October 31, 2002

the week that all my heroes died
Hell. What a dark and sad week it has been. Last night, Jam Master Jay was shot dead. Jam Master Jay from Run DMC was a galactic pioneer on the decks and was my introduction to the world of Hip Hop just as Paul Wellstone was my introduction to Minnesota Liberal politics. I remember like steel the summer between seventh and eighth grade, when my friend Joel and I took a silly job cleaning the foul lockers of the school we were attending. For Eight hours a day we moved like machines down the dark deserted hallways of our school on little swiveling office chairs, moving from locker to locker, scraping off the dried gum that a fourth grader had left behind as his educational totem or cleaning out the well worn trapper keepers left by the careless seniors. It was a thankless task. But our one saving grace that summer was a boom box that was never more than ten feet away. On constant rotation: Run DMC's Tougher Than Leather and Ice-T's Power. When those tapes were rocking, it didn't even seem like we were working. At times, i think we imagined we were cleaning the subway cars in NYC and Run DMC was putting on a show in the park across the street. Jam Master Jay had plugged his turntables into a light post nearby and was cutting up a breakbeat by a washed up hair rocker band that everyone had forgotten about.

October 30, 2002

jaguar free for teachers
That's right Apple is giving away Mac OSX Jaguar free to K-12 teachers. Which if you follow the logical course of thinking will make all teachers very happy because they can throw out and smash all their Windows boxes and soon all of their students will be Alan Feiss look-a-likes. If all goes according to Apple's master plan then all those students infected with the Jaguar will take up Hunger Strikes like Bjork's mom. Perfect.

let the campaign begin!


Charged after the memorial/rally last night, I searched high and low this morning for a Walter Mondale for U.S. Senate lawn sign. No luck. So I made a little temporary one until things at the campaign become "official". If you'd like a copy here is a pdf version (500kb).

October 29, 2002

wellstone memorial
Heading off to the Paul Wellstone memorial. I hope to drive by the Wellstone campaign headquarters as I haven't seen that display yet. I'm happy that this amazing outpouring of grief and support has been organized. Interesting that Dick Cheney has been uninvited, I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean. I think this will be a great event that will both give space for grief and serve to galvanize Wellstone supporters to charge forward in the last week before the election. Although I will rally around "Fritz" and it will be nice to have an elder statesmen in office, I can't help but mourn the fact that I won't ever have had the chance to cast my vote for Paul. I was too young to vote for Paul the first time he ran (seeing those old advertisements for that campaign are great aren't they?) and I was living (and voting) in Portland Oregon when he ran for re-election. This was going to be my first time casting for the "unabashed liberal" and I was warming up my number 2 pencil and counting down the days.

James Lileks has a nice bleat on Wellstone as does Slate. The NYTimes Obituary for Wellstone is good too. His book is still available too. More on Wellstone.

October 28, 2002

OSX rules my morning
I'm sitting here in a conference room of a major software company in Saint Paul, waiting for the guy I'm supposed to meet with to show up. One of the reasons I'm here is to look at the intranet site of this company. No less than four people have been putting me in front of PC's and huge workstations trying to get something to work so that I can see their stuff. Nothing seems to be working. Monitors don't work, connections can't be established. Intra-company passwords are being ignored. Pure comedy. So I decided to school all these players on the power of Mac OSX. I took out my lap-top that had been gently sleeping in my bag, and jacked it into one of the ethernet cables that was protruding from the conference room table and within seconds of taking my machine out of its bag I was online and looking at their system. Needless to say, all were amazed at the simple power of the Jaguar! Hee.

I got here really early (8AM) for no reason and killed time in the Starbucks that is conveniently located in their lobby. I overheard the following conversation/flirting which was too much to take at this early hour. It went like this:

Customer: Hey, man how was your weekend?

Barista: O.K.

Customer: Did you get arrested?

Barista: No. I'm an angel. An angel with broken wings.

Customer: Hmmm...that implies that you once had wings...you devil.

(long uncomfortable pause...and then the customer leaves)

The whole arrested thing really threw me for a curve ball. Yuck. I just hate it when I overhear stuff like that. Really obvious flirting just makes me cringe. People, it's just too early in the morning to get your flirt on.

October 27, 2002

the jackass got lost
Today I went for a long walk in my new city and got hopelessly lost. I can't quite figure out how it happen exactly. Started walking around the lake, turned to take what I thought was a parallel road that would take me back towards the general direction of my dwelling and ended up on the wrong side of another lake. Harriet I believe. Everything kinda looked the same with the fall colors being what they are and I ended up taking one too many wrong turns. Haven't gotten lost like that in a while. It's funny, you could drop me anywhere in Saint Paul and I could get you home, but there are huge chunks of Minneapolis that still remain a quite mystery to me. Luckily, I was able to get some direction back when I interrupted a man in the midst of his archery practice. I swear he gave me directions in some Olde English dialect. Odd people in this town.

I laughed till I cried watching the Jackass movie Saturday. Snorting wasabi made me weep with laughter. My only complaint with the movie is that it seemed really short. I think it could have been four hours longer. Oh shit, I'm laughing just thinking about it. Laughing is good.

October 25, 2002

this can't be happening
I just learned that Wellstone has died in a plane crash in Northern Minnesota. I am very sad and don't feel like working anymore today...this sucks.

mcsweeneys vs. they might be giants
I got treated to a really great little show last night at the Fitzgerald. Dave Eggers and They Might Be Giants hosted a roof raising vaudeville show filled with talent and creation. Eggers read a colorfully wet story about going to a junior high dance that anyone who grew up in a mostly white suburb during the 80's could identify with, especially the male leap frog dancing that occurred during Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven". Hilarious.

But the real highlight of the evening was neither Eggers reading nor the quirky interludes provided by they might be giants. The real stars of the show was the Trachtenburg Family Slide-Show Players. The Slide-Show Players, besides being a real family with an incredibly cute and talented nine year old drummer who sings backup too, travel around the country buying up other people's old slide show carousels from estate sales. They then set pretty little ditty pop songs to stories they make up to go along with the slide show. I was so happy watching them, I will be smiling all day. They mentioned that they will be on the Conan O'brian show on election night. I hope they will have a good slide show featuring old elected officials. You should make time after you vote to watch them.

October 23, 2002

fly around my pretty little miss
I have been getting up at odd, wickedly early times these last few weeks. I get up when the sun hasn't even thought about breaking the horizon. Sadly, I am coming to grips with the possibility that I may be a (shudder) morning person. Part of the reason could be the bed upgrade that was dialed in from slumberland not long ago and the subsequent cushy pillows, duvets and other sleep enhancers that have vastly improved my night-night sleepy time. With these low-tech sleep devises being enjoyed, I sleep so well that I actually wake up fully rested in less than the FDA approved eight hours of sleep. I guess this shouldn't be startling information but It makes me really appreciate how poorly I kept my sleeping station before and how many hours I wasted recovering from poor sleeping. Oh the political crisis I could have solved, the books I could have read, the cigarettes I could have smoked. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Because I really do think things like this are funny (thanks babylon).

October 22, 2002

hire a good mason
My friend dave wrote a book. I held it in my hands today. What a crazy thing to hold a book by someone you knew before they wrote the book. Sure he talked about the book a lot, but not until I held it in my hands and leafed through its pages did I understand the gravity and the process of the accomplishment. The book is an about programming in a language called "mason". It's available through O'Reilly. Mason is a perl based module that, I can say from experience, is a fine way to put any web-based application together. It's very slick and simple and the most efficient piece of free code on the market. Get this book while it's hot! If you don't know anything about programming, buy it anyway just to look at the baboon on the cover. Store it with all your National Geographic magazines. More about mason.

washington sniper theories and tributes
The biking season has ended with the arrival of the fresh slushy white stuff and now I am back to driving pavement city again. That means listening to the talk box, and getting that familiar queazy feeling in my stomach again from listening to the silent majority unleash their opinion on everything from the best DVD that features "breasts", to differing theories on the D.C. Sniper. Frighteningly, sometimes these come from the same caller.

Wired has a fine article on the nutty "conspiracy theories delivered in typo-ridden remedial English" by people like me who sometimes get carried away with their own personal weblogs and stumble briefly onto the broken streets of pseudo-journalism It's like we've been kicked out of the bar at closing time and we hit the pavement to yell at the moon; no one's listening except for those that like to point and laugh. The best "theory" is the one about Jimmy Carter who is personally funding the sniper. There has also been a site set up that you can input your own theories and I guess they pass them along to the proper authorities.

CNN has some nice pedestrian tribute designs for the rebuilding of the Twin Towers. My favorite is surely the all red, white and blue towers. You can't get anymore 'tribute' than that. None more tribute.

October 21, 2002

the campaign for better lamps


I was inspired to build a glowing tribute to a Minnesota political candidate this weekend based on the plans in Readymade Magazine for a "for sale" lamp. The basic material is a plastic corrugated yard sign. I wanted to make a Paul Wellstone lamp because then I would have a green lamp. But a quick call to the Wellstone headquarters reviled that their lawn signs are made out of cardboard with a waxy finish. That wouldn't do. So I turned to the Tim Penny for Governor campaign and found what I needed. my lamp is orange. Unfortunately the blue lettering on the sign is very opaque and doesn't allow much light through. Also, I had to do a lot of improvising from the Magazine's design as they didn't mention that the metal frames come in different sizes. That messed me up good. I plan to improve vastly on this design and find the premium piece of corrugated plastic to do so.

October 19, 2002

on my way to the impound lot
I'm perched up in the kitchen, sipping my morning coffee and nibbling the feet off the animal crackers I bought in bulk at the Babies R' Us last night. The missis has another baby shower to attend today, which makes like 10 this year. Apparently making babies, especially the two at a time variety is all the rage in her circle. But when these winter months roll around and you can't go outside really for five months, I can see where all these babies come from. We purchased a Sassy brand "Activity Arch". And on my insistence, we got safety plugs, even though I was told that safety plugs do not make for good shower gifts. But I insisted anyway, because an open outlet is a deadly outlet.

After the baby buying, I dialed in my reward for the day by screaming over to REI for a new computer love bag that will now replace the old one that got screamed at and cursed upon with greater frequency this week.

I was due for a reward yesterday after having to visit both the Minnesota DMV and The Saint Paul Police Impound Lot. Yes, the Brougham was towed away. Very sad. I got caught in a reckless mess that all started when I went to renew my license a few months pack and got a letter from the Minnesota DMV informing me that instead of renewing my license they were going to withdraw it due to some ticket that I had failed to clear up in Portland, Oregon. Well I haven't lived in Portland for at least five years and when I did I didn't own a car, so I was baffled as to what the issue could be. After a month of emailing back and forth with the Oregon DMV, where they couldn't find any violation on my driving record and required me to get proof from the Minnesota DMV that there was in fact a violation on my Oregon record. What?!? This part of the story I will never understand. Never. But I did just that, and after Oregon hunted through their off line files (violations after five years are no longer on the computer), they indeed found proof that I was a violator of Oregon Traffic Law, Section 15173: Failure to Obey a traffic signal while riding a muther fucking bicycle!

All of which brought back all the wonderful memories of that fateful night five years ago when, riding my bike through SE P-town, I heard vigilant screaming behind me and, looking over my shoulder I vaguely made out two people on bikes coming after me. I had no idea who they were so I decided to ditch 'em. I was proving myself very effective at that when I faintly heard one of them mention the word "police". I came to a halt and after a while, sure enough two very angry and out of breath bike cops showed up. Man they were pissed. But so was I. I remember the girl cop wasn't even able to speak she just put her hands on her knees and wheezed a lot while the boy cop wrote ferociously in a book and called me an "Anarchist". Three minutes later, I was the proud owner of a red hot bike ticket. The ticket never made it home. I believe I ripped it up right there on the street and two weeks later I was on my way to S.A for eight months.

But you can't escape the long arm of Johnny Law. His memory is sharp and tight and he didn't smoke all that good clean mexican dope down in the Yucatan. He remembers everything.

So I wasn't able to drive in Minnesota because of a long lost bike ticket in Oregon. Upon further inquiry I learned that if I waited another three weeks the ticket would reach its statute of limitations and I wouldn't have to pay the thing at all. Weird system if you ask me. I decide to wait. I was riding my bike everywhere anyway and I got a MN I.D. so I could still swill booze. They coudn't take that away from me. Although I did get in another oddly heated battle with one of the ugly underpaid workers at the DMV when I went to get my I.D. I told her I was still biking around and biking to work. She yelled at me in front of like 75 hmong patrons that "You don't get it!! Your license is withdrawn, you can't bike anywhere!" We went back and forth like this for a few minutes. I cursed her and gave the hmong bystanders some lesser lessons into the darker regions of the American vocab, "Impossible liar! beastly accident! swarthy pervert!" Lucky for everyone, everything was resolved when we untangled our linguistics knot and discovered that her definition of "Bike" was something that was motorized and required leathers to ride and my definition was chain powered and much slower. Fucking Language. What a mess.

In the time that it took for the Statute of Limitations to pass. My tabs expired, which I couldn't renew since I had stopped my insurance and was still in "withdrawn" status on my license. So of course, between the time the limitations expire and before I could clear everything up with the Minnesota/Oregon DMV, they towed my sorry ass car to the Impound Lot for failure to display proper tags. I resolved everything thursday, and re-upped my insurance and then Friday got new tabs and went to get the Brougham out of the lot. And of course the battery was dead and they hd removed all the air from one of the tires (I think to prevent people from coming in and stealing their car back) so it took me at least an hour to recharge my car and put air back in the ailing tire. Hazah! Now everything is back as it was and I just have less money to buy CD's with. Bastards.

The only bright side was that the guy at the Impound Lot, was hilarious and really nice. He made light of my plight by calling me a hardened criminal and a dangerous renegade. I think he felt sorry for me. He explained that I was a pretty minor offender. He also told an excellent story about a 79 year old John, who was arrested the night before and had his car impounded. The other bright side is Geico Insurance. The best damn company on the map today. In my five years of working with them, i have had the friendliest most amazing customer service ever. If only more companies could emulate. If only the people at the DMV could have a fifth of Geico's understanding and patience.

October 17, 2002

where is all the good cinema?
I'm in a movie going rut. Everything I've seen on the big screen lately has been just short of mediocre. Last night I saw the Robin Williams sleeper One Hour Photo. I could barely stay awake. What banality of story and production! Also, recently I have seen Sweet Home Alabama and Signs. Both of which were not necessarily bad movies or good movies but were neither entertaining nor moving. The best thing about all these movies has been the jumbo Dr. Pepper and the Junior Mints consumed. I demand more for my eight bucks.

Hollywood has lost all respect for the viewer and has become a lazy beast on all fronts. The production designer for One Hour Photo must have been straight out of school. The SavMart that Robin Williams worked at was totally ill-conceived. Was it a Target? Wallmart? Why was the furniture for sale at SavMart IKEA furniture? I don't think IKEA would allow their stuff to be sold at a SavMart. Also, Robin Williams' make-up looked like a horrible bleachy Eminem dye job that did not go with his character. What gives? Am I being too picky? Am I supposed to not notice that kind of stuff or was I noticing that stuff cause the movie was so boring and slow that I concentrated on other things besides the plot - which anyone could have guessed at within the first five minutes.

I need some cinema that knocks me on the floor, makes me openly weep with joy or sorrow - something memorable.

Lucky for me when there is a drought of bad movies there seems to be an onslaught of wonderfully inspiring music. To wit, my top 10 in rotation these days are:

1. jets to brazil - perfecting loneliness
2. the cinematic orchestra - every day
3. various - superfunk3
4. atjazz - labfunk
5. nightmares on wax - mind elevation
6. dj vadim - art of listening
7. doug martsch - now you know
8. low - trust
9. all tomorrow's parties 1.1: sonic youth curated
10. jawbreaker - etc

October 16, 2002

a bad start

Oh boy this is not how I wanted to start my day at all! Yuck what a fucking mess. The worst part is that the soup is under the volume keys on the keyboard and I have lost all ability to lower the volume on my machine.

But then I read, I am better than your kids for the tenth time, and now I feel much better. Don't be fooled. These kinds of hilarious things that people post and email to one another to break up the monotony of the work day and turn otherwise "bad starts" around in a flash, is the reason the internet exists.

Another great combination of things embodied in one design. This time it's Mexican wrestling and skateboarding.

October 15, 2002

bikwriters of the world
Bikewriting (big video clip) combines three of my favorite passions: biking, graffiti, and typography. These fun pieces of rubberized type let you turn any bicycle into a printing, street writing device that prints as you ride. Could anything be better? I think not.

afrobeat theology
I had one of those days yesterday, after many smiler days, where it seemed like I lived a week within a day. Meetings and projects accomplished in the morning felt ages old by noon and afternoon meetings, etc. where ancient history by supper. And just when things should have been winding down I got on the boogie bus and headed down to first avenue to catch the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, the best "get your freaky butt on the dance floor" live act going today. Within seconds of the first dirty blasts of the Fela-powered-pulse-phunk, my body was rebelling against its normal stayed manner. Stoic limbs that normally bounce lightly were galloping out of control. If this music doesn't move you - you might be dead. Woof. The stylings of the busy work day disappeared by the end of the first song and brought everything back to puravida. But hell I still can't believe that it's only tuesday and not the week-end.

October 11, 2002

go Jimmy!
Jimmy Carter wins the nobel peace prize.

'It should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken'
-- Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Nobel committee

How did your congress person vote. See the roll call.

it's a logo world baby
I wasted way to much time today surfing the logo project. Logos make me happy. I realized on my midwestern road trip last weekend that I can stare out the car window and get lost in the logos that fill the landscape. I was told on said road trip that I have an annoying habit of reading logos and company signs out loud for no other reason than to hear the sound of word. I know I should be looking at wildlife and appreciating wilderness but the landscape out here doesn't change all that frequently and even company signs seen from the roadway breaks up the midwest monotony, and I am thankful for that. The bonus to this site is that you can download an EPS version of every logo and manipulate it for your own devilish purposes or just get inspired to build a logo for yourself.

wired again
It's a good day for web designers (are there any left?) everywhere. Wired magazine has given themselves a minor facelift and a slick code redux that brings them in line with the web standards project promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium. The more large (visible) companies embrace the standards project and change their code for the better, forgoing the totalitarian regime of early web browsers, the more freedom the developers will have to construct meaningful and wonderful sites.

October 10, 2002

irascible words for an incindiary time.
I think I may be a little late in catching the language bandwagon on this one but what the hell...I am in love with the word Snarky! After receiving an email that described David Sedaris as "Snarky", I have become totally enamored with the word and have found myself repeating it over and over again just to hear the syllables fight it out to the death. Snark-eeee. Awesome! I try and to use it in daily banter around the office, "Are you getting snarky with me? Huh? Snark-minister are you?"

I learned later that snarky gets tossed around in the movie Kissing Jessica Stein, which I now have to see just to hear other people use the word.

But that wasn't enough. I needed more snark. So I went hunting today. Poking around I was reminded of the brilliant snarky bitch site. Which quickly led to the snarky librarian site. Apparently, librarians are very prone to being a rather snarky bunch. And there is a comic strip named Snarky. A quick image search reveals a good cross section of snark, of which, this is my favorite.

October 09, 2002

cold mornings and new web sites
Sakes alive it's getting nippy outside. 45 degrees this morning. I don't know how much longer I can keep up the biking if this weather continues. The air is thin. Breathing becomes really hard. Not hard as in difficult but hard as in deeply painful in the back of the throat. But I just can't imagine hanging up the two wheeler yet. That would mean at least 6 long month of no biking, which is just unthinkable right now. This morning I got stuck behind a maroon Plymouth Voyager mini-van pumping out a thick blue smoke that I was forced to consume deep into my lungs. The taste was familiar. I swear to god it tasted like chicken. Bad chicken. Sitting out in the Arizona sun for three days chicken. But chicken non the less.

Twinkies took to the Angels last night with vigor and venom, giving the commissioner something to think about I hope. I would love nothing more than to see him present the World Series trophy to the team he tried to banish from his money grubbing kingdom. I already can't wait for game two to start.

I finished two new sites last week with two very different spins. The Prevention and Intervention site needed to be ultra usable and simple. I wasn't psyched about their color choices but I think It turned out O.K. I really like the Kabel type I used for the header. I am in something close to in love with that type. It's a very nice readable font on the screen. Also finished the identity pieces, off-line materials, and the site for the Open Philanthropy Fund, which turned into a wonderful exercise in css while using some nice photos that I've taken lately as well as some great snaps from Peter Schutte's collection. I like the easiness of this design. And after much internal debate am glad I went with the fleur de lea as The Mark. I think the OPFund site has inspired me to do a redesign of afrojet. Something in green perhaps.

October 08, 2002

Days and nights at IKEA.

Back from the long road to Chi-town. I am filled with fire and might. Spent Sunday afternoon held up in a Radisson, biting my nails to the quick, as I watched one of the more agonizing baseball games of my life. But in the end...a victory - a sweet sweet victory. It felt very wrong to be watching the game in Schamberg Illinois and not Minnesota. But it was a whole lot better than Saturdays game, which I lost on the Radio just as we were speeding through Wisconsin Dells. In a desperate fit, we pulled off the highway into the Ho-Chunck Casino, where I was sure I would be able to find a television to catch the last four innings of the game. Unfortunately, I learned a very important lesson about sports and Wisconsin. That is, if there is a flunky Wisconsin Badger game being played in the home state, the entire state comes to a stand still to watch their fearless rodants play an amateur game of tossing the pig skin. Any attempt to turn a television to a far more important game being played on a national stage, is met with threats, fists and broken beer bottles.

Kicked out of the Ho-Chunk sports bar for even broaching the topic, and with no radio reception of any kind, still hours from the Illinois border, I knew I was doomed to miss the rest of the game. So i settled into a soiled plastic stool, ordered a Hienekin and set out on a mad gambling spree. At one point I was really up in my winnings but I got greedy, started making large bets, and lost the kitty. In the end I walked out up $1.75 to the positive.

But the Twins won the series, the Packers romped the Bears last night and I trust I can ride this wave to both the World Series and the SuperBowl. Stick with me baby and we'll go far.

All day IKEA shopping Saturday was very successful. IKEA shopping is very odd in that it's the only place I've shopped where everyone actually looks happy in their consuming. It's more than just people getting four dollar lamps that actually look nice. The amenities for kids, hungry bellies, and design playgrounds for adults, make the crowded aisles and crying babies just disappear. It's a good thing that I have to drive seven hours to get to an IKEA or I think I would have less dollars to spend gambling at the Ho-Chunck.

October 05, 2002

This is the scene outside my kitchen window this morning at 9AM. It's my new neighbors once a year all weekend garage sale blowout (neighbors get 10% off). It sounds like a carnival from where I sit. Knowing that this mad parade of desperate junk junkies would drive us to take extreme measures this weekend, the missis and I are taking off to Chicago for the weekend, where we hope to: see some fall midwest color, visit I94 roadside attractions, hit the IKEA, make a few purchases at Dustygroove, and paint up the big windy city.

Not sure if I'll be able to find a good bar to watch the Twins hopefully turn the series around tonight, but I'm feeling optimistic even after last nights heartbreaking loss.

October 03, 2002

eyes smoldering beneath the ashes of the night before
It's a somber and wretched morning. Day two of a horrible sickness that has left me neutralized with a double barrel nose drainer and an impossible heavy head that wants to detach from my shoulders and fall to the nearest pillow. I feel like my mellon is a balloon that is being inflated by a small boy one hot breath at a time.

Making things fearfully worse the Twins took a preposterous and cruel beating from the pine of the mighty Oakland bats last night. The trouncing brought no solace or relief to my struggles. It hurt. When you're stricken with the gripe, your day can be parceled into very small nodes of decision and possibility, hope and responsibility (or lack there of). So it was, that I looked forward all day yesterday to the Twins lifting me off the couch and into the merry hands of the baseball brotherhood. It just wasn't our day. It's not all a wash I tell myself, the day before was a different story. A good story.

And if that wasn't enough, that business in Milwaukee, that brutal rebuttal by a bunch of blood thirsty 12 year old bandits laid me flat out. Everything drained. I oozed from my couch into a dirty puddle on the floor.

My only hope today is pharmaceuticals and the new songs from Doug Martsh. His lyrical poetry empties out of the hi-fi, finds my broken head and begins to rebuild me with hard granite stone and a solid mixture of mortar. Were his songs my guide each day, maybe I could outlive mountains.

October 01, 2002

Morning bike commute: reflections of a transplant.

Here is another photo taken in the narcissistic reflection series. I like this one because It makes me look like a Giant looming over the tree tops getting ready to squash a tiny village under my feet.

This guy took some surreal, really creepy photos of what it looks like when the Military tests missiles near his house in smoggy Los Angeles.

I am rediscovering what an incredible band Supercunck is! Punch me Harder! Here is a fun documentary that Cam Carrithers made about the chunk over the years.

It's off to Tracy's Bar at 3pm today to catch the first game of the Twins battle against the Oakland A's. Of course the bastards at MLB want everyone to watch the New York Yankees in prime time so the always underdog Twins get relegated to a 3pm show time. Ohhh the injustice of it all. ESPN has 10 reasons to root for the Twins.