Sneaky Sweets

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Cops and Dorm Rooms Don't Mix (Story #1...Blow)

I lived at the Pioneer Hall dormitory on campus at the University of Minnesota for my first two years of college, from September of 1984 through May of 1986. While there I had a few run-ins with the cops. One notable time was during my first year there. Our dorm was attached by an underground tunnel to the dorm next door called Frontier Hall, and we shared a basement cafeteria with them. One night I was in my friend Ron Bronson’s room in Frontier Hall with Ron, his roommate Paul, Rinehart Simpson who lived across the hall, and one or two other guys. Paul was a rich kid from Colorado who had an expensive high school cocaine habit. He had pretty much quit doing blow when he got to college, but occasionally he would still splurge and have some fun. This was one of those nights. While we were all sitting around smoking pot he suddenly pulled out a 12”x12” Van Halen carnival mirror and dumped a gram of coke on it. Yay! Coke is a pretty crappy drug for many reasons but it was fun every once in awhile, especially if you did not have to pay for it.

We had been having a heated discussion about the breakup of Pink Floyd and which one is ‘Pink’…Roger Waters or David Gilmour. I love Gilmour, but I have always been more in the Rogers Waters camp. I was going to help prove my case by having the group listen to a kickass Roger Waters bootleg cassette I had of a recent concert at Madison Square Garden. In the dorms we had been warned many times about smoking pot so we were very careful about SLT’ing (Shut/Lock/Towel the bottom of) the door whenever we smoked. I removed the towel covering the bottom of Ron’s door and left to run over to my dorm room and get the Waters tape. Ron’s room was the very last room at the end of a hallway, and on the third floor. I walked the length of the hallway and turned left to get on the elevator to go down to the basement tunnel to my dorm. As I turned the corner I literally ran smack into the dorm’s Resident Assistant (RA) and a cop! After bouncing off his belly, the RA gave me a sad but stern look and wordlessly they made the turn heading for what I was sure was Ron’s room. Despite our precautions, the RA must have smelled the pot and called the cops.

My first thought was huge relief that I was no longer in that room. My second thought was “Oh sh*t, the coke!” Pot was bad enough, but if my friends opened the door thinking it was just me coming back and they had the mirror sitting out it would be big trouble. As soon as the cop/RA turned the corner I ran past the elevator to the adjacent stairwell and ran down the three flights of stairs as fast as I could. When I got down to the lobby a few precious seconds later I grabbed one of the two lobby phones and called Ron’s room. He picked up and said “Hi.” and in the background I could hear loud knocking on their door. “Cops, ditch everything! Cops ditch everything!!” I yelled. Then in order to make my point and hopefully get him moving instantly, I slammed the receiver down loudly as I hung up. I walked over to my dorm, drank a beer in my room and hoped for the best.

I waited about a half-hour and then called the room. Ron answered, gave a weak laugh and said: “God, thank you man, come over.” When I got there the gang was hanging out talking about what happened, while Paul was sitting on the corner of his bed looking in the Van Halen mirror and making strange faces with his mouth. Ron told me that the second I hung up he motioned for everyone to hide the drugs. Somebody stashed the weed under a mattress while Paul grabbed the mirror. He did not want to dump $100 worth of drugs on the floor, but he did not want to risk being caught with it either. So he quickly huffed the entire pile of coke into his mouth! Then he licked the mirror clean and slid it under a pile of junk. When everything looked cool Ron answered the door and let the cop and the RA in.

Luckily they did not search the place, but they had smelled the weed and my friends got a written warning from the RA and a stern lecture from the cop about the evils of marijuana…how it is leading them down a dark path, that the next time they will bring a warrant and search the rooms and they will all end up in jail. The cop questioned each guy in there if they were smoking pot and if there was any in the room. Everyone denied it vehemently, but when they got to poor Paul he could barely talk. Not only was he nervous and getting all jacked up from the instant ingestion of an entire gram of cocaine, but his mouth was completely insanely numb from it. Imagine getting a dozen shots of Novocain in your upper/lower gums and your tongue. He was all mush-mouthed and doing his best to keep from drooling while answering the cop’s questions. “No thir…I havth nod been thmoking weed.” The cop looked at him curiously and asked what was wrong with him, but Paul told him he had a really bad cold and the cop left him alone.

All’s well that ends well, but remember kids…don’t do drugs, and stay in school.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

The Good, the Bad and the Awesome

Well as the title suggests, we will start off with the ‘good’. Early last Spring the four remaining living members of the Grateful Dead announced they were going to do three final farewell shows in Chicago on July 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th of 2015 at Soldier Field. This seemed fitting as it was the site for the final shows the Dead did in 1995 before Jerry Garcia died a month later. I had been at those two final shows in ’95, and I decided I had to see at least one of the three final ever Dead shows. With Saturday being the 4^th of July to spend with the family and Sunday the 5^th being my wife Nadia’s birthday, that only left me with Friday the 3^rd.

We were going to be in Wisconsin anyways that Thursday through Sunday at Nadia’s brothers cabin in the Wisconsin Dells, so my plan was to drive the 3.5 hours on Friday down from the cabin to Chicago, and then drive back late after the show. But after months of looking I could not for the life of me find a reasonable ticket. I was not going to spend hundreds of dollars to sit behind the stage, so I decided not to go. But then my buddy Travelin’ Dave from Milwaukee told me he flew out to San Francisco for the two Dead shows the weekend before and there were tons of tickets available all over the parking lot. Okay, that’s good news, so I decided to go to Chicago without a ticket and find one in the lot.

As I was pulling into the B&B where Travelin’ was staying with his girlfriend, out of the blue my friend Dave Thompson called me up from Virginia and asked if I was in Chicago and if I needed a ticket. He knew a guy in Chicago with an extra. $215 face value. Yes I said! More than I wanted to pay (I only had $260 in cash), but at least I would be in to the show. Then he texted me and said it was free! What?! So I figured the guy with the extra ticket was rich and was just being really cool. After many anxious texts and failed phone calls and voicemails with his friend, I finally managed to find the guy out in the lot only an hour before show time. And thank god because there were NO extra tickets to be found. I would have been shut out. I only saw one guy selling tickets in the lot and he looked like a criminal. And right after I saw him I ran into a friend from Minneapolis who was incredibly bummed out because he had just spent a ton of money on two tickets from somebody in the lot and the tickets were fake. He got turned away at the door.

So I finally find Thompson’s guy with an hour to spare and he hands me the ticket and a beer and said the ticket was on Thompson! Dave…you are so f*cking cool. It was a great seat, next to a hot 24-year old chick who was there with her dad. They were both totally cool and we talked and shared Dead stories. The show was a blast and surpassed all of my expectations. I warmed up to Trey Anastasio after a bit, and then started to really enjoy his guitar. I was never a Phish fan and only have been to one half of one Phish show so I know nothing about Trey, but he was good. The 1^st set was well done and the energy of the 70,000 people was a living, contagious entity. It was starting to feel a little like old times.

‘Mason’s Children’ to open the 2^nd set was the second of four songs I had never heard the real Dead play (Passenger, Mason’s Children, New Potato Caboose and Ripple). The ‘Scarlet/Fire’ that came next was crowd-pleasingly awesome. That eventually led into ‘Drums’ which was fun to watch as they broadcast it up close on the insanely massive screen behind us, but it was a bit weird as everyone turned their backs to the stage to watch the screen. The jam after ‘Playin In The Band’ was incredibly long and rather pointless since they had just got done with a long ‘Drums/Space’. It was basically all seven guys making uncoordinated noise for way too long, and after awhile I really missed Jerry who would have guided that mess into something cool. I said to the hot chick “What the hell are they doing?” and this being her first Dead show she had no idea what they were doing. Finally Bob steered it into ‘Let It Grow’ which was cool, and then a sweet ‘Help/Slip/Franklins’ to end the set. Then the ‘Ripple’ encore to end the show was total goosebumps, with Bobby singing and playing acoustic guitar.

It was a good concert, but it could never touch that good ol’ Grateful-Jerry feeling you got when Jerry was on stage taking care of our souls. It did reaffirm my love of the Grateful Dead’s music however, the soundtrack to much of my life. I had a few goosebump moments (during ‘The Music Never Stopped’, and of course ‘Ripple’). I had no illusions that I was seeing a Grateful Dead show when really I was just seeing the best Dead cover band of all time…but the music was good and it was a great night. If those same seven guys ever toured I would go see them (but not for $215).

I have my commemorative ticket, as well as the stuff they handed you at the door which was a rose, a backstage-pass type of thing and a program. And since I had some extra money thanks to Dave I also scored a signed/numbered 7/3/15 poster (#987/1000) which I have framed along with the ticket and pass. It was a good time and I had a blast and I owe it all to Thompson. I am almost glad I did not go to the final show on Sunday as I am sure there were a lot of tears. I listened to it on Sirius radio in my car and I was tearing up throughout the show. I was very nostalgic, thinking back on the exactly 100 times I had seen them in the past and all the good times/friends/travels/memories/loves the Grateful Dead had brought me. Overall, it was a ‘good’ experience and I will go see these guys play again in whatever configuration they come up with.

Now we go back a couple weeks to the ‘bad’. With two small kids Nadia and I only get out with each other a few times a year, so we have to pick and choose our nights carefully. We had not gone out since the previous fall so when I saw Gordon Lightfoot tickets go on sale a few months ago I asked Nadia if she was up for that. It was on Saturday, 6/20/15, just a day before our 7-year anniversary. She was not a big fan, but I had grown up listening to his records and still love everything on the ‘Sundown’ album so I talked her into it. I scored a pair of great 15^th row aisle seats dead center on the floor of the State Theatre in Minneapolis. I had never seen him but always wanted to, so I was super excited.

When we got inside I ordered a double-scotch for me and a bag of Skittles for Nadia. $23 with the tip. Okay, it would be a one-drink night. No problem. We settled in to our kickass seats and right on time at 8pm the band strolled on stage and started playing. Soon a little old man shuffled slowly up to the center mic with a guitar and started playing and ‘singing’. What? Was that possibly Gordon? It did not look like the guy that was on any of the album covers I had ever seen. This was just a little old guy with long, greasy, slicked-back hair. And the voice. Ouch. It was inaudible, barely above an old-man whisper. Was this for real? A quick check of my cell phone revealed he was born in 1938. Holy crap he was going on 77 years old!

That sort of explained the insanely bad vocals, but it did not explain why he still thinks he should be touring. I looked over at Nadia who was gamely pretending to be enjoying herself. I shook my head and put her at ease by telling her that this was horrible. She looked relieved, like she thought that I thought that this was good. I kept hoping maybe he would clear his throat and his voice would come back, or he just needed a couple songs to warm up. But no…his voice remained consistently painfully embarrassingly non-existent throughout the entire concert. After 45 minutes he took a much needed set-break. 15 minutes later he shuffled back on stage and continued the torture for another 45 minutes.

His band was good, but his voice was just awful. I knew every word to almost every song, but I could barely recognize the songs. I love Gordon Lightfoot and his music, but the ancient man who was croaking out my favorite songs bore no resemblance to the man who first sang them. It was by far the worst concert I have ever paid any money for. This was not an isolated incident for him because I have since read similar reviews of his shows around the country. I feel bad for him, but I just hope somebody he will listen to will tell him that he has to stop touring and retire. It was a ‘bad’ performance and nobody should ever pay money to see him again.

Now we go back another couple weeks to the freaking ‘awesome’. Last spring mysterious billboards started popping up in certain cities around the country with the familiar Rolling Stone tongue logo and a saying next to it like ‘Start Me Up’ or ‘You Get What You Need’. Minneapolis was one of those cities and I was overjoyed. I had only seen the Stones twice before, and for various reasons I had not seen them since 1997. The show was announced to be at TCF Bank Stadium on Tuesday, 6/3/15 and I scored a fairly good seat for $150. I marked my calendar and eagerly awaited the return of the greatest rock and roll band of all time.

The day of the concert it was raining so I brought a raincoat and parked a mile away near my old apartment in Dinkytown to avoid traffic and paying for parking. I had my bike in the back of the car and rode in the misty rain to the stadium and locked my bike to a rack against the stadium. I was wearing my 50^th Anniversary Stones shirt (thanks Penny!) and my ‘Stones/Sesame Street/Some Girls’ boxer shorts and I was ready to rock! Grace Potter opened and she was great. The first time I had seen her was a few years ago in a half-full bar called the Cabooze, and now she was opening for the Stones in a football stadium. I talked to her at the Cabooze and she signed a couple of her cd’s for me as my buddy Mitch and I went backstage to smoke up her band. Extremely nice guys, and Grace is as cool as she is hot so I was happy to see her making it big-time. She did a great set and the mist had ended by the time her set did and the skies cleared up.

My purchased seat was in the upper level on the side of the stage but I never went up there. Instead I found a 5^th row aisle seat directly below on the lower level right out in front of the stage. I sat there for Grace, and then had to move back to the 7^th row for the Stones. For some strange reason I had 10 seats all to myself in an expensive section close to the stage. Through the next couple of hours they slowly filled in with a few people, but I managed to have the two seats on the aisle all to myself for the entire show. That is one of the perks of going to a concert by myself…I usually manage to find a great seat close to the stage.

The excitement and tension was building until the lights finally went down and out came the Rolling f*cking Stones with ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and it was on. It was a massive stage of course and they continued to assault us with classics like ‘It’s Only Rock n Roll’ and rarities like ‘Bitch’ for over two hours. Mick Jagger was all of 71 years old, but he sang and acted like he was in his 20’s. His voice was perfect and he is obviously in great shape as he danced and pranced the entire concert. Compared to Gordon Lightfoot who is only 5 years older, Mick is a god. Gordon can barely walk or talk whereas Mick hardly ever stops moving. The stage was as wide as a football field and there was a walkway out from the stage out to the middle of the field. Mick left no part of the stage or the walkway untouched as he continuously ran all over, making as many people as possible feel as if they were in the front row. Keith Richards, Ron Wood and the rest of the band rocked, but Mick was clearly the life of the party.

One of the highlights was when Mick slowed down for a bit, donned an acoustic guitar and went into ‘Moonlight Mile’…so beautiful. Later Grace Potter was invited onstage to sing a powerful ‘Gimme Shelter’ with Mick and she nailed it, and she even inadvertently flashed us her boobs a few times which was nice. Two songs later things got eerily intense when the familiar bongos started the intro to ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. Smoke and flames licked up from the stage and massive screens while Mick slowly emerged from hell wearing a devilish black and red outfit. The encore started with a wonderful ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ complete with a huge local choir split in half on either side of the stage, and ended fittingly with ‘Satisfaction’ and fireworks.

The great seats were a big part of it, but god what a crazy ‘awesome’ concert. Expectations tend to get lower the older your heroes get, but the Rolling Stones erased any doubt that they are still a viable touring band with an incredible performance that blew me away. I will never not see them if they ever come around again. Check out the Stone’s 6/3/15 set list:

1) Jumping Jack Flash

2) It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)

3) All Down The Line

4) Tumbling Dice

5) Doom And Gloom

6) Bitch

7) Moonlight Mile

8) Out Of Control

9) Honky Tonk Women

10) Before They Make Me Run

11) Happy

12) Midnight Rambler

13) Miss You

14) Gimme Shelter

15) Start Me Up

16) Sympathy For The Devil

17) Brown Sugar

Encore

18) You Can’t Always Get What You Want

19) (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Middle School Memories

It was September of 1978 when I began my three years at Butler Middle School in Waukesha, WI. 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grade. I had just moved from Schenectady, NY to Waukesha in 1977 so I was fairly new to the area and still making friends. I was desperately trying to make my way through puberty while overcoming all of the usual obstacles that seemed insurmountable at the time. In addition to being a new kid and coming to a new school and trying to fit in, I had to get braces the day before my first day of 7^th grade. I was in great pain and felt like a freak with a mouth full of metal. I would have to learn how to smile and make friends with my mouth closed. I remember trying to eat a hamburger in the lunchroom the first day after getting my braces and I was appalled at the massive amounts of food stuck in there. It felt and looked ridiculous and I was convinced I would be eating no solids foods for the next two years. At least they told me I would have them on for two years. Of course that stretched to three years. In fact I got them off the day after 9^th grade ended, so my time in braces neatly bookended my Middle School career…from September of 1978 to June of 1981.

In addition to my funky teeth, I was quickly realizing I had funky eyes. I found myself squinting to see the chalkboard in class. Instead of sitting in the back of the class with the cool kids, as the days wore on I gradually migrated row by row to the front of the class just so I could see what was going on. Pretty soon I was in the front row with the nerds. Even then I had to squint and eventually I had to break down and tell my mom that I was nearly blind. She took me in for an eye exam and my 20/400 vision meant I was getting a new pair of cool glasses to go with my awesome braces. I hated them and never wore them unless I was sitting at my desk not talking to anyone and looking at the chalkboard. I hated them so much (flash forward to high school) I remember being on a date with my new girlfriend Dawn Blaedow and almost getting us killed on an off-ramp because I was too embarrassed to wear glasses on a date, even while driving blind.

To increase my nerd-quotient I also played the cello which I had to haul to school every day on the school bus. So instead of sitting on the back of the bus with the cool kids, I had to sit by myself up front with my cello picking food out of my braces. One day I was sitting at a table during lunch with some kids who were talking about the musical instruments they played. One guy said he played the guitar and the other guy (I think it was Bryan Belmer?) said he played bass. They were talking about getting together and jamming and maybe putting a band together. The bass? I naively thought he meant an acoustic stand-up bass that people played in my school orchestra. But I never saw that guy in there. Maybe he took lessons outside of school. Enthusiastically I broke in and said I played the cello and that I would love to join their band. They both stopped talking and looked at me like I was an alien, trying to figure out if I was just joking or if I was really that dumb. I just sat there smiling hopefully until it was apparent to them that I was that dumb, so they ignored me and continued their conversation with their backs to me. I eventually got good enough at the cello to be invited to try out for the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra. That was my cue to quit what is one of the most beautiful instruments in the world. I regret it now of course, but I had to do whatever I could back then to shed my nerdness. I was never going to get a girlfriend hauling a cello around town.

I remember one day in 7^th grade sitting in the lunchroom and a bunch of guys were all hunched together at a table giggling at something. It was a Sports Illustrated. I sat down and asked what was up and one of them handed me the magazine. Except it was more than a Sports Illustrated…much more. Hidden inside the sports mag was a Playboy! Oh boy. It was genius. We would never get caught because anybody walking by would think we were simply reading a Sports Illustrated! I eagerly flipped though the Playboy, shocked and delighted in ways that I was only just beginning to discover. I was completely lost in the magazine. I tuned out everything in the world except the voluptuous delights laid out before my eager young eyes when suddenly I felt a strong firm hand on my shoulder and the magazine was ripped from my grasp. Hey! Oh. Uh, oh. It was the science teacher Mr. Prust walking by who noticed the magazine and came over to investigate. All of the other kids at the table melted away and it was just me and the teacher with the rest of the lunchroom staring at us. He took the magazine and told me to be in the principal’s office in 5 minutes. Dammit. I finished my sandwich and headed to Mr. Fink’s office. When I got there he was kicked back in his chair holding up the magazine sideways checking out the centerfold. I cleared my throat and he quickly folded it back up and laid it on the desk. He asked me if this was mine and I said no. He asked me whose it was and I said I didn’t know. You could tell he was trying to act angry, but in reality he was amused at the ol’ Playboy-inside-a-Sports-Illustrated trick and was doing his best to keep from laughing. He let me off with a warning and told me to never be seen on the school grounds holding a Playboy ever again.

One thing I learned in Middle School was how to be a dealer. I noticed there was a guy who used to carry a box of pencils around. Sometimes when a kid or even a teacher needed a pencil they would borrow one from him. Hey I thought…why lend out pencils when you could sell them? I got an old cigar box I found in my garage and started collecting pencils. Whenever I saw a pencil laying around I would grab it. Pencils from home and pencils from school laying in the hallway or left behind on desks or in the library. My eyes were constantly on the alert for pencils. Any size from stubs on up to new ones. I carried my cigar box full of pencils and a little pencil-sharpener around with me at school all day every day. After awhile I had enough pencil stock to start my business. I let it be known that my pencils were for sale, 1 penny per inch and I would sharpen your new pencil free of charge. If you needed a pencil and the guy with the free pencils wasn’t around, you could buy one from me.

That was okay for awhile. I made a few cents here and there which seemed like a lot in the 70’s (a white milk carton from the cafeteria was 2 cents and chocolate 4 cents for example) and it felt cool to be ‘the guy’…making money selling stuff people needed. But I wanted more. More money…more power. So I turned to something less legal. Gum. There was a gas station a couple blocks from my school so in the morning I had just enough time after I got off the school bus to run to the store and use the 50 cents my parents had given me for lunch to buy gum. At first I was buying Juicy Fruit for 20 cents a pack. There were 7 sticks in a pack and I would sell them for 5 cents a stick so I was almost doubling my money. But it was about then that Bubble Yum was invented, with Bubblicious and Hubba Bubba soon to follow. The soft bubble gum craze was on. Packs of this stuff were also 20 to 25 cents with only 5 pieces per pack, but I would sell those for 10 cents apiece to regular people and 5 cents apiece to the cool kids. This new gum was so popular that I could barely keep it in stock. I was making good money as well as making headway with the cool kids. My mom did not allow my sisters and I to chew gum, so I was following the dealer’s age-old adage: Don’t get high on your own supply. My prowess at dealing gum however soon led to widespread gum usage which in turn led to the school banning chewing gum in school. My empire was beginning to crumble, but I was not deterred until eventually I got busted and hauled into Principal Fink’s office. He took all the gum I had on me but he let me off with a warning…no more selling gum in school or I would be in big trouble. I was not sure what ‘big trouble’ was, but I did not want to find out so I quit dealing.

Another fond memory was the school-wide field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. One warm spring morning all of us kids were loaded on to school buses and hauled down I-94 from Waukesha to Chicago. It was 2 hours each way so we left as soon as we got to school which got us to the museum around 10 am. We had to leave the museum by 12:30 pm to get us back to school by 2:30 pm, so that only left us about 2 ½ hours to explore the museum. I was in 8^th grade and had recently started talking to a girl in class named Jill. She was not especially pretty or smart or popular, but she was a girl and she was talking to me. When we got off the bus I asked her if she wanted to check out the museum with me. She nodded yes and we headed into the deep dark vast maze of corridors and rooms to explore. We kept on walking and walking and eventually we ended up in a back back exhibit room. We ate our lunch there and I noticed we were the only ones in the whole room. We started holding hands and then I leaned over and kissed her! This was like a dream come true…I was making out with a chick while on a school field trip! We completely lost track of time and after awhile an out-of-breath teacher came running into the room, saw us kissing and let out a huge sigh of relief. He was really pissed off though. He grabbed us each by the arm and marched us out towards the entrance, letting us know that the entire school was waiting for us. Per policy nobody could leave till everyone was accounted for. He got us out into the blinding sunlight and there were 3 or 4 waiting school buses full of kids all staring at me and Jill. I did not know whether to be embarrassed, proud or scared of being in trouble. I ended up being all three.

Middle school was a time of puberty, getting uncontrollable boners in class for no reason, getting naked for the first time in the school locker-room (no boners in there btw), the presidential fitness award, glasses, braces, crushes on girls (Vicky Ross, Kelly Welch, Stacey Anders, June Hansen, Tracy Lapp, Megan Rowlands, etc.), hot teachers (a big rumor was that Ms. Carlson was a Playboy model before she was a teacher), awesome teachers (Miss Bischoff taught us all about the Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Who while listening to their albums in class), bad teachers (Mr. Harding’s nickname was Mr. Hard-on because he was such a tool), my awesome music slide-show, school dances, algebra, elective classes...so many good times and bad. It was a precursor for what was to come in high school. If you made it through these formative years relatively unscathed mentally you were ready to take it all on. Middle school was scary, fun, humbling, exciting and a good learning experience. High school was mostly an all-out total blast. We will get to that some time down the road…

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Massage Fun

I woke up a few months ago on 'Super Sunday' with a weird neck ache. It was 2/1/15 and Super Bowl XLIX was ready to kick off that day in Arizona and I had a pain in my neck. I figured I had just slept on it wrong and it would be fine. But over the next few days it got progressively worse, moving down to my back and eventually my left arm. I kept thinking it would get better but it did not. It felt like there was knife sticking into my upper left back, with pain and numbness running down my left arm to the point that I could not feel my elbow or pinkie finger. The only slight relief I could find was if I hunched my left shoulder up and mashed my left cheek onto it while raising my left arm over my head. I could not walk around like that though because it looked like I was giving some weird Nazi salute. The pain was constant, day and night, making it hard to sleep.

Finally a week later I realized it was not going to get better on its own so on Tuesday the 10^th I made an appointment to see my chiropractor. She is a totally cool lady and fun to talk to and I hoped she could fix me up. She cranked on me for awhile and told me to give her 4 appointments and she would have me back on the right track. It felt a little better but not much. I went back two days later on Thursday and she cranked on me again and told me I should get a massage. The pain was not getting any better but she said a deep tissue massage would help. I had done a little research of my own on the problem and I was starting to think it was a pinched nerve, but she insisted that I should get that a massage so I said I would.

My wife Nadia had a gift certificate for a $100 massage at Simonson’s Salon & Spa that she had gotten for Christmas. She said I could use it, but I was a little dubious. Was I, a guy, supposed to be going to a beauty salon? With relief I then remembered I also had a Christmas gift card for a massage with the awesome daughter of a friend of mine from work. I had been to her a few times in the past and she has magic hands. She is so good though that when I tried to make an appointment with her she was booked out at least 3 weeks. I could not wait that long as I was getting no sleep with the constant pain and needed help right away. I guess I was going to have to go to the salon.

So I called Simonson’s and was told that their female masseuse was on vacation so they only had a guy available. He could see me the next day on Friday. Really? My only option was to get rubbed down by a dude at a salon?? I hesitated with the girl on the phone and said I didn’t know if I was cool with that, but she said that guys tend to have stronger hands and if I am having a medical issue it is better to have a guy. I stalled for a bit and finally relented…she talked me into it. My massage was scheduled for the next day at 4 pm after work.

I had strong reservations the second I hung up the phone. I have had probably ten pro-massages in my life, but they have all been with girls. I had mixed feelings. A guy?? Rubbing and touching me…touching and rubbing. What if I enjoy it? Usually I have had them done by the daughter of the work friend I mentioned. She is female, but she is a lesbian so I know there is no possibility of anything sexual. Although lesbians of course turn me on in general, I have known her since she was a kid so I do not think of her that way…even when she is rubbing me and getting close to my good parts. I was not sure if I was going to feel comfortable having some dude oiling me down and rubbing my whole body and getting close to my good parts. It seemed very weird to me. What if…what if it moved? I felt exactly like George Costanza.

The next day was Friday the 13^th. I did not sleep very well…a combination of pain and uneasiness. I thought about it all day at work. Should I just call and cancel? I could do that. I did not have to go to the salon. I could pay the $100 and go somewhere else. It would be good for me though I finally decided. One of life’s interesting little roadblocks that builds character as you maneuver through it. I pulled into Simonson’s Salon & Spa in Plymouth, MN at 3:45pm that afternoon. I thought one last time about ditching the whole thing as I parked next to a pink and blue ‘Molly Maid’ car. What if someone I know sees me? With a sigh I decided to go for it and quickly walked inside trying to act cool. I had a cool black leather jacket on. Was that cool enough? I looked around and saw that I was the only guy in there. My heart sank. I was not supposed to be here, but I got in line with the rest of the women. There was an incredibly large woman right in front of me that I could sort of hide behind which was nice. But then an incredibly hot woman got in right behind me. It did not matter though because I was not a man anymore…I had no illusions of trying to be cool.

When I finally got up to the counter I whispered: “I’m here for my 4 o’clock massage.” She asked me if I had been there before, and when I quickly shook my head ‘no’ she dutifully and carefully took down all of my information while the hot chick waited behind me. Then she told me ‘Lanier’ would be with me in a bit as she led me down a hall and introduced me to a back waiting room with a few other ladies in there reading magazines. I took a quick glance at the magazines strewn about and of course there was no Sports Illustrated or ESPN…just Glamour and Cosmopolitan. So I sat down with my cell phone and tried to pull up ESPN, but I was not getting any reception back there so I had to stare at my phone and pretend to look at my manly messages while waiting for my masseuse.

Lanier came and got me after a few minutes and led me further down the hall to a back-back room. It was dark, warm, and unpleasantly pleasant. We stood there and sized each other up. Lanier was short, muscular, Latino, wearing a skin-tight muscle-shirt and thankfully a man of few words. He asked me if there was any particular part or parts of my body I wanted him to focus on, or should he give me the general full-body massage I had signed up for? I told him about my back problem, and then I tried to tell him that my calves were also sore but it came out all wrong. I wanted to tell him that I had been to a rock concert over the weekend (I had gone to see ‘The New Orleans Suspects’ at Bunkers Music Bar which meant a long night of rocking and partying), but for some reason it came out: “Yeah I was out dancing at a downtown nightclub over the weekend so my calves are really sore.” It sounded incredibly gay as I heard the words I was saying and I gave a nervous chuckle. He politely laughed and said he would take care of my calves.

Then he left the room so I could get undressed. I was not going to go commando so I stripped down to my boxers. It was then I noticed I was wearing ‘Family Guy’ boxers that had a picture of a naked Stewie on the front looking like Cupid with the words ‘Sex Party’ in fancy writing beneath him. “Well that’s just perfect” I thought. Lanier totally thinks I’m gay, and now these boxers are an invitation for him to have his way with me. When he came back and started in on my back with the oil I got scared and told him to abort the full body massage (“ABORT!”) and that he could just work on my back for the whole hour. I tensely held on to the front of the table in a white-knuckle grip as his strong, firm, experienced hands slowly worked the oil into my back and my neck. After a few minutes I began to relax just a little bit. I gotta admit, he was good…but I am definitely going to stick with women from now on. I tried the other team, but I am happy to report that it did not move and now I’m back baby!

Poor Lanier…I guess I totally led him on. I am sure he probably wanted to massage my 12 lbs of dangling fury and instead he had to settle for just my back. I gave him a nice tip though and then ran out of there as fast as I could.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Robby Krieger - 3/13/15 At The Medina Ballroom

On July 30^th of 2011 keyboardist Ray Manzarek of The Doors was playing a gig at the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis. He was there playing with slide-guitar legend Roy Rogers. I love the Doors and I knew it was going to be a great show, but I decided to skip it. If I remember correctly, I believe I went to a picnic at Karl Bremer’s house that Saturday afternoon and had a great time. It was a long hot day, I was tired and slightly buzzed and did not feel like driving to a concert later that night. I reasoned that I would just see him the next time he came to town. Unfortunately the time never came around as Ray was taken down by cancer less than two years later at the age of 74. A chance to see a member of the freaking Doors came and went and I blew it.

Well a couple of months ago I learned that the guitar player for The Doors Robby Krieger was playing a concert on 3/13/15 at the Medina Ballroom, just a couple of miles down the road from my house. I was not going to make the mistake of missing the only remaining touring member of the Doors again. At the age of 69, who knows when/if he will be touring again. I think I might have seen him and his band back in the early 1990’s at some outdoor rock festival in Chicago, but I am not sure I am remembering that correctly. Anyways, about a month ago I logged in to my computer to get a ticket for the show and I scored a seat in the front table, dead center of the stage.

Reserving a spot at a certain table however just guarantees you a seat at that table, but not which seat. That is on a first-come first-serve basis. The doors opened at 7:30 pm so I got there at 7:00 pm just as people were starting to show up and I was the first in line. When the doors opened I ran to the front and scored the best seat in the house next to the stage. The eight of us at the table were all excited as we introduced ourselves and ordered drinks while waiting for the show to start. In addition to running into a few old friends including Pat and Patty Sundberg a couple of tables away, I made some new friends at my table.

The guy sitting directly across from me was a huge blues guy and he was so impressed that my uncle Tony was a famous harp player that he bought me a drink and he gave me a poster. I also stunned my table (all of them complete ‘Doors’ freaks) with the story of how my uncle had actually sat in and played with the Doors on November 10^th, 1968 at the Minneapolis Auditorium. Then before our show a KQRS radio DJ came out to talk-up the crowd. He put the mic in some guys face at the table next to ours and asked him his favorite Doors memory or story. He mumbled something while everyone on my table was trying to get the DJ’s attention so that he could ask me the same question…they wanted me to relay the ‘uncle-with-Doors’ story. No such luck. But I did catch a couple of tee-shirts they were tossing out from the stage. They were medium Sniper shirts from the recent ‘American Sniper’ movie which I had zero use for though so I gave them to a couple of girls near me.

It was all-around a fun show. In the front-center table I was kicked back in my seat with my left arm on the stage. It was great seeing a living legend while he is still able to play, at a nightclub just down the street. Most fans know practically every Doors song by heart, note for note, and it was cool seeing the guitarist make those notes happen live in concert 12-inches in front of my face. The drummer and keyboard player were awesome and I got the keyboardist’s autograph after the show. The kickass journeyman bass player Phil Chen played with Jeff Beck on the ‘Blow By Blow’ album, as well as with many other musical heroes including Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff to name a few. Robby’s son Waylon Krieger on vocals was a bit rough and made me cringe a few times, but who other than Jim wouldn’t make me cringe singing those songs. He got better as the night went on, but the main focus was Robby of course.

Before the encore Waylon was signing a couple of autographs from the stage. The guy next to me was practically wetting his pants he was so excited but he could not get Waylon’s attention. So I took his cd and waved it to Waylon who came over to sign. Then in a burst of inspiration as I was handing him the cd and Sharpie I asked him: “Do you think you could sign it – ‘Jim Morrison’?” He looked at me like he didn’t know if he should laugh or punch me, so I cut the tension by laughing and slapping him on the shoulder and saying I was sorry, just kidding and that he had done a great job. All in all it was a great night. Here is the monster set list on this first night of the tour. Judging by the much shorter set lists I found online for the following nights, we got a good one.

Encore: