R.I.P. Posts

Thank you all, good fucking night.

Well, Bone Appetit played it’s last show ever last weekend, and it ended just like it began — sloppy, drunken, and unpredictable.

Thanks to everyone throughout the years that supported us, and thanks even more to the people who took time out of their lives to rip on us, thus giving us even more press than our supporters. I wish I could take the time to individually thank everyone, but I refuse to do that knowing I’d forget someone.  We may have never sang about “what’s cool,” and never really fit in with the whole Duluth scene, but to those that embraced us for doing whatever the fuck we wanted, I thank you!  

I have more good and funny memories from that band than most any other thing in life, and even though some of us don’t really get along in the band anymore, I will still say that I love each and every one of those guys. We’ll never get the accolades that some bands in that town get, but there isn’t one fucking person who deny that we fucking rocked that town over the years.  In the end, I like to think we left a nice big skid mark on certain parts of that music scene that can’t be wiped off.

To everyone I’ve had a beer/smoke/laugh with over the last 11 years in this band, I have nothing but thanks for you.  I love you all, and Good Fucking Night.

Love always,

Cory “Hotrod” Ahlm

P.S.  Special thanks to Starfire,  Adam Guggemos, Paul Lundgren/Barrett Chase, Christa Lawler, Rick Boo, Eric Swanson, Slim Goodbuzz, Jason Cork, and Chris Whittier. Anyone else I forgot, hit me up for a beer.

The Quizzard is dead! Long live the Quizzard!

Dear reader, as I sit down to write this obit, I still cannot believe the debauchery I have witnessed this eve. A poor, young virgin, probably, icon of the fair festival we have undertaken, only minutes ago, laid upon his deathbed, while a group of Brats, of the Wurst kind, danced around in glee as he snuffed it. He appeared on stage to give blessing to the Brats, and was slaughtered in front of a cheering mob. Oh, woe are we who expected to see him appear at every stage during this and every coming festival. I feel I cannot go on … but I must, if only to warn future generations of the TINY TWAT who wrenched him from my grasp, promised to free him, and then returned him to the entrail encrusted demons on stage to be rendered, to their delight. May the giant chicken have mercy on our souls.

Bone Appetit’s Last Temptation of Duluth

Final work of art

This Friday, at the Rex Bar in the Fitger’s Complex – roughly 60 hours from now, maybe more, depending on where SuddendEATH is – Bone Appetit will play its last show ever. Bone Appetit: Duluth’s Worst, then Sexiest, then Greatest Band, forever laid to rest after over a decade of service to you, the citizens of Duluth. As of last glance, there are 85 confirmed guests for this show, which [using mathematical extrapolation, as well as consulting my trick knee] means the room will be filled well beyond the fire marshal’s stated capacity.

Downtown Ace Hardware closing

Losing Daugherty Hardware was bad enough. Now Ace Hardware downtown is closing. The big-box stores cannot compare, and downtown takes another hit. Poop!

R.I.P. Jaime Escalante (the teacher who inspired ‘Stand & Deliver’)

I don’t know about you, but he made me want to be a teacher to a bunch of really tough, overlooked but brilliant kids. And it worked, I did it. I even used his line about Mayans being first to popularize the zero to my own mostly Mayan descended students a few years after I saw the film when I was a volunteer teacher in Central America. Oddly enough the film didn’t do much to quell my fear of calculus.

I’m not sure how the film holds up now, 22 years later, but it was a great depiction of a great man. RIP, Maestro Escalante.

Alex Chilton 1950-2010

Alex Chilton of Big Star and the Box Tops died last night of heart complications at the age of 59. Here’s a eulogy from Rep. Steve Cohen (D) Tennessee, which he gave today before congress.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton
When he comes ’round
They sing, “I’m in love. What’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.”
— The Replacements

Surely You Jest

R.I.P. Corey Haim

Poet Lucille Clifton Dies at Age 73

“homage to my hips”

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

*This is one of my favorite poems. Ms. Clifton. I have yet to develop an opinion on her last book of poetry, “Voices”. But she left many great works before her death.

Threaded Comments – Aborted

As explained in this post, Perfect Duluth Day experimented with threaded comments for a few days. The benefits of it seemed to be outweighed by the complications of it, so the experiment is now over and comments are back to working like they used to.

Since previously threaded comments are now unthreaded, we hope it won’t create too much confusion to readers who haven’t been following along.

Remembering the Ripsaw’s Transition

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It’s been 10 years since the Ripsaw published the last of its monthly scandal sheets and converted to an “alternative newsweekly” format. Here’s a look back at the old monthly editions of Duluth’s most infamous rag.

That’s Trouble of Some Kind, George

Previously unseen amateur video of Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

R.I.P. Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

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Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States and many other books died this week.

Here are references I found to Duluth and Minnesota in “A People’s History of the United States”

Alas, Mr. Salinger is dead

The car moved west, directly, as it were, into the open furnace of the late-afternoon sky. It continued west for two blocks, till it reached Madison Avenue, and then it right-angled sharply north. I felt as though we were all being saved from being caught up by the sun’s terrible flue only by the anonymous driver’s enormous alertness and skill.

The Corporate Coup is Complete

SCOTUS

SCOTUS

Landmark Supreme Court ruling allows corporate political cash