doodledee

Tonight while cleaning-up some stuff in the basement, I finally decided to throw out the drinking water we purchased back at the turn of the millennium so that we'd be safe in the event that the world went bonk on January 1. In retrospect, I'm not sure that 2 gallons of Cub water would have gotten us very far, but hey, it was better than nothing.

I'm not too worried, though. I still have 75 pounds of dehydrated hash browns and a couple dozen number 10 cans of chocolate pudding in inventory, just in case the apocalypse is running late.

Ladies and Gentlemen, feast your eyes on this:

Saturday, October 23 @ First Avenue - Cake (new album in tow)
Monday, October 25 @ Orpheum - Wilco (see you in the 3rd row, bitches!)
Tuesday, October 26 @ First Avenue - Camper Van Beethoven (yep, they're back)

Now I'm not saying, I'm just saying, but that's 3 big shows in 4 big days and I've already been cleared for take-off. w00t!

Here's a list of some of the stuff I've been meaning to write about but haven't. It's not that I haven't wanted to, it's just that I've been too busy and/or not motivated enough to actually sit down type it out. The late summer does that to me sometimes. Lazy, hazy, and crazy.

Anyway, make up your own wacked-out commentary on the following subjects if you feel up to it. Huna will proof-read it for you.

• Target has started selling tons and tons of hipster t-shirts. They're all pre-distressed and trendily styled with silk-screened graphics of 80's cartoon characters and ironic sayings and stuff. I saw a brown one with the tootsie pop owl asking the 'how many licks?' question on the front. It kinda made me sad to see something as awesome as the tootsie pop owl on a t-shirt at Target. Is my own childhood being remarketed to me? Write the rest yourself.
• Earlier this summer there was this article in the SF Gate about how Best Buy wants to fire some of their customers. It turns out the ones they want to fire are the ones to cheat and steal from them (duh!) and the ones who only wait to buy stuff on sale (huh?). Then a couple weeks ago, the state of Ohio sued Best Buy for consumer fraud. Turns out Best Buy cheats and steals way more than their evil customers do. Now there's something to think about.
• My whole theory on how this election is going to come down to the people who hate Bush and the people who hate the people who hate Bush. I seriously think there's a significant segment of the voting public who would vote against Bush if it wasn't for all the in-your-face asinine behavior from the 'beat Bush at all costs crowd'. They're so self important and annoying and jesus why won't they just shut up and go away already. Anyway, I've been saying this for months now, just not here. In the meantime, unfortunately, a bunch of real writers came up with the same angle and actually got around to writing it down. If I wrote mine now, I'd be somewhat less of a visionary and somewhat more of a lamer who's behind the times. So that's out.
• The light rail parking situation. Park and riders are being treated like a hostile occupation force by the residents of South Minneapolis neighborhoods near the LRT stops. Bitchy signs are hung on trees, 'fake' parking tickets are put on windshields, and plenty of poorly reasoned arguments are being posted to internet mailing lists. There's plenty to be said about this one, but I'm already tired of it. Funny how that works.

Have fun with those, then.

Breaking news from the land of the Purple: the Vikes are for sale. Or maybe they're not. And maybe the new owner will be uber-rich local boy Glen Taylor or maybe it won't be. And maybe this means that the Vikes will get a new stadium or maybe it doesn't. And maybe this means that Sid will find something else to talk about for 5 minutes, but I doubt it.

Remind me again why any of this is news?

Oh, that's right, it's not. It's just that it's August and there really isn't much else to talk about.

Sid Hartman: Vikings won't lobby this year [strib]
Arizona group hasn't made offer for Vikings [strib]

• Park and ride and eat yourself sick at the Minnesota State Fair. Go see the sheep and the cows. Go get a footlong. Go see the quilts and canned veggies. Go get a corndog. Go see all the crap for sale under the grandstands. Go get 32oz of fresh cut fries. Go home knowing that you're one of the ones who "gets it". [Aug26 - Labor Day]
• Take the cover off the Italian Jeep you secretly keep in the garage and drive it over to the 2nd Annual Wheels of Italy All Italian Car and/or Motorcycle Show. Or better yet just go and gawk. Then relax with an espresso on a stick. [Aug 28]
• Get on the stand-by list for the biggest, baddest Stampin Up! Spectacular the world has ever seen. Didn't make the cut? Call Libby and she'll sell you stuff anyway. Tell her Dave sent you. I need the points.
• Sit at home and prepare yourself to be completely underwhelmed by the Mtv Video Music Awards. I know that's cheap and easy to say, but come on, they've just been brutal the last few years. [Aug 29]

I spent the last two days on the couch sick. It was horrible. I had a fever so high I started hallucinating. At least I think I was hallucinating, because I was watching the Olympics and I'm pretty sure I saw a female gymnast without glitter in her hair and that's just not possible.

Today I'm feeling better. I even went into work for a half a day. Rock on, work rules.

More grilled cheese, please.

Sometimes when I'm out on a walk and people have their big green tubs of recycling sitting out by the curb, I'll stop to rifle through their bags of discarded magazines and find an issue or two of whatever they tossed to take home and read. I find tons of great stuff that way, most of it from magazines that I'd never actually consider subscribing to.

Libby says it's 'gross'.

I say it's 'frugal'.

Team Yep Softball won the late summer co-rec B-league softball championship last night. KC hit a home run in the bottom of the 7th to win the game. It was tremendously exciting.

Struggling to get WebSphere Portal 5 to work with Jakarta Commons Logging? Hey! Me, too!

Well struggle no more, my brother.

Follow these instructions and find peace with yourself and with your portal. Then try and explain to me why people are so in love with little boxes on their screens.

Am I the only one who keeps gawking at all the empty seats at the Olympic venues in Greece? And not just at the lamer events, either, the 'good ones' are empty, too. Tonight NBC featured one of those monster huge swimming races and the blimp shot showed the stands were maybe 2/3 full. And it's been way, way worse than that at other events. On Saturday I saw some dudes in leotards walking around in an empty gymnasium looking confused. One of them got up on some rings and did some flips and stuff, but nobody clapped because a) nobody was there and b) gymnastics is dumb.

It looks bad on TV. Really bad. So bad that Bob Costas took the time to try and explain the empty seats to the home audience, presumably to reassure us that just because nobody was actually *at* the events, we should still stand-by for the next Budweiser commercial.

"Europeans don't like the same sports we Americans do," he said. "Plus, the games just started and the medal round stuff has been selling much better, so expect big crowds later on." Then he added the obligatory "And also of note is that August is traditionally the holiday month for Europeans."

Unfortunately he didn't go on to explain how, yes, most of Europe takes THE WHOLE EFFING MONTH OF AUGUST OFF.

Screw the empty seats, that's the real thinker.

So Far, Olympics Are a Box-Office Bust [strib]
Europe Ponders the Meaning of Life [nyt]

• Throw the kids in the mini-van and head down to the Target Center and park them in front of The Wiggles live action sing-along concert and fun fest. I have no idea what any of that means, but my buddies with older kids assure me that I will soon enough.
• Jump the next plane for Athens and try and score some cheap seats for a good event at The Summer Olympics. Or better yet, make like Dave and prepare to plant your butt on the couch for the next 16 days. Ok, that's probably not totally accurate because after the first week week or so I get tired of watching the ‘popular' events and spend the rest of the time bitching about how they don't show enough ping-pong and mountain biking.
• Put on your chain mail, grab your wizard hat and head down to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival for some serious cleavage watching. Sure, it's the same jokes and the same food and the same vendors and the same shows and the same everything else as it has been since the actual renaissance, but it's still fun to stop by every decade or so.
• Move Molly from one part of the Hopkins school district to a different part of the Hopkins school district. Hope that that t33kid shows up to help with the heavy lifting.
• Go buy an XM radio and sit in your car and listen to Phish's final shows live from Coventry. Buncha quitters.

• The Uptown Art Fair was last weekend. We went. It was fun. Very little pointillism. I heard a guy lean over to his wife and say "What the hell is that supposed to be?" I thought that pretty much summed it up.
• Verdict on the new Fiesta Potatoes at Taco Bell: hit or miss
• I think I'm gonna lose it if that Los Lonely Boys song gets even one more spin on the radio. I seriously heard it on 3 different stations at the same time today. Insane. ATTENTION MORON PROGRAM DIRECTORS: we get it, it's a crossover hit, please stop, thank you.
• The new asphalt MNDOT has been putting down on 394 is awesome. It's smooth and seamless and goes on and on and on. If he was cool, TPaw would order the freeway closed for a day so we could all rollerblade to work. A surface that perfect is wasted on cars.

At its meeting last week, the Edina City Council fell to its knees and begged for mercy as it formally struck down the 'official' 44th and France redevelopment plan. I didn't go to the meeting, but reports from Commie Mike were that it was packed to the rafters again. I'm a little baffled by that, as it was pretty obvious after the first meeting that the council was going to trash the plan, but hey, maybe the Cool Kids Club Neighborhood Steering Committee wanted to milk this easy win for all the outrage they could.

The council voted 5-0 to remove the plan. Councilman Mike Kelly - yes, that Mike Kelly - whimpered a bit about how taking away the plan could theoretically open the neighborhood up to even yuckier development, but his arguments fell on deaf ears and he eventually sided with the winning team. Pussy.

As a bonus, everyone's favorite local over-hyped blowhard libertarian blogger Bob Smith decided to attend the meeting. A Man of the People, he seems to view the neighborhood's action as just another glorious chapter in the book of revolution. Summary: government trying to force feed people "planned" development is total bullshit.

I'll leave aside the fact that he twists the nature of the 44&F plan to be more sinister than it really is and that his utopian organic vision for residential business development seems to fly in the face of zoning regulations that are maintained by, who's that?, oh yeah, the government, but otherwise he says some good stuff. Why should the government be planning a community for me? Why not let it grow all fun and funky on its own? Why favor some business over others? Genius!

I wonder if it's hard for him to side with us cake eaters? Methinks it probably is.

I also wonder if he rages as hard against those gross-out exurban planned communities that aren't planned by a government per se but are planned just the same in that they favor certain businesses, they plan what types of buildings people will build, etc. It's not for me, but it's clearly for somebody, and who's to say it's wrong?

So now we're left without a plan and I have mixed feelings about that. It's great that the eminent domain crap has been flushed, but what's next? Sure, the area is zoned, and some of it is even borderline historic, but if some clownshow developer waltzes in with a big fancy plan and a dumptruck full of cash, who knows what'll happen. We've got nothing to fall back on. Maybe next time the neighborhood rallies it won't be for a fake reason after all.

44th and France Avenue removed from Development District [mnsun]
Eminent domain abuse is on the run [noforce]
turns out you can fight city hall [doodledee]

Last Friday the search for the best Jucy Lucy in the Twin Cities took us to the Cardinal Tavern. Did we party with Viva and Jerry? You betcha! Did we find the best jucy in town? Read the review and find out.

Searching for the Best Jucy Lucy - Cardinal Tavern [doodledee]
Viva and Jerry's Country Music Videos [mtn]

I'm sitting here watching the new PBS special that documents Phish's IT festival from last year. It's different than I thought it would be. It's got lots more interviews and talking, it jumps around from the day sets to the night sets, songs are cut short, etc. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as now that I think about it it'd be stupid to just turn on the cameras and roll hours and hours of music, but that's kinda what I was expecting. Anyway, this 'docuconcert' stuff is a fun watch. A little heady at times, but fun never the less.

Check it out on rerun. If not for the awesome tower jam footage, then at least for the glow stick war. It's worth it.

And it all kinda makes me sad.

MollyWee and I are going to the Live Movie Theater Simulcast Event of the last big show next Sunday. Six or so hours crammed into a Brooklyn Center multiplex with all the other doofs who didn't pack up and move to Vermont for the weekend. Buckle up.

"IT": A Phish Concert Special [pbs] [local tpt info]

This afternoon Gov. Pawlenty announced that he had found the money needed to help jump-start the Northstar Rail line. That's right, he "found" it. Reports of where the money was "hiding" are unavailable at this time. If I had to guess, I'd say he found it in old pair of governor pants he hadn't worn in a while. Either that or he extorted it from the newly arrived Hmong refugees, who knows.

The money will be used to build a commuter rail line between downtown Minneapolis and places that seem way farther away than I'd ever want to live and still work in Minneapolis. It'll also open up yet another alternative means of transportation, which will keep people in that mindset, which will maybe, just maybe, result in somebody building a light rail real close to my house so I can use it. See you in 2025! All aboard!

My favorite part of the story is the part about how historically Pawlenty has hated the Northstar line but now that he's governor he's all over it. I know that's petty and obvious, but whatever, I get a kick out of it.

My other favorite part is how TPaw is just ramming the money through without legislative approval. My hunch is that he's not up to facing down the "homo marriage is first on our hit list" crowd that would show up at a special session, but I guess it also might just be laziness. Kosovo will do that to ya.

Oh, and my other favorite part is how DFL'er Phyllis "What's a Term Limit?" Kahn was cuffed and stuffed for stealing GOP literature off people's porches the other day. Sure, that has nothing to do with Northstar, but man, it's a classic.

Pawlenty finds money to kick start Northstar commuter line [strib]
Rep. Kahn accused of taking GOP fliers [strib]

The building I work in downtown is big and has a bunch of other businesses in it. One of them is a modeling agency. Their suite is on the main floor and is tastefully lit and heavily trimmed with cherry toned wood. Dozens of black and white headshots hang on the walls behind the receptionist, presumably current and former clients and not just teaser shots of "model quality" faces lacking any true relation to the agency. I guess I can't be sure what really goes on in there, as I've only ever gawked in through the glass doors, but it sure looks professional.

Every once in a while you'll see a couple kids - usually girls - coming or going from the place, but it's never very busy. The craziest it ever got was the time they held a fake fashion show one evening. It was just like Milan or Paris only instead of celebrities and journalists, the audience was full of moms and dads. Surreal, no?

The modeling agency is the target of many jokes at the office. The running one swings around the theory that every parent thinks their kid is cute/pretty/hot enough to be a model/actress - which is fine in and of itself - but becomes much funnier when the parents believe it so much that they take their kids in and pay thousands of dollars for reps and classes and teeth whitening and stuff. Well, funny and frequently kind of pathetic, I guess.

Today the Strib ran a feature that provided tons more ammunition. Great stuff.

To date, [mom] has spent $20,000 on [her daughter's] dream of becoming an actress.

Her expenses include $8,000 for a lifetime membership to John Robert Powers for classes and access to auditions with visiting casting directors, and $12,000 for a trip to New York City to attend a modeling convention.

Twenty thousand bucks for the chance to maybe, just maybe, appear in some local newspaper or television ad!? (The Twin Cities are a small market, and you're not going from Richfield to Revlon overnight, baby.) You can get a late model Saab with a trunk full of Swiss Cake Rolls for cheaper than that. And seriously, who wouldn't want that?

Although she said she wouldn't invest that kind of money again, [mom] says her 16-year-old daughter has benefited from the auditions and from some of her acting classes. "The problem is it's an industry where people are milking you for your dreams," she said. "It's so easy to go in and spend a lot of money because you think this will make my child famous."

How's that again? Is it your dream or her dream? Hence the theory, hence the easy target, hence the running joke, hence I just used hence 3 times in a single sentance and that is totally bitchin.

All this nonsense naturally goes out the window once Nick gets his pec implants. Game set match underwear model. You just wait.

Not Always a Pretty Business [strib]
When Did Skivvies Get Rated NC-17? [nyt]