July 20th, 2026 I’m exhausted (physically, emotionally, and heat), satisfied, and still basking in the afterglow of the third Minnesota Yacht Club Festival. I didn’t attend the inaugural weekend in 2024 and experienced immediate regret. Last year, I went on Saturday because my favorite band Fall Out Boy (who wrote the song “Saturday”) were headliningContinue reading “Minnesota Yacht Club 2026”
Author Archives: dennisvogen
Book Fair For Grown-Ups 2026
July 11th, 2026 The Book Fair For Grown-Ups and the Inbound Brewery team knocked it out of the park again. Despite the heavy heat, spirits I encountered were high and living their best Scholastic-coded lives. I took notes! • The new space was warranted and much-appreciated. I sounded like an old man when I recountedContinue reading “Book Fair For Grown-Ups 2026”
Don’t Think Twice
June 7th, 2026 As a born-and-raised Minnesotan and a self-taught musician, I made a solemn teenage vow to myself to see two artists live in concert: Prince and Bob Dylan. I saw Prince in 2004; a manager at Chili’s had an extra ticket to one of his Musicology album release shows and invited little ol’Continue reading “Don’t Think Twice”
Fight Song
July 3rd, 2026 I saw a t-shirt today that made me sad. It also served as an important statement on the state of this country during our birthday this weekend. The shirt itself was joyously racist and aggressively obnoxious; in other words, it well-represented the administration and its supporters. It’s not always a shirt; sometimesContinue reading “Fight Song”
In The Hunt
June 29th, 2026 Being weeks out from graduation now, the first question people usually ask when they see me in the wild is: “How’s the job hunt going?” My answer is always succinct and honest: it is a nightmare out here. It is a daily humiliation, a habitual humbling, a constant experience of rejection andContinue reading “In The Hunt”
Dual
June 17th, 2026 I don’t know what I am. Zen Buddhism says that in our absolute reality, each of us are the whole universe and nothing simultaneously; in our individual, relative versions of reality, however, I believe the entire point of our existence is to discover who we actually are before we’re gone. Usually whenContinue reading “Dual”
World Cup 2026
June 12th, 2026 I’m so sorry if you see me in the next five weeks because my personality will be, largely, the World Cup (though, depending on your opinion of me, this may be better than whatever my normal personality is). I’ve always had a complicated relationship with soccer; I have both hated it andContinue reading “World Cup 2026”
SpringCon 2026
June 6th, 2026 I know it’s been a long time between conventions for me when there’s so much to catch up on! There was rarely a moment I wasn’t in conversation with an old friend, a new fan, or a random passerby today. I missed this community so much and there were moments I feltContinue reading “SpringCon 2026”
Ceramic Squirrel Cookie Jar
May 31st, 2026 I know that a surefire way to experience heartbreak in this life is to have attachments; this hard-earned knowledge hasn’t stopped me from keeping my mom in a ceramic squirrel cookie jar. A beautiful, diseased tree that lived behind our home was cut down on Friday. Its branches held a dray thatContinue reading “Ceramic Squirrel Cookie Jar”
Not So Fast: My Time At DCTC
May 15th, 2026 “Wow, it went so fast!” This is the most common response I receive when I tell someone that I graduate from school this month. And, with all due respect, this has not been my experience at all. No, this has been two of the longest years of my life, in the veryContinue reading “Not So Fast: My Time At DCTC”
