In the Year Twenty Eighteen…

I just re-upped for the domain name thesamerowdycrowd.com. For nine years. Don’t know why nine, exactly. Mainly because I’m terrible at keeping track of things and now we won’t have to worry about it again until 2018.
When a small nerdy herd of us dreamed this blog up three years ago — mostly it’s Austin’s fault, [...]

Stompin’ at the Loft and the Dakota — Jazz and Poetry

My friend John Gaterud and his daughter Abbey have created Blueroad Press, and their newest offering, Stompin’ At The Grand Terrace, is being celebrated tonight at The Loft in Minneapolis and Sunday at the Dakota, also in Minneapolis.
If you need a break from baseball or from the shock of cold weather — I could see [...]

The sneeze germed ’round the world

NBC’s Chuck Todd finally learned his lesson. How to maintain objectivity in reporting the news? No. How to decode the complexities of the American “culture war” with ease for his viewing audience? No, no, silly.
He learned how to prevent the spread of germs by properly covering his sneeze! And how did [...]

Crawling Back to Normal-ish

You probably didn’t even notice I was missing. After all, I was hardly missing — stopping by rather regularly, especially for a “missing person,” to leave a rowdy comment here and there — and Loveland start writing again. The guy can’t be stopped. I think he just took a few months away to pile up [...]

Riding The Slippery Slope At The State Fair

I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough Minnesota State Fair food “on a stick” jokes. Every time a local anchor lays one of their highly original State Fair food bits on me, it just gets funnier and funnier and funnier. I swear, it never gets old.
But if you are one [...]

July 20, 1969

The 60s were a tough time in terms of news that sticks with me.  Maybe it’s because I was young – I was born in 1959 – but mostly, what I remember are the low points when it seemed like my whole family, my neighbors, the world for all I knew,  had stopped and were [...]

A history of digital Mother’s Day greetings

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers (including all three of mine – Real Mom, Mom in Law and Step Mom), the soon-to-be mothers (including the dear Mrs. Michael Keliher) and anyone else who’s done anything remotely mom-like for anyone.

Maybe I’m the only one who finds this interesting, but Google has a long history of [...]

Who Are We, Guys?

Do you believe in the Myers-Briggs Personality test? I had one administered years ago by a little old nun (one of the famous SSNDs of Good Counsel in Mankato who’ve been studied for decades for their ability to live, work and thrive well into their 90s). All I remember is that part of my [...]

John Updike’s Reputation, Overshadowing Better Writers

John Updike died this week, and his passing was marked by a front-page New York Times article and two full pages inside. That treatment is indicative of what is, in my humble opinion, his inflated reputation.
I loved reading the early Updike. His stories about a marriage breakup, the Maples stories, collected in a little volume [...]

And now, for something completely different

This has little to do with saving the newspaper industry, presidential speeches, public relations ghost-writing, helping to save the world or anything like we usually talk about here at the Rowdy Crowd,  but it’s newsworthy — or at least blogworthy — nonetheless.
I’M GOING TO BE A DAD!!!
You heard it here first. Or maybe second, depending [...]