British Arrow Awards

Tonight we (just the adults) went to The British Arrow Awards at the Walker.  We'd been once before and that time, and this one, I won two tickets from work, making the total cost for our evening of entertainment $4.00.  Nice.  The advertisements featured were both funny, in the case of Guinness and Axe and Thinkbox and Money Supermarket, and disturbing/sad in the case of the women's shelter (scary rape scene because the shelter was being defunded), childhood abuse prevention, smoking, and anti-shark finning.  The did an excellent job pulling the series together to handle the ups and downs to keep you entertained rather than simply amused or too sad/shocked.  Some of my favorites:

Guinness' Sheep Dog:

Money Supermarket Astronaut:

Thinkbox's Harvey & Rabbit

Funny Fortnight with Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson - my fellow Anglophiles will recognize the context of the duo together:


John Lewis Christmas Retail - The Journey

Orange Security:


John Lewis Never Knowingly Understold - not funny, but really a beautiful commercial with a great cover of INXS

Rock the Garden

LissyJo was very nice and took Eryn yesterday for almost 9 hours while Pooteewheet and I went to Rock the Garden at the Walker (at the Sculpture Garden) on two tickets I won at work (yep, Twins tickets and Garden tickets. It was a good week). Particularly nice as my brother in law was out of town and she already had two girls and a sushi date.

The event was great. There was Retribution Gospel Choir, OK Go, Sharon Jones and DAP Kings, and MGMT. The last one was the one I was excited to hear, although I really enjoyed OK Go as well, and the others were just fine to listen to on a sunny day in the park. You'll have to excuse that last post about the New Pornographers. Apparently I was on a previous year and had a mixture of bands in my head that suit my disposition.

OK Go doing a bells number. The women in my hometown Methodist church had a bells group that used to tour the state. Good to see it's gone mainstream. I did enjoy the secular version considerably more than the religious version.

Sandal Summit! Built in coasters. The ability to get Summit EPA was wonderful.

Stupid sunglasses guy. Maybe he has an ailment? I hope so. There was also stupid dancing girl near us. She was a teenager, so she probably deserved a bit of slack, but there were two teenage sisters sitting next to us who were incredibly amused, so she doesn't deserve too much leeway. I asked one if she was amused and she replied, "No. Confused." Later their mom told us they were referring to her as the Elaine on Seinfeld dancer. I have video, but it was too dark for it to be amusing enough for publication.

His glasses from another angle.

Pooteewheet's ex, from junior high that is, and his wife Ginger. I don't think they'd seen each other in 20 years or more. Luke is a cofounder of The Nerdery, which is cool. A brush with local geek fame. He does indeed have two beers and a dixie cup of heavily vodka-ed juice. He was riding the bus home, so he didn't need a designated driver.

Some videos from the bands that were playing:
MGMT Time to Pretend:


MGMT Electric Feel:


MGMT Kids:


OK Go, Here we Go Again, for Pooteewheet who has never seen their treadmill video.

OK Go, This Too Shall Pass - Luke was commenting on their Rube Goldberg video:


Sharon Jones and The DAP Kings, 100 Days and 100 Nights:


Retribution Gospel Choir, Hide It Away: