Update 12/31: Final day of voting – and Dan Stover is still within six votes of Learned Foot. Foot has played a Gopher-like first six days of voting; will Stover pull off a Red Raider-like comeback in the next day?
Voting ends as close to midnight as I get around to turning it off…
It’s the end of the year – the time when we look back and reminisce on the year of blogging that’s been.
And thus it’s a perfect time for the first annual “Shootie” awards, given by the editorial board at Shot In The Dark for contributions advancing regional blogging.
The Eva Young Trophy For Blatant Link-Whoring: This award is given to the regional blogger who best exemplifies the bloggers’ ideal for getting traffic; suck up to bloggers bigger than you as relentlessly as possible.
And the winner is: Sisyphus from Nihilist in Golf Pants, for puckering up for John Hinderaker, naming the Powerline blogger “Rock Solid in the Blogosphere” last fall.
The Baghdad Bob Award: The lineage of this coveted trophy is fairly obvious – and goes to the local blogger or bloggers who insist the facts we see before our faces don’t really exist.
And the award this year goes to Minnesota Monitor, a groupblog in which a group of local leftybloggers were paid a montly stipend in the low four digits (reportedly $1,500) to dab an “ethics statement” on top of modesly polished leftyblogging. When it was pointed out that the Center for Independent Media shared office space with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America”, and that it appeared there might be a connection between the country-destabilizing ultraliberal plutocrat and the local rent-a-bloggers, the resopnse was “Yo Momma”.
The Sisyphus Memorial Trophy for Trying To Mate Via One’s Blog: This award is named in honor of Sisyphus from Nih[i]list in Golf Pants, in honor of his game attempt to woo Mary Katherine Ham by naming her “Rock Solid in the Blogosphere” last summer. It didn’t work well…
…but to be fair, it was a better idea than that of this year’s winner, who used his LiveJournal to find out if a self-described “goofy looking dude and his goofy looking friend could wander into the scene and begin making out with some slutty collegey-looking babes with minimal effort”, and if so, where.
Blog Post Title of the Year: That’d Go To Learned Foot of Kool Aid Report, for December 13rd’s classic
Captain’s Quarters Gives No Quarter to Hind Quarters
…regarding Ed’s reaction to Chris Muir’s Thong-Gate crisis of a few weeks ago.
The Thomas Dewey Trophy for Atrocious Prediction: In 1948, the Chicago Tribune’s early edition called the election, in four-foot-high letters, for Dewey. Truman, of course, ended up winning.>
Previous winners include local rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke, who called the ’04 presidential election for Howard Dean. Then Wesley Clark. Then Hillary Clinton. Then Hillary Duff. Then John Kerry. Before the ’04 All-Star break.
In that spirit, we honor “Powerliberal”, another prominent local left-leaning rent-a-blog, which called the Sixth District election for Wetterling – on October 6. Based on the Minnesota Poll – which always calls every election for the DFL/Democrats. Apparently some Democrat bloggers haven’t gotten the word…
The Molly “The Hatchet” Priesmeyer Award For Hatchety-est Hatchet-Job: This award is named in honor of the work of the eponymous Ms. Priesmeyer, whose riveting 2004 expose of conservatives eating dinner was so chock-full of facile stereotypes one assumes Ms. Prisemeyer was on the payroll of the Cliche Anti-Defamation League.
>And for the ninth year in ten, the award goes right back to the City Pages, for their election-night “coverage” of the GOP “victory” party that wasn’t. So chock-full of smug cliches was this piece that the Cliche Anti-Defamation league actually sent City Pages’ editor Steve “Not The Journey Guy” Perry a cease and desist order. (The CP’s only loss in this category in recent memory came, ironically, in ’04 – to a Twin Cities exile Jen Vogel’s classic tantrum, “F*ck the Suburbs”. But Vogel’s piece appeared in a paper so similar to City Pages, it’s close enough for Ramsey County work – or, given the tone of Vogel’s piece, perhaps “close enough for Oaxacan mystery meat” would fit better)
The Charles Townsend Award – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:
“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”
And this year’s winner is: Growth for Justice. The group – led by former far-left-leaning Strib editor Joel Kramer – took out an ad in the Strib last summer, signed by 203 wealthy liberals demanding that we all get happy and pay for a better Minnesota, by bankrolling (with taxes, as opposed to their own largesse) to the tune of two billion dollars a plan by a group of their “experts” to revive the state (which has a throbbing, thriving economy, by the way). Funnier still, they advertised themselves as “bipartisan” – the add said “Growth & Justice has a board of directors of 24 distinguished Minnesotans, including Democrats, Independents and Republicans…” – even though our blogswarm showed that 95% of their contributions went to Democrat/DFL causes; as I noted back then, the signatories “gave a total of $4,782,724 to DFL and national Democrat campaigns – 95.63% of the total. The GOP netted $188,580, for 3.77% of the total. Other parties/campaigns – mostly Greens, if you look at the spreadsheet – snagged $29,800, less than a percent of the total.”
The Kevin McKay Award For Protesting Too Much – McKay was (and might still be) a local leftyblogger famous for his spittle-flecked, thud-witted, sour-grapeolicious snivelling about what angry. thud-witted, sour-grapeolicious people conservative bloggers were.
And this years’ award goes to… this snivelling infant.
And finally, the Kate Perry “We Will Tell You What the Facts Are” Award, given to the mainstream journalist or story that most grossly manipulates or conceals facts, and then rationalizes it away later.
This year, no contest – the Strib, from Anders Gyllenhall on down, for Rochelle Olson’s hatchet piece on Alan Fine – which took 35 column inches to explain the inner details of a 12 year old domestic abuse record – but didn’t bother to mention that the arrest record was expunged, that the case never went to trial, that there was no physical evidence of Fine’s guilt, or that the ex-wife that brought the original charges was eventually charged with domestic abuse herself – seemingly validating Fine’s claim about the original incident. But Kate Perry said there was no problem, so there must not be a problem. Natch.
That’s it for this year. But we’ll be back in 2007 with the next edition of the Shooties! Goodness knows there’ll be material…
No, King caught my flub. NARN is on from 11 to 5 today. John, Brian and Chad at 11, King and Michael at 3…
…plus Ed and I at White Bear Lake Superstore at 1.
Join all six hours!
It’s going to be a big weekend.
First: Tomorrow, the NARN Volume II – Ed and I – will be out at White Bear Lake Superstore. We’re both excited to be kicking off our third year of association with Paul Reuben and the whole gang out there; make sure you stop in, or at least tune in. And if you’re in the market for a late-year car purchase, need I say more?
Then: Sunday will be this blog’s first ever year-end award ceremony, The Shooties. We’ll be awarding (and by “we”, I mean I) local bloggers, media people and politicos their just desserts just in time to ring out the year.
Finally, Sunday night will be the mother of all New Years Eve parties. It will not be liveblogged.
Click “Refresh” at least ten times an hour, all weekend long!
As noted many times in this space, I oppose the death penalty for exactly one reason; the likelihood, across 50 states and thousands of counties and 300 million people, of executing an innocent person. As long as any chance of this exists, along with any acceptable alternate approach, capital punishment is to me morally unacceptable.
Presuming there’s a chance of innocence.
Which, I think almost everyone agrees isn’t the case with Hussein.
And I also usually eschew the ghoulish notion of the Dead Pool. But for Hussein, and in honor of my Kurdish friends who will no doubt be celebrating soon, let’s do it.
Pick the date and time of Hussein’s death. Leave it in the comments.
I pick 3PM Central time tomorrow. Not that I think it’s the most likely time, but these things seem to happen whenever the NARN gets off the air.
Your turn.
The Strib editorial board, learning a lesson or two from the street thugs they’ve been avoiding writing about for the past year, are circling their next victim – you.
In June 2004 the Hiawatha light-rail line debuted to rave reviews from riders, applause from community leaders and a volume of passengers that far exceeded official projections.
And yet, even with the ridership numbers, 2/3 of the line’s revenue is from state appropiations. A little over 1/3 is from ridership and advertising – the stuff the Strib editorial board clucks over. “Rave reviews” and inflated ridership haven’t made the Ventura Trolley anything but a state-sponsored money pit.
The result? Minnesota won’t open its next light-rail line until … 2014.
Speaking as someone who lives six blocks off the next light rail line, there’s a term for that; reprieve.
That’s appalling. It’s not just a sign of ossified planning and a lingering love affair with the automobile, it’s a warning that state leaders haven’t grasped the truth about growing, prosperous cities — that an adequate transit network relieves road congestion, improves quality of life, conserves energy and triggers lively new forms of metropolitan economic development.
Of course, 1, 2 and 4 are backed by no emprical evidence, and 3 is doubtlful. But don’t stop ’em – they’re on a roll.
Accelerating the region’s transportation timetable — including light rail, commuter rail, road projects and dedicated bus lanes — is one of the most urgent tasks facing the 2007 Legislature. It would help restore Minnesota’s reputation for enlightened urban planning while burnishing the high quality of life that has long been a Twin Cities selling point in the national competition for economic talent.
I’m no transit hawk – I ignore most of the city-bashing endemic in most critiques of transit, because there is a place for transit, determined by the market. There is no market need for a train from downtown to the airport. There is market need for something – train, bus, whatever – to haul people from the cities, where they live, to the ‘burbs, where more and more of them work. And there are cases under which Northstar and Red Rocks (the commuter lines from Big Lake and Hastings, respectively) could be self-supporting – not right now, of course, but at some point when population in the far east and far west metro exceeds our capacity for building roads (which, despite the one-size-fits-all panaceamongering of the road-hawks is also going to happen; the very thing that makes rails so expensive, buying right-of-way, is going to smack roads upside the head, too), and assuming the Met Council doesn’t turn the lines into monuments to themselves (going easy on building stations, buying used rolling stock for starters), both lines could be self-supporting in the reasonable future.
But that’s not what the Strib is talking about.
Early next year a coalition of planners and business leaders, with wide support from mayors, will ask the Legislature to create some form of dedicated metro revenue stream, perhaps a half-cent regional sales tax, to get these projects on track. Such a tax would raise more than $200 million annually, cost the average local household less than $75 a year, and let the Twin Cities make a commitment now — rather than waiting a costly decade.
Here’s what they envision: The commuter from Eden Prairie could get to her Minneapolis office without wasting time on clogged freeways. The Vikings fan from Elk River could get to the Dome without downtown traffic jams [only to fly into a rage when they realize the same government that taxed them to build the transit system also put the Vikings up in Blaine or Anoka or Farmington…]. The Bach enthusiast from Edina could get to the Ordway without fretting about parking ramps. Suddenly, people would have new choices about where to live and how to get where they’re going.
I have a vision, too. She’s a gorgeous, 35 year old redhead. She has no psychological problems, is a cheap date, smart and articulate enough to replace half of the NARN on the air, has a thing for [censored for the early morning audience], and best of all she’s going to knock on my door in about ten minutes, without my having to so much as take out an ad on Match.com!
Really! That’s my vision!
I went to a presentation a few years back by former Saint Paul mayor Jim Scheibel – one of the most disastrous mayors this city has had. It was at a forum on affordable housing. He got up and spoke on the vision for affordable housing; liveable places, with enough of the amenities of modern life to make the resident feel like they’re not removed from society; enough room to put one’s family in; of course, in easy walking distance from good transit. Completely absent from the discussion; what those of us who have to find our own affordable housing have to pay for this. Try as I did, he never got around to that.
A vision of…well, the paper calls it “convenience” without a vision of the work that Minnesotans are going to put into the taxes to pay for it – and believe me, on top of everything else I pay for in this state, $75 to pay for this “vision” is too much – isn’t a vision so much as it is the petty tyranny of the petty bureaucrat.
This isn’t some planner’s fantasy. In Denver, transit has spurred a $1 billion cleanup of an old industrial brownfield;
Nice, but – at whose expense?
in Portland, it has created a leafy, walkable urban core;
Again, nice – but does the core necessarily follow the transit? Minneapolis has a “walkable urban core”.
in Washington, lively neighborhoods of cinemas, bookstores and condominiums have sprung up around Metro stations.
Benefitting DC’s yuppies immensely. No, I’ve been there, and the DC transit system is a wonder. And a money pit, too!
In fact, it’s the very concept embodied in the Metropolitan Council’s main planning documents. The problem is that Minnesota doesn’t have the money to carry out its own plan.
And where I come from, that’s called “a reason to get a new plan”.
There are plenty of details to negotiate in a regional transportation tax, some involving principle and some involving mechanics. But if lawmakers want to maintain the momentum of this vibrant metro area, they need to say, “All aboard.”
No. They need to say “let’s suspend our transit dogma and quit building visions, and start doing what Minnesotans really need.
Mike “Mikementum” Mosedale of the City Pages writes about the Strib sale and, mainly bloggers reactions to it, with a Cnote about the new publisher:
Not to be a buzzkiller, but it appears the personal politics of new Avista head honcho Chris Harte should meld quite nicely with those of the current Strib regime.
Tangent here: So does this mean that Mosedale is breaking with the common saw among local far-lefty medioids and activists – the City Pages’ base – that the Strib is really a conservative front organization?
Harte, who is expected to assume the role of chairman of the board at the Strib, is a longtime Democrat.
Yeah, I don’t think a lot of us on the right hold out much “buzz” for a reform of the Strib from within. I suspect the vast majority of us think that, at most, being owned by a private VC firm rather than a firm that participates in the noxious conceit that newspapers are a monastic order with a higher calling just might make the changes in the news market swing back and smack the newsroom a bit more directly. That a VC company might look at incidents like this a little more sensibly than did McClatchy.
Or at least gut the editorial board like a fish.
A few years ago, he contemplated a run against Susan Collins, the moderate Republican Senator from Maine, and since 2000, he has contributed more than $37,000 to assorted Democratic candidates and causes.
Good information…
…which Brian had a solid day or two earlier, not to mention Ed’s very complete listing.
Another meme via Red.
1. Was 2006 a good year for you?
It had its tough spots – a planned job change followed by an unplanned one, some other stuff, runarounds with schools that are fodder for many posts to come, and the unending comedy of my personal life – but all in all, it was good. Kids are in better school situations, I’m in an awesome job – I’m pretty happy, all in all.
2. What was your favorite moment(s) of the year?
3. What was your least favorite moment(s) of the year?
Let’s not go into that.
4. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?
Drove a minivan.
5. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t do them – but I have goals for the year. None of them really panned out, but ’07’s another year.
6. Where were you when 2006 began?
At a friend’s house.
7. Who were you with?
My girlfriend at the time, our various kids, and her family.
8. Where will you be when 2006 ends?
At an undisclosed location.
9. Who will you be with when 2006 ends?
Not who I’d like to be. And yet there’s noplace I’d rather be.
10. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but my sister – who turned 40 this year (and still looks all of 28, the little brat) found out she’s expecting; the baby is due one of these next few months, and will join her 16, 14 and 12 year olds.
11. Did you lose anybody close to you in 2006?
No, but we sorta closed the book on my grandparents. I never got around to writing much about it; I went to North Dakota in August to scatter their ashes around the college where they met (and where I graduated). It was fun – I saw my aunts and uncles, including my mom’s brother, whom I’d not seen in almost thirty years – and sad as well.
12. Who did you miss?
See above.
13. Who was the best new person you met in 2006?
Let’s not go into that, either.
14. What was your favorite month of 2006?
July. I got to go back to my 25th reunion. I had a wonderful time.
15. Did you travel outside of the US in 2006?
No.
16. How many different states did you travel to in 2006?
NoDak, Wisconsin and Illinois. That was it!
17. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
Senses of peace, accomplishment, and that my kids have finally, officially turned the corner.
That, and some sort of national syndication deal for the NARN. (A guy can – no, indeed, must dream).
18. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Not sure any date is “etched”; some of the usual important days, I’ll remember.
19. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Tie:
20. What was your biggest failure?
I can’t honestly say there were any huge “failures”. I had one job that went sour unexpectedly, but I can honestly say I did my best on that one, and I’ll tell it to the face of the little jag that caused the issue.
21. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was actually very healthy this past year. I hope I haven’t jinxed myself.
22. What was the best thing you bought?
I can’t think of a single thing I bought.
23. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Honestly? My daughter’s. With the school change, she went from being – honestly – a straight F student to achieving well in line with her abilities; and oy, does she have abilities. I am serious – you can not imagine the weight this has lifted from me.
24. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Chad the Elder.
No, seriously, I expect so little of people (especially celebrities) that nothing really appalls me.
25. Where did most of your money go?
The mortgage, Excel Energy, and food.
26. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Don’t ask. It didn’t pan out.
27. Did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2006?
I drank so little this past year. I bought a six-pack of St. Pauli Girl in October, and there’s still a bottle left in my fridge. I barely made it to Keegan’s, either.
28. Did you do a lot of drugs in 2006?
I wish. That might actually be a relief.
But honestly, I may have had a dozen Aleve this past year.
29. Did you treat somebody badly in 2006?
No.
30. Did somebody treat you badly in 2006?
No. A couple of situations disappointed me, but it had nothing to do with “bad treatment”.
31. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? – At the moment, sadder. But it won’t last. If you leave out the comedy of my personal life, I’m probably happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? – A little thinner, actually. That’s a big goal for this year.
iii. richer or poorer? – A little richer, and a lot smarter. That’s another big goal.
32. What do you wish you’d done more of in 2006?
Everything fun; relaxing, hanging out with friends, sex, travelling – yet more goals for the coming year.
33. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying, grovelling.
34. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Yet again, let’s not go into that, either.
35. What was your favorite TV program(s)?
I finally discovered Scrubs. Oh, I’d seen part of an episode or two, years ago, and thought it was funny, but I never absorbed all the real poignancy the show also has. For all the surreal laughs (and go ahead and ask my kids – I laugh harder and more loudly to this show than any show I’ve ever seen), it’s got a bittersweet, real edge to it. It yanks me back and forth from shrieking mirth to gulping back a tear in less time that it’s taken to write about it. Wonderful.
Oh, and catching up on 24 was a six week hoot.
36. What song will always remind you of 2006?
That “OK Go” song.
37. How many concerts did you see in 2006?
None.
38. Did you have a favorite concert in 2006?
NA
39. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I can’t actually think of one.
40. What was the best book you read?
No question – Red sicced me on Children of the Arbat by Anatoli Rybakov. A chillingly mundane look at the early Stalin era. Incredible.
41. What was your favorite film of this year?
I think Eternal Sunshine was last year, right? It might have been Little Miss Sunshine.
42. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Opened a card and presents from my parents, took the kids out to Bascali’s, a little Italian joint by the Fairgrounds that I save for special occasions.
43. What did you want and get?
Nothing, and more than I could have asked for.
44. What did you want and not get?
Puhleeze.
45. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Many little things, few big ones. Everything from finally conquering my personal finances to meeting the “right” person.
46. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
Stay Alive.
47. What kept you sane?
Prayer, Blogging, the NARN, and the fact that going insane is never really an option. No matter how freaked out I start to feel, dinner’s gotta get cooked.
48. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
The winner, as for the past 15 years – Marisa Tomei.
49. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.
Sorry, no.
50. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
With a nod to the honorable mention, Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long”, I gotta go with one that might be no surprise; if my life were a movie, Bruce would be half the soundtrack:
One soft infested summer, me and Terry became friends/Trying in vain to breathe the fire we were born in./Catching rides to the outskirts, tying faith between our teeth,/sleeping in that old abandoned beach house, getting wasted in the heat, and…
(CH) Running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets. /With a love so hard and filled with defeat./Running for our lives at night on the backstreets.
Slow dancing in the dark, on the beach at Stockton’s Wing,/where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the Duke Street Kings./Huddled in our cars, waiting for the bell to ring,/In the deep heart of the night, we could cut loose from everything, and go
(CH) Running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets. /Terry you swore we’d live forever – taking it on the backstreets, together.
Endless juke joints and Valentino drag, where dancers scraped their tears up off the streets dressed down in rags,/running through the darkness, some hurt bad, some really dying,/and at night sometimes it’d seem you could hear the whole damn city crying./Blame it on the lies that killed us, blame it on the truth that ran us down,/hell, you can blame it all on me, Terry. It don’t matter to me now./When the breakdown hit at midnight there was nothing left to say,/but I hated him. And I hated you when you went away…
Lying in the dark you’re like an angel on my chest,/another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness./Remember all the movies, Terry, we’d go see, trying to/learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be?/Well after all this time, we find we’re just like all the rest,/stranded in the dark, and forced to confess to…
(CH) Running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets. /Terry you swore we’d be forever friends, on the backstreets ’til the end…
Tonight was the big night. Sunday, December 28, 1986. It was going to be a huge night on two fronts.
The evening would kick off with my band’s first gig at Williams’ Uptown Bar on Hennepin in Minneapolis.
Then, after load-out, I’d race out to KSTP to do my show. I was going to interview a childhood idol of mine.
———-
When you play in a dinky garage band, it’s easy to dream big. Sitting in your home studio writing music, or standing around in the basement listening to your band’s progress, and especially standing on stage in front of an appreciative crowd (or “crowd”), it was easy to think “next stop, the big time”. The optimism that accompanies the sort of muted arrogance that makes one think that anyone actually cares to hear what you write makes it easy to think, on reading one’s lyrics, hearing one’s practices, and seeing people watching you play, that you’ve got it going on.
But loading-in usually levels that out nicely.
Turns out I was the only driver in my band. The other three guys bused everywhere. And while we didn’t have a lot of equipment by the standards of the bands I’d played in high school (where we had to haul a PA system along with our instruments), there was enough – two guitars and a bass, their amps, a drum kit, and a Crumar T1 organ – and it didn’t haul itself, and it wasn’t going to fit into the back of my Jeep. I’d managed to borrow a van from one of my roommate’s parents, though. I got to the band’s house, and we started hauling our gear out of the stinky basement into the frigid late afternoon.
The good part – it was only about five blocks to the bar. The bad part – we were early.
The headliner that night was a group called “Bathyscope”. The name meant nothing to us – yet. What we did know was that they had a ton of gear – guitars, bass, two keyboard players (whose equipment is always heavy and bulky) and a drummer with a huge kit, and a box packed solid with other percussion instruments and stage props – and bigger pretensions, it seemed, in getting it set up and soundchecked. It took them a solid ninety minutes to get their gear up on stage, soundchecked, and ready to go.
Then it was our turn. As the opener, we were supposed to put our gear in front of the headliners, plug in, and grab a sound-check – if we had the time. By the time Bathyscope got off stage, it was 8:25. We were supposed to go on at nine.
We pulled, hauled and plugged, and got our stuff set up and more or less ready by about ten ’til, and started our soundcheck – a few bars of one of our songs. People were filing into the joint. The Bathyscope people – who looked, except for the drummer, to be distinctly “uptown” by the standards of Minneapolis in the day – were not visibly impressed with our Iron City Houserockers-Via-Lou Reed vibe.
But it didn’t last long. Will, our drummer, stopped in mid-song. I turned – he was frantically fiddling with something under his snare drum. I walked over.
“My hi-hat’s broken”.
Five minutes until we’re supposed to start. Crap.
Our options were two: Borrow a couple of pan lids from the kitchen, or hope someone would come through for us.
Bathyscope’s drummer – a big guy who looked to be in his late teens or early twenties, the only black guy in the room – came up on stage. He and Will conferred back behind the drum kit – and then he reached back to his own rig and grabbed his hi-hat. They turned to moving Will’s broken ‘hat out of the way, and putting his in place.
And we were on. Larry Sahagian, sitting at the sound board, went on the crackly, on-its-last-legs PA system and announced “Ladies and Gentlemen – Tenant’s Union”.
————
The gig itself – well, it was rough.
Turns out that excitement does make people go a lot faster than they think they are. The tapes we heard after the gig were shocking; it sounded like we were playing 50% faster than we were supposed to. The sound was garbled, my voice sounded like a fractured, out of breath yelp, and we sounded more like four guys playing at the same time than a band of four guys playing together.
The crowd was worse. There was a decent house, about 3/4 full…
…that seemed pretty uninterested in us. The clapping between songs was muted and wan. We weren’t dying – just gravely injured.
Still, I had fun; to me, there’s never been a feeling quite like working a room, even if it’s not perfect. We played ten songs, eight of them mine. And, rough as we were, by about the sixth or seventh song we started finding whatever groove we had; we were loud, (too) fast, and even though things were rough, we had a certain power to our delivery that felt like climbing on a big motorcycle, one that may need a tuneup but still makes the air crackle with power just a little bit.
During the third to the last song – “Five Short Words” – one guy back at the bar stood up with a look of recognition and a broad smile on his face, and started clapping along. I played the whole song directly to him – might as well reinforce success – and filed the guy’s face away for later.
After the tenth song, we were done. There was scatted clapping as we unplugged and started hauling our gear out of the way and Bathyscope started moving theirsinto place.
We hauled our gear out to the van, and sat down to watch.
And figured out quickly why the crowd hadn’t really dug us. “Bathyscope” was a jazz-pop band with very arty aspirations. The lead singer, a (how do we say this in our politically-correct age) aggressively gay guy dressed in an untucked tunic with laurel wreath (!) on his head, danced about the stage like an oversized dwarf from Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” scene. They set their amps and keyboards (and their stage props) on – I’m not kidding – doric half-columns. The band was modestly tight – the drummer was amazing, and the rest of the band was not great, not bad – and extremely ornate in that music-major-y kind of way. It was very unlike our thrashy din.
Um.
As they finished their set, the singer announced “Come see our art next Saturday at the Riflesport Gallery!”
Double Um.
Before we left, I walked back to the bar. The guy who’d been clapping walked up to me.
“That song you did – that was a reference to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, wasn’t it?”
It was.
Six weeks work, and our fan base is a fellow English major and Russian Lit geek.
I also saw Larry Sahagian, who paid us our twenty bucks. “You guys did all right, but you were totally the wrong band to open for these guys”.
Anyway. At least none of our friends had seen us.
——————
We went back to the basement and loaded our gear downstairs. By the time we were done, it was 12:30AM. I had to race out to the station to get on the air. I got there at 1AM – a little late, given the obsessiveness I put into show prep at that point in my “career” – but I got down to it.
Among my various geekinesses as a child and teenager was a fascination with fighter planes and aerial combat. I knew a little bit about many of the world’s classic dogfights. The protagonist of one of my favorite dogfights – a Navy F-4 ace from the Vietnam War that I’d been reading about for years – had just written a book. I had booked him for a phone interview from his home in LA.
After five months of doing the show, I was starting to settle into a bit of a groove. The awkard halting of my first couple attempts at guest interviews had been replaced by a little confidence and a tad of polish – which is damning by faint praise, but whatever – and at least I knew the subject matter for this interview pretty intimately.
The interview went…very well. It clicked as well as the gig had not. I knew the material in the book, and the guest appreciated it. I knew things about his story that, clearly, he wasn’t used to radio interviewers knowing. And the callers surprised me; one of the callers had even served on the carrier, the Constellation, with the guest during the Vietnam war, and added a lot to the commentary.
I wasn’t the only one who thought it went well – I heard the following week from the PR agent that the guest had had more fun on my little show than with any other interview he’d given.
I could have told her that.
I drove home that night – exhausted, cold, and giddy. The music career needed some work, but was off and running. And for the first time since July, I was starting to feel genuinely confident as a talk show host. I felt, for the first time, like I could fill in for any of the daytime hosts, and not embarass anyone in the process.
I could see the top of the world from where I sat in my Jeep.
————————
Postlude: It’s interesting to me, twenty years later, to note that I had one degree of separation with both fame and infamy that night (three, if you count Larry Sahagian, whose band the Urban Guerillas was about to release their proto-grunge classic Attack of the Pink, Heat-Seeking Moisture Missiles. But for the benefit of those who weren’t marinating in Twin Cities underground music twenty years ago, I won’t count that).
The personable, friendly, good-samaritan drummer for Bathyscope went on to much bigger and much better things. He turned out to be Mike Bland – at the time an Augsburg student, who was gigging for a few bucks on his way to a career as one of the most sought-after session drummers in the business, as well as stints with Prince and the New Power Generation and Soul Asylum.
The author and fighter pilot? Well, he was Duke Cunningham – still a hero, in those days, known for shooting down five North Vietnamese jets, including three on one climactic day, long before his political career and eventual status as poster-boy for Congressional corruption.
I knew ’em both when.
The Strib staff meets the world outside the media cloister:
NEW YORK It must have surprised its own newsroom as much as it did news operations and media observers across the country.
After reports surfaced Tuesday that the Star Tribune in Minneapolis would be sold by McClatchy Co. to a private equity firm called Avista, a columnist at the paper, Doug Grow, said workers there — like everywhere else — were scurrying around the Internet trying to find out anything about Avista.
“Everything we’ve heard from McClatchy recently is ‘Hey, we’re all in this together. We don’t do layoffs.’ Blah blah blah BS,” he told the Associated Press.
Shocking, innit? That managers might BS reporters as if they were mere commoners!
Seriously – that’s one of the parts about this story, and the decay of the major media in general, that makes it so hard to feel too much sympathy for the Strib staffers. Media people – especially at newspapers – see themselves almost like a monastic order, driven to a higher calling than the proles they “serve” with their reporting. They show it in their reactions to things like blogs (Nick Coleman summed the situation up as “astronomers being assaulted by people who swear that aliens force them to have sex with Martians” from his point of view) and mere readers (see: any Kate Perry column); they are the lonely beacons of enlightenment serving an ignorant and benighted rabble against the encroaching dark.
Maybe reality is starting to sink in?
The New York Times on Wednesday observes: “The sale caught most employees at the paper off-guard [an acquaintance at the Strib, not in the newsroom, confirms this – MB] and angered some newsroom employees, who expressed concerned that Avista Capital Partners, which owns no other daily newspapers, could make severe staff cuts.”
And if that happens, what will the peasants do for fair, objective news reporting? Like this?
Nick Coleman, a metropolitan columnist for the paper, told the Times, “It was like, who? Everyone knows the whole industry is in play and that just about anything could happen, but nobody thought we could get sold. There’s a real sense of betrayal …
“At a fire sale,” he said, “people get discounted, so we’re very concerned, worried and anxious.” But he added, “maybe it takes someone from outside the newspaper business to see the way forward.”
Five will get you ten it takes someone from outside the Strib to see it. Goodness knows they’ve had enough opportunity.
it’s a great time to be in the news and advertising business.”
Chevy Chase on the the guy who launched was the reason for his career:
Chase, 63, was an original cast member on the trend-setting late-night comedy television show “Saturday Night Live” and frequently opened the show pretending to be Ford stumbling and falling. The parody in 1975-6 helped reinforce a popular image about Ford’s clumsiness, even though the president had been a star athlete in college.
Chase proceeded to make that (and Fletch, which was basically the Ford bit tacked onto a private eye) his whole career.
Was he grateful? Well, eventually:
“He had never been elected period, so I never felt that he deserved to be there to begin with,” the actor said about Ford, who died on Tuesday at age 93. “That was just the way I felt then as a young man and as a writer and a liberal.”
“Later on we became friends and he was a very, very sweet man,” Chase said in a telephone interview from a Colorado ski resort. “He took my wife and I on a whole lovely trip through Grand Rapids to show us where he had been as a child and what not. We kept in touch and he was just a terrific guy.
Wow. Are Republicans supposed to be “terrific guys?”
“Ba’ath Party Warns It Will Hold The US Responsible”, warn the headlines, if Hussein is executed. So says a Ba’ath-affiliated website:
“Our party warns again of the consequences of executing Mr. President and his comrades,” the statement said.
“The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime,” the statement added, referring to Baath fighters as “the resistance.”
Oh, goodie. Launch an attack on U.S. soil. Try to ding us on our home field.
You want to guarentee a hard-line response from the American Street? You want to neuter the pacifist, accomodationist wave that is about the slither into Congress? Do it. Attack us here in the States. I triple dog dare you.
Even Democrats, mostly, aren’t stupid enough to ignore that.
So at the nadir of my misery on Monday, I fire up the MP3 player.
And what are the first three songs that insensitive software bastard serves up immediately?
So much for the “healing power of music”.
(No, don’t worry – I actually got a good laugh out of it).
Captain Ed’s advice on selecting an executioner…:
pick a Kurd, any Kurd.
…might might actually give lawyers an Eighth Amendment case against Hussein’s sentence. (*)
I remember a story from Paul Harvey, twenty years ago, about a guy on an aircraft carrier during the Great Typhoon of 1945 (a storm that struck the US Seventh Fleet causing immense damage and sinking three destroyers). A guy walking along the deck was caught by a shift in the wind and an unexpected roll in the titanic waves, and wound up getting swept and falling down the slanted deck toward the sea below. His shoe caught a two-inch steel lip on the edge of the flight deck, and the sailor – an officer – held on until the ship righted itself.
He was Lieutenant Gerald Ford, a navigation officer on carrier USS Monterey, and of course the future president. I always thought the story was an able metaphor for his presidency; a fortuitous, even if slightly mundane, rescue from the brink.
Ford died yesterday at age 93, most known perhaps for his pardon of Nixon:
That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Ford was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Even after two women tried separately to kill him, his presidency remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Nixon, the transition to Ford’s leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process – despite the fact that it occurred without an election.
I was too young to really understand much about Gerald Ford when he was president; I was 12-13 years old at the time. His importance has only resonated in the time since Chevy Chase’ impression ceased to be my major impression of him. But his job – bringing the nation down from the nightmare of Watergate – was a huge one. Others might have done it better; Ford did it well enough.
McClatchy unloads the Strib at a $670 million loss.
Avista Capital Partners, an investment group focused on media, healthcare and energy companies, will pay $530 million for the newspaper, which Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy bought from Cowles Media Co. in 1998 for $1.2 billion.
The deal is expected to formally close sometime in the early spring. Chris Harte, a member of Avista’s advisory board, will serve as chairman of a board overseeing the Star Tribune. Harte is a former publisher of newspapers in Akron, Ohio; Portland, Maine, and State College, Pa
Word has it that McClatchy, riven with debt from its purchase of Knight-Ridder, unloaded the paper for a huge loss because the purchase is to be all or mostly cash; McClatchy needs cash.
Hey, all you dotcom survivors – how does this sound to you?
The printed daily newspaper “will be the core of our business well into the future,” Harte told hundreds of employees gathered in the Star Tribune’s largest assembly room. “But it won’t be the overwhelming majority that it is today many years from now.
Um, yeah. All you production-side people start circulating your resumes.
(Sales and contracts people – you’re probably safe…)
“You and I and everyone who works with us will have to listen carefully to our readers and our advertisers and make sure we provide them with the information and advertising they want, when they want it, how they want it,” he said. “By doing that, the Star Tribune will continue to be the dominant medium in the Twin Cities.”
I wonder what, exactly, this means? Could it mean, as Brian Ward puts it, that…:
the days are numbered for front page agenda journalism, PC blinders on important stories, insult editorials, unchecked casual plagiarism, and the willful arrogance of a self-aware monopoly …
…or not remains to be seen (and Brian’s found disheartening evidence that’s just not gonna be).
But since Avista is a venture capital company rather than primarily a media operation, maybe it’ll mean that while the Strib editorial board remains the type of caricature of liberal cabal that conservatives could scarcely design as parody, at least they’ll be run with a bottom-line focus that will mean their excesses will harm them where it hurts most – in their pocketbook (or budget).
is “endunder“.
That is all.
Ed notes my prediction from three years ago, and predicts:
I suspect that the Maliki government will actually execute Saddam within 72 hours, before the protests can gather steam. I also predict that they will televise it, just to ensure that the Iraqis don’t fall into a new conspiracy theory that they executed someone else as a stand-in for Saddam.
We’ll see.
Since we’re into predictions, I’ll float another. Mark your dead pools for Saturday, 3PM Central time (midnight Baghdad). Here’s why; Ronald Reagan and the Pope both passed away moments after the NARN show let off the air. Now, you’d be right in saying that there’s no comparing Hussein with either of those two great men, or comparing the natural deaths of two men after long, rich lives to the execution of a genocidal Napoleon. That might well throw my prediction off. But I gotta start somewhere.
My first prediction was a very slightly educated guess. Here, I have tradition on my side.
Get through the morning without blowing chow.
So far so good.
Hussein’s death sentence has been upheld.
As I’ve written before, I think it was a mistake to “try” Saddam in a court, as though there were some doubt about the murderous nature of his regime, and that doubt could somehow be resolved by a judicial proceeding. I’ve also been critical of the manner in which the trial has been conducted. It has dragged on much too long and has far too often served as a platform for Saddam’s grandstanding.
It’s worth noting, at this time, that – ahem – it looks like my dead pool entry was, er, dead on, if all goes according to plan.
Someone notify Hewitt.
Christmas was hard this year. Actually, the holiday was fine, other stuff intervened. More, maybe, later.
I haven’t had a significant break from blogging in a couple of years. And I don’t think I will now – but posting is going to be very light for the next day or two.
John Kelly at Irish Pennants has among the best discussions going anywhere about fighting and winning a counterinsurgency war (and not just the linked post).
General Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, and former West Point professor Frederick Kagan have a different view. They headed a study group for the American Enterprise Institute which issued its report Dec. 14. They think it’s about time we tried the only thing that’s ever worked in fighting insurgencies.Every counterinsurgency that’s succeeded has done so by protecting civilians from insurgents, Gen. Keane noted.
But protecting Iraqi civilians isn’t even formally a mission for U.S. troops, which explains in part why we’re doing such a poor job of it, Prof. Kagan said.
That’s one of the things the British have always done when fighting insurgents; secure the local population.
Along with the increase in the number of troops would be a change in strategy. Currently, after U.S. troops ‘clear” a neighborhood, they return to their bases, permitting insurgents to slip back in. Any civilians who cooperated with U.S. or Iraqi troops are subject to retribution, which discourages cooperation. The higher troop levels would permit a constant presence in the disputed neighborhoods.The AEI study has a specificity the Iraq Study Group report lacked. It identifies the particular mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad where the security problem is worst.
Read the whole thing.
My daughter had her radio on last night. Call me un-hip, but the music sounded like a hair dryer running. No rhythm, no lyrics I could make out, just…a hair dryer.
What is with music today?
UPDATE: I’m informed that my daughter was actually drying her hair…
James Brown dead at 73:
Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid- footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowies “Fame,” Princes “Kiss,” George Clintons “Atomic Dog” and Sly and the Family Stones “Sing a Simple Song” were clearly based on Browns rhythms and vocal style.
“He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown,” entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Browns, told MSNBC. “A great treasure is gone.”
Sad icing on the sundae of a most dismal Christmas.
Carnivore at KvM on this tragic shooting in Boston:
A day after a loner gun nut went on a human hunting trip at the local bus full of nuns, punching a 30mm hole through countless people, the Mayor is calling for a ban on the weapon of mass destruction used during the shooting.
The high powered weapon, known as the AK-57 triple barrel, laser, radar, heat seeking, shotgun is able to spew ammunition such as explosive tipped ammunition in a rapid fire high powered fashion.
“High powered weapons such as these are only for the high powered battlefield like when I was in high powered Vietnam,” said Senator Kerry. “They serve no civilian purpose with their high power bayonet lugs.”
OK, it’s not a real news story.
Or…is it?
Read KvM to find out…
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