How about showing the Yankee Flipper:

http://www.yankeeflipper.com/droll/index.cfm#

Flinging squirrels from a bird feeder...now THAT'S fun.

YES!! That gets funnier every time I watch it.

It has surprised me that there has been silence since the possible demolition of our headquarters was first contemplated earlier this year. I have always admired the six medallions of quintessential Minnesota-dom, from the miners' jackhammer to the jumping fish. It reminds me where I am.

Agreed: the medallions are beautiful, and cool - a cow! I like to work in a building with a proud stone cow. You could make the accusation that the buidling has overtones of European 30s architecture, a style not employed by the most enlightened nation-states, but the cow and the fish soften the edges. It's also remarkable that they put them waaay up there, where you can't see the details. Perhaps they'll end up in the lobby of whatever featureless structure replaces the HQ . . . if that ever happens. Hope not.

Ahhh, they trained that little rascal to sing.

David Seville does a good job here. Didn't even need to spped it up to 78 rpm.

I just watched the "Dramatic Chipmunk" clip and immediately recognized the music is from "Ghostbusters," right when Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis are turned into demon dogs.

*dripping with the geek*

but we're already starting with a furry little animal.

does that mean that (( horror!! )) Dramatic Chipmunk is about to turn into... ((gasp!! ))....

A Second-Tier Presidential Candidate????

oh, the horror!

Those unauthorized biographies of Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Nancy Reagan were written by a dolphin? How did she type them without opposable thumbs?

Oh, wait, I forgot. Dolphins do have thumbs now. Never mind.

Altogether, the best 19 seconds on the internet! It's rofltastic!

...I don't get internet speak, but I use it anyway, just to blend in... ¬¬

D'you think if I had a clip of a Zebra Finch sneezing it would be popular? They are the most ridiculously cute sneezers, after all.

--
bucketbucketbucketbucketbucket...

Speaking of Clark Kent -- Lois Lane's dad DID work in the 425 Portland building. Dave Neill was a news editor at the Star in the 1930s and '40s; he hung on until around 1960. His daughter, Noel, graduated from high school in 1938 and got accepted by the U of M, where she planned to major in journalism. But she took a trip to California that summer, lucked into some nightclub singing gigs and started an acting career that led to her role as the main portrayer of Lois Lane in some 1940s "Superman" theater serials and the 1950s "Adventures of Superman" TV series with George Reeves (Phyllis Coates did one season). Noel revisited the building in 2003, when she was in town to sign copies of her biography. She asked yours truly to show her her dad's old office, but I had to tell her the building had been drastically remodeled ("Project Stardust," part of the three-fer redesign/reorg/remodel in the mid-'90s).

By the way -- Cedric Adams was a well-known columnist and radio personality in decades past, and he had an apartment on the fourth floor. He used to come downstairs in his bathrobe and read page proofs, it's said. That was before my time.

The Freeman Building, apparently to be torn down, was named after well-liked Cowles Media executive Gale Freeman and dedicated in 1982. I once crossed the street on the way back from the Little Wagon and came upon Gale Freeman -- I'm not sure if he'd retired at the time -- looking up at the new building. Probably the only time I'll see a living person and a building named after him at the same time.

I doubt that Lileks knows any of this, but that's not a criticism.

*THAT* is news to me - thanks! As for Cedric, I know the work and the lore - this week I'll be posting an audio file of the Great Man, and I have some video to upload as well. A copy of his book has sat on my desk since the day I joined the paper. I haven't delved into the Freeman history here at buzz.mn, since it seemed like inside baseball.

I wouldn't hold myself out as any sort of Strib historian, but I've been collecting pictures and stories about the building for a while - I have a novel in the works about the paper c. 1947, and have spent many happy afternoons poring over the photo files from Cedric's time.

Thanks for the additional info.