Photo Excursion: The Minneapolis Midtown Greenway
One of the fun things I did this weekend was take a camera down to the Midtown Greenway, a jogging, biking path that runs west along Lake Street toward Lake of Isles. I Got some good pictures:

posted at 11:31 PM

Song of the Moment
Belle & Sebastian's - Waiting for the Moon to Rise is in a word, gorgeous. (right-click on link, select Save Target as..)
posted at 12:12 PM

Funniest Films Ever

Last night we watched Hot Shots and I decided I should post my list of the top ten funniest movies ever:
10. Kicking & Screaming - was entirely too close to my college experience
09. Naked Gun/Hot Shots! - loved Naked Gun when I was 12, loved Hot Shots when I was 22.
08. The Princess Bride - One of the best movies, ever.
07. Wayne's World - I'm not worthy
06. Top Secret! - Val.
05. Waiting For Guffman - "Dartanion! How dare you do that to me, you."
04. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
03. Trading Places - "Want some beef jerky? Theres plenty ya know."
02. Airplane! - Shheeeeeeeeeeeeeeit (Golly)
01. Monty Python & The Quest for the Holy Grail - "Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-PTANG! Zoom-Boing! Z'nourrwringmm!"

posted at 7:35 PM

entertaining an out of town guest 101

As I sit here listening to the polished vocals of my recently acquired Pete Yorn CD, I look back on what was a gloriously long weekend that started last wednesday when my sweetheart Joe came to town. He had never been to Minneapolis, let alone the midwest, and coming from beautiful San Diego, I had to make the city appear so cool that he would forget about the obvious temperature differences. Here are some pictures from our adventures.
On Thursday we went to the Walker Art Center (Free Thursdays == Excellent) and then the sculpture garden,
Friday, we drove around the city looking at various landmarks like the various schools I went to in my ascent through mpls public school system.

On Saturday we went to the Como Park Conservatory,

and on Sunday we went skating at the Depot Skating Rink in Downtown Minneapolis, an incredibly cool rink that rivals NY's Rockefeller Center Ice rink

For future reference:
When showing someone around your city, make sure you show them something Art-y (museums), Tourist-y (sky-lines, malls-o-americas, etc), Something personal (where you can story-tell, like a school), good food (like Palomino), good drink (CC Club) and something semi-athletic(like skating). If you cover those six things, chances are they will forget about the bad stuff like subzero windchills.

How do you guys show out of town visitors a good time?

posted at 9:18 PM

"Show me, Paint the Fence!"
Today I painted my brothers' old bedroom. I don't really mind painting as long as it doesn't splatter into my eyes/hair. After a couple hours I thought, "man, why can't this room be a Photoshop canvas?", then I use the Paint Bucket tool and in a split-second the room would be finished with a perfect coat of new paint. As it turns out, I'm not the only person who envisioned such a luxury. The technology is known as "light-emitting polymer" or in this case Electronic Wallpaper which, may be in our homes sooner then you think. I found a couple more interesting articles, including one about Light Emitting Polymers redefing our idea of indoor-lighting and Toshiba's anouncement of its organic screen technology.

"Bonsai!!"

afterthought, how does one keep light-emitting polymer materials clean?

posted at 9:03 PM

Amazing screen-printed posters found here at Aesthetic Aparatus, one of Madison's best design firms.
posted at 10:49 AM

Jeez.
First it was Sigur Ros, then it was the Breeders. Add Belle & Sebastian to the list of sold-out-way-in-advance concerts that I coudn't get tickets to. The show I'm refering to is Belle & Sebastian's only mid-western stop on there tour of the US, May 11th in Chicago at the Congress Theater. I guess there's always ebay but last I checked 2 tickets were $75. And to all of you I told was gonna get tickets for, Im sorry. I would still like to go down to Chicago one of these days, anything happenin?
posted at 7:28 PM

Bad Game, Great Commercials
So last night I was watching the T-Wolves go from 10 up on the Rockets with 6 minutes left, make about a million turnovers and loose their fifth game in a row. I was disappointed but my spirits were lifted by these hilarious commercials featuring these short "white boys" beating NBA teams like the Lakers, Jazz, etc. As luck would have it I found a spot on the internet where you too can view these commercials. Thanks to IFilm, you can watch Synchronized Slaimmin' or Jimmy's favorite Coppertone Burn.
posted at 12:10 AM

Beautiful Flash Games
Orisinal an amazing site with beautiful, original Flash games. I like Pocketful of Stars and the Truth is Up There. Theres also a recent article from Wired about the creator of this wonderful site. [via atomgrid]
posted at 6:20 PM

Bowling and a Bar
The original title for this post was, an Adventure out into the Ice and Rain, but unfortunately, I didnt get any good pictures of the ice/rain. Saturday night we vetured through the ice-rain we into NE Minneapolis, to go bowling at Elsie's. As you may have seen from my photo page a bowling alley is an excellent place to take some pictures.

on top of getting some quality shots, I bowled a amazing 152! which is by far my best score in years, must've been the black-light. After bowling we hopped down the street to Nye's Polonaise Room.

posted at 11:38 PM

MN State High School Hockey Tourney
Spent most of the day today watching Minnesota's version of the Olympics/Super Bowl the boys state high school hockey tournement. There were the Large School (AA) quaterfinals today. Today's games were pretty good, unfortunately none of the private school teams (4 of 16) lost. I'm pulling for Roseville in AA and Fergus Falls in A. And for those who dont know, the last time Minneapolis South was in the State Hockey Tourney was in 1993 ( I missed it by 2 years :( ), on the other hand the last time Minneapolis South beat current AA semi-finalist Holy Angels, was in 1997 and I was most definitely apart of that game (alas I dont have a link for that amazing victory).
posted at 12:17 AM

poking fun at the chief
read the last paragraph [via Andy]
"Strategery"
"Don't mess with Texas"
"...Pass"
what ever happend to the old dubya?
posted at 11:52 AM

Lentils & Rice & You
Aside from Tostadas one of my favorite meals to make is Lentils & Rice. I recieved a rice cooker for christmas which makes cooking this meal painless. Fear not if you dont own a rice cooker, this is a simple recipe that should be almost as easy to make using a pot.
1 cup of lentils
1 cup of rice (any kind, I've been using basamati recently)
1/2 Onion (white or yellow is best)
1/2-1 cup Carrot diced
1 Clove of Garlic minced
2 1/2 cups Chicken or Vegetable Broth
some salt and pepper
you may want to soak the lentils in warm water for 20 minutes, so they end up softer in the end.
If you have a rice cooker throw everything in and turn cooker on.
If not throw everything into a pot, bring to boil then simmer til everything is cooked.
Voila, a tasty, perfect-protein, healthy meal that will serve at least 6 ( I usually have a couple days worth of leftovers).

Anyone else have any rice or legume or rice and legume dishes?
posted at 9:57 PM

Maeda Magic

John Maeda is one of my favorite digital artists. His work and other incredible artists are show cased at Levitated.net. check it out.
posted at 9:27 PM

BRrrrrr.......
According to Paul Douglas, today was probably the coldest day of the winter. After stepping outside I felt that i wanted to capture how cold it was on film (or digital film). So as I was driving over to my folks' house to do laundry, I spotted this bridge over a creek where some one had tried to drop cinder blocks through the ice. I took a few pictures of the bridge and the cinder blocks, which didnt break all the way through the ice, but I wasn't happy with those, I did like this one tho:

and this one:

and incase you were wondering about the cinder blocks:

thankfully the first day of spring (March 20th) is only a few weeks away.
posted at 8:41 PM