April 2009
72 posts
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Oops. Chuck Terhark at METRO totally scooped me on... →
Last week, even. Boy oh boy, am I embarrassed. Pistols at dawn, Chuck?
Mint Juleps and Kentucky
Chris at chriseats learns the terrible, shocking truth:
I recently was talking about Mint Juleps with some friends, and in my ignorance, I said, “I bet Andy Sturdevant makes a mean mint julep.” (because I found out that he was from Louisville) I was quickly corrected, I had assumed that Kentuckians drank them like Milwaukeeians drink brandy old-fashioneds. After some research, I found some...
"The End of Pontiac, the Beginning of...
Reflecting on the demise of the Pontiac brand, I asked my friend, noted St. Paul poet and automotive enthusiast Paul D. Dickinson to say a few words on the subject. I present them here for you today:
I always thought Pontiac was an interesting brand. It represented the endless choices of American empire. We had so much abundance that we could have a GM brand called Pontiac.
Just like Black...
“Zorn, then, is the most we can ask of a modern artist: prolific. In an age of...”
– Joshua Cohen on composer/saxophonist John Zorn, in the May issue of Harper’s. He goes on to write that Zorn is “determined to entertain us through challenge. His goal seems to be the imprinting of a local sensibility on an unprecedented wealth of material.”
This is something very...
Last Saturday was the four month anniversary of...
“MR. FORD: Swine flu very much.”
– Gerald Ford, concluding the first debate with Jimmy Carter in Donald Barthelme’s 1976 retelling of the event, as published in The New Yorker. Read that in your best Gerald Ford voice. Every time I hear the phrase “swine flu” I think of Gerald Ford thanking you.
Lowertown St. Paul's lost sustainable urban... →
“Art has been crippled by the mandatory MFA, now visible on every artist bio in...”
– John Perreault in Artopia, writing about the New Museum’s The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.
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Here’s something for your Sunday afternoon...
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Oh, the mid-1970s. When else could a...
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The greatest unsung trope.
I saw a flier on Washington Avenue this morning by the University advertising “Free Mechanical Bull Rides.”
At first I became very excited, because I thought this might be the name of a band. One of the greatest, most heroic, and largely unsung tropes of rock music is when a group of snotty kids get together and give their band a name that suggests an activity of some kind that lots...
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The meme report.
My brother’s Internet has been down for close to a month-and-a-half now, and we have fallen into this completely ridiculous, unintentional routine of me calling him every week or so to explain the different Internet memes that he is missing since the last time I talked to him. It leads to truly awful conversations like this:
“So, wait, she was from Utah?”
“Yeah,...
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The blackout years and a sub-generation of...
The photo of myself in Pittsburgh from yesterday came unexpectedly in an email from my friend Tom, who was holding the camera and on whose roof I was standing. He lives in California now and was responsibly for snapping the documentation from my first In-N-Out burgers.
There aren’t many photos from this time of me. I’m guessing there’s probably less than two dozen between 1998...
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What is the best to mark both Earth Day and...
Roger Miller, “Kansas City Star,”...
“Someone ought to train them how to behave in museums. Not only do they converse...”
– Charles Dantzig, “Liste des Américains.”
Sturtevant at the Walker Art Center. →
“It’s been said that Sturtevant is the only artist who can’t be copied—but she is best known for making repetitions of works by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Jasper Johns.”
Not a distant aunt, unfortunately.
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A short trip back to 1999.
We’re not really into observing mindless anniversaries over here at South 12th, but…oh, wait a minute, no! We are totally into observing mindless anniversaries over here at South 12th! Well, that’s great, because here’s another one: Sleater-Kinney’s The Hot Rock was released ten years ago this year, back in February.
This seems important for a few reasons I was...
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"Roasted chestnuts, peanuts, bananas, peaches, hot... →
Here’s a piece I wrote for the great local food blog The Heavy Table about why you can’t buy a hot dog from a food cart on a street corner in Minneapolis. At one time, surprisingly, such food carts were very common.
Ineffectual karaoke tricks, #3:
When singing...
“So he’s an adjunct professor, but he still talks about wanting to work in...”
– A woman to her friend on the east bank of the University today. Oh, the 1990s will never truly be over!
Hey, it’s springtime! Everybody’s...
Would you like some free-ish/cheap clothing items... →
Sure you would. Click through for Tien’s clothing giveaway tumbelog. She seems pretty chic, so I would expect to see some quality items in there.
A short anecdote about West Coast fast food.
So says Emy, via a status update on Facebook:
I find it zlol that anytime anyone heads to In-N-Out Burger (from the east coast) - they have to take a photo for their FB, Tumblr, Flickr. That’s good eatin’ … but really?
I am myself guilty of this very practice. However, being a complete and utter rube, I blew even this simple documentary act of flyover country rubiness it in a...
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A cross-disciplinary stunt interview and rock...
Rumble on the Southside, a sprawling, multi-week open work, opened last weekend at Art Of This Gallery. The curators, Patty McMeans and A.J. Warnick, asked Salon Saloon to host a sort of supplemental episode. Perhaps an artists’ talk, or an interview. I said “of course,” but then thought it might be more interesting instead to ask the four resident artists — Sarah Petersen,...
A fun fact about your correspondent is that I was...
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"Rebellion in Minneapolis." →
An excerpt on the 1934 Truckers’ Strike, from the new Haymarket Press reprint of The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sit-Downs, by Sidney Lens.
“As early as the 1860s, Smith notes, vocal opponents of urban green space argued...”
– Craig Cox in the Minneapolis Observer, in a review of City of Parks, a new history of the Minneapolis park system by David C. Smith.
For a nice bit of perspective, consider that I live twenty blocks south of 10th, and ten south of Franklin. Starting at Eliott Park right on 10th Street and...
Two plants from the Portland Chamber of Commerce,...
Guy #1: Brains and beauty? You can't have it all.
Guy #2: Uh-huh, you can! In Oregon!
Guy #1: Oregon?
Guy #2: Yeah, Oregon! That's why I'm-a go to Oregon!
A well-placed source close to us claims to have... →
