SPECIAL REPORT FROM THE JOKE SHOP

FLYING COYOTES

2010-06-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

The back story behind this is probably book length itself, so I’ll do my best to keep it brief. I was living in a house with thirteen roommates in Portland, Oregon. The year must have been ’97, possibly ’98. These years are sometimes fuzzy. Although that seems like a lot of roommates, we weren’t the most extreme house like this. Our pals at a house called the “Dust Bin” had some ridiculous number of like 25-30 people living there, including several people living in the backyard in tents.

Sometimes I miss these days, sometimes I don’t.

Anyways, we found out our landlord, a crooked Reverend, didn’t own the house we were living in. The bank owned it and this crooked Reverend just had keys to the place and was charging us rent on a building he didn’t own.

This led to a legendary keg party in which the house was severely damaged in several ways. A crew of graffiti artists went nuts on the walls, people dismantled the chimney and threw it in the yard, we burnt the furniture, and my pal Duane cut a Lay-Z-Boy recliner in half with a chainsaw.

It was one hell of a party.

After it was over, we decided to flee Portland, taking two vehicles- Duane’s cargo van and a VW microbus.
After a stop in San Francisco, we decided the best thing we could do with our lives was to become nomads living in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, so we headed down there. When we got to the desert, we made a pit stop at a gas station. These would usually take quite awhile as people poured out of the vans, took sink baths, smoked cigs, bought twinkies, whatever.
Jammed in a van with nine people- like I said, sometimes I don’t miss these days.

So what I would do while waiting is see how well I could balance walking back and forth on the concrete blocks at the end of a parking spot. As I was doing this one time I saw a big baggie sitting in the curb dirt.
“That’s funny because that looks like a giant bag of weed.” I thought, then thought “naaah that’s ridiculous, it’s junk.” Then I thought, “Maybe I should look at that and confirm that it’s junk.”

It wasn’t junk- it was a giant bag of weed.

That night we got totally lost in the desert and decided to just pull off the road and make a bonfire and try to figure out what state we were in in the morning. After we made the fire using dried out cactus and wood from a pallet we had stolen from the gas station, we smoked the shit out of that reefer- yes sir.
Then we started hearing coyotes howl. First one, then another, then a dozen. And the howls were getting closer. People were getting a little paranoid about the coyots. They were sure the coyotes were in league against us.
Here’s a point of contention in this story- I swear that we also heard drumming in the background- like Indian drums far away along with the coyote howling, but everyone says that didn’t happen and I just hallucinated it.
The coyote howling freaked a lot of people out and they got in the vans to sleep. I’m a pretty tough codger, though, so I slept right by the dwindling bonfire, along with three or four other people.

That night I had a dream I could see me and the other guys sleeping by the fire, like an out of body experience. Then I saw a huge horde of coyotes running right at us- hundreds of them. Just as they were approaching our sleeping bodies, though, they took off flying over us and up into the starry desert night sky.

UNUSUAL SUBMISSION PROCESS

2010-05-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

I had written a couple articles for the Shepherd Express's A and E section, but had not yet written for the Music section. For my first pitch to them, I had a boffo piece. I had been informed of a unique story- a well known Milwaukee DJ, Malcolm Michiles aka DJ Old Man Malcolm had gotten a gig as the personal DJ of the Green Bay Packers, spinning records for them on the filed as they did warm ups.

I contacted Malcolm and then confidently e-mailed the Shep. Days passed with no response. In the back of my head, I was worried about this. Had e-mail Gremlins stolen my message? Were the editors unimpressed with this impressive pitch?

I woke up in a very 1950's looking hotel room, like something out of a Hitchcock flick. A phone was ringing on the nightstand. It was one of those solid black plastic rotary phones with a curling wire connecting the giant handset.

"Hello?" I said. A hushed, muffled voice replied.

"Hey you. You want to get your story printed in the Shepherd Express, huh?"

"Uh...yeah." I said, confused.

"Then you better meet me down in the lobby in 5 minutes." Then dial tone. I got my clothes out of the drawers, and next thing I was in the giant hotel lobby.

I noticed a lot of junk pinned and stapled and nailed to the walls. I thought it was strange that this classy hotel would have such junk for art.

I noticed there was a Fuel cafe hooded sweatshirt, a rubber duckie (pierced through the head to the wall with a nail), a frying pan hanging from a nail and lots and lots of magazine and newspaper articles stapled to the wall. It went on and on down the wall with all sorts of random junk and newspaper clippings, and all of it was connected to each other with different lengths of colored yarn. Typical mad man problem solving.

Suddenly, there was a man in a trenchcoat next to me, a fedora hat tilted down to hide his face.

"You want to get your story printed in the Shepherd Express, huh?" He asked in person.

"Yes, dude." I said, a little irritated already.

"All you got to do is solve the code." The mysterious man gestured to the walls draped in junk.

"Solve the code, get the story printed." He walked over to a bench between two elevators and sat down.

"Ok," I thought. "This is an unusual submission process, but I can do it."
I began studying the junk hanging on the wall to determine if I could see a code."

"Hmm, let's see...a rubber duckie, Fuel sweatshirt, frying pan. Duck-pan? Fuel-pan? Duck-fuel-pan? Cook the duck with fuel in a pan?" I looked down the wall. The mysterious code seemed endless and solving it would take much more effort than the 500 word piece I was writing on Malcolm. I became frustrated with the predicament.

I walked over to the man sitting on the bench.

"You know what?! I'm not solving this stupid code. There's no point! You're on your own!" I exited the hotel.

But I must have returned and solved the code, because I got a reply to the e-mail query the next day.

DUANE, HOW DARE YOU RUIN MY COUNTRY ESTATE

2010-05-07T22:57:00.000-07:00

The night was hot, and I was flipping around in my bed. The loud sounds of construction machinery woke me up, and I was highly pissed about this. How dare they wake me up from my sleep at this hour. What time was it? Didn't matter.

I woke up and found I was in my large, palace like estate. My room was four times bigger than my house, the sole piece of furniture was my large bed, with four posts holding up flowing curtains, trying to shield the interior of the bed from this noisy intrusion. I was wearing a red robe and put on a smoking jacket.

I walked across the room and pushed open the doors which led to a large semi circle veranda. It had a marble fence enclosing it and a checkerboard marble pattern for the floor. I put my hands on the marble and looked out at my large country estate, spread out for acres. In the distance, a good forest for a fox hunt.

And there, below me, my friend Duane was digging a swimming pool like hole in the ground in front of me with a back hoe. As usual, he was sporting overalls with patches and ornate tiny bits of scrap metal sewn into them, his spiky bleach hair above the determined look on his face.

"DUANE!" I screamed, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"

He heard my screaming, vaguely, looked up and saw me, waved and gave the thumbs up.

"NO!" I screamed, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"

He looked up to me again, then held his hand to his ear, indicating he could not hear me.

I ran down my marble spiral staircase, adjusting my smoking jacket, my barefeet slapping the stairs. I pushed open the front doors and ran out into the estate. I ran up to the machine and frantically began yelling at Duane. He killed the ignition.

"Hey dude." He said.

"Duane! What the HELL are you doing?!" I cried.

"Oh, Warick told me to dig here for minerals." Warick is the bartender and proprietor of a punk bar here in Milwaukee called Circle A.

"Warick?!" I yelled, "What the fuck does Warick know about minerals?! He runs a fucking bar!" Duane frowned at me and reached to switch the ignition back on.

"Hey, you're going to have to talk to him about this. It might be your land, but it was his idea." I stood there dumbfounded as he started in on the digging.

I woke up and still heard the digging. I walked to the window of my apartment and saw the City of Milwaukee workers digging up the street in front of my house.

There's a joke about Wisconsin, that there's really only two seasons- Winter and Construction.

ME HEAD IS A HAUNTED HOUSE, MATE

2010-04-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

This is another project I'm working on- a short book (75-100 pages) that is a collection of writing and illustrations by yours truly based on strange dreams I've had. I don't have much time to work on the illustrations until I'm done with HEROES IN THE NIGHT, but I am in the mood to work on small bits of the writing here and there.

This writing is a lot simpler, it doesn't need to be fact checked or researched, the only reporting is on the strange things that happen to me in dreamland.

INTRO

There was tons of blue smoke, too much of it, like 100 cigarettes.

I was sitting alone with an empty pint in the corner of the pub, somewhere in the Temple Bar area of Dublin. I was very anxious because I wanted to go to the bar and order another pint, but there was a man ranting and raving loudly, standing next to the bar. If I went to the bar, I knew he would try to engage me in his rantings, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

To make it worse, the bartender stood with his back to the bar, ignoring the man, washing pint glasses. It would be hard to get his attention unnoticed. I watched the man pacing in a small circle carrying on and on about something- can't remember what.

Eventually, my thirst for Guinness outweighed my anxiety. I approached the bar. As I predicted, the man put a hand on my shoulder and began angrily ranting to me. I turned to him and suggested he take a seat and calm down. He looked at me, shocked by the audacity of my statement, wild eyed and crazy haired.

"YOU THINK I GIVE A SHITE WHAT YOU THINK?!" He yelled. He placed an empty shot glass in front of him with a large thud on the bar. He looked at me again and bashed his head into the bar as hard as he could, smashing the shot glass. Then he turned to me, grinning and laughing, pointing to his head. Blood and bits of broken glass were dripping down his face.
"You think I give a shite?" He said again, laughing. "Me head is a haunted house, mate!"
I thought it was an odd thing to say and I was kind of in shock from his wild stunt, so I slowly took a step or two back. The bartender turned around, and without saying anything, threw a bar towel to the man.

PUSH!

2009-11-30T17:01:00.000-08:00

A couple months ago, I walked home from work and was almost home. My legs were tired, but the afternoon was young. I saw a man approaching me.
"Hey big man- you afraid of me?" He asked. I guess he was asking because he was a different race than me. I thought it was strange.
"No." I said.
"Hey, I need help. I need help pushing my car."
"Ok." I said. I've helped push a lot of cars in my life. The key is pushing with the knees instead of the back. We started to walk. He was thankful I was helping him. His car was out of gas, he said.
"No prob." I said. "Where's the car?"
"Uh. On Brady. Holton and Brady."
I stopped walking.
"Wow." I said. "I'm the first person you found between here and there?" It was about 11 or 12 blocks from where we were (I don't know how many blocks the bridge counts as, but I'll say 2).
"So we would have to walk the 12 blocks, then push it 6 or 7 blocks to the gas station on North and Humboldt." I told the guy.
"No, we can't take it there. We have to take it to Capitol." I stopped walking, again.
"What?!" I said. "Why would we push it to Capitol?!" Capitol is about 22 blocks from Brady, the origin point of the gasless car.
"Because the gas station on North doesn't have diesel."
"Diesel?!" I said. "What kind of a car is this?!"
"Well, it's more of a truck." I stopped walking, for real this time.
"Look, man." I said. "I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news here, or whatever, but you and me aren't going to push a truck for 22 blocks through the angry motorists of Holton Street."
The guy then said if I gave him like ten bucks he could buy a gas can and some gas. Even if it wasn't a scam, I had no money. I literally had two dollars left for the bus in the morning and 50 cents for my sole nutrients for my shift of work- a paper cup of coffee from the vending machine.
As it turns out, it was a scam, or I guess a cursed vehicle, I've seen the guy two more times trying to get reluctant people to help push his car.
Overall, I think this story is funny, especially the image of me pushing a truck at .01 mph while people honk and flip the bird.
The only thing that pisses me off is that, hey I'll help someone push their car. And I hope if I'm in a jam someone will help me. But this type of scamming makes people retreat instead of lending a hand.

KRULOS HOLIDAY CONFESSIONS

2009-11-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

1. One of my first Christmas memories. I was on that teetering edge of believing in Santy Claus. The boys at school were making this rough, they were punching guys that believed in Santa, so I played it cool with them and said I didn't. But my heart had doubts. That year my parents got me a gift that seemed huge to a kid. I want to say Castle Greyskull, but I'm not sure. Anyway I told them I believed in Santa, because there was no way that they could have afforded to buy it.
They still think that's funny and so do I.

2. I was briefly a drama nerd. My froshman year I auditioned and got a part in a dramatic adaptation of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas. I can't remember the whole things, but lines of it pop into my head randomly walking down the street. All of a sudden it'll be like:
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.
Memory is a weird thing, especially when you're killing time on the number ten bus.

3. The holidays are the only time I allow myself to miss my ex-wife. Coincidentally, maybe, I have not been in a relationship since during the holidays. (Except for one where I had no communication with the person for almost the whole month of December.)
There are a couple of advantages. 1. Not having to come up with a great unique-thoughtful-romantic-awesome gift, and 2. Not having to hang with the awkward family of she or hanging with the er unique family of me (you know I love you guys).
Being single during the holidays is like being single during a zombie apocalypse. Sure, there are some advantages, but also it is oh so lonely.
Along similar lines: I also wish I had a daughter, or maybe twin daughters during the holidays. I don't know, you tell me.

4. Which leads me to my favorite Christmas song, "Blue Christmas," by the King. Not really a fan of any other Christmas songs.

5. I'm not a strong advocate of traditions, but I did start one for myself last season. I watch all three Lord of the Rings movies, one each night, for three nights. YES I know this is extremely dorky. But you know what, screw you, because you're a huge dork dork, too. So you can jam to a movie adapt of Chuck Dickens, and I'll rock it to JRR. What's the diff?

6. I'm not a huge fan of getting gifts anymore. The few people I do get gifts for, I do try to put some serious thought for. Sometimes it works.

7. Since today is Thanksgiving, I will say that I'm glad I'm not starving to death, dying in a desert, or suffering. See, up until this point you may have thought I'm a bit grinchy, but I do appreciate some holiday stuff. I think if people can find happiness for a month, that's great. I'm glad. I'm glad for the get togethers and the people being kind in the holiday spirit. I love my family, I love my friends.
Just don't expect too much of me.

p.s. Check out my blog on my book: www.heroesinthenight.blogspot.com

MORE BAD TIMES IN DREAMLAND

2009-10-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

It was this place again. Sure, I knew it.
An abandoned city, a ghost town. Always rainy, giant piles of garbage, eternal night.
The planes drift around overhead. I can hear the rush of the jets and see the blinking red lights.
I walked down the street and tried to enjoy the loneliness. I heard an accordion playing some French folk or some gypsy jazz. I spotted a goth girl sitting on top of a pile of old tires, pumping the accordion. She wore black lipstick and a black feather boa, with a couple of longer black feathers sticking up from the back of her head.
I'm normally quite happy to hear the accordion, but this intrusion to my solitude drove me rabidly mad.
"SHUT UP! QUIT PLAYING!" I yelled. There was a pile of giant, fist sized rubies next to me. I picked one up and whipped it at her. She reacted quickly. The accordion morphed into a baseball bat, and she smashed it like a beer bottle. The bat turned back into an accordion and she began to snap the bellows shut and placed the accordion back in it's case. She looked at me, angrily.
"E tu, brute?" She hissed, then picked up the case and walked away. I had no opinion on this and kept walking.

Shortly after that I was walking in the street because the sidewalks were clogged with trash. Headlights stopped in front of me, blinding.
"SHUT THE LIGHTS OFF, DAMMIT!" I yelled. The lights shut off and I could see two Hispanic men wearing baseball uniforms sitting in an army jeep.
"Are you the man who phoned for two vampires?" One of the men called out.
"Vampires?! No I didn't." I said.
The two men looked at each other and laughed.
"He said vampires." One of the men said to each other. More laughing.
"I said UMPIRES." The man said. "Are you the one who phoned for two UMPIRES. We're umpires from the San Francisco Giants." I pretended to think.
"Umpires? No, I didn't." I kept walking.
"Okaaay." One of the men said, as if I were the crazy one.

As I walked, I developed a Saharan level of thirst. My body felt lighter, and I put my hand on my gut. There was nothing. I looked down, and my torso had become skeletal. I had some panic about this, and thought, if only I could drink a couple glasses of water, my flesh would return.

I spotted a bar down the street, which looked a lot like the famous Milwaukee institution Wolski's tavern. The door was open, and strands of rock floated out. I walked in, and the bar was frigid. That wasn't the problem, though. The problem was that the bar was filled with a dozen dead people. They were slumped over the bar and tables, and lying on the floor. They were impaled with knives and broken bottles and pool cues. Blood was forming puddles everywhere.
I stood there frozen, unsure of what to do. I badly wanted to go to the other side of the bar and get a glass of water, but decided I should leave fast. This was a crime scene.
I decided to keep walking. I passed under an El train track. An El passed by, empty. A ghost train.
As I walked, I suddenly felt badly for those dead people. A loneliness swept over me, and when I awoke I was sad.

EVERYDAY HEROES-Uncut

2009-09-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Note: This article was featured in the September 2009 issue of Milwaukee Magazine. The article is not available online, so I decided to post the original version here. It is about twice as long as the magazine article. It was written back in March, and was the secret origin of my current book project. -Tea

EVERYDAY HEROES
By Tea Krulos

It was a frigid 9 degrees on March 1, chilling me as I paced through Gordon Park. It was just after sunset, and I was waiting to meet one of Wisconsin’s own superheroes, The Watchman.
The Watchman pulled up to the park, not in a high tech Batmobile, but a pretty normal looking four door Pontiac. He exited his car and began walking through the empty park toward me, and for those first strange moments I felt somewhat unprepared to interview a costumed crime fighter.
He extended a motorcycle gloved hand to me in greeting. The rest of his costume includes a simple domino mask, a red hooded sweat shirt with The Watchman logo stenciled on it, army boots, and a black trench coat.
The Watchman is part of an expanding group of people across the nation and world calling themselves “Real Life Superheroes” (often referred to as “RLSHs”). These people are living out their dreams of adopting costumed personas and hitting the streets anxious to thwart evil.
Watchman said his name is not directly inspired by Alan Moore’s social superhero epic comic (and now movie) Watchmen, but admitted the graphic novel is a “RLSH Bible.”
We began to stroll around the perimeter of the park, and as Watchman told me about his double life, the only sound was the faint noise of traffic in the background, and the crunching of ice under our feet.
“I’d like people to think, hey, maybe these people are doing good, and take notice and hopefully get a little inspiration. Not necessarily to dress up and go out the way we are, but to do something.” Watchman explained, as we passed the park’s playground. The swings were creaking in the wind. He continued,
“You know if everybody made little changes in what they did, gave more to charity and watched out for their neighbors a little more, we would not have as many problems as we have. That is what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Watchman admits that “most patrols are pretty uneventful,” but adds that “from time to time something comes up.”
On one of his patrols he encountered a group of teens tagging a building with graffiti and trying to break into the building’s shed. The Watchman appeared in the night and “scared him off,” he said.
The Watchman found himself in a bad situation when he got a tip about an underage party on the south side and decided to stake it out.
“I normally leave parties alone. I was a kid once, too, but I like to check up on them sometimes to make sure they aren’t out of control.” He said.
The Watchman saw a group of four or five guys leaving the party with a girl, probably about 15, said Watchman. He sensed trouble.
“It was pretty apparent the girl had too much to drink and the guys were trying to take advantage of the situation, so I intervened.”
The girl’s brother came out of the party to check on her, and when he saw the Watchman he mistook him for the villain and pulled out a knife, according to Watchman. Watchman jumped in his car and took off. Later, from a distance, he saw the girl leave the party with her brother.
“I was mad at how it all went down but I remind myself that at least for that night, the girl probably just ended up with a bad hangover instead of being date raped.”
The Watchman helped form a league of Midwest RLSHs, called the Great Lakes Heroes Guild, which now claims approximately 14 members. The leader of the group is Razorhawk, of Minneapolis, who also runs a website, hero-gear.net. The site creates modestly priced costumes for RLSHs and business is booming as Razorhawk has filled orders for heroes across the nation and beyond.
The group’s first mission was to donate toys to charity groups for Christmas. Watchman participated and made a rare public appearance by donating toys to a charity called the Gingerbread House.
Hoping to join these ranks is Milwaukee’s own MoonDragon, who has just begun to get a feel for his double life, putting on the mask for the first time a month previous to my meeting him. Watchman says he has been patrolling for years, and he met MoonDragon “mask to mask” to join him on patrol and offer his advice.
It is 5 days after my meeting with Watchman and 50 degrees warmer when I join MoonDragon on the busy intersection of National and Layton. I am joining him for a foot patrol of the area between 19th and 27th on National, through the alleys and side streets and Mitchell Park.
MoonDragon was wearing a ski mask with lightning bolts on it, a black hooded sweatshirt, and army boots. Watchman and MoonDragon have “toned down” versions of their costumes for street patrol, and flashier spandex costumes with capes and more elaborate masks for charity events and other public appearances.
Both heroes carry a practical arsenal, a can of pepper spray, note pad, flashlight, digital camera, and first aid kit. MoonDragon is also planning on carrying a pair of eskrimas, a Filipino fighting sticks made of rattan.
It is a quiet night. There is a small group of boys playing soccer in the park, and an old man sitting with his dog at a park bench. They give us a curious look.
“Sometimes I’ll be hanging around with my friends, having a beer and I’ll be thinking to myself- I should be out there right now.” MoonDragon tells me as we turn into an alleyway. He says as of now, none of his friends, no one in fact, knows his secret. Not even his fiancée.
“I will have to tell her soon though.” MoonDragon says. “Maybe I’ll just nonchalantly make an offhand remark about patrolling the streets at night in a cape and mask.”

SCHWEDDED WHEAT

2009-06-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

Well, it took about 3 months longer than I thought, but I finished the story of Schwedded Wheat. It was an interesting writing experience. What is next for the Joke Blog? We shall see. Here is the original intro, and the story in order, in it's entirety...

INTRODUCTION
Today I start on writing my "cell phone novel," SCHWEDDED WHEAT. It is inspired by, but not the same as, the cell phone novels or keitai shousetsu of Japan. These novels are written (usually by young Japanese women going by one name monikers) mostly on subway commutes on the way to work. People subscribe to the books and receive short chapters on their cell phone. The cell phone books have mostly been romance and drama although the field has become diverse rapidly. The first keitai shousetsu was written by a Japanese writer calling himself Yoshi in 2003, titled Deep Love. It's a story of a teenage prostitute in Tokyo. It became so popular that it was published as an actual book, with 2.6 million copies sold in Japan. Now about 5 out of 10 bestselling novels in Japan are print versions of the keitai shousetsu.

I am not inspiring to such fame, but today I was thinking about the keitai shousetsu on the bus to work and I thought, you know, I have some down time on the bus everyday or sitting around on break, I should write one. So today I wrote the first chapter. I am trying to write a chapter everyday(NOTE-HA!), although I may skip a day here and there. I am projecting about 50 chapters(NOTE-HA! Try 21!), give or take. This story is technically FICTION, although many of the events and characters are based on real people, including myself(Note-And the place I used to work, RIP. Just think, this place is gone forever.) I am hoping to include it as a chapter or section in my Hotel Pharmacy book.

SCHWEDDED WHEAT

CHAPTER 1
I was at the register ringing up the customers. She appeared like a vision, her arms filled with candy and magazines.
Her hair was like cherries, her red lips smiled, her eyes said 'lets get to know each other' then we heard the screeching sound.
"Young man! I need your assistance immediately! I am very old and fragile! Help!" Shrieked a voice, hidden amongst the aisles.
"Uhh" I told my redhead vision. Her juicy lips pouted in concern. "Uhh.... I better check this out." The moment was broken.
I went to investigate the shrieking, irritated.

CHAPTER 2
I peered down the aisles trying to locate the source of the sorrow.
I found a tiny, shriveled old lady, her body gnarled. A twisted frown of pain with partially showing under the veil of her pillbox hat. 'I need your help' she said, staring up at my towering frame.

''I'm very old and fragile and I need you to carry these up to the front counter.'' She said, thrusting boxes of crackers into my arms.
I looked towards the door. The redhead was opening a candy bar. Our eyes met and she lifted her hand and wiggled it goodbye.
I then felt a tugging at my sleeve. ''Young man! I need your help!'' The hideous voice shrieked. I took one last glance at the redhead exiting through the door.

''Goodbye, Big Red.'' I thought and turned to my tormentor.

CHAPTER 3
"Yesss?" I said, hissing politely and turning to the old woman.
"Follow me. I have something to show you." She said.
She grabbed my hand and yanked. I drew back.
"I'm sorry, I have some customers here." I said, gesturing toward the counter.
"Oh they can wait." She said. "I'm very old, you know."
"And fragile." I added.
"What?!"
"Nothing." I said. I glanced back at the counter.
A line of people was hemming and hawing, looking around with disgusted looks on their faces. They were in a hurry. The old lady wasn't.
She lead me slowly, slowly over to an aisle and pointed to a shelf.
There were some boxes of Cheerios, an empty space, and then boxes of Corn Flakes. She pointed more closely at the empty space.
She stared at me deeply. "They're gone." She said in a tone, as if she was speaking about the victims of the Titanic. "Why are they gone?"
"What? What's gone?" I asked. Her mood changed for the worse, and she gave me a piercing stare for insulting her with my stupid behavior.
"The SCHWEDDED WHEAT!" She snapped. "WHERE IS IT?!"

CHAPTER 4
"Hmm." I said, looking around for my boss. I could see he was busy yakking away to someone. "Well, the schw- uh, the Shredded Wheat...is."
I looked to the long line of customers at the counter.
"The Shredded Wheat is out of stock." I said and headed to the counter.
"No it isn't." She said in disgust. "You have more in your stockroom."
"Do we?" I asked in mock surprise. "Let me check on that, one sec."
I ran to the counter and began checking people out. "1.50, and here's your change, 3.50..."
Like a leprechaun, the old lady realized she had been tricked, and began to howl. "YOUNG MAN!"
"So that's 1.99, here's a penny back."
"YOUNG MAN!!" "
Did you want cash back for a tip on your card?" "YOUNG MAN!!!" "Did you want a bag for this?"
"YOUNG MAN!!!!"
"Here's 1.22."
The howling was getting closer. As I hurried the last customer, the woman stood next to the counter, yelling "YOUNG MAN!"
I turned to her.
"Can I help you?" I said, smiling. She made a ticking sound in disgust.
"YES! You can go get more Schwedded Wheat from the stockroom."
I quickly ran up the flight of stairs to the stockroom. I walked among the aisles of soda and canned goods and paper products.
I made my way to the cereal. There was Cheerios, Wheaties, Corn Flakes, Fruit Loops, Count Chocula, and me Lucky Charms, but no Shredded Wheat.
I walked down the stairs. The old lady was standing there staring at me, and her eyes were on fire. I held out my hands helplessly.
"Whatcha gonna do? No Shredded Wheat." I said it as if this was one of the everyday risks you take living on planet earth. She didn't agree.

CHAPTER 5
''No shredded wheat.'' I said. ''May God strike me down if I'm lying.''
The old woman frowned. ''When will you get more in?'' She asked skeptically.
''Probably Tuesday. That's when our order comes in.''
''What?!''
''I say TUESDAY...''
''Well what day is it today?''
''Friday.''

CHAPTER 6
''Well here, take these to the counter.'' The old lady said, shoving boxes of mac n cheez into my arms.
I took the mac n cheez and added it to the old woman's horde of goods. Boxes, cans, bottles of aspirin, and bags of catfood.
I turned to the front counter, and the old woman was standing there. "Bring all those things up here she said." She said haughtily.
"I'm ready to check out." She said it like she was the Queen of England. I eyed her cautiously and hauled the goods to the front counter.
It was going to be the longest transaction of my life.

CHAPTER 7
When I try to think back on it now, it seems unreal, like a scene from an italian horror film.
I remember she had fashioned a coin purse out of a paper napkin which she slowly unfolded.
The line of people behind her grew.
She shakily spread out an array of change and began counting it with a bony finger.
The line of customers grew.
She began asking the prices of the items over and over. I tried to mask my irritation.
The line of customers grew.
When I had finished ringing her up at last, she said ''That can't be right.''
The line of customers grew some more.
I ripped the receipt off and began going through the items with her. She adjusted the glasses on her nose and stared carefully.
''That can't be right.'' She said, shaking her head in disbelief.
''Believe it.'' I said. The line grew longer.
I went through the items on the receipt with her again. She shook her head.
The line grew longer.

CHAPTER 8
It took a lot of reviewing, change counting, double and triple bagging, but somehow made it through.
I cruised through the long long line of pissed off customers, many of them whining like the baby men and women they are.
''So sue me.'' I mumbled to them. ''You think I control the universe fer chrissakes?''
Things settled after a bit and I took some deep breaths and tried to enter a zen like state.
My shift ended and I went home and had a few drinks, whiskey on the rocks. Then I fell asleep.

CHAPTER 9
It was cold in the dream. There were water drops falling from the ceiling, everywhere. The redhead was there, smiling.
''I need your help.'' She said in a sultry voice, her lips pouting. ''I'm very old and fragile.''
She said this and laughed like a demon.
'' You think you're funny but you're not.'' I said, trying to pretend I wasn't bothered.
The redhead began to cry and I somehow began to feel guilty. I reached my hand out to her.
''Get away from me!'' She cried. ''You're always like this!''
Then I woke up.

CHAPTER 10
The dream stuck with me briefly but soon it was back to buisness as usual. Soon I completely forgot the old lady.
I even forgot the redhead, more or less.
The days were fair and went by with ease, but then Tuesday rolled around.
My co-cashier approached me.
''You really pissed someone off.'' She told me.
She pointed down the aisle, and there was the old lady, fuming.
"Shit." I thought. "Shit happens."
"Young man." She said, pointing a shaky finger at me, "You are a liar!"
"What?!" I said, confused and offended.
"I said you are a liar.Today is Tuesday, is it not?"
"Yeaaaaaaah..." I said warily.
"You said there would be more Schwedded Wheat in today. The shelf is empty."

CHAPTER 11
I stared at the empty space. The space where the schwed- excuse me, the Shredded wheat was suposed to be. I stared at it.
I stared at it. Then I stared at the old lady. The old lady stared at me. I stared back. I looked over to the other cashier.
The other cashier stared back at me. I stared at the space again. "Hang on." I told the old lady. "Young man..." The old lady began, madly.
"Hold on." I said. "I will investigate this problem in a thorough manner." I walked to the other cashier. "We have a problem." I told her.
"Where the hell is the shredded wheat?" "We didn't get any in this week." She said. "Hell." I said. "What the hell am I going to tell.."
"YOUNG MAN!" The old lady was yelling, staring at us. I walked back. "I'm sorry we don't..." I began. "Young man, you are a liar." She said.

CHAPTER 12
It is a truly humbling moment when you have an overwhelming desire to punch an old woman in the face.
You learn something deep at that moment. You learn that evolution is a failure. They can shave an ape and put deodorant and clothes on it.
They can teach the ape to operate a cash register and ask "would you like a bag?" but in that moment nothing has changed.
The heart beats fast, the teeth and fists clench together, the eyeballs fill with red hot blood.
And it is then you realize you are still just an animal underneath it all, a wolf that might take off howling down the street any moment.
The feel is humbling and terrifying.

CHAPTER 13
My mind worked like mad, trying to calm down.
It was like a madman with coffee shakes trying to solve a rubix cube.
My mind was trying every calming image it could: sand, beaches, limes, giant naked women.
Orange juice, ice, a farm, a piano, pillows, love letters, etc. It was alarmingly slow work, but I got my breath back.

CHAPTER 14
Once I had calmed down, I explained to the old lady that gee, I was sorry, but sometimes these things just happen you know.
"Sometimes you're told Shredded Wheat will be stocked and sometimes it just doesn't happen because a series of random events.
Maybe it's a problem with the delivery guy or the distributor or manufacturer themselves. In fact," I told her, "maybe its even higher.
Maybe you should blame God," I said, smilingly largely. "I mean it all starts with him, don't it? I asked." The old women scowled at me coldly.
"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Now come over here and carry these bottles of ginger ale up to the counter for me."
"I'm very old and fragile, you know," she added.
"I know," I said.

CHAPTER 15
So I began the process of checking her out, again. By now, you know this horrifying story. Each item is slowly evaluated.
The old lady reexamines each item she has selected, scrutinizing it as though they were items found in old King Tut's tomb.
Perhaps the riddle of Sphinx is buried in that cardboard can of oatmeal. Then there is the questioning of the prices.
As this is happening, I am sweating and flushing and the line of impatient customers is growing. Next, the coin purse made of a napkin is taken out and the monies slowly counted and recounted with a skeptical, wavering hand. Then there is the receipt review.
Next, I field a series of complaints about economics, the old days verses the modern age, and the down side of life in general.
This takes place during the double and even triple bagging. Last, the calling and giving of lengthy instructions to the taxi driver.
The call usually ending with the dispatcher sighing heavily, all too familiar with the hell he sending his men in the yellow cabs into.
Indeed, the visit is not over without her questioning the perceived lateness of the cab, squinting at me with a certainty.
Certain that me and the cabbie are in league together. Certain that there is a large, nameless conspiracy of service industry workers.
Cashiers, cabbies, baggers, butchers, waitresses, bellboys, clerks, bus drivers, garbage men, building managers, bakers, bank tellers,veterinary assistants, ushers, hair stylists, and many more, all conspiracy against her.
An alliance of evil, united to make life difficult for the old lady.

CHAPTER 16
I couldn't hear them outside, but the old lady was pointing at the cabbie, speaking loudly, most likely telling him,
"I'm very old and fragile." She lifted her cane with great effort and pointed it at him. For a second I thought she would swing it at him.
The cabbie raised his hands defensively and began speaking rapidly in hindi, I'm guessing. His lips were moving too fast for English.
The cabbie got the lady and the bags of groceries into the cab and pulled away. I breathed a sigh of relief and cradled the back of my head.
I smiled like I had just finished a marathon or passed a drug test. The little things, like getting rid of the old lady in a taxi are sweet.
I smiled again and turned to look out the window, and my heart dropped. The taxi was back. The cabbie glowered into the window.
He held the door open for the old lady, saying a curse. Something was wrong here. The old lady stepped out of the cab.
She scowled and her and the cabbie shot daggers from their eyes in through the window. At me.

CHAPTER 17
The old lady walked through the door with much determination, and the cabbie followed like a body guard.
His arms were crossed below his stern face. The old lady stared at me. "Hi." I said. She looked at me, frowning. "Where is my RECEIPT?"
Here are some general things I know about the old men who shopped there.
1. They know a lot about state quarters.
2. They know a lot about bus routes and how they are being rerouted.
3. They follow the weather reports like hawks.
4. It's never cheap enough.

Likewise, here are some things about the old ladies.
1. It is either too hot or too cold.
2. Yes, they would like a bag and probably a double one.
3. Always, always, ALWAYS GIVE THEM A RECEIPT. I slapped myself in the face, hard.

CHAPTER 18
First, a moment of silence for the BSP. Much to write on that later. Now, back to the story of Schwedded Wheat.

So, yes, I had to dig through the trash, looking for the receipt in the pile of hundreds of identical receipts.
I was swearing under my breath, the old lady was making ticking and tsking sounds in disgust, and the cabbie just stood there, arms crossed.
There is nothing that will torture a cabbie more than wasted time slipping by. To them yellow means green, and the sidewalk is the street.
I couldn't find it, so I went through the items in the bag and rerung everything. "This is absurd." The old lady said. "I already paid you."
"I know." I said. "Here's your receipt." "Now young man," she said, clutching the receipt, "I want you to call your manager."
"Oh boy." I said. "Tell him to tell you the ACTUAL date you will receive a Schwedded Wheat shipment." The manager didn't know.
The manager didn't keep track of that sort of thing, the cashiers did. I thought I would humor her, though, hoping to get her in the taxi.
I picked up the phone and talked to the dial tone. "Hello, yes?" I said to the dial tone. "I need something checked here right away."
"Don't take that tone of voice with me. Look, when are we going to get some Shredded Wheat around this place? Uh huh. Mm hmm. Ok."
"He says next Tuesday." The old lady rolled her eyes and huffed out the door, and was escorted out by the cabbie.
"God have mercy on my soul next Tuesday." I thought as I watched the cabbie load the old lady in the taxi.

CHAPTER 19
I thought about the old lady over the next week. I was mellow and frankly embarrassed. Had I lost control of myself?
I mean, after all, she was just a little old lady. I had a grandma, and she was probably a grandma. How had I let her get the upper hand?
I often thought of myself as a zen master and here an old lady had made me fall apart mentally, close to running down the street screaming.
I am imagined Tuesday rolling around and disaster striking. I visualized the old lady pointing her cane at me with a shaky hand, telling me,
"I'm very old and fragile." I saw the old lady squinting at the receipt telling me it didn't add up. I saw the glowering cabbie, his arms were crossed tightly. I saw all this and visualized myself transcending it all. The bad energy was flowing past me.
It was flowing past my protective aura shield. Then my co-worker approached. "Um, the men's room toilet is clogged, so you know." She said.
"Well it worked for a minute." I thought and headed to the supply closet for the plunger.

CHAPTER 20
Tuesday rolled around, the day the shelves are stocked. I loved Tuesdays. Stocking meant a lot of tearing and crushing.
A lot of ripping apart packaging. It always made me feel relaxed. I had my own pricing gun with my name on it.
I would often pretend this was a real gun. I knelt down with my box cutter to open some boxes. I carefully cut open the first one.
And there was the treasure. A box filled with not one, not two, but twelve entire boxes of schw...shredded wheat. I smiled. "Lordy, lordy."
I said. "Lordy, lordy." Soon after that, I saw the old lady creeping stiffly out of a cab. She walked in, and I was leaning on the counter.
I was leaning like I didn't have a thing in the world to do. "Nice weather, isn't it?" I said to her, smirking. She looked suspicious.
"Never mind that, young man, now tell me do you or do you not have my Schwedded Wheat in stock?" She said, piercing me with her eyes.
"Yeah, of course we do." I said. "I mean it's in the cereal aisle. Right by the Cheerios. Can't miss it." The old lady began mumbling.
She headed to the cereal aisle, and I kept leaning.

CHAPTER 21
When she approached the counter, there was a smile on her face. It was the first time I had seen her smile and it was weird.
It was probably the first time she had smiled in her life.
"Thank God for small favors." She said, as she set the box of cereal down.
"My Schwedded Wheat!" She said happily. We went through the routine of checking the receipt, the double bags, etc.
Except this time it wasn't as stressful. Then she surprised me. "Young man, hold out your hand." She said, wearily, but not unhappily.
I did as I was told, a little nervous. She carefully placed two dimes and two nickels in my hand. "That's for you." She said.
She walked slowly off toward the cab, and I looked at the loose change in my hand and smiled a bit. Thirty cents! And you know what?
Later that redhead walked by the window and smiled at me and did that little wave she does just wiggling her finger tips.
THE END

TEA KRULOS MUST DIE A VIOLENT DEATH

2009-01-25T17:39:00.000-08:00

Since we’re on the cheerful subject of death (see last post), I’ve talked to more than one person recently on how we would like to die. A lot of people say ‘I wanna go quietly in my sleep.’ Booo! I want to go loud and violent, getting my ass kicked for hours and hours, maybe days. I’m not talking about torture here. I hate torture of any kind. (Good job Mr. President on shutting down GitMo. Glad you’re keeping it cool.) I had trouble during the famous “ear scene” of Reservoir Dogs and nearly jumped out the fucking second floor window of a friend’s house while watching Audition.
No, I want a knock down, dragged out extended FIGHT to the death. A brawl. You may think this is gruesome, but you know what? After that you’re dead. You’re not going to care because you’re going to be DEAD, so go out with a bang.
Some historical deaths I admire:

EDWARD TEACH aka BLACKBEARD
Teach wanted to retire from piracy, but the powers that be didn’t care. On the morning of November 22, 1718, Lietunant Robert Maynard led two boats to attack Blackbeard and his crew of 19 pirates aboard their boat, the Adventure.
Yes, I know this is terrible of me, the number one sin of all sins of journalism, but it’s Sunday and I’m lazy, so I’ll let Wikipedia tell you what happened next:
“In the battle, Blackbeard was reportedly shot five times and stabbed more than twenty times before he died and was decapitated. Legends about his death immediately sprang up, including the oft-repeated claim that Teach's headless body, after being thrown overboard, swam between 2 and 7 times around the Adventure before sinking. Teach's head was placed on a pike or pole on the north shore of the Hampton River in Virginia, at a place now called Teach's Point, as a warning to other sailors who thought of taking up a life of piracy.”

BONNIE PARKER AND CLYDE BARROW
Well, they pissed off the cops, that’s for sure. I mean they had offed a couple. These things happen when you’re tommy gun wielding depression era gangsters. Bonnie was somewhat of a poet and sent the newspapers poetic odes, “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” etc. They kidnapped a cop at one point and posed with him in funny pictures before letting him go. The long arm of the law didn’t see the funny side of that.
Those coppers ambushed Bonnie and Clyde May 23, 1934 out in the sticks of Louisana. Clyde was tricked into pulling over the couple’s stolen Ford V8 and then six lawmen from Louisana and Texas stepped out of the bushes and emptied 130 rounds into the couple. They wanted to make sure they done died and stayed dead, I guess.

Preferred ways of dying:
FIGHTING A SHARK
And not one of those fucking anklebiter sharks, we’re talking a Great White, or a giant Tiger or Hammerhead at minimal.Or a school of Makos. And if you think I’m going to just, boom, get bitten in half, you are seriously mistaken. I’m going to beat the fuck out of that shark (sorry PETA). I’m going to punch it, stab it, and bite it until it wins, like the shark in Jaws when it gets Quint.

FIGHTING A BEAR
This is the land version of the shark attack. Unlike Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man, though, I’m not going to let the bear just crunch my skull like a coconut. I’m going to beat the fuck out of that bear (sorry PETA), slap the shit out of it, etc.

LONG ANECDOTE ABOUT ME THINKING I MIGHT HAVE TO FIGHT A BEAR WHILE I WAS HIGH
Summer and fall of 2001 was the one of the high points of my life. I mean this because I was traveling a lot, and having a blast. I was also getting high a lot. I spent most of the month of July visiting my friends Dan and Flo in Portland. In August I flew from Portland to Australia and spent most of the month there. I flew back to Portland. I was travel weary and my cash supply was burning up quickly (I spent a lot of money in Australia on meat pies, vegemite, and souvenir boomerangs). I was supposed to meet my friend Micca in Portland and drive back to Milwaukee with her. I hadn’t heard from her, though, so I was like, screw it, I’m hopping on a bus out of here. I’m tired of sleeping in a damn sleeping bag. Then I got a call from Micca at Dan and Flo’s house.
“Yo Tea!” She said, “I’m down in Fort Bragg, working at this tourist train station for these hippies in the middle of the redwood forest. It’s amazing! They need another worker, so come down here and work with me for a month, then we’ll take off.” So I went.
It was pretty amazing. The old steam powered locomotive would bring tourists to our stop, Northspur station, where the tourists could buy lunch, beer, jars of homemade jam, t-shirts, trinkets, and cute little bears carved out of redwood. Bears.
We saw evidence of the local bears. Does a bear shit in the woods? Yes, they do. A lot. Especially near the berry bushes. The garbage was kept in sheds, to prevent the bears from getting in, and I often found giant muddy paw prints on the shed doors when I pushed the garbage cart there to unload. So, I knew the bears were there.
The work was fair, a lot of kitchen work and clean up. After the work day we would unwind with some drinks at our cabins, or smoke some grass in the outdoor, wood stove powered hot tub. Me, Micca, and this dude Forest shared a big cabin, and this dude Hayden had one down the road. After work one evening Hayden invited us over to smoke some cheeba. Was this good stuff? Duuuuuude, we were like next door to Humboldt county, ya know what I’m saying? The Humboldt dude, the Humboldt. Anyhow, we go to Hayden’s cabin, which has a little porch out front. He has two things on this little porch.
1. A rocking chair.
2. A gravity bong.
If you don’t know what a gravity bong is, it’s an evil invention built with the top half of a plastic gallon of milk and a bucket of water. ‘Nuff said. So we’re doing hits off this gravity bong, and suddenly I’m like “shit, I am very high. And now I feel kind of dizzy and nauseous.” I tell Micca and Hayden that they should keep on rocking in the free world, but that I’m going to go lay down in bed. By now it’s completely dark, and I have no flashlight. There’s only the moonlight. I walk down the road a bit and come to the clearing where our cabin is. Now I’m about a football field away from our cabin, and I hear this huge snapping, crunching, stomping sound in the woods behind our cabin.
“SHiiiiiiiiiT!” I think, and my heart speeds up. “Maybe my high, paranoid brain just made that up.” More snapping, crunching, stomping sounds. Something big.
“SHiiiiiiiiiT!” I think, “What the hell should I do?!” I stand there for what seemed like forever, totally frozen, holding my breath, listening. More crunching and stomping. Finally I decide what I must do. I must take out my house keys. This way, if the bear attacks me, I will stab him (sorry, PETA) with the keys. I will key the bear. Then I ran as fast as I could, the whole football field, threw open the door, ran inside, and slammed it behind me. Then I carefully hid beneath the window, listening. I was too afraid to peek out the window, because I was afraid the bear might be staring in the window, looking for me. After awhile I got into my bed, but soon heard the crunching and stomping again. It sounded pretty close. I had an awful night’s sleep, because I kept waking up in waves of paranoia.

FIGHTING A HOT ANDROID
And of course, fighting a hot android would be a good way to go.
“Is that a vray gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” She’d say in a cocky, sexy, robot voice.
“Yeah toots? That’s pretty funny talk. And whaddaya got down your pants? A fuckin’ toaster?”
“Vhy don’t you try to find out Krulos…before I kill you. Before I kill you dead!” She’d say, pulling a giant lazer gun out of her shirt. You get the idea. Some sassy, sexy talk and then BLAM BLAM BLAM ZAP ZAP ZAP!!! (sorry PETA or whatever agency handles the rights of hot androids). She’d shoot me over and over again. It would go on for like ten hours. Then I’d sneak up on her and croak out “suuuu…priise” and shoot her with a hand cannon, then fall over dead myself.
A lot better than dying in your sleep.

THE DISH DOG MARTYRS

2009-01-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

There were three ex-dishwashers of the café who have died of alcohol related conditions over the last year and a half. They drank themselves to death. All three were somewhere in their fifties. Here they’ll be called “Peter,” “Paul,” and “Joseph.”

JOSEPH
Joseph had thin, greasy hair combed over his scaly, pock marked head. He had a vulgar looking moustache and was missing a tooth, most likely from falling off a barstool. He had the looks of an evil landlord, a Snidley Whiplash character who would twirl his moustache hair with glee as he’d try to goose the rent out of the poor widowed farm wife.
Despite this, I got along with the guy alright. We weren’t bffs or anything, but we always said ‘hi’ and engaged in some type of small talk every day. You know, sports, weather, how much work sucks, etc, etc, so on and so forth.
He was unpopular with the waitresses, which is a bad bad bad place for a dishwasher to be. Those waitresses will conspire silently, wait patiently, and then sabotage your very soul. They’ll tell you they left a birthday present for you in the garage, and you’ll go out there, touched by their generosity. Then you’ll discover the garage door locks behind you and that the room is filled with rabid mountain lions and the walls are lined with mousetraps.
Such was the case with Joseph. As soon as he slouched through the door, you could see the back hair of the waitresses starting to stand on end, their postures clenched and uncomfortable. He came to work sometimes noticeably drunk. He sometimes snuck off to a side room to catch a few Z’s. The waitresses were convinced he had a bottle hidden somewhere on the premises and the flipped the place more thoroughly than the vice squad. No stone was left unturned in the search for the stash in a desperate attempt to find hard alcohol hard evidence. They even had me search the tank of the men’s room toilet on three different occasions. Now that you mention it, that is a pretty good place to hide the hooch.
One day I walked in, and Mo was smirking at me through a haze of cigarette smoke.
“Wait’ll you see Joseph today.” She said, exhaling smoke. “He’s turned yellow.”
“Sure, Mo.” I said, dismissing it. I thought she was implying something like “he’s a little green around the gills” or that he looked pale and a little ill. Then he walked in.
“Holy cats!....He’s….YELLOW!” I shout whispered to Mo.
“I told you.” She said.
“No, no…he’s yellllllll-ow!”
“I told you.”
“I mean, he looks like he walked out of an episode of the fucking Simpsons!” I was still kind of in shock. I’ve never seen anyone Crayola yellow before.
“I told you.”Mo said again.
As you can probably guess, it’s not a good sign when you turn as yellow as yield sign. It means you are dying. And a few months later, Joseph was dead.

PAUL
Paul had a drinking problem.
His doctor said “Paul, if you continue to drink, you will drop over dead as a fucking doornail.”
Paul said, “Thanks for the advice, doc.” Then he headed straight for the Roman Coin.
I liked Paul. He was a nice, jolly guy. He loved to laugh and joke around. Sure, he was in a goddamn grouchy mood sometimes, but who the fuck isn’t? I can’t remember now if he quit or was fired for being drunk on the job, which happened on a regular basis. The booze made him happy. The waitresses were split on their decision on Paul. I liked him.
He started losing weight. Like I said, he was jolly. Jolly to me implies a little fat, which Paul was. He started to lose weight, rapidly, and it wasn’t from dieting or exercise. The weight loss looked unnatural. His skin tone was changing, too, it was yellowish greenish grayish. That’s the best way I can describe it. It was like he was shriveling up and dying. It was depressing to see. I remember seeing him, gray looking, soaking wet, walking in the rain with his XXL t-shirt hanging off his now L body, heading to the Roman Coin. Things got worse and he checked into the hospital. He didn’t check out.

PETER
It was kind of a surprise. I knew Peter drank too much, and popped an unprescribed amount of pain pills, which is a no no, but I didn’t think much on it. He didn’t look great, but he didn’t look like he was going to drop over.
Peter had a bushy beard and long hair and a wild look in his eyes, like Charles Manson. He was always dressed in the same beat up flannel and beat ups jeans, chain smoking Old Golds and looking around him wildly. Initially the dude freaked me out a little bit, with all the staring and teeth grinding and mumbling to himself. Soon I realized that this was the pain pills talking and that he was an ok guy. He had miserable things happen in his life and I felt bad for him. I do remember thinking that he looked a bit worse than usual last week. He wasn’t making sense and seemed angry about it. I swear his beard looked much grayer than it had been days before, but maybe my mind has invented it. He disappeared for a few days, then one evening his mother walked in. His mother is like three hundred years old, slouched over a walker, dressed in an ancient floor length fur coat, a mess of white hair on her head. The boss and I were at the front counter. She walked through the door with much effort, and stared down at us.
“Peter is dead.” She said, making a great effort to lift her head. Like I said, it was kind of a surprise.
Later I was at the bar having a drink. I stared down into my glass. “Shit, man.” I thought, “This shit will kill you.”

2008: My Big Fat Ego

2009-01-01T16:14:00.000-08:00

A lot of my colleagues are writing 2008-year-in-review pieces which are pretty entertaining. I thought I'd jump on the band wagon by reviewing some of my favorite write ups over the last year.
It's all I got people. Me and the laptop. By the way, although I've never named my penis, and hopefully never will, I have named my laptop("Pepper Potts"), my cellphone("Yorick"), and my ipod shuffle ("Metatron"). So I got that going.

I wrote 33 articles and had 3 columns (2 "Talk Derby" and 1 "Boozehound") published in 2008 in addition to this blog and the Riverwest 24 blog. Not bad for an old man, but not enough to pay the rent.
Here's some of my favorite interesting, compelling, or just zany excerpts from some of my favorite pieces.
JANUARY
"Malcolm Michiles looks out his apartment window. It has begun to snow, and he studies it, sipping a mug of tea. It is two days before the Packers will beat the Raiders for the NFC North division title.
“I’m not sure about this snow. I haven’t had to deal with this. I’m mostly concerned about the equipment.” Michiles is talking about his unusual and challenging DJ gig, a gig he also calls “The best gig of my life. It’s like playing on a mountain.” Every home game at Lambeau field, Michiles sets up his DJ equipment at the Green Bay Packer’s sideline and spins for the players warming up, the idea being that the music will help psych the Pack up. Over the next couple of games, Michiles will struggle to stay warm, keep snow off his records and needles, and heat his equipment with deer hunter’s hand warmers."
- from “Malcolm Michiles, Official Packers DJ” Shepherd Express Jan.10-16
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-462-malcolm-michiles.html

FEBRUARY

"Politicians are known for trying to use flowery language, but how poetic are their souls? Woodland Pattern offered the 3rd District candidates a chance to wax poetic the night of February 15, and all showed up for the challenge except John Connelly..."

"Fouliard himself was up next, and picked up an acoustic guitar. “Let me introduce you to my friend, A” he said “It stands for aequitas, which is Latin for justice.” He then sang a rendition of Where the Streets Have No Name by U2. U2 is certainly must be on the top of Fouliard’s playlist. He once tried to get a million people to sign a petition to have the group play a charity gig at Miller Park, although he was unable to convince the Irish rockers to sign on."
-from “Roses Are Red…” milwaukeeeworld.com Feb.16
http://www.milwaukeeworld.com/blog/2008/02/080216.html
A previous piece I wrote on the aldermanic candidates encouraged an entertaining response from candidate Dan Fouliard: http://www.milwaukeeworld.com/blog/2008/01/on-campaign-trail.html#comments

MARCH

"Jee plays an infectious, energetic, pop-punky Orange county-y sound, a ray of South Cali supersonic sunlight that blinds the frozen no-fun-niks of the local scene. Leah Jee and The Boys (her back up band: Jim Sinicki, bass, Lior Dar, drums, Bryan Burch, guitar) have played it all, from the sweat-soaked, beer-swilling masses at Summerfest to intimate serenades on a stormy night at the Riverwest Commons."
-from “Leah Jee Rocks BBC” vitalsourcemag.com please note my word "Orange county-y"

APRIL
I'm going to refer to this article as a whole.
“Under The Radar Dining: Milwaukee’s Secret Café Society” ran in the Shepherd Express April 9- 15 issue. It was a lot of fun to write, and part of the fun was all the secrecy.
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-1602-under-the-radar-dining.html

MAY
I'm also referring to this one as a whole.

“End of the Echo Base: Police Shut Down Bike Co-op/ Performance Space” ran in the Shepherd Express May 29-June 4 issue. It started with me hearing the story in a bar, then following through, interviewing a lot of people, looking at police reports, etc. It's sad that it had to be an "obituary" piece, and I genuinely was dismayed the space had to shut down.
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-2277-the-untimely-end-of-the-echo-base-collective.html

JUNE
"And what about Hitler? How did der Fuhrer get his snicklefritz on?"
-from “Neo Nazis, Riot Gear, and the Pink Bloc” altdash.com June 10
http://altdash.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=74

JULY
"In May, two of the carnival’s performers, Pinky and Erik Bang, had a rummage sale. It wasn’t your typical knickknacks, toasters and old dishes. The spread included juggling pins, swords for swallowing, eccentric suits, a bucket of raccoon bones and stilts. I bought a mummified bat – I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to do with it, but it seemed like a steal at fifteen bucks."
“Dead Man’s Carnival” Vital Source Magazine
http://www.vitalsourcemag.com/index.php/magazine/article/dead-mans-carnival/
Also,the M2MTT story turned out well. It's going to reprinted in Cafe Racer magazine later this month.
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-2736-midwest-speed-racers.html

AUGUST
"The fifth annual Midwest Gypsy Swing Fest, held on Friday and Saturday at a farm in Fitchburg, felt more like a family picnic of talented jazz musicians than a festival. They played at Art in the Barn, with plastic chairs and bales of hay set up for seating. There were no aggressive sponsors, and the bathroom was located through the horse stall, next to a horse named Ringo."
-from “Jazz and jam reunite at the Midwest Gypsy Swing Fest in Fitchburg” TheDailyPage.com(Madison Isthmus’ website) Aug.24
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=23584

SEPTEMBER
"And talk about sexy! At one New Year’s Eve gig at the Hi Hat, scores of dancing women crowded the makeshift stage, and when too many foxes surrounded the band doing the foxtrot, the hen house fell apart and the stage dumped the band and the dames on the floor!"
-from “Hail Cesar Palace” altdash. com Sept.1
Probably the most ridiculous sentence I wrote all year.
http://altdash.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=96

"The Uptowner, a 58-year-old corner bar in Riverwest, seems an unlikely venue for an impromptu noise show on a Saturday night. Peter J. Woods sets up his gear, synthesizers, effect pedals and an electric violin on a card table while a small group of people gather in front of him and a couple of guys shoot pool directly behind him.

Then the noise starts.

A violent wall of screeching distortion fills the room. There is no rhythm, no melody and no noticeable structure. Woods begins to scream into a microphone, heavily distorted. Two of the bar patrons start to get angry.

"Turn this shit off, now!" one of the patrons yells from the end of the bar, his face turning red. "This is the worst shit I've ever heard in my life! Stop it!"

Woods plays a short set and then packs up. As he walks by me with an armful of gear, he says, "This is what I was talking about earlier."
-from “The Art of Noise” Shepherd Express Sept.25-Oct.1
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-3814-the-art-of-noise.html

OCTOBER
“Stacey” was concerned about us visiting. She was afraid we would be abducted or worse: executed, by aliens. She wanted to know our next of kin in case we met death in Appleton, warning us that they were watching her house, armed with ray guns that had three settings: stun, kill, and vaporize. She was protected from the aliens by God. If our faith was not strong, she said, Groschopf and I would surely be vaporized by the aliens. We would not even make it down the street to Beansnappers before we died..."

"On our way to the meeting, I told Groschopf we couldn’t sit next to each other because I might burst out into fits of laughter. To make matters worse, I am recovering from a painful boil on my ass and Doc Feelgood at the free clinic has given me some high octane pain pill poppers that have made me drowsy and ultra mellow yellow."
-from “Abducted and Alienated” appeared as a two part story in Alt- magazine and its website, altdash. com
http://altdash.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=121

NOVEMBER
I'll refer to this as a whole as well, since it's a Q and A:
“Barber Extrodanaire: Off the cuff with Jose Ortiz” Shepherd Express Nov.25
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-4631-barber-extraordinaire.html

DECEMBER
"His studio, near Marquette University, is exactly what you might expect: littered with all things pirate. There's a treasure trove of books, maps, bottles of rum, swords and a skull wearing a pirate hat. Above his computer, where he broadcasts his show, is his own pirate flag. It features a cartoon monkey wearing a tri-corner hat with a pair of crossing cutlasses beneath it."
-from “The Other Kind of Pirate Radio” Shepherd Express Dec.24
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-4953-the-other-kind-of-pirate-radio.html

REGULAR NICKNAME MASTER LIST

2008-12-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

Any workplace with regular customers leads to nicknames for the regulars. My workplace is a little above and beyond, over the top, and off the blinking hook. Are some of these nicknames mean? Perhaps. But they are useful for code identification so the employees can communicate information about people back and forth.
* Indicates that the nickname was christened by yours truly!

REGULARS WHO HAVE BEEN KICKED OUT AND THEIR NICKNAME MIGHT GIVE YOU A CLUE WHY
Stand Up and Pee Lady (one of my favorite souvenirs is a note from Mo informing the staff that "Stand Up and Pee Lady" has been permanently kicked out)
Rat Face Bastard
Blue Tooth
Filthy McNasty (as reported here:http://teakrulos.blogspot.com/2008/03/hotel-pharmacy.html)
Piss Pants
The Witch
Crazy Christian Lady(as reported here:http://teakrulos.blogspot.com/2008/06/god-tells-me.html)
The Player
Miss Fish (also known as Bobblehead)
Freak Show
The Golfer (for threatening the waitresses with a golf club)
White Power Santa Claus (this nickname was actually passed on to me from the fine folks at Beans and Barley and I instituted it here.)

CELEBRITY LOOK ALIKES (# in front of ones who also fall into previous category)
Rasputin
Columbo
*Frankie Four Fingers (named after a character in the film Snatch, because he also lost a finger to the mob for his gambling debt)
It's Pat (the androgynous Saturday Night Live character)
#Edward Scissorhands (a schizophrenic heroin addict who resembles the Tim Burton created character)
Sheneneh (named after the Martin Lawrence character on the show Martin)
*Count Floyd (a vampire-like italian named after the SCTV character)
Young George W. Bush (looks so much like him, I'm surprised no one has whipped a shoe at his head)
*Col. Klink (named after the "HOOOOO-GAN!" shouting nazi colonel on Hogan's Heroes)
Dumb and Dumber (a couple named after the Jim Carrey/Jeff Daniels comedy)
Number one son (named after Charlie Chan's son)
Captain Ahab (eye patch sporting regular with huge yellow fingernails)
Moby Dick (huge fat dude often sporting a "tail" made of a string of toliet paper hanging out of his ass crack)
#Jeffrey Dahmer (kicked out for generally creeping out everyone)
The Scream (named after the painting by Edvard Munch)
*Gimli, son of Gloin (named after the axe wielding dwarf of the Lord of the Rings)
Mumbles/Mushmouth (This marble mouthed individual has picked up two nicknames. Mumbles is the incoherent mob stooge from Dick Tracy, Mushmouth is the equally hard to understand member of Fat Albert's gang.)
*Abbie Hoffman (named after the activist and Steal This Book author)
*#Skeletor (named after the bony He-Man nemesis)

IRONY
"Skinny" Vinnie (He actually weighs 600-700 pounds. Write up coming soon.)
The Beauty Queen (don't ask)

YOU KINDA HAVE TO BE THERE
*Fuzzpass (asks for a fuzzpass instead of a bus pass)
Dinner Man (always orders the dinner special)
The Seal People (I have no idea)
Mr. and Mrs. Gopher
Sock Monkey Lady (brings her sock monkey in and feeds it soup)
*Lawn Gnome
Double or Nothing (always orders two seperate glasses of soda and uses two ashtrays)
*Moss Man (has hair that looks like moss)
The Big Cannolli (big fat italian dude)

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF TONE LOC

2008-12-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles, California, 1989

CHAPTER 1

2008-12-27T09:02:00.000-08:00

Tone Loc is dismayed. The women at the club don't seem to notice him, as if he were a Mr. Cellophane. In his mind, this can't be right, because he is a skilled rapper and he is dressed in the finest clothing.
He notices some kind of love guru at one end of the bar, surrounded by admiring women. Loc decides to ask this sage what his secret is. The mystic reveals that it is not his award winning personality nor his physical appearance, but an elixir with strong aphrodiasiactical properties. The mystic calls this potion, when served in liquid form, "funky cold medina." Tone Loc is intrigued.

CHAPTER 2

2008-12-27T08:54:00.000-08:00

Tone Loc is nervous or perhaps skeptical of the effects of the medina, so he arranges an experiment. He decides he will administer the medina to his dog and study the possible side effects. After consuming the medina, the animal shows a noticeable increase in its libido, to the point of simulating sexual intercourse with Loc's leg. To make the situation more problematic, the dog is able to communicate the location of the medina supply to a network of dogs, who heads to Loc's house. Among this pilgrimage of dogs are dog celebrities Spuds MacKenzie, spokesdog for Bud Light beer, and Alex who represents the now defunct Stroh's brewing company.

CHAPTER 3

2008-12-27T08:48:00.001-08:00

Encouraged by the libido level demonstrated by the canine, Tone Loc heads out to the club. There, the medina is administered to a "woman" who claims her name is "Sheena." After ingesting the medina, Loc determines "Sheena" was "with it" after displaying sexual arousal by demonstrating provocative licking of the lips.
After returning with "Sheena" to his home and getting "her" to disrobe, however, Loc discovers that "Sheena" is a transsexual or transgendered person. Loc is not ready to take a walk on the wild side, his simply stated reasoning being that "this is the 80's, and I'm down with the ladies."

CHAPTER 4

2008-12-27T08:43:00.000-08:00

"Back in the saddle," Tone Loc decides to let the audience help him out as he becomes a contestant on the Chuck Woolery hosted game show Love Connection. The audience "picks a winner" and the two have a date at the Hilton. After "dinner and medina" the date reveals to Loc that she expects matrimony. These expectations are unreasonable to Loc.
Loc seems to have learned his lesson and admits, "you don't play around with the funky cold medina."

RED AND THE SECRET SAUSAGE RECIPE

2008-12-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

ME: Were you talking about someone who has a secret recipe over there? Who has a secret recipe?

RED: Oh, ders so many people dat godda secret recipe. Dey've had 'em for years, and dey don't wanna give 'em out, and der stupid for not givin 'em out. They really are, they're stupid. They're stupid...you know where Dentyne's is, the butcher? (I shake my head no) He's been sick, and he's been recooperating and der's a couple people in the family. A couple people in the family, he don't own the property alone, and he's not going to re-open again. It's kiddy corner from Sanford's restaurant. So I talk to, he's related to him, Joe. He's on the board of trustees at the ICC (Italian Community Center) They're talkin about (begins to kind of whisper) they're gonna sell the place, put up a condo in der. Then Joe says dat he...he won't give up the recipe.

ME: Recipe for what?

RED: Sausage. Making sausage. Klements came over der, and dey put a chunk of money down on da table. Bob, you can give him $10 million dollars and he won't take it. He gave Klements only half of the recipe. Only part of it. How stupid can you get? You're going to die, you want to keep the recipe going? And he says the kids don't really want to work.

ME:Do you think he has the recipe memorized, or is it on paper?

PHIL: Aaaah, Red, I'm going to go. You gonna stay here?

RED: Well, that's what we were talking about. (exits with Phil)

Later, Joe, another regular and aquaintance of Red, comes to the counter with a pamphlet on a "tracfone" which is a cheapie phone with prepaid minutes. We discuss the pros and cons.

JOE: ...Dey say you godda buy tree-hundred minutes. I don't need no tree-hundred minutes. You got...you got ninedy days to use dem minutes, otherwise dey bump all dem minutes off the phone.

ME: Yep, that's what it appears to say.

JOE: Tree-hundred minutes? Ah, who am I gonna talk to for tree-hundred minutes?

ME: You could call Red. Then you'll burn through those minutes in no time.

JOE: Ahhhh, that guy. Gimme a break...

Turns my attention to small print in the pamphlet about warranties.

RED THROWS IT IN REVERSE

2008-11-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

ME: Were you talking about someone getting thrown out of a window or something?

RED: Noooo, what I was talking about was years ago I lived in this neighborhood, over by the boy's club on Arlington and up dis way here, we had people that we knew and da tavern down here, Listwann's, my buddy, I grew up with him, his parents lived on Franklin and den, when dat house went up here on Farwell or Prospect er something, his pa retired from the post office and had a lot of money...

PHIL:(sarcastically) ...ahhh yeaaaaaaaaah...

RED: ...his wife was the second wife, came from Italy. She came from Italy. And um,what happened was, we were over by this one guy, I didn't have a car then, but he's drive'n around, come'n down Farwell avenue, we're goin' up Brady street, he says "Watch this!" 35 miles an hour, I'm gonna shift da gear, put it in reverse. He blew a rod in the engine...

PHIL:...aaaaaaaaaaaaah...

RED: Here's the guy at American motors tellin me the same thing...

PHIL:(waving hands in rejection) ....aaaah...

RED: He's working on the production line...

PHIL:...aah, you godda be kidding me. Jesus Christ.

RED:...and he's in the reserves and he says listen...

PHIL:...shit...

RED:.. and he says, listen, I can't blame the kids. Little kid like that and he's got him standing up on the front seat while he's drive'n an old station wagon, and the kid sees dad pull the lever down, so the kid reaches out and pulls the lever down...

PHIL:(disgusted laughter)... aww, c'mon...

RED: ...Blew everything on the engine, the engine broke. Yer doing 35, 40 miles an hour, you throw it in reverse...

PHIL: ...What does he do? He throws it in reverse. Holllly Christ. He throws it reverse?

RED:...You could blow a rod. And if the rod comes through the firewall and hits you in the stomach, then you're in trouble...

PHIL:...ahhh how stupid do you think this guy is? 35 miles an hour and I'm gonna throw my car in reverse? Hollllllly Christ.
What was he...

RED:...And den, you go up in dis guy's house and he's like a hippy he's got...

PHIL:...Christ. Who's the dummy? Who's the dummy he was riding with? Ahhhhhh Jeez...

RED:...You got three black walls in the bedroom and one wall is white. The mattress laying on the floor...

PHIL:...Who's the dummy he's with?...

RED:...Now go out in the living room. Chains coming down from the living room...

PHIL:...35 miles an hour...

RED:...With an octagon stop sign he's using for a coffee table...

PHIL:...Ahhh, I'll see ya Red...

RED:...He was like a hippy. I'll see ya Phil. I godda go in here. (points to Men's room)...

PHIL: Ok, don't fall in. When you flush, be sure.

For the next 31 minutes Red talks. He tells me about his job, the night security detail at a quiet car dealership. He tells me about a lot more things. These include, but aren't limited to,how to clean a thermos, including a failed plan involving hot vinegar , a good sale on a thermos that he had to pass up, how he dropped a thermos and dented it one time, how he needs coffee to stay awake because he falls asleep at work and in fact got caught sleeping on the job, how the chief was mad, how he accidentally called the chief by pressing a button in his sleep, the company's car insurance plan, the company Christmas party and white elephant gift exchange, the details of the party invitation, the history of the Safe House, how he bought a used car and it's insurance plan, how much money he would have to win in the lottery to break even, the siren light on his security car, his car battery, and more.

I just love my day job. It's such a good use of my time.

RED AND THE FROZEN TURKEY SNIPER

2008-11-23T14:16:00.000-08:00

RED: ....So I turn around on that bridge...

PHIL: Did ya jump off that son of a gun?

RED: I says "dat turkey flew away!" (laughs)

RED: (pointing to Phil) I was telling him, the one day, it was winter, I was going over the Hoan bridge, to go home to Saint Francis. I looked, I said what the hell, that's a pretty good sized turkey. Frozen. Still had the wrapping on it. Probably a guy had it in the back of his pickup truck. And it fell off. He hidda bump or something and it fell off. It was laying against the side of da wall. Sure, when this side hits,it's uh...(demonstrates falling turkey hitting road with hand) it's uh...it's going to tear the plastic a little, but you could clean that off. But I can't stop, sheriff might drive by, I'll get a ticket for stopping. I got to the other side of the bridge, I pulled off, turn around, come back on, pull over and where'dit go? Fly away? Somebody stopped and picked it up, but I wasn't going to take that chance. End up getting a ticket? Not me.

ME: You might have gotten a ticket, but you'd have a free turkey.

RED: Well, it looked like it was still frozen too yet!

RED TRIPS THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

2008-11-20T10:20:00.001-08:00

ME: What was that term you were using earlier? Something about the "light fantastic?"

RED: "I tripped the light fantastic."

ME: Yeah, that's it. I was trying to remember.

RED: I used dat at my credit union. You say "I tripped the light fantastic." Then they're supposed to come back and say
"You wanna gedda young lady? You dilly her in the dally, you twidder her in the twilight,then yer jackin in the dashcliffs in someone's underwear out on the washline, and the grand finale yer the phantom in the boudoir."
Then you grab the guy's leg and go "SHEEP SHANKS!" You yell "Sheep shanks!", but yeah, "I tripped the light fantastic."

ME: But what does that mean?

RED: I don't know. It's just a term that somebody...the guy at da credit union, he was behind the manager, he said, I never heard dat before.

PHIL:(leaving) Ok, Red, see ya.

RED:Or da one where I was on the treadmill. The doc says, we're going to stop the treadmill and give you some dye, then you sit down for fifteen minutes, then we get you back on the treadmill. I say, doc, you ever hear the term 'heart dropsy?' He says , no, what is that? I says its when a guy sits his ass down in a chair and he ain't got enough heart to pick it up again! (laughs)

PHIL: (in doorway) Hey Red, I'll see ya then if you're gonna stand here and bullshit all day.

RED: Sheep shank! (Exits)

RED TALKS ABOUT THE DANGERS OF THE DESERT

2008-11-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

ME:I heard you guys talking about scorpions. What's up with that?

RED: Oh, where my sister lives, Arizona, she's godda condo and you can look at a computer and rent it.You walk out on the patio and you look out at the desert. Dey got snakes out there, dey got something dat looks like a wild pig called an abalonian, scorpions, snakes. Then dey godda bush. You see this bush when you're driving down the side of da road, they got them on the golf course too, it's called the jumping sequoia bush. You walk too close, the bush leans over and grabs you. You get all sorts of burrs, you godda use a tweezers to get them oudda you. It's just growing out and it leans over and grabs ya. Then he says(ed-"He" being his sister's husband), then he says, when you look off, going over the desert, there's a casino out der, and the indians live on both sides. They don't care if you go out der. I said, why would you want to go out der? Don't you value your life? You bump into a rattlesnake...you bump into a wild pig, it's called an abalonian, they come down there looking for some food. A scorpion. Then my sister says, by the way, you wanna stay here tonight? I said, you got the youngest kid coming in with her boyfriend, from Madison.She says, naw, you can stay here. I figure I can crack the door so you can hear the coyotes howl at night. There's a screen on it. I says, no thanks, I'll stay down there with you, you let them two stay here. Cause she had the car. I says, well, unless you give me the car, and then when he goes to work, you ain't got no car. Cause he works at the golf course part time, just to get free golfing. Other than that, they're both retired. And she's getting $2,000 a month out of that one condo. That's pretty good money. A certain time of the year...it's not rented out all year long. A month, maybe month and a half where she don't have it rented out. The people look in the computer, and she gets the same people all the time.

ME: Where is this?

RED: It's in Arizona, but it's called Hob Hills, Arizona. If you're up on that patio, you're looking out at a man made lake, then there's a mall in front of it. There's a ten story fountain in the back der, that shoots up ten stories high. Around 10 o'clock at night it shuts itself off. It's a more fancier neighborhood. You godda go a long ways to get to a grocery store. You godda have a vehicle out there, unless you wanna walk. I mean, they got sidewalks that you can walk on. Yeah. I was sitting on the patio there, Christmas Day, with short sleeve shirt and shorts.

ME:Nice.

RED: I'm not worried about June and July. I can deal with hot weather. And no snow.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

2008-11-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

I got into the cab at 10:15AM, minutes after I woke up and I thought "This cab stinks like garbage!" Then I realized it was me.
The cab dropped me off at Discovery World, where I was to work on an article for about four hours on one of their upcoming programs.
And what did I discover at Discovery World? Couples.

Couples everywhere. Happy couples holding hands, arms drapped around each other, hugging. Couples making out in the Les Paul House of Sound exhibit in front of their grossed out kids while a picture of Les Paul looked down at them, smiling benignly.

I took a break from the journalism to go to the Alterra on the lake to get a coffee to go. Outside it was much worse. Couples were jogging together down the goose shit splattered bike path, running and playing grab ass. There were couples riding tandem bikes and walking dogs (and the dogs were couples, too).
As I walked by the art museum, a young man called to me.
"Please, can you take a picture?" He said, gesturing to a young woman standing by the famous Calatrava designed building.
"Sure." I said, shrugging. They put their arms around each other, beaming brightly.
"Cheez." I said.
"Thanks. It's our fifth anniversary." The man said.
"How 'bout that." I mumbled, walking away.

Was there relief at the Alterra? No.
The couples were snuggled up, suggestively tasting each other's drinks and foodstuffs. Their bodies were full of comfort and sometimes innuendo. A couple across the street played frisbee. The gal who poured my coffee was cute, but I could tell she had a boyfriend. Sometimes you just know these things.

I walked back and spotted a couple walking, their hands in each other's back pockets. Her head was tilted back, laughing heartily at whatever half assed witticism the dumb ape was spewing.
I love it. Looooooooooooooooove it. Fuck'n love it.

What the FUCK? For real? Is November the first suddenly FUCKING VALENTINE'S DAY?! Is this really fucking fuck fuck fuckedy fuck for fuck FUCK? Fuck, fuck, and fuck!

ABDUCTED AND ALIENATED

2008-10-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

PART 1: THERE ARE DANGEROUS THINGS OUT THERE
By TEA KRULOS
Alien graphics by J. Jason Groschopf

JUNE 2007 (EARTH CALENDAR) APPLETON/OUTER SPACE
“Stacey Doe” had just returned from a trip to Denver, Colorado and went out to her porch to light up a cigarette. She inhaled deeply on the cool summer night. Her house was just off the highway on the north side of Appleton, not far from a strip club named Beansnappers. Her dogs barked in the backyard. A light caught her eye and she lifted her head skyward. The sky was filled with spacecraft and flashing lights flying in formation. She heard a hum as a tiny craft, the size of a bird passed by her on the porch, displacing the cigarette smoke. It was so close she could have touched it.
She doesn’t remember what happened next, but she was on one of the craft. There was a blue neon device over her head, and in front of her hung a screen displaying an x-ray of her brain, and she could see implants in her skull. A human, an agent working for the aliens, lifted her off the table. The aliens had completed a surgery, in which they had fitted her with special eye lenses. Her eyes felt terrible the entire next week, “like sandpaper”. She doesn’t remember what happened next. She was home, but the unusual events were far from over.

AUGUST 5 2008 (EARTH CALENDAR) APPLETON
“Stacey Doe” told me this was not the first time she had been abducted. She said she has been abducted at least ten times, going back to when she was nine years old. Her daughter has been abducted, along with two of her unborn children, stolen from this planet. We exchanged several e-mails and talked on the phone a few times. Well, she talked, and talked, and I listened. She said a lot of things.
She said aliens had threatened her with a ray gun. There was an alien bounty on her head. Her neighbors were part of an alien conspiracy against her well being. Her house is located in the middle of a UFO base, she said. She was like “the hole in the middle of a donut” and everyone around her was in on the conspiracy. One of her neighbors had some Bigfoot creatures chained up in their yard, and they stunk like skunk mixed with musk ox. She said she was in contact with a light-being named “Sam.”She told me, “I was sent here by God and I am a ‘white-lighter,’ ‘walk-in,’ ‘Indigo mother’ and born a ‘Star Child.’ We agreed to come here to help the people on Earth/Terra.” I didn’t know the meaning of those terms but she didn’t stop talking so I didn’t ask. She saw people being transported in plastic spheres up to a UFO. She once saw an alien in her indoor pool. She said a lot more things.
I told her I wanted to visit her in Appleton with my friend and colleague, Groschopf. Groschopf has long had a skeptical interest in all things paranormal, and was helpful in writing this article.
“Stacey” was concerned about us visiting her. She was afraid we would be abducted, or worse, executed, by aliens. She wanted to know our next of kin in case we met death in Appleton. She warned us that they were watching her house, armed with ray guns, which had three settings, she said: stun, kill, and vaporize. She was protected from the aliens by God. If our faith was not strong, she said, Groschopf and I would surely be vaporized by the aliens. We would not even make it down the street to Beansnappers before we were dead.
We decided not to go to Appleton. Groschopf was having car troubles, and to be honest, “Stacey” was freaking me out. I told “Stacey” we were too young to die, and she understood, she said.

APRIL 19 2008 (Earth Calendar) Bay View Library

Placard depicting different UFOs at the Bay View meeting. Photo by Groschopf.

“We estimate between 4 and 6 million people are abducted weekly” said Bill Burt, State Director for the International Community for Alien Research (ICAR). That is a pretty impressive number compared to the people who have shown up for this meeting: two—me and Groschopf. Burt admits we have smashed his attendance record. At his first meeting, only one person accidentally stumbled into the meeting. A second meeting was cancelled due to a snowstorm.
The Alt- editors spotted a posting on Craigslist for this meeting which sent me down a rabbit hole, or maybe up a gravity beam from which I may never recover.
On our way to the meeting, I told Groschopf we couldn’t sit next to each other because I might burst out into fits of laughter. To make matters worse, I am recovering from a painful boil on my ass and Doc Feelgood at the free clinic has given me some high octane pain pill poppers that have made me drowsy and ultra mellow yellow.
I walk in first, and sure enough, no one else was there except Bill Burt eating a giant Big Mac. He was crammed into a peach T-shirt and baseball cap. This was exactly what I didn’t want. I was hoping for more people to add more interest to the story and act as cover, so I could blend in. I sat in the front row and Groschopf came in and grabbed a seat near the back of the room. Burt has a single handout, which was a list of recommended websites. He has an unnaturally slow and deep voice that sounds like it’s been digitally altered to protect his identity.
Here are some notes on what Burt had to say.

• Burt feels aliens are bad. “There’s no evidence to the contrary,” he said. “There are other things out there. Other dangerous things out there.” Burt admits he himself has not experienced an abduction.
• “UFOs are the most sought topic on the internet,” Burt said, “Second is porn.”
• There are several known races of aliens. You got your Whites, your Greys, your Tall Greys, your Blacks, your Reptilians, your Shadows, and more.
• “Aliens communicate through telepathy, so they are ten steps ahead of you.” Burt said.
• There are alien bases on Mars, the dark side of the moon, and underneath bodies of water on Earth.
• Aliens should check if their pants are on fire, because they’re filthy liars. “If you ask them what star they’re from, they’ll lie and make up a fake star. So, how can you trust them?”
• Aliens can “download” info into your brain. “It feels like five or six pails of information have been dumped into your head. Your head hurts and you’re unsure what to do with the information.” Burt told us this, and it also describes how I felt at this meeting.
• Tips for field work: Carry a disposable camera with you at all times. Don’t remove anything from the scene. Wear safety glasses and gloves when handling extraterrestrial material.
• It is likely most people with red hair in the medical field are aliens or agents working for aliens that do prep and recovery work on abductees.

For most of these theories, there is no way I can take them for a test ride, except the last one. I did later find a redheaded woman working in the medical profession.
We’ll call her “Redhead X” to protect her from extraterrestrial retaliation. Redhead X has just graduated from medical school, hopes to be a medical assistant and someday go into pediatric nursing. She claims her red hair is a result of her Irish lineage. Is she an alien or alien agent?
“Not that I know of.” She laughed, “Not that I remember. But if I was working for an alien agency, I wouldn’t tell you. So who knows, I could be.”
At the library, in the middle of the meeting, Groschopf suddenly got up and left. I got a text a few minutes later telling me he was down the street at the Hi Fi Café, and I should meet him there when I’m done. “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” he told me later at the cafe. Meanwhile, I was sitting there face to face with Bill Burt, my drowsy, downer-induced self trying to wrap my head around intergalactic anarchy. A woman randomly walked in and started rambling on about things unrelated to UFOs and I decided to leave and go meet Groschopf. As I’m leaving, Burt encouraged me to attend an event the following month: a talk by super conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs, author of Alien Agenda (Conspiracy spoiler: you will cross paths with Marrs again before this article is over). The talk will be in Black River Falls and will be followed by a “sky watch” from dusk until midnight. I regretfully didn’t make it to the event.
I rendezvous with Groschopf at Hi Fi and he was not impressed with Bill Burt and his theories. Things are soon going to take a right turn at Yugoslavia and head straight toward the Shadow realm, as we prepared to meet a different group, UFO2U.

PART 2: I FOUND AN ALIEN AND JESUS CHRIST

JUNE 21 2008 (EARTH CALENDAR) EAST LIBRARY
It’s easy to dismiss “Stacey Doe” as a paranoid loner, hallucinating aliens zipping through her back yard. Bill Burt also seems to be a loner, eating Big Macs in an empty room at the Bay View Library. UFO2U, however, exercises an unusual groupthink, a hysterical support group that mixes spirituality and the paranormal. I attended one of the group’s meetings in late June.
UFO2U has been meeting once a month at the East Side Library for the last ten years. The group was started by Heidi Hollis, author of a column called “Alien Advice” which is sort of an intergalactic “Dear Abby.”Hollis has had a wide range of interaction with a large variety of entities, both extraterrestrial and spiritual. She was part of a proposed Discovery channel show called “X-Ops,” which was a super team of paranormal investigators led by conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs. The show was cancelled before the pilot aired. The pilot was about the ghosts of the aliens who crashed in Roswell. These ghost aliens were haunting the hospital they died in, according to team X-Ops.
Hollis has also written two self published books. In her first, The Secret War, she claims that she and her friend Amanda discovered they could channel a somewhat witty alien named Cafth(who looks like your average “Gray” alien archetype), and his more guru-like ally Soforus(who looks like Casper the friendly ghost). Amanda would channel these beings while Hollis would play twenty questions. In the book, Hollis says she is a “light” or “energy” being who sometimes will “blow out” electronic devices, by absorbing the energy of the machine. “You could say these things turn off the way they do because I use them as a nutritional supplement instead of the light I have access to, if I’m understanding correctly,” she says in the book. She also details how she has encountered sinister Shadow people of the Shadow realm, along with evil Reptilians, including one who possibly asked her out to dinner. She says in a past or parallel life, she helped train a righteous spiritual army in Yugoslavia. Cafth and Soforus offer an almost Yoda-like wisdom about an upcoming war between the Shadows and a Sci Fi-like alliance that will stop them.
In her second book, Jesus is no Joke, she seems to switch gears. I bought a signed copy of the self-published book from Hollis at the meeting. In the book she claims that she had four visitations by Jesus Christ, starting in 1999. These visits usually occur after she falls asleep, or when she is in a trance like state. One visit was revealed under hypnotism. The book is written in a personal, candid way. For example, she sometimes ends a happy thought with a smiley face emoticon. :-) There are very few references to extraterrestrials, although she does mention the awkward incompatibility of her new encounter.
“Trust me; it’s dawned on me that I was going to be looked at as some kind of weirdo trying to blend Jesus with UFOs and maybe make a new religion out of it all…Wowzers! What a lot to think about if I planned on coming forward with my Jesus encounter.”
In the book, she states that she was unable to see Christ clearly, due to excessive amounts of holy light.
“Pure white light seemed to come from everywhere”, she says of his first visit, “making His face beam like a sun but still darkened against the brighter light behind him.” During this visit, Christ reveals Hollis’ real name, although the significance of this name is never explored.
“I asked, ‘Jesus, what’s my real name?’ I then heard him laugh lightly and say gently, ‘I love you very much, Ileyah!” After saying this, the deity disappears into a wall. He also told her to finish writing The Secret War.
“You need to finish your book. Do not be discouraged by what others say. Know that I will be there and give you the words…” Despite having the hand of God as a co-author, book sales haven’t been otherworldly. The book’s sales rank at amazon.com is number 493,433 as of this writing.
In later visits, “JC” cured Hollis’ case of colitis, and in one dramatic visit, took her on a tour of hell.
UFO2U is joined at this meeting by members of The Lightside, a group that meets in Oshkosh. This group includes author Bonnie Meyer, who has penned two self published books of her own, Alien Contact and Unholy Alliance. (Here’s the book blurb for Unholy Alliance: “An unholy alliance was signed between the negative aliens and the secret world government in Europe in 1572 and with the US in 1946. The secret governments knew with whom they were dealing but were not aware they were being deceived.”)
Everyone at the meeting was extremely inviting and friendly. Groschopf and I were again pretending we didn’t know each other, which is especially funny today as we were “introduced” and Groschopf comments on my unusual name.
“I’m sorry, did you say T? As in the letter? Does it stand for something?” He asked me.
I can tell the UFO2U group was a bit confused about two newcomers showing up, but hope we may be fresh blood. The group went around the table, everyone sharing experiences or interesting things they’ve read. They discuss UFO sightings, a possible secret plan to evacuate the Earth, the end of the world, and an upcoming picnic. The meeting lasted three hours and I leave with a serious case of library head, which is the feeling you get walking out into the sun after being inside for hours.

AUGUST 6 2008 (EARTH CALENDAR) THE UNEARTHLY DESK OF TEA KRULOS
What is up with these abductees? If they’re not experiencing abductions or encounters, what are they experiencing? Rebecca Watson of the site Skepchick.org says people claiming abduction experience something much more earthly: “For instance, there are many people who suffer from something called ‘night terrors,’ a really scary phenomenon in which a person wakes up in bed but is unable to move." Watson explained further. "It's a kind of malfunction the body experiences sometimes, waking up your senses but not your muscles and therefore trapping you between dreams and reality. Some people describe seeing or sensing demons, or ghosts, or aliens, even "feeling" them sitting on their chests or hovering nearby. There's a perfectly good scientific explanation for it, but because the phenomenon is not well known, it can be tremendously frightening and convince even the most rational person that they've had a supernatural experience. Many people are quite relieved once they know that what they experienced had a rational explanation.”

Later, I walked through the park at night, squinting through the city lights to see the stars. The universe is so huge it is beyond imagination. There are billions of galaxies. What is up there? Could Wisconsin be a truck stop for alien life forces?
I crossed the park through the playground, to the parking lot where my intergalactic Cadillac was parked. Elvis and Bigfoot were sitting in the backseat, along with my alien friend, Zorgnus. We heard a booming voice say “Shotgun!” as Jesus Christ leaped into the passenger seat, blinding us with his bright light. I threw back the gear switch on the flux capacitor and we took off into the stratosphere.
“Gentleman, we are now travelling at maximum krulocity, the speed at which awesome happens!” I yelled to my colleagues. The Bigfoot made a sound like Chewbacca in approval.
“Next stop…Alpha Centauri!” With that, we blasted into hyper space, prepared to battle the shadow people.
Ridiculous, you say? Do you have any proof that it didn’t happen?

BONUS FEATURES

WHO THE BLEEEEP IS JIM MARRS?
What George Clinton is to funk, Jim Marrs is to conspiracy theory. He, literally, wrote the book on the JFK assassination conspiracy (Crossfire, an inspiration for Oliver Stone’s film JFK) and won over UFO believers with his 1997 book Alien Agenda. He has also written on 9/11 conspiracies, and even a military conspiracy of a psychic soldiers (who apparently aren’t very effective- where’s Osama Bin Laden?) called Psi Spies.
Marrs’s latest project was to be a documentary for the Discovery channel called "The Alien Ghosts at Roswell", which claimed that not only did aliens crash in Roswell; but that their poor ghosts were trapped in the hospital they were examined in. Wow, two for one! Aliens and ghosts! Apparently, Discovery channel wasn’t impressed. They bought out Marrs’s contract, declined to air it and parted ways. As the April edition of Skeptical Inquirer asks:
“Can a pseudoscientific documentary be so insulting to the viewer’s intelligence that even the cable channel planning to run it turns it down? Apparently at least one was: The Alien Ghosts of Roswell.”

The X-Ops. Marrs is kneeling on the right, with the white beard. The woman with glasses directly behind him is Heidi Hollis.

I checked out Alien Agenda from the library. I really wish I could tell you that I read it and absorbed Mr. Marrs’s ideas, but it’s just not true. About a hundred pages or so into it I felt as though a crazy at the bus stop had been babbling nonstop to me. Here is what I sort of gathered from the book, before setting it down beside my bed, exhausted:
The Moon is probably hollow an alien base or craft NASA and several astronauts know this but they ain’t saying peep going back the Bible says a great many things including probable alien visits just ask old Ezekiel and also aliens vaporized Sodom and Gomorrah how about the pyramids they could only have been built by aliens and moving on the Nazis obviously had help from extra terrestrials building their secret Nazi UFOs it’s possible JFK was whacked because he knew too much about aliens and of course that leads us to Marilyn Monroe who knew the secret of the cover up of alien technology by the USA because she was getting her freak on with JFK and of course none of this begins to touch on the Roswell incident or the secret government group known as the Majestic 12 or Area 51.

WISCONSIN: ONE BIG UFO TRUCK STOP?
Wisconsinites are crazy for extra terrestrials. There are no less than three cities that claim to be the UFO capital of the world, Elmwood, Belleville, and Dundee. All three cities celebrate their title, ignoring the other cities with their own UFO Day celebrations.
Then you got Bob Tohak of Poland, WI, who has built his own UFO landing tower in his backyard. It reads “UFO LANDING PORT- WE”RE NOT THE ONLY ONES”.

The Sci Fi Café and Earth Mysteries Museum in Burlington offers you the rare opportunity to grab a coffee or bowl of soup, then peruse paranormal artifacts in a museum and research center.

INTERESTING MOMENTS IN THE UFO HISTORY OF WISCONSIN
“Some Indians were walking over the plains when they saw someone sitting on the grass. It was a man, wearing shiny clothes. When they approached, he halted them by raising his hand. He said ‘I don’t belong here. I dropped from above.’ He asked that they clean a spot for him in their village, and came to the village later in the day. Every day at sundown, he watched the sky. In a clear voice he said ‘something will come down, I will go up.’ He said he had been running in the sky. There was an open place; he couldn’t stop running, so he dropped through. They said a star descended, the sky man got in and rose to the sky.”
That is the Chippewa story of the “Sky Man”, recorded by Wisconsin historian Charles Brown.
A spree of UFO sightings was recorded in Milwaukee June 28-July 6 1947. Flying saucers were reported from the Pfister Hotel, Mitchell Field, and the residents of the South side. Flying saucer mania had hit the USA in the late 40’s, early 50’s.
One of the most stupid reports comes from April 18, 1961. Farmer Joe Simonton said three “Italian looking” aliens landed on his farm, asking to fill a jug of water. In exchange they gave him three out –of- this –world pancakes, which he said “tasted like cardboard.” The Air Force investigated but concluded Simonton was “delusional” and had “hallucinated.”

MY INTERVIEW WITH REBECCA WATSON OF SKEPCHICK.ORG

Rebecca Watsons leads a team of "skeptical female activists". These women want you to get real and read their posts at www.skepchick.org. Watson also co-hosts the weekly podcast “The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.” You find the podcast at www.theskepticsguide.org

Tea Krulos:I guess the basic argument from people is, look at how vast the universe is. Surely there must be other planets supporting life forms out there. It seems unlikely that in such a huge universe we're the only ones. What do you think?

Rebecca Watson: I agree! I like the idea that perhaps somewhere out there, there's another life form staring up at the skies, or at least going out for drinks or watching TV. I even support SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence -- they're a group of scientists who are actively trying to find any hint of alien life. They're working diligently, but they've yet to find anything.

The Universe is a huge place, and that might mean there's a greater chance of other intelligent beings, but it also means that there's a greater chance that those beings will be too far away to ever find us or make contact. Also, there's the chance that once those beings are evolved enough to hop between stars, they might not even care about letting us know they're there. And even if aliens had the technology to find us and cross countless galaxies to visit us here on Earth, somehow I doubt that they'd suddenly screw up and crash their ship into the desert, or decide to mutilate a few cows, or anally probe a few farmers.

Tea: So, people who claim to be abducted by aliens. If they haven't actually experienced abduction, what have they experienced? Are they delusional? Is it a pop culture influence? Are they attention starved?

Rebecca: It's difficult to say what makes a person believe they were abducted by aliens. For all we know, maybe some were! However, when you examine specific cases, you see that there is often a better explanation.

For instance, there are many people who suffer from something called "night terrors," a really scary phenomenon in which a person wakes up in bed but is unable to move. It's a kind of malfunction the body experiences sometimes, waking up your senses but not your muscles and therefore trapping you between dreams and reality. Some people describe seeing or sensing demons, or ghosts, or aliens, even "feeling" them sitting on their chests or hovering nearby. There's a perfectly good scientific explanation for it, but because the phenomenon is not well known, it can be tremendously frightening and convince even the most rational person that they've had a supernatural experience. Many people are quite relieved once they know that what they experienced had a rational explanation.

There are other instances in which people may believe they've been abducted when they haven't. There may be some people who have had painful experiences as children such as rape, who then deal with their pain by inventing a story that they themselves come to believe. Many people don't realize how easy it is to be fooled, and especially how easy it is to fool yourself.

Pop culture does play a role, of course. Every time period has its favored delusion -- sprites, angels, demons, and ghosts have all had their day. Aliens are a fairly recent development, and the aliens people claim to see tend to follow trends influenced by books, movies, and other sightings.

Tea: How do you explain the following phenomenon...Crop circles…?

Rebecca: Crop circles are a relatively recent pastime, which have been perfectly explainable for decades now. Two British men even 'fessed up, showing exactly how they made hundreds of circles using a plank and a piece of rope. The circles have evolved to be more and more complex, which is easily explainable by the fact that computers capable of calculating beautiful fractals have become pretty commonplace. The simple explanation -- that these are made by pranksters and people having fun -- is much more believable than any complex explanation involving UFOs.

Tea: …cattle mutilations…?

Rebecca: In every case that I've seen a good, thorough examination, these have mundane (and really kind of gross) explanations. Usually, a cow keels over and small scavenging animals come along to get at the good bits. Sad to say that the good bits are often easily acceptable by going up the anus. Ew, I know. Also, blow-flies have been shown to remove eyeballs with nearly surgical precision. And again, ew. So maybe one day we'll see some evidence that aliens are scooping up cows just to steal their anuses and other random parts to make alien hot dogs or something and then dumping the rest of the cow back into a field, but in the meantime I'd rather go for the natural explanation.

Tea:…multiple witnesses (including credible ones such as police or air pilots) seeing the same UFO…?

Rebecca: Again, this is something that must be taken on a case-by-case basis. Multiple witnesses can all jump to the same (wrong) conclusions, which is why in a scientific examination we need to strip away anything that might be subject to bias. I used to perform magic professionally, and could convince a dozen people that I made coins appear out of nowhere -- but that doesn't mean it happened. In a stressful situation, one person's perception can easily color the perceptions of his friends.

As for "credible" witnesses, time and again we are shown that being in a certain profession doesn't make a person credible -- it's more important to be skeptical, with a sharp mind and a scientific approach. For instance, last month police officers in a helicopter saw a UFO, what they described as an "unusual aircraft," in the sky over Wales, making headlines across the world. It turned out to be wedding lanterns. Everyone can be fooled -- they're only human.

Tea:...grainy, out of focus photos of UFOs…?

Rebecca: I have a camera in my bag, on my cell phone, and on my laptop. Most of my friends do, too. Never before have we had so many people walking around with so many recording devices, or so many people watching the skies through telescopes as well as at observatories. Where are all the photos and videos of UFOs? We're still stuck with the same old fuzzy pictures of dinnerware flying through the skies. Boring!

Being visited by aliens would be exciting as hell, but I'll save my enthusiasm for the day someone shows me some credible evidence. And for goodness' sake, the next person who gets abducted had better at least grab a scalpel or something to show off when they get back to Earth.

WHAT TO DO IN A REPTILIAN ATTACK

In researching this article, I joined a yahoo group with local roots that serves as a forum for people around the world who want to share their experiences and insights. I was quickly overwhelmed by the multiple daily updates in my inbox and soon was struggling to keep up with reading even a fourth of them. I gradually began to delete them as fast as I could without reading them, and eventually removed myself from the list. The following exchange caught my eye, however, not so much for the horrifying Reptilian attack documented, but for the horrifying grammar and spelling errors by both posters. Alien technology or not, spellchecker is now available on most e-mail services and a valuable tool against Reptilian invaders.

RE: REPTILIAN ATTACK
Posted by: “Letter J” (name changed)
Today at 4:00 AM a friend of mine's sister woke up to find someone laying agenst [sic] her. He was holding her down. She was laying [sic] on her side. Being a large women [sic] and very powerfull [sic] from lifting bolts of cloth, she managed to push him off and told him to leave. When she looked over her sholder [sic] she saw the face of a snake! The event happened in Milwaukee Wis.

Posted by: “Letter N” (name changed)
Sun Jun 15, 2008 6:41 pm (PDT)
Sorry to hear of friends [sic] sister's Reptoid attack. These critters are not new to me. In fact they are generally bad news. Mostly they reside in the 4th dimensional fields of existence [sic]. For a better description, they actually reside between 3rd and 4th dimensional vibration. Sometimes in the physical. Over the years I have had many an unwanted visitation from these things. One thing that I have personally found is that they love to feed off your fear vibration. Scaring the shit out of the person is one way of them having a feeding frenzy!

The last one I had was in the form of an attachment to me. The only way I can describe this is that the thing was always behind me no matter how quick I looked around to try and see with the naked eye. It was attached to me like via a stringy like rope of some sort of etheric [sic?] mamaterial [sic]. Psychically I could see it.

I tried all I ever new on how to rid myself of this creature. Strangly [sic] enough, The [sic] only thing that worked was to send the little sod love. And keep doing it. Even ask for JC to help you.(Jesus)

Now I am NOT a religous[sic] person, but over the years I have had many experiences with reptoids attacking every move I made or what ever[sic]!
Another trick to there [sic] demise is to "see" in your minds [sic] eye the
creature diminishing whilst at the same time you are showering it
with the love vibration. Keep doing this until it is gone, and don't stop until you KNOW within yourself it has. Works every time.

Get hold of yourself and show NO fear but only love and you will win in an unwarranted attack by things unseen by the naked eye. Even works in the physical where an attack of this nature takes place. Another secret is to make the sign of the cross either with your arms OR fingers and point at the creature.

The CROSS is not only a symbol of Jesus as most think, but is also feared strangly[sic] enough by these creatures.

The cross is an ancient Ikon [sic] that has been used over the millinuims [sic] of time and does work on these creatures.

Again I am not religious in any way, and I hold no allegence [sic] to any
religion in any way. But the experiences I have had in this regard and other matters may be of a help in ridding oneself of this scurge [sic] that has actually been around for thousands of years.

Never be afraid of anything. Period. There is no point. The only thing we really fear is fear that has been taught us, and that fear is always generated from one's own mind. Replace this fear vibration with love.

Change your thinking immiadiatly [sic]! Drop negative thoughts and start
positive thoughts. This also dissapaites [sic] the fear vibration that other as of yet unseen by the naked eye beings that are hidden from most of us and banishes them to where they belong. And that is out of your field of being and into where ever they come from.

I hope this helps, as doing the above has rid them from me.
Love & Peace,
“Letter N”

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE PASSAGE FROM THE SECRET WAR: THE HEAVENS SPEAK OF THE BATTLE
Hollis is not exclusive in her experiences. One night at a “neighborhood burger joint” Hollis’s friend William tells her and Amanda about a close encounter of the XXX kind.

“I’ve been really disturbed by some experiences lately with a female alien,” William began. I continued to lean into my burger, looking up periodically to hear the rest of what William had to say. “Yeah, well I have been having sex with this alien woman. More like, I’m being raped by her.”(pg119)

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND LINKS
The W-Files: True Reports of Wisconsin’s Unexplained Phenomena by Jay Roth, 1997
Weird Wisconsin by Linda S. Godfrey and Richard D. Hendricks, 2005
Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2008, vol.32, no.2
Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs, 1997
The Secret War: The Heavens Speak of the Battle by Heidi Hollis, 2001
Jesus is No Joke: A True Story of an Unlikely Witness Who Saw Jesus by Heidi Hollis, 2008

Websites:
Rebecca Watson www.skepchick.com and www.theskepticsguide.org
UFO2U www.ufo2u.com
The Lightside www.thelightside.org
ICAR www.icar1.com
Jim Marrs www.jimmarrs.com

UFO FUZZ BUSTER

Groschopf found this handy gadget, a "UFO Detector", at www.imagesco.com/ufo/index.html This "elegantly designed" unit retails for $94.95, but you can save some do-rey-me by buying the kit for $64.95 and assembling it yourself. Good luck!

This article appeared in a slightly different form in Alt- magazine.

Introducing....THE KRUMOSA (patent pending)

2008-10-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

So on Sundays, I work in the morning and then I spend the rest of the day drinking, reading newspapers, and watching movies. Also I watch the old Batman show at 4PM on channel 41, and the Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy.

Today I invented a great new taste sensation, the Krumosa. It is served in a pint glass filled with ice. You add a jiggawatt of Puerto Rican dark rum, then 3/4 champagne and 1/4 Orangina. Orangina, not orange juice. Then you add a totally phat slice of lime, and you're in business, my friends. Tiny umbrella optional.

It goes well with fried chicken and potato wedges (street name: jo jos), and must be drunk before sunset. It is guaranteed to make the old Batman show funnier and the newspaper less depressing.

Cheers!

THE TRUSTY KNIFE AND CRAPPY DRACULA @ 7 MILE FAIR, Saturday July 26

2008-10-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Shoppers paying the $1.50 entrance fee to 7 Mile Fair were also unknowingly paying admission to a concert at an unlikely venue for two local bands, The Trusty Knife and Crappy Dracula. Trusty Knife has created a local buzz with their unique indie rock. Crappy Dracula is known for their strange sense of humor and has often been compared to the Dead Milkmen and Flipper.
The show idea started as bar talk between the two bands and quickly escalated.
Besides some fans that caravanned with the band, fair goers stopped to take in the sounds in between perusing knick knacks, old lawn mowers, parakeets, Scarface memorabilia, and other assorted junk.
The bands, which originally planned to set up at 11AM, arrived late at 1:30PM and played for a couple hours. At least one band member says the tardiness was due to a late night at the Cactus Club the previous night, where both bands had played sets. The bands set up under a small makeshift stage in an outdoor stretch between the two main buildings of the fair.
In addition to their usual set lists, both bands played an ode to 7 Mile Fair. Crappy Dracula reworked lyrics to one of their songs in tribute, and Trusty Knife performed a lounge like ballad for the thrifty shoppers at the flea market.
“If you’re in love with value/then I’m in love with you/ you better set up a table/ at 7 Mile Fair.” Lead singer Zack Pieper crooned, reaching out lovingly to the small but enthusiastic crowd.
Dug Belan, bassist and singer for Crappy Dracula, said the reception from 7 Mile Fair management was great and that both bands hope to return someday.
You can see footage of the show at www.youtube.com/user/dugglesworth

BIKE THIEF USES TIME FLUX TO FLUMMOX EX-CHEERLEADER

2008-10-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

"If I say 'The Cheerleader', do you know who I'm talking about?" Mo asked me, lighting up a Marlboro Medium 100. We were standing at the back counter at work.
"No." I admitted, not sure if I should be grateful or disappointed about my lack of familiarity.
"She is crazy. And she really was a cheerleader. Head cheerleader, in fact. She went to the same school as me, St.Antilda for girls. She was gone for a long time, but guess what? She's back." She exhaled and smiled, amused by it all.
"So, you know that kid, Mario, who works across the street at Glorioso's?"
"Yeah, sure, good kid. Hard working. Keeps his nose clean." Mario is maybe fourteen or fifteen and works around the shop when he's not at school, sweeping the floors, cleaning up in the deli, stocking the shelves, running errands.
"I know, he is just a sweetheart. This poor kid...so 'The Cheerleader' is over at Glorioso's annoying the shit out of everyone, and Mario pulls up on his bike. He bought that bike himself. So he's locking it up outside, and 'The Cheerleader' sees him."
"That's a nice bike, she says. Where's you get it?"
"Thanks, he says,I bought it from this shop over on Murray."
"I used to have a bike just like that when I was a girl. She says. Mario thinks this is strange, since it's a recent model."
"Oh, ok, he says."
"Yes, she says, it looked just like this...in fact...this IS it...you stole it from me! You are the one who stole it from me! She yells, pointing at Mario."
"Mario tries to reason with her. Hey, lady, I didn't steal your bike! How could I have? I'm only fifteen! By now the elder Glorioso men have come outside to see what the commotion is."
I'm going to interject here and say that anyone who wants to start a fight with the Glorioso's is absolutely crazy. 'Nuff said.
"So they're asking her what her problem is, and she's yelling that the kid stole her bike from her when she was a kid and that he needs to give it back to her after all these years. They get sick of trying to argue with a crazy woman, so they call the cops."
"Wow. So she what, she thinks Mario somehow travelled back in time and stole her bike?" I ask.
"I guess so. Then the cops show up, and she tells them that the kid stole her bike. Then she tells them they can trust her, because she used to be head cheerleader, and she says she can prove it, so she starts doing cheerleader moves right there on the sidewalk outside Glorioso's."
"Cheerleader moves?" I ask. "But isn't she old..."
"She's as old as me, and she's out there doing the splits, and jumping in the air, and rolling her arms. The cops take her away."
"Wow." I said. "No, I haven't met 'The Cheerleader'."
Not yet, anyhow.

Format

2008-10-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

"Special Report From the Joke Shop" will now have new material added every Thursday and Saturday.
And that's the Krulos Guarantee. (patent pending)

The GOLD DRAGON

2008-10-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

In my dream I walk into work, but things have been switched around. Now the cafe is in an airplane bunker. Lights illuminate the front counter, "the island" us cashiers call it, a rectangular counter floating in wingnut central. Off in the shadows are a few tables with people sitting at them, eating. On the far end is a radio control tower, a small one, about a hundred feet high. Up at the top, at the control panel, my boss, illuminated by an overhead light and flashing lights on the control panel. Other than these elements, the bunker is huge and empty and dark and pretty creepy.

I walk up to the counter, where my co-worker Jenny is straightening some things on a shelf.
"Jenny, what the fuck is going on here?" I ask. I know this is all wrong. This isn't reality. Jenny shrugs her shoulders, and moves to another shelf. I walk around the counter to tend the cash register.

A frightening bum comes to the counter. I have not seen him in real life, and hope I never, ever, ever do. He had cataract covered eyes, a few stubby yellow teeth, and oozy boils on his face.
"Gimme a blanket!" He hissed at me. I put on a poker face so he wouldn't know I was freaked out by him.
"Sorry, we don't sell blankets." I told him matter-of-fact.
"Yes you do, you muthafucka!" He yelled at me. "I bought one here yesterday!"
He pointed at Jenny. "I bought one from her, you muthafucka!It's got a dragon on it!"
"Hold on." I said. "Calm down!" Then I walked over to Jenny.
"Jenny, what the hell? This crazy guy is telling me we sold him a blanket yesterday. What's going on?"
"Oh yeah." She said, sighing. She motioned for me to follow her.
She pulled open a giant drawer that we usually store excess tobacco in. The drawer was filled with what looked like hundreds of packs of "king size" rolling papers. They were all crimson red with a gold Chinese dragon stamped on the cover flap.
Jenny eyed me, bored.
"Apparently, these have a blanket folded up inside." She said this, picking one out of the drawer. "It's like one of those foil emergency blankets. They're a dollar forty nine."
I brought the...blanket...up to the counter, holding it up for the bum to see. He was delighted.
"I told you! I told you, you muthafucka!" But now, he was saying "muthafucka" in a friendly way, instead of an insult. I ignored this, and rang him up. He dug some grimy change out of his pocket and slapped it on the counter. Then he unfolded a blanket from the package, and threw the empty pack on the counter, then wrapped the blanket around him like a shawl.
"I told you, muthafucka, I told you!" He said, pointing at me, then shuffled out the door.
I picked up the package on the counter and stared at the gold dragon on the cover. I flipped it over. The back was plain red, no text that would identify a company name, explanation, or place of origin. I looked over to the "control tower", shielding my eyes to look up into the light. My boss was standing there with his arms crossed, staring down at me.
I crumpled the package up and threw it away.

DREAMLAND BOMBER

2008-09-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

"Some really good friends of mine, they blew up a factory
Nobody knows how it happened or if they're still running free
Well I think it's funny..."
-The Crucifucks

I had a short series of nightmares lately, in which I was bombing random targets. The series seems to have stopped. I'm glad, because each time I woke up, my thought was "Oh shit, the FBI and the CIA are both going to come crashing through the windows and ceiling and throw a giant bag over me like in the film Brazil.

So, a word to any spooks out there...I am really dumb. I don't know how to build a bomb and would be afraid to even try because I know it's highly likely I'd blow myself up. The best bomb I could create is a bunch of bottle rockets duct taped together. Besides, I really don't want to blow things up when I'm awake.

In the first dream, I blew up my high school U.S. History teacher's house. Although a lot of my peers did hate this teacher, I never really did. I thought he was annoying and overbearing, but I was more amused by his old codger stereotype than anything else. He would get teary eyed and passionately talk about great battles of the civil war and then scold us for that "noisy nonsense music" that us kids today listened to. Now, in my dream, he had apparently moved on up to an apartment on the Eastside. I was lugging a bomb disguised as a large package wrapped in brown paper up three or four flights of stairs, knocked loudly on his door and said "UPS!" then took off running down the stairs. Once I run across the street, I took a wii controller out of my pocket and blew the apartment building up.
I blew up some other things, but can't remember, then woke up in a cold sweat.

The next night, I blew up Rev. Fred Phelps. If you don't know who he is, here's the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps
Now, although I admit it might be fun to blow up Fred Phelps, I never would want to serve jail time for him. Plus, you need to keep an idiot like that around just to set a level of lowness.Big Fred is coming to Milwaukee October 10, and I read a report on it the night I had this dream. In the dream, I was standing with a crowd of counter protestors. A line of riot cops stood between counter protestors and Fred Phelp's inbred posse. I had created a tiny bomb that was strapped to a remote control car. I took a controller and artfully steered it around the riot cop's feet and parked it directly in front of Fred Phelps. He looked down at the car, then looked into the crowd, trying to see where it had came from. I pushed a button and the car blew up, knocking everyone over.

The third night, I nervously entered the post office on Juneau. I stuck my key in my P.O. box, then used the key as a peg to hang my backpack on. The backpack was ticking. I was sweating, in the dream and in the real world. I tried to look casual and crossed the street, over to the metro market parking lot. I was wearing a sporty watch, the type that keeps seconds and milliseconds...any second now...the building blew up.
I actually love the post office, so I was dismayed by my bombing decision. That dream seemed to conclude my bombing series, and I'm glad, it made me feel weird for days.
What does it all mean?

LAST CARLSON CARTOON

2008-08-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

Well, here is Stuart Carlson's last cartoon. It appeared in the August 17 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, almost exactly 25 years after he began working for the company.

The letter I spearheaded never ran in the paper. Here it is...
To: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The undersigned, all Milwaukee area cartoonists, consider the upcoming dismissal (via buy out) of editorial cartoonist Stuart Carlson a great loss.
The editorial cartoonist, unfortunately a dying breed, is an important part of the identity of any newspaper. It is a tradition as old as the medium itself, and a valuable part of American culture.
We strongly urge the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reconsider its priorities and keep a local editorial cartoonist on staff instead of giving its readers recycled material from a syndicate package, or worse, nothing at all.
Keep it real.
Sincerely,
Tea Krulos, Michael Cothroll, Max Estes, Tim Demeter, Jennifer Janviere, J.Jason Groschopf, David Beyer, Jr., Derek Stuart, Chris Miller, Terry Haller
Milwaukee
To date MJS has run syndicated cartoons, many by conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez. I don't think he does bad work, but of course he is based in L.A. so there is no local angle.

AUGUSTUS

2008-08-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite regulars was Auggie. He disappeared at some point, he was in poor health, so he probably headed to a nursing home or the graveyard. Or maybe he jumped on a train one last time. He was a train conductor. I was reminded of this whenever he pulled out his giant pocket watch like the white rabbit. He waddled like a penguin in a cardinal red suitcoat, three times too big for him. In winter he wore his cardinal red suitcoat with a scarf and a furry hunter's hat, with giaant earflaps covering his ears. He had a very gruff, slow, baritone voice.
He was a little insane and drove some of the waitresses crazy, but I loved the guy. He gave me one of my favorite Christmas gifts ever- a package of cheap fruit magnets from the dollar store. The glue was cheap and the fruits fell off the magnets, but I reglued them. He also clipped out his favorite 'Cathy' comic strips and gave them to me. I forgave his shitty taste in comics because it was such a nice gesture.
He asked me one of the strangest questions I've yet to field at work...
"You ever hear of a Nympho-MANIAC?!" He asked.
"Yeah, sure, Auggie." I said. "Have you? Are you one? Should I be worried?"
"It's someone who can't get enough of the sex act." He told me matter-of-factly.
"Well, thanks for that definition." I told him. He waddled off to order a bowl of soup.

FAVORITE THINGS HEARD AT WORK

2008-08-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, Palookaville. From what the old men tell me, this town is very stupid. When they encounter someone stupid, they tell me
"That guy musta just got off the train from Palookaville." When they hear about something stupid they say "Sure, I heard about it...in the Palookaville Times."
Here's someone who is real mean...
"That guy is meaner than snakeshit."
An attractive young woman walked by and an old guy told me what he thought.
"Woooooo! That girl makes me wanna sing Sinatra!"
The old men are experts one three topics. State quarters, the weather, and the bus routes.
An old lady told me this on a guy's girlfriend who had no noticeable qualities.
"That girl must have a solid gold snapper."

SANITY ALERT

2008-07-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

There will be a lot of stories posted here about my day job...the Brady Street Pharmacy. I am working on a book about the place which will be titled Hotel Pharmacy. I am going to use this blog to work as a rough draft, test material, and reference bank. Bits and pieces will make it into the book, some of it will tossed.

OUTSMARTED BY A 14 YEAR OLD

It's really pretty funny. My bffs at work are a sixty some year old woman, Mo, and a 14 year old girl, "Anna Banana" aka "Miss Banana" aka "The Kid". The Kid is alright. She's one of the waitress's daughters and fills in for cashiering, cooking, dishwashing, busing, cleaning, and anything else. She's hard working, sharp as a tack, and has the street smarts you wish they'd teach those dumb college kids. I never talk down to the Kid. I know I don't have to.
Me, Mo, and The Kid sit around making fun of our boss and the customers. Funny stuff. I love to make these two laugh by impersonating the customers and telling them bad jokes.
My boss loves to harass and tease the Kid, so I've seen her punch him a few times, hard, which is hilarious. He goes "oh!" and doubles over in pain. Sometimes he gets mad and chases her around the store, which leaves the customers confused. Get real, geezer. You're not going to catch the Kid!
Besides physically besting my boss, she has also tricked him and locked him out of his pharmacy and out of his building (like the opening credits to The Flintstones), spiked his coffee with lemon juice, hidden his coffee cup, and pulled other great shenanigans.
Me and Mo were working on a crossword puzzle, which is our other favorite after making fun of people. One of the clues had Senor Wences as a clue. Senor Wences is a brilliant ventriloquist in case you didn't know.
"S'o right? S'o right!" And all that.
"What show was he on?" Mo asked me, straining to think. "The one with the goofy guy everyone made fun of...looked like he had a stick up his ass..."
"Oh yeah." I frowned and hunched up my shoulders. "Looked kind of like this." I said and made a sweeping gesture with my hands.
"Duh. The Ed Sullivan Show." The Kid told us.
"Honey, cover your ears." Mo said to the Kid. Then she turned to me. "How the fuck did she know that?" I shrugged. Then she turned to her.
"How the hell did you know that?" The Kid laughed. Mo continued. "You weren't even born...your mom wasn't even born!" Later the Kid identified another crossword clue for us. We couldn't think of a Yul Brynner film that fit, but the kid knew. "Duh. Westworld." She said.
The Kid had a series of bake sales to raise money for her class trip to DC. My favs were the cookies with the huge hersey kiss in the middle.
Like I said, the Kid is alright.

GOD TELLS ME

2008-06-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

HELL BOUND TRAIN
Today I was cursed to hell, and sadly I didn’t even blink about it. A woman came in and sat down in the restaurant. I groaned. This woman is a pain in the ass. She is short and looks like a Halloween witch, except she has a giant crucifix around her neck. She has an unnaturally loud, hoarse voice which she uses to loudly ramble on about Jesus this and Jesus that. She always complains about the food and thinks that the satanic waitresses have added up her bill wrong and overcharged her. Of course they never had. Sometimes she comes in with her half dead parents, other times with her scuzzy, sinister looking boyfriend. Today it was her boyfriend.
“Fuck.” I said to myself, “This is a real drag seeing these two ugly obnoxious motherfuckers in here.” Well, I had no idea how big of a drag was going to be.
I’m going to have to jump back and forth here chronologically so you can see what I did. I’m busy doing something, when I hear a commotion. The crazy lady I described is arguing face to face with the waitress.
“Fuck me dead.” I say to myself, “She’s arguing with her about the bill. She can’t add and thinks we’re ripping her off (She also only orders water to save money and *Important fact* only tips 50 cents). This is not unusual. But here’s what actually happened.
She sat down with her nasty boyfriend, across the aisle from two little old grannies. These grannies are regulars and they are very old, 80’s, and very sweet. They have lived in the Brady street area their whole lives. They are devout Catholics and go to Saint Hedwig’s (on Brady and Humboldt) every Sunday. Today they came in together to get ice cream, and they began to talk about how happy they are that the Saint Hedwig’s quilting program will soon begin its summer session.
This is when that hideous woman butts in.
“If you two think the catholic church is a way into heaven, THINK AGAIN! The Catholic church is a FRONT for SATAN! You need to BEG the forgiveness of JESUS CHRIST, OUR SAVIOR for being involved with SATAN or you be going to HELL with ALL OF THE OTHER CATHOLICS!”
The waitress gives me this account. She says the poor old ladies were stunned, speechless and wide eyed. The waitress sprang into the action.
“Excuse me, but you can NOT speak to my customers that way.”
“Oh, yeah? I can say whatever I want. I’m speaking God’s word.”
“Listen, these two are just trying to enjoy some time together. They’re not bothering you, so don’t bother them. If you don’t like it, you can leave right now.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. Just for that, you lost your tip.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t care about the 50 cents you were going to leave. Leave my customers alone.”
“They need to hear it. YOU need to hear it. You are on your WAY TO HELL.”
“Ok, I’m on my way to hell and you’re on your way outta here!” I love these waitresses. They won’t put up with it. Don’t even try.
“Yeah, you go ahead and say that. You’re going to HELL.” The woman and her boyfriend come up to the counter, where I’m waiting. I’m not sure what was going on. As I said, I assumed it was over the bill. If I had known, I would have been angrier. She’s muttering, saying that she can say whatever she wants, blah blah blah. I sometimes channel different types of people to deal with these situations. Right now, I’m a stuffy English butler.
“I mean, what are we supposed to do, sit there in silence?!” She asks, poking a witch finger at me.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.” I say dryly.
“I mean, are we supposed to communicate in sign language?!” She pokes a finger at me. I don’t respond.
“Do you know sign language?” I shake my head no.
“Ok. I’m going to teach you something in sign language, ok?”
“No thanks, ma’am. I don’t want to learn anything in sign language today.”
“What?! Well, this place is just pure evil, isn’t it?”
I shrug my shoulders, as if, hey, whaddareyagonnado?
“Can I ask you, do you believe Jesus Christ is your lord and savior?”
“I can tell you what I do believe ma’am. I believe one who is working should not discuss religion, politics, or sex.”
She then rambled on about some Christian program or something.
“I am not going to discuss this with you.” I said firmly.
“Ha! Sure, you don’t got the time…”
“I do have the time, I’m just not going to discuss it with you.”
“Sure, you don’t have the time. GUESS WHAT? You’ll have plenty of time to discuss it on your way to HELL!” I just let it go. If I had known she had harassed those old bittys, I would have been more evil. I would have told I was Satan, and growled, and rolled my eyes back into my head.
The waitress and I told the boss, and he agreed to put her on the long, long 86’d list. I was extra nice to the old ladies when they left, but they didn’t need my charity. These old dames have lived on the eastside 80 some years. Nothing freaks them out much.

CELEBRITY RAPE VICTIM
A thirty something year old guy walks in, and gets some rolling tobacco and walks to the check out. I ring him up. A crazy old seventy something Russian woman lines up behind him. I’ve never seen her before, but I can tell she’s a crazy old Russian. I don’t know how to explain this. They just have a look you learn to identify. She has some kitty litter and some candy, and I start to ring her up as the guy with the rolling tobacco heads toward the door.
“He rapa me. He rape me. He rape.” She says this to me pointing out the door after the guy.
“That guy?! That guy raped you?!” I ask her, my mind furiously factoring the probability of this. She nodded, solemnly.
“Well, did you call the police?” She made a pushing gesture with her hands, as if this was an absurd question. Another customer came to the counter, and she moved over by the magazine rack. The customer left, and there she was, standing by the magazine rack, staring at me intently.
“He.” She said, “He rape me. He rrrrape me.” She said this, dragging the 'R' out.
Johnny Carson had died recently, and she was pointing to his picture on the cover of TV Guide.
“He rape me.”
“Johnny Carson?! Johnny Carson raped you?” I didn’t know what to say. “Well….he’s dead now, so…maybe that makes you feel better…?”
“Yes, yes, he dead.” She agreed, nodding. “God kill him. For the rape.”
Right about now is when I start to think, wait a minute, am I really having this conversation?
She then moved over to Entertainment Weekly or some similar rag, where a beaming George Clooney was smiling with his devilish good looks. You guessed it. She stared at me, deeply.
“He rape me. He rape. He rrrrrrrape me.”
“George Clooney?! George Clooney came to Milwaukee and raped a seventy year old Russian woman? This really is a sick world we live in.” I said this, and she made a pushing gesture at me again. Then she walked out the door and I never saw her again.

GOD TELLS ME
I was filling in for dishwashing. A bug eyed, disheveled looking nutso sat at the counter next to one of the regulars, an elderly blue collar type of guy who loved the cheap coffee and burgers. He enjoyed talking to the waitresses, and you could tell this was a high point in his day.
The bug eyed weirdo orders some hot water and a packet of honey. He pours the honey into the hot water and mixes it with a spoon. He tastes some of the honey from the packet with his finger, then turns to the old man.
“There are three kinds of honey…” He says in a weird whisper “The honey that comes from a bee, the honey that comes from a wasp, and the honey that comes from a hornet. I can tell where the honey comes from, just by tasting it. I can tell if it comes from bee, a wasp, or a hornet.”
“Izzat a fact?” The old guy grunts.
“Yes. Do you know how I can tell?”
“No. No, I don’t. How can you tell?”
“God tells me.”

RW24

2008-06-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

Hey, I am also writing at www.riverwest24.blogspot.com about Riverwest in general along with other writers and artists. It ties into the RW24 which is a 24 hour bicycle race coming up July 25/26.

FATHER'S DAY

2008-06-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

7AM: My alarm, a clock radio set to pure static goes off. I drank a bit last night, so I wake up dry and groggy. I have also had a stuffed up nose almost every morning the last month. Diagnosis? Insanity.

7:45AM: I arrive at work and my hangover clears up after a couple cups of coffee. I actually don’t feel bad and am slightly friendly to the customers unlike many Sundays when I am mute at best and bluntly rude at worst.

9AM: The waitress’s 15 year old son tells me about his favorite movie of the year, I Am Legend, a zombie flick starring Will Smith. Actually, he not so much tells me about it, more like gives me a DVD commentary the length of the actual movie. He adds a lot of violent sound effects to his description of Will Smith’s struggle against the zombie menace.
This young fellow has a lot of ideas for horror movies he plans to direct someday. A lot. Today he tells me about one that will feature psychotic arsonists lighting people on fire on the streets of Transylvania. After some discussion, I convince him to move the setting to Pennsylvania, and after further discussion, he decides to move the setting to Washington D.C., with the psychotic arsonists targeting the President.

10AM: My boss laments the low coloring book sales, something we never sold much of, and unless a strange new trend starts, never will sell much of.

12PM: I have told four different women that I will show them “Who their daddy is” for Father’s Day. Two think the joke is funny. Here is the beauty of polls. That means that 50% of all women think my “who’s your daddy” joke is funny. One of these women happens to be black. Half of all women think my joke is funny, while I am a comedic legend among black women, an astounding 100 percent of whom think my joke is a winner.

12:30PM: I am done with work so I stop by the Pick N Save deli and get some deep fried potato wedges, street name “Jo Jos”. These are the most delicious things on earth. I get a giant can of Modelo Especial to go with the Jo Jos. Plus I am going to need the drink if I am going to see my family.

1PM: After eating I quickly clean my room, throwing away tons of unnecessary print outs of stories, empty beer bottles, back issues of the New York Observer, and random trash. In one of his books Philip K. Dick refers to weird multiplying trash as “kipple” and that’s what I call all this small junk (gum wrappers, bus transfers, receipts, etc.) I remove dirty dishes, pick up laundry off the floor and do a load of wash. Almost all the clothes I own fit in one washer load, which says something about me but I don’t know what.

2PM: I take a shower and then lay in bed. I flip through the Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times. I read the Sun Times only once in awhile, when the mood strikes. I do enjoy their half tabloid/ half “real” paper attitude. My parents say they will pick me up between two and three but I know this means they will start to think about it then, and actually arrive one to three hours later. That is just how they operate.

3:30PM: You can imagine my surprise when they technically show up only a half hour late. This is only because they have not done their errands yet. We stop at Southridge Mall for reasons unclear to me, carry on to Pet Supplies Plus for food for my sister’s pet ferrets, and a grocery store to get corn on the cob.
4:45PM: We arrive home and me and my middle sister (14 years old) and I play “Rock Band”. I am disappointed the game does not feature “Holy Diver” by Dio, which I have been practicing via air guitar frequently. It does have “Blitzkrieg Bop” by The Ramones which I play with a golden touch. My oldest sister (22 years old) arrives with her husband. They just got back from their honeymoon to Disney World (yawn) and Key West (sweet). My youngest sister (9 years old) plays with her ferrets like they were Barbie dolls.

6PM: We eat dinner, hamburgers, French fries, tater tots, and corn on the cob. Me and mom drink wine out of a box. My friends and I used to call this a “space bag”, because we would pull the bag of wine out of the box, and pass it around, holding the bag in the air and pouring the cheap wine into our mouth. Four or five of us would split the cost of a space bag and a pouch of Top rolling tobacco and eat bagels dumpstered from Einstein bagels. Those were the days!
Dad opens cards and gifts. He looks older than he is, from a life time of hard work. My dad and I aren’t really close. He knows very little about my life from my late teenage years to present day. He can be uptight at times, and I think rightwing talk radio has been a bad influence. But he has been a good dad, and I enjoy seeing him. We mostly talk about something we both enjoy, old music and movies. He really likes old blues, and music from about 1950-early 70’s, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, the Who, the Stones, the Beatles, the Animals, Cream, Hendrix, etc. He likes old sci-fi movies, old adventure films, old comedies, and the Twilight Zone. I like all those things, too.

8PM: They drive me home. Mom has had a few glasses from the space bag, so she’s a real chatterbox. My sister listens to this crazy punk metal junk the kids love so much these days on her teeny tiny iPod, which is the size of a saltine cracker. Escape into the earphones! She is soooooooo much like me when I was her age, it’s frightening. It’s like you get to see what was awesome about being a teenager, but at the same time you get to remember how fucking terrible it was. I hope she makes it through quickly and sane. I’m not sure I did.

9PM: I watch an Iranian film called “Iron Island” on my laptop, in bed. It’s a pretty good flick. It’s about a colony of Iranians living an isolated life on an abandoned warship. I drink a couple of “Dark and Stormys” while watching it (rum, ginger beer, lime juice). Then I read a chapter of this book I’m reading, “The Castle in the Forest”. It’s the last book that crazy kook Norman Mailer wrote before he croaked off. It’s a fictional account of the life of Adolf Hitler, and happens to be the third book I’ve read in the last month that has something to do with Hitler. No, no, don’t get worried, it’s coincidence. Two of the books were for research for a story for altdash.com and this one was just out of curiosity to read Mailer’s last novel.

11PM: I go to sleep, so I can wake up early and get stuff done before work.

HEART OF GLASS

2008-06-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

HOW TO NAME A GOAT
Things were going fine for my sister’s wedding. I was calming attending to details, scooping up forgotten keys and luggage and making sure they got to the right place, while everyone rushed in a mad whirlwind around me. It was total chaos, but of course everything fell into place. The actual wedding was at her church, a huge, sprawling megachurch I refer to as “the compound”. The Compound is so big, I got totally lost in it one time. I was wandering through the same halls over and over, like the scene in This is Spinal Tap where Spinal Tap is lost in the basement trying to find the stage.
At the reception, at Old World Wisconsin, things calmed down, and I began killing time with a few drinks. I suddenly started feeling emotional about my own space shuttle disaster of a love life. I thought about all of it quickly, every woman I ever loved, and how none of it had worked and was suddenly very sad. I began to feel hot tears welling up in my eyes, and quickly started walking the grounds, away from the crowd, so no one would have to witness this emotional outburst. I was stopped short by my youngest sister, 9, and her friend.
“I hope you know that over that fence there’s some goats and pigs.” My sister said, pointing off in the distance.
“Really?!” I said, trying to quickly disguise my tears.
“Yeah, we’d show you, but we got kicked out. We climbed over the fence, but someone told us we had to leave.” Her friend said.
“Ohhhhhhh no. Are you two getting into trouble? Are we going to have to bail you out of ye Old World Wisconsin Jail?”
“No, they just told us to leave. We named all the animals. You wanna know what?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I wanna know what.”
“Well there was three pigs. We call them the three little pigs. There’s Wilbur, and there’s Babe, and there’s Bacon.”
“Bacon?!” I ask in mock shock. The girls think this is very funny and giggle.
“And I named the goat Mr. Dots…”
“Um, excuse me, that’s Mr. Stars. Because his coat has a star print all over it.”
“Who ever heard of a goat with a star print? Give me a break. Those were dots. Mr. DOTS.”
“I know what a dot looks like. Those were stars.”
“Duhhhhhhh. Mr. DOTS.”
“Noooooo.”
“Have you ever heard of a goat with stars on it?!” My sister asks me this and rolls her eyes. I try to be diplomatic, so as not to offend her friend.
“Hmmm. A goat with stars. Let’s see…well, you know, anything is possible.” The girls are determined to go take a second look. I tell them that this is ok, but that they have to be careful not to get in trouble.
They run off with a youthful energy, back to the three little pigs and Mr. Dots. Or Mr. Stars, depending on whose side you’re on. I stroll around the grounds some more. This short exchange with my sister and her friend has somehow made me feel a lot better, and I walk back to the reception.

BLONDIE TRIES TO CHEER ME UP
I had a dream about ten years ago that is burnt into my brain like an acid flashback. In my dream I am at a disco. It is your classic disco set up, light tiles on the dance floor, disco ball, fog machine, and so on and so forth. I am depressed (maybe because I’m at a disco?) and drinking a long island ice tea. Deborah Harry takes the stage and begins singing “Heart of Glass”. She is wearing a skintight full body pink rabbit costume. The only flesh showing is her face, beneath a pair of bunny ears. She spots me and begins singing and dancing toward me. She puts her mitten rabbit costume hands on my face and sits on my lap, singing “Heart of Glass” inches away from my face. I remember being very moved that Miss Harry had taken a personal interest in cheering me up. It is all very vivid, and to this day when I hear “Heart of Glass” I get a tingling in the back of my brain, neurons firing a far away recognition signal of my mystical encounter with Blondie.

BIG ASS BIRD HOUSE
I have a day job and my boss is a strange, insane man. At one point he had tried to get city approval for a fountain, old timey town square style clock, bird house and benches outside of his business. There is plenty of room out there for all this. I’m pretty sure he approached it the wrong way and the city rejected his proposal, which made them bastards of the universe in his book.
He was telling me this whole story and began to get emotional and teary eyed about it. Then he told me this in a very serious, emotional, hushed tone:
“All I wanted to do was have a fountain, benches so people could sit down and enjoy the day, a nice clock, and a big ass birdhouse.”
I immediately started laughing and had trouble stopping. A big ass birdhouse? How could City Hall not be sympathetic to the big ass birdhouse project?
Imagine this. I am talking to you very seriously and get emotional.
“All I ever wanted was a nice, meaningful relationship with someone who cares about me.”(sniffs, wipes eye) “You know a nice hot bitch to settle down with.”
It was bad because I got stuck laughing, and everytime I looked at him, still emotional and obviously confused why I was laughing, I’d start laughing more.

“Oh, and one more thing…It’s been emotional.”
-Big Chris in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

A HORSE IS A HORSE

2008-05-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

"Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up."
- Hunter S. Thompson, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

Up until yesterday, I enjoyed a good horse race, but now I sort of feel like it might be horseshit.
I have never really liked gambling at all and would get pissed off losing a buck on a scratch off. Maybe about four years ago, though, some of these geezers that hang out at my day job got me interested in horse racing. They would talk to me about it, and I thought I was getting it straight from the horse's mouth (sorry about that pun, inappropriate). Soon I decided I would place three $10 bets a year- on the three races of the triple crown (The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness Open, and The Belmont Stakes). I got advice from the geezers on how to place a bet and some basic horse talk, and I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth (again, sorry).

I developed a sort of romantic vision of horse racing as a great american tradition. It all seemed kind of exciting- the trumpet sounding, the mint juleps, the announcer going nuts, the clatter of horse hooves, the weird looking mini men jockeys. I also hate to admit that it gave me a sense of manliness- real men take chances, chance takers have real cajones. You might say I sort of felt like I was hung like a horse (ok, really sorry about that- I couldn't resist).

Yesterday's derby, though, made me feel like a horse of a different color (zing!). I put $10 to win on #9, Pyro, who came in 8th place. That isn't what upset me though. The second place horse, 8 Belles, fell in the last stretch and broke both front ankles. She was immediately euthanized, as this is a very painful injury, as I understand it. Suddenly I didn't feel so manly or that this was a great sport.
Poor 8 Belles is galloping to horsie heaven, and why? To entertain these chucklehead Kentucky Colonels and their mint julep sipping, stupid hat wearing wives? What the fuck have the Kentucky Colonels done for us lately, or for that matter,ever, except create a fried chicken franchise?

I am trying to be a more zen individual and think of solutions for my complaints. Fortunately I have an easy one here, one that will keep the Kentucky Colonels happy and the horses as healthy as a horse (yes, that was weak. Just watch the video)

Now, imagine that at horse size! Imagine the horse power!(C'mon, that one fit in pretty well) Best of all, if it breaks down, you just need a screwdriver, not a necromancer. Let's get with this century and race and bullfight robots. Think of the fortune saved on paying pooper scoopers alone.

KRULOS SITCOM PITCH LIST

2008-04-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

I am trying to produce a sitcom that stars myself. You wanna know why? My life is a joke, matey, an effing joke. I put together what we in the sitcom writing business call a "pitch list", a brief run down on six possible ideas for further development.

1. COOKING WITH HELLFIRE
In which Tea Krulos portrays a high octane, obnoxious Italian chef/ TV show host who is constantly yelling things like "BAM-A-LAM!", "WHAMMY!", "YOU SHUT UPPA YOU STOOPID FACE!", and "COCK SLAP!" (Studio audience laughs, claps, whistles.)
Things take a turn for the funny when it is revealed that he is an alcoholic that is also possessed by the devil. (Audience oooooohs.) This is discouraging to the staff, which is constantly berated by him as he throws meatballs at them and yells "YOU'VE BEEN COCK SLAPPED!" (Audience claps and cheers wildly.)

2. WORD ON THE STREET
In which Tea Krulos portrays an overly enthusiastic journalist who always wears a pin striped three piece suit and a fedora with a press card sticking out of the brim. He is a journalist of the old school, walking the streets, needling inside sources for leads, digging through city hall's trash, sitting in a tree with binoculars, and so on and so forth. (Audience claps and starts doing the wave.)
In a hilarious twist, it is revealed that he is also an alcoholic that suffers from hallucinations and is possessed by the devil, who pops up from thin air when he is particularly sizzled (a la the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones) to give him ill conceived idea advice on relationships. (Audience wolf whistles.) An ongoing gag is that Krulos, in a demonic state, sneaks last minute items into the paper, articles with headlines like "HEIL, SATAN!" and "PRINCE OF LIES SEEN AT WAL-MART". This sends his editor, who is similar to J. Jonah Jameson of Spiderman, into a fit of rage. "KRUUUUUUU-LOS!" he yells, shaking his fist.

3. FOXY BOXERS
In which Tea Krulos portrays a smarmy and cantankerous manager of an all woman boxing league. The bad (but FUNNY!) times start to roll when it is revealed that Krulos is a hard line boozer possessed by a sexist demon. (Audience applauds, oohs, aahs, starts doing the Macarena.) He is constantly slapping the ladies on the ass and saying things like "Watch that right hook, sugar tits." The entire time he smokes a big honking heater of a cigar. (Audience cheers, coughs from cigar smoke.) The ongoing gag is that every episode the women become so enraged with him that they beat him into a coma and every episodes with a close up of his heart monitor flat lining.

4. GHOSTS IN THE GRAVEYARD
In which Tea Krulos portrays a gloomy, gothic caretaker of a cemetery and lives in a small shack on the grounds. (Audience laughs and laughs.) In a side splitting, knee slapping, funny bone shattering revelation, it is discovered he is an alcoholic and possessed by demons. This draws the attention of the local goth girls who hang around in his graveyard writing shitty poetry. Ghosts haunt the graveyard and Krulos tries to have sex with them. (Audience whistles, pull out Stradivarius violins and play a rendition of "Stormy Weather".)
Possible guest appearances: Anton LaVey, Elvira, Marilyn Manson, Cheech and Chong, the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe.

5. APE ASTROLOGIST
In which Tea Krulos portrays a 250 pound gorilla that also happens to be a talented astrologist who writes a romance/ horoscope column called Your Stars With Dr. Ape. (Audience cheers wildly.) Everyday, he meets his girlfriend, a talented monkey salsa dance instructor, for a banana split at lunchtime. (Audience moans in ecstasy.) One of the reoccurring characters is Wigglesworth, an orangutan that works at the diner as a short order cook. He wears a spinning bow tie and his catchphrase is "Don't make me FUCK START your head!" (Think of the merchandising potential!) Also, the ape is an alcoholic possessed by demons. (Audience claps, shoots automatic weapons into the air.)

6. HELL STREET BLUES
In which Tea Krulos plays ol' horn head himself, the devil, the dark lord, el Diablo, most commonly known as Satan. He rules the empire of hell, but is also an aspiring blues musician and abstract painter. You can imagine the hilarious and surprising results when he finds out he is an alcoholic and is possessed by….himself! This creates an inescapable paradox that causes a rip in the fabric of the universe which created a black hole into which everything is sucked into a void of nothingness. (Audience claps and stomps "We Will Rock You" then screams as they are pulled into the eternal nothingness.)

UNDER THE RADAR DINING

2008-04-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

Milwaukee has an adventurous new flavor for its palate: its own underground restaurant. That’s about as much as I can tell you. The crew behind the venture has asked me to withhold who they are, when their next event is, location(s) and even the name their secret café goes by. I can tell you, however, that the name is a reference to Emma Goldman’s journals. They’ll be referred to here as “Café X.”

Underground restaurants have sprung up worldwide and, in the United States, range from the Blind Pig outside of San Francisco to the NY Bite Club in the heart of New York City. Blind Pig offers a different theme for each opening and one of the locations they use is a two-car garage furnished with booths that were thrown out from a closed-down Chinese restaurant. It’s run by two chefs—who go by the aliases Ro Smith and Mo Smythe—who cook outside the garage in a tent. The fee is $15 to $30, depending on the number of courses.

Bite Club is a members-only joint located in a Manhattan commercial loft building. Members are asked not to talk about the restaurant in the hallway and are charged $150 a head. Thankfully, Café X has a much more laid-back attitude. Started by enthusiastic vegan chefs, they charged a more Milwaukee price of $10 at their last opening. The staff includes two or three chefs and a handful of volunteers.

One of the chefs recalled visiting underground restaurants in Olympia, Wash., and Portland, Ore. “I felt so overwhelmed by how amazing it was, and when the opportunity came up to do it here in Milwaukee, I was totally excited,” she said.

Underground restaurants are sometimes more a state of mind than an actual location, and so Café X rotates between the homes of its crew members. On the night of Feb. 24, it took place in an East Side building with apartment loft spaces. A doorman at the ground level asked people if they had arrived for Café X, and then directed them upstairs. Pushing through a door, you found yourself in a lobby featuring displays of paintings by a local artist—also anonymous.

Walking through a beaded curtain into the next room, you gave a donation for admittance to the culinary speak-easy. Candlelit tables were set up throughout the loft, and I grabbed a seat with my friend and her young daughter next to the open kitchen.

The Café X staff was in high gear, slicing and stuffing, pulling trays of food out of the oven to restock the buffet-style food line.

Vegan Menu

This was the third time Café X had set up shop, having done it twice in the summer in the vein of an outdoor, neighborhood barbecue. They said that they plan to carry on “as long as they can.” Everything is vegan, and on the night that I attended, one of the chefs stated, “This is our most ambitious menu yet.” The offerings included grilled tempeh, corn pudding, stuffed mushrooms, crostinis, seitan in chile-chocolate mole, lemon-roasted asparagus, toasted sesame slaw and, for dessert, cakes and truffles—rich truffles. When my friend’s kid grabbed quite a few, a chef gave her mom a friendly warning. “You might want to take some of those home,” she said. “They’re very rich. I don’t think you can eat them all in one sitting. “I had a friend who ate a bunch and he was like, ‘Ohhhh,’” she added, holding her stomach in mock pain.

Preparing the Meal

The preparation for this meal started Friday night with a major grocery run. “We try to use local and organic ingredients as much as we possibly can,” one chef said. The morning before the event is when the prep work begins. The chefs spend about seven hours on desserts, chop 37 pounds of vegetables, boil 15 pounds of seitan, move the food to storage and organize the space.

They begin the real cooking the morning of—lots of decorating, marinating, stuffing a hundred mushrooms, washing and assembling—fearful that everything might not be in place by the 6 p.m. dinner bell. Café X has advertised through e-mail lists and fliers. This strategy attracted about 50 people in February—mostly Riverwest punks, activists and artists.

The atmosphere is friendly, and one of the secret chefs stated the ultimate inspiration: “It is obviously a labor of love, and we get that love back when we see people enjoying themselves and the food.”

Originally appeared in the Shepherd Express

DANNY PRICE AND THE LOOSE CHANGE

2008-04-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

“Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to? Where you gonna run to, all on that day?” –traditional song

WELL I RUN TO THE ROCK- PLEASE HIDE ME!
“Let’s run through it one more time, then listen to the CD.” Danny Price tells this to his band, The Loose Change. They are practicing a set of mostly covers for a St. Patrick’s Day show at a Riverwest bar known simply as The Pub. They are trying to get down a cover of a traditional song, “Sinnerman”, made popular by Nina Simone. It is an intensely soulful rolling piece.
“When I first heard her version of ‘Sinnerman’, there wasn’t another song I listened to for a week.” Price says of the piece.
The Loose Change, Paul Setser, keyboard, Ben Rousseau, bass, Russ Nadasdy, guitar and Ken Zanowski, drums, are crowded in Setser’s living room in his second floor flat. The drum set is set up by the couch, the keyboard by the TV, and everyone somewhere between. All the members have a glass of wine within arms reach.
They jam through the song pretty reasonably, and then listen to Simone’s version. Paul plays along lightly on the keyboard and Ken adds a couple cymbal splashes. They start into the song, faster this time, and add a break down where the band claps the rhythm with their hands. They run through the song one more time and they have it down tightly. They then run through a couple more covers, “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis, and the traditional Irish drinking song “Nancy Whiskey”, which is sure to get the crowd singing along.

SO I RUN TO THE RIVER, IT WAS BLEEDIN’- ALL ON THAT DAY
Danny Price grew up listening to pop music and country, and in his adolescence discovered punk and metal.
“Now I try to incorporate all those different styles that I grew up loving into our music.” Price says. Price looks and sings like a sailor who just got leave off a ship of the damned. When he sings, his face is concerned, as if he is feeling all the pain he sings about.
Danny, Paul, and Ken played the first Loose Change show as a trio on Christmas Eve, 2006 at the Circle A. The three also play in the burlesque themed band Eat The Mystery. Smoky torch singer Angie Livermore sings with Eat The Mystery and often joins in with the Loose Change at shows. Ben and Russ joined the band a year later.

OH I RUN TO THE SEA, IT WAS BOILIN’- ALL ON THAT DAY
“I said POWER (Power lord!) POWER (Power Lord!) POWER!” The Loose Change are performing “Sinnerman” at The Pub, Danny Price screaming “Power!” over and over, The Loose Change clapping and singing “Power Lord!” in response. They are shoved in a corner, more cramped than they are in the living room. The crowd is festive for St.Patty’s Day; everyone is shoulder to shoulder, clinking glasses and enjoying the music.

This article appeared in a slightly diffrent form in the Shepherd Express

EULOGY FOR A RUSTY BUM

2008-03-21T18:08:00.001-07:00

Well, it happened. Rusty Bum, or as I called him sometimes, Rust Bucket, kicked it. The Bucket. He was on a short list I have of people who might die anytime, a list of people I won't be surprised when I get the news and in fact will be like "What took so long?" How did he die? My grand dad used to sing me this song when I was little...
"A peanut sittin' on the railroad track, waitin' for his mudder/ along came the number ten train and TOOT! TOOT! Peanut budder!"
Like a lot of people, I was friends with Rusty for awhile, but then we had a falling out. I was walking down Center street when he angrily confronted me with some of his hobo friends. "What the fuck is with you, Tea? You used to be cool, but now you think you're too cool for me." He went on and on and on and I had no idea what he was talking about. He challenged me to fight him several times there on Center, I told him to fuck off and avoided him after that. I had somehow become one of "them" in his growing disproportionate battle of "me v.s. them". To those who had only heard of him, he was a minor legend, a localized Keyser Soze. To many of us who knew him, he was a pain in the ass, a perennial pest annoying the shit out of everyone in Summer, then hopping out to raise hell in some other unfortunate city. I think he would also not be dismayed by his own doom, as he didn't seem to value his own life very much. He seemed to be constantly pissed, and made "misery love company" his mantra. I'm sure some of his friends, who all have rail rider names like "Toadface", "Shithead Jones", and "Stinkbomb" might disagree with me. They've probably had good times drinking Old Thompson and stabbing each other. I have many stories about him, too many to type out. I did witness his legendarily drunken crash of a Beans and Barley picnic which is still talked about today. He came staggering across the horizon towards the picnic, walking right through a volleyball game, totally oblivious. There was a tub filled with melting ice and bottles of soda and beer, and the first thing he did was dunk his head in it, then shook his head like a dog and said "Refreshing!" He then harassed the employees for smokes and made lewd comments. A lot of mellows were harshed.
I could go on, but I'll leave it with one more. I found this article in the way back machine, originally published in April 2001 in the late, great Milwaukee Orbit. The Orbit had a feature called "Tales From The Pub" in which the staff and guests recalled their wildest drinking hole experiences. In this issue, I described a full on bar room blitz started by the Rusty Bum.

It seemed like a normal, calm night. Wednesday, the middle of the week. I got done with work early, about 11:30 and got to Riverwest
about Midnight. What the hell, I thought, I'd stop at my neighborhood
bar, the Polish Falcon, and have a beer. I'd say hello to my friends
who usually show up there for open bowl. As I approached the bar, I saw
what appeared to be a Sasquatch accompanied by a punk rocker run out the
front door and to the side of the bar. They started punching these
dudes, and nearby two girls were also punching each other.
"Whoa." I said.
I walked in, and inside two guys were being pushed apart. The group from
outside ran in the back door and started shoving the people inside. They started throwing bar stools and pool cues. The bartender was calm, eyeing the chaos and smoking a cigarette. "What's going on here?" I asked, leaning on the bar. He shrugged and said, "Buncha people actin' stupid." There was handfuls of people punching and pushing and running in and out the front and back doors. It was chaos! The downstairs bartender was sitting next to me and he said, "If they were real men, they'd take it outside." He was also calm. So was I, even though I knew most of these people fighting
each other.
"Have a good night." I said, and tipped a dollar. Then I left.

That Sasquatch looking fellow, of course, was the Rust Bucket, who had started the fight. It was exactly the type of thing he thrived on. As for his death, all I can say is that some deity somewhere has a big mess on their hands.

BUILDING THE CHALLENGE

2008-03-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

Old traditions share space with latest technology
By Tea Krulos, Photos by Paul Kjelland

When the new Discovery World opens at Pier Wisconsin on September 9, it will feature a stunning array of cutting edge technology. But one of the main attractions, a replica of the 1852 schooner The Challenge, was built in the old, traditional craft of wooden boat building. It’s an art that has few practioners left.
One of the crew of boat builders working on The Challenge was Amy “Shredder” Schaub. Unlike many people her age, Amy has decided to pursue a career in boat building, sailing, and teaching these skills to others.

“SHREDDER’S” SEA CHANTY
Amy began as a volunteer crewmember on the S/V Denis Sullivan, a recreation of an 1880’s era three masted schooner that now calls Pier Wisconsin home. The schooner was built under the direction of shipwright Rob Stevens, who has been building boats for over 25 years. He has built a replica of a Viking boat, the Snorri, among others. Amy took a basic boat building and sailing class. When the Denis Sullivan was set to cruise on it’s second voyage, Amy joined the crew as a deckhand. The voyage took the boat up through the St. Lawrence Seaway, and then down the East coast as far South as Florida. It was here in Florida that she took a test and received her Captain’s license.
The following year, Amy again voyaged with the Denis Sullivan, this time as Second Mate. They stopped at the Tall Ships Festival in Green Bay, and then again headed through the St. Lawrence Seaway, stopping in Halifax, and then heading to the Bahamas and Bermuda. The crew met Bermuda’s Governor, who joined them in a round of Bermuda’s official drink- the Dark and Stormy. This delicious cocktail consists of Gosling’s rum mixed with ginger beer and lime.
The next spring, Amy returned to Caribbean shores to teach Semester at Sea, a six week program for High school girls, who learned new skills as well as experiencing seasickness first hand. Subjects for the class included Sail Training, Water Science, Navigation, Maritime History, and Weather. Returning to Milwaukee, she taught on the ship Neeskay for the UWM Great Lakes Water Institute.

A TRAINING IN MYSTERY BAY
Amy decided to advance her boat building skills at the Northwest School of Boat Building in Port Hadlock, which lies on Mystery Bay in Washington State. After a semester she graduated with an associate’s degree in large vessel construction. The skills she obtained would be useful for her return to Milwaukee.

THE CHALLENGE
While in Port Hadlock, she received a call from Rob Stevens. He had work for her helping to build the Challenge. William Wallace Bates originally built the boat in 1852 in Manitowoc. It was built for speed, delivering cargo throughout the Great Lakes area. The ship met its fate in 1910 when it began to take water. The crew tried to pump the water out, but soon had to run the ship aground in the Milwaukee River. Folklore says the ship crashed into a shoreline saloon, but there is no official record of this.

BUILDING THE BOAT
Hundreds of steps, big and small go into building the schooner. Amy began working on the boat October of last year, after she graduated. Construction of the boat started with the “backbone” which includes the stem and keel. Next the frames or “ribs” are added to form the skeleton of the ship.
Planking begins. The planking is the wood that makes up the hull, the skin of the ship. The rudder is added. Deck beams, which support the deck floor, are placed.
A system of spars, masts, the jib boom, and bowsprit are constructed. All of these are parts, which hold the sails and the ropes, and parts that help move the sails, known as rigging. The pilothouses and cabins start to be constructed, and the deck is laid down. The anchor windlass, which houses the anchor and chain, and the anchor support system, is built. Lots and lots of sanding, painting, and detail work happen. One of the last steps is to add the sails and rigging. In order to get an authentic look, the shipwrights wanted to get pieces made for the ship, from the same source the original builders of the Challenge would have gone, a blacksmith.

CALLING IN THE BLACKSMITH
Like Amy, Nathaniel Reinartz is practicing a career in an uncommon art- blacksmithing. He was contracted to build several small working pieces for the Challenge, straps, plates, runners, and other parts. Some of the UnderCurrents crew traveled to Kewaskum, where Nathaniel was working in the Bighorn Forge on a piece called the traveler, a device that helps move the boom, which helps move a sail. The forge is on a pleasant farm housed inside a barn with dirt floors. The shop is filled with fiery furnaces, anvils, and racks and shelves full of hammers, tongs, rulers and various other tools and materials. A cow skull hangs above the doorway, and a rooster crows periodically in the background.
“The definition of Blacksmith has changed a lot over the years. The craft has always been somewhat ornamental, but now it’s 100 percent ornamental.” Nathaniel tells us. He’s glad to be working on functioning pieces, even if the ship isn’t setting sail. The Challenge is suspended from the ceiling inside Discovery World. People can walk underneath the ship and then board it on the second level of the museum. I asked Amy how she felt about putting so much work into a ship that will never sail the high seas. She said basically that she was just glad to practice her boat building skills.
The Challenge has helped Amy and Nathaniel apply their trade, but where can they go from here? Amy is returning to Port Townsend to teach on the schooner Martha, a two masted schooner that has survived since it was built in 1905. It has had a lot of work done, and although it can’t make long voyages, it can go on short class length trips. Nathaniel will carry on seeking freelance work, ornamental fences and other work.

MORE ATTRACTIONS AT DISCOVERY WORLD
In addition to the Challenge and the S/V Denis Sullivan, displays will include saltwater and freshwater aquariums, and touch tanks with sturgeons, sharks and stingrays. More displays-

* The HIVE is a “multimedia experience that immerges you in an exciting virtual environment.”
* Rockwell Automation’s Dream Machine “build your own 3-D object”
* Techno Jungle “join the hunt for the next great idea”
* Great Lakes Future, a scale representation of the Great Lakes waterway.
* Health Satellite “ explore modern medicine and it’s tools by diagnosing an astronaut on a mission to Mars”
* Energy and Ingenuity, “explore energy and it’s uses and sources”
* Life Jet City “an interactive display that teaches you how to get your ideas into the Marketplace.”

Discovery World’s Exhibit Grand opening is September 9t After Sept 10, Discovery World will be open every day 9-5
Discoveryworld.org

GOT A MOUTH LIKE A SAILOR?
Schooner- A boat with two or more masts with the main mast taller than the rest.
Transom- The bow of the ship.
Windlass- Drum that hauls the anchor up.
Capston- Wheel turned in a circle by sailors that hauls the anchor up.
Spar- Sticks that support the sails and rigging.
Jib Boom- A spar that sticks out in front of the boat.
Jib- Small forward sail.
Avast- Stop.
Starboard- Right hand side facing forward.
Port- Left hand side facing forward.
Cut of your jib- As in “I don’t like the cut of your jib.”

This article originally appeared in UnderCurrents

LAST CALL AT CIRCLE A

2008-03-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

photo by Paul Kjelland

“Circle A is an entity of it’s own. I love what it’s become, and that’s mostly the people.” –Warwick

Things change.
I remember rocking out the Doctor Who pinball machine while slamming Blatz in the back room of the Stork Club. The space is now Nessun Dorma, and the back room is usually full of people enjoying wine, imports, and antipasta. Onopa “cleaned up its act” and became Stonefly. Quarters is still Quarters, but it went from a sonic boom blasting rock and roll palace to a hip hop palace.
And consider this: The Unicorn was a rock club that used to be housed in the basement of the Sydney Hih building. Some of the acts included pre superstardom groups like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, etc. and a ton of great punk bands. The club closed mid nineties. Gus Hosseini, who ran the club, now owns Club Belize (among other businesses), a Caribbean themed bar with card-carrying members and a dress code. There are other great Milwaukee clubs that closed before I got a chance to experience them.
Circle A, which opened five and a half years ago, has closed for set business hours, although it will be open sporadically for special events, at least until the bar’s license is up for renewal in Fall. Warwick Sealy, the bar’s owner has a “wait and see what happens then” attitude toward that date. Warwick lives upstairs from the bar, which rests at the end of Chambers Street next to the lot occupied by North Side Lumber and Fuel Company.
Inside flyers from 80’s punk shows featuring bands like The Cramps, Bad Brains, UK Subs, TSOL and others decorate the wall. Three Television sets play nothing but static. The beautiful Jukebox, a treasure, has an unusual mix of Hank Williams, The Ventures, Bow Wow Wow, Led Zepplin, and The Buzzcocks, as well as local bands like The Mistreaters (who released a Live At Circle A 7”), Rusty P’s, and Bear Proof Suit. This isn’t just a place of great music, but great thinking. And if you can’t find the right word for your thought, a double box set of the Oxford English Dictionary rests next to the cash register.
Circle A has become famous locally for a couple things, the first being it’s cramped “Alive At 8” series. This music showcase featured dozens and dozens of local bands. It was early enough that it didn’t piss off the neighbors, didn’t conflict with other shows, and was a great alternative to those who wanted to check out a band they liked but didn’t want to stay up until bar close to see them. Many of these performances were taped and Warwick hopes some of these are released in some form.
The other thing that energized Circle A was a solid line up of DJs spinning pop records, which wasn’t common at the time they opened. The bar had DJs almost every night of the week, many of which have developed their own following.
I went to the Circle A to hang out for the last night they were open on a regular basis, Sunday, February 25. It was a dark and snowy night. Just after 9 p.m., photographer Paul Kjelland and I showed up. The “Alive At 8” set is halfway through. Aaron Schleicher of the local band Juniper Tar is playing an acoustic set, and his brother Ryan will play after him.
9:45 p.m. Warwick pops in and greets the patrons. He has the gift of conversation, which makes him a favorite bartender to many.
10 p.m. In the men’s room the writing on the wall is, “Death to the Weird” and, uh-oh, “It Burns When I Pee”.
10:30 p.m. It’s not a place where everyone knows your name, but you’re sure to run into someone you know. Big Terrible Easy, a Brew City Bruiser, recently voted “Best Party Animal” by her league shows up. By now it has cleared out some because the “Alive At 8” set has ended. A DJ has set up and plays straight up 1950’s rock and roll on the ones and twos. Paul and I grab some theater seats against the wall and take it all in.
11 p.m. I’m looking at a giant poster by the window for a Ramones gig in London. As if on cue, the DJ cranks “I Wanna Be Sedated”.
11:10 p.m. The crowd has had enough drinks to start dancing, cutting a rug to Gene “The Duke” Chandler’s Duke-Duke-Duke of Earl-Earl-Earl, followed by “Book of Love” by The Monotones. I tried to write down the lyrics in real time for some reason, and the page is just a scribble of “boop boopy doops”. I see faded, scratched lettering on the window, “The New Wheel”. I ask the bartender about this artifact and she says the bar was “The New Wheel” and then “A Likely Story” in its past lives.
Midnight. I’m having a blast and my handwriting is barely legible, but I can read a note about people dancing to “Short Shorts.” It’s by The Royal Teens, and yes, we like short shorts. I go to the bar to get another beer and knock it over when I hand Warwick the money. Beer spills across the bar. Warwick’s unfazed. He’s seen worse.
Around 1:30 a.m., as best I can tell, I’m in the bag. I’m three sheets to the wind as they say. I say goodbye to everyone, even strangers.

One week later, and I’m again sitting at the bar of the Circle A. It is empty now, except for Warwick and I, and really quiet. The coolers, the neon signs, the static filled Televisions are all shut down. A pile of shredded cardboard covers part of the floor, chewed up by Warwick’s pitbull Hazelnut. I start the conversation by trying to backtrack to why he opened the bar in the first place. He tells me it was largely inspired by his love of music.
I ask him what the first memorable shows he attended were. He started out going to coliseum shows by monsters of metal like Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, and Kiss. He soon came across punk rock when he moved to New York City in the late 1970’s. There he was blown away by The Ramones at a small bar called Zappa’s, and saw The Cramps and Richard Hell and the Voidoids at Max’s Kansas City.
Warwick moved to Milwaukee in 1996 and quickly became part of the local basement scene. At that point there were maybe four or five houses having basement shows on a regular basis. He even played in a band briefly himself as the keyboardist for the short lived but well loved band The Moles, which also featured a bass player and a percussionist playing oil drums.
“Playing a show at Circle A is like playing a basement show, minus the furnace, leaky pipes, and washer and dryer.”
So why close?
“I’ve been edging this way for awhile, I’ve gotten tired of it and the work involved. I’m not whining, I’ve had a great staff. Its just time for something new.” The non stop party has distracted him from other projects he wants to take on, although he’s quick to add that he’s grateful for all the people who have showed up regularly to support Circle A over the last five years.
“For all the things that could go wrong running a bar, thankfully few of those things happened to us.” I asked him if crime was a factor in his decision. Circle A has been held up twice, the last time a year and half ago.
“No it didn’t. It sucks, but it didn’t sway my decision. It’s a concern, but a separate concern.”
Is Circle A the last of the great rock bars in Milwaukee? Where can the masses turn?

This article originally appeared in UnderCurrents

HOTEL PHARMACY

2008-03-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

Note: These three short write ups will hopefully be collected in a larger volume someday.

THE MILLIONAIRES

"So we might as well not bother coming into work Thursday, heh heh heh." One of the cook says this, dumping burger patties and onion slices on the grill.
"I mean, we're going to win, so why bother? No, wait. We should go buy coffee and donuts and bring them in here for the regulars and say, look, sorry, but this place is closing down. We all quit."
The cafe employees, two cooks, two dishwashers, five waitresses, and one cashier have all thrown in two bucks to buy Powerball tickets. Powerball is up to 200 mil or some ridiculous unimaginable total, and the staff plans to split the winnings ten ways.
One of the waitresses says to the dishwasher, "You know what I'm going to do when we win?"
"Quit?"
"Quit?! Shit, what's wrong with you? Of course we're all going to quit, that's a given. No, I'm going to get my damn kids their own apartment. I'll just stop by once in awhile to make sure they have food. Shit, maybe I'll send someone else." She loves those kids, but sometimes....sometimes they just drive her crazy!
"You know, you better divorce your husband quick, because he's going to get half your winning." The other cook says this to another waitress.
"He don't get shit."
"No, I mean legally, he IS entitled to half."
"He ain't going to get to spend it. I'm keeping it in my own bank account. He wants something, he's got to ask me."
The cashier walks through the kitchen to get herself a diet Coke.
"What are you going to do with a couple million?" The dishwasher asks her.
"Spend it. Spend it all, as fast as I can!" She gives a sinister laugh.
The staff does not have humanitarian issues in mind, not now anyhow. Their wealth will be their revenge. They are too beat down by the long hours, the impossible regulars, the dirty tables, the small tips, the cleaning of the grease traps, the kids, the lack of respect, everything.
"What will happen to this place? He can't run it without us." A waitress says.
"Oh, you missed it. We already discussed this. We're going to buy it from him, tear it down and build a parking lot." Another waitress reveals the plan. A cook elaborates.
"It's going to be a two story garage with free parking. That's what the east side needs. There's not enough parking. I'm serious."
"What about you? What are you going to do with the money?" A waitress asks the dishwasher. The dishwasher smiles. He has thought it through on many a slow night. He would buy a single family home, with a big backyard. A fireplace in the living room. A room set aside for a library. Some comfortable chairs. A well stocked licquor cabinet.
But first, he would take a vaction.
"To New Zealand and Fiji. Until this winter is over." He points out the window to the huge, icy piles of snow, blackened by car exhaust. Now he is drifting a thousand miles away. He is on a coastal beach in New Zealand, with his girlfriend. He is lounging in a beach chair, resting his aching back. He looks over at her, and she is smiling. The sun feels good on their skin.
One of the cooks will open his own casino (and probably gamble away his earnings.)
One of the waitresses will move granny out of her home and into a plush retirement community (let them do the sponge baths!)
A group of scuzzy, grumpy old men walks in, but the waitresses don't pinch a fit like they usually do. What does it matter? In two days they will be multi millionaires, and they'll never have to deal with these assholes again.
I mean, the odds are in their favor, right?

HIS OWN CHRISTMAS TIME VILLAGE

When my boss looks out on his village, he sees progress. He stands with his arms crossed, crusty cup of hot cocoa in hand, staring at his village, totally transfixed, hypnotized. His village, a set of miniatures, spreads nearly forty feet along the street level windows. This village combines all the best bits of Charles Dickens, Frank Capra, Norman Rockwell, Bing Crosby, everything that will fill a grandma's heart with bliss.
Much of it was purchased at a post Christmas fire fifty percent off everything must go sale. And what a village it is! He walks closer to adjust a white picket fence around the town bakery. Look at the size of this candy shop! A solid brick two floor building, all candy shoppe. Can you imagine the rent if this building was on Brady st.? You'd have to sell a lot of lollipops. There's the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. And over there is the bank, the good type. The type that will shake your hand and give you a loan, but won't repo everything you own. A life size toy train circles around in one window and in the next youngsters skate on a "pond" created by spraying spray snow on a mirror. Carolers line the street. He can almost hear them singing "Silent Night" and "Old King Wenceslas". They are rewarded with hot apple cinnamon muffins and hot cocoa...hot cocoa. He's spilled it on his tie, which has a turkey outline pattern on it. He wipes it on his sleeve. And here, here in the first window is the glorious city hall. A beautiful, unthreatening stone building. And when my boss stares at this city hall, he realizes that he should be mayor of this fine village. He'll wear a top hat and scarf and scarlet over coat. These people of this village will adore him as ruler. They will laugh with him, not against him. He will be delightful but a firm leader. Part Captain Kangaroo, part Napoleon Bonaparte. He will spend his days in the office of this city hall, planning ribbon cuttings and the village holiday parade.
Yes! The holiday parade! Six dozen carolers, ice skaters, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, people on sleds, the lovable train conductor....and who is leading the parade? He is! Mayor eternal, with immortality. He is LORD MAYOR, swinging a baton at the head of the parade, lead by the village high school marching band playing a beautiful rendition of "O, Tannenbaum"! He can see himself there, he can actually feel himself transported to miniature size....into the display! He leads the parade along the windows, back, back to the kitchen. They pass the village tailor, and Joe's General Store. Joe is standing on the steps, waving the parade on. The pass the pagoda in the middle of town and the fix-it shop. They pass the church, steeple covered in ceramic snow. They pass the one room school house, the pride of town....not like these awful public schools. Now they approach the end of the town, near the kitchen window, when a sense of terror grips my boss, terrorizing him. THOSE...THINGS! Those hideous, ugly, foul things approaching his village! Five or six big ones! COCKROACHES!!!!!!
A nightmare for this mayor. He has failed his constituency.

ODE TO MO

If I ever get old with anyone, I hope she's like my friend Mo. Mo and I have worked together seven years, more or less, I've quit and come back a few times. (Oh, and you know what I really love? When people come in and say "Wow, you've been working here FOREVER!" Yeah, thanks for the update, bozo.)

Mo's in her late 50's, a chain smoking, pill popping, foul mouthed granny. We've become good enough friends that she's more of a relative to me than a real relative is. She's helped me through some hard times, and is widely knowledgable about how to get out of most bad spots, mostly from experience. I usually turn to her first with any and all advice. She likes to break my balls sometimes, like she'll say "Who the fuck do you think you are, Elvis?" when my hair is slicked back, or she'll say "Your girlfriend is here!" and point to the ugliest, craziest woman on Earth.

Most women Mo's age love Tom Jones and Liberace, but Mo prefers the soothing riffs of Black Sabbath and Motorhead. We're both cashiers. We both hate our jobs.
And did I mention her foul mouth? It's filthier than Smirk Savage's.

I think one of the funniest moments we shared was a few months ago. We were having a really, really difficult day. Wingnuts and assholes were pouring through the door.
"It must be a fucking full moon." Mo said.
"Fuck a duck." I agreed.
I mean it was really bad. One of the waitresses came over with a plastic bag over her head and asked me to grip onto her neck so she suffocated.
"Kill me." she pleaded. Mo came up to me later and grabbed my arm so tight it left bruises.
"I'm going FUCKING CRAZY!" she said, twisting my elbow. I was going crazy, too, but I'm almost monk-like in controlling my anger. Mo bit my arm, hard, leaving teeth marks. I was shocked, but understood.

At the end of the day, she lit up one of her Marb 100's.
"I've never been so fucking glad to see the ass end of a day in my entire life. If I so much as see one more fucking goober (her term for a crazy) I'm going to shoot my fucking head off."
At that exact moment we both looked out the front window. A woman walked by carrying a giant dufflebag shaped like a fish (a pike, I believe) muttering angrily to herself and twitching in spasms. Mo looked at me, and we both started laughing. At that point it was either start laughing or start crying.

Anyhow, today we got to kick out one of the many, many people on the 86'D list, which we always enjoy. I was pricing Twizzlers and Mo was going through this week's tabloids, when I looked up and saw an 86'D ex-regular, "Filthy McNasty" heading toward the door. Let me tell you, you have to be pretty fucking filthy to get a nickname like that here. The dude smells like piss and rotten cottage cheese. He would leave a stain of sweaty ooze wherever he sat, which the waitresses would have to clean with lysol, a napkin over their mouth and nose. He would leave a GIANT mess all over the table, ashes everywhere but the ash tray. He was rude to the waitresses and would fart loudly while ordering. He was demanding, once ordering a milkshake, sending it back because it wasn't thick enough, and when the poor waitress finally figured out how to thicken a fucking milkshake, he insisted it was...you guessed it...TOO THICK. He is a gluttonous slob. We had a sale on fudge cubes once, for 53 cents. He bought one. Sat down. Ate it. Bought a second one. Sat down. Ate it. Did this six times, stood up and puked a puddle of chocalate onto the floor. I could go on and on and on. At last he was kicked out for- get this- stealing a 59 cent cigar. This dude is like sixty or seventy and he's going to risk shit for a 59 cent cigar.

So here he is walking up to the door. "Shit. Heads up, Mo." I say.
She looks up. "This dumb fuck?" she says in disbelief. Our boss doesn't step into this type of thing. It's me and Mo versus the masses.

I've developed what I call "the strong and silent" technique. I first saw Stan use it at Fuel cafe, and I was like "Wow, I'm burning myself out yelling at these creeps for nothing." Basically I stand on my tiptoes and puff my chest out, so now I'm like 6'10", I give my best menacing stare and point at the person, completely silent. Nine out of ten times it works (yes, we kick out this many people). What often happens is the person starts denying the crime, which is obviously a confession, and they don't realize it until too late because they are stupid. Example:
"What? Why am I not allowed in here? I didn't do anything. This is bullshit! What did I do? Well? I didn't steal a cigar. That's bullshit. Who told you I stole a cigar yesterday? Bullshit." Meanwhile, the whole time I'm standing there, pointing, not saying peep.

Mo's technique is a bit different.
"You have two fucking seconds to get the fuck out of here, shithead." Is usually her opening remark. Today she calls Filthy McNasty one of my favs, a "scumfucking sleazeweasel."

It was a beautiful scene. Me standing there, chest puffed out, pointing silently, and Mo on the other side of the counter, swearing up a tornado, and Filthy McNasty standing in the doorway, scratching his hairy exposed gut, mumbling "Bullshit, bullshit." over and over.

LEAH JEE ROCKS BBC

2008-03-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

LEAH JEE ROCKS BBC
By Tea Krulos

Talking to Leah Jee is a cheerful experience and you get the impression she spends a great deal of time happily rocking out. She has carried this attitude with her from her home in sunny California, moving here in 2000 with a scholarship to Marquette.
Jee plays an infectious, energetic, poppy punky Orange county-y sound, a ray of South Cali supersonic sunlight that blinds the frozen no-fun-niks of the local scene.
Leah Jee and The Boys (her back up band, Jim Sinicki, bass, Lior Dar, drums, Bryan Burch, guitar) have played it all, from the sweat soaked, beer swilling masses at Summerfest to intimate serenades on a stormy night at the Riverwest Commons.
The band toured in November, playing dozens of gigs in home, sweet home, California, from San Francisco to San Diego.
“The California music scene was absolutely receptive to us, and we had a great fan response every show we played.” Jee told me.
The band will hit the road again in May for a mid atlantic and east coast tour. On March 8, Jee will rock the BBC, celebrating the release of her new EP, All The Things I Forgot To Mention, recorded at Studio Z in Milwaukee over several months.
Leah Jee and the boys always has an energetic live performance, and if the audience is lucky, they’ll hear a rockin’ cover of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” which wowed the crowd so much at one performance, that they demanded the band play it a second time.
Speaking of Paula Abdul, Miss Jee will be one of three guest judges for the Alverno College Idol contest, a replica of American Idol.
Jee will certainly bring a healthy dose of Vitamin C to the contest.

The CD is available at www.leahjeemusic.com.
This story originally appeared at www.vitalsourcemag.com

THE HORROR OF ZOMBIE WIFE

2008-02-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

IT CAME FROM LAKE MICHIGAN
by Tea Krulos

The sky is overcast, foreboding, as dark clouds quickly roll in and a thunderclap is heard in the near distance. It is a bleak day for we, the aggrieved. Tragedy has struck. Beth died, too young, in a tragic accident. She was driving and was struck by a car. (Fade to black. CRASH SOUND.) Her husband, Jason, looks guilty and he should. The night before they had a fight in bed before going to sleep. They were arguing about finances when Beth told him “Urgh, you’re such a jerk.” (Rolls over and goes to sleep.) To which Jason thoughtlessly replied “You make me so angry. I wish you were dead.”(Goes to sleep.)
And so here we stand staring at Beth’s grave. The pastor tries to improvise words of comfort.
PASTOR: “She loved you. She was a good wife. Do not look at this as an end, but a new beginning…”(The attendees mourn. Jason is visibly shaken.)
“CUT! Great job, everyone!” Jason Knuth yells out. I’m an extra for the funeral scene in Knuth’s short movie Zombie Wife, which will be one of the first movies screened at this year’s It Came From Lake Michigan (ICFLM) horror movie festival. Knuth has written, directs, and stars in the movie. His wife, Beth, is the title role and assistant director. This scene is shot on a cloudy day in early May in a corner of Knuth’s backyard in Waukesha. The extras really are his mother and co-worker. William P. Zenobia, a director of ICFLM, portrays the pastor.
After a few takes of the scene from different angles, we move into Knuth’s house to watch the raw footage. Knuth operates with a simple set up, a Sony handicam, with editing done in Windows Movie Maker. His living room is covered with Star Wars posters, unopened action figures, and autographed framed photos. Everything checks out and now Knuth has only the climatic appearance of the zombie, the corpus reanimatis, to film.
A couple months later and the Knuths stop by my house to view the final product. He has sent a copy to ICFLM (who accepts it), and also submits it to horror film fests in Chicago and Sacramento. The film runs nine minutes from opening credits to shocking conclusion. Knuth became interested in making his own film after appearing in collaborator Kelly Prescott’s 2006 film Bowlful of Happiness, a film in which Knuth portrays a mentally challenged man obsessed with beans who is tormented by killer sea monkeys.
I ask Beth what it’s like having Jason as a spouse and director.
“He needs to learn to tell me to do more takes.” I tell them I’m surprised, that I might guess the opposite, that he’d overwork her. Knuth shrugs.
“I still have to live with her when the camera shuts off.” And the advantages?
“She’s an actress I can call on anytime.”
“And I’m free.” She adds. The budget for the movie was a hundred and fifty dollars, spent on make up, flowers for the funeral scene, and software. The actors all volunteered and it was shot entirely in and around the Knuth household, causing several strange looks from the neighbors.

When asked why a horror film fest instead of something more artistic, ICFLM founder Wayne “Uthyr” Clingman says,
“I want to watch films I enjoy. I’m tired of hair being glued on film and called art.” You can be sure you won’t find fuzzy artistic statements in this year’s ICFLM films which include Backwoods Blood Bath, After the Blood Rush, and Blood, Boobs, and Beasts.
Clingman started the first ICFLM last year in Racine, but decided to go “bigger and better” this year at the Tommy Thompson Center on the Wisconsin State fair grounds.
Horror heavyweights appearing this year include Lloyd Kaufman, head of Troma Entertainment, which has produced such cult hits as The Toxic Avenger, and Class of Nuke ‘Em High. Troma’s latest release is Poultrygeist.
Also appearing will be Mark Borchardt, the local icon documented in American Movie, and John Dugan, who played “Grandpa” in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
What connection do the Soup Nazi (Larry Thomas) and Niedermeyer (Mark Metcalf) have to the genre? Thomas stars in Postal, which screens here, and Metcalf is beloved by Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans for his role as The Master. More guests include numerous horror film directors, make up artists and a bevy of B Scream Queens.
Industry ghouls will be conducting spine tingling workshops throughout.
“We are the only film fest that is doing a major push on workshops, many taught by the stars.” Claims Clingman. There will be a gala party Friday night with a London 1885 Hellfire club theme, with a performance by the Living Dead Girlz, a horror themed burlesque group.
Clingman hopes the all the sweat pays off after putting in the efforts to insure success.
“I thought, how hard could it be to put on a fest? Much harder than I thought.”

This originally appeared in the Shepherd Express

VEGAN IN A BLACK LEATHER JACKET

2008-02-29T16:55:00.000-08:00

VEGAN IN A BLACK LEATHER JACKET
by Tea Krulos, photo illustration by Paul Kjelland
The morning of May 1st was crisp and cool, so I threw on my black leather motorcycle jacket and headed out for my morning cup of coffee. A few steps out the door I laughed at the irony of my choice. Today was the first day of 31 days of being a vegan for me. Vegans do not consume animal products of any kind, meat, dairy, and clothing made of animal products.
It all started a few weeks earlier. I was having a rough month, the type of month you get through and once you’re through it you know you can take on any challenge and it’ll seem piddely by comparison. I needed to move by May 1st and it appeared I had nowhere to go. My friend Paul Kjelland, a talented local photographer, made the generous offer that I could stay at his house for as long as I needed in May.
Paul is vegan, and my thought was that it would be an interesting experience and perhaps a polite gesture as a house guest if I adopted his lifestyle for the month. As it turns out, I found a place of my own before the month was up, but now going through with the plan to me really appealed to me, so I decided to go ahead a vegan way of life for the month of May.
The vegan movement started with the Vegan Society in Britain in the 1940’s. Donald Watson lead the group and coined the word “vegan” from the first three and last two letters of vegetarian because “Veganism starts with vegetarianism and carries it through to it’s logical conclusion.”
To encourage me further, my new room mate, Jessica, agreed to join me in the vegan challenge. I took notes daily on what I was eating and discovering, and what follows are points of interest along the way.

MAY 1- Welcome to veganhood dinner party
I usually take a solid dose of half and half in my coffee, but today I start using soy creamer instead. It is not too far off. Real half and half is a little thicker, but after a couple of days my tongue has adjusted and the difference doesn’t bother me.
For lunch I have a Rabbit sandwich at the Anodyne coffee shop on Brady Street. It has lettuce, carrots, and onion with a delicious almond spread on white bread. After I leave though, I wonder “Was the bread vegan?” I didn’t ask. Later, Paul assures me that I hadn’t failed before I even began, all the bread at Anodyne is vegan. I ask him what he does if he doesn’t know if a restaurant uses vegan bread.
“Ask.” I ask if the answer to that question is “I dunno” and what he does if it is.
“Wing it.” He tells me.
To kick off my trek, Paul is hosting a vegan dinner at his house with a few friends and me.
The main course is red peppers stuffed with a mix consisting of brown rice (prepared with cilantro and lime juice) and fake crumpled beef. He adds habanejero sauce and onion for flavor. He also makes two great side dishes, steamed asparagus and a spicy side of black beans seasoned with onions, lime juice, cumin, cayenne pepper, paprika, chili powder, and a splash of orange juice.
He also lends me two books, the first, and natural place to start is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vegan Living. Of course I should have read this beforehand, but I zip through the book over the next few days. The other is a vegan cookbook called Simply Vegan, which comes in handy on nights I feel like cooking.

MAY 2- “My parents thought I joined a cult.”
I go to the Riverwest Co-op café for breakfast. The Riverwest co-op becomes headquarters for me over the next month, for a few reasons. It is close proximity to my house, everything on the menu is vegetarian and can be made vegan, the grocery section contains many vegan substitutes, and the staff is insightful and friendly. Inventory Co-Manager Shelly McClone who is a former roommate and good friend of mine. Shelly was vegan for about ten years, starting when she was 19 and still living in Appleton, a city not well known for it’s vegan ways. She became vegan around the same time she shaved her head.
“My parents thought I had gone crazy and joined a cult.” She says, but adds that they eventually came around to accept it. After becoming pregnant a couple years ago she decided not to follow a strict vegan diet.
“I figured I had done it a long time and didn’t want to limit my food during pregnancy.”
This morning I’m having vegan French toast which I admit I’ve ordered out of skepticism. Making French toast without dairy seems impossible, but I get my first of many pleasant surprises over the month. It’s not only good; it’s great, all the way down to hunk of non dairy butter melting on top. I eat breakfast often at the co-op over the next monthly, trying almost every dish on the menu. My favorites are the Ranchero plate- brown rice, black beans, tofu, avocado, salsa, and tortillas and Bi Bim Bop, which is not a ska band but a Korean dish that uses brown rice, grilled seasoned vegetables, tofu, kimchee (spiced cabbage) and BBQ sauce. Spicy!
Later at work, a co-worker offers me a bag of peanuts. I’m about to eat a handful when I notice that they are honey roasted. “Hey!”, I say, “Honey comes from bees!” I’m going the distance, here, folks.

MAY 4- Vegan pizza party
I pick up two frozen vegan pizzas, one with garlic almond cream, onions, and peppers, and one with garlic almond cream and tofu posing as sausage. They are both made by Simple Soyman, a Milwaukee based company that makes vegan meat alternatives. It isn’t the same as real pizza, but it tastes pretty good anyhow, Just different.

MAY 6- Hot diggedy dog
Hummus with El Rey chips, my favorite, baby carrots, a pasta salad with butter beans, and for dinner me and Jessica have chips and homemade guacamole. Look out, because pre made guac often has dairy. We also have tofu hot dogs (the Lifelight Jumbo Smartdogs) we are skeptical and a bit turned off by the rubbery, discolored appearance, but once we bite in, they’re really not that bad. We boiled them, and maybe they’re even better grilled.

MAY 9- Tofu Italiano
After work I cook up a dish called Tofu Italiano from the Simply Vegan cookbook. If you want to eat well as a vegan, you must develop at least some interest in cooking. I’m not a good cook. I get easily distracted and then stuff gets burnt, but I’m trying to put in the effort, and in this case it pays off. I make a spread of sautéed tofu and onion mixed with tomato sauce, peas, corn, oregano, and garlic poured over rotini pasta. It turns out well, with leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

MAY 10- Into the medicine cabinet
“No, now see, this says Glycol, which might be a form of Glycerin.” Me and Paul are looking through my medicine cabinet, at my small collection of hygenics. Vegan philosophy goes beyond what you eat. It extends to what you use, and what you wear. Paul is warning me that glycerin is often made from animal fat. In addition, even if cosmetics don’t contain animal products, many are tested on animals. He recommends checking out the Peta’s and the vegan society’s websites for more information. He explains he doesn’t know much about the details because he gets his supplies from local stores, stuff that is clearly labeled as animal friendly.
I key online later and find an easy to use list at caringconsumer. Com and am dismayed to find my soap, toothpaste and 2 in 1 shampoo/ conditioner are all made by companies that test on animals. Fortunately good alternatives to these products are easily found. I am relieved to see that my goopy hair treatment, which I assumed was pure lard, is animal product free, although it is almost pure petroleum product, which is not environmentally friendly.

MAY 11 – vegan jerky
Yes, they make vegan jerky which I can’t resist trying. I grab a big stick of Primal stick natural smoke flavored jerky. The taste is not too bad, but the texture is a little odd.

MAY 12- Mother’s day
“So should we just order a plain cheese pizza?” I’m trying to explain to my mom what a vegan is. My sister is a vegetarian, and I explain the difference to her. Then she asks a classic line many vegans hear in their life. “Can’t you just skip it for a day?” I tell her I could if I was a total wimp, but that’s just not the case. My sister ends up making a delicious vegan crowd pleaser- veggie burgers, fried potatoes, pasta, salad, and creamed corn.

MAY 17- veganmyspace . com
Yes, you can find a vegan alternative to almost anything, including the popular social networking site myspace. I wish I could tell you veganmyspace is 100% animal free, but after all, one Tea Krulos has just joined. I set up a profile and start adding vegan friends from Texas, California, and New York. I am able to find one fellow vegan on the site, Kellie, who is 21 years old, has been vegan three years, and is an aspiring experimental filmmaker. Her tagline reads, “I’m too creative for mass production.” She recommends I check out the web store Vegan Essentials at veganessentials. com, an online store that has anything and everything you might not find locally.

MAY 19- Beans and Barley
I stop at Beans and Barley, an eastside institution, and one of the first vegetarian, health conscious, and smoke free restaurants in Milwaukee. They have an excellent deli, a great dining area and a small shop that offers groceries, organic goods, earth friendly cosmetics, independent magazines, and eccentric toys. As their former dishwasher, I know firsthand how clean and orderly they keep their kitchen, because my back ached many nights, trying to keep up with their thorough cleaning regiment.
The vegan items on the menu are marked with a “V”, and the restraunt is equipped with many vegan alternatives.
“We understand vegans, and most of the entries on our menu can be veganized.” Co-owner Peg Silvestrini tells me.
Today I pick up some Savory Tempeh Stew from the deli, which is very similar to beef stew. The tempeh looks almost exactly like beef. I also get some of Bean’s own hummus blend and the Indian Basmati salad, a spicy rice dish with chick peas and other vegetables.
In other news, Jessica is having serious cheese withdrawal. She wanders around the house muttering “Cheese. Cheeeeeeeeese!” To make matters worse, our friend Jason sends her a text message mocking her symptoms that simply says “CHEDDAR! CHEDDAR! CHEDDAR!”

MAY 20- Vegan brunch
I go with Paul and some other friends for brunch at the Comet cafe. A Bloody Mary goes well with Kelly’s Vegan Scrambler, a dish named after my old neighbor Kelly Todd. I find out that Kelly has been vegan for over five years. She helped design the dish because she found it difficult to “…find good (vegan) breakfast items in the city.” She also rallies me on to consider full time veganism.
“You should extend it past May. Getting started is the hard part, it only gets easier as time goes on.”
Like Beans and Barley, Comet notes vegan items with an icon of the Comet mascot, a swan diving rabbit.

MAY 23- Raw power
A raw food diet is a great way to cleanse your system. When food is cooked, it loses a lot of nutrients, which is why raw foodists eat nothing that has been cooked. I decide to try it out just for today. I start the day off with a couple of apples, and an all fruit smoothie. For lunch I have a lot of carrots and some grape tomatoes. At dinner I have two giant portabella mushroom caps with a sliced cucumber on the side. I eat the mushroom with a steak knife and fork, like a steak, listen to classical music and drink a glass of merlot. Hey, I can be a classy guy once in awhile.

MAY 25- Outpost
Outpost started as a small co-op on the Eastside and has steadily grown into three large stores on Capital Drive near the Eastside, in Wauwatosa, and in Bay View. I cruise over to the Capital Drive location with Jessica and our friend Mel. I have some Southern Fried Tofu, which tastes similar to chicken, Creole style roasted yams, “Riverwest best” blend coffee, and a sweet green machine smoothie, a powerful dose of apples and green vegetables. The stores are well stocked with vegan alternatives to everything, groceries, cookbooks, beauty supplies, and more.

MAY 27 and 28- Memorial Day BBQs
The grilling season officially kicks off this weekend, and vegans love a good barbeques like everyone else. I went to two vegan barbeques and had my fill of vegan burgers and brats with plenty of sides and of course beer.

MAY 30- More options
I look over my notes to see other places vegans have recommended checking out that I haven’t made it to. So many places, so little time. East Gardens is an oriental restaurant in Shorewood with many vegan options. Whole Foods has opened a large store on the east side. East Side Ovens is a great place to get vegan bakery.

MAY 31- Last day?
I was pleasantly surprised how easy the month went. The healthier diet gave me more energy and I found I was awake longer hours, had a more positive attitude at work, and overall was able to get through the day easier. After a week I felt energetic enough to start a simple exercise routine, something I hadn’t done in months. I lost nine pounds over the month.
The big question everyone had was what would I do on the first? Run out and buy pork chops and a wheel of cheese? The answer is no. I have not maintained a strict vegan diet, particularly when it comes to bakery, but I have been eating more vegan options than not, mostly because I want to maintain a healthy system. I also appreciate the animal rights issues. You know, I’ve had my black leather jacket for a long time. Vegan Essentials carries a slick pleather jacket that looks like the real thing and is similar in price. Maybe it’s time to make the trade.

Unpublished

FLLOOYYDDD!!!!

2008-02-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

FLOYD FANS REJOICE AT LASER SPECTACULAR
By Tea Krulos

“All we are is another brick in the wall, dude.”
-Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular fan in the men’s room

////////////HELLO, HELLO//////////////HELLO,HELLO//////[[[[[[Is there anybody OUT there??]]]]]
They are out there in the Riverside Theater, February 8, and every single one of them is totally high. It’s a slippery slope making a speculative statement like that, so I’ll concede I might be wrong, but let’s pretend I’m right. Everyone in the audience was stoned. The old school fans, long grey hairs who have dusted off their Pink Floyd: The Wall denim jackets, they were stoned out of their gourds, just like the young college neo-hippies, born close to the group’s last studio album, 1994’s The Division Bell.
If they're not stoned, they should be, it would help. That and the special glasses you can buy for two bucks that makes you see the lasers in six overlays. This might not seem to be a big deal, but the glasses do improve the quality of the special effects.
The Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular has been touring for eighteen Floyd filled years and certain parts of the show have obviously remained unaltered in that time. Some of the effects seem outdated, but this is where good grass comes in. Gyrating laser effects are awesomely hypnotic whether they’re from 2008, 1980, or 1970.
“FFFFLLLLLLLLOOOOYYYD!!!!” My friend next to me yells. Besides a UFO full of laser beam shooters, the show combines video footage, blasted onto three thirty foot screens. fog machines, disco balls, and of course one killer stereo system to deliver you the full Floydian experience, although I was disappointed by the lack of flying inflatable pigs. I thought I saw a pile of deflated ones in the balcony, ready to spring into action with some high octane pig inflater, but I was mistaken. It was the ganja.
The only inflatable unleashed was the classic dancing man, hijacked by the squares in mainstream society who now use the poor fellow on every car dealership mega-sale and city run music festival. These laser folks need to get with the pigs. A disembodied voice said hi to the citizens of Milwaukee and urged them to sing along to “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II” and the audience let out with a hearty “HEY! TEACHERS! LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!”
It’s hard to think of any other band in history that could get such a devoted following to spark their jays, throw down twenty five bucks (plus service fees, parking, souvenir T-shirts, and 32 ounce cups of Sierra Nevada) to see a laser show tribute to them. I guess certain things just go together like peanut butter, marmalade, and bread. For instance the atmospheric music of Floyd, laser technology,……and weed.

Unpublished

ROSES ARE RED...

2008-02-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

ROSES ARE RED…
By Tea Krulos, 3rd District resident

Politicians are known for trying to use flowery language, but how poetic are their souls? Woodland Pattern offered the 3rd District candidates a chance to wax poetic the night of February 15, and all showed up for the challenge except John Connelly. Vince Bushell, publisher of the Riverwest Currents hosted the event and the candidates had a variety of different approaches to the subject.
David Schroeder admitted it had been 42 years since he had read a poem out loud to an audience in school, and he read the last poem Woody Guthrie wrote, about the struggle of hard working immigrants being deported.
Matt Nelson started by asking the elders in the room permission to speak, which was granted. He read poems from friends that spoke of creativity being the antidote to problems, and trying to better one’s neighborhood environment. He ended with a piece on the common man, art, and liberation from Albert Camus’s 1960 collection Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.
Sam McGovern-Rowen took a much lighter approach. He started with a quote from Steve Martin, “Some people have a way with words, some people not have way.” He then read the classic tale, in it’s entirety, of Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss. The audience was amused.
Nik Kovac read a poem by Charles Hines, cousin of Willy Hines, which began “People are made of people…” Next he read an excerpt of a short story he wrote in college, and ended with a clever and funny poem about the long, cold, trek of the campaign trail, with politely funny nods to the other aldermanic candidates. He had a great line about Dan Foliard hyping “a chicken for every pot, and a pineapple for every pothole.” The line refers to an aldermanic forum in which Foliard brought a pineapple to illustrate the point that he was a complex fruit, the pineapple, while the other candidates were merely apples. It also refers to one of Foliard’s talking points, fixing the many potholes in the 3rd District.
Foliard himself was up next, and picked up an acoustic guitar. “Let me introduce you to my friend, A” he said “It stands for aequitas, which is Latin for justice.” He then sang a rendition of “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2. U2 is certainly must be on the top of Fouliard’s playlist. He once tried to get a million people to sign a petition to have the group play a charity gig at Miller Park, although he was unable to convince the Irish rockers to sign on. He then played a tune called “Ms.Amazing” which he wrote for his sweetheart who was in the audience. The lyrics can be found in his newspaper, The Advocate of Milwaukee in an ad for the Petaluna flower shop on page 11.
Sura Faraj has long been a poetry advocate. She started with a “Riverwest Manifest-o” which was an ode to the creative scene in this neighborhood, and read two more from Nerve House, a short lived but well produced art and literature publication that she edited and published. One of the poems, “I Love America” was an angry tirade against the heavy handed U.S. bombing of middle eastern countries. Faraj’s country of heritage is Lebanon. Her last poem was a tribute to her grandmother that appeared in Mizna, a publication showcasing Arab American artists.
Patrick Flaherty was the last poet of the night, reading an “Ode to Television” that he wrote twenty years ago. He explained this poem was read before his college friends after they found many discarded television sets and decided to put the unfortunate TVs on a fake trial, complete with judge and defendants before smashing them. The poem made references to Little House on the Prairie, MTV, and Starsky and Hutch.

This originally appeared at Milwaukeeworld.com

OLD MAN MALCOLM SPINS THE SIDELINE

2008-02-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

Malcolm Michiles looks out his apartment window. It has begun to snow, and he studies it, sipping a mug of tea. It is two days before the Packers will beat the Raiders for the NFC North division title.
“I’m not sure about this snow. I haven’t had to deal with this. I’m mostly concerned about the equipment.” Michiles is talking about his unusual and challenging DJ gig, a gig he also calls “The best gig of my life. It’s like playing on a mountain.” Every home game at Lambeau field, Michiles sets up his DJ equipment at the Green Bay Packer’s sideline and spins for the players warming up, the idea being that the music will help psych the Pack up. Over the next couple of games, Michiles will struggle to stay warm, keep snow off his records and needles, and heat his equipment with deer hunter’s hand warmers. The idea came from the company that does the audio for Lambeau, who hired Michiles and praise came early for the idea. A higher up at Lambeau approached the audio team.
“Whose idea was this? The players love it!”
As the game is about to start, Michiles has about ten minutes to pack up his equipment and head up to the control booth, where he helps work the audio for the game.
Michiles is well known on the local music scene, he DJs under the name Old Man Malcolm, and recently toured with his band Codebreaker. He was part of Citizen King, and recorded in studio with Garbage.
Michiles is a life long Packers fan. He has fond memories of watching the game while his granddad yelled at the television. After moving around, Michiles ended up going to high school in Green Bay. He recalls frequent trips down to Milwaukee to buy records because choices were slim in Green Bay.
On game day, Michiles loads up his records and equipment around 6AM and makes the drive up to Green Bay. During the 2007 season, Lambeau Field was voted the number one NFL stadium in game-day atmosphere and fan experience by a Sports Illustrated poll, and endless small details must come together to maintain this image.
“The precision of the timing is amazing.” Michiles says of the operation.
As the pregame starts, Michiles sets up his equipment by the sideline.
“I had to overcome the last bit of stage fright I’ve had. It’s weird seeing yourself on the jumbotron, it’s a huge crowd.” At first, he felt he was perceived as “The weird guy who showed up in the infield spinning records.” Soon the Pack was asking what he was going spin.
Michiles is currently working on trying to get more feedback from the Packers, but is somewhat difficult with all the attention surrounding the players. Meanwhile, he uses available knowledge. A player shouted that they wanted to hear “Crank That” (by Soulja Boy) from the bench. What about the king of touchdowns, Sport Illustrated’s Sportsman of the year, Brett Farve? Michiles knows he’s a fan of Tim McGraw and Toby Keith, so he throws tunes by them into the mix.
For the last game he started his play list with songs by Cupid, Bob Marley, Smashing Pumpkins, and Dr.Dre.
“I try to mix it up as best I can.” There are limitations, however, and he has to be careful what he plays at the family friendly arena.
Michiles wishes he could DJ the sideline the entire game, but there are safety concerns. Imagine if Michiles and his equipment were suddenly tackled.
As the game starts, Michiles makes his way up to the control booth, where he works balancing with the announcers, the ref, the networks, and others.
“The producer will be like, alright, in two seconds let’s go to this screen and play “We Will Rock You”. It’s unbelievable to see that level of show come together week after week.”
When the game is over, Michiles packs up and drives back to Milwaukee, where he has a lower key gig spinning at the Good Life restaurant Sunday nights.
I ask Michiles if he sees himself as a possible trendsetter, if someday we might see every team with a sideline DJ.
“I think it’s possible. It has to be the right guy for the job, there’s a ton of things to keep track of.”
The Pack beats the Detroit Lions by 21 points in the last game of the season and Michiles spins in less than 20 degree weather, but is excited despite the cold. He will be DJ-ing at Lambeau for the play off game January 12.
Michiles is proud to be on the front line for this season. The Packers may go all the way to the Super Bowl and who knows what songs will be playing in their head?

This originally appeared in a slightly different form in the Shepherd Express

BUS TUBS OF THUNDER

2008-02-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

“A writer without a bottle of whiskey is like a chicken without a goddamn head.” –William Faulkner.

Yeah, Billy Faulkner, thanks for reminding me, I think as I walk bleary eyed and hung over into Ma Fischer’s. I grab a booth with Ms. Killya, and raise an eyebrow as she scoops ice out of her ice water and drops it into her coffee.
“I need to drink it NOW.” She explains.
Ma Fischer’s is famous for it’s large menu of Americana staples, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, lasagna, hamburgers, liver and onions, apple pie, milk shakes, coffee, etc., etc., and so on and so forth. I put in an order for my fav, eggs benedict and Ms. Killya opts for some hash and an egg.
Ma Fischer’s is also famous for it’s bus boys. They are perhaps the most energetic people on earth. They don’t just bus tables; they rain down on them like thunder and lightning. They circle with an endless supply of coffee and water, and I’m barely halfway through my cup of Joe when a bus boy appears stealthily to top it off. He chews his gum in an aggressive rhythm SMACK SMACK SMACK. Could this be the secret to his energy? Some high octane rocket fuel supersonic NASA invented chewing gum invented to launch people into outer space?
Two tables leave at once.
“Vamanos!” The first bus boy says to the second. He has a look of determination, like a deep sea fisherman with a net full of electric eels. He SWOOPS down once, magnetizing all the plates with his hands and slamming them into the pan. He SWOOPS again, catching all the glasses with his fingers, then SWOOPS and scoops all the silverware into the bus pan, grabs the ashtray, flips it upside down, and cleans it with a towel that hangs out of his pocket, cool as James Bond polishing a martini glass.
The whole thing is a frenzied hurricane of a flurry, and Ms. Killya and I stare at the sight with the same attention we’d give an ice sculptor going nuts on a block of ice with a chainsaw.
“You should have brought a stopwatch!” She tells me.
They throw the full bus tub on a cart, weighed down with tubs full of dirty dishes. Let’s hope the dishwasher is as energetic as they are. The second bus boy enters the arena after the first has cleared the tops. He quickly and efficiently wipes down the tables like turtle wax on a Cadillac, then slams down new silverware, placemats and napkins, a blacksmith and his anvil. All of this happens in a blink of an eye, and that may be the only way to measure their speed, one blink per tabletop.
I admire these bus boys, although really they should be called bus men. Their work ethic and enthusiasm inspires me. They know how to bring it. Our waitress, a bubbly blonde, brings the breakfast.
“Enjoy your meal.” She tells us.

Unpublished

WIENERS FOR THE WASTED

2008-02-29T16:47:00.000-08:00

WIENERS FOR THE WASTED! With ketchup and mustard!
By Tea Krulos

It’s midnight on a Friday night, and the corner of North and Oakland is hopping. I’m standing by Sil’s Drive-Thru. I like to make an annoying argument that this hot dog stand is no less an architectural achievement than Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum. I mean, it’s much smaller, but if you somehow blew it up and moved it to the lake, it would look more or less the same, minus the flapping wings.
One thing you won’t find hanging on a Calatrava, though, is a banner that reads “Wieners for the wasted- $1.50 hot dogs with ketchup and mustard 10PM-2: 30AM.” Giant hot dogs bookend the words, and the words “for the” are in an explosive neon starburst. Sil’s also offers a variety of other dogs, from a Chicago style to a Southsider (with kraut), donuts, nachos, coffee, slush puppies, and more.
A group of college women walk by.
“I said c’mon, Andrea, rum or beer? Rum or beer? C’mon, RUM or BEER? And she was like…” Her thought is derailed by the traffic light. “…C’mon, ladies, the light is GREEN! So, I was like, you are going to be soooooooo drunk.”
At this moment a man walks out of the Eastsider to greet another man. He picks him up and then begins thrusting him up and down. It is reminiscent of an intimate position called Janukurpara.
A dejected looking man approaches Sil’s and looks a little down. Perhaps he has struck out, and now his companions home are a couple of dogs.
A girl walks by briskly, deep in thought, an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth. She’s almost out of sight before she lights up.
Two women walk up to Sil’s, one on a cell phone. They passed two guys on the corner who stare over at them. The women look over but give no commitment.
“Shiiiiishhh.” One of the guys says, and they move on. The woman order nachos and donuts, and uh-oh, someone’s in the doghouse from the dog stand.
“No. I hate you. You hang up on me ONE MORE TIME and I swear…” Her threat is drowned out by the number 15 bus.
Two guys exit Cush across the street and yell and wave at the women.
“Aaaaaay!” One guy yells. “Aaaaaaaay!” One of the guys wears a red polo shirt and the other a matching yellow polo shirt. I think “with ketchup and mustard” and laugh. They should be standing here by Sil’s with a guy in hot dog costume.
A couple walks up and they grab some dogs.
“You wanna walk that way, or you wanna walk that way?” He asks, shrugging. All roads lead to Rome, they say.
A group of five women walks by. Three are on cell phones, and another is howling an awful, off key rendition of “God Bless America.”
Across the street at El Chico Zuma, the kitchen staff is outside, people watching and smoking. One of them swings a kitchen rag above his head like a lasso.
Inside Sil’s, the hot dog wrangler is taking a break, playing a handheld Playstation. The marquee above Pizza Man spells out this message- “AHH…SUMMER NIGHTS BY THE LAKE…LIFE IS GOOD.” Yes, it is.
I have a hot dog and it’s okay. I bet it would be better is I was wasted.

Originally appeared in the Riverwest Currents