A gaggle of us went on the Summit Brewery tour in St. Paul.
Tonight we moseyed down to Classafrass, which is what I call the Pumps and Pearls Revue at the Townhouse Bar. We even got some No Doubt realness:
Pechman had a “recreational fire” at his house. His neighbors were unamused.
It is 1 a.m. and we are at St. Paul’s Camp Bar. Eric and Curt are off another room, but I am on the dance floor because Beyonce’s “Video Phone” is playing. An over-cologned Ethiopian-Somali1 guy watches me from the bar.
A remix of “Took the Night” comes on. The Somali and I exchange a look, he puts down his drink, and a full-scale vogue battle ensues.
I usually do not vogue at random bars, especially in St. Paul, but I just wasted a hour listening to a crappy cover band butcher top-40 hits. The band is on break, the video-Jockey is playing vogue music, and therefore boomkats are in order. The Somali agrees.
We give hands, dips, and duck walk as guys at the bar gawk on like “what kind of fuckery is this?” The battle lasts for the entire song. We then clear the dance floor and the cover band comes back on:
Surprisingly, our random vogue-off was not the hottest mess in St. Paul that night: earlier, at the Movie Bears Beer Bust, there was a 400-pound woman wearing black underwear, fish net stockings, and 3-sizes-too-small spiked heels.
Eric was so amused and wanted to pose near her, but I could not get a good shot of our Pussycat Doll because her friend blocked the view:
Normally, I would just ask the Pussycat Doll if she would pose with Eric, but she was ranting about how she didn’t understand why people were making fun of her, so I decided not to add any fuel to the drama-fire.
Last night’s beer bust was my first Movie Bears event. The club usually watches movies on Tuesdays, which is Trivia night, but they also watch horror movies on Fridays. It seems like a fun group, but I haven’t decided if I want to tack one more event onto my social calendar. Do I have time for this?
1 This is actually accurate. I asked.
It snowed a bit yesterday.
Parking on the wrong street during a snow emergency means a few hours at an impound lot and a hefty fine.
The City of Minneapolis has a parking grid available online. St. Paul doesn’t. This was a problem because Trivia night is in downtown St. Paul, and I did not know if my car was safe because I could not find any “we plow here” signs.
I was scared of getting towed, so I left the bar to move my car to a garage.
The construction in downtown St. Paul and the random one-way streets caused me to spend at least 15 minutes driving in a huge, awkward circle. I ended up on the wrong side of the street several times. The cops got suspicious. It was a disaster.
I eventually found a parking garage near the bar. The garage was underground and looked like a basement from the SAW horror movies. The lighting was dim and the columns were unpainted. Rats somersaulted on the partially flooded floor.
I walked to the pay booth and saw a sign that read “Garage closes at 10pm. Plan accordingly.”
A random middle-aged woman enters the garage and I ask her how one gets into the building after 10pm.
Random woman: “After 10pm? I dunno. Just park in the covered alley.”
Me: “The covered alley?”
Random woman: “Yes. There’s a covered alley right on the side of the building that has parking spaces. It’s always empty. Here, let me show you. Follow me.”
So I let the random woman take me to the abandoned covered alley, and then park.
The “covered alley” is more of a tunnel. It is the kind of tunnel where a jogger finds a burned body on Law & Order. I leave my car with the understanding that I will be killed and eaten upon my return. Thank god Christopher Meloni will find my body and launch an epic investigation sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, a family company.
Trivia night was a sprawling conversation. Jake, Bill, and I exchanged stories until almost 2 a.m.
I then snuck back into the tunnel, fetched my car, and zipped back to Minneapolis, the city of clear parking restrictions.
The attendance at Trivia was sparse last night. We still won with our three-person team since Randy happened to know 90% of the answers.
Last night was special because of our new Trivia host: Amy.
This is totally a “Paula was okay but Ellen is so much better” situation.
This is Jake, taking pictures on his phone:
He’s really good about taking pictures… posting them is another matter.
And this is Joel’s standard look. He calls it “pondering” but everyone else calls it “bored and unengaged.”
The real message is: “Bitch, my hat is fly. I cannot be bothered.”
Jake finally posted the picture from last Tuesday night’s Trivia Night at Innuendo. Behold:
We won that week, but didn’t do as well this week. We didn’t place last, but it was still a hard fall from grace…
We debated what to do about the competition and you can expect a flurry of “accidents” over the weekend.
Yesterday, all I wanted to hear was “look back at me” by Trina. I waged a steady nagging campaign all night, but the host was not playing my song.
Then it struck me.
So I learned two things during the Minnesota Wild game:
1) I learned was how to use the action setting on my camera which takes automatic pictures. I had WELL over 800 pictures from that night.
I edited some of the pictures, but threw the rest in a flip-book like video:
And yes, that entire video is comprised of nothing but pictures. And yes, I am aware that the “E” from “Irreplaceable” is clipped in that video and I am not going to fix it. I am sure sasha fierce won’t mind.
And
2) Joel is as clumsy as I am:
I realize the song for the second video is grossly inappropriate for hockey. I first heard that song on a MTVU short, and spent an offensive amount of time tracking it down, so it had to be used.
Here are the rest of the pictures from the Minnesota Wild vs. Anaheim Ducks game. I took a ton of pictures of the sidelines and crowd because the facial expressions are priceless.
Click on the thumbnails to see the full sized picture:
Joel took me to my first Hockey game tonight: The Minnesota Wild season opener vs. the Anaheim Ducks.
There was action:
Suspense (They came back from 3-0 and the game went into overtime!)
Drammy:
Oh and of course a pile-up:
I took an offensive amount of pictures. I will post them soon.
Week #10 was the last week of summer school, aka, finals! I spent the beginning of the week studying, mostly at the Walter library. After my last final I went to work, and worked 10 hour days for the next 4 days.
I also decided to get health conscious, and just say no to Caribou pastries. That’s also the week I almost ran Jill off the road, and celebrated the end of my first year in Minnesota.
Several of my housemates have started busing home because of the cold.
I walked home for lunch, but decided to try the bus-thing after school..
After 5 minutes on the bus I had an epiphany: The University of Minnesota has campuses in St. Paul and Minneapolis. The campus connector bus probably connects the campuses…
I looked out the window and realized the bus was on the expressway to St. Paul. Doh.
Next time I take the campus shuttle...
I eventually get back to Minneapolis and buy a McFlurry from McDonald’s. The nice thing about -8 is that McFlurrys don’t melt on the way home…
30 minutes later I’m in the living room watching TV with some housemates. The doorbell rings.
It’s a woman smoking a cigarette, holding a 12-pack of beer and a pitbull-lab mix on a leash.
Woman: “I got in a fight with my boyfriend. I’m going to stay at a hotel tonight or something…Can I wait in your foyer while I wait for the cab? I gave them your address…”
So we had a pitbull running around the living room while three of us were looking up dog-friendly hotels…
***update… my housemate just walked out with a bat in a box… I guess another bat got in the house…
Housemate #1: “Aww! The bat looked so cute! It was so small!”
Housemate #2: “What? No! I was gonna go bat-shit on that bat!”
Housemate #1: “Oh look, my humidifier just came! I’m gonna go humidify myself!
Things are too weird right now. I’m going to bed.
Now there has been more to my week than the random coffee shop crazies. MC took me on a tour St. Paul, which has a ton of beautiful old buildings. I also saw Macalester, where I almost went for undergrad. Hm.
And, gasp, a big honking Cathedral.
And yes those dots by the doors are people.
Ooo and look at the inside of the dome!
The Twin Cities remind me a lot of Germany. Well, of course you don’t have the altstadts or castles here, but there is definitely a richer sense of history in than in Miami or Wichita.
St. Paul feels like mountain country (after living in Miami at least). The Cathedral is on a slope and has a pretty nice view of the Minnesota capital building.
Seeing the Capital made me excited all over again for law school – “In a few years I might work in that building with the cathedral as my daily backdrop.”
I saw myself in a crowd of other lawyers marching up a nearby courthouse’s steps. NBC logo in the corner of the daydream screen.
Hah. Call Nancy!
I haven’t daydreamed about/dwelled on school too much though. I’ve hung out a bit more with the housemates and asked most of the wide-eyed 0L questions. But other than that… nope…
Class starts in three weeks. I can worry about it when my butt’s in the chair.
Until then I have almost a month of playing tourist and coffee-house rat.
And taking pictures of random things I see downtown like:
