Crank up the tacky factor

Last May my father, my brother and I took a week and biked something like 430 miles from Hayward, Wis. to Mackinac Island, Mich.
In case you're not familiar, Mackinac Island, located in Lake Michigan, is best known for its lack of motorized vehicles — everyone gets around either on bicycles or in horse-drawn wagons — and for fudge, which is available in roughly every other shop on the island. The buildings all look like they could be made of gingerbread, the businesses are staffed primarily by people who move to the island for the summer and its economy is based primarily on the sale of candy, tacky t-shirts and any number of other things nobody actually needs.
It's a tourist trap, but in a vaguely classy, oldey timey kind of way.
This year, we decided to take things to a new level.
Last Friday morning the three of us drove to Red Wing and set off by bicycle to LaCrosse, Wis. and from there to Wisconsin Dells. The trip itself was scenic and pleasant. With the exception some of the worst navigation since Columbus tried to find a new route to Asia -- what was supposed to be two 100-mile days in the saddle turned into 110 miles on Friday and 123 on Saturday -- it was uneventful. The trip's end, though was anything but.
Mackinac Island is quaint in its tourist trappiness. Wisconsin Dells, on the other hands, is about as gaudy and in-your-face as a city of 1,200 people can be. It's like the Midwest's answer to Las Vegas, only instead of gangsters it appears to have been built by harried parents looking for ways to keep their kids occupied for a week every summer. It may be the only city in the world with more mini golf holes than permanent residents.
In recent years Las Vegas has tried to lure people with the addition of high-end shopping malls. My mom remembers the Dells primarily — and fondly — because it once had a store called Chenille world.
In Las Vegas they build giant theaters for dubious stars like Celine Dion. In the Dells they built a theater for magician Rick Wilcox.
Vegas has gambling and is a prime destination for a certain kind of bachelor party. The Dells has go-karts and would probably be a sweet place to have birthday party if you were, like, 8.
It's hard to know quite what to make of the Dells. Back before I hit puberty and had the patience to wait 10 minutes in line for a two-second waterslide ride I'm sure I thought it was really cool. Now that I'm too big to fit comfortably in a go-kart (seriously, I've got a bruise on my knee now) some of the shine is gone. I still enjoyed my three go kart races and my 18 holes of "adventure golf," but I was also happy to go back and read my book. I could have wandered through the shops downtown, I suppose, but a person really only needs so many "Female Body Inspector" shirts.
I think it's great a place like Wisconsin Dells exists — people all over the Midwest need a place they can drive with their kids for a summer vacation — I'm just not sure I need to go back there anytime soon.
It's hard to know how we’ll top this with our next trip. Although people have already started talking about Vegas. I suppose it's the natural next step.

Local news, now with less local

We live in a world where every job currently done by an American worker can be outsourced to someone in another country willing to do it for less money.
I didn't used to believe that. I mean, I always knew there were a lot of jobs that could be shipped overseas in the name of saving a couple of bucks. Some guy in Bangalore, India can help me troubleshoot my computer or activate my credit card just as easily as Carl in San Jose. It might be a bad deal for American tech workers, but at least they have more time now to play World of Warcraft.
So, yes. I knew there were plenty of jobs being farmed out to foreigners. But all jobs? That seemed unlikely. My job? No way, Jose. No way some guy telecommuting from another continent can provide the kind of local coverage readers of small-town newspapers want. No way someone sitting at a computer in the Far East can know as much about what's going on in Rosemount as someone who sits in the meetings and walks on the streets and talks face to face with the people who live here.
I mean, right?
Apparent ly not. And a web site in Pasadena is proving it.
Accord-ing to the Los Angeles Times, a web site called Pasadena now.com recently hired two beat reporters to cover Pasadena city government. Both will work from home, which for them is in India. They'll watch live webcasts of city council meetings and conduct interviews via e-mail. And the best part for the web site? Together the two reporters, one of whom reportedly has a degree from the University of California at Berkley, will be paid about $21,000.
The web site's publisher, James Macpherson, told the Times the new reporters would be, "a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications."
I suppose when you consider most of Pasadenanow's previous city government coverage until came from press releases he might be right. But I imagine the thing he's most concerned with increasing is the size of his bank account. And when there's money to be saved who cares if the guy writing the stories has ever met the subject of his interview face to face? What's the big deal if he's never been to Leprechaun Days or sifted through the letters written about downtown redevelopment or had people call and tell him he doesn't know what he's doing? With a 13 1/2-hour time difference from India to Pasadena — not to mention the long distance charges involved — that seems unlikely.
What are a few culture-based misunderstandings when you're saving big bucks?
Then again, maybe I'm just being defensive. I bet the guys at the Visa call center never thought a bunch of foreigners could do their jobs, either. And when you think about it, with the growing popularity of satellite TV why couldn't some guy in Shanghai make just as many lame jokes as I do about stupid shows on TV?
So, there you go. Newspapers aren't just going out of style. They're going overseas. And if someone can cover a city without ever setting foot inside its borders why should we believe any job is safe from outsourcing? I'm sure this is just the beginning.
Why do we need so many local police officers, for example? Can't we just install a bunch of security cameras and have some kids from a Chinese sweatshop watch for trouble on their breaks? Maybe we can have a couple of local cops on duty in case of emergencies, but if we could rig squad cars up to remote control systems it would be just like playing video games for the kids.
Lawyers? I'm not convinced they actually serve a purpose as it is, but if you really need one why not just hook up a video conferencing system and patch in some guy from Hong Kong. He doesn't get paid until you get paid, and even then it's like 75 cents.
Why spend big money on famous actors for our movies and television shows? I bet there are all kinds of talented Croatians who are willing to do the same work for a fraction of the price. And do you really think the quality of a movie like Delta Farce would suffer?

I wasn't using my gums, anyway

A couple of large, padded envelopes showed up on my desk one day last week. That's not unusual. Operating two newspapers out of the same office, we often get press releases and other materials in duplicate. What was in the envelopes? Well, that's where things get interesting.
As I write this column, I have sitting on the desk in front of me two packages of something the manufacturer has decided to describe as "dissolvable tobacco" — wintergreen flavor! — and two packages of something called hard snuff — "Spit Free," the box announces in red letters.
That's right. Mr. Postman brought me a veritable jackpot of addictive, cancer-causing substances. Outside of the thin mints the Girl Scouts send each year to announce the start of cookie sales it's the most potentially habit-forming press release I've ever been sent.
I realize the tobacco industry doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to the methods it uses to get people hooked on its products. Still, sending out samples through the mail seems sketchy even for people who chose pitch their products with a phallus-faced cartoon camel.
I don't know quite what to make of these particular products. According to the press release that accompanied my gum disease-causing gift, smokeless tobacco like Ariva and Stonewall — the names of these particular products — is "between 10 and 1,000 times less hazardous than smoking depending on the product." That's nice, I guess. But isn't that a little like saying my chances of ever getting a date with Charlize Theron are between 1,000 and 1,000,000 to one, depending on how much she's had to drink? Star Scientific, the company behind what I've decided to identify as suckable tobacco, recently added 40 new distribution centers, which the release claims are "capable of making the products available to approximately 50,000 retail outlets." Just like I'm "capable" of treating Charlize to a lovely dinner. You know, assuming she doesn't mind ordering from the dollar menu.
The packaging for both Ariva and Stonewall looks like a hybrid of a cigarette pack, a box of cold medicine and a package of chiclets. The individual pieces of Ariva, which come 20 to a pack, are sealed in plastic blisters like Sudafed. The football-shaped Ariva pieces are about the size of a pea. The similarly shaped Stonewall is roughly twice as big. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to use them to ease a nicotine craving or clear up sinus pressure.
I'd like to tell you what these things taste like, but I've never used a tobacco product in my life. And as dedicated as I am to my readers I'm not going to start with something that looks vaguely like it should be sold on a street corner somewhere.
The back of each package has instructions, which seems like a bad sign when the only major step is putting something in your mouth. Still, the box strongly recommends against chewing the piece or swallowing it whole. Nothing ominous about that. Or about the warning on the bottom of the box that either product might cause gum disease and tooth loss. Or the warning that oral tobacco products can cause dizziness, heartburn, hiccups or nausea. No wonder they're giving this stuff away.
I imagine products like Ariva and Stonewall will become more popular as legislators continue to ferret out every last place a Minnesotan might try to light up a cigarette. This might explain Star Scientific's new marketing campaign for the products: "Better than Cigarettes® — Find out Why." Granted, when you're sucking on a lozenge of tobacco there's no secondhand smoke to worry about. And we've already covered the spitting issue. All we'll really have to worry about is a bunch of dizzy, queasy tobacco-suckers with no teeth and rotting gums.
Apparently, the convenience store industry is sold, though. An article in the April 2007 issue of Convenience Store Decisions calls Ariva and Stonewall "the future of tobacco use in the 21st century." I'm not sure how many other options there are for our future tobacco use, but I imagine people wadding tobacco leaves up and sticking them in their ears.
Me? I'm waiting until cookie time rolls around again.

Were we having fun yet?

Last weekend I spent a healthy chunk of an otherwise lovely Sunday causing myself considerable discomfort.
I wasn't alone. By one estimate something like 5,000 people were out there with me, forsaking yard work and family time and other more productive activities like, I don't know, watching the NFL draft or cleaning the lint trap in their driers, to pedal their bicycles in big circles.
These people and I participated in the Ironman bike ride, which started and ended at Lakeville North High School. At least, it ended at LHS for people who didn't collapse somewhere along the way and require professional assistance just to relieve pressure from their super-stretchy shorts. I imagine there were more than a few of those.
Most of these people will tell you they enjoyed their ride Sunday. And they won't be lying. At least not entirely. So far as I can tell, there are three truly enjoyable periods in any long bike ride. The first is on the way to the ride, as you eat a banana and talk confidently about how fast you're going to go. The second is any stretch of road when you've got a strong wind at your back. There's something immensely enjoyable about speeding along at 25 miles an hour with hardly any effort. The third and most important period is long after the ride is done, as you convince yourself, you actually did have fun doing the activity to which you just dedicated five-plus hours.
This last period is vital, because it serves to convince people they should A) try the ride again next year and B) talk their friends into trying it with them. This is how rides like the Ironman, which more often than not takes place on cold, windy and otherwise miserable days, continue to grow year after year.
What I'm saying is a good distance bike ride is kind of like a really efficient virus. It causes discomfort in its host/rider but it never does enough damage that it can't sustain itself. And don't let anyone tell you riders in the Ironman don't suffer. Last year I rode 100 miles in 40-degree rain. A long bike ride doesn't typically cause as much coughing or vomiting as a nasty flu bug, but after 90 miles sitting on a seat roughly the size of that banana you ate earlier in the day, well, let's just say you're ready for a nice, cushy chair.
And no matter how much fun those with-the-wind segments are, you can never forget you're riding in a big circle. Eventually you'll have to turn around and go the other way. In the Ironman, this typically means around mile 85, as you hit Northfield and turn north up Cedar Avenue, you prepare yourself to spend the last 15 miles or so biking uphill and into a wind I estimate is typically just short of gale force. The next time someone tells you this is a good time I encourage you to laugh in that person's face. Or possibly to give them a solid smack.
Still, there's a lot to love about a ride like the Ironman. It gives a person a glimpse at just how diverse the bike community is. As I rode Sunday I saw bikes that probably cost as much as my car and bikes that probably cost as much as my shoes. One year I swear I saw a guy riding the 100-mile route on a bike he appeared to have built himself.
I saw riders Sunday who looked like they were fit and ready for any endurance test and others who made me start humming that High Hopes song about the ant and the rubber tree plant. These were riders who put the sag in sag wagon and, unfortunately, the big fat rear end in tight spandex shorts.
There were riders in full Lance Armstrong costume, with Discovery Channel jerseys and Trek bikes, and there was one guy whose outfit included way-too-short biking shorts, clip-in bike shoes and a Hawaiian shirt over a big gut.
Bikers are an eclectic group alright.
Sure the Ironman is a struggle. That last hill up to the high school is a killer every year. But there's also a whole lot to love about it. I suppose I'll go back next April.
Wanna come?

She can forget a Mother's Day card

There is an unwritten Guy Code that spells out certain things any real man really should do for himself. Shaving is one. So is hooking up new electronic equipment. Sending hate mail to a former elementary school classmate you haven't seen in more than a decade? That's definitely on the list.
That last one should probably be self-explanatory, but some people have to learn the hard way.
Anthony Perone did. According to a March 16 story in the Hartford Courant, the 20-year-old Faribault resident wrote two letters to a girl he'd gone to school with in third and fourth grade. He wrote things like, "Your gonna learn about suffering and having nothing. Pain you will feel. Fear, Being alive," and filled the letters with drawings of tombstones and rifles and hearts with chunks bitten out of them. He signed them "Love, Death Stalker."
Then, he left the letters for his mom to mail.
This is where is plan starts to fall apart. Because Perone's mom, presumably thinking she was being helpful, put her son's name and return address on the envelopes and put them in the mail.
This might have been the easiest stalking case Connecticut police have ever solved.
Clearly mothers are nothing but trouble. Sometimes they put return addresses on letters that threaten death to people who are practically strangers. Sometimes they give their son's phone number to strange women they meet in book stores, just because the woman says she likes biking.
Not that I know any mothers who would do anything like that.
Imagine how much easier it would be to solve crimes, though, if every criminal was so dependent on his mother. The Unabomber would have been caught within days, although I imagine it would have taken some time to track down a return address for "crazy person's shack in the woods."
The anthrax scares that happened after 9/11 probably would have been over before they started because the mailer's mom would have been just certain her boy would never have meant to send such messy packages. And shouldn't he come out of that lab for just a little while? At least go sit in the yard. It's such a nice day.
Obviously Peron has some problems. Aside from bad grammar and a pushy mother, I mean. Police found an assault rifle and ammunition in his bedroom, along with a machete and evidence he planned to travel to Connecticut. He'd been obsessing over a girl who he'd last seen when both were in elementary school. And he wanted to go to Connecticut.
Still, there's no excuse for this kind of mistake. Does Peron ask his mother to soap him up when he showers? Does she clip his toenails? I'm guessing she doesn't. And he really shouldn't ask her to mail his anonymous, venom-filled letters. Hate mail is a very personal thing, after all.
According to the Courant, Peron has pleaded guilty to two counts against him and could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000 when he is sentenced June 5.
It is not clear whether he would write his mom from jail.

Keep on truckin'

It seems like every third commercial on TV these days involves one automaker or another telling everyone how big and powerful their pick-up trucks are.
This isn't an entirely new thing. Americans have been infatuated with larger-than-necessary trucks ever since we as a culture decided we didn't give a darn how much gas cost — or how often news anchors told us prices were increasing — because we needed to drive around town in something larger than many people's first apartments.
Still, things seem to be getting out of hand. These commercials are everywhere. I see them a lot during sporting events, which makes a certain amount of sense. Manly Men watch sports, and Manly Men need big trucks so they can pull up stumps or haul construction debris or drag Rhode Island over to the West Coast just for the heck of it. Probably while wearing flannel shirts and steel-toed work boots. These are things Manly Men do.
But I also see a lot of commercials for these trucks during The Office. Do Manly Men like quiet, observational comedies shot in a documentary style? Do Manly Men care whether Jim and Pam end up together? Do they wipe away tears with flannel hankies? Maybe Manly Men are more diverse than I give them credit for.
I'm learning things watching these commercials. A few weeks ago I had no idea what a leaf spring was. Now two manufacturers are telling me their massive springs — "honkin'" is the term one of them uses — are the reason their trucks are strong enough to hold all of the rocks or manure or small office buildings you want to load them down with. Frankly, I would have thought a part so vital to making our trucks super-tough would have a more rugged-sounding name. Something less plant related. Like, biceps spring, maybe. Or tough-guy spring.
I've seen trucks pulling trains. I've seen trucks driven at breakneck speeds to the edges of cliffs. Manly Men have very little respect for the well-being of their trucks. Then again, their trucks are tough. Their trucks can take it. Their trucks want it that way, because they are Manly Trucks.
I'm sure there are people who need trucks like these. These are people whose job involves activities more strenuous than sitting at a desk and typing all day. Although, to be fair, I'm at serious risk of carpal tunnel. I take that risk every week because I want to entertain you, my readers. I don't consider myself a hero for that, but it's OK if you do.
Still, I'm not sure the market is so large I need to spend every commercial break learning about fully-boxed frames or supersized tow hitches or brakes the size of manhole covers apparently designed specifically to stop speeding trucks at the edges of cliffs.
Then again, maybe these automakers know something I don't. Maybe our environment is worse than we realize and we'll all soon need trucks so large they have their own gravitational pull just to survive. Or maybe our obesity epidemic is spiraling out of control and we'll need super-sized trucks just to haul our super-sized butts around.
Better beef up those tough-guy springs.

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry

Can we please cool it with the rage?
Earlier this month the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed a Columbia News Service story about the growing incidences of what the story calls Sidewalk Rage, which it apparently defines as any incident in which one person gets really ticked off at another person where both of the people involved are on a sidewalk at the time. Apparently the term was considered more concise than "getting really ticked off at other people in public rights of way."
I guess I get that.
I don't know if Road Rage was the first commonly recognized form of situational rage, but it's was the first to enter my consciousness. This was back around the time we started seeing all kinds of stories about drivers in California who had started opening fire on the Interstate, having deciding a raised middle finger was no longer an appropriate response to the jerk who cut you off.
At the time, it seemed like an appropriate turn of phrase. Drivers were getting honked off at the idiots on the road all around them and were flying off the handle. They were on the road. They were in a rage. Simple as that.
Now, rage is everywhere. It's moved from the road to the sidewalk and there's no stopping it. Consider these terms that turned up at least one recorded incident in the first five responses from a Google search:
Travel Rage: A blanket term that includes Air Rage (getting miffed at altitude when), Hotel Rage (wanting to ring the bell of the clerk who lost your reservation) and Train Rage (like Air Rage, presumably, but on rails and generally at a lower fare and with more stops).
Restaurant Rage: Now getting irate at the waiter who takes an hour to bring your soup or the jerk at the next table who won't get off his cell phone gets its own diagnosis.
Cable Rage: The Urban Dictionary describes this as getting extremely frustrated at a particularly nasty tangle of cables. I'll admit, it sounds a lot better than, "Becoming upset at the realization your sloppy cable-routing habits have created a disgusting mess behind your home entertainment system."
Parking Rage: Pretty much what it sounds like. Someone takes the parking spot you wanted, you flip out. Someone parks too close to your car, forcing you to contort your body like Plastic Man just to get out of the mall parking lot, you key their door. Someone's car alarm won't stop going off, you smash a trash can through their windshield. Simple.
Snow Rage: This might be a particular concern this week. According to the Chicago Tribune a 73-year-old man was charged with assault in March of this year after he reportedly slashed his neighbor with a knife because he didn't like the fact the neighbor was blowing snow into his yard.
"I'm very upset about what happened," the man reportedly said after he was released on bail. "We're good friends, good neighbors. I just want this to blow over."
Apparently this assumes it doesn't blow into his yard.
Sports Rage: This one's easy. Parents go nuts at a sporting event. Parents attack ref. Parents attack opposing coach. Parents attack their own child's coach. Take your pick, really.
To be fair, there were several terms that don't yet turn up claims of rage syndromes. So far as I can tell, nobody has yet coined the term Soup Rage. There was nothing for Slacker Rage, although that one seems pretty self-explanatory. A search for Salamander Rage turned up a review for the Sega Genesis game Streets of Rage 2 (which was awesome, by the way) but no incidents of people getting angry over newts. There were no valid responses for Television Rage, which seems really surprising. Seriously, nobody's blood boils when they watch Two and a Half Men?
A search for Marshmallow Rage turned up a story about Fluffernutter wars raging in Massachusetts. That doesn't really fit this discussion but it suggests that despite playing a key role in the American Revolution Massachusetts now has the lamest wars ever.
I'm sure these types of rage and more are on the horizon, though. It's just a matter of time. And when I see them I'm going to get really mad.
Call it Rage Rage.

Tubby, Tubby, Tubby

We're nearing the end of March, and you know what that means: Every person in the world is currently losing in their NCAA tournament pools.
This is the time of year when anybody with the remotest interest in sports — and even many without any interest at all — fills out a tournament bracket. It's also the time of year when newspaper columnists and late night talk show hosts write or talk about how poorly they're doing with those brackets. And since nobody ever talks about winning their tournament pools, I can only assume nobody ever wins.
It's simple statistics, folks. You can't argue with it.
For the record, I actually still have a chance to win one of my pools. If I've done the math right, never a certainty, Ohio State beating UCLA in the championship means I win. That could mean some decent money. You know, if I was in favor of betting on things like this.
Kids, don't gamble.
I don't want to talk about any of that, though. I don't want to talk about this basketball season. This basketball season is dead to me. It went on life support the day the Gopher men's team lost to Marist, and it started coughing up vital organs around the time the team started stumbling its way through the Big 10 season. You know how you can tell things are bad? When you start to wonder if the players know they're only supposed to throw the ball to players whose uniforms match theirs.
I've been going to Gopher games since before I was old enough to really understand what was going on. There were times this season when I still wasn't sure, but I blame the team for some of that. In all those years, this is the first time I actually felt relieved when the season ended. I haven't been to the dentist in years, but getting teeth drilled couldn't be as bad as this year's team. At least at the dentist you get Novocain.
How bad was this year's Gopher team? If I'd had any college eligibility left, I might have had a chance to walk on. I'm not saying we'd do better if I was on the floor (we almost certainly wouldn't) but we couldn't have done much worse. And I'd have had the chance to wear a tank top, which likely would have either made people laugh or made them a little queasy. Either way, though, it might distract them from the game.
But like I said, this season is over. The Dan Monson Era is over in Gopher Basketball and the Tubby Smith era has begun. It's fitting this happened in spring, because there couldn't be anything more refreshing.
I don't know a lot about Tubby Smith. I know his real first name is Orlando, and that his parents had something like 632 children. I know he was an assistant coach at Kentucky before moving on to Tulsa and Georgia, where he ran successful programs. I know he won 22 games this season, just three fewer than the Gophers won in the last two years combined, and still had people calling for the school to fire him. And I know people in Kentucky really, really need something besides college basketball and bourbon to keep them occupied.
There are certainly concerns with the hire. Some of those people calling for Tubby to be fired questioned his ability to recruit. And if Tubby can't recruit at Kentucky, one of the great programs in the history of college basketball, how can we expect him to recruit to a school with players who at times this season seemed unclear on the underlying concepts of the game? Maybe we could offer to have someone write the players' term papers for them.
Mostly, though, I'm excited. Because beyond the questions, beyond the doubts, beyond the idea that, hey, $1.8 million is an awful lot to pay a guy to coach a basketball team, there is one important fact. That fact is this: In the next few years we're going to have a lot more opportunities to use the word "Tubby." And that can only be a good thing.

Break out the fish pudding!

They say everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day. I can only assume that in this particular instance "They" are "People who are looking for an excuse to justify drinking until they can't see straight."
As I headed out for a bike ride early Saturday afternoon (on a green bike, no less) I saw lots of people being Irish. By 1 p.m. they were already heading into bars or into tents set up specially for the occasion. Presumably they'd set aside a lot of time that afternoon for exploring their Irish heritage. Hopefully they'd arranged rides home with a somewhat less Irish friend.
When I attended college in New Orleans we had weeks at a time when everyone was Irish. They were called "Mardi Gras." Or sometimes "Thursday."
I don't think I've ever been Irish on St. Patrick's Day, though. Most years on March 17 I'm the same thing I am every other day of the year: Norwegian enough to know how to eat lefse the right way, but with enough other nationalities mixed in I've never thought to myself, "You know what I'd like? A nice piece of whitefish soaked in lye sure would hit the spot. Get me some lutefisk!"
I realize there are plenty of people who enjoy lutefisk now and again but I also suspect these people are the reason there are Ole and Lena jokes. And not even the funny Ole and Lena jokes.
(I'm kidding, of course. There are no funny Ole and Lena jokes.)
Norway is the only country where I've actually met distant relatives. This was during my junior year of high school, when I spent 10 months living in Sweden. My aunt, the genealogist in the family, came to visit and we went to find our kin in northern Norway. We met some relatives I'd never seen before and will probably never see again. And we got a tour of an old family homestead from some people who were in no way related to us. They picked us up from the library where my aunt was doing research (the librarian had called them) and fed us lefse and some kind of soup that was pretty much just milk and macaroni (I have no idea why people think Norwegians eat bland food). They would have let us spend the night, I think, if we didn't already have a hotel room.
In other parts of the country this story might have ended with my aunt and me chopped up in somebody's basment, but I think our biggest danger was that they might make us put Saint Lucia candle-wreaths on our heads.
I like being Norwegian. In Minnesota, it's practially a requirement. The only problem is, we don't get enough respect. When people think Norway they don't think famous people. They think fjords and white food and possibly Haggar the Horrible.
There are a lot of noteworthy Norwegians, though. There are explorers like Roald Amundson, the first person to reach the South Pole. Vilhelm Bjerknes, the father of modern meterology, is Norwegian. At least, there's a 75 percent chance he is. Norway has famous cyclists like Thor Hushovd and ski jumpers like Espen Bredesen. There are even famous Norwegian beach volleyball players. Which brings up the surprising realization there are beaches in Norway.
Norway has lots of famous entertainers, although two of the 20 people in the Film and Comedy category on Wikipedia's list of famous Norwegians are porn stars. That's 20 percent! Apparently the Norwegian film industry is really trashy.
Norway also boasts the band Mayhem, which so far as I can tell is like a cross between Kiss and the creepiest person you've ever met. They feature songs with names like Voice of a Tortured Skull and Necrolust. Those long winter nights can really mess with a person.
I think it's clear we Norwegians have a lot to offer. There's more to us than cross country skiing and fjords. Keep that in mind a couple of months from now. Because they say everyone's Norwegian on Syttende Mai.

The pain of a great loss

Dear Diary:
Anna Nicole Smith is gone and I'm not sure what I'll do. Our world has lost an icon. A stylemaker. A role model for people everywhere. At least, for people who aren't all that bright but want to remain in the public eye despite having no readily identifiable talent. Where in Hollywood will we ever find anyone like that again?
I realize I'm late in writing about this, Diary. Frankly, it was too much to process right away. All I wanted to do was pretend it hadn't happened but there was nowhere I could turn. At the gym on the night she died I had to watch endless Fox News coverage while I ran on the treadmill. CNN is said to have gone 90 minutes commercial-free with nothing but Anna Nicole news. I don't blame them. What, after all, could be more important than the tragic death of a woman who brought joy to so many. Who brought news of TrimSpa to the masses and who, let's be honest, made us all feel just a little bit better about ourselves.
Even now, weeks after she left us, Anna Nicole's death is still very much a topic of conversation. Just recently a judge wept as he ruled on the fate of Anna Nicole's daughter. People made fun of him for that, but not me. He knew. Anna Nicole was gone and she was never coming back. How could any baby be better off with a mother like Anna Nicole out of the picture?
Just last week, Stephen King wrote about Anna Nicole in a column for Entertainment Weekly. He called her life a fairy tale, and that seems about right. She rose from poverty to prominence is just like Cinderella. You know, assuming that after she married the prince Cinderella got hooked on drugs, flashed her hooters in some bad movies and let a film crew follow her around for a few months while she made a fool of herself. Which I think she totally did. Just read between the lines in the original text. Also, I imagine marrying a wrinkly old rich dude is probably a lot like kissing a frog.
Frankly, Diary, I'm not sure what we'll do next. Who will we turn to for our regular doses of celebrity inanity? Who else out there can so consistently put herself in the public eye despite contributing nothing of any real substance to society. Britney Spears is trying, Diary, bless her heart. But she is just one woman and frankly I'm not sure how much longer she can keep up this pace.
Paris Hilton? Tara Reid? Jessica Simpson? It's a start, Diary, but somehow it's not the same.
Lindsay Lohan? Actually, I kind of liked Mean Girls.
It's hard right now, Diary, but I know it will pass. I know we'll move on. As hard as it will be, I know society will find someone to fill the void. We need to. It's part of what Wired magazine this month describes as our Snack Culture. In a world of YouTube clips and pop songs shrunk down to cell phone ringtones we don't want celebrities we have to think about. We want someone we can know all about even if all we read about them is the blurbs on the cover of Us Weekly. We don't want thoughtful, artistic films. We want Internet clips of cute puppies and guys getting hit in the junk.
I know all of this, Diary. I know life will return to normal just as it did after Barbaro left us. But that's for the future, Diary. For now it just hurts.

Up next: a Golden Girls marathon

TiVo doesn’t know me.
Oh, it thinks it does. Just hours after I plugged in my new digital video recorder it was making suggestions. It was recording things it thought I should be watching. While I slept it recorded episodes of Sanford and Son and the Cosby Show. When I woke up the next morning it was in the middle of an episode The Beverly Hillbillies.
It was way off. I watched my share of Beverly Hillbillies episodes during the summers of my junior high school years, but I like to think I’ve outgrown jokes about cement ponds.
In theory, the machine is supposed to get smarter as it learns about me. It’s supposed to identify my interests and record accordingly. So far, though, it seems to be getting worse. In the weeks since I set the device up it has remained inexplicably devoted to the idea I like reruns of old sitcoms. It has recorded episodes of Full House, the treacly Friday-night fixture best known for introducing us to the Olsen Twins. It has saved copies of Family Ties and of Boy Meets World.
I realize the 80s were my formative years, but that doesn’t mean I want to relive them.
TiVo also appears to be under the impression I’m a middle school-aged girl. For several straight days it recorded shows from Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. It recorded something called Hannah Montana, which I gather is about a fictional pre-teen singer. It might be a great show, but considering it’s major characters are all played by 13-year-olds I’m not sure I could watch it without feeling like I needed to call the police and get signed up for a electronic ankle bracelet.
Lately, TiVo’s been all over the map. On Sunday night its list of suggestions for the week ahead included the O’Reilly Factor and Chris Matthews’ Hardball. It had Tucker Carlson and Maury Povich. Jerry Springer and Charlie Rose.
TiVo thinks I might want to catch an upcoming showing of Die Hard 2, which might not be a bad idea, but it also wants to make sure I don’t miss Desperate Housewives. Honestly, I think Wisteria Lane is the next place John McLean should be set loose.
If I listened to TiVo I would find myself a double feature of Brit Hume and Tyra Banks.
I can’t fix my car to save my life, but TiVo thinks I might like something called Automotive Vision.
The closest I get to farming is driving through what’s left of local fields on my way to work, but TiVo is ready and willing to record this week’s airing of Ag Day.
TiVo recommended seven separate Spanish-language shows on Univision despite I haven’t taken Spanish since I was in second grade.
The recommendations aren’t all bad. TiVo suggested Alias, which I own on DVD. It also alerted me to an upcoming airing of Ferris Bueller’s Day off. Once, in college, I put off writing a paper that was due the next day so I could watch that movie in our campus bar. Then again, I probably put off papers in college so I could wash my socks. It wasn’t a high bar to clear.
Mostly, though, the recommendations are confusing. It thinks I might like Little House on the Prairie and Gunsmoke. It wants me to watch the A-Team and Crossing Jordan.
I realize I’m coming late to the whole TiVo sensation. And I can see why people have gotten so excited about a magic box that can set itself to record an entire season of a television show with just a few button presses. I’m sure it will change my life once I get used to it. I just have to feel a little suspicious of any electronic device that tries to sell me on watching women’s golf.

TV: it’s a right, not a privilege

I love television. That's no secret. I probably watch more than is good for me, and since I bought a new TV month ago I probably watch even more than I did before. Even According to Jim is halfway decent when you're watching it on a 42-inch plasma screen.
If you'd asked me two weeks ago, I might have claimed TiVo was the greatest television-related invention since the cathode ray tube (or at least since the remote control) but now I'm not so sure. Because now I've discovered high-definition.
I don't have access to a lot of HDTV at the moment. I don't have the digital cable subscription I'd need to get the full range of channels with that kind of crystal clarity. But with a simple $20 antenna I can at least get local networks in all their high-resolution glory. In the past two weeks I've discovered the joys of seeing every gory detail as Jack Bauer interrogates terrorists on 24. I never imagined I'd get so excited about being able to pick out individual beads of sweat on Kevin Garnett's forehead. Then again, when the Timberwolves are choking away one game after another you have to have something to keep you interested.
Even Antiques Roadshow is better in HD.
HDTV is the future for all television. In February of 2009 all over-the-air television will be broadcast digitally. The idea — aside from giving everyone the opportunity to see in vivid detail each wrinkle and age spot on Andy Rooney's face — is to free up the bandwidth currently used by television broadcasts for use by emergency workers. As a consequence, all Americans who don't already have a high-definition TV — or at least a box to convert digital signal to the analog signals most TVs use today — will have to make some changes.
Don't worry, though. The government will be there to help. Starting next January, the government will start handing out $40 coupons to help Americans cover the cost of digital-to-analog converter boxes. The National Telecommunications and Information Association has set aside $990 million for the program, with the possibility of spending another $510 million if there's enough demand. The coupons will only be available to people who do not subscribe to cable or satellite services.
Some people might think this is silly. They might argue there are bigger problems — homelessness, maybe, or funding for education — than making sure every American has uninterrupted access to Deal or No Deal.
I disagree. Frankly, I don't think they're going far enough.
Sure, the government is making sure we will continue to have access to television, but what are they doing to make sure we're watching? It's a terrible thought, but I know there are hours of television that go tragically unwatched. There are millions of Americans who each week neglect their patriotic duty to vote for our next American Idol. Look, America, this is your Idol. If you don't vote, you don't get to complain when whoever wins releases some terrible CD later this year. I've already ordered my "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Lakisha" bumper stickers.
We need TV to watch the news, too. If I didn't have access to local news broadcasts I wouldn't know important things like how Ricky Schroeder feels about joining the cast of 24, or what the latest theory is on the death of Anna Nicole. An uninformed populace is a scary thing.
The converter box coupons are a good start, but there's room to do so much more. If the government could spring for a new flat screen for everyone, I'm sure there'd be more interest in watching TV.
TiVo has got to go, too. As much as I love it, if people can skip through commercials willy-nilly they'll never know what products are out there that they just have to own.
What if we required modifications to TVs that kept them on all the time? That might help. And maybe one of those chairs like they have in A Clockwork Orange, so viewers can never look away. Is that going to far? I don't think so. This is the culture war, people, and extreme times call for extreme measures.
I think it's time the government gave up on this idea of fighting the growing obesity problem in the country and started trying to convince every man, woman and child in America to plop down in front of the tube with a bag of chips. At least it's a fight we know we can win.

Super Bowls and celebrity splits

Some things that occurred to me as I recovered from seeing Prince's giant phallic silhouette during the Super Bowl halftime show:
• Everybody gets excited about the Super Bowl commercials, but if people really think jokes about people getting kicked in the crotch are so great why isn't my column more popular?
• Anybody who watched any TV at all in the weeks before the Super Bowl knows each 30-second commercial during the game cost advertisers $2.6 million. That comes out to something like $50,000 for every second of cleavage shown during the average beer commercial. Or $25,000 for every Chicago fumble during the game.
• According to USA Today the most popular Super Bowl commercial involved crabs worshiping a cooler filled with Bud Light. Seven of the 10 most popular ads were for Budweiser products. Other popular ads: One guy hits another with a rock in a fight for the last Bud Light; a Doritos eater crashes his car while ogling a woman; and two mechanics rip out their chest hair to prove their manliness after they accidentally kiss while eating a Snickers. Stupid people hurting themselves and those close to them. That's the way to move product.
• At what point does coverage of Barbaro's death officially constitute beating a dead horse?
• Honestly, this time last year there were like six people in the world who knew who this horse was and now that he's won a couple of races we're supposed to mourn him like we've lost a national hero? I like animals as much as the next guy, but how much longer do I have to fly my Kentucky Derby program at half staff?
• This week's Time Magazine features an item about Barbaro in the section reserved to mention the deaths of famous and important people. Meanwhile, Newsweek is examining the impact on our youth of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton going out without their undies. It's good to see serious journalism is alive and well.
• Up next: US News & World Report dishes on its best and worst dressed at the State of the Union and BusinessWeek examines the economic impact of Reese Witherspoon's divorce from Ryan Phillippe.
• I'm torn. I feel bad for knowing Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe just got divorced (and foolish for admitting it in print) but strangely good to know that Reese is single again. Do you think it's too soon to call?
• Then again, I'm not sure I want to date a chick with kids.
• Something I learned while looking to make sure I was spelling Phillippe right (sadly, I was): the web site www.ryanphillipe.com is devoted entirely to Minnesota-born actor Josh Hartnett. I smell an especially hunky lawsuit brewing.
• As far as I can tell, covering celebrities these days consists entirely of waiting for one celebrity to say something slightly mean-spirited about another celebrity, then running to the second celebrity to get their even more mean-spirited response, then repeating the process long enough to spark stories about how everyone's tired of hearing about this feud. You know who would make really good celebrity journalists? Just about any middle school girl.
• It's been really cold the last few days. I just wanted to make sure someone mentioned that to you.
• Am I too late to make a joke about Al Gore and global warming?
• A community celebration in Hartlepool, England has canceled its traditional sack race because it has gotten too expensive to insure the event. Up next at kids' fun day: Standing very, very still. The kid who stands the stillest wins. Also, everyone else wins. Trophies for everyone!
• There's like, there's love and then there's "Driving 900 miles with a plan to kill the woman who you think is making a move on the guy you like." Then, somewhere way, way beyond that, there's "Wearing a diaper while driving so you don't have to make as many pit stops." In other words, don't mess with NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak. The Right Stuff, indeed.
• Maybe being single isn't so bad.

On the run

Earlier this year I did something I didn't expect I'd ever do. No, I didn't volunteer to organize a Britney Spears fan club. It's something even stranger.
I took up running.
Until late last year I was pretty sure my opinion of recreational running served as pretty good proof there was no such thing as a jogging gene. My dad used to run all the time. He ran marathons. He ran ultra marathons. He ran on roads. He ran cross country. He was like Forrest Gump, only I don't think he ever met the President.
For several years straight he maintained a streak of running every day. By the time he was done nobody had any idea where he was (ba-dum bum!).
Meanwhile, my personal attitude toward jogging could be described as such: If it was done in course of another, otherwise enjoyable activity — say a game of basketball or soccer — I was OK with it. In the rare instances I needed to be somewhere faster than a brisk walk would allow, I could tolerate it. If someone was chasing me, well, I figure I'd better run. But if I'd ever said, "Gosh, I think I'll go for a quick three-mile jog?" Well, I'm pretty sure that would have been a sign some vital spring in my brain had finally come uncoiled.
I was a cross country skiier in high school, and by the time I'd graduated I figured I'd done enough running to last a lifetime.
I almost caved a few years ago. Back before biking became my exercise of choice I decided I wanted to get into better shape, and I decided running was the way to do it. So, I bought new running shoes. I bought shorts and t-shirts. I even bought an MP3 player so I wouldn't have something in my head besides my own thoughts. And I ran. Once. Maybe twice. And then I came to my senses. I eventually gave the shoes to my brother, who feels the same way I do about running but presumably found some other use for them.
I thought I was done after that. I really did. But around the time the outdoor biking season was winding down last year (say, early December) I decided I needed to find a way to keep from ballooning out of shape over the winter. That meant either riding a stationary bike, which I decided a few years ago is almost as pointless as jogging, or finding something else. I decided to give running another try, and I discovered something that surprised me: running on a treadmill is somehow less awful than running outside.
For the record, then: love biking outside, can't stand it inside; despise running outside, yet actually enjoy it when I do it in a situation that makes me feel a little like a hamster on an exercise wheel.
I have no idea why that is. Maybe it has something to do with the fact running on a treadmill doesn't require me to know where I'm going. Or maybe it's because I can watch TV while I do it. Maybe I just have something against the sun. Or maybe I just like the feedback I get running on a treadmill. On my bike I have a computer that tells me how far I've gone and how fast. Same on a treadmill.
Then again, maybe I've just managed to stick with it long enough that I can finally go more than 100 yards without collapsing in a heap. That wasn't always the case. The runs I went on a couple of years ago could probably be more accurately described as lurching staggers interrupted by frequent periods of walking — you know, to recover. When I ran last Sunday I averaged about eight minutes per mile and ran just over five miles in 40 minutes.
I was feeling pretty good about myself until later that day. Flipping through the channels I stumbled onto some kind of indoor track championships. I tuned in just in time to watch an Ethiopian woman set a world record by running 3.1 miles at a pace of just under 4:40 a mile. I never had any delusions I would ever be a world-class runner, but getting your butt kicked hurts all the same.
But let's see her write a column.

Fido too fat? Time for a doggie diet

Americans have heard for years about how fat we're all getting. But there's another health crisis that has flown below the radar. At least until now.
Apparently, it's not just humans whose waistlines are expanding at an alarming rate. Our dogs are packing on the pounds, too.
We're raising a nation of fat foxhounds, pudgy poodles and chunky chows. According to the Chicago Tribune, as many as 40 percent of America's pet dogs (about 17 million) are getting way too thick around the middle. Our best friends are tubbing out all over the place and it's affecting their health.
Now, though, there's a solution. And it's nothing unpleasant like taking our dogs for regular walks or resisting the urge to feed them treats by the shovelful. It's the kind of level-headed, minimal-effort solution any red-blooded America-loving dog owner looks for when it comes time to lose weight: diet drugs.
That's right. We're getting doggy diet pills. Pfizer, the company that brought us Viagra, recently received FDA approval for something called Slentrol, which it advertises as the first and only diet drug for dogs. Just pour the liquid on Fido's food or give it to him directly and watch the pounds melt away. All for no more than $1.50 per day.
Just make sure you give him the right drug, or you might never get him off your leg.
Somehow, it seems like there should be a simpler solution here. Something like taking the dog outside to play every once in a while. Maybe throwing a ball for it to chase. Or just not feeding Spot heaping bowls of food every day — all solutions, I might point out, that are completely free.
Supporters of the drug, though, claim Americans are far too busy these days to take their dogs for regular walks. We lead hectic lives. We have places to go, people to see. Sometimes ol' Rover has to take a back seat.
I don't know. In a world where millions of people watch The War at Home every week and movies like Little Man make more than $100 million at the box office I have trouble believing we can't squeeze in a half hour for a quick walk. Bonus: maybe that even helps with the whole "Fat Americans" thing.
In many cases, though, dogs have become so much like a member of the family people just can't resist spoiling them. One vet quoted in the Tribune's story claims some of her patients regularly drive their dogs to McDonald's or Burger King for a burger or an ice cream cone. She doesn't say whether they supersize the meals, but I'm guessing yes.
And that's not all. I used to live down the block from a bakery that sold nothing but treats for dogs. I've seen doggy-sized staircases designed so our pets don't even have to exert themselves enough to jump on the couch. And it is now possible to buy at least two different brands of beer for dogs.
That last one surprised me a little. I stumbled across the first doggie suds — a Dutch pet shop owner's concoction, called Kwispelbier — while I was writing this. Then, as I tried to find that story again, I came across Happy Tail Ale. Both dog beers are non-alcoholic. Both appear to be essentially meat-flavored water. If you're interested, you can order a sixer of the Happy Tail brand on sale from Petco.com for just $18 plus shipping. That's a little more than $3 a bottle, or roughly $32 per gallon.
So there's Slentrol, which seems to work pretty darn well. According to Pfizer's four-month study of the drug, 97 percent of 144 dogs lost weight on Slentrol and half lost 11 percent or more of their body weight.
Side effects? According to a Pfizer press release cited by the Tribune vomiting is the most common. Also possible: diarrhea, lethargy and anorexia. So, your dog will be thin but lazy and your carpets will be a mess. Also, Lassie will develop the same body-image problems as a runway model. Seems like a fair trade.
Anything to avoid that walk in the park.

Dear curb: You're a jerk!

Dear curb that, like, totally messed up the front end of my car,
Seriously, curb, what was that about? I wasn't bothering you. I would have been perfectly happy never coming into contact with you. All I wanted to do was take a picture and get to work so I could finish laying out the paper.
But you couldn't let me do that, could you? For whatever reason, you needed to mess up my poor car's undercarriage. You had to jam my front wheel all the way back into the back of the wheel well.
Way to go, tough guy. Everybody's real impressed.
Do you know what you did to me? I had to wait almost an hour for a tow truck. It cost me $90 to get towed to a repair shop. And getting the car fixed? Near as I can figure the estimate's somewhere over two grand now.
That's not even all. My mom was out of town while my car was in the shop, so I figured I'd borrow her car and save on a rental. Except, her car started acting up on me mid-week. It stalled. It hesitated. Sometimes, I'd step on the gas and get no acceleration. Nothin'. I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the week.
So, yeah. Thanks a lot.
Jerk.
What did I ever do to you, curb? I've always had all kinds of respect for concrete. I use sidewalks every day. And when I was younger, concrete always did an admirable job holding my basketball poles upright. It's one of my favorite construction materials, right after steel and plexiglass and just ahead of fiberboard. That ain't bad. You're way better than aluminum siding.
I like you, curb. You do a good job of defining the edge of the street. So how about returning the favor, huh? You had to mangle my wheel like that? You couldn't just boost me up and over yourself? Apparently not. Apparently that's too much to ask. So now I have a repaired front end and the only thing you ended up with was a little scuff where my tire hit you. It's probably even washed away by now.
I suppose you'll try to blame all this on the ice. And sure, it was slippery. But I didn't have any problems until I ran into you. Ice and I are close, curb. Ice and I understand each other. Ice keeps my drinks cold and I don't mess with ice. I don't drill holes in ice to fish anymore (not a big sacrifice, I'll admit) and I've pretty much given up skating. Me and ice, we're cool, so stop trying to badmouth ice.
It sure as heck wasn't my fault. Like I'd do that to my own car? I'm still paying for it, man. I was driving safely, curb. Get over it.
This isn't the first time I've had a run-in with your kind, curb. I was a junior in high school, an exchange student in Sweden, when I tried to jump my bike from the street to the sidewalk, up and over one of your foreign brothers. I admit it was a bad idea, but did it have to take me down like that? I got scraped up pretty good.
More recently, I was riding across the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis a few years ago when a little lip at the edge of the bike path took me out. I ended up hanging by one arm from the railing. I could have gone over. I could have been seriously hurt, curb. As it was I got bruised all up and down my right side.
I know that little lip wasn't really a curb, curb. But it's close enough. It's the same obnoxious family.
I don't know why you did what you did, curb. Did it make you feel tough? Do you feel like a big curb now? Well, good for you. I'm sure you spent the rest of the week bragging to all your curb friends.
I hope it was worth it, curb. Because you and me, we're through.
Yours,
Nathan Hansen

Facing the new year with resolve

I've never been big on New Year's resolutions. Maybe it's because I'm uncomfortable making out life-altering to-do lists on a night that has a well-earned reputation for heavy alcohol consumption. Maybe I'm not organized enough to figure out my goals for an entire year before that year has even begun. Or maybe I've always just believed I'm so perfect already no resolution could make me any better.
Well, except maybe that one resolution I made a couple of years ago to be more in touch with reality.
Whatever the reason, I have always entered the new year resolutionless. Adrift and without a list of hastily-scribbled, poorly-defined goals that I could halfheartedly follow for a couple of months and then abandon when I got tired of them.
Hey, I've been to Lifetime Fitness. I see the way the parking lot starts filling up this time of year. I've also seen it get less busy sometime around early March as thousands of resolution breakers settle into their easy chairs with bags of Cool Ranch Doritos.
This year, though, that changes. I figure it’s time to try something new. So, in no particular order, here are Nathan Hansen's New Year's resolutions for 2007.
• I resolve to breathe some fresh life into this column: People tell me they enjoy reading this column. They tell me I make them laugh. From time to time they question my sanity. All of this is good. But it could be better. For 2007 I pledge to shake things up. No more tired old jokes about about bad movies or C-list celebrities or Britney Spears getting photographed without any underpants. I resolve to find all new jokes about bad movies, C-list celebrities and dirty pictures of former Mickey Mouse Club members.
I'm looking at you, Christina Aguilerra.
• I resolve to make this column more local. One of the things we hang our hats on at the Town Pages is putting out a paper that is almost exclusively about Rosemount. Some Dakota County news sneaks in from time to time, but mostly it's about Rosemount people doing things in Rosemount.
Things are a little different with this column. Because we publish two papers from this office and this column runs in both, writing about something specific to one city means I can't run the column in the other paper. That would double my column workload. And that would mean an extra 10, 15 minutes a week. As a consequence, there is rarely much local flavor in the column. That changes this year, though. For example, how about that sports/academic competition team from the local high school? Can you believe how well/poorly they've done so far this year? It sure is impressive/embarrassing.
See, I think that adds something.
• I resolve to write more about the adventures of Bob Corn and his unending fight against the killer zucchini.
• I resolve to make fewer jokes that only my freshman year college roommate would get.
• I resolve to stop letting people know my freshman year college roommate and I had conversations about things like organized hunts for killer zucchini. It might make us sound kind of dorky.
• I resolve to write something that will really mortify my mom. I'm not sure yet what it will be, although she's been out of town since I published last week's Christmas music column so I might be able to check that one off.
• I resolve to clean up the spelling and grammar in this column. My dad tells me he finds some kind of error in this column nearly every week. That doesn't reflect well on me, and I promise to fix that. Failing that, I resolve to find a way to blame someone else.
• I resolve to do everything I can to make this newspaper something all Rosemount residents can enjoy. I know there are interesting stories out there about Rosemount residents and I want to find them. I resolve to find interesting ways to tell the stories that might not otherwise capture people's attention. Rosemount is a great city, and it deserves a great newspaper.
No, seriously.
Now, where are my Doritos?

Take a hike, ye merry gentlemen

This is the most wonderful time of the year. You want to know why? Because now I can go another 11 months or so without having to hear "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." Or any other Christmas music, for that matter.
That's right. I'm I'm coming out against carols, those sappy, sentimental staples of the Christmas season.
I don't expect this to be a popular opinion. After all, who could be opposed to Bing Crosby crooning "White Christmas" or Nat King Cole doing "Silent Night"? Who could find it in their heart to hate the festive, trampling-based humor of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"?
Well, I could.
It's not that there there are no good Christmas songs, because many are lovely. It's not even that from mid-November through the end of December stores everywhere have Bing and Nat and Johnny Mathis on a continuous loop. I just can't get behind any music that only qualifies to be played once a year.
That holds regardless of the season or the holiday involved. I went to college in New Orleans, and as most people know Mardi Gras is a big deal in the Big Easy. It's like Christmas and a drinking binge and a trip to a particularly sleazy strip club all rolled into one. The holiday's theme song is something called "The Mardi Gras Mambo." It's a terrible song, and there's really no reason to ever listen to it. But for two weeks each year it's everywhere. It's like some evil force overtakes the part of everyone's brain that decides whether music is good or bad. I imagine it's the same thing that happens to people who buy Celine Dion albums.
It's the same thing with Christmas. I'll admit some Christmas songs have appeal. "White Christmas" is nice if you're spending wintry night lounging by the fire. And there was even a time I found "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" kind of funny. I was 8, but still. But when the malls and the radio stations and everyone homeowner taken over by the Holiday Spirit decides we need a steady diet of Christmas music and nothing but that things get dicey.
Then there's the fact Christmas albums have become the easy way for musicians to cash in. You're not really a successful recording artist these days until you've recorded a collection of Christmas standards. So, for example, Christina Aguilera, who called her second CD "Stripped," released a near-pornographic video to accompany one of her songs and made out with Madonna on some MTV awards show can now be heard singing "Oh Holy Night" and "Angels We Have Heard on High." Presumably, these particular angels have nipple rings.
These kinds of Christmas CDs are nothing new, of course. Elvis has several Christmas CDs. Even Kiss has one. Amazon.com currently offers a jazz Christmas CD, a Motown Christmas CD, even a CD of Christmas music played on steel drums. Because nothing says Christmas like "O Come All Ye Faithful" infused with the rhythm of the tropics.
Imagine if this trend extended beyond Christmas. Imagine every holiday had its own collection of traditional songs. Easy listening station would jump from all Christmas, all the time straight to marathons of New Year's Day songs ("Auld Lang Syne" on repeat, baby!) and from there to its catalog of Valentine's Day ballads. By the time we got to Thanksgiving we'd all be ready to gouge our ears out with a turkey baster.
I don't begrudge people their Christmas music. I know it helps get people in the holiday spirit. I can respect that.
I just don't think I should be held accountable for my actions if I someone puts on their copy of "Ultimate Christmas" when I'm in the room this week and I'm forced to listen to Kenny G's rendition of "Silver Bells."

Congratulations, everyone

I am Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2006, and I have to say it's about time. I'm thrilled to know the letters I've been sending finally got through to someone.
To be fair, Time Magazine has apparently chosen to name every man, woman and child in American -- or maybe the world -- its Person of the Year this year.
The reasoning behind Time's decision, it seems, is that the Internet's power to bring people together and give everyone his or her own voice gave unprecedented power to the individual. The popularization of blogs gave everyone the potential to be a terrible journalist, and sites like YouTube meant we had a central location where we could see all those stupid movie clips we once had to wait for our friends to e-mail us. And honestly, who can get enough pictures of rapping grannies and monkeys smelling their own rear ends? Take that, America's Funniest Videos.
If you ask me, the whole thing sounds like a big cop-out. The Time editors probably just forgot they were supposed to choose someone and made up some junk about learning America's true nature by watching the videos they choose to post online. I know what that's like. Once, in college, I put off writing a paper because the bar on campus was showing Ferris Beuller's Day Off. These things happen. But if watching a minute and 15 seconds of some dude hand-farting the Star Spangled Banner really reveals the character of this country I'm going to think seriously about moving to Canada. First we've got photographers camped out hoping to get pictures of Britney Spears without her underpants and now this? It's almost too much to take.
But let's take a minute to consider Time's point of view. Clearly, many people have made a notable contribution online. Sites like Wikipedia have tapped the communal knowledge of geeks everywhere to build a kind of living encyclopedia, and bloggers have in some cases helped keep mainstream journalists honest. Blogs have also allowed real journalists -- you know, hard-working folks like me who make their livings writing jokes about Britney Spears' underpants -- to keep our fingers on the pulse of America without leaving our desks. Talk to people to find out how they feel about an issue? The heck with that, I'm going to go to blogspot .com and pull quotes from a bunch of anonymous people who seem to think the world cares what they think about when they're sitting in front of their computers in their jammies. I'm in favor of that, although it would help if I could find a few more blogs where people expressed opinions about Rosemount.
But think about this: If Time is naming everyone Person of the Year, we have to take the good with the bad. We have to take Britney, for example. And we have to concede that her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, is also worthy of being considered Person of the Year, even though all he did was get someone pregnant, marry her and release a terrible, terrible rap CD. We also have to welcome to the club people like the guy who earlier this year called police to report his quarter-pound of marijuana had been stolen, then showed up at the police station to identify his drugs. Or the countless teens who used MySpace , another one of those wonderful community-building online tools Time is so excited about, to post details of the crimes they had either committed or planned to commit. Then there's my favorite local Person of the Year, the guy who, pulled over by police, claimed to have a bunch of cocaine in his truck's spare tire, only to claim it was a joke when police didn't find anything. We even have to accept the hand-farting guy, who has apparently done an entire hand-farting series, including performances of the Jeopardy theme and Happy Birthday.
I'm not sure this is a road we're really willing to go down. I'm not confident we as a nation are ready to come together as a collective Person of the Year when we can't even get together long enough to agree it's OK to wish people a Merry Christmas.
I don't care, though. I'm still putting it on my resume. At least until People finally gets around to naming me Sexiest Man Alive.

What's that smell?

The Christmas season is upon us, and people everywhere are looking for the perfect gifts to give their loved ones. Perfumes and colognes are one time-tested option, and now more than ever our celebrities are giving of themselves and providing opportunities for their adoring public to smell like them.
This is not an altogether new thing. Celebrities have been involved in the fragrance business since a soft-focused Elizabeth Taylor thought her white diamonds would give some anonymous gambler good luck. But the famous-person-odor market is getting more crowded all the time. I bring it up now because I just saw a commercial for a new fragrance from Antonio Banderas.
You know Antonio, right? Played Zorro? Was the voice of Puss in Boots in the most recent Shrek movie? Married to that blond chick from Working Girl? Yeah, that guy. Apparently he's got his own cologne now. Or maybe it's perfume. The commercial wasn't clear.
And Banderas isn't even the only Zorro castmember with his own signature scent. Catherine Zeta-Jones has one, too. Presumably it's a special concoction formulated to attract older men who look more like the Crypt Keeper every year.
There are plenty of others, too. Cher has one. She keeps threatening to pull it from the market, but it never seems to go away. So does supermodel Naomi Campbell, whose scent has "a blend of sensual and warm notes," sure to make you want to abuse your personal assistant. Celine Dion has one, too. I can only assume it is overpowering and not at all subtle with "piercing high notes."
Famous rich person Donald Trump has his own scent, which he presumably found easier to market than a line of hair care products. Substanceless pop star/ actress Hillary Duff has a fragrance that features the scent of something called Mangosteen fruit, which, according to an ad elsewhere in last week’s issue, cures more ills than Dr. McGillicuddy's Miracle Tonic in addition to making people smell good.
Even athletes have their own fragrances, although the idea of smelling like a locker room seems less than appealing. Basketball star Michael Jordan has one with "spicy lavender amber fragrance." I have no idea what amber smells like. I just know if you find a bug trapped in it you can make dinosaurs. Famous tennis player Andy Roddick has his own scent. It comes in an attractive bottle but despite early promise never seems to last as long as you think it should.
You don't even have to be a person to have your own fragrance. There are new scents available named after television shows like The O.C. and Desperate Housewives. Apparently desperation is an attractive odor.
I'm not really a fragrance person, but thanks to a website called kidzworld.com, I know what celebrity fragrance is right for me. Although some of the questions it asked about my ideal boyfriend were a little troubling, the site seems confident something called Taste by Jessica Simpson is right up my alley and will make me "kissable and smoochable" and "harder for peeps to resist." Sweet!
There are more options than I have space to mention here, but what follows are some of what my perfume-industry sources tell me are among the best soon-to-be released celebrity scents:
• Liberation, a new scent for men by recently-divorced Britney Spears ex Kevin Federline. It smells like Cheetos, Pabst Blue Ribbon, pot smoke and desperation.
• Top Gun, by Tom Cruise. A closet's worth of fruity scents that evokes enthusiasm, denial and general insanity. Scientology-approved.
• Reasonable Doubt, but O.J. Simpson. The former football star and accused murderer is not saying he's releasing this speculative fragrance, but if he did it would smell like leather gloves and cold steel.
There are even a couple of local options:
• Game Manager, by Vikings Quarterback Brad Johnson. An enduring scent that never seems to get its due. Everyone calls it an unremarkable scent that won't offend anyone but never seems to help you score.
• Trade Rumor by Kevin Garnett. Get it now. If news reports are to be believed it might not be around next week.