I was temping in downtown St. Paul around the same time I was dating Jay (see previous post). I remember very little about the job itself--the details of mind-numbing temp gigs tend to blend one into the other over the years--but I do know I was working at The Ramsey County Government Center on Kellogg, next to the Science Museum. I remember having to walk through a metal detector every day, and needing to wear an ID badge to go anywhere in the complex. Our supervisor was a goofy, genial guy who was the spitting image of Dan Fogelberg and frequently quoted old cartoon characters (Mr. Peabody, Underdog, etc).
My old boss, before he got a government job.
I became friendly with another temp, a lady named Reva who was in her mid-40s. Reva was a bookworm like me, and we often traded paperbacks. One day she came in with a novel called Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu, a book she'd started reading but was "not really feeling it," so I said I'd give it a try.
Spoiler alert: I never read it. The job assignment ended later that year, I lost touch with Reva (one of the folks lost to the mists of time in the days before social media, back before everyone was trackable) and I never read the damned book.
Guess what, though? I still have it.
It's like it was with the mug: I didn't plan to hold onto this book all these years later, I just did. Although, there was some intentionality with this one. See, I have to regularly do sweeps to pare down my collection and get rid of any books I don't plan on reading again, otherwise I wouldn't have room for anything else.* The books I end up keeping are either signed copies, or ones that have sentimental value (if it was a gift from someone dear, I'll usually hold onto it). But all the books in my "slush pile" get dispatched to Half Price Books and various Little Free Libraries around town.
I've kept Spilling Clarence for over twenty years now. It's been on the chopping block every time I've done a book purge, and every time, it manages to stay.
Why have I held onto it? The main reason is, well, because I never read it. As a book lover, I cannot---will not---get rid of a book that I haven't read yet. I mean, what if it's amazing? I'll never know if I donate it.
Also? Spilling Clarence sounds intriguing, if the description on the back cover is anything to go on:
"What if you could suddenly remember everything that ever happened to you? Would it be a blessing, or a curse? This is the fate of the residents of the town of Clarence, who fall under the spell of a strange and powerful drug that unlocks their memories. The past comes flooding back without the buffer of time, and the townspeople, young and old, find themselves awash in their own reminiscences--of love and death, of war and childhood, of happiness they've experienced and sins they've committed. Beautifully rendered with a light comic touch, Spilling Clarence is a beguiling exploration of our relationship with our histories, the seductive pull of regret, the unreliability of memory, and the bliss of forgetting."
Hey, look what I found stuck in the pages!
It's the passport card from my very first passport, which, judging by the date, was issued on July 2, 2006 (ten years before the expiration date listed). Cool!
Without further ado, I am reading it. Yep, today's the day.
Let's do this, bitches.
* I have to periodically do the same with clothes and shoes, or my closets would overflow.
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
THE MUG
There's a scene in the novel Wonder Boys where Grady Tripp, at the end of a chaotic, debauched weekend, looks down at his feet to see that a tuba which showed up early in the story appears to have "followed" him throughout his adventures.
Does anyone else have something like this? An item that has followed you from place to place over a period of time, even though a.) you never made a conscious decision to keep it, b.) you're somewhat ambivalent about hanging onto it, but c.) still, it's just....there?
I do.
When I moved to the Twin Cities, I rented a cute little studio apartment in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of St. Paul. I was living there when I briefly dated a younger guy whom I'll call "Jay." I was 32, he was 23. We used to laugh about the numerological juxtaposition of our ages.
Going out with a youngster was funny; by our second date Jay was calling me his girlfriend. It wasn't creepy or anything, it seemed kind of natural since we clicked right away and we both dug one another. I didn't mind it.
Jay had his own apartment in the St. Paul burbs, but--being 23--he was frequently at his mother's house doing laundry and getting free meals. Jay also spent a lot of time at my apartment, and soon he was leaving personal items behind: a hoodie here, a toothbrush there, a towel hanging in my bathroom. Then one day, this mug appeared.
We were having coffee one morning, and I told Jay how much I loved this literary-themed mug he'd brought over, pointing out Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, Nabokov, and some other famous authors I recognized. Jay was like, "Yeah, it belongs to my mom. She works at Barnes and Noble." I told him it didn't seem kosher to swipe his mom's mug and leave it at my place, but he waved away my concerns. "Ah no, it's fine. Believe me, she has a collection of these."
A few days later, we were drinking wine and laughing at my cats Shelby and Riley. They were crouched on the windowsill, chattering at the squirrels outside. "You know," said Jay, "my mom has this thing for her cat. It's like this carpeted ledge that fits onto the windowsill, so the cat has room to stretch out. I'll bring it over."
I was like, "Dude, seriously? You can't do that." If Jay nicked the cat's ledge, I would not only be stealing from Jay's mom, I'd also be stealing from Jay's mom's cat. Nope, no way. I couldn't have it on my conscience.
Jay kept trying to convince me it would be fine, and that his mom could just buy a new window ledge for her cat. I put my foot down. "Fuck no, I'd be pissed as hell if someone did that to me." After going back and forth for a bit, Jay finally relented and agreed that he wouldn't bring the thing over to my apartment.
We dated for about six weeks. It was hardly an epic romance for the ages, but we had a good time. Jay was funny and quirky, a computer animator who played the theremin and was obsessed with pirates. We went to a lot of movies together; March of the Penguins and Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers are two that I remember, just to place things in a historical context.
One thing that bugged me? Apart from going to the movies, a lot of our dates consisted of me, Jay, and like thirteen of his buddies hanging out at various hipster bars around St. Paul. While I liked his friends--they were a fun, creative, diverse group of people--I began to balk at the frequency of these types of outings. Jay didn't see why I'd have any issues, since I liked everyone, and they liked me.
It was becoming an annoyance, though.
The last thing I recall happening in our short-lived relationship was Jay coming over with his DVD player (I didn't have a DVD player; I barely had a working TV at the time) so we could watch Kill Bill, a film he was adamant that I see. I fell dead asleep about 20 minutes in, and Jay was miffed. I often fell asleep when we watched movies at home; I was also temping full-time in downtown St. Paul during the day and posing for drawing classes a few nights a week at the College of Visual Arts. I was exhausted much of the time.
Still, for him, it was an annoyance.
Not long after, Jay and I made a mutual decision to call it a day, and we parted amicably. He remembered to take the DVD player, the hoodie, and the towel. I tossed out his toothbrush.
We both moved on.
A few weeks after Jay and I split, I noticed that I still had his mom's Barnes and Noble mug. By that time, I felt awkward about contacting him to see if he'd pick it up, so I didn't.
More than 20 years later, that mug has traversed the country with John and me, living in the kitchen cupboards of six (Seven? Eight? A dozen ? I've lost count.) different residences. I've kept it all this time, for reasons I don't understand.
Well, one reason. I mean, it's a cool mug, you know? I still use it when my favorite mug is in the dishwasher.
Wanna see my favorite mug? Sure ya do!
My stepdaughter and her kids sent me this during the lockdown.
Of course it's my fave!
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Ok, millennials. If we #FreeBritney will you kindly SHUT UP about it?
I don't mean to sound insensitive about Britney's plight, but let's have a little perspective here. Britney Spears is an obscenely wealthy white celebrity living in Malibu, not a political prisoner sleeping on the dirt floor of a Belarusian detention center.
Pictured: not Britney Spears
Okay, I know I've ripped on Britney a lot in the past, but over the last several years I've mellowed a bit (yes, really), and it's dawned on me that I never actually had a problem with her personally. True, Britney's music has never been my cup of tea and I found her ubiquity circa 1999-2008 vomit inducing. But it's always been painfully obvious that Brit-Brit was never in the driver's seat of her own career anyway. She's a former Mouseketeer for Christ's sake, groomed and tossed onstage by her creepy parents, thrust into the limelight by Disney, polished and packaged by MTV, then foisted on the public for decades now by the corporate media. So it's not so much Britney that I detest; it's the relentless PR machine that's been shoving her down our throats since the late '90s.
I don't plan on watching any of the roughly 37 documentaries released this year about the whole Britney brouhaha, but I've read enough internet think pieces and editorials to get the idea. Basically Mom and Pop Spears, The Mickey Mouse Club, various managers, agents, handlers, the paparazzi, tabloid newspapers, celebrity bloggers, gossip websites, Justin Timberlake, some hanger-on named Sam Lutfi, her rodent-faced baby daddy K-Fed, Diane Sawyer, Matt Lauer, Tucker Carlson (ew), and pretty much any regular Schmoe who ever publicly expressed a snarky opinion about Britney Spears should be hanging their heads in shame at how spectacularly they've all failed her.
While I agree that Britney was undoubtedly shat on from a great height by lots of people over the years, I'm not sure most of the world's population is at fault for her mental health issues and whatever else she's facing now. I'm sure as hell not shouldering any of the blame; if I could cross my arms, flip my ponytail and erase Britney's stardom I'd do it in a shot. In fact, the poor girl probably would have been happier if she'd stayed in Louisiana and lived an anonymous existence raising kids or corgis or whatever and blowing off steam on karaoke night at the Downtown Daquiri Lounge once a week.
And also? I'm really fucking tired of seeing stupid headlines like this:
I don't know Kevin, you talent-free hack. It wasn't my turn to watch him that day.
Speaking of Timberfuck, can I just say again for like the 1000th time that I never got the appeal of that dude? When he was with his lame boy band (and by the way, why do they call these dancing, lip-synching, trained monkey teenybopper acts 'boy bands'? They're boys, sure, but bands? Bands play instruments, goddammit! I think it's an alliterative thing for lazy music journos, hence 'boy bands' and 'girl groups,'), why was Justin the breakout star? He was so mediocre in every way, even when contrasted with those other Backstreet Boys erm, N'Sync dullards. And remember the music press when he went solo? They pushed him so hard, it was baffling. Rolling Stone was especially determined to make me care about Justin's crap music.
Rolling Stone in the 2000s: all shit, all the time.
If you've been paying attention to the Free Britney movement (heh, "movement), you'll know that Justin Timberlake is now problematic and possibly canceled. Not because of his musical output, which still sucks, but because he acted like a giant jackass when he and Britney broke up. It has mostly to do with his skewering of Britney in one of his sucky music videos, and also because he admitted in a radio interview that he and Britney had S-E-X.
Yes sir, they did the no-pants dance. The four-legged foxtrot, if you will. Made the beast with two backs. Played hide the cannoli. Took a trip to pound town. Sent out for sushi. Ate out at the Y....over the panties, no bra, blouse unbuttoned, Calvins in a ball on the front seat, past 11 on a school night.
Yes, it's fucking ridiculous, but this revelation was actually deemed shocking at the time. To put it in '80s terms, dig if you will a picture...
It's 1986 or so and Billy Idol is doing a promotional tour for his new album, Whiplash Smile. Billy has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend Perri Lister (actually it seems they broke up after having a kid together in 1989, but just humor me here).
Radio Interviewer: So Billy, I hear you and Perri broke up. That sucks, man.
Billy Idol: Yeah well you know. Shit happens.
Radio Interviewer: You guys dated for several years. While I have you here in the studio, Billy, tell me, did you and Perri ever, you know.....DO IT?
Billy Idol: Oh yeah, we did it. Lots of times. I saw her naked, too.
Radio Interviewer: Dude, high five!
But no, people in the '80s weren't asking Billy Idol or Perri Lister if they boned, because back then there wasn't endless speculation over whether or not pop stars were having sex. I'm guessing because it was generally assumed that they were all fucking like bunnies, and also due to the fact that back then nobody cared enough to make a goddamned federal case out of it.
I understand that the public debate about Britney's virginity is explored in the current crop of #FreeBritney documentaries, and it sounds like they all share my view on the topic, which is to say "What the fuck was up with that, anyway?" I read some old articles and interviews, trying to figure out whether the virginity narrative was originally floated by Britney and her "team," or if it was something a reporter asked her about and she gave the "I'm waiting til marriage" speech of her own accord, but it's not clear how (or why) it started. I just know it was a really creepy thing for the media and the public to fixate on, and anyone genuinely invested in the "purity" of a teenage girl--celebrity or otherwise--is a damned pree-vert.
And the obsession with virginity wasn't limited to Britney back in the aughts. I seem to recall Dubya signing an executive order to declare Jessica Simpson's hymen a national shrine around 2002 or so.
Pictured: a proud day for Amurrica
"My fellow Amurricans, today we recognize Miss Simpson's tireless commitment to chastity and her steadfast belief in church-sanctified marital sex. Jessica, you are an inspiration to the unfulfilled loins of our country's youth. Thank you, and may God continue to bless Amurrica. Karl Rove, you get to cut the ribbon."
No that didn't really happen, but the post-9/11 climate was so bizarre that it sure as shit seems like something that could've happened. Come on now, I'm not wrong.
Not to rip on Bush some more, because now that we've lived through the horror of The Orange Menace, Bush looks like goddamned Churchill in comparison. BUT, is it any wonder that millennials are so irony deficient? They grew up in the era of freedom fries, inbred sister wives destroying Dixie Chicks albums, and, erm, whatever the fuck this was:
When the media shows footage of homophobes President Bush and Prince Abdullah strolling hand-in-hand looking like Archie and Betty on their way to the malt shop, and you're meant to take it seriously? Well, I think it would tend to warp your sense of irony, especially if you're still in your formative years.
This trend of teen pop stars advocating virginity seemed to peak around 2008. I remember seeing the VMA's that year when Russell Brand hosted, and he made some sort of crack about the famously chaste (at the time) Jonas Brothers and the purity rings they wore to signal their pledge to remain sex-free. Well, Brand's comment did not sit well with American Idol "winner" Jordin Sparks (who?) and later that night when she took the stage to present whatever bullshit award she was there to present, she snotted, "I just wanted to say there's nothing wrong with wearing a purity ring, because some of us aren't filthy whores." (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.) Of course, times have changed a bit and if Jordin said that today I believe she'd get her prissy ass canceled by the Twitterati for "slut-shaming" and be forced to make a groveling social media apology. Personally, I think that if this sort of dreck is representative of her musical output, Jordin Sparks should have been canceled for trying to bore everyone to death.
Ah, millennials. Ya gotta love 'em. I'm not being sarcastic, I have a lot of friends who fall into the millennial category and they're good eggs. Much more socially aware than us Gen Xers, but we're trying to catch up. Yep, some of my favorite people are millennials. And it's not entirely their fault that the music of their generation sucks so hard; with public school arts programs being systematically gutted over the past few decades, is it any wonder that many millennials consider people like Drake and Katy Perry purveyors of good music? At least they have a valid excuse. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for people like Rob Sheffield. And that sort of breaks my heart.
Yes, my fellow Gen Xer, Rob Sheffield. It pains me to say this, because I enjoyed his book Love Is a Mix Tape and of course I appreciated him giving my favorite band their due in his second memoir, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. But Rob also talks a lot of shit, and he is oddly, inexplicably worshipful of Britney Spears. For instance, he once claimed that Britney's music is actually punk. Yeah, okay. Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Slits, and....Britney Spears. "Punk." Lester Bangs is spinning in his grave.
I guess if Avril Lavigne is your idea of punk, so is this.
Then in 2019 Sheffield penned a think piece marking the 20th anniversary of Britney's debut album Baby One More Time, calling it "avant-garde." (Rob, you ignorant slut.) Seriously, Laurie Anderson should kick his ass for that one.
I remember Britney's first music video where she's dancing down the hallway of a Catholic high school, all tarted up like she's about to hit the main stage at Spearmint Rhino. I also remember a standup comedian around that time who quipped, "When I see that Britney Spears video I think two words: JonBenet," which I found funny and creepily on-point.
But the video that stands out to me more is her follow-up, "Sometimes." (I'm not posting the video, instead here's the 1986 Erasure song of the same name.)
Much better to have this "Sometimes" stuck in your head, trust me.
It opens with Britney gazing through one of those beach telescope things, mooning prettily over her designated love interest.
Her dreamboat is shown clutching a football and walking along the surf with a dog. These quick shots tell you everything you need to know about him: he's a sports-loving, dog-owning, red-blooded dudebro, lest you think he'd be caught dead doing something femme-y like petting a cat or reading a book.
Then Britney heads down to the pier to bust some choreographed dance moves with her, erm, peers. Everyone is decked out in white.
Britney lounges on a picnic blanket clad in a virginal white dress....
.
...and hangs out with some girlfriends, still wearing white. Even her car is white.
You know, maybe the biggest difference between Gen Xers and millennials is the latter's affinity for synchronized dance routines in their music videos. Something about a clutch of plucky kids dancing in formation is so cringey and off-putting to me.
I mean, they're all just so sincere about it.
Call me jaded, but I prefer my music videos firmly tongue-in cheek. For instance, Simon Le Bon trussed up to a windmill....
"You got sirens for a welcome, there's bloodstains for your paaaaaain."
Debbie Harry rapping with The Man From Mars....
"And you don't stop, just blast off, a sure shot."
Or George Michael pretending to be sexually attracted to a woman....
(Wait, you mean he wasn't being ironic here?)
What else is there left to say about Britney? Well, I don't dislike her. I hope she is completely freed of her conservatorship, I guess. I can't abide her musical output, but reportedly she has no plans to subject us to more of her vocal stylings anytime soon.....although we'll see how long that lasts because I can't see her team wasting all this free publicity without cashing in with some new project. Maybe she'll release another fragrance and spare us any more albums.
I just hope we've heard the last of this #FreeBritney bullshit, because it's doing my head in.
