Minneapolis / St. Paul Music Blog

That's a key line from NOFX's "Seeing Double at the Triple Rock." The SoCal pop-punk stalwarts are shooting a video for the new track at its namesake club on March 6. In the song, the band gets "snowed in" at the bar (Don't you hate it when blizzards completely shut down Cedar?) and spends the afternoon "watching Paddy talk." This town has an overabundance of punk fans who'd happily shoot the shit with Dillinger Four's Patrick Costello without cameras rolling, so it's no surprise that the shoot's request for extras was quickly filled. Lucky "background artists" have to dedicate three to four hours to the filming. They're also required to show up dressed as priests and nuns.

Slate has posted a fascinating essay/slideshow by local photographer Alec Soth. It's excerpted from his most recent major project, "NIAGARA," which debuted at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC last month. Soth's intimate photos, shot around the Niagara Falls area, capture hand-written love letters, shabby motels, and flaccid, naked couples. As the pictures flash by the artist ruminates on love and its (often ugly) aftermath. The collection will be published as a book next month and goes on display at the Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis starting April 7th.

Local artist Jaron Childs paints pain. He uses found photos of people crying, sobbing, or bent with loss, and re-creates them as photo-realistic images of ghostly and mysterious cousins twice removed of the original painful moment.

The titles of his paintings, currently on display at Soo Vac, are the same as his source material: Google image searches resulted in "628.jpg" and "crying(2).jpg," among 15 other found photos, that Childs has painted in careful brush strokes. But there are no links to stories or other searchable clues provided in the enlarged images; all that remains are interpretations of human loss and anguish via Childs' painstakingly realistic reconstructions.

In a new feature at Culture To Go, I've sent out five silly questions to a local blogger to find out about their life beyond being chained to their keyboard. First up is Mary Lahammer, a host and political reporter for Almanac on TPT2. When Mary's not blogging at the Almanac site, she's on the capitol beat for public television. Mary has scored a few Emmys and City Pages named her "Best Newscaster" back in 2002. We also think her last name means "The Hammer" in Italian, but our knowledge of things Italian don't really go beyond eating Chef Boyardee everyday. I thought of the silliest, most inane questions in the five minutes I allotted myself and fired them off to The Hammer. Here's what she had to say...

John Fogerty is an AC/DC fan. That's one of the revelations in this interview I conducted with the former leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival late last fall when he was out promoting his first-ever collection that includes hits from both his Creedence era and his later solo work.

 

The Disney dog-sled movie, Eight Below, has inspired a slew of groan-worthy headlines. Can you top these stinkers?

Eight Below is Top Dog
Eight Below Licks Film Rivals
Eight Below Mushses to No. 1 Debut
Eight Below: A Mushed-See Movie
Eight Below Paws its Way to Box-Office Success
Sled Dogs Prove Ample Actors in Eight Below
Some Nifty Canines Star in the Exciting Eight Below
Eight Below: A Dogged Survival Tale
Eight Below Warms the Heart Despite Faux Paws (*)
Sled Dogs in Eight Below Tug at Heart Strings
Eight Below Freezes Nuts Off US Weekend Box Office
The Universe Must Be Inverted, Because Dogs From Heaven Have Found Eight Below (**)

*(Yes, this headline is real, and as far as we know so are the dogs' paws.)

**(Ok, this isn't real, but we think it's "A Cut Above the Other Eight Below Headlines.")

A couple of different organizations are working to restock the bookshelves along the Gulf Coast. The New York Foundation for the Arts website is encouraging folks to send any and all hardcover and paperback books to the New Orleans Public Library. Some will be stocked and others will be sold for fundraising. When mailing, be sure to ask for the library rate from your friendly neighborhood postal worker. The address is Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations, New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70112.

Book Relief spreads the literary love to the classrooms. Nine book distributions have already been held on the Gulf Coast, with over 1.5 million books being distributed. Book Relief's goal is to donate at least five million books to organizations, schools, and libraries supporting the evacuees, and replenish the schools and libraries being rebuilt on the Gulf Coast. Click here for donation information.

While visiting the gymnasium the other night, my companion picked up a Time magazine to skim while trudging on one of the infernal machines. The news was a bit dated: The issue had hit the street on January 15. Most of the pages were given over to the global war that we find ourselves in and its effects on the media, the labor force, the commodities market, etc. That old war hero McCain, for instance, was issuing yet more proclamations on how we could still win the fight.

While most of the news related to whom we're attacking these days, the publisher's note in the front of the edition boasted more cheerfully about Time's global reach: "Time has come to be...a truly international magazine (now that we are publishing special editions on every continent except Antarctica)." The ads, though, appealed to bedrock native values. Even healthy, square-jawed men drink milk! And, naturally, those men will want to drive a healthy, square-jawed new truck from Ford or Dodge!

Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly's Local is a comic book series about a city-hopping young woman named Megan. Minneapolis gets some ink with issue #2, "Polaroid Boyfriend," thanks to St. Paul resident Kelly. The story of Megan's disturbing and/or romantic relationship with a stranger takes place on a three-block stretch of Lyndale Avenue South, and it's got the landmarks (Hum's Liquors, the Wedge Co-op) to prove it. Locale aside, the book is like a visual scavenger hunt for Twin Cities readers who will no doubt spot details like a Spyhouse to-go cup or a Chino Latino billboard.

Leave it to scrutinizing local eyes to also pick up on the inaccuracies. For one, the main character works at Oarfolkjokeopus--which was renamed Treehouse Records years ago. A disclaimer says that the story takes place in 1995, an excuse which is betrayed by all sorts of musical anachronisms: Low's The Great Destroyer on the store's shelves, a Heiruspecs CD lying on the floor of Megan's studio apartment, a flyer for a Soviettes show at the Triple Rock on her fridge. Kelly blames the mistakes on trying to get the book done in a hurry. But irked residents may find solace in a snarky Twin Cities primer in the back, which includes factoids like, "[In 1866] the first Minneapolitan discovered St. Paul, immediately grew bored and returned home."

When professional dancer Liz Wawrzonek first met Lauren Schad and Gina Kent, they were dressed in bunny costumes, or as Wawrzonek describes it, sequined unitards with "rabbit tails on their cute little butts." It was Easter, hence the uni-bunnies, and Schad and Kent were tap dancing at the Triple Rock as openers for the local punk band Dillinger Four. For Wawrzonek, colored eggs, plastic grass, and melted Peeps didn't immediately spring to mind. Instead, her first thought was, "How do I sign up to be a tap-dancing punk-rock Playboy bunny?"

Turns out Schad and Kent weren't Playboy bunnies, just skilled costume designers who called their dancing duo the Shim Sham Shufflers, had a shared dream of dancing, and never stepped a tapped foot into a dancing class.