doodledee

Man, wasn't that a beautiful day on Friday out at Afton State Park? You remember - the one with the huge autumnal sun marching slowly across postcard perfect cerulean sky. The one where the wind blew briskly enough that you got to wear long sleeves and/or even a vest (!!) if you got there early enough. In a word: spectacular.

What's that? You don't remember? You were stuck in a cubefarm all day punching a keyboard for The Man? Oh, that sucks. Because seriously, dude, it was awesome. A nice hike, a nice picnic, another nice hike, some splashing and/or rock throwing into the river, and a hike back to the car; everything a fall day at a state park should be. And we were basically the only car in the parking lot. Not to nag, but where were you people?

Only bummer: it's still a couple of weeks until leaves hit their peak colors around here. But I'm not complaining.

Insider tip: 95 is [currently] under construction south of 94 @ 18. Ignore the detour signs go east on 18 then jog south.

Anyone ever do the backpack camping there? I walked thru a couple of sites and they looked pretty nice.

Afton State Park [mn dnr]
Afton State Park [wikipedia]

Round the horn we go.

• [music]: I heard that 'Hey-Ya' Outkast song on the radio on the way home tonight. The 'shake it like a polaroid picture' line has not aged well. I'm not saying it's "who let the dogs out" bad or anything, but it's maybe not as far away as I would have predicted back when it was fresh and cool. It was fresh and cool, right? Perhaps my hip-hop naivety is showing. Again. Oops.
• [book]: For those of you following along with my quest to find which kids books sound best when read aloud using the vocal stylings and mannerisms of David Sedaris, my current contender is Nugget and Darling. It's not quite perfect, but it's super close. It's also not a bad little book. Check it out.
• [tube]: How about '60 Minutes' last Sunday? My faketivo didn't get abused by late running football - meaning I got to see the whole thing for once - and all 3 stories were solid. Scott Pelley just hammering on Ahmadinejad, asking all the [obvious?] questions we home viewers were yelling at the screen. "But you're not answering the question, sir!". Good stuff. It almost made up for Katie Couric's humiliating kid-gloving of Christine Todd Whitman the week before. Almost. Because seriously, that may have been a low point for the franchise.

Is this the stuff that I should be posting on doodletwitter? I kinda think so, but I'm not sure they give you enough room in a message for this level of genius. I'm thinking I'd have trouble with the confinement - I need to breathe, I need to stretch. "Thinking about breathing and stretching". "Fearful of confinement." Maybe those'd be good tweets? I'm so confused. Must be the 14 bottles of game fuel I drank today.

Wow.

Just wow.

Saturday was one of those days where the weather climbs up on a chair with a megaphone and makes the following announcement: "Attention Apple Lovers: There will never be a better day than today to go pick apples. I'm serious. Check out my blue skies and lack of wind and my nice warm temperatures. And don't forget the honeycrisps are ripe now, too. So go pick apples. That is all." And really, who am I to disagree with the weather?

For those of you still debating about which orchard you should go to, allow me to introduce: Fall Harvest Orchard. And yes, we've done the Minnetonka Orchards routine and the Apple Jacks routine and the Krumbees routine and they're all nice enough and, seriously, if those types of places turn your cider crank, then by all means keep going back. But for my apple-picking dollar, the team out at Fall Harvest is absolutely my go-to family fun orchard getaway weekend destination of preference.

Fall Harvest is a working farm that gets a little extra help from friends and family during the 'open to the public apple and pumpkin season'. They've got the chickens and the cows and the pigs and goats and all that and it's neat because you can just kind of wander around and do your own thing while you're there. Wanna go into the henhouse? Have fun. Down to the pasture to feed a cow? Go get 'em. Drag a wagon out into the orchard to pick apples? Me, too! And that's only the beginning. They've got lots of other animals to see and pumpkins to choose and arguably the best wagon/hay ride ever. (Including a stop where the driver dude gets down and *teaches* about what's going on and another stop where the kiddies can pick a gourd and an ear of popcorn (!!) to bring home. I know!)

So it's fun, but not in that overwhelming apple-orchard-meets-vegas kind of way. And don't let me oversell it - though maybe just a little - just recognize it for what it is: a small orchard that does all the right things to cater to simple, fun loving rubes from the city.

I'll see you there. And don't forget to stuff their donation box. I'll be watching.

Fall Harvest Orchard [fallharvestorchard]
mini-reviews of several local orchards [considertheegg]

For those of you with blown out zippers in the rear window of your jeep soft top, just a heads up that duct tape is not a suitable zipper replacement and in a severe thunderstorm it will tear off and your jeep will get just as full of water as it did the last 4 times it rained when you left it open and hoped it would just be "a quick shower". Which it never is, of course.

This has been the worst month ever for slackers who won't fix their jeeps.

In other storm news, I was outside right when it was rolling in tonight and a capital-H huge lightning bolt went off super close to the house. Ten seconds later, the ozone smell was almost overwhelming. That was a first for me. Neat.

Last weekend our little Sunnyside Market officially went down in a blaze of buyout glory courtesy of the Russell T. Lund empire. It'd been a tumultuous couple of weeks leading up to the actual closing, as rumors and speculation blew through the neighborhood like an angry tornado, flipping over Volvos and scattering speculation and misinformation in its wake. They were closing?! The building was going to be vacant? For 2 years?! What about the workers? Kowalski's wanted it, too? What's Lund's going to do with it? Empty? Warehouse? New Lund's? Year round fresh cut fry booth?! (As hard as I tried, that one never stuck.)

Mass emails were sent, public "hearings" were scheduled, The People were mobilized... it was all very enthusiastic and honest and sincere. There was talk of boycotting and yard signs and impact analysis studies and "is this even legal?" and all sorts of stuff, though oddly no hunger strikes, a move that would have been at once ironic and [apparently] trendy, but in retrospect, maybe a little too Linden Hills for us.

I took the opening and briefly attempted to socialize the idea of a formal public booing, where we'd all go down to Lund's HQ and stand outside their front door and boo. It's a form of public protest I've been brainstorming a way to get back into society since I saw those doofs pushing strollers down the Vegas strip at 11:30 at night and I thought to myself "why aren't we all booing these morons?". My idea went over well with most people, but it never built enough momentum to justify setting something formal up, much less alerting the media or making signs or shirts or getting megaphones to make sure our disgruntled chorus could be heard all the way up in the executive washroom. But man, that would have been sweet. Someday, my warriors, someday.

Then a day or two went by and the lawyerish types in the 'hood pointed out that [surprise] these private businesses can kind of do what they want when it comes to this type of thing. And people realized that Lund's is much too awesome of a store to boycott and come on, Sunnyside was a pretty lousy store with expensive crappy produce, overpriced staples, reasonable meat, and an ok rotisserie chicken. So while it's fine to be pissed that it's gone because when you needed hamburger buns or milk it was only 3 blocks away - or because you don't want it sitting there vacant - it's overselling it a wee to tell teary-eyed stories about people starving because they'll have to walk an extra block to the co-op or the Lunds@50th to buy better, and in many cases cheaper, food. And that's when everyone just kinda calmed down and the issue sorta dropped off the radar. Go figure.

Late last week Sunnyside had a pretty good 'going out of business' sale. Lots of stuff 50% off. LOTS of mustard. Way more than I would have expected. We didn't buy much - basically nothing, actually - but we did buy an ornament from the huge pile of Christmas decorations they drug out from some back store room. I thought that was funny.

In two years their lease is up and Nostradoodle predicts we'll go through it all again. Book it.

Sunnyside Market set to close [swjournal]
Lunds pays to keep Kowalski's at bay [strib]

Friday overnight I did a medium size brisket that ended up taking about 2 hours longer than I expected but turned out totally mint. I finished it in foil in the oven and I think that really helped, though it probably would have been fine without it.

Saturday overnight I rawked about 30 pounds of pork, rubbed with mustard and spices and love. They were pulled in a neighbor's kitchen just before serving at a big 'ol backyard party and after I finished I grabbed a beer and sat back and watched the good people wolf it down with their roasted corn and their pasta salads and their homemade chunky salsas and their endless selection of desserts and it was a perfect day in just about every respect.

I'm thinking I had the smoker warm for almost 36 consecutive hours. That's most definitely a personal best.

Terry Ryan is gone and Bush has updated us all on Iraq. Is it a Twins quote or a Bush quote?

1. "It's important to get everybody prepared for what's ahead and hit the ground running on Oct. 1."
2. "This is an enormous undertaking after more than three decades of tyranny and division."
3. "The last thing I want is to pretend I am jumping ship."
4. "Sectarian killings are down, and ordinary life is beginning to return."
5. "Local reconciliation is taking place."
6. "The defeats are getting tougher to take and the wins aren’t as much fun."
7. "Realizing this vision will be difficult, but it is achievable."
8. "I'm not sure this is that funny of an idea."

Answers

1. Twins
2. Iraq
3. Twins
4. Iraq
5. Iraq
6. Iraq Twins
7. Iraq
8. Work.buddy.T-bone

A couple of days after the bridge collapsed I wrote up this huge post that walked through the two different takes I had been chewing on as the waves from the wall-to-wall news machines washed over me. Both of my takes took radical groundbreaking new perspectives. So radically groundbreaking, in fact, that existing lexicon could not contain them, forcing me to invent new terms to cage them in. I'm like an angry zookeeper with these things. Bam!

Then the next morning I reread what I had written and - as one genius predicted - it sounded "inevitably trite and lame" in the context of the bridge falling. Blogs have a tendency to do that. No offense. None taken. Nothing posted.

Now it's been a while and I'm still having fun with the made up words stuff, so I'm going to dump them out here just so I get credit when they show up some froofy language article. (Hi, Safire!)

• The first is metata (meh-ta-ta), which is my radically groundbreakingly new way to go meta on meta. Lemme explain. With an event like the bridge collapse, there's [obviously] a ridiculous amount of 'primary' coverage - mainly via tv, radio, and newspapers, but also through various coverage2.0 outlets. Another layer down in the onion is the [now] ubiquitous 'meta' coverage in the form of people covering and/or critiquing the primary coverage - mostly bloggy type things, but some 'primary' outlets as well. My genius idea was that I'd cover the coverage of the coverage. I'd discuss the discussion about the discussion. I'd raise the bar. I'd go for distance; I'd go for speed. Metata.

  Note that metata probably isn't as easy as old school slacker meta commentary. Metata requires sifting thru blogs, reading newspapers, watching tv, the whole 'bit and kaboodle' (ha). Sure, some of it's obvious - ripping the now-predictable-yet-somehow-still-amazing-to-the-coverage2.0-fanboys Big Media article about how Wikipedia was updated with the story while the bridge was still in midair - but most of it isn't so easy. Let that be a lesson to you Metatawannabes.

• The other made up word is empathotainment, which is a smash-up of "empathy" and "infotainment". I've also described it as "empathy driven infotainment". There's obviously a bit of an overlap with pure play infotainment - given the size of infotainment's wikipedia page there'd have to be - but I'd argue that the bridge type coverage has taken the quaint notion of a traditional infotainment 'human drama' story and [d]evolved it into and entirely new genre: wall to wall empathotainment. All these way over the top Bart's People on steroids style interviews and stories and vignettes and seriously, why aren't you crying yet, this is really emotional stuff, the dude got this kids out of a bus, man, the frickin' bus! It was all just so gross and cheap and embarrassing.

So there you go. And yes I get that the second one could be the target of metata. I'll leave that as an exercise for my reader. (Hi, Mel!)

And yes, I saw that stupid Strib article about how Minnesotans make up a lot of words and I wrote this anyway. Stupid Strib deflating all my buzz. Again.

Libby and I squeaked in a date night on Saturday evening to check out the Picasso Exhibit down at the Walker before they boxed it up and sent it back to the Whitney. It was great. Really, it was. Maybe that's lame to say because Picasso is too obvious or something, but who cares, I really enjoyed it. And the larger-than-expected-for-9pm-on-a-Saturday-night-at-a-museum crowd that was milling around with us seemed to be in similar spirits. So there.

As soon as we climbed the stairs into the exhibit I was kicking myself for not downloading one of the myriad podcast walk-along tour-guide things that I remembered reading about, but the museum did a nice job of adding context via little signs and stories and I didn't really ever feel lost or out of synch. I still think I'll go back and listen while it's all fresh in my mind. Right after I listen to 14 hours of KFAN breaking down the Vikes victory, that is.

After the Picasso stuff we had a few minutes to wander around and check out the other stuff before they locked the doors. Most of it reminded me that I don't 'get' modern art, but we made sure to spend a few minutes soaking up the Rothko's - Libby did her best Simon Schama impression and I just kinda spaced out and stared for a while. Good stuff.

There was some mom/kid get together in the park in on Saturday morning, so Junior and I didn't make it down to the Target Book Festival thing until around 3pm or so later that afternoon. By then the crowds had thinned considerably. I'm talking like 500 people in the whole place, parents included. I chalked it up to the threat of rain and the Gopher football game being in its 6th hour of overtimes. Who wants to get rained on and/or miss that crucial 7th hour of football? Clearly nobody.

The light crowds made for a busy festival for us. Wanna jump on the jumpy castle? Go ahead, no waiting. Wanna jump in the other one? Go ahead, no waiting. Wanna climb up and slide down some huge inflatable slide thing? Go ahead, no waiting. Color a fish? No waiting. $4 funnel cake? Uhh, Daddy forgot his money. But look, we can go on a paddleboat. No waiting.

After doing all the jumping and coloring and going down by the lake and whatnot, we settled in for the main event: the Justin Roberts afternoon set. It was just as good as expected. After it ended I took Junior over to the 'backstage' area and waited for Justin to come out. He totally did and we totally got a picture with him and I totally gave him my theory about how The Hold Steady stole their whole sound from his song 'One Little Cookie'. He seemed to be digging it, but maybe he was just putting up with blabbering fan du jour. Either way, both Junior and I thought he was a pretty nice guy.

On a related note: Rick Kupchella was the emcee for this thing and was his usual doofy self, working the crowd before each act hit the stage. Hoffmaldo had bet me 3 lunches that I couldn't get a pic with my arm around him. I was all set to make it happen after the concert, but wouldn't you know that clock-watcher Kupchella would make a beeline to his VIP golf cart at exactly 5:00. He was back to his VIP parking faster than you can say "expensive designer jeans". Dagnabbit.

August is over and The Fair has come and gone and my white suit is off to the cleaners after a rough and tumble summer of lavish nights on the town and/or/more likely a lot of backyard bbq's and trips to the pool and stuff like that. Though to be honest, I don't have a white suit, but I did buy a $10 pair of super light khaki chinos that were a little too short and I wore them but the one time before being laughed out of my cubicle farm, after which I immediately went home and boxed them off to the goodwill. Because that's what you do when you work in a cubicle farm - you mock and ridicule your co-workers into passing down their awful clothes to the less fortunate. Then you go get another cup of extraordinarily bad coffee

This August was a more immersive hiatus than usual. Instead of just not blogging, I more or less stopped internetting. I read a few news sites, I checked my personal and work emails, and I occasionally poked my head up in a messenger app to make sure the boss knew I was still around. But no blogs, no trash, no fluff. It was like detox. Detox that the 12MM youtuberubes who've watched Miss Teen Somethingorother stumble through a bad answer in a beauty pageant should think about checking themselves into. And for the record, I would have said that before the hiatus recharged my self-righteousness.

I missed you too.