Latest — Thoughts, Ideas & Creations
UPDATED 07/12/26- The Reservation Next Door — From Flyover Country: A Tale of Two Tribes.
- Even Little People Need a Home! — I built them a village.
- The Daycare Bubble — From Flyover Country: How money really moves
- The Mystery of the Vanishing Object — Your feet find it instantly. Then your eyes and fingers can't.
- Technophobia — From Flyover Country: every generation's panic about its own best ideas.
- The Greatest Fireworks Show in History — America turns 250 — and goes absolutely, gloriously, unapologetically all out.
- Happy Birthday, America! Now About Those Skeletons... — NPR reminds us of everything wrong with the founding.
- TEAM ALGAE! — America turns 250. Some people chose to spend the moment protesting on behalf of pond scum.
- Negative Liberties — What the government cannot do — and why that's the whole point.
- The News Is Dead — A digest, fact-check, and analysis of contemporary news sources from 4th Wall.
- Doonesbury and "Pet Sounds" in 1990 — "Brian Wilson is God!"
- Operation Metro Surge Jeopardy — Play with your friends and win!
- They're Going to Every House Anyway — So let Amazon deliver the mail!
- The Incredible Ant — They’re tiny. They’re tireless. And they’d leave you in the dust.
- The Auto Insurance Ad Tsunami — Why every other commercial seems to be Flo, Jake, or a gecko.
- All Summer Long — The New Beach Boys Book — Grab a board and get ready for the ride of your life.
- Avoiding “Flyover Country” — Tangle rationalizes east and left coast biases.
- Father’s Day — What fathers actually want.
- The Great Minnesota Car Wash Bubble — How many new car washes do the Twin Cities really need?
- The Cancer Charity Industrial Complex — Nearly 5,000 organizations. $8 billion a year. How much actually funds a cure?
- Tilly Norwood — The World’s First A.I. Actress.
- I Profile Celebrities for a Living — Nothing prepared her for Tilly Norwood.
- Lucid Dreaming — How pre-sleep treatment with galantamine may stimulate lucid dreaming.
- “Hello Fresh” — A fresh take on the importance of high fiber diets for “Gay Pride” month!
- National Lampoon’s “Lemmings” — 53 years too soon…
- Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden Told Us — “The United States will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.”
- Nick Shirley — Minneapolis SuperHero!
- Spencer Pratt for Mayor — LEGO Los Angeles goes FULL CHAOS!
- New Songs for Old — Suno.com and Revid.ai reimagines a classic R&B song.
The song and story of Minneapolis during “Operation Metro Surge.”
- Spencer Pratt for Mayor II — AI Batman campaign ad for Los Angeles mayor 2026!
- The Miracle of Suno.com — Two 40 year old songs given new life & an oldie but a goodie!
- Stars — 100,000 Stars is a Google Chrome experiment.
- What is “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+”? — Word salad insanity!
- The LEGO “Brick Convention” Goes WOKE! — The lunatics have taken over the asylum.
- Artemis 2 — Amazing views of Earth, Moon and a Solar Eclipse during lunar flyby.
- The One Story Jesus Told That Should Make Christians Uncomfortable
- The “No Kings” Protests Held on March 28, 2026 — Historical Perspectives.
- Tangle — Members Comments — Actual intelligent discourse on important issues!
- What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Do? — Perplexity AI explains how civil disobedience really works.
- Is there a Constitutional right to vote? — Senator John Kennedy Makes The Case For SAVE America Act.
- Tangle — Members Comments — Who let the dogs out?
- Untangling Tangle — Part II — What a Tangled Web We Weave.
- Untangling Tangle — “Why trust us? If I were you, I wouldn’t.” — Isaac Saul
- The Save America Act — When should identification be required — when voting or when shoveling snow in NYC?
- This is Worth Fighting For — A song for Black History Month and America’s 250th birthday.
- Martin Luther King Jr. On Protests and Civil Disobedience — What would MLK say about Operation Metro Surge?
Explore the Archive
Decades of music, writing, family, and curiosities — tap any category to open it.
- Bob the Beachcomber home page
- Bob & the Beachcombers home page
- Beachcomber Bob home page
- Minnesota Music History — A musical career in photos and text
- The Midwest History of Rock & Roll — 1,800+ photos of regional R&R and artists from the ’50s – ’70s on Facebook
- Original Songs — Songs written & recorded
- HITZ on PM Magazine — A WCCO TV broadcast featuring the band HITZ
- The “End of the Endless Summer Tour” — Part I — Bob & the Beachcombers hang up their surfboards
- The “End of the Endless Summer Tour” — Part II — Bob & the Beachcombers hang up their surfboards
- Twenty Years of Beach Party Fun — Graphs and charts of 2,513 shows from 2006 to 2025
- Bringing Beach Party Summertime Fun to the Midwest — With No Town Left Behind!
- AI Generated Family Art — NightCafe Studio Digital Art and Luma Dream Machine videos
- New AI Generated Family Art and Videos — NightCafe Studio Digital Art and Luma Dream Machine videos
- More AI Generated Art & Videos — And a special report on “Where Are They Now?”
- Has America Lost Its Melody? — Something changed in popular music around 2005
- What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? — The rise and fall of David Clayton Thomas
- “A Brian Wilson Tribute” — An excellent hagiography exploring the genius of Brian Wilson by Bob Lefsetz
- Leonid & Friends — Amazing “Chicago” tribute band. Play it loud!
- Billy Joel — And So it Goes — An excellent two-part documentary about the Piano Man on Amazon
- Is Live Music Dead? — Is a choreographed, pre-engineered production really live music?
- The 2026 Grammys — Proof music is getting worse
- Billy Joel · We Didn’t Start the Fire — The 59 Names Mentioned in “We Didn’t Start the Fire”
- The Giants of Ottertail County — Northern Minnesota’s collection of giant statues.
- The Ballad of Jason Davis — A travelogue of Minnesota travel destinations.
- “We Didn’t Start the Fire” 1985–1995 — From the archives!
- “We Didn’t Start the Fire” 2010–2025 — Updated!
- “Goodnight Saigon” — An adaptation of Billy Joel’s song about the Vietnam War
- “Leningrad” — An adaptation of Billy Joel’s song about his shows in Russia and WW II
- “If I Had a Trillion Dollars” — Barenaked Ladies parody
- “American Town” — A parody of Billy Joel’s “Allentown” about the mortgage crisis of 2008
- “Hotel Minnesota” — A parody of “Hotel California”
- “Boats” — A parody of Zac Brown’s “Toes”
- “Blue Donkey Bar” — Hunter Biden’s Lament — A parody of “Pink Pony Club”
- Minnesota NICE vs. Minneapolis ICE — The Video
- Minnesota NICE vs. Minneapolis ICE — The Lyrics
- “Leap of Fools” — The original theme song and video for the “No Kings” protesters!
- Bob & the Beachcombers — A playlist of the Beachcombers band videos
- “Minnesotaville” — A playlist of nine Minnesotaville songs by Bob & the Beachcombers
- Gangbusters — The Blues Brothers show
- Gangbusters — “Sunday Morning Fever — Where Did the Disco?”
- Monroe Wright III — “Memories of the Mills Brothers” and “The Bachelors”
- Cedar Avenue Live — Short videos performing at the Amsterdam Bar
- Riding the Root River Trail — Biking in Lanesboro
- The WorldWide Scam Network — The original Laundry CD parody from 1997
- The WWSN Lifewave Scam Website — That prompted a 137 page lawsuit in Federal District Court
- Graphic Novel — WWSN vs Travelogia.com MLM Scam — And the $7.6 million dollar lawsuit (spoiler alert — they lost!)
- River of Dreams — A philosophical website merging religion, science and philosophy.
- Dome Sweet Dome — Geodesic domes and “The Sphere” in Las Vegas
- Music, Memories & Madness — My Substack music blog
- Planning a Wedding? — You have options!
- Beachcomber Bob Seniors Show Upgrade — New music, new props, and new beach party fun!
- Beachcomber Bob “Back to the ’50s” Upgrade — Rockin’ the Oldies was never more fun!
- Stalked By a Rock & Roll Fan! — She warned me, “Don’t let your wife read this!”
- Beachcomber Bob “Tribute to Elvis” Upgrade — A new & improved Elvis show!
- “I Am Iron Man” — Not quite, but I’ve got a high tech pacemaker…
- The “/now” Page is Live! — Modeled upon Derek Sivers — saying what I’d tell a friend I hadn’t seen in a year.
- CNN — News of the Future — A parody of the CNN network
- Saturday Night Live Predicts the Future — With help from a talking dog…
- “Grinched For Good!” — The Wicked Witch of the West reformed; why can’t the Grinch?
- Grokipedia is Here — The AI Encyclopedia that ends Wikipedia drama
- It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem — The New York Times
- The Ukrainian Crisis — It’s Not All Putin’s Fault
- Mr. Maher Goes to Washington — Kid Rock, Bill Maher and President Trump at the White House
- “Larry David’s Dinner With Hitler” — Bob Lefsetz warns, “We’re going to be slaughtered like all those Jews in the forties!”
- “Tesla Backlash” — Music blogger Bob Lefsetz attacks Elon Musk
- Lefsetz Letters — A blog challenging the political nonsense of music and entertainment blogger Bob Lefsetz
- Do Rich People Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes?
- Dueling perspectives on the Ukraine–Russia War — Taking Tangle to Task
- “House of Dynamite” — Who’s going to light the fuse?
- How America’s Broken Promises May Lead to a New Cold War — Newly declassified documents
- Self-Deportation? — Stay in the U.S. and move to sanctuary cities. Everybody wins!
- Please, Mr. Oilman… Tell me how the wind is bad for the environment?
- How Wikipedia Got Captured — Leftist editors & foreign influence by John Stossel
- Misleading. Biased. Exposed. — Media offender of the week
- “What is an American?” — An essay by Vivek Ramaswamy
- Tangle Troll Claims ICE Protests Peaceful — “NOT ONE window broken, not one thing disturbed”
- Conversations With God — An uncommon dialogue revisited
- What’s the hardest part about getting older that no one ever talks about at all? — Excerpts From Quora
- The SolTec Lounge Chair — Picking up some of those good vibrations!
- Growing Old — There’s a discrimination nobody talks about.
- Best Quotes From “Stranger In a Strange Land”
- Gods Don’t Exist Because Gods Can’t Exist — The challenge of believing in logically incoherent beings
- God — The Quantum Mechanic — What kind of God invents a universe like this?
- Alan Jackson — “The Older I Get” — An anthem for Baby Boomers across America!
- The Physics of Consciousness — A simple formula creates the universe.
- On Consciousness and the Soul — “Everything begins with consciousness.”
- What if we existed in an alternate reality? — The phrase for instantly manifesting what you want.
- The Layer Above Reality — How the Universe Chooses to Exist.
- The Illusion of Matter — A simple formula creates the universe.
- The Clock Suggests Time is Moving. Physics Suggests It Never Was. — If time doesn’t flow, what actually changes?
- 5 Common Beliefs Modern Physics Says Are Wrong — Common misconceptions.
- Something Is Wrong With Black Holes. Physicists Know It. — Black holes should delete everything. They don’t.
- Is This the Last Invention? — The Future of Artificial Intelligence
- What is the best explanation of the 4th dimension you have ever heard of?
- The Many Worlds Theory — What is meant by the term “You create your reality?”
- What is “Grok”? — And what is Elon Musk’s AI Grok?
- Riding the Bucking Bronco of Consciousness — Hanging on for dear life, or enjoying the ride?
- Quantum Mechanics & Cosmology — The universe may have infinite dimensions
- The Cosmic Symphony — Why the Laws of Physics Sound Like Music
- PACK — Empowering Families Through the Joy of Food Service
- Trumpy Homes — Custom built homes and basement finishing
- Frontline Firearms and Training — Private instruction for individuals, couples, and groups
- Monroe Wright — The Twin Cities best kept secret!
- The Rockin’ Hollywoods — The best oldies band in the Midwest!
- Loss Prevention Associates — Precondition surveys and vibration monitoring services
- Dave Olsen Photography — Professional photography services
- Brad James — The Voice — Professional voice services
- The GITS System — Group Improving Target System
- Burtis Family Christmas Cards 1989–2025
- Burtis Family Videos on YouTube — A playlist of online family videos
- Burtis Early Family Videos — Six large files of family videos from the 1950s.
- Burtis/Stadick Family Tree — Going back to Alberto Alberti in 1290 with 3,141 relatives and growing!
- “Love Letters” — Letters sent from Dad to Mom while in the army
- Mixbook Family Photo Albums — Semi-annual family photo books
- “Worms” — A story by young Shawn Burtis
- “Where’s Fond?” — A fishy story by young Shawn Burtis
- Our 2025 Family Christmas Card — Merry Christmas from our families to yours!