"I wouldn't say that I would never not absolutely not rule that out."

-- Actress Debbi Morgan, asked at the Daytime Emmys if she would consider commuting from New York to Los Angeles to tape All My Children.
 

I’ve been listening to Garrison Keillor’s audiobook Homegrown Democrat, based on his 2004 book, in the car on my way to and from work. It’s reminded me one of my favorite pastimes is writing – and how little of it I actually do.

My problem lately is I want notification of an update to go into Facebook as well. This doesn’t seem like a major problem relative to everything else that goes on in the world, but I would like my blog updates to be reflected there somehow. It can be done, but one must be logged into both Facebook and Live Journal simultaneously – and Facebook is blocked at my office, where I do most of my writing. (One mind wanders when sitting behind a desk.) I’ll probably do some entries during the day, more at night – the better to do a “hey, look at me!” type of thing.

Anyway. One of the things Keillor points out is how much he enjoys going to the local café to write, read, or people watch. I can see enjoying that. Keillor lives in St. Paul, MN, population 287,151. I live in Naperville, IL, population 147,779. They sound similar, but they’re not, in that maybe 10 percent of Naperville’s homes are actually within realistic walking distance of its beautiful downtown.

Naperville’s a big city, but we are spread out. For us, a walk downtown would take a couple of hours, by which time we’d likely take a taxi back home before doing anything else. We do have a small strip mall within a 10 minute walk of our house, but there’s very little in the mall worth walking to – a convenience store, Convenient Food Mart, with a gas pump outside and a selection and occasional faint aroma inside that usually makes me think it’s better to buy what I’m after elsewhere. Zeppe’s Italian Market, which is what it claims to be, and has no tables. And a pizza place that had not-great pizza the one and only time we went. It would be a great place for a small coffee shop, but there are businesses you’d never expect there, like floor tile, and a dentist office, and a Curves – which probably has little space to actually exercise.

So we settle for the strip malls along Washington Street, which are about a mile away. There’s the takeout-only Chinese place, and the takeout-only Domino’s, and the takeout-only Jake’s Pizza. There’s Crème de la Crumb, a breakfast and lunch only restaurant with okay food and the ambiance of a nursing home cafeteria. There’s Scarpacci’s, which I have not yet tried, because it has no web site, no reviews, and looks more like a catering place, but does promise pizza by the slice. There’s Big Apple Bagels, which is a standard bagel place in a city that has a lot of them. (At least they’re better than the bagels in Durham, NC, which made me long for New York more than I thought I would.) There’s Gino’s East, which is acceptable but not nearly as good as Lou Malnati’s, and certainly not as good as Brooklyn pizza by the slice. There is a TCBY, of which Danny noted, “This isn’t bad, actually,” during his trip yesterday.

Since there are no true places where one can sit and linger for awhile, if I get the urge, I may have to settle for Dunkin Donuts, which just opened a location, to the delight of my son. The day after we got back from Cambridge, the two of us walked there – well, I walked; he used his Razr scooter – and he got a marble doughnut (blue icing with red stripes, for the 4^th of July). The next night, Karen, Danny, and I walked, after I told Danny he should use the bathroom before we left, which he declined to do. Halfway through the walk, he said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and then made a show of collapsing every 75 yards or so in agony. By the time we were close, we switched our original destination of TCBY to Dunkin Donuts, knowing the latter had a bathroom. We got there, with Danny rushing up to the counter to check out all the doughnuts before I dragged him off to do God’s work.

I don’t particularly want to make Dunkin Donuts my home away from home, and perhaps it would make more sense to find a café with less than the 6,400 locations DD boasts. There’s a place called The Fat Bean Bistro, or something like that, about a five minute drive from our house. But I want to do more writing – preferably not necessarily from my cubicle.

And Michael -- obviously, no one saw this one coming, although like Elvis, he left us young.  The Jackson 5 was my first favorite band; my first three LPs were all J5 albums (Greatest Hits, Diana Ross Presents, Maybe Tomorrow), and I still have all three.  (Almost sold them all at a garage sale in 1980 but reconsidered and let The Osmonds and Partridge Family go instead.)  Bought the albums, watched the cartoon (very disappointing make the connection years later than the voice of Berry Gordy was the same as Santa Claus in Frosty the Snowman, and it wasn't the actual Berry Gordy), watched the TV series a few years later.  I was the first guy at my fraternity to spring for Off the Wall (even though I will never like "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough") and Thriller.

After that, though, it was too much Michael, and too much for him.  I'm one of the people who thinks no one ever told him, "Uh, Michael, that's a really bad idea" except his dad, who no longer held sway at some point.  When you're anointed the King (of Pop), you do what you want, even if it turns out that having a gigantic ranch with a Ferris wheel and live animals might be a bit of a cash drain.  His albums after Thriller all suffered from the inevitable comparisons and "disappointing" sales (there was nothing like Thriller in terms of album sales, and likely never well be, plus it's been a good catalogue album).  He was planning a series of concerts in London, but obviously we're left wondering what those would have been like.

That's a lot of day for today.  Maybe we'll have a normal day tomorrow.