Minneapolis Airport

Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star Tribune

It's hard to contain myself. Senator Slimy, aka Larry Craig, was caught trolling for sex in a men's room in the Minneapolis airport. Seems ol' Larry comes through the Twin Cities regularly on his way back to Idaho to service (ahem) his constituents. He knew exactly where to go. What the Star Tribune and other fine journalistic organs did not tell you is that the location of this men's room is really not on the way to any gate. It's in the main concourse right outside security. If you just landed from Washington and you need to transfer to Boise or Pocatello, it's a good bet that you don't need to walk through the main concourse.

So, Star Tribune, get on the stick. Find out what Larry's flight numbers and gates were. And, while you're at it, tell us why you didn't break this story in June or July. Have the cuts made in the Strib reporting staff been so severe that you aren't able to have someone review the court cases for newsworthy and titillating stuff? You were scooped by a Washington insider paper.

That the airport uses its security resources to have an officer spending his shift in the men's room, sitting on the toilet and reading the paper, is a sad commentary on so many things that I don't know where to begin. But having a moralistic, gay bashing, conservative being caught with his pants down, so to speak, is too good to be true.

And Alberto Gonzales is no doubt thanking his lucky stars, if he has any, that Americans don't really care about substantive matters. Sex scandals trump violating the Constitution every time.

Minneapolis arts scene

There's a reason I won't live in Washington County, Maine, full time. It's certainly beautiful. But I'm a culture junky. And Minneapolis is a great place to indulge that particular weakness. It's affordable, accessible, and middle of the road enough to appeal to bourgeois types like myself.

Exhibit A: I spent 15 minutes figuring out our obligtions this fall and into the spring. We have a performance of some sort every other week. And that's with three sets of season tickets. And there is a little break in January. We have two sets of theater company tickets and one set of chamber orchestra tickets--the Park Square Theater, the Guthrie Theater, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. It's a bargain that we can share with our kids--if we can't go, they can. And this doesn't take into account the free tickets that Joe High School receives as a result of his attendance at an inner city high school.

For less than $900 per year, OLGS and I can see world class performances of musicians and actors. And if you're not as snobbish as I am, you can see far more for far less. That is one of the primary reasons that I would prefer to live in Minnesota during the opera season, although I've been to the Minnesota Opera twice. But it's the thought that counts and the realty that matters.