The meaning of Memorial Day seems to be missing in action

The old man walked up to the three of us and squinted up from beneath his visored baseball cap.

“So what goes on in here, then?” he asked, motioning to the ugly newspaper building we worked out of.

I looked at the writing on his hat. It read “U.S.S. Darke APA-159 Tokyo Bay 1945.” My mind jumped into action. Imperial Japan surrendered to the United States Sept. 2, 1945, after the dropping of the two atomic bombs. And this man was there to see it.

“So how close were you to the U.S.S. Missouri when the Japanese delegates were on board for the surrender,” I asked.

He didn’t even blink.

“Oh, I’d say a block or so,” he replied.

His name was Burt Falk, and in his youth, he’d served on the U.S.S. Darke, a 455-foot attack transport that earned two battle stars during its time in the Pacific. It took part not only in the landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, but also practicing for the planned invasions of the Japanese home islands.

During the ensuing 25-minute conversation, which meandered between fishing and war stories, Falk showed us his Navy dog tag (“Not the real one. Some idiot from Hopkins lost that one when we were doing the landing on Iwo”) as well as a tattered airmail letter that had a commemorative stamp from Tokyo Bay.

My seemingly random encounter with Falk reminded me of something important. Memorial Day in the minds of many people equals a Monday off with a good chance of barbeque over the weekend. In fact, one of the staff blogs at the newspaper started correctly, with the assertion that Memorial Day is under-appreciated, but in the wrong direction from there: “Memorial Day is an exciting time because it marks the kick-off of summer activities.”

The column (here) goes on to say that the holiday also kicks off the summer garage sale season and that we should all de-clutter our homes because “In a way, we are no different than the dung beetles.”

An excuse for a sale. A chance to watch the Indy 500. A good reason for a barbeque. “A kick-off for summer activities.” Am I missing something?

The roots of this holiday are darker, stained with the blood of soldiers and the tears of those left behind. It originally began as Decoration Day, when relatives of soldiers lost in the Civil War paused to remember the husbands, fathers and sons who had fallen in the service of their county. Over the years, it gradually developed into what we now recognize as Memorial Day, which was declared the official name of the holiday in 1967.

Several veterans’ organizations have been trying to undo to change Congress made to the holiday in 1971, when it was changed from a specific day (May 30) to a weekend with the National Holiday Act. A 2002 Memorial Day address from the VFW stated: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."

I agree.

We owe these men and women our thanks. Many towns have remembrances of various scales. I wonder how many people attend. I know I shouldn’t throw stones, as I’ve not actually attended one of these events, but I have at least realized they exist, and find it sad that people can’t crawl away from the air conditioning for just a few minutes to honor those who made the entire day possible.

I wonder what Falk will do to celebrate. Personally, I think he’ll go fishing.

“One day, they came over the loudspeaker on the ship, and said, ‘The war is over. We dropped the a-bomb,’” he recalled. “The guys and I just laughed. We misheard them. We said to ourselves, ‘What do you mean, a [as in ‘single'] bomb? How dumb do you think we are?’”

Falk told us his memory was failing. He couldn’t remember his daughter’s wedding or his current phone number, but could remember the complex formula for U.S. navy gunpowder, a memory as fresh as the day it was created in July 1942.

“Why do I remember that,” he said, gently tapping his forehead. “What good is that doing to do me?”

The U.S.S. Darke was withdrawn from service in 1995 and sent to the breaker’s yard in 1974. Some day, Falk will be gone too, taking his story with him.

Memorial Day is designed for men like Burt Falk. It’s the one day of the year we are actually asked to recognize veterans, both living and dead, and to give them the thanks that is their due, even if in passing thought only. It’s not an excuse for a barbeque, a sale or a multi-hour race, because without men like Burt Falk, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy those freedoms in the first place.

I’m not saying not to have fun or enjoy the extra time – but at least remember how it was bought and paid for. I think our vets would enjoy nothing less.

Re-purposing of old church building combats 'real-estate Disney World' mentality

I stood in the back of St. Joseph's Catholic Church with my parents, a 9-year-old in a pair of grey slacks, a navy blazer and, insult to injury, a tie.

As we started down the blaze orange carpet heading towards the altar, I could feel hundreds of eyes on me, and I felt like I was going to melt into my penny loafers. I fought the rising panic.

“Just look holy, look up at Heaven,” I repeated multiple times to myself, trying to remember to put one foot in front of the other. I felt a full foot shorter by the time I reached the front of the church, and stared up at Father Francis Roach’s benevolently bespectacled face before accepting my First Communion. My walk up to the front had been the hard part; I'd inadvertently learned what it must like to be a bullfighter.

Twenty-one years later, I stared down at the same piece of ground I’d trembled on years earlier while doing a story on the church becoming an arts center. The orange carpet was gone, uncovering old black-and-red tiles I had never known were there. The whole floor was much the same, stripped of pews and carpet left with bare wood floors worn thin by the constant traffic of dress shoes and intentions. It was as if the workmen had literally peeled off the decades with each layer of flooring removed.

My professors in journalism school always stressed the need for detachment with the stories I cover and the people I interact with. Most of the time, I completely agree that this is necessary, but when it comes to St. Joe's, it’s hard to completely free myself from part of what formed me. I went to its school, had my first communion there and spent nearly every Sunday morning of my childhood in its pews, pretending desperately that I was someplace else.

Still, when the church moved to a new building in 2002, I felt I’d lost something. I felt I’d lost a comforting place that had never changed, some idyllic reflecting pool in the midst of life’s sometimes-chaotic whitewater rapids. The new St. Joe's building was beautiful and well made, sure, but it just wasn’t the same. There was something about being around so much living history that made the messages I heard somehow resound a little deeper.

I'm glad I've been able to return to both the school and the church in this career to document the changes taking place. After years of living in the suburbs, I've determined that "heritage" is something that gets destroyed in the process of expansion, with old farmhouses being churned into the ground to make room for more strip malls that will become blight 20 years down the road.

Later, when people share the assumption that something of value had been lost with the torn-down farmhouse, clever development companies come in and make exorbitantly expensive idealized versions of what once was, coating them in pleasant little names like "Heritage Oakes." It's a real-estate version of Disney World, contributing to the nonsense idea of some sort of mythical small town America that has never existed outside the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalog. It's Lake Wobegon at a higher price point.

In the case of the old St. Joe's building, it's good to see that people sometimes have enough foresight to hang on to their past and find a way to carry it into the future. And at a price tag that everyone can afford.

Walking towards the entrance, I looked town and saw a scrap of familiar blue carpet in a trash pile. I remembered the shade well. My family and I had gone on vacation in the summer of 1991, and when we returned, the blaze orange carpet was gone, replaced with a resplendent shade of royal blue. It sounds silly now, but the change excited me, and made the old church look somehow more regal.

"Looks like you've found something for your scrapbook," my guide said, smiling.

Think of it like a molting from a snake, or a cocoon from a butterfly – it's the shedding of a past life on the way to a new one. It's the kind of metamorphosis I'd like to see happen more often.

Review: "A Plague Upon Humanity" outlines real-life weapons of mass destruction us - 65 years ago

Ironically, wartime sometimes brings out the best in human ingenuity while simultaneously bringing out the worst in the limits of our cruelty.

War is sometimes the source of some of most important inventions in human history. World War II-era inventions that still impact our everyday lives include the jet engine, radar, some of the first computers, synthetic rubber and penicillin.

Another World War II-era invention doesn’t seem to be as widely known in the United States, but it had quite an impact among civilians in other parts of the world. Before and during the war, Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 developed biological warfare agents and not only tested them civilians, including Allied prisoners of war, but released them into the general Chinese public, killing between as many as 1 million people. Compounding the shame, most of the perpetrators of these crimes not only went unpunished, but some even ended up sharing their discoveries with the United States in return for immunity.

The whole story is outlined in “A Plague Upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program,” a 304-page by Daniel Barenblatt. While I knew the facts of the program and what it produced, I was unprepared for the utter dehumanization that went along with the development process. As Barenblatt outlines in the book, prisoners were not only infected with diseases like bubonic plague, they were often dissected alive so scientists would have the freshest results to view.

“When I picked up the scalpel, that’s when he began screaming,” a 72-year-old former medical assistant told the New York Time’s Nicholas Kristof. “I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.”

Not only did these scientists develop bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera, they bred fleas and rats to spread them along with specialized bomb cases for germ warfare attacks. Japanese soldiers would poison village wells, or distribute candy laced with germs to children. Barenblatt asserts that rats in China still test positive for antibodies to the Japanese-developed plague germs nearly 65 years after the end of the war.

Japan didn’t limit the scope of its bio-weapons attacks to the Chinese mainland. The Imperial Japanese Navy developed some of the largest submarines in the world during the war, equipping some with hangars to launch several aircraft on a one-way mission. Another excerpt from the Kristof piece:

“Toshimi Mizobuchi, who was an instructor for new recruits in Unit 731, said the idea was to use 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin in July 1945. A submarine was to take a few of them to the seas off Southern California, and then they were to fly in a plane carried on board the submarine and contaminate San Diego with plague-infected fleas. The target date was to be Sept. 22, 1945.”

Sept. 22. Slightly more than one month after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to ww2pacific.com, an Allied War Crimes Tribunal brought 30 people to trial in March 1948. Charges included vivisection and wrongful removal of body parts. Twenty-three were found guilty of various charges, and five were sentenced to death. None of the death sentences was carried out, and by 1958, all the convicted were set free.

When the war ended, Gen. Douglas MacArthur himself requested that the Japanese scientists be exempted from prosecution.

“Information about vivisection useful," he allegedly explained in a 1947 radio message.

So, as it did in Nazi Germany, the U.S. made another deal with the devil, sparing punishment in exchange for information. Shiro Ishii, the mastermind behind Japan’s bio-weapons program, allegedly worked on bio weapons in Maryland. Another, Dr. Masaji Kitano, led Japan's largest pharmaceutical company.

While Japan wasn’t the only country to develop bio weapons during the period, it stands out not only from the extensive use of human subjects, but also because the products were actually used on a pretty widespread basis.

Barenblatt’s book wasn’t an easy read. It was a mixture of dry historical facts and incredibly disturbing passages about incomprehensible human suffering. But knowing about what Unit 731 did is important, if only to give perspective.

Japan seems more than willing to play to victim when it comes to the suffering of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but remains mute when it comes to the suffering its own forces inflicted on civilians in the territories it occupied and the civilians it would have attacked in the U.S. if given the chance. Books like the one Barenblatt wrote remind us that there are both victims and perpetrators on every side involved in a world war – something Japan itself seems loathe to officially admit.

Thirty years of puppets, probe droids and paternity: "The Empire Strikes Back"

Things don't always go your way. Sometimes, you do your best to hide in the garbage dumped by an Imperial Star Destroyer only to be tracked to Cloud City by a persistent bounty hunter. Other times, you do your best to prove yourself only to end up losing limbs and discovering unpleasant genealogical truths along the way. Some days, sometimes you find out the hard way that the carbon freezing process does indeed work on humans – namely, you.

Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the world finding out that Darth Vader was really Luke Skywalker's father. That's right – "Empire Strikes Back," the second film in the hugely successful "Star Wars" trilogy (yes, I saw "trilogy" – those other three don't count) was released in theaters May 21, 1980.

That's not true. That's impossible! Thirty years?? To quote some dialogue from the film:

"Search your feelings. You KNOW it be true."

"NOOOOOOO!"

I don't remember the first time I'd ever seen "The Empire Strikes Back" in its entirety. Being born less than seven months before it came out precluded me from seeing it in theaters. I likely caught it as a movie-of-the-week on network television. Even at a young age, the movie's highs and lows were legendary among the kids of Hemlock Court: Darth Vader being revealed as Luke Skywalker's father; Han Solo being frozen in carbonite and taken by the mysterious Boba Fett; and of course, the introduction of the benevolent, linguistically scattershot Jedi master, Yoda.

My appreciation for "Empire" really didn't start when I was a kid. Sure, it had some cool parts, but the Death Star trench run of the first film and the Ewoks from the third seemed to captivate me more as a young boy. As I grew, however, so did my appreciation for "Empire," and in time, I found it to be my personal favorite.

The reason? Simple. It's dark. Really dark. Basically, everything bad that COULD happen to the Rebels DOES happen to the Rebels. Hoth attacked? Check. Han Solo put in to carbonite to face an uncertain future? Check. Luke Skywalker not only losing a hand but also finding out that he's the scion of the most evil man in the galaxy? Check.

The tone is a marked departure from the breezy optimism and fun of the first film, and serves as a weight counterbalance to the admittedly lighter third film, which according to Randall from the movie "Clerks" just had a bunch of Muppets.

"Empire" taught me a valuable lesson I can't recall seeing in many other movies of the era: the good guys don't always win. Coming from an time when children's programming was saturated with saccharine messages about inevitable personal success by the time the credits rolled, "Empire" seemed a refreshing dose of doom and gloom. Its message of triumph from the fact that our heroes were determined not to give up in the face of everything that had gone wrong. It's a good message to learn, and one that is more relevant in a period where a whole hell of a lot is going wrong.

So happy birthday, "Empire." I can't wait to show you to my kids and see the look of quizzical disappointment on their faces when the movie doesn't end the way they thought it would. After all, life is sometimes like that, too.

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons - Why I Detest "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"

I only needed to hear a few seconds of the audio track coming from the TV in the other room before I made a dash into the viewing area. Alas, I was too late.

“It’s just ‘The Simpsons,’” my wife scowled as the changed the channel. “It’s on like, every day, all the time.”

Her fingers worked the buttons on the remote, and eventually, the screen was filled with Ty Pennington’s smiling face.

Time to leave.

My wife and I agree on many important things, but when it comes to television, we are night and day. My wife, you see, happens to really like “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” ABC’s home remodeling show that has produced 162 episodes during seven seasons. The basic premise is that Ty and his diverse crew of lovable re-modelers will send a deserving family on vacation and re-build them a new home, often with modifications for disabilities, in a week. The families, from what I’ve seen, also have medical bills and mortgages paid, and sometimes receive cars.

I have no doubt that the needs of the families on the show are genuine. What I take issue with is how the entire thing is presented. It reinforces the same sort of “deus ex machina” moral portrayed in CBS’s “Undercover Boss.” In TV land, people who have problems are helped only when someone with far more power than they (like a television network) swoops in to fix the wrongs. Unfortunately, it’s about as likely as winning the lottery.

What bugs me the most about “Makeover” is the sort of ham-handed sentimentality that drapes everything in the proceedings. The warm fuzzies culminate in the citizens of whatever no-name town the build is happening in to come over a hill wearing matching t-shirts with stirring music playing, ready to tear down the house.

“When we heard about the [blank] family’s troubles, we just couldn’t stand by and do nothing,” a resident will say.

Really? How coincidental that your desire to help just happened to occur when a major network is filming a television show on the same family! Remarkable! It almost makes me forget that if your town really had its act together, and really cared like you claim, Ty Pennington and crew would have never heard of it. There would be no need for “Extreme Makeover” to even be here, because the Johnsons wouldn’t have to be living in a cardboard box near a pig farm. You would have already taken care of them.

The homebuilders who get some face time are just as cloyingly humble, mumbling memorized statements about building the house on behalf of the blah-blah company. “Makeover” is really nothing more than business PR disguised as do-gooding. Next time you watch the show, pay attention to how many needless close-ups of brand names there are during the build process. Once you notice, you can’t ignore it. Also, Ty seemingly never forgets to mention “the good folks at CVS Pharmacy” who pay peoples’ medical bills, or Ford, who donates cars.

“Makeover” is a prime example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. How many people, I wonder, would show up to build this house were the cameras and fanfare not present? And how many write-offs do businesses, ranging from contractors to Sears, get in the process? In “Makeover,” everyone wins: the family, ABC, Ty Pennington, volunteers and the corporate donors.

Building a house for a family in need is an admirable thing, but when was the last time you saw Habitat for Humanity workers on prime time every Sunday night? Somehow I can’t feel dirty after watching “Makeover,” as the exposure seems to contradict the inherently invisible humility in giving:

Matthew 6:2 – “When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret.

“And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

Life's many blessings, and how easily they are forgotten

The Ford pick-up's driver couldn't make up his mind, and obviously didn't see me behind him in the adjacent lane. The F-150's bulk began to drift closer as we both pulled up to the stoplight. At the last second, he realized the error, and corrected course. By this point, with eight hours of work and three hours of class under my belt for the day, I was too exhausted to really care.

I've been taking a class on business communications at the University of St. Thomas' Minneapolis campus. While it has been helpful (reminding me that I went into journalism for a reason), the three-hour classes preceding Friday deadline days are wearing me down. There are two more sessions left, and I will be glad to have Thursdays back soon.

When the latest class on creativity ended, I grabbed my stuff and practically RAN to the car. My mind drifted as I slowly wound the Sunfire down a set of narrow ramps leading me to the exit of the Spartan concrete parking garage. I paid for my time, and took a right onto the now traffic-free downtown street. The F-150 and I got acquainted, and I sat at the red light, feeling my eyes glaze over in the LED glare.

While we were waiting, I saw some shadows moving out of the corner of my vision. It was a man carrying a duffel bag, and two boys (twins?), who looked about three or four years old. It was 9:30 on a Thursday night; what were they doing out on the streets so late? My eyes traveled back to the father, and then to the small duffel bag in his right hand.

Oh.

Homeless?

It was easy to imagine that they were headed towards some sort of shelter. If the kids were concerned, they didn't seem to show it in their body language, following their father in the sort of trusting way that kids do. The father had his head down as he purposefully strode down the street and into the darkness, each brisk step taking him past the school edifice that I'd unappreciatively come from.

Comparisons made me feel silly. Here I was in nice clothes, in a decent car, on my way home to a beautiful wife and daughter in a quiet neighborhood. How dare I complain about having a long day?

I kept driving south, making my way over to Interstate 35W. One of the last sights that greeted me on the way was a Native American woman sitting on the sidewalk talking to a police officer. She was crying, and the officer had his hands on his hips. As I accelerated onto the freeway, the last thing I caught in the rearview mirror was a glimpse of her tangled mess of hair, bathed in the red and blue lights of the squad car.

Accelerating and merging, my mind drifted: "Should I delete my Facebook account? That blog I read sure make some good points. What the hell was with those two guys in class tonight? Why are they so rude? Am I hungry? I wish I was riding my motorcycle."

All of a sudden, I felt ashamed that I'd already forgotten what had so genuinely moved me mere minutes earlier. How was it that I could see something, feel it and internalize it, but find a way to reconcile it and move on to minutia again? What happened to the sincerely thankful prayers that I wasn't in this guy's shoes? Had they meant nothing?

When I got home, my daughter was in her crib, crying from the pain of the new teeth slowly making their way through her gums. I gave her some Tylenol, and took her in my arms. As we sat in the darkness, she fell asleep again as I rocked her back and forth in the white leather glider chair. She was lucky, I realized, to sleep in the same place every night. And so was I.

Why is it so hard to keep that in perspective?

Possible Side Effects: Drug Marketing and the American Consumer

My entry today starts with an imaginary commercial. The following voiceover is read over warm and fuzzy slow motion footage of a woman taking pottery classes and playing with Golden Retriever puppies with what we assume to be are her grandkids...

“Reading this blog is not for everyone. Talk to your doctor about possible side effects. These may include nausea, dizziness upon standing, shortness of breath, loose stools, demonic possession, hair loss, voting, using a food processor, and talking to houseplants.

“Talk to your doctor today about this blog entry. This blog. Live a better life.”

Since when has real life had disclaimers? And how long will it be before my daughter turns away from the TV to ask me what “erectile disfunction” is?

There have been many sweeping changes to our world since I was in high school more than a decade ago. The dominance of TV pharmaceutical ads since they became legal in 1997 is not one of the positive ones. I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t bombarded with Baby Boomers looking earnestly at me (through the TV screen, of course) and telling me how hard it is to mention to their doctor that their pee-pee doesn’t work anymore. Or that they are ashamed by their ugly foot fungus. Or that “restless leg syndrome” has made their lives miserable.

Can’t we just go back to seeing the occasional Tylenol ad?

No. Drugmakers spend nearly $20 billion dollars a year to advertise their wares to the public. Nearly $4 billion of this goes towards patient-targeted ads. To make a comparison, James Cameron’s “Avatar” cost $500 million to make. So for the same price of these ads, the drug industry could remake “Avatar” eight times. Each year.

Melody Peterson, a former New York Times reporter, wrote a book, called “Our Daily Meds,” about how these drugs are marketed. Americans, she writes, “increased their spending on prescription drugs by 17 times between 1980-2003.” She also catalogues how these ads have become commonplace in everyday life, with Viagra logos on everything from stock cars to the pens in your doctor’s office. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“A very powerful technique that the drug companies spend millions and millions of dollars on is hiring physicians to give lectures to other physicians on their drugs. It looks like the physician is up there giving his independent position on this drug, but often he’s been trained by an advertising agency. His slide presentation has been created by an ad agency. It looks like independent science, but it’s not.

“They want to get as many articles published in our medical journals as they can that show their products in favorable lights and will get physicians to prescribe them, so they often hire a Madison Avenue ad agency to write up an article for them or a study. The name of the ad agency rarely appears in the published version; instead, they hire doctors to put their names on as author ... It’s gone so far that some independent scientists are starting to view our medical literature as propaganda.”

Thankfully, at least small changes are being attempted. The FDA announced two days ago that its new “Bad Ad Program” is urging doctors to report ads and sales that violate FDA rules. Also, representatives from Pennsylvania (Democrat Robert Brady) and Virginia (Democrat James Moran) introduced a bill in the House last year called the “Families for ED Advertising Decency Act” that calls for the prohibition (“as indecent”) of any ad for a medication for erectile dysfunction.

It calls for non-broadcast of these ads between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and at last check, the bill had been referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

As much as I’d like to see this happen, I doubt it will. When even the FDA argues that ‘“direct to consumer” ads like these help educate and engage prospective patients about their healthcare options,” no one is going to put the brakes on the pharma gravy train any time soon.

Not when you are spending enough money to make “Avatar” eight times in a single year. Besides, according to in-depth analysis from the website visiongain.com (“an independent business information provider”), 2003 revenues for erectile dysfunction drugs alone was $2.12 billion – and were set to more than triple by 2009.

When that one particular (albeit high-visibility) category is doing that well, it makes me wonder how much money is changing hands, and what possible side effects this increasing dependence on pills for everything (“overactive bladder”) will have on the American public. Definitely nausea, anger, disgust…

In it for the glue fumes?

As I write these words, I am this close (pinches thumb and forefinger together) to finishing the 1/72 scale B-24H Liberator that has turned this week's free time into an exercise in Murphy's Law.

The Liberator, a World War II heavy bomber, was awkward in real-life, and its scale counterpart is no less homely. This particular kit was made by Mini-Craft, a Japanese brand known for making decent replicas of large aircraft. Unfortunately for me, the kit, as it is Japanese, was not designed for my clumsy American fingers.

I decided early on to have the Lib sit on its own landing gear, which I usually don't do. Unfortunately, the model was notoriously tail-heavy, meaning that I had to add weight to the nose to make it sit on all three landing gears. One "AAA" battery and .45 caliber bullet later, the thing was still sitting on its tail, despite the improvised weights glued into the bomb bay. In a moment of genius, I came up with the idea of adding lead fishing weights behind each of the four engines.

Nothing changed.

I got so frustrated that I ripped out the entire bomb bay and cracked the fuselage in half trying to extract the weights. Most of my model airplanes come close to becoming airborne while I am working on them, but this Liberator had me on the verge of throwing my paints, glues and supplies along with it. Everything that could go wrong WAS going wrong.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I boxed the broken kit and let it sit for a night. When I came back in the morning, the damage was pretty severe. I'd torn out a very narrow plastic grid that held the bomb bay doors in place, wrenching it into several parts while doing so. It took a lot of Crazy Glue and four-letter words, but eventually, I got it back together, and closed it up with a generous helping of putty.

As of this afternoon, the Liberator is complete, awaiting only the decals that will finish its construction

My wife asks me why I make models when it's obvious that they aren't the least bit relaxing. I think that's a bit of a generalization. I relaxed two kits ago while building a Japanese dive-bomber because it went together so smoothly. But in general, she's right. I've been making these damned things for 23 years now, and I have pretty high expectations of what I'm capable of. The day of slapping something together that's less than museum quality are long gone.

If I thought really hard about it, and were given enough time, I could probably list every single of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of models I've ever built. I'm like "Rain Man" when it comes to this stuff. My brother showed me a random model part he found while cleaning the house, and I was able to name the exact kit (A Revell 1/28 SPAD biplane) what part it was (the left engine exhaust) and when I'd built it (summer 1994). It's one of the few things in life I can claim to know more about than anyone else I've met. It's a bottomless hobby, because there is always something out there I didn't know about, some rare version of some plane no one has ever heard of, and I enjoy the relative obscurity.

It will be interesting to see what happens to models as we go into an increasingly computer-dominated future, when people can play simulators that ape a P-51 Mustang, rather than take an afternoon to build one and use their imagination. As for me, I am perfectly happy sans microchips. Give me an old kit and a tube of glue and I'm a pretty happy camper.

Despite the headaches and complications, it's rewarding to be where I am now with the Liberator – 90 percent done, and on the verge of completing yet another kit that I thought for sure would destroy my interest in the hobby forever.

"Turning Blue" with Jay Reatard: Joe reviews "Singles 2006-2007"

The first time I heard of Jay Reatard was when I saw an upcoming concert listed in City Pages, and thought to myself, "Man, that's a horrible last name."
The next time I heard about him, he was dead.
Reatard's death earlier this year (he died in his sleep in January as a result of, a Memphis media outlet reported, "cocaine toxicity, and alcohol was a contributing factor in his death") garnered widespread media coverage, which is ironic, given that he already had an amazing thing going for him. During his short 29 years on this planet, he performed with several different bands in addition to performing as a solo artist. He recorded an amazing 22 albums and was featured on nearly 100 other releases. It seems he packed a lot of living into a few years.
So, it was a pretty easy call to make this week to grab Reatard's "Singles 2006-2007" when I saw it sitting on the shelf at the Hennepin County Library. There are 17 tracks on the double-disc set (with disc two featuring a DVD a live performances from around the world), making this two-year glimpse into his career about as lengthy as some other singles collections from bands that were around for far longer.
I didn't know what to expect when I threw the disc in the car stereo on the way home. The first two tracks, "Night of Broken Glass" and "Another Person," seem to channel, respectively, Big Black and Devo, and neither sounds very locked down. By the third track, however, the gorgeous "All Over Again," Reatard's footing steadies, and when "Feeling Blank Again" hits, it's clear that the fuse has hit the payload. The next 13 tracks are an amazing mix of early punk rock energy (think the Damned or the Adicts) with the sort of sloppy tunefulness that reminded me why I like garage rock in the first place.
Reatard's sheer productivity seems to attest to a theory I've long held: rock music is meant to be recorded minimally and released as soon as possible without any tinkering. Each of the songs on "Singles 2006-2007" sounds as if it was recorded on a boom box and released the week later. And that's a great thing, because the energy and enthusiasm completely comes across, with positively crackling results.
The Smiths knew this theory. The Birthday Party knew this one-shot recording theory. When you get bands like Nine Inch Nails spending five years on an album, Axl Rose spending a decade on "Chinese Democracy," or Brian Wilson spending almost 30 on "Smile," what you get sounds exactly like what you'd expect: a labored opus. Jay Reatard's music is refreshingly free from this trend. It's almost tempting to think, while listening to these songs, that you are listening to a tape of a really good high school band your friends are in: the quality is low, but it doesn't matter, because what you are hearing is refreshingly alive and new.
Ironically, one of the songs on "Singles" is called "Turning Blue." It seems to foreshadow Reatard's eventual end.

"You got me sweating/ shaking in my skin/ I know it's nice/ to find beginnings and ends/ As sad as it seems/ you're turning blue in my dreams"

I'm upset that I won't be able to see Reatard live. I can only imagine what that would have been like. But he's left us an impressive amount of material to wade through, and if his other stuff is anything like "Singles 2006-2007," count me in.

Rogers Waters and "The Wall" - Irony Coming to a Concert Hall Near You

"So ya thought ya might like to go to the show?"

-Opening lines of Pink Floyd's "The Wall"

There is something sobering about the various warnings one receives while purchasing anything online with a credit card. In this particular instance, I was about to spend a three-digit sum on two tickets to see Roger Waters, the former singer and bassist of Pink Floyd, perform the album "The Wall" live at the XCel Energy Center. I don't remember the EXACT wording of the process, but it was something along the lines of:

"If you click 'continue,' your credit card will be charged. Do you wish to continue?"

Yes. Yes I do. Consequences be damned.

I hit the button, the screen refreshed, and I was instantly poorer. It's a far cry from the days when rock fans used to have to line up around the block, or even sleep out overnight, to get tickets to a particular show. If it had been me back then, I wouldn't have bothered. I'm famous for buying tickets (MUSE, X, Paul van Dyk, etc.) and finding reasons not to go on the day of the concert ("I'm by myself," "I just broke up with my girlfriend and need quiet time," "Parking is a hassle," "It's only Rammstein," etc.)

I don't see that happening with the Waters concert. Not only have I been obsessed with the album since 2003 (when I saw the movie and BAM! the entire thing made sense to me) but I've gone so far as to write a 10-page communications class paper analyzing the symbolism in both the music and the album art (still wish I had that!). I have a bootleg live video shot at a New York show in 1981 proving just how over the top the stage show for this album was. Even if the video an nth-generation copy and nearly unwatchable, the sheer attempt at spectacle comes through, as full-size model planes crash on stage and an entire wall is built and demolished as part of the finale.

There is a lot of irony in seeing Roger Waters bring "The Wall" back on the road. From what I've read about the band, doing the shows and the album the first time were more nails in the coffin between Waters and fellow Floyd members David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason, as Water's control of the band's direction became more unbearable. The album, with its themes of disconnection and alienation from the audience, stemmed from a 1977 incident in which Waters, burned out from the road, beckoned a fan onstage at a Montréal concert and spat in his face.

"It just became more and more oppressive," Waters recalled in a 1994 MOJO interview. "Those places weren't built for music, they were built for sporting events, and it's not unnatural to experience a ritualisation of war, because that's all sport is. What was going through my mind – my whole body – was an enormous sense of frustration, a feeling of 'what are we all doing here, what's the point?' And the answer that kept clanging back monotonously was: cash and ego. That's all its about."

Cash and ego, indeed, and good for him. Now, he's taking the irony back on the road, selling it to schmucks like me who can't resist seeing the ultimate rock and roll spectacle. And I can't wait.

Literary Coroner - Joe reviews punk rock book, porn star autobiography

I go to the library several times a week. Here's some of what I've been reading lately.

During senior year of high school, two books dominated the top of my reading agenda: "Rotten," an autobiography of Sex Pistols lead singer Johnny Rotten, and "Last Gang in Town," a 600-page book about the Clash that took me two months to read. There was something about the history of punk rock that really excited me, and it tied in to my natural tendency to remember dates, names and places as I'd done in the history classes I'd earned A-pluses in.
I recently revisited this territory when I read "London's Burning: True Adventures on the Front Lines of Punk, 1976-1977," a 328-page history book of sorts written by Dave Thompson. Thompson claims to have experienced all of this as an impressionable teenager, and his insights lend a unique, ground level perspective to a history that has become dominated by people at the top, like Johnny Rotten and the Clash. For example, it's one thing to hear about members of the Sex Pistols being attacked by people who thought they'd offended the Queen. It's another to read Thompson's breathless accounts of being chased through the streets as a teenager.
One particularly troubling episode comes when Thompson and his girlfriend are being chased by three men, only to see things get worse when some Rastafarian friends step in to help:
"And what was Linton doing? He was waiting for a bus, the huge red bus that was now bearing down toward hum….was almost level….was about to pass. With a grunt as loud as the engine, he hurled his load against it, a six-or-seven-foot gap that the flying body crossed in no time, but which seemed forever as time slowed to a crawl. There was a crash like she'd never heard before, flesh and bone meeting steel and glass, screams from inside the bus."
Perhaps more chillingly, no one believes the two punks that the Rastafarian blacks were helping them, and one policewoman goes so far as to say, "But what do you expect to happen, if you go out dressed like that?"
***
Another book I read recently was Ron Jeremy's a43-page autobiography, "The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz." Jeremy, an adult film star with more than 4,000 pornographic movies to his credit, has become something of a pop-culture phenomenon. Much of this has to do with his unlikely (i.e. homely) looks, and the fact that he has been so utterly prolific in his career.
The picture Jeremy paints of himself in this book is that of an educated man (he says he has a masters degree in special education that he has never used) who wanted to break into serious acting but found porn instead. I finished this book in two days. Not only is it a quick read, but also it's really quite funny, with Jeremy providing amusing anecdotes of the strange world he works in. Take what happened after he sent in some nude pictures to Playgirl using his real name. The phone calls to his parent's house started soon after.
"Ronnie," my grandmother told me one morning over breakfast. "Some sissy called you last night."
I nearly spat out my eggs. "I'm sorry, what?"
"A sissy boy called and asked if you'd be willing to meet him in a gas station downtown. Does that make any sense to you?"
"Uhhh..."
"I assume it was one of your drama friends. He sounded like a sweet fellow, although he was breathing awfully heavy. I'm guessing he has asthma."
It's hard to write about working in the adult film industry without being graphic, but Jeremy writes ABOUT porn, not porn itself. Still, the proliferation of genital-related material can be overwhelming at times, as can the depersonalization of sex that pornographic films by their very nature inspire. I wouldn't recommend this book for someone who is squeamish about such things.
Say what you want about the industry he chose to work in, but Jeremy's had an interesting life, and met plenty of interesting people along the way. All in all, this was an interesting (albeit "vulgar in a way that makes me glad libraries have auto-checkouts") read.

COMING SOON: My review of "A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation."

Writing the old-school way, one clackity-clack at a time

As I write this, my latest acquisition is sitting naked in the garage, doused with carburetor cleaner and deskbound.

Wait, that sounds bad.

It's not what you think. My latest acquisition is a lime green IBM Selectric typewriter that I found in storage at work yesterday. It weighs about 35 pounds, with the inner workings protected by two extremely thick steel shell pieces. It's solidly built, to say the least. I've got it sitting in the garage because it needed a good cleaning, as, according to the sticker on its underside, had last been professionally serviced when Nixon was still in office.

This isn't the first time I've brought home such a treasure. My habit of collecting typewriters has raised eyebrows. Walking out of work with my prize yesterday, I caught the curious eyes of one of my co-workers looking at me, and I cheerfully told her that the company had FINALLY bought the new laptop for me that I'd been begging for. She spat out a small laugh, and I was pretty sure I could see her hand reaching for the mace. I thought I was funny, anyway. In our old Eden Prairie office, I would bring a small one outside to write letters with, and I could see people from an adjacent office taking turns to look out the window at the anachronistic masochist and his infernal machine.

"What a weirdo!" I could picture them guffawing. "Doesn't he know that people haven't used those in like, 10 years?"

Yes, actually. Many people who have discovered my hobby have asked a very relevant question: "WHY? Why do you collect machines so completely obsolete that even Goodwill refuses to take them? Why do you want something that is so eclipsed by technological descendents that is it beyond even a joke, like the Eight-Track tape?"

Well, that's the point, actually.

Typewriters have many virtues. They don't get viruses. Some of them don't even use electricity. Yes, you can't go back and fix mistakes or rely on spell check, but those are probably good habits to develop anyway. There's a certain appeal in the rhythmic, syncopated sound of metal keys hitting one after another, as the genius flows out onto whatever paper is in the chute. It is instant, tangible creation, free from all of the unreality of the plastic keyboards and Internet fancy that has come to dominate our lives. Typewriters are like fountain pens or thank-you notes (two other concepts I enjoy on a regular basis). They don't allow you to "multi-task" (a term which represents a sick age of distraction from what one is doing in the name of alleged "progress"). No, if you are using a typewriter, that's all you are doing, because if you take attention elsewhere and make a mistake, you are going to be there for a long time.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who is interested in typewriters. There is a place in Richfield called Vale Typewriters that services all makes and models. I called the guy earlier today, and he told me that a complete chemical cleaning for my Selectric would be about $85. Ouch. That's $85 I don't have. So, I went out to the garage and found the carb cleaner.

I realize that computers and Internet give me the ability to reach a worldwide audience. But typewriters don't, and that's one of the reasons I like them. They sequester my thoughts from the larger world, creating a more intimate and tangible final product than the glorified set of ones and zeroes that this missive will no doubt be coded into for publication.

Of Missed Connections with the Famous and the Ordinary

People are in our lives for only so long before we pass like ships in the night.

My neighbor and I were chatting this past weekend, as male homeowners often do, about what lawn projects were currently making our lives interesting. I was trying to tackle the shady dirt patches allergic to grass, and my neighbor was digging a pit for his wife’s rain garden project. We talked about a particular old house on the block, and I mentioned that the guy who grew up there in the 1920s still was still living not far away. My neighbor blinked.

“Lived,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did Wally die?”

“Yeah, he passed away last fall,” my neighbor replied.

Oh.

I’d met Wally at a National Night Out party in 2008. He was probably into his late eighties by then, and lived four blocks away from us. He told me about flying cargo planes over “The Hump” (a nickname for the Himalayas) during World War II in the China-Burma-India theatre of U.S. operations. Between 1942-45, nearly 1,000 men and 600 planes were lost doing this. Wally, who had played in big bands before the war, ended up going to school for radios, and flew up on Curtiss C-46 Commandos going over the Hump.

I walked away that night glad I’d gone, glad I’d met Wally and hoping to visit my new friend and talk more about history. I would drive by his pink house with the chipping paint, and wonder how he was doing. There was always a faded American flag flying by the door.

I meant to go over there. I really did. But I kept putting it off, and now, I won’t get the chance.

This has been happening a lot lately. For years, my mom told me to contact Brian Anderson, a man she’d worked with years ago when he was the editor of Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine. She remembered how kind he’d been to her, and said that I could probably benefit from talking to him. I would nod, and put it off. Eventually, that stopped the day I read that Anderson had gone into hospice care after a battle with leukemia. He a short while later at age 65, and everything I read about him showed me that I had truly missed out on meeting a great man.

We all have brushes with people or things greater than ourselves. I still kick myself for not seeing the opening act of a concert I covered for a college paper in 2004 at the Seventh Street Entry. They were a little band no one had ever heard of called the Killers.

“Come on,” I remember saying to my friend who was with me. “Opening bands always suck anyways. Let’s go get some drinks.”

Six months later, the Killers would be one of the biggest bands on the planet, and I was left only with a so-so story about what might have been.

My mom recently told me a story that has really made me think about pursuing these connections while the opportunity exists. When my parents lived in Baltimore in the 1970s, my mom debated reaching out to a TV reporter who was also new to town. As they were both young women in the communications industry, they may have found a lot of common ground, doing similar work in a new place. Time passed, and it was a meeting my mother didn’t pursue.

That TV reporter? Perhaps you’ve heard of her. Her name was Oprah Winfrey.

A cast of characters supports journeys through life. Some, like parents and siblings, are there for a long time. Others, like strangers on the streets, are mere living scenery dressing. Regardless of whom these people are, they all share one thing in common: none of them will be around forever. Wally was a member of our Greatest Generation, which is dying at the rate of 1,000 per day. By the time my daughter is old enough, very few of these men and women will be around anymore.

It’s an extreme case, perhaps, but it reminds me to make those phone calls now, to ring doorbells sooner than later, and to not forget that all relationships are offered on for a limited time only.