I was standing in line to check out at Whole Foods on Saturday and the customer in front of me, a sixty-ish woman, pulled out her pocketbook and remarked to the young dude at the register, “Do those hurt?” She was referring to his dreadlocks.

“Because it hurts me to look at them.”

The guy kept his cool and said something innocuous. She came back with, “They must itch. I wonder what’s in them?” Lice, maggots, Satan?

Now this guy is one of the few Whole Foods register staff who isn’t wearing a “Team Member In Training” button, so I seek his lane out. He’s friendly and does a fine job. And he’s a lot easier to look at than the guy at the Y with the half-dozen rings and studs affixed to his face. (We all draw the line somewhere.)

My three-year-old daughter is what I once heard referred to as a “primary processor”—she says everything she is thinking. But she is three. She will eventually learn that it doesn’t get you anywhere to tell your dad that his breath is bad at 4 a.m. after you roused him from sleep screaming “I NEED HELP” to announce, “I’m hungry.”

Eventually people get the message. For Mrs. Dreadlocks it will be when she finds herself on Block E after seeing Cats at the Pantages, and inquires of the brothers if their asses get cold when their pants hang that low.

Further evidence of the vast American narcissism appeared in Friday’s Wall Street Journal (requires paid subscription). The article described the growing problem at resorts: Boomers insisting on wearing robes well beyond the realm of their bedrooms, the pool, or spa.

It quoted the freakish Lisa Peterson, forty-six, communications director for the American Kennel Club. She said that walking through a resort restaurant in a robe “alerts the world that I am pampering myself because I believe I’m worth it.”

OK, maybe the terrorists do hate us for our freedom.

But I’m no Taliban. I enjoy a bikini or thong as much as the next guy. But anyone who feels the need to “tell the world” anything via their attire needs to spend a little less time thinking about themselves and a little more time trying to make the world a better place. Perspective sometimes needs to come as a slap upside the head.

A couple hours of babysitting at our house would be a good way to start. We pay $10 an hour, because you’re worth it.

Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you’re never coming round
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by
Turnaround, Every now and then I get a little bit terrified and then I see the look in your eyes
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and then I fall apart
Turnaround bright eyes, Every now and then I fall apart

Is this the worst song of all time? How about this one?

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life

These lyrics were written by Jim Steinman (yes, a guy wrote these lyrics) and made famous two decades ago by Bonnie Tyler, who has a voice that sounds like she’s smoked about 1,800 cartons of cigarettes. The first verse above is from "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a mawkish mess of a song I am still hearing on Twin Cities radio (stations such as WLTE and maybe KS95). I imagine, as Tyler sings . . .

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I’m only falling apart
Nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there’s only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

. . . that thousands of women listening in cars pull over to the side, weeping over a lost relationship, then driving away stronger, more confident, not to feel that kind of pain again—until Tyler comes on singing "Holding Out For A Hero."

Judging by her website, Bonnie still does quite well with these songs, has gotten some better control over her makeup, and is resiliently popular in Ireland and Germany. I’m sure Steinman and Tyler have made a great deal of money off these two ditties, one of which was originally written for Meatloaf, or so the Internets say.

Some enterprising Scandinavians (I can’t tell whether they’re Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish—Norway is my guess, based on the clothes) have covered "Eclipse" in a video, playing instruments made from kitchen appliances. And then there’s Mimmi Sandén, a five-year-old who cleaned up doing Bonnie Tyler covers on Talang 2007, which, according to Wikipedia, is one of the most watched shows in Sweden this year (airing on TV4, in case you have satellite). The top prize was 1 million kronor ($41.44). Sweden is just nutty about talent shows, judging from TV4’s website. And it has national health insurance.

But I digress. It’s time for you to weigh in. Ladies in particular. These songs are historically bad, aren’t they? In the bottom ten of their genre post-1840?

Before I leave you, though, remember:

Forever’s gonna start tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight

My wife and I have some close and wise friends whose perspective on parenting is that you overprotect them at every possible turn and shield them from as much of the world as you can for as long as you can because what is out there is sick and crazy and malevolent.

Amy and I are not really built for that type of parenting, and our two kids’ personalities are ill-suited to that kind of insularity. They are fascinated by the outside world, crave experiences beyond their years, and exude no little amount of confidence. Usually, I am proud of those qualities. This week, they make me nervous.

I generally don’t follow crime news. My general take is crime is random, devoid of broader meaning, and following it delivers all pain with no gain. Still, the other night, unable to fall asleep, I violated my policy and read a crime story in the Metro section of the paper.

It detailed the conviction of a Blaine woman for abetting her boyfriend’s murder of his ten-year-old daughter. He fatally scalded her in a hot bathtub as punishment for putting a corn chip in her underwear, which she had started doing subsequent to sexual abuse by her mother’s boyfriend.

I was staggered by the level of casual depravity at work in the torture of this child. It’s the tried-and-true story—sick guy abuses his kid, weak-willed woman looks the other way.

Jordan Gonsioroski apparently had no one looking out for her. The women in her life sold her out for the worthless men they depended on. I’d like to throw her mother in jail for failing her so badly. I’d also like to stop her from ever reproducing again. We will put people to death in this society, we will lock them away forever, but we will not declare you unfit to parent and then make it impossible for you to do so. I know, the civil liberties implications are a nightmare. What’s your solution?

Most abusers were abused themselves and go on to repeat what they know. I spent weeks back in 1994 observing a juvenile-sexual-offenders program at the Hennepin County Home School for an article I was writing. The program was a valiant effort to turn around teenage boys who were showing tendencies, before they became monsters like Jason Gonsioroski. They were sympathetic kids from deeply troubled families at all strata of society. I wonder if the program still exists, and how many kids it's saved.

Jordan Gonsioroski’s death ended her suffering. But we need to find other, more hopeful ways to break the cycle of abuse. Until that day comes, if you suspect a child needs help, please have the courage to tell someone.

This weekend we will disassemble my daughter’s crib and put together her bed. It is a symbolic passage from baby to child, and a manifestation of independence. My little one is headstrong, willful, and completely drunk on assertiveness.

Perhaps the flipside of overprotection is that my daughter will be comfortable enough in the world and in her power that she would never be attracted to the type of person who would abuse a child. I hope for my daughter the confidence and courage to speak up, and then to walk.

I was a media critic in my twenties, from 1986 to 1994 at the Twin Cities Reader. I had some sporadic successors in town, but the beat ultimately languished for over a decade until Brian Lambert took it up at The Rake. The local press is just too powerful and influential (fracturing though it is) to work without scrutiny.

Media criticism is not going to be the stock-in-trade of this blog, but I will dabble, and I stumbled upon an article on the July 23 Strib Metro cover which is a textbook example of how the façade of objectivity subverts attempts to separate news from innuendo and opinion.

Mike Kaszuba, one of the paper’s more veteran reporters, delivered what’s probably regarded at Portland Ave. as an enterprise piece regarding the U’s hot-and-cold quest to get Robert Sabes, former owner of Schieks, to donate a cool mil for the new Gophers stadium. (The “enterprise” aspect being the disclosure from public data of the proposed donation.)

The longish story lacks a thesis—either a sign it’s been edited heavily or the writer is dancing around something he/she can’t quite say without displaying a point of view. We’re told Sabes owned Schiek’s strip club, was involved in legal gambling and other (legitimate) businesses, has attracted notoriety, is admired by some, and is giving away much of his wealth. There’s a third-party quote saying he lacks “a bad bone in his body” (which implies the point is in question) and a reference to a 1993 magazine article where Sabes complained about being linked by gambling regulators to organized crime.

The piece is not hostile, and there is nothing beyond the suggestion of impropriety—no criminal record or accusation of illegality or violations of University policy. But it goes on and on, airing Sabes’s life’s laundry, with the U declining comment. I was left scratching my head, until the light went on.

The Metro section has always been the place where the ideology and presumptions of the paper’s writers and editors leaked through most starkly in story selection, perhaps because it’s the only locally written section that does not mingle opinion in the news copy. The Sabes article may be liberal (or conservative) Puritanism at work—stripping is exploitive (or immoral) and gambling exploits those least equipped to lose to benefit those with the most (or is immoral). Those associated with either are thus unclean.

Or, it could be a gotcha piece. We journalists love the gotcha—disclosing something that no one is really hiding, but that will embarrass a pillar of the establishment such as the U. Controversial exploiter of the weak-minded involved in controversial endeavor to build expensive stadium on the backs of the taxpayers.

Can’t the paper just show its cards and ask: Is it appropriate for a taxpayer-funded institution to benefit indirectly from stripping and gambling?

Exotic dancing and gaming, to use their marketing labels, are legal activities in this state—one is even sanctioned by it. Katherine Kersten’s column begs my question on the very same page as Kaszuba’s story—for those of you who still read the print edition.

Like any other informed and engaged person, I am a ball of opinions. And try as I might, I can’t keep them from coloring my worldview and perception of the news of the day. So I don’t pretend I can. Newspapers are still trying. The Strib has typically been one of the less agile.

Last week, Rep. Keith Ellison all but apologized for using a Nazi analogy to put in context his take on the Bush Administration’s assault on civil liberties post-9/11. He was predictably jumped on . . . you always get slapped for anything that appears to some to minimize or trivialize the Holocaust or Nazism.

I tend to side with Ellison’s use of the analogy on multiple levels. I like to see our elected representatives owning what they believe instead of just saying what’s broadly palatable. Historical analogies are an effective way to illustrate abstract arguments. I don’t think making an analogy from a lesser evil or ill constitutes minimizing Nazism or the Holocaust. (I’m speaking as a practicing American Jew.) And most of us knew what he meant. Even Ellison’s pal Glenn Beck.

What concerns me is our penchant as a culture to place topics off-limits, as the protectors of my faith would do with Nazi analogies. You couldn’t question the war five years ago and be regarded as patriotic. You can’t question the value of race-based preferences and not be regarded by many as racist. You can’t ask whether religion has done more bad than good in the world without being considered hostile to people of faith. There are sundry other public speech no-go zones as well. And we are poorer as a nation and community for most of them.

I support Keith Ellison’s right to make a sincere point. Not because I agree, but because it’s worth talking about. Which gets me back to square one.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss life in the Twin Cities beyond the realm of consumer culture that define most mspmag.com blogs. Some days it will be heavy, some days it will be trivial, some days it will be macro, some days micro. Hopefully it will always be interesting or entertaining, and occasionally meaningful. And when relevant, I’d like to use it as a forum to earnestly raise impolitic questions with the goal of improving the conversation. I’ll try to post a couple times each week.

And I encourage you to chime in. But we have some rules for that:

Comments must be approved. If you put your first and last name with them (for publication), I will be reluctant to hit delete even if you suggest I must have been picked last for kickball in school. If you prefer to go by a web handle or need to protect your identity for good reason, we will only print your comments if they advance the debate or make an interesting point. Personal attacks and witty rejoinders don’t qualify. My goal is to eliminate much of the clutter and obnoxiousness that litters the blogosphere, even though many serial commenters believe it to be their birthright.

As for me, my politics are best described as eclectic and pragmatic; I am wary of ideology. I’m a Chicago native with more than a quarter-century of history in the Twin Cities. I lord over this site’s restaurant coverage, much of our news and issues coverage, and the print magazine’s City Limits section. I’ve got a wife who works for Target Corp. and two kids with single-digit ages. We live in Minneapolis.