Rambling Rhodes

Just For the Hell of it

Note: Extra points taken down, because the long title was screwing with the blog layout, or at least my layout.

Nick Coleman. You know him. You love him. And fisking him is my hobby.

MY SYMPATHIES TO THE PEOPLE OF BURNSVILLE AND BLOOMINGTON AS THEY COME UNDER THE FLIGHT PATHS! HOW'S IT GOING, FOLKS?

FINE, NICK! HOW ARE YOU? ARE YOU STILL A CYNICAL OLD BASTARD WHO HATES AND EXPECTS EVERYONE TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT EVERYTHING AND CAN'T WRITE?! YOU ARE? OKAY!

WHAT?? WHAT DID YOU SAY?!!

FINE, NICK! HOW ARE YOU? ARE YOU STILL A CYNICAL OLD BASTARD WHO HATES AND EXPECTS EVERYONE TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT EVERYTHING AND CAN'T WRITE?! YOU ARE? OKAY!

Oops. Sorry for shouting. People who live in the jet canyons by the airport -- I spent 18 years near Lake Nokomis in south Minneapolis (I KNOW STUFF!) -- shout a lot. It's the only way we can get anyone to pass the salt.

Wha? Pass the salt? That's the best he could come up with?

I SAID, "PASS THE SALT!"

PEPPER?!

As a Ryan-Rhodes-Knows-Stuff aside, I'd like to note that two summers ago, my cousin was married in a Twin Cities suburb where airport traffic buzzed overhead with regularity. It was unusual at first, but I became used to it pretty quickly, like within an hour. I asked several other wedding attendees who lived in the area what they thought of the noise. Their answers were pretty much universal: "You get used to it, and it's a great neighborhood even with the planes."

Thursday the Metropolitan Airports Commission opened Rolling Thunder, a brand-new $800 million runway that will send thousands of jets a year screeching over Bloomington. Apparently the commission was unhappy with being hated only in Minneapolis, Richfield and Mendota Heights.

Gee, either that, or they recognized that one of the few ways to expand an airport in the heart of the Metro area was to open a runway that would inevitably inconvenience SOMEONE. I imagine in Nick's mind, the obvious and best course of action would have been to open a new runway in Iowa somewhere. Damned if he could explain how best to get there to catch your flight, but that's fodder for another Crappy Coleman Column (CCC).

The complaint number is 612-726-9411. But don't bother calling. They play recordings of citizens' complaints at cocktail parties, just to laugh at us and make funny telephone jokes:

This is what passes as Nick Coleman humor, in case you didn't get it. . . you know, ALL OF YOU.

"Airport Complaint Department here. What? What was that you said? Hello?! Sorry, I can't hearrr you! What's all that racket in the background? It sounds like airplanes! Ha Ha!"

Nick is an interesting man to talk about flippant feedback. My co-worker, Caroline, once asked him (before we knew he was a dink, by the way) if he'd be willing to speak to a class of journalism students. He responded to the tune of: "I don't think my editors would appreciate me taking a day off." Which, you know, fine, but do you honestly think what Coleman writes takes anywhere near a day? I could scrawl out his meandering nonsense in 20 minutes. Hell, it only takes me 10 minutes to fisk the man, which sounds kinky, but you know what I mean. For other examples of Coleman's flippant response history, see here and here.

You may think I'm being cynical.

SCREEEEEEEEECHHHHHH! Nick Coleman? Cynical? No way! In other news, water is wet, the sky is blue and humans breathe air!

But these are the same political cronies and has-beens who burned $100,000 of public funds last month on a party to celebrate the new runway.

Has-beens? Since they're currently on the Metropolitan Airport Commission, wouldn't they be considered "Are-Nows?" Hard to completely defend the $100k party, I'll admit, but a little pomp and circumstance is warranted after the completion of such a project, and since $100k comes in at about .00125 percent or so of the total project cost, well, I tend to give it a little leeway.

UPDATE: As reader Mr. Cranky points out: Nick should check his facts. The MAC had a bit of help paying for their opening. He presents this.

Ready for Takeoff is being coordinated by the MAC with sponsorships by Piper Jaffray, Bear Stearns, ABM Janitorial Services, HMS Host, Faegre and Benson LLP, Northwest Airlines, Sun Country Airlines, HNTB and Padilla Speer Beardsley.

It was pretty hard to find - it's from a list of the MAC's press releases. I can see how Nick missed it. After all, why look something up when you *Know Stuff*.

"Whoo-eee! Wait'll Eagan gets a taste of cargo jet fumes at midnight! Take that, suckers!"

Whoo-eee! Wait'll the Twin Cities starts realizing the financial benefits of increased airport revenue and efficiency due to an expanded airport! Take that, er. . . suckers!

The commission is tone deaf. The rest of us are getting deaf the old-fashioned MAC way:

"Tora, Tora, Tora!"

What the fucking fuck? Does Nick even know what he's mad about any more? I imagine him in his Star-Tribune office, gazing out the window, watching humanity bustling about, and he just kind of picks at random what he's decided to hate that day:

"Dagnabbit, I hate how people spit their gum on the street!"

"Consarn it, people who smoke are sure smoking smokers who smoke!"

"Airplanes make noise, damn it. Noise, I tells ya! Pass the salt!"

Plus, I used to have nightmares about a 200-pound chunk of blue ice from a 747 biffy coming through my roof, crushing me in bed: "Minneapolis man killed by falling doo-doo."

Biffy? Doo-doo? Ah, right, this is a CCC. Such fantastic, humor-filled prose is expected whilst reading a CCC. Still, can you imagine the Strib reader suffering that could have been avoided had Coleman been taken out by a frozen chunk of airplane waste years ago? Such a pity.

The new runway opened with a replica of the plane Charles Lindbergh flew to France. How long will it take Minnesota to get over the philandering fly boy who left illegitimate kinder all over Der Fatherland?

Those damned American icons! I hate 'em! I hate 'em so much!

How, exactly, did the runway open with a replica of a plane, by the way? Did it cut the ceremonial tape? Did it give a speech? Coleman's not much on explaining such things; he's more interested in calling down fire and brimstone on an American icon who helped usher in the era of international aviation. Coleman is a sad, angry little man who's not even sure what he's sad and angry about.

I really hope people write letters to the editor regarding that horrendous, spiteful, paragraph.

They also had a symbolic take-off by a Northwest jet with no passengers. Hmm: An empty Northwest flight to nowhere?

Maybe that's too symbolic.

Kind of like an empty Coleman column that goes nowhere, which is probably symbolic of the man himself. Maybe TOO symbolic.

Still, I have fond memories of my years under the bombing run. Such as the Sunday barbecue when an elderly relative dived beneath the picnic table to escape what he thought was a Japanese Zero at Pearl.

Ahh, so Coleman's codgerly antics are genetic! That explains a lot. Not to engage in too much speculation here, but does anyone else think that Coleman's anecdote seems a little too. . . oh, I don't know. . . unbelievable?

And I raised my first three kids under the flight path, and watched them grow. I wish I could have heard what their names were.

Oh, come on Nick. You know their names: SALT! PEPPER! PEAS!

Oh, well.

I live in peaceful St. Paul now. Sometimes, at night, I hear the whistle of a far-off freight train.

Oh, for those halcyon days of the iron horse. . .

I love that. No freight train ever flies over my house.

Perhaps someday, Nick, if we're lucky, one will fly INTO your house in a fantasically ironic and improbably coincidence. Hey, at least then your name will be in the newspaper and people will actually WANT to read about you.

Posted by Ryan at October 28, 2005 06:19 AM | TrackBack