Withering Glance gets a move on

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: I have been thinking about moving now for how many years?

RN: The first time I recall having this conversation, Meryl Streep was up to about eight or nine Oscar nominations. With "Into the Woods," she's now at 19. What's with the foot-dragging?

CP: Every time the urge to list hits me, it is counteracted by the prospect of dismantling my beautiful bookshelves, painstakingly installed a mere nine years ago. At which point I sit down with a beer and a new GQ. Time passes. Seasons come and go.

RN: Soon the day will come to pass when your nieces and nephews, still in their mourning togs, will be forced to play a spirited round of Keep-Toss-Recycle with your vast wig collection. Think of your family, Claude. If you love them, you'll move, if only to downsize.

CP: Easy for you to say, but if I'm in a shoe-box condo somewhere, paying exorbitant property taxes and a hefty association fee and gnashing my teeth about the clicketyclack noise from my upstairs neighbor, you will have to hear the bulk of the complaining.

RN: You, complain? Stop.

RN: Perhaps you could leave such matters to the much-vaunted Minneapolis park system. Tell you what. I'll come over and help you stage. What better way to reinvest the thousands of hours I've devoted to "Sell This House," "Designed to Sell" and "Get It Sold" than to help a friend in need?

CP: Since you have not changed your own address in 15 years, I often forget your near-obsession with this dusty corner of the reality TV wasteland. Have you looked deep within and asked why?

RN: Well, several years ago I sold my mother's Eagan townhouse. In a day. OK, the Realtor did the actually selling, but like a good gay son, I supervised the staging. Which is why I consider the wit and wisdom of the divine Sofie Allsopp, the tart-tongued minx of "The Unsell­ables," to be a public service.

CP: You pot up some geraniums on the front steps. Get a new throw pillow. Put out some colorful matching margarita glasses. What's the big deal?

RN: Oh, you neophyte. You'll become intimately familiar with the layout of the closest Home Depot/Lowe's/Menards outlets, and you'll have plenty of opportunity to improve your paintbrush skills. There are worse things.

RN: Wait, why don't we practice here at the office? After all, the paper is leaving its 95-year-old home in March, and headed to a slick downtown skyscraper.

CP: That makes me nervous. I was just starting to feel settled here.

RN: Start tossing. Those back issues of Variety aren't going to move themselves, mister.

CP: Look to others, not me, for newsroom pack rats. A few reporters here have not tossed out a newspaper since the Gorbachevs visited the Twin Cities.

E-mailwitheringglance@startribune.com