Mid-July – Got a lot of great reactions to the news that Liz and I are engaged. The best was from Ron Thums (co-host of KFAI’s “Radio Rumpus Room”, which airs right before me). Upon hearing from Liz that she was engaged, he asked, “Does Ron know?” Awesome.
Late July – It was hot. The heat index got up to 106 degrees on July 15th. Bleh. My lawn was crunchy for most of the summer.
Early August – There’s one particular restaurant location very close to my house that seems to be doomed. Since I moved to town nine years ago, it’s been at least four different restaurants, all of them awful and all of them going out of business.
The most recent one was a pizza place that also sold Chinese food (???), and they did a miserable job of both. That closed and stayed vacant for about a year. One day a sign appeared saying that Howie D’s steakhouse would be in that location, but the sign disappeared after a few months. Guess Howie D saved himself the trouble and expense of actually opening the restaurant before going out of business. And that seemed like a dumb idea because it was literally two stores away from a “Steak & Ale”.
Now it’s the “Atlantic Buffet”, a pretty darn awful Chinese buffet. They do have a large selection of dishes, but I would prefer just one GOOD dish, instead of lots of bad ones. And like their business card says, they’re the “Best Buffet In Tow” [sic].Early August – Liz and I drove down to Iowa to see her grandparents. On the drive down there, I flipped around the radio dial while Liz drove. Just to be a jerk, I stopped on a station that was playing Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”. Liz immediately retaliated by digging her nails into my arm, breaking the skin, and causing my first ever song-related injury. (Liz felt bad afterwards, and it really didn’t hurt much, but it still makes a good story.) You’d think that 15 years of abuse dished out on “Crap From The Past” would have had a similar effect on some listener at some point, but I guess I’ve been lucky.
So thanks, Daniel Powter, for sinking to a low that had previously been unattainable by mere mortal songwriters. Your song actually drew blood; you must be very proud. May your second album spread pox, plague and pestilence coast to coast and around the world.
Mid-August – The upscale grocery store near my house set up a “Kosher Bakery” section! They rotate which products they carry, and over the past few weeks, I found black & whites and hamantaschen. (They weren’t great, but they were better than nothing.) Jewish food in Minnesota?!? What a disorienting experience! And even more disorienting is the logo on their packages, which has a Kosher for Passover logo superimposed on the state of Minnesota. What what what???
Late August – Decided not to go to my High School reunion, and was going to cancel the trip out east, but Liz convinced me that she needed to meet my 95-year-old grandmother and needed to do it soon. So we spent an extremely short weekend in New York seeing family and doing virtually nothing else. We zipped through Manhattan just long enough to experience some serious New York pizza, and then spent the world’s shortest weekend at my mom’s house in Nanuet. My apologies to virtually everyone in the New York area – we got to see essentially no one this trip.
After we landed in Newark, we took a shuttle to our rental car place. The shuttle driver was most likely crazy. He was blaring gospel music in the van, and driving approximately 350 MPH as he weaved in and out of traffic at the Newark airport. One would think that death metal would have been his music of choice, but nope – gospel. Well, if the gospel music was there to get God’s attention, then we passengers were thankful. We arrived intact, and we did indeed sing songs of praise and thanks once we were back on solid ground.I would not recommend renting a car from Payless in Newark.
My brother Kenny and I have always had a strange fascination with baseball statistics. Not because we’re avid baseball fans, but because we like potentially meaningless statistics. I think a lot of it stems from a game we watched as kids, in which a batter fouled off at least 8 pitches. Kenny and I wondered who had the record for the most foul balls in a single at-bat. It turned out that there was no way to find out, because that particular statistic wasn’t kept at the time we saw the game. It might be kept now, though; baseball stats have since gotten way out of hand.Case in point: Kenny found one particular statistic that may be the most convoluted and/or least meaningful statistic in all of recorded history – “LIPS”, or Late-Inning Pressure Situations, defined as “Any at-bat in the seventh inning or later with the Red Sox leading by one run, tied or having the tying run on base, at bat or on deck.” (USA Today, Thursday, August 17, Page 2C) Is this meaningful to anyone? What happened to good old AVG, HR, RBI?
Liz got to see the coolest thing in Rockland County, NY: the Rockland Bakery. Boy, do they make bread! The conveyor belt system is a sight to behold, and they let you in the back to pluck rolls right off the belts as they come out of the ovens. Plus, they make killer cakes and pastries, so I got Liz hooked on authentic New York black & whites. Now she understands why every trip out east is non-stop NY pizza and black & whites; they’re fantastic, and you just can’t get them in the Midwest.During one stretch right before we left New York, I found myself with two hours to kill, so I drove into New Jersey to see if the last remaining record store that I knew out there is still open. To my amazement, it is! Except not on Sundays, so I got to look in the window and not much else.
So since I was in north Jersey with no record store to visit, I decided to visit one of my old summer jobs. To my dismay, Lehn & Fink, the company where I spent two summers in the maintenance department, was no longer there. Instead, there was brand new building on the property, which wasn’t quite finished yet.
Lehn & Fink made Lysol cleaning products, Bayer aspirin, Minwax sealants and stains, and a host of other cool products. At the time, the building was their corporate offices with a little bit of lab space, and I was the summer lackey who lugged stuff around, painted the equipment on the roof, and changed all the fluorescent light bulbs in the building as an after-hours overtime project. They’d send me all around town in the company van, picking up pizzas, delivering equipment, and filling up the tank. I had orders not to use a particular gas station on the corner that sells that “Mickey Mouse” gas; only the name-brand stuff for the company vans.
So they must have moved, or closed up shop. I was surprised at how sad this made me, considering I was only there for two summers and one Christmas break, all about 18 years ago. I thought about the guys in the print shop there, who printed off fake coupons for Park Pizza and then sent me out to pick up their order, without telling me the coupons were fake. Or the time they printed off a label for one of their aerosol cans for a wonderful new product that neutralized a particular annoying member of the maintenance department: “Fred-Be-Gone”. I thought about the time I strung up the garland around the top of the building during the holiday season, and then wrote “Ron” in fifty-foot high script letters in the snow on the roof. Or the time I had to disassemble, then reassemble, a set of office partitions because someone’s office size was too small by (literally) one inch. Or the time I nearly cut off a few toes moving some of those partitions – a piece of glass broke free and fell, cutting right through my leather boot, and actually broke the skin, but no blood. You can image the feeling of dread as I carefully took off my boot. Or the time when I knocked over and broke eight fluorescent light bulbs in the office of one of the VPs. Or the fantastic sound the fluorescent bulbs would make when you squash them in the trash compactor (environmental hazards? Ha!) Or the time I cleaned off the patio chairs with “Double Super Potent Cleaner”, an in-house product that was not for sale to the outside world. I cleaned the chairs on a Friday, and by Monday, most of the skin had peeled off my hands. That stuff was amazing!
In hindsight, it’s very clear why I was sad.
Now that I was depressed, I decided to drive all the way across Rockland County, going south to north on Route 45. I’d never done that before, and it seemed like a good way to see what else had changed and what hadn’t.
The baseball fields where I played my Little League games are still there. (Even the one where I started and ended my pitching career by throwing 32 low pitches in a row, all right across the plate, thereby walking the first 8 batters of the game. Never pitched again.)
I hadn’t driven the roads in 20 years, but I knew all the curves from sitting on the summer camp buses for years on end. Once I hit the north end of Route 45, I decided to see if those camps were still there, since I still had an hour to kill. I drove past the studios of what used to be one of the local Rockland County radio station (AM 91/WRKL), which is now an all-Polish language station.
Miraculously, the car seemed to know where to go, winding through the maze of ribbon-like two-lane roads at the north end of Rockland County. Not sure where I was actually going, but confident that those roads led somewhere interesting. As I drove past a parking lot and a field on my left, it clicked – I just drove past Deer Mountain Day Camp, which I attended in the summers of 1979 and 1980 (as a 10- and 11-year-old!)
I turned around and pulled into the empty parking lot. At first, I was spooked because there was no one around, but then I realized it was Sunday and day camps are completely deserted on Sundays. Not knowing if there was any security guard around, I wandered slowly through the grounds, which I hadn’t seen since I was 11. (Bear in mind that I don’t have any close friends that go as far back as 1979 – I met my close childhood friends later on in junior high.)
Incredibly, everything was just like I remembered it, and in really good condition. The little lunch counter that made the best hamburgers ever, the little wooden bunks where we’d change in and out of icky wet bathing suits (a task I hate to this day), the volleyball courts where I discovered that I could jump higher than a nerdy kid could be expected to jump, the tiny lake (“Lake Inferior” I used to call it) with a few canoes and kayaks. I couldn’t believe it. I was absolutely astonished that something from so long ago could be so immaculately preserved! Fresh coats of paint on everything. Spiffy nets on the tennis and volleyball courts. Just like when I was 11!
And as I strolled to the far end of the campground, I remembered why I had such an attachment to Deer Mountain Day Camp. Back then, they had a tiny, carrier-current AM radio station (“WDMC”), which you could hear all over the grounds. And one of the scheduled activities was Radio, right along with Arts & Crafts, kickball, and lunch. I got my start in radio right there, under the watchful eye of a senior counselor who called me Radio Ronald on the air (ugh!), and a junior counselor who introduced me to the drama of the chart positions on the Billboard Hot 100.
Back then, their little radio bunk had two turntables, a Numark DJ mixer that had a “talk” switch that abruptly knocked down the level of the music so you could talk over it, a mike in a mike stand, and a handful of rock record albums. As you might imagine, I spent the majority of the summer playing with the equipment as much as I was allowed. I even had my stepfather Phil paint a little “WDMC” sign on a block of wood, so the mike stand would look all official, like the ones you see at press conferences.
This is where I got my start in radio. 27 years ago. And it was still here!
As if my eyes weren’t tearing up enough, I noticed on one of the bunks at the far end of the grounds a little sign on the outside that read, “Radio”. Like Omigod! I looked in the window, and saw one CD player, a cheap mixer, and a microphone in a mike stand. Not much of a radio station, and it looked like it hadn’t been used in a while, but it still existed!
I was amazed. I wondered how many other little impressionable 11-year-olds had caught the radio bug from this place in the last 27 years. Or, for that matter, an Arts & Crafts bug that turned into a hobby in quilting. Or any other of the activities on that weekly schedule, which one day a week would always read, “Bowling, bowling, bowling, bowling, lunch.”
I drove home in shock. Of all the little morsels of my childhood that have evaporated over the years, I still couldn’t believe this one was still here. When I got home, I tried to describe it to mom and to Liz, but it just didn’t have the same impact in mere words. I’m just sorry I couldn’t find any other people on the grounds; I’m pretty sure someone there would enjoy hearing a thank-you from a former camper who was very grateful for one of their summer camp activities from a mere 27 years ago.
Late August – Liz and I played hooky and went to ValleyFair, a local amusement park. Over the course of about ten hours, we rode 29 rides. That’s 29 funs, in our unit of currency.Late August – More hooky and went to the State Fair, where we ate 11 food items, most of which were on a stick. 11 funs – same as last year.
Late August – Went to a midnight showing of “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, the best worst movie ever.
How bad?
- Bela Lugosi died three days into the shooting, so rather than scrap the handful of shots he was in, director Ed Wood replaced him with a guy about six inches taller who kept a cape in front of his face for the remainder of the movie. I think the new guy was the director’s wife’s chiropractor or something like that.
- The woodenest of wooden dialogue. “You know, it’s a funny thing when you consider, the earth people who can think are so frightened of those who cannot.”
- Absurdly cheap sets. You can see headstones in the graveyard wobbling when people walk by. The shots of the spaceship are hubcaps on a string. You can actually see the string. The same desk turns up in a government office, a spaceship, and an airplane cockpit.
Mid-September – The rep who handles our work bank accounts decided to show her appreciation for us by dropping off three whole pies at the office. And on a day when a bunch of us were out of town – there were four people and three pies that day. That glorious, wonderful day. The pies lasted about a week, with a little help from all of us.
Mid-September – Spent a day in Atlanta for business. My tiny law firm in Minneapolis is partnering with a huge firm in Atlanta, so we flew out to check the place out and meet people.
This was my first time outside the Atlanta airport, and I kinda liked it. The train system (“Marta”) took us to midtown, and we walked about a block to our hotel. The law office was just across the street from the hotel, so we certainly didn’t need a car.
I got to wander around for an hour after we flew in, and I strolled through the Botanical Gardens and Piedmont Park, which has everything you could ever want in a park – tennis courts, bike and running trails, water fountains, big huge green field for soccer and football games, plenty of people throwing around frisbees, and a guy playing the bagpipes. (Is that the “Chariots Of Fire” theme I hear?)
We even found a great place for dinner. If you’re ever in midtown Atlanta, I can wholeheartedly recommend “ONE. midtown kitchen” (that’s how it’s spelled, with odd capitalization and punctuation). Very good food, cool atmosphere, and excellent staff. I had a dessert with some blueberry ice cream, which had the most vivid blueberry flavor I’ve ever tasted. Apparently, there’s a “TWO” and “THREE” elsewhere in town, owned by the same people. I don’t know how often I’ll be getting out to Atlanta, but I now have a short (and numbered) list of restaurants to try.
Late September – We put Liz’s condo on the market, and moved everything except the furniture into my house. Including the cats. Keep in mind, my cat is a 13-year-old girl cat, and her cats are 1- and 2-year-old boys. It’s like the skate punks moved in with Grandma.
We kept her cats in my TV room, which has French doors with big windows, so her cats could see out and my cat could see in. I was pretty sure that my old cat would have just hid in the basement indefinitely and not interacted at all with the new cats, so I put her food and water bowls right by the windows in the TV room. After a month or so of that, we opened up the doors, and now they can wander around without killing each other.
Combining households is fun, in that you get to pick the best stuff from two complete sets of everything. We’ve made many a trip to Goodwill with clothes, old pots and pans, towels, the giant plastic serving spoons that never really fit in the drawer anyway, a set of drinking glasses, virtually unused exercise equipment, and so on and so on and so on… It always feels good to get rid of stuff – that must be why people buy stuff to begin with. Liz’s furniture will move in once her condo sells, which may be a while.
Late September – There’s a restaurant delivery service that we routinely use at work. They don’t cook anything themselves, but they pick up and deliver from lots of local restaurants, and they’ll set up the food for meetings and whatnot. Once a year, they throw a Restaurant Expo, which is an exhibit of food. Just food, plain and simple. Exhibitors have booths, and they’ll give you plastic forks and little Styrofoam plates full of pasta, sandwiches, pizza, desserts, and whatever else they’ve got. A co-worker and I went to this year’s Restaurant Expo, and it was like the entire State Fair crammed into 45 minutes, with better food and all for free. I ate items from 14 restaurants in a mad sprint through the exhibit, and unlike the State Fair, I was very glad that there were no roller coasters there. This may very well be the Greatest Event Ever, and I’m already looking forward to next year!
Late September – “Crap From The Past” picked up a new affiliate in Liverpool, England! Home of the Beatles! That raises the total to four countries: US, New Zealand, Germany and now the UK! As always, I still can’t get arrested in Minneapolis, but apparently the show is a big hit overseas.
Coming early next year – We settled on wedding plans. We’ll be doing a destination wedding in Hawaii with parents and siblings, and no one else. Small, intimate, and most certainly memorable. Liz and I have never been out there, and this is the perfect excuse to go sightseeing. We’ll be spending a little less than two weeks on two islands there, and I’m sure there will be plenty to write about in the Big Life Update in February. (I’ll try and get one more out before the year ends.)
In early February, we’ll throw a much smaller party here in town for the locals.
We’re not registered yet. We joked about registering with SkyMall, the in-flight shopping magazine! Who WOULDN’T want a voice-activated R2-D2, a pop-up hot dog cooker, or a 9-foot by 13-foot dry erase wall map mural? That’s the life for ME!
Stay warm and cat-hair-free!
Ron and Liz
