afrojet

Interleague Play
These interleague games are great for baseball. I got to see the New York Mets live at the Dome for the first time in my life the other night. Better yet, I got to see the Mets get crushed and humiliated by the Twins for the first time. And again, for the second time in a week, those pinstriped powerhouses destroyed their dark horse challenger in the very bottom of the ninth. Two great games.

Near the end of Tuesday’s game our party was joined by a youngster who had more energy than Iggy Pop on 10 cups of coffee. The boy had to run up and down the aisle steps just to get a base level of wobbly comfort. He did however provide the line of the month. From high up in our upper deck seats behind home plate the boy was watching the game through a monocular. When the action really began heating up in the ninth inning the boy was eagerly asked, “Isn’t this exciting?!?” To which he replied in a very droll and unconcerned manner, “I’m just staring at the grass.” Classic! If you know Ralph from the Simpsons, then you can understand even better how absolutely hilarious this little sapphire of wisdom was.

Iceman Versus Captain America
Remember those great articles by Evan Wright in Rolling Stone last summer (The Killer Elite, From Hell to Baghdad and The Battle for Baghdad)? They were pretty damn good weren’t they? Well, Mr. Wright would like Afrojet readers to know that his new book with, “considerable expansion/change of those articles is coming out this June 17”. The title of the book, “Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War“, easily wins best book title of 2004. Essential summer reading.

Mill City Museum

Finally got around to visiting the Mill City Museum this weekend. I was blown away. Top notch. A beautiful addition to the Mississippi waterfront. When I worked downtown, I used to bike by the development of the museum every day. It’s great to see the completion. The award winning architecture developed by MS&R is a wonderfully organic multi-use restructuring of the burned out shell of the old mill. Standing in the outdoor ruin courtyard is like imagining yourself in some bombed out World War II edifice. Inside the museum, one becomes an over-stimulated 12 year old. The best of the old Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, and General Mills product archives are on display (Check out the old Bisquick television ads). There’s volumes of old print advertisement broadsheets, a large collection of Pillsbury Doughboys that would make any eBay collector blush. There’s detailed cut-out illustrations showing all nine floors of the Mill and the activities performed on each. The piece de resistance, however, is a converted freight elevator that now works as a nine floor moving documentary. It’s called the Flour Tower. You sit on risers in the elevator/theater as it takes you to each floor. On each floor the giant elevator doors open on what looks like a well designed stage set. Some floors have film being projected on the back wall of the sets with a narration provided by people who used to work in the mill. Sound effects for all moving parts and machinery also add to the multi media ride. Just damn cool.

Bad Start
Man, what a terrible morning the driver of this Volvo is having. You’re driving along, rocking out in your car thinking about all the things you have to do today and then – Bam! Your whole day is thrown into turmoil. Let’s be careful out there.

Where Have All the Children Gone
It’s summertime kids. The sun is out and the nights are long. School is something to be barely tolerated this late in the game, a thick restraining arm holding you back from all the budding potential of a hundred plus dog days. . .so where the hell are you?

My neighborhood is residential and families are breeding at an preternatural rate. Yesterday, while I dug out more room in the garden for expecting vegetables, I was serenaded by the cries and screams on no less then three infants who threw tantrums in close proximity to my own home. It seemed no amount of cooing or shooshing was going to keep these babies from teaching us all a thing or two. The babies made the dogs howl and the dogs made the birds go crazy. The ear-splitting orchestra was more than I could take and I was forced back indoors to enjoy some time with a silent corona and a speechless Esquire.

But now I’m off track. . .Yeah, there are a ton of babies in the hood, but we’ve also got the normal allotment of middle school and high school aged kids as well. I see them from time to time exiting the big Catholic Middle School just down the street. They saunter home carrying Voyageresque size ruck-sacks and quickly move into the comforts of their own home. And then – this is what kills me – they never come back out! The baseball diamonds at the park lay empty and overgrown, The basketball courts at the community center just two block away are as desolate and deserted as a January evening. I hear and see no skateboards rolling down the well trimmed sidewalks. Hell, the community center has these thirty foot gently declining stairway rails with no obstacles to impede someone from pulling off one hell of a rail-slide. The whole center enjoys easy banked and nice rounded 60’s architectural surfaces throughout. But ain’t no one shredding it up. There isn’t even the faintest sign of wax to indicate those who came before. Dirt bikes? BMX? Anybody out there? What up kids?!?

So I guess the question is, what gives? Have the pretend skateboarding video games, the IM’ing/internet, and just plain old dumb television rendered the outside world boring and forgettable. Are kids so loaded down with commitments and formalized activities that there’s just no room for unsupervised, unscripted fun? Has the fear got ’em? I don’t know the answer. I do hope, with the close of the school year, that the gentle hum of four Birdhouse Fat Guy 54mm wheels riding swiftly, racketing at every break in the concrete like a bulky metronome, will work to drown out the shrill speak from younger voices.

Inclement Memorial Weather
Soggy conditions continue to plague the atmosphere here. The Twin Cities seem to be undergoing an identity crisis where it believes itself to be Seattle. A heavy, moist dankness sits on the air like an obese genie whose magic carpet is no match for his massive weight. My gardening attempts this weekend were ridiculous and comical as I dashed out madly to try and pull a few weeds in-between the sudden burst from the heavens. Yesterday was frustrating, the gods were in a silly and drunken mood. The rain would fall hard for two and half minutes and then a ray of brilliant sun would shoot through the clouds for another five. This mean cycle of weather repeated itself again and again. It was as if the gods had run out of imagination and simply left their post with the weather-lever held on ‘repeat’.

Since outside work was a tough garden to hoe, I retired to the cineplex and sat happily through Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. Even better than I had anticipated. So many great performances. I was especially taken with Alfred Molina. He’s a terrific actor whose films I need to see more of. I thought he really knocked it out of the park playing Diego Rivera in Frida.

Sunday, the misses and I saddled up and road down to Red Wing Minnesota for rainy day antique shopping. I found some great old metal and wood type specimens and two old Johnny Cash records that were in great condition. There was a massive air show going on in Red Wing that day and everyone was keen to know if we had gone and what did we think. In saying that I hadn’t bothered with the show I saw true disappointed on many faces. It was as if the whole town had labored to bring us a mighty banquette of exotic and favorable foods and we had looked upon it with the indifference that one gives an earthworm who is stuck in a puddle after a storm. We cast their hard work and hospitality aside with a, “sorry we’re full – we hit the Taco Bell on the way down”.

Jets Above Me

Something has changed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The flight patterns of the giant metal birds have been augmented today so they fly directly over my South Minneapolis castle. Usually most of the passing aircraft fly north of my house and at a safe enough distance that both sound and anxiety are kept at a safe distance. But today, they are flying low and straight over. I can almost read the flight numbers as they go by. The cats are not excited about this new turn of events.

When the planes aren’t flying this close to the house I actually enjoy them. I’ve pretty much got my entire work day schedule timed to their consistency. There goes the NW 561 to San Francisco – time for Lunch. Is that the 4673 to Phoenix I hear? Must be time for my 3PM smoke break.

My favorite is Ted, United Airlines little spin-off company. The logo is so big, it’s almost like a billboard in the sky. I definitely like Ted. Ted can pay a visit whenever he wants. He seems to be much quieter than his other airborne compadres. I also have aerosite (an airline logo directory) bookmarked so that I can keep tabs on the other hooligans that pay a visit.

I’m Not Drunk – I’m LCing
Watching the Timberwolves get quashed and maimed last night by Kobe and his crew of pillagers and giants was more then I could stand. Surely we can do better than that?! I threw a gallon of vitriolic laced polemic tone poems at the cathode squawk box and still my voice couldn’t raise the high-step in our defense nor add glue to our offensive hands.

As things began to unravel for our home team, a perfect storm of rage and ridiculousness began settling in around me. I could feel a violent tide rising in the bar. The crimson stools were beginning to feel waxy. The beer tasted skunky and faded. The air was aromatic with the unpleasant smell of hard grease, and kitchen fires. All this. . .and then I saw an advertisement pop up on the screen for Skyy Sport Low-Carb Malt Beverage. I went off. Like off off. That was too much. A nutritious malt-beverage? Please. Maybe it’s just me but this kind of bold-face shameless race to the bottom of health and hedonism is disgraceful. You can’t have it both ways America. What’s next? Low-carb Cigarettes? And just what makes Skyy Sport Low-Carb Malt Beverage so damn sporty? Should you be substituting this wonderful elixir for Gatorade the next time you play a vigorous round or badminton? “My that’s a sporty beer you’re drinking there Tom.” “Thanks, Bob, it’s low-carb too.”

The good folks at Skyy must be listening to that old Dead Milkmen song, “You’ll Dance to Anything” and replacing ‘Buy’ for ‘Dance to’ every other stanza. I actually did a little research on this Skyy Sport Low Carb foolishness and found that each bottle contains 15 grams of carbs. Roughly, that’s the equivalent of a whole six-pack of Michelob Ultra. So there you go. Don’t ever let them say that ol’ Afrojet ain’t looking out for your health and well being. We all have a job to do. Go wolves.

Scooter Du
Reading Bob Mould’s Blog, I ran across this funny little Sooter Du event happening here in Minnesota later this summer. I know nothing about the scooter scene here in the Twin Cities but it looks pretty cool.

Meet my new best friend. We’ve been spending a great deal of quality time together. I’m going to make stickers that say “I love to shred”. Sometimes I have these day dreams where I’m working as like the head shredder guy at the State Department and I run around to all these huge industrial shredding machines feeding the monster its classified lunch. Seriously satisfying work. Sometimes, if I get an e-mail that really pisses me off, instead of just deleting it, I’ll print it out just so I can shred the bitch. My shredder lives on a steady diet of passive aggressive e-mails. My new thing is redefining font sizes and line-heights of certain documents so that when shredded the cascading ribbons that end up in the basket can be removed and then repositioned to form prose of real interest. Result vary but these things feed the soul.

R.I.P. Elvin Jones. An absolute monster on the skins. I just got Grant Green’s Matador from the library this week and was marveling for the millionth time at E.J.’s mastery of color and texture. Sad news.

Win or Go Home

Watched the Kevin Garnett Show last night. That kid is such a crushing talent, an absolute powerhouse of a man. His intensity on the court is so visceral. He makes all other toys on the court look like small wobbly children. I saw a lot of the players on both teams rooted to the paint, watching in anticipation of what he would do next. I think even a non-basketball fan could watch KG’s steely ferocity and get a dose of inspirado from his passion and fierce work ethic. Damn glad they won that game seven. Now we all get a chance to see more of the KG Show as they take it to Shaq and Kobe. The announcers were all concerned about KG only having a day of rest before going up against the Lakers on Friday, but the guy is so in the zone right now that I bet he wishes he was playing tonight. HardCore.

I caught some of that Colonial House show on PBS. Anybody else watching this thing? Premise: a group of 21st century peeps go kick it 1968 colonial style for four months and see if they can hack it. It’s a reality T.V. show but it’s pretty good television. My favorite thing about it is how the appointed mayor of the colony gets to hand out these ‘scarlet letters’ to offenders of colonial law. Unfortunately, the shows not hardcore enough to dole out the serious corporal punishments that would have been mandatory back in the day. If they did that then no one would be left on the show for they all would have been burned at the stake. I’m thinking we need to bring back the scarlet letter system except make it more democratic. Are you with me? Everybody gets a fat stack of four inch high Helvetica Bold letters that they may slap on any modern day offender. Points awarded for creativity. If someone gets tagged with a letter they may not protest and must wear the letter for a 24-hour period. And hell, the application shouldn’t be limited to humans, you should be able to slap them on Gas-guzzling, eco-destroying Hummers, bad architecture, my neighbors yipping dog that barks incessantly throughout the day. Fuck, I’d probably break my printer producing enough letters to heap upon that damn dog. So if you see me coming your way and I’ve got a handful of stickers in my hand you better watch what you say and do because the benevolent dictator has returned!