Secrets of the City

Emily from Because Emily Says So goes through her comments to see what she has published that has gotten the biggest reaction. Among the big ones: Prefering one jucy lucy over another and having a strong opinion about local cyclist behavior.

What else is likely to get a Minnesotan into a huff?

Vita.mn takes on the culture of the douchebag that seems to have swamped the Twin Cities (or, at least, bars like Drink). If for nothing else, the story is worth it for introducing me to the Tweets of PePe LeDouche, a local satire that is note-perfect.

The Star-Tribune reviews the Theatre in the Round’s Production of Kevin Kling’s Ice Fishing Play, one of the first plays I saw that really felt uniquely Minnesotan: Cleverly blending quirky wit, a rich sense of place and the evocative tug of memory and loss, Kling has created a piece that is entertaining and unexpectedly poignant. An additional review from MinnPost.

Metro rolls out it’s “Style Force.”

The creator of Mystery Science Theater has just announced a new show in which he and the original cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000, including J. Elvis Weinstein and Trace Beaulieu (as well as regular castmembers Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl). They will be doing what they do best — riffing on crappy movies.

MPR presents six tales stories told by Kevin Kling, including an explanation of the title of his new book, The Dog Says How.

I love how media profiles of our beautiful city always seem compelled to credit some facet of our local character to a mysterious “heavy Scandinavian influence”. When I moved here, I fully expected to hear people speaking Norwegian on street corners. After living here for a few years, though, I’ve never seen such a thing. In fact, if it weren’t for the Swedish-American Institute, the Sons of Norway building in Uptown and Ingebretsen’s, you would barely know this city was supposedly chock full of Scandinavians at all. How does Minneapolis reflect this supposed “heavy Scandinavian influence” on a day-to-day level? Is there a Little Oslo buried deep in South Minneapolis I’ve missed, or this all an elaborate hoax that Garrison Keillor has perpetrated?

iwilldare discusses The Sabotage Cafe: “People keep calling it a novel about the Minneapolis punk scene. While, if you have to sum up the book in a sentence, that summary works, but it is really about way, way more than that.”

Anybody read it?

Because not enough nerds go to the Science Museum, I guess: Exhibit visitors will be able to climb aboard a full-size replica of the cockpit from Episode Four’s Millennium Falcon, sit inside a real hovercraft similar to Saga’s landspeeders and step into a lab where they can build and program robots and engineer droids. Link.

It’s the subject of MnMonthly’s latest issue, including tales of locals who put the state on the map and an overview on how we got to be so frightfully cool. Mediation offers a few comments.