The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

With all the carnage being reported about cars these days, I'd like to call your attention to the best ad on TV AND the sorriest car company of late (without good reason). The ad is done by Kraft for Velveeta cheese. I can't seem to track it down, but it shows a Mom in a supermarket cutting stuff in half with a saw. This ad is good. I know good when I see it.

Every winter in our fair state, the subtle tang known as desperation permeates the air. Match.com and eHarmony fill with the profiles of Minnesotans scrambling to find someone with whom to warm their long winter's nap before the season's icy grip on the region's nethers prevents any chance of companionship altogether. But this season is different. That subtle tang has become an overwhelming stench wafting from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, and that desperation signals a mightily dangerous time for our cities.

America's shoppers, determined to single-handedly drag the U.S. economy forth from its dark and lonely apartment before it's found, wrists slit, in a warm bath with a hastily scrawled suicide note containing shitty poetry, had a field day on Black Friday.

photo courtesy of Pundit Kitchen

The latest version of the bailout bill being voted on tonight in Congress doesn't just amount to lipstick on a pig. It's Rush Limbaugh smothered in fetid road kill.

Even as Wall Street continued its end run into a cold nuclear winter's meltdown, leading some former investment bankers to seek comfort in the

All praise be to the cyclopean gods of old for finally bringing the nigh interminable local and national Democratic nomination process to a close. For while sentences involving Andy Rooney, sodomy and bestiality, not to mention flag lapel pins and innuendo involving sniper fire,

I've been watching this debate raging on my television screen over how America got into this economic mess. Am I the only person out there who understands why?

Oil is hovering around $115 a barrel, the lowest price of gas in the Twin Cities is $3.18, foreclosures are still a-rising, and yet, in her latest column, the Star Tribune's Katherine Kersten believes all we need to weather the storm of inflation, diminished access to credit, and skyrocketing healthcare costs is a shit-eating grin and a positive attitude. Allow me to add a hefty supply of recreational pharmaceuticals to the list, because these days I'd love to have some of whatever Kersten is smoking. A few