THE WYMAN WEEKLY

Unemployed. Unattached. Unimpressed.

Issue 3 February 22,1996

 

 

 

Greetings and salutations, dear readers. Did you know if you look my name up in the new Minneapolis phone book, it has “Wyman” under my listing?  Since issue #2 went out, subscriptions have gone up 33%! Slowly but surely I’m building this weekly into the most respected and influential publication in America. Hey, aren’t you proud of me that these are actually coming out weekly? Those suggestions for alternate titles for this rag are still coming in. Diary of a Madman is catchy and Get a Life pretty much nails it on the head. But I’ll still stick with the current title as it locks me into a regular publishing schedule.

 

BEER

 

Still going strong with the Grain Belt longnecks. You may be interested to know that the Liquor Depot (they should be paying me for all the plugs I put in for them) has Premium returnable longnecks. More expensive than the regular Belt, about twelve bucks a case I think. Premium hasn’t been available in returnables since the late eighties. They do not, however, have the tapered bottle like they did back then.

 

New discovery: If I open one of the windows in my living room (that would be the room in my apartment that is not my bedroom) and set a longneck beer on my air conditioning unit located underneath the window, the beer will stay cold while I listen to extremely loud music on headphones. Ah, the air conditioner - it’s now useful all year long.

 

BARS

 

Last week I was at a bar in St. Paul drinking Premium taps and on the way to the bathroom, some girl who was on a scavenger hunt wanted my underwear and even offered hers in exchange. On the plus side of that deal I possibly could have held out for both panties and bra, she would only get my boxers and then I’d be the winner in quantity. On the down side, she was smaller than me, so her panties wouldn’t fit anyway. So I turned the deal down and didn’t even bother asking if I could watch her undress.

 

MUSIC

 

Went to the Uptown last week and saw the Rank Strangers. This band is highly recommended and I’m not just saying that because City Pages did two weeks ago. What type of music do they play? Well, guitar rock with a certain Stones / ‘Mats swinging swagger to them. They’re loads of kicks to watch, too.

 

Just bought the new album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds today. I could review it, but the title says it all - Murder Ballads. Nick Cave has some great album titles, he also has one called Your Funeral My Trial.

 

Look for the early summer release of my first musical release. It’ll just be my voice and a Telecaster guitar (I would do it with my acoustic, but this whole unplugged thing is so passé - have you seen that Cities 97 TV commercial where they say Clapton was the first do go unplugged? Obviously, they’ve never heard Robert Johnson or Woody Guthrie or for that matter Dylan’s first few albums, Springsteen’s Nebraska or Tesla’s Five Man Acoustical Jam.) All that is needed to get my five-song EP out is the music, lyrics, talent, and a recording contract. But I’ve got some great titles for the songs like “Drunk Again,” “Chuck Taylors Hurt My Feet,” and “Last Call (Caught Me By Surprise)”. The first single will be “Pride on Ice Blues” b/w “Frank Mazzocco Rules.”

 

SPORTS

 

Glad to see the Twins sign Paul Molitor. Not only is he one of the best pure hitters of the last twenty years, he’s intelligent and a classy guy - always showing up for the Puck’s yearly charitable pool tournament. And above all he’s always been a valuable addition to your Strat-O-Matic Baseball (the game that belongs in the Hall of Fame) team. It’ll be enjoyable watching my beloved Twins for the first couple weeks until their young pitching allows them to fade from the pennant race, but then “Twins in ‘97” has always been my motto.

 

WORK

 

Things I miss about work: that wonderful coffee; being one of the nine percent in the office who doesn’t feel above making that wonderful coffee; talking about boring sports like professional football; hearing people say how cool it would be if we had rules like those countries where they cut your hand off if you steal; hearing phrases like “team”, “quality” and “empowered”. Whenever I end up working again, my motto could be “employed, empowered, embittered against corporate fucking gurus who come up with idiotic buzz words.”

 

POLITICS

 

There’s been requests for a politics discussion, so here we go. As a child I grew up with the Vietnam War (Democrats’ fault) and Watergate (Republicans’ fault) so by the time I was ten I was jaded and disillusioned with the whole political process.

 

Plus when I was in college I worked with this lovely blond girl one summer who ended up being the leader of the whole Youth Democrat thing on campus. So she would always bug me to come to their meetings or wear some sort of Democrat propaganda pin. I always said no because if her party could get our country bogged down in a wasteful and futile war, just think of what one blond temptress with a nice rack could do to yours truly.

 

Then a few years back I dated a blond beauty who was a Republican true believer. We both had economics degrees, and I would maintain that Reagonomics was ruining the county with all of its attention to defense spending and its redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich and all this cutie would say was that we had a progressive income tax system. Well, I won’t go into the sick and pathetic details of how it all ended, but this same vixen turned out to be deceitful and kind of a racist. In short, she was your typical Republican.

 

Yeah, Wyman, you’re saying: politics and chicks don’t mix. (Hey, my motto for ‘96!) Is there another, perhaps relevant, point of these rather boring stories? Well, in the words of Bobby Dylan: “Don’t follow leaders / watch the parking meter.” The only other political words I have to say are the ones I learned from the wall in the men’s room at First Avenue: “If you haven’t voted Grass Roots, you haven’t done shit.”

 

MISCELLANY

 

The Wyman Weekly tee-shirts now available! Just take a blank tee-shirt and a magic marker and spell The Wyman Weekly. Note this also works to show your support on coffee mugs, baseball hats, skin, etc.

 

IN FUTURE ISSUES

 

Adventures in haircuts...What’s made Milwaukee famous (has made a loser out of me)...Beers with my uncles in Elk River.