Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning … 

SIXTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: “The end of Arlen Specter.” That’s what Bachmann predicts as she swipes back at the senator from Pennsylvania for commanding her to act like a lady (audio). [Hot Dish Politics]

ELY: The end of bear privacy. Webcam promising view of live birth in bear’s den draws thousands of peering human eyeballs. [Fox 9]

STATE CAPITOL: Ethics first? Gov. Pawlenty’s PAC lets him skirt state limits on taking special-interest money during the legislative session. [Minnesota Public Radio]

STATEWIDE: Build a wall. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is higher than Minnesota’s by 1.3 percentage points — the biggest gap in 22 years. [Smart Politics]

MINNEAPOLIS: “Purple and Gold.” Prince issues a song for the Minnesota Vikings; Mayor R.T. Rybak wagers local CDs by Brother Ali, Mason Jennings and the Minnesota Beatle Project. [Fox9; Gimme Noise]

STATE CAPITOL: Dick Cheney would take that bet. A gubernatorial Facebook war prompts suggestion that Pawlenty agree to be Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s runningmate if the New Orleans Saints beat the Vikings. [Associated Press]

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning … 

MINNEAPOLIS: “Obama has let us down.” Eleven arrested as marchers stopped downtown traffic, protesting the president’s escalation of the Afghan war. [FOX 9]

SIXTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Maureen Reed is primary-bound. She’ll try for the DFL Party endorsement, but the Independence Party that once tapped her for lieutenant governor won’t cross-endorse. [MinnPost]

ST. PAUL: High-living Tom Petters faces possible life in prison. The jury found the Ponzi schemer guilty on 20 counts. [Minnesota Public Radio]

MISSISSIPPI RIVER: Barges can’t take a few snowflakes? The shipping season ended after 254 days. [Associated Press]

FRAZEE: State ought to help towns tap wind power. Iowa’s ahead on alternative energy, said DFL gubernatorial candidate Matt Entenza. [Frazee-Vergas Forum]

HIBBING AND MINNEAPOLIS: Prince and Bob Dylan to vie for best rock vocal performance Grammy. Native sons’ nominated songs’ titles are already fighting: Prince’s “Dreamer” vs. Dylan’s “Beyond Here Lies Nothing.” [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

Image: PiM/YouTube

State Rep. Paul Thissen may be seeking the DFL Party’s gubernatorial endorsement, but he sounded down on the whole party thing in a karaoke duet with his wife, Karen Wilson, over the insistent synth tones of Prince’s “1999.”

It was just one of the Candidate Karaoke acts at an Urban Embassy event last Friday that Politics in Minnesota has preserved for eternity on YouTube.

“Parties weren’t meant to last,” sang Thissen in his best basso.

Later in the video, Thissen switches to spoken word and knocks the very decade to which “1999″ belongs:

Too often our party, the Democrats, look to the past. They look back to the ’70s and the ’80s for solutions. But Minnesota is very different than it was in the ’70s and ’80s. I think we need a governor that’s going to look 2015 and 2020 and 2025.

Which really doesn’t seem in the spirit of Prince’s message:

Yeah, they say two thousand zero zero party over
Oops out of time
So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999

Photo: Hennepin Cty Library

The bells atop the Minneapolis City Hall tower rang out Michael Jackson tunes on Friday in memory of the pop star who died on Thursday. Dan Wascoe performed five Jackson songs: “We Are the World,” “Ben,” “You Are Not Alone,” “I’ll Be There,” and “Gone Too Soon.” Audio and video after the jump.

Friday carillon concerts at midday are a weekly tradition, but such memorials are rare. Frank Sinatra’s death in 1998 inspired a similar program of signature tunes, and the bells played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” after Kirby Puckett died in 2006.

Wascoe, a former Star Tribune writer, explained to the Minnesota Independent (via a Facebook message) how he came to select those five songs from Jackson’s oeuvre:

For the bells concert, I developed a list of potential songs from several folks who know Jackson’s hits, including Tony Hill, the producer of the bells concerts; Baibi Vegners, my musical partner in a duo we call Nuance/a duo, and Nicole Wascoe Bauman, my elder daughter.

I culled that list using two main criteria: First, would they be recognizable when played on the bells? (The overtones of the 15 bells can turn some tunes, particularly uptempos, into musical mush.) Second, could I learn them well enough overnight to render decent versions during Friday’s concert?

I knew a couple of the tunes already and listened to the rest on YouTube. Because of the limits of the bells and the tiny keyboard from which they’re played, I had to determine which keys I could transpose the song into. I summoned the lyrics to the songs on the internet, then wrote above the words the letter name for each note  as heard on YouTube. Then I went to the piano to figure out how to transpose them for the bells.

It was something of a scramble because I am more of a Sinatra/Nat Cole fan than an MJ fan. But I guess folks who listened on Friday did recognize the tunes, so I consider that a small victory given the time pressure.

In a way it was fun to work against a tight deadline again. I was a Star Tribune reporter and columnist for 40 years before retiring two years ago this week.

Wascoe mentioned that there’s a great YouTube video of Jackson performing “Gone Too Soon” at President Clinton’s 1992 inaugural gala.

Here’s audio of Wascoe playing “I’ll Be There” on the City Hall bells, as recorded on the street (you’ll hear the passing traffic) by Jake Mohan and posted at his blog, The Dependent Clause:

And here’s a KARE-11 news report that shows Wascoe playing the tiny keyboard that controls the tower bells:

Minneapolis’ City Hall bells playing Jackson and Sinatra is reminiscent of the old nursery rhyme ”Oranges and Lemons“ about the bells of London, which ring out pop tunes as re-imagined in the Clash song “Clash City Rockers“:

You owe me a move, say the bells of St. Groove
Come on and show me, say the bells of Old Bowie
When I am fitter, say the bells of Gary Glitter
No one but you and I, say the bells of Prince-Far-I

(Prince-Far-I being a reggae DJ, not the Minneapolis-born pop star currently known as Prince, or the son of Michael Jackson who is also named Prince.)

Roberts’ advice to Reagan included this:

It is also important to consider the precedent that would be set by such a letter. In today’s [Washington] Post there were already reports that some youngsters were turning away from Mr. Jackson in favor of a newcomer who goes by the name “Prince,” and is apparently planning a Washington concert. Will he receive a Presidential letter? How will we decide which performers do and which do not?

“The whole thing’s a scream,” observes David Weigel at our sister site, The Washington Independent. It’s well worth reading the Post’s full account for other delicious tidbits. For example, while dissing Jackson, Roberts judged Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” tour to be commendably “patriotic” —  suggesting that Roberts completely missed the album’s undercurrent of cynicism and doubt about the country under Reagan.

Strange that he would miss that, considering that he’s apparently a close reader of Springsteen’s hero, Dylan. In what’s thought to be the first occasion on which pop music invaded the sacrosanct realm of high court opinions, Roberts cited a Dylan lyric in an opinion last June:

The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).

Roberts’ predecessor as chief justice, William Rehnquist, liked light-opera legends Gilbert and Sullivan so much so that he not only quoted them in opinions but added fussy accessories to his judicial robes that looked like knock-offs from Gilbert and Sullivan costumes.

No word on whether Roberts wears a mid-’80s-style Springsteen bandana tied around his head while crafting opinions in chambers. Actually, Prince has provided a more judicial look in some phases of his career.

And Prince also gets political from time to time, most recently working federal bailouts and North Minneapolis’ progress (or lack thereof) into a jam on his latest CD. Indeed, at the time Roberts began writing his Jackson briefs, “Purple Rain” was days away from being released (the release date was June 25, 1984 — 25 years to the day before Jackson’s death) so youngsters would still have been digging earlier songs off his previous record, “Controversy”, including one called “Annie Christian” that mentions Reagan:

Annie Christian was a whore always looking for some fun
being good was such a bore, so she bought a gun
she killed John Lennon, shot him down cold
she tried to kill Reagan, everybody say gun control (gun control!)

Here’s a video of Prince, hand in pocket, performing a punked-up version of “Annie Christian” at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 21, 1981.

Two junior high schools will continue to put a laptop computer into the hands of every student, despite the school district’s $5 million budget shortfall. An outcry coaxed officials to save the “1:1″ program at Oak-Land and Stillwater junior highs from possible extinction. District 834′s catering to youngsters’ digital desires doesn’t stop there. Officials plan to spend remaining technology funds on upgrades so students’ personal wireless gadgets will work better on campus.

Elsewhere in Minnesota headlines this morning …

ROCHESTER: State’s take makes parking tickets twice as pricey. With a state surcharge increasing by $8, the fee that locals pay will almost double … but it’s not a tax. [Rochester Post Bulletin]

ALBERT LEA: Teen didn’t get rights read, lawyer says. Police say they were interviewing, not interrogating, her about alleged abuse of patients at the nursing home where she worked. [Albert Lea Tribune]

MINNEAPOLIS: Northland Poster Collective to close up shop. Pro-labor and progressive, the producer of t-shirts, buttons and posters will fold this month. “After three decades of working to undermine Wall Street, it finally fell on us,” founder says. [Minneapolis Labor Review]

OWATONNA: Outdoor swimming arrives after 60 years. A long-sought public pool and water park opens this week, despite some donors to the $3.7 million project being $80,000 behind on their pledge payments. [Owatonna People's Press]

HIBBING: Newspaper to be indefinitely editor-free after bosses, citing financial pressures, give editor an involuntary early retirement — a reminder, he writes, that print-media watchdogs must be fed (from dwindling advertising income) or their eyes will drift shut. [Hibbing Daily Tribune; Minnesota Brown]

BLOOMINGTON: Mazarati revs up for reunion. The local 1980s act that Prince coached to the Top 40 (they recorded a de-countrified version of his composition, “Kiss”) rehearses for a gig this week at the Minneapolis bar where they started. [Twin Cities Daily Planet]

“Ol’ Skool Company”

“Sometimes It Snows in April” (audio only)

Watch more Dailymotion videos on AOL Video

Videos and audio link after the jump, with Pawlenty missing a chance to promote Duluth and Klobuchar missing a chance to make a gratuitous Prince reference (we help her with that). 

Pawlenty, on NPR, had some discouraging words about the stimulus package’s prospects but volunteered that Minnesota has a list of transportation projects ready to go in the next 90 days, including Hwy. 610 in the northern suburbs.

By now, Pawlenty is eschewing his formerly wholesale rejection of the stimulus package for piecemeal pooh-poohing. On NPR you could hear him spit out mild contempt for decadent projects proposed for the state’s recreation and related tourist industries:

We had cities requesting snowmaking equipment, and that was Duluth, for something called Spirit Mountain outside of Duluth.

(Ahem, Governor? This is where you make a brief aside for the national listening audience about how great it is to visit Spirit Mountain and Duluth.) Anyway, back to the bad fun:

We had another community requesting funds to rehabilitate a country club at a golf course. We had another city that wanted to build some tennis courts. So those aren’t the kinds of things in this time of crisis that would be priority measures.

Pawlenty recently joined the chorus warning that the stimulus could result in a revival of that dread 1970s trend, stagflation:

You could see the whiplash effect of this being inflation, or stagflation even, in the intermediate term, so if people are going to rewrite the history, I would suggest they look at it not just one year out but three and five years out as well.

Tuesday was Pawlenty’s second appearance on Maddow’s show. The first time, Nov. 3, he opened with the announcement “I’m available, I’m available” (to go on the show, he meant, although the context of the ensuing interview was also his availability for higher office in the future). This time he greeted Maddow with the Goldie Hawn-ish endearment, “You’re funny.”

Here is the video clip of Pawlenty’s appearance on Maddow’s show Tuesday night:

Maddow’s online video archive indicates three previous appearances by Klobuchar (Sept. 17 and Oct. 8 and 31). A highlight of this one was the DFL senator’s prediction about how long it will take for Minnesota’s Senate delegation to be complete.  Here’s a brief transcription and Monday’s video clip:

KLOBUCHAR: My prediction, Rachel, is that we will have a new senator by the time the ice melts on Lake Minnetonka, which that is predicted to be April 11.

MADDOW: Is that the sort of thing where you guys throw a cinder block into it to really help things along?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, oftentimes people dive into it to show how tough they are in the cold. But anyway, hopefully we will get this done in a month or so because the trial’s been going on. It could be even sooner.

That may be the first time in 25 years that jumping into Lake Minnetonka has penetrated the nation’s consciousness. The last time, of course, was Prince’s “initiation” of Apollonia Vanity (that’s a character’s name, not a character flaw) in the movie “Purple Rain.” Here’s a transcript of that scene (a variation on the dog-bite routine from “The Pink Panther”):

PRINCE: You have to purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.

APOLLONIA: What?!

PRINCE: You have to purify yourself in Lake Minnetonka.

[APOLLONIA disrobes and gets ready to jump in.]

PRINCE: Hey, wait a minute that’s– [splash!] Uh, hold it.

APOLLONIA: What?!

PRINCE: That ain’t Lake Minnetonka.

YouTube has a video clip of the scene but it is not safe for work and not – repeat: not – safe for re-enactment by Norm Coleman or Al Franken, nor indeed by any of their attorneys, notably Joe Friedberg, Ben Ginsberg, David Lillehaug and Marc Elias.

But if they do, The UpTake will carry it live.