MPLS: The Place That I Like Best

A few rules of the Gooniverse were violated yesterday, and I think we all just need to go back in time and try again.

• The Mississippi and anything related to it is invincible. Look, even Mark Twain (kinda) said so:

It is strange how little has been written about the Upper Mississippi. The river below St. Louis has been described time and again, and it is the least interesting part. One can sit on the pilot-house for a few hours and watch the low shores, the ungainly trees and the democratic buzzards, and then one might as well go to bed. One has seen everything there is to see. Along the Upper Mississippi every hour brings something new. There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods and villages--everything one could desire to amuse the children. Few people every think of going there, however. Dickens, Corbett, Mother Trollope and the other discriminating English people who 'wrote up' the country before 1842 had hardly an idea that such a stretch of river scenery existed. Their successors have followed in their footsteps, and as we form our opinions of our country from what other people say of us, of course we ignore the finest part of the Mississippi.

• And nothing bad happens in Minneapolis unless there's some serious Liquor Lyle's involved.

So Minneapolis and your city full of fantastically wonderful people, you're in our thoughts today.