Happy Halloween. Well, except for us Norwegians...

Here's a spooky Halloween story inspired by my adventures in plumbing last night. It's called, "Encyclopedia Brown and the Leaky Ball Gasket"... OoooOOOoooo... Scary.... For weeks now, my toilet has been causing me grief. It started with the problem of needing to "jiggle" (technical term) the handle to make the water tank stop filling. Then it deteriorated to a point where I'd need to remove the lid to the tank and "nudge" to the ball float to make the valve shut and stop the water from filling. After weeks of jiggling and nudging, activities which I normally enjoy, I finally decided to get the appropriate parts, study the anatomy of the flush toilet, and make the simple repair.

Two trips to Home Depot later, and after a thorough reading of the instructions, I finally got started. Step One is an important one. That's the step where they tell you to shut off the water valve that feeds the toilet. If you DON'T do this, and if you DO remove the old ball gasket head, you will find that your toilet can become a very high-pressure "fountain". That's the poetic term for it. And guess what? Yes, I found out the hard way... [Let's pause while my friend Jeff finishes laughing]

Anyway, after a few mad scrambles down two flights of stairs, I finally completed the task. When I was finished, I had a perfectly functioning toilet again. I looked like a wet rat and had towels all over the bathroom, but I think I learned something. No, not "learned". I was "reminded" as to why people like me should pay other people to do simple "handy work" around the home. I'm not cut out for it...



Back to Halloween. I was just thinking about my favorite character from SCTV -- Count Floyd. He hosted the "Monster, Chiller, Horror, Theater" and would make these wild howling noises before stopping with a wheezy coughing jag... Great character.

Oh, I also stocked up on my Halloween candy for the trick-or-traitors that live in my neighborhood. Here's how you pick candy. First, identify all of the brightly colored candies that children just love... You can skip these. Then, look for the cheapest candies you can find... Skip these also. Finally, pick out several bags of candy that YOU would eat if there are any "leftovers" at the end of the night. Pick these. Then, on Halloween night turn off all of the lights in your house and eat the candy by yourself.

It's a great little tradition, and I must say, Halloween is now one of my favorite holidays...

Before there was e-mail: forwarding jokes through history.

You can go to the State Fair with Dutch people, but for God's sake don't go camping with them.

Coffee makes you smarter, happier, and sexier. Just as I thought.

Another good McSweeney's list: Windows messages, as if rewritten by Scott, this guy who bullied me in the second grade.

And finally, a little cartoon... HomeStarRunner's Halloween.

Another busy weekend out in my hometown. On Saturday I went out to my Dad's place to help throw out some junk from the barn and granary. Nothing like taking a sledge hammer to an ice-fishing sled to work off some steam... Then, had lunch at D'Vinci's (best pizza anywhere), spent some time at my Mom's house, and then finally went to a pumpkin carving party at a friend's house just outside of Mayer. My pumpkin turned out pretty ugly, and not in a spooky way either. Just ugly.... I hadn't carved a pumpkin in many, many years, and immediately after sticking my hand into the "pumpkin guts" I was reminded WHY... Yuck.

And finally, here's some pictures from my high school reunion from last weekend out in Waconia...

Does your roommate play the Indigo Girls?

A letter from Garrison Keillor to Ron Popeil.

And finally, a feel good story for a Monday...

I watched the finale of Push, Nevada last night and it was terrible. The "brilliant" ending was so full of holes that it defied reason. Ben Affleck should never be allowed to write or produce a series again. Period.

Here's my beef. The whole season revolved around trying to find out how these mobsters were laundering money through a casino in Push, Nevada. In the end, our crack IRS detective figures out the scheme. You see, what they were doing was laundering money to the average citizens of Push, even though they didn't know they were in on the scheme. The casino had unusually large payouts, so once the local citizens "won big", they'd spend the money in town. And who owned every business in town? Why the mobsters of course. So, once the townsfolk spent the money, the mobsters got their "laundered" money back in their pockets. Brilliant!!! Not. Let me deconstruct this and show why it's an idiotic premise.

1) The concept of laundering money revolves around taking "dirty" money (from crimes) and turning it around through a legitimate enterprise to produce "clean" money. Problem #1 with their premise is they never explained how the "dirty" money got accepted by the casino in the first place. In order for a laundering operation to be successful (or make sense, even), you have to legitimize the flow of cash "into" a business. They didn't do this. Did they arrange for people to come in and "lose" the money to the house? Perhaps. In fact, this would be THE way to do it since casinos are cash enterprises. Hire a bunch of people to bring $XXX dollars in cash and then "lose it" to the casino, which is a legitimate enterprise. Right NOW, the laundering part is complete and the mobsters have all of their money. There's no reason to go and "pay out" all of the winnings back to the townies...

2) Okay, let's just assume they did it that way. Now you have the casino with a bunch of "clean" money that it disperses through gambling winnings to local townfolk, so that they, in turn, can spend it in the local businesses to return the cash back to the mobsters. They should a little montage where some local huckster goes in and buys a brand new John Deere lawnmower. Once he purchases it, the money is all back in the hands of the criminals, right? Wrong.

The mobsters had to pay wholesale for the lawn mower (to John Deere) in the first place, so that pretty much wipes out their gain. Suppose the Casino paid out $2000 to the huckster, and then he buys the John Deere. Well, of that $2000 in "clean" money, about 80% of it will go straight to John Deer for the lawn mower. The remaining $400 is free and clear for the mobsters, but not really. First, of that money, they had to pay for all of the kick-backs, bribes, etc. PLUS they have to pay the overhead of running all of these local businesses. They have to hire and pay staff, purchase real estate, and fund the grocery store, the hardware store, the car dealership, etc. Of that original $2000, maybe only $100 bucks or so would ever make it into clean "cash"...

Anyway, I just was annoyed by the lame attempt and poor writing. Enough said.

Let's see if we can't find something more intelligently written that a Ben Affleck show. Oh, here we go: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Just some dumb stuff today...

I love this. The Powerpoint Anthology of Literature.

"Icebergs, right ahead!..."

This one cracked me up because clearly Ryan Adams has NO sense of humor. Want to really get him ticked off on stage? Request a Bryan Adams song. Funny stuff. [Note: If you're not familiar with Ryan Adams, he's this bad-boy alt-country/rock dude who spends too much of this time pretending to be Paul Westerberg...]

Coming to a mall near you... Robo-Coaster.

And finally, the lost world of minor Looney Tune characters. Which one is your favorite?

And then there's the regular Looney Tunes site. Those cartoons were just the best...

Nick Hornby's list of the top 10 songs he could not live without. [Nick Hornby is an author who wrote the book, High Fidelity, about a guy much like Nick Hornby who makes lists of song tracks for every occasion.]

I had my 15-year high school reunion on Saturday. Whew! Am I getting old or what? Anyway, I think it was a great success, although the attendance could have been a tad bit better. I think we had something like 27 or 28 classmates attend out of a class of about 97. Still, it was fun catching up with people I hadn't seen in so many years. I'll get in more details about the reunion at a later date (hint: I was the designated class photographer, so I took pictures that I'll be posting shortly)... On the downside, since many of them may be visiting this site, I can't go into all the sordid mockery that I'm prone to do...

With that said, I think one of the highlights was seeing my old 8th-grade English teach, Mr. O'Brien. Honestly, in all of my years of schooling (including college), I can't think of one teacher that I liked better. He was the odd combination of an army drill sergeant (he ran a tight ship) and a cantankerous old prankster. He had this very dry, acerbic wit that I don't think has been paralleled since.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my favorite memories of Mr. O, because as my friend Bruce said as he introduced him at the reunion, "I think all of us agree, that beyond anything else, Mr. O'Brien has commanded our respect. Respect. We all respect him."

And we do...



Some of the odd things about Mr. O's classroom. First, he'd have his student aides make posters and paste them over the walls with propoganda like: "Stamp out baby talk!" (with a Monty Pythonesque foot stomping next to it), "The Zoo is in Apple Valley!", "Bored Person is a Boring Person!" and I forget the rest... But, they were all pretty funny. On the blackboard he's have a small square in the very top-most corner where he'd post the weekly assignments. Once a week, he'd pick the shortest person in the class (guess who) to come and change the assignment. I have to bring up a chair, stand on it, and then stretch to fit in the assignment in the box. Now, maybe that sounds a little humiliating, but I can assure it was not. I think most of us when we are being ridiculed, and when something is just "funny". Mr. O was never belittling. It was just fun and ironic. Mr. O was always good with irony.



Mr. O also had a way of keeping control in the classroom. When somebody would make a smart alecky or profane comment, he'd pause (in his oh-so characteristic way) and open up a drawer with a tattered piece of paper taped onto it... Then he'd peer over his glasses and say, "uh-huh... Thought so... I haven't heard that one since 1972 when Johnny McDonald used it when he got detention... Let me know when you have one that I haven't heard..."

If a student said something stupid in class, he'd reach into another drawer and pull out a fake hand grenade -- El Whoppo! Mr. O always used the threat of El Whoppo to keep us in line...

Mr. O was also our 8th grade football coach. When doing our daily drills, the last drill always called called out our last name (alphabetically) and we'd have to run to the end of the field. It was only a matter of time before you learned the order... "Kadrie! [zoom, gone]... Kelzenberg [zoom, gone]... Lebakken [zoom, gone]..." And just as you got comfortable anticipating the cadence, he'd like to catch you off guard... "Kadrie [zoom, gone]... Kelzenberg [zoom, gone]... Leisnewski [zoom, er, wait]... Lebakken, end of the line..."

Many years ago, after college, I ran into him again at Bruce's wedding. I ambled up and just wanted to tell him what a great teacher he was, and how I STILL remembered all of those poems and stories that we'd read in class. To Satch, Dandelions, Cargoes, Superman (with the great line "Superphosphate fed foods feed me"), and other snippets of lines that I'd remembered from Robert Frost to Carl Sandburg to Lewis Carroll... After I rattled off several renditions of poorly remembered poems, Mr. O looks me square in the eye and with an even dead-pan voice says, "Now Brian... I'm NOT changing your grade..."

Classic Mr. O'Brien response.

And finally, on Saturday night I had the honor of sitting next to him at dinner. Just as popped a big hunk of Chicken into my mouth, he inquired, "So, what are you doing these days?" I chewed quickly and nodded and chewed some more. "See how I did that? Waited until you had a mouth full before I asked you a question?... I should have been a dentist."

Anyway, he's a great guy, a fabulous teacher, and since we share a partial namesake, I'm adding Mr. O'Brien as the newest inductee to the Gallery of Sexy Briens... Touche', Mr. O...

Well, the Beck concert was kind of a wash. Not BAD, I guess, but certainly nothing to write home about. The Pioneer Press already has a review posted, and I agree with it. The Beck I really liked is the one who penned the Gen-X classics like "Beercan" and "Loser" and "Truck Driving Neighbors Downstairs". The guy who came out last night was singing acoustic ballads... about Love...

Uck.

I hate it when songwriters mature...

Oh, and the other thing that got my goat was that the usher at the Orpheum threatened to take my digital camera away if I didn't put it away. Whaaa? I mean, I was just playing around with my hiptop (which DOESN'T have a flash, so I wasn't bothering anybody). This is the same theater that had 2 shootings and a stabbing... only TWO days ago. Yeah, so forget about weapons, assaults, drugs, underage drinking, etc. Let's focus on the guys with the digital gadgets. Phhht!

Anyway, it was better than sitting home watching Survivor. As I mentioned earlier, despite Amazon.com's user profile on me, I didn't care for the Flaming Lips either. The lead singer kept pumping his arm in the air, and he looked more like Che Guevara than a rock star.

Okay, time for a live update from the Beck concert, courtesy of the new wireless HipTop. I just fisnished watching/listening to the Flaming Lips. Prognosis? Negative. I'm sorry, but people like me may find these guys interesting, but I find them rather lame. They play with a big video screen behind them, and the final song of the set featured a video of the Teletubbies. Everyone was clapping and cheering... Except for me. Remember? I'm the guy who enjoys SHOOTING Teletubbies. Whatever. Anyway, Beck's up next and that's who I really came to see... More later...

Only dumb stuff today.

Tired of nagging telemarketers? Fight back! Here's your official counter-script.

Is there a God? Find out from famous celebrities.

And, for some strange reason, several people e-mailed me this article about deep fried Twinkies on a stick. Shrug.

Want to see a cool clock?

Ultra-violent game where you get to kill Teletubbies... I'm waiting for the Jerry Falwell version.

Thinking about joining a book club, but nobody likes the books you read? Well, Bookcrossing has a fantastic idea. Just leave a copy of your favorite book at a coffee shop and let somebody else find it. Once they do, they'll find instructions on how to log in to the web site and have a conversation on the book. I think I just might try this... Sounds fun.

Tonight I'm going to the Beck concert at the Orpheum theater. Tonight's show kicks off his official tour. Opening will be The Flaming Lips. By all accounts, if Amazon's "recommendation engine" is useful at all, I should be fanatical about the Flaming Lips, since "people like me" (a phrase that sends a shudder of terror through my body) seem to like this band immensely. We'll see. I've listened to some of the their stuff, but so far I'm not quite getting it. One thing that is pretty cool is that you can listen to their entire album via streaming audio at their web site. I'm listening to it now...

Yesterday we had our book club on The Language of Genes, by Steve Jones. It was sort of interesting. I also found this rather startling article on the BBC. Blondes 'to die out in 200 years'.

Blondes to "dye out"? Insert your own blonde joke here...

Next up for the book club is Philip Roth's The Human Stain. This should be interesting. I read Roth's The Ghost Writer in college, where the protagonist was 23-year-old Nathan Zuckerman. In the Human Stain, we catch up with Nathan as a much older man. It should be interesting to 'check in' on a literary character to see how he's doing...

Bored? Try a google fight.

The RIAA's reasons why you shouldn't download illegal MP3's.

Then again, you could argue that there are reasons why you should.

The Calling playing on MTV's TRL. Dreamy, huh? (Note: link will take over the entire screen, so don't freak out... Just hit the [ESC] key to back out of it...)

Here's a hilarious series of letters from Grouch Marx to Warner Bros. Apparently the legal team at Warner objected to the Marx brother's use of the word Casablanca in their movie A Night in Casablanca, which Warner Bros. felt could cause confusion with their own movie Casablanca. Lesson learned? Don't mess with Groucho...

Well, I'm kind of looking forward to winter (after, hopefully, a long autumn) simply because I need to catch up on some reading. A bunch of new books are coming out by some of my favorite authors -- July, July by Tim O'Brien, Ignorance by Milan Kundera, and Baudolino by Umberto Eco.

I'm also eagerly awaiting the movie Adaptation by Charlie Kaufman. What's it about?

Oh man. Okay. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is given the assignment of adapting for the big-screen Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief, which tells the true story of a plant dealer named John Laroche and three Seminole Indians who conspired to clone rare orchids and sell them at exorbitant rates to plant collectors. But Charlie worries that the book doesn't have enough plot to sustain a full movie, and he doesn't want to do the standard Hollywood thing and turn it into a heist movie or something like that. Plus he's becoming attracted to Orlean herself. Meanwhile Charlie's brother Donald, also a screenwriter, is writing cliche Hollywood thrillers, much to Charlie's disdain. This - every single word I just said - is the plot of Adaptation, the movie; it's what you'll see on the big screen. Nicolas Cage will be playing both Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. (Donald doesn't exist in real-life, just in the movie.) In real life, the real Charlie Kaufman really was asked to write an adaptation of The Orchid Thief, and the above stuff is what he came up with - he wrote about himself writing the movie. Whoa, my head hurts.

Sounds bizarre, but that's part of Kaufman's weird non-linear brain. He wrote the screenplay to Being John Malkovich, which was equally weird. I posted a link to this Star Tribune article/interview on him a while back.

Watch the trailer for Adaptation (high-speed connection probably needed), or check out the still-in-progress official web site.

Okay, so maybe tradeshows aren't all THAT boring. Last night we had a private party downtown with a couple bands. There were only about 200 or so people, so we pretty much had the run of the entire joint...


Penny standing front and center with The Calling.


Penny also called Sarah to let her listen in, but I don't think Sarah heard much of anything... Sorry, Sarah...


"Hi, Sarah? SARAH? Guess where I am? You know that song you like?... Well..."


After the show, we went down to an after-party in the small club in the basement, where the opening band -- Herding Cats -- jammed a second set.


Penny got to hang out with The Calling guys...


who were... DORKS. But still, it was pretty fun.


And just after 1:00 we called it a night.


Penny got a guitar pick as a souvenir.

And that, THAT concludes a fun night at a tradeshow...

Well, I'm currently resting my feet (and voice) at the show, clicking away with my sidekick. In many ways, I have to admit, most tradeshows are pretty easy. The biggest drawbacks are the sore throats and tired feet. Today has been really slow, but still, I've been standing & talking for the better part of 8 hours.

On the plus side, after the show we're going to a big private party at a swanky Atlanta club. They've booked The Calling, and there's always the free dinner and booze element. It should be fun.

Um, yeah, so that's like it for today. I'm bored...

As you can see from my post on Sunday, I finally broke down and got a sidekick. It's been pretty fun so far, and I'm trying it out this week at the VON show in Atlanta. The show starts tonight at 6:00. Maybe I'll do some 'live' updates (yawn) if it's boring enough. Here's a couple of pictures (courtesy of the sidekick) for my cohorts for the week -- Tom and Penny. Stay tuned...

Test. I'm just testing out a wireless blog update from my new T-mobile hiptop. My brother got one first so I'm just trying to keep up...

There doesn't seem to be any good solution to this whole conflict in Iraq... until now. Either way, I think the US would come out a winner...

Well the Rushdie reading last night was very good. In fact, if you have access to Minnesota Public Radio, you can hear the entire rebroadcast this morning at 10:00am. He read some selections from his novel Fury, and then from his latest collection of essays called Step Across This Line. True to form, he was engaging, funny, and always (always!) provocative.

Some of my favorite Rushdie quips during the evening:

Katherine Lanpher (of MPR): "Your novel Fury seemed prophetic..."
Rushdie: (sighs) "I've had enough problems with prophets in my life. I'm not applying for that job..."

On writing a collection of essays, post 9/11: "It's a non-fictional moment. It's a time for writers to write directly."

On the writing process in general, after Katherine commented that his writing process sound like composting: "Yeah. Gardening and plumbing metaphors are very useful..."

After some pretentious "writer" in the crowd asked some dumb-ass question about the struggles of becoming a writer, Rushdie kind of blasted him and creative writing programs in general. After mentioning that Dosteovsky learned to write by facing a firing squad in his youth, he made the following indictment against MFA programs: "In fact, firing squads would generally turn out better writers." This was particularly funny (for me, anyway) because the reading was sponsored by The Loft -- basically, an extended MFA program. Leave it to Salman to bit the hand that feeds...

When discussing his essay on the Wizard of Oz: "I take the Toto-ist position. If ever a dog existed that deserved to be squashed as much as that one..." and then "The one thing that's nonsense about that movie is the whole 'no place like home' bit. Once you've been to Oz, who wants to go back to Kansas?..."

Discussing his first job as an Ad copywriter. In the 70's, he worked for (ta-da)... 3M. When 3M first launched the Scotch brand tape in England, he wrote the first commercial that John Cleese was in (at the height of his Monty Python fame). Basically, it showed Cleese taping things together with regular tape and with Scotch tape. "Here is the Scotch tape, which you see, you don't see. And here's the ordinary tape, which as you can see, you can see..." I would love to see that commercial.

When asked about whether or not it's harder now (post 9/11) to make fun of or satirize religion: (without a pause) "...Not for me!"

After the reading, I went up to get my book signed. It was all very impersonal and methodical, but as I was waiting in line I started talking to this older guy standing behind me. He brought a copy of the Koran for Rushdie to sign. Needless to say, I let him go ahead of me as I wanted to see what Rushdie would do. When we finally did get up there, Rushdie refuses to sign the book (note: In the Islam tradition, from my understanding, writing in the Koran would be considered blasphemous). Anyway, I'm rather glad he didn't sign it. He then signed my book, looked up briefly and smiled. And that was it...

So, all in all, a very interesting night.

Two more links. Here's a heated letter exchange between Rushdie & John Le Carre... Pretty fun to hear writers fight!

And lastly, here's the MPR book club forum on the book Step Across This Line.

Yesterday, Salon.com ran a couple of good articles on Salman Rushdie. The first called him a beacon of sanity, and I for one wholeheartedly agree. In an age of religious fanatics, patriotic zealots and self-righteous leftists, Salman Rushdie champions free thinking and fun. Amen to that, brother! The second was an interview.

I'm going to see him read tonight at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. I'm very excited.

The 'Burbs concert on Monday night was a blast. Yesterday I was, shall we say, a bit sluggish, but it was worth it. It was one of the "funnest" (or is that "most fun") concerts I think I've ever been to. The nice thing about the 'Burbs is that they don't have a lot of serious songs or ballads... Their last show is tonight, so check it out if you have the energy. [Update: THIS JUST IN -- due to popular demand, they added a show on Friday, Oct. 4th in the First. Ave. mainroom.]

Let's see. My brother got one of these T-mobile devices yesterday, just to (once again) leapfrog ahead of me in the geek gadget category. It's pretty cool. It's a small e-mail, surfing client that also works as a phone and a digital camera. He's also threatened to get one of these. This is a very sad case of sibling e-rivalry...

How 'bout some dumb stuff? You know what the most anticipated TV show for the new season is (in my warped little mind, that is)? Surreal TV. Just when I think TV executives can't be any more brilliant, they totally redeem themselves...