Added the two additional shows to the top post schedule. Al's site says he's playing the Mohegan Sun Arena, but I think that's like a big actual "arena" with 10,000+ seats, so I'm guessing he playing in a different, smaller venue.

That's part of a casino complex. I'd assume they have smaller theaters as part of the same facility/complex.

And having quickly googled, I'm guessing it's the Wolf Den or something similar: https://mohegansun.com/poi/venues/wolf-den.html

Rock and Roll covers CD, finally?

I really, really hope not. If he doesn't have his own originals, I actually would like to see an approach along the lines of what the Monkees' 2016 album was, with a bunch of songs written by admirers. I know NPP was along those lines in part, but I don't necessarily mean with guest spots--just songs. There are plenty of musicians who I'm sure would love to get tunes done by the master. If he arranged new tunes and recorded them with that band, I think it would be fantastic.

Really I just can't get excited by an album of oldies, even done by BW. I'd get it, of course, and I'm sure there would be nice moments. But I'm only really excited by new material: his, his with cowriters, or just other writers'. As long as he is involved in the arrangement and production decisions and has that band--and is into it--I think it would be fabulous.

It’s surprising to hear Al’s playing there because it’s primarily a jazz club, leaning a bit toward the fusion end of the music. It has a capacity of 180 and like most jazz venues on the East Coast is a sit-down place so tickets for front and center would mean tables in that area.

That's the type of venue where he played in Minneapolis, too: the Dakota is primarily a jazz club. A couple hundred people tops, tables, etc. I think maybe that's the sort of venue he (or whoever does the booking) thinks is most appropriate. He probably can't sell out the theaters like he plays with Brian's band, and he and his audience don't really fit in the smaller (dirtier, standing-room only) kinds of bars/clubs that younger rock bands play.

Yes, Minnesota can get really hot in the summers: 90s are normal, 100s aren't so rare, and it's humid besides. I hate that. I'm sure we're at or near the top for biggest difference of temps in the country (sometimes literally within a day or two). As for the niceness, I don't know about that. "Minnesota nice" is a cliche, but I think a lot of it is more passive-aggressiveness than anything. And just try getting anything done at a 4-way-stop intersection, with everyone trying to out-nice everyone else, waving one another forward...maddening!

And really, if you ever moved here, Minneapolis is the superior town ... (said the Minneapolitan).

What did I do today? So far, not much. Working from home, so I made a bigger breakfast than usual.

I think it probably depends on the specific question as to which is the coldest place in the USA: coldest average temperature, coldest average winters, coldest average coldest day, etc. I'd think North Dakota or northwestern Minnesota would be the worst, being so far from any moderation caused by big bodies of water. But I'd guess at our coldest, we're not so far off Siberia's coldest. Just not as often or for as long.

Wow, is that especially early for you? We had snow in the northern parts of the state--I heard eight inches in one spot!--but nothing here, thankfully. (There had been forecasts that we might get some.) I enjoy the cool weather that precedes the winter most of all. Though it was about 35 F / 1.6 C this afternoon ... hardly warm. But not yet bitter cold.

I should add, I know what you mean about snow that melts, though. That slush and mud are even worse than just snow.

It's true: my writing could bring the Wolves up to the level of the SLAM! (That's how they wrote it: SLAM! It was agony, considering I was a college student at the time being pummeled with Strunk & White and the like, and thus wholly opposed to overuse of capitalization and exclamation points.)

Now I'm trying to think of how many SLAM! players were better than various Wolves players over the years...

Let's please not go that direction of ongoing other-board or ex-member bashing. Please?

I'm at the point of being happy with almost anything.

Today the Wolves canceled practice (and thus media) and yet somehow still seem not to have come out of it with Thibs fired or Butler traded. In fact, there is just more soap opera style news that they did, or didn't, depending on who you ask, hold a players-only in which Butler either ripped into everyone or said his only issue was with management and ownership (unless it didn't happen at all).

Such a joke, the whole thing. For Taylor to have let Thibs keep his job at this point is just amazing. I want that guy to hire me for something. Anything. Apparently once I'm in, I can do anything I want and I'm safe from discipline.

I'm slowly working my way through David Friedrich Strauss's "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined," an early-to-mid 19th century piece of Biblical criticism in the (ongoing) quest for the historical Jesus. From what I've read about it by others, it's one of the earlier, truly critical attempts at such a task. While I'm very interested in the topic, it's really slow going, absolutely agonizing to be honest. The language (translated from the original German) is still very dated, and the occasional references to the Greek originals do me no favors. (I'm thinking of trying to learn New Testament-era Greek, actually, as I keep coming across this issue.) I've already renewed it once and still have something like 650 pages (out of about 800) to go. But on the positive side, I don't anticipate people putting in requests for it, so I may get a couple more renewals.

But at least I can laugh every time they write "connexion" instead of "connection." I don't know why, but it tickles me.

For fun I've been reading Tolstoy's Hadji Murat, too, but I feel bad when I switch over to it considering all the work ahead of me on the Strauss.

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter to Mike's right...and is that Carlos Santana to Trump's left?

...or Father Guido Sarducci?

Kid Rock

It should never have happened. For him to come in and be blatantly insubordinate to management and coaches and confront (star) players in an obvious ego trip move is just idiotic. He should be gone. And if not gone, suspended from all team activities. Why metaphorically pour poison in the team's Gatorade (especially once you've already identified and kept separate the poison)? Even though it's kind of cool in a way that he came in and dominated on a team of end-of-benchers, it's still a bullshit piece of grandstanding.

At this point I'd be happy to get anything other than long-term bad contracts.

But first and foremost I think Thibs should be gone. He should have been fired the first time there was evidence he dragged his feet on the trade request (which is probably pre-draft).

Today I thought about whether I want to hang around here. I deleted my PSF account a couple days ago because I’m bored. Not angry with anyone or anything, not freaked out about anything, not thinking I’m too good for it, nothing like that. No hard feelings. No drama. Just bored. I think maybe halving my experience by cutting to one board could help. Thought about zero, but stuck with this one (more or less on a coin toss) for the time being.

Very exciting. I can hardly wait to get home to dig in. Thank you!

My maternal grandpa kept a diary throughout his college and seminary years during the Great Depression. It included his early years working, meeting my grandma: you’d think it would be amazing. Unfortunately most entries (including the one where he met my grandma!) are only a few words, often about how long something took (traveling from A to B) or how much something cost.

I wonder now - is there any BBs song with imperative title?  "Do It Again", what else?

Celebrate the News
Break Away could be taken as imperative but isn’t in the lyrics.
Make It Good
Cuddle Up
Never Learn Not to Love
Wake the World

Think About The Days

Be Here in the Morning
Talk to Me (if we allow covers)
Johnny B Goode (if we allow covers + wordplay)

I wonder now - is there any BBs song with imperative title?  "Do It Again", what else?

Celebrate the News
Break Away could be taken as imperative but isn’t in the lyrics.
Make It Good
Cuddle Up
Never Learn Not to Love
Wake the World

Accents: Minnesota is relatively neutral, but especially in rural areas or among older people there is something, a kind of exaggeration and perversion of certain vowels. It’s hard to explain but I’ll try to spell out.

Cute instead of kyoot might be kyoo-ut.

A in many words is almost abrasive, more like the a in cat than the ah it is sometimes properly meant to be. Also sometimes made into two syllables like above with “cute.”

There is also something about the letter o that is hard to explain. I’d say it is more closed-mouth, like not fully pronounced, stilted, which makes it less of oh and more like a combined, fast oooh and uh. (Sorry I can’t explain that.)

I believe it comes from lingering Scandinavian and German accents that evolved.

The movie Fargo is meant to portray it but as NOla BB Fan said of Louisiana accents, Minnesotans don’t think it sounds accurate. (It is a good caricature of it though.)

Is it light in summer in MN? F.ex. in some locations in Russia, including St. Petersburg, there's white nights.
In Welcome thread, thorgil, NOLA BB Fan et al said that when driving car, various small animals can jump to road & NBBF said she tries not to step them with car tyres. Is there such animals to be seen in the driveway in MN? Do you too save them lives when they run/ jump?

We’re not far enough north for the near-full light in summer or dark in winter, though we do have pretty wide swings. I’d guess in summer our longest days are from maybe 5 am to 930 pm, while in winter they are as short as about 730 or 8 am to 4 or 430 pm.

Animals in the roads: it depends where you are. In the city you’re usually not going to see much besides squirrels, rabbits, cats, and dogs—though we occasionally see raccoons around, or even larger, obviously confused wildlife. Once you’re into the country, especially in the north woods but also fields, you can see deer, bears, wild turkeys, moose. Or ducks etc. I try to avoid hitting them but don’t go out of my way to help them either: I generally leave wildlife alone.

Re winter: I have very mixed feelings, but overall I don’t mind it. I’m usually ready for cooler temperatures by the time autumn comes around. Once “cooler” becomes “cold,” it’s also not so bad. I love staying indoors and reading, drinking hot coffee or tea (or a hot alcoholic drink), and just generally feeling cozy. This is especially fun with the dogs. And usually I find cold air invigorating.
 
But on the negative side, while I don’t mind shoveling if it’s just a couple of inches, once it gets up to (or above) 6 inches at a time, that gets pretty tedious, especially in the driveway. I have been thinking of buying a snowblower this year, actually. Also as winter wears on and snow piles up, driving becomes more unsafe and unpleasant: piles of snow move out from the boulevards into the streets, making them narrower. It’s also tedious to get bundled up to go anywhere, not to mention messy when you’re covered in snow or (on warmer days) slush. It is also a shame to be unable to sit outside in my yard, which I enjoy doing very much. The dark also gets to be hard to deal with: in winter I rarely see the sun during the week, as it is dark when I leave in the morning for work and dark before I leave work.
 
I try to focus on the parts I like and just deal with the parts I don’t. Usually that works OK until February or March, when winter begins to feel like a personal insult. But really I think that living where I live, if I REALLY hated winter, I would have to move. It’s insane for people to choose to live here and then complain about winter, since obviously it comes with the territory.

I’m not going through your post point for point, but I think actually (and maybe surprisingly?) I agree more than not. I also think your language comes across as very blunt and harsh in English, which could easily be that it’s a second language. Or maybe that’s just how you talk.

Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat.

Minneapolis and St Paul are known as the Twin Cities because where usually a metropolitan area has one large core city surrounded by suburbs, they grew to be two large, (nearly) coequal cities (surrounded by suburbs).

Originally the term actually referred to two settlements in the early 1800s on each side of the Mississippi River. But both of those actually ended up part of Minneapolis. However St Paul continued to grow and was made capitol city of Minnesota, while Minneapolis grew even more and was the commercial and cultural center, mostly on the other side of the Mississippi River from St Paul. So each became a large, important city in its own right, and basically they grew into one another. But where Budapest was two cities that became one, these remained independent of each other even though they are adjacent. Thus, the “twin cities.”

(They are definitely NOT twins though. They’re quite different.)

I'd like to add some information about the history of anti-black racism and the civil rights movement in the northern part of the country, because I think it is not really told as part of the "story," even inside the US. I'm personally too young to have experienced this, but my dad grew up in Minneapolis through that era, born in the mid-40s, and I've read the information that has come out since. I think RRA1 or others might find this interesting to help complete the picture.

Usually the story is told more or less as South = Bad, North = Good. And obviously the South had a more explicit kind of anti-black racism in slavery and then formalized segregation. But in the North, there was a different kind of discrimination. For one, there was a far smaller black population, so with a more homogeneous (white) population, it was easier to say the right things and "preach." In the 1900s, as there was a mass exodus of black people out of the South into the industrialized Midwest and North where they could find jobs, there were problems.

First, cities often used "redlining" in real estate to segregate races. It wasn't really publicized, but it was actually formal. Certain cities and neighborhoods were zoned to exclude different races: blacks were among those to whom houses simply were not sold. This automatically kept races in their own enclaves, and predictably, poverty bred poverty while resources were used on the white areas (which were already the better areas, with the black-dominated areas often in or near industrial zones). The official city documents are quite clear on the racist intent.

Second, the middle of the century was when cities experienced "white flight," where middle class white people left the core cities and moved to the suburbs. This brought their tax revenues with them, leaving core cities crumbling and increasing in crime while suburbs got the boost of those tax dollars.

When my dad went to a public high school in the city, there was something like two black people in his class of almost a thousand. That same school now is just under 80% minority (including 35% Hispanic, 33% black, 6% Native American). Even now, the remnants of those situations I described above remain. Certain neighborhoods have been mostly impoverished for half a century or more, and those are the neighborhoods that were "redlined" for minorities.

These sorts of issues are part of why during the Civil Rights era of the 60s, there were race riots in places like Detroit, Chicago, the cities of Ohio and Pennsylvania, etc. The supposedly enlightened North.

My point being, it was easier then for the Northern white people to fault the South, because they mostly did so from a distance: it is easy to fault people far away for their handling of situations that are outside your own experience. When confronted with people of other races, they basically ghettoized them and then fled altogether. So they weren't exactly the good guys they are sometimes painted to be.

Who would you hire to replace him?

KAT’s dad.

Kidding.

Kind of.