[MEDIA] St Paul Pioneer Press 11.12.03 JOE SOUCHERAY: Do we even want to know about mansion antics?

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/joe_soucheray/7238277.htm

Posted on Wed, Nov. 12, 2003   
 
JOE SOUCHERAY: Do we even want to know about mansion antics?

Pioneer Press Columnist

Just as I was opening the mail Tuesday morning, a woman came back to
get her coffee. They have me near the coffee machine. Out of the
envelope I was opening spilled a piece of pink feather boa, a couple
of buttons and a news release and this woman said, "I always knew.''

Funny, lady. But there I was with a piece of this wispy junk in my
hands.

The news release was an invitation to all "media jackals'' for today,
10 a.m. sharp, at the governor's mansion on Summit Avenue. I guess we
are supposed to assemble there to accommodate Dan Creed, former
Governor's Residence manager, who is releasing a book called "Governor
Ventura: The Body Exposed.''

In the teaser, the news release mentioned that "Minnesota deserves to
know the truth about what went on behind closed gates.''

You know, Dan, I'm not so sure.

I haven't been to the mansion officially since the day Rudy Perpich
invited us over to take us up to the attic and show us a leak in the
roof. Perpich, who had more creative humor in his little finger than
Ventura did over his entire mass, had theatrically attached a garden
hose to the ceiling of an old ballroom and left it dangling into a
bucket.

We were supposed to be ashamed of the home's condition, when all Rudy
was really doing was giving everybody the needle because he perceived
his wife, Lola, to have been wounded by Independent-Republican charges
that the first couple was living in lavish splendor.

Oh, Rudy was in top form that day, practically begging us to go back
to our newspapers and write that Rudy and Lola were living in a dump.

What Creed wants us to know I am almost afraid to ask. The telephone
number on the press release was for a publisher in Madison, Wis., but
no one answered the phone. I left a message. All I really remember —
it was so sophomorically tawdry that it wasn't worth remembering — is
that Creed was fired or the mansion was closed because Creed blew the
whistle on parties in the mansion that allegedly involved Ventura's
son. I don't know. Short of the kid burning the place down or bringing
in a house mover to steal it, I figured that anything that went on
with the kid was Ventura's problem, not mine.

I realize that Creed is just trying to make a buck and defend the
Loyal Staff, which is ceremoniously capitalized in all references.

But the idea that Ventura had a slobbering and infamously amorous
bulldog doesn't do much for me. And I can't imagine that I would be
surprised by anything revealed in what Creed calls celebrity dinner
dialogues.

It has always occurred to me that food is among the ways you could put
your finger on the large fellow's character. If you were on a desert
island with Ventura and there was one turkey leg, you weren't getting
any.

Soon after Ventura was elected, a guy who used to work for him on
radio went to visit him at the mansion. This was in the small window
of opportunity before Ventura decided that all outsiders were jackals
who needed to be squashed under the off-road tires of a Lincoln
Navigator. OK, the guy goes and gets clearance to go downstairs and
say hello to his old boss.

Ventura was watching "Beverly Hills Cop'' on TV and eating his mansion
dinner off a TV tray. Still undestroyed on the tray was dessert,
possibly a cherry tart. Maybe Creed would know. In any event
Turnbuckle's former radio producer was a noted chowhound. He stood
there with his kids and his wife, thinking that maybe the gov would
offer them a taste of the dessert.

Nope. The governor dug in.

"This is pretty good,'' the gov said. Then he pointed his fork at the
TV and guffawed at the exploits of Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley.