Taking politics at face value

You know what would suck about being President? You could never, ever grow a beard.
I mean, I can’t grow a beard. But that’s a matter of genetics, not my position as the most powerful man in the free world. Give me a couple of weeks and I could come back with some facial hair. It would be the kind of thin, patchy beard that most people wouldn’t actually notice. It would look terrible and probably make small children weep. But I would know it was there and that’s what really matters.
Can you imagine what would happen if George Bush showed up at a press conference with the beginnings of a goatee? Nobody would hear a word he said. Every newscast for weeks would lead off with speculation about the Presidential facial hair and what it might mean for the country’s fortunes in Iraq or its plans for Iran. Is the President trying to impress someone? Did he lose his razor? Does he have an exit plan for this pseudo-hipster fashion statement?
It would be the most talked-about facial hair of all time, with the possible exception of Luke Perry’s soul patch on Beverly Hills 90210.
In fact, if the Republicans really want to get past this whole Mark Foley thing, they just need to talk George Bush into trying out a mustache. Maybe one of those curly Rollie Fingers/barbershop quartet deals.
It's not that beards can't be Presidential. According to CNN.com, five U.S. Presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield and Benjamin Harrison — had full beards when they served. A handful more had facial hair of some kind. Martin Van Buren had mutton chop sideburns, which is kind of like a beard for quitters. Of the 12 presidents between Lincoln and Taft, only two were entirely clean-shaven.
But things have gone downhill for hirsute Commanders in Chief in the century-plus since then. Harrison, elected in 1888, was the last President to serve with a beard, and Thomas Dewey, who had a mustache when he ran for President in 1944 and 1948, was the last candidate-with-facial-hair to have much success with voters. Jesse Jackson doesn't count.
But even Lincoln, our most famously bearded President -- to the point he looks mildly creepy in pictures where he doesn't have one -- didn't win election with a fuzzy face. He was clean-shaven when he worked as a lawyer in Illinois and still hadn't tossed the razor when he was first elected in 1860. He grew the beard between election and inauguration, reportedly at the advice of an 11-year-old girl, probably one of the best-qualified political advisers of all time. Then again, Lincoln didn't have CNN and Fox news standing ready to analyze the the socio-political implications of his five o'clock shadow. Presumably by the time he was up for re-election in 1864 the whole freed-the-slaves-and-restored-the-Union thing carried enough residual good will to overcome any hit in the polls caused by a few chin whiskers.
I don't know why we as a country prefer clean-shaven Presidents, but more than a century of election results don't lie. Even during periods when beards were fashionable for the general public, they were taboo at the ballot boxes. Were we afraid beards made our leaders look too sinister? Too creepy? Too much like Fidel Castro?
Why do we want our elected leaders to be powerful enough to command the world's greatest army but not so masculine-looking they could put on a flannel shirt and film a guest spot in a Brawny commercial?
Why is it OK for George W. Bush to show off for TV cameras by clearing brush on his ranch but not OK for the President of the United States to grow a Van Dyke if thinks it makes him look cool?
Some of you probably think this is a frivolous question. You think this is all just coincidence. But what did Al Gore do as soon as he lost the election in 2000? No, I mean after he complained about voter fraud and demanded a recount. You know, once he actually accepted it was over? That's right. He grew a big ol' beard.
Think about that for a second and tell me I'm wrong.

Sky high shopping

I have no idea who Northwest Airlines' SkyMall catalog is for. Presumably, it's targeted at either people who have so much money they can afford to drop $300 on a pair of loafers while they're in the air somewhere over Topeka or people who shop so compulsively they can't go the length of a redeye to Cleveland without making some kind of purchase, even if it's something as seemingly unnecessary as the world's largest write-on map mural or the snow flurry projector, an outdoor lamp that shines what the catalog claims is "the illusion of gently falling snow" (in the picture, it looks more look like "the illusion of giant, mutant fireflies") on the front of your house.
It's hard to pin down a target audience here. The catalog I picked up on my recent flight back from California has everything from shoes and clothes to lawn furniture to stuff to help you organize your garage. It's a catalog for the well-dressed handyman who likes to entertain people in the backyard after showing off his color-coded garden tools, I guess.
Pet convenience is a big thing here. The catalog has a ramp to help your dog get into your van and two separate options for people who want to provide stairs to help their tiny dogs get up onto their couches. Presumably if you're the kind of person who believes your dog's comfort is important enough it shouldn't have to go through the strain of jumping, like, ever, you're also not the type who believes maybe the dog shouldn't be on the couch in the first place. Although the catalog also offers an electronic device to keep your pets off of furniture and counter tops. Talk about mixed messages.
There are $600 watches in the catalog, perfect for people wondering when the damn beverage cart is going to come by. There are video goggles you can plug into your iPod. There's a $300 heart monitor but, so far as I can tell, no defibrillator.
There's even an $800 crystal chandelier. Let me tell you, nothing says "high society" like buying showy light fixtures with some guy's seatback wedged against your knees and a baby crying in your ear.
There's luggage, which makes a certain amount of sense. And there is a carpet steamer, which really doesn't. A travel outlet adapter, which does. And a $200 chrome tool set. If you buy it on a plane, shouldn't you be able to carry it on? You think you can get a hammer and a hacksaw through security? We couldn't even make it to the plane with a tub of sea salt and brown sugar body scrub. Apparently airborne exfoliation is an issue.
There is a wine cooler and a hot dog cooker. There's a fish finder and a bird feeder. There are drink dispensers shaped like fire hydrants and orange traffic cones that read "Caution, party zone: Beware of falling guests." I assume these are for people who like to throw parties but don't have any friends.
The catalog has all manner of overpriced toys. A radio controlled hovercraft and a remote control "reconnaissance plane," complete with removable spy camera. Use the plane's 1,000 foot range to snap top secret, really grainy photos of, um, the neighbor's patio. Although the neighbors might get suspicious when the big silver plane keeps flying by 50 feet over their heads. So, maybe secret is an overstatement.
My favorite, though, is the $100 radio-controlled shark, with a battery that, according to the description, runs for 15 minutes on a one-hour charge. Not since the invention of Sudoku has the effort-to-payoff balance been so lopsided.
Basically, SkyMall is all of the useless junk you find in the Sharper Image and Hammacher Schlemmer collected in one, high-altitude place. With patio furniture. And plasma TVs.
Oh, and really trashy dresses.
So, you know, it's not all bad.

Peter Pan really shreds in a halfpipe

There are certain things no right-thinking person can do if he truly hopes to be considered adult by the population at large. He can't wear flip-flops as everyday footwear, for example. He can't use Internet chatroom-spawned lingo — Cya L8r, for example — in regular communication. And he can't ride a skateboard.
There are other things, obviously (no cartoon characters on bedsheets OR underpants; no backwards baseball cap) but these are some of the basics. Unfortunately, it appears even at the most basic level things are going downhill.
Consider flip-flops. Minnesota winters ensure they're out of the question for at least half of the year, but during the warmer months a style of footwear commonly referred to as shower shoes is becoming increasingly popular among a group of people apparently in too big a hurry to tie a pair of shoes. Last year, a member of the national champion Northwestern University women's lacrosse team caused a stir when she wore her flip-flops to the White House to meet President Bush. The act was annoying both from a fashion standpoint and because of the number of horrible "flip-flop flap" headlines it spawned.
And chat room lingo? It's everywhere and as instant messaging becomes more popular it's only going to spread. Florida Rep. Mark Foley has been in the news lately for the sexually explicit instant messages he exchanged with underage former pages. Yes, it's unconscionable that a grown man would solicit sex from a 15-year-old boy. But isn't it also terrible to realize that this same man also on multiple occasions typed "lol" instead of "laugh out loud" and on at least once typed "me 2," apparently too busy to bother with the additional keystrokes necessary to spell out "too"?
OK, maybe that's not the best comparison, but still, do we really want our country to be run by people who might respond to a particularly good e-mail forward from the Prime Minister of Canada with "ROTFL!"?
As bad as those other things are, though, it's the skateboarding that's been most on my mind most lately. Until last weekend, I didn't even realize it was an issue. When I come across skateboarders around the Twin Cities they appear to be almost exclusively 15-year-old boys with no apparent fear of catastrophic injury. Apparently, the skateboard culture is a whole lot different in other parts of the country.
Last weekend I was in Santa Barbara, Calif., to attend my cousin's wedding. With some time to kill Saturday, I wandered along the beach and happened upon a skateboard competition, a fact that should have let me know right away things were a little bit different. In 31-plus years living in Minnesota I have happened upon bicycle circuses and Lutefisk suppers but never once an organized skateboard competition.
The really amazing part, though, was who was competing. I caught only two age divisions: the 30- to 39-year-olds and the 40- to 49-year-olds. And there were a lot of them. The oldest competitor there was 61. SIXTY ONE! Next thing you know my parents are going to take up big wave surfing.
It appeared to be a pretty diverse group. Some of the guys could have been doctors or lawyers. One claimed to be a distant relative of existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The guy who did the announcing had long, blond semi-dreadlocks and spent the entire time shirtless. Actually, he looks exactly like the guy you pictured a minute ago when I told you I saw a 40-something California skateboarder.
They are guys who, if they came of age somewhere other than California, would probably spend their Saturdays golfing or jogging or, in some cases, panhandling.
I guess it's just a different culture. I actually heard one skater refer to another as "bra," a greeting (I assume it's short for "brother") that I didn't think existed outside of the Partick Swayze/Keanu Reeves surfing/bank robbing classic "Point Break."
Still, while I'm willing to make an exception for those X-Games skaters who make their living on a skateboard, I have to draw the line somewhere. At a certain point it's just time to put the flip flops and the skateboards and the Super Man Underoos away say Cya to childhood for good.

Go directly to jail

I suppose it's a little foolish to get worked up about consumerism in a game called Monopoly. The entire object of the game, after all, is to beat your opponents into bankruptcy by overcharging them for shoddy properties in questionable neighborhoods (Now that I think about it, a lot of my former landlords were probably pretty good Monopoly players.) so throwing a few corporate logos around the board shouldn't be that big a deal, should it?
Still, I'm troubled. Hasbro is in the process of releasing something called the Here and Now version of the world's best-selling board game. This particular version of the game has been thoroughly modernized. Money comes in larger denominations (players now get a cool $2 million for passing Go) and properties have changed from their familiar, Atlantic City-based names to locations chosen by votes conducted across the country.
Some of the new properties are familiar landmarks. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is on there, as is the Golden Gate Bridge. Those make sense. They are iconic images of America. Others, though, are less encouraging. In an entirely predictable move that still managed to sadden me, Minnesotans chose to be represented by the Mall of America.
Also on the board: Disney World; Cleveland's Jacobs Field, home of the Major League Baseball team with the mascot most likely to offend Native Americans; the Liberty Bell; and the White House.
That's right, you can buy the White House. Apparently Jack Abramoff served as a consultant for this version. Even more unsettling: at $3.2 million, it's not even the most expensive property on the board. Boston's Fenway Park ($3.5 million) and New York's Time's Square ($4 million) both cost more than the home of the most powerful man in the world who's not Bill Gates. And the properties you need to create a monopoly with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Wrigley Field and Las Vegas Boulevard. So, it's all perfectly logical.
There are other changes to the game, too. Cell phone and Internet service has replaced electric and water utilities. Airports have replaced railroads. Instead of penalizing players with "income taxes," the game has spaces that require $750,000 payments for "interest on credit card debt." I actually think that number is about right for a lot of Americans. Chance and Community Chest cards have been updated, too. Instead of winning $10 for finishing second in a beauty contest, players can pick up $100,000 for competing on a reality show. Presumably one that involves eating pig intestines, not one that involves dating washed up rappers.
I think it's the new playing pieces that bother me the most, though. Familiar tokens like the iron, the thimble and the dude on the rearing horse have been replaced by McDonald's french fries, a Motorola cell phone and a laptop computer.
The race car? Now it's a Toyota Prius. A Prius! You can't make vrooming sounds going around the board with a hybrid! And there's nothing exciting about making the quiet humming sound of an electric motor.
The Scotty dog? Now it's something called a labradoodle, a Labrador-poodle mix that's reportedly very popular these days. I don't care how popular it is, labradoodle is a ridiculous name. And if you're looking for a dog with a ludicrous name, why not go all out? Why not go with an affenpoo (part affenpinscher, part poodle) or a whoodle (part soft coated wheaton terrier, part poodle). I'm just saying, there are options. And whoodle is a lot of fun to say.
Finally, the ever-popular ankle boot has been replaced by a New Balance sneaker. This actually makes perfect sense, because you know how the kids today like their New Balance.
Admittedly, this isn't the first time brand names and Monopoly have mixed. The Hasbro web site lists versions of the game featuring Sponge Bob Squarepants, Disney and Star Wars, and there are many others out there. And reportedly none of the companies featured on the game tokens paid for the right. New Balance, it seems, was chosen because it is the only athletic shoe brand manufactured in the United States, which I suppose is admirable. Still, there's something that doesn't feel quite right about putting hotels on the Golden Gate bridge or charging rent for staying at the White House, at least since Clinton left office.
And I still think labradoodle is a stupid name.

Take me out to the (foot)ball game

I graduated from Stillwater High School in 1993. Leaving out my junior year, which I spent in Sweden, I was a Pony for two years and an Oak Land Junior High Raider for three years before that. I played sports -- well, JV soccer and JV cross country skiing -- and I took part in activities. And yet I realize now I have spent more time at Irish Stadium watching the RHS football team than I ever spent watching football teams that had a fair degree of success.
I guess I wasn't what you'd call filled with school spirit. But if the Irish games I have attended in recent years are any indication I might have missed out. I skipped games when I was a student because I had no particular interest in high school football.
The thing I’m realizing, though, is that an interest in football is not even remotely necessary for the students who attend high school football games. Last Friday I attended Rosemount’s game against top-rated Eden Prairie. It was a big game. And I'm convinced there were students there who did not know at any point what the score actually was.
It was last week's game that really drove this message home. Going to a high school football game isn't about football. It's about getting together with friends. It's an excuse to sit outside on a nice fall night or to stand by the fence and talk about nothing at all and especially not what's happening on the field. The younger the student, the truer that seemed to be.
At Irish Stadium there seemed to be at least four groups of fans, at least among the students.
At the top were the Superfans. They're the ones who paint their bodies funny colors and wear goofy outfits and jump and scream and cheer all game long. They're the ones who actually care about what's happening on the field. Or, they had enough school spirit to pretend they did. Or, I suppose, they just liked to yell.
I wouldn’t have been a Superfan in high school. I probably would have been the one making fun of the Superfans with my friends.
After the Superfans were the regular fans. They're the ones who showed up early enough to get a seat in the bleachers and probably spent most of their time paying attention to the game. If you had asked them at halftime they probably could have told you the schedule. Or at least known where the scoreboard was. Or what sport they were watching.
Next were the casual fans. They typically stood by the fence and spent most of their time talking to each other but turned their head toward the field every once in a while. It’s not clear they were actually watching the game, but they at least could have made that argument.
Finally, there were the nonfans. They could have been at the mall or in someone's basement or on Ellis Island for all the attention they paid to the game. They were at the stadium primarily because it was Friday night and that was where students were supposed to be.
For the most part, interest in the game tended to exist in inverse proportion to the student's age. For whatever reason, high school seniors appeared to care a lot more about how their team was doing than their freshman counterparts and freshmen, even the ones standing by the fence, were showing infinitely more interest than the middle- and grade-schoolers who couldn't even be bothered to stay in the stadium during the game. At any given time there appeared to be four or five pick-up football games taking place on the fields outside the stadium. It's not clear whether this group -- and there were hundreds of them -- even bought tickets to the game. The games could have been played just about anywhere. Aside from the occasional cheer and the noise from the PA system they might not have known there was an actual sanctioned game going on.
Not that there's anything wrong with any of this. More than just about any other activity, high school football games are about building community. There's something great about seeing those football games going on. Presumably, at least some of the kids playing did not know each other when they started playing. And given the things everyone keeps saying about Americans all being fat and lazy, playing a little touch football seems like a better way to spend a Friday night than sitting around and watching America's Funniest Videos.
I’m starting to think I missed out 13 years ago.

Bad boys, whatcha gonna do?

I rode in the 100-mile Defeat of Jesse James Days Bike Tour last Saturday, just one day after I realized how much I have in common with the famous outlaw. For months, it seems, I have been living the life of a criminal.
OK, so my crime isn't anything as glamorous as robbing banks in the Old West. Or insider trading. Or even serial jaywalking. Nobody sent a posse after me and I didn't even get thrown in the hoosegow when I got caught.
Although the State Trooper who pulled me over did give me a ticket and refuse to let me drive my car.
Here's the thing. Apparently I was wearing my glasses the last time I got my driver's license renewed. As a result, I had a restriction on the license that required me to wear corrective lenses whenever I was driving. Only, nobody ever told me that, and I never bothered to read the back of my license, where the restriction was printed. My particular prescription has always been pretty weak, so when I lost my glasses a few months ago, I didn't bother to do anything about it.
That’s right. I was living outside the law. Sticking it to The Man. Next thing you knew I’d be cutting off mattress tags.
For a while, nobody even noticed. I lived my lawless existence and reveled in the danger of it all. I didn't hit any old ladies in crosswalks or drive through any shopping malls. None of which swayed the trooper when he pulled me over last Friday south of St. Peter.
"You have a restriction on your driver's license," he told me, the sunlight glinting cruelly off of his own pair of lenses. He knew he was bringing down a hardened criminal. "That's a problem. I can't let you drive."
"I have a what?" I said, hoping to throw him off with the fallback of most hardened criminals: genuine ignorance. "Nobody ever told me that."
"It says it right here on the back of your license. Can you see that."
I could see it, a fact I thought should have strengthened my case. But apparently being able to read the fine print on the back of a driver's license was not adequate proof of my ability to drive safely.
I considered claiming I was wearing contacts (What’s a little lie to police to serial lawbreaker?) but it occurred to me if I was going to start lying to police officers I should not do it with a claim that could be so easily disproved.
The trooper asked if there was anyone I could call to bring me glasses or to drive my car. I pointed out, as politely as possible, that I live in St. Paul and was currently sitting somewhere just north of Mankato. I know very few people who like me enough to drive that far and the few I do were all at work, it being 9:30 on a Friday morning.
I neglected to mention that I no longer actually own a pair of corrective lenses. We outlaws don't like to give cops any information we don't have to.
The trooper eventually left me by the side of the road but not before warning me that if he caught me driving he'd tow my car and throw me in jail.
In the end, I called one of my co-wokers, Michelle Leonard, and made her leave the same training session I was late for when I got pulled over. She brought me to the training, then chauffeured me to a license center, where I took the eye exam -- without my glasses this time -- and got the restriction removed.
I felt a little bad about caving in so quickly. Who is The Man to tell me what I have to have on my face when I drive? Why shouldn’t I continue the Bad Boy life I had unwittingly been living for most of a year?
In the end, though, I pushed myself away from the Dark Side’s temptations. I figure it’s the wiser course of action. It’s not in my nature to scoff so openly at the laws of society. It’s just not who I am.
Besides, being an outlaw is hard.

What a chore

Every once in a while, mostly when I am not overly bothered by little things like financial realities, I think about buying a house. When I do, I often think about chores -- about mowing lawns and painting fences and fixing leaks and shoveling walks. The fact I find myself looking forward to these things is something I can only attribute to some form of early-onset dementia or the warning sign of diminishing mental capacity.
Clearly I have forgotten those years earlier in my life when I was pressed against my will into doing this kind of work. I mowed so many lawns growing up that they mostly blur into one long session either walking behind or sitting upon a mower. Sometimes I got paid. Sometimes I didn't. But did I ever actually enjoy it? No more than I enjoyed going to the dentist or smashing my head repeatedly into a concrete wall. And I've never enjoyed that much.
My only distinct lawn mowing-related memory involves snagging a lever on a riding mower in a volleyball net I had presumably left up in the interest of saving time. It is a story I remember mostly because it has been told frequently in the decade-plus since it happened, but the incident has been so warped by constant retelling that most people don't know the truth of it. If you believe my father, he came home from work to find the mower still running and me cowering -- apparently fearful of some violent retribution -- in a tree house.
The story is usually good for a few laughs, but makes some big assumptions. One, it assumes I was either so ignorant or so flustered by becoming ensnared I did not have my wits about me enough to turn the mower's key.
Second, it assumes the younger me believed my father placed such importance on the integrity of his volleyball net he was likely to punish me severely for foolishly befouling it with a riding lawn mower.
It's possible my father believes he was a more imposing figure than he actually was.
For the record, the lawn mower was turned off and I was inside when my father got home, most likely watching TV.
In any case, I'm not sure where these fond feelings about household chores originates, but the more I think about it rationally the more foolish it seems.
In recent week's I've had the chance to put these feelings to the test. Housesitting for a co-worker last month I was asked to water plants and mow the lawn. The lawn was not large and there was neither a volleyball net nor any other lawn-related games to impede my way. I won't claim it was difficult, but after walking behind that self-propelled mower for half an hour I found myself thinking less about the satisfaction of a job well done than about the wisdom of planting large wildflower gardens.
More recently, I offered to help as a sister, in an effort to keep water from seeping into her basement and collecting in a low spot that happened to be more or less under my desk chair, regraded an area along one side of her house. On Saturday and again on Monday we shoveled rocks, hauled dirt and put down plastic. My nephew helped from time to time. He picked up rocks for a while until a bug scared him away. Then he mostly climbed on the rock piles we had created and tried to rub his dirty hands in my hair.
It was hardly backbreaking labor, but it was hot. Especially on Saturday, when my efforts came after a 48-mile bike ride. The finished product seems to be making a difference, but I take no particular satisfaction in that. Mostly it makes me angry at a wall that couldn't even be bothered to keep out a little moisture. And there's nothing worse than getting mad at masonry.
I like to think things will be different if I'm ever doing this kind of work on a house I own. I like to think I'll take a kind of pride of ownership that will make me enjoy the neat-looking lawn or the leak-free basement I helped to create. More and more, though, I imagine myself doing these chores while thinking of all of the other fun things I could be doing. All of the books I could be reading. All of the bikes I could be riding. All of the reality television I could be watching.
Townhomes are pretty popular these days, aren't they?

We’ll always have Paris

When celebrity bubblehead Paris Hilton recently declared herself a generation’s iconic blond — comparing herself to figures such as Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana — it was enough to spur at least one Time magazine reader to action. That reader wrote a letter declaring, in short, that Paris is not fit to carry those women’s night-vision handicams.
Now, a person could argue the merits of debating anything Paris Hilton says. Spending any amount of time considering anything that comes out of the “Simple Life” star’s mouth seems like it would be as stimulating as holding a three-day conference to discuss the merits of Coke versus Pepsi. Either way, you’re going to feel empty and a little bit gassy.
In this case, though, it’s especially foolish. Because in this case Paris might actually be right.
Trust me, it hurt to type that just now. Aside from her notable contribution to the “‘Stolen’ sex tape as publicity device,” boom of recent years, a notable accomplishment in its own right, I can’t see any value Paris Hilton has brought to this world. I’m vaguely surprised she was able to use the word “iconic” in the proper context.
But the letter-writer’s claim that Paris did not belong in the same category as Monroe or Princess Di because she lacks the “inner beauty” those women had overlooks one important factor: Paris Hilton’s generation is not about inner beauty. It’s about skin deep. It’s about judging books by their covers. It’s about Dancing with the Stars and Us magazine’s Style Watch.
Consider this: We live in a world where Paris Hilton, who in some bizarre circular fashion appears to be famous solely because she is famous, and who does not appear to have any discernible talent, has published a book. Even worse, we live in a world in which Paris Hilton has published multiple books and continues to appear in a regular television show. Worse still, it’s a world in which even Paris’ obnoxiously tiny dog has published a book. And people apparently are buying them. I’ll admit I haven’t read any of these books (I assume this puts me on an even playing field with Paris), but I can’t imagine people are buying them for their deep philosophical insight. Kant she ain’t.
America, it appears, is fascinated by Paris Hilton. I know this because I see her vacant, vaguely plasticine face everywhere I look. For crying out loud, I can’t even flip through Time without seeing her name.
Who better than Paris Hilton, then, to serve as the iconic blond of a generation of Real World-watching, American Idol-voting, Paris Hilton-listening (Oh, yeah, she’s got a CD out now, too. It’s as terrible as you might imagine and it’s got a cover of Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.) Americans.
I find it somehow ironic that the letter in question appeared in an issue about high-achieving high school students choosing the right college for them.
Besides, are these other so-called blond icons the writer jumps to defend really so great? Sure, Princess Di did a lot of good. She appeared on more People Magazine covers than anyone in history, and there’s the whole landmine thing. But what else was she going to do? It’s not like she had to worry about the rigors of shooting a reality TV show and launching a perfume or going to, like, lots and lots of parties. Text messaging wasn’t even invented in those days.
And Princess Di had palaces full of servants to help her every day. Poor Paris only has mansions full.
I’m pretty sure Princess Di wasn’t even American, although she gets credit for inspiring Elton John enough that when she died he changed like, two words in his song about Marilyn Monroe to create a tribute to her.
I can’t claim any firsthand experience with Marilyn Monroe. I would have liked to have known her, but I wasn’t even a kid.
Based on what little I know, though, I see more parallels than differences between Marilyn and Paris. Paris has her sex tape. Marilyn had her appearance in Playboy, the celebrity sex tape of its time.
Paris Hilton has appeared in terrible movies. Marilyn Monroe appeared in several classic films, although it could be argued her acting played a relatively minor role. Be honest: is The Seven Year Itch a classic because Marilyn Monroe so thoroughly inhabited the role of “The Girl,” as imdb.com credits her, or because she was willing to let Billy Wilder blow hot air up her skirt?
In her defense, Paris Hilton has not died of a drug overdose. Yet.
And if she really wants to be the icon of this generation she won’t. She’ll die of a heart attack brought on by eating every meal at McDonalds and never exercising. And it’ll happen while she’s watching “The Biggest Loser.”

Raise your glasses

Beer is back.
At least, that’s what I’m led to believe by a story on the front page of last Saturday’s St. Paul Pioneer Press business section. American brewers, it seems, have found ways, through marketing and the introduction of new products, to lure back the fickle drinkers who — perhaps enticed by a desire to feel more sophisticated, perhaps drawn by an unhealthy attraction to corks — had forsaken beer for wine.
Frankly, I have a problem with this premise. Not with the idea beer is back, but with the suggestion it ever went anywhere. Temporary sales fluctuations aside, beer has always had an important place in American culture. Nobody goes to tailgate parties with a bottle of Chardonnay, at least not without risking serious injury or at the very least a sound mocking.
For the vast majority of Americans beer has never really gone away. And if LL Cool J has taught us nothing else, it’s that you cannot call it a comeback when someone or something has been here for years.
So, that’s my problem with the article. But brewers do not get off the hook entirely. Though none of them are related to sales figures or market share, I have had growing concerns with the beer industry. My problem is with the same new products this article claims have drawn beer drinkers back into the fold, and the advertisements with which they seem to be selling increasing numbers of them.
According to the article, American brewers have started to pitch their products as cooler, classier and, I swear, healthier. Because nothing makes a person feel more vital (or more high-society) than waking up the morning (or early afternoon) after enjoying a few too many Buds.
Brewers, it seems, would like us to believe beer has all of the same health benefits attributed to red wine. Although presumably without the smugness associated with buying an expensive port. Unless you’re drinking Guinness.
Take Michelob Ultra, a lite beer introduced a few years ago when Atkins-obsessed Americans were caught up in a frenzy of counting carbs. Though the anti-carb movement has died down some since people discovered Dr. Atkins was horribly bloated when he died, Michelob Ultra then and now has been marketed as a beer for active people. “Are you a runner?” the ads seem to ask. “A swimmer?” Then this is the beer for you. Apparently the beer’s reduced calorie and carbohydrate counts make it the next best thing to Gatorade. Never mind the reason many people run or swim or bike is so they can spare the calories involved in drinking beer that’s darker than the water in your average aquarium.
More recently, Budweiser has introduced something called B-to-the-E, a beer-based drink that features, according to the article, “sweet flavors, caffeine, ginseng and guarana, a Brazilian stimulant.”
In other words, Budweiser has come up with an answer to energy drinks such as Red Bull despite the fact nobody ever even considered asking them the question.
I saw a can of B-to-the-E a while back (the logo is a Budweiser “B” with a lowercase e hovering over it as though it’s some kind of alcohol-based mat notation) but couldn’t work up the nerve to try it. Beer was never intended to give people energy. It was created by the mythical beer fairies to reduce people’s energy level to the point baseball seems exciting. What’s next? Amphetamine-based sleep aids?
The beer world used to be so much simpler. The major American brewers made regular beer and they made lite beer. Most Americans drank one or the other and those who wanted something with actual flavor could choose a beer from a smaller brewery or find something imported.
Advertising, too, was simpler. Find an attractive woman or a washed-up sports figure or a cute dog — or better yet, all three — and put her or him or it or them into a commercial. Make it funny and show lots of cleavage (the woman’s not the former defensive lineman’s).
Let’s see the wine industry top that.

Let freedom fry

I can’t decide if this is good news or just plain ridiculous.
According to An Aug. 2 story in the Washington Times, the last two cafeterias on Capitol Hill to serve Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast have given the food items their French names back. In other words, the most childish incident of foreign relations-related defiance since our Founding Fathers voted to collectively stick their tongues out and go, “Thpppbbbbt!” at Parliament has finally ended a mere three years and four months after it began.
I’ll admit, the Freedom Fry issue fell of my personal radar a long time ago. If I’d bothered to think about it in the last three-plus years I probably would have imagined Congress, which presumably has more important things on its schedule, sheepishly put the French Fry signs back up around the time our President admitted there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Or perhaps when our Fearless Leader proclaimed from the deck of an aircraft carrier that our mission had been accomplished.
At the very least I would hope most legislators did their best to ignore the change over the past few years, asking cafeteria workers for plain “fries.” Or maybe just ordering potato chips — or even better, a nice fresh fruit plate.
In any case, I would never have imagined our nation’s leaders holding on to their hold-my-breath-till-I-turn-blue-style protest against French non-violence would stretch nearly the full length of a Presidential term. I don’t think even the raincoat-wearing serial killer in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies held a grudge that long. And there have been at least three of those awful things.
None of the United States Representatives involved was interested in talking to the Times. A spokesman for Ohio Rep. Bob Ney, one of two Republican Representatives who called for the Franco-fryo-phobic change three years ago refused comment.
At the time he asked for the change Rep. Ney called it “a small but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France.”
French President Jacques Chirac reportedly responded at the time by vowing to personally head butt any American he encountered in France.
A spokesman for Michigan Rep. Vernon Ehlers, who chairs the committee that apparently has the power to change the names of the junk food our nation’s leaders snack on, told the times, “I really don’t see how this is a story.”
It is a story, though. Maybe this change is not as significant as some governmental decisions — naming blueberry Minnesota’s state muffin, for example — but it is a sign of significant changes in our country’s attitude toward the French. According to a Pew Global Attitudes survey conducted in June and cited by the Times 52 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of France. Last year that number was 46 percent and in May of 2003 only 29 percent of Americans thought the French were good for anything but making wine and surrendering to anyone who looked at them funny.
It is not clear why 48 percent of Americans still dislike the French but it is suspected that number is split nearly equally between people upset about France’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and people who “just don’t get that whole Jerry Lewis thing.”
First, the United States and France work together to broker a cease-fire in the Middle East. Now we are once again willing to put their name on our fatty fried potatoes and egg-soaked breakfast breads.
That’s what I call progress.

The straight dope

Imagine if you will a press conference. Television cameras line the room, and photographers with still cameras are dotted here and there, all jockeying for the best position. Reporters, notebooks and tape recorders held at the ready the way an Old West gunfighter might clutch a Colt .45, sit in orderly rows, waiting for the action to begin.
A prominent athlete, his identity not important at this moment, approaches the podium. He speaks:
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. I will make my comments brief.
There has been a lot of talk lately about drug use among professional athletes. Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, who clawed his way back into the tour and won the hearts of Americans desperate to hold onto the tour title in the post-Lance Armstrong era with an epic solo ride through the mountains was later found to have hormones more out of whack than an entire Spring Break’s worth of liquored-up frat boys.
Justin Gatlin, the Olympic champion and world record co-holder who can run 100 meters in faster than most Americans can get up from the couch has also been found to have unusual levels of testosterone in his system.
And for whatever reason a nation clamoring for answers continues to insist baseball star Barry Bonds’ gigantic party-balloon head is the result of something more sinister than a grossly overinflated ego.
Given these cases I want to take this opportunity to insist once again I have never taken banned substances to improve my athletic performance.
I see some of you have questions. I expected that. Please, though, let me finish and hopefully I will address most of what you want to ask.
First, there is the issue of my sudden weight gain. Yes, I am more muscular than I once was. I suppose three months is a quick span in which to add 115 pounds of muscle. But I promise you this weight gain is natural. I hit the gym three times a day to build this body. I am proud of the work I have done and to have you sitting out there at your press tables lined with donuts and hot dogs questioning my dedication to the sport I love offends me.
Also, while it is true doctors were recently unable to puncture my skin with a needle to draw blood I maintain this is due solely to a naturally callousey skin, not to the effects of any illicit substance.
Second, I’m sure many of you are curious about rumors I produced a blue sample during a recent surprise urine test. This is true, though I believe claims the vial could have lit Yankee Stadium are exaggerated. At most the glow from the sample was powerful enough to serve as a nightlight. Possibly a desk lamp.
Let me assure you, there is nothing unnatural about this sample. My nutritionist has simply had me on a food-coloring-heavy diet. Also, I really like blue raspberry freezie pops. That coloring simply worked its way into my system. It is all entirely natural.
There have also been some concerns about my recent behavior. I admit some of it has been unorthodox and there are incidents I am not proud of.
Yes, after a recent win I ripped the head off of the opponent’s mascot and screamed obscenities at the 16-year-old girl inside. I am embarrassed by my actions in that situation. It is 45 minutes of my life I wish I could have back. But I was excited. It was a big game and I lost control. I apologize, but I promise you I am in full control of my emotions.
Yes, I occasionally run, naked and screaming at the top of my lungs, through the streets of our fair city. Is there something unreasonable about this? Can a man not express himself in the way he sees fit? Shame on you for trying to cage my joy.
Finally, yes, I have recently grown this second head. Trust me, this is not as unusual as it seems. Second heads are currently all the rage in Europe. Soon people everywhere will be growing second and even third crania. Just you wait.
I hope I have answered these concerns to your satisfaction. I promise I will continue to defend myself against these unjust charges for as long as they are leveled against me. I only hope this media speculation does not do further harm to the sport I love so much, curling.

Vote now! Win fabulous prizes!

I’m hardly in a position to criticize other people’s voting habits. Before the 2004 Presidential election I had never cast a ballot in an election more significant than college class president. I might have voted once on the color of a new M&M, but I can’t be sure. In any case, I have yet to see any polka dot M&Ms.
I can’t defend my voting record. It’s not that I felt my vote wouldn’t matter. It’s more that I could never quite motivate myself to really get to know something about the candidates and thus didn’t qualified to involve myself in the process. At least that’s what I told myself when it was time to get off the couch on Election Day.
I’m not sure what could have convinced me to get more involved in the process, but a measure currently being promoted in Arizona might have made a difference. According to the New York Times, an Arizona man named Mark Osterloh, whom the Times describes as “a political gadfly,” and a “semiretired opthamologist,” would like to include a measure on the November ballot that would, if approved, establish a kind of voter lottery that would award $1 million to a randomly selected voter following every general election.
Osterloh’s slogan for the proposed measure is, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Vote!” But awful slogans aside, Osterloh makes some fair points. Voter turnout in recent years has been as low in Arizona as it has been, well, everywhere else in the United States. Anything that can increase that number, Osterloh reasons, is a good thing.
The money from the prize would come from unclaimed state lottery money. Which, of course, raises another interesting question: If people in Arizona are too lazy to claim a collective $1 million worth of lottery winnings, can we really expect them to take the time to vote? In their defense, though, it’s pretty hot in Arizona.
According to the Times, 2 million people voted in Arizona’s 2004 general election. If Osterloh’s measure had been in place then each voter would have had a 1 in 2 million chance of winning. That is significantly better than the roughly 1 in 146 million chance people currently have of winning the Powerball but, as the Times helpfully points out, not nearly as good as the 1 in 55,928 chance they have of dying from a lightning strike at some point during their life.
For further comparison, according to the national safety council, a person’s lifetime odds of being accidentally poisoned or exposed to “noxious substances” are 1 in 212 and the odds of dying in a streetcar accident are 1 in 931,246. According to my father, the odds of finding a typo in this column are roughly even.
Osterloh’s plan is not perfect, of course. Some critics have complained that turning the electoral process into one massive $1 scratcher somehow cheapens the idea of democracy. People, they say, should vote because they feel a sense of civic responsibility, not because there is a small chance they will hit the jackpot and finally be able to get those gold teeth they’ve been thinking about.
Also, it’s probably illegal.
According to the Times, one federal statute calls for a one-year prison term for anyone who “makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote.”
Osterloh, though, is undeterred. The lawyer who helped him draft the proposal told the times he didn’t think “federal law would cover this kind of situation,” though he declined to say why, exactly.
I’m torn on this issue. I don’t think people should be bribed to vote, and I don’t think it would lead to people getting more informed before they went to the polls.
I am, however, in favor of winning $1 million.

Superstalker?

Dear Superman,
Can I be honest for a second? You can take it, right? You’re the Man of Steel after all.
It’s just, well, I’ve never really liked you. I guess that sounds a little strange, you standing for Truth, Justice and the American Way, and all. It’s just never really worked for me.
I’m not sure what it is, exactly. It’s just, you’re too … perfect isn’t the word. Nobody with that fashion sense can really be described as perfect. I’ll never be a Vogue model, but even I know the underwear goes on the inside. And knee-high leather boots? What kind of kinky things do you get up to in that Fortress of Solitude? America’s ultimate Boy Scout? I don’t think so.
I guess you’re just a little too much to take. Spider-Man has to live with the belief he’s responsible for his uncle’s death. The X-Men are persecuted by an entire society. And you? As far as I can tell your biggest problem is making sure nobody figures out that when Clark Kent takes off his glasses he looks a whole lot like you. You don’t have any weaknesses. Nobody can even hurt you unless they happen to find some rocks from your home planet that happened to cross the Universe and end up on Earth. I mean, how many of those can there really be lying around.
You’ve even got that cool forehead-curl thing in your hair. Do you know how much I’d give to be able to make my hair curl like that? Actually, not all that much. But it’s still pretty cool.
Anyway, now you’ve got this new movie. And it’s pretty decent. We get to see you flying around and catching a falling airplane and it’s pretty great to see how people react when they realize you’ve come back to them after five years away. Even though nobody seems to put together the fact that you and Clark disappeared and reappeared at the same time. First the glasses thing and now this? There was a survey recently that showed Minneapolis residents were among the most educated in the country. I’m not sure anybody in Metropolis even finished high school.
But, like I said, the movie’s pretty good. Lex Luthor’s one of the best villains around even if it’s never entirely clear how he’s going to stop people from just taking the land on this new continent he’s creating. Or why they’d even want to live someplace that looks like the surface of the moon would look if it were slightly less hospitable. The movie was worth the price of admission, is what I’m saying.
But it raised certain uncomfortable questions. What, I have to ask, is the deal with all the stalking?
I realize you missed Lois Lane. Love of your life and all. And it probably got pretty lonely in those five years you were flying around looking for the remains of your homeworld. But hiding in the trees outside Lois’ house and using your x-ray vision to check out what’s going on inside? That’s just creepy. The movie never shows you looking in on anything inappropriate, but come on — what’s the point of having x-ray vision if you’re not going to put it to good use. Am I right?
Seriously, get over it. There must be tons of Super-groupies out there.
And sneaking into the kid’s room at the end? I know Lois seemed OK with it, but come on. That’s a Michael Jackson move. You’re better than that.
While we’re on the subject, I have some other issues related to your relationship with this kid. But some people probably haven’t seen the movie yet and I don’t want to give anything away. I just hope saving the world pays well because I think you’re going to have some checks to write.
So, where does this leave us, Superman? I know it probably hurt to hear some of these things. I know we’ll probably never be friends. But I hope you understand where I’m coming from. I hope you lay off the stalking thing. And maybe ditch the cape, too. I mean, what does that thing even do?
Regards,
Nathan Hansen

Tall tales

I am six feet, six inches tall.
This is significantly taller than average.
I understand this.
There are certain advantages to being tall. I can usually reach things on the high shelves, for example. And I hardly ever have to worry about someone sitting in front of me in a movie theater.
There are also certain disadvantages. Like having to search the Twin Cities to find pants that fit. Or having to find a car with enough headroom. Or always having people ask me to get things off of high shelves for them.
Many tall people get asked by complete strangers if they play basketball. I used to get annoyed when this happened to me, but it seems to happen less often these days. Maybe it’s because I’m starting to look old enough that even if I had once played basketball bringing up the subject no would at best cause me to tell long-winded stories about the time I made the winning shot at the section tournament. Or maybe people have finally realized that typical basketball player has a physique that’s a little more Charles Atlas and a little less Charles Darwin. (I write this, obviously, assuming the man who popularized the theory of evolution is not particularly buff and that he couldn’t even dunk on a nine-foot rim. Although I hear he had a quick first step and a great crossover.)
Whatever reason, the basketball questions have for the most part gone by the wayside. In their place, however, is a conversational tactic that I find perhaps even more confounding. More and more, people I have just met feel the need to make conversation by explaining that they have a friend (or a relative or a dentist) who is also very tall.
I’m honestly not sure how I’m supposed to react. Should I feel better about myself if they know someone who is very tall but not quite as tall as me? Should I feel threatened if they know someone who is, say, six-eight? Should I simply feel better knowing I am not the only unusually tall person in the world? And if that’s the case are those comments really necessary considering the existence of the National Basketball Association?
Do people do this in other conversations? When they meet someone who is especially short, do they say, “Oh, I know a guy who’s a jockey”? When they meet someone who is heavyset do they say, “I know a guy who’s on a diet”? When they meet someone unattractive do they say, “I know former Minnesota Timberwolf Sam Cassell”?
Do people who tell me about their uncle with a glandular problem expect me to say, “Oh, sure. Chuck. I saw him the other day at the tall guy’s club.”?
I don’t have any answers to these questions. I never know where a conversation should go after a comment like this. But I will tell you this much: I really like the idea of a tall person’s club. We will have high doorways and extra long couches for when we want to take naps. We will give each other extra-high fives and laugh dismissively at guys who are shorter than five-eight.
And maybe, with enough thought, we’ll figure out what to say the next time someone tells us their podiatrist is six-nine.

The sharp, glassy edges of reality

A few weeks ago I used this space to assert my theoretical superiority to every other bicyclist on the road. As long as I am safe in my car, I argued, I believe I am faster than anyone I see riding.
In the absence of objective proof, why should I give some other sucker the benefit of the doubt? Sometimes, though, reality rears back and smacks you down like broken glass puncturing a tire.
For me, one of those broken glass moments came last weekend.
On Sunday afternoon I drove out to Stillwater to watch the final stage of the Nature Valley Grand Prix, a five-day bike race that also had stages in St. Paul, Cannon Falls, Minneapolis and Mankato. The final stage was roughly 25 miles and the leading riders finished it in about an hour. So, you have a pretty good idea what kind of speed they were going.
The race course one short, very steep hill. According to the race’s web site the hill is a 24 percent grade. By way of comparison, the site explains, federal law does not allow highways to have a grade steeper than 6 percent. In other words, this particular hill is at least four times as steep as any highway you’ve ever driven on. At just a couple of blocks long it’s the next best thing to a wall.
The course also has a long downhill, this one several blocks in length, that runs from down the bluff into downtown Stillwater. It’s not as steep, but racers approach 50 miles per hour on the way down, then immediately whip into a 90 degree corner, never appearing to slow down or even consider that they are one slick spot from ending up stuck to the side of a building.
These racers are not the best of the best. They’re professionals, but they’re like minor league baseball players or golfers on the Hooters tour. They travel around the country, put in hours of practice and make very little money but they’re doing something they love to do. They are trying to earn their way to bigger things and some of them make it, but most have reached their highest level of competition. They can dream all they want about becoming the next Lance Armstrong, but they’re more likely to be the cycling equivalent of a star player for the St. Paul Saints.
They don’t even get to compete in events with cool names like “The Hooters Tour.”
Every one of them could kick my butt.
It’s not easy for me to say that, but while I haven’t actually raced the course these guys competed on, I can’t argue against what I saw. Mostly, that was a blur of brightly-colored jerseys whipping past me on both sides.
I’m not the greatest hill climber in the world. At six feet, six inches tall I carry too much weight to make riding up mountains a sensible thing to do. I’m pretty sure, though, that the racers who competed Sunday would gain more time on me on the downhill part of the Stillwater hill than they would on the up. To put bike handling ability in automotive terms, they are exotic, highly-tuned Italian sports cars while I am more like a school bus.
Fully loaded.
Pulling a semi.
With flat tires.
In other words, while they were zipping around the corner and heading back toward the uphill, I would be somewhere in the middle of the downhill, squeezing my brakes in a death grip and rethinking my decision to save a few bucks on discount tires. I don’t want to sound like I don’t trust my bike to hold up, but I weigh somewhere around 210 pounds and my bike weighs between 15 and 20. I’m just saying it seems like a lot to ask. It’s not a bet I’m willing to make with the good health of my skeletal structure.
So, yes. I’ll give these guys the benefit of the doubt. I will admit the professional bike racers who dedicate hours to their sport are faster than me. It hurts, but it’s the truth.
I’m still pretty sure I’m faster than everyone else, though.

Improving the world's game

The World Cup started last week. Around the world, soccer fans are on edge as they follow their team’s fortunes. Countries are declaring national holidays so their citizens can stay home and watch their team’s games.
Meanwhile, in the United States, people are wondering why it’s taking so long this month to the golf highlights on SportsCenter.
It’s no secret soccer’s in the United States has a popularity that ranks it somewhere in the vicinity of lawn bowling and dwarf tossing. Every time the subject comes up — essentially every four years during the World Cup — Twin Cities newspaper columnists renew an argument against the game that has been going on at least since I played soccer in high school. This time around, one actually suggested liking soccer was just a few steps removed from burning the flag. “We’re Americans,” the message seemed to be. “We know better than to like that silly no-hands game.”
Ask them and Americans will give several reason for their dislike of soccer. A nation raised on the thrill-a-minute pacing of baseball does not believe the game is exciting enough. A country where fans frequently celebrate sports championships by turning over cars and starting fires tut-tut over the soccer hooligans who celebrate their team by fighting with the hooligan fans of rival teams.
Admittedly, there have been reports of Polish fans trying to schedule fights against rival fans. I don’t condone the violence, but it’s nice to know it’s so well scheduled. Although presumably the Poles would be wary of an planned brawl German fans, though.
Granted, soccer is not the easiest game to watch on TV. It’s hard to appreciate the individual work players do without seeing them up close, but it’s hard to appreciate the tactical aspect of the game — the reasons a team would pass the ball all the way back to its own goalkeeper when the goal is to get the ball in the net at the other end of the field — without a wide view.
Our sports do not lend themselves to moving backward, and it’s not a notion we accept readily. A runner would never voluntarily move back a base in baseball and a football team would never give up a sack just because it gave them more plays to choose from. About the closest we come in this country is a center in basketball passing the ball out for a three-pointer. But in Minnesota, home of the Timberwolves, even that must seem like a foreign concept.
I could argue the merits of soccer as a game, but that has been done before. Americans have their arguments and there isn’t much soccer fans will ever be able to do to convince them the game the rest of the world adores might be at least as entertaining as a rerun of According to Jim. Maybe what we need to do is find ways to make the world’s most popular game more appealing to the American public. With that in mind, I propose the following:
• At halftime, the team that is behind has to eat a tub of cow intestines.
• Two words: alligator pits.
• Every 15 minutes, someone gets voted off the team.
• Replace referees with women in striped bikinis.
• Speaking of scantily-clad women: where are the cheerleaders? How are we supposed to take a sport seriously when there are no dance squads? Come on, Sweden. Bring out the bikini team!
• Miss a shot, do a shot.
• Come on, you can use your hands just a little bit, can’t you?
• Is it too much to ask to have an occasional fight? And how about some kind of car crash?
• Two more words: exploding ball.
• No more letting goals decide the results of games. From now on, America votes. Think South Korea played the better game? Text your vote to 3845. Think Togo deserves the win? Text 3846.
I’m not sure any of this would actually be enough to make soccer appealing to the average American fan, but I’m pretty sure it’s a step in the right direction. If you disagree and would like to fight about it, please call to schedule a time.

Lessons learned

Things you learn when you ride your bicycle 450 miles in five days:
1. Bringing an extra chain is a good idea.
2. The farther you go, the bigger the hills get.
3. There are more ways than you would expect to sit on a bike seat.
4. Number three really doesn’t matter, because by the middle of day two sitting on a bike seat hurts no matter how you do it.
The last time I wrote a column for this space I knew it might very well be the last time I ever wrote for the Independent. As that newspaper arrived in mailboxes around Farmington, I was on my way with my dad and my brother to Hayward, Wisc., to begin a bike trip that in less than a week would take us across northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Mackinac Island, a city that exists solely to fill tourists with fudge and caramel corn. In five days of riding we covered distances of 95, 89, 93, 83 and 68 miles. This is what happens when my family plans vacations after a few drinks.
I didn’t know what to expect from the trip. I’m comfortable riding my bike long distances, but I didn’t know how I would feel riding so far so many days in a row. And there were some trying times. There was a while toward the end of a hilly, windy third day when I started mentally divvying up my earthly possessions (a disappointingly brief exercise, at least when we’re talking about things anyone would actually want) and wondering whether my riding companions would roll me into the ditch or just leave my body on the shoulder after I collapsed. Other than that, though I felt pretty good.
Even better, thanks to big breakfasts and bigger dinners I managed to burn all of those calories without actually losing any weight. That’s when you know you’re eating well.
We rode through a lot of remote forests, but we didn’t exactly get back to nature on this trip. With my step-mother and my brother’s girlfriend meeting us at our hotel at the end of each day, the closest we got to roughing it was staying in a bed and breakfast the fourth night and not being able to watch TV.
We all made it through the ride in pretty good shape. I broke my chain 93 miles into the first day’s ride, requiring me to walk the remaining two miles to the motel and forcing our support crew to spring into action a day earlier than they planned. They drove late into the night to meet us with a replacement. My brother broke his crank somewhere along the way, but that wasn’t as painful as it sounds and he was able to finish without any other major problems.
We were even lucky with the weather. While my co-workers back in Farmington dealt with a broken air conditioner in 90-plus degree weather, I was riding my bike in temperatures that never got much above 80. There were occasional threats of rain, but even the thunderstorm that greeted us on the morning of the fourth day cleared up early enough for us to ride and provided a nice tailwind for most of the day. Altogether we rode in the rain for about 15 seconds.
I don’t know that I’ll be in a hurry to try a bike marathon like this again anytime soon, but it’s at least nice to know I’m capable of doing it. Next time, though, I’m bringing a cushier seat.

A Rhose by any other name...

Until you’ve tried to identify kids for a picture that will run in a newspaper, it’s hard to understand just how many ways there are to spell what otherwise seems like a straightforward name. For every Erin, it seems, there’s an Aerin or an Aryn. For every Justin there’s a Juston or a Justyn.
Things seem to get more difficult the younger the children are. I can imagine a day in the near future when I will take a picture of a group of smiling fourth grade students and not know how to spell a single child’s name.
“What’s your name?” I will ask the first girl.
“Taylor,” she’ll say.
“OK. Taylor,” I’ll say, writing in my notebook.
“That’s T-A-E-Y-L-O-R-R.”
“Um, OK. And you?”
“I’m Zachary.”
“Zachary?”
“Z-A-K-K-E-R-Y.”
“Really? And you?”
“Matthew.”
“Well, that one’s easy.”
“M-A-T-T-H-U-E.”
“No.”
“Yep.”
“I’m Ashley.”
“And how do you …?”
“A-S-H-S-L-E-I-G-H.”
“Ash-slay?”
“The S is silent.”
“Of course it is.”
There is some fundamental aspect of baby naming I just don’t understand. I realize parents want their child to have unique names, but things seem to be getting out of control. We live in a world with Madelines, Madelyns, Madelinns and, for all I know, Maddelyinns.
The unique spelling trend seems to be most common among girls, but there is enough of it on both sides of the gender gap that that on the Social Security Administration’s recently released list of Minnesota’s most popular boys’ names for 2005 there were entries for both Aidan (No. 38) and Aiden (49), Caden (69) and Kaden (79).
Maybe it’s because I work with words, but I’m all for predictable spellings. Someone I know recently named his baby girl Maya. It’s a unique name. Before she was born the only other Maya I’d heard of was a character on the mediocre sitcom “Just Shoot Me,” although I’m not sure that’s a ringing endorsement. But the name was spelled exactly how I would expect it to be spelled — like the people who built all those pyramids in Mexico — not with vowels and consonants placed willy-nilly to serve as linguistic landmines to otherwise well-meaning journalists just trying to do a job.
I don’t understand how certain names become popular, either. Some parents name their children after relatives, but I can’t imagine there are enough young girls being named after Grandma Destiny to account for that name’s popularity (No. 90 on the list, apparently setting the stage for a large influx of exotic dancers in Minnesota sometime around 2023). There are hardly any baby Margarets these days, a fact I blame mostly on the negative portrayal of Margarets in the Dennis the Menace comic strip. The first Kayla I ever knew was a Farmington High School student who mentored with me a couple of years ago. Now every third elementary school girl in the United States is a Kayla. How does that happen?
According to a story in Tuesday’s St. Paul Pioneer Press, the hottest name for girls these days is Nevaeh, at No. 55 last year on Minnesota’s baby names list and apparently climbing like a monkey on amphetamines. The name is “Heaven” spelled backward and is pronounced nuh-VAY-uh, which mostly makes me think of lotion.
What might be most frightening, though, is the story gave at least part of the credit for the name’s popularity to the fact a member of the Christian rock band P.O.D. named his own daughter Nevaeh, a fact he apparently revealed on the MTV show “Cribs.” In other words, America is taking it’s baby-naming tips from a show where mid-level celebrities show off their cars and swimming pools. And, apparently, their newborns.
When I mentioned the growing popularity of Nevaeh to someone in my office he threatened to name his firstborn son Lleh. I would never go that far, although might name one of my children Yrotagrup, which I would of course pronounce “Frank.”

It's a going thing

There are certain things a person has to know when he chooses a place to eat. What is the menu like? How’s the food? What are the prices? And, last but certainly not least, how’s the can?
For too long, public bathrooms have been a hit-or-miss affair. Often literally. But no longer. Thanks to Minneapolis-based web site restroomratings.com, diners can find out in advance the quality of water closets from St. Paul to Seattle to Sao Paolo.
The site is flush with toilet reviews. By my quick estimate, the site currently features reviews of close to 460 toilets worldwide, including one for Minneapolis restaurant Yummy! that features an unsettling capsule review that reads, simply, “Yummy!”
The site reviews public bathrooms of all kinds, from restaurants to parks to gas stations. So, the next time you’re cruising through Breezewood, Pa. with a need to make a pit stop you’ll at least know the Shell station has a bathroom that is, according to the site, “Nothing to write home about, but decent enough to poop on.”
Don’t say you never learned anything from this column.
I have no idea, aside from the obvious cleanliness issues, what makes one bathroom superior to another. I found the facilities at El Meson, a restaurant where I ate dinner a few weeks ago, entirely ordinary. But the site’s reviewer gave it an eight out of 10, claiming it reflected the restaurant’s “rustic textures of a quaint Spanish villa.” Having spent limited time in the bathrooms of Spanish villas, I am forced to take them at their word. The cramped and generally uninspiring men’s room at The Chatterbox Pub, one of my favorite places to have a drink, got good marks for the cartoon characters painted on the walls.
I have never found a Taco Bell bathroom inspiring in any way, but one of the fast food chain’s restaurants got credit for its “sturdy and satisfying lock.” A toilet in New South Wales, Australia got bonus points because most of the water used for flushing is snow melt. And while the bathrooms at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis lost points for being dirty and having stalls that are “uncomfortably close to each other,” it benefitted for a certain undefinable hipness.
On the flipside, the toilet at Afton State Park lost points because someone had, um, used the urinal for the wrong kind of relief. Actually, that ones is pretty easy to understand.
While I haven’t had time to thoroughly review the site, the capsule reviews for bathrooms can range from disturbing (One for Pizza Hut in Mauston Ill. gets, “Well kept place to eat and poop.” Eat? Really?) to odd (Pizzaria Uno in Phoenix, Ariz., gets, “Beware of crouching dwarves.” I have no idea what that means.) to predictable (The Phi Tau fraternity house in Hanover, NH gets, “Eewwww, just eeewww,” yet still somehow scores a six in the full review.).
The site has gotten its fair share of media attention. In a 2004 Pioneer Press story, Ami Thompson, who founded the site with her husband, Jon, explained the project began when she complained during a car trip that it was impossible to know which bathrooms were suitable for use. Making the decision where to stop, she told the reporter, was a crapshoot. I can’t be sure, but I choose to believe she intended to make a pun there.
Most of the reviews also feature pictures, although that presents certain issues. Some people, you might be surprised to know, do not take well to people taking pictures in the bathroom.
“If there’s a crowd, I plan my escape,” Jon says in the Pioneer Press article. “I’ll take a photo and run out so people don’t think I’m a pervert.”
This raises an interesting question: Are you more likely to consider someone if they snap a picture of a toilet and run out or if they take a photo, hang around and comment on the feng shui of the toilet stall? I have to imagine it’s a tossup.
Either way, we owe the Thompsons a debt of gratitude. In a world filled with disgusting bathrooms, it’s nice to have someone there to tell us where to go.

Do I make you angry?

Benjamin Franklin gets a lot of press for being one of this country’s Founding Fathers, or for tying a key to a kite during a lightning storm or for inexplicably supporting the wild turkey over the bald eagle as the symbol of the United States. He gets far less attention, it seems, for his role in the early development of American newspapers.
Maybe it’s because I was out of the country the year most students in my high school studied American history, or maybe I just never paid much attention, but until last weekend I knew next to nothing about Franklin’s role as a newspaperman. He did not publish the country’s first newspaper, but his Pennsylvania Gazette, which he founded after ending an apprenticeship with his older brother, James, is, according to Infamous Scribblers, Eric Burns’ history of the beginnings of journalism in America, one of the first respectable publications in the country.
I mention this because, according to Burns, Franklin published an essay in 1731 that does a pretty good job of defining the role of newspapers from the Washington Post to the Farmington Independent. He intended it, he wrote, to be “a standing Apology for my self.”
As quoted in Burns’ book Franklin asked those who disagreed with or were angered by something he printed to consider the following:
“1. That the Opinions of Men are almost as various as their Faces….
“2. That the Business of Printing has chiefly to do with Mens Opinions; most things that are printed tending to promote some, or oppose others.
“3. That hence arises the peculiar Unhappiness of that Businesss ... they who follow printing being scarce able to do any thing in their way of getting a Living, which shall probably not give Offence to some, and perhaps to many; whereas the Smith, the Shoemaker, the Carpenter or the Man of any other Trade may work indifferently for People of all Persuasions, without offending any of them….
“4. That it is unreasonable in any one Man or Set of Men to be expected to be pleased with every thing that is printed, as to think that nobody ought to be pleased but themselves….
“8. That if all printers were determined not to print any Thing until they were sure it would offend no Body, there would be very little printed.”
In other words, Franklin told his readers that if they read his newspaper long enough he was bound to make them mad. The same can be said of this newspaper. At least, I hope it can.
Maybe I should clarify: It is never our goal to make our readers angry. That would be irresponsible and unprofessional. But with so much happening around us we are bound to touch on some sensitive subjects.
Our readers, we hope, have opinions about things like the site of the new Farmington High School or the superintendent’s contract or the state of business in downtown Farmington. And while we believe our news reporting is free from our own opinions and as balanced as possible, there are bound to be items that hit a nerve with one reader or another.
Cover enough sensitive subjects, and we are certain to upset one person or another. It is not something we strive for, but neither is it something we can shy away from and still believe we are doing our jobs to the best of our ability.
So, yes. Sometimes we make people mad at us. We know there are readers who believe we cover some subjects too much and others not enough. Sometimes those readers let us know how they feel. More often, they don’t.
We don’t mind the criticism. We wouldn’t last long in this business if we did. But too often small-town newspapers have a reputation for being the Polyannas of the journalism world: focusing on good news to the exclusion of anything that would rub someone the wrong way and serving always as cheerleaders and rarely as critics. We believe on balance our pages contain more good news than bad, but we also believe we cannot shy away from the bad when it is there to be reported.
I guess what I’m asking is, the next time you read something in this paper that really gets your blood boiling, stop for a minute and think of Ben Franklin’s message.
If that doesn’t work, imagine how ridiculous a turkey would look on the back of a dollar bill.