Lit City Blues

I mapped it out, just to be sure and from our drop off point to that beautiful beautiful intersection where The Missus and The Spawn were waiting for me on the other end, I went 51.5 miles on a bike. I did it. I did a day of RAGBRAI. I freely admit I was a little bit nervous going into it. I had been training and I had managed to do every distance in between the towns on the day's route, but I hadn't gone out on as many long rides as I would have liked, so I had no idea how the day was going to go. As it turned out, the day went pretty well- and it didn't start getting really hard until the end. The weather was perfect. There were clouds, a beautiful cool breeze and the day took it's sweet time warming up. We were two miles outside of Harper to start and it was an easy ride into Harper and then it was off to Keota, five and a half miles down the road- which was another relatively easy jaunt, all things considered. I was feeling pretty good about the experience, ta...

This Week In Vexillology, we're dipping back into the Lost Archives to take a look at the flags of not one, but two Sudans: Sudan and South Sudan. Let's start with the non-directional Sudan: The current flag of Sudan was adopted following the 1969 military coup of Gaafar Nimeiry- prior to that, they had a blue-yellow-green horizontal tricolor that they used for a flag. The current flag is based off of the Arab Liberation Flag, elements of which can be seen on the flags of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the flag of Palestine- the latter of which is almost entirely identical to the flag of Sudan except their 'triangle' is red and the stripe sequence is black-white-green. The red in the flag represents the struggle for independence and the country's martyrs. The white stands for peace, light and optimism- but it also stands for the White Flag League which was a nationalist group that opposed colonial rule in 1924. The black stands for Sudan (in Arabic, 'Sudan...

I made a point of tracking down some Colorado whiskey when we went to Colorado last year, so it only made sense to continue that tradition when we went to Minnesota. I can't remember when exactly I first heard about Far North Spirits - but I do remember that I liked what I heard and wanted to track down a bottle of their Roknar Rye Whiskey. We've been to the Twin Cities many times over the years and whether it was my early exploration of Surly or other things, Richfield Liquor has been my go-to for many a trip. Just north of the Mall of America, it's conveniently located, right on a highway and relatively easy to find. I headed there first in my quest for whiskey and, shockingly, for the first time ever, struck out. Not to be deterred, I tracked down another liquor store closer to our hotel in Eden Prairie, and where Richfield Liquor had let me down, Eden Prairie Liquor did not and I claimed my prize: The design of the bottle and label sticks out first. It's clean,...

I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask this, but you get to thinking, you know. The Missus and The Wee One were away for a weekend up in Des Moines, so it was just me and older two kiddos, hanging out at the mall and as I'm walking down the long spine of the mall where the carousel is along with the other little rides are they wanted to play on when it hit me: is my generation going to be the last generation hang out at the mall? I mean, malls are nothing particularly special- I'm not sure I'm going to be sorry to see them go, to be honest. They were sort of massive temples of consumerism that seemed to be somewhat struggling with the economic realities of today. They were undoubtedly very cool in the 1980s and when I was growing up- but that was when we had arcades in the mall. That was when you had stores like Sam Goody and B. Dalton and Waldenbooks. That was when Best Buy still sold CDs- which now seem to be heading the way of vinyl. It's an odd moment ...

Watched On: DVD (Redbox) Released: 2018 Starring: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Pena, Storm Reid, Zach Galifianakis, Chris Pine Rotten Tomatoes: 39% Pick: Mine I made it a point to read the book before I ever got around to watching this movie and it's still kind of shocking to me that it was as big of a box office disaster as it turned out to be. As adaptations of source material go, this movie does an excellent job bringing the book to life. That's not to say it's a bad movie, however. It just feels a little flat in places- but that's not necessarily it's fault. The movie opens with thirteen year old teenager Meg Murry (Storm Reid) struggling to adjust to both her school and home life, ever the disappearance of her father, Alex (Chris Pine), nearly five years before. No one is certain what happened to Alex, but Meg and her mother, Kate (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) think that he proved his theory and was transported to anot...

This Week In Vexillology we're doing something a little different. I was digging around for inspiration and I stumbled across this article from io9.com that was published all the way back in 2013 ambitiously entitled The Coolest Flags In Human History. I'm not going to break down every flag on their list- some of them are quite cool and I've done them before like The Most Serene Republic of Venice. Others I own, like British Columbia. Some of are thankfully consigned to the ash-heap of history (Rhodesia and pre-1994 South Africa.) But out of that list, here are two of what I consider to be the coolest: This, along with Northern Ireland are the two flags of the British Isles that I don't own- and it's probably the one Isle that people outside of the UK probably overlook. Yes, it's the Isle of Man : How cool is this flag? The central symbol is a triskelion , which features three armored legs with golden spurs on a red background. It's been the officia...

What can you say about Tintin? He's been around for decades- was one of the most popular comics of the 20th Century. He's spawned a television cartoon ( which I remember watching on Nickelodeon ) and more recently a movie ( two more of which are apparently coming, though it's been awhile since the movie dropped .) He hasn't been free from controversy- Tintin In The Congo is hard to find these days for a reason, the least of which is (what I'm guessing) the somewhat 'problematic' portrayal of Africans in the Belgian Congo when the reality of that chapter of colonial history was dark indeed. For sure, if there's an aspect of these books that makes me cringe somewhat, it's his portrayal of Africans. Herge's portrayal of Latinx individuals and cultures tends to be a bit better, though his portrayal of indigenous folks and Asians is somewhat mixed. He's excellent in The Blue Lotus , somewhat less so with his portrayal indigenous people in Ti...