Let the hate flow through you

It's the eve of the Gopher-Badger football game, so I thought I'd post some good reasons to hate the Badgers.

Proximity to obnoxious fans
Being that Minneapolis/St. Paul is so close to Madison, WI, many UW grads migrate to our fine city looking for employment and other opportunities to live a fruitful life. Unfortunately, they show up at our games, irrelevantly and constantly talking about Brett Favre while wearing those horrid red hoodies. That leads me to the next hate-point:

Ugly school colors
Red and white is a shitty sight. That's one of the reasons why I hate the Badgers and traditional peppermint candy canes. When watching their home games on TV, the site of all that red makes me want to vomit. The only other time I got ill from seeing to much of that despised color was when I looked at the electoral map from the 2004 election.

Jump Around
These morons have a "tradition" of playing House of Pain's "Jump Around" over the loudspeaker at the end of the 3rd quarter. They took an obnoxious, early 90's hip hop tune that is played in stadiums and arenas all across the country and made it their own. How did they do this? Much like a classroom full of pre-schoolers, their entire student section takes the lyrics from the chorus literally. Voila! Instant, manufactured "tradition." To me, the novelty has worn off, and this is about as cool as playing The Village People's "YMCA" and doing all the letters with your arms.

Lack of Discipline
During the 2007 off-season, former UW running back Lance Smith slaps around his girlfriend in the middle of the street, takes her shoes, and leaves her stranded. His punishment? He's not allowed to travel with the team and play in road games. However, he's still with the team for every practice function and suits up and plays in every home game (71 carries, 429 yards for the season).
If you thought that was rough, wait until you hear what happened to cornerback Jack Ikegwounu. He was arrested with his brother at the end of the 2006 regular season for breaking into somebody's apartment and stealing an XBox. I don't even know if he got a slap on the wrist, because he was still able to play in their New Years Day bowl game and played all of the 2007 season. Karma police caught up to him though, as he got a nice groin punch from our own Eric Decker in last year's game and he ended up blowing out his knee while preparing for NFL predraft camps last spring.

Idiot Coach
If there was a Coach of the Year subcategory award for "Coach That Looks Like His Team's Mascot," then Bret Bielema would be looking towards winning that award for the third straight year. The combination of his buzzcut, fat head, and squinty eyes is enough. But takes the cake is the fact that he has one of those receding hairlines that attacks the upper corners of his forehead, leaving him with an awkward penninsula of hair that protrudes down the center of his head. That is how a grown man looks like a badger.

I could go on and on, but I don't want to drift to far to the darkside.

Better Dead Than Red!

I have slain the bat!

Let me tell you a tale of my previous Saturday:

It started like any other Saturday night: I stopped at France and 44th to pick up a 12 pack of beer on the way home from work. Lately I've been enticed by variety and have grown fond of buying sampler packs from various breweries.

However, I found a completely new brew this night and decided to take a risk and purchase a full twelve pack of it. It was Leine's new seasonal, Fireside Nut Brown. It was pretty good, but had a very sweet cocoa aftertaste to it.

When I got home, I had the entire house--and more importantly, the tv--to myself. With no friends, family, or girlfriend to distract me, I could concentrate on drinking beer and watching NCAA football. There were three prime-time games on that night: Florida versus Vanderbilt, Boston College versus Notre Dame, and Texas Tech versus Oklahoma State.

I knew Florida-Vanderbilt would be no contest, so I only flipped to that game if both of the others were on commercial break. The TT-OSU game was supposed to be amazing, since both teams were both ranked in the top 10, but Tech started to run away with this one pretty quickly. So I settled in with the BC-ND game, which I guess was also a one sided contest (BC won 17-0), but it was more interesting because it was a defensive blowout. Notre Dame was just stifled by Boston College. Just when they would get something moving, BC would come up with a big stop or takeaway.

Now I mentioned earlier that I was just going to concentrate on football and drinking beer. Well I wasn't really concentrating on the beer drinking part. If I was concentrating, then I wouldn't have been drinking it at such an alarming rate. I cracked into my seventh brew before halftime. I was now officially drunk. It was a weird kind of drunk that I hadn't experienced since I was a minor and we would always drink really fast in order to get intentionally plowed. I couldn't feel my lips.

I slowed the pace and only had one more beer in the second half. I also was starving, so I ordered a Pizza Hut Pizzone and a small order of Quepapas. I actually despise Quepapas. They are the biggest waste of space I have ever put in my stomach. I even knew this before I ordered them. However, the Pizzone was only $5.99 and I needed a minimum order of $8.50 for delivery. The Quepapas were only $3.00, so I got them.

When the delivery guy came, I had a hard time speaking. Normally when you drink in a social setting, you are talking constantly and don't have an issue with speaking as you get more intoxicated. However, when you get drunk alone, you aren't really talking. So when the time comes and you have to actually put together some coherent words, it can catch you off guard and be more difficult then you expect.

I finished the Pizzone and the football games were ending. It was still relatively early that evening, but because I was now intoxicated, I could not drive anywhere. This was disappointing because I got a text from a friend who was going to the Park Tavern. They have karaoke there. I love karaoke.

I decided I would hoof it to the nearest Blockbuster video store to find me some Saturday night entertainment. I picked up John Carpenter's The Thing. I also brought back my video I received in the mail. With the Blockbuster subscription plan, you can exchange your DVDs received in the mail twice a month for a free rental at the store. After those two freebies, you can still exchange them for $1.99 rentals.

Every time I bring a DVD back for the $1.99 rental, the cashier fucks it up. Saturday night was no exception. I approach the counter with my DVD I want to rent, the DVD I am exchanging, my Blockbuster membership card, and a box of Mike and Ikes. He rings it all up and gives me a total of over $6. The Mike and Ikes were only $1.79and the total with the $1.99 movie and sales tax should have been somewhere between $4-$5.

I inform the clerk of the error and he seems to get it right away. He just doesn't know how to ring it up properly on the computer. He flags over the manager to help him out.

The manager types up some stuff on the register and then gives him a reassuring, "There. Now scan it in again."

The clerk scans the stuff again and gives my total: $0.87. Now this obviously makes no sense to me, and it really shouldn't to the clerk or the manager who's still standing there supervising. The right thing to do would be to correct him again so we could get the right total amount due. But I was drunk, and they may have sensed that, too. Maybe they were afraid I would go on a belligerent rampage and wanted to get me out of there as soon as possible.

Whatever. I got a movie and a box of candy for $0.87.

On the way home, I grew impatient of walking. It was taking to long. I wanted to be back in the house and watching my movie. So I did what any rational man would do: I started jogging. I jogged all the way home.

I got home and got myself all ready to enjoy this feature film starring Kurt Russell. I was wearing sweatpants, covered up in my blanket, and was sitting in the dark while munching on candy. The movie was starting to pick up right away in the first 20 minutes. A Siberian husky mutated into a giant monster and started attacking the other dogs in the kennel and it's handlers.

That's when I saw something fly across my basement room. It was too big to just be some bug. It flew around the corner and back again.

"Great," I thought, "there's a damn bird down here."

It came around the corner again and then at me. Startled, I swung at it with my trusty blanket. I either hit it or it got disoriented and flew into the wall. It then fell down behind some junk piled underneath the window. I turned on the lights and grabbed my weapon of choice: my trusty blanket.

It rustled behind some bags of stuff and then crawled on top of a pillow in the corner. It was no bird. It was a bat. And it started flying at me again.

I took a swing at it again with my blanket and again either hit or stunned it. He fell to the floor by my desk. Unsure of what to do next, I just followed my instincts. I proceeded to pick up one of my shoes and hurl it at him. I missed by about 4 inches. He started flying again and ran into the wall in the opposite corner. This time he fell onto a pile of seasonal decorations. Actually, it was just an Easter basket with a couple small Christmas decorations in it.

I sat there and waited for him to emerge. He didn't.

I stood there pondering my next move for about 15 minutes. I couldn't just go back to sleep knowing this little bastard is floating around in my room. On the other hand, I didn't want to go digging in that corner for fear of it attacking me.

But I decided to face my fear that evening. I grabbed a broom and started poking around. He wasn't coming out, so I had to start picking some things out of the pile. I was trying to pick up the Easter basket with the broom handle but I ended up dropping the whole basket. That's when I started to hear a faint squeaking noise. I believe he was in the basket and was injured by a heavy snowman figurine that was also in the basket.

I cleared the holiday decorations away and found the furry little bugger just lying there and making this innocent little squeaking noise. I then proceeded to pummel the living shit out him with my broom. First, I attacked with the broom head. Then I flipped it around and got him once with the broom stick. Finally, I put him out of his misery with a fatal jab straight to the chest with the tip of the broomstick.

Despite not really leaving the house and having very limited human interaction, last Saturday night was pretty eventful.

Our House

I got this from my good friend Elliot, of "I'm o.k, I'm all write." fame. I figure the best way to post something on my blog when I haven't done so in awhile is to find something wacky like this to get back into the rhythm. Enjoy.

Directions:
1. Put your iPod, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.


IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
The Lost Art of Keeping A Secret

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
Sweet Jane

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Paper Planes

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Rotating Head

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Dumpweed

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Feel Good Hit of The Summer

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
King Without A Crown (Thanks guys)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Daft Punk Is Playing At My House

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Lyla

WHAT IS 2 + 2?
3 Quarts Drunk (nice)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BESTIE?
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Underdog World Strike

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
You (wait, what?)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WHEN YOU GROW UP?
No One Else

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE
No Complaints

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Snoop Dog, Baby (Oh, it will happen one way or the other)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Fraud In The 80s

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
Down Like Disco

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Kids With Guns

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Jenny

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Our House

One More Year...

Today is a significant date in Gopher Football history. No, it's not because we are on the eve of our first ever match-up with Division I-AA Montana State. It is because today is the 1 year pre-anniversary of the opening of TCF Bank Stadium. I read an article earlier this summer that asked readers to vote for their favorite memory from the last 25 years the Gophers football team spent in the Metrodome. It was somewhat laughable because there really weren't to many positive memories from those last two and half decades. They pretty much sucked for most of the 80's and 90's, and the big wins during the Glen Mason years usually came on the road. In fact, some his most agonizing losses occurred at home.

Now I never really followed Gopher football until I became a student at the U of M in 2001. Here are my memorable moments (both good and bad) from the Metrodome years:

September 8, 2001 - Minnesota 44, UL-Lafayette 14

This was my first ever college football game I attended. I was with my high school friend, Andy. He went to North Dakota State, but was in town visiting his HS girlfriend who went to the U. I think they might have broken up by the time the weekend was over.

September 29, 2001 - Minnesota 28, Purdue 35 OT

Another first: this was the first Big Ten match-up I witnessed in person, and it was wild. I can't find an exact recap of this game, but from what I remember, Dan Nystrom missed a field goal that could have sealed it.

Then there was a horrible call in overtime that may have cost us the game. A touchdown pass was ruled incomplete because the ref said the receiver was out of bounds. The ref appeared to be confused by the way the end zone was painted. The turf in the endzone was painted entirely gold except for the border was left in its natural green hue. The receiver landed with one foot on the green, which is not out of bounds. The out-of-bounds is marked by white. This was before the dawn of instant-replay in college games, so the call stood.

The game ended a play or two later, and the Purdue players were showered with beer cups and other debris as they celebrated in our end-zone. For the next home game, the end zone was painted with the school name over an all green background.

November 16, 2002 - Minnesota 21, Iowa 45

This was a pretty crappy game where we were thoroughly dominated by an Iowa team that ended up clinching a share of the Big Ten Championship with that win. After the game ended, the large amount of Iowa fans there stormed the field. It was mostly innocent celebration until they decided to partake in the tired tradition of downing the field goal posts. Unfortunately, no body's skull was crushed during this ritual.

Then some idiots were arrested and spent the night in jail for trying to leave the Metrodome with the goalposts. I remembered seeing them briefly interviewed on the local news the next day. They were mostly good humored about the situation, but still seemed befuddled as to why they would be arrested for destroying and stealing private property. Apparently that's not a big deal down in Iowa.

November 8, 2003 - Minnesota 37, Wisconsin 34

The game for Paul Bunyan's Ax was intense and ended with a last second field goal by Gophers kicker Rhys Lloyd, whom Glen Mason dubbed "Winston." You know, because he was British. Just like how we always call every Mexican "Pedro" or every native African "Mufasa"...or not.

Anyway, this game gave me hope as it was the first time I've seen a Gophers football team win a close one at the last second (mind you, I wasn't here for the big upset of #2 Penn State back in '99). It wouldn't be the last nail-biter of the season. We beat Oregon on another last second field goal at the Sun Bowl.

October 23, 2004 - Minnesota 45, Illinois 0

After a couple crushing road losses to Michigan and Michigan State, the Gophers returned home to shut out Illinois. This was the first time I saw Minnesota Gophers team shut out a Big Ten opponent (if Illinois could qualify as one that season...they were really, really bad). Regardless, it was uplifting until we closed out the season with losses to Indiana (WTF?), Wisconsin, and Iowa.

September 24, 2005 - Minnesota 42, Purdue 35 2OT

This was the first and only time that Glen Mason had beaten Purdue during his tenure. It was uplifting at the time because Purdue was ranked #11 and had one of the top rushing defenses in the nation. We ran for 301 yards on them. It was a thrilling win as some gutsy calls and clutch play by QB Brian Cupito sealed the deal. In retrospect, this win isn't as glamorous since Purdue ended up finishing 5-6on the season.

October 15, 2005 - Minnesota 34, Wisconsin 38

The most demoralizing loss I have ever witnessed (note: I was not here for the game against Michigan in 2003; I was on a flight to Jamaica for my sister's wedding. The Gophers lost and my sister was divorced within a year. Coincidence? You be the judge).

The Gophers ran for over 500 yards on the Badgers and were up by 10 points with three minutes to go. The Badgers received a kickoff and picked apart the Gophers secondary to score a touchdown within a minute. The drive ended with a long touchdown pass where the defender got called for a face mask penalty. This was assessed on the kick-off. Wisconsin tried an onside kick and failed. But instead of the ball being caught by Minnesota and downed around midfield, it squeaked by and rolled all the way back behind the Gopher's 20 yard line.

Now I mentioned before that we had run for over 500 yards, so you figured we could run for a first down and the clock would expire.

1st and 10, run for 3 yards.

2nd and 7, run for three yards.

3rd and 4, run for 3 yards.

Shit. Now it's 4th and 1.

Conventional wisdom says the conservative thing to do would be to punt and the ballsy thing to do would be to go for the first down. With us, I believe it was the exact opposite. Consider that we had already rung up 500 yards of rushing on this defense, and we just made 3 straight gains of 3 yards with their entire defense stacked against the line of scrimmage. There was nothing they could do to stop us. Now consider that our defense had just given up a 70 yard touchdown drive in about a minute. Wisconsin was only down by 3 and would just have needed to get into field goal range in 30 seconds. The ballsy thing to do here would be to punt it and leave this game in the hands of the defense, and the conservative thing to do would be to run the ball one more time for the first down and let the clock expire.

Glen Mason has balls. He decided to punt it. The freshman punter drops the snap, picks it up, tries to get the punt off and it's blocked. The Badgers recover in the end zone for a touchdown.

Worst. Loss. Ever.

October 21, 2006 - Minnesota 10, North Dakota State 9

This was the first time I saw my Alma mater play against my home-state school where most of my friends went. This was a fun game because it had the same type of rivalry atmosphere as a Wisconsin or Iowa game, as in the away fans nearly outnumber home fans.

The game was closer than expected and it was a pretty pitiful performance by the Gophers. I blame the coaching staff as I don't think they spent too much time with their game plan on this one. I think they thought they would just overpower NDSU like they did with Kent State and Temple. When the game started and they realized that wasn't the case, they didn't know what the hell to do.

Luckily, Minnesota won the turnover battle and got a few other breaks. NDSU had a touchdown called back for a rare tripping penalty and the kicker shanked a short field goal. Finally, the Gophers blocked another field goal as the clock ran out.

My friend Dylan sent me a link to a lame ESPN.com Top Ten list that counts down the top ten upsets of the BCS era and the Gophers loss to NDSU the following year was #10. I actually think the 2006 game was more of an upset, even though the Gophers won. The 2006 team was actually pretty good. They struggled early in the season, but started to roll towards the end and qualified for a bowl. They were completely destroying Texas Tech before the Glen Mason's traditional 4th quarter meltdown. NDSU completely dominated the Gophers in 2006, but we won because we didn't turn the ball over and got a few lucky breaks. We should have really beat the shit out of the Bison that year.

When we actually lost to NDSU in 2007, it wasn't much of an upset because of how terrible Minnesota was that year. Not only were we the worst defense in the nation, we were not even close to being the second worst defense in the nation. In statistics, we were known as what is called an outlier. Meanwhile, NDSU was the #1 ranked team in Division IAA (until the schmucks dropped a game to South Dakota State). Anybody who followed NDSU and Minnesota that year will tell you that game was no upset. The Bison were clearly a better team and it would have been an upset if they had lost.

November 18, 2006 - Minnesota 34, Iowa 24

This was a great game because it was the first time I had seen the Gophers beat Iowa and win the Floyd of Rosedale trophy. On top of that, it was our sixth win that season and made us bowl eligible. We were invited to the Insight.com Bowl in Tempe, Arizona, to face Texas Tech. This bowl game is what eventually led to the firing of Glen Mason. I was happy to be there in person to watch such a historic collapse. I was not happy about being snowed in for New Year's Eve outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the way home.

September 1, 2007 - Minnesota 31, Bowling Green 32 OT

Drunkest. Game. Ever.

The season opener and the start of the Tim Brewster era didn't go so well for the team or me. I was pretty damn giddy about the start of the new season. Since kickoff wasn't until 7 PM, we had ample time to get nice and sauced before the game. My friend Matt and I had a couple beers at my apartment that afternoon while watching VA Tech and East Carolina duke it out on TV. Then we went to the liquor store, picked up another friend, and headed out to tailgate. The three of us finished a case of Grain Belt Premium. When that was gone, we started mooching off a keg of Busch Light from some damn freshmen (they probably weren't freshmen since they had the means to obtain a keg, but I have a habit of referring to any college kid as a freshmen). On top of that we took a couple ceremonial tequila shots before we headed in for the game.

Needless to say, I don't remember a lot of the game, but I do remember walking home. It was from the Metrodome to my new apartment in St. Louis Park. I mapped it out online and it was a good 8 mile hike and took me almost three hours. Good times.


So there you have it. Those were my most notable memories from the Gopher era in the Metrodome. Hopefully after this season, I can add beating Michigan and Iowa to become bowl eligible.

Hey, Look What I Found...

I was testing my links on a previous post and found that the site for the Take Back Labor Day concert is already gone. However, it did link to the sponsor site where I found a video from the show. It's over 3 hours long and gives you most of the show uncut. Unfortunately, Billy Bragg's set and the majority of Steve Earle's set is absent from the video. But there's still plenty of enjoyment to be had seeing a bunch of us geeky, white Minnesotans getting down to hip-hop shows.

Since Blogger isn't letting me imbed the damn video, here's the link.

Everybody's movin' movin' movin' movin'

On top of myself moving from my lush apartment in beautiful St. Louis Park to a dingy basement in South Minneapolis, there are some blogs on my blog-roll that have migrated elsewhere, too. Mostly it's big-timers who have out grown this free Google Blogger system and need an upgrade. I'm not sure what's so different except their URL's no longer contain .blogspot anymore.

Anyhow, here are the changes:

Paging Jim Shikenjanksi has moved to The Daily Gopher. This is the new love-child blog of the former PJS and another UofM blog called Gopher Nation. The two guys who operate this site have been pretty good so far with a couple updates every day. It's now on my daily reading list.

Sunday Morning Quarterback has moved to the Y! Sports Blog network and now goes by the name of Dr. Saturday, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the BCS. Same great statistical analysis as SMQ, only now with cleverer title.

The Wizard of Odds is now simply called The Wiz of Odds. Not sure what prompted that change. Again, the only difference I see is lack of .blogspot in the URL now.

While I'm updating the existing links, I thought I'd add a few more to the pile.

Official TCF Bank Stadium webiste - They now have an official site that is mostly designed to sell tickets. However, under the multimedia link, you still view construction progress through the webcams. There are a few bad links in the site, but I've read all of this information before. I now just check it daily to look at the webcams.

Obsessed much?

Yes.

Now I'll probably have these sites linked up until the election in November. They're good things to read daily during a big election season.

Electoral-Vote.com - This site is absolutely great if you like to follow big elections. This blogger has an simple entry everyday, but the fun part of the site is that he tracks every major political poll through the country and updates an electoral college map with red and blue colors throughout the entire campaign season. It's very interesting to see the fluctuations and the biases of all these different polls.

I got to say that I'm pretty damn impressed that a recent North Dakota poll shows Obama with a 3% lead over McCain...in North Dakota. This is a state that was carried by George W. with 60% of the vote in both 2000 and 2004. Polls in South Dakota and Montana show Obama and McCain in a statistical tie as well. It appears there may be a large political shift occurring in the northern plains. Let's see if it carries on into November.

Factcheck.org - This is a great non-partisan site that sifts through all of the political bullshit, spins, misleading figures, and outright lies we will be hearing from both sides of this presidential campaign. Obviously the hot times on this site are right after the conventions and debates. They also post fact checks on new campaign commercials as they come out.

Catching Up...

It's been awhile since I've checked in last. I've actually had to move out of my apartment at the end of July. It's been awhile to get back into a rhythm. So here's just some random musings about some of the nonsense I've been up to the last month...

...since moving into a basement, I'm starting to become paranoid about bugs. There's lots of spiders and other weird centipede-y things crawling around down here. Anytime a I feel an itch or something brush against me while sitting down here, I twitch and spasm. It makes for difficulties getting to sleep sometimes. I've been trying to crush those bastards every time I see one, but they just keep coming back. I feel they may be plotting against me.

...these national political conventions crack me up. I love watching the speeches, the random unexpected events, and the crowd shots of all the delegates dancing around like dorks. It's quality, prime-time entertainment that I enjoy even more than the Olympics every four years. Here's some of my favorites this year:

Favorite DNC speaker: Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was absolutely hilarious. Not so much of his speech's content, but his mannerisms while speaking. He was so damn fidgety, it was as if he downed a case of Red Bull before he went on. I liked it. Bonus points for doing the Chris Farley-esque shoulder shrug/double chin thing a few times (2:02 mark on the YouTube video).

Favorite RNC speaker: Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson endeared to me. He just had that surly old grandpa demeanor that reminds me of my hometown. I can see this guy fitting in fine with the grumbling old farmers at the local cafe or barber shop. They're always amusing and always blunt. Bonus points to Senator Thompson for constantly clearing his throat every minute, too.

Favorite moment caught on camera: Sarah Palin's second youngest child styling the baby's hair with her own saliva. It either elicits an "Awwwww" or an "Eeewww." Either way, it's a good catch by the camera crews.

Finally, here's a pretty funny picture that was sent to me by way of Lisa:

If you're quite familiar with this show and these characters, it's even funnier. Now who has some cartoon equivalents for Obama/Biden?

...the good thing about having a national political convention in your town is that it brings out some pretty damn good concerts. On Monday, I attended the Take Back Labor Day event at Harriet Island in St. Paul. It featured a line-up of Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), Atmosphere, Mos Def, and a reunited Pharcyde.

I would describe Tom Morello's performance as spunky. His solo album has a mellow, folksy feel to it, but he treats his live performances as if he's up there with RATM. For example, he closed out his set asking the crowd jump up and down like mad while he played Woody Guthrie's "This Land is My Land."

The Pharcyde was the other highlight of the day. They closed out the show and bucked the trend of playing songs about the poor, the working class, and unions. They just busted out their hits and it was a damn fun set. I was surprised so many people stayed around for them. I honestly thought the entire crowd would dissipate after local legends Atmosphere performed. The only complaint I had about their set is that they would show some of their music videos on the big screen behind the stage while they performed. I preferred the screen to show shots of the group on stage and action out in the crowd.

There were some other notable shows through out the week, including a free show by Michael Franti and Anti-Flag at the Capitol Grounds on Tuesday afternoon. Apparently Tom Morello and the rest of Rage Against The Machine showed up at the end of the event and played Bulls On Parade before they got shut down. No bother, as they had their own gig at the Target Center the very next evening.

So if you want to see a week of great shows, then get ready to make a pilgrimage to the RNC city in four years.

...last and certainly not least is that football season is finally upon us. I went to the Gophers home opener against Northern Illinois last Saturday. The season got off to a good start when we won 31-27. While they look like an improved team from last year, they still made some costly mistakes to make the game a lot closer than it should have been. It's hard to gauge where your team is at when it took a last minute touchdown to beat a MAC school that finished with a 2-10 record last year.

This week's match-up at Bowling Green should be a lot more telling. BG beat us last year in overtime and they opened this season with a 10-point win over #25 ranked Pittsburgh. If we win this game, I have reason to be optimistic that we'll reach a bowl game. If we lose, then I don't think we'll finish above .500 this year.

The "Whiskey Tastes Better..." Book Club

I finished this book over a month ago, but I'm finally getting around to giving my $0.02 on Breakthrough: From The Death of Environmentalism to The Politics of Possibility by Ted Norhaus and Michael Schellenberger. I first heard about this book on 89.3 The Current when Mr. Schellenberger was part of the Policy and A Pint series. I learned a little more about them when I downloaded a podcast from iTunes U that features the authors discussing the book's subject material at Berkeley. So the next logical step would be to actually read the damn book.

And I did.

I don't know where to start with this book. I guess I'll first say that these two guys sound really damn smart. Almost too smart at times. They are very thorough in making their points and use long stories to illustrate their arguments. Unfortunately, I would get too drawn in to their stories and examples and then forget what point they were trying to make.

This is why I'm having trouble trying to write about this book. There were so many bases covered, I can't really find a main point to drive here.

The part I really agree with is that in order to address important issues like global warming, you need to separate it from other "environmental" causes and pitch it as an economic issue. No matter how much press global warming gets, it's still not that important to the vast majority of Americans (and I imagine people of other nationalities don't care that much either). The book cites some polls where they gave people a list of 20 issues and asked them to rate the issues in order of importance. The issues at the top of the list were the economy, health care, national security, energy independence, and the war in Iraq. Global warming was consistently in the bottom 5. In fact, they say they polled once before the release of Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and once after it was released. Even after all of the publicity, discussion, and positive reviews that his movie generated, global warming dropped in importance in the second poll.

To get people behind global warming solutions, it needs to be tied to issues that they are concerned about. From the poll that was in the book, some obvious choices would be the economy and energy independence. My friend Becca sent me a video of Al Gore giving a speech about the future of our country's energy policy, and he said a lot more in that five minute clip than he did in the entire 90 minutes of An Inconvenient Truth. A lofty goal he sets is moving the country to 100% renewable electricity in 10 years. This would mean moving away from coal fired plants and investing heavily in wind and solar energy. This would provide a huge economic stimulus for the country as thousands of jobs would be created for people manufacturing, installing, and maintaining new equipment such as wind turbines, solar panels, and transmission lines. I would imagine a bit of backlash from members of the coal industry, however. I don't know how realistic it would be to completely phase out coal-fired energy plants within a decade, but his ambitions are in the right place.

Another guy that's been making some noise lately is T. Boone Pickens. He's an absurdly rich oil baron who's now devoting his billions of dollars to promoting a new energy plan for the country. In a brief video on his website, he breaks down where all of our electricity comes from. He shows that 22% of electricity is generated by natural gas. He advocates fulfilling that slice of the pie chart with wind energy instead. Then all of the excess natural gas not being used for electricity can be used towards fueling vehicles. He cites that this would save the US billions of dollars each year since we wouldn't have to spend that money on oil imports. This was only on his little introduction video. I haven't really researched either his or Al Gore's full plans.

This is a good sign. Both of these men are extremely powerful and wealthy. They can do some serious lobbying for change in our nation's energy policy and create thousands of jobs in the process. I really hope for the day that I see President Obama/McCain make the same speeches that Pickens and Gore have made. Then the energy revolution will explode.

I believe this is the type of solution we need to get the population to fight against such a vast and complicated issue like global warming. This is what the book means when they say "the politics of possibility." People don't want more restrictions and regulations like carbon "cap and trade" programs (what the book refers to as the "politics of limits"). Instead of simply reducing carbon emissions, it would serve us better to find solutions that give us new technologies that emit no carbon at all. They talk about JFK's "We choose to go to the moon" speech and how the Apollo project spurred a whole era of expansive technological development. This country has vast resources and can do some seriously big things in a hurry if we have the support and incentive from our government. Let's hope that comes sooner rather than later.

You Know What? You Stink!

There was an asinine column by Nick Coleman over at the Strib last week. He's basically complaining about the ballpark being put next to the waste incinerator on the edge of downtown. A note about this columnist is that he has been adamantly against the new ballpark using public funding, and he's been trying to find a way to complain about it ever since the funding bill passed.

It's been discussed over at Twins Ballpark 2010, and here are my two favorite comments:

I spent lots of time in the HERC neighborhood when my company was located in Ford Centre and I never smelled anything. Nothing. Never. Ever. Not even once. As another commenter put it, it doesn't smell any worse there than it does throughout the rest of downtown.

It's a complete non-issue and that is proven by the number of people who are choosing to live very close to it. They wouldn't do that for long if it stunk.

But my bigger point is this: Whether you agree or disagree with Coleman, his writing is atrocious. By adopting a condescending tone and a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" style, he somehow manages to lower the level of discourse on just about every subject he touches. Even when I agree with him, I cringe while reading. He belongs on some crappy talk radio station (I can think of one).

His columns are like talk radio for newspaper. That is NOT a good thing.

Between him and Kersten, the Strib B-section is starting to look like the Jerry Springer Show of newspapers: Write whatever you want as long as it provokes a reaction.

If that's your strategy for selling newspapers, you won't be selling them for very much longer...

Posted on July 17, 2008 at 12:24 AM by Rick

before i go: nick coleman points out something from which the ballpark must distance itself: the garbage burner. no matter how much people will go on the record saying there's no smell, the fact that the herc is referred to as "the garbage burner" is a psychological dent in the ballpark. it's kind of like when someone says "don't think about an elephant..." and the first thing that jumps into your mind is an elephant. the herc simply must be moved, decommissioned, or transformed into a wind/solar plant.

Posted on July 17, 2008 at 10:32 AM by yeaklye

These two comments bring up some good points on two unrelated subjects:

1. The first brings up the declining quality of the Strib's columnists. Reading them is like listening to an obnoxious talk radio program. I understand the position the Star Tribune is in, though. Readership and circulation is down, and it has a lot more to do with the changing ways that people now get their news. They keep these writers on staff to have them write columns that will spark arguments and controversy. If they didn't have that, there would be even less readers. But it seriously hurts the integrity and entire reputation of the newspaper.

2. The second comment makes a very level-headed assessment of the situation. No matter what it really smells like down in that area, being next to "the garbage burner" is going to give people a negative perception of the site. I used to park down in the Rapid Park lots a lot when they were open, and I never really smelled anything out of the ordinary. I even toured that plant with a college class and while I was expecting the entire place to reek, the only area that did was the actual warehouse area (I believe it's referred to "the pit" in the article) where the garbage is dumped and stored until it is brought to the incinerator. But any remotely foul smell at this ballpark is going to automatically be linked with the HERC plant. A big sweaty guy sitting next to you while watching the Twins game could fart, and you would automatically think it's the garbage next door. So I do agree with the commenter that they will eventually have to get rid of this plant in order for that neighborhood to continue to develop with new housing, retail, and parks.

Breaking The Law

So I'm sitting here at work on a slow Saturday and figured I'd use this time to catch up on some posts. Our work policy forbids the use of personal e-mail, blogs, and social networking sites while at work, but I feel like rebelling today.

Midnight Premieres of Summer Blockbusters are good! We went to the midnight showing of The Dark Knight on Thursday. I can vouch for all of the reviews you've read that say the movie is fan-freaking-tastic. But what makes the movie-going experience all the more fun is going to the midnight opening with all the other hard-core movie fans.

I've been to the midnight openings of Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, and The Incredible Hulk so far this summer. The Dark Knight was the largest of all these openings by far. We went to the theater in Southdale and they must have been showing this movie on over a half-dozen screens. Typically, as was the case with the other midnight premieres I've seen, the theater will usually have it on one or two screens. On Thursday night, we got our reserved tickets and the usher just told us the number on our tickets were irrelevant and that we should just grab a seat in any theater that has a seat left. The mall was long closed, but the entire south, east, and west parking lots were full of cars until after 3 am. It was quite the event. I'd never seen a crowd this size at a midnight premiere; not even for Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

The highlight of the evening was probably about 20 minutes into the film when there were some "technical difficulties" with the film reel. The film basically just came to a halt, complete with the audio slowing down and lowering it's pitch like when you're listening to a cassette tape and the batteries die on your Walkman (if anybody still listens to their Walkman anymore). Then the uproar from the audience came. So what does the theater staff do? They send some employee -who looked and sounded like the Squeaky Voiced Teen character on The Simpsons- to address the crowd. Poor kid. He was probably shitting his pants up there, but the audience was civil for the most part and didn't hassle him too much. Lucky for him that we all left our pitchforks and torches our cars.

Yeah, I'll Play

Sorry I haven't had anything real posted in a while, but I couldn't resist this nonsense. I dedicate this to my three faithful readers. It was a fun little game, but my Google settings have all the filters turned off. There were some pretty appalling photos I found for "Christopher," "Louise," and "farmhand." If you want to know what I'm talking about, go to the Preferences link on Google, turn off the SafeSearch Filter, and then look up those words I mentioned.


Answer the following questions by typing the answers into Google Image Search. Then post the picture that you like best for the answer.



My Age:





A Place I Would Like To Visit:





My Favorite Place:





My Favorite Object:





My Favorite Food:





My Favorite Animal:





My Favorite Color:





Town Where I Was Born:





A Past Pet:





My First Name:





My Middle Name:





My Last Name:





A Bad Habit:





My First Job:





My Current Job:





My Grandmas' Names:







What I Am Doing Now:

Good Lord...

As the 4th of July holiday approaches here in Minnesota, I thought I would post this little article in case anybody is making plans to go tubing on the Otter Tail River. Just imagine leisurely floating down the river, sipping a beer, when suddenly this guy jumps up and bites your damn arm off! No, I'm not talking about the old man biting your arm off; I'm talking about the gi-normous muskie he's holding. It could happen.

We can pants if we want to

I have recently been riding my bicycle to work. No, it's not because I am trying to "save the environment." It's not that I don't care about those issues, but I'm just not naive enough to believe I'll have some sort of grand impact on the Earth's carbon levels by not driving my car every other day. No, I have more self-centered reasons for my choice of transportation.

The first motivator is my own narcissism. Over the last year, I had gained 25 pounds and it was starting to show. I started to avoid looking at myself in the mirror when my shirt was off. This was the first significant weight gain since I was finishing up puberty back in high school. I had managed to stay the same size all the way through my college and post-college years until I moved out to the suburbs last summer.

What does living in the suburbs have to do with it? Well, I used to be able to walk everywhere when I lived in Loring Park. I walked to work and back twice during the day because I would usually hike home for lunch each day, too. Not only that, but my trips to Target and Blockbuster were walkable because the stores were within a half-mile of my apartment. I'd also walk to bars and restaurants in the Downtown and Uptown area when going out with friends. On top of all that walking, I'd even work out by running and biking every other day, too.

When I moved out to St. Louis Park, I found myself driving everywhere: to work, the grocery store, and the bars. I no longer had all of that daily physical movement. The running or biking every other night wasn't enough to combat the weight gain. It sucked. For the first time in almost a decade, I was going to have to buy new pants because my old ones were too small.

Biking to work has now got me back to that daily physical activity. It really helps that my office is over 10 miles from my apartment, and the last stretch of road has about 10 good sized hills I have to climb. It's a good feeling coming home and knowing that you already worked out for over an hour and a half just by going to and from work. It's one hell of a workout, and any other physical activity occurring that night is just bonus points.

The second motivator for using my bicycle is the almighty dollar. Or perhaps I should say the almighty $4; as in $4 a gallon. Gas is getting damn expensive and I'm pretty sure it will remain that way for the rest of my life. By only driving to work every other day, I estimate I'll save $60, or one tank, each month in gas. That adds up to $720 a year. $720 adds up to a pretty solid weekend trip to Las Vegas.

However, I discovered a hidden cost of excessive bike riding which will lead to an explanation of this post's silly title: my jeans are rapidly deteriorating in the groin area. They haven't completely decayed, but they're going fast. If I have to dip into my gas savings to replace my pants periodically, it will take its toll on my Vegas fund. If anybody has some good tips on how to prevent crotch decay on blue jeans, I'd like to hear it.

Love hurts

So the Wolves selected OJ Mayo last Thursday in the NBA Draft, just as I had hoped they would do. As everyone drifted off to sleep with visions of OJ becoming the Rookie of the Year, the Memphis Grizzlies traded their #5 pick, Kevin Love, and three other players to the Wolves for Mayo and another three throw-ins.

This has been a highly divisive issue here in Minneapolis. Some are adamantly defending the pick, but the majority are kicking and screaming because they think Mayo is the next Michael Jordan.

Right now, this trade looks to be in favor of the Timberwolves. As I mentioned in a previous post, I would be all for trading this pick if they are able to dump Marco Jaric's terrible contract in the process. Not only did they do that, but they also got rid of some other big contracts in Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner. Here's how the trade worked out:

Jaric for Memphis's Brian Cardinal: They are both equally useless and overpaid, but Jaric has 3 more years left on his contract, while Cardinal only has two. Advantage Wolves.

Walker for Jason Collins: Both only have one year left on their contracts. Walker rarely played last season and was most likely going to be bought out this year or traded. In return the Wolves get a solid center with only one year left on his contract. This looks like an even exchange.

Buckner for Mike Miller: The Wolves got rid of a guy that rarely suited up last season and had three more years on his contract. In exchange, they received a starting forward/guard who averaged 16 points a game and shot over 40% beyond the arch last season. Advantage Wolves.

Mayo for Love: Here's the wild card. Jim Souhan put it best when he said the Wolves got the sweet end of this deal...unless Mayo becomes a huge NBA superstar and Love does not. There's really no way of knowing if that will happen. He could end up playing at the same level as Clyde Drexler, Ray Allen, or even Kobe Bryant. Or maybe his ceiling will be at the level of former Gopher Bobby Jackson.

That's why Wolves fans need to mellow out about this trade. If you all want to get pissed about something, then look to the trade they made to Miami with second round pick Mario Chalmers, a point guard out of Kansas. He was the floor leader on the team that won the NCAA Championship last year and was projected by some to be gone by the middle of the first round. The Wolves got some cash and two future second round picks from Miami.

At first, I was a little upset that they gave away a player that seemed to be a pretty good steal, but I understood that they were pretty jammed up at his position when they had Randy Foye, OJ Mayo, Marko Jaric, and Sebastian Telfair projected to be playing point guard. I still thought they should have been able to get something better than two future second rounders, though. Oh well.

But then the next morning came and I heard about the big trade that happened late that night. OJ Mayo and Marko Jaric were now gone. In addition to that, the Wolves did not extend a qualifying offer to Sebastian Telfair, making him an unrestricted free agent as of tomorrow. This leaves only Randy Foye left at the point guard position. In the matter of 24 hours, the Wolves went from having 5 players at the point guard position to just one.

As I said before, there's really no way of knowing how any of these rookies will pan out in the NBA. But as a Timberwolves fan, I feel a little more pissed off about losing Mario Chalmers then I do about OJ Mayo. Only time will tell.

And now, a word from Chuck Klosterman

No, it's not a guest post. I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman IV, a collection of essays that were published in places such as the Esquire, Spin, and the Fargo Forum. I thought I would just share an excerpt from a column entitled "Cultural Betrayal" that was printed in Esquire in 2005:

Do you want to be happy? I suspect you do. Well, here's the first step to happiness: don't get pissed off that people who aren't you happen to think Paris Hilton is interesting and deserves to be on TV every other day; the fame surrounding Paris Hilton is not a reflection on your life (unless you want it to be). Don't get pissed off because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren't on the radio enough; you can buy the goddamn record and play "Maps" all goddamn day (if that's what you want). Don't get pissed off because people didn't vote the way you voted; you knew this was a democracy when you agreed to participate, so you knew this was how things might work out. Basically, don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it.

Now, it's quite possible you disagree with me on this issue. And if you do, I know what your argument is: you're thinking, But I'm idealistic. This is what people who want to inflict their values on other people always think; they think that there is some kind of romantic, respectable aura that insulates the inflexible, and that their disappointment with culture latently proves that they're tragically trapped by their own intellect and good taste. Somehow, they think their sense of betrayal gives them integrity. It does not. If you really have integrity--if you truly live by your ideals, and those ideals dictate how you engage with the world at large--you will never feel betrayed by culture. You will simply enjoy culture more. You won't necessarily start watching syndicated episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, but you will find it interesting that certain people do. You won't suddenly agree that Amelie was a more emotive movie than Friday Night Lights, but you won't feel alienated and offended if every film critic you read tells you that it is. You will care, but you won't care.

You're not wrong, and neither is the rest of the world. But you need to accept that those two things aren't really connected.

Amen, Brother Chuck.

Rating the Summer Blockbusters

The official first day of summer is a couple weeks away, but the summer movie season is in full swing. It'll be tough to follow up last year, when there was week after week of huge franchise blockbusters released (Spiderman, Shrek, Pirates of the Carribean, Fantastic Four, Harry Potter, Transformers) combined with not one, but two pictures involving Seth Rogen. Those are some big ticket sellers right there. While this season doesn't have as much depth as last, there are still some films I'm pretty excited to see.

Here's what I've already seen, in order of least impressive to most impressive:

Prince Caspian - An overwhelming "meh" on this film. I saw this movie at midnight on a Thursday evening, so maybe that clouded my judgement. As a book adaptation, it was great. Spot on. They covered pretty much everything. But as a movie, it lacked two key ingredients: writing and acting.

It's probably difficult when writing up an adaptation. You want to stay true to book as much as possible. The problem is the book didn't have much for dialogue. CS Lewis told his story with vast descriptions of what was going on. This puts the screenwriters in charge of having to create interesting dialogue without fabricating too much. They unfortunately didn't do that well.

What made it worse was the four kids they have playing the parts of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all are terrible. Maybe not terrible, since I've never seen them in anything else. But all of their lines seem awkward and unnatural. The lone bright spot amongst these characters is Trumpkin the dwarf, played by Peter Dinklage. You may remember as the little children's book author who runs across the table and attacks Will Ferrel in Elf.

If you've read the books or just like seeing medieval battle movies, then go see it. If you don't fit any of the aforementioned criteria, than wait until it's on DVD or cable.


Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - What can I say? It's an Indiana Jones movie. If you like the old ones, you'll like this one. If you don't like the old ones, then you might still like this one. My favorite thing they did with this was keep the time lines parallel. With the Chronicles of Narnia, the two worlds they jump between operate at different speeds. While only a year has passed in their real world, over a thousand years have passed in Narnia.

Not so much here. In our real world, it's been about twenty years since The Last Crusade was released. That's also about the same time that has elapsed in the movie world of Indiana Jones. The last movie back in '89 had Indy dealing with the rise of evil Nazis before WWII in the '30s. Now it's 2008 here and 1957 in Indy-world, where the new enemies are the Soviets and nuclear weapons.

The only thing I was disappointed with is the excessive use of CGI animation. I wished they would have done more live action stunts and blew up real props with real explosives. I understand it's probably cheaper and safer to use CGI, but doing some more things the old fashioned way would have helped capture the feel of the original movies. Instead, I felt like I was just watching another installment of "The Mummy,"(they are releasing another sequel to that later this summer).


Iron Man - Wow. Now that's how you do a good superhero movie: get some A-list actors, write enough witty banter without being too cheesy, and don't waste three quarters of the movie explaining the damn origin of how the hero came to be (they only waste about half the movie this time). In all honesty, I could have skipped the two movies above and just watched this movie three times. It was that damn good. SEE IT!


What I am looking forward to seeing:

The Incredible Hulk - I know it wasn't very popular, but I liked the movie done by Ang Lee a few years ago. I have to agree that this one looks like it's even better. It has a new cast, director, and storyline. At the end of the trailer, you can even hear a brief clip of the original theme music from the TV series.

Get Smart - I don't remember Anne Hathaway being this incredibly good looking in The Princess Diaries. Then again, I've never seen The Princess Diaries. Maybe I should have. Damn.

Wall-E - My girlfriend is all excited about this one, so why not?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army - I never read the comics, but I enjoyed the first one. So again, why not?

The Dark Knight - Yes. Yesssssss. YESSSSSSSSSSS!

Pineapple Express - Seth Rogen + stoner comedy = Box office gold.

Not much else to get excited about this summer: the aforementioned Mummy sequel, some comedy with Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly, a Ben Stiller comedy, and an animated remake of the Chris Farley classic, Beverly Hills Ninja.

Construction Junction, What's Your Function?

UPDATE!
I was having problems formatting the pictures in this post, and then they just stopped showing and came up with those little red X's. Here's a link to a Photobucket album instead. The good news is I've included more photos in this album, so go ahead and take another look.

*****

I made some trips around town with my camera recently and thought I would share some construction pics. The first one was taken of the 35W bridge construction from the pedestrian bridge that connects the U of M East and West Banks. You can't really see too much, but I didn't feel like biking over the 10th Ave bridge (the one blocking the view). It was taken about a month ago, so progress has moved along considerably since then. These guys are working around the clock and are on track to be 3 months ahead of schedule. The last report I read had a September 15th opening date.

The next nine photos are of the new Gophers football stadium. These were taken on the same day as the bridge photo, so they are a bit outdated. If you check the webcams here and here, you'll see the brick work is well underway, there's more precast seating bowl pieces installed, and the steel frame is almost complete. In fact, all steelwork is scheduled to be complete in June. They said that by the fall, all of the brick work and windows will be installed and the interior of the stadium will be inclosed. In other words, it will really start looking like a functioning football stadium this fall; minus the field turf, scoreboard, lights, and the seats. But those are just minor details.

The last few pictures were taken at the Twins ballpark site about ten days ago. You can see the structure really starting to take shape in right field, and the plaza is nearly complete. I could go on and on about this ballpark, but I'd only be plagiarizing everything I read over at TwinsBallpark2010.com. I highly recommend checking it out.

Click on the pictures for full size photos.

More NBA Draft stuff

-So maybe I was a little hard on Jim Souhan in my earlier post, as I just found another piece that he wrote about the NBA Draft lottery. This column is pretty good and tries to give hope to all of the perpetually gloomy and whiny Timberwolves fans.

- Chad Ford has updated his mock draft and has the Wolves taking OJ Mayo. He also mentions Brook Lopez and Danilo Gallinari as other potential candidates.

I'm not a big fan of the Lopez pick, simply because players like him come along almost every year. If there's still the need, we can pick a big center with limited athletic ability next year.

The Gallinari pick intrigue's me though, mostly because I don't know anything about international players. I'll eat up any evaluation from these scouts because I've never seen him play.

- The Fanhouse mentions that Kevin McHale may be high on UCLA center Kevin Love. I'm not sure how I feel about this pick because as the article mentions, his game duplicates Al Jefferson's. This would require some creative coaching to get the most out of these two players when they are on the floor together.

Food! Glorious food!

There's a story from MinnPost last week that talks about the food that will be served in the new Twins ballpark. Delaware North, the company contracted to run the concession stands, states they want to seek out local food favorites to serve alongside the traditional hot dogs and peanuts. The article brings up suggestions such as Jucy Lucys from Matt's Bar, walleye sandwiches from Tavern on Grand, Sweet Martha's Cookies, Kramarczuk's sausage, Dixie's barbecue, and Punch Neopolitan Pizza.

I thought I'd give my take on the ideas above before offering a few more of my own.

Jucy Lucys - Yes, yes, yes! Why wouldn't you want this at the new ballpark? I still can't believe this item is considered uniquely Minnesotan. Why haven't people in other cities and regions figured out that stuffing melted cheese inside a burger is fucking delicious? Maybe they have and I just don't know it yet.

Walleye Sandwiches - If you want an item that represents our state, than it doesn't get better than deep frying, grilling, or blackening our official state fish before slapping it on a bun.

Sweet Martha's Cookies - Amazing idea. People could order them up in the plastic buckets like they do at the fair, only these buckets would have the Twins logo and design on it. You'd get a little souvenir and a whole lot of cookies to take home.

Kramarczuk's sausage - This is an interesting suggestion. I've never eaten at this place, but I've driven by it plenty of times. They are an Eastern European deli and bakery. I would think this would be a cool idea to have a specialty stand in the ballpark that has their unique flavored sausages. However, I'm guessing one of the local meat packaging giants like Hormel or Schweigart will continue to provide the dogs for the majority of the stands.

Dixie's barbecue - This one is debatable. While it is a local restaurant, they specialize in a food item that isn't really correlated with our region. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be served at the ballpark, though. There's already a Famous Dave's stand in the Metrodome. This is where the debate comes with multiple local barbecue joints in the area (Dixie's, Famous Dave's, Rudolph's, and Market BBQ). If they do serve barbecue in the new ballpark, I hope they offer more items than just pulled pork sandwiches. How about some brisket or ribs?

Punch Pizza - Another debatable idea, mostly again because of other established local chains in the area: Pizza Luce and Davanni's. Whoever is selected to be the pizza vendor, I only have one suggestion/demand: serve it by the slice! There's only one thing I truly hate that is pizza related, and that is personal pan pizzas.

Davanni's is the vendor in the Xcel Energy Center, and they serve it both ways. However, you can only get it by the slice on the elitist, gated community they call "Club Level." The sports fans in this fine state need to rise up and demand that fans of all socio-economic backgrounds are able to purchase a delicious slice of pizza and not be forced to eat those personal pan pizzas that are the size of a bagel and may be laced with soylent green (trust me, I used to work there and make those very pizzas).


Here are some other items that I think are essential to rounding out the menu:

Cheese curds - Another thing that I'm finding out from watching cable food shows like Bizarre Foods and Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives is that this is another uniquely Midwestern food. Why hasn't the rest of the country figured out that deep frying battered chunks of cheese is the greatest idea this country has had since abolishing slavery.

And I want fresh battered cheese curds like they have at the State Fair. None of those pre-made cheese curds that you just pull out of the freezer and drop in the deep fryer.

Pronto Pups - Staying with the State Fair foods theme, I want to see some corn dogs at the park. I don't know why they're not serving them at the Metrodome already. It's delicious and convenient. You have your dog served on a stick with ketchup and mustard already slathered on with a paintbrush. What could be better?

Local beers - At pro sports venues, almost every concession stand cashier is equipped with a beer tap next to them that typically pours American style lagers. I would like to see a Grain Belt Premium and Pabst Blue Ribbon tap for every Budweiser and Miller Lite.

On top of that, I would like to see a couple beer stands in the park that only have local brews on tap. No food or sodas would be sold at this stand; just beer in the bottle and on tap. This would be similar to the Harbor Bar stand in the Xcel Energy Center. Sure, I don't mind them selling the standard imports and micros like Corona, Guinness, Sam Adams, and Heineken, but I only want to see them in the bottle. Save the tap space for all of the varieties of Summit, Schell's, Leinie's, and Surly.


Those are my additions to the suggestion box. If anybody else has ideas or input, I'd love to hear it. I guess now the question is how many of these items and local companies will be selected to sell their products in the new ballpark, and how big will their role be? Will they supply their own staff to operate these stands? Will they just supply the items and the brand names? Will they be available in multiple stands throughout the ballpark, or only in single specialty stands? I can't wait to find out. Don't disappoint me, Delaware North.