TREGOCHE

Uptown, Minneapolis, is one of those places that everyone should attempt to live in during one’s life. The area is spectacular. Bars and restaurants interlace themselves with incredible stores and specialty shops.

To name drop a few, I recommend Chino Latino, Fu-ji-yah, and Milio’s Subs as the finest places to eat. If you want to buy comics, look no further than Dreamhaven. Scandolous lingerie, try Venus. And when it comes to body jewelry, no one beats St. Sabrina’s Parlor in Purgatory.

But the truth is, the cost accrued is insane. Quite enough to drive one to drugs and meager box dinners. It won’t be long before you see me sporting my best fatigues, propped up near 35W with a sign: Bosnian vet, brother, spare a fiver?

Really. $6 for a martini? $50 for a pair of pants? How much is rent? Damn, no lunch for me this week.

However the ideas I’m being exposed to are brilliant. Intercultural gay pride with a punk rock hippie attitude.

Every time I go to the convenience store, I end up with the latest propaganda from the Progressive Labor Party or Save the Wildlife Fund.

And that’s when the paranoia sets in.

I’ve determined that the Olson Twins are harbingers of Armageddon. One will die and signal the Apocalypse. Even Nostradamus knew. The twins will make a bad film in the New City.

But in reality, with Rift Valley Fever spreading, Zarqawi beheadings becoming a daily truth, and the two presidential candidates being both Yale graduates, one has every right to scream end of the world.

I walk into my living room and Underworld’s Dark & Long is playing on the radio. How it got there, I don’t know, but the thoughts rush me back to a more innocent time. Before the city. Before adulthood. Before everything that has tainted me.

Age sixteen. Sitting in my brown 1984 Chevy Citation, listening to really bad techno on REV105 at, like, 1AM. It was June. Beautiful weather. I was drinking a couple Miller Lights I’d jacked from my parents.

Back then, I thought about the brave new world. The world that would exist when I was a grown man. A gleaming future, all technologically perfect and music pulsating from every corner of every angle of every nook and cranny. I think we kinda got there, but it’s not quite Hackers yet.

And with my maturity and loud life comes a depression of sorts. A disillusionment as if I was lied to. This future is way less cool and Johnny Mnemonic and way more dark and unreasonable. Like 12 Monkeys.

That’s why the paranoia sets in. Bastards.

MINISTRY OF SPACE

The final issue of Warren Ellis’ Ministry of Space at last arrived at the comic shop. Two years in the making and I hate it.

It’s anticlimactic. A great premise but a trite story. The main character, Sir John, is responsible for establishing the British Space Program.

However, he did some underhanded things to get it done like use the stolen Jewish money to pay for the fledgling program. And in a shocking turn of karma, he lost his legs in the process.

Now, in 2001, the Americans are ready to launch after years of an apparent disinterest in space. What they’ve been doing and why they chose now are irrelevant to the story. But the overuse of insignificance is the problem. The story of Sir John is pointless as is the examination of the history of the Ministry. We neither revere nor despise Sir John’s actions, he just is.

The only real success comes from the stellar artwork of Chris Weston and Laura Martin. Visions of Britain’s gleaming, aeronautical expanse from Earth to Moon to Mars are astonishing.

Ministry of Space is merely Ellis’s latest examination of the possibilities of the British Empire before Americanization a la Two Step.

The future is interesting but you wouldn’t know from the bland and meaningless plotline.

Truth is, in our world, this great space construct of satellites and star fleets belongs to no one. Not the Americans, not the Russians, and most definitely not the Brits. However, the idea is possible. We can go to Mars and expand into the universe. We could have done it years ago. In this way, the story succeeds.

But then again, maybe I’m just bitter. It was two years in the making and no payoff.

You waste my time Mr. Ellis.

Ministry of Space # 3 was published by Image Comics in May, 2003.

LUNA ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The moon is mesmerizing tonight. A deep crescent of beauty, stunning and forever. Tantalizing me, it stares with eyes so tumultuous. Blending perception and all-knowing wonder. Something of spinning life and yearning friendship. It stands by so close even when we’re miles apart. And I know that inside that dazzling crescent, it dreams of me as I sit and dream of it.

A BREIF GLIMPSE AT THE LAST MOMENT OF A MODERN CIVILIZATION

The hookah was shaped like a clown, bulging eyes and long tongue. Its painted ceramic was full of blue hues and purple tubes. They called it Henry and it was altogether the ugliest thing in the room.

So, when it came crashing down it wasn’t the biggest disappointment to Eric or Angie.

The big disappointment came when Eric looked out the window to see a very large, very bright mushroom cloud developing just beyond the horizon. He knew right there and then that civilization as he knew it was at an end.

Very befitting, he thought, as his country had been on the warpath for the preceding decade, fighting in country after country, swallowing up whole cultures, globalizing their populations and converting them into mere vassal states.

Eric held Angie close.

“Don’t look, baby.”

What would come after, he couldn’t quite fathom.

Would mutated ape creatures wander the charred remains in a never-ending quest for food?

Would only the roaches survive thriving and overrunning the world in twisted cannibalistic carnage?

Or would the planet Earth grow silent, just another dead rock orbiting the sun?

Maybe this was an isolated event. A terrorist act, so heinous no one will ever forget.

But there was no way for Eric to know.

Nor reason to care.

He simply held Angie close, shut his eyes and enjoyed their last moment together.

THE DEATH OF THE 80'S

My first president died last Saturday.

Although I was born into the Carter Administration, my childhood memories are of this old man with a grandpa smile and surprisingly slick black hair-- Ronald Reagan. And as a child, I was oblivious to the inner-workings of Washington politics and scandals. All I saw was someone who was running the country, always had run the country and always would run the country. And he was a good man.

Reagan, along, with his arch-nemesis -- Gorbachev, Gaddafi, and Ayatollah Khomeini -- were the figureheads of American Empire for the 1980's. He defeated the Soviet Union using words and money and began the war in the Middle East.

His "Voodoo Economics" tripled the U.S. national debt and Nancy's War on Drugs was simply an excuse to subjegate Central and South America.

But none of that mattered to me as a kid. All that mattered was that I felt safe. Safer than I've felt since he left office. No way would The Gipper left me down.

The Oil Wars. Nicaraguan Death Squads. Crack-Cocaine. Airplane Bombings The Red Menace.

He'd protect me from all.

He built super hi-tech space stations to defend from nuclear attack.

Or did he?

Now, looking back I know he was simply an actor given the role of a lifetime.

Play the President of the United States.

He exceled at the task and was the best president not only because he was a true American, but because he was a man. A very sweet, sometimes ignorant, man.

He was Grandpa Ronnie and he liked jellybeans just like me. He liked horses and the outdoors. Just like me.

That's how I'll remember him. As a guiding force of my youth.

Ronald Reagan died on June 5 at the age of 93 in his home in the State of California.

METAL-MAGEDDON

The day was Tuesday, June 1 and at Lee's Liqour Lounge, the stage was set for the exploding, aggressive fury of Metal-Mageddon!

Sponsored by NORMLMN and Source Emission Studios, Metal-Mageddon brought together some of the sharpest young talents in the Minneapolis music scene for one night of destruction and mass rebellion.

I arrived sometime before the show began to buddy up with a couple of the bands and terrorize the concertgoers. After buying an overpriced gin and tonic, I sat back to witness the oncoming noise and promote my latest project.

The show opened with a riotous alt-punk quartet, Alysium. The noise guitar and snotty vocals chased out most of Lee's regular clientel so I decided it was best to purchase another gin and tonic. Liqour is my preferred way of supporting the industry.

They were followed by Nameless, a harcore group fronted by a short, bald thug with a pencience for surface piercings and corny lyrics. Songs like "Return to Greyskull" and "Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD" enveloped the crowd in humor and power-hungry hysteria. This pissed off the bartender so I bought a couple cheap beers.

Closing the show was a local favorite, Dead Human Society. DHS, as they are affectionately called by their fans, played long metal songs laced in solos and twisted anger. Waining throughout thier set was a disdain for the world as we now knew it. In response to the Iraqi Prison Scandal and the Nick Berg beheading, Dead Chris, the lead singer rapped, "...War, love it or hate it, the world can't exist without it."

After their set, the bartender chased everyone out except for a couple homeless guys. I stumbled into the night's air to enjoy my incredible buzz and ringing ears.

What was Metal Mageddon even about?, I asked myself.

In truth, nothing at all. It was just an excuse to drink and be loud.

But what's more metal than that?

TRUTH, FEAR AND THE PRECURSOR

The Warriors of 9/11 march gleefully to their deaths. This nation has become bored with its own Romanesque instincts. I sit and drink cheap wine and listen to Dizzy Gillespie. Superman's still dead. Dan Jurgens killed him with the need to boost sales. Our world was forever altered. The hijacking of our childhood.

Everything you can to keep her. She gives you clothes. Sex. Inspiration. New ideas. But most importantly, love. Her companionship has transcended thought and moved you to instinct. What's instinct tell you to do? Never get comfortable.

So far, my experience in life has been dull at best. I'm an overexposed bastard, looking for new thrills. I watched the decapitation video for the hell of it. Nick Berg died for my excitement. It felt weird for a second. Real emotion. Then...dick. Nothing. Back to the soul-less proletariat.

Armin Van Buren and Baby Anne. All that's left is the DJs. All the world has descended into decadent chaos, but the DJs keep spinning as if it's all just a bad dream.

Two bowls. A bottle of wine. Ephedrine. No sleep. No food. Two packs of ciggies. My nails are gone. She doesn't notice that I'm on the cusp of brain drain.

Modest Mouse.

I can see my own hair.
Cell phones.
Sit back.
It's fucked.
We all walk around with our own personal communicators like some bad Red Shirted Trekkie.

2002 Merlot.