For the brave among us: The Exonerated, an anti-death penalty plays, opens this evening at Mixed Blood and Mark Mothersbaugh: Postcard Diaries (i.e., art from the frontman of Devo–yes, we’ve covered this endeavor of his before) opens at Creative Electric Studios.
Month: March 2007
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McClatchy Chlamydia Strikes Strib!
With only five days to go before the McClatchy newspaper corporation flips the keys to its’ once flagship property, the Star Tribune, to the Avista immediate-return-on-investment corporation, a terrible virus has infected the newspaper’s connections to the internet. Something wormed into the Strib system Wednesday cutting off access to the net, and by Thursday it still hadn’t been completely knocked back. “Its still running really slow, kind of like being connected to AOL,” said one Stribber.
The thought of some nasty cyber toxin prowling the tubes of the Stribs’ internets goosed the already high levels of profane gallows humor affecting the building. (The imagery of The Strib infected with an STD, as a result of a quick, tawdry union of McClatchy and Avista was amusing.) As noted here several times earlier, since no one has a clue what Avista is really all about, every professional skeptic in the place presumes the worst. And with good reason. There simply is no available precedent that encourages high hopes in the current situation. Private equity companies typically want to mine their downward-trending old media companies for profits, usually by rigorous cost-cutting … I mean, “localizing”.
Comments over the weekend by new top editor, Nancy Barnes, essentially confirming the prevailing view that Avista is a strip-and-flip squad intent on getting acceptable profits out of the Star Tribune in “three to six years”, wasn’t anyone’s idea of a comforting bedside manner.
Point being that next week will be a big one in the lives of dozens of Strib employees, who have seven days, until March 12, to decide to take the contractual voluntary buy-out, or hang on and hope they aren’t reassigned to covering feral cats in Woodbury stories. (A rumor working the Strib today was that Avista was planning to summarily whack all merit pay, sending veteran employees back to union scale salaries they haven’t seen in decades. By the end of the day consensus was that there was language in the current contract prohibiting such an action, or at least most of it.)
One other move of interest, the Star Tribune’s D.C.-based reporters, Rob Hotakainen and Kevin Diaz, were formally reassigned away from the Star Tribune, Hotakainen to the Kansas City Star and Diaz to McClatchy papers serving Alaska and Idaho. Both will remain in D.C. Among a host of mysteries is whether Avista plans to build its’ own D.C. bureau. The presumption is they won’t.
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Children, Get Thee To The Library!
This weekend, Deb Girdwood and Isabelle Harder’s throwing a little movie party at the Central Library downtown. Deb and Isabelle could be called the Queen of Children’s Films in the Twin Cities, responsible for the Childish Film Fest at the forthcoming Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Harder believes, quite rightly, that there’s a dearth of good children’s films available on the big screen. There’s virtually nothing better than watching a bunch of kids howling with glee at their favorite film, although what they can choose from at the Cineplexes is simply awful.
So where do they go? As adults we get to decide between violence and special effects, stadium seating at the malls, costume dramas at the Edina or German Oscar winners at the Uptown. Children aren’t so lucky, and neither are their parents. I wince just thinking about having to take kids to see the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Well, to heck with that. What could be a better Saturday morning treat than to pull on those moon boots, ignore the cheap cartoons, and head down to the library to watch perhaps the greatest children’s film ever made, The Red Balloon? There’ll be dancing to a DJ, and then the classic Iranian film Children of Heaven.
And you know what? Afterwards, the kids will find themselves… in a library! Where they can check out that delightful story Minn of the Mississippi, also recommended by the river-loving Harder!
The Red Balloon shows at 10:15 in the morning; Children of Heaven at 1:00 pm in Pohlad Hall. Red Balloon is appropriate for kids 3 and up; Children is for 8 and older (due to subtitles).
This series will continue through the 24th, and feature some awesome films. Look here for more information each Thursday!
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Fear to Trudge
In the cards for tonight, so long as I’m not buried: The Stephen Petronio [dance] Company at the Walker Art Center. Don’t know much about ’em, I’m afraid. But they come recommended by my friend, the very knowledgeable and talented Ms. Linda Shapiro.
Looking on the bright side of all this powder and slop: I guess this means we’re in like a lion, at the very least. But it couldn’t be a worse weekend, in terms of happenings, to get snowed out. For now, I plan to strap on my snowshoes and trudge to the DIVA MN fashion event (wouldn’t that be something?) as well as to opening weekend of Don Juan Giovanni.
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Another One Bites the Dust
My apologies for the paucity of posts. I’ve been out of town since Saturday. But I’ve returned with a head full of savagely deep thoughts. Until one bites me there is this …
I am not pretending that many will notice or care, but my alma mater, KTLK, (noted in previous posts for its’ gruesome ratings performance to date), has terminated morning host, Andrew Colton, as of this morning, Feb. 28. No further details at this time other than a comment from a KTLK insider describing, “a dramatic scaleback of news operations”. Odd,I wasn’t aware there was a news operation at KTLK. Don’t you need reporters for that? Maybe the source means KTLK missed a payment for access to all those Fox News rip ‘n reads.