I might be an anarchist...

Over this past weekend during the lead up to the RNC, several homes around Minneapolis were raided by the Ramsey County Sheriff. The occupants of the homes, which included one in my sister's neighborhood, were suspected of preparing to violently confront the police during the anti-war protests in downtown St Paul during the RNC.

My sister's neighbors have a house that is, well, seemingly overflowing with stuff and ... dare I say... crap. According to twincities.com, the police found and confiscated a number of items during their search. The implication being that these items somehow showed that they intended to attack the police and destroy public property. I made a quick search of my own house to see which of these items I might have on hand. Here's the evidence that I might be an anarchist and that I might, at some point, riot in downtown St Paul.

Materials to create "sleeping dragons" (PVC pipe, chicken wire, duct tape), which is when protesters lock themselves together

A machete, hatchet and several throwing knives

a gas mask and filter

Empty glass bottles

Rags

Flammable liquids

Homemade caltrops (devises used to disable buses in roads)

Sledge hammers

Kryptonite locks

Empty plastic buckets cut and made into shields

So I'm not a perfect anarchist. My caltrops can't be turned over in any direction and still work. I don't technically have gas masks -- they're just dust masks. I haven't, technically, cut those buckets into shields. And, of course, I'm missing a few of the items that the police confiscated:

Rappelling equipment

Metal pipes

Axes

Bolt cutter

Material for protective padding

An Army helmet.

Wrist rockets (high-powered slingshots)

I'm missing the key item:

Large amounts of urine, including three to five gallon buckets of urine.

But the "anarchists" whose house got raided weren't perfect anarchists either. Turns out that the buckets contained rain water that the occupants had been collecting to flush their toilets and, indeed, some urine from a man who lives in a nearby garage that doesn't have a toilet. It's sort of sad that it was assumed that the urine was there for something nefarious when it was there because someone is poor.

There's still a chance that I'm not an anarchist. From the state of things on my second floor, there's still a chance that I'm just a homeowner doing some demolition (or supervising while her in-laws and husband do all the actual heavy lifting).

In fact, that switchblade pictured above was underneath some built-in cabinets -- likely tucked there decades ago by a kid whose parents didn't want him owning a switchblade or auditioning for Westside Story or perhaps an anarchist.
I took the picture of the knife next to the dusty remains of a bat that we found in one of the walls that we knocked down. Or I maybe I'm a witch...

Either way my house should definitely be raided.

Is it really possible for two such awesome things to happen in one day?

First, I was driving home yesterday afternoon and I had to stop to get some cash. I pulled over at a little bodega that I have never been to near our house. Standing at the cash machine, I glanced over at the malt liquor area and noticed this sitting on the shelf.


I thought they had discontinued this stuff! The date on the can does say 2006. Apparently either some places have been hoarding it or it doesn't fly off the shelves the way the real stuff does.

The Daily Show did a little piece on this energy drink when it first came out. They got two kids to drink some of it and they ran around going crazy for a while. At the end of the clip, one of the kids gets right up close to the camera, his hair all wild, and screams, "I'm high on cocaine!" I can't find the clip, but it's awesome.

Now there is a trio of cable guys at my house installing our cable and it is taking every fiber of my being to keep myself from getting up and asking them, "Would you like some water or some Cocaine or anything?"

Finding Cocaine was enough to make my day... no, my week, and then this happened.

My buddy Jeff (web editor over at City Pages) won a silent auction item that gave him the honor of leading the crowd in "Take Me Out to the Ballpark" during the seventh inning stretch of a St. Paul Saints game. (The local AA league team.) A bunch of his friends gathered at the field in St. Paul to cheer him on and enjoy the kitsch of these events (which are an illustration in what I wrote about in my last entry about the greatness of local community and culture along the lines of the "St. Paul Sieve" -- a guys who dresses as a hockey goalie and tries to defend his goal during a between inning fan involvement game -- and the verging-on-racist-or-at least-very-awkward-between-inning karaoke performance by a Japanese guy in a Dunn Brother Coffee emblazoned white tuxedo jacket with tails) .

Before the game, Eric and I were sitting out by the field enjoying a beer next to a concession stand. The Saints' mascot is a pig so the name of the concession stand was "Pigtop" and it was emblazoned in big letters across the top of the stand, which also happened to be the wall next to the bleachers above the stand. In between sips of beer, I looked up and saw this.

Yes. That is actually a cop. And yes, he is actually standing above a sign that says Pigtop. Plus, it was Irony Awareness Night at the game. You cannot make this stuff up. I only wish I'd had my real camera and not just the one on my phone. It was an amazing day.

Obama Baracks St Paul

On the drive along 94 to St Paul last night to go to the Obama speech at the Xcel Center, we passed under a pedestrian bridge where someone had hung a giant sign that read, "Nobody for President." We both agreed that it was a sentence. Sort of. At least it would probably be an improvement over our current situation.

We had the brilliant idea of going to the rally because we decided that we'd be happy we went later on because it was "history in the making." Turns out, more than 20,000 other people think in similar platitudes. The line wound through one and a half miles of downtown St Paul city blocks and the wait to get inside and then for the man himself was long.

It was sort of interesting, and yet not too surprising, to watch the crew get set-up for the evening. There was one guy in a blue buttoned down shirt whose job seemed to make sure that most of the people in the crowd who would be on camera had some sort of sign or an American flag to wave around. Those handmade signs that say things like "Women 4 Obama" and "MN [hearts] Obama" and "Barack the Vote?" They're made by volunteers and other behind-the-scenesters and then handed out to the crowd. No signs and banners of your own allowed.

While we were waiting, they played some of McCain's speech on the jumbotron and then the camera panned back and forth across the crowd. Attendees cheered when they saw themselves and stood up and waved their hands and signs. People like to be on a TV screen, even if it's just closed circuit. Eric compared it to looking in a giant mirror.

They didn't play any of Clinton's speech, although we could see when she was on in the little TVs in the luxury boxes. I would have liked to have known what she said and to see how that matched up with Obama's speech. Eric conjectured that they couldn't play Clinton on the jumbotron because they didn't want people to boo her. That would divide the party.

The speech, as everyone has read or heard by now, was amazing. No number of cliches can capture what a great speaker Obama is so I won't even try. I was grateful that his speech was on the jumbotron with closed captioning. Otherwise the cheers in the crowd were drowning him out.

It's true, though, what a lot of the talking heads are saying. I think Obama is great and I think that his ability to inspire people is just what this country needs right now, but at some point he's going to have to talk actual policy otherwise it's just a lot of people cheering every time he says, "universal health care." (And, believe me, I was one of those people cheering.) Fingers crossed that it doesn't turn into that Family Guy episode where Lois runs for mayor and everyone loves her because she says the words "9/11" over and over in one of the debates. I'm all for inspiration, but I'm going to need to know what I'm being inspired to do, even if it is just to pay more taxes to support more government programs. For this moment, though, it was exciting and invigorating to have been there, even if, sitting behind and to the left of the podium, this is mostly what we saw:

Good Thai Food Comes to the Twin Cities!

My husband and I have been on a quest for good, cheap, fresh, tasty Thai food ever since I arrived in the Twin Cities a year and a half ago. After months and months of being referred by websites, reviews, friends, and foes to Thai outlets that end up being overpriced, oversweetened, and overstale, at last, our quest has come to an end.

My friend Wai Linn moved to St Paul from Thailand a few months before I arrived here. (In the interest of full disclosure, my father was born and raised in Thailand and I lived there for three years as an adult. This, of course, gives me automatic and undeniable credibility. My credibility will not be denied.) A few weeks ago, we met up for a meal at Mai Village, the Vietnamese joint on University. "We should go and eat there," he said, pointing out the window and down the street to an unassuming white building with a strange smokestack-like pillar jutting out from its roof. "It's a new Thai restaurant," he explained. "It's real Thai food."

Indeed, this weekend, when my husband stopped by the new Thai restaurant on a whim after Grand Old Day, the sign above the entrance read, "real Thai food." At first, the "Bangkok Thai Deli" appears to be just another Asian grocery store. Past the rows of ramen noodles, lemongrass-filled produce aisle, and varieties of pickled vegetables, to the right of the checkout counters, there is a small cafe with a few booths and a few slightly unsteady-looking tables covered in red tablecloths under the dingy light of a few florescent lights. There's a sort of deli counter at the back and entering the cafe, my husband and I had one of those brief, awkward moments of "Do we order at the counter? Do we seat ourselves?" I got my Thai legs back under me and chose us a table. Awkward moments, cheesy Thai karaoke and soap operas on the TV, florescent lighting, tables full of SE Asians, totally dinky, completely ineffectual paper napkins on the table: all signs pointed to a tasty meal ahead of us.

We ordered a few standards, the dishes that we order so test whether a new Thai restaurant knows what it's doing or has adapted the dishes to suit what the owners perceive as American palates. The food was served on ordinary plastic dishes with a fork and a spoon, just the way it is in Thailand. The Tod Man (fish patty, as it's called in the menu), were small and freshly fried. They were served with no dipping sauce, but they didn't need to be; they were loaded with just the right amount of lemongrass. The fishcakes were chewy without being gummy. We were off to a good start.

We also shared the rad naa (stir-fried flat noodle with gravy) with beef. The gravy was thick (not gloopy) and well seasoned. The Chinese broccoli was just barely steamed, still crunchy and clean. The pad krapraw (stir-fried meat with basil) was served as it is at roadside stands in Thailand: with an egg fried in a wok in vegetable oil, just what's needed to balance the sweetness of Thai basil. The pad krapaw was spicy without overpowering the other flavors or making diners feel the need to brag about their spice tolerance. (Yes, sweaty tough guy, we know you can eat spicy.) Just enough heat to kick in a few endorphins and to make me suck a little air through my teeth and over my tongue a few times.

The total bill? Just under twenty bucks. Maybe not the cheapest of eats, but a great deal when compared to some of the other Thai restaurant options in the Twin Cities. Granted, they don't have a liquor license (they only opened seven months ago), but, frankly, who needs another Chiang Mai Thai?

We'll definitely be returning. More updates to follow.

Bangkok Thai Deli
315 University Ave W
St. Paul, MN 55103
651.224.4300 (take-out available)