Losing weight and quitting smoking are always the top two New Year’s resolutions for us Americans. Not to brag, but I’ve done both—quitting a twelve-year, pack-a-day smoking habit and losing (and regaining and relosing) a rather substantial amount of weight in my life. I did neither by making a New Year’s resolution. Like most really … Read more
I had begun writing on an entirely different subject for this month’s column—plea bargaining—but then a friend called to tell me that Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III had died. I put all thoughts about plea bargains aside, went down to my basement, and dug out an old Pryor album. Staring at it, I was … Read more
It’s time to celebrate the unassuming doughnut, the stalwart companion of countless cups of fresh-brewed coffee, the humble fried hoop that is everyman’s golden cake. Why now, you might ask? Because January marks the opening of a long stretch of winter contemplation; also, there has yet to be a holiday misgiving that can’t be quietly … Read more
Jared has a last name, but like Michelangelo, Madonna, and Saddam, he doesn’t need one. When I say “Jared,” you know I’m not talking about actor Jared Leto or Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond. Those guys have their constituencies, but uninym status? There’s only one Jared who can make that claim: Jared the Subway Guy, … Read more
The other day, the Minnesota State High School League decided the public is ready for instant replay at some high school basketball and hockey games. High schools using television replay to fact-check the referees is unheard of, yet at their meeting last week, Minnesota coaches, officials, and athletic directors all patted each other on the … Read more
In 1978, Joe Franken had a day job consulting for the Johnson Printing Company of Minneapolis. He also moonlighted as an actor, a model, and a copy writer. Back in the seventies and eighties, his work in TV commercials made him a familiar face to many Twin Citizens. Before he got into advertising and printing, … Read more
Every winter you encounter them in the news, Minnesota’s perverse answer to Sports Illustrated swimsuit models: pale, shivering people taking part in polar plunges for charity. Huddled like doomed, featherless penguins, their ample pink flesh turning blue, they suddenly rush past the camera men and on-site ambulances to flail briefly in the water of some … Read more
My brother recently had a job that required him to purchase 231 gallons of gas in seven weeks. Ben was behind the wheel of his 1997 Honda Accord ten hours a day, seven days a week, and he covered 5,500 miles without ever leaving the metropolitan area. But this was no trucking or courier gig; … Read more
Tucked into an out-of-the-way corner in northwestern Minnesota, Alexandria is a small town known for its twenty-eight-foot-tall Viking statue and a famous runestone museum. What most of the rest of the state doesn’t know is that this is where a mass slaughter of one of the humblest species of fish is taking place. Each year, … Read more
If you need guidance in repairing the clutch in your ’57 Ford pickup, quieting your stuttering Edsel, or locating the lubrication specs for that turn-of-the-last-century Stanley Steamer in the garage, here’s a suggestion: Check out the Minneapolis Public Library. The Central Library downtown is the proud possessor of an automotive manual collection that is second … Read more