doodledee

The Strib ran a story on Sunday that beat the crap out of Block E. It was a fun read, but only because it's full of that "I told you so" type of smirking that tends to come with this type of article, not because it offered insights into how to fix the problem.

I've personally seen most of the Block E transformation. I've eaten at the Hard Rock and played video games at that GameWorks place. I've also stood there - like *everyone* else - and talked about how an entertainment destination that's long on Starbucks and Applebee's and short on anything that really makes it a 'destination' is bound to fail. Dots.connect and all that, this one isn't hard.

Beyond the sucky tenants, there's plenty of other stuff to bitch about. The foot traffic patterns suck, the overall layout sucks, the bus stop on Hennepin sucks, the Starbucks sucks, blah blah blah. But again, it all seems so obvious, and that's the part I wish somebody would go nutso about.

I want to blame that lead developer guy, Dan McCaffery. He seems like a total kook. Now that people are being critical of the place, he's getting all defensive and paranoid:

"I'm thrilled with the performance because I don't believe my job was made particularly easy by the perceptions of the downtown," McCaffery said.

And talking about some of his tenants:

Assessing the tenants, consultant McComb said GameWorks could be considered "a score."

"Hard Rock is choosy, though it covers a lot of markets. A bookstore is an obvious tenant."

The Snyders doesn't seem to fit the original plan, but McCaffery called it "a coup."

Shut up doof. It's a Snyders. You've taken $40M in taxpayer money and built an Applebee's and a Snyders. And some parking. Enjoy being thrilled with that, I guess.

Oh wait, there's that fancy hotel, too, don't forget that.

"We needed something with some kick-ass power to keep the energy level up for the elitists. That's my nod to them," McCaffery said.

Kick ass power? Who talks like that?

But now I'm even more confused. Is it supposed to be an entertainment destination for all Twin Cities residents or is it a kick ass powerful playhouse for the $350/night elitist crowd? Or is it supposed to be both? Or neither?

The point is that anyone should been able to predict that if Block E turned out like this that it wasn't going to be a success. So who approved the plans? And is the finished product different than what the original plan called for? (Hint: yes.) And what's being done to bridge the gaps? (Hint: nothing.) And so on.

But I've kind of stopped caring for a while. It's not the park I wanted, so I just get to be grumpy instead. Rock on.

I've been enjoying reading some of the reactions to today's Supreme Court ruling on the legality of gay sex. I think issues like this really bring out the worst in people. The quotes out there, like this one from a group named the Traditional Values Coalition, are a hoot.

"Today's Supreme Court decision overturning a Texas law against homosexual sodomy is a defeat for public morality and America's families," said Traditional Values Coalition Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon today. "This ill-conceived decision will have serious repercussions upon public health and welfare in Texas and other states that still criminalize sodomy.

Wow, those TVC guys sounds like fun! Let's check out their website. Oh look, they've taken the time to document Homosexual Urban Legends. How nice. Finally I can learn the truth! And then there's this gem of a 'fact based report' [sic] entitled: Homosexual Sex = Death from HIV Infection. Aww man, I hate when titles give away the ending.

Aren't hate groups fun!

But wait there's more!

A group called Focus on the Family chimed in with this statement:

"If the people have no right to regulate sexuality than ultimately the institution of marriage is in peril, and with it, the welfare of the coming generations of children." - Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family.

I think the logic here is that now that gay sex is legal, everyone will decide to become gay and when that happens there won't be any more children because we'll all be too busy having gay sex to procreate. Huh. That's a new one.

The part I find it most disturbing is how the media gives groups like the TVC such a high profile voice after big decisions like this one. Why them and not the Skinheads? Skinheads hate gay people too, right? Is it because the name 'Traditional Values Coalition' is more palatable than 'Skinheads'? Whatever... it's stupid.

Big extremes in customer service over the last few days. Most of it, unfortunately, of the crappy variety.

It started last Saturday afternoon when we headed out to test drive a couple 'family cars' that somehow managed to squeak into Libby's 'maybe' column. The whole experience was a joke. At the first place, Lupient Pontiac, we checked out a Pontiac Vibe ("Pontiacs rule!" - Gerry). The sales guy who helped us knew nothing about the car. Literally. He tried to fool us by talking about what color it was and pointing at the sticker and reading stuff off of it out loud, but I wasn't going for it. When he brought one around for us to test drive, he got out and announced, "We can't go very far, it's almost out of gas." I had to laugh out loud. Uberdoof.

It didn't get any better at the next dealer, either. We experienced the same dumb looks - still free! - and startlingly doof-like behavior. Who are these people? Don't they work on commission? They must, because they never forget to give you their card and remind you to call if you have any questions. Yeah, I'll be sure to call if I need you to EXPLAIN WHAT 'RED' LOOKS LIKE.

But wait, it gets better.

The air conditioner we normally use in our bedroom decided start only blowing hot air this year. After some investigation, I figured out it was more cost effective to just go buy a new one than try and get the broken one fixed. So on Monday, I headed over to Sears at the Eden Prairie mall to pick one up. Yuck.

After finding my way to the AC department, I looked around for like 10 minutes and settled on the super cheap one. Concerned that it was a piece of junk, I went over to the checkout stand and started talking to one of the Sears ladies about their return policy. That's when supersalesdoof guy showed up and took over. (Here's hoping she wasn't working on commission.)

Not knowing the dude was a doof, I asked him what he thought of the $88 unit.

"Well, it's a loss leader," he says.

"Yeah, I figured. So is it a piece of junk?"

"It's a loss leader."

"Yeah, you said that..." [doof alarm starting to sound]

Concerned about the potential extra electrical expense of running a budget AC, I asked about the power consumption.

"How many watts does it use?"

"Watts don't matter, only BTUs make a difference."

"No, I'm talking about power consumption, not cooling ability." [doof alarm in full effect]

"I know," he says [knowingly], "that's not watts, that's BTUs."

It became obvious that he didn't really know, he was just straight-up lying. And nothing makes me madder than that. Just give me the cheapie AC and get the hell out of my way, doof. I have no time for lying liars and the lies they tell.

Whew.

But it's not all bad. This morning I had an appointment with a plumber to come over and talk about redoing a couple of pipes in our house. [WaterPressure.suck()] He showed up on time, worked efficiently, had great attention to detail, and - most importantly - he clearly knew his stuff. 30 minutes later I was fighting the urge to hire the guy without even getting another bid. He single-handedly restored my faith in quality customer service.

Those other doofs owe this dude. Big time.

Snoop Dogg has a new show over on the Mtv. He's also in a couple of new movies and I think he even still raps or something. Whatever, he's way over exposed.

How do I know he's overexposed? Because in the last few weeks *everyone* - and I mean everyone - has been going around saying 'izzle this and 'izzle that. Its become so, so lame. And it so needs to stop.

There's a new DVD technology that's gonna be rolled out later this summer called EZ-D. EZ-D discs will be cheaper than conventional DVDs but will only be able to be played for 48 hours after they are opened. I guess the atmosphere chemically reacts with the disc causing it to slowly change color. After a couple of days, it's changed enough that it's unreadable.

From a business perspective, the technology is very similar to the infamous Divx format that sucked so hard a few years back. The difference is that Divx required a crazy special player that had to have a phone line plugged into it so it could call The Man and let Him know you were watching one of His movies. Another problem was that there were only like 8 movies available on Divx. Go figure, it didn't last.

This time around, Buena Vista Home Entertainment has stepped up to be the pilot studio for the first round of EZ-Ds to be released. This likely means that those of us who are lucky enough to be in one of the initial test markets will be able to purchase a temporarily viewable copy of The Hot Chick. Man, that'll be a sweet 48 hours.

On one hand I'm all for the EZ-D. It seems like every time we rent a movie, one of us ends up racing to the video store at 9:55 the next night, trying to avoid the late fee. That sucks. It'd be way better if we could just throw it away.

But on the other hand, everyone throwing their movies away creates a lot of waste. (See: AOL) And what's worse, if this thing takes off, the technology could easily start being misapplied. After all, why not make *all* DVDs into EZ-Ds? Or better yet, how about all digital media everywhere? Enjoy your new CD that you get to listen to for 2 days. Oh, and you better hurry up and install that software, too.

And, lest we forget, Buena Vista is owned by Disney. That means that your kids will probably be getting Disney DVDs in their Happy Meals. Ah boo.

So for now I guess I'm cynically optimistic.

Last time we were in seeing the baby doctor I took some audio of the baby's heartbeat. It was kind of a crazy visit because the power went out in the whole building and the doctors and nurses were working by candlelight and stuff. At first it was just stupid, but then they moved us to an exam room with a window and turned out to be actually kind of neat.

Anyway, have a listen.

The other night after our lawn bowling game ended, the referee girl came over and talked to us for a minute or two. We were the last game of the night and she was trying to figure out the new standings for our division.

Before the game, we were tied at 2-0 with the team from TCF Bank. For reasons that I assumed were purely alphabetical, our team was listed above TCF up on the big standings board.

This week, both the TCF team and our team won, improving to 3-0. (Note: we made a historic comeback against some accountants from Ernst & Young.) I figured we'd remain atop the leader board for another week, but the referee explained that the tiebreaker isn't actually your team name, rather, it's based on the total number of points you've beaten your opponents by over the whole season.

"Oh", I say, "you just add up the deltas from week to week, then?"

"Uhh," she says, "isn't Delta an airline?"

"Geek!" says JoePa.

After she took off, we had a debate about the use of 'delta' in everyday conversation. I say it's perfectly acceptable. Everyone else said I was a doof. Funny how that works.

I have this Deadhead buddy named Gordon Sharpless who lives in Cambodia and does some freelance writing and photography and stuff. He's neat in a "I picked up my life and moved to Cambodia and I'm never coming back" kind of way.

Gordon recently returned from a two week trip to Afghanistan. While he was there, he traveled around seeing for himself how things were going now that the Taliban have been sent packing.

He didn't have time to tour the whole country, but he did spend some quality time in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, two cities which continue to be hubs of US/UN activity. He also spent some time in Bamiyan, which is where those giant Buddhas stood before the Taliban blew them up. Jackasses.

Gordon wrote up his experiences on his website. There are some good pictures, too.

Check it out.

Am I the only dork on Earth that didn't know that Transformers hade made such a huge comeback? I guess you can buy them in stores again and - suprise! - they've got their own movies and TV shows. Rock on!

• Hasbro official site
• Uber geek transformer portal
• Optimus Prime - Man of the Century
• A page with huge graphics you can print out and put on tshirts*

But what about the Gobots? They ruled.

• Commodore 64 Gobots Game cheat codes
• Original Gobots for sale - still on the cards!
• Some dude's Gobots nostalgia page

Really, though, who can pick a favorite?

Ok, I can. Transformers did and always will kick all over Gobots.

* - wear at your own risk.

For some reason the debate around concealed handguns continues to rage even though it's already law.

First you've got the gun nuts. They're complaining about the signs springing up all over town that say things like 'This Establishment Does Not Allow Guns on its Premises' or 'Guns Are Not Allowed in this Facility' or - my favorite - 'Mama, Put My Guns in the Ground - I Can't Shoot Them Here'.

Maybe they've got a point. After all, why bother packing heat if you have to leave it under the front seat of your Camry? And what about the 1:10,000,000 case where you're in a bank and it gets robbed? Do you get to sue the bank because they didn't allow you pop a cap in the robber's ass? (In the name of self-defense, of course, because lest we forget, this law was first and foremost about Personal Protection, not about the right of an individual to carry a gun.)

No wait, they totally don't have a point. And what's more, all this 'what-if' crap from the pro-concealed carry camp drives me nutso. If you remember, one of their big arguments during the debate was that Minnesota was just a loser state and that all the other cool states had passed more liberal concealed carry laws years ago. You would think that at least one of the other 'enlightened' states would have figured out the answer to all the what-ifs and, if asked, that they'd be willing to share their experience and knowledge with us late adopters. Why reinvent the laser sight here, people? Ask for some help!

Then on the other side, you've got the anti-gun people. They're hanging those damn 'no guns' signs *everywhere*. It makes our town look stupid to walk down Nicollet Mall and see one in every window. Real classy. It kinda feels like Texas, only without all the executions.

I say that until somebody actually draws a gun in your place of business that you shouldn't be allowed to hang the sign. It's like a one strike and you're out type deal.

Which reminds me: I was 0-3 at softball tonight.

As I've been blabbering about, tonight was the night that Libby and I headed down to the Walker to help the sculpture garden celebrate its 15 year anniversary. Seeing as the sculpture garden is the only part of the Walker that I can at least kind of enjoy, I thought it might be fun to go down and check it out. Oh yeah, and Wilco was playing.

The weather was perfect - tons of sun and a nice cool breeze. The sell-out crowd showed up early and stayed late. Before the music, the garden itself was packed with people just hanging out, having picnics, and enjoying the atmosphere. Libby and I sat on a park bench and people watched. I noted that there were more exposed tattoos than you typically see at, say, the State Fair.

Wilco came out a little after 8 and put on a hell of a show. They haven't been touring in a while and were a little rough in spots, but I could care less. They were having fun and so was I.

One thing that struck me was that Tweedy left his winter coat on for the whole show. It was like 80 out and the dude is singing and playing guitar in jeans, 2 shirts, and a jacket. And he didn't really sweat. I think he's a robot.

On a parking note, parking sucked, but I still managed to find us a free spot. For those keeping score at home, that's $0 spent on concert parking this week.

On a willpower note, I resisted the siren song emanating from the corn dog booth. For those keeping score at home, that's $105.50 spent on junk food this week.

Tonight Molly and I made a last minute decision to head over to St. Paul to catch Beck playing at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium. He's back out on the road touring to support his most recent album Sea Change.

Sea Change is full of acoustic guitar, low mumbly singing, and a healthy dose of melancholy. As such, Beck's initial tour last fall was played solo, in front of well-behaved crowds sitting in fancy theaters. And yes, I'm still pissed I missed it when it came to town.

This time around, however, it's back to the basics. Beck and his band came out on stage, picked up their instruments, and exploded with a kaleidoscope of angst and funk. Less than a minute into the show, as I sat there watching Beck and the rest of the band posing down Charlie's Angles style, switching positions every few beats, pointing their guitars and drum machines at the sky, all I could think was "Beck is the coolest - and thinnest - guy I've ever seen."

And all it did was get better from there. Beat boxes, loud guitars, robot dancing, keyboards on wheels... you name it. He played many of his hits [Loser, Where it's At, etc], plenty of selections from his older albums [Novocaine, Beercan, Milk & Honey, etc], took some mellow breaks for the newer stuff [Lost Cause, Golden Age, etc], and even tossed in some wacky stuff, most memorably a main set ending cover of Nelly's "It's Gettin' Hot in Here". The show was straight ahead and it was fun.

At the end, Beck and the band came out for a second encore dressed in white jumpsuits and proceeded to rip through a ferocious Devil's Haircut. Hell yeah. That's what it's all about.

Every morning on my way in from the back parking lot, I walk over this bridge that crosses a little pond of water. Sometime early last week I noticed that there was this one turtle sunning himself on the bank on the pond when I walked past. "Neat," I thought, "a turtle getting a tan."

After a few days, a bunch of the turtle's buddies started showed up and tanning with him. One morning there must have been like 15 turtles lined up on the shore. "Wow!" I thought, "That's a lot of frickin' turtles!"

So I brought in my camera and took a picture. Unfortunately, today was a little overcast - read: not good turtle tanning weather - so there were only maybe 8 turtles hanging around. Plus, once you lean over the side of the bridge, some of the more modest turtles see that you're trying to take their picture and scamper back into the water. They do this much faster than you would think a turtle would be capable of scampering. Oh well, it's still neat.

By my calculations, somewhere around 2/3 of the population of Wisconsin will have monkeypox by the end of the day on Thursday. From there, it will only be a matter of hours before it jumps the border, most likely ruining what would have otherwise be a pretty nice weekend. Damn you monkeys and your stupid pox!

Strangely, it turns out that the people who caught monkeypox didn't actually catch it from monkeys. (Cheaters!) Instead, I guess most of the people got it from prairie dogs that they had purchased as pets. That's right: prairie dogs as pets.

Now don't get me wrong. I think those little prairie dogs are frickin' cute. You see them at the zoo when they're in that big concrete circle thing and you watch them dig and run around and stand there and look at you and all you can think is, "Man, they are so stinkin' frickin' cute!" Then I usually think, "Man, I want one of those as a pet!" NO WAIT, I TOTALLY DON'T.

Anyway, the real issue here isn't the wackos who want prairie dogs as pets, it's the fact that some disease you catch from prairie dogs is called monkeypox. Is this just yet another example of brilliant spin control from prairie dog special interest groups? Hardly. The truth is that prairie dogs aren't even the real culprits. They just picked it up while frolicking around the pet store with some of the other pets-to-be; this makes them innocent - and cute - bystanders.

Ah-ha! So it was monkeys! It all makes so much sense now. Remember back in the late 80's / early 90's when all those dorks wanted to have pet rhesus monkeys to ride around on their shoulders like some James Bond character or maybe that Ross dude from Friends? Well now that that fad has passed, pet stores are probably overrun with monkeys whose only form of entertainment is to put little saddles on the prairie dogs and ride them around the store, spreading their pox wherever they go. Mystery solved, monkeys it is.

Well no, not exactly. But close.

Instead of monkeys, I guess some sort of freakishly huge rat was the source of the pox. Even stranger, these giant rats were in the pet store because people actually like to keep them as pets! Holy stupid pet week. And it's not like the rats are even cute - they look exactly how you would expect a 10-pound rat to look. And maybe it's just me, but the idea of a 10-pound rat nibbling oyster crackers from my hand sounds... well... ewww.

The moral of the story is: don't hang out with monkeys from Wisconsin.

Whenever I see a scratch off lottery ticket on the ground, I always pick it up and check just to make sure that it isn't an accidentally discarded winner. So far my net earnings from this technique are $0, but I fully expect that'll change someday, so I keep picking them up despite Libby insisting that it's 'gross'.

On the same thread, this week's episode of This American Life had a dude who runs this magazine called Found. It was neat. Found is - go figure - a magazine that collects and publishes images of things people find. Things like letters, notes, signs, or what have you. The total lack of context leads to some crazy interpretations, some of which can be pretty damn funny. Browse around on the site for a while, there's some wild stuff.

No lottery tickets, though.

What a turbulent weekend of concerts.

On Saturday night, Libby and I headed over to the 400 bar to see the flops bring the acoustic noise. For some reason this show stayed under the radar, which translated into a nice small crowd instead of the usual butts-to-nuts scene. That was a treat, as was the music, which included a couple of new songs (3?) and a cover of The Chantels 'Maybe' that I'd never heard *anyone* do before. The remainder was the usual Matt Wilson / Trip Shakespeare cover-fest. All in all, plenty solid, though I sometimes wish they would stay with the uptempo stuff a little more.

Then tonight, we headed over to the hell hole that is River's Edge Amphitheater to see Jack Johnson and Ben Harper play. This one didn't go so well. The show was scheduled to start at 6. Because it was raining all day, instead of going over at 4 and tailgating or something, we tried to time it all out perfectly. My theory went like this: based on a lifetime of attending concerts and having never seen one start on time, I figured the no-name opener would start around 6:30. Figure they would play for 40 minutes, followed by a 20 minute set break. Then Ben Harper would come out and play for maybe 90 minutes. Finally, after another 20 minute setbreak, Jack Johnson would take the stage around 8:45 or so. Conclusion: if we show up at 7:30, we're golden.

Bzzzzz!

We left our place at 6. We got stuck in a nightmare of traffic as we got close to the venue, which - because we made such excellent time the rest of the way - maybe set us back 15 minutes. We park and start the wet-pasture death march to the gate, figuring at worst we missed the very beginning of Ben Harper's set.

On the way there, one of the doofs behind us calls his buddy on his cellphone. (His buddy is already inside.) "Where are you?" "What's it like in there?" "Holy shit, Jack is already done?!"

Hold up, what now?

At first I thought he was joking, so I asked just to be sure. Yep, Jack was already off the stage. Holy crap. It was only 7:40. I looked around at the [literally] hundreds and hundreds of other people walking with us and realized that we all just got crapped on. Time to think.

We head to the gate. I ask some chick what the deal is. She says that Jack is already done. She's pissed. She's been waiting for her friend since 6:30 and she had missed Jack's whole set. Damn. Sucks to be her.

There are still tons of people walking up. Some of them are pretty upset. I spotted several classic teenage girl breakdowns as they found out the status of the show. In fact, if I were to write a poem describing the scene, I think I'd call it 'Beers and Tears in Wisconsin'. It would most likely be A-B-A-B.

Oddly, even with the show 2/3 over, the line at the ticket tent was 20 deep. I quickly checked with Libby and we both agreed that it wasn't worth fighting the crowd just to see Ben Harper, so I scampered off holding our two tickets in the air. Here fishy, fishy, fishy.

Three minutes later I'd recovered my money and we were headed home - dumfounded and speechless. I've gone over the whole thing in my head a couple of times and it just doesn't make sense. Oh, well.

All I know is that Wilco's show this Friday is gonna kick hella-ass all over some stupid rainy concert in Wisconsin. Back in my old neighborhood, indeed.

There's this program named Aimster that was pretty popular a few years back or so. It allowed people using AOL's Instant Messenger service to share their files with their buddies on the AOL IM network. Big surprise, Aimster was mostly used to trade MP3's.

Aimster is still around, though now it's called Madster because AOL sued to force a name change. (The author claimed it was named after his daughter Aimee). And while with an estimated 2 million users it's still plenty popular, it's not nearly the dynamo that it was in its heyday. Part of that is probably the result of the growth of other filesharing applications and part of that is probably because Aimster was sued by the RIAA.

In a nutshell, the RIAA is arguing that the users of Aimster violated copyright laws when they shared/downloaded MP3s. Because Aimster facilitated the illegal transfer, they argue that Aimster is itself therefore inherently illegal.

Aimster's defense is built around the fact that it doesn't *have* to be used to trade illegal files; in theory it could be used to exchange all kinds of *legal* stuff. This argument is based on a Supreme Court ruling from the early 80's where Universal Studios sued Sony when VCRs first came out. Universal was saying that VCRs were illegal because they allowed people to copy copyrighted material. Sony won by arguing that that because a VCR could also be used to record TV shows to watch at another time - a process that was deemed legal - that VCRs themselves were not illegal.

Unfortunately, using the Sony defense seems a little weak in this case. Sony won their case because the 'legal' use of a VCR was far and away the most popular one. In Aimster's case, they haven't been able to provide proof of even a single 'legal' file being transferred. That's not to say it doesn't happen, obviously, they just don't have proof.

I'm all for programs like Aimster existing. In fact I think it's nearly critical that they be allowed to. I just don't like the way this case is shaping up.

The actual trial started today and the coverage is actually pretty good reading. Here's one particularly solid eyewitness report.

Rage on, rage on my brother.

We had a severe storm drill in the office today. I didn't notice because I had my headphones on and I didn't hear it. Fortunately, one of the Indian guys out here tapped me on the shoulder to let me know, thereby saving me from getting yelled at by our Floor Captain. I think I owe him my [virtual] life.

My cube is on the second floor, but the building I'm in is kind of like a walk out basement in that there are windows on one side, but it's like 50 feet underground on the other. Oddly, a 50 foot thick blanket of earth isn't enough of a comfort zone for GE, because they hustled our whole crew down to the exercise room in the next building over. It was, at best, controlled chaos.

When the drill ended - after like 5 minutes - this big voice boomed out over the building's public address system:

Attention employees: the drill is over; return immediately to your work areas.

As hundreds of us marched like cattle back to our little grey boxes, I was laughing on the outside, but I was crying a little bit on the inside, too.

Moo.

(There's probably a thoughtcrime joke in there somewhere, but I'm too busy enjoying these doubleplus good Famous Amos cookies to dig for it.)

The Edina Art Fair took over the 50th and France area last weekend. This year they shut down 50th for a block or two, turning it into a pedestrian mall type deal. I thought it worked out pretty well.

The last several years have been hard on the fair because of extra, extra crappy weather that drove both crowds and vendors away. Apparently it just isn't as much fun to look at pointillism prints of the Chicago skyline when you're getting rained on. Who knew?

This year, however, the weather was great. And the crowds were huge. And the art was exciting in some cases, banal in others, and the rest... well, the rest was either homemade soap or kettle corn.

Libby and I walked down early on Saturday morning. In a scene out of some long lost Twilight Zone episode, literally 80% of the people - us included - were carrying around $3 cups of coffee. By 11 am, many garbage cans were full to the top with starbucks and caribou cups. Oddly, I didn't see one littering the ground. Welcome to Edina.

On Sunday, I went back down and checked out the scene, this time with Jeannine. Near the end, I picked up neat watercolor that I had been hemming and hawing over. It's a print of pea pod that's open, showing the peas inside. I like it a lot. Not bad for $25.

I managed to resist the good luck monkeys. Only $3 for eternal monkey luck?! Sounds too good to be true - better move on.

I also got a kick out of the some of the foodstuffs available. First I had trouble figuring out the menu at the cheese curd booth. (What are my choices again?) Then I had trouble figuring out why the people selling kettle corn were dressed like amish folk. Is kettle corn really that big in the amish community? Who knew?

All in all, a pretty mint fair this year.

Eric Schlosser has a new book out. Called Reefer Madness, it explores the 'underground economy' in the United States from the perspective of marijuana, migrant workers, and hardcore pornography. This stands in contrast to his first book, Fast Food Nation, which seems much tamer as it talks about how a potato becomes a french fry.

Mr. Schlosser was in town last Friday doing a book reading over at Ruminator Books on the Macalester College campus. Being a fan, I went over to hear what he had to say. Being a cynic, I was giddy as can be.

It was a pretty full house. All the chairs were taken so some people had to stand or sit on the floor. Mr. Schlosser came out right on time and launched into what turned out to be about a 45 minute talk. He started by raging about the the misconception we have of the 'free market' and how the Pentagon used economic freedoms to [at least partially] justify the war in Iraq. That was fun. Then he moved into the marijuana portion of the program, describing several of those cases where some kid in Indiana gets busted with a joint and ends up being sentenced to 90 years without parole. That was also fun. Finally, before taking questions, he did a reading from the migrant worker portion of his book. Can't complain.

Overall I found his talk reasonably solid, but occasionally it was hard to track where he was going. Trying to find a common thread was difficult because his talking points at times seemed to contradict one another. At one point he would be arguing for a more 'free market' - one that allows us to buy and sell whatever we wanted - namely marijuana, but then he would turn around and argue that we need more government regulation and oversight in the market, including things like wage and benefit guarantees. Hmm... So we're supposed to subsidize hemp once we make it legal? Is that it?

The audience questions were a total hoot. One dude brought up the old marijuana v. the paper industry conspiracy theory - Schlosser shot it down; another went crazy talking about how 'all poor people smoke pot and drink a lot' - Schlosser looked uncomfortable; perhaps most bizarre, a classic liberal wacko raised her voice and called for a global minimum wage. I laughed out loud at that one.

Good times.