Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Graveyard Special by James Lileks Lileks: An early fair? It's against the laws of nature. No, hold on. I'm not the only who feels this way, I'm certain. Suddenly it's a looming issue. The State Fair, the Great Get-Together, has announced a "mini-fair" on Memorial Day Weekend, and for many it's tempting. Except for the whole "Get Together" part. First, what's a Mini Fair? Does that mean everything is half-scale? That would be amusing. Instead of big lumbering cows, there would be very small cows (or as those farm kids say with their special country lingo, "calves"). The big swing ride on the midway goes up only 7 feet, which is great if it gets stuck. In normal times when it ceases to operate and everyone's dangling, you don't have the "hop off" option. Well, you do, but it's not advised. What else would a resized fair have? Half-sized neon-hued yardsticks, which would work as walking sticks only if you went around on your knees — which perhaps also would be mandatory under the miniaturized theme. Fairchild, the mascot gopher, would be replaced by an actual gopher, manipulated with marionette strings to make it walk erect. (Note to the person who has to put on its clothes: Make sure you're up on all your shots, and we just don't mean COVID.) I know what you're thinking: what of Mini Donuts? In a Mini Fair, would they just cut the number in half, or reduce the size of the doughnuts? Is it even possible to reduce the size of Mini Donuts? At some point the center aperture no longer will be visible, and then people will think they're doughnut holes. "Actually, ma'am, they still have a hole. It's just not observable by the naked eye." "So I'm supposed to bring an electron microscope to the fairgrounds to make sure I'm actually getting a Mini Donut and not a full-sized doughnut hole?" "Step over here. We have a high-intensity light, and I can hold up the Mini Donut; you'll see a thin shaft of light as the photons pass through the hole. That should set your mind at ease." Similar questions attend the About a Foot-Long Hot Dog. I've never quite understood that designation, anyway. Is it full disclosure, in case some class-action suit lawyer shows up with a tape measure, keen on bringing down the entire lying foot-long industry? Or do they mean "about" in the Cambridge Dictionary sense: "on the subject of, or connected with?" As in, "settle down, children, and I'll tell you a story about a foot-long hot dog. Friends called him Frank." If they're going to have a Mini-Fair version of the About a Foot Long, they couldn't call it the About a Half-Foot-Long Hot Dog, could they? Wouldn't that just be . a hot dog? It would suggest that they'd had the fresh opportunity to measure the product precisely to meet the Mini-Fair realignment protocols and had waved it away as too much trouble. I'm not impressed. There was no fair last year, you know — they've had almost 22 months to figure out how long the hot dog is, so apparently they just don't care. Truth be told, I don't think the Mini Fair literally will be mini, and I don't say that just because I've grown tired of the idea and have run out of increasingly strained ways to write about it. The Mini Fair will just be less of what the Maxi Fair provides, a little preview, a gift to a fair-starved state. Sounds like a lovely idea and thank you, fair, for doing this. But I can't go. I want to go! But I don't. After last year, I have great pent-up fair anticipation, and I don't want to squander it on anything but the actual fair. Plus, it always feels wrong to go to the fairgrounds when it's not the proper time; it's empty and sad, like sneaking into Disneyland after it's closed and seeing the guy who plays Mickey sitting on a bench with his mouse head off, smoking a cigarette. Here's the real problem, though. The fair comes at the end of the summer. It is the last hurrah, a time when summer seems eternal one day and fleeting the next. When the fair ends, the summer is over, and no matter how hot and green it may be, we know it's actually fall. If they hold a Mini Fair at the end of spring, it's possible some cosmic meteorological law will be broken, and we'll have a cold summer where the days get shorter and it feels like Halloween at the end of July. You don't want that. You know why? Because then people would start talking about the Great Halloween Blizzard, and they would drone on about it for four months, instead of one. James Lileks. Lileks began his writing career as a columnist for the while he was a student at the . After college, he wrote for City Pages , a Twin Cities alternative tabloid. He served as a general columnist for City Pages until 1988, when he was hired as a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press . This led to a columnist job with Newhouse News Service and thence The Washington Post for a period in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, Lileks returned to the Twin Cities for a job with the , retaining his Newhouse column until late 2006. The Star Tribune discontinued Lileks's column in 2007, eventually naming him editor of the now defunct community website buzz.mn. Lileks also writes a regular column ( Athwart ) for . [2] Radio personality. Lileks's first foray into radio came in 1987, while he was a writer with City Pages . He became a regular guest on the Geoff Charles show, an afternoon talk show on KSTP. When Charles left the Twin Cities, Lileks filled the slot and served as an afternoon-drive host on KSTP for a time in the late 1980s. In the mid-1990s, after returning from Washington DC, Lileks reappeared on KSTP with a new program, The Diner – a show set in a fictional 1950s-era diner. The show lasted several years on weekday evenings and then a few more as a weekend-evening program before leaving the air in the late 1990s. As of October 23, 2013, The Diner was revived on Ricochet.com. In late 2006, The Diner was revived in podcast form. Selected original Diner programs and new original Diners are available on Lileks's website. Lileks is also a weekly guest on the Hugh Hewitt show, [3] Pajamas Media's weekly PJM Political show on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio's POTUS channel, and a frequent guest and guest host on the Northern Alliance Radio Network program. Lileks has also been a monologist for the public affairs program Almanac , carried on Minnesota PBS television stations. Website. Lileks's , the Daily Bleat , [4] began in 1997. The Bleat covers many topics in his personal life (including his daughter Natalie (referred to as "Gnat" until she became old enough to object) and the family dog, Scout), politics from a conservative viewpoint, and cultural points of interest ranging from art and architecture to movies and music (one perennial topic is the ). Lileks's website also hosts a vast repository of vintage advertisements and other ephemera from the 1920s to the 1970s. Other work. Lileks is a regular contributor to the social networking and blogging network Ricochet.com, and co-hosts the site's flagship podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. [5] Star Tribune controversy and resolution. On May 7, 2007, Lileks announced that his home paper, the Star Tribune , was ending his column in the interest of budget cuts and putting him on a straight local-news beat. [6] The move, which was forced by cuts in other parts of the Star Tribune ' s newsroom, drew criticism from many, [7] [8] [9] including Dave Barry. [10] Mike Argento, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, said in reaction to the news: [11] It's just a reflection of the sad state of the newspaper industry. Many of the people running newspapers don't have a vision. They're concerned with dollars and cents, and the bottom line. They should look at the future, not just slash and burn. On June 5, 2007, the Star Tribune changed course and announced Lileks would serve as editor of buzz.mn, a community website. [12] Buzz.mn ceased publication of new content in July 2009. Bibliography. Fiction. Falling up the Stairs (1988, ISBN 0-525-24655-X) Mr. Obvious (1995, ISBN 0-671-73705-8) Graveyard Special (2012, ASIN B00962GFES) The Casablanca Tango (2014, ASIN B00NDLYM70) Columns. Notes of a Nervous Man (1991, ISBN 0-671-73701-5) Fresh Lies (1995, ISBN 0-671-73703-1) Humor. The Gallery of Regrettable Food (2001, ISBN 0-609-60782-0) Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s (2004, ISBN 1- 4000-4640-8) Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice (2005, ISBN 1-4000-8228-5) Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery (2007, ISBN 0-307-38307-5) RiffTrax - special guest riffer for Spider-Man 3 [13] Related Research Articles. The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. It originated as the Minneapolis Tribune in 1867 and the competing Minneapolis Daily Star in 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s Minneapolis's competing newspapers were consolidated, with the Tribune published in the morning and the Star in the evening. They merged in 1982, creating the Star and Tribune , and it was renamed to Star Tribune in 1987. After a tumultuous period in which the newspaper was sold and re-sold and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, it was purchased by local businessman Glen Taylor in 2014. The St. Paul Pioneer Press is a newspaper based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, primarily serving the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Circulation is heaviest in the eastern metro region, including Ramsey, Dakota, and Washington counties, along with western Wisconsin, eastern Minnesota and Anoka County, Minnesota. The paper's main rival is the Star Tribune , based in neighboring Minneapolis. The Pioneer Press has been owned by MediaNews Group since April 2006. It no longer includes "St. Paul" as part of its name in either its print or online edition, but its owner still lists the paper's name as the St. Paul Pioneer Press . The paper also calls itself the St. Paul Pioneer Press on its Facebook page and its Twitter page. Joe Soucheray is a radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist. He produces his podcast Garage Logic from studios in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hugh Hewitt is an American radio talk show host with the Salem Radio Network and an attorney, academic, and author. A conservative, he writes about law, society, politics, and media bias in the United States. Hewitt is president and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law, a columnist for The Washington Post , and a regular political commentator on NBC News and MSNBC. KSTP is a sports radio station. It is the flagship AM radio station of Hubbard Broadcasting, which also owns several other television and radio stations across the United States and some other media properties. It is the ESPN Radio affiliate for Minneapolis-St. Paul. KSTP operates at a power of 50,000 watts and shares clear-channel, Class A status on 1500 AM with WFED in Washington, D.C., from a transmitter located in Maplewood. The Minnesota Daily is the campus newspaper of the University of Minnesota, published Monday and Thursday while school is in session, and published weekly on Wednesdays during summer sessions. Published since 1900, the paper is currently the largest student-run and student-written newspaper in the United States and the fourth-largest paper in the state of Minnesota, behind the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press . The Daily was named best daily college newspaper in the United States in 2009 and 2010 by the Society of Professional Journalists. The paper is independent from the University, but receives $500,000 worth of student service fees funding. Sidney Hartman was an American sports journalist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the WCCO 830 AM radio station. For 20 years, he was also a panelist on the weekly television program Sports Show with Mike Max , which aired Sunday nights at 9:30 p.m. on WUCW 23 in the Twin Cities metro area. He continued writing for the Star Tribune until his death at the age of 100. Al's Breakfast is reportedly the narrowest restaurant in the city of Minneapolis, at a width of ten feet (3.0 m). Al's Breakfast is crammed into a former alleyway between two much larger buildings and is located in the city's Dinkytown neighborhood near the University of Minnesota. The restaurant's 14 stools have seated generations of local students, along with notable figures such as writer James Lileks and humorist Garrison Keillor, all of whom consider the tiny diner to be a significant icon of the state. The 2006 United States Senate election in Minnesota took place on November 7, 2006. One-term incumbent DFL U.S. Senator Mark Dayton announced in February 2005 that he would retire instead of seeking a second term. The primary elections took place on September 12, 2006. DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar won the open seat. Writ is a legal commentary website on the topic of the law of the United States hosted by FindLaw. The website is no longer adding content, having published its last entry in August 2011. Before then, Writ published at least one new column by one of its regular columnists every business day, and frequently posted a second column by a guest columnist. The regular columnists were all notable attorneys. Almost all contributors are law professors; some are former law clerks from the U.S. Supreme Court; some are past or present federal prosecutors; one is a former Counsel to the President; one is a novelist, and one is the current director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program of Human Rights Watch. The guest columnists also tend to be law professors or seasoned attorneys. When the website was still producing new content, columnists commented both on notable ongoing court cases and recent court decisions, as well as on current events. Dan Barreiro is a sports radio talk-show host on KFAN 100.3-FM in the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Born in Gary, Indiana, Barreiro was a sports columnist at the Star Tribune for 17 years after previously working for the Dallas Morning News . Barreiro left the Star Tribune in March 2004. Marjorie Johnson , the "Blue Ribbon Baker", is a popular baker from Robbinsdale, Minnesota. First made famous through her guest appearances on KSTP radio's Garage Logic, she has since appeared on numerous talk shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , The Rosie O'Donnell Show , The View , and The Kelly Clarkson Show in September 2019 at age 100. Johnson has won over 2,500 fair ribbons, including over 1,000 blue ribbons and numerous sweepstakes ribbons. Patrick Reusse is an American sportswriter and radio personality in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area of Minnesota. Guy Pelham Benson is an American columnist, commentator, and political pundit. He is a contributor to Fox News, political editor of Townhall.com, and a conservative talk radio host. David A. Thompson is a Minnesota politician and former member of the Minnesota Senate. A member of the Republican Party of Minnesota, he represented District 58, which included portions of Dakota and Goodhue counties in the southern Twin Cities metropolitan area. He is also a former radio personality. Thompson was a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in 2014. Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy ( TIZA ) was an elementary school (K-8) in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota named after Tarek ibn Ziyad, the muslim general of medieval who entered in 711 CE on behalf of the Umayyad Caliphate and defeated the Visigoths. The school is sponsored by Islamic Relief USA. The school has a primarily Muslim student body and has been embroiled in a number of controversies regarding the separation of church and state. The school has a waiting list of 1,500 students. Around 80% of students are English language learners. Despite this, the school has one of the highest reading scores on standardized tests in the state. As of July 2011 TiZA has been shut down by order of the Minnesota Education Department, due to lack of an approved charter school sponsor. The 2010 Minnesota gubernatorial election was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 to elect the 40th Governor of the U.S. state of Minnesota for a four-year term to begin in January 2011. The general election was contested by the major party candidates State Representative Tom Emmer (R–Delano), former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton (DFL), and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner. After a very close race, Dayton was elected governor. Emmer would be elected to the United States House of Representatives four years later. Ron Olsen is a veteran cross-platform journalist based in Harford County, Maryland, United States. Michael Russo is an American sports journalist for The Athletic. His primary beat is the National Hockey League (NHL) and Minnesota Wild. He worked for the Minneapolis Star Tribune from 2005–17. Cannabis in Minnesota relates to the legal and cultural events surrounding the use of cannabis. Recreational use of marijuana remains illegal in Minnesota. Rob Long, James Lileks, and Roman Genn, from the 2012 National Review Cruise. Our final interviews from the 2012 National Review Post-Election Cruise feature a troika of pop culture-oriented conservatives. Rob Long writes an often hilarious column for “dead tree” edition of National Review, in addition to producing TV’s Sullivan & Son for WTBS (in past years, Rob was a producer on a comedy you may have heard of called Cheers ). James Lileks writes the “Athwart” column for each issue of NR, in addition to writing at his own Lileks.com Website, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and, from time to time, PJM as well. Along with Peter Robinson, they host the flagship Ricochet.com podcast. Roman Genn has illustrated many a National Review cover. With his deep foghorn Boris Badenov voice, he’s also the master of the deadpan one-liner on the comedy nights on the NR cruises. Topics discussed include: ● How can conservatives recapture pop culture? ● Lileks’ new novel, Graveyard Special and its flashback to college life in 1980, during the culture’s transition from Carter to Reagan. ● How Roman crafts his National Review covers. Click here to listen: (24:36 minutes long; 22.5 MB file size. Want to download instead of streaming? Right click here to download this week’s show to your hard drive. Or right click here to download the 7MB lo-fi edition.) If the above Flash audio player is not compatible with your browser, click below on the YouTube player below, or click here to be taken directly to YouTube, for an audio-only YouTube clip. Between one of those versions, you should find a format that plays on your system. ● For our interview with Jim Geraghty from the 2012 NR Cruise click here. ● For our interview with Victor Davis Hanson from the 2012 NR Cruise click here. Graveyard Special by James Lileks. I was here years ago - many, many years ago, I realize with a small sigh - to do a story on the town for the paper. A weekend getaway! There wasn’t much to get away to, but it was a nice place. It’s known for something quite important to Minnesotans, but we’ll get to that. Let's imagine the pride of the man who had this one built. “Well, there it is - the most economical yet handsome commercial building in our fine fair town. I expect it’ll be known for years for its uniqueness, and special, simple perfection." “Why, surely no other - OH HELL MERRICK NO YOU DIDN’T" "I told my architect not to sell to that got-damned Merrick" This one literally seems to be whistling past the graveyard. Cruel Bucarooism, and what the hell is going on with that little pointy part and peculiar balustrade? He built it? I guess a man could make a nice living doing simple, illustrative diagrams. “I can’t get around it, Mr. Neal. The middle wall is a load-bearing wall.” “Can’t you just bring the bricks forward so the facade is flush?” Architect falls silent, fumes internally, wondering why didn’t think of that. “No, sir, would weaken the building. Fatally, I fear.” No one’s ever seen them without their helmets: A prime example of an awning uniting two different buildings. Some buildings just look horribly hung over. The Delta Rhythm Boys were an American vocal group active for over 50 years from 1934 to 1987. I mention that because it's in the placeholder copy, and now and then throughout the year you're going to see it, because I forgot to remove it. Our little runing joke. Look at that lovely little building - a touch of style and grace filtered through the machine-era aesthetic of Art Deco. Stuck wearing a shingled hat. “And here’s the Captain of our chapter to explain how we spent too much of the stone budget on the fish fry.” “Work on that door, Johnson; we’re only hiring hobbits now, and I don’t want them to feel self-conscious when they see a big door.” POST JOHNSON DAVIS. Huh? A banker named F. H. Davis who purchased the Post in 1931 and sold it to father-son B.A. Johnson and M.A. Johnson. Then in 1937 banker Davis bought the Register from Palmer and sold that also to the Johnsons. The sales included the newspaper building. If you look at where Blue Earth Graphics is now located, it says "Post - Johnson-Davis" on the building. Doesn’t explain why both names are chiseled on the front. That’s it. No bank, no movie theater. But there is a Supervalu - a brand that disappeared from most grocery-story signs decades ago. But they have the Colossus of Peas. That's what we Minnesotans know, and love. James Lileks. Lileks began his writing career as a columnist for the Minnesota Daily while he was a student at the University of Minnesota. After college, he wrote for City Pages , a Twin Cities alternative tabloid. He served as a general columnist for City Pages until 1988, when he was hired as a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press . This led to a columnist job with Newhouse News Service and thence The Washington Post for a period in the early nineties. In the mid-nineties, Lileks returned to the Twin Cities for a job with the Star Tribune , retaining his Newhouse column until late 2006. The Star Tribune discontinued Lileks's column in 2007, eventually naming him editor of the now defunct community website buzz.mn. Lileks also writes a regular column ( Athwart ) for National Review . [1] Radio personality. Lileks's first foray into radio came in 1987, while he was a writer with City Pages . He became a regular guest on the Geoff Charles show, an afternoon talk show on KSTP. When Charles left the Twin Cities, Lileks filled the slot and served as an afternoon-drive host on KSTP for a time in the late eighties. In the mid-nineties, after returning from Washington DC, Lileks reappeared on KSTP with a new program, The Diner – a show set in a fictional fifties-era diner. The show lasted several years on weekday evenings and then a few more as a weekend-evening program before leaving the air in the late nineties. As of October 23, 2013, The Diner was revived on Ricochet.com. In late 2006, The Diner was revived in podcast form. Selected original Diner programs and new original Diners are available on Lileks's website. Lileks is also a weekly guest on the Hugh Hewitt show, [2] Pajamas Media's weekly PJM Political show on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio's POTUS channel, and a frequent guest and guest host on the Northern Alliance Radio Network program. Lileks has also been a monologist for the public affairs program Almanac , carried on Minnesota PBS television stations. Website. Lileks's blog, the Daily Bleat , [3] began in 1997. The Bleat covers many topics in his personal life (including his daughter Natalie (referred to as "Gnat" until she became old enough to object) and the family dog, Scout), politics from a conservative viewpoint, and cultural points of interest ranging from art and architecture to movies and music (one perennial topic is the Minnesota State Fair). Lileks's website also hosts a vast repository of vintage advertisements and other ephemera from the 1920s to the 1970s. Other work. Lileks is a regular contributor to the center-right social networking and blogging network Ricochet.com, and co-hosts the site's podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. [4] Star Tribune controversy and resolution. On May 7, 2007, Lileks announced that his home paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune , was ending his column in the interest of budget cuts and putting him on a straight local news beat. [5] The move, which was forced by cuts in other parts of the Star Tribune ' s newsroom, drew criticism from many, [6] [7] [8] including Dave Barry. [9] Mike Argento, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, said in reaction to the news: [10] It's just a reflection of the sad state of the newspaper industry. Many of the people running newspapers don't have a vision. They're concerned with dollars and cents, and the bottom line. They should look at the future, not just slash and burn.