said catchy things like “My Balls Aren’t Gonna Lick Themselves” and “Stop Snitching”. My college age friends formed groups such as “I Got through Puberty Listening to Loveline” and “I Have a Suspicion that my Teacher Smokes Pot…and that makes me Happy”. One of my coworkers asked me to join her group that was titled “Enough with the Unicycling Already!” I joined immediately because who doesn’t hate fuckers who show off on their fancy one wheeled bikes?

    Over time, my network blossomed. And Joshlynn was totally right: everyone is doing Facebook. My friend list now includes a gun toting Marine, smooching hippies, NYC fashionistas, various Minneapolis Public high school rats, a M.I.T. Grad School nerd, and one dental hygienist. It is a daily occurrence that I will get a Friendship request from someone I went to grade school, high school, or college with. It’s so weird to see the names and faces of my past pop up on my computer. As I add them to my network, the memories come roaring back: I went to High School with that guy and he had testicles the size of tennis ball; Oh, my, that girl used to look like Jennifer Aniston but now she looks like Carol Channing; When I was in college, I think I took a shit in that guy’s mail box.

    The greatest feature of Facebook is one that no one talks about: Cyber Stalking. As a member of the website, you have access to millions of people, and can stalk all of your friends and family with great ease. You get to know who is in their network and what they are up to. We can peek through a virtual peep hole into their lives without causing suspicion. And before you know it, all the networks are intertwined, and internet snooping comes with your morning coffee.

    But the down side of all the cyber stalking is that you can get found by people you have tried to forget. A few weeks ago, the most wickedly popular girl from my childhood found me on Facebook. Megan was not only the cutest girl in the school but also the type of girl who would purposely break your crayons, throw them at you, and shriek with laughter. She had huge boobies in fifth grade, had grown into a full blown woman by seventh grade, and was dating buff high school dudes by eighth grade. She single handedly crushed my soul and then pissed on it. I had heard rumors that Megan had grown up and was now actually quite nice and started a family. Apparently, she was no longer smoking cigarettes behind the junior high, lurking in the shadows, ready to kick me in the gonads for smiling at her. But now there she was, in front of me on my computer, an entire lifetime later, requesting (I like to think she was begging) to be my friend.

    In 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, his goal was simple: to form an online community solely for Harvard and other Ivy League students to communicate. He had no idea four short years later, his networking website that was to be used strictly for Ivy Leaguers would become a giant popularity contest for bored housebound adults all over the world. As I sat there pondering whether to accept Megan’s request, I moved my cursor back and forth over the yes /no options. Facebook had finally leveled the playing field. For the first time in my life, I felt golden.
    I checked yes.

  • Golf Sex

    On a recent sunny afternoon in Minneapolis, four fabulous looking ladies put some serious sass into the usually bland game of golf. As the young fasionistas shimmied across the grounds of the Walker Museum’s new Artist Designed Mini Golf Course, the women combined ample cleavage and golf putters to make the fantasy of millions of American males finally come true. Astroturf never looked sexier.

     

    The gorgeous golf girls, who were all in their twenties and in ridiculous high heels, casually flitted around the unique sculptures/golf holes that were on display, even occasionally trying to hit a ball. On Hole Two, where numerous empty glass bottles hung from ropes over the putting green, the group giggled lightly as one of the women jokingly did a sexy come hither burlesque walk through the bottles. Ten feet away, a male golfer in a classic visor and Dockers nearly swallowed his tongue.

    Immediately following the four sultry women, my son and I stepped onto the golf course and the whole sex vibe instantly died. I’m a stocky Barney Rubble look alike and my son is Bam Bam dressed in Gap Kid clothes. There is no greater buzzkill in the world than a four year old boy wielding a golf club. With his index finger rammed up his nostril, constant barrage of mind numbing questions, and possible hot pile of poop in his pants, my son is two legged anti-Viagra.

    When the four hotties sauntered off to Hole Three, we moved onto the platform to the Hole Two bottle fun. Without a single word of instruction from me (I’m about as good at golf as I am at speaking Mandarin), Murphy drew the club back behind his ear and violently slap shot his golf ball all the way across the frame and out onto the lawn. The sex kittens playfully giggled as my son tore off into the bottle maze to find his ball. Within seconds, he couldn’t navigate the bottles dangling from above and soon looked like a drunk staggering around in a house of mirrors. I reached in and lead him out. After he retrieved his ball, he promptly slam dunked the thing into the cup and raced to the next hole.

    The course was at times difficult and at others just plain odd. With the sports aspect taking a back seat to wenches and weird metal roosters, at times I felt like it was something Andy Warhol probably came up with in gym class while all the dick hard jocks were tagging him with dodge balls. But each hole was inspiring and unique and the entire local artist congregation designed environmentally sound and challenging pieces.

    There were holes with water towers, giant carpeted waves, Paul Bunyan, and even one where we shot our balls into Teddy Roosevelt’s mouth. And amazingly, they were all made from recycled or reused materials like crushed glass and rubber tires. We spent a solid ten minutes at a hole where we had to peddle a stationary bike backwards to shoot our ball into a giant pinball machine, then use the hand brakes to move the flippers, and finally had to putt our balls through a labyrinth of slots.

    We finished golfing and took a nice leisurely stroll through the Sculpture Garden across the street. With the heat slowly fading away and the blue sky just beginning to fill with stars, we walked hand and hand under an awesome summer sky that was filled with both day and night. We playfully chased each other into a grove of trees where our innocent Father and Son moment was punctured by the sight of two young people dry humping the bejesus out of each other on a secluded bench.

    After I saw my son’s worried expression, I told him, “Those people are just wrestling.”

    “Like those two bears at the zoo?” he innocently asked.

    “Ugh, yep.”

    (I chuckled because every time we see two living creatures engaged in foreplay or intercourse, whether it is two horny twenty-somethings fresh from two-for-one drinks at Liquor Lyles or mating grizzlies at the Minnesota Zoo, I always tell him that they are just wrestling. And I don’t know why I do this. Maybe it’s because I went to Catholic school for thirteen years and was told that God would send a plague of locusts after me if I had premarital sex. The whole wrestling excuse seems to cover all the logistics of the situation. But I can’t help but think that when my son has his first sexual intercourse experience [when he’s married of course!] he will greet his partner with a flying forearm shiver as he leaps off the bedpost.)

    We quickly left the happy humpers and returned to the golf course to eat a small snack from the golf shack which featured food from Wolfgang Puck’s Gallery 8 Cafe. Darkness was just beginning to cover the grounds and the downtown city lights twinkled in the distance. The course was now bustling with a whole legion of people on dates. There were straight couples and gay dudes, all noodling each other as they swung golf clubs around. As we walked to the car, you could feel waves of summer loving wafting off the golf course.

    Who knew that a sport normally reserved for rich white guys could be such an aphrodisiac?

  • A Lesson in Futility

    At the end of July, I will be trekking to Montana to write a story about a man who lives on top of a mountain in the most remote corner of Glacier National Park.

    Since this dude literally lives on top of a mountain, I have to hike up hill for six straight miles (with an elevation gain of 3,000 feet) through grizzly bear infested wilderness just to talk to him. I’ve hired a professional Twin Cities photographer named John McCambridge to shoot the story.

    As our journey draws closer, I recently fretted to McCambridge about how in fact are two bumbling idiots like us going to make it up a god damn mountain?

    "The only thing I’m carrying up there is a camera and my will to live,” McCambridge jokingly replied. Easy for him to say. He’s built like one of those wild Scotsmen from the movie “Braveheart.”

    Me on the other hand, well, I just kind of…suck. In an attempt to not die on the mountain, I started exercising to get ready for the journey.

    I thought I’d start with a bike ride around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis. The last time I rode a bike in earnest was when I looked like Duane Allman and played hacky sack in the oval of the University of Montana. This is to say it was a lifetime ago. I hooked up the kid carriage on the back of my bike, loaded up my son and his cousin Elliot, and off we went.

    Within two blocks of my house, the wind was so violent it was as if I were pedaling in soup. Then the two kids started chirping.
    “Where are we going? Do you like elephants? Who’s Darth Maul? Can we have treats at wherever you are taking us? Why are you going so slowly? Why is your skin purple?” It felt like I was carrying those two old crumudginey bastards from the Muppet Show on my back. The biking was a bad call. Hated the bike.

    So I started jogging. The next day, I put my son in the stroller and we headed down to Lake Harriet. I began the jog with a little trot. But after only a few feet, I realized that pushing a forty pound kid and trying to run really, really blows. In a miracle from God, I made it to the concession stand where I quickly bought my son a box of the famous Lake Harriet popcorn (which is basically buttered flavored crack rock) to shut him up. As I started jogging again, several packs of beautiful people sprinted past me. These little clicks of runners –all dressed in their fancy sweat wicking shirts and flowing shorts– were so annoying I wanted to hockey fight them right in the path. They passed me at full speed and gobbled up miles like Pac-Man eating up dots. The worst part was that they were casually talking the entire time they ran. I, on the other hand, looked like Chris Farley choking on a pork chop.

    Near the beach, I ran into my dad. Big Smitty was doing the half running/half walking thing where the person moves with an odd tightness, not quite sure if they should run slower or walk faster. In my dad’s case, he just looked like a man trying to hold a poop in. When he saw me jogging towards him, a look of bewilderment came across his face.

    “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

    “I’m jogging. Trying to get in shape for my Montana trip,” I said.

    “You gonna need more than that,” he said. The iPod that I bought him two weeks ago dangled off his pocket. I preloaded the thing with 200 of his favorite songs so that he could rock out as he exercised. It was nice to see him using it. He fiddled with the iPod and said, “Hey, how do I get this thingy to play a different song. All it plays is Mustang Sally.”

    I took a look at the iPod and realized that somehow my dad had screwed the menu up so badly that he’d been listening to Otis Redding’s “Mustang Sally” on repeat for two straight weeks. I clicked a few options on the menu and got it working. He trotted off, his butt turtling a poo, singing some sunny Beach Boys song. The whole scene made me chuckle and it got me through the last grueling mile. I guarantee that Big Smitty, at least once, had gotten so frustrated by his new iPod and its lame ability to only play one song that he turned the thing upside down and smacked it like Fonzi trying to fix something.

    I asked some twenty year olds at my work to make me some music mixes to run to. On one mix it was all whiny British guys and the other featured growling white chicks. I was really grooving to this one mix (titled “Two Forty Gordy,” a sly reference to fat people) when all of a sudden the up tempo rock music went off and there were five straight songs of slow folk music. This would be fine if you were sitting in a coffee shop, but I was sweating my ass off trying to make it up the Newton Avenue hill. I asked the kid who made it why on earth would he slow down the music on an exercise mix?

    “It was for your cool down period, bro,” he told me. “Like the circuit training at Lifetime Fitness.” Cool down? What the hell is a cool down? I was going old school on this exercise shit. I simply was going to run until I fell over. I don’t think Rocky was listening to the soft melodies of “Teghan and Sarah” when he was in Russia carrying logs in the deep snow.

    After a few weeks, I was feeling good. Although my frantic Alaskan sled dog running style led many of my neighbors to believe that I was being chased by something, things started to pick up. I could jog for longer stretches without feeling like my lungs were going to explode.

    On a recent afternoon jog, I ran past the Milo’s sandwich shop in Linden Hills and saw McCambridge the photographer completely going to town on a sub the size of a muffler. His cheeks were stuffed full and he could hardly talk. Then I realized something: I don’t have to be in shape at all for our journey up the mountain. I will just let the big guy go first up the hill and let him be the pace car, nice and steady. And if we do see a grizzly bear, all I have to do is be faster than McCambridge.

    I think I’m going to make it up that mountain after all. Just maybe not in one piece.

  • The Idiots at My Work, Part II

    On
    the loading dock of my work, a truck driver named Tater takes a seat in
    the shade and fans his sweat soaked crotch with a celebrity gossip
    magazine. Under the broiling summer sun, the tubby
    trucker is quickly roasted like a luau pig; his fleshy face turns heart-attack red and his sleeveless t-shirt stinks to high heaven. As
    I unload pallets of topsoil off his truck with a forklift, we chit-chat
    and have a rather high-brow discussion about how awesome barbeque
    flavored Corn Nuts taste. When we’re finished talking, Tater stands up and eloquently says, "Y’all got a toilet? I need to take a dump."

    When Tater waddles back from the bathroom all sweaty and winded, I’m knee deep in the stank of my daily working class grind.

    "This
    Jennifer Lopez is something, huh," Tater boasts and jabs a chubby
    finger at a picture of the pop star in his soiled gossip magazine. "I’d wear her ass for a hat."

    Mere
    seconds after Tater departs, a group of my coworkers run out of the
    store like terrified villagers frantically fleeing a foreign invader.

    "It smells like the zoo in there," a young cashier chokes, a cupped hand protecting her nose and mouth. After I perform an exorcism on the bathroom, an unholy odor festers in the store and clings to my clothes. Good times.

    At 8 a.m. the garden center opens and once again becomes the Ellis Island of labor. We hire the wretched, the stupid, the gimpy, the soused, and put them to work for the summer.

    A college kid named Hafner shows up to work with only one shoe on. He gives me no explanation for the blunder. Hafner is majoring in aerospace engineering, making him an actual rocket scientist. But it appears that putting two shoes on this morning was too difficult a task. I send him home to find the other shoe and he comes back wearing lime green flip flops. I send him home a second time because labor regulations prohibit the wearing of "kick ass beach wear" on a job site.

    Just as I finish watering a section of evergreen shrubs, a rusted out Buick slows down at the back gate. The Rooney Brothers fall out while the jalopy is still moving. They are a half hour late and wear matching purple welts under their eyes

    "Hey boss man," Tommy Rooney greets me nonchalantly. They both are eating hard shell tacos for breakfast and a dirty red sauce rings their lips. Tommy finishes his taco in two bites and then puts a chunk of chewing tobacco into his lip for dessert. Danny Rooney rocks nervously back and forth, holding his taco to the side.

    "We lost the remote for our TV!" Tommy blurts out randomly.

    "Is that why you two are late?" I ask.

    "No, it’s got nothin’ to do with the remote control," Tommy says and shoots me a stupid look. "We’re late because there are bats in our apartment that kept us up all night. And we each drank a case of beer."

    "But dude, check this out: We lost our remote control and hated having to get up off the couch to turn the channel. It was an issue who’d get up."

    That explains their fresh black eyes.

    "O.K."

    "So we went out and bought a wheelchair. Now we can drink and watch TV and no one has to get up. We just roll on over, change the channel, and roll back. Isn’t that awesome?"

    "Actually, it is…" I begin to say just as Danny drops to a knee and dry heaves onto the asphalt.

    Tommy takes out his cell phone and takes a couple of snapshots. "I’m soooo Facebookin’ this."

    In my mind, I’ve fired these two idiots four hundred times a piece. But who am I going to hire that is eager to shovel dirt for eight straight hours? I’m
    so desperate for workers these days that if an applicant wrote on his
    application that his previous work experience was "Al Qaeda," I’d still
    hire them.

    "Didn’t
    spill a drop of my taco, bro," Danny says proudly, as he rises off the
    pavement and washes his mouth out with Mountain Dew.

    Now that’s a skill you can’t put on a resume.

  • A Knight for a Day

    Giving a sharp sword to a hyper-ass eight-year-old boy goes against all parental logic. But
    that’s exactly what happened at the "Knight for a Day Camp," a place
    where kids are whole-heartedly encouraged to go completely medieval.

    The
    "Knight for a Day" summer camp was put on by The Oakeshott Institute, a
    Twin Cities foundation that promotes the interest of ancient arms,
    armor, and legends, through hands-on education. The Oakeshott Institute, nestled in a remodeled 1880s church, is a virtual Hogwarts Academy right in the middle of Dinkytown. Ever
    since Harry Potter rode in on his magic broomstick, whipping up a wand-waving fever, children of all ages have been looking for
    mythical activities to partake in. To accommodate all
    these eager Muggles, the Oakeshott faculty has put together a Viking
    and chivalry summer course as an alternative to the usual park-board fodder of hula hoops and endless games of tag-you’re-it.

    On
    a recent Friday morning, I watched weapons instructor Galan Poor, a
    wiry young man with a huge thicket of hair so wild it looked like it
    might come alive and talk, stand before a captivated classroom of
    children and teach them the art of war.

    "Get me a sword!" Mr. Poor told his assistant. A
    college intern then raced to a glass case housing a treasure chest
    of ancient killing devices that included a sword used in the First
    Crusade. Amongst the axes, spears, and daggers, a rusted Viking sword was chosen and handed to Mr. Poor. He
    demonstrated to the class how the Vikings used a chopping and hacking
    motion, and not the sharp-pointed fencing-style attack that has been
    made popular in movies. In long elaborate swoops, Poor gently brought the blade down on a dummy’s neck and wrists.

    "Hack here to cut off his hand!" explained Poor. "Hack it like a piece of tough meat. And swoop down to cut off his foot!"

    The blade made a slight ting as he connected with the metal rings of the chain mail draped over the dummy. The
    class sat still as crows on a wire, anxiously awaiting their turn to
    engage each other and pretend to have their own limbs hacked off. It wasn’t exactly a game of kickball.

    Mr. Poor then moved to a dry erase board, where he gave a detailed NFL style play-by-play of Friday’s lesson: The Shield Wall. The
    kids were going to reenact the legendary 1066 Battle of Hastings, where
    the Anglo-Saxons held off an entire Norman army by standing atop a hill
    and forming a tight barrier with their shields. The kids learned all about the war for England’s crown, the ancient art of defense, and the physics of the Shield Wall: If
    the shields were lined up correctly, even these little runts would be
    able to withstand the mightiest of blows (in this case, rubber dodge
    balls.) A dozen boys were so enthralled in the lesson
    about flaming arrows and knights on horseback that there was no mention
    of boobies, wieners, or farts, which is the holy trinity of discussion
    amongst pubescent boys.

    The
    campers had spent the entire week building helmets, shields, and chain
    mail and were finally ready to use their wares in action. Today was battle day.

    With
    the boom-boom base of low riders bumping down Como Avenue as a
    backdrop, Van Cleve Park near the University of Minnesota campus became
    the battleground for the thrown of England. On a small grassy knoll, the kids formed a Shield Wall using wooden replica shields that had authentic paint and art design. A tiny kid, who resembled Chicken Little in every way but the beak, pounded his shield and howled with rage. A big lunker of a ten year old stood in the middle and smirked, "This is soooooooo Brave Heart."

    Rubber balls flew through across the park and tagged the Shield Wall, filling the air with a sharp slapping sound. The
    inner city tuffs playing pick-up ball on the basketball court adjacent
    to the fields stopped their game to watch the mayhem exploding all
    around the children. A camper with shaggy, summer-streaked hair bent his knees and deflected the balls being thrown at him from the camp councilors. He yelled out in delight as the balls ricocheted off him and back down the hill. The big kid in the middle shouted out, "Hold the wall! Hold the wall!"

    After twenty minutes, the kids were spent and Battle of Hastings turned into a glorious massacre. The
    runts stationed at the corners of the Shield Wall grew tired and were
    picked off. The wall loosened and all the kids were bombarded with
    rubber balls. The history lesson was lost as one solitary Velcro shoe was shot into the summer sky as a sign for peace. The kids crumbled to the grass in theatrical mock death.

    But a lone girl kept the battle alive. She stood amongst the wiggling bodies of her fallen comrades and tried her best to soldier on. Seven balls came at her and she was comically peppered in the head, stomach, and leg. She wailed with sheer joy.

    "She
    would’ve cried for days if I had sent her to soccer camp like the rest
    of the kids," Maggie Swanson’s mom said about her courageous daughter. "But she loves this."

    The beleaguered campers took a break and sat in a shady grove of trees. Then
    a burly instructor laid out spears with tennis balls on the tips and
    boasted with a great Hail Caesar flair, "Let the Children play with
    spears!"

    The kids sprang up, grabbed spears, and bolted through the park. A gangly boy, who couldn’t throw a ball to save his life, chucked a spear and hit a target dead on. Congratulatory cheers rang out as chivalry was brought back to the Twin Cities.