Monthly Archives: March 2007

What a day. It topped out at something like 81 degrees, which I think was a new record high for the state. That was unexpected.
It was a nice night for a run, and seeing as I’m currently between soccer seasons I was motivated enough to actually follow through on that instinct. And what the heck, maybe a scoot down to the grocery store, too. I know, it sounds like a lot of work, but the scenery makes it all worthwhile. What scenery you ask? Why, all those beautiful Christmas lights, of course!



Seriously, I’ll give you through the New Year. I’ll even tolerate a few stragglers until Valentine’s Day (assuming there’s snow on the ground). Then this year we got all that snow right around March 1st so I got out my scissors and started cutting some more slack. But come on. It’s 81 degrees out, people. It’s time to take them down.
(FD: I took these pictures – and more – over the course of probably 10 minutes zoooooming around on my scooter. There was basically one house on every block. And yes, I felt a little silly. And by silly, I mean creepy.)

A sampling of stuff I woulda shoulda coulda written about. Served all at once. Better put on a bib.

• We met some friends at Jun Bo last Sunday morning for a Dim Sum dumplinganza. I had only ever eaten at Jun Bo during the week and had concluded that the hype was somewhat hypier than deserved. Well Sunday mornings are a totally different story. Witness: a group of Chinese girls in fancy dresses with little white furry shawls greet you at the door and show you to your table. They seat you on the right side of the building, which is a massive banquet room packed with [no DEF] 800 other people scarfing down cart after cart after cart of pretty darn good Dim Sum. At that point the differences between the weekday lunch scene become too numerous to list. The food: I didn’t have the chicken feet, but I did put down about 25 dumplings wrapped with various wrappers and filled with various fillings. And probably 10 cups of tea. And a couple of sweet items. And a pound or so of stir fried pea leaves. And ribs. And a bunch more stuff. And it was all actually fantastic now that I think about. Go go go, 3 times I say go.
• You know you’re six or seven beats behind on the blogging when buzz.mn scoops you on the new Lake Harriet picnic pavilion thing. Ugh. It’s been on my “wtf is that going to be?” list ever since we went down there on of those really warm Sundays a few weeks ago to splash around in puddles and try to walk around by the Bandshell. I say ‘try’ because the park system doesn’t really shovel around by the bandshell too much, so unless you have a 4WD stroller with monster truck tires, you weren’t strollering anywhere that day. BTW, if you do have a 4WD stroller with monster truck tires please send me a few pics, because that sounds awesome.
• Gopher puck. Yankees on ice. Big 1 seed. NCAA Tournament bound. And you gotta like the effort against North Dakota in the WCHA Final Not Sure What This Tournament Really Means Five. I was up off the couch yelling and screaming when Wheeler dove and slapped that puck in just like every other Gopher rube. That said, I went to the semifinal game the night before when we played Wisconsin and let me just say this: we’re too fancy. And that probably stands for all definitions of the word ‘fancy’. And I don’t just mean our traditional afraid to hit style, I mean our obsession with making too many silly passes. How about some shots? Was I the only one who noticed the total shot count after a 53 second 5-on-3 against Wisconsin? Answer: zero. The only excuse I can think of is that we were trying to break the record for the most consecutive passes without a shot during a 5 on 3 in a semifinal tournament game. And hey, kudos on the effort, but fake stats don’t win championships, so let’s shoot the puck. And how about the next night in our [admittedly gutty] ND win? Can you spell 1 shot over 8 minutes of power plays? That’s not exactly “taking advantage of opportunities”. (We did deliver in the 9th and 10th minute of man advantage, which throws off a lot of stats, which is why I’m shedding light on it here. You’re welcome) Also this: Eric Johnson kinda looks like he’s checked out to me. Lots of gliding, not much striding. I suppose he’s maybe one of those super efficient, positionally brilliant all around players, but I’m not convinced he’s as fully involved as we need him to be. (Nostradoodle still predicts: “Gophs win it all, doy. Ditka”.)
• Twitter. I assume jejune.com was taken. I signed up a few months back when Rex wouldn’t shut up about it. (Still hasn’t.) I haven’t actually twitted yet. And now it’s full of twits. They’re too lazy (or boring) to blog, but overnight they’re all busting with cybercred because they twit. Burn. And how long until this thing gets overrun by bots? Nostradoodle predicts 3 months. Unless nobody is indexing it, in which case maybe we’re safe. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just changed a diaper and I need to inform the Twitterverse.
• Was Scooby Doo the original mash-up? Reminder: Don Knotts on a cartoon should count for something. No? How about Laugh Olympics? Some lunch conversations conclude: yes.

Checked out Badly Drawn Boy’s show at the Fine Line last night. I wore a stocking cap to the show. Because it’s winter and that’s what I do, I wear stocking caps. Well Damon (the Badly Drawn Boy) wears one, too. It’s kind of his thing. So the audience is full of dudes in stocking caps. I didn’t notice until a couple of songs in, but when I did it was kind of creepy. Like, here’s a room full of doofs in stocking caps, bobbing their heads to British acoustic pop and furiously taking mental notes so we can all run home and blog about what we thought of the show. Looking around that place, if the Fine Line had gone up ala Great White, all the authorities would have found the next morning would have been 50 pair of melted Buddy Holly glasses, piles of smoldering long sleeve/short sleeve tshirt combos, and 300 MPR membership cards. And probably more scooter keys than you’d expect. But I digress.
The show. The music was good. A nice long set. He played a lot of down tempo stuff. Real mellow and stuff. Then he’d toss out one of his more poppy songs, just to make sure nobody fell asleep. There were stretches that were arguably a little too saddo – here’s yet another song about a funeral, ugh – but If you ask me, it was just fine for a Sunday night. Not as much off ‘One Plus One’ as I would have liked, but I’m not going to complain.
I think BDB is pretty big in the UK and he seemed a little disoriented by the casual vibe of the crowd in Minneapolis. At one point he commented on the lack of huge applause after each song by saying “I’m not sure if you’re liking what we’re doing up here.” (He backpedaled quickly, saying we were a great crowd, which we were, but admittedly a casual one.) During one song he took the mic and wandered around on stage shaking people’s hands. I’m sure back in Manchester people go gaga over the opportunity to touch greatness, but last night it just came off kind of forced and a bit weird. By the end of the night he almost seemed kind of humbled. That or extra drunk, one of the two.
Official BDB Site [badlydrawnboy]