Zombies were spotted in downtown Minneapolis. “They were arrested for behavior that was suspicious and disturbing,” said Lt. Gregory Reinhardt, a police spokesman. (thanks to Kez for the tip)
In other, not so amusing news, it seems as though the Amazon might be drying up and turning into a desert… To my knowledge, no one has been arrested. (I guess no one finds it either suspicious or disturbing.)
As I’ve mentioned here before, I just happened to stumble across a reference one day to the fact that a man I once worked for (indirectly) had the distinction of playing himself in the movie “Black Sunday.” He didn’t share any screen time with Bruce Dern, and he didn’t get to run from the hilariously-cheesy blimp replica as it came crashing down into Miami’s stadium, but he did get to yell at Robert “the Captain in ‘Jaws'” Shaw and then pucker his face up in a really funny way. Here, for prosperity, are a few images. If I had more time, I’d make up some funny captions. (Robert Shaw, by the way, died shortly after this, at the age of 51.)
What terrible and/or prescient movies have your employers appeared in?
As most of you know, the Ypsi Mayoral Debate takes place this Thursday evening at 7:00. The Ypsi Votes site is handling lots of traffic, we’re getting some good questions submitted from the community, and a lot of the people that I meet on the street tell me that they’re planning to attend, so I’m thinking that we might have a pretty good turnout.
So far, the publicity has been good. WEMU recorded a piece that will be airing this week, and I believe the “Courier” has some kind of coverage in the works. The Sidetrack has put table tents out, announcing the event, and the Corner Brewery has put an announcement card in their menus. And, as I mentioned last night, a lot of other coffee shops, bars, restaurants and stores have allowed us to post flyers. I doubt we’ll get the same kind of turnout that we had for the Shadow Art Fair, but it won’t be for lack of trying. We’ve got a great team of volunteers in place and they’re busting their asses to get the word out, and to make this a great, substantive event.
The planning committee got together on Friday night to touch base, and I think we’ve got almost everything in place by this point. There is one fairly sizeable hole though. We still need someone to record the event and help us to release it as a podcast. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested, please leave a comment or send me an email. Your contribution would be greatly appreciated. (And, the best part is, you don’t even have to be an Ypsilantian! We’ll take volunteers from anywhere, so long as they’re fully clothed, know what they’re doing, and value the democratic process.)
All isn’t necessarily lost if we can’t do a podcast. Sam Abuelsamid has agreed to come out, videotape the proceedings, and post them on You Tube, Google Video, or some other free hosting site. (Sam’s 11-year old son, Max, by the way, has a pretty cool music podcast. (For those of you at Zombie Claus ’06, he was also our youngest zombie.)) So, there will be a way that some people can access the content if they aren’t there on Thursday night, but, if at all possible, we’d like to give them an audio alternative. (I’m sure we could find a way to separate out Sam’s audio feed and release it as a podcast, but I think it would be safer to have another person there recording for that purpose, just in case something were to go wrong.)
I spent about four hours this afternoon wandering around town with Clementine, putting up debate flyers and talking with people about the upcoming election. All in all, it was a good experience. Here are a few observations:
If you missed it last week, here’s the audio (in five bite-sized chunks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of Jennifer “Henrietta Fahrenheit” Albaum and me on Mike Perini’s WCBN show, “Pandora’s Lunchbox,” talking about the Shadow Art Fair. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire thing, at least try to catch the last clip, where you can hear local celebrity DJ “Arwulf” (whose show was about to start) grab the microphone and correct me when I say that, back in the day, Iggy Pop worked at a fantastic little family restaurant called Potbelly Sandwiches. (Potbelly Sandwiches, for those of you who don’t know, is a franchise that now sits on the site of Discount Records, where Iggy really did work.)
After I “correct” Arwulf on this point, I believe we go on to educate him as to the origins of the Ann Arbor Art Fair. (Iggy and his mom started the Art Fair to sell macram
