Liberal Media Elite

…since New Orleans drowned. Since the gulf coast was decimated. Since our national humiliation. Since the Prezzz, and the Gov, and the Mayor Man killed a bunch of people through their incompetence.

Bet they’re all making speeches today.

I’m gonna do me something private. I’m gonna put on the iPod and go sit by the ocean…something about wanting to be near water today…when it ain’t being a killer…I’m gonna crank up John Boutte’s set from the 2007 jazz fest and I’m gonna listen to a perfect voice singing “City of New Orleans”.

And I’m probably gonna cry.

God Bless New Orleans. God Bless her people. God Bless their joy and rage and laughter and tears. God Bless the survivors and the rescuers. God bless the ones that are gone.

My work is done. Conservative political cartoonist Chuck Asay is now the #1 reference on Google when you search on “cocksuckingly unfunny.”

Proudest moment of my life.

[Updated on 8/29. Just some links. -M.]

Mornin’ all. Last night’s storms jostled me out of bed around 3 this morning and I haven’t been back to sleep since. I took the morning hours to catch up on some reading.

I’ll just say it’s a good day to watch the ad and read just about everything at Salon. It’s a playbook of what the Democrats need to do, and why.

First up,Glenn Greenwald as always, has a well written piece about how the time for a fight is now.

Mark Benjamin tells us why.

And finally, finally, a psychologist shrinks the Democratic party and suggests they strap on a pair and go for it.

Allow me to second this notion. Democrats need to stand up to Mr. 25% and whatever might be going on in Chertoff’s gut on this one. Tis’ time we call Senator Klobuchar and tell her that while we appreciate her keeping the world safe from nefarious pool drains, it’s time for her to distinguish herself, especially after votes for FISA and the Iraq War capitulation funding bill.

I’m also going to be keeping my eye on our Presidential candidates from the Senate, and how they deal with this one. They’ve been pretty good, especially on the aforementioned legislation, and a tough posture on this upcoming fight would earn further praise, and quite likely a check from yours truly (and yes, I’m talking mostly about the Junior Senator from Illinois)

Another one? Yes, another one. A U.S. senator this time. From Idaho, yet!

He was arrested (and pleaded guilty, it must be said) for being naughty at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Let’s all hope Sen. Larry Craig (R-Gaygaygaygaygaygay) wasn’t on some sort of scouting mission to find all the best cruising spots in town in advance of the 2008 Republican National Convention and Swingers’ Party.

I mean, for God’s sake, people! Haven’t these guys ever heard of Craig’s List? Gay.com? What the hell?

So…big article in the New York Times today on the mortgage lending crisis and the first ever nationwide drop in housing prices.

Well…the first since such statistics were kept, which dates to 1950. Safe bet that in the Great Depression there was a drop in housing prices, yes?

Lots of genius economists are now acting shocked that we can have a nationwide housing drop. The theory at work is that housing markets are local and therefore you can have local and even regional housing markets boom or bust but that this won’t impact the whole housing market. Lotsa smart guys with impressive degrees. Two reasons why they are, despite their degrees, dumber than rocks.

First…there was a nationwide housing boom. At the same time (say 2004-6) that the genius contingent was cranking out intellectual capital saying that there wouldn’t be a national housing bust we were in a national housing boom. If all housing markets are local and therefore can’t bust on a national level then they are all local and also cannot boom on a national level. But they did. There’s a certain delicious irony in genius economists writing that a national bust can’t happen and the reason they’re writing said things is to assure buyers that the national boom won’t end.

Okay…that was the snarky one. Here’s the “why” of it…

Housing markets are, in fact, local. But lending no longer is. Used to be that running in tandem with local housing markets were local housing lenders. If times was tough in a particular locale they’d put the brakes on local lending. Not ’cause they wanted to play God but because they figured that most folks wouldn’t be good for the loans. In the last, oh, 20 years or so (and particularly in the last ten) as lending has consolidated on a national scale (largely due to deregulation in financial services) that local lending, which provided a control on speculative bubbles, has provided increasingly fewer, in raw numbers and as a percentage of the whole, of the mortgages that enabled this boom. In addition, the same national lenders that enabled the boom did a great job of marketing the dream of the endlessly growing piggy bank house. “The value will never go down, so borrow against the equity.” And we did. Oh, my, how we did. On top of that throw in the increased pace of buying and selling of loans. So, not only are we not localized but we have increasing personal distance and decreasing direct knowledge of local conditions between the entity holding the note and the person who owes on it. You know the mortgage loan commercials that show the gray haired friendly guy who knows exactly what you need for your loan so you and your family can buy part of the American dream without sacrificing your financial future? That dude exists only in two places, on television and in memories dating back to the early 80’s. There are very few local loan counselors left, having been swallowed by big national players in the last decade. Now there are risk management professionals and marketing execs writing scripts for glorified telemarketers.

So, housing markets are local. But credit no longer is, meaning that housing no longer is. Markets have always consisted of buyers, sellers, and money. The buyers and sellers may still be local, but the money is based in New York or LA or London or where-the-hell-ever. It is a stretch, then, to declare housing a truly local market.

I’ve floated this theory past various econ geniuses I have the pleasure of knowing. Smart folks. They all shoot it down for various reasons…which is distressing ’cause they’re all smarter than me. I’m sticking with it, though. ‘Cause ain’t none of ‘em offered up an explanation of why. We seem to be entering the economist’s “markets are like God” explanation phase. This happens whenever they can’t figure something out. Then markets are inscrutable and move in mysterious ways. Like God. And Paris Hilton.

A new national intelligence estimate has concluded that the Bush strategy of escalation has accomplished nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Things have gotten so bad that John Warner (R-VA) and Gen. Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have called for us to get out of Iraq. Warner…hmm…Warner has been a subtle critic of the war for awhile now. So, you know, whatever…give him props if you must while ignoring that he has supported the President on every single war related vote up to the present moment. So…nice of you to voice your concerns, how’s about doing something about it? Pace…well, that’s interesting. The General’s argument is that the army simply cannot keep doing this. That it is stretched to the breaking point. That its ability to protect the country is being compromised. Fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here? Remember that. Hell, I just heard it in a conversation earlier this week. The General would appear to be saying that we ain’t accomplishing shit over there and we’re straining our resources so badly that we couldn’t fight ‘em over here if we had to.

Neat, huh? So…escalation (the “Surge” as it is more commonly known) was a failure, right?

Depends on what you wanted it to accomplish. In terms of the Prezzz’s dirty little war, in terms of our security, yes…an abject failure. But that’s not what the Prezzz ever set out to accomplish. Ever. What he wanted to do was look good (presumably to his base) and put off the decision for another year. Remember, he’d just gotten his ass handed to him in the 2006 elections when he dreamed up the Surge. Why another year? Because starting in about a month, gloriously coinciding with the timeline on which we’ll hear from Petraeus how fucked up things are, he’ll be able to change his tune to “it wouldn’t be right to make a decision with such grave consequences given a new President will be coming in”.

You heard it here first. My money is on Friday, September 21st.

Maybe we should start an office pool. Like March Madness but with people dying.

Oh, City Pages. I can always rely on you for a measured response.

In addition to their latest cover — an image of the collapsed bridge, with the caption “WHO’S TO BLAME?” — Kevin Hoffman opened a mini-article last week with the following paragraph:

“President Bush didn’t bother waiting until all the bodies had been recovered from the Mississippi river to politicize the disastrous collapse of the I-35W bridge at a morning press conference the day after the tragedy.”

Now, my rejection of the Bush administration, and all of its works, and all of its empty promises, are a matter of public record — but this seems to me to be a classic case of people getting angry with Bush for the wrong goddamn reasons.

I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about Bush callously taking advantage of a tragedy for a photo-op. But the thing is, he kinda has to. Why? Because if he didn’t, we’d never let him live it down. We’d be indignantly blogging about how he doesn’t even care enough about his constituents to put in an appearance. It’s like how we crawl up his ass about not having attended any of his soldiers’ funerals. The minute he did, we’d be expressing our dismay at how he takes advantage of their loss for his own gain. It’s lose-lose, and not just for him.

The point I’m making is that that’s the wrong debate for us to be having. Ultimately, I don’t care if he shows up at the scene of a tragedy or not. Isn’t he doing plenty of other scary shit we should be paying attention to?

As usual, I have one foot planted in both halves of the blogosphere — and, as usual, both sides of the debate are pissing me off. Right-wingers are trumpeting the bridge collapse as a sign of government incompetence; left-wingers are using it as a rallying call against the Taxpayer’s League. I’m all about accountability — I’m all about doing everything we can to insure that something like this doesn’t happen again. But am I alone in thinking that we need to at least wait for the results of the investigation before we can have anything resembling an intelligent debate about this?

Wall Street is all wacky with panic, as are a number of other global markets. The Fed had to step in and pump money into the financial system (along with a number of other central banks) to try to hold markets steady yesterday.

How come?

Sub-prime mortgages.

This one wasn’t even hard to see coming but, in another installment of “Ain’t No Such Thing As Rational Markets” the investment community is shocked beyond description that this little bubble done burst.

Sub-prime mortgage is code for big ass mortgage loan to people with really shitty credit (like, well, me). Lousy credit history, no problem. No money, think nothing of it. Sub-prime mortgages were extended to people who, frankly, shouldn’t have been given a loan. Of any size. Like, again, me. Some financial whiz kids dreamed these things up and structured them such that they get more expensive for the borrower as time goes on but, surely with the equity in their homes, they’ll be better off…or something…and able to afford the nut. And, of course, the housing market, which is nothing so much as a historical study in cyclical booms and busts, couldn’t possibly ever bust again because…I don’t know…just ’cause. This is, I assure you, an accurate presentation of the 200 million power point presentations made over the years to sell the idea of sub-prime mortgages to stuffy bank executives. So…again…they loaned money to people who, financially, look like me. Trust me, my credit history is such that anyone giving me a loan is doing the risk management equivalent shooting themselves in the shin. Painful, possibly crippling, but not likely to be deadly. The problem comes when you extend a whole shitload of those loans to a whole passel of me’s. This is the logical equivalent of pulling the bullet out of your shin, reloading it, and shooting yourself in the shin again. Do that often enough and you will eventually blow your damn leg off and bleed to death.

Oh…but we ain’t done yet. You know the big corporate buyouts you hear about but don’t really pay attention to unless you sit up in business class? The ones where the words “hedge fund” and/or “private equity” show up in the boring ass articles? Yeah…so what happened is the people making the shitty loans to folks like me would gather those loans up and sell them to hedge funds and private equity firms who would buy them, flip them, buy more, flip them, buy more, and eventually have a shit-ton of money with which to buy out those firms we were talking about at the top of the paragraph. The value of these packages of loans comes from the revenue streams associated with the people paying the mortgages. Got it?

Okay…so a bunch of guys like me who have the fiscal responsibility of a rock’n'roll star with a fistful of cocaine and a roomful of hookers see a housing market that is way overpriced and slowly, slowly, slowly, the housing market goes through an utterly predictable correction in which home prices stall and then start to sink. Why is this predictable? Three reasons. First, when houses get to expensive, regardless of how cheap credit is, eventually you just can’t make it cheap enough for folks to be able to pay for an overpriced house. Second, how many really rich folks do you think took out expensive sub-prime loans. None, that’s how many. The recipients of these loans were generally middle and working class folks who wanted a piece of the dream. Seen what’s been happening to working class wages the last few years? Yeah…not so good. Third, and this is the really important one, housing markets always go up and always come down. Always have, always will. In every damn one of those 200 million power point presentations were various slides explaining why this wouldn’t happen. All of which were wrong. As anyone with a fucking brain could tell you. Unless said brain is blinded by huge dollar signs as you see a truckload of money sitting in front of you.

So…now the hedge funds and private equity firms have lost a primary source of capital. They haven’t really lost it…it’s still there…but it’s gotten expensive and (shock of shocks) unreliable. Think about it for a second. A pool of money predicated on people who have demonstrated that they shouldn’t be extended credit, especially credit that is tied to an obviously overpriced stock of housing, has suddenly become recognized by the financial geniuses of the world as risky.

Now for the big quantum logical leap…listen to the private sector types and their political shills and they’ll tell you that we must cut taxes and cut government spending because the government is inefficient and the private sector is wildly efficient. I agree that the government is inefficient but saying that we can then conclude that the private sector is efficient is like saying that American Spirits, which are far less damaging to you than other cigarettes, are healthy. No…they fuck you up less. That’s all. The private sector is less inefficient than government. But efficient? Not so much (See Also: The Dot-Com Boom).

We have cut taxes. We have cut spending (other than military). We have hacked public works and maintenance to shit. While the government may be inefficient there is something extremely rational about…oh…maintaining the bridges, levies, electric grids, highways, waterways, dams, and ports that make the American economy possible. I’m sure the government will do so inefficiently. Sure of it. But they’ll do it rationally (I’m setting the bar low…rational in this case equals doing it at all).

But we can’t do that. ‘Cause government spending crowds out private investment. And private investment is always smart. Like with sub-prime mortgages.

“I will essentially be the mouthpiece and effective leader for tens of thousands of Young Republicans, 18 to 40, across the country,” he said.

Mouthpiece, indeed.

Pearl Jam were playing at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago last Sunday and apparently spiced up the lyrics to Daughter a little bit. Much to the dismay of sponsor AT&T, it seems.

From the band’s website:

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

- “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and

- “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “NetNeutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue.

Thanks, AT&T, for delivering a great argument for the very same Net Neutrality that you so bitterly oppose. And your sorry argument, that this was a mistake and that you usually just get rid of profanity in your webcasts, does not console us a bit. Sounds a little lame after your steamy love affair with the NSA, don’t you think?

For those who don’t know, this is one of four blogs that I write for — several of my posts on this self-righteous left-wing blog are cross-posted to my own self-righteous right-wing blog Libertarian Rage, and I also write a blog for the Minnesota Fringe Festival at Womb with a View. I’ve already seen twenty-nine plays and we’re just starting the fifth day.

Didn’t really think there’d be a lot of interest in that over here, but ran into Matt Foster the other night who encouraged me to repost it. So, if you’re interested in either political theatre (or theatre that has libertarians at least tangentially involved in it), here’s my list:

Bad Dad: A Comedy of Errers

I was lucky enough to catch a production of this while I was touring in Iowa, and it’s one of the most explicitly anti-state plays I’ve ever seen, period. If you’re looking to catch one show this time around, it’s this one.

Bleak, bitter, and funny as hell, this show works precisely because it recognizes that there’s *nothing* funny about the ideas it’s ridiculing. It tells the story of a man trapped between banks, law firms, the IRS, the Supreme Court, and the weight of the US government — and his frenzied attempts to beat the legal system at its own game, to win back his liberty and his family. It doesn’t shy away from just how totally, unapologetically *fucked* all of us are, and that it’s *not* just a minor inconvenience, it’s *not* just some silly, bureaucratic hassle — that we’re all trapped as part of a system that ruthlessly destroys people’s lives.

I want people to see this show, not just because I’m in passionate agreement with its message — although, of course, I am — but because it’s *good satire*, dark, mean, smart, and hilarious. It’s wrestling with ideas that almost *nobody* else is onstage right now, so please, please, please make an effort to this show.

That’s really the only explicitly libertarian show I’m aware of in the Festival this year. There are, however, several libertarian *artists* who are producing work, if you’re interested in supporting them:

Descendant of Dragons

This is my show. In the past four years, I’ve been to Canada, Portugal, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, doing research on my Chinese ancestry — so if you’re interested in going to all of those places in an hour, this is the show for you. Not explicitly political, but one of the major themes of the show is individualism versus collectivism, and my politics become a significant plot point once I actually enter red China towards the end.

Robert Anton Wilson’s Masks of the Illuminati

Robert Anton Wilson may have chosen to call himself a “decentralist grassroots Jeffersonian”, but his tongue-in-cheek approach to conspiracy theory made him something of a cult favorite to libertarians everywhere. The writer/producer, Tim Uren, blew me away last year with a slavishly faithful one-man retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls,” so this seems like one hell of a team-up to me.

Bouffon Glass Menajoree

A parody of the Tennessee Williams play. Bouffon clowning is hard to describe — it’s a form of French clowning that’s sick, violent, hedonistic, and grotesque, pretty much the embodiment of contempt for authority. And by contempt, I don’t mean a “ha-ha-let’s-make-fun-of-Bush” contempt, I mean scary, cruel, raping-an-open-chest-wound kind of contempt. If you think that snuff films could use some wacky ragtime music in the background to lighten the mood, this is probably the show for you.

Tom Thumb, or The Tragedy of Tragedies

This is a collaboration between two of the Fringe’s most talented entertainers, and it looks like all kind of whacked-out, trippy fun. The actor cornered me the other night, confiding in me (with all the glee of arrested adolescence) that they’ve made a real effort to cram in all the cock-and-ball jokes they could possibly think of, so that should tell you pretty clearly whether or not you’re in the audience for this.

But I’m Not Bitter: Confessions of a Middle-Aged Lounge Lizard

To be honest, this show’s kind of a crap shoot — I’ve seen a few previews, and it could really be either brilliant or embarrassingly bad. The *script* is funny, smart, poetic at times, shifting between highbrow musings about Dante and Yeats to cheesy, Borscht-belt stand-up.

And, of course, a special mention goes to…

The Tyranny of God’s Love

And not just because he’s the guy that landed me these blogging gigs in the first place. Matt Foster may have some rather suspect lefty tendencies, but his distrust of everyone and everything puts him in entirely appropriate company on this list. Landed number three on my top ten shows I’m most looking forward to seeing, and with good reason.

If you’re interested in more of my thoughts, check out my Fringe blog Womb with a View. Remember, there’s a lot of smart, edgy stuff happening out there — and you can see more than one play a year.

They say that one useless man is called a disgrace. Two useless men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress — John Adams, from 1776, the musical

Our Congress, that one with the Democratic Majority in both houses (little good that has done us) has once again capitulated. But this round is for a few more marbles than a funding bill with troop withdrawal deadlines. No, this one is a clear dereliction of duty. When Mr 26% got to deciderin’ that he wanted a new FISA bill, all he had to do was say “boo!” and our Democratic congressional “leaders” folded like clean laundry and gave him what he wanted. And all I (and basically all rational people left in the country) am left to ask is why? Why the fuck would you do that? Whatever reason the Congressional leadership has, it’s lame.

There is more in this than electioneering. There is more in this than being tarred as “soft on terrorism.” Whatever the fuck that means, to begin with. As others have pointed out, do you think Fox News is going to declare, trumpets blaring that the Democrats are suddenly strong on national defense? This is more than being partisan. It’s not about the fact that Commander Codpiece is quickly becoming the least popular and surely the most dangerous president in US history, yet you listen to him anyway. It’s about something bigger. The Republic. Remember? You people are trashing the Constitution. You have given a back-door amnesty to all the misdeeds this “administration” has carried out spying on it’s own citizens. GOD DAMN IT PEOPLE, IF YOU DON’T START DOING YOUR JOBS OF DEFENDING THE CONSTITUTION, THERE WON’T BE MUCH OF A CONSTITUTION TO DEFEND.

Others are articulating their frustration anger sheer revulsion over this bit of legislative surrender better than I. For instance Glenn Greenwald

The common, defining political principle here — what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea — is a fervent and passionate belief in our country’s constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who — having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it — instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

And Meteor Blades at DKos:

Frankly, you epitomize weak. Your every pore exudes feebleness. You are surrender monkeys. And you’ve just casually tossed away a basic protection as if it were a banana peel.

I’m currently working on a production of 1776. Every night I watch actors portray the men that made our country a country. Men that risked the hangman. Risked their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor.” And what a cowardly lot our Democratic “leaders” are by comparison. Every time I think they are getting a back bone. Just when I think they’re ready to go after the pricks in the Executive Branch with both barrels, they promptly point said barrels at their feet and fire at will, more worried about what the ticker on Fox News might say, and with blatant disregard to what the Constitution actually says.

During the show I have a few big breaks. I’m taking advantage of these long breaks to do some reading. I’m currently absorbed in Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason. (It’s really great, and I’ll probably write about it at length when I’m actually done with it) In the midst of writing this post, I read this paragraph:

This administration simply does not seem to agree that the challenge of preserving democratic freedom cannot be met by surrendering core American values. Incredibly, this administration has attempted to compromise the most precious rights that America has stood for all over the world for more than two hundred years: due process, equal treatment under the law, the dignity of the individual, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from promiscuous government surveillance.

Welcome to that club, Democrats. And you signed on why? To pander to. . . somebody. So the meanies on the other side of the aisle wouldn’t throw nasty mud at you next election? Cool, calm political calculation? Meteor blades is right. Surrender Monkeys. I supported, volunteered for, donated money to, and voted for a Democratic Congress that would finally stand up to this administrations power grabs–and that’s all this is, it has about as much to do with fighting terrorism as Iraq does–but in the end you’re all just chickenshit. So, Mr Reid, Ms. Pelosi, just how dry is that powder these days?

It’s time for a song. I dedicate this song from 1776 to our Democratic Congress. (Mind you, this song is sung by the Tories and Loyalists)

What we do we do rationally
We never ever go off half-cocked, not we
Why begin till we know that we can win
And if we cannot win why bother to begin?

Rutledge:
We say this game’s not of our choosing
Why should we risk losing?

All:
We are cool

To the right, ever to the right
Never to the left, forever to the right
We have gold, a market that will hold
Tradition that is old, a reluctance to be bold.

Dickinson:
I sing hosanna, hosanna
In a sane and lucid manner
We are cool

All:
Come ye cool cool considerate men
The likes of which may never be seen again
With our land, cash in hand
Self-command, future planned
And we’ll hold to our gold
Tradition that is old, reluctant to be bold.
We say this game’s not of our choosing
Why should we risk losing?

We cool, cool, cool
Cool, cool, cool
Cool cool men.

Good work guys, we’re all really proud of you.

(UPDATE) Now that I got that off my chest, I think Buffalo Girl is right. Bloggers need to get better at the whole legislative process, not just doing the election thing, and throwing a tea party every year.

That’s right everyone, it’s Fringe time. (As if most of our readership didn’t know that.) Those of us not at Yearly Kos or battling alligators are quite consumed in the festivities. Matthew is directing a show. Phillip is perhaps biting off more than he can chew, producing and performing a show as well as blogging about everyone else’s. If posting is light over the next week or so blame the art.

I have been let out of The Big Blue Theater just long enough to see one show. The Nonsense Company produced last year’s sleeper hit “The Great Hymn of Thanksgiving. Their offering this year was originally scheduled to be “American Folksongs: The Ballad Of Ferris Riley.” Sadly, due to “an eleventh-hour technical crisis” they performed in its stead “The Prince Myshkins” It’s a collection of political satire songs, which you can imagine would be right up my alley. Each song was more witty, incisive, and lyrically orgiastic than the last. From cataloging the attire of the attendants of the Constitutional Convention, to imagining 100 nuns storming Fort Benning and the SOA, to clucking along with prominent Chickenhawks, the songs and commentary were creative and unique enough to avoid wandering into the realm of polemics and preaching, which is where political art goes to die. Additionally, the performers Rick Burkhardt and Andy Gricevich are talented enough that they likely could make an hour of “row row row your boat” interesting. Anyway, I’m talking about it more than I meant to. It’s good. Go see it. Here’s the schedule of remaining performances

And, if you haven’t clicked that link from Matthew, do it now. Trust me, you’ll like that, too.

Thank you.

Hey, y’all.

I’m in Florida working and watching the news. Watching about a big ass bridge on the I-35W that collapsed into the Mississippi. Watching and unable to get a call through to anyone in the Twin Cities ’cause the lines are jammed.

Sound off, folks. Drop us a comment and let me know you’re alright.

Not knowing is killing me.