The vintage store B Squad in Minneapolis used to be in a depressing little space on 38th Street just off Nicollet. I went there once, tried to sort through a rack of t-shirts that were smashed together on a rack, thought about buying some sew-on patches and then didn’t because they were unmarked and I was told that they were probably $3 each. I thought $3 for a patch was ludicrous at the time. The entire store felt as if if was pressing in on you with its little bowls and buckets and boxes of stuff. It just wasn’t for me.

B Squad recently moved into a new space on Nicollet Ave at 35th Street, right on the corner. The space is a lot bigger, giving B Squad’s merchandise room to breathe and its customers room to move.

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Corky is a master of self-deception. Isn’t this how we all live our lives? It’s just so damn funny to watch other people doing it. I love the travel agents who have never been anywhere. Want to look like an asshole? Put on an ascot with a running suit.

I don’t usually feel very comfortable talking about my truly personal life on Not Shallow. Usually that’s because my personal life just isn’t that complicated or even interesting except to me and those directly involved in it. I don’t want to bore my 30 regular readers to tears. But this may help other people, so here goes.

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The Found Footage Festival rolled into Columbia Heights last night, with two shows at The Heights Theater. Of course, it’s a laugh-a-minute program, but it also leaves some indelible impressions and lingering questions.

1. Why would anyone confuse mucus with fat? Better yet, why would anyone be so determined to expel mucus/fat every morning, save it, measure it, dry it out and sometimes burn it with a blowtorch? You tell me. I saw the footage (from a cable access program) and I’m dumbfounded. In case you’re interested, this isn’t something you can do without the aid of grape juice put into a spray bottle and sprayed into the mouth. Really gets that mucus worked up so you can spit it out into a strainer.

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1. I will keep my acts, performance and behavior in good taste while I am in costume and makeup. I will remember at all times that I have been accepted as a member of the clown club only to provide others, principally children, with clean clown comedy entertainment. I will remember that a good clown entertains others by making fun of himself or herself and not at the expense or embarrassment of others.

This seems like several commandments rolled into one, doesn’t it? I think perhaps the clowns had to pare down their number of commandments so that they didn’t have ten or more. If God can keep the rules down to ten, summed up so nicely, it would seem a bit presumptuous to have ten or more commandments just for clowns.

So I’ll break it down. Commandment 1: Don’t be a clown pervert.

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I have no Halloween costume. This always happens.

What can I be? A free association of ideas…

An apple that is not organic. The horror! Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter, Apple. Emeril, the chef. The Iron Chef. Riboflavin because it could look however I wanted. No one knows what riboflavin looks like. Something fibrous. A germ. A flu bug, although that’s what they did in grade school health, didn’t they? Have some teacher dress up as a flu bug and give you a talk about germs, in character? My high school art teacher, the manic depressive with a thing for corduroy and over-achievers. A pheasant. No one is ever a pheasant and why not? When will pheasants get their turn in the spotlight like penguins have? Like lions? An alcoholic lion. Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT. He’s been on my mind lately. Shit, why did I have to think about Pennywise?

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I recently reviewed a play called Amazons and Their Men for TC Daily Planet. You can check out the “official review” here.

After seeing the play, I immediately watched The Horrible/Wonderful Life of Leni Reifenstahl (see my 50 Word review, which hardly does the film justice) and became both enamored and repelled.

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Was she or wasn’t she? What did she know and when? She was a genius. She was brave, climbing mountains in bare feet. She was a coward, taking and giving under the table, so she could make art. Me thinks thou dost protest too much but me also finds thou fascinating.

Rapid fire. Every male sentence begins, “Listen, sweetheart…” Every female sentence begins with, “Listen here, you…” Hildy wanted to escape journalism, get married and become normal. She was talented, smart and wore little hats perched on her head. Should have stayed divorced but kept working. Walter Burns, you’re a cad.

Over on MN Dialog, I posted about my Friday night trip to the new Theatres at Mall of America. You can read the full post here.

One thing I neglected to say is that the Jack Nicholson impersonator had the shakes. I don’t think from drinking; I think from age. It was a little disconcerting when he put his arm around me for our picture, which didn’t make it onto the Metromix website.

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