Day in the Life of an Idiot

 So, I need to start with a lovely cartoon that I found this morning and shared on Facebook with the caption, "Me, in Midway."



Image: Cartoon of a grackle (a brown bodied bird with blue head) realizing that their ugly neighborhood isn't, if you look closely at things.

I really love living in Saint Paul's Midway neighborhood most of the time. We have a really active community.

Our Buy Nothing group is beyond the Pale. I can wax lyrical about how I feel about the folks on that Facebook list, plus it's dead useful. Shawn and I just picked up a folding table that she was excited to find because it will be helpful to have immediately after her knee surgery. It was all bent-up on the bottom shelf, but I managed to spruce it up with two can's worth of spray paint. We may end up passing it back along once she's done with it, but that's the beauty of that group. 

I love that our neighborhood has actively adopted "the" possum as our neighborhood symbol. (There are many possums, we just call all of them The Midway Possum.) We track The Midway Possum on Facebook, share photos of her, make art, and write poems and haiku in her honor. 

The neighborhood has even organized volunteer garbage pick-up. We are an insanely busy neighborhood, with Snelling and University (and Fairview and highway 94) as part of our neighborhood. We have the Stadium and the light rail so we get lots and lots of people passing through, dropping garbage everywhere. This should be something that the city of St. Paul takes care of, but they don't, and no amount of haranguing will motivate them. So, every first Sunday of the month, a horde of Midway residents don safety vests, pickers, and garbage bags and collect literally hundreds of pounds of garbage. 

I know the names of my actual neighbors. The other day when I ran out of garlic powder, I was able to text several of my next door neighbors and get some! We watch each other's houses during vacations. We text when packages are misdelivered, etc. There are always tenants that we don't know in various apartments, but, come snowy weather, I'll likely learn their names when we all gather to help push someone out of a snowbank.

But, the neighborhood sometimes feels very ugly to me. I woke up this morning, threw open the windows to get a breath of fresh air, only to cough my lungs out because the air tasted and smelled of exhaust. When I want to go for a walk, I'm hemmed in by University a half a block to the north, Snelling to the east by about four blocks, the highway two blocks to the south, and Fairview a block and a half to the west. All those streets often so busy as to be unpassable (certainly the highway literally is). 

I do feel like the grackle in the first panel. Like, to find beauty, I need to go far.

Today, however, Shawn and I went for a walk and discovered several native gardens that have been planted all up and down our blocks. Moreover, someone has this magical, tiny garden. 


Image: Garden with carefully planted chicks and hens and Irish moss. 


Image: Tiny rock garden, continued. Moss roses and marigolds.

So, I am looking closely and finding beauty.

 I know most people play a version of, "If I won the lottery..." 

Today, Shawn and I played this in a hyper-local way. Here in Saint Paul, there's a lovely stretch of cutesy-businesses on a street called Grand Avenue. (https://www.visitsaintpaul.com/directory/grand-avenue/) It's set up to be kind of a tourist destination. But, lately, it's been hemorrhaging businesses. Just last night, Shawn read that we're going to be losing a famous walleye fish fry restaurant, Tavern on Grand. Most notably for the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev ate there, during his US tour.  

Shawn and I drove up Grand Avenue this morning to her work and counted all the empty storefronts. 

It's a lot.

To brighten the mood, we started playing the "if I had all the money in the world" game, only with the twist of "what business would I sponsor to go on to Grand Avenue to revitalize it?"

Wanna play?

You don't have to be from around here to suggest an idea. This is all fantasy, anyway. I'm just curious what you'd want in a walkable street lined with shops--small business to chain stores. What would make you come out at night, or just come out. I will say that Grand Avenue already has one very lovley children's bookstore called The Red Baloon, but one of our fantasies was to just make it a bookstore haven? LIke how there are just bookstores neighborhoods in places like Japan and in Engliand. So, tell me your dream bookstore ideas too. 

Here's what we have so far:

Shawn:
She would like to start a restaurant/storefront that specializes in English tea. Like, a fancy-ish place where they specialize in making a High Tea, but also do things like have a little storefront where you can buy British baked goods. In our unlimited budget dream, she would also flight in former contestants from the British Baking Show and have them be guest bakers for a week and also give talks about their experiences and a cooking demo.  (In case you're wondering, you can already have High Tea here in Saint Paul. You have to have reservations, of course, but tea is served at the historic Saint Paul Hotel:  https://www.saintpaulhotel.com/happenings/afternoon-tea/)

My barista at Claddagh, Lee:
He really likes hearty baked bread and wants a kind of Second Harvest type place. I said that would be allowed so long as it was on the far East end, far enough away from Breadsmiths not to draw off their business.I said that I really love the experience--even in Minnesota winters--of the line that forms at Brake Bread's window on Saturday mornings. It feels really cosmopolitan. 

Me:
I'm planning a theater--like a little indy place, hopefully somewhere close to Emmet's (which might be the only bar on Grand) so that people could come to Grand Avenue in the evenings for drinks, dinner, and a show. My place would be very experimental, but would also have a screening room so we could host  international film festivals. I'd really, really love to have something like the old Asian Film Festival people back in business, to have midnight showing of old Jackie Chan films. Or... honestly, I would go to the U of MN and just ask various cultural departments if there's some under-represented group that would like a stage. Maybe we could become the Malaysian film festival HQ or Karen-speaking or Somalia... something like this that might draw in folks.
Grand Avenue already has one really neat, nerdy shop that I recommend to anyone visiting our area: Mischief Toys and Books. So, dream quirky! Dream personal!

Like offcntr, we could pretend you can just afford and staff a pottery outlet here!

Everyone else? What business would you start? Rules of the game: you're just the idea person. You don't have to have the skills to run it. You also have an absolutely unlimited budget. You think what Grand Avenue (or the fictious version of our dreams) needs is a full-scale amusement park like the one at the Mall of America, yes, sure, we;ll build it. Just tell me what you think would make a nifty shop/feature, etc. in a walking-around business district!

 
New, as of yet unnamed kitteh, a stray who looks IDENTICAL to Willow, aka The Void.

This weekend we heard a lot of howling and yowling in our yard. Upon investigation, we found this young lady (guessing no more than 6 months old) entertaining a bevvy of gentlemen callers in our backyard. We were able to coax her onto our porch for safe keeping as we hit the usual Facebook groups for an owner. No hits so far, though there is at least one person who is interested if she will otherwise be homeless. We have a vet appointment scheduled for her to get her emergency tests: feline leukemia and intestinal parasites, etc. If she gets along with our other two, we will get her on the docket for a spay. 

Otherwise, perhaps, some lucky neighborhood Facebooker will get a new cat.

We are trying to resist naming her, but the vet needed something so she is currently, Clover, as in we found you rollin' in the...  Mason pointed out that if we keep that name, all of our current crop of cats have botanical names: Willow, Buttercup and now.... clover? We shall see. We are trying to be responsible here, since our current couple get along famously and we have been loathe to break up their perfect union. 

In other news, there's been a flurry of activity around my place. Monday and Tuesday, naomikritzer and I played tour guide (not to be mistaken for The Tour Guide) for two out-of-town guests, rachelmanija and her friend Lauren, who were here for Bouchercon, the world mystery convention. I started them off at Axman, a local "surplus" store that is far, far more than your average surplus. We're talking about surplus iron lungs, buckets of dolls heads, and so much weird stuff... along with lots of dead-useful electronics, etc. It's kind of a place that needs to be seen to be believed. 

Then we had lunch at Se Salt, with the intention that maybe we might take a look at Minnehaha Falls. Normally, you can hear it roaring from the restaurant. I didn't hear it, but also didn't think of it... until we looked over the edge. There was barely a trickle. I'd forgotten about the summer long drought, despite my constant struggle to keep my garden alive. It didn't seem worth doing a nature hike, so we ended up on Summit Avenue. I gave everybody a walking tour, which was a great deal of fun. We walked a LOT, but it was a lovely day and the buildings are so fascinating. 

Rachel was around a second day so we did some books shopping and hanging out. 

And then on Thursday offcntr and Denise came to town as well. We went out to lunch at Bole, an Ethiopian restaurant. They have an amazing outdoor patio because Bole was one of the places that burned to the ground here in Midway during the George Floyd riots and, thus, they relocated during the pandemic. We had a lovely time just chatting and catching up and eating amazing food.

The rest of the week and weekend were spent finishing painting our bedroom. We'd painted one wall Baskerville Blue, if you recall from an earlier post, and we hadn't gotten around to doing much else even though we wanted to make the other three (we have five walls in that room) a lighter, yet rich yellow. We finally finished that project this weekend, though it took me both days thanks to the kitten dropping herself into our lives.  I would post pictures of the bedroom, but it is actually so dark in that room, I'm not sure if a photo will do it justice. 

Hope you all had a good week. Sorry I was completely absent.

In reverse order.

Saint Paul has a lot of panhandlers. They tend to congregate at busy intersections. They're not as aggressive here as I am led to believe they are in other cities. No one runs out and tries to wash your window or anything like that. They just hold up various signs and attempt to figure out the right amount of eye-contact/no eye-contact that will illicit sympathy from Minnesotan drivers.*

Despite living here for over 30 years, I always fail this. I'm forever looking people in the eye. I compensate for this failure by smiling a lot. I figure if I've made accidental awkward contact, I might as well be pleasant about it. So, I'm looking out my window and I catch the eye of one of these panhandlers. He smiles broadly back at me and lifts his sign, which reads: "I bet you a buck you'll read this sign."

I laugh and reach for my wallet, because, yeah, okay, that's clever.

As I'm reaching, he excitedly runs back to his backpack and pulls out a carefully plastic wrapped pile of papers. When he takes my dollar bill, he hands me a sheet. "I'm a published poet," he tells us. "I'm going to have a reading one day. That's why I'm doing this." What can I say? I mean, I know a lot of poets, many of them professional, and it is not an easy life. Even really successful poets who try to only do poetry have a hard time making ends meet. So I take the poem with another sympathetic smile and say, "Good luck to you, my friend." He waves happily and goes back to his poetry spreading panhandling.

His poem is called "Real Love." His pen name appears to be BC the Black Clown.

"Ain't it sad?
So many people go through life
Never really feeling loved
Because when they open their heart
It gets crushed by the very one
That they gave their heart to
And ain't that sad?
That the amount of life that is received
Is often measured by
The amount of money given
The quality of the stability and comfort
And the degree of physical pleasures
Ain't that sad?"

It goes on in this fashion until it turns religious.... because, of course, you know who gives the perfect love? JE-sus.

I mean, I'm sure there's actually a place for religious poets, and I don't regret the dollar I gave him. Not only was his sign clever, but I paid a poet probably a better $/per word than they'd get trying to sell to a print or e-magazine.

The other big excitement of the day was going off with my usual Marvel crew to go see THOR: RAGNAROK. Eleanor, who hasn't seen Mason in several months, noted that his voice had dropped. Puberty is a thing, for sure, and Mason is getting hit hard all of a sudden. We also all noticed that Mason is now taller than Mr. Murphy**, by at least an inch.

Murphy bought us tickets at the AMC in Inver Grove Heights (the place I was supposed to see BLADE RUNER 2049, only ended up at the wrong comfy theater.) They have the reclining seats, which is nice, and assigned seating, which I find annoying, because inevitably people end up getting bunched together. I was knee-to-knee with a stranger, despite the fact that the row beneath us was empty. But, I couldn't let Eleanor, the introvert sit next to the strangers. That would be bad extrovert-to-introvert etiquette.*** If I'd thought of it, I'd have made Eleanor and Murphy switch once it was clear no one was going to be sitting between Murphy and the aisle. I only say this, because I predict now that Eleanor will not have liked this movie as much as she might have if she didn't have to sit surrounded by people (even friends. Since I have an introvert at home, I know how to care and feed introverts. Even having to sit that close to people she LIKES wears on Eleanor.)

We got to see some interesting previews. Of the ones I saw, I was most excited to see the new BLACK PANTHER movie. I was not super enthused by Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther: Nation Under Our Feet when I read it, but I was excited to see that movie seems to be following the visual aesthetic of the comic book. The Shield Maidens, in particular, look bada$$.

As a fan of the first PACIFIC RIM, I was equally thrilled to see the sequel's preview, as well, of course, as the newest STAR WARS (I'm one of three people who actually LIKE the character of Kylo Ren, so I'm perfectly down for a movie that features more Kylo character moments.) The one preview that I think I was intrigued by that no one else in my set seemed that interested in was Matt Damon's DOWNSIZED. It looks... I mean, yeah, it totally vibes like a Stepford Wives cross with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and I would NOT want to spend the outrageous movie ticket prices to see it first run, but I would totally Netflix it, if you know what I mean.

And then the movie.

I'm not going to spoil it at all (except a little bit under the cuts), so suffice to say that the humorous tone of the previews you've seen? It's that, all the way down. I personally did not mind the lighter tone. I'm not sure how a character like the Grandmaster would play (pardon the pun) if he was plunked into a movie that took itself even moderately seriously. HOWEVER, there are moments in THOR: Ragnarok that probably needed more there THERE.

Unless you're an Incredible Hulk fan, in which case this movie was 100% perfect for you. The Hulk gets, by far, the most poignant scenes (which given some of what transpires in Thor's life, and how complex his relationship SHOULD BE with his half-brother**** is a little... imbalanced?).

I have a friend, Rob Callahan, who had a brilliant take on the MCU franchise. He pointed out that each of the Marvel movies are kind of their own genres: you've got the war buddy film (Captain America), the melodrama (Thor), the industrial action flick (Iron Man), the heist (Ant Man), the space opera (Guardians of the Galaxy), and now, if you follow his point,... for some inexplicable reason you have fantasy comedy ala Princess Bride, (Thor: Raganrok.)

I'll be curious to know what the fan writer community thinks of this new addition to canon. ( Minor character moment spoilers, but several of them, so read at your own risk )

All and all, though, my complaints are minor.  Once you surrender to the tone, THOR: RAGNAROK is a fun film. The fight scenes always give this old Marvel fan a thrill because I can so easily picture the still framed panels they came directly out of.  

Speaking of that, I suspect one of the reasons that, of my group, I had less trouble with the tone of this particular movie is because it very much reminded me of some of the comic books I read Mason (particularly the All Ages+ of Fantastic Four) in the early-2000s, like "Fantastic Four: Doom, Where's My Car" and some of the more cheesy stuff that came out of the Chris Claremont era.*****

I used to read all that Grandmaster crap in the 1970s, and it was all like this. Only, I mostly ran across him in FF, so Reed Richards would outsmart the "games," but basically this is al that, plus a giant helping of "VERSUS" titles.  Do you remember those?  I think that's what they were called--but they'd always be these one shots Hulk vs. Wolverine! etc., etc., where the writers would contrive some scenario to make our heroes fight each other just to play the "who would win" game.  

The ways in which comic book canon is like a giant fan fiction community are, in point of fact, indistinguishable.


______
*Many Minnesotans are weird about eye contact. I say this as a transplant, who has lived here for 30+ years, and who has yet to figure out what the proper ratio of direct eye contact and "glance away" to use to make my colleagues comfortable in my presence. This is especially tricky when you're trying to sell people something, like, say, a book you've written.

**Sean. I would call him this, but as my wife is also named Shawn, we have gotten in the habit over the years of calling Sean "Mr. Murphy."

***It is my solemn belief that extroverts exist to spare introverts from certain things: phone calls, in-person sales people, pizza deliverer, and to act as HUMAN SHIELDS in crowds or at the occasional party that you've managed to drag your introverted friend / partner to.

****Fight me. Loki was always HALF-brother to Thor in comic book canon and this insistence on "adoptive" is bull CRAP. Though, I understand the need given fandom, but, darlings, adoptive or not they were still raised together so y'all better be warning for incest. ( Related Thor: Ragnarok minor spoiler )

*****Double plus fight me. Before you get on your high horse, let me remind you that Claremont is responsible of the X-Babies.  'Nuff said.

 Saint Paul did not close its schools.  So guess who was up at o'f*ck o'clock shoveling the sidewalk and unburying the car?  That's right. THIS GIRL.

I was so irritated by St. Paul that my chiropractor literally pulled me aside to talk to me about my shoulder tension.  I resisted screaming into his face, "BLAME THE ST. PAUL SCHOOL SYSTEM!" Because, okay, yeah, I'm probably unreasonably irritated about having to get up early and shovel, but what made my shoulders that high was having to drive on half-plowed street with my family in the car.  Myself, alone, maybe I wouldn't be so tense.  But, with Shawn AND Mason along?  Yeah, no, that's a lot of responsibility and I really don't want to be responsible for having killed them, a pedestrian, or another driver and/or their family.  Yeah my shoulders were up over my ears. I was lucky they weren't higher.

Now the sun has come out to mock me.

I kind of wish that the skies had dumped an extra fifteen pounds of snow on St. Paul's head so I could self-righteously shout: "HA!"

On the other hand, because I was up and about early, I stopped by Whole Foods and picked something for the crock pot for dinner tonight and made myself a very early lunch (technically brunch? Maybe breakfast with lunch-related food?)

When Shawn was recovering from gallbladder surgery, a friend of ours, George, brought over his guaranteed vegan, all-the-fiber stew, which was basically: garbanzo beans, tomato chunks, and various veggies all simmered together.  It was super simple and he kept apologizing for it not even being a particularly tasty batch, but I LOVED it and now make a version of my own on a regular basis--mostly for myself, because my family is a bunch of unrepentant carnivores.  So somewhere around ten am, I stuffed my face with bean/tomato/potato/mushroom/okra/carrot stew.

Being irritable takes a lot of fuel, apparently.  

I will be on KARE-11 on Tuesday, August 3rd for a live appearance on "Showcase Minnesota," which I think airs at 10:00 am. All I know is that I'm supposed to be at the studio by 9:45 am. It's confirmed. In fact, I just scheduled the hair and make-up person. hork-hork.*

Thank you to the one or two people who jumped in to tell me that I'm plenty cute for TV. I happen to agree with them. However, the reason I think of myself as having the perfect face for radio is because you just don't see a lot of people who look like me on TV, period.

I think about this a lot when people crow to me about how FAR we've come in terms of GLBT visiblity in television programming. Willow was gay, you know. I _know_, but her girlfriend was possibly the one person in the Buffyverse MORE GIRLY than she was. The women of the "L Word"? They wear more lipstick in one episode than I've worn in my entire life. You might get the ocassional hot-chick-on-hot-chick relationship surprise (or very special episode) on other shows, but I just don't see a lot of pleasantly plump butch women on TV on a regular basis.

I'm sure it will go fine. I got some pointers of a friend who's business it is to BE the media, and he reminded me to have a talking point, repeat it, and smile a LOT. Oh, yeah, and to keep my expectations low. He said that the host will probably spend most of *my* five minutes of fame explaining me to the audience and making it all about him or her (instead of me). It'll be over in a flash at any rate.

I did decide to go ahead an buy the professional hair and make-up person. She costs a couple of hundred dollars, but the last time I put on make-up I was in high school... or maybe the last play I performed in in college. And, frankly, I was never very good at it. This person's speciality is high definition TV and that makes her ten times worth it. I'm sure my sad attempts would look even worse under the magnifying glass of HDTV.

Things are just hopping, because I got a call from the Pioneer Press too. We scheduled my interview with them for Monday morning. That means I've got TV, radio, and newspaper covered.

I was standing in line here at the coffee shop talking to my writer friends about all this, and it suddenly HIT ME why I was getting all this attention. The book takes place in Saint Paul. And it's about vampires. That's a cute little story for a lot of local media. D'uh.

Speaking of which, though, I need to go off and get started on the proposal for ALMOST #3 and a few other writing related things.