Tag: humor

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!

I first heard of Colorado mountain climber Aron Ralston’s daring self-rescue on the radio. I thought: “Wow! What an adventurer!” I stood daydreaming in the kitchen, up to my elbows in dishwater, and let my imagination fly. It was the fifth day… pinned to the north face of a brutal cliff… my water—gone. My hopes that someone might happen along, someone within earshot even—dashed. Listed among my assets: rope, the clothes on my back, and perhaps the most important ingredient of all—steely resolve.

I never got to the part where I sawed off my arm with a jackknife and rappelled down the cliff only to walk five miles before finding help, because I know myself too well. I’d never have made it. Once pinned by the 800-pound boulder, I’d have faced a toss up—how to expel fluids fast enough to pass out from dehydration and welcome sweet death? Crying or wetting my pants? Could I do both at the same time? Probably, yes.

As for the DIY surgery, forget it. I can’t even cut my own bangs. Even mall-walking is too risky for me. I’m smack dab in my mid-30s, and I’ll tell you—I’ve got my limitations pretty well categorized. What’s intriguing to me about this hike gone wrong are the other little bits of the story that get lost in the shuffle. Time magazine headlined their chronicle of his ordeal, “Survival of the Fittest.” I’d call it “Lucky Fool Cheats Death—Again!”

Here’s the timeline. In the late 90s, Ralston saw the movie Everest, the one about the climb gone fatally wrong. It spurred him on to quit his day job and devote his life to exploration and following the jam bands Phish and String Cheese Incident. (After reading this, I could give Ralston the benefit of the doubt and assume he is not also a fan of illegal herb, but I won’t. I mean, come on.)

So, for me, the next part makes total sense—the part where he forgets/neglects to leave an itinerary. (Do you think Ashton Kutcher will star in the movie version of Ralston’s hike? Dude! Where’s My Arm?) The more you know about it, the more the story degenerates into a Super Dave Osborne fiasco. Ralston’s made a habit of climbing with nothing more than water, candy bars, and an ice axe. No cell phone, no global positioning system, no rope. When I’m walking on the treadmill at the Y, I’ve got a 20-oz. Cherry Gatorade, the latest Jackie Collins potboiler on tape, and if I didn’t think people would look sideways at me, I’d bring caramel corn.

I know I shouldn’t blame all of this guy’s irresponsible behavior on the demon weed. Scientists say there’s an internal chemical reason folks like Ralston skate the edge. They call it the thrill-seeking gene. Boy, when you hear it described that way, don’t you just get visions of handsome Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier? Plane disintegrating around him? His broad rugged shoulders seared by his flaming jumpsuit as he plummets to Earth? But the same gene must then include Houdini. And Evel Knievel. The guys on Jackass (who have, incidentally, elevated that word to an entirely new level of disrepute). And that goofy kid I knew in third grade who thought he’d be able to jump off his garage roof, Wile E. Coyote-style, and scare the skittles out of us girls. (Sure, we felt bad, but it didn’t stop us from laughing before we ran to get help.)

So when thrill seekers are out for information or money, the rewards seem pretty well explained. But how about those rambunctious few who venture outside the fence of science or show business? Are they merely threats to themselves and others, or could they be valuable research subjects? Could we harness their brain chemistry to create an elite force of rodeo clowns? Should we have volunteers from the Raptor Center ear-tag them like other endangered species? Or should we do what we’ve always done—let these guys roam free to inflate our rates on life, health, and casualty insurance? I’m glad to hear that Ralston is on the mend, but I still worry about him. He doesn’t strike me as a quitter. And there’s a lot of mountains left out there.

“ST. PAUL — A lawmaker who had hoped to stop Minnesota prisoners from getting desserts met with an unexpected problem this week: Turns out it would cost the state an extra half million dollars to stop.” —Associated Press, April 5

I’m kind of sorry that Rep. Marty Seiferts’ no-dessert proposal for state prisoners wasn’t taken more seriously. I mean, hey — you can see where he was going with it. Just trying to save a few bucks here and there. Even though our hoosegows are closer to Super 8s than Hiltons, you can always squeeze another few pennies out of the budget. Put the money to better use than tossing chocolate parfaits down the necks of evildoers.

And if it weren’t for those outdated feel-good nutritional guidelines gumming up the process, we might have had something here. But no, if we deny our prisoners dessert ($), we then have to replace it with an item of comparable caloric value. Like fruit or cheese ($$$).

I say we get rid of the guidelines and just send them to bed without any supper. I mean, they’ve been bad, right? And instead of rehabilitation programs, let’s just get my mom to go over there, and she’ll give ’em a good talking to. Hey, it worked for me. Well, mostly, anyway. And, for the super tough cases, I’ve got a friend who’d love to go over there on Saturday nights to dole out spankings, free of charge, just because he’s into that kind of thing.

Another scheme that got the kibosh before the House Judiciary Committee was a plan to hire private companies to house state prisoners. Jury’s still out on that one, and considering the troubling number of Minnesota-based businesses wallowing in red ink, perhaps this is one proposal we should think about carefully. Do you think Musicland could re-organize in time? They could put Lifers in the Oldies section. Assault and Battery convicts in World Beat? All they have to do is snap those magnetic shoplifting tags on the prisoners and they’ll never get past the Cinnabon before the guards open fire.

And how about Northwest Airlines? They’ve got some awfully big hangars out at the airport, and loads of high visibility zip-up jumpsuits. Plus, the staff is already adept at maintaining the discipline of large unruly groups, performing cavity searches, and dishing up cheap food.

My favorite recommendation for thrifty incarceration, however—even better than Gov. Pawlenty’s brainwave of charging political protesters for their luxurious accommodations in the klink—is Rep. Seifert’s plan to serve brunch on weekends and holidays. By adopting the program already in place at St. Cloud State Prison, the state will save almost $250,000 each year. And brunch sounds so festive! I can just see the inmates rioting if there’s not enough whipped almond butter for their scones. Since Martha Stewart may soon be joining the ranks of Cellblock H, perhaps she can lend her special touch to planning the repast. It’s a different kind of state dinner than she’s used to, but I’m sure her classic good taste is appropriate for any occasion. And I imagine we’ll have far fewer escape attempts with Martha designing the Big House menu. Instead of The Shawshank Redemption, it’ll be The Lamb Shank Reduction. (Slice thinly with shiv and serve warm.)

Still, maybe we don’t need to get rid of the nutritional guidelines altogether to make this thing work. I mean, if ketchup is a vegetable why couldn’t water be classified as a thin soup? We haven’t exhausted our options. What about road kill? Make it into jerky and nobody’d know the difference. How about putting all the prisoners whose height/weight ratio doesn’t match up on Slim Fast? A delicious shake for breakfast, a delicious shake for lunch … a case of the shakes by dinnertime. Like I said, I don’t blame Seifert for trying. He wanted the money saved to go into funding areas of public service that are doomed to be cut this year. Meals on Wheels for one. And if that gets cut, maybe we can just serve the inmates a new Hormel product… Soylent Green!

The sun is peeking out, the snowman who stood sentry in my neighbors’ front lawn has surrendered, and though some of us will get itchy eyeballs and stuffy noses, we’re all going to get a present soon: an extra hour of daylight. I can’t help but get mushy like Mr. Snowman this time of year. I’m springing ahead.

This surge of goodwill usually bubbles inside me until I’m compelled to do something nice. Last year, that meant volunteering to help at the annual Ladies Aid spring salad luncheon fundraiser held in my church’s basement. You might be thinking, “Hey, church basements are usually the most un-spring like environments in the world!” Well, gotcha! Because when I showed up ready to be put to good use, Nettie and Helen had already made and hung the construction-paper daisy decorations.

Now, I don’t know Nettie and Helen. I’d seen them before, of course, but not in a social situation outside of chapel. And I’m sure that one doesn’t just step off the mean streets into her first guild event and snag the plum decorating job either. So I marched off to the back kitchen, where I met the head lady, Adele. Silver flip ’do, steely green eyes, and a fuchsia stain on her lips, cheeks, and nails. Ninety pounds of will, and at least 20 pounds of that had to come from the shoulder pads that were sewn into her sequined, exotic animal-print cardigan sweater. Think “Cher’s Grandma.” She was too small to be a tackle, but definitely could be a tight end.

“You!” she commanded, looking up at me as though I weren’t fit to spit-shine her rhinestone mules. “Get over to the prep table and start cutting squares and plating the salads.” In the distance, I saw a trembling mass of jewel-like blocks, molds, and towers. A skyline, for all its rubbery backbone, that shouted “Doubt!” And “Hope!” Some slabs were plain, but I could tell in a glance that others held petrified chunks of sugared pineapple, and various canned fruits. Some were mysterious, boasting tiny celery smiles. And—egads!—some even had pink chunks of what could only be described as meat, lurking in Kool-Aid tinged psychedelic freak out, man, daring you to guess fish or fowl, beef or pork.

If we were downtown, Adele would have been awarded a Bush grant and been the toast of the avant-garde community. Note to Matthew Barney: To hell with sculpting in tapioca and Vaseline. Gelatin is the new (old) medium.

The glistening molds were a Mondrian-style feast, more of a commentary on food than actual food. Genius. When fruits and vegetables have been manipulated that way, can you still call them “salad”? The only unsullied vegetation in the room was a head of romaine lettuce, which was to be arranged around the chunks and blocks and slices to soften the edges—a little like lingerie for Jell-O.

I smiled to introduce myself, and suggested that, with my extensive service-industry background, I might be better suited to rolling the coffee cart and pouring. Adele shot me a withering glance. “Not dressed like that, you won’t. You’ll stay in the back.”

I looked down at my T-shirt and Indiana Jones cargo pants. Not my best effort, but honestly, not my worst. Peeking out to the dining room, however, I saw that Adele was right. A thousand twinkling lights bounced and scattered off the overhead fluorescent tubes. The ladies from the guild wore their sweaters like armor. Scaled with doodads and ditsys. Floating slowly and regally past the cafeteria tables like great exotic Technicolor fish. Peaceful as prayers, offering napkins to sticky sweet fingers. Murmuring low and husky reassurances to the congregants.

Next to them, I was no lady. I would have looked fine handing out samples at Home Depot, but this was a feast of celebration. Good intentions notwithstanding, I would have been as jarring as arugula in a bowl of shredded iceberg. Sometimes you’ve got to do a little extra work to make things easier to swallow. Call it the Parable of Jell-O.

Lesson learned, I turned to the prep table and tried to slice the particolored salads as perfectly as possible. My internship with polite society had begun.

Enough tension-building hysteria. Yes! The polar ice-caps are melting! Yes! Migration habits are disturbed! Yes! The ozone layer has more holes in it than I-94 after the spring thaw! (Rim shot, please.)

Environmentally, politically, socially, morally—we’re screwed. As humans, I believe this state of events is our natural habitat. That doesn’t make it right; it just is what it is. And I pledge to do my part. I hereby swear not to jump into my luxury mink-seated SUV, late to pick the kids up from school, and go barreling into traffic among those tiny, pious, Toyota Tsk’s, with half an eye on the road, as I yammer on to my stockbroker, making secret insider trades while cell-phone cancer eats through the last brain-stem inhibitor I have left that keeps me from shouting at the TV, Fat Elvis-style, whenever regularly scheduled programming is on.

I have gladly quit smoking, my lawn is free of pesticides, and my ten-dollar-a-week Aqua Net habit is a thing of the past. But it’s not enough. Nor will it ever be. I subscribe to the notion that human lives could never ever be cruelty free. Even the best of us, or even the best parts of us, are woefully fallible. We are doomed to repeat the same selfish, sinful mistakes of our ancestors, only as each generation goes on, more stylishly, and more efficiently then ever before.

Well, a clean heart, mind, and conscience might well begin with a clean colon, so I looked up a friend who espouses the virtues of clean living. For the sake of this story, I’ll call her Megan the Vegan Pagan. Her body is a temple and it only accepts certain offerings. She dragged me to the co-op, and lectured me on the error of my ways, which she diagnosed as partly dietary, but mostly a species of moral failure. In her worldview, eating clean is only somewhat about health. It’s more about feeling ethical. I decided to accept her counsel. After all, I’ve got my wellness to think about.

As we first strolled into the meat aisle, Megan dismissively pointed out the free-range chicken, ostrich steaks, and fresh fish, stating that she “never eats food with a face.” “Even Gummi Bears?” I kidded. But this was no laughing matter. Did you know that Gummi Bears are made with gelatin? Which is derived from bone marrow? Me neither. Since Gummi bears are not on the generally accepted food pyramid, I decided this was not such a great loss.

We went on to produce, where I couldn’t help but notice that, while the fruits and veggies resembled the fruits and veggies I usually buy, they were, on average, smaller, dirtier, and more expensive than what I’m used to. How European! Megan explained that these fruits were organically grown, without scientific hocus-pocus and therefore they looked like what real produce should look like, not like those hormone-injected Pamela Anderson cantaloupes like they have in the supermarket. (By this reasoning, if Moby ate hamburgers addled with Bovine Growth Hormone, he’d look like Vin Diesel.)

In personal care products, I picked up a baking soda tooth powder, which tasted like penance for all my sins, but got my teeth so clean they squeaked when I smiled. Plus a natural deodorant crystal the size and texture of those ice formations that you get under your wheel well this time of year. It said on the back of the box that the rock had a street value of $5.99 and that it was a year’s supply, but I wasn’t sure if I should crush it and snort it, or cook it on a spoon and mainline it into the affected stinky areas.

Later, over dinner and—what else?—organic red wine, Megan admitted to me that progress is the goal, not perfection, when it comes to living the virtuous life. She said new information comes out every day, and it would be impossible to stay on top of what was ethically acceptable to shop for and where to shop for it. I let this sink in. “You mean, I could be offending Mothership Earth right now and not even know it?” She nodded sadly, and then excused herself to have a smoke out on my back porch. I grabbed her pack of butts and shook them in the air, pointing out to her that this was a perfect example of human incongruity. She snatched the pale blue pack back and snapped: “They’re American Spirits. They don’t have any additives.”

I have a clock radio from 1978. It has two volumes, “Way Up” or “Silent.” The alarm is stuck between KQRS and buzzer, and after the Exxon Valdez coffee/hairspray spill of 1989, the on/off button is gunked up and doesn’t work. So I either plug it in, or I don’t. But it still does the job. It’s more like a time bomb I set for myself every night, so I can be assured of dragging my can out of bed when it’s absolutely necessary.

But this is a story about a morning when I didn’t have to get up. A day off. I got up anyway. Because I forgot to unplug my alarm. One moment, I’m dead to the world. The next, the alarm goes off. I was shocked into Bachman-Turner Overdrive. With so much adrenaline coursing through my body, I had no choice but to stay awake. Because it was my day off, I was at loose ends. I decided to call my mother, who is the only person I know personally who is up early in the morning every day for no other reason than that “it’s the best part of the day.”

My mother is old. And I’ll let you in on a little secret about old people. They don’t sleep. They put on their pajamas like you or me, but it’s all for show. If you called my mother at 2 a.m., she’d answer on the first ring and conduct a lucid discussion on the subject of the Marie Osmond doll collection versus the Precious Moments figurines. (Just an aside here: I don’t like how, at a certain age, dolls become socially acceptable collectibles again. My grandmother has an entire roomful of two-foot tall Victorian villagers. Not one of them has kung fu grip, or can wet their knickers. Inaction figures. If this weren’t bad enough, she also has a “shame baby.” This is a doll who is perpetually in a “time out” position, standing in a corner, hands shielding its eyes in eternal disgrace. I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to immortalize this particular childhood rite of passage, and then I figured out that maybe my grandmother is nostalgic for yelling at children. At any rate, the last time I was there, when Nana wasn’t looking, I carefully posed a steak knife in the dolls’ little foam hand, so it could at least look like she had done something worth being yelled at for.)

Back to the story. I looked at the clock. It was around 5 a.m. I dialed the number, and to my horror, my father answered. My father is the original strong silent type. He distrusts the telephone. When the telephone rings, it’s either trouble, or somebody who wants to talk. And either way, that’s trouble. Small talk is out of the question, because it implies a weakness of intent in life that my dad finds unsettling. Quickly, I decided to talk to him about something that I had recently purchased, because the one thing that is sure to engage Dad is the threat of expenditure.

Right down to lunchbox apples, no purchase is too mundane for my dad to wrestle over. He’s got a system, and it’s served him well. The Four W’s. If you want to buy something, ask yourself, why, why, why, and why. If you find that you can answer all four questions clearly, wait three weeks and see if you’ve forgotten what you wanted in the first place. And if you must spend, before you crack open your wallet, think “double duty.” Two years ago, my dad bought each of his kids a case of Jimmie Dean Lambrusco, an amber vintage the color of iodine, with a sausage-y afterthought. He proudly read from the back of the box: “Says right here this wine goes with beef, chicken, and fish!” My Mom interjected, “I’m pretty sure it would go with franks and beans, too, Hon.” Still high from his splurge, my father replied, “You know, it doesn’t say anything about pork, but let’s try that tonight!”

Anyway, as soon as Dad answered, I launched into a filibuster about my broken clock radio, hoping to either trick him into conversation, or trick him into handing the telephone to my mother. In record time, he handed the phone to my mother, who, hearing my voice, breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, I thought it was your grandmother.”
“Why? Is there anything wrong?”
“I think she’s going batty. She called us up at 3 a.m. last week because one of her dolls pulled a knife on her.”

Forget road rage. I love my car. It is my pod of sanity. A micro-community I control. Yes, I understand when I slide behind the wheel and I survey all that is out in the great beyond through my windshield that I have no control of what goes on out there. Traffic jams, crazy drivers, construction. These things are to be expected. Inside my car, the music is perfect. My seat is positioned exactly for me. The temperature, ideal. Driving in my car is often the only quiet time I get during the week. The problems start when I have to get out of my car to pilot a smaller vehicle through an obstacle course where there is no right of way. There are no rules. There are no state troopers keeping an eagle eye for wrongdoers. There is no limit on blood alcohol level, no rearview mirrors, and no brakes. This is the Thunderdome. I am speaking of course, about shopping carts.

Cart Rage. Anybody who’s ever plopped a feverish toddler into a seventy-pound metal cage with a sticky front wheel knows what I’m talking about. Trying desperately to maneuver through the fluorescent labyrinth of a warehouse grocery store, accumulating a week’s worth of groceries before the child in your cart is old enough to require braces. Personally, I prefer to shop with a screaming toddler. It turns my cart into something akin to an emergency vehicle. Like a siren, little Billy will alert fellow shoppers of my approach and let them know to pull off to the side. If you’re not careful, tempers can run short. In the interest of public safety, I have taken it upon myself to illustrate three troublesome cart drivers to watch out for.

1. The “Diva.” Miss Thing believes the grocery store and all its inhabitants were created just for her. You can identify the Diva driver by the way she leaves her cart unattended in the middle of the busiest thoroughfare, wandering off to contemplate the intricacies of fresh versus concentrate, effectively blocking both lanes of traffic until she has made up her precious, precious mind.

Strategy: The Movement. Whenever I spot an abandoned cart, no matter how many children, groceries or personal affects it has in it, I like to hunker down beside it and start singing protest songs at top volume. Usually, the Diva can’t get away fast enough.

2. The “Daredevil.” This is NASCAR style shopping. This guy carries no list, coupons, or meal plan, armed with only his wits and, unfortunately for you, a major weight advantage swinging blindly around a corner at thirty-five miles an hour.

Strategy: Reconnais-sance. Dispatch your spouse or a trustworthy child to precede you like a hurricane hunter to gather intelligence on activity in nearby produce sectors. If the Daredevil is barreling your way, remain calm. Do not try to outrun him. Get low and cover your head to protect yourself from flying canned goods. Shield yourself with a 12-pack of quilted toilet tissue if available.

3. The “Diner.” These shoppers usually mill around in foraging herds, particularly on sample day. As crafty as they are hungry, they create pockets of gridlock around any display of food that is not protected by a vacuum seal. Particularly dangerous around grapes and bulk peanuts, an unruly group of Diners can also form an arterial clog in the self-serve bakery aisle.

Strategy: Infiltration. Sneak into the throng’s outer perimeter while making chewing motions with your jaw. Turn to the person nearest you and whisper, “Say, did you have any of those lobster claw samples they’re handing out over on Aisle Six? Man, are they good or what?” Then move aside swiftly. Standing in the way of stampeding grocery-store moochers can be more dangerous than running with the bulls in Pamplona.

With this information, your next shopping expedition should go smoothly. And if somewhere in this article, you recognize yourself, so much the better. We can’t all stand in the express lane, but with a little effort, we can make it back to the safety of our cars before the ice cream melts.

After a couple of accidental clicks of the mouse the other day, I realized that I have officially seen enough naked people in my life. This does not mean that I never want to have sex again, or that I don’t want to see the person who I currently see naked all the time naked any more, it just means that I don’t want to see any additional naked people. I have too much information, and I am done.

I am as surprised as you are, because you’d think that naked bodies might be endlessly fascinating, but they are not. Kind of boring now, actually. When I walk past the magazine rack at Target and I see the latest seminude cover of Maxim featuring Tara Reid staring me down through a thick smear of eyeliner, I’m most likely to cluck and think, “Honey, wash that crapola off, you’d look so much prettier.”

I miss the sense of anticipation. Back in the day, when a person wanted to see another person naked, it involved an elaborate period of give-and-take usually referred to as “courting.” You would have to pass many different levels of social acceptance before you were able to view the object of your curiosity undressed. Or, if you were unable to maintain a working relationship with this person, but then decided that you still needed to see people unclothed, you had to get into your car and drive to the bad part of town to pay for the opportunity to see strangers naked. Both ways required a certain amount of risk and effort. This might be the St. Paul side of me talking, but doesn’t everything of value entail an expenditure of effort?
I don’t understand the idea of nudity on credit. Or even the “buy a boob, get the second one free” feel of pop culture. Video scamp Pink says in an interview that she got her nickname because she blushes easily. Gosh, I’ve never noticed. In her last video, though, I think I saw a cervical polyp that she should probably have a doctor look at.

The other thing that gets to me is that I don’t recognize naked people as naked people anymore. They all look the same to me. Like Disney character versions of naked people. Smooth and bouncy, sort of wholesome even. I prefer my naked people hairy and disconcerting, like my husband. These other non-naked naked people represent a frightening hybrid species that exist only to be manipulated to serve passing desire and then tossed back into the abyss they sprang from. Sure, it sounds like fun, but hey, there’s a reason they put a three-minute limit on a Tilt-a-Whirl ride. Too much fun plus more too much fun equals trouble.

Now that nakedness holds no thrill for me, I’m afraid that I have developed perversions, cultivated strange tastes in order to compensate. I’m into a little thing I like to call Cake Porn. While I have seen all the pictures of naked people I can stand in one lifetime, I have not even begun to see enough pictures of cake. One of my big suppliers of Cake Porn is women’s magazines. Every week, there are new glossy beautiful layouts of spongy moist cakes to tempt me.

Pictures of great-looking cakes hit me on two levels. Number one, I would like to eat the cake. Number two, I would like to be the kind of a person who could make that kind of magazine-perfect cake, with five or six hours of spare time to pipe the perfect crotchless, buttercream teddy onto my lemon poppy-seed nine-inch round. Rather than the kind of person I am, the kind of person who remembers my kids’ birthdays at the last minute, rushing out to the 24-hour grocery at midnight to buy a plain sheet cake, gouging the name in with my house keys while waiting for stoplights on my way to the party.
Just the other night on the Food Network they featured a segment on a man’s 100th birthday gala. At the end, waiters rolled out the most magnificent five-foot high monument to Cake Porn I have ever seen in my life. Ribbons of icing, blazing with the light of a hundred candles. Before the celebrants were finished singing, I had to snap the television off for fear of a pixelated naked person jumping out and ruining my fantasy.