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I accidentally took this out-of-focus shot of the Christmas lights hung (year round, trailer trash style) next to my desk at work. None of the actual lights are the colors you see here. Also, my desk is tucked into a dark, cavelike space, and the lights are against a dark surface. So how did it wind up looking like it was taken outside, with a house in the background? Your guess is as good as mine.
Psycho Suzi's has always been a great little Northeast Minneapolis tiki bar, and when they announced that they were upsizing into the huge old Gabby's space a few blocks south I thought that meant the end of a good thing. Man, was I wrong; the new place just blows the old one away, and a lot of that is due to their Friday and Saturday night house band, Exotik-A-Go-Go, which is a bunch of old chops musicians seated in a circle right in the middle of everything playing hilarious Martin Denny-like bachelor-pad jazz utilizing everything from coconut shells to bird calls to a Theremin, all played at a volume low enough to allow for conversation. It's totally magical. The thing I couldn't believe was that there were so many cars there that I had to park four blocks away, and yet the place wasn't packed... it's that huge. They're building a giant deck overlooking the river outside; man, this place is going to be a blast next summer!
For those of you who live in Melbourne or Sao Paulo or Mada-friggin-gascar, this is what it looks like at 2:30 in the afternoon in Roseville, Minnesota on November 26th. Like it will be dark in two and a half hours. I don't mind many aspects of winter, but darkness at five blows. I don't understand the whole "fall back" resetting of the clocks thing; I'd rather have an hour more of sunlight in the afternoon than in the morning. But I don't control time.
It's not often that I do product endorsements here (other than those fantastic products offered by Magnetic Poetry), but I've gotta tell you, if your household drinks pop like my household drinks pop (or even if you drink "soda" or "coke"), you've got to get one of these gizmos. They cost around a hundred bucks, but save you a ton of money in the long run, and produce pretty much zero packaging waste. Plus, it's really fun inventing delicious carbonated beverages with good stuff like fresh fruit juices and Italian ice syrups. Burp!
As seen in today's StarTribune. If you'd like to see two of these in action, my friend, Jim and I will be performing (as The Meteor Boys) in The Underpants Show at Bryant Lake Bowl on December 3rd. We're working up a jaunty little Dean Martin tune that's running through my head even as we speak...
So say some bike geeks, but it also applies to the world of Magnetic Poetry, where our packaging conversion continues apace. Just shot these displays for our 2011 catalog and may I say, things are looking tasty!
My friend, Tom, has got straight-up clown cred. Being that he is a characature artist who works the state and county fair circuit in the summer, he's had to join the clown union, and carries his card proudly. He even gets thier trade magazine, and after seeing my Halloween costume blog entry he says he's going to get me some back issues to peruse. I'm anxious to see if they address clown terror; I've got to believe it's a real issue in that business.
Last weekend was really really long, and really really fun. Weather-wise, it was gorgeous Indian summer outside but I was oblivious, being ensconsed in my dank steel room with no widows or even air circulation, for that matter. Still, I didn't mind, because so many great people stopped by, made "poems," and laughed their heads off at their own 14-year-old dirty-minded cleverness. I don't know what I was thinking when I expected something poignant to emerge; absurdity is Magnetic Poetry's strong suit, and I (and probably you) love it. Long live the enormous sausages!
I'd meant to do some live blogging of the goings-on at Art Attack via iPhone, but had some extenuating circumstances. One, it's so dark in there that my iPhone pics (I've got the old 3GS without a flash) sucked, and two, it was so busy that I had no time for anything but frantic hobnobbing and custom word making. I'd ask people as they arrived to think of one word to add to the walls and they'd come up with three or four, which I'd stamp on blank magnet strips and slap up into the mix. Maybe I'll bring some sort of photo light today and try again.
I wouldn't say that any great works have been produced yet, but people were laughing their heads off as they composed short odes like "Nixon's farts smelled like old meat" and "Phil is a pudgy puff tard." Yes, my product seems to be appealing to the baser instincts, especially in the Grown Ups Only section where there always seemed to be a pack of giggling women making "poems" that cannot be reprinted here. Come read them yourself, if you dare.
I feel confident in saying that the Magnetic Poetry Chamber Of Steel I'm installing at the Northrup King Building for this weekend's Art Attack is the world's largest interactive poetry installation... I keep an eye out for this sort of thing, and I've never seen anything close to our nearly 3000 square feet of steel surface, all of it covered in variously-themed word magnets. I've been tagging (magging?) the steel doors all over the building to lead folks to the space. The event starts tomorrow... stop by, say hi, and create something lovely, dirty, hilarious or all of the above! Check the Magnetic Poetry Facebook page for a live feed on the poems that emerge; I'll be photographing and posting them with my iPhone.