my sole belongs to duluth ...

i'd like to personally thank the city of duluth for being the sort of place where i not only can wear these shoes, but i would be a fool not to. here in duluth it is even socially acceptible to wear them with a skirt.

these shoes say: watch out, world! i just might wade in that creek when i'm done rock climbing. just let me get my confounded kayak off the back of my bike so i can journal about this moment before our adventure begins. now where's that damn dog?

austin city limits ...

me, martin zellar, one of my college roommates [st. thomas, may 1998]

austin, minnesota, in the late 1980s to mid 1990s, had to be -- to me -- the most romantic place on earth. anyone who has ever seen the movie "all the right moves" knows that there is nothing sexier than a blue-collar town, and no place in the world lived up to that expectation better than austin, 45 minutes from rochester, home of spam and the infamous hormel strike of 1985.

austin pacelli's varsity basketball team was comprised of actual men with muscles and athletic grunts, as opposed to the lourdes eagles -- a collection of gangly elbows and oversized ears. it was like a holiday when the shamrocks were the visiting team, parading into the school like letter jacket models. sometimes we sat with the opposing fans on the other side of the gym. our school spirit easily broken by their green and white short-shorts. steve rogne, marty woleski and rob garry didn't necessarily instigate puberty, but they certainly coaxed it along. [editor's note: yes, i remember their names. no, i did not know them. apparently in high school i was creepier than i previously suspected.]

but bigger than austin pacelli's boys basketball team, if possible, were the gear daddies. one of the original bands to be described as having that "college sound." they seemed accessible: like on the right night, maybe they would set up shop in your garage and play your graduation party. maybe a cop would show up wielding a billy club, say something like "okay, boys. pipe down."

bassist nick ciola would charm them into one last song, promising "then we'll wrap it up." the gear daddies would get a mischevious glimmer, crank up an extended version of "boys will be boys," and half the puritanical neighbors would charge the stage, while the other half shielded the youngens ears. martin zellar would fling the final lyrics from the window of a metallic blue muscle car, and they would skirt along back roads out of town leaving legions of boys emasculated and the girls practicing cursive "zellar"s after their first name.

i know this is is how it would happen because there is a moment on the cd "can't have nothin' nice" during the song "the color of her eyes" that zellar forgets the lyrics and says "shit."

the gear daddies broke up in 1992, promising one final show in their hometown of austin. my friend hinz, then going into her junior year of college, invited princess linda and me to go to the show. princess linda got the okay. i wasn't even allowed to watch mtv, so i didn't even bother asking to go. i pictured the austin pacelli basketball team in street clothes at the concert, solid, basketball-palming hands dwarfing cans of old milwaukee. maybe tossing a football and busting out a few lyrics to "drank so much (just feel stupid)."

at some point it had rained and the photo that ran in the rochester post bulletin the next day featured muddy music fans, who had turned the venue into a slip n slide. whipped handfuls of mud at each other. danced wildly in the guise of anonymous bog monsters. sent the gear daddies out right.

i knew i'd regret missing that show for the rest of my life. and frankly -- so far that has proven true.

now broken up, i showered all of my gear daddies loyalty on martin zellar, who was performing solo gigs -- sometimes doing exclusively neil diamond covers, sometimes revisiting the gear daddies, but usually mixing the two.

random fact: for my entire 19th year, the song "bored and 19" was my anthem.

as long as he was playing within an 80 mile radius and i had seven dollars for a cover charge, i was at every show: aquarius club, o'gara's, rookies ... he played at st. thomas for our senior sendoff. my bib overalls were almost as doused in beer as my liver when i climbed on stage with him and posed for a photo.

i got a little snotty about my zellarness. i was in the front row at a small show, dancing with a stranger, when a man behind us started screaming for zellar to play zamboni.

my dance partner and i turned around, stunned. damn-near tackled him.

"he HATES that song!" i said.
"how can you not know that?!" the other dancer asked.
"he's sick of playing it!" i admonished him.
the guy quietly slinked away.
the show continued.

out of college, this fanaticism continued. by then i was greeting him after each show.

me: martin, will you play my wedding dance someday?
martin: by the time you get married, i probably will be playing wedding dances.

this routine never grew old for me. i'd coo, and journal about it when i got home. i can imagine he cringed when he saw me coming. in his head i'd turned into the neighbor who says everyday: "cold enough for ya?"

the last time i saw martin zellar play was the weekend of my 30th birthday. he and the gear daddies did a reunion show at the minnesota state fair. the first two-thirds of the show was boring. suddenly, six beers later, it started to rock hard enough that my then-roommate had to pull over in moose lake, minn., on the way home so i could barf.

the point is, martin zellar played bayfront park last night. it was a free show. i had a previous commitment i didn't try to hard to get out of. but at one point i broke away from the group and went outside and heard most of "zamboni" and feverishly regretted not being at the show.

i hate missing the good stuff.

the waking is the hardest part ...

in the days leading up to the half-marathon, i began thinking of it as a parade. that helped a little. so did considering the time element: the equivilent of giving the songs "true faith" and "bizarre love triangle" by new order 13 consecutive listens, which is easy peasy and probably how i spent a few weekends in 1994.

i was honestly a little nervous.
"nervous?" ma pista said. "you don't get nervous."
true. but i don't usually wake up at 4 a.m. for a parade, either.

typically, 4 a.m. finds me peeing, brushing my teeth and barricading the bedroom door to keep out the 30 pound, rat-faced, 12 mile and hour headbutting feline -- not encasing my bosom in a sports bra and cramming a banana in my face. i got a smart email from an athlete in colorado who certainly recognized my plight and offered great wisdom:

I recommend at least one drink Friday night so you can get to sleep before midnight and aren't even more cranky at 5:30am on Saturday when you're waiting to ride a school bus filled with guys in short-shorts slathered in Vaseline.

Also, that ticket you get at the end of the race is good for either a cup of Arco coffee, a Coke or a Miller Lite. That's a pretty easy choice.

Finally, you can probably trade your t-shirt and cheesy-ass finisher's medal with an agreeable bartender for a pitcher of beer or two. Successful at both Quinlan's and at the Red Lion.

***

i wouldn't say i trained, so much as i ran sometimes. deep in the winter, i'd been running about five days a week. and when the start-training date approached, i melded two different workout guides into one and followed it pretty well for about three weeks.

then i got bored.
then homegrown week happened.
and pretty soon i spent more time feeling guilty about not running than actually running. it was like prepping for the ACT and my senior project in college all over again. i have my own mausoleum for the big ideas that have gone pastey, coughed weakly, then quietly expired.

my friend blitz was training. real training, not just rearranging the songs on his running mix and then yawning and reading gawker. i ran into him two weeks ago and he was limping. so was i.

"i did my long run today," he said. "11 miles."
"me too," i said. "five."

my landlord called me pathetic and said i should write my own "how not to prepare for a half-marathon" guide.

***

let's just say that picking up my race packet was a lesson in humility. i felt like shrek stomping around during miss minnesota's swim suit competition.

***

i put myself to bed at midnight. i'd opted to not follow the beer advice, since i've never had just one beer in my life. chuck, who also struggles with being awake before 10 a.m., went to bed, too. we layed there watching journeyman on his laptop, me with my eyes closed. i was hoping for something like a nap.

that never happened.

i got out of bed at 3:45 a.m., showered, drank coffee, changed my shirt three times and had some deep thoughts about shorts with built-in underware.

i met up with blitz and jcat and we got on a bus bound for the deep woods.



***

first gross runner's thing i did? the bus had a bathroom, and i knew trying to go to the bathroom at the starting line would be like trying to touch donnie wahlberg's frayed denium during a show in the mid-80s. so i crammed myself in the tiny pee closet and noticed there was no toilet paper, no kleenix, no paper towels. i had a vision of myself walking out of the bathroom with a single trickle of urine snaking down my leg and shuddered. so i just used my pants and stuffed them in my plastic bag.

a few people caught on to the buses bathroom. one girl went in and came out immediately. "there's no toilet paper," she said.

i felt exposed as disgusting. did she notice i went in wearing pants and came out in shorts?

***

i spent a lot of time at the starting line looking for people i thought i could beat. there was a suspicious lack of amputees.

***

my friend blitz is about 8 feet tall, and six of those feet are legs. he was planning a pace that was a big faster than i thought i could handle -- having absolutely NO idea what to expect. so i piddled alongside him for the majority of the race, taking four mini peon steps to his one gigantic stride.

the first six miles were crazy. at each mile point i did a crude cavewoman version of math and was surprised at our splits. they weren't fast, but they were faster than the chug-chugging i'd planned for.

***

the route from almost two harbors to duluth is a gradual, and sometimes not-so gradual, incline. at mile 11 the distance from my foot to the ground was hardly perceptible.

***

some asshole was holding a sign that said: run faster!
you run faster, bitchface.

***

my meager fan base -- chuck and the parents pista -- missed me. i was too fast for them. they saw the greysolon bingo team trudge past and imagined me guiding them like a baton twirler.

***

instead of a runner's high, i got runner's crabby. the finish line was chaos and i was trapped inside a plastic fence. retreiving my potty-stained pants seemed too taxing. i wandered around a bit, exhausted, and finally planted myself on a sidewalk and willed my meager fan base to somehow stumble over my body. finally i used my last ounce of strength to gather my belongings and find chuck. then i borrowed some of today's strength to find parents pista.

***

today my male soccer player thighs are raw from repeated contact. a toenail on my left foot is about to jump ship. i can walk, but it would take time-lapse photography to notice.

i have slept something like 14 hours. this was totally fun and i will do it again.

pork chops and applesauce ...

our plans to read in leif erikkson park were thwarted by a visions of the vista fleet chugging along at a nice clip and the promise of a hot dog vendor anchored in canal park.

canal park was like a nike commercial where everyone is running and the world's collective BMI is gatorading itself toward extinction. we were having a pleasant conversation when chuck stopped mid-sentence to damn-near shout:

"HEY-LOOK! A-CARNIVAL!"

it just flew out. like he had spontaneously birthed an 11-year-old boy from his mouth. actually, it was infamous beer tent. a post-marathon church for thousands upon thousands of sturdy thigh muscled boogie wonderland fans wearing "finisher" t'shirts, scorched skin, and a medal. stand in line for a porta potty at 10 p.m. and you will overhear more about splits, paces and chafed bloody nipples than if you subscribed to runner's world on tape.

i'm just guessing. i've never been to the beer tent. i stood on the fringe one night and realized that the only way it is possible to charge a cover charge and $5 or more for a bottle of bud light is to invite a bunch of people from minneapolis to duluth, break down their spirit by sending them on a 26.2 mile run, then stick them in a yellow tent in canal park.

it is the exact opposite of a carnival. no tilt-a-whirls, but some young runner from white bear lake is bound to get the spins.

***

more than a year ago, chuck and i were both hangover hungry on a sunday and decided to test out hell's kitchen. we did laps around the block, trying to find a place to cram a car. hungry was morphing to sick and sick was a gateway drug to testy. the mere sight of an egg mcmuffin on a park bench would have sent me cartwheeling through traffic just to lick that sweet, plastic cheese from the wrapper. i glanced to my right at a stop sign where a man was posing for a photo by a fountain. he was turned slightly and had his hands positioned in a way to make it look like -- in the photo -- he was emitting the stream.

any thoughts of hunger were replaced by the idea of his wife showing those photos -- an "our trip to duluth" slideshow to their adult children and wee grandchildren.

we failed to recreate that image today. [they've since added a railing, that makes getting into the exact position a challenge for anyone under 6-foot-8.]




we couldn't get it to look like i was spitting, either. doh.

***

i love hot dog vendors, and the five foot radius of county fair air they emit. how hours later you will think: hmm ... what smells like cheese curds? and then realize it's your face. crabby bill's version is like a beached tugboat and has everything from hotdogs to fish wrapped in lefsa.

we each got a dog slathered in pure, undiluted, milky white horseradish.
"this is powerful stuff," mrs. crabby bill warned us.
i went about four spoonfuls deep.
"careful, it's potent," she said, then directed us to a nearby picnic table.
i spooned another dollop just to freak her out.
"if i see things blowing up green, i'll know it was you two," she said.

people with sensitive tongues are so cute. this hot dog was awesome.



***

we came home and grilled meat -- which is what we do now instead of going to restaurants: boneless pork chops marinated in southwest sauce and then a skewer filled with great veggies. a mango-banana-raspberry mix for dessert.




it has been said that the grilling spatula looks like something out of "friday the 13th."


and i ate an orange in a way i hadn't eaten an orange since i last played organized soccer ... um, 1988ish?

this is why we can't have nice things ...

my unemployed friend says this is his last visit to duluth. ever. he came to town for his son's high school graduation, and now he doesn't see a reason to come back. lake superior college doesn't seem to have a concert choir, so he won't be attending those. plus, he gave his son his car.

"you gave him your CAR?" i ask.
he nods.
"but, but ..." i stammer.
"i walk everywhere," he explains.
"you got a DUI, didn't you?" i ask.
"no!" he says. "i told you! i don't drive anywhere."
"i can't believe you're giving your son a car with whiskey plates," i say.
"you gave your son a car with whiskey plates?" jcrew asks.
"i didn't get a DUI!" he repeats.

when he says something about his carbon footprint, i snort.


jcrew: use this as your new facebook profile photo.
me: and change your 'status' to 'it's complicated.'
jcrew: it will up your resale value.



***

we meet up at the twins' bar. me, jcrew, unemployed friend and his parents -- a cute couple in their late 60s who agree with me when i say unemployed friend's son is not much of a kickball players.

"he's not much of an athlete," the kid's grandmother concedes. and this is how i know i love her.

chuck shows up. moccassins and dojo. babs. my landlord. seadawg. then bubbles.

we drink beers. my landlord tries to top the high score in ms. pacman and comes dangerously close to doing just that.

***

"chuck," jcrew says with the sweet lilt usually reserved for coaxing exboyfriends into buying her jewelry, "what would you think of hosting an afterbar?"

crap. i know there is a partial case of lukewarm pbr stashed at home. i'd already mentally called dibs on it. i was going to snuggle into the couch, shotgun about three of them using a vampire technique, and see what sort of nonsense i could throw up on the internet.

chuck seems open to the idea.

"i only have like 10 beers," he says.
my landlord's eyes bug cartoonishly out of his head, as they are wont to do when the word 'beer' is made plural in his presense.
i kick chuck.
"really, it's more like five," i say. "or three. and they're luke warm and all the alcohol has been siphoned out of them."

no one hears my drunken caterwalling. instead they are magically transported to the porch, smoking and swearing and spitting and burping and gossiping about hair while we buy mexican frozen pizzas and tiger woods' flavored gatorade. we climb up the street and see them convened. they look like peasants waiting for cheese rations, used socks and expired bread.

***

my unemployed friend flops on the couch. my landlord shows up with half a pack of hotdogs and a lunchbag filled with beer. jcrew chases toonses around the apartment like a scorned lover. seadawg is leering. chuck mans the record player:

tears for fears' songs from the big chair.
erasure's chains of love. [boo'd by guests]
the national's the boxer.

people who don't smoke are smoking. things that aren't bathrooms are becoming bathrooms. chuck throws six hot dogs on the grill. my landlord cradles toonses like he is breastfeeding him. jcrew finds my bike helmet and dances alone in the middle of the room. soon bubbles joins her -- without a helmet. my unemployed friend sways on the couch, singing along like a muppet. the hotdogs are done, and there is only one hot dog bun, so everyone wraps their meal in a piece of wheat bread, and douses it with ketchup. crime scene sandwiches.

fleetwood mac's rumors. twice.
eddie murphy's boogie in your butt. [suspiciously not boo'd]
katrina and the waves' walking on sunshine.

by now we're all dancing to "jump" by van halen. then "panama" and "you really got me." i've claimed the final beer, a bud lite my landlord ditched in the freezer, spilling frozen peas all over the kitchen floor in the process. chuck makes the pizzas, sets them on the table, and they immediately disappear. the sun is not just rising, it's risen. my unemployed friend trips over the coffee table, breaking half of it, spilling beer and pizza crumbs.

lionel richie: "stuck on you." "all night long."
men at work "down under."
inxs "what you need."
the cars "best friend's girl."
the who.
U2's joshua tree.









chuck sneaks off to bed. i find him and decide that is a great idea, this bed thing. everyone files out into the street. neighbors are getting ready for work. children are heading to the bus stop. these people are maniacs.

***

my head feels like it was left out on a picnic table during a fourth of july potluck. i'm tired but can't sleep. every two hours i go to the bathroom, take another aspirin, chase it with four chugs of tiger woods' gatorade. chuck groans next to me. when i look at him, he mistakenly thinks i am going to ask him to engage in a conversation. he groans again and simply says: no.

silly boy. my hair still hurts. it takes a level of ambition i can't muster to merely blink.

the living room looks like someone broke a pinata filled with empty beer cans and pizza crust. i pick up my green converse low top, which is dark with wet. i sniff it to make sure toonses didn't try to give me a subtle message about being chased around the apartment by a whack job wearing a helmet at 5 a.m. no. it has just been soaking up my unemployed friends' spilled beer.

there is a crushed beer can in the front yard.
the table is still broken.
someone soiled the toilet bowl, and we have our suspicions about who it was.

"i never said my unemployed friend is a civilized drunk," i say.
"it's kind of like having marmeduke over," chuck says.

***

jcrew sends me an email: that may have been THE afterbar. second only to the one at landlord's where we all got free salad rolls.

'tis true. that one was just a touch superior.

meat party ...

last night we were invited to eat some grilled grass-fed beef chuck's fannie's girlfriend, geogrl, had scored on the internet. this made my entire week. for as much as i like laying around on the couch honing our secret handshake, there has been a decisive lack of "couple friends" in this relationship.

the time we went to dinner with s'fire and icknay at guadalajara, i was psychotic in my efforts to keep them seated across from us in the booth forever. more talking! more margaritas! more beans! all of my friends that are coupled are either coupled with

a) a man who lives in minneapolis, or
b) a scrawny catastrophe of a woman with an obscenely large collection of dorky scarf-headbands and an obscenely larger collection of low-rent dudes with whom she is "just friends."

aside from that, "okay, we'll meet up with you at midnight" isn't really a selling sentence for civilized human beings.

but the stars aligned on thursday, and so we got to go to a meat party.

***

we ate cheeseburgers, a salad with huge chunks of feta cheese, and geogrl's sweet potato french fries on their deck, wandered inside for the main event: the chinchilla cheech's dust bath. [next time there will be video of this.]

***

when we realized the vfw was closed, we went to the north pole -- which is perhaps the preeminant west duluth bar. located on a corner of raleigh street, this brightly lit bar features a well-tended juke box, possibly the best, most fun-encouraging bartender in the state, and a special patio with a wood burning stove. if you, perchance, set your beer on the deck's railing, you are inviting a neighborhood cat to splash his paw in your drink as though his little furry hand is a pita chip; the beer an avacado dip.

aside: i hate other people's cats. to me, touching one is as invasive as if a stranger had casually stripped out of their underthings and draped them over your body.

on this night, i found a young man face down on the picnic table bemoaning his most recent piece of pizza.

"is it his birthday?" i asked his two friends.
"yes," the designated driver responded.
"twenty-one?" i guessed.

here, drunkie used his remaining will to hold up two fingers. a weak peace sign.
"twenty-two?" i asked.
he banged his head against the table in a sort of feeble nod-like gesture.
"well, birthday boy," i said. "your zipper is down."
he groaned.
that's when i noticed that i had a full view of his blue stripped boxer shorts.
"actually," i said, "you're hardly wearing pants at all."


this photo was approved of by drunkie.


***

we were joined later by hotrod, who celebrated his opposite of a promotion by driving straight to duluth from the twin cities. his sister; his sister's boyfriend. hotrod, who was last seen wearing women's jeans and strutting across the stage at the orpheum during homegrown, is, um ... pretty hard to explain. suffice to say he made this photo happen and is passionate about horse racing. frankly, i'm surprised today that none of us are swiss cheesed with stab wounds:




hmmm ... slim jim.



hosts of the meat party.

***

the hosts of the meat party walked home; we shared a cab east with hotrod, his sister and his sister's boyfriend.

"you ever get it on with a chick in here?" hotrod asked the cab driver. "you ever give girls free rides home ...?"

and with that our cab driver took off at about 70 miles per hour during the dark neighborhood streets of west duluth. hotrod's sister was screaming, "PUT ON YOUR SEATBELTS!" her hair catching flames from cigarette embers.

"is it okay if we pay you with garbage pail kids?" hotrod asked the cab driver.

halfway into the trip we learned that our cabdriver was infamous. in the early 90s, he sullied a national holiday by saying something racist while while the event was being filmed by a local tv station.

this was arguably the worst cab ride home ever. we should've probably should have walked the 15 miles.

***

we ate pizza and corn nuts, watched "serial mom," and went to bed.

hey internet!

look who i met!

"i almost didn't recognize her because she wasn't dressed like a mime," chuck said.

and bam! i'm an eagle scout ...

chuck pointed at a super high rock and said "do you want to go up there?" and i thought he was kidding. that rock looked like it would require a carabiner, if not at least seven other things from one of those stores with the word "adventure" in the title.

but here we were at 123rd avenue west, and what else were we going to do? chuck was wearing a pair of chuck taylors, notorious for their lack of spikey soles. i'd left my water bottle in the car. our plan to cover 39 miles of the superior hiking trail was derailed last year -- like a lot of good ideas that are hatched at 3 a.m. on chuck's couch. anyway, we found a path and elevated to here -- something called ely's peak:










stay tuned for my photo show entitled: blurry bar shots and pictures of chuck taking pictures of stuff.


there were dozens of turkey buzzards, who seemed to be performing a danceline routine to technotronic's "pump up the jam."

we wandered further along, probably three miles or so, and then had to make a decision:

* do we turn back?
* come out on the other end of this path at skyline. spare ourselves the boredom of backtracking past the same old bear paw prints and the dozens of alien messages in the form of cairns? i mean i'd already used what i learned yesterday from the bristol stool chart to determine these here woods are filled with constipated animals.
* or do we freakin' bushwhack through this mess -- do exactly what you aren't supposed to do and jump path and head straight downward where hopefully we'll hit the munger trail or at least get close enough to it that i can carry chuck if he twists his ankle?

we went with the third option. chuck scoped it out in front of me, disappearing into twigs and trees and grass. finally i decided to follow him, but he was already out of sight. everytime i heard a crackle, i looked for a flash of black t'shirt, and it was usually just a bird. i yelled for him: nada.

i spent about 7 minutes imagining night fall, gnawing off my own thumb then staying hydrated by drinking leaffulls of my own saliva. then i wonder what if chuck fell off of something and how will they get the helicopters in here? not to mention the sociopaths and train robbers hiding in the hills.

"you've been watching too many tori spelling movies," chuck tells me when i find him four seconds later.

we continued our very unpractical drop and by the time we get to the bottom i was being given an auditition as the host body for a young tick. hello, summer!

then we ended up in this cavey tunnel thing that was super cool and dark and exactly where the satanists would spend their time painting anarchy signs on the rocks and pounding sugar free red bull -- if this tunnel was in rochester.






if chuck ever comes out with a poetry chapbook, i hope he uses this shot for the cover.

in the air ... from christa pista on Vimeo.

here is 19 seconds of us on ely's peak.

homegrown day seven: the stage is surrounded by a rind of drunk ...

lookee loo. my funshackle totally faded to white over the course of the week. like a mood ring or some other who-do voodoo.


8:30 p.m. -- jcrew, the rockstar and i dine at india palace. my goal is to either coat my stomach with matar paneer: something that i assume will soak up one dollar water glasses filled with coors, or at least look interesting at 3 a.m. when i pollack it all over the curb outside of pizza luce.

9:15 p.m. -- i'm seriously cramming forkloads of peas and cheese into my body like some sort of animal with a second stomach. the one i have has grown freakishly distended. next to me, jcrew is moaning through her similar mission.

10 p.m. -- we get to quinlan's, where i have a pavlovian desire to not enter, still a bit skittish from the way the place was raining breath and body odor during cars & trucks' show the previous night. when a droplet fell from a vent onto the rockstar on friday night, she convinced me that it was raining sweat and called the place a rainforest.

i quickly drink a beer with the intent of catching up to chuck, who has about a six-hour head-start on me having attended a house party in the afternoon where it was non unusual to find a homegrown hero mixing A1 steak sauce with his vodka, mayonaise and coke. god. homegrown is disgusting.

10:45 p.m. -- our trolley driver must have taken drivers' ed with the teenaged minivan driver who spirited us home on tuesday night. i'm sliding all over the wooden bench. the driver announces that it is okay to swear on the trolley, unlike on the DTA. we exit; amble up the hill.


photo by chuck.

11 p.m. -- jamie ness is playing a southern rock cover. his brother, the mayor, struts in and receives handshakes and pats on the back. this would make a fantastic lifetime original movie: [in a deep movie trailer voice] one brother is in a rock n roll band; the other is the gatekeeper to the city's rental ordinances. brother two tries to skirt into brother one's show unnoticed, but he's the mayor and people want to touch him. brother one gets louder. rocks harder. the skuttle around brother two reaches a fever pitch. brother one throw's his guitar down on the stage and screams: "i'm the rocker! this is my show! you have your show on cable access! just let me rock for my fans!"

unfortunately, this did not happen. [and i seem to have taken a lot of pleasure out of writing ness family fan fiction, which is ... weird?]

after shooting photos of jamie ness, chuck meanders back and says: um. i just sat on the floor of the kozy bar.
11:15 p.m. -- we parade southwest, back toward luce. jcrew limping along in a pair of impractical 3-inch heels; chuck photographing a woman in a knit cap who will, in return, belch in my ear as she skips past.

as we near the bar, the sweet sounds of 1991 is thicker than the smell of pizza dough.

mighty shock tower is revisiting REM's greatest hits, while their parents beam from the sidelines, clapping awkwardly and surprisingly unfettered by the liberal use of the "f" word being spit into the microphone.

i suggested to a former acquaintance that olive garden was his favorite restaurant and watched his pupils burn with hell-fire. i had to promptly extricate myself from this dangerous situation.

midnight -- it was during father hennepin's show that i noticed that duluth began to unfurl. it wasn't just the rain of granny panties parachuting onto the stage, it was a sort of drunken rind of fans that became deeper and deeper as the set went on. first it was just the photographer who eluded security, weaving his way across the stage, sticking his camera two inches from his subjects' faces. then i noticed the whole front row had turned pbr into a living, breathing thing. i turned around and saw a wall of sobriety become increasingly less so, like a drunken shadow force touching 20 people at a time until the duluth entity was officially schnockered.

12:30 a.m. -- i take a breather at a corner table. make friends. drink things. babble on and on until my own voice has taken on the piercing static of the most offensive alarm clock.

2 a.m. -- we stumble back into the main room for week's finale, crew jones, which even jcrew can get behind. it's sweaty. it's loud. it's animated. it is, per usual, pretty amazing.

3 a.m. -- jcrew says that since she has been to new york twice and has seen every episode of sex and the city at least once, she will hail us a cab. she stands in the street, arm in the air like the smartest kid in a third-grade math class. and sure enough, she snags one very efficiently. we go to perkins.

4 a.m. -- we cram our bodies with breakfast food and offend -- or perhaps educate? -- anyone withing a three-table radius. jcrew has left the contents of her meal in the toilet and splattered on her fancy red coat before she has even paid for it. me? when my meal bungees, i just reswallow it. this time when the cab arrives, we are uncertain if it is our's or another group's. the cab driver doesn't seem to care either way, and so we take it and are whisked away, back to our normal lives: meals made in kitchens out of ingredients found in nature; liquid in the form of water; conversations i remember. weeeee! oh normal life. i've missed you so.

homegrown day six: where i wake up and think 'is this over yet?' ...

* at fitgers we run into the woman i suggested was having hot flashes all over her cello.
* i dig my fingernails into chuck's arm and giggle like someone pooted in church.
* thankfully, it seems she hasn't read my tiny little blip of a blog.

* the college boys sitting across from us on the bus keep talking about "an adventure" and "we should do this more often." they ditch into fonduluth cascino, sprinting like its disneyworld.
* our bus drops us at the orpheum nightclub before things have started.
* the members of bone appetite are having a having preshow drinks. offstage they look like friendly men who could fix your cell phone plan or hook you up with a roth ira.
* a man jumps off his bar stool and tells us that he is going to go try to wake up fred tyson, the first performer.
* upstairs, in the strip club, it sounds like a woman auction. a bingo-caller is reeling off the dimensions and resume highlights of a stripper who saw 1/4 a ball of black yarn and thought it would make a stunning evening dress.
* apparently professional celebrity strippers have been brought in for the night. "i'm already bored," one band guy says pushing past us. meawhile, the topless professional celebrity stripper on stage is skipping from dull-eyed male to dull-eyed male, selling motorboats for a buck a piece.

* the orpheum is filling with an unlikely crowd of people, stuffing into booths and reorganizing chair configurations. i'm not sure if we should tell them this ain't the olive garden now, or if we should let fred tyson's shiny boxer shorts, satin half-shirt and boxing gloves key them into the fact that there will be no bread sticks and salad refills.
* i'm in the lobby buying my 85th pbr of the week when chuck comes in the lobby to tell me the show has started. that fred tyson was helped onstage and someone is holding him in front of the microphone.
* this little man with a big presense shuffles around in a pair of tube socks, and white tennies that make his feet look like he's having perma puberty. he's chanting his personal catch phrase: freddy gonna do what he wanna do, fuck you.
* i realize that this is the unofficial kickoff to homegrown. anything i've seen before, anything i'll see later, is just strofoam packing peanuts wrapped around this act.
* when the show is over, freddy continues to greet fans holding the dead, unplugged microphone under his chin.


freddy gonna do what he wanna do ... from christa pista on Vimeo.

* we board the free trolley and head to rt quinlan's for cars & trucks.
* the trolley is great fun, with people chanting the obvious: trol-ley, trol-ley. and singing various bus-themed songs. it kinda feels like that moment senior year where the social infrastructure has been sanded down and everyone just likes each other and thinks everyone is wicked hilarious.

* quinlan's is packed. i tuck myself in by the popcorn machine instead of pushing to the front row. i already know i like cars & trucks, so i don't need to be in the front row. i can see tony bennett's hair from here.
* back on the trolley, destination luce for greg cougar conley's show. this is good stuff, but we have to get back to the orpheum to see bone appetite.

* our plan is to then return to luce for giljunko. but i'm slowly realizing that this band is going to suck the life out of me. that guy who was going to upgrade my cell phone package? he's changed into a pair of women's jeans and drawn on a mustache with a sharpie. roth ira is wearing a sweatband.
* fans are screaming along to "drive away." chuck's face is registering pure glee. if he could glow, he would.
* some kid is crowd surfing and dives from the stage.
* this makes me envious of all the bone appetite shows i didn't see, and the people who did.
* most homegrown acts last a half hour, forty five minutes. when bone appetite segues into a cover of "california dreamin'" i turn to chuck quizzically.
* "oh," he says. "they won't leave the stage until they're forced off."
* meanwhile, i have two bladderfuls, but i don't want to miss a thing.
* "they'll still be playing when you get back," he says.


sharpie mustaches ... from christa pista on Vimeo.

* i'm not a skittish bathroom person. my favorite bathrooms in the world are the one-stall wonders tucked into gas stations between here and rochester. the bathroom at the orpheum makes my uvula shiver with pre-barf anticipation. i'm wading through six inches of water, where most of the toilet paper in this room has landed. none of the stalls lock. i have no where to hang my coat. this is the most rudifying thing i've ever seen. maybe its the pbr, maybe its the rock and roll. i decide to become a bathroom rights activist and immediately begin searching for management.
* instead i find chuck, who nods compassionately, but senses i've lost my mind. "you missed paul lundgren singing with the band," he says.
* the show is over.

* we head back to luce to see trampled by turtles.
* there is a line outside of luce, filled with a pack of 21-year-olds whose enthusiasm for this week cannot match mine or chuck's. we take their drunkenness as an excuse to cut in front of them. they don't seem to notice.
* still, there is a bouncer to get past. he's eking people in one at a time as other's leave.
* "look," i tell him. "we're wearing wrist bands. we were already here tonight."
* shrug.
* "honestly! just a few hours ago we were booing greg cougar conley!" i add.
* he chuckles and lets us in.
* we beeline for the pizza-by-the-slice and leave after coating our throats in a bacon-chicken slice.

* we begin to walk home in the cold rain.
* we ask bone appetite for a ride, but they've crammed about seven people into a matchbox car. they seem open to it.
* we continue east by foot.
* for the second consecutive night, we try to watch the movie "trading places." "i think this is how we should end every night of homegrown," chuck says. eddie murphy. dan ackroid.
* i wake up sore. i think from the venue hopping and singalongs.

homegrown night five: i'm holding out for a gyro ...

* chuck cooed a magic word on wednesday: gyro.
* visions of plucky little spiced lambs danced in my head. gyro, gyro, gyro.
* i called niko's in superior to make sure they were still open, assuming from the nonanswer that they were getting slammed. why would they be closed at 8:30 p.m. on a wednesday? gyros know no quitting time. gyro, gyro, gyro ...
* he called me 25 minutes later from the walgreen's parking lot. closed.
* just like the game big buck hunter, my craving lay bloody and bleeting on simulated grass.
* he came home with butter burgers and cheese curds from culvers. culvers should never finish second place in a taste-off. no one puts culvers in the corner.
* thursday we went to the mall, home depot, and through all the 3 dollar sale shirts and potted herb plants, all i could think about was a world coated in tzatziki sauce and that i am a life-sized tongue, lapping paths of its saucy goodness.
* this time i crossed the bridge to superior, winds strong enough to flip my civic into the lake. fortunately, i have at least an added 75 pounds of debris in my back seat to keep me safe.
* the dude in front of me at niko's gets the last gyro. honestly. they ran out of gyro meat one construction worker too soon.
* "i'm as surprised as you," the woman working the cash register said. she seemed pleased to disappoint me, and didn't find my story about how we had been holding out for an gyro for two nights.
* "huh," she responded emotionless.
* turns out the chicken version is a fine substitute.



* the night starts at burrito union. my first experience watching the lake superior cacophonic choir, a group that includes chuck when he doesn't a) have pneumonia, b) have to work.
* i snuggle in next to the rockstar, who recently had a new eardrum installed, rendering her unable to play on wednesday's acoustic night. between niko's being closed and not getting to hear my favorite singer, wednesday would have been a complete failure had we not finished season four of 'the wire.'
* the lake superior cacophonic choir's performance exceded its billing.
* then s'fire took over djing, playing greatest hits by bands performing this week.
* the rockstar drove us to the twins bar for hip hop night. rumor had it: it was a rough crowd.
* before we can get out of the minivan, the rockstar says: "wait. i have to put on some lipstick."
* for some reason chuck and i cackle, watching her from outside her van.
* i think it may have something to do with the chester creek pale ale we've been bathing in.

* hip hop night is not a rough crowd. in a notoriously rough bar on a notoriously rough street -- a street i live on, incidentally -- the "rough" status must have come from someone who fears crowds. it is packed. between the baggie jeans, faux camoflague hoodies and cocked hats, it looks like the parking lot of teen night.
* i start to crave sprite.
* it takes approximately a half hour to order a beer, so i order six.
* die(ode) is playing when we get there, and for some reason i'm surrounded by people who understand that this music is not so hot. i'm hardly a great hip hop mind, but they sound fine to me.
* kritical kontact follows, and i'm surrounded by people who understand that THIS music is hot.

* i'm in the bathroom when a woman walks in. "show us your ass!" the other girls yell, and she tugs down the back of her jeans to reveal a new tattoo.

* the image has something to do with her last name.
* she allows me to photograph it and put it on my web site.

* we walk home and eat burritos, which chuck has stocked the freezer with for a moment just like this.

homegrown day three: teenagers with minivans ...

so tonight was 'experimental tuesday' at the blue crab.
'can you actually eat crabs there?" jcrew asked, when i tried to coax her to go.
'you can probably get crabs there,' i said. [three's company theme song ensues to representing double entrendre.]

the thing with the blue crab is that it used to be a west end bar that closed at 1 a.m., let you take a to-go bloody mary, and was called 'the midway.' now it is a bar in the same location, that has a host of regulars who want to watch tv land, drink mich golden lite and segue into some cribbage. they don't want to watch some woman in mom jeans have hot flashes all over a cello. and they definitley expressed this to the 21 year old florence henderson lookalike who was bouncing at the door.

"what are you, like 120 pounds?" i asked dave mehling, who is unfortunately performing friday night at the twins bar while a lot of people will be at luce. luckily, he's bouncing at the main club thursday if you really want to see him. and you should. he's one of those young smarties who make you wish you read in high school.
"130," he said and went on to talk a lot about testosterone build up and how it makes you want to punch assholes who refuse to pay a cover at their neighborhood bar.

"i always come here," the guy said. "i never have to pay a cover. i didn't even know there was a band?"
his friends heckled him from the street: "so you go to a strip club and the girls are ugly ... do you ask for a refund?"

inside, things were remarkable. after i've decided whether or not i like something i like to give it jcrew treatment. would my favorite friend like it? or would she die laughing in the ladies room, cavorting and snorting, and demand we move on to curly's? here, the latter rings true. lights reflecting blue and red and shadows. everyone in the first three rows has their head bowed reverantly. it's like a prayer vigil or a coma. they are too similar.

"blah blah blah whales humping," chuck's fannie says. "remind me of that phrase [for when i write about this.]"



me? i'm thinking of musical interludes between depeche mode songs. i don't not like it. i do wonder if, based on the bobbing heads and dull-eyed fans, i'm going to wake up with a desire to sell amway or march in a scientology parade. this music should come out of a machine sold by sharper image. but it is very relaxing. and it's makers are pretty passionate. i feel my own face going slack and move out of the first row just as a line of drool snakes down the front of my shirt.

i like to start the night with this statement to my bartender: hi. i plan to drink too much tonight. is it okay for me to leave my car in your parking lot over night?

on this occasion she says yes. encourages me to drink until my liver slides out of my left pant leg. we get a ride home from some guy in a minivan, who i assume is sober. we take corners on two wheels. i'm clutching chuck, his pants are as filled as with shit as they could be if he actally soiled himself but didn't. we skim his block, but our ride drives six more out of the way.

"we could have gotten out there," terrified chuck says pointing.
"i feel like starbuck," i reference battlestar galactica. "the further away from earth, the bigger headache i get."

we get home safely with four days and one brunch to go of my favorite duluth holiday.
"i feel like i'm a drunk on buggs bunny," chuck said. he has the hiccups.

homegrown days one and two: the fun shackle ...

so it is the end of day two of homegrown, and all i have to show for it is an orange wristband that suggests a level of fun i've not yet acheived. my social secretary did a piss-poor job of clearing my calendar, and so these early days of the festival have me catching blanched out pieces here and there.

i got to luce for new band night late on sunday, tired, hungry, spent from regenerating the internal organs i'd sacrificed on saturday night. i was so distracted by being at the holy birth-place of tuna caliente and veggie nuggets that i could hardly look at the dreadlocked bass player rocking in celebratory circles on stage.



i took one of those inane cell phone photos to prove to myself later that i'd been there. ordered my food, avoided eye contact with other humans, and finished the night at walgreens in the crayola aisle.

today i skulked the outskirts of a room at the playground, where photos of homegrowns past are hanging. this was a lot like attending burly burlesque's graduation party -- minus the sheet cake and letter jacket -- as this local artist was easily the most-photographed person from the 2007 tour.

i got my wrist band, though. or my fun shackle. this neon orange accessory promises to bring me a lot of laughs as the week goes on. at first i balked at wearing it for a consecutive week. that can't be hygenic, right? my dirty arm, touching that pristine plastic product? then i remember that last year after homegrown i refused to take it off until i had a night that matched saturday's finale on my personal funometer. i think it ended up disintegrating before i was forced to tear into the sucker with my teeth. a week should be no problem.

so i missed open mic night. i got to carmody as haus meeting was loading an accordian into the trunk of a car.

nights in: 2
bands appreciated: .5
meals originating from pizza luce: 2
times i've stood outside a film fest that i was not able to attend: 1
drinks consumed: 1
times chuck has had enough homegrown fun that he finds it acceptible for me to watch both 'the bachelor' and 'the hills' without headphones while he is on the same couch: 2, but i only took him up on it once
days left in my fun shackle: 5

best day ever ...

we left the apartment with a plan to just go where the wind took us. the wind took us to ski hut, first. i want a bike. i would like to bike everywhere except target this summer [death trap] and a) minimize my 'carbon footprint' b) save gas money; c) do an experiment.

i told the salesman i want a) something between 250-350 dollars; b) something i can ride on roads, but maybe take on a trail if the spirt moves me. c) the spirit won't move me. i'm not going to bike recreationally because i value my pelvic region in a nonhurting state, i like to run and i have inline skate. soon i will either won the hardrock xc or the trek 7100 ... depending on which one my split personality writes a check for.

***



we cut down through some neighborhoods, hungry, and decided to hit coney island on superior street.

here's a dichotomy: coney island on first street is, according ot the health department, one of the cleanest restaurants in duluth. a little retro ... marcia brady booths, but you aren't going to die if you like lick one. the coney island on superior street? there's a sign on the door that mentions this shop is anti pan handling. and you way want to commit pan handling crimes when you enter.

i got a coney. chuck got a polish with coney sauce. we split fries. we told the cashier our order four times. this place was dirty. chuck was afraid to use the bathroom, but fine with eating the food. this says a lot about his intestinal fortitude.

"i just don't want to write a blog post about how i crapped my pants on the DTA [bus]," he said.
"it wasn't that i thought the food was bad. i didn't trust the person serving us," he said.

but it was when he mentioned purina dog food -- after we'd eaten -- that i finally had to tell him to zip it.

***

we wandered down to canal park. the infamous crib, which is a local landmark that washed up last spring, moved about a mile during the storm and ended up beached in this tourist area.

it's weird enough to think that a week ago we were getting our glasses sprayed by wicked waves. to think of this structure moving this far is kind of amazing. we played for awhile.







***

if you've ever traveled on foot with chuck, you know it is a little like walking a puppy you can bring into a bike store. instead of peeing on everything, he wants to photograph every little thing of nature that ever just combusted into place. gi joe action figure laying face down on the sidewalk? fifteen minutes later, you can return to your walk. oh! guy riding a weird bike? see you in ten minutes. as luck would have it ... i think this shit is cute as hell.

***

we tried to decide between valentinos [4 blocks away] and chester creek [a mile and a half] away and went with the later. by the time we got there we were starving. we grabbed menus and on our way to the booth, a cook called to chuck from the kitchen.

"chuuuuuuck!" he cried.

we learned they were trying their new menu tonight. chuck got a recommendation: the crab rolls, his kitchen friend told him.

i got a smoked salmon, he went with the recommendation.

when chucks food came out, it looked like this:



yes. that is sauce taking up half his plate. while good. amazing even, this meal was smalllllllllll. a place like chester creek that serves regular sized portions just gave him kibbles in the guise of a small plate entre.

***

on the way home, we walked through chester creek. came out at burrito union, where chuck bought an actual meal -- a one fisted fat capitalist.

later we went back to burrito union for drinks. i had a mango margarita, a ginger margarita and we played "hey, that looks like a character from battlestar galactica" bingo. i saw laura roslin and gaius baltar. i tried to get photos, but stopped because i felt like a pervert.

geek prom ...

i am a half-assed starbuck from battlestar galactica ... without dogtags ... or blonde hair ... or whiskey ... who realized too late in dressing that my backward tanktop should have been grey and that the words "very sexy" on my vs bra hardly lent any credability. purple (right), however, is princess leia if princess leia had gone to prom on planet alderaan, before planet alderaan blew up.

i need to work on my schtick.


bad cat, here, succeeded with her version of the battlestar galactica outfit. everytime i saw her i, i felt like a failure. the other mistake i made: not eating before i went.


after reading her blog for a very long time, i finally met my new bff babbleon. she was rich in photos of her dog lilo and clove cigarettes.


purple came in third place in the talent show.






i don't know these girls, but they were wearing pantsuits and the one on the right had on roller skates. i had some serious costume envy. from now on, i'll be on wheels for every duluth holiday -- not just halloween.


i like to take photos of chuck taking photos of arty things.


it was best to preface the trip to this cave by saying: we're going to go hang out in the beaver dam. and then winking.



hmm ... the sea.




this is perhaps the best photo i've ever taken in my life.


bad cat also had a glowing red spine, which means she is a cylon! later c-freak gave me a cigar that i used to give my outfit a bonus that bad cat hadn't thought about. granted, i don't think she was specifically starbuck. but i felt better about my weak costume, which i'd probably just wear on day of the week.



i don't know these two ... actually i don't know a lot of the people in these photos. but these two specifically asked me to take their picture. click.



jay-mac can never remember my name. we got in a fight the last time we hung out. i said some things. he said some things ... we set our differences aside for geek prom. right after i reminded him that he couldn't afford to hate me since i'd be supplying him with smokes for the rest of the night.


i kept wondering where lumpy g was hiding. then i saw him gaming on the second floor.


a faction of the kiss army stuck his tongue out at me.


here is ick-nay. we were all clamoring for shots of the geek streak.


i spent all night giving this guy quizical looks until he took off his mask. then i knew who he was.




from left: purple, cdean, babbleon and me.

the night ended at luce. vinnie and the stardusters, hungry and exhausted. chuck and i pigged out on pizza by the slice and decided we were funned out. we heard "duluth" playing in the background as we waited for our cab. we fell asleep watching battlestar galactica.

surf city ...

around 4 a.m. we weighed the weather forecast and the smooth sweet seduction of the bottle of jim beam we'd tapped and made a firm commitment to spending all of thursday bound to the couch, like weebles with our bases filled with sand.

it was the right call. i've spent much of the day watching lawn furniture cartwheel across the deck, recycling bins like blue plastic tumbleweed. right now, according to the weather channel, it is 30 degrees but feels like 16. winds are gusting to 48 mph. we are supposed to get a blizzard, suddenly and viciously. chuck thinks a giant snowball is just going to fall from the sky. considering the horror movie soundtrack coming from outside, i'm inclined to agree.







eventually we were called to look at the lake. that's what we do here when the weather gets crazy on a historic level: drive to the lake and see how its responding. first we parked in the ramp at fitger's, but it soon became obvious that canal park was where the real action was happening.

there was a bit of a traffic jam. "what are all these people doing down here?" chuck asked. it's not, like the fourth of july or the park point garage sales. between us we had two digital cameras and a video camera, which made the answer obvious: gawking.

"this wind answers the question: how do people's cars tip over," i said.

we were going to head to the pier, but honestly the one-lane road was clogged in a way i haven't seen since the burger king closed, so we doubled back to the parking lot of one of the hotels.

we weren't even to the lakewalk yet when sprays of water covered my glasses. the wind was blowing so hard it felt like i'd ingested asthma. the gawkers were giggly and rabid. i could only stand outside in about four second increments before my body started to petrify.







back in the car, my pants were sopped and we were both panting.

"i feel like i was just on a ride. a roller coaster. a roller coaster that could kill you," chuck said.

now we're back on the couch for good.

perfect duluth cliche ...

so i was at the co-op , ordering a large bowl of smoked mozzarella pasta from the deli. to my right was a small hippie family. you could tell they were die-hards, not ust casual recyclers who play the sitar recreationally, because the mom seemed to be wearing the entire contents of her closet -- a skirt, pants, a few shirts and a couple sweaters with more layers tied around her waist. the man's beard was braided.

they were feeding their toddler mushy handfuls of what looked like jalapinos. the woman was complaining because last week she bought a quiche from this very same deli and then couldn't eat it because, duh!, she's vegan.

the toddler poked me in the back with a large novelty pencil and when i turned around he had this big cute old grin on his face. [of course, that could have been a look of firey agony from having hot peppers shred through his soft little pink puffy digestive tract.]

"quit stabbing the lady, beezlebub," hippie mom said.
he poked me again.
"quit stabbing the lady, beezlebub," the hippie mom repeated.
really, i didn't mind. he was cute.
"it's so hard since he doesn't understand english," hippie mom said to me.
"oh really?" i asked. assuming he was adopted from the ukraine.
"well, not yet," she said. gave me a "duh" look.
"oh. right," i said.
"he's from a different country," she added.
i just looked at her. i thought we'd already covered this.
"it's called in utero," she said.
"i've been," i wished i'd answered. "it was crazy. i barely remember it at all."

if i were to write a screenplay about duluth, that scene would sum it up. except the kid would have been ramming me with an incense stick instead of just a common pencil.