Summer begins

Summer begins with some eighty degree days and a weekend of things to do outdoors involving food stalls and bands and a big tub of cockroaches.

* Steven's Square is hosting the Red Hot Art festival. Come see some art. My friend Shanai works for the Bell and she's bringing a big tub of cockroaches, I think to gross out kids with. The last thing Steven's Square needs is more cockroaches.

* The Hold Steady is playing at Grand Ole Days. I got turned on to Grand Ole Days last year, when Brian and I went to see Guided By Voices. Grand Ole Days is described by my coworker Richard as a 'breeder festival' and it's true. Jean shorts and oakleys, strollers and bellies. Very, very white. But then, down at the end of Grand Ave. by the Dixies stage, the hipsters and punks and indie kids start to materialize from the forest of fanny packs, looking slightly lost. They wander about a little aimlessly before finding the stage and the beer overpriced.

It was said last night on Tom's porch that The Hold Steady represent a return to the ideals of classic rock or something like that. What more can be said than suburban Minneapolis represents something for all of us that spent a portion of our formative years in the 1980s. I am enjoying them a lot. For me Nicolett and 66th becomes Two Harbors and Kris Staples' cousin's house and Curt's Harbor Bowl and I'm sure the geographies are equally as specific for you. The Hold Steady is big big big and they're playing for free, along with Har Mar Superstar, who I wouldn't doubt has replaced Richard and Judy on daytime British television or something equally darling.

this woman wants to put an end to women's suffrage; the ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries according to a right wing think tank; tom cruise freaks out on oprah's couch, wrestles with her, pounds the floor, unconvincinly; tom cruise freaks out about scientology, thinks psychiatry is dangerous, convincingly crazy; lots and lots of indie boys kissing each other; trucker bombs: you see them glistening in the sun; fair use day is coming up!