70 thoughts on “Corral Conference”

  1. That’s exactly what they look like, VS. Which Rainbow was that?

    Probably the cross-dressing Halloween party back in ’88 – but that was predictedly weird. I wish I could post the photo of Husband in a blue strapless formal, heels, and make-up. I, of course, wore a tux…

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    1. With this Rainbow closing (it was the one that the Hub at 66th and Nicollet) I think there’s only one or two left. It didn’t really surprise me that this one shut down, it’s been clear for years that they weren’t putting much money into the upkeep or maintenance of the store. But it’s sad for me because it was one of my go-to places on a Saturday morning if I just need one or two things after going to the gym.

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  2. Forgive me an OT post. I got up in time this am to see most of the royal wedding. Gee, the Brits are so much better at ceremony than we colonists ever will be.

    Next weekend my grandson will be the ring bearer at a wedding here in Michigan. It runs in the family. When I was four or five, I was a ring bearer, too. And though I had a small part to play in that ceremony, I screwed it up.

    What I actually bore was not the ring but a pillow. The ring was attached to it with several straight pins. When the big moment came, the minister freed the ring by pulling and tossing the pins.

    “Ooops,” I cried out. “You dropped something!”

    The minister tried to hush me. “I’ll get them for you,” I said. The wedding stopped while I crawled around on my knees finding the pins. I had been brought up right, and I knew it was wrong to throw pins on the floor and just leave them there.

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    1. I set my alarm to watch the wedding this morning as well. I don’t consider myself a huge anglophile but the English royal family is fascinating in a weird sort of way.

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      2. Maybe I’m a tad cynical, but I have zero interest in today’s ceremony although I suspect there will be no escaping it entirely. These are the royal nuptials I watched this morning:

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      3. I woke up with the tv on cbs at 4 and got to watch all the doings
        I am a suits fan so I know her and love her
        Harry’s pretty cool too for a royal

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      1. Just NO! It’s not all small stuff. That’s such a trite, dismissive statement, and it’s simply not true. Sorry to be such a grump, but I’m really losing my patience with that kind of unhelpful advice. I agree that we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but is strongly disagree that it’s all small stuff.

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  3. Huh, I thought all the Rainbows shut their doors long ago. The one I used to go to shut down several years ago.

    I can’t think of any weird parties I’ve been to. Probably because it’s been years since I’ve been to a party, except for VS’s pi day party. And that wasn’t very weird.

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  4. Rise and Don Your Party Hat Baboons,

    A few years ago, some friends invited us over for supper on New Years Eve. My mother was with us, in her Alzheimers’ fog, as well as another couple. We arrived to find our hostess really drunk. Apparently she sipped and cooked.

    The evening went downhill from there. Her husband, suffering from dementia was kind of out there, too. Their daughter was mortified. My mother never noticed a thing.

    Our other friend said, “That was the weirdest New Years Eve I ever saw.”

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    1. PS, I had a tomato planting party last night. This morning they look like they are marching down their garden rows and it makes me happy.

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      2. We were blessed with .26 of rain yesterday, and our planting plans are delayed for a bit ubtil it dries out. .26 isn’t much by Minnesota standards, but out here it is a big deal, especially since it came as a slow drizzle all day long.

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    2. When Kelly and I were younger, there was a doctor, Maury Barry and his wife Shirley, and they both acted with the Rep Theater and they hosted New Years parties.
      When I joined the Rep board, we got invited to their New Years Parties.
      They were much fancier than any party I had ever attended before.
      Full bar with Bartender. Fancy foods that I’d never seen before. Like beef tongue. Maury had a jazz collection that took up a whole wall. He played jazz records and ‘held court’. They were amazing parties based mostly on the atmosphere and company.

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  5. In this region of Michigan malls are being hollowed out. I’ve seen no trends in grocery stores except possibly a trend toward larger stores. I’d welcome that. In general, retail shops of all sorts are too similar and too limited in their offerings. That is, there are many similar stores, all offering the same most popular merchandise. That results in a stunted list of options.

    You can tell that a lot of businesses would like to redesign grocery marketing. I keep seeing promotions for operations where store workers select the food, assemble it in bags and then customers swing through to pick up the bags (not having done any “shopping” in the usual sense). But that requires more people with more money than this small town can muster, so we bumble along with conventional food retailing.

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    1. I have a post on my head about empty malls. Will try to write it up.
      There is a business that brings in people to manage the sell off. Herbergers hired them. Sort of a weird job, mercantile undertaker.

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      1. my wife took a part time job at herbergers a month ago just days before they folded

        she said the person in charge of her store has never done anything like it

        liquidate by the numbers

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  6. A Rainbow opened here a dozen years ago. It did not last a year. The carry our card to get a cheaper price drove everyone out. In the NE every grocery store does that.
    Steve, Hy-Vee has several delivery trucks going, and there is now congestion in the front of the store for orders waiting to be picked up. They designated prime parking spots for those people including moving a couple handicapped parking spots farther away. Their handicap spots are quite a distance from the door, a few are right in front of the liquor store entrance.
    The trucks are often at this building.
    My sons apartment building in south Mpls. Very old, had locking cabinets that opened into the hall for food delivery, now nailed shut.

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    1. You identify one limitation on the move to staff-picked shopping, namely the traffic issues. For that to work right, they would need to design stores specifically for that. Drug stores couldn’t add drive-through pickup willy nilly; it had to be part of the original design.

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      1. This is a town of 50,000. The one Hy-Vee sits in the middle of many office buildings and businesses, very convenient for many.
        The mystery of this town is that one small independent store thrives in a less than convenient location.

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  7. I have managed to go through life attending few parties beyond family gatherings for birthdays. Amen to that. The whole idea of a bunch of strangers crowding into a small space to eat unusual food feels much like hell to me. Oh, yes, let’s make meaningless conversation while standing up trying to eat. Last one i went to was 15 years ago. I kept dropping things, a drink and a small plate of food and bumping into people. It made me investigate enough to realize I had fm.

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    1. Yes, standing up to eat is beyond my capabilities, too. Especially if they use paper plates that sag and bend if you actually put food on them. With the right plate, I can eat standing up but only if I’m not trying to hold a drink at the same time. Eat or drink, but not both.

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  8. I am often amused by seeing a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep all decide to walk from one part of their vast, empty pastures out here to another part. Why? The grass and terrain all look the same. They go as a group. It’s one big party.

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    1. If you see a herd of 40 cows, 35 or so will be in the pack, four will be stragglers, and one will be off on its own. We had a Holstein who was never with the pack, often at opposite corner of the pasture.

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    2. I understand why they go together. They are herd animals, something that goes back (I assume) to reducing predation. As for their movements, it is hard to get inside their heads unless you eat grass and stuff. Some movements must be initiated to find areas with a bit more breeze and fewer insects.

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        2. The human herds are virtual now. All those drivers on the phone, shoppers in the grocery, people walking around constantly connected to a member of the herd. Individuals don’t seem to be complete units anymore.

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        3. Except humans shopping for groceries in Michigan. They like to shop in herds. The grocery stores near me are cluttered, with narrow aisles and an unfriendly aisle layout. What makes shopping difficult, though, is the way shoppers operate in family groups. You don’t see that in Minnesota (at least where I used to shop) or Oregon. Sometimes it is a man and woman side-by-side. Sometimes it is a family of five or six. I don’t say this in a snarky way. Some of these folks seem to enjoy shopping as a family activity. Other families are apparently struggling to stretch not-enough money to please many mouths.

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        5. Sandra woke up and I was going to show her the herds on PBS. But they right then began replaying the wedding. She is off in Harlequin dream land.

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        6. The Aldi near my house is full of herds of people, people shopping in groups or families. They like to spread out across the entire aisle and walk very slowly and talk very fast. Luckily, since Aldi only has about 4 short aisles, even with the congestion, it’s usually not a very long trip.

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  10. I go to a lot of meet ups
    Developers are an interesting group. Primarily geeks but interesting
    The odd group was humanatiarians. Vonnegut was a humanitarian advocate so I thought I’d poke my head in. What an odd crew. Many people with tin foil hats and voices speaking to them. I ordered appetizers before I got the vibe. I stuck around long enough to be glad I was only there for one meeting. I try to remember that mindset when I am behind an awful driver too. I only have to deal with this person for two minutes. There are folks who get to live with it all day every day. Bless them.

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      1. they were stating humanitarian values then I got there and found anti religion I was not figuring on then there were people who had their names changed to world is free and stuff like that
        There were 20 of them and 10 were very odd t
        The other 9 not noticing was concerning too

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  11. HI Kids–
    My wife was up early to watch the royal nuptials. Honestly, and I’m not saying *just* because I’m a man, but I had no idea that was happening this weekend. I’ve been a little distracted.
    I kinda knew this was out there somewhere; no idea it was today.
    Oh well!

    I’ve mentioned the screw sorting party I hosted years ago. Complete with instructions on how to tell a good screw from a bad screw.

    We’re sort of planning another of our randomly scheduled ‘Porta Potty Parties’ this summer. I’ll provide details when I know them.

    My 21st birthday party at a local pizza place was a lot of fun just for the people that were around me.
    My bachelor party was also a lot of fun; again, specifically because of the people around.
    There have been some memorable post show cast parties. I was the young, innocent, naive farm boy before I started going to cast parties. 🙂
    Theater has taught me a lot!

    Back to the ballet…(that’s warming up onstage at the moment)

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  12. Perhaps the weirdest party I ever attended was the celebration hosted by the Danish ambassador to Moscow in honor of King Frederik IXth’s 65th birthday. It was an afternoon cocktail party and was attended by such dignitaries as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexius I. He really stood out because his large beard, clothes and headdress (that’s probably not the correct term). Other guests were high ranking representatives from the Russian government, and diplomats from the various embassies. Also invited were the local Danes (two au pairs – Nina and myself – and Danish embassy personnel). I can’t vouch for whether or not the king himself had been invited, but he wasn’t there.

    It was a formal affair, and we were all dressed in our Sunday finest, but I’m sure it was obvious to everyone that Nina and I really didn’t belong in this crowd. It was certainly obvious to me. I felt a bit like a bull in a china shop, or as the Danes would say: “en hund i et spil kegler,” a dog in a game of billiards.

    The waiters who were serving at this event were friends of ours, as most foreigners that worked in Moscow knew each other. Clad in formal uniforms that included white gloves, they looked the part, and were used to such affairs. They circulated among the guests passing out fancy finger foods from silver platters and pouring wine, champagne or vodka. Whenever they were down to just a few pieces of whatever was on a tray, they’d approach Nina and me, and with as much discretion as they could muster, empty the content of their tray onto our plates. We had plenty of caviar and vodka that afternoon, but managed to escape before making a spectacle of ourselves. Ah youth!

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  13. i did an acid party in high school
    i was a regular pot smoker but didn’t do other stuff
    not much but some
    all things in moderation
    a couple hits of speed
    a few downers
    one day mid summer someone showed up with a sheet of blotter acid and said it was supposed to be the best ever.
    i thought it was the perfect night for it so i went along with the group and we all did a hit
    like a little stamp we each took a half
    after an extended amount of time i was getting impatient. sitting in a chair waiting for it to come on is not my cup of tea
    i suggested we go another half and got told it wouldn’t brvagoodcidea until we were sure the first half had kicked in all the way
    i suggested we go swimming at the nearby lake because it was hot humid with no ac and sitting in the house not the yard (tough inner city neighborhood not conducive to yard parties) again i was told it would be smart to wait for the end result so me and 8 other guys sat as all of a sudden the music stopped coming out of the speakers and started coming from a reverb chamber inside my head, square speakers and picture frames began turning plasma and melting into the 4th dimension
    i was real glad i got talked out of swimming and certainly glad i didn’t take another hit, i was the center of attention because i was usually so chill with my recreational use and on this night i was wowing at the music the spinning transformations and trying to figure out a way to get my psyche back in my own control
    i hit the wall and ended up in the bathtub running cold water over the back of my neck for a couple hours so i could focus on something of my choosing rather than salvador plugging looney tunes into my program and my waiting it out
    at about 6 or 7 am the webs cleared and totally exhausted i did the crash and burn and felt crispy for three days
    my only acid party was my experience in how i need to hang onto control
    free fall in a bungee jump sounds fun, spacectravel for ten years might be interesting expedition to antarctica i’m in
    mind tripping with no control over it is like russian roulette with a time warp. me and my merry band of good hearted hippies did lots of fun stuff but at that nights odd man out party i learned i can only recreate on my own terms
    a bag of pecan sandies, potato chips and a bong are a nice way to watch perry mason and fade off to sleep.
    some parties are more life changing than others
    odd yeah
    something more
    yeah

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      1. i was telling someone the other day i didn’t ride a motorcycle until i was 55 and sure i wouldn’t kill myself
        i was into living with gusto but living

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    2. My life has been so tame compared to yours, tim. Like renee, I’m both amazed and glad that you somehow managed to survive to tell the stories. I love this typo: brvagoodcidea; seems like an apt word for the ideas that pop into your head during an acid trip.

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  14. Do any of you remember Wally Pikal? He was a Minnesota musician who had a band called The Dill Pickles. Wally’s claim to fame was that he could play three trumpets at once, which was remarkable in itself but Wally did it while bouncing on a pogo stick.

    Back when I was in advertising, a commercial photographer named Jim Marvy staged a promotional event and I was given a ticket. Jim had rented the entire State Theater for the night and invited hundreds of guests from the advertising community. This event was probably 40 years ago, so my memory is hazy on the details but I remember there were tables of appetizers and beverages on the mezzanine and down on the stage a corn dog booth and a cotton candy booth where carnival fare was handed out. There was the back end of a ‘58 Chevy arranged so that it looked like it had crashed through the back wall of the stage. The taillights were on.

    For the promotional part of the event, we were all seated in the theater seats and Jim projected a slide show of his photography on the big screen. At the end of the slide show, Wally Pikal came out from behind the screen and hopped down the center aisle on his pogo stick, playing the William Tell Overture. It was delightful, unhinged, memorable excess.

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  15. OT – Tomorrow night, May 21st at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis:
    Join Birchbark Books and Native Arts as we welcome the internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient) to present his latest work, Warlight: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II. Ondaatje will be in conversation with Louise Erdrich, with a reception and book signing to follow. Co-sponsored by Birchbark Books, Rain Taxi Review of Books, and Literary Witnesses. Warlight will be available for purchase at the event. Free and open to the public. Not to be missed!
    7 to 9 PM

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