Reset

In April 2011, I vowed to write on my blog more. I didn’t. A year passed by. Nothing. I played on Foursquare and Twitter and Facebook and other social media spaces, but I ignored the place that has been my online home for nearly two decades.

Last year, I said, “I’m digging in for real this time.” I didn’t. I said, “This blog used to sing and it shall again.” It didn’t.

Last night I was asked, “Are you full of shit?”

It wasn’t a question about this blog, but it was a good question. I became defensive. But today I ask the same question of myself.

My answer is still no, but I need to prove it. Every single day.

Last year, I tore out a lot of content from other writers that you may have enjoyed seeing here at one point or another. Tip, Boo, Schmall, E., James, and other contributors. I strongly encouraged them to start up blogs of their own and to feed their muses. None of them did.

There’s virtually no barrier to managing your own affairs via Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous and a host of other sites, but if they don’t ever do it, you can find most of them over on the Facebook.

I didn’t have the time to manage anything other than what I produce myself. Overextending myself led to blog decay. It turns out that I didn’t even have the time to produce anything at all. Or rather I didn’t make the time. And here we are more than a year later, and now I’m writing again. Why?

In March 2012, I changed the direction of my life. Majorly. I’ve done it before – for career, for family, for personal gain, for restlessness. This time feels different.

Scoffers will scoff. Haters will hate. I get it. I may even deserve it. There are no guarantees in life. I have lived that statement, and I suspect that I always will. This is good. Life without surprises is a dull life indeed.

I feel less full of shit than ever before. But you don’t reach the age I am now without fighting a few bad habits. That said, I’m going to write more. That is something that I will not guarantee (but it will happen).

So let’s do this thing. My name is Greg Sax. I like to use G. Sax instead. I have my reasons. I was born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

I have lived in several of your favorite North American cities, but then I settled down back in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and I promote the hell out of it now. I may not always stay in Saint Paul, but it will always stay with me.

There are many other autobiographical things I would like to share, and this is where I will probably do it first.

I hope you enjoy getting to know me and reading my words.

Summertime Roll (2012 Edition)

by G. Sax

The first half of 2012 was about big changes; i.e., stressssss. I may have a permanent red mark below my right nostril because of a skin disorder that flared right up on to my face. Other bits and pieces of me showed signs of wear throughout the ordeals.

But no matter what hits a man in the guts and nuts, if he’s still breathing he should be capable of leaning forward into a brighter future.

Not everyone agrees. Take your medicine, they say. Hell, I often agree in action. I’m a soft-bellied realist-slash-pessimist-slash-fatalist more often than I would like to admit. But I catch my Blue Nile High moments and I linger over them with the fuzzy slipper kind of fuzzy. I feel warm or content or excited or goosebumped, and I think, damn, why can’t I always feel like this? Why can’t everyone always feel like this? It’s so gorgeous.

Isn’t it what we all really want deep down? Pleasure … Joy … Happiness … Ours. Earned. Felt. In the fingertips. Forcing our eyes closed. The essence of blues and jazz and soul and rock and hip-hop. Brushing across your skin without a breeze. Athletic achievement. The dunk, the touchdown, the home run, the goal, the finish line. Shouting aloud for everything ever done up to that point.

Whatever gets us there, we should get there. Or at least we should try to get there without stepping on others with metal-cleated golf shoes. Compete, no doubt. You’d better. But like Echo said, “Do It Clean.”

So I admit to enjoying myself sometimes though the world is as unsafe as I’ve ever seen it and my world is as storytold as ever it will be.

I admit that I like attending baseball games. I like drinking beers in Saint Paul bars. I like random trips to third-tier towns. I like exploration. I like to read. I like to taste new wines. I like finding the free or end-around way to do things. I like making people laugh. I like a good day’s work. I like to jog. I like to walk. I like to think about the past. I like to be in the present. I like to wonder about the future. I’m not so unlike you and you and you.

Am I?

Fostering Art

Anais Sax by Lisa Jaster

The Spring 2011 rendition of the Saint Paul Art Crawl is this weekend:

Friday, April 29, 6 to 10 p.m.; Saturday, April 30, noon to 8 p.m.; Sunday, May 1, noon to 5 p.m.

During the Spring 2010 Art Crawl, photographer and digital artist, Lisa Jaster, met a little girl named Anais Sax. The little girl asked the artist how she became an artist, and Lisa told her about learning at school and practicing and doing a lot of hard work and continuing to learn and practice and work at that which she loves.

The little girl asked, “Can I be an artist?”

The artist said, “Of course you can.”

The little girl replied, “If I make some art, can I put it in a studio like yours?”

To which the artist promised the little girl that if she made some art, she could not only put it in a studio, but she could put it in her studio during the Autumn 2010 rendition of the Saint Paul Art Crawl.

Months passed. Then one day in October, the father of the little girl contacted the artist. The artist was elated. She thought the little girl had forgotten. The father, ears battered for months, assured the artist that she had not.

The artist offered a huge space to the little girl for a public showing at lmj {originals} photography studio at 275 East 4th Street, Suite 110, Saint Paul, MN 55101 (inside the Northwestern Building). The father coined the term “Fostering Art,” the artist ran with it, and the little girl, Anais Sax, became a full-fledged artist.

The venture was quite successful. Anais supplied an energy that kept patrons in the studio. She was charming and in the mix. Eight-year-old girls can sometimes be shy. This was not an issue. “Which one is your favorite?” was a frequent conversation starter.

It worked so well, in fact, that Anais and Lisa are again partnering for the Spring 2011 Saint Paul Art Crawl. They will both be at the lmj {originals} photography studio on Friday and Saturday only.

Sunday is for appreciating the artwork of others.

If you think this would make a good story, please contact Greg Sax or Lisa Jaster. If you get a chance to meet Anais, you won’t be disappointed.

Anaïs Sax was named after author Anaïs Nin. The umlaut is not necessary for name reproduction. Anais is pronounced ah-nah-EES. She is still 8 years old (until May 9) and is a local artist. Her father is very proud of her.

Anything Else?

by G. Sax

I never meant for this to become a movie review site, so all the movie reviews are, alas, gone. What shall remain will be the “Best of” and “Worst of” collections from movie reviewer, James Evans.

Where did all the other writers go? E. is now in Florida and is co-owner of some horses. Tip produces content at his own personal blog. John Schmall lives in Texas with his wife. Avram lives in San Francisco, and I may help him produce a book one day. Boo works and drinks in Saint Paul. Sometimes he drinks with me.

I still write everyday, but much of it has been work-related. I wrote a lot for the Saint Paul Real Estate Blog over the last couple of years. I’ll grab at some of that content and bring it on over here in the coming weeks and months. I also have a bunch of content dating back to when I first started this blog pre-2000. I’ll be repurposing some of those oldies for depth and personal defamation.

I’m also easy to find on Facebook and Twitter.

I hope that James considers building his own website of movie reviews one day. He has literally 1,000 of them!

Real Estate

by G. Sax

It probably seems like I never write anymore. Maybe you don’t give a shit. But if you do, then I have an explanation for my whereabouts. I’ve been doing a lot more real estate writing lately. It’s kind of my job as Communications Manager at the Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS®, but I’ve also gotten involved with a separate real estate venture called 10K Research & Marketing.

10K is an attempt by my local job thing to become a national sensation. It’s been going well, so it’s been eating up a lot of my creative energy. And what I have left over, I give to the St. Paul Real Estate Blog in a weekly guest spot that appears every Wednesday.

In an attempt to win back your love, I’ll post some of the St. Paul articles here from time to time, and I’ll even do a few right now.

The Other Side of the River: This one’s about my morning with the mayor of Minneapolis and the many cool housing programs available in the Twin Cities.

The Transitive Property: This one’s about recent trips to the North Shore and Colorado Springs.

Agent and Buyer: This one’s about sleeplessness and how I came to write for the St. Paul Real Estate Blog. I subbed my dogs for the agent and buyer.

Irish Spring: This one’s about being in downtown St. Paul during St. Patrick’s Day.

Selby and Fairview: This one’s about my trip to the Blue Door Pub, Jucy Lucys, and the importance of a specific street corner to my life.

10 Memories That Make Me Smile

by G. Sax

One: Listening to my Sony Walkman cassette player while I delivered newspapers, particularly one sunny day on the front stairs of 1054 Norton Street while flipping to Side 2 of the Talking Heads’ Little Creatures.

Two: Crossing University Avenue at Victoria in St. Paul at the age of 6 when I missed my school bus home from Maxfield Elementary but missed it with some other kids who were older than me. Mind you, Maxfield was K–3. Whoever these mystery kids were, they were just babies themselves. But I still remember how exhilarating it was to cross that busy street without an adult present.

Three: Ditching Murray Jr. High on a snowy winter day with Cameron Blackmore. I rarely ditched school, but that day sticks out as a singularly great event of junior high. It was probably one of the only times I did anything alone with Cam. We went to the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul Campus Student Union and ate vending machine food. We walked all the way to Bandana Square, which was still a viable mall at the time. Then we went back to his house near Como Lake. I eventually made it the extra couple of miles home, all on foot. Cam’s dead now and has been since high school. But I have that day as the one memory of me and him when it was just me and him.

Four: Singing “It’s just another one of those boring days…Dragon Snake, Dragon Snake.” This lyric will make sense to only one person in my life. He is Jon Lewis, and I spent the most formative moments of my youth with this kid. And then 30 years later, I took his wife to the Minnesota State Fair and we judged horse-and-carriage shows rather well for a couple of admission fee cheats.

Five: Mr. Muller, my uncle-bad-touch 6th-grade teacher, took me and Anthony Dent and Cory Cox and Roger Lynch to the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Omni Theatre to see “Genesis” on a school night. We ate dinner at his house, and the entire proceedings felt semi-formal. The other three boys were black and I was still white, and I got the distinct feeling that this weird man took pity on us as “underclass” although I already knew that I possessed superior intellect, that Anthony and Roger had superior talent, and Cory had superior cuteness. We would all be fine in life. At least until death. Roger is gone as of 2003. I just found this out a few months back, and it really fucking bummed me out. Roger was my yang for a few years in elementary school, and I will always miss him, even if we hadn’t spoken in 20+ years and will never speak again.

Six: Watching “The Benny Hill Show” with my great-grandfather. Watching “The Love Boat” with my great-grandfather. Watching “Fantasy Island” with my great-grandfather. Listening to an Angels-Twins exhibition game on the radio with my great-grandfather. Playing frisbee on the side of the house on Charles Avenue with my great-grandfather. Putting random bits of metal in the vise in the workshop of the basement of my great-grandfather. Playing Rummy 500 in the kitchen of my great-grandfather. Being mesmerized by the compass bobbling around on the dash of the vehicle of my great-grandfather. Quietly watching the thermostat from the hide-a-bed in the living room that would inevitably be changed in the middle of the night to a different temperature by my great-grandfather.

Seven: Enjoying rainy, dreary days in Milwaukee. Bike rides and car drives with Hunter S. Sax to parks on the East Side, playgrounds on Lake Michigan, cheap food places on North Street and Oakland Avenue, zoos in Racine, and wherever else our adventures would take me and my 3-year-old son.

Eight: Working “The Night Shift” at the snow fort on Mackubin Street, which I romanticized as far more than the snow-plowed pile across from a second-tier frozen lake and third-tier apartment complex. Oh, the way the light hit the shining snow at 9:30 p.m. on those rare, quiet nights as I sat sentry prior to the inevitable vandalism.

Nine: Getting ready before my TRUE night shift at Clean Power, a janitorial service company in Madison, Wisconsin. I generally worked three jobs at a time throughout my college experience (in bare feet, uphill both ways!), and for a time I would pump myself up for the night job with one of two polar opposites: Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” or Public Enemy’s “Brothers Gonna Work It Out.” Either way, I’d play that shit loud and sing it louder, and then I’d vacuum and trash like a fucking demon.

Ten: Driving on I-95 in Baltimore while listening to a lyric in Q-Tip’s “Vivrant Thing” that mentions I-95. Feeling like I had it all. Feeling like I was starting a brand new day. Hearing Sting’s “Brand New Day” while driving the same stretch of I-95 and thinking Sting and I could be pals in optimism. Thinking I could write an award-winning screenplay at the Royal Farms on Key Hwy long before some chick named Diablo Cody did it in a Target in Crystal, MN.

I got memories, yo. They’re all up in here (pointing at left temple). And if I did my job, you love the way I wrote about them, even if you don’t know them. But maybe they pinch something similar in you and you stop and think and remember a piece of your life the way it should be remembered – not in crisis but in private, otherworldly elation.