Operatic and Sotted
Last night the Tonics and Tangurays were put down with all the savageness of a ravenous wolf let loose in a sheep farm. As usual, the site of the sanguinary slide was the Stardust Lanes, and although I actually never got around to bowling a single frame I did sit mesmerized for hours listening to some of the best damn Karaoke these ears have ever heard. It was like witnessing our very own ‘South Minneapolis Idol’. These kids were good. One male crooner even went so far as to preform two or three Billy Holiday songs. The sad part is that there were only about 10 of us inthe lounge who witnessed the vocal sonnets this cat was slinging. Another highlight was a complex rendition of Rappers Delight that was preformed by a trio that took the beat and the Sugar Hill Gang’s verbal stylings and then flipped it with their own freestyles. But the true high point, was this guy Rich – a 60 year old home town favorite – who did a spot on rendition of Billy Jean. Terrific.
No Sign of The Skelton Code
My brother snapped this picture of our namesake sign outside the townhall of our very own township. Neither of us had any idea there was even a township in Minnesota called Skelton. I already feel an immediate kinship to the 372 people who live there. And I kind of wonder – what it would take for me to be deemed King of Skelton? Is it one of those things where I could just show up at the town hall and, upon hearing my name and pure pedigree, they would immediately appoint me as ruler and keeper of the lands? Or, will I just have to amass a small army and march up 35E and take the thing by force? Plans must be drawn up at once!
Yikes, I guess I’m feeling a bit mischievous today. I haven’t been sleeping much on account of that damn book The Da Vinci Code. I suspect that this is the same deep engagement and euphoria that millions of 12 year olds the world over are getting from their Harry Potter Book. Last night I surrendered completely to it’s cryptographic tractor beam. The Journey is a good one. But I refuse to talk about the book cause that would take all day and I would be hung from hooks for the highest crime of ‘spoiling’. In that spirit, I wont even link to reviews but if you’re interested you can get a feel for the book by following The DaVinci Code Web Quest: an online treasure hunt of sorts using Google and other tools. Fun stuff.
We Have Cans
I was standing outside moments ago when a guy on a bike rode by hauling three huge bags filled with hundreds of cans. He was no doubt on his way to get paid from the recycling plant down the street. Just as he passed me, a megaphone narration broke the air and yelled, “Hey. You on the Bike. We’ve got more cans for you.” It sounded mischievous – not something you’d expect to hear blasted loudly across the streets of the Warehouse District. The guy immediately looked at me to see if I was responsible for the command. I gave him a blank look and shrugged my shoulders. Then we both noticed a fire truck parked at a light about two blocks away. The guy on the bike and I concluded that the words were coming from the fire truck. Sure enough the truck pulled up to us and a fire guy got out, went around to the back of the truck, and pulled out three of his own bags of cans. The fire guy and I helped the guy on the bike balance six bags of cans on his bike and then the fire guy and I watched as the can man rode off slowly, wobbling back and forth down the road.
It’s amazing how many books you can crush in a long weekend when the usual distractions of reality television, computers, tire changing, grocery shopping duties, and most importantly, humans are removed from the equation. Only the sounds of cardinals and giant mosquitoes were left to remove me from the printed word. I blasted through two Bukowski novels, War Talk by Arundhati, and a book on Japan’s influence on Frank Lloyd Wright culled from the depths of the Minneapolis Public Library. All great reading but I hadn’t anticipated being able to focus on the reading quite so ferociously and soon I was down to my last paragraph with nothing on deck. Desperate for more words, I traveled from the Log Cabin dwelling and drove the 8 miles to the closest town – New Prague – to gobble up whatever words I could. Just so you know, New Prague doesn’t look anything like Old Prague. In fact the new development that was unceremoniously deemed “New New Prague” certainly doesn’t bare any resemblance whatsoever to its romantic old Eastern European sister city. 
Being that it was a holiday most everything was shut up except for the local Econo foods grocery. I was still in the mood for some quality literature but when all you’ve got to supply your addiction is the Econo foods in New Prague…well that’s just an unforgiving mistress. Across from the canned coffee I found the miscellaneous reading materials shelf overflowing with a bounty of bridal magazines and fantasy football periodicals. I actually had my hands on the newest edition of Lowrider Magazine for a heartbeat, but then I wised up. My book choices were singular – dictionaries that had sat undisturbed on the shelf since the Cold War. No luck. I drove back to the cabin with only a recipe on the back of a bucket of store bought homestyle potato salad for enjoyment.
Without reading materials, the rest of trip was spent in the Captain’s chair trying to lure some of the hundred or so bunny rabbits over to my outdoor lazy-style HQ with bits of potato salad and bite size Oreoes. No takers. The bunnies did get pretty close tho and hopped about on the outside of my perimeter. Of course they were highly entertaining as I finished of a six pack of Private Reserve. The estate also had a few variety of goats, dogs, and a brand new litter of snow white kittens with baby blue eyes. The kittens were doted over for a good long time.
Unplugging for the Fourth
I’m not a big Fourth of July fan. Crowds, alcohol induced patriotism, and explosives will always lead to the inevitable post holiday assortment of news reports documenting the twisted nights of the unkept and dumb. 
It’s always the best time of year to get as far away from humanity as possible. So, I’ve found a cabin for the weekend. A sturdy thing with lots of knotty pine and iron.
The coolers are packed with all the fixings to make as many mojitos as the body can take. I got this sweet Captain’s Chair with Footrest from Target. And I’m planning on stopping by the book store to grab a copy of The Da Vinci Code before getting on the highway and making my way south. Reading will be the order of the days and taking lots of snaps. I’ve got to get going on getting some photos together for the 26 Things Project. I was thinking of using the Warped Tour photo of the cops to fill the category “Love”, but the more I think about it I might use it for symmetry. Be careful out there this weekend.
Type for the Twin Cities
Looks like the Twin Cities is one step closer to a new type face. The TypeCon site is featuring a new type by the fine folks at LettError. The type will be called Twin and it will be up to the folks of the Twin Cites to make the type learn. Ambitious. I can’t wait to peep it at TypeCon 2003.
Employing OpenType, and based on custom software entitled the “Panchromatic Hybrid Style Alternator,” LettError’s Twin font offers an infinitely varied typographic menu. And, in a remarkable first, a “live and reactive” version can be linked via the Internet to dynamic data, so that urban conditions in the Twin Cities can visibly affect the font’s appearance.
Another type innovation that will soon be unleashed on the OSX crowd is Font Book by Apple. From the screenshots it look like the interface will be a vast improvement over the painful verticle display in Font Reserve. Hopefully it will be the last time I need to spend time reorganizing, relearning and upgrading my font organization habits and techniques. A cool aspect of Font Book will be it’s Character Pallet which allows users to “preview a character rendered in every active font”. Sweet.
Stencils are everywhere! Check out Bansky. Here is a photo of a stencil left on Hennepin Avenue by ObeyGiant when he cruised through town a few weeks ago.
The Vans Warp Tour
My favorite people at the Vans Warped Tour turned out to be these two hired cops. I asked if they would pose for this shot in front of the Marines recruiting station that was right next to the drug paraphernalia, hippie, rastafarian tent (man, talk about choosing the red pill or the blue pill). They were swell guys and happy to pose.
For what is essentially billed as a “punk” show the cops were pretty bored. No one was getting drunk because no one was old enough to drink. Which for me was kinda nice. Every-time I went to exchange my eight Warped tickets for a plastic cup of Miller Light there was no line and usually no one else but me in the beer tent. No drinking meant no fighting and generally no one was smoking the purple haired snoop-a-dizzle chronic. So really the Cops were just strolling around in the hot sun trying to have a good time. One guy even admitted he liked some of the music. Hey.
It was a nice day to chill on the blankets, sip beer, smoke cigarettes, watch some half-pipe action (photo), rap with folks, and sing in communal song to the anthems of the day. I had placed most of my bets on The Dropkick Murpheys (photo). They ripped it up. They went on in the hot sun at about three o’clock – brought out their bag-pipe player and ripped into their signature opening song “For Boston”. After that, it was a throw down in the dry hot dirt that was punctuated with great covers of CCR and AC/DC. As we get closer and closer to the 4th of July, CCR begins to creep into everyone’s musical subconscious.
The other band I had a large bet riding on was AFI. Their darker flavored anthems were greeted by a sudden rainstorm that lasted just as long as their set. It was an ominous sky but seemed very appropriate. AFI was probably the high point. They had maximum energy and the new songs sounded incredible. During AFI’s set I was moved to dance around a bit and throw me hands in the air, which made lots of kids point and giggle and snicker to each other, “Look someone’s dad is going bonkers”. Kids today…if they only knew.
Summer Anvil Drop
I took this snap just as a watermelon exploded all over this car that was being softened up for the Annual Anvil Drop that happens at the tool shop just down the road on Washington Avenue. When the Anvil finally fell the car was annihilated. There was a band in the back playing the “Anvil Drop Anthem” while the crowd milled about eating hot dogs and ogling the latest line of Mikita power tools.
Before The Drop, I was out of the office looking forward to my mid afternoon cigarette but found someone had puked all over my favorite smoke spot. The smell was so bad I had to wondered on. I walked down to see if the the book seller was open down the road. He’s been holding a piece for me there for over two weeks. He’s got hours posted but never keeps them. As much as I admire his casual style, it’s been completely annoying as I’ve been to his shop several times lately and he’s not there. Finally today he was open. He said he’d been taking a few sick days and admitted he’d been a little lazy lately. He’s an odd duck but I enjoy hanging out with him. He was very excited about some new titles he had gathered over the weekend and wanted to show them to me. Pretty uninteresting stuff. A weird mix of bad philosophy, German auto manuals from the 70’s, some architecture stuff I had never heard of and some old bibles. It didn’t really matter tho, I knew he wouldn’t sell me any of the stuff, had I been interested. I really don’t know how he stays in business keeping the odd hours he does and refusing to sell anybody anything when they do finally want something. Usually after I rummage through his small dusty stacks and I find the one gem that I want to buy, I’ve still only got a 50/50 chance of him agreeing to sell me the damn thing. I just don’t think collectors like this guy have any business being in business. But, whatever, it’s also a quality I admire in him. I see him as this cultural magistrate who gets to deem whether I’m worthy of his product or not. It’s an exclusive club. Lucky for me, he’s beginning to take a shine to my worthiness.
After convincing him out of some of his precious stock, I headed up to the post office. The line there was horrendous. I hate standing in line. I argued with a guy about the merits of the LeBron James draft. This guy was convinced he was the second coming of Jordan. I didn’t think so. His girlfriend kept putting in her two cents on the subject by telling her man that he (referring to me), “don’t know nothin’ about no Michael Jordan”. Which is true. I can’t argue with her there. But when I’m stuck in a damn line at the post office I tend to start some shit just to entertain my boredom.
Angels Overloaded
Enough already. I’ll go see the damn movie. I’ll even sign something that obligates me to see the movie but please stop the hype train and the endless publicity saturation that hides around every corner, magazine cover, and television channel. Is it too late to edit the ending of the new Charlie’s Angels movie so that all three of the angles die and can never make another movie again? I can’t recall any movie being so overly publicized as the new Charlie’s Angels movie. Demi’s dating Ashton, all the girls get along like family and lean on each other for moral support in times of crisis. Bleectttth! Please. Demi’s gonna dump Ashton after the movie grosses more than 200 million and those girls will be lucky if they remember to send each other Christmas cards. Anyway if you haven’t gotten your fill of CA, then by all means you need to check out the Charlie’s Angels Furniture Porn (It’s Ok. It’s just chairs). It’s actually hard to tell the difference between some of the chairs and Cameron Diaz’s body. Snap. Snap. Oh no he di’ent.
The new Radiohead record reviewed by many in 50 words or less.
The Nu Analog
I picked up this sweet General Electric Solid State Porta-Fi stand alone stereo cabinet with turntable yesterday from the Salvation Army. Wow, what a warm sound. I have it set up in the office. Right now I’m rocking a little Jimi Hendrix ‘Band of Gypsys’ and the bass is bouncing all over the concrete floors and filling up the room with such a huge sound.
I was going to take off for Chicago today to see Jets To Brazil but with work commitments and the Black Flag reunion show tonight at First Avenue, I’m not going to be able make it down to Chi Town.
I would like to lodge a formal complaint with touring bands this summer. What’s the deal? Why aren’t you giving the Twin Cities any love? If I have to travel to Chicago for every good band this summer, I’m going to be broke and exhausted. Is there something we did wrong? Do we Minnesotans smell bad? It’s not cold here right now. There’s no snow. Don’t be shy, come on up. We’ll take you the Mall of America.
I’m diggin on some of the new summer Hip Hop joints. The new Gang Starr record dropped today as well as the new Black Eyed Peas. I’ve still got the new Ugly Duckling on heavy rotation. It’s the perfect party record for the summer. Check out their Meat Shake website and also make sure you check out their hilarious video to the Samba song.