Cheap-Ass SOB

If you're a cheap-ass son-of-a-bitch like me, here's some websites I check on a daily basis:

Woot One deal a day, usually electronics
Barganist A variety of products and services
Dealhack "We are obsessed with finding the best deals for our users"

Freaking Hilarious

The Complaint Choir of Chicago is about to make its debut! And in case you're not familiar with a Complaint Choir (and I wasn't until I read the story) they're a group of amateurs who get together to sing about the things they hate about their city. "Drunks who pee off their balcony." Buses that "bunch up worse than granny panties." And, of course, the Cubs.



Read the Tribune story here

Can't wait to see the Chicago video! Better yet, let's start a Bloomington-Normal Complaint Choir!

Debit Card Blues

I suspected something was wrong when McDonalds declined my Credit Union debit card. OK, no comments about McDonalds. And when I prepaid my cell account yesterday and the payment didn't go through, I knew I had to call the Credit Union.

Oh, I was girded for battle. I was pissed. I was ready to close my account which would be a shame since the CU has been so good to me over the years.

Call #1
I had to use my landlord's landline (ain't that a mouthful) to call since, of course, my cell was not working. I got through the usual menu bullshit by pressing 0. (Works with most systems. Try it sometime.) Got a very friendly young man who looked at my account (WITHOUT asking my password) and then transferred me to the bookkeeping department. Oh, hell no. I KNOW there's money in there. After several rings -- I lost count -- the voicemail system kicked in. I couldn't leave a message. I didn't want to. I wanted this resolved NOW!!
So I hung up and called back.

Call #2
Kristen answered, DID ask for my password (kudos to her) and then transferred me to someone else. Before she did, I explained that my cell phone wasn't working (because my payment hadn't gone through) and leaving a message was not an option for me.
She then transferred me to Laurie who found that October 8th there were three failed attempts to use my card with a PIN. I remembered what that was. Lucy had was going to the cheapest place in town to buy cigs (shockingly the downtown CVS has the lowest prices) and offered to picke me up some, too. She told me when she got back that she had trouble with the PIN.
Anyway, Laurie told me the card froze with 3 bad attempts and she reactivated it right there.

So it looks like I'll be maintaining my accounts there a bit longer.

Another Black Eye For Substitute Teachers

Another substitute teacher has been charged with inappropriate behavior. Just what we need. It's getting harder and harder to become a substitute. One has to be fingerprinted, submit to a criminal background check and have a physical and/or TB test.

They're protecting the kids, of course, which I fully support.

What I'm worried about is how many more hoops they're going to concoct because of idiots, losers and perverts like this guy.

Substitute Teacher Pleads Guilty (Chicago Tribune)

Add this story to the growing list of bad subs: The teacher in Chicago who showed Brokeback Mountain to an 8th grade class, the sub in Bloomington convicted of child molestation and another who is charged with child porn.

Thanks a lot, guys. You freakin' idiots.

Let's Pause For A Moment Of Silence

Illinois has just passed a state law mandating a moment of silence at the beginning of the day for public schools.

I think this quote from Neil Codell, superintendent of Niles Township High School District says it all:

"No wonder we're down at the bottom of all the states in school funding because this is what they [lawmakers] spend their time on."

Ridiculous.

10 Really Bad Gay-Themed Movies

These are NOT "So Bad They're Good." They just plain suck. Avoid them at all costs!
And I'm not picking on indies. It's entirely possible to have a classy independent film on a low budget: Priscilla, Big Eden, Latter Days.
To the producers, directors, screenwriters: Know your audience! Most gay men have attended college and some of us have advanced degrees. Stop insulting our intelligence!
Three words of advice: Character driven plots.

Get Your Stuff:
This movie is misleading. Start with with the cover art. We see two hunky guys frolicking poolside. I'm sick and tired of gay filmmakers pandering to us with shirtless hunky guys. Note to filmmakers: We, the viewing public, have caught onto the fact that eye candy does not make a good or even watchable film. Plus the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the film itself.
Modern Family Values? Gimme a break! Phil and Eric live in Beverly Hills where the only real family value is greed. They don't have a clue about how to relate to each other let alone how to raise kids. They seem to think, and want the audience to believe, if you and your troublesome charges tinker with the car and splash in the pool that the brats will magically transform from little monsters to perfectly acceptable young men. Nothing futher from the truth!
The only situations that were remotely accurate were the character of Gloria and the initial attitudes of the two boys. ("We're too old to be adopted," the older boy tells his brother.)
Add in some abysmal production values (all the interior scenes sound as if they were shot in an echo chamber) and you've got a film that jumps more sharks than Discovery Channel during Shark Week.
Get Your Stuff and get out of the theater!

Chuck and Buck:
I'm an intelligent man but I simply don't "get" this movie. I've seen it described as a black comedy. Sure, if you find emotional retardation and stalking funny. Both Chuck and Buck are so unlikable I had a hard time caring about the outcome of these characters. Chuck because he's so creepy and Buck because he's so selfish, abusive, and abrasive. As a storyteller, you've got to be very careful about making your central characters as unlikable as these, unless they have some sort of redeeming characteristic. And neither Chuck nor Buck have any.
There's some pretty poor production values here, too. Just because a film has a limited budget doesn't mean it has to look and sound like it. To wit: Adventures of Priscilla, Big Eden, Latter Days.
I think part of the buzz surrounding this film is that it got some praise at Sundance. If this is the future of gay cinema, Goddess help us all.
Now, show me a movie where Chuck enters some intense therapy, grows up emotionally, learns to function as a normal human being and how to function in society as a gay man. THAT would be a movie I'd want to see.

9 Dead Gay Guys
9 Reasons not to watch this film.
Silly. Offensive. Unfunny. Dubious. Plotless. Charm-free. Boring. Worthless. Stupid.
I think the last one pretty much covers it all.

200 American
We viewers have been inundated with gay hustler movies lately, to the point where it's becoming a cliche. What is the endless fascination? Frankly, I'm sick of them. This movie did nothing to break out of the gay hustler cliche. The acting is acceptable and the actors pretty to look at but the dialog is unbelievably bad. ("Hello! One Life to Live called. They want their dialog back.") I admit that I did chuckle at the stuck elevator scene. Sad that some seemingly talented actors couldn't have been given some better dialog.
The plot has no real story arc or climax, in fact seems to change focus halfway through the film.

The characterizations are sloppy. Even some of the minor characters such as Ted and Emily and the foul-mouthed models are as likable and funny as fingernails on a chalkboard. Ian is pretty well-developed but the screenwriter doesn't seem to know where he's going with Conrad. Is Conrad a jerk? Are we supposed to feel sympathy toward him because of his recent breakup? He comes across as petty and vindictive (the blanket incident described in the elevator) and that's a dangerous position to place a major character in. In any storyline, if you have an unlikeable character as a lead and you want to engage your audience, you'd better make sure s/he has some redeeming quality. And Conrad has none.

The character of the grandfather was one of the few bright spots in the film.

In the end, the movie never really answers the question posed in its tagline: "What are you worth?" It would have been a much better movie if it did.

Sugar
Question: What do you get when you mix a bad screenplay with no plot, unbelievable situations like the little sister, bad production values and scenes inserted only to shock (pardon the pun) like the servicing of the 500 lb. woman? Answer: Sugar!

Cliff has an identity crisis. Big deal. So what? Which one of us hasn't at some point turned to drugs and hustling to figure out the meaning of life? I know that was my chosen path of enlightenment.

Unlikable characters, flimsy plot, bad production values (everything is so dark I had to adjust the brightness on my monitor) and situations that are so far-fetched they are more appropriate for a comic book. This trashy film asks us to suspend disbelief so often you'll feel like you were hired by your local electric company to string power lines.

Other reviewers have called this film gritty. It's gritty, all right. Gritty like sand in your sugar.

Lie Down With Dogs
"Woof woof bark bark ruff ruff yap woof woof bark bark." What Rover is trying to tell us is that when you Lie Down With Dogs, you get fleas. Neuter it before it reproduces!
Go lay down!

Circuit
I'd like to help the Director Dirk Shafer and the screenwriter Gregory Hinton make this a better movie.

This movie took me to a place I am unlikely never to see; the world of circuit parties. Some reviewers have praised this film for it's honesty and unflinching look at circuit parties. WHO CARES? If I wanted to learn about circuit parties, I'd tour the local sewage treatment plant.

Mr. Shafer and Mr Hinton, you can't seem to make up your minds if this film is supposed to be a fictional account or if it's a documentary. It fails miserably at both. The film tries to show the shallowness, danger and narcissism of the circuit lifestyle and becomes shallow and narcissistic itself. The plot is razor-thin (pardon the pun) the musical montages are wincingly bad. Worst of all the characters are cardboard cut-outs moved from scene to scene. We never really see any motivation let alone any growth. And in place of redemption Shafer offers a cheap and easy out: death.

I make these suggestions, Mr. Shafer, because I think -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that you were trying to make a fictional film. Because if you were trying to make a documentary you would have partnered with Ken Burns and gotten funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The best movies have character-driven plots. My .02 Mr. Shafer: you really missed the boat with the main character. John leaves Illinois because he's been outed at work as a police officer and is led into the vacuous and empty world of the gay circuit party. Allow me to make some suggestions. Why doesn't he get a job as a cop in LA -- or at least attempt to? That would have lead to all sorts of interesting developments. How do his new coworkers feel about his sexuality? How does he deal with the demands of his job after a hard night of partying? How do the other characters such as Hector react to John's getting a job? Cop in LA --let's see...corruption, Rodney King...lots of opportunities there.

One last suggestion. Instead of having John leave Illinois couldn't he move to that big city up there by Lake Michigan? What's the name of it again? The city that beat LA as the USOC candidate for the 2016 Olympics? Oh yeah -- Chicago. But, silly me, gay men only live on the two coasts and the middle of America is simply a vast wasteland to be flown over.

And treated with the utmost contempt.

10 Attitudes
Ya want attitudes? I got 10 of them for this movie: Disgust. Contempt. Dismay. Insulted. Reviled. Bored. Disrespect. Stupid. Shallow. Sense of Humor-ectomy.


Sideline Secrets
I should have known from the pretty shirtless boys on the cover. For low-budget indie films that's a tipoff that the filmmaker (and in this case 'filmmaker' is a very generous term) is going to try to substitute soft-core porn for any semblence of a real movie. Which is fine if that's what you want. I didn't. Call me wacky but I expect more from my moviegoing experience; hmm...let's see...a plot would be nice, some continuity, some decent production values, and some acceptable acting.

I've said it before: Just because a film is low-budget doesn't mean it has to look low- budget. The wardrobe department of Adventures of Priscilla bought most of the costumes at K-Mart on a 15% employee discount and they took home an Oscar for Best Costumes!
Too bad there isn't an Oscar for posing because that's all the actors in this film can do.
Know your audience, Mr. Vasquez. Many gay men have attended college and some of us have advanced degrees. This piece of trash is insulting to our intelligence.
Sideline Secrets should have remained both on the sideline and a secret.

Speedway Junky
Don't care that it's produced by Gus Van Sant. All the more reason not to watch it as far as I'm concerned.

Sarcastic Wear

Within days of the Tasering of Andrew Meyer in Florida, T-shirts went on sale featuring his quotation “Don’t Tase me, bro.” And O.J. Simpson’s latest troubles led to one shirt that reads: “Ask me how I would kill O.J.” For Perspective, the Tribune’s Mark Jacob dug up some other real T-shirt dug up some other real T-shirt slogans ripped out of the headlines.

1. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
2. Bush has no idea how to get our of Iraq, but he knew how to get out of Vietnam.
3. I think we should attack Russia now – they’d never expect it.
4. I’d rather hunt with Dick Cheney than ride in Ted Kennedy’s car.
5. Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.
6. Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.
7. Orwell was only off by 20 years.
8. I really wasn’t using my civil liberties anyway.
9. No immigrants = no burritos. Think about it, America.

Mark Jacob, Chicago Tribune, Sunday, September 23, 2007.

Useless Illinois Trivia

There are only two stoplights in the central Illinois county of Ford. One is in Paxton, the county seat. The other is in Gibson City.

Funny Locker Room Video

WARNING: NSFW

Locker Room Etiquette
Uploaded by blinwins

Dawn of a New Motherhood

Dawn's been hailed as the new Erma Bombeck. And with good reason. She's a suburban Chicago mom with six kids and a wicked sense of humor. Her observations on everyday life are funny and insightful. Highly recommended!
Because I Said So

Old-School B. Dalton Promo

I've written about the closing of B. Dalton before. Here's a nostalgic look at a Reading Rainbow funding credit video. It's from about 1985 when Dayton-Hudson still owned B. Dalton and before Barnes and Noble bought the chain.

Sister Goes to Pennsylvania

My sister is flying to Pittsburgh to take care of Dad's body and close up his house. After renting a car in Pittsburgh, she'll drive 4 hours to his house in central Pennsylvania.

Dad did have a will that named me executor of his estate. He didn't specify cremation but my sister and I agreed this would be the best thing to do. She'll bring the ashes back for burial here.

She's also going to arrange a memorial service at a funeral home for his friends in PA.

I'm feeling kinda numb right now.

My Dad Passed Away Today

My Dad passed away today in his home in Pennsylvania.

Sometimes I don't turn on my cell phone for days on end. When I finally turned it on about 9PM tonight, there were 5 messages. Highly unusual on a Saturday. The messages were from my sister and mom trying to reach me.

More later.

Chicago 2016 Olympics

Chicago 2016! Yes!

The USOC is in Chicago to look over the city and view Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. Back when I managed a bookstore for a living, I vowed that I would attend the ABA (American Booksellers Association) convention if it ever came to Chicago. And it did, from 1995 to 2000. And I attended in 95 and 96.

Now I promise that if the Olympics come to Chicago, I'll be there.

Lies That Became Truth #2

"You should warm your car up. Otherwise you'll screw up the engine."

Lie! Maybe you've heard this from your dad. (I didn't; my dad retired after 30 years as a mechanic. He always told me the best way to warm up the car was just to drive it.) But this lie persists being passed down from generation to the next. Maybe instead of an Old Wives Tale, it should be an Old Husband's Tale.

Truth: Most modern cars don't need to be warmed up at all! AT ALL! Maybe a whole 30 seconds if it's -10 degrees. That's it! Don't believe me? Read your owner's manual. Or read Click and Clack (Tom and Ray Magliozzi) on the subject.

Then there's the issue of wanting an nice, toasty interior before you begin driving. OK, I appreciate that. You don't want to put a baby in a cold car seat. But remember, you and your passengers should be dressed for the weather regardless of the warmth of the passenger compartment. What if you get stuck? What if your car breaks down?

In these times when we all should be concerned about global warming and the size of our carbon footprint warming up a car for 10 or 15 minutes before you actually drive it is NOT environmentally responsible. And annoying as hell to your neighbors.

If you're that worried about it, build, rent or borrow a garage for the winter. Install a block heater. (A block heater is an old-timey device that device that plugs into your house current to warm and circulate the fluids in your engine. Very inexpensive -- it will cost you much more in labor to have it installed.) Or make sure your next car is black and/or has a black interior.

But stop saying that you need to warm it up for the sake of the engine! Liars!

Lies That Became Truth #1

If your mom was like mine she always told me "Cover your head because 80% of your body heat escapes through your head."

Mom, you're lying! Or at least you don't know the whole truth.

While some body heat does escape through the top of your head, the vast majority escapes through the "holes" in your head: IE your nose, ears and most significantly your mouth.

So the next time your mom uses this line on you, set her straight.

Back Where He Started By Jay Quinn
Alyson Publications, 2005

One of my best friends has a comeback line that I’ve grown quite fond of. If I playfully call him a slut, for example, he’ll respond with “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Many reviewers have called Back Where He Started a romance. And my response to them is: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

It’s not a bad thing. Back Where He Started is unabashedly a romance. It’s too easy for serious readers to dismiss romances. Depending on what source you consult, 50% to 65% of all paperbacks sold are romances. People want romance, people read romance, people buy romance. The continuing success of Danielle Steele, Nora Roberts, and Janet Daily is proof.

It’s true that readers have to suspend disbelief to accept the plot of a romance. It’s also true that many of the subplots in Back Where He Started are tied up a little too tidily. But I contend that that is the nature of romance writing. I argue that realistic, contemporary romances are actually difficult to write because the writer has to convince the reader that this really could happen. For the writer it’s a balancing act. In my opinion, Jay Quinn succeeds.

A rhetorical question: Why is it easier for readers to accept an orphaned British boy who becomes a wizard than a contemporary romance?

Back Where He Started is really much more than a romance. Jay Quinn has crafted some lovely descriptive passages that are worthy of comparison to other contemporary Southern writers. He’s given the main character, Chris, a clear voice, wit, insight and a sense of humor. The narrative also contains an extended think piece about the meaning of family and home.

It’s also quite a timely topic what with the national debate about gay marriage. While there are no figures for gay marriage, 50% of all straight marriages end in divorce. The story follows Chris through the aftermath of the breakup of his 22-year relationship with Zach.

When we join the story, Chris is packing up the house he has lived in for 22 years with his partner, Zach Ronan. When Chris and Zach first meet, Zach has recently been widowed as a result of his wife’s suicide and is raising three young children, Trey, Andrea and Schooner on his own. Chris immediately takes to the children, and to Zach, and moves into the ornate Italianate house he is preparing to leave. His children appear, one by one, to take the things they want from the place. Zach has generously given Chris a settlement of guilt money but his gift has strings.

Zach also attempts to pick a fight and we see that they have still have more issues than National Geographic. It would appear that Zach is not finished causing trouble for Chris and they argue. Their tiff ends when Zach regrettably slaps him causing a split lip. The split lip is one of my problems with the book; more about this later.

Despite his poor beginnings raised by a single mother in the Fairview Homes, Chris has lifted himself up by the bootstraps by constant reading and an associate’s degree. Chris is a marvelous parent to the extent that the three kids he raised call him “mom”, a term he readily applies to himself.

Chris has done very well for himself, courtesy of Zach’s guilt money, as he moves into his new beach house filled with designer furniture. And along with the physical act of moving, there are the emotional changes as he moves into a new chapter of his life. Chris redefines his relationships with his three beloved children and with Zach. He also tentatively puts down new roots in his new town. He begins to discover his new neighbors, has a fling with a local vet, establishes himself in a new Catholic parish, finds a job as a receptionist-slash-secretary, and hooks up with a crusty and difficult fisherman and dog breeder from whom he gets a new puppy.

It’s true that his new employer is too accepting, even to the point of asking about asking about Chris’ new romantic interest. The parish priest readily accepts him, too, which stretches the concept of belief suspension to the limit. The Catholic Church has sinfully veered even further away from acceptance in the time since the book was published and it has been my experience that most parish priests would never be so accepting. But I could continue with the book because I cared about the characters and wanted to see what the outcome would be and because of Quinn’s mastery of the language.

I like the fact that Quinn has filled the story with rich details. For example, his characters are never just sitting around talking. (In my observations, people never just sit around and talk without doing something with their hands, unless they’re sitting with a mental health professional whom they have paid to sit still and listen.) The characters are always fiddling with something; food, drinks, cigarettes mostly. He describes light beautifully and reverently, whether it’s the light through a window or from the sky. His description of the places in his new neighborhood caused vivid mental images. His dialog is realistic and finely crafted, if a bit overlong at times and filled with sappy Southern endearments often including the word ‘baby’. Chris never just puts on a CD; we know what he’s listening to. That’s good writing.

I also like the fact that Quinn helps us understand the inner lives of his characters without resorting to psychobabble. He shows us rather than tells us through dialog and actions. Chris is acutely aware of his emotions and the effect of the ‘divorce’ from Zach on the three adult children. He refuses to be bitter or regretful even though Zach baits him from time to time. Chris knows he has Zach’s generosity to thank for his new life in his beautiful new beach house.

Back Where He Started is a cheerful, sunny antidote to the dark, brooding and depressing gay fiction that seems so – unfortunately – prevalent these days.

Yup, Back is a romance. Yup, the reader has to suspend disbelief a bit in order to accept the premise of the story. But I ask again: If we can accept the concept that a teenage boy can attend a school for wizards and play a game on hovering broomsticks, why can’t we accept a contemporary romance where the parish priest welcomes a gay parishioner into his congregation?

It’s a romance. Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing. Suspend your disbelief and read it.

Four Stars out of Five

Interesting story about a gay high school jock. No Happily Ever After ending but still a lot of inspiration here.
Life Was Hell for Gay Teen Jock - Outsports.com

Priest Found Beaten in Park

Interesting article

SJ-R.COM - Priest found beaten in park

Closing Time

“Closing time – You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

Few people mourn the passing of a retail store. You shop at the local K Mart for fifteen years, you know the layout. You know where they keep your favorite brands of toilet paper and candy bars. You know where the clearance items are displayed. You never know what might be there at the clearance aisle. Maybe it’s that CD that you’ve been wanting but has only the one song you’ve heard on the radio and liked – the rest of the CD is an unknown quantity. And you don’t want to pay full price for a CD that has only one good song and the rest is garbage.

And then, seemingly just like that, they announce that the store is closing. Your shopping habits are changed. Maybe you attend the Going Out of Business Sale. In your mind, you plan alternatives. You think that once the store closes for good and you’ve finally run out of the 24-pack of Charmin that you bought at the Going Out Of Business sale, you’ll have to bypass the carcass to park far out in the parking lot at Wal-Mart and wait in interminable lines to get through the checkout.

You never think about the people who worked there. You never think about the front-end manager who runs out of one-dollar bills on a holiday weekend. You don’t know about the store manager who worried about the next district manager visit or running out of an item advertised in the Sunday flier or how he’s going to run the store with so few employees. You never question where they went. Did they go to another store? Did they leave retail all together? Maybe they went back to school.

And what of the building? In a mall, the space is usually recycled pretty quickly. Most of the time a new tenant is in the space before the next Christmas season. If the store’s in a strip mall, it can languish for months before it’s filled again. If it’s a stand-alone store it may never be recycled. It may sit and quietly rot until moss and mushrooms grow on the floor like the old Goldblatt’s store in Park Forest.

In any event, there seldom is any evidence that the old store was there. Just memories. There’s no memorial or testimonial to the people who labored there or the people who shopped there.

I was a retail manager for ten years. I managed a B. Dalton bookstore. It was different from other retail, at least that’s what I told myself. It took brains to manage a bookstore. It took knowledge and intelligence.

B. Dalton, like other retail chains, liked to start their managers out at small stores and let the individual managers rise through the levels. I started out that way. The first store I managed was in Park Forest. I had been assistant manager there for a year before becoming manager and I helped open the store. It was a very slow store. There were days we just barely made $500 the entire day.

The Park Forest store closed two years later, and I helped pack the remaining computer books to return to the publishers. Years later, the whole Park Forest Plaza was “demalled” and a street was paved down the center, where a flowing fountain used to be. The B. Dalton store was partially demolished for a connecting street.

My next store was in downtown Chicago in the Xerox Building. It was a very plush store. There were lockers and a kitchenette in the break room. It had a mezzanine where we displayed the children’s books. It was meant to be the District Manager’s office but the DM had moved from there, wisely, before I got there. The store was a mess when I inherited it. I spent the first two months just cleaning it up. It closed a year later. My district manager called me at home on Tuesday night and told me the store’s last day of business was Friday. I had been blindsided but I learned a lesson, or at least I thought I did. Retail is never permanent and the only constant in retail is change.

That store remained vacant for a short time then it was remodeled into an investment firm.

My third store was in Yorktown Mall, near Montgomery Wards. It was a healthy store, nonetheless. Still, on summer weeknights I could have rolled a bowling ball down the center aisle not hit a customer. While I was still there, Woolworth’s closed its huge two-story store directly across from B. Dalton. It hurt business, especially since we had to stare out at the empty windows for the last nine months I was there. Still, we managed to do $16,000 on one day before Christmas.

By then, the writing was on the wall, although I refused to see it. Barnes and Noble had opened their first store in Wheaton, just a few miles west.

For my last store, I transferred to Bloomington. I had attended ISU, so I knew the community. And there were no superstores. Yet.

Within the first year I transferred, Barnes and Noble announced plans to open a store. It opened by the time my first year anniversary in Bloomington rolled around. I held tight. I didn’t want to transfer to the superstore division. Besides, my store was being remodeled.

In May of 95, we packed most of the store up and moved it to a temporary store in the Bergner’s wing. The store was expanded and remodeled from floor to ceiling in the new purple and sea-foam green color scheme. It was such a beautiful store.

But by that time I was burning out. I had had enough. I wanted weekends off, like normal people. I refused to see the writing on the wall. I denied that there was a problem and kept holding onto the illusion that retail is permanent.

The end came on a bright October day with a surprise visit from my district manager. Unsubstantiated accusations were heaped on my head and unpleasant words were exchanged. He gave me a choice – an untenable set of working conditions or quit. I chose the latter. Suffice it to say the parting was not magnanimous. To punctuate my decision, I threw – really tossed – my store keys at him and told him to run the store through the Christmas season.

Seven years have passed and I found out that the store in Eastland Mall was to be closed. I was saddened but unsurprised. By now I beginning to let go of the myth that retail is permanent.

I wanted to make one last trip to the store. I planned on it. They were having a Going Out of Business sale and perhaps I could pick up some bargains. I had only been in the store once since that day in October. About a year later I stopped in while Sears installed new tires on my car. The last day of business was July 30.

I never made it. I was not working on July 30, but I was tired and needed a day just to vegetate.

I realized that I really didn’t want to see the store again. And I wouldn’t know anyone working there.

Still, I wondered about some sort of memorial. Some kind of testament to the people and hours, worry and sweat that had been invested there.

Today, I went to the Bloomington Public Library. There’s a book that I’ve wanted to read and we can’t check out any books from Borders because inventory is coming up. Our library is open on Sunday and I was surprised at the number of patrons on this beautiful, sunny afternoon.

In the middle of the aisle on the adult side, there it was in all its purple and sea-foam green glory. We called it the foursquare display. B. Dalton had obviously donated it to the library.

As I sat down at the computer to look up the book that I wanted, I spotted several other displays, some of them still empty as if they had just been moved into the library. They looked out of place in the main circulating room which dates from the mid-seventies. The purple and green shelving units clashed with the orange carpet and the original dark wood shelves. As I went to find my book, I spotted even more shelving from the store. The entire Young Adult section made use of the shelves from the store.

I smiled to myself. I smiled from ear-to-ear. Here was the memorial. These shelves were being put to good use. Even if the library decides to discard them in three years or open the branch that they’ve always talked about (providing they ever pass the referendum) they will have served a good purpose. They have provided more shelving for the library and they will remind everyone that there was once a B. Dalton store in Bloomington.

Swinging my book and with a smile still on my face, I stepped out into the bright sunshine. And I remembered that nothing is permanent. Not even in retail.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Semisonic, Closing Time

© 2004 Nick Archer