doodledee

The MTV Video Music Award were on last night. It was the 20th anniversary of the show, and as someone who has probably seen like 18 of them, I think I can safely say that they get dumber every year. To be fair, I only saw like the last 2/3 of this year's show, and I heard the first third was the best part - *cough* Britney Spears *cough* - but I doubt it was good enough to prove me wrong.

For me, part of what makes the VMAs so stupid is that Mtv can't seem to decide if they should embrace the history of music/television or just focus on the current crop of stars. They have all these big time performances by [current] big time stars and big time awards given out by [current] big time hipster presenters. It's no doubt an incredible feat of brand management. It's manufactured to be so fresh, so now, so in the moment... so perfect for their uber picky teenage target demographic. Beyonce shakes her booty, 50 grabs his junk, and Mary Kate and Ashley smile from their VIP seats. Wow.

But then that whole 'history' thing walks out on stage and it starts go get strange. This year it happened when Duran Duran made an appearance. They were being presented with a 'surprise' lifetime achievement award or something. It was oddly uncomfortable. First, Kelly Osbourne has to gush about how much she just LOVES YOU GUYS. Then she has to basically beg the audience to stand up and applaud for them. News Flash: Nelly and Em don't give a shit about some stupid band from the 80's who STILL FEATHER THEIR HAIR. And neither do most of the other people watching at home.

Last year's powerfully lame mega highlight performance by Guns N Roses was the same way. It's arguably neat for us old doofs who grew up glued to Mtv - in that 'can't help but look at a traffic accident' kind of way - it just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of show. What's next, a Daryl Hall and John Oats reunion?

Hey, the Dead were on Mtv in '87. Wonder if Ja Rule would clap for a 45 minute Stephen > Eleven > Stephen?

I know I would.

John Currie, the new superintendent of the Rosemount / Apple Valley / Eagan school district, will be making $160k/year. It's a big district and it's probably a lot of work, so it doesn't seem like that crazy high of a salary to me.

According to this article in the Pioneer Press, not everyone thinks so:

Several in the audience even said the district, with its $200 million budget, wasn't paying Currie enough compared to private CEOs.

"It seems really low," said Michelle Snare, a Rosemount parent at the meeting. "

"I'm worried we're taking advantage of him," Snare said.

Whaaa?! I thought we were all supposed to be upset because private (and public) CEOs were all making way, way too much money. And now some people are trying to say that we're 'taking advantage' of people by not compensating them according to the same obscene CEO pay scales? Has the world gone mad?

• Bubble hasn't burst yet on CEO salaries despite the times
• CEO salaries, bonuses keep rising
• In the World of Huge CEO Salaries, Failure Doesn't Matter
• Moves afoot to curb CEO Salaries

Again I say, whaa?!

Libby and I had a baby doctor appointment this morning. The waiting room was already packed when we got there at 9:00, so I figured for sure it was going to be a huge wait. Last time we went we waited like 45 minutes. (Man I was pissed, but at least I made it through 22 of People's Top 25 Hottest Bachelors. Yummy!) Short story short, today we waited like 4 minutes and we were out of there in 20. Can't complain.

That's not the point, though. The point is that while we sat there, like 3-4 other people came in and *all* of them were late for their appointments. And not just a little late either, this one girl was like 20 minutes behind. What the hell? Just get in your car and get there on time. If you can't do that, call and reschedule. It ain't rocket surgery, honey.

That's when it hit me. Maybe I should stop blaming the clinic when they're running behind schedule. Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe it's idiot patients instead. Who knew?

Oh, and to the lady who chose to describe all her medical issues over her cellphone while the rest of us listened: thanks, and you're a doof.

One thing about the State Fair that I always get a kick out of is watching the people who sell knives, juicers, bowdazlers, and Kitchen Master 2000s work their magic with the crowd. They talk super fast, they call everybody 'friend' and they tell the worst jokes you've ever heard. ("Having friends over for dinner? Remember to take the chopping blade out of the bowl before serving. If you're having enemies over, hey, leave it in!")

Man that stuff sucks me in. Then again, it sucks in lots of people. The good demonstrators will maintain a crowd of 30+ people ALL THE TIME. And what's even more amazing, when the salesdude asks the spectators if they already own the thing he's selling, like half of the people standing there will put their hands in the air. You own it and you're watching a guy try to sell it to you?! You people are such doofs!

Wait a second... why is my hand in the air?!?! I'm such a doof!

Huna brought his new car over to the house yesterday. We took some pictures and then drove it over to Rivkin's house to show it to him. Man, it's smooth. And it corners slightly better than the Jeep.

Me likey.

The other night while I was painting the nursery, I listened to an MPR rebroadcast of some talk that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich had given. (In case you don't know which one Kucinich is, he's the older white guy who always wears a suit.) It was interesting in a wacko progressive kind of way, and I was digging parts of his message and laughing off others. Hey, I thought, this guy is kind of fun. He's gonna shake some stuff up and get some new ideas out there.

Then I saw him on the Daily Show the other night. What a frickin' stiff. It's like he was under orders to only produce one word answers that were evasive and non-committal. And it's not like he has to be funny or anything, just be a little easy going, a little relaxed, a little less old-white-dude-in-a-suit-y.

So the interview bombed, but the host dude Jon Stewart did ask one neat question. It was along the lines of "does your message make you a long shot, or does you being a long shot make your message?" I forget exactly how it went, but you get the idea. It gets to the fact that once a candidate becomes 'viable' or a 'contender', their message tends to become more centrist in an attempt to appeal to the middle majority.

I suppose it's kind of a mean question to ask a presidential candidate - "why are you losing so bad?" - but I dug it.

Team Yep won another softball championship last night. We beat the Humpday Hackers 13-3, but the game felt much closer than that.

As a bonus, Dinkytown managed to make it through the night riot free.

Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under Clinton I, gave a sweet commentary on NPR's Marketplace the other day. In it, he argued for a federal law requiring that every company in America give their employees [at least] 4 weeks of paid vacation a year.

[read it here] [listen to it here]

Hell yeah, I say. We all work too hard. And too much. And it's time that somebody forced us to stop acting like idiots and take more vacation. Again, I ask, why should Europeans get to have all the fun?

When I see a car that's riding low in the back driving down the street, more often than not I wonder if there's a body in the trunk. I think it's a Goodfellas thing.

On the other hand, we did used to put Mikey in the trunk of KC's car for some reason that I no longer remember - but I'm thinking probably had to do with saving a few bucks - so maybe it's related to that.

The last couple of days have been hot. Stinkin' freakin' hot. I think maybe even the hottest days of the year. I may have even sweated a little while mowing our crispy brown lawn this afternoon. Wee.

One thing I get a hoot out of is how when it's super hot out, all anyone can talk about is how hot it is. At least here in Minnesota we do - maybe it's different in other parts of the country. Maybe in other parts of the country when it gets super hot out, people just get grumpy and stop talking. Or maybe they're able to laugh it off and go to awesome municipal waterparks that were [wisely] built in anticipation of stinkin' freakin' hot summer weather. Man, I love waterparks.

Talking about talking about how hot it is out always reminds me of when I worked at Bachman's in high school. That was some serious heat. The greenhouses would easily get to like 130 degrees with 95% humidity on a day like today. I would sweat through my $14 uniform in like 10 minutes. Good thing I never washed it.

Being so hot - and being Minnesota - customers were constantly commenting about the mini-rainforest we worked in. "Wow, it's really hot in here," they'd say. It was amusing enough that my coworker Ryan and I decided to keep track of how many people would talk about the heat when they walked up to the counter. (Final result: everyone did.)

After a couple weeks of keeping score, we switched tactics and began trying to beat the customer to the topic. Our idea was that if we brought up the heat first, they'd have to come up with something else to make small talk about, and we would get a little variety in our day. It quickly became our little shtick to greet the customers at the door with a smile and a "hot enough for ya?" After a couple more weeks, that evolved into "hotnuffoya?" and after a couple more weeks of that, it evolved into us acting like idiots and startling the customers with loud, unintelligible greetings that only we could understand. Yucks all around.

Later that same summer, my boss stole my swiss army knife. He was such a doof.

The latest trend in liberal circles seems to be making huge lists of all the lies and broken promises that Bush has made over the last couple of years. The lefty websites and forums have been full of them, so it's not really surprising to see them start showing up in more 'mainstream' locations.

Steve 'Look at Me!' Perry did it in this City Pages article from a week or so ago. It was bundled with this less-listlike piece, creating something like 20+ pages of angst. Wow. I think I stopped after 11.

Then last Thursday Al Gore whipped an activist crowd at NYU into a near frenzy with his own version that contained a lot of same stuff that Perry had written [transcript here, video here]. I forget, is Gore running for president or not?

It's all the same information over and over again. Websites, newspapers, television, everywhere. You read Gore's speech, for example, and he talks about this quote from George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize winner for Economics:

This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy. What we have here is a form of looting."

Surprise! This same quote showed up in Bob Herbert's editorial in today's Times. And I bet that's just the beginning. Quick! Make haste! Copy and paste!

The repetitiveness bugs me. Sure, it's mostly the result of our hyperconnected environment where ideas and news travel super freakin' fast - a concept that I normally dig - but it still bugs me.

And the monotone criticism bugs me, too. I guess I don't expect anything more than from the Pages, but from some of these other clowns, I want to hear an occasional 'I told you so' or a 'here's what I would have done'.

A letter in today's Strib seems to agree:

Reading the text of the speech former Vice President Al Gore delivered last week at New York University (Star Tribune, Aug. 12), it made me wonder just one thing: What is the solution? I guess it is easier to point fingers, complain and criticize then it is to offer a solution.

Exactly. I'm all for pointing out the lies - they make me want to spit - but I can't stand it when smartypantsknowitalls go off on something like this without proposing an alternative solution. Hell, they've got hindsight for chrissakes, just make something up that would have *obviously* worked and say you would have done that. It seems so easy, but nobody ever does it.

Come on, if 'the bad guys' can tell us how to think, why can't you?

Observations and more.

• Colin got a new tattoo. I would have thought getting a tattoo on your shin would hurt like hell. Turns out I was right.
• I brought one of Libby's knitting needles into the office the other day. I've been using it like a conductor's baton, directing the other people in the office. It's been a hoot watching people pretend to ignore you. Some people don't even make eye-contact as you wave your hands and tell them to 'pick it up a little'. I'm sure they're fun people, though.
• We suffered our first lawn bowling loss tonight. We got spanked. Then we got some dinner and my bootleg kicked in and it didn't really seem to matter.
• The cookies that Cub is selling for a dime this week are pretty darn good. I only bought the ones that have the little fake M&Ms in them, but they were soft and chewy and delicious. More, please.

That's it.

The Strib ran a bizarrely unbalanced cover story the other day about how teachers go out and spend their own money on school supplies. It followed a couple of teachers to Target and watched them fill their carts with notebooks and stuff for their students. It also talked about how there's a $250 annual deduction for out-of-pocket expenses and how [apparently] many teachers use that and more.

I'm not really sure what the 'agenda' of the story was, or even if it had one. I kind of got the feeling it was trying to make you feel like the public education system was getting hosed and that if it weren't for teachers, the kids wouldn't have any crayons. I wonder if that's true?

The thing that frustrates me so much about our school system is that it's so big and costs so much and is so bureaucratic that nobody - and I really mean nobody - understand where the money goes. People - like me - point their finger at crazy expensive school construction and outrageous sports and administration expenses and all that and suddenly it seems pretty easy to ask why there's a bitchin' new parking lot at the high school when kids don't even have notebooks. But that's obviously not the whole story, right? It can't be.

Look, I'm no public policy genius, but if there's one thing I know it's that people will give 'til it hurts to buy kids paper and pencils and paste and dull scissors and rulers and all that other crap that's 'important' for kids to have. Many of us non-teachers (!) already go to Target every year to buy bags of school supplies to donate. Everybody wants to see the kids get what they need to be successful. What we don't want is wasteful BS spending and poor management. Is that so much to ask?

This issue drove Jesse nuts. It also made him look like a heartless prick. Maybe I should just stay quiet.

In case you missed the stork, the Conway baby has [finally] arrived. Everyone is healthy and happy. Yip yip.

Libby and I spent the last 2 days attending an All Weekend Baby Boot Camp Spectacular that the hospital we're delivering at puts on. It was long and I had to behave the whole time, but I felt like I got some good information out of it.

The class had like 20 couples in it, so it ended up with a pretty good variety of people. It had your basic 'I'm totally freaking out' people, your 'whatever' people, your 'all I wanna know is how many meds I'm gonna get and when I'm gonna get them' people, your 'I have an agenda to push' people, and so on and so forth. There were a ton of questions that started: "A friend of mine told me that [insert crazy ass story here]." That was fun. There was also this one dude who - after spending 20 minutes going over it in excruciating detail - still didn't understand what an epidural was. (Note to self: sign up for bozo-free class next time.)

The class included quite a bit of yoga derived breathing stuff. I thought it was neat, but a lot of the people rolled their eyes and refused to play along. (Those would be the 'whatever' people. Whatever.) I did think it was odd that the instructors never actually referred to it as 'yoga' per se, instead calling it 'relaxation breathing' or something. I assume this is because calling it 'yoga' might excite some people who aren't really comfortable with whacked out alternative therapies. Their loss, I guess.

At the end of the class, an egomaniac pediatrician came in and talked to the class. She started off by bitching about how we were having class on a weekend. (Sorry to take up 45 minutes of your time on a Sunday, ma'am, I hope you found a shady spot for your 740.) On the good side, she was Straight Talk Express to the core, which I can appreciate. No tiptoeing, no tulips.

In conclusion, my favorite part was the free cookies, but I also liked it when the old lady teacher went on about how dudes are embarrassed to buy feminine hygiene products for their wives. It was like she was doing a bit or something. Watch out, Seinfeld.

How about those old dudes who come to the office with their briefcases and - best of all - their newspapers? WTF? Can you really get away with sitting at your desk and reading the newspaper? Don't people say anything?

It's called the web, dude, look into it.

Floors being refinished at our house. Stop.

Staying at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Stop.

Old school living. Stop. No cable. Stop. No internet. Stop. Indoor plumbing, though. Stop.

Slowly going crazy. Stop.

No Conway baby yet. Stop.

I went through a phase a couple summers ago where I ate a *ton* of caesar salad. Like at least a couple times a week, usually when Libby had something going on that night and I just needed a quick dinner. It worked out great. For a while, I even went all purist and made my own dressing and stuff. The Surreal Gourmet's version was one of my favorites.

Now I've become jaded and cynical about the whole caesar salad thing. It seems like every fast food place on earth is obsessed with marketing anything that even resembles one. Everyone - and I mean *everyone* - seems to have something on their menu that comes with some sort of overdressed romaine and a few croutons and usually some form of chicken. Some try and differentiate themselves by throwing on a handful of blackbeans and calling it a 'Southwestern Caesar Salad' or something. Whoa. Slow down.

I think it officially became silly when Taco Bell rolled out their caesar salad burrito. That's just stupid. How much longer can it be until Papa Johns launches their Chicken Caesar Salad pizza? Not long enough, I say.

Your mission: take back the caesar salad for the common man.

That new Mel Gibson movie about Jesus is starting to make some serious waves. People are mostly worked up because they think the movie will be anti-Semitic, but some are just worried about it being too violent or factually inaccurate. Also, I guess Jesus wears Nike sandals for the whole movie. What a sellout.

The Huna and I have talked about protesting movies before, mostly because we figured it'd be an easy way to get on TV. After all, if the media will set-up over at the neighborhood 20-plex just to interview parents protesting the newest Harry Potter movie - because, apparently, reading is bad for kids - then they'd be all over a couple of loudmouthed doofs like us. Baby.takeCandy().

We talked about protesting that Jackass movie. It's rated 'R', so we figured it'd be fun to stand outside and try and card all the minors that were being [illegally] allowed to see it. Guaranteed that'd make for awesome television.

There was only one problem. In the name of fairness and accuracy I decided to preview the movie before we protested. And it totally frickin' ruled. Depriving a 17-year-old kid the opportunity to see Johnny Knoxville's rocket skates no longer felt like a fake cause I wanted to be a part of. Also, we were too lazy to get anything organized. *Sigh* Maybe next time.

Now this new Jesus movie is coming out and people are seriously going to protest it. I think I'll skip this one, too. I thought about going meta and protesting the protesters, but then I realized that this is probably one of those 'real' issues that I don't want be seen on TV taking *any* side on.

Again, maybe next time.

In case you haven't been following the diplomatic game of chess going on between Liberia, the United Nations and the US, here's the background:

• Like maybe 6 years ago a big civil war in Liberia ended. The country had elections and this dude Charles Taylor won. He was the former leader of one of the gangs from the civil war.
• After the election, President Taylor ordered the Liberian army to lay some beat downs on his old rivals from the war days. I think the idea here was that it would be harder for his opponents to run against him for political office if they were dead. That's just a guess, though.
• People got pissed. They formed up some new alliances and started fighting back against the government. Civil war ensued. Again.
• Today, the rebel alliance is pretty strong. Like way stronger than they were on Hoth. They've been kickin' some serious ass and now control most of the country. It's total chaos and it ain't pretty.
• Everyone is begging the US to get involved. Bush sent a couple of boatloads of Marines to float around off the coast, but they haven't landed yet. The US's official position is that it's a Liberian problem and that we'll help but only if we're not the only ones helping. Oh, and Taylor has to go.

We look pretty bad in the international community for not helping, and I guess I can see why what with innocent people being killed and all that. And even though I agree we've got to do something, I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea of sending our Marines in to settle things down.

Why, you ask? Easy. Most of the fighters of this war are, in fact, kids with guns. After years and years of fighting, there just aren't that many 'army age' Liberian guys left. And while I'm no expert, I don't think it's considered good policy for the US Marines to drive up and start unloading on a bunch of teenagers. At least it sounds bad to me.

When and if we do go ashore, it won't be fun for anyone.