New

So, regular readers and link-clickers will be aware that my sister has a blog that is dedicated to her family, and in particular her daughters Madeline and Lydia.

I contemplated doing similar posts on this blog. I mean, why not? If anything, it would make me post more. But then, you'd probably get a lot of "Holy Crap, there was crap everywhere!" posts which, if you're coming for the writing, may not be what you're looking for.

Those who are glad to avoid reading such posts need read no further than the next sentence. You can keep coming here to read all about my writing, trials and tribulations with writing, excuses why I'm not writing, and occasional odd excerpts from my writing. Those who do want to read the kind of family oriented whatnot, can head over to StL Hipster Dad. The first post is actually a review of Arcade Fire's new album The Suburbs thinly veiled as sentimentality and love for my daughter. Enjoy!

Link Shuffle

Every so often, I reorganize my links. I don't bring this up as an idle topic; no, in fact, I just messed with it. Take a look.

First off, I took down some links. I took down some links to sites I used to frequent quite a bit but have stopped checking. I also removed some blogs that have not seen an update in a really long time. If I took your link off, and you're upset, leave a passive-aggressive comment on this post and I'll reinstate the link.

But, I also added two new links! First up, Gerald (remember Gerald?), who's now had three or four, um, hundred blogs that he's taken off the internets, is back on the internets with his Art Blog. Pretty sweet stuff, so check it out here.

Also new is Provocative & Talkative, which chronicles the life and times of a new(ish) friend of mine (by that I mean that we have known each other for a little over two years now, but have just recently started hanging out and, it turns out, we're good friends). She very cleverly invents nicknames for all the people she blogs about, so as not to open herself up to Google stalking. Me? I apparently don't mind that much. You can find her here.

Also new, and I hate to do this, but I've enabled comment moderation and also word verification. The reason I hate to do this is because I believe in the openness of the internets. But the reason I have to do this is because (I'm sure regular commenters have noticed) there has been an increase in the number of spam comments on my blog, complete with Asian characters and embedded links to questionable sites. Not what I want my blog to be about. Rest assured, all new and returning readers, that I would say that if you are a real person and you make a comment that is truly, well, real, I will allow it. Any comments with links in them, I will have to check the link before I approve it but, again, chances are good that you will be approved. If you're a bot of some kind, you lose! You get NOTHING!

That's it for now. I promise to have some real posts coming up sometime soon.

Plug, Link, *Beep*

Alright, I have been an assuredly terrible blogger this summer. It's been crazy, I've had probably the most adult-grown-up summer I've ever had, with doing the retaining wall project, working full time and staying late several days to relieve the next day's potential headache...it's been weird. I'm all responsible and stuff. I'm not sure I particularly like this trend, but, hey, that's life. Hopefully soon I'll catch some kind of break and be able to just write write write without any other care (other than, you know, all the other grown up stuff).

With that in mind, though, a friend of mine from Webster who graduated last year, is quite a talented writer and is hoping to become a television writer at some point. He's well on his way, I think. First, check out his Youtube Page. Be especially sure to check out The Life and Times of Jeremy Updike. It's one episode of a TV show he worked on that kind of fizzled out when the school's TV station turned out to be really kind of a dud. After you've checked that out, check out his New Show. It's called The Lou (he's got a promo set up on his youtube page, but the show is at iClips because he can get better video quality). If you like Arrested Development, or The Office, or Thirty Rock...you know, that kind of new documentary-esque episodic story-arc comedy stuff...you will enjoy The Lou. It kind of pokes fun at One Tree Hill, The O.C. (don't call it that) and other similar shows. Totally worth it.

Also, I am introducing a new link. My friend Lisa lives in Minnesota, is dating my friend Chris and is active in the theater scene in the Twin Cities. And for some reason, I just now tonight found out she's got a blog. Go figure. Well, check it out. It's on WordPress, which is all way wonkier than Blogger, but to each his or her own, right?

Okay. I won't make any promises. I just can't, it seems. But I will try to have something new up soon. Look for maybe like a new poll or something to keep you interested.

Minneapolis Trip

Well, while not officially over, I can declare this road trip a great success!

First off, the trip itself was fairly uneventful, with a stop for gas sixty miles beyond where I used to stop in my Camry, so the Jetta's got some staying power. I know that thirty-seven miles to the gallon is nothing considering what some cars can get these days, and I'm not saying it's the Peel P50 with it's mileage, but still, being able to go more than 400 miles on a single tank of gas is a nice way to get around if need be.

But enough about cars, because I want to talk about bicycles eventually. But first, let me get to the point in the weekend where bicycles come in.

No, actually, before I met Kathy at the MetroLink station on Thursday, I drove down Hanley from Clayton towards the Jimmy John's in Brentwood, and the traffic was terrible. I was behind a girl on a really nice red Specialized bicycle, and I was busy checking out the bicycle. I had my windows down, and I was in the right lane, when this guy in the left lane says loud enough for me to hear, "Yeah, I'm checking out that sweet ass, too." I looked at this guy, perfect sleaze ball in a Mitsubishi Eclipse, and I explained to him that no, I was actually checking out the bicycle. He then said, "Yeah, but the hot ass in spandex doesn't hurt, does it?" The girl then turned and said, "I can hear both of you, you know." The traffic started up again, the Eclipse Creep rolled his window up, and the girl pulled over and waved me up. I still had my windows down, so I pulled up next to her and she said, "Were you really checking out my bicycle?" I replied, "Of course, that's a pretty sweet Specialized to be using as a commuter bike" (I only assumed it was a commuter bike because she was wearing a blouse and had a messenger bag that was stuffed to the brim), and she said, "You should see my Orbea at home." Those are pretty sweet bicycles, just so you know. I said to her, "I see you've got Shimano Dura-Ace then on there. Nice. And you must have the FSA carbon cranks." She said, "You could pick that out from behind me?" I answered, "The curve is wrong for them to be the Campagnolo carbon cranks." Her reply? "Do you have a girlfriend?" I should totally set her up with my friend Zach.

Anyway, storms in Iowa, driving for nine hours, blah blah...

Friday we had lunch with Greg rom Bailey Hall at Sally's on campus, got to check out the construction going on around campus, with the new Gopher stadium (for more in depth coverage of this project, consult Chris' Blog) and the other various additions to campus since the last time I was up there in 2005 (check out This Post for a brief rundown of our various road trip mishaps, including the ill-fated 2005 visit to the Twin Cities).

After lunch, we walked around downtown a little bit with my sister-in-law Jen, saw the construction of the New I-35W bridge, which is coming along very quickly and makes the St. Louis I-64 project look like it is just...dragging...on...forever...which it is...and then looked at the debris from the 35W collapse, which they have partially laid out underthe Washington Avenue Bridge. After that, we went to Cafe Ena for dinner with my bro-in-law Joe and his fiancee Shelley, drank a ridiculous amount of sangria, and then we went to Chino Latino for drinks and appetizers with some of our old MN friends (including the aforementioned Chris). It was nice to catch up with them. No, it wasn't nice. It was fantastic. I really truly miss Minneapolis, and as much as I love school at Webster, and I like my job, and Kathy loves her job, I can actually see us moving here sometime in the future (grad school, maybe). After Chino Latino, we ran across the street to Williams Uptown Pub & Peanut Bar where, we were promised, we could get a quiet and cheaper drink. Well, anything is cheaper than drinks at Chino Latino when you get right down to it, and almost anything is quieter, but not Williams...but their beer selection was unbelievable. It will be complete when they get Magic Hat IPA and Schlafly products on tap.

But it wasn't all drinks and peanuts and catching up...I also made a great reconnection with my friend Lisa, whom I haven't seen in something like five years, but who is very active in the theatre and film scene in Minneapolis. She asked me to send her some of my scripts, and without making any promises said she'd do what she could with them. Hell, any exposure is good esposure, right? I can't thank her enough for that. Yet another reason to want to move back, right?

Saturday, we finally got to see our host, my bro-in-law Paul (Jen's husband, Kathy's oldest brother), and we hung out with them playing Wii and eating some good food with Jen's parents until we went to the wedding, which was great. They got married, so the desired end result was achieved. And of course, Kathy got to see quite a few of her old classmates, so it was like a mini-reunion.

There was a girl there who looked incredibly familiar to me, and it wasn't until Kathy told me that I remembered why. I used to buy coffee from her at least three times a week at Laurie's Coffee Shop, which was just across the street from Bailey Hall. She, it turns out, makes handbags and messenger bags and sells them, which is cool because I actually do like me a good messenger bag. But what was even cooler was that her boyfriend builds bicycles. He designs and builds steel framed bicycles in Minneapolis. His name is Brad Capricorn, so his company is called Capricorn Bicycles. They are really nice looking bicycles, and I may buy one from him some time in the future. He was also a really cool guy. His website is mostly just a blog right now, but eventually Peter (the groom from the wedding) will finish designing a website for him. Should be awesome. I posted Capricorn's website in my links list. Check it out, some good looking bikes.

Overall, a great trip. We've got a BBQ going right now, so I should probably get to that. Hopefully (knock on wood) our trip back tomorrow is uneventful and safe. Hope everybody everywhere else had a great weekend!

We Are (Almost) Back In Business!

Well, see, silly me and my wanting to maintain a higher video quality...what was I thinking? So, I had to compress it into an mpeg2 (mpeg4 w/mp3 audio was still too big), which is just a suck, but the point is it will soon be posted to Google Video, which means once it goes through review, I can post it on the blog. Yay! A month later!

Right, so, a few new updates to the blog. First off, a new poll is coming for all of you to vote on. And then, there is of course, the updated links list. And in the interest of interesting you all, I am going to go through the links one by one and tell you what they are all about.

NPR

If you don't listen to NPR, you should, and if you do, good. My local station KWMU just came under a bit of fire for what their general manager likes to call her management style, but that doesn't change the fact that NPR itself is great. Sure, sometimes it can be a little, um, ear grating (Diane Rehm's voice), some of the hosts can get a bit sycophantic (hello Terry Gross), but all in all, it's a good source of news and entertainment. I like to play the Wait Wait Don't Tell Me online quiz every day to keep up with odd news.

...But I Am a Cyclist

You see, it's funny because I actually am a writer and not much of a cyclist. But there's a small amount of posts on there, I update very infrequently (even moreso than on here) but I get some good rants in on the state of affairs in cycling. There's also a list of links on that blog, but I won't go into them.

Turbochubs

Formerly the link read "Gerald Has Returned" but he's been returned for a while now, so I figured I'd retitle the link. Gerald's a designer, into hockey and is probably the most politically liberal of all of my friends, which is no bad thing. He's got a healthy mix of NHL, politics, and Daily Show clips interspersed with other tidbits and hilariousness. Check him out, yo.

Whiskey Tastes Better When You Have Problems

My former roommate from college, Chris and I rioted after the U of MN won hockey nationals in 2002. We also drank cheap vodka (read: he drank cheap vodka and I spent money I didn't have on Smirnoff, which I know, is cheap vodka, but if I considered that splurging, just imagine what he was drinking...), played simultaneous Dark Forces (Chris on PSOne, me on PC), pondered rearranging our room once, and he also took a video of me riding my bicycle down the hallway (at a terrifying-for-indoor-riding 26 miles an hour). But, through all of that, it seems we kind of forgot about going to class every so often, and I ended up leaving and he ended up in a little bit of trouble. But hey, you live and if you're lucky (like Chris and I), you learn and you move on with life and you stay friends and such. Check out his blog, he talks a lot about sports in the Twin Cities. Proving once again that all the sportswriters out there with their degrees in Journalism have nothing against a fan with a dangerous amount of time on his hands and a gift for the written word. Check it out.

mGk

Formerly titled "Mo and Kev and Maddy," I liked the simplicity of the look of the mGk, so I went with it. For a while, it was a blog about my sister, her husband, their house and their cat, and then it was about how my sister was dealing with her husband, house and cat while she was pregnant, and then, about a year ago (May 4th, actually, of 2007), it became all about my niece Madeline. She's adorable. Except she watches American Idol, which I just can't get down with. I gotta help that girl out with some serious Good Television Marathons. Mo, Kev, send Maddy over. We're gonna spend the weekend watching Arrested Development.

Idealism Never Goes out of Fashion

A new addition to the list, Becca is another of my Minnesota friends. Memories of her always included either Fiona Apple, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Piggly Wiggly, or her stealing various items from my room and then kicking me in the ding-ding. She's working on her Master's Degree in (appropriately enough) Middle Earth itself, New Zealand. Let's see if I can get this right...she was a clothing design undergrad, and is getting her masters in textiles? Yes? Becca, feel free to correct me if I am wrong (which I almost never am). Her blog is about life in New Zealand, with a fair amount of an emphasis on living a greener life and even, it seems, a bit about clothing design and textiles. Hey alright! Check it.

Auntie Maine

My mother's youngest sister Nora lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and there's not much to do up there in the long winter months, so they find ways to entertain themselves and, sometimes, the readers of their blog. Updates are few and far between, but sometimes you don't need an update, you can just keep reading her old posts and the comments that pop up there from, say, my mother and my other aunt. So click the link; let it never be said that "You can't get theah from heah."

TGSeale.com

A friend of mine from Webster, Tanya Seale is a fellow writer who is a bit further along in her writing career than I am. But what we both have in common is that we both got plays produced at Surfacing 2008. I really liked hers quite a bit, and I am looking forward to seeing more of her work next semester when we have our fiction workshop together. A word to those with slow interweb connections: her site is a bit of a slow loader because it's got a lot of stuff on it. But check out her blog anyway, she writes the same kinds of things that I do, only, you know, more frequently, like, you know, a good blogger.

JMG Design

Like Gerald, John is a friend from my days working in Retail. Of the four of us represented here (Gerald, John, Colleen, me), John was the first to escape to work on his garden, a passion of his which he has turned into a small business of designing gardens for people. Check it out, he's full of information about what to plant where and when, plus he's got recipes for great dinners and drinks.

These Walls Are Paper Thin...

Colleen escaped the drudgery of retail toil only to experience the drudgery of office toil. But, be that as it may, she still finds plenty to keep her mind occupied elsewhere. Lately, she's been doing the Apartment Cure, which is interesting to read about, because she divulges some secrets about how high off the ground to hang pictures and other strange tidbits you didn't know people wrote books and made websites and did bad reality TV shows about.

Annie Get Your Blog

While the link text is not the official title, I will never change it because it came to me in a moment of clear thought, and to me it seemed clever. But "What I Do Not Understand" is one of my favorite blogs; Annie's got a sweet touch to her writing style that makes me forgive her for being a Cubs fan, which is no small feat. And of the bloggers I've linked to, aside from family members Annie is my oldest friend, seeing as how we've known each other since we were like, twelve (oh my God, Annie, we've known each other more than half of our lives. That makes me feel kind of old). And what doesn't Annie understand? Well, actually, she understands quite a bit. I think it's the fact that we live in a world where so many things are understandable that shouldn't be that makes it hard for her to understand the world. If that makes sense. Also, she claims to be married to Yadier Molina, but I haven't confirmed that with either Yadi or Annie's boyfriend.

The McGrath Family

My uncle Dennis is nine years older than my cousin Brian, who is nine years older than me, and I am nine years older than my cousin Maggie. Maggie is the only one who's never lived in Minneapolis. So you know what that means? She better move there to keep up tradition. But in the meantime, you can check out the blog about Dennis' family, maintained mostly by his wife Laurie. It centers mostly on their two beautiful daughters, Mia and Mazlin, both of whom were adopted from Guatemala. Laurie's posts are often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking (but the good way, not the bad way), occasionally laced with anger (check out the recent post about Teleflora and the Today Show calling adopting mothers "Non-Mothers"), but always written from that cozy spot in Laurie's soul where she keeps her children. Ask her if she is an innie or an outie.

Post Secret

If you don't know what Post Secret is yet, you will be addicted soon.

Stuff White People Like

Um...let's see, how many items from this list have I mentioned on my blog? Well, just in this one post, public radio, the daily show, bicycling and Arrested Development. Let's see, um, we used to like Jettas but now we like the Toyota Prius (but we do still like Jettas). I think I've mentioned Free health care before. If I haven't mentioned Wes Anderson Films, I should have. Arts Degrees, Kathy and I both guilty (or rather, she is guilty and I will be guilty). Microbreweries, I love those. Writing workshops, had plenty and will have more. Coffee, I've talked about coffee. Oh, I talked about Organic Coffee once, and white people love organic food! I have Trader Joe's bags in my car, that's grouped with Whole Foods/Grocery Co-Ops as well...see? White people love being white.

The System is Down

Homestar Runner Dot Net. "It's Dot Com!" Seriously, you guys gotta check it out. Strong Bad E-mails and Teen Girl Squad are a must. And the absolute musts are Strong Bad E-Mail Dragon, Japanese Cartoon, Rock Opera, and...Tape Leg? Seriously.

Daryl Cagle

Okay, I know there are people out there who only get their news from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (another thing white people like), but I am not one of those people. I get my news from NPR...and also from Daryl Cagle's professional cartoonist index. See, when you look at over a hundred artists' editorial cartoons, you get to see positions from each side of every major story/issue in a very quick, concise way. It works for me.

That's about it for now. Look for the video in a day or so, just gotta let it load up through Google Video and go through the process. Have a wonderful rest of your week all!

Surfacing Update and A New Link!

For those who were wanting it, here's an update on the play. Our first casting session was very disappointing. We only had ten people show up, and of those ten, only four struck me as right for any of the roles in my play. One of the guys, and three of the girls, two of which would have been great in the role of Edna (the old lady), and one of which would have been great for Melissa...until she said she was not comfortable reading a bit of dialogue (the bit that made me want to cast her in the role of course...) because that part is, um...have you ever seen When Harry Met Sally, most specifically, the scene in the deli, where Rob Reiner's mother says "I'll have what she's having"? Yeah. It's kinda like that.

And then, our second session got cancelled due to bad weather. So we had to wait a week, and then we had to contend with a basketball game.

Since when do students at Webster University care about/go to basketball games? I mean...the type of people who would audition for surfacing? It's just weird. To me, anyway. Maybe not to you.

But, we got enough people to cast all six plays (only one person doubled up on roles, the guy I wanted from the first night). We didn't get the exact cast we wanted, but we got the Edna, Delivery Man and Melissa I wanted. We got our third choice for Ben, but that's because our first choice for Ben was everybody's first choice for something. So, should be good. Rehearsals start after spring break. The show is April 18, 19 and 20 at the Loretto Hilton theater, downstairs in the black box theatre (possibly set up as a theatre in the round, which could cause problems for some of the shows but we'll work around it).

Okay, so, there's your update. And now, let me point out some new stuff. First off, I removed a couple of links from my list, most notably Memory Machine's Urban Exploration blog and Alan's Sports blog, because neither of them had been updated in quite some time. I set up a new poll so you can all help me shape my spring break plans. And I added a new link: Whiskey Tastes Better When You Have Problems. Written by my old room mate Chris, it's got all your information on Gopher Football and the daily life of an unemployed Minnesotan you could desire. Go check him out. Tell him Elliot sent ya.

It's 60 here. Last week, it was ice storming. Go figure.