Manitoba Links Weekly: Brandon Crime as Fringe Play, Grass as Redevelopment, Deep-Fried Pizza Pops as the Lede, and Online Reader Comments... on Paper? (ManLinkWeek 40)

Your eyes do not deceive you; what you see here is blurry cellphone footage, taken yesterday in the wild ("the wild" in this case being the Maryland Tim Hortons between Portage and Broadway), of an online reader-comments section grabbing a pen and forcibly crossing itself over into the print edition. Behold -- the future of publishing!

Now, before we launch into this week's cornucopia of content: I didn't want to devote a full segment below to them, because they've already appeared many a time in this feature already, but holy shit, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I split my time tonight between typing this post out and watching them lose again, so they're still on my mind right now, but from the way their year is shaping up so far I can see that I'm going to need to pace myself. So let's say instead that I'll, uh... I'll let you know if they win. (And you'll note that's an 'if'.)

On to ManLinkWeek!

[National Post: At the Drive-In: The big pictures and pizza pops at Morden, Man.’s Stardust Drive-In]
As part of an Arts & Life series of drive-in profiles, the National Post provides some timely national exposure to the Morden Stardust Drive-In and its fast-approaching digital upgrade deadline of January 2013. Just under half of the paragraphs in this article are dedicated to deep-frying Pizza Pops -- it may be an interesting trademark genericization note here that the author repeatedly uses "pizza pops" in lower case -- which is a snack approach that, I certainly have to admit, I've never thought of attempting.

(Apparently, and I did not know this until just now, Pizza Pops were in fact invented in Winnipeg. Is this news to anybody else, or am I just embarrassing myself right now in revealing how little Pizza Pop research my life has involved?)

The online edition also includes a link to the Stardust's website, which, uh... wow. Moving on.

[Winnipeg Free Press: A guided tour of Riel's North Dakota hideout]
Speaking of summertime options for hittin' the open road, here's a neat profile of another place I've never been the North Dakota trading post that Louis Riel hung out at for a while, y'know, just dropping by his buddy's place for a bit after things got a little messy north of the border. Sounds like fun! Trap doors, tour guides, amusing historical tales -- yes, should I happen to be passing through North Dakota sometime, I'll be sure to pop in and check this out.

[RossEadie YouTube: Case of the Week - Mynarski Minutes (via)]
I don't know if the "Worst Back Lane" recipient is democratically elected like the "Worst Street" was, but here's City Councillor Ross Eadie cheerfully taking the audience on a tour of things that are wrong with his ward. The camera lingers on a dumpster literally overflowing with uncollected refuse as Eadie recounts a story of somebody backing out of their driveway into a pothole deep enough to require a tow truck visit, then chuckles for a few seconds as the vehicle vaults over what appears to be a mislaid accidental concrete speed bump.

"This thing, they've been talking about fixing for twenty years. Twenty years!"

The concept has its limits, of course, but hey -- as far as politician forays into YouTube go, you have to admit, this one ain't bad.

[Brandon Sun: Who's that sleeping in my bed?]
[CBC Manitoba: Bizarre break-ins spark warning in Brandon]
With this nonviolent but thoroughly unnerving drunken Brandon break-in story so closely following last week's nonviolent but thoroughly unnerving drunken Brandon break-in story, it seems logical that one's mind would attempt to connect the two in some way. The guy was identified and caught in the later story, but not in the earlier one; suppose it was the same guy in both cases? Probably not, one then reasons, since that detail or suspicion would definitely would have come up in the later case when police commented on the (for lack of a better word) trend. Now, suppose we flip that last idea: what if it was different men in each instance, but these things just kept happening to the same woman? And then, at that point, it's basically just a fully-formed Fringe pitch. (Is it Fringe season already? Cripes, summer just disappears on me, every year.)

The stranger-in-the-house motif could represent the alcoholism of one, or all, of the important male figures in her life -- her boyfriend, or her husband, or her father, or some weird confabulatory boyfriend/husband/father hybrid concept because plays -- or the drunken males that she encounters could be the same character every time but played by a different actor in each appearance, to suggest that even as he quietly goes about the mundanely familiar domestic tasks of their shared space she still continually finds herself incapable of recognizing the man he's become. Or the multiple besotted strangers appearing in her personal space could represent her desperation for male companionship and affection, stemming from her feelings of abandonment as a child, the resolution to her situation only arriving once her eventual self-actualization allows her to close and lock out her unhealthy desires for validation. Or maybe somebody who could actually write the thing properly can take over here, because I have clearly established that I have no idea what I'm doing; I am a golden retriever in a chemistry lab when it comes to things like this.

Anyway. All of that is the hypothetical, highfalutin' literary takeaway; the tangible, real-world takeaway from this is that Brandon women need to make sure their doors are locked at night, because criminal activity in Brandon has been creepy as shit lately.

MOVING ON

[Epitath Records SoundCloud: Propagandhi- Failed States]
[punknews.org: Videos: Propagandhi to release ‘Failed States’, we've got a trailer (Exclusive)]
Heads up: new Propagandhi album, September 4th! As you can see above, reactions to the news thus far have mainly taken some form of "FUCK YES NEW PROP" with the occasional burst here and there of "wait, why Epitaph, what". To tide us all over until it drops, here is the title track (presumably the first single?) from the upcoming album and a quick promotional trailer that I really, really do not know what to make of.

[THE RISE AND SPRAWL: The end of Chinatown]
The motion mentioned within passed easily in Council earlier today, because of course. Of course it did.

"We want to knock this landmark heritage building down."
"Okay, but only if you come up with a redevelopment plan for the space first!"
"All right."
(A beat.)
"We want to knock this landmark heritage building down, and we have a redevelopment plan for the space."
"Great! What's the plan for the space?"
"Grass."
"Grass?"
"Landscaped grass."
"APPROVED!"

sigh

And, finally:

[the cold cold ground: lo point for the shed?]
[The View From Seven: Forget Ellice Ave. — Osborne Village would be the best place for a hostel]
Today's episode of Winnipeg Internet Pundits featured a segment discussing, among other things, the sizeable building (with sizeable debt) that will soon be abandoned and shopped around after Hostelling International's (very suddenly announced) forthcoming departure from the city. This would have made for quite the lively discussion at the event held there on Monday, which is probably why they held off announcing it until Tuesday. Nobody has any idea how this is going to play out yet, so -- keep an eye out! I'm sure this is going to end up an interesting story one way or the other.

Thank you for reading ManLinkWeek! I'll be disappearing off the internet entirely from Thursday evening to sometime Sunday-ish -- Oak Lake, and the relatively-nearby Brandon Folk Festival, await me -- so you folks have a good weekend, and I'll see you all next week. Until then, true believers!