The story on homebrewers in the latest Current profiles a local brewer known as Bob “The Brewer” Barnett. Puts us in mind of the time on “Buffy” when Willow was watching a basketball game: “That guy can really jump! They should call him…the Jumper!”
We’ve moved to Chicago for the month, so we’re going to miss the Shaman Drum appearance of Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer of Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People. Buy this book? That’s A2 radicalism for you.
Even when told that it’s a two-word college town whose name contains a female name and a natural feature of the area, three contestants couldn’t come up with A2 in Final Jeopardy! Had they gotten it right, the contestants should have received 1.6 times what they bet in order to keep pace with A2 inflation.
Apparently all you have to do is mention blogging in public, and the women of A2 will throw themselves at your feet.
The homepage of Laser the dog also contains a section devoted to A2, containing such observations as, “If something is expensive enough round here, it automatically becomes pretentious and hence desirable.” Wait, we thought that if something here is pretentious enough, it automatically becomes desirable and hence expensive. Whereas in normal cities, if something is desirable enough, it automatically becomes expensive and hence pretentious. Or is it the other way around? Now we’re confused. There are only six ways it could be. Maybe everything here is automatically expensive, and if it’s pretentious enough it becomes desirable?
“Ann Arbor, get over yourself,” writes a planning student in a perceptive rant about the experience of attending an A2 Planning Commission meeting. What’s a “green roof,” by the way? Is that like when they plant sod on a roof?
And we’ve got a new installment of Nordlinger Watch! This time, our favorite ex-Ann Arborite National Review commentator relates a news item about a Maryland Senate candidate who was the victim of an assault but blames the crime on “the war on drugs, the lack of national health care, the society that didn’t care about this man.” He (the candidate) also owns a poster of Trotsky and Stalin. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pure Ann Arbor,” Nordlinger reminisces. “I had it with my mother’s milk.” Now, as Nordlinger A2 slams go, this is rather weak fare; he just seems to be using “Ann Arbor” as a synonym for “communist.” But he sort-of redeems himself with the next line: “But I was especially interested in that poster of Leon Trotsky and Stalin. I didn’t know you could admire both! In the old days, you had to choose!” Okay. Heh.
Thanks to George Hotelling for hosting the new Wordpress-powered AAIO! Let us (us as in AAIO) know if you experience any problems with the new site. (Um, except possibly not in the comments at the moment.)
UPDATE: Comments should be working fine now.
The new Ann Arbor Craigslist is like Christmas six months early for us. “I was the quiet bearded boy in a the yellow ‘734′ shirt who ordered a tempeh reuben and chai latte,” writes one lovestruck People’s Food Co-op customer. It wasn’t a soy chai latte?
Google, in its search for a location to build its Tech Center, has among its criteria “a 24 hr doughnut shop in close proximity.” Well, Canton is sort of close, right?
Crain’s Detroit Business profiles developer Jeffrey Spoon’s attempts to interest Ann Arbor in his luxury condominiums and offices, “a case study in how downtown Ann Arbor can perplex developers.” It turns out that people actually want lower-priced residences near “everyday retail needs, such as grocery stores.” “Ann Arbor’s a special place,” concludes the developer, who’s planning to open a restaurant called “The Mellow Mushroom” in town.