A 79 year old Minnesotan pleaded guilty today to a disorderly contact resulting from him starting a scuffle in a restaurant when he objected to a cel phone user’s foul language.

24 more years.

If you are in my office and you are reading this, get back to work.

Have you heard about the Midnight Rambler?

Tonight I am most decidedly not at my wife’s office Christmas party. This is either the second or third one we’ve missed in almost thirty years. She’s worked at this agency longer than anyone. All those campaigns, creative directors, art directors copywriters, empty suits, AE’s, bean counters. People I’ve seen start out right out of art school and get all the way to the “you make too much, we’ll get three people right out of school for the same money and work them to death” phase. That’s what a freelancer is. That and guys like me who never made it into the agency scene. Too old by the time I awoke from my drug and alcohol induced haze.

I was relieved this morning when she asked if I’d be disappointed if we skipped it.

But there’s been some fun. Like when Beck broke the ankle of one of the copyrighter’s wives. Things were pretty drunk and Cheryl was trying to pull Beck’s dress down and made some comment about growing up with six sisters. Beck said, “Oh yeah, well I grew up with six brothers and they were wrestlers.” She put some kind of take down move on her and snapped her skinny anke. The night it was 30 below and all the roads had ice about ten inches thick and you could hardly walk and one guy was doing the ‘gator and a fifty year old (old to me then) AE was doing drunken back flips. And I don’t remember getting home. And I was driving.

And when the Norwegian guy became the boss and they started the tradition of toasting to a shot of aquavit before dinner. You could count on half the people at the table not drinking theirs and passing them to me. And open bars with really good cognac. Not to mention various controlled substances. And huge ice sculptures filled with shrimp.

But now I’m an old stick in the mud. I don’t drink and I’m just not that big of a party guy. And besides they fired a bunch of Beck’s friends this year. If Allison was going to be there…well THAT’S a different story. We saw Allison this week. I told my wife that I had to be honest. I’d do Allison. She said, “Who wouldn’t. I’d probably do her.” Now there’s a thought. That will probably happen right after the Wolves pick me with their first round draft pick.

Anybody see the Wolves eviscerate the Kings in the last five minutes tonight. Eddie Griffen just might be the missing piece of the puzzle. Or might have been the missing piece…cause I guess he’s not missing now, right.

This is so typically Bob.

I met a very attractive young woman that’s working temporarally in our office. I’d heard her spoken of and thought I new her name. She asked me what my last name was and made some comment about me being a legend, and I said something like that and “you’re (last name is) Fox”

She got a wierd expression on her face and said, “I’m a fox?” Well she is but that’s not really the thing to say to someone in the corporate (stick up the ass) environment.

I replied, “You’re name, Samantha Fox, right?”

“Um, that’s an eighties porn star.”

Well at least I got the Samantha part right! That goes on the ten top most embarrassing moments. Nothing like getting wood while giving a speech in front of the class in sixth grade though.

And I never got to ask her about the legend thing.

Latrell Sprewell, what a guy. Starts off the season complaining that contract negotiations on his multi-million dollar contract were jeopardizing his ability to “feed his family.” Then a couple of nights ago he invited a female fan to perform oral sex. He was standing close to the courtside mic at the time so all the fans watching the game heard his invitation. He got suspended for one game. Lost his pay for that game too. $178,000. That’s over 50 thousand a word.

It dawned on me while thinking about this that he’s not even the highest paid player on the court. I don’t know what the minimum NBA salary is….I think it might be over a mill. So how can the NBA possibly make any money. Let’s say the average ticket price is $50. And the seating at a stadium is 15,000. That’s only $750,000 for a sellout. Say it’s a million. If one guy is pulling down 180 a game and both teams suit up, what twelve? Even with the TV money….how the hell do you make a profit?

Have you noticed that a lot of religions and cultures have a BIG celebration around the winter solstice. This makes perfect sense to me. I mean I’d get religion too if the days kept getting shorter and shorter and I was pretty much convinced that the sun was going away and the world was coming to and end. I might even slaughter some fatted calves or vestal virgins. And when the days started getting longer….it worked, better not risk not doing it next year.

Yes, managing artists is always interesting. This employee was suffering from some neck pain today. So they attached a bag of frozen broccoli to her shoulder with an Ace Bandage. I think we’ll soon be teaching a class on Food First Aid. Oh, the fun we have.

It’s been an eventful week!

A fire destroyed a butter plant in New Ulm, MN, melting 1 million pounds of butter! In some places the butter was two feet thick on the ground. A refrigeration train carrying 100 tons of lobsters slid off the track and dumped it’s load into the mess, creating the biggest lobster feed in history.
OK, I lied about the last part.

Q got her dream job. She gets paid in T-shirts CD’s and concert tickets, but it’s her first step to owning a record label! And she gets to give away lots of free stuff! Which will make her very popular. And she just might be the coolest kid in the twin cities!

Beck called me at work on Friday at about 2:30. She wanted me to take her to the emergency room. Her left arm was tingling. Being a Hard Ass Norwegian, she really didn’t want to go, but the nurse she called talked her into it. And then she tried to get me to talk her out of it, but I wouldn’t. So we went and she was fine. No heart problem, just a pinched nerve. Too much Yoga.

I got my acoustic guitar back. The guy ground down the tail piece and adjusted the neck and secured the electronics for the pickup so they don’t flop around inside and adjusted the pick guard. For thirty-five bucks. It plays so much easier and sounds so much better!

Today Q and I went to see the Gopher Women play Kansas. Q forthrightly explained to me that she knew I bought the tickets for the family and she liked to go with me, but just to be with me. She really doesn’t like basketball that much. Kansas lost their last game to a D-2 team so it figured to be a blow out. But the Jayhawks came out shooting and the Gopherettes couldn’t buy a basket and found themselves down 20-4, or something like that. I was never worried though. They just couldn’t match up for a whole game. I was right, we won by 17.

They drew 8,000 fans for a non conference game when the Vikings were on TV!

Have a great week, amigos!

This weekend I went to Surdyk’s Liquor Store and Gormet Cheese Shop. It started out when I asked MM to solder a broken connection in my Strat. Well we had to go to his office for the tools and then since he had me along we drove over to Nordeast (as any true Minneapolitan calls Northeast Minneapolis) and the coolest liquor store in town. But of course I’m not too interested in the booze….but oh the cheese. Steve was looking for Grana for a recipe and I just can’t resist a good stinky cheese so I bought a big chunk of Stilton and some other assorted goodies like chocolate and pear mustard.

Dang, I love stinky cheese. Today I found one of the truely great flavor combinations. A nice ripe pear smeared with some really ripe cheese. MMMM-MMMM. I also made myself a scrambled egg sandwich with, that’s right, stinky cheese.

With my acoustic in the shop for some tweeking and my Strat non functional I was kind of going crazy, so it’s really nice to get a functioning guitar back….but it probably would have been cheaper to just take it to the shop, given what I spent at the Deli.

Dogs. Y’gotta love ’em. We went out for a walk with my niece’s husband and their little, rambuctious puppy. There was another dog on the trail that stopped to lift it’s leg and the pup just ran right in for a drink. They do stuff like that and then they want to lick your face!

Should be an interesting day. Or profoundly boring. All of the systems are down today, the company waived the limits on how many people could be off at one time and I’ve got 2 out of 23 people here today. And nothing really to do. Except all the day to day red tape that I’m so far behind on because I absolutely hate it.