Yesterday Colleen and I made our annual trek over to the Walker Art Center to see the British Television Advertising Awards in the beautiful McGuire Theater.

Before the show, we spent some time going through the galleries, including the new Benches & Binoculars exhibit. The layout reminded me of museums we saw in the UK and was well done. Be sure to pick up the handouts if you go – they have a lot of great info in them.

After the galleries, we had lunch at Wolfgang Puck’s 20.21, which was surprisingly crowded for that time of day. Colleen tried the tasting menu and selected pot stickers, salmon and chocolate cake (with a 20•21 bellini to drink). I had the Singapore style street noodles with masala braised short ribs and the cookie sampler for dessert. Pastry chef Corinne Sherbert helped us select the desserts and brought them to our table. They were all good, but I really liked the cheesecake brownies.

As for the awards, it seemed to be an average year. I had already seen the advertisement of the year online and didn’t think it was very good. As usual, the public service announcements were shocking and effective, while VW had some of my favorites:

The show lasts about 80 minutes and tickets are $10 for the general public ($8 for Walker members). The last screenings are on Saturday, January 2, but many of the remaining dates are already sold out.

Colleen and I went to the Walker Art Center on Sunday to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary by watching a favorite of ours, the annual British Television Advertising Awards.

The 2008 edition had a number of ads that we liked a lot, but here is my favorite (semi-NSFW):

Many of the ads are funny, but as always, the PSA’s were hard hitting:

The best commercial of the year was a let-down, as we’ve seen it before many times. One other weird thing happened – during the show, the cane of a person sitting behind me slipped and hit me square on the back of my head. It scared me more than anything, but it was one of those canes with a brass duck head, so the impact was more than just a love tap. Ouch!

My wife says she’s never seen so many geeky men so excited about anything before. Yesterday we went to the Science of Minnesota to see the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit.

They had a large selection of props and costumes from the various movies and a number of science-themed kiosks to explain the science behind the fiction. We also waited for the 30-minute presentation on robots that featured that “shiny guy that worries a lot,” but skipped the extra-fee hyperspace simulator.

The selection of Star Wars items in the gift shop was a little disappointing, focusing on a lot of regular junky toys, Halloween costumes and, rather surprisingly, a bunch of Family Guy Blue Harvest items. Not much in the way of exhibit guides or merchandise specific to the Science Museum either. They were selling unwrapped Star Wars trading cards, though, for $8.50 per pack (with a warning to *not* eat the gum).

Worth a visit if your childhood included Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy. Anakin et al. don’t count…

UPDATE: Photo gallery of low-res iPhone shots

Last Friday I picked up a print we finally had framed after about twelve years in storage. We picked up this Frank Kozik print on one of our visits to London (I believe at the no-longer-open Vinyl Experience store off of Oxford Street). It’s a signed, limited edition (28 out of 75) print of the Kansas City band Season to Risk’s 1992 self-titled album cover.

Didn’t know that at the time–just thought it looked sweet…

How cool is this? Purchased on eBay last week and now a part of the office hockey shrine. Now I need to get the McDonald’s Canada mini hockey stick collection for 2007-08…

Viva La Canada!

Colleen and I went to see Warm Beer Cold Women at the Guthrie’s Dowling Theater this weekend. The theater was set up the exact reverse way from when we saw Phil Callen in Pen this fall, which threw me off at first.

I’ve liked Tom Waits for a long time, but realized I’m not much of a Waits expert. This show had lots of songs I’d never heard before, but we still had a good time. Katy Hays was our favorite performer, but Dennis Curley had his moments and Robert Berdahl (who also wrote, directed and produced) did an admirable job with his torn Achilles and crutches.

The musicians were very strong and we really liked Dan Chouinard on keyboards and Mark Stillman on accordion (his entrance at the beginning of Rain Dogs was a highlight of the evening).

Complete list of songs from the program after the jump. (more…)