Random Posts

Jesus Christ Meets Bob Dylan in a Hotel Room in Tucson, 1978

May 25, 2024 7 Comments

Bob: I’m ready to accept you, Lord.

Jesus: Not so fast there Bob. I need you to do something first.

Bob: Name it Lord.

Jesus: I need you to rub out Jimmy Gravante.

Bob (stunned): The hitman?

Jesus: Your successor in the Duluth family, after you got out and became — this (gestures around). You know Jimmy — the sniper who blew you off your motorcycle in 1966 in Woodstock.

Bob: He hit the bike, man, not me. Sniper my ass.

Jesus: I’m going to need you to check your tone.

Bob: I’m sorry Lord. It’s just that he wasn’t even at 200 yards. He’s more like a potshot expert than a sniper. And my divorce is killing me. I just got off a world tour and my adrenal glands feel squeezed dry like little raisins. Think I’m coming down with something (sniffles).

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Duluth authors Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence return to UMD to share insights with students

May 16, 2024 No Comments

University of Minnesota Duluth alumni Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence spoke to students in the Writing Studies major in April. Hafdahl and Florence offered tips, tricks and profound insights into the publishing process.

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Remember Watson

May 04, 2024 No Comments

Goob, Fozz, and I hiked down around another switchback in the trail. We saw a family that passed us higher up on the mountain. A dad, his three kids, and a dog. I saw the dad standing there, blocking the trail. His son sat on a rock with his two sisters standing beside him.

As we got closer Dad said, “He’s not doing so good.” I assumed he meant his son.

I walked up and then saw the dog. Their golden retriever was lying on its side in the trail and panting. I thought: We’re part of this now.

Dad said, “His stomach is super hard, too.” I reached down and felt the dog’s stomach which had swollen up bigger than his ribcage. It was firm.

The Dad explained that the dog chased something and got all riled up. I can’t remember if he said it was a squirrel or another dog. But it was after the dog’s frantic chase and barking that he started to swell up.

“I think his stomach has flipped over,” I said.

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NorShore?

Apr 23, 2024 5 Comments

Duluth’s NorShor Theatre is a bit of a copyeditor’s headache. People often misspell NorShor as “NorShore” or they fail to render the S as a capital letter. And since its proper name uses the British version of “theatre” and Americans prefer “theater,” we end up with numerous ways to screw up two words.

Apparently NorShor was being spelled wrong right from the start — or “NorShore” might have even been what was planned for the original spelling before someone decided to shorten it up — because an old sketch of the building, shown above, includes an E that never made it to the building’s tower or marquee.

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“Stalked by My Stepsister” shot in Duluth

Apr 17, 2024 No Comments

[This post originally contained an embedded video that is no longer available at its source.]

Local author Phil Sher sent me a note asking me to share that the Lifetime cable channel original movie Stalked by My Stepsister was shot in Duluth. It was released in October.

I think I can see the Lakewalk and Leif Erikson Park. I think I can see the interior of Glensheen. IMDB confirms the Duluth shooting sites.

Has anyone watched it, or know anyone involved in the shooting?


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PDD Shop Talk: The Usual Spiel

Apr 10, 2024 No Comments
(Enter the amount of your choice.)

You know the spiel. All of the content on Perfect Duluth Day can be read for free. It is produced by people who are paid either poorly or not at all. Advertising revenue keeps the operation going; donations help us do more and do it better.

So if you appreciate the thorough listings of hoopla on the PDD Calendar and/or the features on the PDD Blog, kindly drop a few bucks in the PayPal account. Follow this link for more info about our fundraising.


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Is the Postal Service OK?

Mar 30, 2024 3 Comments

It recently snowed about thirteen inches here on the hill in the very middle of Duluth. Right here, in the urban middle.

That thirteen inches took three days to fall. It stopped snowing three days ago. The roads in my neighborhood have been entirely passable the whole time. Slick, perhaps, at times, but entirely passable.

Neighbors have been coming and going. School buses. Fed X, UPS.

But no Postal Service. No mail. Not a single truck since last Saturday.

Are they OK? Should we check on them?


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Attention Billionaires: Get Bent

Mar 30, 2024 6 Comments

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”

― William Gibson, Count Zero

Attention billionaires: get bent. As the recent “Cheerios” kerfuffle illustrates, Minnesota billionaire Karen Kathy Cargill is acting like a terrible neighbor in Duluth. Google her name to see the universally bad press she has unleashed upon herself. Basically, Mayor Roger Reinert had the temerity to point out that Cargill was not actually being helpful, and she ran crying to the Wall Street Journal, like ya do. It was there Cargill laid bare her toxic billionaire’s view of the world: “The good plans that I have down there […] forget it […] I think an expression that we all know — don’t pee in your Cheerios — well, [Reinert] kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I’m not going to do anything to benefit that community.” Imperious much? Get bent.

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Park Point Land Grab

Mar 27, 2024 4 Comments

This Duluth News Tribune article talks about Kathy Cargill’s comments about Duluthians in the Wall St Journal.

Said a billionaire Heiress named Kathy
“The locals are yokels
Their houses are crappy”

No accounting for taste
She bulldozed in haste
And wonders why the neighbors aren’t happy


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Do I own this star now?

Mar 19, 2024 2 Comments

I picked this up in a thrift store. The frame is worth as much as I paid for it — the certificate is a bonus.

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Saturday in Canal Park

Mar 18, 2024 1 Comment

Some kids appeared to be having fun in Canal Park Saturday.


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The Nerd Habit of Collecting Signatures

Mar 12, 2024 2 Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, at MarsCon in Bloomington last weekend the son of a nerd who had died was selling his father’s collection of media, books, games and ephemera.

I picked up the Doctor Who cookbook from the previous century, some trading cards, all for pennies on the dollar. Perhaps the best find, or at least the one I can’t ever imagine finding again, was the single by the actor who played the third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, “Who is the Doctor?”

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Signatures for a Nerd

Mar 11, 2024 No Comments

At MarsCon in Bloomington last weekend, the son of a recently passed nerd was selling his father’s collection of media, books, games and ephemera. I picked up the Doctor Who cookbook from the previous century, some trading cards, all for pennies on the dollar.

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Duluth Island

Mar 09, 2024 No Comments

The discovery of a scale model of Duluth, carved from black coral on a desert island in the South Pacific, sent shockwaves through the scientific community. The miniature cityscape lay in a hand-excavated chamber under the sand, on an uninhabited, unnamed island only half the size of a city block. The flat, round expanse of sand, if noticed at all by distant ships, seems featureless. At twenty feet above sea level, it fully submerges in some storm surges, and might not survive climate change’s rising seas. First appearing on maps in 1941 with a numerical designation, it was not explored until 2015. That’s when a team of American biologists, following a tagged sea turtle, navigated a black reef and set foot on what is now known as Duluth Island.

Sea turtles and sea birds liked the island well enough. It had no trees or flora visible from off its tiny shores, but up close it was seen to support beach grass and some shrubs. The thought of human habitation was so impossible it didn’t cross anyone’s mind until one of the team noticed a square slab of black coral in the island’s dead center. It measured thirty inches by thirty inches and was at least a few inches thick, set into the sand. It was either subsuming into the sand or emerging from it. The object, obviously the product of human labor, remained unexplained as the biologists departed.

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PDD Shop Talk: Help Perfect the Perfection

Feb 28, 2024 No Comments
(Enter the amount of your choice.)

For more than 20 years, Perfect Duluth Day has remained committed to serving up its content with no paywalls and without overly obtrusive advertising. That doesn’t make paying the bills easy, but with modest income from sidebar advertising and the generous contributions of readers we continue to get it done.

So if you appreciate the thorough listings of hoopla on the PDD Calendar and/or the features on the PDD Blog, kindly drop a few bucks in the PayPal account.

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