Due to weather I figured to make for a good drive from KC, MO to Kato, MN, Harry and I blasted out from my folks' place at 11:25 a.m. We stopped for gas on 435 in Raytown at 11:43 a.m. I keep a Captain's Log for trips, so this time is correct according to Harry's clock. Raytown was just the way I visited it last about four years ago: a good place to get shot by a whitetrash tweeker or someone who would like to be in a gang. Due to Harry's mad skills and my ability to spot whitetrash, we made it out alive and unscathed and everything was pedal to the metal to somewhere where few people consider Cheez-Wiz one of the food groups, a place where few people will stick a knife or gun under your nose and advise you to buy some crack cocaine. Raytown always reminds me of the original Lampoon's Vacation when Clark takes a wrong turn into East Side St. Louis. Clark drives the family through the hood and says, "Look at all of this plight, kids. We are fortunate." A gun shot goes off. Clark instructs the family to "roll'em up," as for the station wagon windows. The people of Raytown will not like reading what I have written but one thing is absolutely true about Raytown. It is grief to live there and, in the stages of overcoming grief, the people of Raytown are stuck in the first stage, denial.
Harry and I make it out of KC and rock straight up 35 and an un-lawabiding pace until Bethany, MO. Bethany is considered a "big town" in NE Missouri. That's right, they've got a hospital with witch doctors there. The amish haven't invaded yet because they like central and southern Missouri too much. Plus, Bethany does enough of inbreeding for itself. I have a license to wield such insults. I've been to Bethany. Proof of God is that baby Jesus wasn't born anywhere near this town. It's that awesome.
Harry and I slowed down not to act like proper members of a citzenship but because of FOG. How the hell do you get fog in December? This is what happens. First off, you need warm air descending from the jet stream. Second, you need a surface colder than the air descending. Wham, bam. FOG.
I thought the fog would lift. I drove through heavy fog from Bethany to Kato. That's a lot of fuckin' fog. The state of Iowa was fog. Driving in fog means many different things to many different people, but, to Harry, fog means let's drive fast. Let's get out of this shit. Johnny law can shoot radar all he wants, but it don't matter. Johnny law can't visually see who is committing the "crime." Harry is one smart Ford. I had no other option than to abide his judgment.
We made it from KC,MO to Kato, MN in 6 hours and 4o minutes with three stops ringing in at 10 min per. We didn't have to stop for gas after Raytown until Alden, MN, which is about 20 min from Kato. That's pretty fantastic. When we got to my pad I hugged Harry's steering wheel. We made it. Harry didn't hug back. Harry knows what's up.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Back to Kato
It is 9:24 a.m. and I'll be hitting the bricks here soon. The Holiday went well and Kansas City is still a strange place with strange, though awesome people. Wish me and Harry (my car) luck.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
The Christmas "Present" From My Buddies
If you want to see the Christmas "present" I got from my buddies please click the link below. Use caution. Keep a barf bag within arms reach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBGpRUilAc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBGpRUilAc
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
KC Update: Part Three
It is 6:47 p.m. and I've got just a little window of time there to zip off a blog before my brother comes home from getting "holiday food" and beer. Our buddies will arrive around 8:00 and we will have Festivus. I'm not too sure what's going to happen with the "Feat of Strength" but something is planned and I'm betting it will be pretty hick and most definitely error on the side of white trash.
We did Christmas for my immediate family at my folks place this afternoon starting at noon. At 8 o'clock this morning I was still asleep and had not yet started my Christmas shopping. No biggie. At 8:30 my brother woke me up by peeking in my room and saying, "Wakey. Wakey. Hands off your snakey." He was in his boxers and wearing a red t-shirt with no sleeves.
At 9:30 I was warming my car and preparing to go do my X-mas shopping. For my Dad I made a bird house because he loves feeding birds and doesn't have a birdhouse. It's actually a pretty cool birdhouse though, most times, nine year olds give their dad's birdhouses. At least I didn't get him a tie.
As for my neices, I had them covered because I originally thought about making jewelry but when my brother said he was online looking at toys and ordering I told him to order for me and I'd pay him pack. No problemo.
At 9:36 I was in my car, named Harry now, and off to buy some books. I had my list in my hand. This is how I roll when it comes to Christmas presents. Everybody get a present from the same place bought on the same day which is also the day they will receive it, unless they live out of town.
At 9:50 I rocked into a Barnes and Noble and walked straight up to a customer service lady with the list in my hand and said, "Can you please help me find these books?" Something in my voice must have expressed urgency because she said, "Do a little last minute Christmas shopping?" I said, "I'm giving these books to people at Noon."
We did Christmas for my immediate family at my folks place this afternoon starting at noon. At 8 o'clock this morning I was still asleep and had not yet started my Christmas shopping. No biggie. At 8:30 my brother woke me up by peeking in my room and saying, "Wakey. Wakey. Hands off your snakey." He was in his boxers and wearing a red t-shirt with no sleeves.
At 9:30 I was warming my car and preparing to go do my X-mas shopping. For my Dad I made a bird house because he loves feeding birds and doesn't have a birdhouse. It's actually a pretty cool birdhouse though, most times, nine year olds give their dad's birdhouses. At least I didn't get him a tie.
As for my neices, I had them covered because I originally thought about making jewelry but when my brother said he was online looking at toys and ordering I told him to order for me and I'd pay him pack. No problemo.
At 9:36 I was in my car, named Harry now, and off to buy some books. I had my list in my hand. This is how I roll when it comes to Christmas presents. Everybody get a present from the same place bought on the same day which is also the day they will receive it, unless they live out of town.
At 9:50 I rocked into a Barnes and Noble and walked straight up to a customer service lady with the list in my hand and said, "Can you please help me find these books?" Something in my voice must have expressed urgency because she said, "Do a little last minute Christmas shopping?" I said, "I'm giving these books to people at Noon."
Sunday, December 21, 2008
KC Update: Part Two
It's 1:35 a.m. and I am back to strange sleep patterns because I don't quite have the structure to my days here that I do back home in Mankato. Sort of interesting to me that you can feel a lack of structure in your home town. This is probably due to the fact that I left, went out into the world, and became more of a big boy who developed his own way of doing things at his own pace.
This afternoon I planned on making some soup here at my brother's. Of course he had all sorts of "suggestions" aka "I'm-gonna-whine-like-a-little-bitch." He kept asking, "Where's the recipe? What's your recipe?"
"Chillax," I said.
"There is no recipe is there?"
I chopped potatoes as Drew and Bobby observed me getting more and more irritated with my brother who was looking over my shoulder, watching my every move, and wondering outloud how many stitches I would need while I kept chopping the two potatoes. I have probably chopped more potatoes and onions and garlic and mushroom than one person could eat in a life time. My history of working in restaurants did not matter to my brother though. I knew what he was up to. He was being big brother doing absolutely everything to piss off little brother in the name of trying to excercise some kind of power.
Let me describe my brother's kitchen. First off, remember that there are dead mallard and teal wing thumb tacked to the wall. There's a lot of counter space except that just about every inch is lined by empty beer cans or dirty dishes or some random food container with some random, spoiled food. Most everything is dirty or suspect and when I washed out the pot to make the soup, the pot my brother claimed to be clean, he called me a hypocondriac. When I rinsed the "clean" wooden spoon my brother said, "Jesus."
Jesus wouldn't dare eat at this house. Most cooks would look at this kitchen and vomit. Most human beings would consider cooking in this kitchen a little like cooking when you are camping. And when my brother reads this he will be horrified because I will have offended he good graces to let me cook him something that doesn't come out of a box; he will be offended that I have bad mouthed all that he has provided; he will say that I'm not respecting him.
Now, I can trash a house and live like a pig like nobody's business so I am not an innocent little lamb when it comes to filth. In the past and sometimes in the present, my apartment in Mankato is pretty notorious for being substandard and worse. Let's get back to the cooking scene.
Bobby and Drew have take cue to my extreme irritation at this point. Bobby asks if I need any help and Drew stands in the doorway keeping quiet looking a bit like he might have to break up a cat fight at any moment. I ask Bobby to cut up half an onion. My brother does not like the texture of onions. He bitches about there being too much onion.
I cut up half a toe of garlic. That's too much garlic, my brother says. This is gonna be another garlic and onion soup with too much soup. Why can't it just be a stew? I don't like soup, my brother says.
You are wearing me out, I say.
Drew knows what this means the most because when he and I cooked together at Kennedy's this was the token phrase I found myself saying before something grew wings and flew across the kitchen followed by a litany of profanity.
I decide this is the time to pan fry the Kielbasa in the stock pot. I do this to irriate my brother. The potatoes should go in first. Everybody knows this especially since Kielbasa is pre-cooked.
Then the potatoes and onions and garlic go in.
What happened to sauteeing the onions, my brother asks. He thinks the only way to liquifiy onions chopped finely is by sauteeing them.
It'll be fine, I say.
At this point I want to add some broth to the mixture.
That'll make it too soupy, my brother says.
At this point I am five seconds from hitting my brother in the face with the stock pot lid that's hot. I've seen this done to someone in real, commercial kitchen. It the worst thing you can do short of stabbing somebody.
I agree not to add any broth just to get my brother to stop his bitching and I know exactly what's going to happen to the potatoes. They'll turn to mush. They'll be mashable.
So the "stew" my brother wanted turned out to be more like mashed potatoes with sausage and tomato. It looked a bit like cat vomit. And my loving brother decided to eat cold pizza before even tasting what he bitched to high heaven about. I considered this a major insult, though I said nothing. I ate the stuff and it was good but a far cry from a stew though the flavor was just fine. My brother ended up eating the stuff straight from the pot on the stove after he had his fill of cold pizza. He said he liked it though it got a little dry. No shit. Really? Hmmmm. I told him I'm thinking of starting up a new Christmas tradition. We're gonna make that exact same thing every Christmas. We'll follow the exact recipe from today. It's gonna become a favorite. It's gonna become a Christmas classic. It won't be Christmas until we eat that sludge. Yeah, baby.
This afternoon I planned on making some soup here at my brother's. Of course he had all sorts of "suggestions" aka "I'm-gonna-whine-like-a-little-bitch." He kept asking, "Where's the recipe? What's your recipe?"
"Chillax," I said.
"There is no recipe is there?"
I chopped potatoes as Drew and Bobby observed me getting more and more irritated with my brother who was looking over my shoulder, watching my every move, and wondering outloud how many stitches I would need while I kept chopping the two potatoes. I have probably chopped more potatoes and onions and garlic and mushroom than one person could eat in a life time. My history of working in restaurants did not matter to my brother though. I knew what he was up to. He was being big brother doing absolutely everything to piss off little brother in the name of trying to excercise some kind of power.
Let me describe my brother's kitchen. First off, remember that there are dead mallard and teal wing thumb tacked to the wall. There's a lot of counter space except that just about every inch is lined by empty beer cans or dirty dishes or some random food container with some random, spoiled food. Most everything is dirty or suspect and when I washed out the pot to make the soup, the pot my brother claimed to be clean, he called me a hypocondriac. When I rinsed the "clean" wooden spoon my brother said, "Jesus."
Jesus wouldn't dare eat at this house. Most cooks would look at this kitchen and vomit. Most human beings would consider cooking in this kitchen a little like cooking when you are camping. And when my brother reads this he will be horrified because I will have offended he good graces to let me cook him something that doesn't come out of a box; he will be offended that I have bad mouthed all that he has provided; he will say that I'm not respecting him.
Now, I can trash a house and live like a pig like nobody's business so I am not an innocent little lamb when it comes to filth. In the past and sometimes in the present, my apartment in Mankato is pretty notorious for being substandard and worse. Let's get back to the cooking scene.
Bobby and Drew have take cue to my extreme irritation at this point. Bobby asks if I need any help and Drew stands in the doorway keeping quiet looking a bit like he might have to break up a cat fight at any moment. I ask Bobby to cut up half an onion. My brother does not like the texture of onions. He bitches about there being too much onion.
I cut up half a toe of garlic. That's too much garlic, my brother says. This is gonna be another garlic and onion soup with too much soup. Why can't it just be a stew? I don't like soup, my brother says.
You are wearing me out, I say.
Drew knows what this means the most because when he and I cooked together at Kennedy's this was the token phrase I found myself saying before something grew wings and flew across the kitchen followed by a litany of profanity.
I decide this is the time to pan fry the Kielbasa in the stock pot. I do this to irriate my brother. The potatoes should go in first. Everybody knows this especially since Kielbasa is pre-cooked.
Then the potatoes and onions and garlic go in.
What happened to sauteeing the onions, my brother asks. He thinks the only way to liquifiy onions chopped finely is by sauteeing them.
It'll be fine, I say.
At this point I want to add some broth to the mixture.
That'll make it too soupy, my brother says.
At this point I am five seconds from hitting my brother in the face with the stock pot lid that's hot. I've seen this done to someone in real, commercial kitchen. It the worst thing you can do short of stabbing somebody.
I agree not to add any broth just to get my brother to stop his bitching and I know exactly what's going to happen to the potatoes. They'll turn to mush. They'll be mashable.
So the "stew" my brother wanted turned out to be more like mashed potatoes with sausage and tomato. It looked a bit like cat vomit. And my loving brother decided to eat cold pizza before even tasting what he bitched to high heaven about. I considered this a major insult, though I said nothing. I ate the stuff and it was good but a far cry from a stew though the flavor was just fine. My brother ended up eating the stuff straight from the pot on the stove after he had his fill of cold pizza. He said he liked it though it got a little dry. No shit. Really? Hmmmm. I told him I'm thinking of starting up a new Christmas tradition. We're gonna make that exact same thing every Christmas. We'll follow the exact recipe from today. It's gonna become a favorite. It's gonna become a Christmas classic. It won't be Christmas until we eat that sludge. Yeah, baby.
KC Update: Part I, Dead Mallard and Teal Wings
It's 5:31 a.m. here in lovely Kansas City and I am reporting live from my brother's house where I will be staying until making the crusade back to the frozen tundra we all know and love as balmy Minnesota. The drive down wasn't all that bad, though I had to blast out earlier than expected due to blizzard warnings. Supposedly the mother of all storms would traipse along southern MN on Saturday and Sunday, so I fired up Harry (my smokin' old man car named after my grandfather) and hit the bricks. Made it in seven hours flat. Pretty good.
Staying at my brother's is always a pleasurable experience that's sort of like an urban adventure. Upon entering my brother's house via the kitchen entrance I noticed that he has decided to chop off the wings of ducks he and my buddies have recently killed and tack them to the wall with thumb tacks. Sort of like a hick version of wall paper. This struck me as an extremely odd thing to do, but I also kind of expected strange things as such. My favorite part about these wings is that I asked my brother why he had a skinning axe (sort of a long handled hatchet that's razor sharp) laying on hood of his broken down F-150 that's in the drive. He said, "Well that's what I used to chop the wings off with." In that moment a fantastic image came to my mind.
I envisioned my brother and my buddies standing around outside drinking cans of Miller Lite after a day of duck hunting. They are smoking cigarettes and farting and saying "Yealm" the hick version of Yes that my brother and George invented while in college. All the while my brother is thwacking the wings off these poor, unfortunate mallard drakes and teal and using the steel hood of his old truck as a cutting board. There's almost a caveman like quality to this. I really enjoy that image mostly because it kind of horrifies me. It makes me think, What the fuck, dude? I have no idea how my brother and the guys came up with this idea, though I would not be suprised if it were Drew's brain-child. Now the only question about these wall-tacked-wings is: how long will they stay tacked to the wall? Is this simply something for the holidays? I'm putting my money on those wings staying on the walls until moves out, which might be never.
Stay tuned for more strangeness because I assure you there will be more. Oh, yes, there will be more.
Today, I'm heading over to my parents house to chill with them for a bit, but also snag my baby book so I can scan some pictures into my computer. I'll probably end up posting some of these pictures on this blog so you can see the snot-nosed version of myself.
Staying at my brother's is always a pleasurable experience that's sort of like an urban adventure. Upon entering my brother's house via the kitchen entrance I noticed that he has decided to chop off the wings of ducks he and my buddies have recently killed and tack them to the wall with thumb tacks. Sort of like a hick version of wall paper. This struck me as an extremely odd thing to do, but I also kind of expected strange things as such. My favorite part about these wings is that I asked my brother why he had a skinning axe (sort of a long handled hatchet that's razor sharp) laying on hood of his broken down F-150 that's in the drive. He said, "Well that's what I used to chop the wings off with." In that moment a fantastic image came to my mind.
I envisioned my brother and my buddies standing around outside drinking cans of Miller Lite after a day of duck hunting. They are smoking cigarettes and farting and saying "Yealm" the hick version of Yes that my brother and George invented while in college. All the while my brother is thwacking the wings off these poor, unfortunate mallard drakes and teal and using the steel hood of his old truck as a cutting board. There's almost a caveman like quality to this. I really enjoy that image mostly because it kind of horrifies me. It makes me think, What the fuck, dude? I have no idea how my brother and the guys came up with this idea, though I would not be suprised if it were Drew's brain-child. Now the only question about these wall-tacked-wings is: how long will they stay tacked to the wall? Is this simply something for the holidays? I'm putting my money on those wings staying on the walls until moves out, which might be never.
Stay tuned for more strangeness because I assure you there will be more. Oh, yes, there will be more.
Today, I'm heading over to my parents house to chill with them for a bit, but also snag my baby book so I can scan some pictures into my computer. I'll probably end up posting some of these pictures on this blog so you can see the snot-nosed version of myself.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
New Place for the Long Posts
I've decided to keep the entries on this site short from here on out. This means I have created a wakka-wakka account to maintain my ramblings in cyber space. This blog will be reserved for day to day jazz and random wanderings into what concerns me the most. If you would like to read on then feel free to find the long posts at mrfriendboylongposts.blogspot.com. There's a link on this page if you don't want the hassel of typing all of those letters. I'm a little astonished by the fact that I have maintained this blog for over one week let alone started-up a companion blog since I used to be so anti-blog. I just didn't get it because I didn't want to get it. My buddy named Bob wrote to me saying, "I don't understand the purpose of blogs, but I like what you have written here" in an email once. A homie named Steve encouraged me to stay nasty after reading the blog about how I value writing the nasty. With all of thise in mind I think it is best to open up a new venue to release what is most important and scary and real and daunting and exhilirating and passionate while keeping this blog as a means to say hello, to check-in, to say this is what is happening at this very moment and this is what I think about that at this very moment. Hope you tune into the Long Posts, but Long Posts will be a free-for-all. You might need to grab a cup of coffee. You might need to light a cigarette. You might need to secure a six pack of beer or bottle of wine or bottle of whiskey. You might need to do all of the aforementioned tasks though I don't recommend you do them in that order.
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