MPR is one of the largest and most influential public radio organizations in the country. The homebase of such radio leading lights as Garrison Keillor, the Marketplace show, and of course our beloved The Current (89.3 fm). Well, they also publish the Minnesota Monthly magazine. If you contribute enough money to mpr in a given year, you get a subscription to it and the stultifying Midwest Home gets packaged right along with. The September 2007 issue of MNMO (yes, mnmo) included features on what makes Minnesota "cool". Included in the feature was a story about how we came to be cool and what we've done to remain that way. There's also a horror perpetuated in the issue called the "matrix of cool" (scans shown below) which is presumably a satire aimed at puncturing the gassy people and places which people in the state use to devise their own "niches of cool"--you know, the things they wear, what they buy, where they live, etc. It was revolting and only a little funny. On top of that was a pictorial of people who are considered cool.

To give you an idea of the impact this had on me, on the last page of the first article is a list called Cool in Theory, which bills itself as "Things we’re supposed to love, but can’t". Forthwith, a sampler of that list: "Trader Joe’s, street food, light rail, Surly beer, Midtown Global Market, Riverplace, local wine, charter schools, Voyageurs National Park, third parties, Robot Love, Tapes ‘n Tapes, winter, RollerGirls, Community Supported Agriculture, prairies, Canada"

Anyone who knows me can attest, the only way for them to find a list of things more dear to my heart might have been to spy on me for ten years. I mean, who drags innocent prairies into the middle of this bullshit?! Positively hallucinating with rage, I created an lolBaby image macro, and wrote the following email letter:

Brian Johnson's cover on the 9/07 issue IS awesome. Things quickly descended from that high point. Tim Gihring's article made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Advertising. Is. Poison.

The people bit? Nice & all, but gahhh. A whole 1/12 of these 'faces of cool' are black. No other ethnicities are represented. Great. We're cool if we're white, and I am so I guess I should be... glad? Where's that pride in immigration again?

The people of my generation (X, but surely you guessed that) and younger score if we're well to do, it seems. Or v. clean. Clean is cool. Rich is cool. Boomers are automatically cool.

AND WHAT IS THE MEANING OF that "cool in theory" list? "Can't" love. Can't. can not?

Did you really think putting "magazine theme issues" at the bottom would absolve you of these sins, Minnesota Monthly? It's like every item on the list was a small droplet of somebody's nightmare caricature of Boomeritis, transmuted into white hot pearls of liquid hate for the very things, the Exact Things I love, then dripped on my forehead: Trader Joe's (love it so much. splat! ow!) light rail (best defiance of the word boondoggle EVAR. drip! argh!) Surly beer (fills me with joy. split! ow!) Riverplace (I WORK there for crying out loud. splash! ahh!) then from about Tapes n' Tapes to the end, it's like a downpour of your apocalyptic hate lava. As if you installed a listening device in my Soul and printed up a special issue Just to torture ME.

The matrix of cool. Oh to the Em Effing Gee. Shockingly accurate, drearily bourgeois, again, so bad. So so bad.

Downtown St Paul: nope. University Ave at Frogtown: uh uh. North Minneapolis: not on the list. Rural Minnesota: not a chance.

Big.
Big.
Surprises.
I have attached an image macro, which encapsulates my feelings.

Regards,

Jon S. Olsen
Queen Ave N, MPLS

Well, apparently my destiny in life has nothing to do with poetry or fiction but is perhaps to be among the great crank-letters-to-the-editor writers of our time. I accept that mantle with trepidation, but I think I have a case! I write to City Pages all the time, and of the last 10 letters I've sent, I think as many as 6 have gotten published! I'm unquestionably proud of my 900 word commentary supporting gay marriage—from a Lutheran perspective no less!—the Star Tribune published back in 2004. I was on my way to forgetting this task, figuring the lack of any wonderful coca-cola-like response from and ensuing back and forth with the editor was a sign that while doing the task was successful to the letter, the spirit of epic aggrandizement was not upon it. However, as my wife discovered in my mailbox last week, leaving the pages spread out upon the kitchen table for me, MinnMoe published this one. As you can see, they heavily edited it, regrettably leaving out many words and the critical detail of the image macro. But dayumn!

The image macro itself is not overly funny or nearly as inspired as Cameron's loopy Ted Nancyesque ravings to Coke. But I have long felt that a great task completion should not be greeted with fear on my part and I am proud to have accomplished this task in this manner (and I just now realized we share one similarity, if nothing else the coke can cover says, kismet, baby!) Plus, the image macro I made actually reflects the seriousness of my mood after reading the article. Though the editors have not said boo about the lolbaby, their publishing the letter is almost like getting a vote before the proof was even written up and submitted here!