Month: March 2007
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Attention, Paul Mirengoff
Your “master of obscure sports references” title is under serious attack. Now is no time to rest on your laurels. My suggestion: less Everton, more Buzkashi. Have your people call my people.
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Things I’d Pay A Lot of Money To Hear Again
It was sometime late in 1986 when Dave Elvin managed to book Country Dick Montana, the eccentric drummer of California cowpunk band the Beat Farmers, on the Don Vogel show. It was one of the most hilarious interviews of all time. We’d been using the Farmers’ classic “Happy Boy” as a bumper whenever we needed…
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Things I Never Care If I Hear Again
The song from that car ad – I wanna say it’s Mazda, but they’re all “zoom zoom zoom”, so it must be some other brand – with the jungle beat and the chorus of audibly-disheveled guys who are apparently chanting… “Sky Cannabis – Green light. Sky cannabis in-spi-RAY-shun…” …or something like that. And yes, it…
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A Leash Being Yanked
Getting an education for my children has been a beastly, awful business. The only break I’ve had in recent years has been getting my kids out of the St. Paul Public school system… …no. Let me rephrase that. The only break my kids and I have caught has been getting them the hell out of…
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Where Will You Be…
…when your laxative kicks in?
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NARN Today!
On Volume II, Ed and I will be talking about the Democrats’ pork-laden political whoopie cushion “Defense Appropriations” bill. We’ll also be talking with St. Paul School Board member Tom Conlon about the move to exclude military recruiters from Saint Paul schools. The Volume I guys – Chad, John and Brian – have a guest,…
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Best Wishes
One of my great inspirations has to be Tony Snow. Two years ago, he came down with colon cancer. Like a lot of people (of all political walks), I sent him a “get well soon” email; I’ve long respected Snow’s chops as a radio guy. His email in response was truly a gift of insight…
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How’s That Again?
Katie, from “Yucky Salad With Bones”: I have always approached pork touching with what I’d like to believe is admirable bravery. No, you’ll need to read it.
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24 Scenes I’d Like To See
SCENE: In CTU. The heat is on. Clicking, beeping, whirring all about; barely-controlled pandaemonium reigns. BAUER: “Chloe, I need those grid maps overlaid with the week-old satellite photoes and the differentials called out, and I need ’em now… CHLOE (irritably): “Back off! I’m running a back-streamed IP subnetwork mask through the HTU turborouter with a…
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Overpowered By Meme
Today’s meme – unmet expectations. 1. What, in your experience, was the most overrated movie of all time? I may get shunned by my arty friends, but Eight 1/2 by Fellini left me totally cold. 2. What was the most overrated album? That would have to be Sweet Baby James by James Taylor. I never…
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The Seed Painter
One of the annual treats of the trip to the Minnesota State Fair is the seed art exhibit. The exhibit provides plenty of comic relief (not to mention easy material for the NARN broadcast), and of course the occasionaly “wow – didn’t know they could do that with seeds). Most of the latter came from…
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Hello, Dave!
Calvert DeForest – AKA Larry “Bud” Melman from the David Letterman show – is dead at 85: The Brooklyn-born DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, Letterman’s “Late Show” announced Wednesday. He made dozens of appearances on Letterman’s shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: dueting with Sonny…
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Reinforcing Failure
One of the great legacies of the Bush Administration is further proof that tax cuts work. They stimulate the economy. They put people to work. They are a just-plain-good thing. Now, the Bush Administration screwed up, and badly, by not cutting domestic spending. Those of us who supported Steve Forbes up until the end of the 2000…
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Notes From A Shoebox
Learned Foot remembers his grandfather: Most people will leave behind a shoebox full of pictures to remind subsequent generations of their mark upon the world. But for a precious few – whose numbers are dwindling rapidly – the world itself is the evidence for the mark they left on it. The whole thing is worth…
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Attention, Minnesota Political Parties
Other states are moving up their primaries, so as to make them more influential in selecting the next president: Hoping to muscle Florida into a pre-eminent role in picking next year’s Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, the state House voted Wednesday to leapfrog almost all the other states and set a Jan. 29 primary, with…
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Man who dragged girl with his van is sentenced
Mauricio Sanchez was sentenced to 23 months yesterday for hitting 11-year-old Gladys Reyes, dragging her a third of a mile, and then running away when another driver forced him off the road. Reyes lost an arm, and is in intensive therapy to teach her to walk again. Maybe. Margaret from Crime Watch quotes the judge,…
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Ugh.
My first thought, before I turned the sound up – “Wow. Kim Thayil from Soundgarden is back in the news!” No such luck. The guy is alleged to have killed a 41-day-old baby. A bruised upper lip. Broken ribs. A severe skull fracture. The head injury would kill tiny Delijahjuan Winden on Tuesday, after only…
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Simple Pleasures
This August it will be 28 years since I first started in radio. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge – nine stations, huge hopes, big disappointments, and an entree into a life I loved. Then hated. And now kinda watch and take what I need and leave the rest. And after all…
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You Might Not Be A Baby Boomer If…
Comment-section gadfly gadflea gadmite gadamecium RickDFL wrote: On behalf of the younger generation can I just say that watching all you old baby boomers re-fight the war protests of your youth, only this time without the cool soundtrack and hot women, is really boring. I pointed out that I’ve banned people for less than calling…
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Doh! It’s The Old “Kill Thousands, Get Captured, Talk Big” Trick!
With the release last week of the transcripts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial transcripts, I started a countdown; how long would it be until the Mainstream Media turned him into either a benign figure, or even something akin to a clever folk hero? The first bit was Saturday, on some NPR news show or another…
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Brutal Stifling of Dissent!
Ahem: A NASA scientist [James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies] who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years. Censorship? Nah. However, the Administration would be justified in calling the guy a…
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Great Dane
Among the reporters taking early retirement at the Strib this past week is Dane Smith, dean of Minnesota political reporters. Doug Tice – an editor who is very rarely mistaken for a cliched liberal reporter – reminisces: It seems that during the lead up to the Spanish-American War McKinley needed to get word to a…
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Spain’s Next Top Model
Mary Louise at Casual Sundays… Socialism may not be pretty but it sure as hell is funny! Read the rest of it.
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You Might Not Really Support The Troops If…
Almost three years ago, I wrote this piece, which generated a ton of traffic. The main part: If You Believe: that America has problems – huge problems – then dissent is American. But If You Believe: …that America’s problems make it an inherently rotten concept, then maybe you should think about whether you’re living in…
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Stat!
Go to read Cathy’s account of her battle with cancer over at Cake Eater Chronicles. Stated, in this case, in the form of a Battlestar Galactica story: In my dream, Chief told me, in a very sympathetic way, that he was really sorry, but I was now obsolete and that it simply wasn’t worth it…