don’t find this one around town at many bars, but it’s a good one. had this one a couple times on our new york trip. pam got me the “official” glasses to drink the beer out of online somewhere. it works pretty smooth because the beer actually has directions on the bottle that mentions how you should use those glasses. as you pour the beer and get to about a quarter bottle left you swirl it around and get it good and foamy before pouring it in the glass and it tops off perfectly. smooth.

My New Favorite Beer.

JAN.06

winter...ya, right. we haven’t had hardly any snow. personally i think that sucks, if it’s going to be cold it might as well snow. what will happen is we’ll get dumped on in march and april when i really don’t want it to. it was mostly a low key month. am starting to really feel it for some of these drawings...the colors and detail is really getting to a place i dig.

tivoli products are as close to perfect design as i can think of. i own many of their products and they are all beautiful in their simplicity. the unit on the left is their satalite radio and the unit on the right is a new speaker they came out with. talk about perfect...the thing is just a big wood block, with the speaker cone on the top. it is an amazing piece of design. no brand name. no logo. no model number...nothing. and it sounds great too so besides being great looking it’s also  works well too. why can’t more stuff be like tivoli stuff?

Killer Design.

how did we end up with a dog like this? don’t get me wrong, he’s great and love him and all, but he’s nuts. he’s nothing like buster. buster was laid back and mellow and easy going and really pretty slow, mentally and physiclly and grady is not. he’s full speed and always on. even when he sleeps he has one eye open and can go from 0-60 in half a second. he’s like a little circus dog and can run and jump like a madman. he’ll jump straight in the air to get our attention and he can jump about up to our shoulder height. get a hoop and have him join the circus. i will say the one thing he’s really good at is cuddling. he’s on us all the time in the bed and i really dig that. he’s not aloof at all like so many french bulldogs tend to be.

nothing better than a bigass bowl of vietnamese noodle soup from quang. it’s probably enough food for  3 or 4 people but it seems sort of healthful so i do my best to eat the whole damn thing and come close most of the time. pair that up with fresh springrolls and a vietnamese iced coffee (jet fuel) and you’ve got yourself a serious meal. i dig all the saucess and stuff they put out on the table next to the chopsticks and big spoons. the most important one is the shriratcha sauce, a red chile sauce that makes shit really hot. i keep a bottle in the fridge and put it on damn near everything i eat. good stuff. the other brown sauces on the table get a little too creepy for me, and why people add sugar to the soup i’ll never understand.

patrick took us here a couple of years ago after a trip to the state fair.you know the stories of the bars you walk into and everything stops and people stare at you because you don’t belong there and they don’t know you? well, this is one of those places, worse than i’ve ever seen it. ted’s is built for drinking. ted’s is a drinking machine. the outside looks cool and old. the inside has absolutely zero ambiance. just bare flourescent tubes blasting white light onto pale sick looking drunk people. the place smells like mold and the beer is cheap. don’t think i’ll make ted’s a regualr hangout anytime soon...at least i hope i don’t.

i first saw these birds on the powerline and thought that might make a cool picture...than i saw the lexington plaza sign straight out of the 1970’s and i knew i had to make it. we got stuck in some suburb of st. paul and i was killing time while pam bought fabric or something. i dig the sign, it’s pretty cool, which of course means they’re about to tear it down and replace it with something teal and 1980’s looking as an “update”.

nye’s is one of those places you have to go to if you don’t live in minneapolis. it’s old. red vinyl booths. and old poka band plays in the bar while an old fat woman plays next door in the piano bar. the attched ‘palonaise room’ serves big plates of meat. sounds great except the it’s pretty close to the university and all the drunk dorks like to hand out there. i wish they’d find a sports bar or something more fitting for them to hangout at so i can start going back to nye’s before someone buys it and closes it down.

speaking of old cool stuff being sold and closed...where the bulldog bar is used to be a great vegitarian place that was sort of an icon of the city. real hippie type place that sold great food. when it closed i didbn’t have much hope for what would replace it, but when i saw they were calling it the bulldog i dug that for obvious reasons and figured the place had at least a shot at being cool. well it is cool. they serve hot dogs and fries and a bunch of beers and play some pretty good tunes on the jukebox (social distortion, motley crue etc). the place has turned in to a pretty decent neighborhood rock and roll dive joint with decent food. and a cool name.

took a drive into wisconsin to check out a restaurant i’ve been reading about for a while that is owned by the drummer from Husker Du. came across this old drive in restaurant that was closed up for the winter. there’s something really creepy about closed down drive in’s. pretty good places to shoot horror movies if you ask me.

see what i mean? it’s got horror movie written all over it.

the memorial for the motorcyclist that bought it at the intersection doen the hill from the drive-in was a bit much.

i had one of these fancy beers on tap. good stuff. i usually

roll with the light beers but he didn’t have any of those, and these were brewed in wisconsin so when in rome.

owned by the drummer from Husker Du. pretty cool. good place too. we sat at the bar and he was working the bar. i never had the courage to do the whole “hey, you’re the drummer from husker du!” thing. i don’t know why. i should of, but i just wasn’t feelin’ it. i was feeling the food though. great place. and if the food did suck all kinds of fancy spices were just an arm length away to make even roadkill taste good. didn’t need them though.

rock poster art shows are cool. opening night of rock poster art shows are not...at least not if you actually want to see the art. that was next to impossible with all the scenesters floating around blocking the art. “look assshole, i’m here to see the art, not you standing around talking to your buddies or some hot chick you’ll never sleep with, posing in front of the art i’m trying to get a look at...get the fuck out of my way.”

we were shooting something with marc aand he had just moved into his new studio and having work done to the place and i wanted to catch him in a moment of his chaos.

glad i never saw this back in my polaroid shooting days. this sucker would set me back over $1000...but isn’t it cool as hell? rock that at a party and some shit would happen.

from somewhere i don’t remember.

need a serious sugar/caffeine fix? this is the way to go.

and i mean crazy. before this focus group for what ever the hell

we were focusing on the moderator went around the room and had people tell their name and a little something about themselves. most people did the normal “my name is...i have this many kids...i like to ski...i like to waste a night of my time for fifty bucks and a free meal...” blah blah blah. well, they got to this woman, she says her name and blurts out “i’m a christian.” and that’s it. no mention of kids, hobbies, job. just that she’s a christian. that’s all that matters. and she said it with that tone that was designed to make her somehow more important than anyone else in the room. unfuckingbelievable. what the hell is with people and the religion thing? crazy.