Why is Kim Johnson more offensive than Liz Collin at WCCO-TV?

It's well known by anybody who pays attention to the Twin Cities talking heads that WCCO-TV's second-stringer Liz Collin is a problem for the station right now.

Comments via Twitter show how there's little love for the weekend anchorette who is married to a guy widely regarded as a white supremacist. Don't kid yourself, most people don't really care one way or another. They have no interest in any form of news reporting. We all know it's biased, so it's impossible to learn anything from it. And what is there to learn?

We form our own opinions, regardless of facts, then refer to that opinion as "our truth." It's not "the truth," it's "our truth." And it's better than anything those nasty media jackals will tell you, without question.

So we know that WCCO morning anchorette Kim Johnson was kicked to the curb because the station wants to go in a "different direction," or something lame like that. Kim doesn't dazzle the masses the way Jamie Yuccas did, inexplicably. (I don't get that one, at all.) But Kim wasn't nearly as offensive as Liz Collin, as far as I know. Maybe she is despicable, what do I know? Not much, as I have said over and over.

But Kim had to go, leaving the morning duties to the rest of the pre-dawn team, I presume. (I haven't watched in a while. I can only assume they haven't added payroll in the absence of Kim.)

Liz, however, remains immortalized on WCCO's website, a crown jewel in the station's tiara, unquestionably.

So how big of a problem is Liz for WCCO? Not big enough. Yet.

If you're reading this you probably know that Liz, in her late 30s, has daddy issues, and is on her second marriage. She married sexy Minneapolis cop Bob Kroll, who might be 55 years old at this point, and is most definitely despised by many average Joes and Janes in the Twin Cities. He's  not afraid to talk the talk, when it suits his agenda, and somehow he is beloved enough by Minneapolis cops that he has been elected president of the PD's union.

Like any good Minneapolis cop, he has run afoul of standards and practices more than a few times. And he is generally regarded as a racist for his willingness to refer to non-white people and organizations as terrorists. I think he also gets dinged for not being too kind to the gay community, although I'm not sure what the basis of that is. We do know he loves Donald Trump, and happily took the stage during a Trump rally in Minneapolis to bask in the orange glow of our mentally challenged president. I'm not sure if Kroll went so far as to suckle at Trump's teat. I didn't attend that redneck rodeo.

What makes Liz so fascinating is that milfy anchorette with a dye job to die for isn't that proud of marrying a guy 15+ years her senior. Conversely, Kroll should be quite proud of his trophy, and show it off any chance he gets. Everything about his character suggests he'd be the type to gloat that he has married a news babe. And yet he doesn't want anyone to know that Liz is his little lady.

There were leaks that Liz and Bob were more than friendly with each other, but I hadn't heard anything about it until a Star Tribune interview last year, where Bob famously threatened to never speak to the newspaper again if it mentioned that he was married to a blonde TV babe who happens to read the news on the weekend.

Why would Bob be so ashamed of Liz? Well, he's not, of course. Every little boy grows up dreaming of marrying a TV babe 15+ years his junior when he hits his 50s, and Bob is one of the few boys who realized that dream. But Bob, having positioned himself as a mouthpiece for the Minneapolis PD -- with racist tendencies, it seems -- is smart enough to know that it's considered a conflict of interest if his wife reports on local news for a major market TV station and is married to a prominent member of the big city police department. Bob didn't want his trophy to be tarnished, so he and Liz seemed to downplay their nuptials publicly.

I, of course, don't care who is married, divorced or flamboyantly gay when it comes to our sacred TV people, but we tend to find out, one way or another, because they want us to know they're just like us.

So why is Liz suddenly a pain in the ass for WCCO? It could be for several reasons. Here are a bunch of possible reasons. Some are good bets. Others are more speculative.

We know that Liz use to report on police issues, but doesn't do so any more. We also know she has been married to the White Knight for a while. There's no way anybody at WCCO, from the top brass down to the interns, didn't know she was married to sexy Bob Kroll. And yet, only recently, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis cops, has WCCO referenced the fact that Lizzy is married to her hunka hunka burning love by reading a disclaimer that she hasn't reported on Minneapolis PD matters in more than 2.5 years.

I have seen no evidence that WCCO made that disclaimer prior to Floyd's Memorial Day death. So why now? Why wasn't that important to note in January, or last year after the Strib outed Kroll as her life partner? That's an E4, and I'm not talking about an error on the second baseman.

WCCO loses a lot of credibility either way, but it's a really bad look when you disregarded Liz's happy homemaking with Bobby for so long, and now suddenly fess up to it. People would still criticize the station for having her on staff had they disclaimed Liz after the first date to the drive-in movie, but to remain silent for so long, only to feel obligated to fess up now, raises questions about the ethics and credibility of the station since the first moment Liz caught a twinkle in Bob's eye.

Liz went silent on Twitter after Memorial Day. Last I looked, she took a Twitter sabbatical prior to the holiday weekend. As best as I know, she conveniently hasn't turned up on WCCO's newscasts since Floyd's death. Coincidence? I don't think so.

WCCO is clearly troubled by the fact that Liz loves cuddly Bob. Otherwise they would have trotted her out like nothing happened on Memorial Day at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

Beyond the hesitancy of the station's honchos, you have to wonder how Liz will be able to do her job at the station.

It's no secret that being the face of the newscast is the gig most TV people covet. You're not out there in the trenches, doing live shots outside an empty city hall at 10 p.m., and you don't have to ask the unwashed masses for their mindless opinions. You sit in the comfy chair and read. And people think you're really important. And if you fool enough people, you get paid big money to read. You're trustworhty!

Liz seemed to be doing a little of both: Reading the news when called upon to do so, and filing a report when they needed her to. At this point, do you really want to send Liz out in the community to file a story? And if so, about what?

As I noted before, most people don't care about the news, so they won't know who Liz is or why the Twitter masses want her served with walking papers by WCCO, yesterday. But asking Liz to cover a story about the black community is asking for trouble if anyone associated with the story knows who she is. Send Liz to interview participants at a Black Lives Matter rally and prove me wrong. Please!

And even if it's not a story about the black community, do you really want to run the risk of sending Liz out to cover a food truck festival where she might run into angry viewers of any color who think she's as racist as her husband is believed to be?

It's unlikely, but what does WCCO do if they send any other reporter to cover a story, and somebody snubs the reporter because WCCO employs Liz? You can't rule it out. The anger over Floyd's death runs far, far deeper than any other death involving a Minnesota police department in recent years.

Does WCCO want to weather the storm of negative comments that comes every time Bob spouts his hatred toward a self-appointed terrorist group? The anger over George Floyd isn't going away any time soon, and WCCO, and its employees, will be reminded of it every time Bob speaks, so long as Liz is on the payroll. That's a tough row to hoe.

And how does Liz's marriage affect morale around WCCO these days? The station's Twitter account and, presumably, Facebook account are getting hammered for her continued employment. Social justice warriors are tweeting responses to other reporters about the fact that the station continues to employ Liz. Liz may be the least racist person in the world, but that doesn't matter if you're Frank or Amelia, and you tweet a link to a story about unemployment, only to get a response telling you that Liz is a racist by association.

I won't suggest there's a correlation between Liz's news judgment and her taste in men. But you're welcome to connect those dots.

I have no problem believing, like one diehard Twins fan on Twitter who must be Liz's father, (based upon how breathlessly he defends her,) that Liz doesn't have to be racist just because her husband is believed to be by most of the free world. Let's assume she's not. It does beg the question: What about his seemingly racist tendencies does she find so appealing?

I digress.

Here we are, mid June, and harmless Kim Johnson is searching for a PR job with an organization that would love to have her well known face as its spokesperson. And Liz is hiding with Bob, waiting for people to forget she's married so that she is safe to do her job at WCCO.

If Kim is out, and Liz is still on the payroll, you really have to question WCCO's news judgment, don't you?

I still can't get over the fact that Liz married ol' Bob. I already explained why Bob was seemingly more than happy to exchange rings with a TV babe. But I can't say I know definitively. I guess I should be open-minded enough to consider other scenarios.

What might one of those scenarios be? Glad you asked.

We know that the hunky man's man belongs to a motorcycle club and rages Republican.

Does that mean he likes wearing leather, and claims that he despises the thought of Adam and Steve, the evil counterparts to the bible's Adam and Eve?

Come to think of it, I noticed that Liz had a 5 o'clock shadow the last time I saw her on TV.

It would explain Bob's lack of pride in his marriage to Liz, wouldn't it?

I had a premonition Kim Johnson was fired by WCCO

I'm not making this up, I swear.

I haven't been watching as much morning news, lately, thanks to the fact I am not working these days. It's temporary, and I'm not too worried about it. 

Turns out I could have morning coffee with Kim Johnson these days. 

I have no idea why, but this past weekend I wondered about Kim. As I watched local news coverage of the "peaceful" protests, and saw a cavalcade of WCCO reporters chipping in to the coverage, I wondered about Kim. I have no idea why, but I realized I haven't seen her lately, and I wondered, for no reason, if she was still working at WCCO.

Why did I have a premonition about Kim, and not Ali Lucia, Alix Kendall or Chris Egert? I don't know. (I saw Alix not too long ago, but I haven't turned the TV on much in the morning, do Ali and Chris still have a job?)

Then I read this morning that the morning anchorette, who never seemed to work a night or weekend, who never seemed to be called upon to do anything extra, was out of a job. 

Turns out she's one of us, I learned today. I never knew that. I did know, for no particular reason, that she's married and spends a lot of time frolicking around Lake Minnetonka. The story I stumbled upon somewhere suggested that she lives on the lake. 

I don't know what's more puzzling, why she had the job as a morning anchorette, seemingly for years, or why WCCO was compelled to kick her to the curb.

I have to wonder if she was shitcanned simply because WCCO is desperate to trim salary from the books. I gotta believe ad revenue is way down at this point in the pandemic. They've gotta be cutting deals on local commercial time, don't they? 

Great theory, but I can't imagine she was a financial burden. I have a few other theories that are even more of a stretch than that.

I suspect the end result of her unceremonious dismissal, whatever the motivation, is that we won't see a new hire. Instead her seat in the early morning will be filled by somebody on staff. I can imagine several ways this might work. 

Whatever the end result, I'll miss her, for no good reason. There's a reason, but it's not a good one. 

Now if WCCO really wanted to unload dead weight, it would have dumped Liz Collin. 

Tawnja Zahradka begs a lot of questions as she runs for Congress

It seems almost silly to offer any sort of commentary on the political fortunes of a made-for-TV spokesmodel when it's such an ugly time to live in Minnesota.

I won't offer commentary on the future of police/community relations, who is at fault for where we are today or why things that have happened in the last 24+ hours are confusing. It's not as black and white as many people want to see it. I'll leave it at that.

That aside, I did a little further examining of Tawnja Zahradka's campaign after posting my initial thoughts of the cable access sexpot. All that did was muddy the waters of Forest Lake.

As I noted in my previous post, Tawnja touts that she is a victim of sexual harassment. I have no reason to doubt the claim. And I don't.

As I scoured her campaign website, and eventually her campaign's Facebook page, I was a bit surprised. She has made plenty of videos, it's what she does best, after all, and she makes it clear more than once in videos that she's a victim of sexual harassment and discrimination. At least once she claims that she lost everything she spent two decades building as a result, and lost her career as a spokesperson because of it. She also claims that this loss inspired her to pick herself up and dust herself off, to start anew.

And that new start is winning elected office. At the federal level. After two decades of pimping German restaurants and any other business that paid her to do so.

As I noted previously, I've found nothing about this failed lawsuit, a lawsuit that failed because of, she claims, "sexual harassment laws that are designed to protect the harassers-which they did."

I can only assume that this harassment occurred when she was an "executive producer" of MCN6. Tawnja has a ton of her videos posted on YouTube, and in 2015 she posted an MCN6 interview where she is touted as the cable access station's executive producer. The most recent videos are form three years ago, and the last several videos don't seem to feature Tawnja, but they're segments much like Tawnja peddled for two decades, and they appear to be segments produced for the benefit of the vast MCN6 viewership.

It appears that, if she started a legal battle in late 2017, as she claims, that she must be referring to her work at MCN6 as the source of harassment, as all indications are that's where she was working three to five years ago.

So what's the point?

I'd say, first, that if she was a victim of sexual harassment, it's none of our business. Maybe it becomes our business if she sues a cable access TV station. Maybe it's our business only if she wins the lawsuit and the quasi-public entity is held accountable.

But it's definitely our business if she's going to tout her being a victim, time and again, and claim that the system is protecting the guilty, and that she was a victim, of both harassers and the law. If fighting for women like her is an important issue of her campaign, and a major reason for her campaign -- as she claims -- then you've got to give us more, Tawnja.

You can't just say you were a victim, the system is rigged against victims and then ask us to support the change you seek without giving us some explanation as to how the system failed you. I haven't found that, at least not yet, and I doubt that explanation exists.

If you claim that you're going to improve public safety, you had better offer a plan, or at least ideas of how to begin to improve it. If you're going to promise lower taxes, it rings hollow if you never explain how. If you're going to claim you are fighting for victims of sexual harassment, and hold up yourself as an example, why are we supposed to simply accept that the laws are stacked against victim's like you? I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea how harassment laws work. Prove it to us, Tawnja, and give us details that show you know what you're talking about.

There's something else that bothers me. Tawnja claims she lost her two-decade career due to this harassment. First off, shilling for local businesses on cable access TV for two decades is hardly a career. If you made money doing 30 minutes of commercials on cable access TV, that's damn impressive. But it's not much of a career.

Second, if your skill set is so great, why haven't you parlayed that two decades of pitching local restaurants on cable access TV into a commercial voice over career? Or video production for local businesses that want to run commercials on their websites and social media channels?

It's unfortunate that Tawnja's long association with MCN6 seemingly ended due to harassment, but without details as to why that chapter of her life is such an important part of her campaign, her candidacy seems rather manufactured, much like that smile she has flashed for more than two decades.

Tawnja Zahradka was sexually harassed, and wants your vote

I retired from blogging a long time ago.

I'm still retired.

I can't afford the time. Life is short, and criticizing what passes for broadcasting in this day and age is too easy, and akin to shooting fish in the barrel.

I never intended to set the world on fire with this blog. I never tried, either. Yes, I set up a Twitter account, mostly to observe what others are saying and doing. Sure, I tweet now and then, to the few people who follow, knowing most of them won't see the tweets.

But this blog generated plenty of interest through simple Google searches of the media darlings that we all love.

I'd do things different if I was to do them again, but I'm not starting down that road.

Except that once a year, I get an itch.

And I have that itch. And Tawnja Zahradka gave it to me.

Who is Tawnja? I wrote about her once upon a time.

I'm sure she's a decent human being, and I'm sure she works hard at being pretty.

I find her fascinating.

Why? First off, I am amazed/amused by the people who turn up on local cable access TV, working so hard to create something notable. I couldn't do better, I guarantee that. But that doesn't stop me from cringing at the sight of their local programs. I was very disappointed to see that Carla Beaurline has returned to Twin Cities public access TV, after trying to sell her crap as a Facebook program. Nothing has changed, Carla is still as minor league as ever, and seems to be shilling for the same lame businesses that she has always shilled for. It's awful. Pure and simple.

I have long been mildly fascinated with Tawnja Zahradka. From what I could tell, she wanted to work in front of a camera, and seems to have the looks and the skill set to do it.

Her online bios suggest she has been in movies and other important stuff, although I don't recall her actually doing anything meaningful other than being an extra. Perhaps I'm wrong. Too tired to care.

Model, actress, spokesperson...She'd do any of it it made her a local celebrity, or better.

I noticed that her local TV show, which she seemed to produce for decades, disappeared at some point after she marked 20 years of shilling. She showed up on the Twin Cities public access channel, MCN6, as a co-host of some local girl chat program for a while, which seemed to exist as a way to shill for local businesses....what she does best. I swear she was credited as some sort of honcho at MCN6. But at some point she disappeared, and I was left wondering what happened to her.

Then I saw a list of the DFL's endorsed candidates for U.S. Congress. I fell out of my chair.

Tawnja Zahradka, who seemed to be going by her husband's name, Tawnja Peterson, a few years ago, is the DFL's answer to Tom Emmer, a Republican who has made a living off of the voters, and replaced none other than plastic, fantastic Michele Bachmann in Congress.

Stunned doesn't come close to describing this revelation earlier today.

I see no evidence that Tawnja, Zahradka or Peterson, has ever held a public office. But that doesn't matter in this country. Not any more. If you want to hold a federal office, go for it!

I still can't get over it.

So I examined Tawnja's website and Twitter account. And damn, can of worms be opened.

Her online bio starts with the usual shit that means nothing. Her father was in the military. Thank him for that, but that doesn't say one thing about you or your qualifications. Even if Tawnja had went to boot camp once upon a time, it wouldn't mean much when it comes to her ability to navigate the complexity of Washington, D.C.

Her personal bio notes that she supports a few causes, is a stepparent and is married to a drummer that once toured with Badfinger. What difference does that make? (He wasn't important enough to note in Badfinger's Wikipedia article, although I learned that Badfinger is a really old band that has been bastardized with varying incarnations.)

She also notes that she was a Mrs. Minnesota once upon a time. She doesn't mention it was 1995, and she doesn't mention that the Mrs. Minnesota title is a big joke. Married women who want to either capture the glory of their youth, or chase glory they never attained, compete in a meaningless pageant for a state title and the right to chase a meaningless national title. It's manufactured and it's embarrassing. Nobody outside of the participants, and their families, cares. I don't have 20 minutes to detail why.

This is the most interesting excerpt from her bio: "Tawnja spent over two decades on television in the Minneapolis market only to have her career ended due to sexual harassment in the workplace. After a two year legal battle beginning in late 2017 to restore her television career, justice was denied to her due to sexual harassment laws that are designed to protect the harassers-which they did."

So her disappearance from TV was a result of sexual harassment? And she is no longer on TV because she couldn't win a legal battle to prove it? That's one hell of a bombshell, and I'd pay a lot of money to read that story. I tried finding anything that speaks to this case, but a simple Google search turned up nothing.

So she disappeared from local TV through some fantastic sequence of events, and now she reemerges in my life as a candidate for a federal office, having done nothing noteworthy that I can see. Yet she's loved by the DFL. How the hell did a woman who spent two decades or more trying to be a pretty face on camera end up deciding she wants to get down and dirty in Washington, D.C.?

I have a theory, and it's absurd, but I'll save it for after the election, win or lose.

One final thought: She has a Twitter account for her campaign, an account she doesn't seem to use much. She hasn't touched it in three months, that I can tell. But this nugget from early February is outstanding, even if I have no idea what she is referring to, specifically. "This is why Tom Emmer is a disgrace. I can’t wait to debate this sad excuse for a congressman."

Look out D.C., this kitten has claws!

Learn all about Tawnja's campaign at https://www.tawnjaforcongress.com/

Is Belinda Jensen excited about Twin Cities Summer Jam 2020? #TCSummerJam

I've gotta say, I'm somewhat impressed.

I didn't expect Chris Hawkey's "damn festival," also known as Twin Cities Summer Jam, to return with an ambitious lineup, if at all, but it seems like the money behind the outdoor music debacle is willing to double down on the initial investment. Despite the shit show the 2019 Jam was, there must have been a modest return on the investment, which is ironic given the festival didn't sell enough of those VIP ticket packages that were crucial to paying the talent. 

It was announced not so long ago that 2020 tickets would go on sale in December, which made me laugh. Then it was announced that the Zac Brown Band, which is a big draw somehow, would be on the bill next summer. All I know is that the band sings some dopey song called "Chicken Fried," and the lowest common denominator goes nuts for that song at Target Field. But hey, Zac Brown seems to be a big deal, so that's a solid booking for the Jam.  

Now we know how the damn festival is going to play out, for the most part, after several additional acts were announced. 

Carrie Underwood seems to be able to fill an arena every couple of years, and she's the final night's headliner, so that seems like another solid booking. 

I'm a bit puzzled as to why Pitbull is coming back, and drawing top billing on Thursday, the opening night of the late July festival. I get it, Thursday isn't likely to be as strong of a draw, regardless of the headliner, but it still seems goofy to make him the focal point of the first night. Perhaps he converted 10,000 new fans who saw him open for Tim McGraw in July, and now those fans can't get enough Pitbull, so they'll race back to Canterbury Park next summer to see him do it all again. If you say so, Hawkey.

The pairings from night to night seem to be a bit more sensible. If that's better or worse, I don't know.

Whatever the reason, Nelly seems to maintain interest in his career 20 years after his big splash. I don't get how a guy with a few pop/rap hits in the early 2000s has sustained his career when so many rappers seem to be quickly forgotten, but if you're going to book Nelly, it makes more sense for him to open for Pitbull than Underwood. 

I don't know what Blanco Brown is, but somehow he is a country artist that has produced for Pitbull, and he goes on first Thursday night. If you're going to mash up genres, this trio on Thursday seems about as logical as you can expect. Take a look at a picture of Blanco. When you see him, you're not going to expect him to croon "The Gambler."

Friday and Saturday are banking on country music to put asses on the lawn with Zac Brown Band and Underwood as the headliners. 

There's a nod to rock both nights, I think. I have no idea what kind of rock the local band Fabulous Armadillos plays, but it doesn't matter. They appear to be the first band out of the gate on Friday, when the crowd will be tepid, at best. Later that night Third Eye Blind opens for Zac Brown. Once again, that's one of those things you'll never see anywhere else. Third Eye Blind had a few hits, but they go back 20 years or so, like Nelly. They're not a legendary rock band, and I doubt they'd draw a big crowd on their own in Minneapolis. Their inclusion as the opener for Brown's chicken buffet seems like little more than a time killer by a wimpy alt-rock band. 

Saturday's schedule has slots to fill, so that will be interesting to see how it rounds out. But naturally Hawkey needs to dazzle the masses, so he'll go on before Underwood. Arguably he's rock, unless he feels like selling country that night. Either way, I'm sure the crowd will hang on his every lyric.  

Other than the headliners on Friday and Saturday, there's only one country act booked so far for Friday or Saturday, depending upon how you want to classify Hawkey.

As it stands, the festival is attempting to live up to its reputation of uniting pop, rock and country, yet seems to be a little less eclectic in going about how it slots its acts. I'm not sure if that sells more single-day tickets or if it hurts three-day pass purchases. Perhaps it won't matter at the end of the damn festival. 

So at this point I'm impressed that there's a major financial commitment behind a second year of the festival, and it seems like the festival is trying to find synergy among the artists it is booking for each day. Not too shabby for the shit show that was the first damn festival this past summer. 

Not everyone is dazzled by the lineup, although that's to be expected.

The early comments I read on Twitter announcing Pitbull and Underwood are joining Brown as headliners questioned why there's not a major rock act. Last year Aerosmith was a headliner, and we learned that Steve Tyler is an asshole, at least according to Hawkey. I'm not sure what major rock acts might have been available next summer, but when your two big weekend nights have major country acts, you're not trying real hard to entice the rock and roll crowd. Country sells, so I can't blame Hawkey and his fellow hucksters from banking on the farm crowd to pay the freight next summer.

For the rockers, however, there's zero incentive to attend one night of the festival unless you really love hearing Underwood sing about a guy who will hop in the sack with more than one woman. Perhaps fans of Third Eye Blind's "Jumper" really groove to that "Chicken Fried" song. What do I know?

Again, boot scootin' boogie music sells in Minnesota, so it might be a wise marketing strategy on the part of the damn festival to emphasize it in 2020. Whether coincidental or by design, there's no We Fest in northern Minnesota this year. The big country festival in the northwoods is taking a year off. I doubt that crowd is going to migrate to Shakopee to get their fix, but the lack of a major annual country music festival at the same time of the year can only help the Summer Jam.

More accidental brilliance by the Hawkey brain trust: His damn festival isn't on the same weekend as Moondance Jam, or Rock Fest in Wisconsin. If they think the rock crowd wants to rock out to Underwood, you might as well host your festival on a weekend when you don't have competition from festivals three hours away.

So it looks like Summer Jam made smart decisions for 2020, doesn't it? Time will tell. Given the countless ways they botched their inaugural festival this past summer, they can't afford to make as many boneheaded decisions again, I'd argue.

Nonetheless, I've got to believe that they'll screw it up again somehow in 2020.

How? Glad you asked.

Once again they're selling a variety of VIP tickets and upgrades. There's a portion of the market that will pay for that, and you have to know that the brain trust that botched the VIP area so thoroughly last year will takes steps to ensure they don't screw the folks who are willing to trust Hawkey and company with their money in 2020. Plenty of morons will pay VIP prices to sniff Underwood's underwear from 20 feet away, I'm sure, and probably have no clue that the 2019 VIPs were shat upon.

But given how clueless and fraudulent Hawkey and company were in 2019, I expect they'll find a way to bungle VIP ticket access in 2020.

These geniuses did figure out that they're overpricing their crappy general admission access. Not hard to figure that out after the 2019 shit show. So the one-day, crappy access tickets are just $79! (Plus fees, I'm sure.) I think that's a little cheaper than the cut-rate tickets they were trying to hustle during the final week of the 2019 festival.

But now they're going to charge people $20 to park at the damn festival.

I get it, parking fees encourage car pooling. But Summer Jam isn't in downtown Minneapolis. It's at a facility with tons of parking, just like every suburban shopping mall. People aren't going to boycott the damn festival over a parking fee, and you can argue that the fee is offset by the reduced one-day ticket price, but it still looks shitty to charge it, and charge more than $20 for "VIP" parking access. Just shitty.

And you just have to know that charging a fee for parking is going to turn into a debacle. The horse track parking lot isn't designed for paid parking. When you have to collect admission to a parking lot, you'd better be able to handle a lot of cars at once. There's more than one access point to the lot, and you can sell parking passes online to expedite entry, but I've got to believe that parking access is going to be a daily fiasco.

I'm sure they've figured out a plan, but how do you accommodate for the free parking poker players will require during the damn festival? There's a 24-hour poker room at the race track, as well as off-track betting. Live horse racing may take a weekend off, but the other revenue generators won't.

This parking fee is going to bite the festival in the ass somehow, I'm certain.

I'm speculating, of course, but given how poorly the 2019 Summer Jam was set up and run, from start to finish, you're a fool if you think the 2020 festival will be flawless.

The funniest, and most insulting, thing about the 2020 Jam is that they're selling tickets now. It has become a common practice in the live entertainment industry to book acts as far in advance as possible, bank as much money as possible, many months in advance of the event. There are a variety of summer concerts and events that are selling tickets now, and in recent years the Minnesota State Fair has jumped on that bandwagon, selling as many grandstand concerts as possible prior to Christmas. Perfect for gift giving!

Given how poorly run the 2019 Jam was, and the fact I have yet to read one report of any sort of refund given to the 2019 VIP ticket holders they screwed over royally, asking people to commit hundreds of dollars to an event that has such a bad reputation eight months in advance is laughable. And highly insulting, given there's no indication that any effort has been made to rectify the shitty treatment VIP ticket holders were subjected to this past summer.

But I'm sure a few fools will hand their money over in time for the holidays. Hawkey is a modern day P.T. Barnum.

Will Hawkey be making excuses for his damn festival again in 2020?

Will local shills like Belinda Jensen embarrass themselves by proclaiming the damn festival to be a rousing success again in 2020?

Will Jon Bream lob backhanded insults at the damn festival again in 2020?

If the answers are yes, I'll be back next summer. 

Was Twin Cities Summer Jam a cash cow? #TCSummerJam

I don't know three things about running a music festival, but I know that Twin Cities Summer Jam was a major production, and not cheap.

I've pointed it out before, Aerosmith makes huge money performing live after all these decades, and they didn't come to Minnesota as an act of charity. Pretty boy Chris Hawkey said as much when he noted that "the damn festival," which he is an owner of, had to sell VIP tickets/access just to afford Aerosmith. Clearly they didn't sell enough of those VIP tickets... that's well documented.

So if VIP ticket sales were vital to the damn festival, we have to assume that Steve Tyler and the added cost of Buckcherry on Friday night didn't leave a lot of profit for Hawkey and the other owners. Sure, Canterbury Downs/Park made money off its beer sales, but it couldn't have been a profitable night for the festival's ownership, unless they sold a lot of those shitty T-shirts and other trinkets. The price of those T-shirts, hats and other bullshit, by the way, was reduced before the end of the festival on Saturday. People are idiots, but even the idiots weren't buying that crap, it seems.

It's a general rule of business, you don't expect to make big money in your first year. You may do huge business, but you have a lot of startup costs. Aerosmith sells itself, but I have to believe that all the costs associated with running the Summer Jam didn't leave a lot of room for profit, and we know that the ticket sales didn't surpass expectations.... otherwise the damn festival's brain trust wouldn't have slashed tickets in the final days, when hype should have been through the roof.

The question is, did the brain trust make a dime off of its efforts. Did it come up short? You can't tell me that Pitbull/Armando and Tim McGraw came cheap on Saturday night.

Was the brain trust prepared to weather a financial loss in its first year in order to build something that the masses would flock to, and drop hundreds of dollars on VIP tickets, annually? Time will tell.

Strib music critic Jon Bream doesn't run music festivals, either. But after decades of covering the industry and reviewing concerts, you've gotta think he knows a thing or 10 about the economics of the concerts and tours that take place in the Twin Cities.

His festival review/wrap up included a telling paragraph. The damn festival "merited solid grades in just about every aspect except ticket pricing (too high) and efficiency (computer and box office glitches). Here’s hoping the fest promoters can come up with the capital to bring TC Summer Jam back in 2020."

Gee, why did Bream throw that last comment in his review? Do you think he's just speculating? Do you think he's clueless about what the damn festival cost, and what the crowd size meant in terms of covering the costs of the performers, security, marketing and general labor associated with running a multi-day festival?

I don't know if there's a future for Summer Jam, and clearly neither does Bream. But I have no reason to believe he's shitting on the future of the damn festival simply to be an asshole.

Can Hawkey and company afford another ego stroke next summer? If they decide yes, it will be interesting to see what the damn festival looks like in 2020.

If the brain trust tries this stunt again, here's a nickel's worth of free advice: Don't buy the VIP tickets, no matter how hard P.T. Barnum tries to sell them to you.

Winners and losers at Twin Cities Summer Jam #TCSummerJam

Like any event old or new, there's room for review and scrutiny. Were there winners or losers during the first Twin Cities Summer Jam? Let's find out.

I knew of the event, and didn't think much of it. It wasn't clear to me how or why it was happening, and I had no interest in attending. I have no doubt the performers put on a good show. Jon Bream, the weathered music critic from the Star Tribune, gave a thumbs up to most performances. Some of those were more enthusiastic than others. The only one he didn't appreciate was Buckcherry. No big deal, there's always a dud in every festival lineup.

Bream made mention of issues in his festival review, but let Summer Jam off easy. He noted the tickets were priced too high, and that the festival's technology was inefficient. A previous article he wrote about the festival noted there were a few other flaws, such as the configuration of the sections and video screens, but he really didn't flesh out details of any of the Jam's issues.

In the last day or two I reviewed a Summer Jam article that seemed slightly more critical of the event and its flaws. I'm not sure when Bream wrote it, but it continued to downplay the flaws.

Bream's reporting didn't seem to provide fodder for the prosecution or the defense.

As I said, I wasn't particularly interested in the festival. Aerosmith would have been interesting to see, but I had no interest in seeing any other act performing during the weekend, unless you paid me to be there and treated me like Belinda Jensen. (She raved about the Jam via Facebook, and I'm going to guess she neither paid for a ticket nor had to watch the show while rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses. If so, her raves are hollow.)

I find it odd to invite Pitbull to open for Tim McGraw on the final night of your festival, but if it works, go for it. Opening acts usually draw tepid interest from the audience, but I suppose it's different at a festival where people want, and expect, to stand around for hours. So I'm sure Pitbull had a nice crowd. And if you're the kind of guy or gal that likes boot scootin', why wouldn't you want to watch Armando rap his way through a bunch of dance tunes, or watch his dancing babes shake their money makers? No, I don't get it either. That was probably the first and last time Pitbull opens for McGraw.

The mash up of artists seemed to work, as best I can tell. Score one for Summer Jam.

So who comes out of Summer Jam a winner? Lots of people who paid for crappy general admission access, and then found out they could flood the VIP section, for reasons we'll probably never definitively know.

If you paid for general admission tickets, you got pretty crappy views of the action due to the distance and limited view of the stage, as well as the lackluster video screen technology, by many accounts. Double win for those who waited until the final days to buy their admission ticket, and paid less than those who bought early. Pre-sales are typically crucial to events, but those who were on the fence were rewarded for being lukewarm to the festival. That's one hell of a slap in the face for committing  your dollars weeks or months in advance, eh? But I said it before and I'll say it again, it works both ways, and you make a value judgment when you buy your ticket when you do.

Clearly the biggest losers were those who paid hundreds of dollars per head for VIP access, and then were treated like sardines when the cheapskates were rewarded with a comparable experience at a fraction of the price. That's disgusting. I'm not convinced we know who is to blame, but more on that in a moment.

Neither winners nor losers: All the sponsors. There seemed to be plenty of sponsors, from the big casino just down the road to the Clear Channel radio stations, some of which were pimping and promoting the festival via free tickets and upgrades.

Nobody seems to be angry at the sponsors, and understandably so. They may have supported a poorly executed festival, but I suppose they're victims, too. They paid something to get their name in front of the masses. So even if it was a debacle, the show did go on. Even if it was a total disaster, they would be considered victims, too.

And nobody seems to be pointing a finger at Canterbury for hosting the Jam. I have to believe that beyond getting paid for use of their space and infrastructure, they were going to get a cut of concession sales to the captive audience. This wasn't free money, but they had a vested interest in the success of the festival, regardless of how little, if any, participation they had in its execution.

Sometimes you're an innocent bystander. But you should receive some of the blame when you allow a group to come in and miss the mark so spectacularly on their ticket allocation for premium access, especially when  your property has hosted similar events over the years. You don't rent your hotel convention space to hate groups, unless you want public backlash. You shouldn't turn over your seasonal pony track to a group that doesn't have the deep pockets to do it right, especially an untested entity like the Summer Jam brain trust.

Yet nobody seems to be upset with Canterbury. So they're not losers in this deal, but they should be.

Probable losers: Those in the horse industry. The Jam didn't happen overnight. Those who come to Canterbury for live racing each season -- jockeys, owners, shit shovelers -- know up front what they're getting and for how long. I have no idea how an off weekend effects their income or schedule at tracks elsewhere around the country. Perhaps there's always an off weekend during the summer. I really have no clue. But I'm guessing a lot of those season people who are vital to Canterbury's success found themselves with an unwelcome unpaid vacation. Or perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it was "spring break" week for the horsemen of Canterbury. Seems like shutting down their livelihood during a summer weekend is not doing them any favors.

It's not always clear who owns an event or attraction. Sometimes it's a faceless corporation. Sometimes it's a small, anonymous group. It was only as Summer Jam went off the rails that I got an inkling as to who has some stake in it.

It turns out potential loser Chris Hawkey, the morning radio/evening patriot who loves his country, owns "the damn festival," according to a comment he tweeted to one of his critics. Hawkey took the time to engage the critic, first off, and that's a boneheaded move. Don't be Brian Oake, Chris. That's not a good look for anybody.

I'm not a fan of Hawkey, but it does me no good to root against him. The dude hustles, and people like the music he churns out. I don't find him funny, which is one of many reasons I don't listen to his KFAN morning show, but they don't need me. I've only heard select samples of his music, and it fails to dazzle me. But it doesn't have to. I can easily turn it off, and life goes on.

Hawkey has a long history of busting his ass, and has a couple of pretty good gigs, it seems. I'm not sure how much investment he could possibly have in a major event that had a ton of expenses, but he owns the damn festival, he made that clear. And by owning it, he gets to stroke his ego by booking his love of God/country music jamboree into slots on both Friday and Saturday night. It's good to be Chris Hawkey.

Hawkey has been the mouthpiece for the festival, given his prominence in the music industry and local entertainment market. Depending upon what you read, he has suggested refunds are coming to the VIP ticket buyers who were shat upon at the festival. I've seen it suggested a couple of different ways, including in an article from the bastion of journalism excellence, Bring Me The News. So it must be true.

Will Hawkey end up being a loser in this deal? If those who were royally screwed by the festival don't get a refund, everyone associated with the debacle should be force fed a shit sandwich, with a steaming pile of shit. Piled high. And Hawkey should be served the first and last sandwich, since he owns "the damn festival."

But given the VIPs are a small percentage of the ticket buyers, it's unlikely his blue collar persona is going to take much of a hit, big picture. He can still sing about how America is great again, and the $99 Summer Jam ticket buyers will eat it up. I'm fighting the temptation to make a shit sandwich joke right now.

I doubt he'll end up a loser in this deal, but the biggest asshole, by far, is Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, if you believe Hawkey. Tyler "demanded" that the general admission crowd fill in the vast open space in the VIP area near the stage, and threatened to default upon his contract to perform if that didn't happen, Hawkey is quoted as saying.

It seems hard to believe, but that's the story Hawkey is selling.

So Tyler told the festival that if they didn't screw over his fans who paid hundreds of dollars for premium access, he was going to default on a major payday and screw over every fan at the festival by not performing? Really hard to believe, honestly, but that's what we've been told by Hawkey.

So we'll assume that's exactly what went down. If so, then Tyler is definitely an asshole. And if I paid for VIP access to his show, it would be the last time I gave a dime to the asshole.

And yet, if Hawkey's claims are true, nobody is really going to hold it against Tyler or Aerosmith, because most rubes don't care, as long as they're not the ones getting jail raped by Tyler.

So we know who the winners and losers are, or should be, eh?

While Tyler isn't likely to come out of this a loser, according to Hawkey's story, we can only conclude Tyler is an asshole. If so, this shouldn't surprise us.

After nearly five decades of being catered to, he's making as much as ever doing shows whenever he is in the mood. Not everybody gets rich quick as a live performer, but the value placed on the live performance has increased exponentially during the past 25 years or so, and Aerosmith seems to have no problem drawing huge crowds year after year as the value placed upon live shows continues to grow. Aerosmith ain't worried about hit records any more, they keep banking money off of their live performances, and are clearly a viable draw, as they now have a recurring gig in Vegas, where the big names now set up shop in a major casino and let their fans come to them, rather than the other way around. Worked very well for Celine Dion. After nearly 50 years, and millions of dollars having been showered upon Aerosmith, it'd be hard not to have an ego, and become an asshole. Or perhaps he was born that way.

The internet may be littered with stories about what an asshole Tyler is off stage. I don't know, I'm not looking for them, and I don't care. And perhaps I'd be none the wiser if it wasn't for the arrogance and stupidity of the Summer Jam brain trust.

Hawkey was quoted as saying that in order for his damn festival to be able to book an act as big as Aerosmith in its first year, it would take a lot of cash. A lot. I don't know how much, but Aerosmith isn't on tour. Aerosmith has been playing gigs in Vegas, and came to Minnesota specifically for this gig, according to their 2019 performance schedule. Aerosmith didn't roll into Minnesota for a pair of gigs at Canterbury and Moondance Jam. Tyler and company were here solely for Hawkey's damn festival.

In order to gross that huge stack of greenbacks, Hawkey had to sell VIP tickets, and bunches of them, to pay Aerosmith's fee. He is quoted as saying "we paid an exorbitant amount of money for Aerosmith to be at this festival, we had to sell some VIP seating in order to make enough money to have a festival."

Seems a bit ambitious and foolish for a first-time festival, doesn't it? Seems dangerous and foolish to gamble big on your first go at it, doesn't it? You could afford to gamble if you're a concert production company like Live Nation looking to establish a new annual event. Could Summer Jam's brain trust really afford to gamble big on its damn festival?

It did. And because of that, we know that Tyler is an asshole. But that's not why we know.

The only reason we know is that the Summer Jam brain trust clearly doesn't know how to count. And that's hilarious!

I'll make up numbers for the purpose of the illustration. I have no idea what the actual numbers should be. Let's assume Summer Jam wanted to sell 500 VIP tickets for each night of the show, and dedicated space for those VIP ticket holders in front of the stage. You assume they allocated enough space to allow the VIPs to mill about comfortably in front of the stage, without being packed into their section like sardines.

A reasonable plan, and some people were willing to spend hundreds for, presumably, that sort of privilege.

So what do you do when it's Friday morning, and your computer program (You've got to have some sort of accounting software, don't you?) tells you that you've sold 100 VIP tickets? The easy thing to do is hope 400 people pay big bucks at the gate that day and fill in the space that night. But c'mon, we know that's not going to happen.

Yet it seems like that's exactly what Summer Jam hoped for. Then asshole Tyler comes along and threatens to walk away if 95 percent of the crowd is 500 feet away from the stage during his performance. Suddenly Tyler's VIP fans are being shat upon.

So what's the solution? The obvious solution is that you look at your VIP ticket allowance, look at how many you've sold by Friday morning, decide how many you're going to give away to get people excited about your $99 general admission tickets and then adjust the VIP section accordingly. If you have sold 100 VIP tickets, are going to upgrade 100 people somehow that day and think you'll sell 50 VIP tickets that day, you reconfigure your VIP area to allow the general admission slobs to be closer to the stage. And if you're lucky, you'll sell 60 VIP tickets that day, and therefore you'll have slightly less breathing room for everyone, without packing them in like sardines. Then Tyler never has to be the asshole that screws his wealthiest fans.

And don't tell me that the VIP area couldn't have been reduced, while maintaining its integrity, that morning. The concert wasn't being moved to a Somerset, Wisconsin, campground. It doesn't take a Mayo Clinic specialist to reconfigure the VIP seating. It can't be that hard to reduce the VIP area of your damn festival that morning. If just can't.

And, of course, after screwing Aerosmith VIPs on Friday night, that same thing happened on Saturday, I guess. According to Bring Me The News, "with the precedent set on Friday by Aerosmith, the VIP section was opened up to GA for Pitbull and Tim McGraw on Saturday." So those who paid huge money for McGraw on Saturday were shat upon, too?

Precedent? What a bunch of horseshit. Which is appropriate given the venue for Summer Jam.

Tyler was an asshole and VIPs were screwed, all because the Summer Jam brain trust overestimated how many expensive tickets they could sell, and couldn't figure out how to configure their VIP area in front of the stage based upon the number of VIP tickets that they had sold? How embarrassing. Talk about amateur hour.

No, I've never run a damn festival. Of course it's far more complicated than that.

As George Costanza once said, "It's not a lie if you believe it."

Twin Cities Summer Jam may prove, yet again, that we don't like music festivals

You know I have to be intrigued if I dust off my retired blog to write about something happening in the Twin Cities this weekend at our giant horse track, Canterbury Park.

While this blog has been reserved for commentary on the broadcasting geniuses of the Twin Cities market, I'm going to deviate, sort of. More on that another day, I think.

For the record, I have nothing to gain by the success, or failure, of Twin Cities Summer Jam, the latest effort to create a music festival in a major metro area that can't seem to support one.

We've had varied success over the years with festivals. Ozzfest seems to have drawn well in the past when it toured here, but it was a one-day tour. Specialty festivals of one or two days do fine. I don't know how to describe Cities 97 when it comes to its playlist, but their niche seems to draw well for two nights every July at the Basilica Block Party. Some hip hop gig does OK as a one-day festival at our treasured state fairgrounds early each summer. I don't know how successful, but nobody gets shot at it, as best I know, so I'd call that a success.

In the past Canterbury Downs/Park has hosted a variety of concerts. We're reminded occasionally that Lilith Fair came through two centuries ago and dazzled the masses. And our local Clear Channel stations (I'm old school, I still shop at Dayton's) use to do one-day radio station events at Canterbury in the fall for a few years, after the horses went to the glue factory at the end of the racing season. Canterbury has hosted a variety of other musical conclaves over the years, as best I recall, so there's some track record of success, it seems. Lord knows they have plenty of room for it all.

But shutting down their horse racing for a weekend in order to host a summer festival spanning three nights, and multiple genres, seemed like a bold move, at minimum.

This market seems to struggle with multi-day music festivals, and I'm not sure why. Years ago the geniuses behind Live Nation, the concert production company, tried to turn Harriet Island in St. Paul into the scene of a music festival. That lasted one year. Prior to that the geniuses running the Taste of Minnesota essentially killed the event by trying to turn a lame food festival into a nightly music destination. I might have the details of those two items slightly incorrect, but I'm old, my memory isn't the best. And I'm lazy. I don't feel like Googling old Pioneer Press stories.

The Twin Cities just doesn't have the desire for a major music festival. I don't know why, but look at what a major production Milwaukee's Summerfest is each year around the Fourth of July. It features about 10 days built around music, from noon until close. We're better than that here in Minnesota, evidently.

So trying to craft any sort of music festival is a bold move, if not outright foolish.

But let's say it's a safe bet. Did it make sense to host it this weekend?

This very same weekend was also host to a well-established festival in northern Minnesota, Moondance Jam. And there's a major rock festival going on this same weekend a couple of hours east in Wisconsin, Rockfest.

I wouldn't argue that those events are killing Summer Jam, or are competing for Summer Jam's audience. The rock festival in Wisconsin is high-octane hard rock. Summer Jam has relatively safe, geriatric rock, such as Aerosmith and REO Speedwagon. Sure, they booked local alt-rock darlings Soul Asylum and a harder rocking band of a 20-year vintage....yes, 20 years... Buckcherry, but the Summer Jam lineup won't be confused with Wisconsin's Rockfest.

Moondance Jam seems more akin to the market Summer Jam is aiming for. But Moondance is a little more streamlined. There's no major country headliner at Moondance Jam, and nothing that resembles Pitbull, as best I can tell. And Moondance seems to be an event that is based upon camping and making a long weekend out of it. Loud nights, lots of drinking, little sleep. I don't get the appeal, but plenty do, and Moondance is a huge annual success.

So is Summer Jam's weekend of choice brilliant, or brutal? Summer Jam thinks that fans of Buckcherry are fans of Aerosmith, Pitbull, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw and REO Speedwagon. Some people probably are. But it seems like a gamble to try to convince people that they want to spend more than one night at your festival when you get Aerosmith, Pitbull and Rascal Flatts during that three-day extravaganza.

And I get it, you can't simply book any band for any weekend  you want. You have to pick a weekend and book whomever is touring in your area and is willing to come to Minnesota if your price is right.

Wisconsin's Rockfest is happening the same weekend as another hard rock fest in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson and others are playing both fests this weekend. Makes total sense. I have no idea how similar or different the fests are, but they're far enough apart that they can co-exist, evidently, and can take advantage of each other when it comes to getting bookings for this weekend.

Did Summer Jam benefit from any sort of synergy with other festivals happening 3-5 hours away? No. Inexplicably, the one hard rock band on the Summer Jam bill, Buckcherry, is not at either Wisconsin rock festival this weekend.

As for Moondance Jam, how many of its performers is Summer Jam booking? None.

Again, Summer Jam isn't necessarily competing for the same audience, but having major festivals elsewhere this weekend doesn't help. If you think your Pitbull fans love Rascall Flatts, then you have to assume some of your Aerosmith fans are going to choose Rob Zombie at Rockfest or Lynyrd Skynyrd at Moondance.

So Summer Jam chose a weekend when there's major competition, and isn't benefiting from the bands that are coming to the midwest for those festivals. Perhaps this is the only weekend Canterbury was willing to shut down for this festival. (UPDATE: It turns out Tim McGraw was at a festival south of Milwaukee on Friday night, so Summer Jam did find a little synergy to exploit.)

It seems that the brain trust behind Summer Jam would have wanted to pick another weekend. Could they have? I won't know, but the weekend they've chose doesn't seem to be advantageous. At all.

Ultimately Summer Jam isn't likely to be a victim of competition, but having other festivals the same weekend can't possibly be helping draw people to Canterbury Park. I'll give Summer Jam a pass when it comes to choosing a poor weekend, but the organizers didn't take advantage of the regional activity taking place. At all.

So as curious as Summer Jam is, the execution of it has been flawed, to say the least. I'll apologize now, I'm enjoying the angst and vitriol. That sounds wrong, of course, but at least I'll admit it. We accept that NASCAR fans love the unavoidable crashes, so long as nobody is killed, and NHL diehards insist that fighting is a part of the game that shouldn't be eliminated. I'm no worse than those people for enjoying the rants of the Summer Jam disgruntled.

It's well documented on Twitter and Facebook, and you can find a few news articles starting to air Summer Jam's dirty panties. They set the price points too high and/or expected far too many to pay the premium prices for the best seats. As a result they cut prices on tickets days before the festival, claiming new sponsorship money made it possible.

Really? The only reason they lowered prices is because a sponsor kicked in money to have their name associated with the festival in its final days? If it smells like bullshit....

So those who wanted great seats for the festival were penalized for buying early. I have no sympathy for you.

Had you bought those tickets and it turned out that the venue sold out, and the secondary market was selling the tickets at 150% of face value, you'd feel like a genius, and happily sell them for a profit when your Aunt Marilyn died days before the show and you had to skip the festival in order to travel to Michigan for her funeral.

Best analogy I read about the pricing: It's like airline tickets. You book two months in advance, and the price could drop the next day, or rise the next day, and it could go up or down many times in the weeks prior to departure.

I think that's a good comparison.

The difference, of course, is that airline passengers don't usually talk to each other about what they paid, and when, for their tickets...all you can know is how much less, or more, you might have paid had you booked earlier, or waited longer, if you want to track those sorts of things. With Summer Jam, you can't know what the guy in the beer line paid for his ticket, unless you ask, but you know they were trying to get asses through the gates in the final days, at a discount, and that could have been you had you not been so eager to spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of tickets to see Aerosmith on a disgustingly humid night in Minnesota.

Moral of the story: You deemed the tickets were worth the price you agreed to weeks ago, and then they had a sale days before the show. You can't count on that, so you make a value judgment at the price you agreed to pay, and that's the way it goes. If the market value goes up or down, it doesn't matter, as you have already made your choice. End of story.

Except it's not the end of the story, of course. Even with price breaks in the final days, there weren't nearly enough premium ticket buyers to justify the premium seating allocation at the festival, by many accounts. So for the past two nights the people who paid for those premium seats, at whatever price days or weeks ago, found themselves rubbing elbows with tons of people who decided a general admission ticket at the back of the grounds was all they could justify.

This is where I have a lot of sympathy for those who paid for VIP access, at any price. I've read plenty of comments on  Summer Jam's Facebook page about people finding themselves suddenly surrounded by the unwashed masses because the organizers didn't want a pathetic looking festival with tons of empty space in front of a mob of general admission rubes, and therefore opened the VIP floodgates to fill that open space ahead of the rubes.

That's downright shitty. And people have expressed that on Facebook, wondering where there refund is for paying premium dollars and then being disrespected.

They have to be smart enough to know that Summer Jam won't be refunding them any money. You paid your cash, you got screwed and they won't care enough to make it right. Based upon how desperate they were to move tickets in the final days prior to the festival, they'll be lucky if they have enough money to cover all the expenses, even with sponsors.

I have no idea if the festival will be deemed a success of failure financially, only time will tell, and it still won't tell us the whole story. But given what a debacle this has been on multiple levels, I would bet against another Summer Jam next year.

Yeah, I get it, you need to learn from experience and make improvements. But let's be realistic. They didn't invent the wheel. They shouldn't have had to learn so many hard lessons in 2019.

They couldn't figure out how to set up video screens that worked properly during at least some of the performances, or how to configure their grounds so that a huge area of general admission access didn't have an obstructed view of the stage. They couldn't figure out how to price and allocate their sections so that they'd draw a crowd and sell enough tickets without having a fire sale in the final week. They picked a weekend when they gained almost nothing by having other regional festivals going on. What makes anyone think that they'll make any money when this is all over?

If I was to bet $5, I'd bet there's no Summer Jam next year. Yes, it could be improved 1000% and draw a nice crowd, and this weekend hasn't been a total failure, but with all its shortcomings, it's hard to believe that this will become a new tradition in midwest music festivals.

Alix Kendall, Rena Sarigianopoulos and Elizabeth Ries walk into a bar

I want to write about too many things, and I don't want to write 10 blog posts in the next year, so here are thoughts on a variety of topics, rolled into one package.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT THAT FASCINATING

Why is it that TV stations insist on treating their employees like they're part of our family? I'm sure the anchors and reporters are complicit in this.

We all know Rena Sarigianopoulos got married and had a child during the past few years. It's hard to hide the pregnancy when a woman continues to work on camera, but honestly, did KARE-TV need to share pictures of Rena's wedding and pregnancy announcement on its social media channels?

It's one thing to note that an on-air "talent" has had a child. If you watch Rena on that news-fluff program she participates in you noticed the obvious, and were probably reminded of it plenty of times. (I don't watch, so I don't know.) When Rena disappears for weeks, it's understandable that the station will show a picture of the mother and child and note a baby was born.

But TV stations take it to another level these days thanks to social media. I'm not sure which station in the Twin Cities is most guilty, but damn, KARE-TV sure likes to exploit the personal lives of their talent. I have to assume the talent agrees to play along. It's sad, and it is trumped by the fact that people actually care. They will respond to those Facebook posts to congratulate Rena or whomever it is for their incredible accomplishment. Harmless, sure, but a sad indictment of both the stations pumping out the local news and the people watching it.

BRING ME A BARF BAG

I'm not a fan of that lame attempt at news chat that Rena and her pal are doling out at 6:30 p.m., although Rena doesn't seem that interested any more. I don't watch the show, but if I have the TV on at 6:30, I try to see who is hosting on any particular night, and Rena is absent more often than not, it seems.

Perhaps the show is better than it was a couple of years ago when I first watched it, but honestly, these people are not smart.

Did I ever mention Rena once lectured me on Twitter? I made a silly comment about the show, but instead of ignoring it, Rena lectured me for my negativity. Now keep in mind that I had watched the show three times in its opening few months. I was watching on one 2016 night and tweeted that I was going to change the channel because the windbags on #BTN11 were going to praise Chris Kluwe, who should need no introduction to you because he's a media whore. I never said I wouldn't turn the channel back in five minutes to watch the final segment of the show.

So Rena, in response to a snarky comment at the end of the show, "busted" me. And then she lectured me, and tried to flatter her own ego at the same time. How superficial. And so, so wrong. At this point I hadn't tweeted all that much about her show, but she really put me in my place!

I was a social bully for daring to criticize a crappy show and refusing to watch two women babble about Chris Kluwe? OK, honey.

She didn't block me, like she should have if she is so delusional as to think I tweet hate daily.

Ignore those who criticize your crappy show if your skin is so thin. But pretending I'm some social bully who is constantly tweeting about how awful the show is shows how petty she is. Some might suggest it's an indicator of intelligence, or lack thereof.

Rena's not the only person who lives in a fantasy world of self-importance. The show has a producer named Nikki Muehlhausen who once lectured me on Twitter. She's at least smart enough to have deleted her tweets about a day after she did so. But basically darling Nikki told me that I'm allowed to praise her lame show and offer a suggestion, but I'm not allowed to call a spade a spade. I was wrong for calling it like I see it. I can kiss #BTN11 ass, but I can't call out bad TV when I see it. I didn't screen capture it, so I can't share the sentiment exactly as it was expressed, but yes, she was that ridiculous.

There's a dufus named Chad Nelson who points a camera at stuff now and again for Ch. 11. He saw some of my tweets, particularly those simple, dopey ones I sent for a while, noting I wasn't watching #BTN11 daily, despite what Rena thinks. His life is no better than mine, evidently, as he tried to needle me a few times in response. I love dopes who like to fight fire with fire. I'm sure he thinks he's above that.

In its earliest days they had some stiff named Nick Petersen who was their social media genius. They'd turn to him to share with the viewers what they were talking about on social media while watching the show. The guy wasn't smooth. I didn't interact with him much, but I did note his segment was painful to watch. A couple of months later I tweeted something (probably snarky) and made my standard comment about how I hate every segment, every day. He didn't reply. He blocked me, and I'm guessing he did so simply because he wasn't interested in seeing my comments in his social media scouring for #BTN11.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done. Don't get high and mighty like Rena and Nikki, don't be a fool like Chad. Just ignore and move on. I'll have a lot more respect for you, even if you're not great on camera. (I flip to the show for a moment every once in a great while, and I haven't seen that guy on camera for a long, long time. I'm guessing Nikki saw the same thing I did.)

My favorite interaction came from Chris Hrapsky. He's a KARE reporter who has had to feed from the #BTN11 trough a lot, as far as I can tell. (He has my sympathy.) I'm not sure why he was compelled to engage me, but rather than get all high and mighty, he spent a few minutes to learn a thing or two and ask a question. I was impressed.

Chris could be an egomaniac for all I know. He could have the IQ of a diseased cat. But in comparison to all those from KARE who engaged me regarding #BTN11, he appears to be the only person whose elevator goes to the top floor. I can barely watch KARE's newscasts these days, for a myriad of reasons, but I respect a guy who doesn't need to come off as holier than thou.

IT'S HARD TO KARE

I'm no expert or insider, I've said that before. But Ch. 11 has really gone down the toilet when it comes to overall quality of their news and newscasts, and I don't need to be an expert in order to see that. I don't have the time or patience to list all the ways the station has lost my viewership. I watch on a rare occasion just because I like torturing myself. The single best example of how the once-mighty NBC affiliate has gone in the dumper? Weekend sports kid Ryan Shaver.

CAN I GET A BARF BAG WITH JASON MATHESON'S FACE ON IT?

I have mocked the fact that TV viewers find the opinions of the local talking heads to be entertaining, interesting and/or important. It was enough to have the goofballs at Ch. 9 doing it every weekday at 9 a.m., but it must have been too lucrative, as Ch. 4 decided they needed to get in on the action, too. I won't rehash my previous rants about that.

Of all the talking bobos on local TV, nobody is more nauseating than Jason Matheson.

I use to respect the guy. He worked long hours and did whatever it took to land two seemingly decent jobs in the Twin Cities. And with all that effort, he has become intolerable.

I occasionally watch a few minutes of his TV chat fest on Ch. 9, airing weekdays at 10 a.m. and a dozen other times each week at any odd time the local Fox affiliate has time to fill on either of its stations.

First off, God bless Jason for playing up the gay stereotype of being fascinated with pop culture. I don't know if he gushes over the usual gay icons -- Cher, Barbra Streisand and Rosie O'Donnell -- but he gushes over a few people, I've learned over the years. Katie Couric immediately comes to mind. It sells, buddy, so keep it up, I suppose.

Why are people so fascinated about a gay man who will tell you how interesting a "Real Housewives" episode is? I'll never understand people.

A dude working in Minneapolis, talking about pop culture. Big fucking deal. But Jesus, Jason will try to convince you he has his fingers on the pulse of Hollywood, and connections you just won't get anywhere else. Maybe he does, I don't know, but every time I sample his schtick, he's making fairly obvious observations. He's like a poor woman's Wendy Williams. You want a window into the world of mindless sheep, watch Wendy's audience go nuts for her banal observations. Then get a local version of it by watching Matheson gab on Fox 9.

For whatever reason, his two-bit show has been given two summer tryouts as a national talker. I'm stunned that there's nothing better to consider. There can't be if his show is being given a tryout.

I tried to congratulate him for the opportunity. But I didn't simply kiss his ass, which seems to be the way you have to treat him nowadays.

I noted via Twitter to Matheson that it was a tough road to national stardom he was about to navigate, as proven by bigger names who have had summer tryouts in limited markets, but it was impressive nonetheless that he had been given the opportunity. Princess took that as an insult, of course, and had to self-stimulate his ego in responding to me. You'll have to take my word for it, I'm not in the mood to create Twitter images to illustrate it.

I don't read his tweets regularly, but he once bitched about the cost of an Uber ride from the local airport. I get that you don't make millions of dollars per year in local broadcasting, but it seemed silly to me. Perhaps he was trying to appear relatable to all the housewives who adore their gal pal.

I mocked him for his silly bitching, and of course his response was quite Sarigianopoulos-like, pretending that he's constantly under attack by me, somebody who rarely pays attention to his silliness.

He's a great success story whose ego can no longer be contained by his Buzz Boy frame.

I haven't listened to 10 minutes of his chick talk on morning drive radio, so I can't comment about how brilliant, or brutal, his long-form fawning over Shania Twain is.

And last, but not least: Jason, please convince those cheap bastards at Fox 9 to spend some cash on a theme song for your daily parade. Please don't tell me that the garbage you're using now is original, commissioned music. It sounds like royalty-free crap that would be used as filler during some lame children's show.

DID THEY HAVE A PRENUP? 

It's not nice to laugh at the failures of others, but I'll admit that the implosion of Paul Lambert's fairy tale marriage warms my heart a little.

Lambert, known as "Meatsauce" on 100.3 FM's morning show, is a great rags to riches story. He plays his part well, and as I've said before, he's The Fan's replacement for Jeff Dubay.

The hype and publicity he garnered for losing a few pounds and marrying Falen, a sidekick on the KDWB morning show, was a bit nauseating. Two people working for Clear Channel morning shows start dating, get married and live happily ever after. Congrats. More power to you.

It's inevitable that it's going to come up on the morning shows they work for. I assume it was discussed on KDWB. I rarely listen to morning radio, and when I do, I never listen to Dave Ryan. Ever.

But the nuptials got a lot of steam in the Twin Cities. There was at least one feature story in the local media profiling the love affair of these two "celebrities," and the duo didn't hesitate to market themselves as some sort of "Beauty and the Beast" duo. They'd find ways to use their marriage for promotion of themselves and/or their radio stations. I never watched the videos, but they had cooking videos that were shared on the radio station websites, if I recall correctly.

These clowns were nauseating, but that's what you have to be if you want to make money as a "personality." And of course the fairy tale marriage came crashing to the ground within a couple of years. I've read comments about why, but I've never heard or read a reliable explanation, and I don't care.

I don't revel in the failure of these fools, but it brings a wry smile to my face, knowing that their personal lives have been shown to be as fraudulent as their on-air personas.

QUICK HITS

To close out this Twin Cities roundup, here are random thoughts.

It's great that you get to sit on a WCCO couch once a week and give us your insightful movie reviews, Dennis "Rusty" Gatenby, but it's time to put your name to use as some mediocre communications coordinator for a local company and quit trying to hold onto the local TV limelight you lost so long ago.

It has been more than 18 months since I last published on this blog, and the last time I did, I noted what a waste of flesh Cheryl Johnson is. She's better known by her initials, B.J., and since she got in trouble for her idiocy back in 2016 she has been severely neutered by the Strib, which published the garbage she produced. The only reason they don't shitcan her, I'm guessing, is that she'll sue for discrimination. There ain't no way she's worth whatever they're paying her, and there ain't no way she's getting a better paying gig if she's kicked to the curb by the Strib. But it's nice to see the Strib has stopped publishing the garbage she use to produce, which seemed to lack any sort of editorial scrutiny.

I never, in my wildest dreams, would have guessed we'd still have sports talk on AM 1500. I don't know how that low-rated station survives, but kudos to all of you who looked to be out of a job more than a year ago.

And Kudos to the Pohlad family for proving that underachievement isn't limited to the MLB franchise you own. The inability of the Pohlads, whichever brother(s) run the radio/media conglomerate they built, to succeed in running a radio station is a fitting testament to the business savvy the family has demonstrated during the past 25 years.

Brian Oake is still an asshole. It just needs to be said more often than it is.

Last, and certainly least, is the namesake of this blog. I've predicted before that it's going to end on a very sour note for Dubay. His most recent run-in with the law ended with a plea agreement he made. He claimed that he couldn't risk going to jail for years as a result of the lies of a vindictive housemate he may or may not have been having sex with. Even if Dubay's hands were clean, the circumstances of it all show how hard it is to pick up the pieces after you've flushed your career and reputation down the toilet. And we know Dubay hasn't been able to walk the straight and narrow in the years since it all came crashing down around him. Unless Dubay comes to Jesus and makes peace with what's left of his life -- the dude is 50 years old, it's unlikely his life is ever going to be as cool as it was in his 30s -- it's not a matter of what ugliness will befall his life, it's simply a question of when does the next shoe drop. Good luck, Puffy, you're going to need it far more than most degenerate gamblers.

AND FINALLY

It's easy to throw stones at the local media. When pompous script readers like Jason DeRusha lecture the world on how precious his time is, and how great of a human he is for giving of his time, it's hard to avoid vomiting. Oh yeah, he's a culinary genius who eats and writes. He's multi-faceted!

When local "talent" is asked to fill an hour talking about the news and water cooler topics, you'll end up cringing at some point, assuming you're not lapping it up like a Pavlovian dog. (I'll never forget the excitement the recently departed Kylie Bearse expressed about the fascinating hour of chat they were about to launch at 9 a.m. a couple of years ago.)

It's too easy to throw stones because too many of the folks producing news or inane chat are mediocre at best, not nearly as well compensated as you might think. As I've noted before, plenty of folks get out of the biz for jobs that seem far less prestigious, and I'd bet my last $5 that income is a major factor in why former reporters find their way to communications positions with corporations or governmental agencies. Or, if you're fortunate enough to be a trophy wife, a la Natalie Nyhus, you can afford to stay home with your child. Why pass your paycheck onto a day care provider when you can spend those formative years with your child? Good gig if you can get it.

I have occasionally lavished praise, or simple observations, about developments in the local media. But more often than anything, I've chosen the low hanging fruit: Criticizing the mediocrity and mindlessness of the local media. The Twin Cities may be a top 20 market nationally, but our products are weak, and we're not unique. Media companies don't have the exclusivity and license to print money they once held, and they're not interested in being nonprofit entities.

I am pretty much guaranteed years of fodder, should I chose to accept it. But not so long ago, I listened as a motivational speaker discussed the merits of creating, regardless of the audience for your product. Sure, this blog is a creative outlet, and one that finds an audience. With little promotion these days I've found that plenty of people find their way to the blog. Not hundreds per day, but more than most "mommy" bloggers get, I'd wager.

This blog is a creative endeavor, but it's not the most satisfying creative outlet. A few months ago I finally started a new creative project that has nothing to do with writing, and I'm enjoying it. I'm going to keep at it.

I won't suggest that I'm never going to record another thought at this blog, but it hasn't been a priority for more than a year, and since the start of 2018, I've finally found a replacement for that creative expression this blog has provided, even if it is at Keith Leventhal's expense. (As his biggest fan, I had to work a backhanded compliment in one more time.)

Until something changes, I'm putting the blog on indefinite hiatus. Now, if we could just get Fox 9 to do the same thing with Ian Leonard....

Star Tribune columnist C.J.: an emperor with no clothes

I've been relatively quiet via this blog in recent weeks. That has been by design. But tonight all bets are off.

I don't enjoy "Breaking the News." It's a painful show featuring two smug women who are producing a bunch of fast food, the kind of garbage the public seems to crave when it comes to the news they consume. I've learned via Twitter that Rena Sarigianopoulos, one of the two anchorettes, isn't very sharp. And some of her KARE-TV staff is equally dimwitted when it comes to social media and responding to people like me, who don't find the TV show to be worthwhile.

I scoff at the general wardrobe choices of Jana Shortal, the other anchorette. I'm not a prude, I just think that her wardrobe choices and her style are a distraction when she broadcasts. And I find that to be the case every time I flip past her KARE-TV chatfest. But even if she looked like a million dollars, it wouldn't change my disdain for the content of the program. It's just my personal preference, and I feel that way whether she's talking about terrorism or what little kids think about politics. But i'm just a viewer with a blog. I have no clout in the media.

While I don't care for Shortal's show, I care even less for the arrogant, worthless gossip maven of the Star Tribune: Cheryl Johnson. I like to refer to Johnson by her nickname: B.J.

B.J. decided to rip Shortal for her wardrobe choice while discussing a sad, difficult, 27-year story that affects many in this state. Most are only affected indirectly, yet thousands upon thousands of people have been impacted by the short life and horrific death of Jacob Wetterling.

Of all the times to rip Shortal about her wardrobe choices, B.J. is too fucking stupid to know better than to do it in relation to Shortal's reporting about the details of Wetterling's death. (I don't think I've ever used profanity in this blog.)

B.J. has been a fixture in the local media for more than two decades. That's one hell of an indictment of the Twin Cities right there. And B.J. has proven herself to be an egotistical, arrogant bitch on previous occasions.

And the fact that B.J. chose the details of Wetterling's death as the moment to crucify Shortal for her fashion choices shows just how inflated her ego is, how out of touch she is as a human being and how worthless she is as a gossip maven in the Twin Cities.

I may not be a fan of Shortal, but I was highly impressed by how classy she was in her online response to B.J.

What's more astonishing than B.J.'s idiotic, aloof perspective of Shortal? The fact that the Star Tribune allowed her idiocy to be published on its website. The Strib offered an apology for posting an insensitive column by B.J., but it begs the question, "Are the inmates running the asylum?"

I'm glad the Strib published the column, only to delete it and offer a pathetic apology. B.J.'s shallow, arrogant opinions have unleashed holy hell upon the Strib's social media platforms and is bringing spectacular attention to the worthless trash that is B.J.'s career.

I hope the Strib's error finally awakens more than a few people to the fact that B.J.'s media presence is pathetic and worthless.

I may be petty and idiotic for having an opinion about how lackluster Shortal's wardrobe is, but I'm not as petty and idiotic as B.J., thank God.

In memory of Jeff Dubay

This blog is facetiously named after Jeff Dubay.

I'm not a fan of his work, and I never thought he was much of a talent. He loved sports, and he did anything he could to build a career talking about them. And did a pretty good job of it.

Drug addiction put an end to that, and probably an end to a lot of the meaning and purpose to his life, too. It's sad.

I'm guessing his local "fame" is a drug Dubay is as addicted to as the crack cocaine he can't keep out of his hands. Ironic how one addiction pretty much prevents him from partaking in another at this point. He's nearly 50 years old and his radio career is dead. When he gets out of the clink he might try his hand at another podcast, but a few hundred listeners a week aren't going to satisfy the addiction, or pay the bills.

Instead Dubay will have to rely on friends or family to help him keep a roof over his head since it's going to be hard for him to get a decent job when he's turned loose. Who wants to hire a two-time felon when there are plenty of people competing for the same menial jobs that Dubay is qualified for. After all, he has no other career of any significance, at least that we know, since he spent a long time trying to make ends meet on sports-talk radio.

He's nearly 50, he has no career to resume when he gets out of jail, he is a two-time felon and he has 10 years of probation to deal with. Odds are stacked against him.

Perhaps Dubay will make peace with his demons and live out the rest of his life clean and sober, finding some sort of meaning to the life he lives.

I can't help but wonder when we're going to read about his untimely death. I mean that sincerely.

Lesson to the kids: Drugs suck. Don't even consider dabbling with them. Your parent(s) taught you not to play with fire. Listen to them.

Is Brian Oake an asshole?

At least a few people think so, and the stories I've heard would suggest that Brian Oake is indeed a pompous asshole.

I won't waste time recapping how a dude with the gift of gab and the love of music has made a name for himself in this market. You can't argue with his skills.

But the dude has a thin skin, and if you don't kiss his ass and tell him how great he is, he's likely to rip you for it. 

I know of a few stories, but the best story is one I can vouch for. I am connected to a woman whose friend works in the media. He is not a DJ or a news anchor, he's one of those faceless guys who is as important to the reporting as Jason DeRusha. OK, a lot more important than DeRusha. 

My friend showed me some of the online evidence to help substantiate the story. Basically the media guy tweeted a comment about Oake. The comment ripped Oake, sort of, and initially it seemed that Oake was cool with it. Basically the media guy wasn't a fan of Oake's work on The Current's morning show. 

But Oake didn't brush it off. No, he's too sensitive and self-important to do that. He messaged the media guy and asked the media guy about the Twitter comment. I'm not sure exactly how that exchange went, I didn't have access to those exchanges, but eventually the media guy shared via his social network that Oake bitched at him for the comment he initially made. 

The best part is that Oake concluded the exchange by telling the media guy he didn't care what the media guy thinks. Somebody get Oake a dictionary and point him to an entry for "irony." Oake initiated the private exchange for an explanation of the initial tweet. Yet Oake doesn't care what the guy thinks? 

Oake has had a steady, solid career in this market, but his success at the local level has gone to his head. Perhaps he was an asshole growing up in Coon Rapids, I don't know, but there are multiple stories out there that would prompt more than a couple of people to say, "Yes, Brian Oake is an asshole."

Understanding the mind of Dawn Mitchell

Not so long ago I noted that I was unimpressed with Fox 9 sports reporter Dawn Mitchell. Her lack of social media savvy did not impress me.

A Twitter follower tipped me off to something I missed yesterday while taking care of out-of-state business. (A visit to Detroit in April, hold your envy and jealousy.) There seems to be a rift between longtime Minnesota Timberwolves scribe Britt Robson and the lovely Dawn Mitchell.

I'm still not clear what the sticking point is, I can only guess, but there are a few clues.

Robson wrote this exhaustive analysis of what has gone down in the world of Timberwolves basketball, and brought up the name of Mitchell (the reporter) regarding the dismissal of Sam Mitchell (the season-long interim head coach). The female Mitchell earned a paragraph in Robson's analysis:

"It wasn’t until the game was already underway that Fox 9 reporter Dawn Mitchell (no relation to the coach) who only tangentially covers the Wolves beat, was the first to report that Mitchell would not be included in the coaching search. Regular beat writers Zgoda and AP’s Jon Krawcyznski had details of the Korn Ferry search firm by then, but no specifics on Mitchell’s future."

This didn't settle well with our blonde sports reporter, (who inexplicably has a Facebook fan page with over 95,000 likes). There seemed to be a Twitter dispute about Robson's writing.

As best I can tell the third-string sports reporter didn't like the characterization that she broke the news after the final 2015-16 Timberwolves game was underway. Her tweets indicate that she disputed the timing of her report. (She insisted that she reported the tidbit before the final game began.) It also appears she didn't like the characterization that her coverage of the team is tangential.

The somewhat challenging to follow Twitter exchange between Robson and the backup sports reporter at Fox 9 is hard to handicap. It became increasingly unclear to me as to whether or not D-Mitch was the first to report the interim head coach's fate. And whether she was or wasn't, ultimately I don't care. But her apparent pettiness is too rich to resist.

It appears that the blonde backup didn't like the tangential description of her coverage. Whether it's fair or not, I'm unclear as to why it was an important characterization to Robson's analysis. Was it to cast doubt upon the accuracy of her reporting? Was it to applaud somebody who allegedly doesn't document the team's fate as exhaustively as others? It's a bizarre description of her coverage, either way.

That doesn't mean the Fox 9 reporter needs to make an issue of it via Twitter, but as I wrote previously, she doesn't appear to be the most thoughtful person using the social media platform.

The most confusing tweet that D-Mitch dropped seems to indicate that she thinks she's being disrespected because she has a vagina.

What does her gender have to do with anything? I saw no indication that the fact she, presumably, has a vagina had anything to do with Robson's writing or commentary. Perhaps I missed it, but I couldn't find it, and Robson was quick to rebuff her criticism.

He also noted via another tweet that there is some dispute (from another news outlet) about whether or not D-Mitch was the first with the anecdote, which didn't seem to bother her. Her response was "I don't care about that."

Am I reading it wrong? D-Mitch doesn't care if another outlet claims she is being inaccurately portrayed as the first to report a sports factoid? I suppose she could be applauded for not caring about such triviality, but her quick dismissal of the dispute only adds to the appearance that she's petty, and not the sharpest mind using Twitter.

I'm sure I have it all wrong. I'm sure those 95,000+ Facebook users are fans because of her intelligent sports insight.