Of all things Green and Gold, and now more than ever Purple and Gold:
— With the Vikings beating up on the Packers to gain a playoff berth, the Purple fans recently were in the unique position of having the upper hand. At Guv’s Place in Houlton, the featured fans included one with an extraordinarly real looking set of two-foot-long horns, and a cutie in a — fitting — Adrian Peterson jersey who at prime junctures would stand on her barstool and wave a three-foot-long Purple banner designed like a set of goalpost uprights. Meanwhile, at the every-corner-packed Village Inn in North Hudson, a Viking fan had another two-foot-long horn — and was blowing loudly on this one — and it also looked vintage.
— The question came up in conversation: In Wisconsin we have cheese as our claim to fame. What does Minnesota have? The answer was “10,000 Lakes.” However, as the recent sign at Kozy Korner in North Hudson pointed out, Wisconsin actually has more lakes than the Gopher State, but they stole the glory, maybe out of jealosy about Cheeseheads. Then the sign concluded: “Take that Nerds.”
— The Packer-Viking game, part two, playoff version, is likely to be the event of the season at sports bars such as the Village Inn. So will extra staff be needed there, even more so than usual on game day? “All hands will be on duty,” came the response.
— One of the highlights of Jess’ birthday party at Guv’s on Friday was a acoustic, of all things, rendition of Jimi Hendrix’ Purple Haze by guest guitarist Chris and singer Tony of Saving Starz fame. “This is the first time ever that this song has been done acoustically,” was the way Chris introduced it, authoritatively. Ax-man Geno of Saving Starz had planned to ask Chris if he knew All Along the Watchtower by Hendrix, and if I could sing it, as its the tune I’d cut my teeth with as far as singing with bands, and Geno had wanted to collaborate with me. Chris said, predictably, that it had been a long time and that he’d forgotten some chords. Geno added that the guy always says that about song requests then proceeds to “totally shred them” on guitar. Meanwhile, I confided with Geno that for some time, I’d been hankering to revisit the earlier, cranked-up Joe Winter version of the song, not the scaled back version that he’d heard. To which a surprised Geno said: “What, that’s the scaled back version?”