Local Celeb Spotlight: Joe Mazan

Mr. Mazan is one of the most obnoxiously smug sounding and irritating of any local news reporter I have seen. His job at KSTP consists primarily of live, on-the-scene coverage, inter-spliced with pre-recorded segments with him providing the usual voice-over reading. I guess what I really find aggravating about Mazan is his unnecessarily 'theatric' hamming and nauseatingly dramatic story structure. His bits will usually show him standing or sitting on something - a bridge, a billboard, waist-deep water, etc. - which is fine, but the camera is always positioned below, above or far away from him, so a nice pull-back can be used as Mazan mugs for his carefully mapped out reporting. Then it'll get into the voice-over - typically accompanied by more unsympathetically dramatic camera angles - where Mazan and his Ray Ramano voice "sets the mood" with that kind of sickeningly soulless news-man poetry; along the lines of "A child's tricycle; once a source of joy and merriment, now sits... unattended. Just a symbol of young innocence tragically stripped from this earth... Far too soon."

-Flotsam

Local Celeb Spotlight: Jeff Passolt

One subject I must touch on is Twin Cities' anchor people. I will profile different ones periodically. Perhaps they are much the same everywhere. However, ours take no back seat for pandering and just downright stupidity. I will start with our own channel 9's Jeff Passolt.

This guy is truly the Ted Baxter of the Twin Cities news. After reporting a story on teens texting while driving, he has to inform us how dangerous this is and that people can get hurt doing it. I would feel this demeaning except, when I see his dense expression, I know he can't help it and this is just how he rolls.
-Max

Minnesota: An Asthetically Stimulating Art Scene

Like my counterpart, Flotsam, I too have dealt with the Minnetoilet art scene, only for a longer time. First, we must understand - if it doesn't resemble a Hallmark card, than most suburbanites won't 'get it'. In "the burbs", art organizations consist of blue-haired old ladies, soccer moms and retired knuckleheads seeking something 'deep'. Meetings consist of pot-luck dinners where they critique pastel flowers and boring landscapes, all the while patting each other on the back.

The urban art scene is a little better, but consists mostly of student wanna-be's that play with geometric shapes in one form or another, paint their hair, wear hipster Bing Crosby hats and pretend...

Here in the TOILET, community art bans nudes for being "offensive", but shows photos of sports 'heroes' to entice any football hooligan to stop by. Outdoor art must be 'child friendly' - a.k.a., kids must be able to climb on it. For now, we are very proud of our spoon and cherry, but none of us knows why.

-Max

Minnesota: The Most Art-Friendly Place on Earth

The Minnesota "art scene" - that many unreasonably naive and senseless locals (especially the local news personalities) tend to hold in such high regard - will certainly be a much favored topic -sure to be revisited on a fairly regular basis here on MinneTOILET.

Personally, this is where much of my despisement for this state stems from being that I, myself, am an artist who wants nothing more than to engage in some kind of underground art milieu and mingle amongst like-minded folks who share a similar creative compulsion. Problem is... Minnesota doesn't have an underground art scene. It barely has a mainstream art scene. The extent of Minnesota's involvement in the arts is catering to rich old women who take up landscape painting and/or pottery while they're home all day to distract them from their daily boredom. And the beauty of it is - they're rich enough to get into the hoity-toity bullshit galleries and art institutes that desire the ceaselessly hackneyed, non-threatening greeting card-esque grade of vacuous fluff art that these rich elders mindlessly turn out. That's typically what the Minnesota-based "in crowd" sit and revel in while the one other main art-form that is celebrated to a mass degree is abstract 'modern art'. Mainly, this type of work gets a perplexing amount of attention and praise due to the fact that it's usually displayed outdoors or in a park so average people come across it while walking their dog or out with their families. That's all fine and dandy, but the fascination with this kind of "art" is generated NOT by a unanimous love of art, but for the fact that it's BIG. You know what else is big? The Jumbo-Tron at sporting events. Ooooo! Ahhhhh! Case in point, the famous Spoonbridge and Cherry "sculpture" near the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. I can't begin to explain my unbridled loathing for this ridiculous eye-sore... And most recently, a large structure erected in downtown Minneapolis called "Filling the Void".

What "Filling the Void" is, in essence, is a large grid that people are wrapping in various colored bungee cords. This was recently brought to my attention after being spotlighted on the local news and I really feel like it helped to further solidify my point. From my perspective, "Filling the Void" contains no real artistic interpretation. The significance of this "art" is giving troubled inner-city youths something to do instead of getting involved with gangs, drugs, mischief, etc. That's fine. Just don't call this ART. It's just a big problem with Minnesota not taking the concept of art seriously by incessantly downplaying it and representing it as just a childhood hobby. Seriously. Usually, when art is brought up by the local media, children are involved...

From the way it looks on my depressing end, it seems that if you were to live somewhere like San Francisco or New York, you would be amidst a world of more indie art shows/galleries and comic book and subversive art conventions than an artist would know what to do with. As much as Minnesota likes to make believe like living here grants us residents the delights of EVERY possible advantage under the sun: our art scene is GREAT, we're all in such good shape because we LOVE the outdoors so much, we've got SO much sports pep (UCK!) . The only one of those that is actually true is the last one. We are a culturally deprived bunch of saps. If you are an artist who wants to do something different, you need to flee this place. Hell, if the Minnesota arts and culture scene is so thriving here, than why aren't people running away to come HERE? Hell no! You LEAVE Minnesota to pursue your creative endeavors and fulfill your dreams. "I had to get out of Hollywood. Opportunity was calling and I had a date with destiny in the only place where dreams come true. Minnesota!". Those words have never, EVER been spoken. I assure you.

-Flotsam

Zygi Wilf: Dark Lord of the Football Stadium, Tax-Payer Gouging Underworld

 

-Flotsam

"Minnesota Nice"

Let's start now with the familiar saying "Minnesota nice". Yes, we are Minnesota nice! If we weren't, than Zygi Wilf would never have received his sports palace for a fraction of the price OTHER team owners paid.

Let's face it folks - he didn't move here for the weather. But, that's another subject... We find now electronic pull-tabs are not cutting it, sooo... it's off to general fund for the mortgage. Hey, this money kinda comes in handy for little things like plowing record snowfalls and etc. But we in Minnesota are "nice". We'll help Zygi and the "gods" that play the sport that rule are here.
-Max

Flotsam's MinneTOILET Introduction

MinneTOILET is a collective effort from a pair of Minnesota natives who, between them, have over 70s years of unmitigated disdain for this particular part of the upper-Midwest. What you will find here are the compiled rants and ravings of two guys who don't feel so "Minnesota Nice" about living here, as we feel that the overall attitude of Minnesota and middle America, in general, conflicts with our own personal values and interests. Readers of ours - whether they hail from MN, themselves, or anywhere else in the country or world - will surely get a sense that we see ourselves as "above everyone else". As much as that may come across as evident, we want to assure you that we do NOT consider ourselves superior to anyone... aside from the immeasurable population of slovenly, art and culture deprived, country music obsessed, sports consumed square-heads that make up this depressing, humdrum state that we are stuck in. What these writings include are our thoughts, complaints, worries and, overall, HATRED for a small portion of cold, isolated America that we are forced to call "home".

-Flotsam

Max's MinneTOILET Introduction

If you were to ask a local government leader , civic activist or even some TV news anchor person about Minnesota, they would tell you wonderful things about the standard of living, arts, culture, etc. We here at MinneTOILET differ on these views and would like to use this format to expose the falsehoods that most residents have been force fed for so many years.

We at MinneTOILET are lifelong residents (not by choice) so we have a lifetime of observing the stupidity and denial of the REAL culture of Minnesota. We welcome all of your input on the subjects of art, sports, politics... even Lutefisk.

It starts now...

-Max