I showed up last night at the official MOB event at Town Hall Brewery at 5:20, and there were no bloggers to be seen on the patio or in the bar. I just figured everyone was being fashionably late. No, actually, what I was thinking was this was some kind of rookie initiation prank to see who can be fooled, similar to the “free turkey” giveaway prank the Vikings vets pull on the rookies each year.

Since it was a nice evening I decided to park it on the patio anyway. While waiting for bloggers to show I heard someone at a nearby table asking why the military couldn’t have just dropped food and water from helicopters to the people near the SuperDome. The juxtaposition of the question so close to my thoughts of turkeys immediately reminded me of the WKRP in Cincinnatti episode where the station decided to put on a Thanksgiving promotion by dropping turkeys to people in a parking lot – from a helicopter. I can’t remember for sure if the turkeys were live or frozen, but the result was disastrous either way, and the scene was perfectly played because the television writers knew the power of radio; they showed the cast sitting in the station listening to the broadcast of the “drop” as narrated over the air by newsman Les Nessman, “Oh, the humanity! The humanity!” The writers left the scene to the viewers imagination, as I have just left it to yours. Also for your imagination is what I may or may not have said to the person at the nearby table.

Anyway, it was but a few moments before I was joined by the eponymous Martin Andrade and Barry from Water Cooler Wisdom and Larry from…actually, I don’t know if Larry has a blog, but he’s not short on opinions. Minutes later Learned Foot and V-Toed Bill showed up to represent the Kool-Aid Report, though their shirts made it appear as if they were about to start representing Hawaiian Punch instead. Soon Swiftee from Pair O’Dice and his wife Trisha (Tricia?) were there as well. It was the first time I’d met Swiftee, and, well, he looks pretty much like I’ve always imagined him, except he wasn’t wearing a pirate bandana around his head.

There was still no sign of our hosts, Mitch or the Fraters, but our patio group was growing and having a great time, especially when David Strom and Margaret Martin showed up from Our House. David was carrying a case that looked as if it held his 8-track tape collection. Instead, he was packing heat – a wide selection of cigars, from which he offered me one. It was great – and I was so honored that I’m not going to wash my hair for a week! Once I managed to keep it lit and my eyes stopped watering I saw Sandy from the MAWB Squad, who introduced me to Peg from What If, who I’d never met.

Then the non-blogging conservative radio host Bob Davis arrived and shortly after that Mitch Berg came out; it appears a small MOB group was gathered in the back room of the bar, wondering where everyone else was. Well, sorry, but there wasn’t a sign or anything pointing out where to go (which, given our proximity to the U, was probably a good thing from a security standpoint), but you can’t really expect an independent group like this to automatically go where they are expected anyway.

The announcement that a beachhead had been established on the patio brought King Banaian out. He wanted to usher everyone back inside – until Stromie gave him a cigar, and the Hennepin County Smoking Ban succeeded in changing behavior after all.

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