At a private screening hosted at the Mall of America theater last week, Mark Mathis, producer of a new documentary starring comedian Ben Stein that targets critics of intelligent design, resorted to drastic measures to keep critics of the film away: He enlisted mall security.
And it worked—sort of.
"I'm blogging this from the Apple Store at the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to wait," wrote University of Minnesota biology professor PZ Myers, a notorious and outspoken enemy of creationists everywhere. Myers appears in Mathis's film, and is thanked in the credits—but he was ejected at the theater door.
According to Myers, he was waiting in line with family and colleagues, having registered to attend the screening, when a security guard pulled him from the line and informed him that Mathis had instructed the theater not to allow Myers in.
The popular blogger and defender of evolutionary theory obliged, and headed straight for the nearest internet connection where he got right to blogging. It was not enough that he had been booted from a film he appeared in (and which is called...wait for it...Expelled), there was also this: "They didn't notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn't recognize him."
The guest was perhaps the world's best-known living evolutionary biologist: Richard Dawkins.
"He's in the theater right now, watching their movie," Myers wrote. "Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?"
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Sprayer Haters
Rush City citizens challenged their City Council last week to defend them from cats in heat.
Feral, sex-starved felines have been spraying everything in town. "My house smells like the neighborhood litter box," protested one local.
The sprayer-haters suggested the city call in the Animal Ark Neuter Commuter—a mobile feline de-sexing unit that will roll into town if you trap at least 50 offenders.
Start trapping, Rush City—winner gets to drive the Neuter scooter!
Feral, sex-starved felines have been spraying everything in town. "My house smells like the neighborhood litter box," protested one local.
The sprayer-haters suggested the city call in the Animal Ark Neuter Commuter—a mobile feline de-sexing unit that will roll into town if you trap at least 50 offenders.
Start trapping, Rush City—winner gets to drive the Neuter scooter!
Clubbing! Show ads from a hairier era...
We've gone deep into the City pages vault and emerged with a handsome collection of ads from the big Twin Cities metal clubs of the '80s.
We've got a rich archive here at City Pages headquarters, and we'll be mining them from time to time for a series of posts we're calling Unearthed. For the Sex, Drugs, & Awesome Hair story, I pulled dozens of issues from the '80s and scanned ads from the big clubs of the day. These images go along with our vintage slideshow of the bands. Here they are, see you at the show!
Read the rest here.
We've got a rich archive here at City Pages headquarters, and we'll be mining them from time to time for a series of posts we're calling Unearthed. For the Sex, Drugs, & Awesome Hair story, I pulled dozens of issues from the '80s and scanned ads from the big clubs of the day. These images go along with our vintage slideshow of the bands. Here they are, see you at the show!
Read the rest here.
The glamtacular history of 1980s heavy metal in the Twin Cities
ON MAINSTREET in Hopkins, a bar called Decoy's shares the street with an antiques mall and a bead store. On a subzero night in March, a middle-aged woman with bleached blond hair, skyward bangs, and a winter coat covering a jean jacket is on the sidewalk in front of the bar on her phone, arranging a rendezvous with a friend. "Irregardless," she says, "I'll be on the floor dancing."
Inside, Hairball, a band that bills itself as "a tribute to '80s hard rock," is setting up two walls of amps on a cramped corner stage.
The bass player, a 37-year-old who goes by "Sports" and looks more Danzig than David Lee Roth, is standing on the empty dance floor in front of the stage, plucking through Metallica's "Enter Sandman" with eyes fixed on a corner television screen broadcasting a high school hockey tournament at a St. Paul arena—the kind of place for which Hairball's gear might be better suited (the lighting trusses, drum riser, and pyrotechnics wouldn't fit on the Hopkins stage). The band is a sort of time-machine act, using costumes and staging to evoke a lost era when drug- and sex-saturated rock stars wore spandex and long hair and played heavy metal on arena stages. It was also an era when countless Twin Cities bands emulated these heavy metal stars, angling for record deals, tour buses, and enough fans to fill their own arena concerts.
Off to one side of the Decoy's stage, Hairball has hung a black curtain, creating a tiny staging area for an evening of elaborate costume changes. There are two singers. One will do two songs as Dee Snider from Twisted Sister while the other is preparing his Ozzy Osbourne costume in the improvised dressing room.
When the lights go down, somebody somewhere cues the intro music and the singer called "Rockstar Bob," who is wearing spandex, a sleeveless tee, a blond wig, and dark aviator glasses, peeks out from the black sheet and signals a crew member with frantic hands. He is signaling for the fog—lots of it, his hands say in circles. Everywhere. The band rolls in with the fog. The guitar player, known as "Happy," is wearing ripped, flesh-hugging pants with fishnet patching and is a veteran of Twin Cities metal bands from the era he now spoofs. Happy strikes a chord and Rockstar Bob issues a proclamation: "This is a Hairball party!"
Really, it's a class reunion. Onstage and on the dance floor (which is packed) are the same people who haunted the stages and dance floors of Twin Cities rock clubs two decades ago. They were clubs like the Iron Horse, Ryan's, the Payne Reliever, Muldoon's, and the beloved Mr. Nibs, which had walls covered with glossy black-and-white promotional photos of the local bands that played there—bands with big hair, tight pants, bare chests, and expressions that alternated between come-hither pouts and defiant grimaces. The bands had names like Dare Force, Obsession, Paradox, Slave Raider, Brass Kitten, Mad Atchu, Wonderland, and the Blondes.
In those days, the critical affections of the local press were spent on bands like Hüsker Dü, the Suburbs, Prince, and the Replacements. Heavy metal was the scene the critics didn't want to touch. When they did, they were not often kind.
Read the rest here.
Inside, Hairball, a band that bills itself as "a tribute to '80s hard rock," is setting up two walls of amps on a cramped corner stage.
The bass player, a 37-year-old who goes by "Sports" and looks more Danzig than David Lee Roth, is standing on the empty dance floor in front of the stage, plucking through Metallica's "Enter Sandman" with eyes fixed on a corner television screen broadcasting a high school hockey tournament at a St. Paul arena—the kind of place for which Hairball's gear might be better suited (the lighting trusses, drum riser, and pyrotechnics wouldn't fit on the Hopkins stage). The band is a sort of time-machine act, using costumes and staging to evoke a lost era when drug- and sex-saturated rock stars wore spandex and long hair and played heavy metal on arena stages. It was also an era when countless Twin Cities bands emulated these heavy metal stars, angling for record deals, tour buses, and enough fans to fill their own arena concerts.
Off to one side of the Decoy's stage, Hairball has hung a black curtain, creating a tiny staging area for an evening of elaborate costume changes. There are two singers. One will do two songs as Dee Snider from Twisted Sister while the other is preparing his Ozzy Osbourne costume in the improvised dressing room.
When the lights go down, somebody somewhere cues the intro music and the singer called "Rockstar Bob," who is wearing spandex, a sleeveless tee, a blond wig, and dark aviator glasses, peeks out from the black sheet and signals a crew member with frantic hands. He is signaling for the fog—lots of it, his hands say in circles. Everywhere. The band rolls in with the fog. The guitar player, known as "Happy," is wearing ripped, flesh-hugging pants with fishnet patching and is a veteran of Twin Cities metal bands from the era he now spoofs. Happy strikes a chord and Rockstar Bob issues a proclamation: "This is a Hairball party!"
Really, it's a class reunion. Onstage and on the dance floor (which is packed) are the same people who haunted the stages and dance floors of Twin Cities rock clubs two decades ago. They were clubs like the Iron Horse, Ryan's, the Payne Reliever, Muldoon's, and the beloved Mr. Nibs, which had walls covered with glossy black-and-white promotional photos of the local bands that played there—bands with big hair, tight pants, bare chests, and expressions that alternated between come-hither pouts and defiant grimaces. The bands had names like Dare Force, Obsession, Paradox, Slave Raider, Brass Kitten, Mad Atchu, Wonderland, and the Blondes.
In those days, the critical affections of the local press were spent on bands like Hüsker Dü, the Suburbs, Prince, and the Replacements. Heavy metal was the scene the critics didn't want to touch. When they did, they were not often kind.
Read the rest here.
Reporter's Notebook: Sex, Drugs & Awesome Hair
Brian Bart of Dare Force traces Twin Cities hair metal back to some rather astounding sources. Most notably, local 60's garage rock legends the Litter. How does he do that? Two words: Zippy. Caplan.
Zippy Caplan sang in The Litter and later in the hard-rock-teetering-on-heavy metal local act White Lightning. With White Lightning, the hair got longer, the pants a little tighter and the riffs a little heavier.
Another local forerunner to the metal bands featured in my article was Chameleon. Not ringing a bell? Maybe the name of their keyboard player would rattle your memory glands. I'll give you a hint: one name, rhymes with Donny.
Answer: Yanni.
Who said there were no surprises in metal?
There were a zillion Twin Cities metal bands in the '80s, as you can see from that slideshow of promo photos. Also check out the City Pages' show advertisements from these bands during that era. For this post, I zeroed in on three groups: Dare Force, Obsession and Slave Raider. Here's a little more on each of them ...
Read the rest here.
Zippy Caplan sang in The Litter and later in the hard-rock-teetering-on-heavy metal local act White Lightning. With White Lightning, the hair got longer, the pants a little tighter and the riffs a little heavier.
Another local forerunner to the metal bands featured in my article was Chameleon. Not ringing a bell? Maybe the name of their keyboard player would rattle your memory glands. I'll give you a hint: one name, rhymes with Donny.
Answer: Yanni.
Who said there were no surprises in metal?
There were a zillion Twin Cities metal bands in the '80s, as you can see from that slideshow of promo photos. Also check out the City Pages' show advertisements from these bands during that era. For this post, I zeroed in on three groups: Dare Force, Obsession and Slave Raider. Here's a little more on each of them ...
Read the rest here.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Crazy Train
There is no crime against bad ideas, which is a good thing for Minnetonka consulting firm Media Ink.
Last week the deep thinkers in the branding agency unveiled their suggestion for naming the Central Corridor light rail line. In a city that routinely grapples with sub-zero cold snaps, Media Ink thought it would be cute to call the train the ICICLE, or the "Ice" for short. The name, they said, would reflect Minnesotans' pride in climate.
In a just world, a judge would lock these people away for life and they would spend the rest of their days in a prison called "Chain Gang Acres."
Last week the deep thinkers in the branding agency unveiled their suggestion for naming the Central Corridor light rail line. In a city that routinely grapples with sub-zero cold snaps, Media Ink thought it would be cute to call the train the ICICLE, or the "Ice" for short. The name, they said, would reflect Minnesotans' pride in climate.
In a just world, a judge would lock these people away for life and they would spend the rest of their days in a prison called "Chain Gang Acres."
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