Approaching the Road to Recovery

UPDATE FROM THE JOURNAL:
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2008 03:53 PM, CST
Wain just went past the waiting room on the way to his room. He waved at everyone as he went by and said "bring me my guitar". Yai is up in her room, she's talking and smiling-has to be expected post-op discomfort. It's been a long but great day for the McFarlane family.

01:36 PM, CST
The surgeon came out and said Wain's new kidney is in and functioning well!!!!!! Surgery is over!!! Wain will be going off to the recovery room where he will be for about 3 hours. Many family members are at the hospital waiting out the day. Very excited about the encouraging news-praising and thanking GOD!!!!

12:58 PM, CST
The kidney is "in and running"!!!!! All continues to be going perfectly. It will still be a while until Wain heads off to recovery. Keep those prayers coming!!!!!

11:50 AM, CST
Yai's surgeon just met with everyone. He said she donated a "lovely kidney" (her left one) and that everything went wonderfully. Yai will be headind to recovery soon. Wain should be in for a couple hours yet.

11:17 AM, CST
Yai's kidney was removed and "hand delivered" to Wain's OR. Expect at least 1 more hour for Yai's surgery and 2+ for Wain's.

---

A dear friend and my former Minneapolis neighbor, Wain McFarlane, is being admitted to the Mayo Clinic tomorrow, Feb. 26, for a kidney transplant. Some of you know the long road Wain has traveled to get to this point; in the end his niece agreed to give him a kidney.

A journal of Wain's surgery and recovery is being kept at http://caringbridge.org/visit/wainmcfarlane. In addition to video and other details about Wain's ordeal, there's a guest book, and I'm sure he and his wife Catherine would appreciate a note, regardless of how well you know him.

We're told Wain will not be allowed to have flowers or any other gifts in his room at the hospital, but when he is released he will be staying with a family in Rochester, and if anyone wants to send gifts at that time I can pass along the address.

Please keep Wain in your thoughts. (The above is from an email sent by Jeff.)

Orange Cones, Beware!

A friend of mine who writes a column and blog about transportation for the Minneapolis Star Tribune took a cameraman with him to the annual MetroTransit "Roadeo" to do a story. He ended up behind the wheel of one himself with hilarious results. This is what most of us would look like driving a bus.

Read more here.

Troubled Waters

	City of Lakes. I was treated to this every day for six years. [Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association]

Jeff woke me up this morning by telling me that there are still cars in the Mississippi River with bodies inside. It's so, so sad, what happened yesterday.

The video I've seen on TV makes the whole scene look relatively small, I think. That bridge was just a freeway overpass across the river, but it was huge. A crack in the bridge would cause chaos, let alone the whole thing tumbling into the river.

It's cliché, but I can't help but think that I drove across that bridge almost daily for more than six years. It's freaking I-35, after all.

What I remember most, and most endearingly, was the spectacular view of the Minneapolis skyline available crossing southbound on that bridge. In all the years that I saw it, speeding across the Mississippi, I never took it for granted. The sight of it at night, as the creamsicle sun was setting and the lights were beginning to show against the shadows of the city, made me proud to live in such a beautiful place. On winter mornings, with intensely clear skies and air cold enough to suck the breath out of your lungs, clouds of steam not normally visible rose from buildings downtown, and I was happy to belong to a city, my city, that had been radiating defiance against the cold for more than 150 years.

I still don't know for sure that no one I know was hurt or killed yesterday. My fingers remain crossed. My heart and sympathies go out to the folks who will never see that skyline again — and to their families, for whom that view will surely be heavy with memories and meaning.

You Must Not Know 'Bout Bea

CNN gleefully covered an onstage spill from Beyoncé recently. It reminds me of the time I saw Bea Arthur fall off a stage in Minneapolis.

She was barefoot and resplendent in a flowing white kaftan. Or something. During a story about a fistfight with Elaine Stritch or something, she moved slowly backward into a poorly lit part of the stage. And then, in an instant: a wisp of white taffeta, like smoke, and she had vanished.

A gay guy in the front row gasped. A small child began to cry somewhere. And then, from the darkness, Ms. Arthur's voice rang out like a call from God:

"Ladies and gentlemen. I am all right."

Exuberant applause erupted from the assembled masses, and she took to the stage once again, without so much as a limp. It was inspirational.

Three Cheers for Madison, Wisconsin!

	Dangerous play. Do not tackle like this. Do not get tackled like this. [godsofsport.com]

My 9th grade world history teacher said the most basic sign of civilization is plumbing. He proposed that, looking back on world history, we cannot consider a people to be civilized unless they had devised a way to pipe poop away from where people lived.

I propose that a people cannot be considered civilized until they have a rugby team. Before Rugby, England, 1823, we were just sort of messing around. Wheel. Fire. Feh. Rugby? OK, now we're getting somewhere.

The Madison, Wisconsin, LGBT community is stepping up to join the world with a new rugby team. So far unofficially named, Madison Gay Rugby had their first team meeting on March 10 with the help of the Minneapolis Mayhem and the Chicago Dragons. They got an impressive 23 men to show up, which is good for a training session on an established team. (According to Madison team spokesman Shawn Neal, the Dragons saw 13 at their first meeting, and the Mayhem drew only eight.)

An auspicious beginning, Madison. Best of luck to you! Can't wait to meet you on the pitch!

Read more (scroll to the bottom)

Put 'Em on Me

Empty and untouched [fantasy arts resource project]

When I had a chance to touch Cyndi Lauper recently, I turned it down.

When she walked out onto the peninsula of stage projecting out into the masses assembled on the floor of the club, she reached down to the frantic hands grasping at her knees. She briefly clasped fingers, slapped palm to palm, butted fist to fist.

My friend pulled me closer and shouted into my ear. "Do you want to go up there and touch her hand? I'll go up there with you."

I hemmed and hawed and eventually decided no. No, I won't.

"OK," she said, "but if you change your mind, let me know. I'll go up there with you."

I wanted to go up there. No I didn't. Yes I did. I looked at the bouncing crowd at her feet. It was packed. I'd have to be pretty aggressive to get up there. Rude, even. But I might never be so close again. And why shouldn't they share her with me? Oh, why didn't I start out closer to the stage before the show started, when there was plenty of room to stake out a spot?

	I couldn't get a good snapshot, but memories "R" Good Enough. [dnamagazine.com.au]

Lauper retreated, and the hands came down. My moment, my chance, had passed. Much more importantly, I could stop fussing and wimbling and concentrate on the show.

I looked over at my friend. What have I done? (What have I not done?) She sort of shrugged, as if to say, Well, that's that. I asked you.

Cyndi Lauper was performing with Soul Asylum, Lifehouse and Mint Condition in a benefit concert for Wain McFarlane, a friend of mine. He needs a new kidney, and with the inadequate health insurance of a man who makes a living as a musician, Wain can't afford the procedure and, more importantly, the anti-rejection drugs he'll have to take the rest of his life. Thankfully, his brother is donating the organ, and it's a good match. Things could be worse. But he's still got to pay for it.

All the performers have a professional and personal connection to Wain, and agreed early on to do the show. Jeff and I flew back to Minneapolis for the show to support our friend — and, I'm not ashamed to say, to see Cyndi Lauper.

Before long, she was back on the peninsula, and my friend was elbowing me in the ribs.

I was reminded of a guy I met online whose cowboy hat Madonna took off his head at a concert last year. She wore it through a song and threw it back out into the crowd. He was apoplectic with joy. (His friends strongarmed the poor person who caught the hat into returning it.) Oh, why can't I be like that guy?

As it was, I was embarrassed even to be standing there with my cellphone pointed upward trying to snap a few photo. My real camera had been barred at the door, but it didn't stop us from flipping open our phones, the constellation of those tiny video displays glowing blue and shifting shape for the hour-long set.

It felt so lame and ineffectual. Every time Lauper looked in my direction, possibly even making eye contact a couple of times (which was thrill enough for me), I could feel her disappointment. You're missing the point, idiot. This is music. This is a party. You're trying so hard to capture the moment that you're missing it.

She had enough to contend with, including a band that seemed unable or unwilling to keep up with her and some sound techs who just couldn't seem to get it right. The diva — cold, raised voice, and forceful gestures (Move. There. Now.) — came out a couple of times. She is the boss and in total control. But she is not without flaws herself. When she dusted off "When You Were Mine," an apparent gesture to local-boy-made-good Prince, she had forgotten many of the lyrics and couldn't seem to read them very well from the back of a flyer where they had been scribbled. Eventually, she dropped the paper and rocked the chorus out instead.

None of the images I took turned out, by the way.

I had a friend in college who was a Tori Amos groupie and had a picture of herself with Amos from every concert she had attended. The dedication of waiting at the stage doors after each show, the consistency and Amos' eventual recognition of her, was impressive to me. I was jealous, but also alarmed. It seemed obsessive. Why the need to do it more than once?

A group of three women pushed past me toward the stage, annoying the enormous man standing next to me. The one in front would gently displace someone and then her friends would rush through. It was a nuisance. There was no room for them. I hated them. I wanted to be them. No, I didn't.

I don't think less of people for wanting to make that contact. They were fulfilling a "need" that Lauper was willing to accommodate. Unlike my friend with the Tori Amos fetish, I suppose I just didn't feel that need strongly enough to act on it. Unlike these women, I didn't want to interfere with other people's experience for an ultimately empty gesture.

It struck me that this may not have been about me. By refusing to push forward, I was keeping my friend from getting closer, too. All the emotion around my devision was instantly transferred to guilt. I should do it for her, not me. Though I guess her boyfriend could have taken her up there if she really wanted to go.

It's enough for me to consider that I am only a degree away from Cyndi Lauper. I felt like an insider just being there. I had the hubris to think that maybe Wain would introduce us after the show. It would be just weird to touch her hand like everyone else. She talked about her upcoming True Colors Tour (which won't stop in Minneapolis), days before the official announcement. But even that is meaningless. I don't know her. I have nothing to say except as a one of millions of distant fans.

Cyndi Lauper is a formidably talented musician, not a faith healer. I would love to meet her and tell her I admire her and thank her for helping me friend. But I don't want to reduce her to a fetish. What would I get out of touching her hand? The transferance of greatness? A palm full of sweat? Maybe the human touch would be just enough to assure them that she is as real as they are. Or that they are as real as she is.

Dammit, I should have just gone up there and done it.

Kidney Tones (with apologies to Jeff)

From the cover art of Wain's 2001 release That Was Then, This is Now [myspace.com/wainmcfarlane]

These days, my good friend Wain sticks mainly to cranberry juice. He jokes now about his bar tab. Not long ago, he'd drop a twenty at the most on a night out, because so many people would buy him drinks and the bartenders would do him favors. But no one gets anyone a cranberry juice, even good friends. He has to buy his own. And at a bar they charge you like it's a cocktail. So now he spends much more not drinking than he ever did drinking.

He's no alcoholic, and this is no 12-step program. Trust me, if he had his druthers, Wain would be back to the booze — free or not. But he's got a problem with his kidneys that makes alcohol highly ... um ... disagreeable to his system. He's on doctor's orders. (And when that doctor is from the Mayo Clinic, one doesn't argue.)

Wain's kidneys are functioning at roughly 6 percent capacity. He needs a new one pretty badly. And as a musician, he doesn't have heaps of disposable income and he doesn't have great health insurance. He does have three things, however, in abundance: luck, friends and connections.

The luck came in at a bar in Walker, Minnesota, out in the north woods. He plays up there sometimes. At this bar, by chance, he met a doctor. That doctor knew a kidney specialist at Mayo. And suddenly there was Wain's golden opportunity. Introductions made ... 87 miles each way between Minneapolis and Rochester, Minnesota ... tests taken ... and voilà! We have a surgeon and we have a donor (one of Wain's brothers).

The friends came in shortly thereafter. A bunch of musicians decided to get together to produce a benefit concert on March 10. Wain fronted a funk/reggae band in the '80s and '90s called Ipso Facto, and he's been around the block a few times, having played with Prince's band, Dave Pirner, Jonny Lang, UB40, Tracy Chapman and scores of others. This is where connections come in.

A few years back, Wain's brother was Cyndi Lauper's tour manager, and she became friendly with the family. Wain tells me he once saw her at a party in a gorilla costume. A musician he mentored toured with her. When she performed at the Minnesota State Fair in 2004, she let Wain sing "Time After Time" with her, letting him ad lib a verse dedicated to his late sister. She brought him back out on stage for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," which Wain and her bass player spun into an impromptu reggae jam.

A connection.

	[cyndilauper.com]

So, we are told, Ms. Lauper has graciously agreed to lend some of her time and abundant talent to the cause. And many other people he's worked with are helping out, too: Lifehouse, Mint Condition, Soul Asylum. You can read about it on her Web site.

Wain was our neighbor for more than three years. His wife Catherine, another good friend, was our landlady. He sang at our wedding. We planted vegetable gardens and herb gardens together. They babysat our cat. We've had Easters and Thanksgivings. We've dined on curried goat. We've toasted aquavit. He once gave us 15 lbs. of crab legs (there wasn't enough room in his freezer for 30 lbs.) because the parents of a kid he tutored are fishmongers and they paid Wain in fish.

We just saw Wain right before Christmas. And I guess we'll be back in March. Apparently he thinks we don't visit enough, so he's hauling out the heavy ammunition. I'll take any excuse to go back to my adopted home for a visit. Even in a month as c-c-cold as March. But it's not Cyndi Lauper who's luring us back. It's the prospect of being part of a concert full of people who are there to give their love to my friend.

(Truth be told, having Cyndi Lauper there, too, doesn't hurt.)

To all my Minnesotans: Please buy tickets!

Norway, José

KARE 11, a TV station in the Twin Cities, has issued an ad campaign in — what else? — Norwegian. At the end, he even says, "Ya, you betcha." They're promoting their new weatherman. And let me tell you, weather(man) or not — this kid is a little hunk of cute.

With a name like Sven Sundgaard, he sounds like he owns a coffee shop in Lake Wobegon. What choice is there? It begs for a little Scandinavian navel-gazing.

R.I.P., Oddfellows

[oddfellowsrestaurant.com]

My favorite restaurant in all the world was a darling little number in Northeast Minneapolis. ("was" ... It hurts just saying that.) It was attached to a gay bar called Boom! under the same ownership. I just learned that the venerable gay-owned Oddfellows closed down on the 10th and Boom! will pull up stakes later this month, which makes me very, very sad. Some heteros got in on the "Nordeast" economic boom and bought them out, I guess.

Oddfellows always claimed it wasn't a "gay restaurant," which I found to be a.) usually inaccurate given the clientel, and b.) irrelevant and a slightly off-putting designation.

However, their chow was magnificent. The menu changed every season and was always fresh. Oddfellows described its food as "Contemporary American Cuisine with an 'odd' twist of flavors from around the world." (Read the description here, before their Web site completely disappears.) Their orange-lacquered pork tenderloin was one of the finest dishes on earth. And I once had a lavender-infused custard dessert there that nearly made me mess my pants. Oddfellows taught me to appreciate excellent gourmet food in human-sized (read: non-Applebee's) portions, and to not be so uptight about a high restaurant bill — as long as it's worth it. And it always was.

The inimitable Dara Moskowitz of the alternative news and arts weekly CityPages predicted upon its opening that it would become a "big destination restaurant."

The shingle soon to be removed. [oddfellowsrestaurant.com]

The restaurant and bar occupied a historic building (c. 1891), the meeting lodge of the Independent Order of Oddfellows. Lots of exposed brick and holes in the wall where heavy timber floor joices once inserted. The high pressed-tin ceiling throughout was cool. The blonde woodwork was a little bit too "Target" for my taste, and the stainless steel bar felt a little cold to me. But it was always clean and bright.

I'll miss that place. Lots of anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine's Days and impromptu "fancy" dinners out.

As for Boom!, I can take it or leave it. As a bar, it was not remarkable. The burgers were fantastic, and the fries were tasty (both were from the Oddfellows kitchen), but the drinks were too pricey and it was famously impossible to get a bartender's attention on a busy night.

The one thing that impressed me about it (besides its Nordeast location — I lived in the neighborhood) is that it was the first gay bar I had seen in the Twin Cities that had enormous windows that were not blackened out or boarded up. It left the 'mos inside exposed to the blue collar and the sunlight. To me it represented a proud declaration that Minneapolis' queers would not be kept underground and in the dark.

Oh, how I used to love standing in front of those wide-open windows on Showtunes Night, belting out "Nothing Dirty Goin' On" from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, being gay and free.

Minneapolis, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.

Just feeling nostalgic.

• Nordeast Minneapolis
• Surdyk's
• Surdyk's Cheese Shop
• The unshaven, misanthropic Surdyk's Cheese Shop workers — Can I try a slice of ... that one?
• Nye's
• Psycho Suzy's Motor Lounge
• Room in the back yard for a vegetable garden, an herb garden, and a butterfly garden
• Fish & chips at Brit's Pub
• Aloof disdain for the Mall of America
• Guthrie Theater
• Jungle Theater
• Walker Arts Center
• The Lagoon Theater
• Bryant Lake Bowl
• Dykes Do Drag
• The Mississippi River
• Progressive politics
• City Hall
• The Skyway
• Lake Calhoun
• Watching the joggers, rollerbladers and cyclists at Lake Calhoun
• Lakewood Cemetary
• The luminescent Target Corp. tower
• Loring Park
• Minnehaha Falls
• Stone Arch Bridge
• St. Anthony Main
• Let It Be Records
• Big Brain Comics
• The Capitol
• The House of Cards parking ramp
• '80s night at The Saloon
• Doc, the best bartender I've ever seen
• Professing hatred for The Gay '90s but going there to dance in the retro bar anyway
• Minnesota Public Radio
• People who know where Lake Wobegon is
• St. Paul's Cathedral
• Caribou Coffee
• The straight kickboxer bartender at Trikkx who worked shirtless during happy hour
• Disagreeing with the snobby, joyless movie reviews in CityPages
• The stupid-looking banner of the Star Tribune
• The Minnesota State Fair
• St. Paul
• All my friends