Last weekend, when you combine Thanksgiving with well-celebrated football games between the Badgers and Gophers, and Packers and Patriots, and throw in an amped up Black Friday, it was becoming more and more likely that the drag-out partying four-day span would be followed by a Blue Monday, not a Cyber Monday. (Although, for some of those games, there were full parking lots, but in a few places a few empty tables. An exception was Buffalo Wild Wings, where both the bar counter and big bar table-seating area were so full they weren’t able to seat latecomers).
— A lighted sign outside Historic Casanova Liquors over the Thanksgiving holiday thanked people for supporting their local liquor store. Does that stipulation also apply to all the people who come over here from Minnesota on Sundays? An aside about THEIR local beverage stores, there now is an app via which Twin Citians can order booze for quick delivery. Finally, the Minnesotans have bested Wisconsin. However, they did call a Hudson liquor store — and not even one just off the freeway — 500 times on Thanksgiving to see if they were open, the manager said. (Okay, not ALL those calls came from across the river, but I’m guessing about 98.6 percent). The manager said they should have changed their answering machine message to have it say they are indeed open, and just let it take all the calls. He also said that on one day recently, a Twin Cities broadcast personality came in and ordered hundreds of dollars of high quality liquor and had it loaded into the back of his van.
— Jess at Guv’s Place in Houlton used international shipping to send soccer balls to another place, on another continent, where her daughter has been serving in the military and there was a shortage of such basic equipment — and even a field that isn’t full of holes — that they could use for exercise. Enough balls were shipped to outfit the whole team.
— Also at Guv’s, and also at a place far afield, a patron said he once got an exotic dance from someone who is closely related to a longtime host of a national TV children’s show. (And no, it’s not Peewee Herman).
— Others also live on the edge. Customers at a local establishment said they’ve been told the place is considered a meeting area for cheating husbands or wives coming from the Cities. The bartender said, jokingly, that she wanted names. The patrons replied, fittingly, that they couldn’t do names but could remember some faces.
— But people, especially the bartender, at the Village Inn in North Hudson earlier in fall did remember both the blood moon, and the moon’s eclipse. Problem was that there were wideranging TV accounts — if it was not set for Sports Center — of just at which hour these events would take place. So in both cases the viewing choices ranged from pulling away from one of your busiest serving times to stand outside the door, catching the displays when you were at bar close cleanup time, or staying up until dawn and then being exhausted the rest of the day. The choices were not good, but they were well discussed.
— In watching a sports bar college football game between the Oregon Ducks and their unranked rivals, Oregon State, one of the Ducks pulled up lame and the announcer said “there is an injured Duck.” Could he have said, “wounded Duck?”
— Also seen at the sports bar over the past few months were some interesting last names. The championship pitcher named Bumgartner showed that he ain’t no bum, but I’m not so sure about the player by the unfortunate name Duda, which harkens back to a very old folk song about “walking down the quay,” not the Hudson Dike Road. Lastly, someone who just may have partied a bit much and ended up in the Hudson paper’s police report goes by Moe Oo. That’s right. A few too many vowels.
— According to a flyer at Guv’s, a dog named Rocky who is friendly to other dogs and people — apparently especially so to those in hard hats — has been missing for weeks, last seen in the vicinity of the new Stillwater bridge construction a couple of miles to the south. His has obviously been a rocky road, pardon the pun, as cold weather he faced has also made it cumbersome to do some types of construction work on a new interchange. Bartenders at Guv’s hope that the frigid weather brings some of those workers their way, as happened at least once during the summer when a downpour chased them from the construction site.
— This late night shopping excerpt from my file of being called the Frugal German. After visiting some of the haunts on The Hill, I decided to use one of those great Kwik Trip coupons for a free pound of potatoes (which only cost 38 cents a pound everyday anyway, a shameless plug for one of my favorite inexpensive places to shop), and make some late night munchie fries. I decided to buy only one great big potato, and in a best case scenario push the overall price to 39 cents. However, the clerk said the potato was too green, so I should substitute. When this smaller one got weighed and rang up as only 21 cents, I wondered aloud, if for only a moment, if I should void the transaction and get a second potato. The look on the clerk’s face made the Frugal German recoil and think twice about one potato, two.
It’s like guitarist Geno, formerly of Saving Starz used to say, 50 Cent is a band not a tip. I don’t know if he was speaking directly to me, and maybe I was being a bit paranoid, but one night a hospitality industry worker who was at late night happy hour got on my case about this practice and said I should write an op-ed piece about the injustice of it. I told him that the markets for such articles have dried up down to nothing, and I would have to to do such a thing gratis, which he thought was just fine. Now wait a minute, for me to work for free is fine, but you are the one advocating not just for not leaving a tip, but that tip isn’t big enough? Hmm.
— Showing some killer dance moves at the Smilin’ Moose was someone who looked just like a young Nicole Kidman. On this, a yet another very frigid day, her Irish-styled bright green top went well with her flaming red hair and showed a bit of bare midriff; we give her kudos for bravery to face the cold that way.
— Lastly from the resemblance file, I have to again reference my bartender friend Whitney, who had a look-alike with a prominent role on the TV show The Mentalist. Wouldn’t you know it, that actress also played a bartender, who unlike Whitney was making some extra money running guns. I guess there might be something to this whole idea that sometimes tips just don’t cover the rent.