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Dennis Jansen

June 30th, 2010

Best Summer Ever: Weeks 5 & 6

I really need to do these summaries on a weekly basis because I end up giving short-shrift to everything when I wait two weeks.

What happened these past two weeks? Well, there was school, dates, drag show fabulousness, illness/rice socksmusic production, the Minneapolis gay pride parade, diva-dom, and mass awkwardness.

The most exciting thing that happened during the last two weeks is that I finished my first song. Here is the concise version:

And here is the extended version:

The video was shot at the Minneapolis Gay Pride parade, which was my first pride festival. Last year I sent my camera with Gibs, and my mother went to this year’s Miami Pride Parade.

The twin cities parade was fun, but I expected more hot guys on floats…or at least one hot guy on a float…

I was however, extremely impressed with the Gay 90’s on Sunday evening. It felt like Miami on a weekend. The club was packed, the music was good and ghetto-tastic, and the usual trashy, unfit Minneapolis gogo-boys were replaced by model-like boys and girls who actually knew how to dance!

Gay 90's

Fancy!

And the most fabulous character of the night was the trashed drag queen on stage hanging onto a stripper pole for balance. You know I had to get up and dance with her:

Gay 90's

My favorite part of pride weekend is that I got to see so many of my friends, acquaintances, and my new random-facebook friends. At one point I knew every 5th person the street.

Thomp and I also saw Kathy Griffin perform and I was surprised by how many people I knew at the show.

Kathy Griffin was funny. I was not as impressed by the first hour of the show because the jokes centered around her show, which I don’t watch (no TV!) and US-Weekly humor. I don’t follow the Gosselins or care who Cameron Diaz is dating.

Kathy picked up steam during the second part of the show when she dished about Barbara Walters, The View, and meeting Michele Bachman in DC. The funniest part of the show involved this clip of LaToya Jackson and Bubbles the Chimp. I think Kathy exaggerated the story by adding that dung was flung, but it is still pretty funny.

Aside from the festivities, the vast majority of my time was spent at work or at home learning Ableton. I didn’t go to the lakes with the dogs or skate as much as I wanted because it rained almost every day during the past few weeks:

Gay 90's

I think we got hail a few times and tornadoes made guest appearances in other parts of Minnesota.

The weather is stabilizing and hopefully the krakens and I can get out more this week. I am also working on my first album. There will be 10 songs. Expect rapping, reggaeton, house music, guest appearances, and complete randomness.

This summer is pretty amazing.

June 29th, 2010

Minneapolis Pride Parade 2010 Pictures

This is the first batch of Twin Cities Pride Parade photos. Ta-da! Click on the thumbnails to see a bigger version.

Minneapolis gay pride

RSS/Facebook readers: click here to see the gallery.

June 28th, 2010

Video of the Minneapolis / Twin Cities Pride Parade 2010

After about 10 upload attempts, I my video of the 2010 Minneapolis Pride Parade is finally up! Behold:

And yes, that’s my first ever song too…oh excitement.

June 27th, 2010

Pride Games coming soon.

Oh pride weekend… there are drag queens, Kathy Griffin, hilarity, and and and… update soon. But, the most exciting thing about this weekend is that I finished the video for my first song: Pride Games. I’ll post it when it finishes uploading!

And although the song is purely digital (and free) you know I have to have a CD cover:
Minneapolis Gay Pride games
Continue reading “Pride Games coming soon.” »

June 26th, 2010

The video fail, mass awkwardness

Yesterday’s video shoot did not go as planned.

I left work and got my hair fixed in Uptown. The salon was packed with gays and lesbians because everyone needed a hair-update before pride. I almost asked for a cut similar to this lesbian, but I already had a plan for the style that I wanted.

I wait for my stylist for about 30 minutes and awkwardly avoid eye contact with one of my gay professors and his partner. This professor is visibly uncomfortable interacting with gay students outside of school.

The professor is uncomfortable.
I get uncomfortable because he’s uncomfortable.
He gets more uncomfortable…so do I…and it’s just terrible.

The stylist eventually updates my do, and I skip home to walk the krakens. The only problem is that when I turn on MPR on the way home, the weather man is in hysterics about some huge storm coming. Hail and epic amounts of rain he says… damn it.

The monsoon hits my neighborhood right after I enter my apartment and the wind is so strong that I have to jump around shutting windows to prevent flooding.

It is still pouring after I get ready, so I bribe the dogs with treats and hope that they won’t cake my apartment in scat while I am at the Minneapolis Eagle.

The plan was to shoot some bar scenes at the Eagle, walk the dogs, and then get some highway shots.

But of course it is still raining when I get to the Eagle. I enter the bar soaked, my hair is compromised, and I am unamused.

Despite it being Gay Pride weekend, the Eagle is not much more crowded than a normal 3-4-1 Friday, and the bar is too dark to get decent footage for the video.

My time at the Eagle is also amazingly awkward because the SAME professor from the salon is across the bar and his partner is wearing a “I heart BJs” shirt. I am also pretty sure that the partner made a vulgar gesture towards me1 from across the bar. Ick.

After the Eagle, I walked the krakens and then went to Granite City with Thomp. The problem with traveling last night was that 35W (our main north-south highway) was shut down, so 3 minute highway trips suddenly became 30 minute back-road treks.

The highway closure was also a problem because some scenes for the video are supposed to be on the highway. This is some sort of grand conspiracy to thwart my video shoot and I blame BP.

Thomp and I lingered at Granite City until around 1am, and I didn’t continue filming last night because I had an early work day today. (Which necessary because of tonight’s Kathy Griffin show.)

After the Griffin show, I will slink over to the Saloon to see if I can tape something there. Hopefully tonight’s video shoot is more productive!


1 Well, someone could have been behind me, but I was not going to contribute to the awkwardness by turning around and looking. I pretended not to notice.

June 25th, 2010

Krave at Karma

I forgot to mention that Krave was last week! And you know Broby took pictures:

krave at karma Minneapolis

krave at karma Minneapolis

krave at karma Minneapolis

krave at karma Minneapolis

Krave is Minneapolis’ seasonal swank gay party thrown by Dave Em, our local hunky promoter. And the lovely lady in those pictures is Wanda Wisdom, our local podcast queen.

The rest of Broby’s photos are over on facebook.

June 25th, 2010

Day 2: Rice Sock

I am typing this with a hot, rice-filled sock pressed against my face.

I was sick for most of the week, but this morning I woke up with my eye almost swollen shut. I was convinced that my face was rotting, so I made a desperate call to the school optometrist.

The receptionist said she could “work me in” around 3pm, so my work-day got off to a very late start. I walked the krakens around Calhoun and then spent the rest of the afternoon creating beats in Ableton. The Calhoun walk was pretty, if not a little hot.

rottweiler lake calhoun

rottweiler lake calhoun

rottweiler lake calhoun

rottweiler lake calhoun

rottweiler lake calhoun

I was thrilled to finally use the full-version of Ableton today. I wanted to start last night, but I spent the night gossiping with Alesus while waiting for Ableton to install. The instrument libraries were upwards of 32 Gigs. So installation took forever. My hardrive feels stuffed, and slightly ill as if it just went on a Taco Bell binge.

Today’s Ableton session went well. I have the beats down for two songs, and I just have to figure out vocals and how to shoot the videos. So much planned this weekend…

And I did make it to the eye doctor. The optometrist said that one of my glands was infected and that I should fill a sock with rice, microwave it, and then press it against my face four times a day. I waited for the punchline, but he was very serious.

So I rolled into the office around 6pm. I’ve worked nights all week because I hate being “disgusting flemmy cubicle neighbor” and being “disgusting flemmy cubicle neighbor with sock full of rice” is even worse. By about 10,000. Ugh. This is my glamorous life…

June 24th, 2010

Day 1: Ableton Arrives

Ableton arrived! I had to fetch it from the FedEx facility in the far-flug northern suburbs, but it’s here.

ableton apc40

I’m figuring out how to make beats, and probably shooting a music video this weekend. I’m also calling on all my artist friends (photographers, rappers, drag queens) to make things happen.

This is all happening very fast. How exciting…

June 23rd, 2010

Do straight people really care?

I try not to get caught up in other people’s drama.1 I’m busy, there’s so little time, and I have dog poop to pick up.

That is why I have a hard time getting excited about the whole “gay rights” debate. The saga is ridiculous to me because I cannot understand why “opponents” of gay rights/marriage even care if two men or women get married and raise children.

It has nothing to do with them. No one is asking for money, any particular action, or seeking to corrupt straight children. Heck, Lesbians might even do a better job than straight moms at raising well-adjusted teens.2

The opposition to gay rights is simply a basket of ignorance. The entire saga is exhausting, and again, I have dog poop to pick up.

And although I cannot usually be bothered to care, a 2L brought this to my attention:

Pastor Tom Brock blamed twister on gays. Turns out, yep, he’s gay.

Remember when a tornado struck downtown Minneapolis last year and broke the cross atop a downtown church?

Minneapolis Pastor Tom Brock made a whole bunch of waves by suggesting that the twister was God’s retribution for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America voting at its national convention in Minneapolis that day to take up — and pass — a resolution that allows for openly gay clergy could serve as ministers.

“The apostasy is now complete” in the ELCA, he told conservative Christian radio host David Wheaton not long afterward.

So we assume he’s going to step down. Because he’s gay, it turns out. Lavender outed him in its most recent issue.

The closeted religious man/politician is nothing new, but this story makes me wonder if that many real straight people actually care about opposing gay rights or if the bulk of this opposition is the product of a small group of closeted people trying desperately to deny their fabulousness.

I suspect that most straights have more relevant things to worry about, like picking up dog poop.


1 That is why I am a firm believer in the vogue phrase: “I don’t like that bitch, I don’t see her.”
2 They also tend to look like Justin Bieber (or La Roux) and wear fierce bermuda shorts. What else do you need?

June 23rd, 2010

Unexpected

I spent the morning at the Uptown Dunn Brothers my nose in my Ableton manual. I ordered Ableton last week, but it ships from from Berlin so I run the demo version on my school laptop.

When I came back to the apartment this afternoon to find a FexEx sticker on the front door of the building. Apparently Ableton arrived! The mailboxes for my apartment are tiny, so tomorrow includes an adventure to find the St. Paul FedEx facility…which might be a disaster

After the dog walk, I jump in my car and try to head to school, but my neighborhood is gridlocked. There are no left hand turn signals to the highway onramp, and there is a fender-bender at the intersection I need to turn at.

So I cut someone off, bypass my regular on ramp, and decide to go through downtown… except the traffic is at a standstill at the next light as well because there is ANOTHER fender-bender at my left-hand turn lane.

I look at the clock. It’s 4:30. Class starts at 4:30, and I hate being late. I think being late is obnoxious,  especially when there is a guest speaker. Yesterday over a third of the class was late. We had a guest speaker, and it was embarrassing to watch people come in and disrupt her. It was as if people strolled in and flipped her off.

15 minutes and 20 feet later, I realize that I was not making progress. My neighborhood is hopelessly gridlocked. It is time to go to work. I did not plan on going to work today, but I stayed at work until midnight. Hmmf. At least things cooled down for the evening dog walk.