I love this product from Chocolat Celeste - political chocolates! Not only are her chocolates great but depending on how Pennsylvania drags on you may need to eat some (like me) or give some for your depressed and despondent friends.

Can we get to the nomination already?

Find the link here to view these clever tasty chocolates from a local St Paul gal!

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There is a new product on the market that is creeping me out. It's called check mate and its a little test kit that use use to see if there is semen in your spouse or teens undergarments so you can tell if they are telling the truth and abstaining from sex.

This is all too creepy for me and made more so by the commercial. A link is below:

Assuming this stuff works would you use it?

 

Read Terre Thomas's article that we talked about that appeared in the Star Tribune. She wants the presidential candidates to just take a nap!

 

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/17827129.html

Check this out:

http://vita.mn/story.php?id=17243159

THURSDAY

 

National Geographic Live Speakers Series: Sam Abell Thu., April 17, 7:30pm

Price: $10.50-$37.50

Readings & Lectures

State Theatre

National Geographic photographer Sam Abell's work is rooted in the snapshots and vacation photos everybody takes on family trips. He learned the craft from his father in their basement darkroom, and his homespun influences are still the hallmark of his massive body of work. No matter how grand in scale his projects are, he makes photos that have a personal, homey quality to them. He's traveled and photographed the Lewis and Clark expedition route, Civil War battle sites, and most recently the entire span of the Mississippi River with late historian Stephen Ambrose for the book The Mississippi: and the Making of a Nation, but he manages to make these huge and historically important places feel intimate. Abell is not a photographer who tries to complicate his subjects for artistic effect. He simply shoots what he sees, and wants his audience to see it that way, too. The seasoned speaker and writer's presentation, which will focus on the Mississippi photos, will be akin to sitting in your relative's living room looking at a vacation slideshow, only Abell's photos are brilliant and sweeping, and you'll actually want to hear his deeply personal narration.‹ Ben Palosaari

FRIDAY

PM Dawn

Fri., April 18, 8:00pm

Price: $15

Trocaderos

107 3rd Ave. N

Minneapolis, MN

P.M. Dawn's sultry, New Age melding of hip hop and R&B made perfect sense in the early 1990s, when any and every pop hybrid had an honest shot at serious chart status, no matter how bizarre. But despite the heavy radio rotation the Spandau Ballet-sampling, 1991 single "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"

received, brothers Attrell "Prince B" Cordes and Jarrett "DJ Minute Mix"

Cordes were destined to follow breakout contemporaries like Arrested Development, Vanilla Ice, Digital Underground, and C.C. Music Factory into trivia-question obscurity. Fickle fans lost interest even as the albums kept coming. So now they're another touring nostalgia act with a completed album in limbo‹P.M. Dawn Loves You, which was supposed to come out last year‹spreading their beguiling positivity from burg to burg in a country that mostly doesn't love or deserve them, even though they kicked ass on short-lived one-hit wonder TV program Hit Me Baby One More Time. Maybe this is how the P.M. Dawn story ends‹or maybe they'll follow Coolio's lead and find runaway success in Europe. ‹ Ray Cummings

 

Night of Poets

Fri., April 18, 7:00pm

Price: free

Readings & Lectures

Open Book

1011 Washington Ave. S, Ste 200

Minneapolis, MN

You were probably going to let National Poetry Month slip by with nary a recognition. Shame on you. National Poetry Month might not be comparable with Mardi Gras, but man cannot live on pancakes alone. The Loft offers a trio of Graywolf poets whose concoctions nourish the mind if not the belly.

Matthea Harvey's most recent collection, Modern Life, crackles with clever observations and stories. In "New Friends," she compares potato roots with brain synapses. Fanny Howe's poems open with inviting lyricism verging on the pastoral. Throughout, however, she maintains a persistent focus on moral and political imperatives in The Lyrics. In "At Baron's Court," she describes the morning snow before commenting, "A Palestinian flag waves/In this small Irish town/The correspondence being/Children throwing stones." In Elegy, the most intensely personal and intimate of the three collections, Mary Jo Bang bares her grief over her son's death in stark images and spare language. In "No Exit," she sums it up, "What cruel nature wires a brain like this?/To give it pleasure/And then let pleasure make itself a pain?/To say you loved a person./To say that person no longer exists./A tragic flawed fate going on and on and on." ‹ Rhena Tantisunthorn

SATURDAY

 

The Current Fakebook: Chuck D

Sat., April 19, 8:00pm

Price: $22

Readings & Lectures

Fitzgerald Theater

10 E Exchange St.

St. Paul, MN

The thing about listening to an MC step outside of the context of rap and deliver a straight-up lecture is that often the things that made him sound great as a lyricist carry through into things that make him gripping as an orator. If I were to put together a list of top five rappers I'd want to hear just talk about whatever, Public Enemy's legendary frontman Chuck D would be right up there near the top. He's been notable for doing just that in recent years, co-hosting the Air America radio show On the Real and embarking on lecture tours of the kind that brings him to the Fitzgerald this Saturday. The man who once called hip hop "the CNN for black people" is now fighting against the Lou Dobbs-ification of rap, as well as deconstructing our celebrity culture, examining the constructs of race in the 21st century, defending peer-to-peer music sharing, and breaking down America's place in the world today. Local rap fixtures Slug and PE heir Brother Ali also participate. ‹ Nate Patrin

The Plastic Constellations

Sat., April 19, 5:00pm

Price: $6

First Avenue

701 1st Ave. N

Minneapolis, MN

While the local music community was eagerly abuzz in anticipation of the Plastic Constellations' imminent new record, nefarious, tectonic forces deep beneath First Avenue's mantle were astir. Just a few weeks ago, the disconcerting news came down that tonight's Mainroom appearance will be the band's final show before what is ominously being called an "indefinite hiatus." Is this goodnight or goodbye? The vibrant and indispensable rockers are reluctant to commit. Best to play it safe and pack the club, buy up every copy of the Plastic Constellations' appropriately titled We Appreciate You, and take this as a chance to return that appreciation for what may be the last time. With Doomtree in a rare supporting role, the Plastic Constellations are poised to go out on a legendary high note. All the more

bittersweet: The new record is a direct hit. 18+. ‹ David Hansen