doodledee

That new Michael Moore movie is out and it's breaking records and for some reason everyone is surprised. Well I'm not. And I'm also not a filmmaker. But I'm still fairly confident that if I made a super controversial movie about a topic that people are already nutso worked up about and then I had a public fight with Disney about distributing it and then I received a suffocating amount of coverage from every major media outlet in the country and oh, before I forget, I also win the top award at Cannes, well in that case I'm pretty sure my movie would also be popular. Duh.

Seriously - duh. The only people who didn't think this movie would be a smash are the people who are convinced that pro-Bush forces are trying to 'censor' it. And - go figure - they're also the same people who spent last weekend waiting in huge lines to be the first to see it. Gotta get there before the government shuts down the theater, natch.

I think the whole thing is a scam by Moore. He went through the whole fake-censorship thing with his last book, too. Ended up finding some other group to publish his book and - surprise! - it was a huge hit. He ends up a working class hero who stood-up to The Man. Who knows if any of it is even real? My hunch is that it's not. When the secret revenue sharing agreement between Moore and Disney surfaces, don't be surprised.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Sets Documentary Record [myway]

And in the end it came down to two nights of dancing on a hill in southeastern Wisconsin and wishing it all wasn't happening so fast.

Good times were had by all.

6/25/2004 - Alpine Valley, WI [phish]
6/26/2004 - Alpine Valley, WI [phish]

Since the day we came back from vacation I've been feeling... uhh... a little bit under the weather. I've had like a head cold or something. I think it started as an earache from getting my body plugged full of water while body surfing in the ocean, but now it's rolled all over to my sinuses and my throat and stuff. Until this morning it hadn't been bad enough to justify taking a day off from work to recover or anything, but when I woke today I knew I wasn't going anywhere. For a few minutes I was actually convinced I would never be able to swallow again. Freaky. Then my fever kicked back in and I think I passed out or something. Nice.

I eventually drug myself downstairs to the couch. I was pretty sure I wanted to go to the doctor, but seeing as normally when you go in with a sore throat they just say gargle with salt water and keep an eye on it, I wanted to be double dog sure it was going to be worth the trip. "Hey," I thought, "I'll call that nurse line my over priced insurance company advertises."

After 45 MINUTES ON HOLD, I got tired of waiting so I hung up and sat there and whimpered softly to myself. I hope the asshats at Medica heard me and felt bad. 45 minute hold times? Are you effing kidding me? Remind me again how much my premiums went up last year? Mustcontrolfistofdeath.

I eventually just gave up and went in to the urgent care over at Parc Nicollet. The place is a total dump, but it's so convenient I can't resist going there. After another 80 MINUTES of waiting - during which time I no lie saw a 2-year-old standing on top of the fish tank in the waiting area - I was ushered back to the exam rooms. Three minutes later I was ushered out, scripty in hand.

An afternoon of fluids and broth and pills and I'm already feeling much better. Oh, and I watched that dude who's kicking ass on Jeopardy. He rules.

Sore Throat [mayoclinic]
What is a record jackpot, Alex? [sfgate]

The other day Dash listed his favorite places in town to get Pho. I normally trust Dash to be tuned in on the local eats scene, but as someone who has eaten a *ton* of pho in his lifetime I feel qualified to say that he is high on crack if he thinks that Pho 79 is better than Pho Tau Bay. Unless it's a Monday and the Bay is closed, I suppose. In that case it's perfectly acceptable to drive 5 blocks north to sit in uncomfortable chairs and eat slightly less good soup at 79.

Doof.

Someday I'll go to Vietnam and eat myself silly. Someday.

To Pho or not to Pho [areyousane]

That new C2 coke is out. It's got half the carbs, half the calories and twice the hype of regular Coke. I guess it's made with some sort of sugar substitute - Splenda, maybe? - and here's the crazy part: it's sold in 8 or 18 packs. At first I thought it must have been packs of those little bottles or something, but now I see that it's regular old cans. 8 packs of cans? Did I miss something? I thought the idea was that it was so good for you that you could drink twice as much. Why sell it in smaller packages?

Target features the 8 packs on the back page of their ad this week. Three packs for $8 or something. That's 24 cans for $8, which is more than twice what a case of regular pop costs (on sale, sure, but pop always is). Does a low-carb diet decrease your ability to do math or something? Are people really gonna pay $8 for a case of pop? Huh.

I'll be interested to see if the price of C2 eventually goes down as production increases or if 'regular' pop prices will gradually go up as a result of the newly discovered collective stupidity. That assumes C2 lasts long enough to have an impact, which I'm not sure it will.

And Juettner, before you freak out, I'm not complaining about the price of C2, I'm just commenting on it. I will *totally* sell my jet ski to pay for fake diet pop.

Coke C2 [cokec2]
stop with the whining… [inhale]

I bought a thing of peaches the other day from the neighborhood farm stand thing that sets up in the parking lot of the video store every year at about this time. The peaches are from Georgia and are so ripe and juicy and make such a mess that I just go outside and eat them on the front step like a pig instead of trying to be all dainty by eating them indoors like a civilized person.

I wear a bib in either case, obviously.

Last Friday I cut out of work early and ran over to the record store to pick-up the new Phish album. On the way there I heard the new single on the radio. "Huh, it's all poppy and stuff," I thought. "And why does Trey forget to solo?" Whatever, I'll obviously buy it anyway. Bound to be something good on it.

When I got to the store I noticed The Owls newest (and only) disc was also featured on the new release rack. "At last," I thought, "my White Whale." See, a couple of months back I had run all over town trying to find a copy of it. Nobody could keep it in stock. WTF was that about? Some no-name local mellow pop band puts out a 20 minute EP and it sells like it's some badass new Luda joint? Holla!

Anyway, I had forgotten all about it until I saw it sitting there, so I grabbed a copy along with the Phish and then dug around for 20 more minutes looking for a 3rd disc because the Fetus gives you 10% off if you buy three discs at once. Fortunately my budget got the better of me - *cough* new Wilco on Tuesday, save your money *cough* - and I left with only the two.

The point of all of this is to say that the Owls disc is good and totally worth finding and that the new Phish does indeed have some great stuff on it but I wouldn't say it's their best. Your mileage may vary.

Phish - Undermind [amazon]
The Owls [theowls]

Good times were had by all.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore [nps]
How Barrier Islands Work [howstuffworks]
Body Surfing Safety Tips Video [hoag] [qt]

• Yip yip, JoePa and Anne got a new house. They don't move in for a while, but he sent me some pictures that he was going to post on his own site, but seeing as it's taken him 7 months just to get the logo done, he was okay with me stealing his thunder and sharing them here. Kudos on the logo, though, dude.
• The MTV movie awards show was on tonight and the theme was so dark and scary that it kind of bothered me to watch and I turned it off after 15 minutes. Also, once I heard that freaked-out MTV censors had edited out Shady's butt flashing, I really had no interest. Here's hoping next year they go back to the fun-loving, finger-waving style of yesteryear. Seriously, WTF was all the blood and eyeballs and stuff about? Gross.
• The new Rolling Stone features the '50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock & Roll'. This is seriously like the 6th 'list' issue this year. ATTENTION MORON EDITORIAL STAFF: WE ARE SICK OF YOUR STUIPID LISTS. Please try and control your compulsive list making behavior. And while we've got your attention, we are also sick of all the Avril Levine coverage. Do better, please.
• Beach trip on. Quiet here for a while. We out, we out, right.

Team Yep lost the softball league championship game tonight to our arch nemesis, the Humpday Douchebags. The game was never really close. We played crappy on offense, crappy on defense, and crappy on special teams. To top it off, JoePa brought some seriously swillish beer and I lost my glove and had to play with a loaner. When it rains, as they say.

Ah well, there's always next season. It starts next week. Gotta love that.

Northern Beer [gluek]
Softball swing mechanics [swingmechanics]

Sometimes when the rain is pouring and the lightning is flashing and the thunder is booming, the power will go out and the city will go dark and stuff that normally just pisses you off will instead maybe make you kind of sad.

Or at least that's how it works for me.

I hate talking about the weather but I love complaining about it. Lucky for you, today was a complaint-inducing day of epic proportions, so I feel I'm justified in venting a bit. Read on if you must. You have been warned.

Seriously, today was effing hot out. The NOAA weather station at the airport officially topped out at 140 degrees with 200 percent humidity and a noonday sun rating of "blistering". I sweated through my shoes before 10:30. Sid Hartman was being held on stand-by to haul shut-ins to the air-conditioned Metrodome if their personal A/C units failed. I scheduled a haircut for later this week.

And the worst part is that it just rolled in with no warning. Don't we have satellites anymore? Can't we just call South Dakota and ask what's on the way? Yesterday was PERFECT and now today is like Orlando gone berserk. We can't see that coming?

Four uninterrupted weeks of pounding rain that got so bad at one point I swear animals were lining up two by two in my front yard, followed by one glorious late spring day, and now today you wish you were dead. Go go Minnesota weather.

It's not all bad, though. I could probably stand to sweat off a few pounds before we hit the beach on vacay, anyway.

Mixed blessings are the best kind.

Twin Cities set temperature record of 95 [strib]

We took a break this afternoon from our Outdoor Chore Marathon and walked down to 50th and France to check out the annual Edina Art Fair. Libby had walked through most of it with Nick last Friday, but I still wanted to check it out and it was a nice day so we strollered-up the crew went down as a fam. And before you cringe, when we got there we parked the stroller and bjorned the kid. Crowds + strollers = insane Dave, and I'm not about to encourage others with my behavior. Except when it comes to eating churros, I guess. If my churro eating behavior encourages other people to eat churros, I'm totally cool with it.

While it's always worth the trip, I've decided that Edina's art fair is really more of an Arts and Crafts fair. There are just too many booths selling homemade soap and adirondack chairs and brightly painted mirrors and seasonal windsocks to really qualify to be an "art" fair. Not that it's bad or anything, just that it's true. I did notice a lot more wheelthrown stuff this year, though. Maybe it's making a comeback? Legwarmers and wheelthrown pottery: it's like they never left.

The food situation was pretty tame. It was the homestrech of the last day and most of the booths were in partial clean-up mode, so we just kinda sniffed around and talked about what could have been. I did beg a free cheese curd off the cheese curd people, though. The one they gave me was as big as my fist. How mint is that? It was hot and salty, but I managed to resist the $5 lemonade (in the souvenir cup) in favor of nursing my bottle of water from home. Easier than it sounds.

I ended up buying a watercolor from the same painter guy I bought one from last year. It's an avocado. (See pic, I like it.) The dude said he remembered me, which I didn't believe in the slightest until he whipped out a copy of the print I had purchased and said, "here's the one you bought." Holy wow memory.

Fair off.

Scorzelli Watercolor [mac]
How to Make Soap [waltonfeed]

Jeannine and I went over to the University of Minnesota Bookstore last night to see David Sedaris get his read on. He's in town promoting his newest book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. His talk consisted of reading one of the stories from the book, test-driving some material from his "diary", and engaging in a little Q&A with the audience. It was way better than it sounds.

The place was packed. We got there a smidge late and ended up standing way the hell back by the 35MM film display, where we perched hopelessly on tippy-toes in an effort to see the lectern. At least we did for the first 2 minutes. After that we - and the rest of the overflow crowd around us - gave up and just stood there listening, trying to avoid making eye contact with each other and bitching about how effing hot it was getting. Seriously, it was like pizza oven in there.

It actually worked out pretty mint being in the back, though. The other people around us were obviously fans - or they wouldn't be standing there sweating and staring at their shoes with their ears cocked to the PA speakers in the ceiling, hanging on every low-fidelity word that came out - but they weren't the kind of rabid fans who show up 2 hours early wearing NPR t-shirts and toting dog eared annotated copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day. The mood was mellow and happy. People sat on the floor next to the iPod Mini display laughing at jokes about the Upper East Side that I'm not sure any of us even really got. It was fun. Kinda like being on the lawn at Alpine only less steep and the laser show wasn't as good.

After the 'formal' portion of the program, a capital 'e' NOURMOUS line formed to get books signed. And lordy was it slow moving. I think in 10 minutes we maybe moved one shuffle. Screwing that, I made "friends" with a couple of the people around us and managed to convince one lady - Mary Beth the Family Lawyer - to hold our spot in line while we went downstairs to Goldy's Game Room and went bowling. I shot a 96, my best score ever. Jeannine shot like a 65. She now owes me a dip cone from the Dairy Queen.

We got back and found MB the FL almost at the front of the line. 50 minutes later we were at the table, taking pictures and signing books, and 2 minutes after that we were in the car heading home. Night.over().

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim [amazon]
Goldy's Game Room [umn]
Dairy Queen Location Finder [dairyqueen]

The NYT Magazine's cover story this week was one of those pseudo-scandalous ones where they try and scare all us parents with a bunch of crazy talk about all the sex that kids are having and how the whole dating scene is Way Different than it was when we were kids. My hunch is that they run features like this so they can print suggestive headlines over a photograph of a bunch of awkwardly pretty kids because - naturally - that crap tends to sell papers, but maybe their motives are purer than that, who knows.

Anyway, based on the article, things actually are totally different. See, back when I was a dork in high school, all us geeky teenagers spent our weekends staying up all night eating party pizzas and trying desperately to win Zelda before we had return it to the video store the next day. We hung-out in the basement of one of my buddies' house who had a foosball table and a bigscreen and an Apple ][ with a 300 baud modem we could use to dial-up into the local BBS and chat with other geeks in town. What more do you need?

After studying the article, it's become clear that what separated us from the Teenagers of Today is that now, out of nowhere, all the cute girls from school think that boys who chat on the internet are cool and/or hot. And what's more, they sometimes go online and chat amongst themselves and - brace yourself - SOMETIMES EVEN WITH BOYS. WTF is that about?! Girls on the internet? Talking to boys?! And not just geek boys but "popular" boys?! Is *everyone* online now or something?

Lies, I say, all lies!

Oh wait, maybe it's not all lies. It is, after all, based on exhaustive field research including but not limited to spending time at Hooters with a couple of teenagers, spending time in a basement with a couple of teenagers, and having a couple of phone conversations with Ahmad Chalabi. I think in total he talked with upwards of 15 actual teeangers. Those conclusions are rock frickin' solid like a frickin' solid rock. And if you can't see how to extrapolate that type of data to an entire generation of kids, well then you're just silly.

(I think that same logic may apply to the rest of the article, too.)

And for the record, I checked with some of girls who I chat with over instant messenger and none of them think I'm cool.

Friends, Friends With Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall [nyt]
Totino's Party Pizzas [pillsbury]

I'm in Kansas City for a couple of days. I've never been here before and it's much older and cooler to look at than I thought it would be. I'm staying downtown and my hotel is newer, but most of the other buildings around look like they're at least 100 years old. There are *tons* of railroad yards and old brick warehouse type places, most of which are either empty and near-blighted or else being renovated into 'urban lofts' and/or coffee shops. I did jog by a couple places that still appeared to house their original businesses, though. There was one that had a sign out front that said 'since 1883'. That's old.

Kansas City is home to Hallmark Greeting Cards and a monster Folgers Coffee roasting plant. It's also supposed to be the home of the best barbeque in the world, but the place we went to for dinner - Jack's Stack - was mediocre at best. This year's batch of Dave's Memorial Day Ribs (secret ingredient: love) kicked all over the stuff I ordered.

Home tomorrow for playoff softball. Go Yep.