Secrets of the City

let the Rake pimpin’ begin…

RE: Taxes. I just learned that Washington (along with Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming) doesn’t have any individual state taxes, which, I must confess, is pretty sweet. (They have a corporate tax, and fairly high sales and property taxes though.)

I wonder why no one at the federal level has looked at the various tax methods in different states and coming up with something better than the federal tax code.

Let the Rake Pimpin’ begin…

No doubt. Brad Zellar is pretty good, but come on.

ohjeez: Amen.

An ESPN endorsement is a kiss of death. I am a twins fanatic and only really get excited for a season when we are picked to finish last- just like ESPN said the chisox would finish last season.

oh i see, since the rake guys own MNSpeak, they aren’t allowed to pimp anything at the rake. just every other pub and blog in town. scroll the links, ohjeez. if anything, they’re pimpin the strib. of 30 some ext. links on today’s page as i count ‘em, one is the rake homers. OMG! mnspeak now totally sux!

Ivanho Love: Amen

An ESPN endorsement is a kiss of death.

Case in point: Seven of ESPN’s “experts” had the Twins in the World Series last year.

If I had Zellar writing for me I’d pimp the hell out of him…maybe an ad in the back pages of City Pages where all the other pimps advertise.

And while we’re counting, there have been, according to mnspeak search results 36 Rake pimps, 187 City Pages pimps, 450 Star Tribune pimps.

Maybe you should all read some of Zellar’s stuff before your knees start jerking, but maybe you’re jerking something else while reading Diablo (20 pimps) Cody ?

Gosh, I thought the KSTP story on tagging products normally purchased by African Americans as more likely to be stolen would maybe get some comment. Silly Matt. He should learn to confine his suggestions to topics of real importance.

Yup, MNspeak be changin’.

Maybe they just the tagged products that were most often stolen?

RE: Theft Tags
The whole “racial profiling” vs. “probability” debate is soooo old and menial. If product X is commonly purchased by persons of race Y, and Ys commit the most robbery, then is theft tagging product X a racist measure, or is it a common sense due to probability? That being said, I still believe there is unfortunately racism resident in our world, but lets read into these tags too far.

More importantly, think of the effect these tags are having on ordinary white guys with a penchant for grape soda and Newports.

I blame myself. I just can’t help stealing malt liquor.

I’d like to know if these same products are tagged at other stores. Thanks, KSTP, for a half-story.

Real pimp: Sure, but none of those posts came from Diablo’s editor/publisher. And none were tagged as, “The employee of my magazine is the best writer around.”

So, we can never have another Rake post? Because it could be inferred that any rake post is an implicit “Hey, this is good?”

Can we get back to the discussion of why African Americans are riding the bus all the way out to Woodbury to steal their hair care products…because it’s my theory that black people must feel less conspicuous and less likely to be watched in the outer ring suburbs.

matt isn’t zellar’s editor/publisher

In the interest of full disclosure, I just thought I’d put it all out there:

My parents own and publish The Rake, my uncle Mark publishes City Pages (and my parents used to publish it and MN Parent), and I’m a secret lover of Cyndy Brucato from the 5 Eyewitness News Team.

is that “racial product profiling”?

Carrie, surprise surprise there are balcks (and asians, middle easterns, latinos etc) living in woodbury

plus, the fact that you all can bitch all you want about pimpin–that sorta is a check and balance, no? seems to me, rex was “pimpin” lots of his IBS clients, and no one thought he was funneling traffic for any other reason than to get people chatting. but what the hey do i know?

self-correction: ok, maybe not “lots of his IBS clients,” but WCCO counts.

i am curious about this. it’s uncool for cops to racially profile, but not marketers?

and when the stereotypes start flying around here–fortys/newports/fried chicken– is that cool? people don;t seem to have a problem with racial cliches. even if the’re true– is it cool? (not saying one way or the other, just curious.)

I should know better than to be ironic here. Now can we get back to a discussion of the Irish eating their babies? Mmmm, the little red heads are so tender.

Ok, I changed the Zellar post headline. The son of a bitch just came in to my office and demanded a raise.

In the Irish neighborhoods of Woodbury, do they put those stickers on whisky bottles?

Wait a minute, did someone just say I pimped my sites? I dare you to find one instance of that. One.

Sorry, bzzzzt, WCCO isn’t one of our clients. WCCO.com is owned and operated by CBS (a competitor), not IBS.

that you DIDN’T pimp ‘em, rex. that was my point

In Rex’s defense, this whole site is running on Cold Fusion instead of Microsoft’s asp, and we all know where Mr. Seattlepants is going soon. Of course, Rex could have just been showing off by using a dead language…sort of like programming in Latin.

However, his relationship with Diablo (20 pimps) Cody could use some clarification.

he probably thought because back in the day, IBS used to do channel 4000. er, what IS channel 4000 now?

aah the frivolity of an on-line arguement.

I don’t need anyone on my defense! We ran channel4000.com several years ago, and the relationship ended in a shit storm lawsuit. The accusation that I’m pimping WCCO is akin to saying Bill Gates is pimping Google. (Channel4000 is now a garbage weather site owned by IBS — one that you’ve never once seen me link to.)

Sorry to be in a huff about this, but I’ve made approximately 1000 posts on this site, and you’ll see exactly one Misc Links mention of a startribune.com story about NBColympics.com (my day job, which I just now typed in a second time) — that’s it. Of the other 80 sites we run — not one link, much less pimp.

I’ve gotta go back to work now — The Olympics are almost on! (Dammit, now you made me do it a third time!)

You can accuse Rex of many things, but you can’t accuse him of pimping himself. I had to post when I did a story about his list-of-lists website.

Now you can certainly accuse me of pimping… but I try not to go overboard. And if I do… I know I’ll get hammered by everyone here! I don’t do it for profit. I do it for the internet fame.

I like The Rake links, I like all the links. It saves me a lot of time, that’s why I come here. Is it an unbiased media sampling? No. Are there ANY unbiased media outlets? No.

thats a good lesson, thanks for the history rex. i think the rake guys could learn from that, seriously. its a good mag, but i don’t want to feel like they’re shilling all the time, so maybe they should follow your example and let non-rakers post rake links when mspeakers want ‘em.

Got it. derusha and bartels are pimps, Rex isn’t. But then how does he explain those ‘ho t-shirts, huh?

The Olympics are on?

All kidding aside, Rex, great fucking site. It almost makes me want to watch ice dancing. I’ll pimp for you any day.

Holy cow, I just realized I’ve been pimping NBC. Rex isn’t making a dime off this. Rex, have you ever thought of pimping yourself?

Enough chatting about ourselves: did you guys read that Brokeback Mountain addiction confession? I’ve never seen a movie in the theater more than three times. (Although as I kid I watched Charlie & The Chocolate Factory every year at summer camp). Any other movie addictions? And should I see Brokeback?

Just remember, pimping ain’t easy.

DeRusha – I recommend seeing Brokeback just to see what the hell everyone else is talking about. Even if you don’t like it at least you can participate in the 1,256,784 conversations going on around it. But then again…I saw Titanic 14 times in the theatre

If Diablo Cody wasn’t a stripper or was a guy, NOBODY would give a shit about her. I’ve always been kind of embarrassed for MNspeak for the way they slobbered over her like a horny thirteen year old boy. Meanwhile Zellar’s been cranking out great stuff day in and day out on his blog, his baseball blog, City Pages, The Rake and the Strib for years now. If he had tits and a pussy he would have been a star a long time ago. I don’t blame The Rake for bragging up the fact that they’ve got the best writer in town.

brad zellar *is the best writer in town. say it loud.

Good point, Ray.

Ray, tell Brad about the new Smitten Kitten store. I bet he can get some tits and a pussy there.

If Diablo was a man (a hypothetical hard to imagine), I would still think she’s a great writer. Period.

If Zellar were a woman, same thing.

There are a bunch of false dichotomies here.

ok, i’ll change the subject –

i love that the smitten kitten sells the Baby Jesus Butt Plug.

that’s hot.

Whatever, Rex.

Just the fact that you had to add “a hypothetical hard to imagine” proves my point.

Wow- that’s a heck of a subject change!

The fuck it does. And the whole accusation is sinister sexism.

ok. congrats to the smitten on their new location. but does anyone else miss the discretion of the powderhorn location? i mean i don’t mind people knowing i shop there, but i’d rather prefer they didn’t watch me while i shop there.

Baby Jesus Butt Plug? Is that something I can get away with googling at work?

Depends on where you work.

Yeah yeah, sure Rex.

I think you’re obsession is blatant bonerism.

“Bonerism?”

I used to be a member of the bonerist movement. We had a manifesto and everything, but most of our members petered out after about ten minutes.

And not to be a pedant, but it’s “your.”

The woman presents a voice that Minneapolis hasn’t had before, and has a very effective, and fun to read, style. The fact that she’s hot is irrelevant except for the simple fact that she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go through some of the experiences in her book if she wasn’t.

Can I just say that I’m proud to be associated with a site that can go from discussing what pimps we are to baby jesus butt plug in the space of one short afternoon.

But I’m not done with this Diablo subject….

She’s got a book from a major publisher, a movie in production, and a possible tv show. Now, it’s completely fair to disagree with me about her writing. If you don’t like her, fine. But it’s either asinine or sexist to presume the whole fucking culture industry has been duped because she’s a girl.

This thread has managed to piss me off twice today.

I’m gonna go with “asinine.” With a little schmear of sexist.

I don’t know if any of you folks have been to LA, but I guarantee you “Minnesota cute” doesn’t cut it out there. There either has to be good looks so extreme that your head would spin all the way around or some actual talent.

And I’m also not backing down for occasionally covering her here. If you took…. I dunno… DeRusha and gave him a book deal, a movie deal, a tv deal, and a high-traffic blog… how much would we have covered that? Waaaaaay more than Diablo got covered.

Hrm, this post has made me grumpy.

I think DeRusha would look hot in dreads.

We already know what he looks like in heels.

Hey, just for the record, I don’t claim to be a great (or even a good) writer. I wouldn’t even claim to be the best writer around the Rake’s offices –that would be Brian Sandberg, followed by pretty much everybody else in alphabetical order.
Sandberg also sometimes brings me soup.
Me, I’m just a beast of burden.
As my mother used to tell me, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
Actually, what she used to tell me was to shut the fuck up.

I’m not sure what to think about the Baby Jesus Butt Plug. I’ll let you know when I’ve tried it out.

i could go into great, industrial detail singing diablo’s praises, but she has stopped answering my emails, so i am officially “no comment” until she, you know, services me. i gather that she is still, um, servicing Rex.

kidding, rex. i know you’re a little surly today.

must be the olympics.

Wait until the fucking opening ceremonies. All you mofos will wreak some commenting havoc!

The Baby Jesus Butt Plug has a heavenly fit, thank you very much.

I don’t know if any of you folks have been to LA, but I guarantee you “Minnesota cute” doesn’t cut it out there. There either has to be good looks so extreme that your head would spin all the way around or some actual talent.

This was not my experience in LA at all. At least, not the second part of it. If there is any single town in which mediocrity often rules the day, it is Los Angeles, where producers are far more interested in chasing after projects that are seen as “hot” and potential moneymakers than in actual quality. Which I think is reflected in films like the Pink Panther remake.

Not to besmirch Ms. Cody, who, I am sure, has talent in spades. But I am equally sure it is not the reason Hollywood is interested in her.

The Baby Jesus Butt Plug has a heavenly fit, thank you very much.

rex, that cracked me up!

Anyone want to give me any of the things that Rex suggests?

“a book deal, a movie deal, a tv deal, and a high-traffic blog…”

Well, I do have a TV deal. And frankly, I’d be happy with a moderate-traffic blog. How about a low-traffic blog. I think I have a no-traffic blog.

OK- so my wife and I saw Brokeback. It’s damn good. I admit: I was a little surprised by the sex scene so quickly in the movie. But after awhile, you get past the homosexuality, and get immersed in the love story. It really is a sad story. And a beautifully shot movie. Very good.

Thanks, Sarah, for encouraging me to see it….