On a Tuesday night at Elsie's, many conversations take place. Men are bowling, and nothing about life's twists and turns are off limits. Things are said that give you pause. Things are said that make you reflect. Things are said that make you wonder for days on end. Things are said that you simply don't have in your bag.

What's that? You don't understand?

If I go to a cheesy Mexican restaurant, and fork down roughly 10 pounds of tortilla chips and some grainy, slightly spicey melted cheese, then have to take a dump in their filthy bathroom, I got that club in my bag. If I go to a Twins' game that means something in the standings, or, is against a traditional baseball powerhouse, and something happens in the game that pushes my buttons and I launch into an off-color tirade on the state of the game as we know it in front of approximately 12 kids from Waconia who have never heard language like that before, I got that club in my bag. If I hit 5 3-woods on a 425 yard par-4, then I'm staring down a 30 foot putt to halve the hole for my scramble team, for whatever reason, I got that club in my bag.

The beauty of this phenomenon, is knowing when you DON'T have that club in your bag...i.e., tonight, at Elsie's. A guy at the alley said:

I tried to rub one out in jail and couldn't make it happen.

I've been a lot of places, and done a lot of things; and shit, I embellish a great deal on the stories I tell. But, I simply don't have that club in my bag.

Comments are open. Tonight, I have a burning need to know what clubs others don't have in their bags...please fill in below...

The phone rang. It was Demko.

When Demko calls you on a bright Saturday afternoon, you can count on your entire night being side swiped by some oddball decision to either gamble money you don't have, or something far worse. In addition, these calls usually involve some discussion of the cursed sport of soccer. Demko had been playing the foul game that day, the day before the Super Bowl; make no mistake, playing or even discussing soccer on the day before Super Bowl Sunday is roughly the equivalent of feeding dead babies to a goat inside a burning pentagram on the Saturday before Easter.

His truly brilliant idea on this fine day was to go to the RollerGirls Roller Derby.

Fantastic.

When a downtown bar fills you full of 16oz cans of PBR at an obscene price, then shoe horns you onto a pink bus with disco lights for a 10 block ride to watch "bigger" gals take shots at each other on roller skates, there's a better than even chance your soul is going to get scarred, in addition to your corneas and liver.

Do you think Napoleon sat up one morning and said, "You know Jo, I think I'll trudge into Moscow in the dead of Winter?" After spending two hours of my life I'll never get back at the Roller match, and roughly 3 hours with Demko, I'm full of questions like that.

Don't get me wrong, there is entertainment value in this enterprise, but it still travels tangentially to the track itself, where, if you're a practicing Christian of the St. Augustine variety like I am, you're hoping for collateral mayhem.

There simply isn't enough violence in this incarnation of the "sport." Growing up in Kansas City, there were banked tracks, girls with long legs in multi-colored striped hose, some blonde nightmare who was this side of 6 foot five and 44DD, and extremely fast, extremely violent falls over retaining bars. While there's a great deal of jostling, shoving, and downright anti-social behavior going on here...there's definitely a genteel quality to all of it.

But don't give up, there's definite hope for the "crowd factor." My hirsute sidekick and I stumbled upon a fetching lesbian couple giving each other a good night kiss on our way downstairs to buy Roller Girl panties and to try and sneak into the lower level (impossible by the way...apparently, sneaking onto the lower level of the St. Paul female roller derby is just one notch below sneaking into the House of Representatives during the State of the Union Speech.)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Boy George appeared briefly in criminal court to answer charges related to his October drug possession arrest.

Following a brief meeting at the bench between the pop singer's lawyer, Lewis Freeman, and prosecutor Craig Ortner on Wednesday, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Anthony Ferrara postponed the case to March 8.

Boy George, whose real name is George O'Dowd, wore a long black wool coat, black slacks, a black shirt and gray sneakers with white stripes, and sported a buzz-cut hairstyle and a large dark blue or black Star of David tattoo on the top of his head.

Dear Bill,

Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of bed in the morning. All manner of freaks line the urban sidewalks just outside your window, and in their own way, they're all trying to get inside. Not necessarily for any nefarious purpose, but rather, to burst your psychological cherry. Moments earlier, you had been slumbering in peace, not aware that androgynous junkies were having their heads tattooed with ancient symbols to prove to themselves there is something stronger than the cocaine. In a flash the realization floods over you, and all the dots are connected and you suddenly surmise this is merely the first roach out of the wall; if you don't act fast, you'll have a new window on the world in your psychological house, and it won't have straight edges or a stylish frame.

Of course, the other side of this coin, in many ways, is "encouraged" stagnation. There were too many reasons Neil Young's Prairie Wind was going to suck: what I'm guessing is a photographic representation of his mother hanging the laundry in a brisk Canadian wind on the liner notes; a childhood picture of him and (guessing again) his sister on the back; guys named Spooner playing instruments. If we knew what was good for us, we were going to get the old man's laser again...a reinventing of Harvest with another lifetime of anger and hindsight.

We got Harvest again, all right. In fact, we really got Harvest Moon again. Didn't anyone around him pipe up and say, "Um, Neil...um, you know...um, you already made this record...um?" No, nobody said that Friedman, you know why? Because he's Neil Fucking Young.

I've listened to this disk all the way through probably seven times since I bought it. I've listened to Harvest along side it, just to see if I could find some context...I don't know. You don't live here in Minneapolis, Bill, but if you did, you'd know that this album is the equivalent of a Sid Hartman column. He's been doing it so long, he knows all of the requisite steps and conventions, but the substance of what he's doing has long since drained out of him. I'm listening to the damned thing again right now! I'm on song 3, "Falling Off the Face of the Earth," and I can't think of a time or place to play this song other than in a coma ward at a local hospital.

I'll tell you what really disturbs me Fagelson. Earlier this afternoon, I sat and tried to find a theme in this record, reading through the lyrics, listening, contemplating. It's kind of like a folk rock last will. It's as if he sat there with his pen and guitar and told himself, "okay, pretend you have a month to live and you want to write ten (10) sappy songs about what you'll miss." You and I have walked out of clubs where some long-hair trustafarian was navel gazing the crowd to death with a song like "When God Made Me."

When the fear of death creeps over most older men, Bill, they go buy a new car. That's what Neil should have done. He should have bought himself a convertible and cranked up all ten (10) minutes of "Cowgirl in the Sand," down Highway 1 near Half Moon Bay during a misty dawn, when you can taste the salt in the air. There's more interesting and relevant speculation on God in one refrain and instrumental interlude of that song than in all of the steaming turd he laid at the end of this record.

Everybody knows this is nowhere Friedman,
Rear Admiral Tamerlane "Rusty" Platano-Blanco
U.S. Navy (ret'd)

Some ferrets, especially males, secrete a musky odor from skin glands and from scent glands located near the anus. You can help control the odor by having the anal glands surgically removed, a procedure that's often performed at the same time a Pet is spayed or neutered

Regular bathing with a high-quality shampoo will also help control odors and can prevent dandruff. If your ferret still smells unpleasant, we can help you select commercial ferret deodorizers that you can spray or rub directly on your Pet.

Male ferrets are called "hobs"; female ferrets are called "jills"; and a group of ferrets is called a "business."

--From the pamphlet, Keeping Your Ferret Healthy, by the people at The Banfield Pet Hospital

My friend Cromwell, down the road, has a huge mottled green bird that still squawks "Off with their heads," a dim memory from the time of Madame DeFarge and the madness of the French Revolution. The filthy, ageless animal was hatched in the slums of Paris and came over on a boat with a servant who was indentured, at the time, to Benjamin Franklin.

It is weird to stare into the crazy black eyes of a savage yet well-spoken old bird who can remember snatches of conversation between Ben Franklin and Aaron Burr, and sometimes even George Washington. You never know for sure, with these beasts, but lying is not in their nature and most smart people take them seriously. When the thing starts screeching and babbling about a thunderstorm over the Hudson River on Wednesday night in 1788, it is probably telling the truth.

Nobody knows what it means. Old Ben had a queer sense of humor, but he definitely understood the weather. Thomas Jefferson kept ferrets, which gnawed on his body at night, and eventually poisoned his blood.

--From Generation of Swine : Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's, by Hunter S. Thompson

When it comes down to it, the crux of my complaint howls at the domestication of the music I love. People like Kenny, Shania, and Lonestar are really just poodles, kitty cats, and bug-eyed fish in a boring, yet expensive aquarium. They know where to piss and shit, they throw fits if they don't get the proper amounts and types of exercise and food, and they'll sniff any crotch that has a treat in its pockets somewhere.

Alt Country is the ferrets, iguanas, snow leopards, and the occasional mountain gorilla, found chained to the frame of a '78 Camaro in a poll barn in Coon Rapids: you can spay or neuter it, tear out its anus, and bathe it in luxurious shampoos, but it's just a ferret, and it would really rather be eating field mice and pissing on your begonias, than taking a nap in your great aunt's spacious lap while she watches Oprah.

Thank God, then, for The Gourds from Austin, Texas. If I'm obtuse with my tortured metaphors, it's because of them. There's basic method and technique to everything they do, each one being an accomplished musician...after that, all bets are off. For whatever reason, they stretch twang music in all the directions I want it stretched, and their latest record, The Gourds Present Heavy Ornamentals, Si el problema es no corregido, pulls the taffy of country to its tastiest limits, while pulling back close to the vest at times to honor the tradition properly.

I was standing around in Kansas City's Westport area one fine March afternoon, discussing The Gourds with a bunch of 20-nothings, the band scheduled to appear that evening at Davey's Uptown down the street from where we were. One maladjusted youth in the crowd who had seen one String Cheese Incident and one Yonder Mountain String Band show, each, in his life, piped up, "oh yeah The Gourds, they're a jam band." If I could have reproduced Dalton's seminally violent moment of ripping Jimmy's throat out in the vastly underrated cinematic gem, Roadhouse, I would have.

This is a hillbilly boozehound junky rock band of some sort. But their songs all clock in around 4 minutes, radio friendly, and "tip your bartender" relative. They get the "jam band" label because their lyrics aren't about the class reunion barbecue at the state fair where you find out your high school sweetheart has a disabled daughter who's about to become an angel playing with her puppy near the ice cream stand...or in other words, every song that's come out of Nashville in the last 20 years.

Just imagine a bouncy, almost cajun kinda dance song, with an accordion and everything, then throw in these lyrics:

Yer full of wine and meat, throw yer bacon in the street
Yer long white hair is covered in blood
And I'm singing to the roaches and puttin' pecans in my pie
My tears are fallin down, I got something in my eye
Hooky Junk-Hooky Junk

If I had to throw dice, I'd like to say that's about heroin, but, it could just as easily be about making a pot pie in the microwave. Who knows? Who cares? The song is infectious from start to finish.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I write ridiculous letters to my college roommate Bill in this space quite often. Bill left a lasting impression on me and I measure a great deal of the things I do against his sense of right and wrong, I never want to let him down. The beauty of the thing though, is that there's a running roommate joke going that really starts with Catcher in the Rye:

For a while when I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed with this boy, Dick Slagle, that had these very inexpensive suitcases. He used to keep them under the bed, instead of on the rack, so that nobody'd see them standing next to mine. It depressed holy hell out of me, and I kept wanting to throw mine out or something, or even trade with him. Mine came from Mark Cross, and they were genuine cowhide and all that crap, and I guess they cost quite a pretty penny. But it was a funny thing. Here's what happened. What I did, I finally put my suitcases under my bed, instead of on the rack, so that old Slagle wouldn't get a goddam inferiority complex about it. But here's what he did. The day after I put mine under my bed, he took them out and put them back on the rack. The reason he did it, it took me a while to find out, was because he wanted people to think my bags were his. He really did. He was a very funny guy, that way. He was always saying snotty things about them, my suitcases for instance. He kept saying they were too new and bourgeois. That was his favorite goddam word. He read it somewhere or heard it somewhere. Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway. We only roomed together about two months. Then we both asked to be moved. And the funny thing was, I sort of missed him after we moved, because he had a helluva good sense of humor and we had a lot of fun sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if he missed me, too. At first he only used to be kidding when he called my stuff bourgeois, and I didn't give a damn-it was sort of funny, in fact. Then, after a while, you could tell he wasn't kidding anymore. The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs-if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine.

--by J.D. Salinger

Yeah, that's a long way to go to make a small point, but twice now, in the psychotic ferret world of Alt Country, we've gotten a great "roommate" song. The first was "Nine Bullets," by the Drive By Truckers on Pizza Deliverance. The second is Jimmy's "New Roommate" on this record, a litany of the problems with a succession of 5 new roommates, that instantly reminds of me of the greatest roommate of all time. I'm going to learn it on guitar and sing it at his son's bar mitzvah in January of 2018.

They take simple things and make deep songs out of them. There's nothing wrong with deep in Country. "Weather Woman" is fucking brilliant:

Weather woman what's the call?
We just don't need you in the summer at all
My grass is dying and my bills are so high
Make like a cartoon and go poke the sky

I saw and erubescent sky turn black
I knew that funnel cloud was on the attack
My barometronic pressure was high
How exactly does your Doppler apply?
Do you think it rains when my weather girls cries?
I shit you not it was softball size

I live for shit like that.

"Burn the Honeysuckle" and "Pill Bug Blues" are perfect songs for making a large crock of chili on a Monday afternoon. You have to pulse up some boneless beef and pork in your Cuisinart, then brown them with onions and garlic in a large skillet. When that's done, put 3 big heaping tablespoons of real Mexican chili powder over it and let it seep in. Meanwhile, fill a warming crock with a chopped onion, 2 chopped bell peppers, 3 chopped jalapeno peppers, anywhere from 3 to 15 chopped cloves of garlic, a can of drained diced tomatoes, a can of pinto beans and a can of kidney beans. Add the meat mixture, stir together, and set on high for about six hours. Hit the repeat key on your CD player and burn the paint off your copy of The Gourds Present Heavy Ornamentals, Si, el problema es no corregido. Make some cornbread.