Minnesota Day 1 (Kinda) - Court, Cousins, and Comedy
Today was my big day in court so I started the day with an early morning drive to the Rolette County Courthouse which was 45 minutes away from my Air BnB. The only place in Bottineau, the town I was starting off in, to get a coffee was a little stand in the local Walmart. I would have rather tried to find a local small business along the way, but I wanted to make as good an impression as I could on the judge so I figured being early and caffeinated would be better better than being late or sleepy.
I wanted to get there early so that I could potentially meet with and talk to the state’s attorney before proceedings began so I could get a better idea of what to expect and possibly plead my case a bit. My cousin and my arresting officer had both recommended doing this and asking about something called a deferred imposition which would allow my criminal record to be cleared after a certain amount of time if I kept myself on the straight and narrow. I can’t stress enough how lucky I was that so many people were willing to help me navigate the criminal justice system, because if you don’t do your research (or if simply nobody feels like taking the time to tell you) there’s so many small moments when you could really land yourself in more trouble than whatever crime (or suspected crime) you committed actually warrants.
While I was waiting for the state’s attorney to arrive, I heard a voice come around the corner asking the clerk “Where’s my little man?” It was my arresting officer, and unsurprisingly I was the little man. It was very sweet of her to come by and check in on me, and she offered to speak on my behalf if I she was able to and I needed her to. This is again a huge testament to her being a genuinely kind person, but also just how lucky I was that beyond my initial screw up everything else went just about as ideally as a situation like this can go, which is sadly so rarely the case. I also got to overhear her telling the clerk about one of her inmates in her very Fargo-esque accent that “Wouldn’t you know X decided it would be a good idea to cover himself in his own shit this morning. Now there’s a cute idea”. I didn’t want to seem anything less than contrite in front of all the court personnel but that little slice of delightfully absurd “Minnesota Nice” understatement really tested all of my capacities to not laugh out loud.
I did eventually get to talk to the state’s attorney, and he said that because it was a first offense and such a negligible amount of marijuana that he would push for the minimum sentence and a deferred imposition. I just had to make up mind whether I trusted him or if it would be worth pleading not guilty and potentially having to come back to North Dakota to slightly increase my odds of getting the smallest possible sentence and/or possibly none at all.
It was nerve-wracking, but the attorney came across as sincere so I rolled the dice. There was only one other case before mine, a young woman being charged with a DWI. She was understandably upset, and the judge was unhappy with her dressing really casually and being rude to him. I understand that from the judge’s perspective he felt like she wasn’t taking things as seriously as she should have been, but I also get being frustrated and maybe unable to afford a fancy outfit so I felt like while I could sort of see his point it just didn’t seem worth making a big deal out of. I think it’s just one more small way appearances really matter in a sometimes sort of scary way, and my arresting officer even texted me afterwards and said that after seeing the first girl she felt like me wearing a suit made a big difference on the impression I made. I’m know I benefitted from this, but being able to dress nicely shouldn’t impact your ability to be treated equally in court.
In the end my sentencing went extremely quickly. I plead guilty, the state’s attorney was true to his word and asked for the minimum sentencing and a deferred imposition. I had to pay a $250 fee for my misdemeanor, and if I went six months without committing any more crimes in North Dakota I would have my record cleared. The second part was going to be easy, but what happened with the fine was straight up silly. Since my fine was actually $50 less than my bail, they ended up mailing the remaining $50 back to my house in MA. I think it’s insane that I could theoretically be able to afford my “debt to society” but not my bail, and that $50 would have meant the difference between 4 nights in jail and driving free. It’s such a broken system.
With a big sigh of relief, I left the courthouse a free boy and started making my way the hell out of North Dakota. My cousins and my sister were all on their way to Minneapolis and their was a fun looking open mic tonight, so I just had to hit the road and pound out 480 miles (and 7 hours) of driving and the day would end a heck of a lot better than it began.
Two and a half hours into my drive, I stopped back in Grand Forks (still one of the best named towns I’ve encountered) for some non-Walmart coffee and lunch. I stopped at an unusually pretty coffeeshop on the University of North Dakota Campus called Archives Coffee House, which had really sleek glass windows on the outside and spacious, inviting wood paneling on the inside. It looked like a particularly great campus coffeeshop and an ideal study spot, and the coffee was good and strong to boot. It was great stop to recharge and shake off the lingering stress from appearing in court.
For lunch I stopped at the same sub-shop my friend had recommended earlier in the week, Grand Junction, for a mean turkey and cheese sub. It was delicious, but it might be scientifically impossible to take a picture of a turkey stop sub doesn’t look much less appealing than it tastes.
Fueled up and fed, I finished the next 4.5 hours of driving and made my to the great Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Pulling into the city proper, I hit a very convenient red light that allowed me to take a picture of the Minneapolis skyline to let my cousin’s know I was nearby and to send to my friends from college who had grown up in the area.
I met my cousins, John, Elizabeth, Kevin, and Katie, and my sister Lauren, at an awesome brewpub called The Freehouse. It was very trendy and bustling, but the food and house beers were all excellent so I could I understand why it was a popular spot. It also happened to be just across the street from the Acme Comedy Co. where tonight’s open mic was, so I said hi to my cousins, ordered my food, and quickly ran across the street to sign up on the list to hopefully get a good spot. When I got back, my food was waiting for me. I ordered a fancy double patty cheeseburger on their house parmesan encrusted thick cut sourdough with their City Girl Cold Press Stout to wash it down. It was bar-food perfection (if slightly on the pricier side if you were going for entrees over sandwiches), and what’s better than comfort food, good beer, and family to start off a stay in a new city. The food was fantastic, but seeing my cousins in person for the first time in over half a year was definitely the best part. My mom had warned them not to mention my arrest because she believed I was traumatized by it, so naturally the first thing everyone did was to start making fun of me for it. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
After dinner, we made our way over to the Acme Comedy Co. for me to perform and for everyone else to watch a fun night of amateur local comedy. Because the Acme is actually a really nice comedy club that tends to attract an audience even for the mic, they always get a ton of comics signing up and they cap the list at 25 so I was pretty lucky to make the cut.
While my cousins took up a good chunk of the audience, the rest of the crowd was impressively filled in with seemingly normal people for a Monday night open mic so there was a nice energy in the room and every comic I bumped into was really pleasant, welcoming, and happy to point me toward other mics for the week (though some would not be happening because the Fourth of July was this week). They also had a pretty solid bar with lots of fun options, so I got something called the Short Pants Shandy from Bauhaus Brew Labs. I got it mostly because I thought the name was funny, but it was actually a pretty refreshing lemonade-y summer beer.
In terms of comedy, I thought the mic was, on the whole, super strong. It can be a bit nerve-wracking bringing friends or family to a mic because by their nature you never know what you’re gonna get, but my cousins are the kinda people who would love it if everyone did great but might laugh even harder if people had done terribly. Fortunately they got the former, and I think it ended up making for pretty great night out.
There were a lot of really funny comics, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be a guy named Ahmed Khalaf who told a hilarious extended story about meeting a white guy with an unusually Black sounding voice who also happened to be wearing a necklace made out of raccoon bones. When Ahmed asked where he got the bones, the man simply giggled and said “I found it”. It was a crazy story on its own, but the addition of his body language and act-outs of the way the guy sounded and held his weird raccoon bones really took the bit to the next level and I think we were all dying.
Other Highlights:
Zach Ashton- Facebook reminds you that those rich kids you went to high school with are still doing well
Andy Wetzel- My sex life is like my diet. Mostly fats and vegetables
Leo Lindstrom - My girlfriend’s a princess. But I wanted to make her feel like a queen… so I killed her parents
Daina Ali- I got the worse cat call ever. “Hey girl I wanna inseminate you”
Kathleen O’Brien- I feel like I'm on a fat threshold like a dam about to break. And all I have is an eager beaver
Will Spotted Bear- Religion is like Pokemon. The people who are really into it make it wildly unattractive
Mike Lester -My grandpa drove into a house. They're pretty avoidable. Don't look anything like a road
Dan Mogol- You know how I know I'm too sweaty now? I ruined couches
Corey Adam- It's not racist if you know who Gallagher is, like you can’t claim Blackness and know about Gallagher
Ali Sultan- I got a new steps dad from Egypt. He said “I want you to know you are my son”. I said “I taught you how to speak English and how to ice skate, you're my son”. Step dads, they grow up to fast
Moe Yaqub- I want a passport so I can vote so you guys don't fuck it up again. In my culture swastikas mean purity, but white people took that shit the wrong way
Mike Earley- Do you remember those kids in elementary school who got nose bleeds all the time? Do you think any of them are still alive?
Linda Aaron- In order to be on jeopardy you have to take a knowledge test and pass and a personality test and fail. I saw an episode of that show That's So Raven, and she was dressed like a giant canary and I was like that's not so raven.
As for me, I went up pretty early but I did really well. Just about all my bits were landing, and I don’t think my cousins had heard some of the newer jokes so it was feeling really great, until I stupidly went over my time and they turned the mic off on me. It felt like a rookie mistake, but they gave me the light with 30 seconds to go when I’m used to the light meaning one minute. It’s my fault for not asking ahead of time, but on the plus side at least I got cut off in the middle of doing well as opposed to the worst case scenario of both bombing and overstaying your welcome. The other comics I talked to after were complimentary so hopefully people remembered the good stuff much more than my mistake.
After the mic, we had an unexpectedly entertaining Uber ride to the Air BnB we’d rented for our stay. Our driver was an incredibly sassy middle aged North African Muslim woman and she took a shine to us over the short drive and kept us in stitches with her stories. The big ones I remember were her talking about how people are always giving her crap for her hijab but she always gives it right back. I think she intended to say that some people were trying to tell her that she doesn’t need to cover her ass, but because English wasn’t her first language she ended up saying “They tell me I should open my butt. And I say yeah right, you can open your butt but I’m not interested!”. Intentional or not, it was an incredible turn of phrase. The other quote that made an impression on all of us, was that she was saying that skinny women don’t wear enough clothes when it’s cold out. She said, “You need to wear more clothes because you are a little bitch. And I can say that, because I am a big bitch!” . The drive was maybe 10 minutes but it was a jam packed 10 minutes.
We got to the AirBnB, which was just a house in the suburbs that we’d rented out. My cousins had been busy while they were waiting for me to show and up and had stocked up on booze and snacks. We were pretty tired but we were happy to all be together so we cracked open a bottle of wine and all gathered around to watch some silly tv (I think a new season of Nailed It had just been released) and it was a perfect way to the end night and a promising way to start the week.
Favorite Random Sightings: Clem the Fireworks King (I didn’t know anyone was really named Clem let alone a royal); Black Magic Tires (sounds spooky); Computers n Stuff (Vague but also to the point): a sign that said “Grinder Construction Ahead” (I don’t know what they were actually building but I suspect it probably didn’t have anything to do with the popular gay hook-up app); Christus Rex Church (I know it’s Latin but it sounds like a dinosaur); a sign that said “Think about Honking if you love conceptual art!”; a billboard that said “Don't drive pickled” (Seems like good advice); a billboard that proudly stated “We do cows!” (not specific enough); a real place called Middle Spunk Creek (yikes)
Regional Observations: After being in the much less densely populated Dakotas, I was pleasantly shocked by what a genuinely huge city Minneapolis was. It felt like being back in Boston again, with much better drivers
Albums Listened To: The ‘59 Sounds by the Gaslight Anthem (I think this is probably their best album); 99 Luftballoons by Nena (just the classic titular song); 99 Songs of the Revolution by Streetlight Manifesto (a fun covers album but I only have their version of Bad Religion’s Skyscraper); 1372 Overton Park by Lucero (a great country punk album from good gruff voiced boys from Memphis); 1958 Miles by Miles Davis (a fantastic compilation of Miles’ 1958 sextet capturing the transitional period where they go from bebop to the more modal Kind of Blue style )
Joke of the Day:
The wise old Mother Superior from county Tipperary was dying. The nuns gathered around her bed trying to make her comfortable. They gave her some warm milk to drink, but she refused it. Then one nun took the glass back to the kitchen. Remembering a bottle of Irish whiskey received as a gift the previous Christmas, she opened and poured a generous amount into the warm milk.
Back at Mother Superior's bed, she held the glass to her lips. Mother Superior drank a little, then a little more. Before they knew it, she had drunk the whole glass down to the last drop.
"Mother", the nuns pleaded, "Please give us some wisdom before you die". She raised herself up in bed with a pious look on her face and said, "Don't sell that cow".
Songs of the Day:
a classic mega-80s video
the horns are a lot of fun