ItemWorld: How about potholders?

Leather Lexus heading to Texas Just four years ago, Tom Edwards and his 12-year-old grandson decided to create their first art car. Now Edwards, 66, of Minneapolis, is a good-sized cheese in the art-car world. Saturday he'll make his third appearance at the giant art-car parade in Houston, which features 250 cars and nearly 200,000 spectators. (The Minneapolis parade, threatened this year by funding woes, is the nation's second-biggest.) Edwards' "Genuine Leather Moover IV" is a Lexus covered in scrap leather. He further pimps his ride with strings of lights and a pair of flame-spewing tubes that stick 4 feet out of the sunroof. Way to represent, Gramps. How about potholders?

In honor of Mother's Day, I.W. would like to tip its hat to Joan Mondale, who despite being named Humanitarian of the Year this week by the Fashion Group and being married to former vice president, senator and ambassador Walter Mondale, is still capable of making classic, down-home Mom Statements. The Mondales recently moved from a large Kenwood house to a downtown loft. When asked if her kids --Ted, Eleanor and Bill -- had helped out with the downsizing by taking anything off her hands, she said, "Well, not nearly enough. They didn't even want my vacuum cleaner, and it's only six years old!"

• KRISTIN TILLOTSON

Eclipse rocks again

A year after reopening in its new University Avenue location and four years after it more or less got booted out of the Mac-Groveland area, Eclipse Records will finally start rocking again with live music this week. Store owner Joe Furth had to build a music venue inside his new store, hence the delay. He also used the time to secure grant money from the city of St. Paul -- at least one of the Twin Cities recognized the desperate need for a centrally located all-ages rock venue. (Eclipse is almost perfectly halfway between the two downtowns at 1922 W. University Av.). Superhopper, Togetherness and more play there tonight, and the Angry Mothers and Baby Guts head up the Saturday lineup (6 p.m., $4).

• CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Fellini ... Wasn't he that polka guy from Eveleth?

Doug Spartz, founder of the Mid-America Music Hall of Fame, was concerned that attendance was down at last weekend's fifth annual inductions at the Medina Entertainment Center. After honoring dozens of Minnesota ballroom acts, he has begun recognizing musicians more accustomed to downtown venues. "Should we move?" Spartz asked I.W. Maybe inductee Curtiss A, the legendary Minneapolis punk-rocker, answered the question when he described the event for I.W.: "I feel like I'm in a Norman Rockwell scene directed by Fellini."

• JON BREAM

What are MySpace friends for?

British pop darling Kate Nash has more than 1.9 million friends on her MySpace page. But do her pals know her outside cyberspace? When she played at a packed First Avenue Saturday, her opening act -- the cutesy Brooklyn father/mother/daughter trio known as the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players -- brought out their "friend Margaret" for one song. Guess who that (unrecognized) guest was?

• JON BREAM

Viva la flauta

File under unlikely musical pairings: Irish flutist James Galway performed with Miami-based Cuban combo Tiempo Libre at a packed Dakota in Minneapolis on Monday night. The run-through preceded their date next week at a Toronto studio, where they will record a CD featuring music of Claude Bolling and Bach. The multinational project also rehearsed together all day Monday at Orchestra Hall, where Galway played a couple of gigs last weekend. The CD, to be called "O'Reilly Street" (for a street in Havana named after an Irishman important in the colonial era), is due in September on the Sony BMG label. Will the release party be at the Dakota? Stay tuned.

• CLAUDE PECK

Blooming flowers

They're too polite to say so, but curators at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts hate the popular "Art in Bloom" event that every spring floods the museum with fresh flowers and their potential problems: pollen, bugs and water. There weren't any mishaps at last week's "Bloom," though a couple of floral fanciers were spied spritzing their arrangements in the galleries, a definite no-no. The prize for most bizarre vase goes to Joan Hawk, who interpreted a Frank Stella protractor painting with Gerbera daisies in a huge pink globe and a flock of rainbow-hued watering cans. Sasha Cox's swooping interpretation of Randolph Roger's star-maiden sculpture was lovely, as was Karen Harrison's elegant floral version of Albert Moore's "Battledore" painting, complete with badminton shuttlecock. And Sue and Sean Bagge did the best-ever tribute to the museum's famous Benin bronze head, interpreting it in coral calla lilies in a modern vase sculpted by Sean.

• MARY ABBE