Running From The Cops

“There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are.  These occasions are rare, but they happen — despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths.”

This is a quote from one of my favorite authors, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.  His death in 2005 prompted me to get my only tattoo, which is his symbol of the ‘Gonzo’ fist/sword on my right leg.

I too have had an extremely contentious and lively relationship with the police over the years but I have finally reached a place in my life where I no longer fear cops or see them as the bad guys.  Now I welcome the sight of a squad car driving past my house with my wife and 2 small children here, whereas in years past I would tense up in fear at the mere sight of a cop.  I have had numerous run-ins with the police in the past and some of those stories will probably come out in the future, but today’s entry will just be about running from the police.  A few ‘low-speed’ chases.

My first chase happened one night in the summer of 1995 when I was living in Madison, WI.  My friend Sean Morrison had come down from Minneapolis, MN for a week to visit and stay with me while doing a two-day concert stage construction job in Milwaukee.  He drove down on his 1968 Moto Guzzi motorcycle but it rained the whole way.  When he finally arrived at my house he was soaked, miserable, and the bike was not doing much better.  One of the problems was that all the moisture was causing the spark plugs to foul out and he kept having to stop and fix the bike.  In addition, it was old and falling apart and there were wires sticking out all over and the right rearview mirror was hanging by a cord.

 

When he reached my doorstep I realized that he desperately needed a beer so I quickly ushered him in, grabbed a couple of cold ones and let him dry off and chill out for awhile.  The rain had finally stopped so after a few beers we went out to look at his bike.  He changed the plugs, fixed the rearview mirror, messed with the engine for a bit and said we should take it for a ride.  I suggested we head over to my buddy Mitch Manson’s house.  He only lived about a mile away and I knew Mitch would love to see Sean.  So I grabbed a case of bottled beer, jumped on the back of the bike and we were off.  We rode it around for a bit but it quickly started hitching and stop/starting and running horribly again.  Sean was pissed off, but we lurched and hitched our way to Mitch’s place and went in with the beer to hang out.

 

After a few hours with Mitch and most of the beer gone, it was time to head back to my place.  Sean had to get up early the next morning and make the 1½ hour ride to Milwaukee for the job.  He would not be able to take his bike so I told him he could use mine.  So we left Mitch’s place...but we were drunk.  We should have just walked home but instead Sean got on his bike and got the thing to start.  The mirror immediately fell off and was again dangling by a cord.  I jumped on behind Sean and reached around him with my right hand to hold the rearview mirror in place thinking that would make us look ‘legal’.  Like that stupid mirror was our biggest problem.  We set off from Mitch’s and took a left on East Washington Avenue with the bike lurching and hitching and wires sticking out and Sean drunkenly weaving while I did my best to hang on to the bike with my two legs, hold the beer with left hand and the mirror with my right hand.  Two complete morons, but we did not have far to go so I figured we would be okay.

 

We got to the intersection on Washington Ave to take a left into my neighborhood but Sean could not to come to a complete stop or the bike would die.  So we did a slow rolling stop, lurching through the intersection and waiting for oncoming traffic to clear before completing the turn.  Unfortunately one member of the oncoming traffic happened to be a cop.  As he drove past us he was staring at the dilapidated bike and then he looked up and we locked eyes.  He immediately hit the siren but he could not stop because he was going with the flow of traffic and had cars behind him.  Washington Avenue is a 4-lane road with a median in the middle so he had to keep going a couple of blocks down to the next intersection and do a U-turn before coming back to get us.

 

I thought we were doomed but Sean recognized the fact that the cop would not be able to get to us for a bit, so he gunned the lame bike as fast as it would go through the intersection and into my neighborhood.  We lurched our way one block up a hill, took a right onto my street, and then hiccupped and bounced our way to my house a block up on the left.  I was freaking out.  Were we really running from the cops?!  Yep.  I could hear the angry siren getting closer.

 

Luckily my garage door was open so we slid the bike in, laid it down and shut the garage door just as the cop lights came into view.  We crouched down and cautiously peered out of the garage window.  There was the cop, slowly driving up the street towards us, shining his spotlight left, right, in every driveway and yard looking for us.  He got to my house and the light was impossibly bright as it filled up the entire garage.  It lingered for a bit and then moved on.  We were safe!  My heart was racing and the adrenaline flowing.  I knew we had been incredibly stupid for not walking home, but it was quite a rush getting away from the cops.

 

Another ‘episode’ occurred a few years later in the fall of 2003.  I went over to my buddy B-Dog’s house in Minneapolis to watch Monday Night Football.  We had a couple of beers and then B-Dog said:  “Hey, check this out.”  He left the room for a second and returned with a bottle of Patron tequila.  Uh oh.  Patron came on the market in 1989 but until that night I had never tried it before.  So expensive…so smooth…so good.  We had a few shots in between beers and by the end of the game I was hammered and had reached a full ‘10’ on the stupid-meter.  Not only did I know better than to drink and drive, but I upped the stupid-ante by asking B-Dog for some weed to go.  Just a small bud I reasoned...enough for one bowl when I got home.

 

As all my friends know, I do not smoke weed.  I had not smoked since my second year in college in 1985.  Over the years I will try it every once in awhile, like maybe once every 5 years, but it always incapacitates me to the point that it is pointless.  I have forgotten how to be stoned.  But it had been a few years and I was feeling good so I decided it would be a good idea to bring some home for a night cap.  So B-Dog gave me a small bud and I stuck it in my cigarette cellophane wrapper and hit the road.  I got in my car and took off for the 20-minute ride from south Minneapolis to Plymouth.  Oh sweet jesus what am I doing I asked myself when I got on the freeway and had to use my left hand to cover my left eye to keep from seeing double.  The one-eyed driving trick worked though and I got all the way to the driveway of my condo with no incident.  Yes!!

 

I was so excited to be alive and not arrested that as soon as I made the right turn into my long driveway I floored my 1997 Chevy Camaro and she responded instantly by shooting forward at top speed.  I was still accelerating and probably up to 40 mph when I went through the stop-sign and hit the railroad track crossing that went over our driveway at the top of a small hump.  I knew at this speed I would catch a little bit of air and I was excited at the prospect of ‘flying’.  Everything was groovy until I noticed a car passing me on my left as I was gracefully soaring through the air anticipating the landing.  It was a cop.  Holy crap!  This could not be any worse.  I was drunk, carrying pot, and driving recklessly while speeding through a stop-sign.  He hit the lights and siren instantly.

 

I had to think fast.  In addition to being long, the driveway was narrow with a pond on one side and trees on the other.  I knew he would not be able to turn around until he got all the way out to the main road so I had a few seconds of extra time.  The Camaro landed and I kept the accelerator to the floor as I headed for my underground parking garage on the other side of the building.  It was like a bat-cave in that you had to go past our building, make a sharp right turn, hit the remote button to raise the garage door, and then dive down underground into the building.  I always felt like Batman coming home, or when I would strap myself into the Camaro to leave and zoom up and out of the garage into the light.  Lately though the battery in my garage remote had been dying so sometimes it would work but sometimes it would not, so then I would have to hit the button like 10 times to get the door up or even get out of the car and use my condo key to raise it.

 

So I got to the sharp right turn and I was hammering on the remote button and praying it would work and YES it worked instantly!  I made the turn, dove underground, pulled into the first available stall, killed the lights and turned it off.  I jumped out of the car and quickly ran to the wall in front of the car and crouched down.  There were small windows running the length of the parking garage and I could see the red, white and blue cop lights bouncing off the ceiling and the far walls of the garage.  Thankfully the garage door had come back down in time to keep the cop from getting inside so his car was parked in the driveway.  Then I noticed a strong flashlight shining through the windows as he was going from window to window peering in trying to see me and/or my car.  I held my breath as he passed right above me and moved on.

 

When he got to the far end of the building I raced to the door and went into the condo's work-out room.  I worried that if he was angry enough that cop might get the building manager to let him in to find the car and the owner.  I figured he could not arrest me for DWI if he could not find me though so I hung out in the work-out room for about a half hour.  Then I cautiously poked my head out, went upstairs to the main level, peeked out a window and he was gone.  Phew!  I went up to my third-floor room and smoked the weed reasoning that it would calm my nerves.  Nope.  I got so paranoid I had to shut off all my lights and hide in bed till I fell asleep.  Do not drink and drive people!

 

Another brush with cops on the run occurred during the Halloween weekend of 1985.  Although this time I was sort of running with the cops instead of away from them.  It was during my second year of college at the University of Minnesota and I had come back home to Waukesha, WI for the weekend to visit my girlfriend Lona who was still in high school.  There was a big Halloween costume party that Saturday night so our idea was for Lona to dress up as a man while I dressed up as a woman.  She wore a nice suit out of her dad's closet.  I wore one of her mom's dresses with a well-stuffed bra, high heels, and was sporting a nice black knock-off purse.

 

After I finally got all my make-up on with the help of Lona's mom we headed to the house-party in my 1978 Toyota Celica.  We were a little late and there were cars parked up and down the block.  We finally found a spot to park on the street around the corner about a block away.  I had just pulled into my spot and we were about to get out when a cop pulled up next to me and made the signal to roll down my window.  I did.  He opened his passenger window, looked at me dressed in drag and asked if we were going to the party.  I nervously told him that we were.  He told me not to bother because as soon as more backup arrived they were going to raid it.  Then he moved on.

 

Holy crap! The drinking age at the time was 19, but half my friends were still underage.  They were all going to get busted if I didn’t do something.  As soon as the cop rounded the corner I told Lona to wait there and I jumped out of the car.  I started running through the grass, intending to cut through the yards and get to the party house before the cops did.  I was not making good time though because my pointed high heels kept digging into the grass and slowing me down.  I was getting frustrated trying to run and not fall over when suddenly I hear Lona shout out through the passenger window of the car:  “Take off your shooooes!”

 

Oh yeah, duh.  I stopped and took a few seconds to unlatch them.  Yes!  So much better!  With shoes in hand and dress flowing behind me I cut through the neighborhood yards till I made it to the house.  I pounded on the back door and finally somebody opened the door.  He was irritated and told me it was $2 a cup but that I had to go around to the front door.  I pushed past him into the house and started yelling:  “Cops! Cops!  They’re getting ready to raid!”

 

The place was packed and the music was cranking but word got around quickly.  Within seconds all of the underage kids started spilling out the back door and spread out into the neighborhood like ants.  A few got caught inside when the cops arrived a few minutes later, but most of the under-agers made it to safety.  My girlfriend was underage at the time too so we never got to go to the party, but as I walked back to my car in my sexy sheer fish-net stockings I had the satisfaction of knowing that at least I saved a bunch of my friends from getting one of those damn juvy-drinking tickets.

 

(Again, I do not condone running from the cops and you should NEVER drink and drive.  I do not drink and drive anymore and I am lucky to be alive and/or to have not hurt anybody.)

Rock 'n Roll Fish

This may be of no interest to anyone, but I feel the need to talk about it so here it is.  I had to kill one of my fish a few days ago.  His name was Keith Richards and he was perfectly healthy but I just had to do it.  I didn’t step on him or beat him to death or anything like that, I just flushed him down the toilet.  If he is anything like his namesake though there is a good chance that he is still alive, down in the sewer, partying to the wee hours.  I did not want to commit fishslaughter, but I made an executive decision that it was necessary.  It all started two weeks ago when I noticed that our fish tank was getting a little green with algae…more than the one algae-eating Otocinclus fish that we had in the tank could handle.  So my 3-year old daughter Autumn and I went to the pet store to get 2 or 3 more of the little 2” tank-cleaners.

 

Unfortunately there was only one Otocinclus left in the store, but they had some Spotted Catfish on sale that were kind of cute.  The sales lady said they are not algae eaters, but bottom-feeders that eat poop and whatever other crud that sinks to the bottom of a fish tank.  Cool!  We have two rather large Fantail Goldfish that poop like crazy so I thought the catfish would be a welcome addition.  The description tag on the tank said the catfish only get to 2” when full-sized and they like to be in schools of 3 or more.  There were exactly 3 catfish left.  Perfect.  So we bought the 3 poop-eating Spotted Catfish and the lone Otocinclus and headed home.

 

On the way Autumn decided to name the catfish Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, and the Otocinclus of course would be Charlie Watts.  Autumn loves the Beatles and we already have fish named John, Paul, George and Ringo, but she has been getting into the Rolling Stones lately and she wanted to include them in our fish tank.  So when we got home we happily introduced the Stones to the Beatles and watched them scoot around and explore their cool new home.

 

Everything was great for a few days.  Mick, Keith and Ronnie hung out together slumming it on the bottom and seemingly doing well.  But then one morning I woke up and there was Ron Wood laying on his side gasping for air.  The end was near and I’m guessing his lifetime of heavy smoking finally caught up to him.  He was stone cold dead when I checked back in on him 10 minutes later.  I scooped him up from the bottom when my kids weren’t looking, ran him over to the bathroom, said a few kind words and flushed him up to that great fish-tank in the sky.

 

Now I was a little worried though, because there were only two Spotted Catfish left and they like to school in groups of three or more.  Oh well, I would just go get another one when I got the chance I decided.  I watched as Mick and Keith stuck together, completely ignoring the Beatles floating around above them.  George Harrison is a long, thin Chinese Catfish who tried to join the duo when Ronnie left, but Mick and Keith would have none of it and turned their backs on George whenever he cautiously approached.  By the next day though I noticed that Mick wasn’t keeping up with Keith.  He was just moping around, not moving much while Keith was happily bouncing around having a great time.  By that night Mick was dead.  Laying on his side in almost the same place that Ronnie took his last breath.

 

Now I was worried about Keith Richards on his own without his mates.  However I need not have worried about Keith.  He is apparently made of tougher skin than most and has the ability to adapt to any situation.  As soon as Mick left, Keith quickly latched on to Lucas...literally.  Lucas is the largest and oldest fish in the tank and the only one not named after a rock star.  I got him several years ago, before Autumn could talk and ask questions about who is singing and playing guitar on her favorite songs.  Lucas is a beautiful orange Fantail Goldfish about 8 inches long.  Well, he’s beautiful except for the large, white golf-ball sized tumor growing on one side of him.  It started out as a little white lump about two years ago and it just keeps growing and growing.  Now it looks like somebody has super-glued a golf ball to the left side of his body.  Although sometimes it catches on plants and stuff when he swims by, it does not seem to really bother him much.  He eats tons of food and is always alert and seemingly happy.

 

Until Keith Richards started hanging with him that is.  Continuing to snub the Beatles and going right for the head dog, I noticed Keith always at Lucas’s side.  I thought that was nice…Lucas taking Keith under his wing…until I noticed that he wasn’t just hanging with him, he was hanging on him.  And not just hanging on him, but eating him!  Keith latched himself onto Lucas’s tumor and was slowly eating it away.  Over the course of 2 days the top half of the tumor was beginning to disappear.  Hmm.  Was that a good thing?  On the one hand he is eating his friend which on the surface seems like a bad thing, but on the other hand he is only eating the tumor so maybe that is a good thing?

 

Keith didn’t start eating Lucas until Ronnie and Mick died, so I decided to head back to the pet store with Autumn and get a couple new Spotted Catfish for Keith to hang with.  Maybe then he would leave Lucas alone.  The pet store did not have any in stock however, and when I told the sales lady about Keith’s fettish for tumors she thought that it might not be good for Lucas and to keep an eye on them.  I was worried but Lucas did not seem to mind Keith’s cannibalism much, just swimming around happily like always with little Keith munching away on him.

 

The next morning I got up though and the tumor was looking bad.  The top half was completely gone and it was down to a blood-red nub.  Keith was still right there eating away and I decided that was enough.  Keith was cool, but I’d only known him for 2 weeks whereas Lucas was old-school…my buddy, my pal, my rock in the tank.  Keith had to go.

 

I grabbed the net but Keith sensed the jig was up as he fought courageously for his life, swimming with a speed and agility that I never knew he had in him.  He darted everywhere, in and out of all the underwater plants and fake turtles and underwater buildings till I was starting to think that I would never be able to catch him.  Finally I cornered him with the net though and brought him kicking and screaming up to the surface.  I felt bad, but I took one more look at Lucas’s bloody stump and knew that was it.  Keith darted around in the toilet for a bit, I said goodbye, and then he was off with a woosh to the next party.

 

It should be noted that the lone remaining Rolling Stone Charlie Watts is doing just fine.  The other Otocinclus Paul McCartney took to him right away and they became fast friends.  In addition, we have since gone back and got two more Otocinclus which Autumn named Princess Leia and Anakin and the four of them are buds.  Mick, Keith and Ronnie were good fish, but it just goes to show that rockers live fast and sometimes die young, whereas Star Wars characters will probably live on forever.

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.