- Who would have thought that by 2002 all Minnesotans would be without Pants?
by E. Al Pants
It all started with a misunderstanding. Two actually. I had this great idea for a play (I fancy myself a writer, can you tell?) and someone said �You should apply for a grant to do that at the Southern Theatre,� and I thought to myself, �Why do it in a southern theatre when I could do it here in Minneapolis? I guess they have more grants down south�� I was contemplating this when another friend said, �Man you haven�t lived until you�ve been to a Charlotte Church Concert!� Not understanding at the time that my friend was enamored of the tiny soprano, I thought I was being directed to a North Carolina house of worship for the latest in sacred concertos. I thought, �Wow, everyone�s really talking up the south� I though we were supposed to hate the south. Isn�t it just a bunch of humidity and trailer homes?�
Enlightened as I was, I couldn�t resist my morbid curiosity and jumped a flight to Charlotte (I had accrued enough frequent flier miles by using my credit card for online purchases of� historical videotapes) and imagined the humorous and scathing article I could write about the backward rebels with their funny accents and redneck ways. Well, at first I thought I�d gotten on the wrong plane, because I hopped into a cab and asked the driver to take me into town, and he took me to an actual city! No cluster of trailer homes, no endless yards with dismantled trucks and amateur stock cars, just a city that looked, pretty much exactly like Minneapolis. In fact, I was dropped off in front of the fricking Palomino, same sign with the anorexic horse and everything, it was like the Twilight Zone or something. I started walking around and realized it was indeed Charlotte, North Carolina, but apparently they had the same skills and technology that, up until now, were only thought to be held by the superior beings of Minnesota. Everything seemed to be the same. There was just one difference.
I wasn�t freezing my ass off.
Apparently, in Charlotte winter consists of one or two dustings of snow, which usually melt away either the same day, or if it�s a really bad winter, two days tops. The mercury plunges down into the TWENTIES (ha ha ha) for a few weeks and that�s it. My last winter in Minnesota, I�d say I got up early to scrape off my car and take the slow, icy crawl to work maybe thirty times, give or take. I�ll say twenty-five times. Each time, I�d say that added fifteen to thirty minutes to my commute. To be charitable, I�ll say twenty minutes. Multiplied by twenty-five, that�s an extra eight hours and twenty minutes a year, or a full-nights sleep that I spend scraping and chilling. No wonder Minnesotans are so cranky. Eight hours of scraping a damn car when the southerners get to sleep all that time, that�d make anyone crabby.
If I have an average lifespan of, say 78 years, adjusting that for beer and chocolate pie down to, say, sixty-five (the last two clouded in dementia and life support so they don�t count), that�s another 9 days, 17 hours and 20 minutes of free time that I can split between sleep, eating pie and watching historical videos. Or I could stay in Minnesota and scrape my car for a week and a half. Fuck that, I�m stayin�!
So moving down here, I�ve been able to make a few observations. The place is remarkably like Minneapolis, yet it seems to have many of the quirks that make Minnesotans think it�s a different planet. They just don�t seem like such extreme quirks when one takes into account that Minnesotans have pretty much the same quirks�
FUNNY ACCENT:
NC: Most people sound relatively normal, but many do have a southern accent and say �y�all.�
MN: Most people sound relatively normal, but many do have a scandanavian accent and say �yah�
FUNNY FOOD:
NC: Mostly the same, but less dairy, rice instead of potatoes and the addition of �grits.�
MN: Mostly the same, but less sausage, potatoes not rice, and let�s not talk about �lutefisk.�
FUNNY PASSTIME:
NC: Nascar
MN: Ice fishing
FUNNY ROADS:
NC: Road names change every few miles with no reason
MN: Pot holes the size of your car, road construction year round
FUNNY POLITICAL/SPORTS OBSESSIONS:
CHARLOTTE: Endless debate about a new downtown arena.
MINNEAPOLIS: Endless debate about a new downtown stadium.
FUNNY EXTREMES IN PRINT MEDIA:
CHARLOTTE: Soulless, commercial �Observer�; Rad, liberal �Creative Loafing�; no in-between
MINNEAPOLIS: Soulless, commercial �Strib�; Rad, liberal �City Pages�; no in-between
UNFUNNY POLITICAL SHAME:
NC: Jesse Helms
MN: Jesse Ventura
UNFUNNY INTERNET COLUMNIST:
NC: New Pants
MN: No Pants
- E.A.P.