It’s back. First day I’ve seen A and Dubs open this year.

I couldn’t find any reviews from burgerdogboy for some reason and he’s usually got Duluth hand food pretty well covered. However, I did find this little blurb on Jim Heffernan’s blog.

PDD reader-generated A & Dubs stories are most welcome in the comments.

A couple of UMD Students won Animal Diversity Idol with this video. OK, it turns out that Animal Diversity Idol is not a “real” contest, although when I got started down this rabbit hole I thought maybe it was. It is something that a professor at UMD dreamed up to get students more interested in a variety of weird life forms. I this case the creatures are liver flukes. The video is one-part homage to Pink Floyd and two-parts CDC style public service announcement. Here’s the video:

Comfortably Trematoda by Locksteer

from The Duluth News Tribune; Sept. 10, 1914 via The Oregonian Blog (pdf)

Yesterday I was out at The Princess Bride with a couple of goslings and other uberfans at the Zinema for their excellent Saturday-morning-movies-for-the-whole-family series. That would have been awesome enough, but they threw in free juice boxes for the kids, but it got even better. In the place where we expected the opening previews, or maybe a video short to roll we were treated to this 2006 video, by Duluth’s Willie the Warlock

Willie the Warlock Youtube video

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Haley Bonar is giving away a sampler EP from her “Golder” album which came out last year. Haley claims MSP as her home these days but she has deep roots here in Duluth, too. If you want you can share some of those roots in the comments, I always love hearing that stuff. Especially after some folks have been doing so well on a larger stage lately. In fact, this seems like a fantastic week for music and acknowledgement for Duluth artists. We just became Duluth, MN home of Bob Dylan, Low AND Trampled by Turtles. Haley is another candidate for high pop culture level consciousness and success. This noisetrade promotion is good exposure for her, and us.

* Yes, she’s giving the EP away, but you can give her a tip if you want, also NoiseTrade will add you to their email list and they send out a lot of offers and opportunities (at least one a week). I don’t mind so much as a music lover, but you should know that going in.

Duluth’s Breanne Marie seems like a very nice lady and I think she makes a nice addition to the local music scene.

Kickstarter is a web service that helps artists and and creatives crowd-source fundraising for projects. If the project achieves its goal within a finite window then Kickstarter cuts them a check, if they don’t realize the goal then no one is out anything. Breanne Marie has almost half of what she needs ($3,200) to record her debut album.

I think on the eve of our great Homegrown Music Festival, and the same day our Trampled by Turtles are appearing on National TV, this would be a great time to send another promising Duluth artist along on her way. The suggested pledge amount is $10, but even if you don’t pledge anything, take a few minutes and listen to her very compelling, bittersweet story of how “music saved my life.” And help spread the word, too, if she doesn’t raise the donations she needs on Kickstarter in the next two weeks she goes back to zero, which means she’ll have to resort to bake sales to gather the cash, she says.

*Note: I couldn’t find the designer or provenance with any certainty. Here are the candidates. Please share if you know where to find and credit the designer and heck, maybe buy him a root beer!

CMT World Premiere Trampled by Turtles "Alone"

This was really a pleasure to see, both as a Duluthophile and a music lover. Our boys just keep getting bigger (and better). “World Premiere” music videos surely don’t have the same appointment television mystique that they did back in the early 80s on MTV, but still. This is cool.

Dave Simonett’s MN tattoo and various Duluth scenes and landscapes all have uncredited cameos. Feel free to do the “Where in Duluth?” game on them. I could only figure out a couple on my own.

Not sure why I missed this but my Twitter friend Tim Landis and his amazing instagram pictures were featured a month or so ago on the Huffington Post (more…)

DNT has a nice remembrance of Charlotte Zacher, of Charlotte’s Cafe fame in Carlton, MN.

I heard the news last night from my mom who got her first job there when she was 12 years old. When my brother and I would visit the cafe in the 70s and 80s she would always be gracious and tell us stories of our mom and it was like being received by royalty, because that’s how she carried herself, and I don’t just mean the fancy dresses that she wore to work every day around the diner. A true northern Minnesota original and a gem.

Charlotte’s Cafe and Carlton were featured in a segment on the TV show “Real People.” If anyone has (or can find) a clip of the segment I would love to see it and I know my mom would, too.

Of all the obvious jabs at MN 8th District Congressman Raymond “Chip” Cravaack for moving to New Hampshire – which reached a fever pitch today for the New Hampshire primary – this is definitely the funniest. (Note to moderators, it’s blatantly partisan, certain to test the new commenting policy).

Not sure if the movie clips are fair-use or not so I suppose it could get yanked at any time.