doodledee

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]

In case you didn't notice, the Star Tribune's Vikings blog is kicking the ass of every other Vikes blog on the planet. And they're doing it the right way because they've been doing it the right way all along, they just didn't know what they had to do until this past season. Or maybe they just didn't understand the web? Not sure*.

The key to their success? They took their beat to the people. They've got more or less two full time dudes assigned to cover the Vikes. These guys live, eat, and breathe everything that the organization does. And it's not a hobby, it's their job. So there's coverage of everything. Press conferences, worthless interviews given at the combine (which they went to, of course), silly rumors, locker room comments, etc. Stuff that Garrick's Army of Independent Bloggers would never have the time, resources, or access to get at. And guess what: people are crazy about it. The season is long over, we have an awful team, free agency is flat lining, the draft is weeks and weeks away, and yet the VikesBlog rages on with tons of news and a super active readership. Because the beat goes on, and with it goes the blog.

This is exactly the type of thing that Big Media both can and should be doing more of. Lord knows the Strib is trying. I think they launched 14 new Twins blogs this spring or something. (Have fun with that, JoePa.) And I think they tried to bring the 'local news' stuff down to that level with buzz.mn, but I'm officially saying they missed the mark. I know there are beat writers all over the place, but for the most part the 'beat' stuff isn't what shows up on buzz. Where is my daily fix of capital news? Or city hall? Or parks? Or police? Or the airport? Or whatever. And it's not like I'm asking for all of that to be be crammed into whatever Buzz is supposed to be, but why aren't they somewhere? And don't tell me to read the paper, either, because when you do I'll point to the 80% of the VikesBlog that doesn't end up in print.

Access Vikings [strib]
Buzz.mn [buzz]

* - Yes, in fact, understanding must have been the issue. Otherwise they wouldn't have put so much energy into gardening and treehouse blogs and would have spent more time exposing beats to their readers. In other news, I think it's time for me to invent a new term for beat-based blog. Beblog, maybe? Works for me.

It's been all snow all the time around these parts. And I don't just mean the near non-stop shoveling of driveways and sidewalks and rooftops and side yard patios that appear to drain toward the house. Though there was plenty of that, too.

Thursday night - after shoveling, of course - I loaded my snowboard gear in the Jeep and started scheming how I could skip out of work to catch a few runs at Hyland on Friday. My plan was to get there when they opened at 10, and be back at my desk by 1. If anybody asked, I'd just say I had a meeting in a different building. A meeting that required me to wear a helmet. And snowpants. But then they cancelled school, and nobody came to work, and 4 bajillion snow starved kids had the same idea I did. Except for the skipping out of work part. So my solitary 10am powder runs were replaced by working until noon and fighting the crowds at the lifts. And by 'crowds' I mean 'lines there were maybe 10 people deep'. Still a great time. They don't groom at all - it's so small, why bother - and there were a couple of times I bailed into knee deep fluffy goodness. A total hoot.

Saturday we got up and went back down to Hyland as a family (2 for 1 adult lift tickets after March 1 ohyeah.) I camped in the chalet with juniorette while Libby and junior hit the slopes. More great times. Also this: the chef at the Hyland cafeteria is a genius. Made to order omelets, legitimately homemade soups, featured entrées (roasted red pepper ravioli, anyone?), all showing off his A game. And this was on a crazy busy Sunday morning. I mean sure, they sell 4000 corn dogs a day, so some context is in order, but still, kudos to that guy for stepping it up.

It ain't the mountains, but it's 10 minutes from the house, so it's somethin'.

Hyland Ski Area [hylandski]