GGF Young Professionals

YP Bell Ringing for The Salvation Army

2006-12-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

YP Bell Ringing for The Salvation Army

We have the chance to be a part of one of the biggest, well known community events around the country - Ringing the Bell for the Salvation Army. We are ringing the bell at a Salvation Army Kettle from 10am to 8pm at Cabela's on Saturday, December 16. It'll be a great time for a great cause and we need a bunch of people so go ahead and sign up in twos or threes for as long as you want.

Please check out the available times online at http://ggfyp.com/?id=36&page=Salvation+Army+Schedule and e-mail Amanda at akosior@jlgarchitects.com to sign up! And, in advance, thank you for helping out!

YP Holiday Social

2006-12-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

December 14th
8pm, Whitey's

YP brings you Festivus 2006 - the "Festivus for the Rest of Us!" Not sure what Festivus is all about? Read the info below or check out these links. http://youtube.com/watch?v=eaeQz5HwfoI
http://www.festivusbook.com/

We'll be spreading Holiday Cheer and networking with YPs - this event is free to all, starts at 8pm and won't conclude until the ultimate Feat of Strength is performed. Under the Seinfeld orthodoxy, Festivus is not over until the head of the household is wrestled to the floor and pinned.

History of Festivus
While it first came to the attention of most of America by way of the December 18, 1997 episode of Seinfeld, the celebration of a holiday called Festivus is part of human history throughout the ages, most notably in ancient Rome, nineteenth-century California, and upstate New York in the 1960s.

By December 2004, when Allen Salkin's article about Festivus as a real holiday appeared in the New York Times, thousands of people around the world were celebrating Festivus with parties, grievance-airing, pole-erecting, beer-brewing and the invention of new Festivus rituals.

Festivus Pole An unadorned length of lusterless metal or something that looks like metal, this central totemic element of Festivus can be mighty or meek. Some poles are pinky-short and some tetherball-tall. Erected on a lawn, balanced in a coffee can near a photocopier, stuck in a pail of rocks in the living room or suspended from fishing line on the front porch. the pole symbolizes nothing.

The Airing of the Grievences Like everything else Festivus, the AOG has evolved some wild variations, but the core of it remains lashing into others and the world about how they have been disappointments. This usually brings participants into a circle of sorts in which each takes turns excoriating friends, enemies, relatives, acquaintances and strangers. When all who care to have taken a turn griping, there is no required hugging or making up.

Feats of Strength The FOS generally follows the AOG. Under the Seinfeld orthodoxy, Festivus is not over until the head of the household is wrestled to the floor and pinned. While there is an undeniable classic elegance to this, real world Festivus practitioners have developed other cathartic methods of discharging pent-up energy against one's fellows, including thumb wrestling and washer tossing.

YP Board Meeting & Birthday Social

2006-10-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to make sure that tomorrow nights YP Annual Board Meeting and 2nd Birthday Social were on your calendars. The board meeting is open to all who are interested, and will get a recap of another successful year and the outlook and goals for the one upcoming.

And don't forget that the board meeting will be followed by another one of our signature social events. Work hard - play hard. The social is free and kicks off at 8pm with drink specials, including half price apps & taps and $4 B-I-G Oktoberfest beers for your adult consumption.

Also, put next Thursday, November 2nd on your calendar as YP brings you an exclusive Comedy event, complete with a pre-event social with comedians Dave Mordal & Chad Daniels. This event starts with the poolside social at 7pm, followed by special $5 YP discounted tickets and special seating at the 8pm show. Don't miss this YP exclusive opportunity!!

One thing after another

2006-09-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry, updates have been so spotty but so has time and access to the Internet.

I'm now in Göteborg, which is known in the English-speaking world, as Gothenburg. Personally, I prefer the original version but it's so hard to pronounce. It sounds like "you-ti-burgie" and you say it as if you're the Swedish chef. Göteborg is known for being Sweden's second city, the home of Volvo and Ericsson (the cell phone maker) and the biggest indoor mall in Scandinavia. It's not that big but they all have outdoor malls here.

Tomorrow I'm in Oslo. I'd write more but there's a 15 minute limit on the free Internet at this hostel and all the machines are broken save the one I'm on. So there's a bit of pressure. Later.

In Stockholm

2006-09-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Hi readers, the last time I wrote, I was in København but now I'm about to leave Stockholm for Göteborg or Gothenburg as we English-speakers say it.

This trip is becoming a whirlwind tour by necessity because I got so greedy in my scheduling. Basically, I spend a day on the train and two nights and a day in each city before moving on. But I don't mind because it was always meant to be a recon trip before the really big Scandinavian visit down the road.

The confusion of the first couple of days have passed and I think I've finally gotten into the rhythm of backpacking. Language isn't the problem it was because, outside of reading a menu, I don't really need to understand exactly what the signs say any more. The procedure for doing things like making a train reservation or finding a map are the same here as it was in Copenhagen. (For some reason, I've never seen maps sold anywhere. I have to go to the tourist bureau for them.)

The other part of finding my rhythm involves somewhat detailed planning, the sort of thing that my mom does that drives me a little batty. Since I'm only spending 36 hours or so in each city, it's the only way to make the best use of my time. Yesterday, I made a list of things I thought I could see in one day and drew a little map of Stockholm to decide the order in which I'd do those things. It worked like a charm.

In something like eight hours, I managed to squeeze in a walking tour of the old city, the changing of the royal guards, finding a great view point of the city for a photo, a stop at a nice restaurant with traditional Swedish dishes, a walking tour of the harbor, the Vasa ship museum and a stop at a little farmer's market for fish soup. I would've done more but I only got three hours of sleep the night before having drank too much coffee.

Anyway, I'm losing patience for blogging since there's so much planning and traveling to do at the moment (It's 8 a.m. and my train leaves in two hours.). I'll leave you with some photos, which are available on my Flickr Web site, as usual. Some of them are a little dark because the LCD screen on my camera makes everything look brighter.

Actually, you'll have to see the pictures at my work blog. Blogger's being an ass and won't display my photos.

It's all Dansk to me

2006-09-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

I thought traveling in Denmark would be a cinch because everybody here speaks English. They do, but a lot of traveling involves reading signs and following directions, which, in this case is written in Danish.

How can a Germanic language be so incomprehensible? At least with French, Spanish and Italian, I could guess the meaning of words but Danish only has a few grammatical and basic vocabulary terms in common with English, or it seems that way.

Here's a few examples of how the two are alike:

"Fra" and "til" means "from" and "to" when used with dates.
"Hej" is pronounced "hey" and serves roughly the same function in greeting people.
"Tak" means "thanks" and sound a little like it, too.
"Ja" is pronounced "ya" and means "ya," well, "yes."

But that's about it. At least with the Romance languages, you can guess more meaningful vocabulary terms. If you see "zupa de pesce" or hear a waiter say it, it's not that hard to conclude correctly that "zupa" is "soup" and "pesce" means "fish" or "piscine." I can't even read a can of soup at the Danish supermarket. It could be anything in there. Fish balls, chicken nuggets, matzo balls, who knows? I ran across a sign in front of somebody's garage this morning and it looked like it could've been poetry or a declaration of love or "don't block my driveway, assclown."

I blame Bill the Badass, which is what William the Conqueror would've been known had he been alive today. Old English and the Scandinavian languages used to be closer until Bill showed up with his army of, ironically enough, French-speaking Scandinavians and changed the English language by fire and the sword.

In the way that few native English speakers can speak Danish, all Danes speak English and very well. Oddly enough, most Danes I've spoken with have American accents and not British despite the proximity. As I've mentioned elsewhere, some Finns told a friend of mine that Scandinavian TV does not dub American movies and, consequently, that's how a lot of Scandinavians learned their accent.

Their use of the language is pretty clever, too, judging by the store signs I've seen. One is called "Kitsch Bitch," which I assume is a playful way to refer to their customers. Yeah, it looked like kitsch for women. Another is called "Golddigger" and if I were a golddigger, that's what I'd wear. And best of all, the Carlsberg beer advertising on Hans Christen Andersen Boulevard: "Probably the best beer in town." Who but inferiority-complex ridden Scandinavians could come up with that??

Buns of steel and guys in fur hats

2006-09-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

The people in this town must have buns of steel and thighs of aggregated diamond nanorods judging by the way they ride their bicycles. I had a chance to ride with them this morning having rented my own from the hostel. All day long, there were girls in high heels and old people racing by effortlessly. It's like they did this everyday.

Anyway, the damage to the ego was not grave. Bicycling in København was too much fun.

This is a town that's done darn near everything it can to accomodate bicyclists. Nearly every street has a bike lane so there's riders need not dodge pedestrians nor fear cars. There are bike racks everywhere. On the stairs leading up from an underpass to the bridge above, I even found a little ramp on the side to make it easier for bicyclists to walk their bike up.

Here, bicycles are not simply some sort of recreational vehicle for which there are few traffic rules. Cars and trucks in København recognize bicycles as a normal part of the traffic flow. On the other hand, this radical equality means bicycles and cars are equal so cars don't automatically yield. This equality also extends to traffic rules. Here, turning on a red is illegal, even for bicycles. I'm assuming that's the case anyway because nearly all the riders I saw waited for a green to turn. Still, like other big city denizens, some riders skirted or broke the law when it proved convenient and safe, such as riding the wrong way down a one way alley.

Anyway, having a bicycle was infinitely better than waiting for the bus or walking. I managed to get to the train station to make a reservation, consult the tourism bureau, check out a couple of churches, stop at the Danish Design Center, see the changing of the guard at the queen's residence, visit the little mermaid, check out København's star fort, hang out on the Nyhavn docks with a beer in one hand and a pop in another and have dinner in the old town — all in one day.

The changing of the guard was an amusing event, mostly because the guards were so serious and the tourists kept threatening to ruin their little show.

The Danish guards looked a little like the Queen of England's bearskin wearing guards, except they dress in navy jackets, sky-blue pants and what appears to be fully-loaded M-16s or M-14s (I don't know much about guns but the ammo clip was in the guns) but they weren't as stoic as the Brits. I always thought they were supposed to ignore tourists but they kept having to stop and yell at dumbass tourists. (I was one of them, trying to park my bike by the palace wall.)

Anyway, this was before the cops came out. I think this is a regular thing for these guys because the mob of tourists inevitably get in the way of the guards who walk a complicated route to relieve their colleagues at four different wings of the palace. There were so many tourists milling about that I bet we could've rushed the guards and taken the palace if we wanted. But all we wanted were pictures of guys wearing fur hats in 65 degree weather.

Wanna see my "ø" face?

2006-09-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

It's been five airports, three airlines, three lousy airline meals and 18 hours, but I've arrived in København, Danmarks. That's Copenhagen, Denmark to you, but I'm enjoying this "ø" key on the keyboard. That rocks.

Much in the way that my trip didn't.

It's should've been four airports, three airlines and 13 hours, but I got stuck at a second security screening in Newark, N.J., missed my flight to København and diverted to Amsterdam where I didn't have any time at all to go downtown to smoke dope as my friends suggested.

By the time I got to København, though, I might as well have been smoking dope. I was in such a zombie haze that it took half an hour to figure out how to take the train downtown — all the train schedules were in Danish and the guy at the ticket office gave weird directions for taking the bus — and an hour to figure out where that the hostel really is a five minute walk from the train station.

My temporary roomates are a bunch of East European types who apparently speak no English but do spend a lot, and I mean a lot, of time speaking their own. (What are you guys? Women? Shut up! Haha. Sorry ladies. That was a joke. It's been a while since I slept.)

Since I can sleep at 5 p.m. and wake up in the middle of the night, I decided to scout around for a few hours. København is remarkably compact with everything a tourist might want to see within about a mile of the hostel. And there are a lot of tourists because I keep hearing American voices in the crowd. That's odd. I thought all the Americans were in London, Paris and Amsterdam (for the dope). Maybe they're here for the women, who are svelte and fresh-faced from riding their bicycles all over town. There's a special bike lane on all the streets here so everyone rides. The parking lots are jam-packed with bicycles not cars.

Tomorrow, I'll go see the queen, or her palace anyway, and maybe some viking ships.

Now for a good snooze.

Heads up: Music and art Thursday night

2006-08-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

Besides the Johnny Holm Band and Identity 5, downtown's got another event Thursday night: A new art exhibit at The Third Street Gallery. Donald Renner is the artist and he's apparently talking about his watercolors at 6:30 p.m. The gallery opens until 8 p.m.

Update 1:17 p.m., 9/1/06:I just want to say that the Johnny Holm street dance was awesome. Josh and Maria at Gilly's must've worked their tails off to make this happen and there were actually tons of people there.

Think for a minute how insanely cool that is. Somebody throws a live music event downtown and people didn't ignore it. See this picture for an example of what I mean. The last time I was at a live music event at Gilly's, back when it was known as Babylon's, it was me, about a dozen or so people and hundreds of frickin' crickets. My buddy Jaime actually apologized to the band because we have such a sucky music scene created by sucky music fans who don't show up. Was last night a sign of good things to come? Man, I sure hope so.

The other very cool thing is that the city closed off a section of Third Street for the event. I'm told the city really went out of its way to make the event possible, with police protection and such. Then again, the city probably just sent the usual swarm of men in blue that circles Gilly's every weekend.

Oh, yeah, the Donald Renner exhibit is really sweet so stop by and see it.

It's not just some placid watercolor as the description suggests but these intense and slightly-insane looking creations. Renner, a UND grad, said he paints the background first, pour alcohol on it and lights it on fire, which pushes the colors around as it burns and changes them as well. Then there's some seriously detailed ink drawings on top.

The first series of paintings is a mishmash of eyeballs and teeth and, in some of them, cartoonish breasts. Renner said he believes we are all part of a greater whole and yet there's this disturbing disconnect that allows us to fight one another, which explains how freaky the images look.

The second series is a human anatomy lesson: blood vessels in a hand, muscles in a foot, a fetus with little sperm like things bearing ideological symbols.

I took some photos and will post them soon.

Note to Mike: Thanks for talking up my prowess at the gym in front of the ladies! I'll have to return the favor one of these days.

Update 11:10 p.m., 9/4/06:As promised, photos are below:

Johnny Holm Band rocks the crowd. If you weren't there, you missed out.

One of Donald Renner's eyeballs and teeth paintings.

The anatomy lesson series.

Mix tape mania

2006-08-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I went through this period where I was completely obsessed with compiling mix tapes, well, mix CDs anyway. I'd spend hours compiling songs and arranging them in some emotionally coherent order and then designing CD covers for each mix.

Pretty soon, I ran out of steam and had to lay off for a while.

Well, it looks like I'm back on the habit, having spent four or five hours this week on a new mix.

As I was trying to figure out where each song went, I was thinking of that scene from "High Fidelity" where the John Cusack character explains the art of the mix tape.

I found the quote from the Nick Hornsby novel that was the basis for the movie:

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind," but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.

I've made my own rules, too.

* Kicking off with a corker is one way to do it, but there's other patterns you can follow. You can start subtly and quietly — the way some songs start and you barely realize you're listening to them until they suddenly hit their stride — build up to a climax and then ease on out. Hmmm, that sounds not quite right. Music. We're talking about music, OK?

You can drop the listener into a song that starts suddenly, the way some novels drop the reader into the middle of a scene without any explanation. Then you build up excitement with a couple of tracks, bring it down a few notches as Hornsby suggests and cruise for a few tracks. Then you build up to the climax and go out with a bang.

* Obviously, there has to be fast songs and slow songs. If the whole mix consists of, say, non-stop hard rock, it's gonna just all blend together. You have to highlight the qualities of the songs with their opposites.

* Picking all the tracks from the same genre or the same year is lazy. Mix and match if you can. It's acceptable to mix original artists with later bands that sing songs written by the original artists, just as long as you don't repeat songs on the same mix.

The one exception to the rule is ABBA. There is only one ABBA. I forget the stupid punks who redid ABBA note for note a few years ago but it was supremely lame. The same with Madonna sampling the opening from "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" in "Hung Up." I could go on, but I won't.

* Sometimes it's fun to bury a bonus track after a long pause at the end of the mix. I don't know why I like to do this. Maybe I like to offer a counterpoint to the whole mix. I once tucked a Muppet rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" — Miss Piggy: "Piggy pudding?" Scooter: "Figgy pudding!" — at the end of a Christmas rock mix.

* The mix should have some sort of theme, even if it's all in your mind and nobody can figure it out.

Sometimes the theme is obvious: break-up, heartache (related but not the same as the former), anger (also related), energizing (This is the workout mix. If you are a straight man, it should never contain disco. Tried it and it wasn't pretty.), etc.

Sometimes the theme is a mood: in love but cynical about it, in love and ecstatic about it, not in love and pissed off about it, feeling like beating the shit out of something, etc.

Sometimes the theme is complex. Imagine if you were making the soundtrack to a movie. Is it a comedy? A gritty urban tale? A fantastic spy pic? A drama? A movie about a loser kid in rural Idaho who wins over his high school by dancing like a loon to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat"?

* You might want to consider the song lyrics if you do a soundtrack. The opening track should convey the emotional spirit of the movie and the last track should reflect the ending. Is it a happy ending? A sad ending? A violent ending?

Anyway, I saved the boring for last. Here's the story with my mix.

It started with Lizzie West's "Chariots Rise," the song at the end of the movie "Secretary," the one with the full-frontal female nudity scene that I innocently gave to a female friend for her birthday. Oops. She lent it back to me and I got hooked on the song. The movie lead with a great song by Leonard Cohen called "I'm Your Man."

Anyway, "Chariots" was the core song that would define the spirit of the mix. I used All Music and Amazon.com to find similar artists and sample their songs.

Strong candidates included:

* Bic Runga's "Sway," from the "American Pie" soundtrack.

* Heather Nova's and Benjamin Biolay's "Let's Not Talk About Love."

* Beth Orton's rendition of "Wild World" from the "How to Deal" soundtrack. I love Cat Stevens songs, but sometimes they sound too delicate to go with anything else. It's kinda like how I feel about Bob Dylan songs, except Bob Dylan sounds like a frog so it's better if other people sing his songs.

* Rod Stewart's rendition of "The First Cut is the Deepest." I think Rod's version is way better than Sheryl Crow's and Cat Stevens' original version isn't even recognizable as the same song.

There's other stuff that I found but they didn't fit together some how so I had to call it quits for a couple of months.

Then I bought "Rabbit Fur Coat" by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins this week and it all came together. The first time I listened, I was in my cubicle at work. I had to stop everything for a while because it was too hard to concentrate with all that aural pleasure going on. I'm not kidding you, I got eargasm. Try some samples on All Music or Amazon.com. All Music says it's "the perfect soundtrack to 2 a.m." One of my favorite tracks, which I had to use for the mix, is "You Are What You Love" — a truism if I ever heard one. I also decided to use the band's rendition of the Traveling Wilbury's "Handle With Care."

So here's what I got:

1) Bob Seger - Against the Wind
2) Keren Ann and Benjamin Biolay - Decrocher les Etoiles
3) Heather Nova and Benjamin Biolay - Let's Not Talk About Love
4) Rod Stewart - The First Cut is the Deepest
5) Shelby Lynne - Your Love's the Killin' Kind
6) Beth Orton - Wild World
7) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You are What You Love
8) Wilco - Kamera
9) Bic Runga - Sway
10) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Handle With Care
11) Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man
12) Keren Ann - Spanish Songbird
13) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Melt Your Heart
14) Keren Ann - Right Here Right Now
15) Lizzie West - Chariots Rise

I was gonna call it "You are What You Love" but that sounds kind of icky sweet. "Handle With Care" after one of the songs on the mix is better. All the songs sound like they were written by someone with a fragile heart, so handle with care is pretty appropriate.

Update 1:50 a.m., 8/28/06: Final version, I think.

"Handle With Care"

1) Rod Stewart - The First Cut is the Deepest
2) Heather Nova and Benjamin Biolay - Let's Not Talk About Love
3) Shelby Lynne - Killin' Kind
4) Beth Orton - Wild World
5) Lenard Cohen - I'm Your Man
6) Bob Dylan - Most of the Time
7) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Melt Your Heart
8) Keren Ann - Spanish Song Bird
9) The Velvet Underground - Stephanie Says
10) Keren Ann and Benjamin Biolay - Décrocher les Étoiles
11) Bob Seger - Against the Wind
12) Wilco - Kamera
13) Paul Simon - Kodachrome
14) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You Are What You Love
15) The Traveling Wilburys - End of the Line
16) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Handle With Care
17) Bic Runga - Sway
18) Keren Ann - Right Now & Right Here
19) Lizzie West - Chariots Rise

Johnny from the Block

2006-08-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

Just because he's got a hit album (ok, technically it wasn't a "hit" but it was an album, nonetheless) doesn't mean he's too big of a deal to play for the GGF crowd.

Local legend Johnny Holm and Identity 5 is teaming up with Gilly's for a benefit concert to raise money for Children with Cancer, which is receiving 100% of the proceeds.

August 31st
Gates open @ 5pm
Music starts @ 6pm

Advance tickets are only $5
**advance ticket purchase qualifies you
to win prizes, including:
$3,000 ring from Classic Jewlers
Free Papa John's for a year
Free tanning for a year
Free oil changes for a year
Gift certificates and more!!!

Tickets are on sale now at:
Gilly's
Leighton Broadcasting
Center for Innovation

Found in the men's room at East Grand Forks City Hall

2006-08-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

It looked like some kind of mini-catalog, yet...

Good Lord, it's Satan!

And he's mixing drinks!

If your bartender has horns, don't drink, don't tip him!

Moral of the story: Evil is sneaky, but utterly inefficient. Billions of souls to reap and Satan has to reap every single one himself. Jesus is efficient. He delegates to grandma.

Update 2:32 p.m., 8/22/06: Some amusing details. Third image, third panel: Grandma can't see Satan's minions but her cat can. Fourth image, third panel: Isn't that kid a little young to be celebrating Mardi Gras?

Volunteer opportunity: Special Olympics

2006-08-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

Here's more info on that, as promised:

YP's:

Want to support some of the hardest working athletes in the state? Volunteer for the Special Olympics' State Soccer Tournament!

GGFYP will be in charge of the concession stand, meaning that we will be preparing and vending hot dogs, chips, and athletic drinks. This is an easy activity that is guaranteed to be a lot of fun (as any of you who have worked with the Special O can confirm). As a bonus, hot dogs are yummy.

We need 8 people to help on Saturday, September 9 from 10:00am to 1:30pm at Bringewatt Park in Grand Forks (on 24th Avenue South). We'll have a sign up that says, "Concessions brought to you by the GGF Young Professionals," and all volunteers get a fancy ribbon to show you are a helper.

Please contact Amanda Kosior, the YP Community Involvement Chair, at akosior@jlgarchitects.com if you are interested. If you decide to volunteer, please arrive at Bringewatt at 10:00am and check in with the volunteer table (which should be clearly identified). Francine Davis will be in charge of our concession stand.

Come and hang out with fellow YP's, Special O athletes and parents from all around the region...and get to add a line about "Volunteer Activities" to your resume.

Thank you!

Amanda Silverman Kosior

Star servers

2006-08-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

Heads up: We've got a volunteer opportunity coming up Sept. 9 with the Special Olympics but I don't have much info about it yet. Watch this space.

In the meantime, more reviews! I just like the idea of rating everything in sight. (Today's weather: 1 star. Gas prices: 0 stars.)

James at Buffalo Wild Wings: 3 out of 3 stars. This guy is the epitome of a great server. Prompt and attentive — He came back to check on us, like, three times and seemed to mean it when he asked how everything is — and a great sense of humor to boot. Bam, 25 percent tip.

Kelly at Urban Stampede: 3 out of 3 stars. Working down the street from the Urban means I'm there about every day of the week, so I get to know most of the afternoon barristas. Kelly's one of the best. Friendly service with a smile and fun to talk to if you're lollygagging there for a couple of hours.

The two chicks working the Blue Moose deck a couple of weeks ago: 0 of 3 stars. These guys sucked. I sat there for five or 10 minutes and never once did I even get eye contact. It would've been nice to get a "I'll be right with you as soon as I finish with this order." No, totally ignored me. One of the bartenders or maybe managers working the inside of the restaurant had to come out and serve us. Since it's not his fault, I left 10 percent but I would've left zero otherwise. What's really inexcusable is this has happened at least twice. Another time our server decided to take a smoke break as the restaurant was closing. He hadn't even given us our tab.

Blogosphere: Got a favorite server to lavish praise on or least favorite server to vent about? Do it now. You'll feel better.

Review: Toasted Frog

2006-08-18T02:49:00.000-07:00

A restaurant review feels a little blah-blah after that last historic post, but, what the hey, who's gonna read that self-indulgent crap. OK, on with the review.

Toasted Frog
124 N. Third St.
Grand Forks

So it was the three of us at the Toasted Frog for dinner last night: me, Brad and Jen. We got a veggie lavosh for an appetizer, not realizing the size of the thing. Me and Brad got the special, which was an ahi tuna steak, and Jen got a primerib melt, which turned out to be a kind of open-face French dip sandwich with sweet potato fries.

Ordinarily, I'd hate to start a review on a negative note, but this will provide context. (In fact, it was an excellent meal.)

Even though I think the cocktails there are out of this world, I've always felt a little iffy about the food menu. It's what restaurateurs are calling "eclectic." The way I read that is a) there's no real sense of direction and b) it's another derivative experiment in fusion cuisine.

Real fusion cuisine is knowing when to break the rules. Half-baked fusion cuisine is breaking the rules because they're there. I once had duck breasts with something like yam sauce at a Fargo restaurant. The duck and the sauce were like total strangers. You could've put a chocolate cake next to the duck and it would've been the same. I imagined the chef thinking: "Hey, I've got this duck lying around and the only other thing I've got is this bunch of yams so let's do some fusion."

OK, so the Frog's menu is not that bad. I'm just fed up with yet another eclectic mix when what I really crave is some ethnic food, and I'm not talking about Chinese-American, Italian-American or Tex-Mex. Ethnic food have strong culinary traditions, which means that the combinations of ingredients have survived the test of time. It's like when the Frenchies cook chicken in red wine, even though chicken tends to go with white.

What the heck does all this have to do with dinner at the Frog?

The point is with the ahi tuna steaks that me and Brad ordered, the Frog got the whole fusion thing right. It didn't feel contrived.

The tuna was seared on the outside, pink on the inside, as is traditional with these things. You can't go wrong with this even if you tried. It went with a red pepper and balsamic vinegar sauce that paired well with the natural sweetness of the tuna. The sauce could have been reduced a little more to enhance the sweetness of the balsamic vinegar, but it was pretty good the way it was. On the side were some steamed peas that had a similar texture to endame, the soybean pods in Japanese cuisine. It too was sweetness tamed by vinegar.

Then there was the wasabi mashed potatoes that Brad swears by. I, too, swore, at first, thinking: Augh! Fusion! But there was just a hint of wasabi in an otherwise very flavorful mashed potato. Wasabi, of course, goes very well with tuna and, with just a hint, it did not overwhelm the potato.

I can't say much about the veggie lavosh — the toppings were pretty mundane with an annoying raw texture — or Jen's primerib melt — the tuna was so good I ignored her offers to try some.

Later, I turned Jen on to the city's best mojito, after which I took advantage of the cheap Long Island Iced Tea and danced on the table. No I didn't. I feel like dancing now because it's almost 6 a.m. and I'm done with this review. Note to self: going out early means staying up late to work.

Note to readers: The idiot time stamp says 4:49 a.m. That's when I started writing this. It is now 5:50 a.m.

Update 10:46 p.m., 8/20/06: Geez, I forgot the star ratings. OK, 2 out of 3 stars. The ahi tuna steaks alone would've gotten 3 stars but the boring lavosh brought it down to 2 stars, which, under the Michelin Guide system is still pretty respectable. "Excellent cooking, worth a detour."

And... we're up

2006-08-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

I, Tuey, hereby inaugurate the Greater Grand Forks Young Professionals' first evah blog. I'd like to thank all the little people that made this post possible, namely me, Justinnovate and amanda-rama. One day, when we've passed on, it'll say something like:

GGFYP blog
Est. 2006.
Tuey - Justinnovate - amanda-rama
Founders

Ahahaha. Down to business. We hope to cover a wide variety of topics here and your suggestions are welcome.

So far, off the top of my head, I could think of various useful reviews, such as reviews of bars and restaurants; commentary on things that bug you, like the guy driving 35 on DeMers; and announcements of interesting goings on, YP events, for example.

Amanda-rama suggested professional and expert advice, such as how to negotiate a peace treaty between belligerent combatants, or something like that. She didn't specify.

Sweet! It %@*# works!

2006-08-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

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