Dog-Gone It, People Like Me

The story so far, per Stinque commentary:

1) Wingnuts blaming ACORN, per comment boards on reputable newspaper websites.

2) Rush Limbaugh is displeased.

3) Suggestions made as to alternatives to Bible for swearing-in.

And that makes two comedians from Minnesota. Michele, prepare to be upstaged.

If Franken represents change, he will be eager to be sworn in on a print-on-demand Stinque Zombie Bible. Nojo, can we shoot him a copy?

FlyingChainSaw: YES!

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the next Minnesoda delegation lunch on the Hill. Al and Michelle in the same room. Touching.

TPM update: Pawlenty will sign the certificate today. Stuart won’t be sworn in until the Senate is back from vacation.

nojo: And so the 2010s will truly be the Al Franken Decade.

BTW: where’s Howard Cosell when you need him?

“The referee begins to count; he reaches… IT’S OVER! IT IS ALL OVER! The champ is beaten!”

Meanwhile, at TownHall…

Please, please NRSC and everyone else — train your cameras on Senator Franken. I’ll bet anyone that he’s going to embarrass both himself and his state.

Before or after the Census?

BTW: Harry Reid? Dude. You got 60. Stand on the fucking gas. Kthxbai.

@chicago bureau:

Harry and Nancy are ah-gonna have a bitch of a time coming up with fresh lies about why nothing can get done now.

Original Andrew: Actually, they may still have outs. Lieberman is now certain to be flipped. The line of Republicans ready to service Joementum will be out the door and around the block. You watch.

(But also: consider Ben Nelson another flip risk.)

We’re back at the Batcave, and heeeere’s Al…

Al gives standard gracious victory speech, plays down #60, emphasizes service to Minnesota, blah blah blah…

And Franni’s got the frumpy-cute thing down.

(Yes. Franni Franken. Proceed at your own risk.)

I wonder if Norm has to give back all that money the RNC poured into his campaign over the last month or so.

Big John Cornyn, moments ago:

“I would like to commend both Norm Coleman and Al Franken on a hard fought campaign. In particular, I would like to be among the first to welcome Al Franken to the United States Senate.”

Oh. That went down so smooth.

This was followed by preemptive whining in re Sixty Democrats.

@chicago bureau: Ambinder at the Atlantic calls the practical number at 58:

A quiet concern in the White House is the logistical difficulty of getting Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, both of them long absent with serious health issues, to the Senate floor to cast a vote.

TJ/ Stormy’s on the road again. As I suspected, the only place in my part of the state that will have her is a redneck bar in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, where mudhogging constitutes the height of entertainment. So y’all won’t be getting pictures out of me after all, sorry. Actually it appears you have to pay to get into the event, so make that a HELL NO.

Michael Steele to Minnie Supremes: Fuck You.

I am deeply disappointed in the decision made by the state Supreme Court, and I share the frustration of Minnesota’s voters. At the core of our democracy lies two concrete principles: No valid vote should go uncounted and all votes should be treated equally. Sadly, those principles were not adhered to during this election.

T/J: I beat SFL in a game of Wordscraper! This is like beating Michael Jordan one-on-one. Drinks are on me!! Send the tab to Dodgerblue, c/o Rahm Emanuel, Undersecretary of Go Fuck Yourself, Washington, D.C.

@Dodgerblue:

/whispers/ Don’t give her lockerroom material, Dodge. ‘sides, I noticed that her won/loss record was easily 70/30, so we’re talking what, Michael post Chicago AA ball?

@Dodgerblue: I alerted everyone earlier today to your impending win. But you are being too modest. You didn’t beat me. You CRUSHED me, by a score of 519-354.

@SanFranLefty: I got some good letters in the draw. Even a blind pig etc.

A question – if you were forced to watch one sex tape, would it be the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter sex tape, or a hypothetical Mark Sanford/Argentinian Hottie tape?

@blogenfreude: One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy, dirty old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking, rotten guts.

@nojo:

Pass the milk-plus, me droog, I agree.

@Tommmcatt Floats: doubleplusungood.

@SanFranLefty: @Dodgerblue: Wait. You people get like scores in the 500s? Jesus.

Even if I did play games I wouldn’t play em with you.

@blogenfreude: Why? You got a connection? I mean. You need credit card numbers?

@blogenfreude: Really, even I have my limits. A space alien plunging tentacles into Johnny Mill’s asshole and turning purple and vomiting green oatmeal all over the twisted adulterer, I dunno if I could call that entertainment. Still, it would be hard to imagine having to listen to Sanford go on and on and on and on with junior high school oaths of love that would doubtless attend his pestorkings of the Poon Tango. I mean, he gets emetogenically treacly with AP reporters for goodness sakes. Imagine what he’s like with the Poon Tango.

@Dodgerblue: Someone’s gotta teach me this wordscraper, I want to see how I do against the unstoppable SFL.

@blogenfreude: I’d go with Rielle all the way, Edwards, it would be hilarious to see his contortions to keep his hair perfect, while she, well, she seems like she might be the wild one.

Sanford, from what we now know about him, was probably actually crying tears of combined guilt and joy and reverent, hopeless pussy madness “this is the sacred union of soulmates” sincerity every time he plunged his dick in the soulmate. I am sure he would have thought it disrespectful of the holiness of their perfect love to engage in any enthusiastic thrusting and hollering.

Tearful emo sex, with guilt and sanctimony, yucckkk.

I have to threadjack here.

Its about the deli.

Since we opened, we have had tribulations. My partner/nephew, he was not happy with the situation, I think partly panicked about the lack of business, partly intimidated by the upscale foods, he was miserable, and is now no longer part of it. Before he left, his style and manner confused oour message a bit, he was traditional old school gruff deli, we were trying to be laid back sophisticated, non-traditional but still cheap really good stuff.

And then, the weather. The first 5 weeks we were open, it rained about 80% of the days, very freakish weather for spring here.

We were not doing well, no sales.

It was getting scary. To be brutal, we had maybe 10 days left, if some significant uptick in business did not happen this week, we were looking at running out of funds, I have been buying all the food for the place with my paychecks, and we had to dump money in every friday to meet payroll.

It was a dark night of the soul, the last 4 or five days.

Then, tonight, I get two messages, two catering jobs for this weekend, a party of 25, a party of 65.

Whoopeeeee! A reprieve. Happy days are here again. Whew.

@Promnight: :( and :)

Did you see my suggestion that you make your FB menu posts on the wall and not in your status updates so local people like me can share them on their own walls?

@Promnight: I don’t want to be the first to tell you this but it takes a couple of years to figure out if you are wrong, longer to get a feel if a retail operation has really long-term legs. Last for-profit business plan I sold gave the alleged founders a burn rate that should have lasted them, really, more than 18 months if they’d only staffed up at the level they needed to get a recurring revenue stream happening and see either black bottom lines they could leverage for reinvestment – or enough growth to go for a second round. If you get airborne and stay aloft you should count yourself a miracle worker given how little runway you gave yourself. If you can get a good operations guy, you should not be spending as much time on the platform as you are in the field selling the business or discovering constituencies that could benefit from a line of trade you’d not yet considered.

@FlyingChainSaw: Huh? I make these amazing delights, that would make those who know food sigh. I am lost at connecting the product to those who would appreciate it. But I am finding success in the meantime, at the traditional deli sandwiches, and my pushing of my two specialities, tabbouleh and thai chicken salad, lots of people becoming hooked. I am thinking standard, but better, with some twists, deli sandwiches will produce enough income to support the slower spread of awareness of the specialty stuff.

Tonight, the test kitchen came up with a knockout winner, Tuna Nicoise. more on that later. Amazing, will be this weekends special, forcing it, its amazing, if people will try it.

And that is the start-up executive’s job. There should not be a chamber of commerce meeting within an hour’s drive of the shop where you have not or won’t be appearing soon with some of your delights to hand around to business owners with a splash of wine and a little friendly catering advice. There should not be a food writer within driving distance of the shop who is not sick of hearing you pitch story ideas, recipes, insights on local produce and offers to pen guest columns. Start-ups are about story telling and the executive has to tell it, over and over again, to investors, employees and customers and customers-to-be, all the time. You are lucky. You love all this stuff. Imagine having to sell the number 4 software product, in a field of 22, that you know is a piece of shit.

@Promnight: its amazing, if people will try it.

@Promnight: Ooo nice, congrats on the big parties! Bring a bunch of business cards, get the word of mouth out, you’ll end up with a line out the door most days. Your food sensibilities are amazing, and anyone with a lick of taste will pick up on that.

@Promnight: The trick now is to get your stuff in front of people. As The Saw says, you gots to peddle yr ass down on mainstreet. Get hold of me via redmanlaw at mail.com and I can tell you how to work those local print media assholes.

In the meantime, have a huge fucking rum drink and jam out.

AL! BABY! mazel tov!!!
now please don’t turn into dennis miller.

@Promnight: If you want to get to foodies in the area, I’d invite a bunch of local chefs and high-end bartenders you admire to an after-work chow-down, on the house.

@RomeGirl: Nice. Nice idea. Imagine a publican would enjoy a choice of high-end munchies on Mondays and Tuesdays to bring in the after-work crowd. Hard to do right in house, as a drop-off service, low burden and a distinguishing feature that has advantage of allowing some folks to lay off cost of dinner in these pre-Cannibal Anarchy times.

@FlyingChainSaw: Thanks, baby! I too think after-work is a huge market. This might go against everything Prommie is working toward, but there is something about the psychology of tapas-sized portions of food that makes people feel like they’re not being ostentatious with spending on dining, even though you can charge them out the wazoo.

I am still undoing the work of my well meaning ex-partner.

FCS, I sell with a passion to anyone who comes in the door, but its not selling, its a man who loves creating things that give pleasure and wants to share them, it flows out of me, I don’t have to try. I offer tastes, and conduct them through the store to the highlights, and I have discovered that there is a power in real, genuine passion and desire to make people happy, its like I have Vulcan mind control powers, I can make people buy things. Your advice is absolutely perfect, you are such a mystery, I get the feeling you could give equally valid advice to a multinational corporation’s CEO, as you are giving to a little local deli.

The 4th of july weekend is upon me, and I don’t have time, in the nect 24 hours, my scheme this weekend is aroma advertising. I am bringing my smoker to the place tomorrow, and I am going to smoke a bunch of ribs and chickens, its NOT barbecuing, its slow, low temperature smoking, it takes 5 hours, and the whole time, the thing gives off these amazing aromas, and this island, its a place where peoplee walk and bike around, I intend to permeate the neighborhood with aroma, draw them in, and then work the magic selling to sell all the accompaniements to the ribs and chicken, show them the gazpacho with shrimp and the tabbouleh, “You will need some of these store-made nacho chips, this tabboouleh, some chowder.” My next door neighbor is a wildly succesful seafood place, and people wait around for an hour on the sidewalk to get a seat, I am going to waft aromas over them and make them drool. As it is they wander in and buy this or that, this will make them my slaves.

After this weekend, I do all you say, FCS.

@RomeGirl: My idea all along was to offer almost a tapas bar, a wide variety of small dishes, people could put together an amazing tasting menu, this vision got lost, with my partner, now I am bringing it back.

@Promnight: Do you want my Texas brisket recipe that makes grown men cry?

@Promnight: All true – it is just that your show would kill on the road. The tapas vision is perfect and should be offered to every bar room a half-hour’s drive away as a catered pick-up service for their happy hours. People sitting around swilling alcohol without meaningful munchies is kind of barbaric. The aromatizing scheme is insanely great. Any reason not to do this every weekend?

@SanFranLefty: I make brisket for my private affairs, and all love it, but I gotta tell you, if I made it for the general public here, it would be pearls before swine, they would not know what to do with it. I am going to have to ease that one in.

@FlyingChainSaw: You are absolutley correct, and I am going to follow your advice and find opportunities to “take the show on the road.”

@FlyingChainSaw: If it works, I will damn well do it every weekend, hell, I will do it every day.

I am also building a custom, chrome wheeled, fuel-injected, candy apple red genuine New England Clambake steamer, and when its done ( as soon as I have 2 straight hours free) I am going to park it by the road, fill it up with water and seaweed, and just let steam bellow out of it, all afternoon, with a big sign offering clambakes, in your backyard.

Its actually made from a stainless steel firepit, with a huge propane burner mounted under it, and a barrel-like sidewall made of cedar, wrapped in rope, with a big steel lobster sculpture mounted on it, with big river rocks inside, to give the real clambake effect of steaming on hot rocks. Its cool.

@Promnight: If I or Mr. SFL lose our jobs before Labor Day, can we come be your indentured servants? Your description of the clambake steamer has me salivating. Over the weekend I will not have the tubez but I will work on your media and outreach plan, I swear, and have RML and Mrs. RML weigh in on it.

And listen to Chainsaw. FCS is your free secret COO/strategy person.

@Promnight: People here would steal your rig from the side of the road in plain daylight. Also, in my humble opinion, you should put flames on the side.

Are cooking classes a cost-effective form of marketing?

@Promnight: I’m getting worried that our intended fly-by during the extended weekend will pull you away from serious palate duty. If nothing else, we can load up our vehicle with flyers and deli samples and hand them out at every exit of the GSP on our way back.

I’m not nearly as market savvy as FCS, but I’d go the carwash route: buxom co-eds with cut off shirts and shorts emblazened with “Island Fusion: tastes like tuna!” across the front and back, respectively.

The first time I saw an advert for “butt shorts” at the shore I was aghast; now I understand their real potential…