P!NK

I just got back from picking up my ‘Pink’ ticket for next Tuesday night!  The show is completely sold out, and tix on Ebay/Craiglist have all been going for at least $200.  I got it from Craigslist.  I had been watching Craigslist closely, checking practically every hour for the last week.  I called this latest ad minutes after it appeared online.  $90…lower level…9^th row!  I got it from a lady named Julie who told me on the phone she was going to take her two sons, but one has baseball practice and can’t go.  I told her that I would be her other son for the night.

 

Unfortunately I had to pick the ticket up from her husband, Jim.  He’s a State Farm agent and I had to go to his office.  He looked a little nervous when I walked through his door in my black leather biker jacket and jeans.  I’m sure he was sizing me up, knowing that I would be the guy sitting with his wife and son at a Pink concert.  I thought about pretending I was gay so he wouldn’t have to worry about me hitting on his wife, but then I thought that maybe then he’d worry that I would hit on his son.  So I figured I would just mention my wife to put him at ease.  I told him my wife thinks this whole ‘Pink’ thing is hilariously ridiculous and she can’t believe I am actually going to see her in concert. 

 

Either I was mumbling nervously or he wasn’t listening because then he wanted to know if she was going.  Nope…just me.  A 46 year old guy who likes Pink.  I tried to explain that I like a LOT of different music and I go to a LOT of different concerts, but that I never imagined in million years that I’d be going to see PINK.  Then I nervously told him that it all started last summer when I bought one of her cd’s at a garage sale for quarter just for the hell of it...and I loved it.  As I was talking though I could tell he still wasn’t listening to me.  He was just staring at me with a worried look on his face.

 

I thanked him for the generous price as I handed him the $90.  He looked at me for a little while longer as I mumbled some other unmemorable stuff.  Finally he handed me the ticket and slowly mentioned that I will be sitting with his wife and kid.  I said I would buy them a drink, and then I quickly amended that to ‘or popcorn or something’.  Then I got the hell out of there but I could feel him burning holes in my back with his eyes.  I wonder if his wife is hot.

Ghosts

Do you believe in ghosts, or spirits?  Do you ever get the feeling when you are alone that you are not alone?  Have you ever had anything weird happen to you that you can't explain?  Do you ever walk up the dark basement stairs and suddenly feel like somebody is right behind you and you run up as fast as you can to get away before it drags you back downstairs?  Do you ever watch those reality ghost-hunter shows on TV and think it has got to be fake, but then in the back of your mind you wonder...could it be real?

With the passing of our friend Karl Bremer from cancer on January 15th, the event has given me cause to think about spirits.  The very next day after Karl died I was in the gym working out and I was thinking about him.  Not sad stuff, but fun stuff...like him making jokes whenever I would invite him to go golfing with me and the guys.  Karl hated golfing and thought all golf courses should be turned into parks or nature preserves, so for fun I would always invite him to go along just to see what he would say.  Usually he would come up with something along the lines of:  "Thanks, but I would rather get a root canal while being waterboarded."

So I was laying on the bench press not lifting weights but thinking about Karl with a big smile on my face and suddenly it felt like Karl was with me.  He seemed content and it was like he was letting me know that he was all right where he was.  Just then a guy walks by me in the gym wearing a tee-shirt and on the back it read:  "Care for the city that care forgot".  It was a tee-shirt that Karl and I had helped create for a benefit concert that we had helped put on in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  Karl was totally with me as I layed there and although I was sad at his passing, in those moments I felt like it was okay for him now.  Certainly better than his last year that he struggled with cancer.

The next day I was emailing with my friend Dave S. Thompson and he'd had a similar experience.  He too felt Karl had come to him and was with him for a bit.  At Karl's 'Celebration Of Life' reception that his sweet wife Chris put on recently, people kept coming up to the podium and relaying similar experiences about Karl.  Marcy Baudoin said he came to her while she was awake, and Mack Starnes said Karl came to him in a dream.  Mack said he knew that he was dreaming and he also knew that Karl had passed, but in the dream he was talking with Karl on a phone and Karl wanted him to know he was doing fine.  Chris recently told me that Karl has visited her as well.

Has Karl or Karl's spirit been making a point of going around to his family and friends letting us know he's okay?  My wife Nadia said she has had the same experience with her dad after he died.  On many occasions he has visited her in her dreams and told her that it was okay and not to worry about him.  He still comes to visit her.  One time he even told her in a dream that our sick son Jack had an ear infection and then sure enough, the next day we took him in to the doctor and he had an ear infection.

In addition to that first-hand feeling of a spirit being with me from my recently passed friend, I have also dealt with a spirit or ghost in the house we live in now.  While Karl is a friendly spirit, our house-ghost is more of a mischievous ghost.  I think this particular spirit was concerned about our new presence and may have been testing us.  The first appearance occured shortly after we moved into our house in the summer of 2009.  We moved in June and our first child Autumn was born one month later, in July of 2009.

The entrance to our bedroom is through two large French doors that we had never used or closed at the time.  They had been swung all the way open since the day we moved in, and we had never closed them because we wanted to make sure we could hear Autumn if she fussed or cried.  Her bedroom was right across the hall from ours and in those early months she would would wake up frequently for milk or rocking.  So our bedroom doors were always open and after a while we did not even notice them.

One night in August a few weeks after Autumn was born and not even two months after we had moved into the house, Nadia went upstairs to bed first.  An hour later I went up quietly in the dark, trying not wake up Nadia as sleep was rare and precious during that time of our lives.  I slipped into the bathroom in our bedroom, closed the door, and then turned on the lights so I could brush my teeth and get ready for bed.

A couple of minutes later I turned off the bathroom light, opened the door and was about to slide into bed when I thought I heard Autumn fussing.  Sighing, I diverted from the bed and headed towards Autumn's room to check on her.  By now I knew my way around in the dark and I confidently headed across our room towards her door across the hall from our room, using large quick strides to get to Autumn quickly before she woke up Nadia.

Suddenly, SMASH!  I ran face-first into what felt like a wall and fell back on my ass!  What the f*ck?  Who put a wall here?!  Oh wait, I realized it wasn't a wall, it was the two large solid french doors that were now inexplicably closed.  Nadia of course woke up in confusion from the loud banging and wondered what the hell I was doing.  I was pissed, thinking that for some reason while I was in the bathroom she had got up from bed and decided to close the doors for the first time ever since we had moved in.  "Why in the hell did you close these doors?!" I hissed.

"What are you talking about?  I was sleeping!  I didn't close them!" she shot back.

She reasoned that I must have closed them behind me when I came up to bed.  But I knew for a fact that I had not.  I had never closed them before and I certainly had no reason to suddenly close them that night.  Since I didn't do it, she must have.  Did she do it as a joke?  I didn't get it.  She insisted that she was asleep the whole time and did not wake up until I ran into the doors.  I studied her face to see if she was joking.  I kept thinking she would suddenly crack a smile and admit that she had done it.  But she didn't waver and soon was pissed at me for accusing her of doing something she didn't do.

Well if she didn't do it, and I know I didn't do it, and our 1 month old baby didn't do it...then who did?  It was was weird and it felt weird.  Kind of spooky.  Was our new house haunted we joked?  But neither of us laughed and we didn't really talk about it after that.  I thought about it, especially at night when I would come up to bed and pass through the open doors, but we never talked about it.

Until exactly 1 year later.  It was August of 2010.  On July 19th we had celebrated Autumn's 1-year birthday with a family party...cake, presents, a helium-filled Sesame Street balloon, the whole bit.  A month later the red helium balloon was still around, but was getting lower and lower each day as the helium slowly leaked out.  It was tied to a long string that dragged along behind it.  The balloon lived on the main level of the house, usually in the livingroom where most of Autumn's toys were.  She enjoyed the balloon and would tug on the string and laugh as the images of Elmo and Cookie Monster bobbed up and down in front of her.  As the balloon got lower down to the ground though I eventually removed the string because I did not want Autumn to get tangled up in it or strangle herself with it.  So by then it was just a balloon, bouncing around on the main level of our house.

One Saturday morning I decided to take a shower upstairs in the bathroom in our bedroom.  Nadia was in the livingroom playing with Autumn.  I gave the balloon a kick and told Nadia I was heading up for a shower.  I remember thinking how we should get rid of the balloon as I didn't want Autumn to bite it and pop it and scare her, or for her to eat the plastic remains when it popped.  I got up to our bedroom, stripped naked, went into our bathroom, closed the door, sat on the toilet for a few minutes and read my Golf Digest magazine.  Then I reached into the shower and turned on the water.  I let it warm up for a bit and then I stepped into the water and slid the glass sliding door shut behind me.

As I was washing my hair I was suddenly startled by something hitting my head.  It totally freaked me out and I instinctively jerked my head to the side and swatted above me at the same time yelling: "Ahh!"  I looked up and realized it was the goddamn balloon!  I quickly went from feeling freaked out to feeling foolish though as I realized Nadia was playing a joke on me.  The glass door was all steamed up and I couldn't see through it so I slid it open with a sheepish grin on my face ready to take my ribbing from Nadia.

But she wasn't there.  That's weird I thought.  How in the world did she drop it over the top of the shower door onto me and then get out so fast?  And come to think of it, how did she do it so quietly?  The bathroom door sticks, especially in the summer and more especially when the shower heats it up, causing it to make a groaning sound when you open/close it.  I had heard nothing.  It was a good trick though, however she did it.

I tossed the balloon to the bathroom floor, finished my shower and then got out to dry off and get dressed.  When I was done I grabbed the balloon and walked downstairs to congratulate Nadia on getting me with her joke.  She was still sitting on the livingroom couch playing with Autumn and I said:  "Very funny, but how did you do it?  How did you get in and out so fast and without me hearing you?"

"What are you talking about?" she said with a sincerely puzzled look on her face.

I laughed and told her to stop, it was a good joke, but how did she do it?  But she still insisted she had no idea what I was talking about.  Suddenly I got incredibly creeped out, looked at the balloon and pushed it away from me.  As I watched it drop to the floor I let myself think the silly thought that the balloon was haunted.  Wait, no, not the stupid balloon, the house.  I explained to Nadia what had happened and we sat there trying to make sense of it.  How in the hell did this limp balloon with almost no helium in it, go from the main floor livingroom, up the stairs, around the corner into our bedroom, under or through the closed bathroom door, float up and over the shower doors and drop down onto my head?

There was no way to explain how it happened.  Even if for some reason I had grabbed it and brought it upstairs with me, it was not in the bathroom with me when I was sitting there reading my magazine with the door closed.  It is a very small bathroom.  Nowhere for it to hide.  Even if it had suddenly came to helium-life and had been floating up on the ceiling the whole time waiting for me to get in the shower, I would have seen it when I walked into the little bathroom.  Nadia again insisted she did not do it, that she was downstairs with Autumn the whole time I was in the shower, and no she did not see the balloon float away.  The last time she saw it was in the livingroom before I went upstairs, and then again when I brought it back downstairs after my shower.  Try as we might, there was just no way to explain how it happened.

So, what the hell?  Was our house just testing the newcomers?  Being funny?  Seeing if we had a sense of humor?  One strange thing and one completely unexplainable thing had happened to us in the first year that we lived there.  We have not had anything too weird happen since then though.  We both do have a good sense of humor and so do our kids, so hopefully the house likes us.  We love the house, but our family has doubled in size since we moved in and it has gotten seemingly smaller so we are going to add a 2-room upper/lower addition to it this summer.  I hope the house is cool with that.

So do I believe in ghosts?  I think I sort of have to.  I think that maybe when you die, before moving on to the ‘next place’ your spirit sticks around for awhile to make sure everything is okay.  And if it is NOT okay, maybe you stick around a lot longer…you become a ghost looking for peace.  I certainly don’t want to believe that dead is DEAD…as in there is nothing more, you’re worm food, done.  I believe there is a next place.  I like to think that it is going to be a cool place where time and space are not boundaries…like we could go back and see what it was like to be in the studio watching the Beatles make Sgt. Peppers, or what it was like to be a cave man, or to be in Jerusalem and see for myself if Jesus was a god or just some really good dude.

I hope when we die that we will be able to get the answers to all of life’s big mysteries...like how did the pyramids get made, who killed John F. Kennedy, is there life in other universes, and whether or not women really have a G-Spot.  I love life and I cherish every day that I am alive.  I never “kill” time because it is too precious.  Before I get out of bed every day I think about all of the cool things that are going to happen that day.  Whether it is going to be something big like going on vacation or something seemingly insignificant like building a fort with my daughter, it’s all good and important and makes life great.  So I do not ever want to die, but whenever I do I have a feeling the ‘next place’ will be pretty cool.

Meeting Heroes

Last night I was watching yet another hilarious episode of the Simpsons and I started thinking about the time I got to meet Harry Shearer.  In addition to being the bass guitar player ‘Derek Smalls’ in the mock/rock group ‘Spinal Tap’, Harry is the voice for tons of Simpsons characters, including Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Otto Mann, Reverend Lovejoy, Lenny, Kent Brockman, Dr. Hibbert and numerous others.

As it turns out Harry happens to be good friends with one of my friends, Dave Malone.  They both live in New Orleans and Harry has sat in and played bass with Dave’s band The Radiators a few times.  On Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 I flew from Minneapolis, MN down to New Orleans for the Jazz & Heritage Festival that is held there every year during the last weekend in April and the first weekend in May.  I had been going to the Jazz Fest each year since the mid-90’s and it is the greatest collection of music and fun you could imagine in the coolest city in the land.

So that first day in town I checked in to my hotel room at the Sheraton on Canal St. which is next to the French Quarter.  I had a fairly early flight down from Minneapolis and my running partner for the week Mike Murphy was not due into town until the next day so I decided to spend the afternoon walking around.  It was a beautiful sunny day and I heard there were some bands playing at a day festival in Woldenberg Park which was just a few blocks away on the Mississippi riverfront.

The plan for later that night was to meet up with Dave for the 4th annual  ‘Ponderosa Stomp’.  It was billed as a “Celebrating the Unsung Heroes of the Blues, Soul, Rockabilly, Swamp Pop and New Orleans R&B" concert.  It was a dream line-up featuring the sonic rumblings of Link Wray and dozens of other old famous musicians and pioneers of rock and roll.  It was being held at the Rock ‘n Bowl, a kickass old bowling alley that is also a music venue.  Dave told me Harry Shearer was going to join us so it would be the three of us.  No way!  I was psyched to meet one of my heroes, plus Dave had us on the guest list so we did not have to worry about tickets.

So I got to the park and was hanging out at the riverfront festival, listening to music and having a Turbo Dog beer.  Then I ran into my buddies Tommy The Freak and B-Dog from Minneapolis who were also there for the Jazz Fest.  I decided to call Dave to let him know I was in town and to make plans for that night.  Just as Dave was telling me that he had been trying to contact Harry but could not get a hold of him, B-Dog nudged me and pointed to a guy on a bike.  It was freakin’ Harry Shearer slowly riding right by us on his 10-speed all decked out in his helmet and riding gear.  What were the odds?

He headed to the backstage area of the festival and I said:  "Holy crap, hang on Dave!"  I ran after Harry but he slipped past the guards and disappeared backstage.  So I walked up to the guards and without slowing down I held up my cell phone and mumbled something about how I had an important phone call for Harry Shearer.  The two guards just stepped aside as I walked on through.  I have learned with backstages that as long as you act like you belong there, you can oftentimes get there.

I looked around, spotted Harry and walked up to him with my phone in hand and said:  "Hey man, I've got Dave Malone on the phone for you.”

He looked down at me with this weird, puzzled look and I could just see him thinking to himself:  "What the f*ck?  Who is this guy, how did he know I'd be here, and how did Dave know I was here?"  It was hilarious.  I handed him the phone and he looked at it like it was a bomb or something, but when he finally put it to his ear and cautiously said "Hello?" he realized it really was Dave and they talked for about 5 minutes.

It turned out something else had come up and Harry unfortunately would not be able to make the Ponderosa Stomp concert with us.  So I did not get to hang with Harry that night, but I did get to talk to him for a little while backstage at the riverfront which was pretty fun.  I was tempted to ask him to record an answer message on my cell voicemail...something from Mr. Burns or Otto Mann but I restrained myself.  He was a very cool, friendly guy and that is how I got to meet one of my heroes while down in New Orleans.

And although Harry could not make the evening's festivities, I still got to hang out with Dave all night, who is not only one of my best friends but also a hero of mine.  I knew him as the guitarist/singer in my favorite band the Radiators for over 10 years before I finally got to meet him and forge a lifelong friendship.  With the break-up of the Radiators in 2011 and us living on opposite ends of the country I do not get to see Dave that much anymore and that sucks, but we still manage to stay close.  He is not only an incredible musician, but he is a good person, he is hilarious to be around, and he is one of the coolest dudes you could ever hope to meet.

Another hero of mine that I sort of crossed paths with is a famous black actor named Danny who has my last name (think ‘Lethal Weapon’).  It was December of 2000 and I was in San Francisco, CA for 3 nights of the Radiator’s New Years Eve run of shows there at the Great American Music Hall.  Ever since the Grateful Dead had stopped doing New Years Eve shows, starting in 1992 I replaced the Dead with the Radiators for my New Years Eve entertainment, wherever they were playing.  Over the years I have gotten to seen them in New Orleans, Denver, Minneapolis, New York and San Francisco on New Year’s Eve.

So it was December 29^th and I had flown in from Minneapolis.  I had just checked into the Miyako Hotel where I was rooming with my friend Dirty Dan who was flying in later that day from Madison, WI.  Then I ran into my friend Penny McCartney in the elevator who had flown in from Denver and was also staying in the hotel.  She said that she had just run into the famous actor Danny down in the lobby!  She literally ran into him as she turned around in the lobby and smacked right into his chest.  Penny is as smart and witty as she is beautiful, and ever quick with an hilarious line she looked up at Danny and said:  “Mister?” (from the movie ‘The Color Purple’).  They both burst into laughter.  It turned out he was in town and staying at the same hotel for the weekend.  Cool!  I hoped that I would get to see him at some point and say hi.

I went up to my room and was unpacking my luggage and settling in to the room when my room phone rang.  Hmm, maybe it was the front desk…or maybe it was Mitch Manson or Jon Kreutzmann or Jeffy S. Thompson or Dave S. Thompson or one of the many friends I knew who were staying at the hotel calling to say hi.  I picked up and said 'hello' and a friendly guy on the other end said:  “Hey man, how’s it going?”

“Great!  Who is this?”  I said.

“Felix!  What’s up?”

Well that was weird.  Cool, but weird.  I had just been in New Orleans two weeks earlier with my buddy Ernie Hagen to see the Radiators at a great place called the Maple Leaf.  A guy named Felix had put on the shows there and it was a spectacular 2-night long party.  I met Felix for the first time that weekend and he was a great guy.  We talked for a bit but it wasn’t like were suddenly great friends or anything.  So why is he calling me here in San Francisco?  Ohh, he must be here too to see the Radiators I reasoned.  When we talked in New Orleans I must have mentioned to him that I was coming to San Fran.  What a great guy.  We had only talked for a little while a couple weeks earlier and now he was reaching out to me and must want to hang out…cool!

So we talked for about 5 or 10 minutes, but it was an incredibly strange phone call.  First of all, he didn’t really sound like Felix.  He sounded more…kind of black.  And when he asked how it was going in the ‘city’ I of course assumed he meant Minneapolis so I said it had been a pretty cold winter and we had just got some snow a few days ago.  He just laughed strangely, like I had told some sort of weird joke.  He asked what I had been doing lately and I told him and he seemed puzzled...like it was strange that I had been ice-fishing.  I asked him what he had been doing the last couple weeks and then I was puzzled...he had just been in New York seeing some friends about shooting a movie?

Something was not right and I started wondering if this was a different Felix?  Do I even know this guy that I had been talking to for 10 minutes??  At the same time I was thinking that, Felix must have started to wonder too because we both suddenly stopped the conversation and I said:  “Is this Felix from New Orleans?”

“No, this is Felix from Los Angeles.  Is this Danny?”

Holy crap, suddenly it clicked.  He thought I was the famous actor!  We both have the same last name so the front desk must have rang the wrong room!  I explained that I was just some guy from Minneapolis not his famous friend Danny…and that I had thought he was my friend Felix from New Orleans not Danny’s friend from L.A.  We both laughed our asses off when we realized we were two total strangers holding a conversation together for 10 minutes.  I told him to tell Danny ‘hi’ for me if he ever got a hold of him and we laughed some more and hung up.  I never did run into the real Danny that weekend, but I did get mistaken for him which was nice in a way.

Another one of my heroes that I had a chance to meet was Dan Aykroyd.  I had read in the paper that on Saturday, 3/21/09, Dan Aykroyd was going to be at Haskell’s Liquor Store not far from my house in Plymouth, MN.  He was promoting his own line of wines, as well as Crystal Skull vodka.  I had to go.  It was from 1-4pm and when I got there at noon with my buddy Frank The Tank we were probably 200^th in line out in the parking lot.  The scene was like a huge party, with people drinking in line and lots of folks dressed up as their favorite Aykroyd movie character.  There was even a exact replica of the Ghostbuster’s car the Ectomobile, owned by four fans all dressed up as the Ghostbusters.

A little before 1pm the Crystal Skull vodka truck pulled into the lot with Dan riding shotgun and everybody was buzzing with excitement, and also from the free booze they were handing out in sampling stations along the way in line.  By the time we actually started moving around 1:30pm the line was down the street, around the corner and out of site.  I finally arrived at Dan’s table around 2:30pm and I was feeling pretty good from sampling the numerous beers, wines, vodkas and whiskies they had available.

I had a lot of time to think about what I would say to him before I got to his table and I wanted it to be something different.  The line snaked throughout the store and you could see/hear everybody talking Ghostbusters and popular stuff like that with him.  He was being very friendly with everyone but I was sure he was bored with all that and I wanted to be different.  So when I got up to the table I leaned in and said:  “Closing of Winterland, 1978.”  As I said he had been very friendly and smiling and obliging picture takers, but at the same time he was keeping it moving because of the hundreds and hundreds of people waiting.  But when I said that he suddenly stopped autographing bottles, got this huge grin on his face, put down his pen, looked up at me and said:  “Where you there?!”

I told him I was only 12 at the time and didn’t start following the Grateful Dead around till a few years later, but that I had watched the DVD many times.  (It is from the 12/31/78 Grateful Dead show where they closed the historic Winterland Theatre in San Francisco and the Blues Brothers opened).  He then started telling me what an awesome night that was, but that he was tripping out of his gourd on acid because the Grateful Dead had dosed him without telling him.  He said they were notorious for that and he should have known it would happen.  He said it was great and he had a blast, except that when he got out on stage he was so high that he almost swallowed his harmonica when he first started playing it.

He then proceeded to give me recipe and food ideas for each of the wines…something about scrumptious little tiny baby lambs with the Chardonnay and succulent filet mignon with the Cabernet.  At first I couldn’t tell if he was serious or if it was a comedy bit or maybe both.  He had slipped into that same voice he used in Saturday Night Live when he was doing a fake commercial for the Bass-o-Matic or something.  It was hilarious and he had me cracking up.  It was all so worth the wait.

I scored a signed poster, signed bottles of his Chardonnay and Cabernet and the Crystal Skull vodka he was promoting, but more importantly than that I got to talk to a really cool dude.  In that short time he made me feel like we were friends and I kept thinking I should invite him out to do something that night.  I really wanted to hang with him but of course I didn’t say anything.  I finally forced myself to leave, but I had a great time meeting another one of my heroes.  This casual conversation with a super-star just further cemented my knowledge that heroes are real people too.

Switzerland

 

It was mid-August of 1990.  After a week in Italy it was time for my girlfriend Lona and I to head to the next country:  Switzerland.  Using our Eurail passes we boarded an overnight train from Venice to Zurich.  We tried to sneak into a sleeper car and that lasted all of 10 minutes before we got booted back into the regular seats.  We arrived in Zurich on a bright sunny morning but had not slept that well on the uncomfortable, bumpy train.  We were tired, but nervously excited to be in a new country and looked forward to checking it out.  We exchanged our Italian Lira for Swiss Francs at a bank and then made our way to a youth hostel.

 

As we were unpacking our stuff and settling in at the hostel we ran into another pair of travelers from the United States.  A brother and sister from Ohio who had been in Europe for awhile and were heading back home the next day.  They were extremely friendly and in addition to giving us tips about cool places to go in Europe, they gave us their ‘Let’s Go Europe’ book!  We had religiously used our ‘Let’s Go Greece’ book for the 4 months we were in Greece, but once we left Greece for Italy and then Switzerland we were winging it…not really sure where we were going or what we were doing.  We were ecstatic to be armed with the new friendly book packed with knowledge and tips.  We pored over it for information on Zurich, and then again that night making plans for the rest of the 3 weeks that our Eurail passes were good for.  After spending our first day in Zurich exploring the city’s museums and other attractions, we decided to spend the following day in Lucerne, Switzerland.

 

Lucerne was only about an hour train ride from Zurich so we decided to make a day trip of it.  We would get up early, spend the day and come back that night.  We got to this beautiful city on the shore of Lake Lucerne about mid-morning and set out to explore its sights.  First we checked out the Church of St. Leodegar, a beautiful building with huge twin towers that was built in 1633.  Then we checked out the old rocky walls of ‘Old Town Lucerne’ which is on the hills in the woods above Lucerne.  We climbed along the walls and visited the eight watch-towers along the way.  We eventually found the famous carving of a dying lion carved into a rock wall in a little park.  This carving was made to commemorate hundreds of Swiss Guards who were killed in 1792 during the French Revolution.

 

By mid-afternoon we were hungry and tired so we decided to see our last site before having dinner and getting on the train back to Zurich.  We slowly walked across the famous Chapel Bridge to the other side of the Reuss River.  The Chapel Bridge is a 669 foot long wooden covered bridge that was built in 1333.  Inside the bridge were a bunch of paintings done in the 1600’s showing events from the city’s history.  Exactly three years after we were there most of the bridge and its paintings were burned up in a fire that was started by a cigarette.  How does a kickass wooden bridge withstand 750 years of Swiss winters and wars and god knows what else and get taken down by a cigarette?  Very sad.  It was rebuilt, but I feel fortunate that we got to see the original bridge before some dumbass destroyed it.

 

When we got to the other side we found a cool little café/bar type place right on the banks of the river looking out over the bridge and the city.  Perfect.  We ordered a bunch of food and the beers started flowing.  We had several hours to kill before our train back to Zurich that evening, so we settled in and kept ordering drinks.  We were celebrating our freedom and the fact that we were in freaking Switzerland in this beautiful little city in the middle of nowhere.  We had no idea where we were going to live or what we were going to do when we got back to the United States, but we didn’t care.  We were here and we were happy and for the time being we didn’t have a care in the world.

 

Granted we had no place to sleep that night but we would figure it out.  Our backpacks were stored at a locker in the train station.  Our vague plan was that when we got back to Zurich we would catch an overnight train from there to some other city in Europe...maybe Innsbruck or Vienna.  It was a good plan, but unfortunately the plan did not include getting hammered in Lucerne.  We just kept ordering more and more drinks and after a couple hours we were both completely wasted.

 

To be honest I do not even remember getting on a train.  The next thing I do remember was waking up in complete, total, absolute darkness.  Overwhelming blackness and complete disorientation.  Where am I?  What time is it?  What day is it?  What city am I in?  What country am I in?  I literally had no idea what the f*ck was going on.  I heard soft breathing next to me.  Oh yeah, I’m in Europe with Lona!  Is that her??  Oh god I hope it’s her.  I was slumped over in some sort of worn leather seat.  I reached out into the blackness to touch this person next to me and she grunted and woke up.  Lona!  It’s you!  Where are we?  What’s going on?  Are you still as drunk as I am?  Then slowly the memories of Lucerne came back to us.  The walls, the lion, the bridge, the café…and the beers.  Okay, we remembered where we were, but where were we now?  We sat up and could make out a faint line of light coming through the bottom of a window next to us.  The shade was drawn.  Wait a minute, we are on a train!  But it’s not moving.  “Hello! Hello!” we shouted but quickly realized we were all alone.

 

The shades were drawn, the lights were out and the train was completely abandoned.  I pulled up the shade next to us and we looked out.  We were in a train yard.  It was pitch black out and there were tons of dark, empty trains sitting on various tracks all around us.  This was kind of scary.  Again, where were we?  What city?  Were we locked in this train?  What should we do?  Sleep on the train and figure it out whenever it got light out?  No, we had to figure this sh*t out now.  We could be in Russia for all we knew.  Lucerne felt like it was light-years ago, but we were still pretty buzzed so it must have only been hours ago.  We opened up more shades to get some light in the train and then we felt our way to the end of the car.  We managed to slide the door open and jumped down to the rocky train yard below.  We looked around and it was dark and quiet.  Nobody was around.  What should we do?

 

It was tough to see much of anything being surrounded by all those trains, but off to our left it appeared to be the brightest.  It looked like the downtown of a large city a mile or two away.  Was that Zurich?  Please let it be Zurich with our backpacks safely tucked away in the train station we thought.  We started walking down the tracks towards the light, the city.  It wasn’t easy walking, especially in our condition, but we eventually made it to the train station and our spirits brightened considerably when we saw the big ‘ZURICH’ sign above the tracks on the entrance to the station.  We found some stairs up to the platform and it was pretty much abandoned other than a few stragglers wandering around.  We spotted a clock and found that it was almost 2 am.  What should we do?  It didn’t look like any more trains were running, and we were in no condition to try and catch one if we wanted to.

 

I remembered reading about ‘Needle Park’.  A park where drug use was decriminalized and addicts could exchange their dirty needles for clean ones.  Drugs were still technically illegal in Switzerland, but in this particular park the cops wouldn’t touch you.  We didn’t have or want to do any drugs, but I had read it was right next to the train station.  I figured we could go there and sleep for a few hours and decide our next step in the morning.  The train station was connected to some sort of an indoor mall complex.  As we walked from the station into the windowless mall (were we underground?) we started coming across more and more people shuffling around in a stupor.  They looked like the walking dead.  Zombies.  Emotionless, expressionless faces.  Pale white skin, dirty hair and filthy torn clothes.  Some were nodding off while standing up, some passed out on the ground, and many of them had fresh or dried blood on their arms or necks.

 

We were not underground and when we found an exit I looked out into the park and there were hundreds of them...all over the place.  The park was alive with the walking dead.  No way we are going out there in the middle of the night.  I ushered Lona back in to the relative ‘safety’ of the mall and decided we would sleep in there.  We tried to find an out-of-the-way place, but not too out of the way where we could get mugged.  The heroin addicts were everywhere though.  It was like an indoor-Needle Park.

 

We found the wall of a closed shop to lean on and we slept back-to-back.  We were both drunk, tired, dirty, and my hope was that we would blend in and look like a couple of passed out junkies and the real junkies would leave us alone.  I think that helped, but I didn’t really get any sleep that night as I did not feel like I could safely close my eyes and not pay attention to what was happening around us.

 

Basically what was happening was that while Lona slept leaning on the wall and my back, I kept handing out cigarettes to people who would wander up, stop and ask if I had spare cig.  Luckily I had a couple of packs so I would hand a cigarette to the poor lost soul, maybe light it for him or her, and then they would shuffle off.  It was sad and horrible to see these kids so completely hopelessly lost in this terrible world.  It seemed like they were already dead, and they were just waiting for their bodies to realize it and stop working.  It was one of the saddest things I had seen in my 24 years of life.

 

By 6 am I had almost run out of cigarettes, but the zombies had started to thin out and the real world had started to wake up and move about so I woke up Lona.  We walked back to the train station, got our backpacks, dug out our new ‘Let’s Go Europe’ book and planned our next move.  We decided we’d definitely had enough of Zurich and boarded a train for Innsbruck.  Austria would be our next country and the subject of a future blog…stay tuned.

Karl's Song

Karl Bremer said that he always felt better when he had tickets in hand for the ‘next’ concert, whatever that concert may be.  Well…as of 4:20 pm today Karl has tickets in hand for the greatest concert in the world with Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, George Harrison, Dave Ray…all of his favorites are there and I am sure Karl will be right up front dancing away with his eyes half-closed and that big grin of his plastered on his up-turned face.  Save us a spot on the rail Karl and we will join you when we get there.

 

The following song written by Bruce Springsteen is entitled “Terry’s Song”, but it could just as easily be called “Karl’s Song”:

 

 

Well they built the Titanic to be one of a kind, but many ships have ruled the seas
They built the Eiffel Tower to stand alone, but they could build another if they please
Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt, are unique I suppose
But when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now the world is filled with many wonders under the passing sun
And sometimes something comes along and you know it's for sure the only one
The Mona Lisa, the David, the Sistine Chapel, Jesus, Mary, and Joe
And when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

When they built you, brother, they turned dust into gold
When they built you, brother, they broke the mold

They say you can't take it with you, but I think that they're wrong
'Cause all I know is I woke up this morning, and something big was gone
Gone into that dark ether where you're still young and hard and cold
Just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now your death is upon us and we'll return your ashes to the earth
And I know you'll take comfort in knowing you've been roundly blessed and cursed
But love is a power greater than death, just like the songs and stories told
And when she built you, brother, she broke the mold

That attitude's a power stronger than death, alive and burning her stone cold
When they built you, brother

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-BJcBPA-wQ

Karl Bremer

I am going to visit my friend Karl Bremer tomorrow at his house in Stillwater, MN where he lives with his sweet, beautiful wife Chris.  She is a cancer survivor.  Karl may not be.  This is the saddest thing I have ever written about and may be the saddest visit of my life.  But I love Karl and I am looking forward to seeing him tomorrow and telling him that I love him.

 

Karl Bremer is the most tenacious guy I know who never ever gives up, so in December of 2011 when he told me about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer I was of course horrified, but my first thought was that if there was anybody in the world who can beat this, it is Karl.  I have always said that Karl is like one of those little dogs pulling on your pant leg, shaking his head and growling and never letting go or giving up.  I am sure that Michelle Bachmann can attest to this as Karl has been dogging that nutjob for most of her political career.  His cancer diagnosis phased me, but I wasn't too worried as I just assumed he would beat it.  He said in no uncertain terms that he would beat it and I had no choice but to believe him.

Karl is a fun-loving prankster who takes great joy in seeing justice being done, but if it was done in a funny or mischievous way then all the better.  He once told me the story of a restaurant he visited on vacation where the BLT he ordered had an extremely inadequate supply of bacon on it.  He asked the waitress what the deal was and asked for more bacon and was rudely declined.  Upon leaving he duly noted the address of the establishment.  When he got home from his vacation he proceeded to mail them some raw bacon, taking care to mail it on a Friday so that it would take an extra day to get there and be plenty ripe upon arrival.  I believe he even made this an annual thing, mailing them bacon every year on the anniversary of him being slighted on his BLT.

 

Like myself and most of our friends, music is one of the most important things in the world to us.  It is the beginning and the catalyst of many of our friendships.  For the last two decades that I have known him, Karl and I have seen countless hours of incredible music together.  The first time I met him was at a Radiators concert at a bar in Minneapolis, MN called The Quest.  I had been in awe of him up to that point, not knowing exactly who he was but I had read his many decisive, valid and fascinating posts on an online music chatline called 'Heatgen'.  When I finally figured out who he was I timidly went up to him, introduced myself, and he gave me a big smile and a handshake and I felt like we were instant friends.

 

Since that night we have seen a lot of cool shit together...from the countless great bands we see on our annual trek to the Jazzfest every spring in New Orleans, to all of the incredible music every summer at the Bayfront Blues Festival in Duluth, MN, and of course all of the amazing Radiator concerts in between.  Many of these Radiator concerts as well as other musicians and bands were performed at Karl's house.  Outdoor summer shows and benefit concerts in Karl and Chris's backyard at their beautiful log-cabin in the woods in Stillwater, MN as well as intimate indoor shows in their livingroom.  Some of the best times and best memories of my life have been at this wonderful place, the 'Stoned-Bridge Saloon' he calls it, and I will be forever grateful to have been a part of these incredible parties.

 

Although the Radiators have always been the nucleus of our friendship, over the years we have seen (and not seen) some other great concerts together as well.  One of the best concerts of my life was with Karl at a show in St. Paul, MN on Bruce Springsteen's summer 2006 Seeger Sessions tour.  It absolutely blew us both away and I will always remember Karl dancing and stomping and clapping away throughout most of the show, but especially during the 'Rag Mama Rag' encore.

 

The concert we did NOT see together was at the same venue in the summer of 2009 for an Eric Clapton concert.  I had stupidly tried to buy tickets from what turned out to be a Craigslist scammer for $100.  When we got to the venue, there were no tickets, but Karl graciously offered to split the loss and gave me $50.  It was not at all expected, but Karl insisted.  He was then determined to mail some bacon to the bitch who screwed us, but she ended up getting caught and is now sitting in jail so the bacon was not necessary.

 

I got to pay Karl back in some small measure last summer when the two of us went to see Crosby, Stills & Nash in Minneapolis.  I was able to get a pair of great floor seats from a girl at work who won them on the radio and sold them to me for $100, so I picked Karl up and we had a blast.  As with every great band in the world, Karl has seen them many times and he told me great stories of seeing them back in the 70's.  We enjoyed a couple beers during the terrific show and joked around with the girls next to us...it was a wonderful night that I will always treasure in my memory banks.

 

The last concert I saw with Karl was at the Malone Brothers in Shakopee, MN this past Halloween.  It was the Krewe Of DAD's annual costume ball, a party that the Krewe has been throwing every year since the mid-eighties.  Karl has always been a huge participant in the Krewe's activities, which in addition to the annual Halloween party included numerous other parties throughout the years.  Most of them with the Radiators as the house band, and like I said more than a few of them at Karl's house.  After months and months of chemotherapy Karl's body has been weakened by the treatments, but our stubborn hippie has never lost his long hair or his big smile.  I will always remember a costumed Karl dancing and pumping his fist in the air with his face turned up, eyes half-closed, and that huge smile on his face.  He only stood for a couple songs and had to sit for the rest of the concert, but that memory of him dancing that night will be with me for the rest of my life.

Karl also has a blog, entitled 'Ripple In Stillwater' and can be found at http://www.rippleinstillwater.com/.  My blog is just for fun, whereas Karl's is an important, award-winning journalist blog that like most things he does makes the world a better place.  Out of the blue a month or two ago Karl sent me an email telling me that he liked my blog and enjoyed reading it every time a new story came out.  Coming from someone I respect so much, that meant a lot to me and I saved the email.

As a published and accomplished author, a professional journalist, a terrific cook, a skilled photographer, and a fearless and relentless political rabble-rouser you have influenced me and countless others Karl.  Your writings, your photographs, your words, your sense of humor, your love of live and your friendship will always be a part of me and who I am.  Thank you for everything you have given me and the world.  We are all better off for knowing you and loving you.  See you tomorrow my friend and forever after.