New View Askew

The 29 th Tim Fuzzey Memorial MBGO is in the books! It always starts with a hearty breakfast en route to the venue. (This year, going to Brainerd, we stopped at the Clearwater truck stop – mmm good!) Ostensibly it’s to settle on all the rules and betting games for the tournament. In reality, it’s often the last solid food for three days.  Current champion lording it over the other players at breakfast. (Not coincidentally, we are always put in a little back room by ourselves away from normal customers and waitresses, like cart girls, pretend to be charmed by our clever banter - thank god we're apparently big tippers!)                                                                                                                                                             As an aside, the current champion is also our our current peerless leader whose title is: The One with Total Dictatorial Power or just the "TDP." He is in charge

    I Hate the Night        How do you feel about night? I mean nights in general; you know when you are supposed to be sleeping. Personally I’m really starting to hate it. Night, I mean. I don’t like the way it steals a part of the day. I don’t like how quiet it is. I don’t like how long it lasts (no matter how short). Most of all, I don’t like how it changes my outlook on damn near everything; night is just mean. I’m sure some of this is a function of age. It is the rare night that I sleep all the way through to the morning (whenever that is) and so say most of my friends. Yet there is something different to my dislike. I find myself waking up almost every hour to check the clock. I am convinced that it is because I want to reassure myself that it is actually passing by and sunrise really will come. Or perhaps this too is actually related to age - and to the unsettled thoughts that come with it. For example, the slowly closing door to the future that appears to us as we ge

Cliché Alert - Thoughts on a 50 th  High School Reunion                                               My God he was a handsome devil – what the hell happened?!  “Old age is a terrible thief. Just when you’re getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head . . .” From a terrific (but terrifically depressing) book, “Water for Elephants.” I would add that it also puts a face in the mirror when I shave that does not resemble the guy in my mind.  Perhaps that is what makes something like this reunion a little bit sweeter, though, because we are all in the same boat. In this celebration we still see in each other the handsome young stud or lovely girl from our graduation day. I think most people attending reunions – and especially one as august as a 50 th – have some trepidation. I mean many – most? – of the people you won’t have seen for 50 years. Literally a lifetime has passed and thus

Music - The Business, Anti -War Songs . . . and Hope Mrs. Dear Leader and I were chatting over a delicious meal grilled by yours truly the other day and guess what? Apparently I’m not a great griller! But I digress early.                                                        Mrs Dear Leader aka Lizzy Rain Said Mrs, aka Lizzy Rain, is in the studio working on her third album, High Tide , the first in 6 years and it’s going to be the best of three great albums! So obviously we talked about music and the music industry. Or what passes for a music industry today. That is to say that it sucks. Like just about everything else that it has touched, the internet has totally disrupted the music industry as much or more than others.  Recording artists have pretty much always been essentially indentured servants to the music companies. The only thing that has changed now is that the artists are indentured servants to technology companies e.g. Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, et

McMasions and Dog Poo Apps – hmmm. It’s why I read the paper, to see just how many ideas it gives me to write about. Today there was an article about large – McMansions? - homes not selling very fast at all especially when compared to less expensive homes. What is the surprise in this?? I am always shocked when other people are shocked about developments that were pretty obvious to see coming. I have been predicting for years that if you own a large home that you don't intend to live in until you keel over it might be best to vacate sooner rather than later. Everyone should have seen it coming. With a slower growing (and faster aging) population and a much smaller group of people with the income to purchase these big homes - especially in the distant suburbs - the future was not going to look like the past. (A lesson we continually seem to need to relearn.) As noted by much smarter people than me – which is most – the trouble right now really is out in the