Saw some great guitar playing last night. Adrian Legge and David Lindley were at the Cedar Cultural Center on the West Bank, that part of the U of M Campus that’s on the west side of the Mississippi. The West Bank is more than just a campus, it’s a very funky nieghborhood with a rich history and the center of the counter culture action in the sixties and seventies. Then and now, full of bars with great music as well as ethnic restaruants, live theater and the home of that oxymoronic store for outdoors enthusiast, Midwest Mountaineering. It’s always been a little on the seedy side, with bonafide whore house saloons in the sixties and plenty of drug action forever. Lately the Cedar Towers, the high rise subsidised housing rising out of the middle of it, has become home to a large part of our Somali population, which makes the mix all the more interesting.

The Cedar Cultural Center is an old movie theater that’s been gutted to make it into a huge, high ceilinged room that can be configured for various cultural events. Last night there was a small stage and a room full of folding chairs. It was general admission and we got there early enough to get seats in the third row center. A nice intimate venue for some very cool music.

Adrian Legge is an English fellow about my age who plays finger style electric guitar with an amazing array of electonic effects. On many of the pieces it sounded as if he was being accompanied by the organ at Winchester Cathedral. His father was a choir master and although I think he’s a former rocker, most of his music is based on the harmonies of church music. His playing was all instrumental, and between songs he kept up a nice patter about the history of his family and the inspiration for his music. And what a player.

David Lindley is one of the most unique musicians out there. How many guys do you know that do a John Lee Hooker style blues piece on the subject of “man boobs” on an electic oud. He also did a songs titled “He’d Love You More Than Eva Braun,” “The Jimmy Hoffa Memorial Building Blues,” and one about a junk bond king caught up in a bingo addiction on a Seminole reservation in Florida. Lindley, who you might know as the pedal steel player in Jackson Browne’s early band, does amazing vocal stylizations and is one of the greatest slide guitar players around. And he’s as funny as he is funny looking.

So even though I HATE to go out on Sunday nights and I overslept for work this morning….I had a great time!

I guess the money thing burned up all my luck for the week.

Wednesday: Locked my keys in the car way down in South Minneapolis. At night. Thankfully one of my fellow book group members volunteered to give me a lift home.

Thursday: Left my lights on in the parking lot at work. I had lunch plans with Mountain Man but when I went out to the car the battery was dead.

Friday: Met Lon and MM for lunch at El Loro, our favorite Mexican restaurant that’s not in St. Paul. Took my cel phone out of my pocket and put it on the table. Half way back to work I realized the phone was not in my jacket pocket. I made a U turn and went all the way back to the restaurant. I had already asked the receptionist if they had found a cel, gone back to the table to look for it and was headed to try to find our waiter when I realized it was in my shirt pocket.

My question for you is, should I be allowed out of the house without supervision?

And my answer to Mexispud is: Yes, I believe that the check was the result of the Cingular/ATT Wireless merger.

Woohoo! Today I got a check for $500 in the mail. Out of the blue. It has something to do with ATT Wireless, I picked up some options in the course of our companies revolving door ownership over the last few years and I once owned some wireless stock, but I thought I’d long ago cashed everything out during the cut your losses days. I suppose I’ll have to go back and figure out where it came from. Pennies from heaven!

I’d like to say I’m going to go out and buy something fun with it, like an i-Pod, but it’s probably going to go against that Visa balance that just seems to be slowly creeping up. We stuck our cards in a drawer this week and have vowed that we’re not spending any money for a week, just to make a dent in that life sucking balance. Lottery tickets, that’s the answer.

The kid was spending a rare Friday night at home last night so went to the local strip mall for the Chinese buffet (very good) and then rented a flick. We talked Q into watching The Human Stain which is a pretty good movie based on a very good book by Phillip Roth. The main premise, which I won’t reveal, is a little hard to buy because of casting. Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman and Ed Harris are terrific, but Gary Sinise is pretty wooden as Nathan Zuckermann. Beck and I renewed our argument as to whether Nicole is good looking. I’m on the YES side of that one. She conceded that she looked OK in dark hair, she does look very different, I get a young Grace Slick kind of vibe, but still raises my pulse rate.

I went to the grocery store after work last night to pick up ingredients for a chicken stew with polenta that I had at a friends house a couple of weeks ago. I don’t have a recipe but I think I can pull it off, after all I am a culinary genious.

As I was walking the aisles, it dawned on me that a little saffron would go nicely in the stew. Have you ever purchased saffron? It’s $265 per ounce. Luckily it goes a long way. That’s one expensive herb. I decided not to spend $15 on a miniscule amount.

So now for the polenta. Where would you look for polenta in the grocery store? First I looked where I got it last time, in the organic section, pre made in a plastic tube. None. I looked with the rice, beans, filafal etc. None. I asked a clerk. He called and inquired. They told me to look in the baking section under the nuts. I’m thinking that might have been a little inside joke. All that was there were marshmellows. I finally decided that it just must be made from corn meal and I’d make it myself instead of from a mix. I looked at the recipes on the corn meal box. No polenta recipes. Corn meal mush but not polenta. I knew I could find something on the net and of course I did.

This experience brought up some deep philosophical questions. Is there a difference between corn meal mush and polenta? And what about grits? And what the hell is our govenment going to do about the outrageous cost of saffron. No family should be deprived of the wonderful color and taste that saffron brings to a dish simply because they have to worry about their health care costs. Are there tariffs on saffron? As citizens we should demand to know exactly what’s going on in this crucial culinary market.

Edit: I found Saffron here for $30 an ounce.

Those of you who read this regularly, both of you, know that I’m a big fan of women’s basketball. I can assure you it’s not just that I have an attraction to tall, athletic women in short pants. It goes back to when my daughters were playing youth basketball and Heather Hanaan was starring at the local high school. After the games, Heather would come out and talk to the youngsters and sign autographs and exude sweetness. And then I saw her in a game holding the ball in one hand with her arm extended, daring her defender to grab for it. She went on to play at Colorado State and I followed her career there.

That’s when I discovered Becky Hammon, now the point guard for the New York Liberty. A cute little midwestern girl with a game that looks like it was bred in Brooklyn. Outside shooter who can drive to the hoop and make the no look pass to the open teammate. That brought me to Williams arena and the Lindsay Whalen show. I had season tickets last year and saw every home game. The best show for the money in town.

I have season tickets again this year. Lindsay’s gone but Janelle McCarville is on the short list for national player of the year. Last night was their first exhibition game, Janelle was on the bench in street clothes having broken her hand in practice (what is it with broken hands). Their opponents were the Wisconsin Vikings (gotta love that name) an AAU team made up of former college players. Everyone expected the usual pre-season blow out. What I didn’t know is that AAU must not stand for Amatuer Athletic Union anymore. They had Anna LaForge, who is the star of the Phoenix WNBA team.

April Calhoun was Ms Basketball in Minnesota three years ago. She’s an Armstrong Falcon, that is from the school my girls went to. I followed her career for the five years she played on the varsity. She was also a soccer and track standout and even though she hadn’t played softball much before high school, she was the center fielder and leading hitter on the State Championship team. She’s got red hair. No one plays harder than this girl, she dives to the floor for loose balls and is a tenacious defender. It was a big disappointment when she went to Iowa. Two seasons ago she started every game at point for the Hawkeyes. But she was homesick and the Minnesota program had gone from doormat to the final four. She transferred in, skipped a year and started at shooting guard last night. She played both there and at the point, led the team in scoring, got a bunch of assitsts and played great defense. At one point she out ran a girl for a loose ball, dove to the floor to get it under control and was able continue to dribble as she slid across the floor.

The Vikings hung around and actually lead with ten minutes left. But the Gophers just had too many fresh legs for them and they eventually ran out of gas. But the real story of the night was Anna LaForge. She scored 47 points. The girl has a picture book fade away jumper that she can take off the dribble and can hit from behind the arch. Everyone in the Barn was thinking, “She can’t possibly hit that shot.” String music! Right throught the bottom of the net. Time after time. Shannon Bolden is the Gopher’s defensive stopper and I’ve rarely seen anyone that she couldn’t stay in front of. Including some of the best players in the country last year. Katie left her in the dust regularly. The Viking’s (Wisconsin Vikings I love that)coach pulled her with about a minute left in the game and the home fans gave her an ovation. She acknowledged the crowd sat down on the bench and someone handed her a young toddler. “Yes sweety, Mommy torched ’em tonight.”

I’m feeling better now. I just had a long conversation with my favorite Republican, a very intelligent and politically aware person. He thinks that there’s going to be a lot of shit happening in the next four years (would happen no matter what) and the Republicans were going to have to wear all of it. He thinks people will be so pissed off that the country will swing back to the Democrats next time around. Of course he’s also the one that predicted Kerry would win big.

Fist time through writing this, I typed “potically” instead of “politically.”

VOTE

This morning I was pleased to see that someone had left the Pioneer Press sports page in the stall so I had something to read during my morning constitutional. I glanced over the twelve pages of bemoaning the vikings ass whipping and other football news and then found an article about Latrell Sprewell’s contract problems with the Wolves. Without going into the details of the disagreement (I can never keep this contact negotiation crap straight) I’ll just tell you that he’s making 14.6 million dollars this year and is looking for a long term contract. He’s a great player, but he’s thirty-four years old and injury prone. But never mind that, what really got to me was that he made some statement to the effect that he “had a family to feed.” Geez, Spree….out of touch with reality are we?

Did you see that they’ve published Patrick O’Brian’s unfinished twenty first Aubrey/Maturin novel? O’Brian died last year and I just finished the series a month or so ago, and now they’ve tossed this one into the mix. I thought I was done. Apparently it has his hand written manuscript and his typed draft and an edited version. I’m not sure that I want to read it, because the last volume really seemed to wrap things up with Jack finally becoming an Admiral of the Line, his goal throughout his career. But on the other hand it might provide some great insight into the mind of one of the greatest historical writers ever.

Male homecoming queen at St. Cloud State being threatened

Associated Press
October 29, 2004

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Officials at St. Cloud State University are expressing support and concern for the male student who was named homecoming queen last week.

President Roy Saigo says Fue Khang has received threatening messages. In a letter to the university’s faculty and staff, Saigo asks them to offset any prejudice and intimidation the homecoming royalty may have faced.

Student organizations have been invited to a series of campus dialogues to discuss the media attention the coronation has drawn and to gauge how students feel about it.

The mother of one of the homecoming queen candidates has spoken out against a man being named queen and has organized a petition drive against it.