Paris Up The Back Door

After three years of intensely studying every French word of ill repute I could think of under the tutelage of Madame Klohs at Anoka High School followed by approximately 18 years of barely speaking a word of it, I finally got the chance to go try my tongue at the French tongue where it was invented, France. Having heard stories about the legendary scorn the French reserve for those who dare to speak their language poorly, I was happy to be seated next to Martin, an eleven-year-old French unaccompanied minor (I could tell by his loneliness and the little light on his hardhat) on the flight over, so I could dust off my French in a low pressure situation. I figured I'd start off simple, so I asked him, "Habites-tu a Paris?" He said my mother was a dog and put his cigarette out on my hand. All in all, I thought it went pretty well.

Since I was in Paris to attend ans speak at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, I got to spend the first several days living and working like a local, taking the subway, wearing non-tourist clothes, and showing impatience with the slow walkers. I upped my French speaking ante considerably at the opening night reception at a very cool place called the Museum of Fairground Arts when I asked the carousel operator in what year his carousel was built: "Savez-vous a quel ans votre carrousel a ete construit?" Took a wild guess that carousel was a homonym, got lucky. I apparently did well enough that he went into a long explanation into the carousel's origins. When I stared blankly, he pointed to the plaque on the wall saying it was built in 1900.

Then, Liz showed up, I gave my talk, and we were ready to take Paris like Nazis, and we found it easy to surrender to its charms (obligatory). I had bought an off-brand travel guide, "Dick Sleve's: Paris?" A lot of the "facts" in the book seemed a bit suspect, and most of the hotels it recommended were actually in Belgium so I can't 100% guarantee the accuracy of the information to follow, but hey, a deal is a deal.


Liz vetoed my idea to just get seven day passes to Euro Disney and call it a trip, so after much pouting and many tantrums, I agreed to do it her way and see fruity cultural crap. So, the first day we went to some palace outside town. Not sure what it was called, but the book said its opulence went over really well with the peasants. It rained a bit, but we strolled the grounds, saw a hallava' lotta' mirrors, and had a nice picnic.


In case you were wondering if they sell wine at French McDonalds, we have no idea, but they do have glasses that will hold wine.


The next day we went to the Orsay museum, which had lots of paintings and sculptures. My favorite painting was this one, Dante and Virgil in Hell, as it was badass.


Then we walked around the Latin quarter and saw several other churches, gardens, and a game of bocce. That night, we went to a carnival near our hotel and rode the ferris wheel and sky swing. Then we went to the food tent where, I kid you not, the daily special was foie gras and they had champagne. Yes, Parisian carny food is foie gras and champagne.

The next day we got the most out of our museum passes and went all out in the search for culture and foot discomfort. We climbed to the top of some apparently famous church:


I kept asking people what it was called but they kept saying something about sharing my woman. I had to fight 16 French people (including women and children) to preserve Liz's honor. The book said it took like 1800 years to build and is made entirely out of actual gargoyle flesh.


And hey, they had a statue of that chick from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which was surprising since she must have lived a long time to be around during the construction of this church and also to film that movie. Oh wait, time travel. Of course.


Then we saw a bunch of other boring museums followed by an awesome one containing Ralph Lauren's personal car collection. It lacked Pintos, in my opinion. Then we went to that museum from the Da Vinci Code (the movie, not the book) and saw the Gummi De Milo:

...and a painting of some dude in drag. For centuries, idiots have pondered the meaning behind that smile, shoved their way to the front of the line and taken pictures of it using their flashes despite it being behind glass.


That night we went up inside some cell phone tower that people were all excited about. I guess it was pretty cool, especially since Liz let me have a Heineken at the top.


The next day was thankfully the last day of the museum passes but we still had to see a bunch of boring churches, stained glass windows, paintings, and sculptures. This Rodin guy was a pretty good sculptor, however, and he liked to sculpt people doin' it and/or pooping.



His "Gates of Hell" were pretty badass also, but nobody answered so I didn't get to see hell itself.

We even had to see modern art, which is the worst kind of art of all.

The next day we were on our way to McDonald's (I'm Louvre-in' it) when some bike race broke out. A bunch of guys were chasing some other guy in a stupid looking yellow shirt. They must have biked all over France based on how tired they looked.

We took several other walks, ate some pretty good food, and got pooped on by birds on separate days crossing the exact same street. I can't say for sure whether it was the same bird, but the poop tasted pretty similar so I think it probably was. We even got to see that nightclub from that movie where Nicole Kidman sings all those songs about dying from consumption. Liz and I had different opinions as to its merits:

My proudest French sentences were, at the cafe below our apartment, after some snotty big nosed waiter pretended to squirt the ketchup I'd requested on me when he brought it over and after Liz went up to use our own bathroom: "Elle m'a quitte, elle a dit qu'elle ne pourrait jamais aimer une homme qui mange du ketchup" (She left me; she said she could never love a man who eats ketchup). When we left I said, Bon soir, et vive le ketchup. And also, at a restaurant specializing in cured meats, cheeses, and terrines: "Nous devons revenir quand nous avons plus de faim parceque nous aimons les viandes preservee" (we must return when we are hungrier because we love preserved meats). Later, on that our last night, we shared a late night bottle of champagne outside the Da Vinci Code museum and bid adieu to gay Paris. All in all it was a pretty good trip.

And now, some funny pics/captions:

Don't smoke, or you will grow a stomach penis and pull a hammy running to the hospital.

"Garcon, what does a gay cherub have to do to get an espresso around here?"

No caption.

And finally, I accomplished my primary objective for the trip, to locate the place in France where the naked ladies dance. I found it in the Montmartre neighborhood. Unfortunately, Liz wouldn't let me go in and the song grossly overstates the number of wall holes.

My Retirement Fund

I was never a huge sports card collector; I never bought a pack of cards in my life. I own two complete sets: a 1988 Topps and a 1991 Donruss. I bought a few rookie cards here and there, however, (from Shinder's) either rookie players I thought were going to make it big or up and coming stars whose careers were nearing their peak. I was recently home rooting around in my mom's basement and decided to grab my collection on a whim. Twenty-five years and change later, it has become clear that my collection is a veritable who's who of unrealized potential, wasted talent, and outright disgrace.

Observe: the unrealized potential

Shane Mack had a five pretty good years with the Twins, finishing his first year with the team (1990) batting .326. This performance, combined with his obviously spectacular mustache, made me run out and spend $4 on his team USA card. Shane went on to have some good and some not-so-good years, going 3 for 23 in the 1991 World Series. Although it's tough to say a nine year MLB career is a failure, he never reached his full potential.

Current estimated value: 40 cents.

Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell made their Red Sox debuts in 1988 to great fanfare and were predicted to give the Sox a dynasty of dominance. I was surprised to learn Burks played until 2004 and is rated the 240th best hitter of all time (two spots ahead of Kirk Gibson), although his superstar potential was never realized. Greenwell played all 11 of his seasons with the Sox and finished with a highly respectable career B.A. of .295. Again, never a superstar and as everyone knows the Sox would not win a WS until the current century.

Current combined value: under five bucks.

Ah, Bo Jackson: 2-sport athlete, physical specimen, mainstay of Nike commercials. I remember asking my dad whether he thought Bo Jackson was the greatest athlete of all time. He laughed and taught me the phrase "flash in the pan." Pretty much. Eight injury-plagued seasons, .250 lifetime, 141 dingers. Current value: $1.99 (buy it now price on Ebay).


It's probably unfair to include Ken Griffey Jr. with the previous entries--22 seasons, 630 career homers. But given that he was supposed to be the greatest player of all time...well, he isn't. In a word: injuries.

Current value: about 8 bucks.

And now, on to the embarrassments to the game of baseball:

Chucky K: 1991 A.L. rookie of the year. Spark Plug. Hard-nosed player. Dollar hot dog target. Massive douche. After 7 very good years with the hometown nine, Chuck made some less-than-complimentary comments about MN and the Twins and headed off to NY to don the pinstripes and take his place in history as one of the best second basemen of all time. Despite winning four WS he basically peaked as a rookie, famously losing the ability to make a throw from 2nd mid-career. Some other career highlights: arguing with the umpire rather than chasing down a ball that was in play, allowing Cleveland's Enrique Wilson to score from first base and giving the Tribe a 2-1 lead in the 12th inning of a game in the 1998 ALCS. Hitting Keith Olbermann's mother in the face with an errant throw into the stands. And finally, hitting and choking his common-law wife. Current value: two bits. I am currently accepting ideas for the best way to deface and destroy this card. Bicycle spokes are too good for this schmuck. Bonus points for feces utilization (human or animal).

Enough said.

Current value: I found several people giving them away for free online.

Mark McGwire. Big Mac. Broke the Babe's single season home run record. Has a section of I-70 in St. Louis named after him (although there is a large online effort to have its name changed back to the Mark Twain expressway. Who made the more substantial contribution to American history? You be the judge). Oh yes, and it turns out he was a total cheater and steroid aficionado. He does deserve some respect for admitting, albeit tacitly, his steroid use.

Purchase price: 10 bucks.

Current value: 45 bucks! Really? Anyone want to buy a disgraced slugger sports card?

And finally, "Successful" careers but no monetary value to their rookie cards:

$1.50
$0.40



Worth 4 bucks.

I bought this card from a neighbor kid when I was about 12. The kid wanted ten bucks but I said I only had five. My brother helpfully pointed out that there was a ten right in my top drawer. Thanks to Mark I lost six smackeroos instead of one. So there you have it. We should be able to retire on $66.04, right?

Upses and Downsesses

The last several weeks have had their share of highs and lows. I got a new bike to replace the one that was stolen last year, so that was cool. Then I couldn't figure out how to get it all adjusted properly so that was bad. Then I learned how to correctly adjust a derailleur and got the stripped crank arm rethreaded and I could ride it to work, so that also cool. Then I got knocked to the pavement by cars twice in two days, which was decidedly uncool.

After that, we realized we had a raccoon living in a little tunnel where our porch meets our house and it had tracked poop all over our doors and trim, which was annoying and probably unsanitary. I wanted to kill it but we decided to wait until it left for the night, threw moth balls in the tunnel, and blocked up the hole with bricks. That course of action felt good since we used non-lethal deterrent, which is generally good.

Then we went to visit our friends Erin and Jon in Birmingham, AL, where we were given wonderful steak and out-of-our-price-range wine, which was great. Then we drove down to the FL panhandle and spent a couple days on a really nice uncrowded beach, which was awesome:

Then we used the end of a can of spray-on SPF:

...which either didn't have any SPF left in it or we just didn't apply even coats so we all got these nasty, polka-dot sunburns, which was very unawesome. Liz went to the doctor, twice. They told her she had a sunburn.


When we got home, we realized that the coon had tried very hard to get back in to our house by chewing off shingles, ripping off drip edge, moving bricks, and throwing out the moth balls. I came home from work early to see if it had succeeded, which it had. So then I had to shoot a raccoon with an air rifle, which was heartbreaking. Oh who am I kidding it was the friggen' highlight of my year. The guy at the critter control place we called said the only reason a coon would go to that much trouble to get back in was if there were babies in there, and that it would just grab them and leave once it got to them. Apparently this coon was a non-conformist. We hoped maybe it wasn't with kits and just ornery and liked its cozy little nook and that we hadn't orphaned a litter of baby coons. I'm sure the faint rotten smell coming out of the hole a few weeks later was just coincidence. We gave it a chance to leave so I didn't feel all that bad--I guess mother nature is a cruel bitch, as are air rifles. I didn't take pictures of the hunt or the kill out of basic decency, but it looked something like this:


Then tourist season got underway with visits from my dad and Dave Strand, along with a bunch of guys who traveled out to watch the Twins play the Red Sox in honor of Shane Reese and Greg Mazzuco's upcoming nuptials (not to each other, despite there being absolutely nothing wrong with that in MA). A bachelor party, if you will. We went to the first game of the series and I witnessed my first live Twins win since the second-to-last game at the dome. My Fenway Twins record now stands at an impressive 1 and 5. The rest of the crew went to the Saturday game where they experienced bouts of heavy rain and even heavier bouts of lackluster Twins performances. Shocking, I know. The weather, combined with the previous night's revelry left the gang in low spirits and night two of the bachelor weekend in serious jeopardy of ending before dark. Luckily, Mike Hennies single-handedly saved the evening with his indomitable spirit and some well timed rounds of raspberry kamikazes. People left rested and happy. Which was good.

After three days of regular life, we headed back to MN for Liz's brother Mike and his fiance Vanessa's wedding. We saw some friends, smoked them some pork shoulder for their rehearsal dinner tacos, saw the nieces and nephews, watched as Mike removed Vanessa's garter with his foot at the dance (a first in the DJ's 20 years of DJ'ing, he said), which were all "ups." And then went to our first Twins game at Target Field where the impressive Twins REDACTED the Toronto Blue Jays by a score of REDACTED to REDACTED, which was total bullREDACTED. But then we realized the sun was shining, we were with our family, there was Summit, and we got our picture taken with TC, which made everything good again.

Poutine is Keen

I know this has become somewhat of a travel blog recently but I'm afraid that's about the only interesting thing we've been doing or thinking lately. So here we go again.

Toronto: adapted from the the Mohawk phrase tkaronto, meaning "where there are trees standing in the water," a reference to a place where Hurons and other natives drove stakes into the water to support fish nets. Radiocarbon dating of some of the surviving stakes reveals that they were in use more than 4,000 years ago. Today, it is a place where we went to to last weekend. There, we visited our friends Missy and Rob from the last blog post and went to the Twins season opener. So I guess you could say we were trying to catch the fish of cross-border friendship with the stakes of...baseball bat, something, something, metaphor, metaphor.

We hit the CN Tower on Friday afternoon and took an elevator to the top. You could see far, both outwards and downwards.





Here is the view from Missy and Rob's condo, they live on the 42nd floor facing the lake and have a much nicer view than they did at their previous place in Harlem.



That night, we "went" to the Twins Blue Jays "game" at Rogers Centre. I say "went" because we were behind glass in a party room in the attached hotel, which made it hard to get into the "game." I say "game" because, well, if you watched you know. But hey, the "tickets" were free and I met a guy from Scotland. It's always interesting to see how the hometown fans react to people in visiting team jerseys. In Toronto, their demeanor could probably best be described as "surprised."

Missy, a fitness juggernaut, had mentioned that she was training for a triathlon and suggested I bring my gear and join her for a run. I said sure, but that my max would be about 10 miles. Assuming the distance was negotiable, I failed to mention that I'd never run that far outdoors and hadn't done so in over a year. Unfortunately, there happened to be a bridge over a river that dumped into Lake Ontario exactly five miles down the shore from their building. A physical landmark made it harder for me to just say "well, you keep going, I think I'll turn around now." Running a lot faster than my normal pace in order to keep up with little Miss afterburners and having forgotten my non-chafing running skivs, I was ready to turn back well before the bridge of return. But hell, I figured I'd just gut it out to the center of the bridge then slow way down or even walk on the return trip while Missy got in the extra four miles she wanted to do. Instead, Missy said she'd just turn around with me and continue on once she returned me to home base. "Shit...I mean, great!" I thought. So I tried to forget my severe case of red rider and let my manly pride carry me to the finish. I made it, which I probably wouldn't have without someone to pant/talk to. Although I would not have won any sexiest crotch competitions (that trophy case is getting full anyways), my chafage was not life threatening and I was able to sight see on foot the rest of the afternoon and evening, albeit with a slight hobble and a pronounced pirate gait.

It helped that our first stop was a busy public market where Liz found us a deli specializing in peameal bacon, which is sort of like Canadian bacon but waaaay better. On a wonderful kaiser roll with cheese and a fried egg it was life saving. Afterward we noticed a framed magazine cover showing said sandwich with the caption "One sandwich you need to try before you die." They were not kidding.

After a nap, we headed back out to a poutine shop called "Poutini." I'd often read about Canada's (in)famous fry-gravy-cheese curd combo but had never tried it. I didn't know how good something could be that nullifies the inherent crispy deliciousness of great fries with a gravy bath, but we were surprised how much we liked it.

Liz even had some, which likely comes as shock to those of you who know her feelings on cheese curds. And gravy.

I thought a place called Poutini was missing a golden opportunity to have a signature namesake cocktail:

The Poutini
3 oz vodka (you know, for potatoes)
1/2 oz beef gravy
2 cheese curds

Fill a cocktail shaker half way with ice. Add the gravy and swirl to coat the ice cubes. Pour off any excess. Add the vodka and shake, vigorously for eight seconds. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with the cheese curds. Plug nose and chug immediately.

After poutine we went to an exhibit of Tim Burton's artwork at a museum. It was really neat and creepy. No photography was allowed but he had this one sketch of this guy with this weird skeleton head with some tentacles and other weird crap coming out of it...trust me, it was awesome. Then we had a second, non-poutine dinner and then some superb Canadian IPAs at a neat little bar with a vast selection of beers I'd never heard of. There was a table of young people behind us that were obviously hammered, one girl was crying, glasses were getting broken, and some guy fell off his stool and would have ended up on the floor if Rob hadn't caught him. Then, out of the blue, one guy in the group turned around and quite lucidly asked us how we were doing and wished us a pleasant evening. Seriously, binge drinking? Is there anything you Canadians don't do politely?

All in all, it was a nice, clean, green, international city, with a quaint and convenient street car system, a fun little "hippy" district with second hand stores, ethnic markets, and bakeries, and poutine. Did I mention poutine?


After a heated Sunday afternoon of Dance Dance Revolution, we took a turboprop Bombardier back to Boston and called it a weekend. This weekend: Birmingham and the Florida panhandle. Hey I know, I'll blog about it.

The Last Time We'll Ever See NYC

One of the perks of Boston life is the option of hopping a ridiculously cheap bus down to NYC for all the glitz, glamor and high prices of NYC without having to live in that rat-infested cesspool. It's even better when your friends Missy and Rob live there and let you crash on their Dolce and Gabana air mattress. That's right, nobody in "The City" would ever be caught dead with an Aerobed. So when we heard they were moving to the quaint Canadian hamlet known affectionately to the townsfolk as "Toronto," we figured we'd head down one last time to help them pack up their U-Haul and see them off, eh.

The bus ride down was uneventful except for the girl sitting two rows in front of us who was easily among the world's elite in the all-important irritation statistic "likes-per-sentence" (LPS). I estimate she was about a 4.5. I've seriously never wanted to punch a stranger in the face so badly in my life, and I've seen a few episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen and Bridezillas. Luckily, headphones prevented any actual violence. We dropped our stuff off in their dee-lux 2nd floor sky apartment, and headed down to the East Village pub where they'd first met for their going away cocktail hour(s). Their friends were nice enough, but after a few hours of trying unsuccessfully to follow their conversations on wine, art, and poetry, Liz and I headed out back by the dumpsters to scratch each others butts and talk about how wicked awesome the Green Monster is, leaving them to enjoy their (what I can only assume were) Manhattans, having never seen a drink that wasn't a Narragansett tallboy.

Saturday we Tetrised their U-haul and then, having suddenly become completely the opposite of people described in the previous sentence, we headed out to the Guggenheim for an exhibit called "The Great Upheaval," which focused on the pre-WWI years. It was Kandinsky-heavy, and we both realized we kind of like his stuff. I had him confused with some other painter whose stuff looks like the scribblings of a child. Anyways, here were a few of our (non-Kandinsky) favs:

Les Joueurs Du Football by Henri Rousseau

Because those dudes look like total fruits.

And Eiffel Tower by Robert Delaunay

Because of the three categories into which I place art (Meh, Cool, and Badass), it is cool.

The museum itself was kind of the star, and I now have "rollerblade from the top of the Guggenheim" on my bucket list.

That night, we rejoined Missy and Rob and two of their friends at Keen's Streakhouse, a very cool old place with top quality meat. Missy, despite being very sick and and a pescatarian, troopered it out with us. Liz and I had the porterhouse for two but it would have fed three. The next morning we loaded the last of their stuff, wished them good luck in their new Canadian home, and headed back to Boston.

While we waited for the bus to bring us from the train station to our house, we overheard a conversation between two black people that would have made Rush's head explode. Basically, the middle aged guy in an Africa hat carrying a bag of frozen pizzas was the walking, loud-talking posterchild for the culture of victimhood railed against by my bootstrappy conservative friends. He went on and on about how whitey was keeping the black community down, gave an impassioned argument in favor of "reverse racism" (using the enemy's tactics against him, according to his definition), and went so far as to say that although he was sorry for the loss of life on 9/11, at least now people were "paying attention to the Muslims," and maybe black people should be setting off bombs to get people's attention. I very seriously considered telling the transit police that some guy was making terrorist threats (hey, if you see something, say something, right?). Not that I thought he was in any way serious about terrorism--the guy could barely form complete sentences--much less handle explosives, but I sure wouldn't have minded seeing him experience some real harassment from whitey. I was thinking the whole time that if one of the aforementioned conservatives I know would have been there I would have had to say, "OK fine, you win this round." But it made me think about a misconception I think many conservatives have: at least for me, I don't think all the people on welfare deserve it, (not that the idiot we saw was on welfare, he did have Red Baron Brick Oven pizzas, which aren't all that cheap...hey wait a second, maybe he was one of those fancy-pizza-eating welfare kings I always hear about...but I digress) but I am willing to pay for welfare in order to live in a relatively clean, safe urban area.

So in summary:
Overuse of the word like: bad
NYC: good
Steak: good
Art: cool
Reverse racism: no different than regular racism
Welfare: tolerable
Red Baron Brick Oven Pizza: good