But if you must.

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it. And I don’t like tea. Go HERE.

An amazing day, now that I look back; started in the early AM, with a video shoot at the paper, then a Presentation on the Top Secret Thing Phase One Mark II, then a column, then the sudden decision at 2 o’clock that my work here is done, and a nap might be in order. Pow: out. Up: vacation begins. 

Got up to get out, fetched 3 girls from the summer day-camp on the other side of town. I asked one of the counselors if my daughter could have a new water bottle with the camp logo, since she’d dropped hers and it had shattered. She said yes - in fact, they were all breaking, and had to be replaced. “We switched to a different kind of plastic because the parents worried that the other plastic gave you cancer,” she said. “But they all broke.”

Wanted to say “yes, we were having a white-lead gargling contest last night, and the bottles leaked everywhere.” 

After I dropped off the other kids Natalie and I went to Target to get supplies for the Fourth. Evil SWINE and DESPOILERS OF SUMMER: they put up the school supplies before the Fourth. GAH. Summer has been shoved off to a few aisles like last year’s fashions. No one likes this. No one wants this. No one will be banging on the door a minute after closing time tomorrow to demand admittance because they need a plastic pencil box now. You cannot sell fireworks, watermelons, backpacks and pencils in the same store in July; they should repel one another and be hurled to all four corners of the store. Well, we’ll never try that again. Someone call the Pentagon and tell them we’ve discovered a new elemental force that could possibly be weaponized. Honest to God, Natalie’s face was drained of color when she saw the displays. Noooooo!

If I’d had a bottle of lemonade in my hand I would have walked around like Max Von Sydow, sprinkling consecrated liquid to sear the demon. I cast you out! Begone, erasers  asleep in your plastic blisters! Away, spiral-bound notebooks emblazoned with licensed tween idols! The power of July compels you! The power of July compels you!

Today was the first trip she’s decided she will push the cart. She’s progressed from sitting in the cart to pushing it. Happens much quicker than you expect. I still remember coming out of Target in the rain, seeing her giggle in the seat under her new Hello Kitty umbrella. One of those memories where you not only hear Time’s Winged Chariot, but feel the hoof hit you in the back of the head. 

Some updates prompted by comments in the, er, comments:

1. I never did get around to admitting which song I like, but shouldn’t. I think that’s how I phrased the subject, trying to distinguish it from the Guilty Pleasure genre, but that’s a distinction without a difference. Perhaps it’s the difficulty of explaining why I shouldn’t like a song. If it sounds good, it is good. Right? If you like it, then you like it, and shouldn’t feel embarrassed, unless it’s Bloodrock or Bob Marley’s cover of “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.” Sometimes you rebel against songs because they sum up an era you enjoyed as a youth but came to dislike because A) you saw it more clearly, B) you had a subsequent era that was better, and C) it was the seventies. I’ve been watching some of this:

Price is Right shows. They have a horrible fascination, because they bring back 1973 with such full undiluted power I’m right back in summer break in Fargo, sitting in the kitchen, whiling away a hot morning with a show that not only consists entirely of commercials, but breaks for in-show commercials before it breaks for commercial breaks. I mean, it’s genius. The things you forget.  The cars:

Says Wikipedia:

“In 1974, Pennington married famed mountain climber Fritz Stammberger, who went missing in 1975 in a restricted area along the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union. She later married writer Carlos de Abreu in 1984 after Fritz was legally declared dead. In 1992, Pennington discovered that Fritz helped organize CIA bases among those borders and died fighting with the Afghans against the USSR.”

It gets better: 

“In 1994, Pennington and de Abreu wrote Husband, Lover, Spy, an account of Janice’s search for her first husband. Pennington admitted that after he went missing, she would return to her Price Is Right dressing room in tears when a contestant played the Cliff Hangers pricing game. In that game, a mountain climber caricature climbs up, then falls off, of a cliff when a contestant loses the game - the ‘yodeling’ climb music turning into a loud crash when the climber goes over the cliff.”

She’s 66 now. (Link goes to her MySpace page;  GIS may result in NSFW pictures from her Playboy stint.) By the way, do you see some Scarlett Johansson here? I do. 

And then there was Anitra Ford. Hamina hamina hrr stampa stampa:

Jam-packed & jelly tight, Wednesday was. Whatever that means. Meetings all day, video shoots, then a jaunt off East on I-94 to the adjacent state of Wisconsin to do a video on a fireworks stand. Back home by 8:30, frantic editing, voice-over work, then writing the script for tomorrow’s NewsBreak while the video crunches. Then: it’s 10:48, let’s write a column! Tomorrow has an early-morn video shoot and a presentation about the Top Secret Thing. So no time whatsoever to explain why I’m not picking on Jack Kirby, and have only the utmost love & respect. Tomorrow will have lots of stuff, but for now: nothing. Except:

Lance Lawson is up at buzz.mn.

Yesterday’s Minneapolis Update is . . . updated.   Go HERE. 

Didn’t see this one coming, did you? And congrats to everyone who picked up on the Tashlin sig - that surprised me, a lot, when I spied it. I know he’s done a lot, but I’ve always associated him with a few WB cartoons that showed women from the knee down, leaving the house, telling the puddy tat to behave - an angle stolen used as an homage  in the Roger Rabbit cartoon. 

I’d say the guy can’t help it, but that’s not entirely true. What’s the ad selling? And why is this a remarkable thing to find buried in the bottom of a 1948 newspaper page?

Brrr is not a word that should come to mind the day before July, but the most recent effects of climate turbulence - I believe that’s the new term - pushed temps down way below normal. Cloudy, windy, cool. Weather like this usually hits about two weeks after the Halloween decorations go up in Target.

When I dressed for work today I thought “I should put on a white shirt, in case the Supreme Court decision comes in.” You know the feeling, right? It’s new to me. I got distracted, wore a green linen shirt, and headed in for meetings. Wouldn’t you know it: the decision came in, for Franken, as everyone expected. This meant we had to go live, and as strange as it sounds for a newspaper to go live, that’s what we do: wrangle a journo, pat the face, hook up the mike, and go. I got the decision a few minutes before we went on, got cross-eyed at the legalese, had another cup of coffee, and off we went.

What fun. There was even real BREAKING NEWS handed to me during the broadcast, and if I tried to resist saying This Just In, I don’t think I managed.

At the end of the day I went to pick up daughter, and stopped at the nearby Humane Society to see the dogs. No, Jasper’s fine. From last evening:

But you never know when you’ll find some slow old mutt who makes his case with mute eloquence. A ghastly animal racket came from the back of the building, barking and screeching, as if they were attempting to make some dog-monkey hybrid. With saws. I’m serious: monkeys. I have no idea what the rhubarb was about, but you can guess: the monkeys were shouting WOLF WOLF WOLF GO AWAY I JUMP UP AND DOWN AT YOU GO AWAY and the dogs were barking horrible not-man thing, what the hell On and on it went.

Inside it was sad, but it’s always sad at the shelter. A few of the dogs had signs on their pens indicating they’d be sprung tomorrow by a new family, but this could be the shelter version of Carousel in “Logan’s Run.” (Or the Lottery in “The Island,” which I watched last night. Watched isn’t the right word; more like absorbed while shielding crucial organs from repeated blows.) Some dogs you want to coach: buddy, this isn’t how you get adopted. Do not bark at people while staring out of the corner of your eyes; you look like a psycho. Look at Buddy, here - relaxed mouth, tongue hanging out, tail wagging - people think that means he’s happy - and a general yes boss whatever you say boss you’re the greatest I’m sure glad you’re running the pack attitude.

There was a striking Aussie Cattle Dog who met your gaze with forthright defiance:

He put his paw through the cage to touch my hand. Interesting dog, but he’d chase Jasper around and make his day noisy.

This next one  just breaks your heart, doesn’t it.

Why do humans form such kinship bonds with dogs? Oh, gosh, I don’t know.

Afterwards I got the kids and took them all home, entertaining them on the way with the story of Amazing Amanda. It was a life-sized doll Natalie had a few years ago. It talked. It knew what day it was. It gently admonished you if you gave it cookies for supper. It was hellspawn, and sometimes we’ll make up dialogue for Amanda expression all sorts of evil deeds in the same singsongy innocent voice. By the time we’d gotten halfway home we had Amanda burning down houses because “Fire is pretty.” I made the neighbors pretty too, mommy. Then piano; I sat in the hallway and tried to stay awake. Perkin’s for supper. There was a clown. There’s often a clown.

She walks around and hands out balloons. It was one of those days where you just aren’t surprised to see a clown in the restaurant. Why not. Bring on the mimes while you’re at it.

We played the games on the kid-menu. Natalie had a sensible question: What is a Jinx?

We’ve decided that Patty Pie’s mouth is not the pie-portion of her anatomy, because that would mean her arms come out of her mouth. But it’s still unclear.

I revived myself with a flagon of coffee, but I’m still beat and ready for nothing. The week is shaping up to contain an absolute train-wreck of work on Thursday - I have to give another Powerpoint talk, do the TV news thing, AND write a column, quaint as that now sounds. And I’ve been “tasked” to another Top-Secret Thing, this one code-named . . . PHASE 2. But today will have the usual assortment - Out-of-Context Ad Challenge at 10:00 or so, and a Mpls update later in the day. Right now: the first “What-City-Is-It” cartoon puzzle from a 1948 Sunday Tribune, up at buzz.mn.

Oh, I almost forgot: This matchbook appeared a few years ago in the Matchbook Museum; its advertising terms baffled me. I made some guesses, and it turns out I wasn’t far off. The proof? The son of the restaurant’s owner fills us in.

“Captain, we appear to be stuck on a piece of Scotch tape.”

“Don’t worry. It’s just an optical effect.”

Go HERE, then by all means stop back to discuss. 

Poor fellow can’t even keep his mask on straight. But that’s not the least of his problems. Go HERE.

Monday was one of those days that felt off and wrong from the start, and never lost the off-kilter feel. Five hours of sleep will do that to you, I suppose. Cool day, which was part of the problem. Breezy and cloudy and moody; the sun had no heft. You hate to spend a June day on such weak beer.

Early in the evening I got a call from a robot asking if my phone books had been delivered, and it mispronounced the name of Edina, one of the surrounding towns. Called E-Dine-A  like the AbFab character: “E-deen-a.” More proof robots will do a lousy job of running things - even if I’d been able to correct him, his apology would have been excessive, polite, but rote. No shame. No long brooding episodes of HAL-like self-analysis. He asked if I got the books; press one if yes. Then: did I get the yellow pages? Yes. Did they come in a plastic bag? Oh for heaven’s sake, yes, they came in a plastic bag. Have the deliverypeople been keeping the bags and selling them on eBay? GENUINE MUST SEE. There was no option to tell them to come and get the stupid things, although I believe we do have an opt-out process in place. Should be opt-in, as few people ever think “I should cancel the phone book this year” and set about finding the means by which the useless bricks can be kept from the door.

To make matters worse, we have a competing phone-book company that also drops off 20 pounds; perhaps we should bring them to the company’s parking lot, soak them in gas, set them alight and loft them via trebuchet into their HQ. It might take a few years, but they’d get the idea.

Watched part of “The Island” last night - a remake of “Clonus” by Michael Bay, the Billy May of directors -  and it wasn’t that bad. The first half, anyway. I’m not a Michael Bay hater - I loathed Armageddon, because he didn’t hold a single shot longer than 1.5 seconds, but as loud empty garish noise-movies go, they fill the bill. I’m almost tempted to see Transformers, because it seems to set new standards for nonstop pyrotechnic violence on a scale unseen since the Normady invasion - which, come to think of it, would make an AWESOME Transformers movie, because the ships themselves would sprout legs and walk on the beach and they’d be just as tall as the cliffs and they could punch the pillboxes, and it would be like BANG, then BANG, then BANG, and Nazi juice would squirt out the slits and they’d all die. Except for Pluskat; we like Pluskat. In “The Longest Day” he was one of the Nazis you’d give a pass, because he didn’t seem to be a real Nazi, and was furious with other Nazis.

(Hah: according to wikipedia,  Pluskat was played by someone who had a perfect Mad Magazine name for a Danish children’s author: Hans Christian Blech.)

Anyway, it can’t be worse than Orson Welles’ aborted version of Transformers. He only shot one reel before he had an argument with the producers and the financiers, and the project shut down. (Terry Gilliam was trying to make a documentary about Welles’ Transformer movie, but he had an argument with the producers and the financiers, and one of his actors died.) Just kidding. All that is nonsense.

Except for the Orson Welles - Transformers connection.

Anyway, “The Island” isn’t that bad, except that Scar-Jo has never struck me as All That;   she looks like someone who is getting over an allergic reaction to shellfish.

Best part of today: going to pick up daughter and friend at a summer-school event in the north-west part of town. Went through the tony neighborhood along the northern lakes; I’m sure they view those of us in Southwest as trendy fools who have to live by the cool lakes. The houses are magnificent - saw one modern structure under construction that looked like something out of a 1970s film about The Future, the sort of house with mod plastic furniture and men in jumpsuits with sideburns, drinking scotch, talking on chunky CRT “videophones.”

The first part, before the addition:

Workmen swarmed over the place, and I’d bet every one of them would choose something more homey and traditional. It wasn’t supposed to be so - the great early modernists were convinced that the Prole would be happy to insert himself into his cube in a great glass hive, sit in a rational chair and study a Mondrian before going down to the Worker’s Center on the ground floor and hear a lecture.

The bourgeois desires of the Lower Orders must be such a disappointment to their betters. If only they knew!

Later today: Comic Sins around 11; B&W World in the afternoon, and Small Town Website of the Week at buzz.mn in the early AM. See you soon.