A little spooky, a little lame

So, I'm starting to think my house is haunted. Which, you know, kind of sucks.
It's not that I have anything against ghosts — or spiritual-Americans, as I think they like to be called. I just wish they'd stop messing with my stuff.
They haven't done anything particularly spooky yet. They don't seem particularly dangerous. They're more the kind of ghosts that do things just to mess with you a little. Less Poltergeist, more Ghostbusters.
They're the prank callers of the spirit world.
Take my refrigerator. Since I moved in last December it's occasionally made odd ticking noises. For weeks I thought people were knocking on my door every time it acted up. At first I figured the noises were the result of the refrigerator's internal mechanics going haywire. I don't know the technical term. Cooling coil ping, or something. Now, though, I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing the intervention of supernatural forces.
A less open-minded observer might point out that the refrigerator itself appears to be relatively new and installed not long before I bought the house. Those people have no imagination. I suspect there was a tragic game of hide and seek in the Frigidaire factory and now I'm stuck with a cursed refrigerator from which the ghost of some long-forgotten assembly line worker is forever trying to escape. Desperate for revenge on a co-worker who really needs to work on his seeking.
The refrigerator spirit by itself might not have been enough to convince me if there hadn't been other signs. Like, a few months ago when I found my basement in disarray. There was soot on the floor from a chimney that, so far as I can tell, no longer connects to anything that requires venting. The tops of my washer and dryer were filthy. A bottle of laundry detergent had been knocked off its shelf. Most of the liquid had leaked out through a pin-prick hole. At first I figured some kind of critter had gotten loose down there. Now I know better. More appliances, more obnoxious ghosts.
The last haunting took place over the weekend. I was downstairs brushing my teeth when I heard a crash and a heavy thud coming from the floor above me. The door at the top of the stairs was closed for the first time since I moved in. It was odd. And it didn't exactly make me excited to figure out what was on the other side. That's the point in the horror movie when the killer jumps out and chops someone to pieces. But, like I said, my ghosts are pretty lame.
When I finally mustered the courage to push the door open I discovered a closet door had fallen off of its hinge and pushed the door closed.
The result of shoddy craftsmanship that caused part of the door's frame to buckle? Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I know better.
I have ghosts. And they're jerks.

My Olympic flame burns bright

I thought I was done with the Olympics. When the 2004 summer games were held in Athens I couldn’t have cared less. I was even less interested when the winter games were held two years ago in ... well, wherever they were held. I can’t be bothered to look it up. All I remember is some U.S. skier who partied a lot and didn't worry so much about little things like the actual competition.

Somehow, though, things are different this year. Since the Olympics started two weeks ago I've spent nearly all of my free time sprawled on my couch watching men and women who have dedicated their life to achieving physical perfection. With my near total inaction I am paying tribute to their lifetime of work.
I couch potatoed at an Olympic level.
Like any American with a soul I got caught up in the story of Michael Phelps. I caught all but 1 1/2 of his gold medal swims and most of his preliminary rounds. I wondered like everyone else if he could accomplish a feat as monumental as bringing home eight gold medals. But even more I wondered what NBC would have done with its approximately 93 hours of Michael Phelps features had he come out and stunk up the pool in his first two events.
Fun facts I've learned about Michael Phelps since Aug. 8: His heart pumps eight gallons of blood a minute. He has three extra toes. He eats an entire cow at every meal. His touch can cure the common cold. He can communicate with fish but finds they rarely have much to talk about.
I'm not just getting caught up in the big stuff, though. Anyone can sit down for two hours of gymnastics and call himself an Olympics fan. Getting excited about women's beach volleyball is easy, too. But it takes true dedication to spend most of a beautifully sunny day watching Eastern European women compete in power lifting or tiny Asian men play badminton — both alone and in pairs. Since the Olympics began I have seen fencing and field hockey, trampolining and team handball. I've watched people I'll never care about again play sports I'm pretty sure nobody ever actually plays outside of the Olympics or maybe a particularly adventurous gym class.
I've learned things watching these Olympics. I've learned that competitive trampolining is a real thing, and that even guys who compete in something as lame as air pistol get caught for using performance enhancing drugs. If we can't trust the guys with the BB guns, who can we trust?
I learned that Croatia had the top men's water polo team in the world coming into these games, which came as a surprise. I would have guessed someplace sunny and surrounded by water. Australia, maybe. Or Barbados. Or Atlantis. I can only assume the Croatians are able to draw strength from their totally excellent mustaches.
I'm not sure I'll be able to maintain this level of interest for the rest of the Olympics. I wasn't prepared coming in for the kind of couch time I'd be putting in, and I'm afraid I'm out of condition for these extended sessions in front of the TV. If I can't even get through the 84 heats of the 400-meter hurdles without feeling like I need to go up for a walk or read a book or something I don't know what chance I have when it comes time for a marathon session of, well, the marathon.
I have to try, though. These men and women are giving their all for their country and I will, too. Even if it means picking up my own performance-enhancing substances — another case of pop and a giant-sized bag of chips — to get me through.
USA. USA. USA.

Ready for some bad football?

I'm not much of a sports guy. I'll never be able to talk off the top of my head about how many home runs Justin Morneau hit last year, the Timberwolves' ability to attack a zone defense or the number of illegitimate children fathered by former basketball star Sean Kemp. I follow enough sports to know that when someone brings up Visanthe Shiancoe they're talking about a Vikings player and not a rare tropical disease, but that's about it.
All of which probably made me a bad candidate for watching the Vikings' first preseason game live at the Metrodome. The last time I saw a Vikings game in person Darrin Nelson was the running back and everybody seemed perfectly happy to be playing in the Metrodome. This was back in the days before the Internet when a surprisingly large percentage of the population still genuinely believed the mullet was a good look.
I was pretty OK with my long run of non-attendance. But the Town Pages’ parent company has season tickets, and they never seem to filter down to my level for the really good games. So when general manager Chad Hjellming offered me a seat for Friday's pre-season opener against the Seattle Seahawks, I couldn't say no.
Actually, that's not entirely true. I did say no. More than once. But when the end of the day came and nobody else had claimed the fourth and final seat I started to feel guilty. My reluctance to waste a perfectly good ticket won out over my otherwise complete lack of interest in discovering whether the Vikings' third stringers could outplay the deep reserves of the Seahawks.
"At least it will be fun to see Adrian Peterson carry the ball once," I joked. Who knew I'd be one carry high?
What I got in place of the star running back was a series of passes, a few fumbles and an air guitar competition that should have embarrassed everyone in the Metrodome that night. The PA announcer wanted the crowd to pick a winner, but much like "mullet" and "quality hairstyle," "winner" and "public air guitar" are two things that really never go together.
I also got a whole lot of noise. You know that scene in "This is Spinal Tap" with the amplifier that goes up to 11? I think the Vikings' amplifiers go up to 42. I'm not sure if the crowd ever actually cheered. I'm not sure I could have heard them over the classic rock blaring from the roof.
I saw a few exciting plays last week. In the end, though, my desire to preserve the integrity of my ear drums and my overwhelming lack of interest in just how many times the Vikings reserves could turn the ball over won over my lifelong belief a fan should never leave a sporting event early. I walked out the Metrodome doors and headed for home in the middle of the third quarter, just after fourth-string quarterback John David Booty fumbled the ball away for what was, I think, the Vikings' 17th turnover of the night.
I'm not sure quite what to make of my pre-season football experience. I know the results on the field will have little to no bearing on what happens once the games start for real. And I can't imagine I'll remember any specific plays.
If I can take one thing away from the trip, maybe it's this: Our fourth-string quarterback's name could lend itself to some pretty hilarious commentary. We're one sort-of game into his professional career and I can already describe his play with phrases like "Booty runs," and "Booty fumbles."
When you get right down to it, maybe that's enough.

Oops

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but we got some good news a couple of weeks ago in the Independent office. Seems the National Newspaper Association, as part of its annual better newspaper contest, has decided our little paper is worthy of some recognition.
The Independent has won a general excellence award, though we won't know whether we took first, second or third until the NNA convention next month. We also took first place in our circulation category in the category of best editorial page, something that has become something of a tradition for us in both state and national competitions.
I mention this in part because we're pretty proud of the awards. Add in the general excellence award won by the Rosemount Town Pages, the other newspaper we publish with the same staff from our office in Farmington, and we took two of the three top awards in our circulation category. Throw in the awards the Rosemount paper won for design and local news coverage and the award I won for a feature story on a Rosemount triathlete and we're feeling a little bit like Lance Armstrong must have when he was winning all those Tours de France. Only, without the possibility of turning our success into opportunities to date a bunch of celebrities. And without anybody accusing us of using performance enhancing drugs.
Mostly, though, I bring up the subject of awards because these are the kinds of things I want you to keep in mind when I make small, hardly noticeable mistakes like, say, running the same column in this space two weeks in a row.
Granted, this isn't the kind of error the casual reader is going to pick up. You'd have to be a pretty attentive, pretty dedicated fan of this column to pick up on something so subtle as an entire column running word-for-word the same two straight weeks (Hello, family members.).
In my defense, the headlines were different each week.
What you should have gotten in this space last week was an hilarious column about how stupid contraptions called "Pedal Pubs" are. If you really want to see it you can catch it on the Independent blog at areavoices.com/independent. It's there along with pretty much every other column I've written over the last year or so. What you got instead was the second straight week of jokes about how confusing roundabouts are. Not that jokes about hit 80s songs aren't just as hilarious the second time around. But even the best humor needs a little time to breathe before you repeat a joke.
I'm not really sure how this happened. Things can get a little hectic around here at deadline time. But honestly, how hard is it to notice you're putting out the exact same material week after week? Are you listening, Saturday Night Live?
Then again, people keep going to see romantic comedies, so maybe it's not such a bad idea.
Maybe I'm just confused from spending too much time in roundabouts. Or from listening to too many hit 80s songs.
Whatever the reason for the mistake, there's something I think we need to keep sight of. No matter what we do from now on we can say we have the best editorial page in the country.
If you're not convinced now, just read this column again in next week's paper and I'm sure you'll change your mind.

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