The Cheap Seats

I went to the Minnesota State Fair Saturday. I don't think I had been there since 2006. The Great Minnesota Get-Together was not a part of my childhood. I didn't go to my first Fair until 1987, spending a day there with my mom. We started by eating cinnamon bread the size and shape of an elephant's ear (which I think was its name) and concluded the day by making a mad dash to the car through a downpour after seeing George Jones and Willie Nelson play at the Grandstand. Fast-forward 27 years and those two memories are all I can recall from that first time at the Fair. In between I'm sure we ate, strolled through buildings, sat in on product demonstrations, ate, saw livestock, hiked up Machinery Hill, ate, stepped around fresh manure, watched a hunk of butter transformed into a girl's head, ate . . . Like two recent parolees, we undoubtedly couldn't get enough of conspicuous consumption. The more things change the more they stay the same. I had n...

Goodbye Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, there is a new fundraising template in town and its name is the Ice Bucket Challenge. If you're like me, you will be wiping away wistful tears at the thought of never seeing Jerry Lewis painfully crank out his version of My Way each time Ed McMahon announces more dollars on the tote-board every Labor Day - but whether it is education, business, or the fund-raising game - the old adage is still fresh, Adapt or Die . To be fair, I'm actually not sure if Jerry or Ed are still with us, but I digress. The ALS Association (short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's Disease) can adapt with the best of them. Raising awareness (and dollars) has never been simpler or more fun. Star in a one minute video, donate money to ALS, challenge friends to do the same, take a bucket of ice water for the team. Easy peazy. The Challenged becomes The Challenger. A brilliant and benevolent pyramid scheme that increases exponentially and ...

Social media is tailor-made to magnify and dissect celebrity death. The why, how, where, and when of public figures' passings seem to fascinate and preoccupy an adoring fandom, sometimes to the exclusion of their living accomplishments. Think Amelia Earhart, Buddy Holly, John Kennedy, Roberto Clemente, Princess Diana. Death has a blurring effect on life. But not in the case of Robin Williams. The comedian's recent death - and the upsetting circumstances surrounding it - will not blur or obscure the body of work he left for us to enjoy. To us he will always be Mork or Adrian Kronauer or Mr. Keating or Genie or Sean Maguire or Patch Adams or Mrs. Doubtfire. He will not be remembered as that stand-up comic who committed suicide. Never. Yes, those who personally knew Robin Williams are feeling and grieving his loss. But our grief (if it can even be called that) is of a different nature, more circumspect and searching. More often than not, we are wondering gen...

I am feeling a lot like Kevin Bacon's Ren McCormick today. He moved south from Chicago to Beaumont U.S.A., only to find out that his God-given right to dance had been taken away by small minds in a small town. In a last ditch appeal to the John Lithgow-controlled town council, Ren (seeking permission to hold a high school prom) melodramatically declared that "it is our time to dance." Such deeply sincere overacting was just barely nudged out a few years later by Patrick Swayze's Pechanga-hating, "no one puts Baby in a corner." But I digress. In truth, I draw inspiration from a blogpost I read this morning by Josh Ellis entitled, " Everyone I know is Broken-hearted." Ellis' epic rant takes a swipe at seemingly everything he believes has unraveled the fabric of American culture (from the perspective of a 36 year-old) over the last three generations. Perhaps Ellis is simply a pessimist at heart but his piece speaks of a vague desperation and ...

Did you ever have one of those days when your mind was a jumbled haze? Trying to string two thoughts together is like throwing a lighter-than-air feather. Impossible, undoable - simply can't be done. Hydrate? Caffeinate? Maybe go for a run? Will that loosen the neurons, unstick these synapses? Is a simple lack of coffee responsible for such lapses? Perhaps it's all those paint fumes I've recently been huffing, Or maybe the dry, dead burned skin that has been sloughing Off my peeling red nose from being a softball ump, taking abuse from beer-swilling men - Jesus, what a chump! But wait, my calendar shows the month of August, right? Now the air grows heavy and my own workload light. Try as hard as I will, mental focus eludes me. My brain's own way of saying, "Hey, don't include me." "I want a break. Didn't you know thinking can be overrated. Not everything you do has to...