CTRL: Solicitor Shooting Gallery
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from April's entry:
I’ve never been much of a gun nut, but with the early onset of the door-to-door season here in Duluth, I might just come around.
Yes, there is a price for everything in life – including the first snow-free March in these parts in almost 140 years. Last week, the bill arrived in the form of a Charter cable salesperson knocking on our door and freaking out our dog just after we had sat down to dinner.
(Unfortunately, the dog is a Boston terrier and not a pit bull. We kick it East Hillside-style – not Central. Life: It’s about the trade-offs, no?)
Now, we have not lacked for contact with Charter since moving to Duluth. We lived in an apartment complex, so it was the only choice available to us for cable. Thanks to this simple yet fateful circumstance, I had the privilege of paying almost the same money I had paid in Chicago for one third – ONE THIRD – of the HD channels and absolutely putrid digital picture quality.
Indeed, if I had to pick my favorite memory from this period of captivity, it would probably be sitting through the avalanche of ads for Charter trumpeting its exceptional value for the money. However, reading each day about Charter’s battle with the Big Ten Network over which one would get to bilk me out of more money for the right to watch my mediocre football team would rate a close second. Ah, good times…
Even after we bought a house and switched to a satellite provider, Charter did its best to, er, keep the lines of communication open. It seems like once a month, I get an e-mail and a conventional letter in the mail reminding me of the services I left behind.
So, needless to say, we are aware of the cable company and its wares. Yet there was the salesperson, knocking on our door.
This brings me to a larger point about all door-to-door soliciting. In this age of the Internet and hyper media, where more information about more products is available to consumers than in any point in history, is there ANY shred of value left for the consumer in door-to-door sales?
Or, have we finally stripped this odious and intrusive practice of the disingenuous premise – that people would not otherwise know about a product, cause, charity or church – at its black heart?
I’m leaning toward the latter – if you couldn’t guess. Whether they are peddling home security systems or salvation, the person at your door has come to use the immediacy of a face-to-face encounter to compel you to make a decision that they KNOW you would not make under different circumstances.
To me, that’s a harmful intent. And that’s where “stand your ground” laws passed by various states (but not yet Minnesota) come into play. If you’re not familiar, these statutes provide enormous latitude to people for the use of deadly force against someone they believe is about to commit a crime against them.
Previously, I thought of these laws as doing little more than deputizing would-be vigilantes and, in the worst cases, aiding the very criminals and wack-jobs they’re meant to deter. After all, is there a better way to help a lone gunman run up his body count than setting up a crossfire?
Now, however, I am beginning to see the wisdom. Personally, I cannot imagine many crimes more heinous than talking someone into signing up for Charter cable. What jury would convict me? Certainly not one comprising Charter customers.
The Runaways
Call me cruel, but I have to smirk each time I see one of those homemade handbills announcing the search for a missing pet in the neighborhood.
You know the type: Plain letter-size paper. Taped to a telephone pole or street sign. Name of the missing animal. Date of departure. Owner’s contact info. Testimonial to his or her good nature and/or “bestest-ness.” And a picture that makes the animal look either like an amorphous blob or the spawn of the devil (depending on the level of red-eye.)
Even in these few words, you often sense a level of anxiety and anguish that you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Rest assured: This is not what amuses me. In fact, my writing of this post virtually ensures that my own beloved pet – a spunky, swaggering Boston terrier – will soon go missing and thus run me through this same wringer. So take heart, those of you who are already offended beyond the pale.
No, I smirk because I can’t help but think, “Hasn’t your pet – through the very act of absconding – in effect rendered its verdict on life at your home?”
To take it a step further, does the animal have any other recourse for communicating such preferences or registering its grievances? I mean, how many times can you crap on the stairs or the shower mat without effect before you throw up your paws and say, “This here is broke beyond fixin’”?
For this reason, I’m not entirely sure what I would do if the pet in question were to saunter by just as I was reading one of these posters. I’m sure it’s a crime of some sort to take animal in and NOT call the owner – and that’s a good thing. But the dime-store shrink in me would certainly want to ask some pointed questions in furnishing the return.
“How have things been with Sandy lately? Did she give you any indication something like this was coming? Has she crapped on your bath mat recently?”
Granted, I would probably not appreciate such inquiries from a neighbor returning my dog – were he to split on me. I would want, however, to get to the bottom of some of these issues and work through some of the hurt feelings that would inevitably be in play. These latter can poison a game of fetch faster than you can yell, “Stop eating that rabbit sh*t!”
Fortunately, I can envision my dog and me patching things up fairly quickly. After all, I can convince myself that a dog might jump a fence in chase of a squirrel or skunk, only to look up some minutes later and not recognize his surroundings.
Cats, however, pose a different dilemma. In fact, if your cat could suddenly speak, the very first thing he or she would tell you (after, “You need some friends.”) is that there are no accidents in a cat’s life - only intent.
This is why I would call the owner of a cat if I saw it, but wouldn’t try to apprehend it myself. Most cats seem to pick up life on the street pretty quickly. And for those who don’t, well, do I really need to finish this thought?
CTRL: Salon Shaggadelic
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
If you ever want to do your barber or hairstylist a favor, do what I do: Show up for each appointment looking a shaggy Sasquatch.
It’s like giving a gift, really – an opportunity for him or her to effect a dramatic transformation and enjoy the concomitant satisfaction immediately and concretely.
In a way, you’re providing a little slice of reality TV (just think of all the programs serving-up 30-minute makeovers of people’s houses, wardrobes and waistlines), but in reality, of all places. And if work were more like TV – with its promises of effortless metamorphoses and breathtaking “reveals” - wouldn’t you enjoy it more?
To my stylist: "You're welcome."
Sure, the fact that my lumpy head and slack features still lurk beneath the brush may limit the final achievement, but still, pruning me down has to beat merely tidying the neckline on some standard-issue businessman cut or re-dyeing some housewife’s roots too dark – again.
Naturally, such gifts also present challenges – for the giver. During this particular stretch, in which I went three months with nary a trim, my burgeoning fuzz generated a fair amount of friction between my wife and me. (Call me naïve, but it never ceases to amaze me how fast sex can turn from carrot to stick.)
Choosing who to bestow this gift upon can also be difficult. In Duluth, you’ve generally got three choices. You can go to an overpriced salon, from which you emerge with a sharp cut but also smelling like the produce section at Whole Foods Co-Op. You can visit an old-school barber shop, where for twice the machismo and half the price of the salon you can choose between a crew cut, flat-top or clipper trim of what you’ve already got – provided it’s still recognizable. Or, you can try any number of chop-shop franchises (e.g. Great Clips), where for $10 you can step out of the chair and into a JC Penney catalogue shoot without so much as a daub of gel.
This time around, choosing the barber shop would have yielded the most radical metamorphosis, given the girth of my overgrowth. But I opted for the salon option, mostly because there’s one within a rock’s toss of my house. I guess I could have hoofed it the five extra blocks to the Skyline Barbershop, but that’s a long way to lug all of that extra hair.
Now, you may find this surprising, but fully three quarters of teh way into my haircut, I still wasn’t sensing a level of gratitude commensurate with the magnanimous nature of my gesture. In fact, even after explaining myself, I rated more of a “meh” than a “My Hero!”
This puzzled me. “Hasn’t this guy seen ‘America’s Favorite Fat Ass,’ ‘Slobs to Snobs’ or any of these other shows?” I asked myself. “Does he not see me for the Magi that I am?”
Perhaps he was grossed out by the ear hair, which I discovered was still sprouting healthily upon my return home. Say what you will about old-codger barbers and their clipper cuts, but if you’re over 30, they know your pain, and minister to bushy eyebrows and scraggly ear-wells without your having to ask.
It’s almost worth the tradeoff of walking out of there with a flat-top.
CTRL: Sludge-O-Matic
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
If you still read the Duluth News Tribune (pause for laugh track), you know that Gallagher, the raunchy prop comic and prodigious produce smasher of 1980s fame, performed last week at Grandma’s Sports Garden.
The paper’s Web site not only featured an account of the show by DNT arts reporter Christa Lawler (who should file for hazard pay for covering this functional lobotomy) on the home page but also touted even more coverage from its nightlife blogger.
For people under 45 years of age, this information likely triggered one of two responses: 1) Who the f^ck is Gallagher? or 2) F^ckin’ Gallagher is still alive?
(And they say that newspapers have failed to court the next generation of readers.)
My wife went with response #2, to which I had to reply, “Not necessarily.” After all, performing in front of 300 disinterested Duluthians (according to Ms. Lawler’s account) more than 20 years after your prime has got to kill you on the inside, at least.
Based on the DNT account, Gallagher fuels his cockroach-like resiliency through a potent (or is that pungent?) mixture of delusional grandiosity and outright denial. For example, he claims that he’s funnier now then he was 20 years ago. Sorry, G, but it’s probably your pot that’s gotten better – not your jokes.
According to the review, Gallagher also claims responsibility during the show for quite an array of cultural progeny: “splash rides at amusement parks, Blue Man Group, Insane Clown Posse and Shamu.”
Maybe so, but he also paved the way for Carrot Top – a crime against humanity so heinous that it not only wipes out any good karma generated by the list above (the amount of which is debatable in and of itself) but also should rate the death penalty. (However, given that he’s living the showbiz version of death, I suppose we can limit the sentence to time served.)
Judging from the audience attention deficit Ms. Lawler describes during the first hour of the show, it sounds like little has changed in Gallagher’s act since his days of doing Showtime specials. Listening to his lame stand-up routines has always been akin to watching a 14-year-old boy fumble with the hook of a bra: a bit awkward and exasperating until the melons finally come out.
And eventually, out they came. Even after a holiday season in which community food shelves across the nation sounded desperate calls for donations after months of recession-fueled shortages, Gallagher sledged away. Not to get all Righteous Lefty here, but couldn’t he have at least spared some portion of the evening’s carnage (the way the president pardons a turkey before Thanksgiving) as a comic gesture and donated it to CHUM’s West Duluth food shelf?
Of course, doing so would require climbing out of his traveling time capsule and making contact with the year 2010. As long as a couple of hundred people keep showing up in the Duluth, Minnesotas of the world to see him smash watermelons with a sledgehammer, that probably won’t happen soon.
CTRL: Hats Off to the Bilgewater Lounge
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
"Ce ci ne pas Duluth.”
I’m told a lot of college kids read this pub, so I am gambling that enough of you have taken that classic liberal arts GPA-padder “Art History” to recognize the above. It’s a take on Magritte’s classic painting, “The Treachery of Images.”
If not, Google it. After all, you should learn something over the course of these four-plus years in Duluth – other than the weekday specials at Twins Bar.
For you lazy f*ckers, here’s the scoop: The painting features a pipe, with the caption, “This is not a pipe,” scrawled below in French. The point: an image is not the thing depicted, but rather just an image. (Although I bet if you smoked the painting, you’d at least get some mild visuals out of it.)
I was reminded of this foray into the post-modern and absurd after an evening at The Black Water Lounge, or The Bilgewater, as I call it. On any given evening, you will find it full of people pretending that they are not in Duluth, but rather in some Minneapolis restaurateur’s idea of what a Manhattan bar must be like.
(The Bilge gets this right in the same way that Disney World gets a wild west town right.)
Of course, the surest-fire way to fake NYC is to create an air of sleazy sophistication. At the Bilgewater, this means having the waitstaff wear black corsets over white t-shirts to create a curious kind of slutty chic. Ironically, it also reminds you that the NorShor is right next door. I’m thinking that’s not the kind of crossover crowd they’re looking for.
The crowd they have drawn mostly consists of the worst kinds of posers: local admin girls dressed like high-class escorts, oily lawyer and corporate-sales types, and some local bores who simply (and erroneously) believe that they’re too young for the Pickwick just yet.
Despite some of its mildly stylish touches, the centerpiece of Bilgewater’s up-vibe strategy is one of the oldest tricks in the book: a “No Hats” policy.
Now, at 35, I figured that my last argument of this sort was at least 20 years behind me. So my friends and I complied when asked by the staff to remove our hats upon our arrival. Minutes later, however, I noticed a guy, perhaps just a few years younger than me, sitting at the bar wearing a green army cap – like the kind Castro wears. At least, it was modeled after one like that. It looked like Gap material – not even from Minnesota surplus. Let me make this crystal clear, this guy was NOT a vet.
I assumed this was an oversight and informed the bartender. “Oh, that one’s OK.”
Channeling myself at age 15, I inquired about the difference between Comrade Poser’s and mine.
“Don’t know. You’ll have to ask the manager.”
So I did. I mean, you could stitch a Burrito Union logo on this thing, send him over there to seat people, and nobody would bat an eyelash. After I pointed this out, the manager asked me if I wanted her to make the guy take it off.
Well, that’s the same as asking, “So, sir, how big of a douche bag are you?”
Well, I’m not a big enough one for the Bilge. So we donned our caps and headed for the door.
For a moment, I toyed with giving the crowd a little, “Say good night to the bad guy,” but a guy like Tony Montana (or Duluth’s equivalent) would fit right in there. Provided he didn't wear a hat…
CTRL: Christmas [Rhymes with "City"] of the North
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
Nothing heralds the arrival of the holiday season here in the Northland quite like watching Miss Hermantown freeze her a$$ off in the backseat of a convertible.
Granted, that was my favorite recollection from last year’s Christmas City of the North Parade – KDLH and KJBR’s annual made-for-TV advertiser showcase – not this year’s. You’ll have to forgive me: I spent most of this year’s parade getting Christmas sh*tty at a bar along the parade route.
While that fact would suggest that I am not a crack investigative journalist, I did do a little digging into this whole “Christmas City of the North,” or CCN phenomenon. Specifically, I wanted to know: Is becoming the CCN really as easy as simply declaring yourself such?
Turns out, the answer is yes – although commissioning a song from former TV personality, producer and syndication guru Merv Griffin appears to help. (I am not making this up, and yes, that is Merv on vocals, too.) Roughly 50 years ago, the forerunner to today’s NBC6 ginned up the parade as a way to kick off the shopping season, paid Griffin to write and sing the song, and voila – Duluth instantly became the CCN. What’s more, maintaining the title seems to require only that you line up some high school bands and enough local real estate and insurance agents to wave from flatbed trailers each year.
To put this in perspective, think about how much more work it would take, on the part of so many more people, to become, say, “The Meth City of the North.”
As with some of Duluth’s other nicknames – including “The Zenith City” – the CCN begs an obvious, if not cruel, question: Where does that leave Superior? It’s one thing to get aced out as the primary port at the head of the lakes by your “sister” city, but to have Christmas co-opted out from under you as well? That must be one nutty sh*t sandwich.
That’s why I think Superior should fight back by taking ownership of its own holiday. Which one? Why, New Year’s Eve, of course. With its gazillion bars, who better than Supe-Town to carry the banner of “NYE City of the North?”
I can just see the parade: Hundreds of wobbly drunks pouring out of the bars on Tower, Belknap and Hammond at the stroke of midnight. They stagger down to the feet of the Blatnik and Bong bridges, where they stop traffic, light up their cigarettes in unison, and deliver a boisterous Bronx cheer across the harbor to Duluth.
Of course, the whole affair will need a song to help make it official. Unfortunately, Merv Griffin passed away recently, so he’s not an option. However, it’s probably a good bet that Paul Anka is available. Anka has reinvented himself of late with jazzy covers of indie hits like Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” but nothing pays better than writing originals.
Now if only he can find something to rhyme with “Camaro.”
CTRL: Student “De-evolution” Zones
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
Every time a pack of drunk college kids wakes me up while they stumble down East Ninth Street at 3:00 a.m., I think back to what kind of neighbors my friends and I were in college:
One friend and I had developed the habit of drinking on the roof of our house, then trying to hit the apartment building across the street with our empty bottles. The outer limit of our range: the middle of the street. That never stopped us from trying, though.
Another friend of mine had a complete Papa John’s delivery uniform, which he used to gain entry into neighborhood homes and apartments (“I must have written down the wrong address. I can give this pizza to you for five bucks, if you want it.”) for the purpose of stealing CDs, house plants and other minor trophies.
In our apartment complex, we went through a little phase in which we would defecate in empty pizza boxes and leave them (with an exuberant early morning delivery) at the doors of people in the building who had pissed us off.
And then there’s the night 10 of us flipped a compact car over onto its roof.
The best thing about these and the countless other acts of chaos (including frequent keggers) we perpetrated in our neighborhood during college is that no townies (i.e. non-students) were directly harmed by them. That’s because all took place in the student ghetto that surrounds my alma mater (The University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana). In short, we stuck to drunk-on-drunk chaos.
In Duluth, the mix of student and townie housing across most east-end neighborhoods often leads to much more, er, collateral damage. That’s why you’ve got ideas like the 300-ft rule and “student development zones” jockeying for the privilege of reorganizing the city’s low-rent districts into better-homogenized ghettos.
Of course, the assumption is that this large-scale socio-economic re-engineering of entire neighborhoods – with its inevitable winners and losers – beats the alternative, in which students and townies simply dial down the asshole meter a few notches in order to get along better.
(Such is life in Democratic-leaning Duluth, where there’s no role too big or small for government to play. If this were a Republican town, however, the debate would likely center instead on whether residents have the right to shoot disorderly students on sight. Pick your poison…)
As a homeowner sandwiched between two of the proposed student zones, I suppose I should be investing more energy in the “Can’t we all just get along?” strategy – before some asshole developer builds a high-rise smack in the middle of my already-piecemeal view of the lake.
Problem is, even 14 years after graduating, I still think college kids should get as drunk as they can and as high as they can as often as they can. Hell, that’s what I did. And now I’m going to invite “college me” over for brats and iced tea each August with the hope that he’ll think of me and my wife before tapping that second keg or cracking open that 13th can of Keystone Light?
If you believe that’s gonna happen, then I have an empty pizza box for you with the wrong address on it. Five bucks if you want it.
CTRL: Zintastic Zinema
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
"Well, in Amsterdam, you can buy beer in a movie theater. And I don't mean in a paper cup either. They give you a glass of beer, like in a bar."
Sipping a pint of Newcastle and staring up at the two-story movie mural that dominates the lobby at Zinema 2, Duluth’s sleek new indie movie theater, I couldn’t help but recall Vincent Vega’s classic rundown of the “little differences” between Europe and America in Pulp Fiction.
So has Duluth gone all “continental” with Zinema 2’s arrival? Well, let’s just say that you’re still safer smoking your spliffs on the concrete stairs between 1st and 2nd Streets at 6 Ave. E. than at Jitters or Beaners.
That said, the theater offers the kind of slick, smart and sophisticated experience that you can’t get anywhere else in the Twin Ports. If you caught a slight whiff of pretense and snobbery in that last statement, let me go full Drakkar Noir on you: My wife likened the experience of watching Duncan Jones’ (who happens to be David Bowie’s son) sci-fi mind-fuck “Moon” with a Guinness in her hand to that first shower you take after a week in the Boundary Waters. (Note to editor: She will write this column from here on out.)
In fact, it’s not hard to imagine a little culture clash brewing on the west end of downtown between Zinema’s cultured clientele and patrons of the block’s coarser entertainment options: the NorShor and Fond du Luth Casino.
On the one hand, you’ve got a venue whose films draw people interested in exploring existential questions like, “Is life worth living?” “Is our economic system just?” and “Is love possible?” On the other, you’ve got two buildings full of people who would seem to answer such questions in the negative by habitually pouring their meager paychecks and government assistance stipends into slot machines and strangers’ thongs.
This is not to say that Zinema 2 and its indie fare have nothing to offer those with more prurient predilections. If you’ve ever had access to the IFC and Sundance channels as part of your cable package, then you know that art-house auteurs can hang with the best of them when it comes to serving up skin. It’s one of cinema’s most durable double standards: Take two movies – both composed of about 90 percent f*cking. Set one in a modern-day suburban living room between a bored housewife and a plumber and it’s pornography. Set the other in 17th Century China between a noblewoman and a servant boy and it’s “a heart-wrenching, coming-of-age tale of forbidden passion and class division.”
Granted, Zinema’s lineups have proved pretty tame so far. But when attendance starts dropping with the temperatures this fall, don’t be surprised if you notice a turn toward fare that’s, er, progressively racy. That’s when you just might see some of those little differences between one side of the block and the other melt away.
CTRL: Open Letter to the Hillside Arsonist
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
The following is an open letter to the East Hillside Arsonist, who police recently apprehended in connection with a second string of fires.
Dear Sir:
You are not a failure.
Now, I know that may be hard for you to believe right now: Facing arson charges while on probation for a previous arson conviction. Trying to scrape up $100,000 in bail when you didn’t even have shoes to wear to your last, er, engagement (thus enabling the police K-9 unit to track you with ease). Wracking your brain for what you might have done to prompt your own grandmother to rat you out on a false 911 call the police say you made. It’s enough to make a less focused and dedicated individual throw in the towel.
Well, I am writing with some words of encouragement:
Don’t give up.
Not when so many abandoned houses, dilapidated garages and beater cars in town so desperately require your attention.
You see, the city has it all wrong. They seem to think that all of the blighted properties on the Hillside - you know, the ones behind the hospitals and along all of the one-way streets – will somehow clear and/or rehabilitate themselves. They think that putting a little pressure on slumlords through some watered-down ordinances and shadowing select convicted felons 24/7 will be enough to nudge these neighborhoods toward the kind of renaissance that has rescued large swaths of cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and Milwaukee.
They call this phenomenon “re-gentrification,” but you need a gentry, or moneyed class, for this to work. For a gentry, you need lots of good-paying jobs for young professionals. (See my column in this publication from the week of 10/13/08 for how many of those types of jobs you can find around here.)
For this reason, the city sees people like you – people who could clear many of these problem lots in mere minutes just by doing something they love to do – as enemies, instead of potential partners in renewing what in most other cities would be the most valuable real estate in town. They accuse you of having “little to no regard for public safety” and lock you up when they should be trying to lock in some dates on your calendar.
Yes, it’s frustrating when people fail to see the value of your talents. However, it’s a cross that all of us must bear in some form or other.
So, as you reflect on your fate in the years (and it probably will be years this time, as opposed to months) to come and evaluate your future options, please remember that there are structures here in Duluth that still need you.
In fact, I am thinking of one in particular: a garage, on the alley between 8th and 9th streets. It’s got fraying siding, peeling paint and a door so threadbare that you can just about see right through it. Who knows – there may even be a pair of running shoes in there for you. Size 11, right?
