Dude Weather 12/31
Stuff to do: The Bad Plus at the Dakota
Local not-quite-categorizable jazz trio The Bad Plus continues its four-night run at the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant tonight (Friday) and tomorrow. Tickets are $28 and $40, and you can buy them here; club website here.
Below: The Bad Plus video for “Physical Cities” (from Prog)
Audio: The debt-collection racket
Via Consumerist, audiovisual evidence of the routinely illegal lengths to which professional debt collectors will go in harassing the people they dun. It’s a nice companion piece to this Business Week article from last month about a new trend among collection agencies: stalking people over debts that have already been discharged through bankruptcy.
Trailers: movies opening this week
Alien v. Predator: Reqiuem
Below the jump: The Water Horse; The Orphanage; The Great Debaters
Read more
Art: Robert Williams launches new site
Via boingboing, Lowbrow Art exponent Robert Williams–a one-time member of the Zap Collective, along with Robert Crumb, though he’s better known as the man who painted the original (censored) Guns n’ Roses Appetite for Destruction cover–has a new website, with gallery.
Below: Enchiladas de Amore. Click on the image to visit the site. (The page is all flash, so we can’t link you directly to the gallery…)
Top local stories of the year wrap: The Mole’s list
Thanks to all the other local journalists and media critics who took part in our survey (see those posts), and here are the Mole’s top 9 picks.
1. 35W bridge: It was not just the suddenness and magnitude of the event that made it so shocking. A plane crash in south Minneapolis or a category 5 tornado in the metro area would not have engendered the sense of public betrayal that the collapse of the state’s most-traveled bridge did. It called into question one of the most basic unspoken bargains underlying our sense of what it is to be an American, or a Minnesotan: the confidence that our government, whatever its political allegiances of the hour, is competent enough and uncorrupted enough to ensure that essential services continue to function. Amy Klobuchar articulated as succinctly as anyone: “A bridge in America just shouldn’t fall down.” Yet it did, and the stories that have unfolded since the collapse almost five months ago demonstrate just how dithering, crony-ridden, and cash-starved the agency overseeing the safety of our roads and bridges really is.
2. Minnesota economy: The bad news included a terrible job market (a net decline of over 26,000 jobs through the summer and early fall); a ranking of dead-last in the nation in personal income growth in the third quarter; city budget crises here in the Metro; mounting evidence that the state has fallen progressively further behind in maintaining its infrastructure (see number 1, above); and declining indicators for the future (such as rate of education spending growth).
3. Real estate mess: The repercussions from subprime mortgage madness hit here as everywhere else, causing what had been a booming local construction industry to grind to a near-halt and bringing news of ever-greater month-by-month reductions in existing home valuations. As some of the worst predators in the lending game were exposed over the course of the year, it became evident that Read more
Suddenly, the case of Bill McGuire’s stock options is a lot more interesting
This isn’t a curveball; it’s a brushback pitch. As reported in today’s Star Tribune and Pioneer Press, District Judge James Rosenbaum (pictured) has asked the Minnesota Supreme Court how extensively he can vet the terms of former United Health CEO Bill McGuire’s $420 million options-backdating settlement. This additional setback comes a day after it was reported that Rosenbaum has continued the freeze on McGuire’s remaining stock options (valued at $800 million in most press accounts, but actually worth $960 million at yesterday’s close of trading, as Julie Forster of the Pi Press notes).
Neither story in the dailies does much to elucidate what Rosenbaum is up to, but it’s clear enough that there are at least two sets of concerns in play:
1) The continued freeze on the stock options hinges in part on a not-yet-resolved lawsuit against McGuire filed by a California public employees’ retirement fund, of which Rosenbaum wrote in his Wednesday ruling, “CalPERS has clearly shown a significant probability of success on the merits in [its] litigation.” It may also reflect Rosenbaum’s suspicion that McGuire ought to give up more in the settlement that was already thought to be a done deal–the one Rosenbaum now wishes to review closely.
2) A couple of details from the dailies’ versions of the story make it appear that Rosenbaum is indeed inclined to believe that $420 million settlement should be bigger: There’s the gloss that securities lawyer and former federal prosecutor Christopher Bebel offers the Strib’s Chen May Yee: “Judge Rosenbaum… is clearly… implicitly telling the parties to revisit the terms that were previously agreed upon and [to possibly] sweeten the pot.” And then there’s this notation in Julie Forster’s Pi Press dispatch: Rosenbaum’s ruling referred to McGuire’s pool of remaining stock options as “pelf,” an archaic noun derived from the Anglo-French pelfre, or booty; Dictionary.com defines it as “money; riches; gain–generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten.”
New Movies Opening This Week
There Will Be Blood, playing at the Uptown Theater
One Missed Call
Audio: More Hank Williams Health and Happiness Show radio broadcasts
I think I’ve read practically all the Hank Williams biographies that have been published, but probably the most acute and revealing portrait of Williams I ever encountered was by an art critic named Dave Hickey. Hickey’s 1997 book Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy includes a stunning little “autobiographical” soliloquy written in Williams’s voice from beyond the grave:
“…if the truth were told, I ran so hard and stayed so crazy during my life on earth that sad hardly mattered. Sad I could deal with, sad I could put in a song, and if it was a good song, one that tasted good in your mouth when you sang it, and felt good under your boot when you tapped it out, there was a chance you might tear up and sniffle a little bit when you sang it. But otherwise, the sadness just stayed put, right there where you put it, in the song. So you could say, I guess, that those songs were like bus-station lockers where I stowed the pieces of my broken heart–and forgot them. Because, except when I was writing songs, I didn’t spend too much time worrying about the state of my heart. I spent a good deal more time trying to keep my liver and my lungs and my dick in working order, which, considering the way I lived, was no small task.”
Here, as promised, are the last two 1949 Health and Happiness Show broadcasts from the Internet Archive:
Hank Williams, Health and Happiness Show #3
Hank Williams, Health and Happiness Show #4
Must-read: The year in dysfunctional state government
Of the many year-end lists generated by local publications, the best we’ve seen is Tom Elko’s smart, reference-links-laden roundup at In this excerpt, Elko summarizes the case of Minnesota Health Commissioner Diane Mandernach and her suppression of mesothelioma data from the Iron Range:
On August 22, three weeks after the 35W bridge collapse and amidst calls for Molnau’s resignation, Diane Mandernach quietly resigned as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health, which brings us to the states second significant failure. Results of a study on mesothelioma in taconite miners obtained in March of 2006 by the Department of Health revealed that 35 Iron Range miners died of the asbestos-related cancer between 1997 and 2005, twice as many as in the previous nine years. Diane Mandernach suppressed the results of that study for over a year, as hardworking men and women continued to subject themselves to the carcinogenic conditions on a daily basis. It has since been determined that 58 miners have died since 2003 due to mesothelioma. Most appalling was that Mandernach tipped off Cleveland-Cliffs Mining Company one week before finally releasing the information to the public.
In the months before she resigned, Governor Pawlenty acknowledged that what Mandernach did was wrong but stated that her actions did not rise “to the level of termination.”
Read the whole thing. Very good.
Reveille: New Standards EP tops local music sales chart
From the Mole’s local music partner site, Reveille–where it snows every day now–Andrea Myers runs down the top-selling local discs as measured by the Electric Fetus. These lists always lag real time by a couple of weeks; this one covers the week of December 10-16:- New Standards, Candy Cane EP
- Jim Walsh (book), The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting
- Charlie Parr, Jubilee
- Vicious Vicious, Don’t Look So Surprised
- New Standards, New Standards
- Trailer Trash, Hell, It’s X-Mas
- Cafe Accordion Orchestra, Cafe Christmas
- Dance Band, Returns From the Land After Tomorrow
- Trailer Trash, All Lit Up: Trashy Little X-Mas
- Trampled by Turtles, Live at Luce
Dude Weather: Dutch wishes to party with you vicariously
Stock options case: Does Judge James Rosenbaum want a bigger settlement from Dollar Bill McGuire?
Twin Cities: The Mole picks its top 9 local stories of the year… More Pawlenty administration hijinks: $20 million in Minnesota highway funds could be lost… Reveille: top-selling local records… Dude Weather: Dutch wishes to party vicariously with you (i.e., send him your New Year’s pics)… Pop Media: Most disturbing photoshop trend: Mouth eyes… Google Zeitgeist top web searches of the year… Audio: The last installment of our Hank Williams deathiversary radio broadcasts… Talk: Help the Mole pick a local villain of the year… Or weigh in with your top Festivus grievance of ‘07…
Google Zeitgeist 2007: top web searches of the year
The fastest-rising web search strings of the year, according to Google Zeitgeist:
1. iphone; 2. webkinz; 3. tmz; 4.transformers; 5. youtube; 6. club penguin; 7. myspace; 8. heroes; 9. facebook; 10. anna nicole smith.
And the most searched-for presidential candidates:
1. ron paul; 2. fred thompson; 3. hillary clinton; 4. barack obama; 5. john edwards; 6. mitt romney; 7. john mccain; 8. joe biden; 9. bill richardson; 10. rudy giuliani
And the top 10 “what is” searches:
1. what is love; 2. what is autism; 3. what is rss; 4. what is lupus; 5. what is sap; 6. what is bluetooth; 7. what is emo; 8. what is java; 9. what is hpv; 10. what is gout
There’s lots more top-search lists at the Google Zeitgeist ‘07 page.
The most disturbing photoshop trend of the year, without question, is “mouth eyes”
I was checking out some of the recent work at the Photoshop-monkeywrenching site FreakingNews.com when I came across the Mouth Eyes gallery.
It’s gross. Revolting. Disturbing:
On the other hand, I sort of liked the partial face transplants, like this one of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (below the jump): Read more
LOL Polz: Northfield Mayor Lee Lansing
Regular LOL Polz contributor and local improv performer Jill Bernard goes a little inside-politics with her latest contribution, so here’s the money quote concerning Northfield’s Tammany Hall moment from last Saturday’s Strib:
“When Northfield’s embattled mayor refused to resign Saturday, the college town’s City Council told him to clean out his desk and turn in his City Hall key. The [city council’s censure] vote came just days after investigator William Everett, who was hired by the city this fall, told the council that Lansing violated the city’s ethics code when he lobbied to have the city relocate its municipal liquor store to property owned by his son, David.”
Festivus Friday: Your last chance in 2007 to air your grievances
Every Friday at the Daily Mole, we ask you to air your grievances from the week gone by. But since this is the last Friday of the year, feel free to rehearse grudges and resentments that festered inside you at any point this year.
Eligible targets: bosses, spouses, politicians, co-workers, favorite teams, BFFs gone bad, media, celebrities (real or local), other people’s pets and children, or anyone/anything else that has caused you aggrievement or dyspeptitude in the previous seven days.
Use some common sense. If you’re talking about private individuals you know personally or work with (if it’s a personal story, that is), change names–and don’t provide identifying details that would violate their privacy, because the sad fact of American jurisprudence is that even scoundrels have privacy rights.Beyond that, let them have it.
TC Morning Roundup: If we’re so literate, why can’t anyone in the Pawlenty administration read federal highway regulations?
Practically every media outlet in the Land of 10,000 Fatuous Distinctions takes note this morning of a not-so-fatuous distinction: Minneapolis ranked first, and St. Paul third, in an annual survey of the most literate cities (pop > 250,000) in the US. (Seattle was sandwiched between them.) As Dave Orrick notes in the Pioneer Press, the Central Connecticut State University rankings are based on six factors: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources…But apparently no one at the Department of Public Safety can make it through federal highway regulation updates without nodding off. Officials there have known for quite a while that their procedures for licensing commercial truckers failed to meet federal screening standards, but Mark Brunswick writes in the Star Tribune that Minnesota stands to lose $20 million in highway funding if they aren’t in compliance by next September. Taken alongside the scandals and delays at MnDOT, this latest imbroglio is more evidence that the Pawlenty administration’s house is not in order; the question is whether it’s a matter of competence, or of cash-starved bureaucracies approaching everything with a triage mentality and tending only to the near-at-hand, or both…
And speaking of MnDOT, the Star Tribune continues to mollify officials there even as Carol Molnau continues to stonewall the paper’s own reporters. Yesterday they published a whinging op-ed in response to the paper’s recent DOT series by Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy. It was composed by MnDOT assistant to the commissioner Bob McFarlin, the man who is Molnau’s mouth and possibly her brain…
Minnesota’s slowing population growth could mean a re-districting that reduces the state’s Congressional delegation from eight to seven following the 2010 census. If that happens, writes Nina Petersen-Perlman, two unlucky incumbents will face off in one of the new districts… It’s a good thing, but not really a meaningful statistic: Murders in Minneapolis are down 20 percent this year (from 57 to 47)…
Pi Press shopping enthusiast Gita Sitaramiah writes that the dollar’s sinking exchange rate is bringing droves of Canadians here to buy things: “Total spending by Canadians was up 21 percent last year in Minnesota and business and convention spending shot up 70 percent, according to Statistics Canada for Explore Minnesota Tourism.” According to what?…
A new AMVETS post in the Iron Range town of Virginia will be named after Noah C. Pierce, a 23-year-old Iraq vet who committed suicide earlier this year… In Minneapolis, there’s a battle brewing over who will pick up your trash: The consortium that’s held the contract since 1971 wants to stop the city from seeking other bids…
We hope that Juanita Polyak gets back her Chihuahua, Brutus, which was inside her car when it was stolen on Christmas eve, but we also can’t help feeling that the fact this story is featured at numerous local news outlets, print and broadcast, speaks poorly of what’s become of local media in this year of deep budget and staff cuts. Pi Press story is here.
Suggested New Year’s resolutions:
Stop leaving the baby at the bus stop.
Stop taunting animals that can get your whole head in their mouths.
Gossip Morning
- Sad! Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are getting a divorce. They have been married for 11 years.
- Mischa Barton briefly livened up a quiet week by getting arrested on Thursday morning for a driving drunk, not having a valid license (what is it with celebrities and their no good licenses?), and having some unnamed narcotics on/in her person. She spent a number of hours in jail before making $10,000 bail and being picked up by her parents.
- This is scraping the bottom of the barrel, but Jessica Alba is engaged to Cash Warren.
- Predictions for the new year: Britney will continue her downward spiral, and hopefully fade away. Lindsay Lohan will be arrested again for something. Jennifer Aniston will adopt a kid and break up with Courtney Cox. Jennifer Garner will get pregnant. The writer’s strike will last a long time.
Dude Weather 12/28
Phyllis Stein’s Review of Trailers
In the book Snow Angels by Stuart Onan, nothing is pretty for long, and nothing comes easily. In his spare, relentless way, Onan allows few pleasures to seep under drafty doors on an icy night. It’s a grim little world.
From the preview of the new movie by David Gordon Green (2003’s All the Real Girls), and from looking at Green’s picture on imdb.com (he’s a very young man), I can’t say my heart sank, but my expectations weren’t exactly raised, either. For one thing, it looks to be one of those movies where pretty girls are made to look plain, which is never convincing. I mean, if you dress up that darling sidekick from Juno, Olivia Thirlby, in tortoise shell glasses and ugly clothes, she is still going to be a firecracker. Kate Beckinsale, an airless actress who seems to equate being sour with thinking deeply (see Brokedown Palace or Laurel Canyon), just looks beaten down from not being able to wear more makeup. On the other hand, this is a movie that could be saved by one perfect ice fishing shot—a picture of cold desolation that made up for all the dregs in The Human Stain, the movie.
So, what would happen if Stephen Root’s character from Office Space (the one who keeps getting a shoved into a progressively smaller office until he is working in the boiler room with no paycheck and no supplies to use or steal) were to save his former office mates from a rampaging gunman with his own gun rampage, get promoted, fall in love with the beautiful but now paralyzed office girl, and have a new movie made about him? You would get He Was A Quiet Man in which Christian Slater dons a balding headpiece, bad skin, and ugly glasses, tries to look like William Macy (who’s also in the movie), and makes the most unintentionally ridiculous movie of the year.
keep looking »
