The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

How it is that I...how is it...or, rather, why it is that I...that I seem to keep...or, really, that I do keep, that I keep ending up...that every single night I look at the clock, I look at the clock and it's two o'clock in the morning, it's three o'clock in the morning and I...I keep ending up at three o’clock in the morning, I keep ending up sitting here with...I don't know, I keep ending up sitting here with all this shit, surrounded by all this shit? Night after night I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here night after

This month marks the third anniversary of Yo Ivanhoe, and considering the similarly wasted years I spent shoveling words in a similar hole (Open All Night) at City Pages, I'm not much in the mood to celebrate five years of futility.

When I first started doing this nonsense I was nothing but a clueless conscript to an online enterprise that meant absolutely nothing to me. Blogging? Seriously, what the fuck?

Would you say?

I would say, yes.

Say what?

That is the question.

Yes, that's the question.

No, that is the question. No question mark.

What is the question?

Say what?

I said, "What is the question?"

And I said, "Say what?"

I heard you the first time, but I still haven't heard your answer: What is the question?

That was the question.

That?

Yes, that.

That?

Yes, goddamit, that is the question.

For many months, on her way to and from school each day, Gloria had paused at the pet shop window to gaze with a combination of adoration and desire at the pretty little accordion nestled there in wood shavings and newspaper confetti.

Each night at the dinner table she would beg her parents to let her have an accordion --and not just any accordion, but the one, lonely accordion in the pet shop window. How she longed to have that accordion in her arms, to have it for her very own.

It was Monday morning at Treasure Island casino near Red Wing, somewhere in the vicinity of 5:00 a.m. It was hard to say for certain; I didn’t have a watch, my cell phone was dead, and there were no clocks anywhere. I know the slow, grinding pace of late nights, though, can feel the hours turnover in my head, and in my skull it felt like 5:00 a.m.