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Wells Fargo Online Banking Ads

2009-12-07T21:58:00.006-06:00

Wells Fargo Online Banking, art directed by Dan Vaneps.

Weber Grill Ads

2009-12-07T21:54:00.004-06:00

A campaign for Weber Grills art directed by Dan Vaneps.

Timbuk2 Ads

2009-12-07T21:48:00.007-06:00

Here are ads we did for Timbuk2 messenger bags. Art Directed by Gabe Goldstein.

Soap Factory Haunted Basement Ads

2009-12-07T21:12:00.008-06:00

Here's a campaign I'm turning in this trimester for the Haunted Basement. More to come...

More Ways to Profit From Dogs

2009-12-04T08:06:00.005-06:00

I already posted about an idea to rent puppies so guys can pick up girls, now Chapman University is taking a more therapeutic approach and offering puppies to students to relieve stress. This would have been totally awesome to have at Eau Claire. In fact, why not have dog vestibules all over? Having a shitty day? Stop by the Dog Cube in the US Bank skyway and frolick with some puppies! Plus, it would double as a dog daycare for people who don't want to drive home on their lunch break and let their dogs out to pee and poop.

New Motion City Soundtrack Goodness

2009-11-30T14:24:00.002-06:00

Hey all, swing on over to Spin and listen to another track from Motion City Soundtrack's new album out January 19th. They're also kicking off their tour here in Mpls at First Ave. that Saturday, the 23rd. I'm not saying that you totally suck if you don't go but I'm just sayin'... I mean, I'll be there and I don't suck, so I guess I don't really know where the sucky people will be that night.

Your Words Destroyed My Planet - awesome name for a song, awesome song. Much better than their other sneak peek song, Disappear, which is out on iTunes now and is not too shabby in its own right.

And Out Comes the Nerd

2009-10-19T11:18:00.004-05:00

Yes, I know. Months since the last post. Again. I had to throw this up, though. One of the ways I find new music is through Hype Machine, a pretty decent music blog search engine. So I go on today, planning on finding the new Netherfriends song and the latest post just happened to be a cover of a Weird Al jam.

Turns out there's not just one. This guy over at Cover Me compiled like 15 Weird Al covers for my nerdy listening pleasure. Does it blow anyone else's mind that people are covering Weird Al!? I feel like it gives I love it. If anything, this is a great way to relive the days of sitting in my room playing with M.U.S.C.L.E.S. and rocking 'Dare To Be Stupid' on my boombox.

Two-Toed Nerdery

2009-07-11T14:18:00.006-05:00

I just about shit my pants when I was beer shopping in Rhode Island last week and came across this lovely concoction from Shipyard. It totally stroked two of my nerd sweet spots - beer and the Civil War. I'm probably one of three people in the country to own Gettysburg on DVD (starring Jeff Daniels) and if you put me on the spot and asked me who my favorite Civil War personality was I'd probably say Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

See? Nerdy.

I know that Shipyard is available around town here in the fall because I've seen their Pumpkinhead Ale on shelves. Now I'll have to ask around for this but can't see myself buying a lot of it because it wasn't that great. Maybe I'll need a second tasting...

My Dream Concert Crumbling

2009-05-26T12:35:00.004-05:00

All tour details for Blink 182's reunion tour have been released on Mark Hoppus' blog and this is turning into a sick practical joke.

As expected, Weezer and Fall Out Boy are splitting the tour's opening duties with Weezer taking over on a swing from the east coast across down through Ohio and Missouri and over to Cali. They're joined on this leg by Taking Back Sunday and at some point Asher Roth's broke ass will join up. Fall Out Boy will be with Blink most of the rest of the dates, except the opening date of the tour in Vegas, when they'll be joined by Motion City Soundtrack. They are, of course, my favorite band and Mark Hoppus produced their 2nd album Commit This To Memory. Other opening acts include All-American Rejects, something called Chester French and Panic At the Disco.

So, to recap, barf. All of the moving pieces of this tour have made it impossible to see these guys without sitting through a band that I hate. Of course the best date is the Vegas date and I sure as hell can't afford to go to that. If I go to the show at the Xcel I'll have to focus so intently on not cutting myself during Panic's set that it'll talk all of the fun out of ripping on the little punk kids. My best bet is to take a road trip to KC or St. Louis and catch a favorable combination of Blink, Weezer, Taking Back Sunday and that thing called Chester French.

Boo.

SHUT. THE. F. UP.

2009-05-13T21:29:00.002-05:00

Per MFR, Blink 182 will be joined on their reunion tour by Fall Out Boy and Weezer! This is the mutant fanboy-geek amalgam concert I've been praying for since 2003 when Take This To Your Grave came out. My only beef is that Weezer shouldn't be opening for anyone. Co-headlining with the Foo Fighters was ok since they're alt rock pioneers but opening for Blink 182? Not ever. No way. Get real.

In the Event of The Zombie Apocalypse...

2009-05-13T14:07:00.002-05:00

Eat dog food. Apparently most people can't tell the difference anyway. Honestly, some of the stuff we give Cheese and Hiro looks like it would be pretty good if I cooked it up.

What kills me about this test is not that only 1 in 6 people recognized that they were eating dog food but that they had to have some sort of angry reaction to that. "Um, this is dog food, assholes." Plus, for the other 5 people, did the scientists tell them after it was over?

Subject: "All of that shit was terrible!"

Scientist 1: "Well, it should be. It's fucking dog food."

Scientist 2: "Can you believe they ate that stuff?! Chumps!"

So I Probably Don't Need This Product...

2009-05-06T10:05:00.003-05:00

But what a feeling, right?

So This Is Kind of Prejudiced + a Fun Rant

2009-05-03T03:54:00.006-05:00

The Star Trib, my paper of choice, has an interesting article up on their site today. I was drawn to it's headline - "Flu can't stop Cinco de Mayo."

That's the go get 'em attitude that writers like in us Mexicans. Against all odds we're getting together to celebrate a major cultural holiday! The pluck! The nerve! The tenacity in the face of certain death! The massive amounts of hand sanitizer! Good thing the 4th of July is still on, right?

If this was Kholrabi Day or the Raspberry Fesival or something this wouldn't even be a story but Oh My God the Mexicans are gathering en masse and who knows how mayn of them are newly arrived illegals so this is apparently amazing that Cinco wasn't cancelled? Right.

Never mind that barely nine people may have been infected in MN and seven of those didn't need any sort of hospitalization. Or that Mexico has experienced a whopping 3% fatlity rate from it and here in the old USA it's .5%. Or that this "pandemic" hasn't affected anyone you know. Or that if you ask your grandparents they could probably tell you about a real epidemic that affected their friends like polio. For God's sake, there was hand sanitizer all over the Cystic Fibrosis walk this morning! I didn't use any just to freak people out, but now I'm barfing and coughing up pig parts. Psyche.

This might be a terrible thing to say and if I die from a horrible strain of moose flu or some dumb bullshit I guess that's karma, but bring on the REAL epidemic. Thin the herd. Traffic sucks and I'm sick of ice shelves the size of Rhode Island falling into the ocean.

Hipster Fail Times Infinity!

2009-04-25T00:34:00.002-05:00

OMG, thanks to Nicole for this amazing site. Look At This Fucking Hipster just went to number one on my Google Reader.

BloggieBlog Post

2009-02-07T03:58:00.003-06:00

As my coworker Cody points out, it is indeed a bloggieblog world out there. It's full of tons of ramblings that are usually completely worthless to anyone's point of view but our own. But I love this world. And you should know that Cody is one of three or four hipsters that I like, mostly because she's agreed to dress up like a Tanooki Suit Mario.

You have dysentery.

2009-01-26T11:14:00.003-06:00

If you loved playing the old Apple IIgs in school with games like Number Munchers and Oregon Trail you have to check this site out.

If you didn't love those games, you suck.

The Week In TV...

2009-01-23T10:09:00.007-06:00

I watched a lot of TV this week. Between the final episodes of Battlestar, the season premiers of Big Love, Flight of the Conchords and Lost, the Innauguation and the shows I already watch like Top Chef I have had little time to spare doing important stuff like working or going to class. Let's recap, shall we?

In BSG, Earth turns out to be a nuclear wasteland and everyone is totally bummed. Especially D. Answers better come quickly because they're still revealing new questions. Like what's Starbuck's deal - is she dead or another ancient Cylon or some third option I don't even know about but is really cool? Is that really the final Cylon? I hate that character. When's Gaeta going to be cool again? I used to like him so much but now he's a sweaty one-legged bitch.

Big Love gave us some glimpses at what's going on with Roman and seeing Albie get his ass beat is always a pleasure. All I could think about the whole episode was that Bill Paxton looks really old this year.

Flight of the Conchords started out strong with a nice Greg Proops cameo and the fall of the Crazy Dogs. Brit's hand-woven pants were classic.

Leah needs to get her ass off Top Chef. Radhika blew it so I wasn't sorry to see her go but we really need to keep weeding out these crappy chefs from this season faster. My ever-changing final four prediction is Fabio, Stephan, Jeff and Jamie. Carla can only do desserts, Leah is a hack and Hosea is probably interchangable with Jeff but I think Jeff is better in quickfires and it'll give him an advantage.

And oh boy, Lost... I love that they're jumping through time. I think, though, that I am going to be totally bored with the goings on in L.A. thanks to how intrigued I am with the island antics. This time jumping is a great way to show us the origins of the Dharma Initiative, give us some insight into everyone first known as "The Hostiles" and then "The Others," and even might let us catch a glimpse of an early smoke monster.

Ever since Alex was killed I'm liking Ben more and more, and I really like how Locke's journey could position him to be the next Ben. I feel like Richard is a more open Jacob-like island manifestation that is charged with choosing protectors for the island. I think it's interesting that he gave Locke a compass, one of the items Locke chose as his own when Richard visited him as a child.

Tonight is the next Battlestar episode, which I will be DVRing. More updates next week...

So Anxious...

2009-01-21T13:42:00.004-06:00

Lost season 5 premiers to night and there are still so many questions to answer! It looks like this is the season where everyone tries to get back to the island to save everyone. Is Locke really dead? Does Jin find his way back to our time? How much ass can Sayid kick?! Only time will tell! I'll be rewatching the last half of the last season to formulate some pre-premiere theories this afternoon.

One More Music Site

2009-01-17T01:29:00.003-06:00

If you haven't checked out Daytrotter, you must. The basics is that this guy gets some serious indie artists to do live studio shows that he can post for free on the interblogs. That's cool in itself, but his archives include Merz, Okkervil River, Ben Kweller, Bishop Allen, Minus the Bear, Tokyo Police Club and Yeasayer. The sheer multitude of kickass music on his site is sick.

Daytrotter - http://www.daytrotter.com

Hipster Fail

2008-12-08T18:24:00.005-06:00

I made a big decision today. I reject hipsters. My budding hatred for them seems to be fueled more and more every day and I feel like sooner or later I'm going to snap.

My new job is at a restaurant in NE Minneapolis. It is, unfortunately, very hipster to the core. Not so much the clientèle, although the neighborhood it's in makes an encounter with at least five hipsters a night inevitable, but the whole organization from the top down is devastatingly hipster. From the ownership to the management to the rank and file employee, I'm surrounded by hipsters. This has been what's pushed me over the edge in recent days.

Hipsters: I get it. You bike everywhere. Great job. I recognize both the wellness and environmental benefits to riding that bike of yours everywhere. One of my oldest friends uses a bike as his primary transportation. I don't mind sharing the road with bicycles. I even have ridden to work occasionally myself in the past. But seriously. It's fucking winter now. Even if it is worth it to you to put on seventeen layers of clothes, a ridiculous mask/helmet combo and bike in the middle of a blizzard, just shut the fuck up about it. I don't care that you just rode an hour in the snow, or how "fun" it was to do it; as soon as you started the story about how you have two layers of long underwear on I tuned you out and wrote you off as an idiot with no regard for personal comfort. I can't trust people like that. Plus, I don't prattle on about how I drove to work and how warm it was in my car and how I got a sweet parking spot and how great it was, do I? No. Because that would be a fucking lame conversation to have.

And maybe it is that lack of trust that is the core of my new hipster hatred. The missing ingredient in the humanity of a hipster, the complete conscious rejection of any sort of mainstream sensibility, alienates me no matter how much else we have in common. I can't accept a worldview that places the hipster at the center and camoflages that selfishness by hiding behind unselfish words like "organic" and "fair-trade."

Here is a story that I think perfectly illustrates that selfishness. A group of seven or eight dirty young people came in to my bar around midnight. Looking like they just rolled out of bed at Catholic Charities, they all proceeded to ask for the cheapest variety of whatever their favorite drinks were and complained even then. Don't come in to a fine dining restaurant if you're going to complain about price. Minutes later, two of the hipsters at the bar started yelling at each other and one grabbed her bottle of beer and smashed it on the bar (after three or four whacks). They all ran out laughing. At most, this was annoying and made a good story the next day. When I told the story the next day to the largely hipster staff I found out that these people did that at no less than three bars that night and that they are honest to God hobos. Not real homeless hobos, just kids who train-jump. One is even a grad student at the U, which is like the total king hipster - going to school and still being able to live a life on the fucking rails or whatever. And fuck me for thinking that's totally bizarre. I found this out from a girl who exclaimed "Oh, I know those people, they're my friends. That was kind of an art piece."

Fuck you hipster. Smashing a bottle at my bar, spraying people with glass and then calling it art is retarded and disfunctional and illustrates not only the self-centered view these people have about themselves and their scene but the superiority complex they hold about it. The fact that this whole episode was played off as totally acceptable blows my mind, but not as much as the ensuing comments and general attitude that I was the wierd one for being upset about the whole thing.

I've decided to live my relatively normal, non-train-jumping life equally as loud and unapologetic as these people. Anytime I'm around these people I'm going to talk about shit like playing video games and going to a sports bar and all the shit I bought at Cub Foods instead of the co-op. I'll talk about my life growing up in the suburbs like it's the only way to live and tell every fraternity story I can think of just to piss these people off. Fuck them all.

Viva la Democracy!

2008-12-04T22:48:00.003-06:00

I voted in The Current's top 89 albums of 2008! The list was a little bit limited to "indie radio" releases but I'm too intellectually lazy right now to write anything else in. Here's my votes - disagree if you dare! Or just go log on and vote your own damn selves.

Michael Franti & Spearhead \| All Rebel Rockers
British Sea Power \| Do You Like Rock Music?
Doomtree \| Doomtree
Blitzen Trapper \| Furr
Cloud Cult \| Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
Eagles of Death Metal \| Heart On
Murs \| Murs For President
MGMT \| Oracular Spectacular
Delta Spirit \| Ode To Sunshine
Gnarls Barkley \| The Odd Couple
Kings Of Leon \| Only By The Night
Black Kids \| Partie Traumatic
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin \| Pershing
Mates Of State \| Re-Arrange Us
The Roots \| Rising Down
Cecil Otter \| Rebel Yellow
The Hold Steady \| Stay Positive
Vampire Weekend \| Vampire Weekend
The Ting Tings \| We Started Nothing
Ben Folds \| Way To Normal

Beautiful

2008-11-04T23:22:00.002-06:00

There are many people with more eloquent takes on tonight that frame this election in some very poignant and trancendental parameters. I'll only make two points.

First, on an international level, I think this has to be viewed as a breath of fresh air by all countries around the world. Not only are they happy on a policy level, which is a given, but I think that on a human level they are feeling the same assurance that we felt while watching the rallies in Lebanon, and the Ukraine, among others. The movement in Grant Park to celebrate the election of Barack Obama feels as important to the development and direction of our democracy as the rallies that have created democracies around the world. I can only hope that the planet looks at our decision with the same amount of hope that I have looked on the other great democratic revolutions of our time and works with us to make the earth a better planet for our collaboration.

Second, with Joe Biden as the VP, his senate seat is vacated. The governor of Delaware will now have to appoint a senator. My question is, what if he picks Beau Biden, the Delaware Attorney General and a Captain in the JAG corps serving in Iraq? Does he come back from Iraq or is he disqualified from appointment by his active military status? Something to look in to...

New For Your Eyes and Ears. Your Tongue Will Have to be Patient.

2008-10-19T20:31:00.005-05:00

On the right side I've added a link to another blog out there called Minneapolisfuckingrocks (MFR). It's a quality site that keeps tabs on the local scene while putting in two cents on what's going on nationally. Check it out!

Also, Friday found me at the Triple Rock for the first live performance from Man is Doomed, the side project of Glorious Monster's Brian and Danny. It was a great show - funky and funny, drawing on all of the great pop, disco and rock influences without being pretentious or overdone. I would recommend that everyone check out their MySpace page and if you're in the area come to their next show on November 8th.

Finally, I've been enjoying The Current's Song of the Day podcast for a long time. Even though only about 20-25% of the songs fit my tastes it is totally worth it every week or so when I weed through the pile-up that I've neglected and find one or two really great bands. The Song of the Day has introduced me to such great bands as Blitzen Trapper, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mates of State and The Saturday Knights. It's especially helpful if you're out of town and want to keep up with what's happening around here as so many SOD's are from featured local artists like Jenny Dalton, Mason Jennings and the Doomtree crew.

Persistence...

2008-10-12T02:17:00.003-05:00

When I went to vote in the Primary, the lines were HUGE. Jamie and I stood in line for an hour with our dog in the cold, waiting to vote for Barack Obama.

In the Primary.

There are stories across the country of longer lines and in better weather, and this is why I think Obama will win. There will be an insane amount of people who have never voted before that will come out and vote in November. Just like the primary, people in your neighborhood that you would never have expected to be there and maybe have never even seen will be at your polling place. In the meantime, listen to my sister Maria's Governor Ed Rendell tell his people that you need to get out there and get your lazy ass neighbors to the voting booths and make this country a better place.

"It's on each and every one of you to bring your friends, your relatives, your co-workers, people on the block, everybody has to vote," Rendell said. "I don't care how long the lines are. Nobody leaves."

No matter where you live, bring that philosophy to your neighborhood and get people out to vote. Drag them. Voter registration is through the roof this year but that won't matter if people stay at home.

On a side note, that article makes Philly sound like some fucking 3rd world country when it comes to "street money."

East Coast, boyeeee!

Worse...

2008-10-12T00:08:00.006-05:00

Holy crap, I feel like I live in Georgia. Or at least Missouri. There have been a few posts regarding the rally in my last post but the Star Tribune has at least an on paper account of her state of mind and what I'm sure is at least a secondary education...

Turns out as I click the links that TPM made the same link I did. On Halloween this woman's house is going to look like an egg farm fell on it and then God decided that this was the ass he needed to wipe. Too bad I'm too lazy to drive to Lakeville...