Grocery Shopping at Menard's

Waiting for all the Apple news to roll out of the developer's conference. Interesting stuff so far, but if they don't announce a watch that gives you the power of invisibility the stock will probably drop. How happy will I be if the interface is flattened and the leather-stitching on the apps is dropped? This happy.

Of course, if everything is flattened and adjusted to Ives' exquisite sensibilities, that means that every other app on the phone will look old and garish. Every app developer's probably been working on new icons, anyway. Joy: you have 127 new updates.

See? We can complain about anything.

BEGUN THE CHIP WARS HAVE Sorry; I'm as tired of that Yoda-trope as everyone else.

Yesterday I went to Menard's for some peanuts and a door lock. They didn't have the lock. It was a custom door, apparently, and that meant a custom lock/. The clerk showed me where I could find the model number of the door, so they could order the lock. Great! Thanks. But I had a basket with a jar of peanuts and some Special K bars: nice price. You feel stupid checking out of Menard's with just food.

Anyway, that's all to explain why I have a picture of this.

First of all, Menard's would be your sweet spot-demographic for this, no? Don't think they're showing up at Byerly's.

Larry's right there in the video. It's Ron White's website's address, for heaven's sake.

That said, who makes them? Why, Minnesotans. They're made by Barrel of Fun - which also makes Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s line . . . which competes with Jeff Foxworthy's line of chips, Grit Chips.

There seems to be a point in one's career where branded potato chip is the next logical step, but it only happens to a select few. I'll bet someone approached Ron White with an offer to endorse a line of Tater Salad. You can imagine the expression. Until recently I'd only known his work from listening to the Comedy Channel on satellite radio, and I could still imagine his expression.

MOVIES Summer means a new Pixar movie, which now means we have to sniff at them and make disappointment faces. Here's something that's poorly conceived AND executed:

Do you get the sense you're reading a college paper? It has that ring - the earnestness, the solemn truths, the Olympian tone of knowledge and wisdom won at great cost. We continue:

Like "Bug's Life" and "Nemo," eh? Searing wit. Searing. I gave up on the piece with the swipe at "Cars," which may require more suspension of disbelief than any other animated product in the history of the genre, simply because a civilization populated entirely by vehicles is beyond preposterous. The illogic sears. And the subtext! It's insufficiently complex!

It's a love-letter to the bygone days of the American highway. Everyone said Pixar had lost it after that one, too. As for why we're getting a Monsters Inc. sequel, why not? You can say that it lacks the deep subtext and searing commentary of the first one, which tackled resource depletion and corporate skullduggery, but that's why anyone loved the move.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with a "modern Disney touch." Let's look at some recent Disney movies:"Tangled" was arguably better than "Brave." "Wreck-It "Ralph" contained searing subtext on obsolescence and social anxieties. It was also funny. Neither, however, gave the company "street cred," which meant they resonated with the codes of the urban dispossessed, which is what the term used to be. When I used to watch cop shows there was always an informant who would tell the hero cops about the word on the street, which was invariably true, as it pertained to low-lifes. No one ever said "Word on the street says they're close to finding the Higgs Boson." Unless he was a sailor who jumped ship, and the story was set in a 19th century whaling town, or something.

OBITS One of the greatest comic novelists of the 20th century died last week. Sorry, forgot; this is the internet. One of the Greatest Comic Novelists You Probably Never Heard of Died. There. One man remembers Tom Sharpe:

Sharpe was a bit too "contrary," as the article gently puts it, and a tad too ridiculous, if memory serves. But his novels were hilarious. American publishers tried to get us to like them in the early 80s, but I think they fell flat; people were just baffled.