Why it Matters that Everyone Hates the Yankees

I'm composing my thoughts on Lear, but in the meantime I thought I'd pass this along, from Tom Verducci at si.com, about the massive swarm of bugs that hit the second game of the Yankees-Cleveland series.

OK, you've probably heard too much already about those infamous sacrifice flies of Cleveland, the mighty midges that, unlike almost all AL hitters, knocked Yankees phenom Joba Chamberlain off his game. But this is too good not to pass on: When the bugs started swarming Chamberlain, a local insect expert in Cleveland telephoned the Indians with an urgent message -- those bugs are called midges, and whatever you do, do NOT use insect repellent; midges are attracted to the stuff. The Yankees practically bathed in bug spray; the more Chamberlain put on, the more the bugs swarmed him. So there you go. The Yankees can spend $190 million on payroll and still leave a blatant weakness: no, not their middle relief -- their lack of an entymology expert.

Now that's just good stuff.

Lear at the Guthrie

One nice thing about having parents who are members at the Guthrie Theater is that, from time to time, I get free play tickets (and pretty nice seats, too). Another nice thing is that when I hear there's a traveling production of King Lear coming to the Guthrie, and it stars Ian McKellan, is directed by Trevor Nunn and is produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, I can order them to buy tickets I would otherwise be totally unable to get.

We're going to the final production on Sunday. It's listed on the website as 3 hours and 40 minutes, and I'm betting it's going to be a damn sight better than the last 3.5 hour play I saw (sorry, Hanberg).

I'm very excited, of course. I'm going to be in the same room as Gandalf, which will kick ass. Add to that the fact that he's one of the most accomplished and respected stage actors alive, performing one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, and you've got a recipe for an English-major geek-out.

The cool part is I've seen productions by the RSC and Nunn before. When I studied in London my group took a trip (actually the first weekend, I think) to Stratford-upon-Avon, where the RSC is located. We saw productions of Comedy of Errors and The Rivals (unless I'm much mistaken), and both were excellent. Later that term I saw a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with Vanessa Redgrave that Nunn directed at the National Theater (which I believe he was in charge of at the time). It was the one production that we couldn't get enough seats for the entire class to go at one time: we had to go in groups of four, since that was the maximum number of tickets they could get for one show.

I'll post my thoughts Sunday night. Expectations are high, I hope they get met.

Tacoma in Minneapolis

By the way, it appears that the Tacoma weather, which was grey and rainy during most of my long weekend there, has followed me back to MN. It apparently picked up some extra moisture on its way across the rocky mountains and the Dakotas, but other than that Minneapolis has been doing a very passable Tacoma impression so far today.

Back from Tacoma

I spent the weekend making what's become an annual Hajj to Tacoma, WA to see my good friend Mr. Hanberg. It's always a pleasure to get out there and hang with him, because it generally means an excellent few days when I get to eat good food, see good movies and play good chess. This time around the menu featured Thai food, burgers and omelets, all of which were fantastic. The schuedule featured a Mariner's game which we left when the M's were losing badly only to find out they staged a major comeback to take the game, a 3 hour play called The Steward of Christendom which was decent but probably should have been about an hour shorter, and screening of Shoot 'Em Up, King of Kong, Stranger than Fiction and several episodes of Heroes.

The King of Kong screening was notable because Steve Wiebe, who is pretty much the protagonist of the film, held a Q&A session after the movie. The movie was extremely well done, and it was nice to get a greater depth of understanding on the whole situation with the Q&A.

Erik and I also played several games of chess. This is pretty much the only time during the year that I play chess anymore, and it's something I always look forward to. I think we played somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 games this weekend. I'm the better player, and I got a couple of cheap victories when Erik didn't see an early checkmate, but he did manage to get two draws and really made me work for the last couple of victories.

The great thing about chess is that it's an equal battlefield. There are no surprise attacks, no extra forces you can call on. Your entire game plan is right there on the board for your enemy to see, and the only mistake you can make is to not consider enough of the relevant possibilities. Kudos to Mr. Hanberg for raising the level of his game and really putting the screws to me in several of our contests. And Erik, here's a link to the pawn power book that I read years ago that helped me out.

Thanks also to Mary, Erik's GF who had moved in since my last visit, for putting up with me for five days.

Weekend in Chicago

I just got back from an excellent weekend in Chicago. Most of my time was taken up by the Chicago Heavyweights Championship, which is a fairly large ultimate tourney that takes place every year just before sections. This is the second time I've gone (and the first with a team I didn't pick up with), and thankfully it was much cooler than the last time I was there.

But I did actually get to see a little bit of the city while I was there. Gregg, Kellie and I left the cities on Thursday night so we could get to Chicago by lunchtime on Friday. We stayed Friday and Saturday night at the condo of a friend of Gregg's. We weren't the only ones, either. There were six people sleeping on futons or the floor of that condo. Fortunately the floor plan was pretty open and there was plenty of space. I was very impressed by the absolutely beautiful view from the balcony, made more impressive by the storm front coming in from the North.

So after getting in for an excellent lunch at a vegan restaurant, we ended up walking into Union Station with a stop at a bar for a glass of amazingly (expensive) trappist ale and later that night riding the L to pick up a massive order of sushi for dinner. All in all a pretty good Chicago experience for only one afternoon.

I am Iron Man

The trailer for Marvel's next big movie, Iron Man, came out today on apple trailers. I think they were supposed to wait until tonight, as it's premiering on several tv channels, but it looks like they jumped the gun (which is cool, since I wasn't going to watch The Hills on MTV).

Iron Man's never been the most compelling of the Marvel superheroes for me, although I couldn't really tell you why. Tony Stark is pretty much the epitome of cool, a billionaire playboy who's a massively talented inventor (replace inventor with dective and you have Bruce Wayne, by the way). But he doesn't have the greatest rouges gallery and I ususally seem to like him more as part of the Avengers or the Ultimates. I thought the role he played in facing off against Captain America in the Marvel mini series Civil War was fantastic, though. I also haven't read the most famous Iron Man arc, where Tony, who's an alcoholic, bottoms out.

At any rate, the new trailer looks good, and I've heard excellent things about this movie so far. The sequence at the end is clearly the equivalent of Spidey swinging through downtown NY in his first trailers.

State Fair '07

I've gotten my fill of the Fair for another year. I went last Sunday Java and Carl for about 5 hours or so, and then yesterday with family for somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 hours. I consumed enough calories to feed a small African nation for a day and a half, most of those coming from cheese curds, mini doughnuts and fresh chocolate chip cookies.

I don't know how he hears about these things, but Java's mission on Sunday was to find the booth that sold Viper Jerky, which he had heard billed as the hottest jerky ever. After looking for most of the day, he ended up asking another jerky stand where it could be found, which was fortunately close to the All-You-Can-Drink Milk Booth. As Carl and I watched with curiosity and barely concealed hilarity, Java ate one of the two small pieces he had bought, tearing up after the first bite. It made me curious enough to try some, so I had a bite of the second piece. It was about as hot as eating a whole plate of fairly spicy thai food very quickly. Impressive, but only for the heat-it didn't have any other taste. I was fine, Java not so much.

Most of the time Sunday was just spend in a delicious wander from food to food, looking at various exhibits and what not. I did get to see Etta James, Al Green and B.B. King perform last night, which was cool. Although I would have liked to see more of B.B., as he only played a 50 minute set and talked for a good portion of that. Not that I didn't enjoy hearing him talk; he told several good stories, the best of which was about him slipping over to the "good" (read: white) side of the tracks as a young man in Mississippi under cover of darkness and taking a long drink from a segregated water fountain (after the concert I started working it out-B.B. was over 40 by the time the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 60s. Wow.). It's amazing that he's still touring at age 81 (82 in September), especially with the health problems he has (diabetes, bad joints, etc). The biggest cheer of the night was when he repeated a line he had just sung, saying "I'm going to play until I die, folks." It occurred to me that when he finally does go we're going to miss his voice almost as much as his guitar. It's still as powerful and vibrant as ever, and I'm glad I got the chance to hear it in person at least once. That's history right there.

Invincible

"This is Wolf Blitzer, and you're watching CNN. And now, for the latest insight into the nascent Presidental race, we go to our newest political correspondent, Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. Nice to have you here, Mr. Castro."

"Nice to be here, Wolf. And please, it's Fidel."

"So Fidel, we're still several months before the Iowa caucus, and no one's dropping out of the race yet, but political pundits have been speculating that a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket would give the Democrats the best chance to win the general election. Your thoughts?"

"Well Wolf, I'd first like to say that I'm disappointed because both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding 'a democratic government in Cuba.' They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon. That being said however, I do think that the two of them on one ticket would be invincible. The Republicans would have a very hard time matching that sort of star power."

"Interesting. Now, Al Gore hasn't yet entered the race, but several observers think he might declare late in the game. Do you think he will?"

"I don't think he will do so, although I must say that Gore, better than anyone, knows about the kind of catastrophe that awaits humanity if it continues along its current course. Of course, when he was a candidate, he committed the error of yearning for 'a democratic Cuba,' which is just one more example of how the US is hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma that perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society."

"Thanks for your insight, Fidel. We'll talk to you again as the primaries get closer."

"Thanks for having me, Wolf. Have a good night."

Why Sterotypes Exist

I've only seen Zoolander once, but I seem to remember some advice being given to models about answering any question with the response "world peace." This would have been good advice for Miss Teen South Carolina, whose response to a question about US education was all over the map on which 1/5 of Americans can't find America (supposedly).


I'm sure the poor girl simply got very flustered and started babbling, since she only had a limited amount of time in which to respond. But I'm afraid that she's set the cause of getting ridiculously beautiful blondes recognized for their brains back a few years.

This version of the video has subtitles, which makes it even better. Also, if you look closely at the guy holding the microphone at the end, it's clearly all he can do to keep from busting a gut laughing.

ConVick

I was watching CNN this morning, which was covering two stories: the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Vick formally entering a guilty plea as part of his plea bargain in court. Two thing struck me about the coverage.

The first was that the Gonzales resignation was taking a back seat to the Vick coverage. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this, as it's just another indication of the power of the cult of celebrity and the pull it exerts over our news programs. But somehow I thought that the resignation of an Attorney General who somehow managed to pull off the once-thought-impossible feat of making was forget just how bad John Ashcroft was would get top billing, at least on a station like CNN. A little later I was on JibJab.com and found this video, which struck me as being appropriate.

The second thing I noticed was from Vick's statement to the press after he entered the plea. He said that this situation had called him to "find Jesus." Now, I watched the statement and I don't doubt the man regrets his actions (facing at least a year in prison will do that), but the finding Jesus bit and "turning my life over to god" statements are starting to really be the go-to line for anyone who gets in trouble and has to account for their actions to the public. Not that it's not a good strategy, since sometimes it seems this country has been getting so rabidly religious that I'm surprised Bush hasn't slipped and called the war on terror a crusade. The "I did something bad, but now I've found Jesus" excuse has been used so much that it really strikes me as inauthentic. Whatever cultural or intrisic personality defects that caused Vick to be able to treat dogs in the manner reported weren't a result of not having an active religious life. Actions like that indicate the need for some serious help.

30-3

Yesterday the Texas Rangers were down 0-3 to the Baltimore Orioles in the fourth inning of the first game of a double header. By the end of the game they had rattled off 30 unanswered runs, the first team in over a century to do so (in 1897 the Chicago Colts beat Louisville 36-7). Sure, that's impressive, but if you look at the stats it gets even better.

-The Rangers scored 30 runs, but they only had 29 hits. There was one error committed by the Orioles and 8 walks given up by the four Oriole pitchers. So the Rangers left only 8 men on base in a game in which they had 38 baserunners. To put it another way, a Rangers baserunner had a 79% chance of scoring during yesterday's game.

-All the 30 runs were earned, so the one baserunner that reached because of error didn't score.

-The four Oriole pitchers combined to strike out 11 Rangers.

-Of the 29 hits for Texas, 21 were singles. 21! 2 were doubles and 6 were home runs. I only find this impressive because I'm fairly certain the Twins could find a way to hit 21 singles over the course of a game and not score any runs.

All in all, a massively impressive show of offense.

We've run out of things to study

A British study was recently undertaken to find out if carnivorous dinosaurs were faster than David Beckham. The results found that a T-Rex would have little trouble running down the famous midfielder. Reports that the English are still a little pissed that Beckham left for Real Madrid (and then for the LA Galaxy) are, as of press time, unconfirmed.

Best Lawsuit Ever

We live in an overly litigious society, in which idiotic lawsuits cause dire warnings to be placed on the simplest objects and nobody thinks anything that goes wrong could possibly be their fault. But it does have some benefits, as well. Like this lawsuit, filed by Jonathan Lee Riches against embattled Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. Vick, in case you've been living on Mars with your head under a rock, is being indicted for his part in a massive and brutal dogfighting ring.

Riches is suing Vick for $63 quintillion (or 63 followed by 18 zeros), claiming that Vick stole his pit bulls, sold them on ebay and used the profits to buy missiles from the Iranian government.

Wow.

Vick is only the latest target of Riches, who is incarcerated in South Carolina for committing wire fraud and apparently needs a hobby. The week before he sued Vick he named the Mossad, the CIA and Larry King Live in a suit. But here's the best one:

"In his most noteworthy suit, Riches submitted a 57-page list of defendants that included President Bush, Pope Benedict, actor Tony Danza, Fruit of the Loom, NASCAR, the Ming Dynasty, Skittles candy, the Philadelphia Eagles (2005 roster), the Doobie Brothers, the Congolese Army, the Magna Carta, "WKRP in Cincinnati," the King's Dominion amusement park in Virginia, the philosopher Plato, and the Liberty Bell.

He claimed they collectively owed him money."

It doesn't get better than that.

King on Rowling

I admit to not having read much Stephen King. In fact, until Mr. Hanberg gave me a book of his short stories a couple of years ago I hadn't read any of his writing at all. But since then I've read a little, enough anyway to disabuse me of the totally uninformed notion that he is a horror writer. Instead, I would say that Mr. King (much like Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors whose work I'm much more familiar with) is a writer: someone who loves to write and will do so at almost every opportunity, no matter what the topic.

All this is by way of introducing an excellent article that King wrote for Entertainment Weekly on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He talks about the last book, but much more about Rowling, the series as a whole and what it's done for books in the 21st century. It's thoughtful and insightful, but beware of major spoilers, since King assumes that pretty much everyone who cares has finished the book by this point.

Ahh, Sequels

So what's more improbable than two people being able to steal the Declaration of Independence? Why, two people kidnapping the President and breaking into the Oval Office, of course. In the grand tradition of Hollywood striving to outdo itself in sequel form, the trailer for National Treasure: Book of Secrets is now on apple.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the first movie a fair bit, and I'm sure I'll see this one and probably enjoy it as well. But in a post 9/11 security conscious world these movies require a major suspension of disbelief. Luckily, that's what Americans are good at, so I'm sure the movie will do fine.

Bridge Photos

I went downtown to take a look at the collapsed bridge today-spent about an hour and a half walking around the south side of the river. I couldn't get closer than 300 yards at best. Everything was roped off, and not without reason, as there were a lot of people doing exactly what I was doing. Still, it would have been nice to have gotten a view from one of the surrounding bridges. Oh well.

This is the best of my shots, taken with my new digital camera. Unfortunately it's just a little sucker, and doesn't have much of a zoom. Check out these shots, taken last night by a guy I know who has professional-level camera equipment (and clearly got to the scene before they started roping everything off).

Video of the Collapse

CNN managed to get some security camera footage of the 35W bridge collapsing. It's pretty amazing-you can find it here.

Bridge Addendum

So it turns out that my friend's wife was in one of the cars in the middle section of the bridge that fell 64 feet down into the river. If you follow this to CNN.com (picture #1), you can see a picture of her car (the silver saturn in bottom center of the photo that's pointing toward the sky), as well as her (lower right in a white shirt, next to a girl in a green shirt). Pretty damn crazy. She's fine, which is excellent.

Bridge Collapse

If you haven't heard, the I35W bridge that spans the Mississippi River just north of downtown Minneapolis collapsed just after 6pm (CDT). Current reports have the death toll at 7 and the injured somewhere in the 50-60 range. My family and I are all present and accounted for.

I actually turned on the local news at about 6:10, just before heading out to frisbee practice. As I was leaving the house 20 minutes later the first video images were just starting to come in. When I got to the practice fields, the 6 guys who were there hadn't yet heard about the bridge. They checked their cell phones, and it turned out that the wife of one of my teammates was on some part of the bridge (I'm not sure which part) when it collapsed. He had three voicemails waiting for him, basically saying that she had been on the bridge but was now safe.

If you haven't seen the images yet, go to any news site (the Star Trib will have local coverage). It looks like a major earthquake hit the bridge. This is one of the most heavily trafficed bridges in the metro, carrying over 140,000 cars a day. Beyond the infinitely more important loss of life, this is going to affect traffic in the cities for years.

At this point I've watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours of coverage on this today. What a crazy night. If I get the chance to go downtown tomorrow I'll try and post my own pictures.

Well, I'm Back

A lot's happened since I last posted in this space. Since the end of March, I've decided to move to DC with my girlfriend, driven out there twice (once to move her, once to move a massive truck of stuff), been to Las Vegas for Mr. Bartely's bachelor party, gone to my 5 year college reunion, been to weddings in Raleigh, NC and on Grand Bahama Island, and had said girlfriend break up with me. So it's been a tumultuous four months for me. I am no longer moving to DC, and am now trying to decide what I want to do next.

As I try to figure out that next step I'm going to try and start posting regularly again, as usual on whatever topic seems to strike me on any given day. Like pretty much everything in my life right now, we'll see what happens.

784!

That's the page count that's being reported for the American version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which reportedly will mean my British edition clock in at around 700 or so.

This will make Hallows the second longest book in the series, and while some people have been critical of Rowling's inability to cut it down, I actually prefer the longer books. The strength of Rowling's story has always been characterization and the detail which she puts into Harry's world, and a longer book just means we get more of that. Otherwise we'd have novel equivalents of the movies, and nobody wants that.

Of course, none of this will matter if Rowling has decided to kill Harry. Based on the responses I received in my highly scientific poll*, if Harry dies at the end of the book culture and civilization as we know it will cease to be and everyone will join mass suicide cults. Talk about pressure.


*Poll may not be highly scientific.

Pirates!

The trailer for the third Pirates of the Carribean movie came out yesterday (or the day before, it's so hard to tell with the web sometimes). You can check it out here.

Not a bad trailer. Lots of action, including some sweet shots of a pirate armada and Chow Yun-Fat as a particularly badass pirate. I really wanted to see Keith Richards though. No dice, this time anyway.

It'll be interesting to see when I see this movie, since I will be in Las Vegas celebrating Mr. Bartley's soon-to-be-lost bachelorhood when it comes out.

Bracket Time

In general, I pay almost no attention to college basketball. Maybe that's because the Gophers haven't been good in about a decade, but it's also kind of because there are so many damn teams it would take a ridiculous amount of time to actually be aware of them all, let alone know anything about them.

However, I do love the NCAA tournament. In fact I think it's one of the best sporting events of the year, especially the first weekend. During the first two rounds (the first round is Thursday and Friday, the second Saturday and Sunday) there are so many games going on that invariably three things happen:

First, there are always good, close games. The teams are so pumped up that everyone is playing their best, and you always end up with amazing plays in the final minutes and seconds that decide the game.

Second, there are always upsets, or at least possible upsets. Sure, a 16th seed has never beaten a 1st seed, and only two 2nd seeds have fallen to 15th seeds in the past 10 years, but other than that, I guarantee that over the next two days teams that experts picked to go deep into the tournament will lose. Brackets will be shattered. People will look like morons.

Third, there are so many games in the first two rounds that it creates a unique situation in modern sports: there will be almost no commentating. Sure, the courtside people who are calling the games will make comments and talk about matchups and stuff, but there's no post-game wrapup from the main desk. Just Bob Costas saying "And now that you've just watched that thrilling conclusion, we're going to send you out West where there's an even bigger upset brewing...." Just great basketball back-to-back-to-back.

Sometimes I Hate Computers

Because only with computers can an hour of your work suddenly vanish. I was writing a lengthy post for my fantasy baseball league in preparation of our draft this coming Saturday. It took me awhile because I was doing short profiles of all the managers, and with tweleve teams in the league, I was working on it for about an hour. Then I went to post it, and the damn system errored out on me. Unlike some programs (thankfully Yahoo mail now does this), you can return to the page and still have your lengthy composition intact. No such luck here. And of course I had no desire to just write it all out again. Ugh.

Dude, Where's My Car?

Well, I didn't get towed.

After two massive snowfalls in a week (at least 12 inches both times), if I had left my car in one spot for the last 5 days I wouldn't be able to find it right now. As it is evertime I've gone outside my legs get cold because snow goes up to my knee every time I try and get in my car.

Seriously though, I took a nice long walk yesterday during the second big snow, and it renewed my belief that there is no natural occurance as beautiful as a snowstorm. You can make an argument for a spectacular sunset, but give me some big snowflakes creating a blanket on the world anyday. Especially when it's just wet enough to stick to trees, powerlines, squirrels and anything else that it falls on. By the end of my walk I looked kind of frightening-probably helped by the fact that I did six or seven summersaults into massive snowbanks.

This winter started off pretty crappy, thanks to the damn El Nino effect, but with a nice sub zero strech at the beginning of February and these snowstroms things aren't turning out as bad as I thought they would. Now we just need it to start two and a half months earlier and last until April (or, as Calvin put it, "If I was in charge, we'd never see grass between October and May").

The photo is from Duluth, which is getting pounded even more thanks to the Lake Effect. Ahh, to have Lake Effect Snow.

Crackpots

So now the weather yahoos are saying that we're going to get anywhere from 5-16 inches of snow over the next day or two. This after a week with highs in the 40s. Just when you thought spring was here...

Feelin' Crappy

My lack of posts the last couple days has been due to me feeling under a rather large amount of weather. Hopefully I'll be back up to speed in time to enjoy some of the weekend.

Before I sign off, a big congratulations to Mr. Erik Hanberg, whose theater's first production opened yesterday in Tacoma, WA. For more info check out his blog or The Horatio's website. If you're in the Northwest, check it out.

Watch the Volume, Guys

Heard a pretty funny news story today. Seems a man in Oconomowoc, WI, thought he heard a woman being raped in the apartment above his. He grabbed a sword (yes, a sword), went upstairs, kicked in the door, and demanded to know where the woman under attack was. He forced the guy to lead him around the apartment at swordpoint and open closets and doors where he might have stashed the woman.

However, there was no woman. It seems the neighbor had been watching a porn video with the volume up perhaps a little too loud, and the guy misunderstood the screams he was hearing. The neighbor later played back for the police the part of the DVD that he thought had been misunderstood ("Sir, I think we're going to need to view this again, just to make sure there's no misunderstanding. And you have any kleenex?").

A couple of things stand out here (no, not that). First, the guy said that he never threatened his neighbor with the sword, he only "had the sword extended". I know that I never make the mistake of thinking someone threatening me with a sword when they are, in reality, simply extending it in my general direction.

Second, the guy said he didn't call police because he doesn't have a phone. So that makes him a 39 year old who lives with his mother, doesn't have a phone and keeps a sword readily accessible. Can we get Dr. Phil on the phone, please?

Heat Wave

So Minnesota has gone from deep freeze to Miami-Lite in the space of about 10 days. Sub-zero temps a week ago and now we're looking at multiple days above 40. Totally ridiculous. I've got one more game of broomball tonight that it looks like I'm going to get to play, then I apparently get to break out the shorts and sandals. I hate El Nino winters.

New Look

So this is my blog's new look. I've been thinking about changing it for awhile, and hopefully this is an indication that I'll be posting a little more frequently than in the past few months. Let me know what you think. Positive reaction will justify my course of action, and negative comments will be ignored as the ranting of lunatics (See? You can learn things from this administration).

Words of Wisdom

For the past two years, I've gone to see Garrison Kellior do his Prairie Home Companion show from the State Fair. Both times have been fantastic, particularly the two years ago, when he had a New Orleans blues band perform days after the Katrina mess began (the band had been touring and was caught away from home when the storm hit). I don't know that I've ever seen a crowd so emotionally pumped up for a performance like that.

Last year couldn't match that high, but it did have an excellent insight into the Minnesota Mind with A Lake Wobegon Philosophy. This was printed on the pamphlet they gave out describing the show. As far as I am aware, this is the first time something interesting and worthwhile has actually been printed on one of these things.

A Lake Wobegon Philosophy

1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do this before they do unto you what you don't want them to do. Shame them with goodness. Kill them with kindness. Cut their throats with courtesy.

2. The way to do something is to do it. Persevere. If you want to become the Tallest Boy In The Sixth Grade, stick around, keep at it, and the prize will be yours.

3. Try not to talk about the relationship. And don't refer to it as a relationship. Either it's a friendship or a romance or an illicit affair or you're related.

4. The rules for marriage are the same as the rules for a life raft. No sudden moves. Don't crowd the other person. Keep all thoughts of disaster to yourself. Almost any marriage can be helped simply by having more fun. If necessary, try taking your clothes off.

5. Put a big dish by the door, next to an electric outlet, and when you come home, put your car keys and your billfold in the dish and plug your mobile phone into the outlet to recharge. Keep your extra pairs of glasses in the bowl too. In the time you'll save not looking for these things every day, you'll be able to write War and Peace. Or the Mass in B minor.

6. All tragedy is misunderstood comedy. God is a great humorist who is working with a rather slow audience. Lighten up. Whatever you must do, do it wholeheartedly, joyfully. As you get older, you'll learn how to fake this.

7. The secret of writing is rewriting. The secret of living is to see your mistakes and learn how to either correct them or conceal them.

8. It's nice to dream, but the urge to perform is not in itself an indication of talent.

9. You can't live life all at once so take it one day at a time, and if you need drama, read Dickens. The lust for world domination does not make for the good life. The urge to be No. 1 is a bad urge. Charisma is an illusion and brilliance depends on who's writing the test. Go for the bronze.

10. Life is short and it's getting shorter. On the other hand, never buy cheap shoes.

Mustache Pride

I have never been so proud to be a part of something. The February 11th edition of the Chicago Tribune has published a profile of Carleton's famous Mustache Club, of which I was proudly a member.

I joined the Mustache Club in its second year of existence, and was part of a massive boost in membership over the first year. I am sad to say that I did not join the Club in its first year of membership, but my good friend Andrew Eppig, along with the Club's founder and first President, Hite Geffert (pictured here), convinced me that the Mustache Club was for me. During my membership I not only learned to take pride in my Mustache, I also had the distinct honor to help co-author an article for the Carletonian defending the Club's purpose and existence.

I am thrilled that the Club has not only survived since I left Carleton, but thrived. I've never been so proud.