FREEZE FRAME THE DEFINING MOMENTS OF 2010

They loved this bar º With its guitar-shaped bar, Mason-jar drinks and Whiskey Girl waitresses, Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill was such a hit in the Shops at West End that its operators waited a full five months after opening to bring in its namesake for an official grand opening. With the neighboring Cooper and Crave, the 15,000-square-foot bar helped solidify the shopping center as a new nightlife hotbed. Whether presenting regional bands or Nashville stars, the sprawling honky-tonk has been packed with cowboys and cowgirls from the northern and southern 'burbs who like to meet in the middle: St. Louis Park.

Twins beat Not sure if you heard, but the Twins got a new ballpark this year. Various facets of the Twin Cities music scene played the field around Target Field. First Avenue opened the Depot Tavern to make money off fans. Bands lined up to be featured in the "Local Music Spotlight" at games. G.B. Leighton (pictured) wrote a song for Fox Sports broadcasts, but it was pretty much declared a foul ball. Hold Steady singer Craig Finn knocked the would-be anthem "Don't Call Them Twinkies" outta the park in time for the playoffs. Talk about a one-hit wonder.

Green journey While the opening of Target Field didn't exactly blow open the floodgates for new bars in the downtown scene, it did herald the arrival of Kieran's Irish Pub on Block E. To celebrate the big move on St. Patrick's Eve, gregarious owner Kieran Folliard (pictured) wrangled 300 regulars and a band of bagpipers to parade the last pint served at the old pub over to the megasized new digs. The man knows how to make an entrance.

Choppy seas for local film moguls Rocked by the May departure of marketing guru Bob Berney, Minneapolis-based Bill Pohlad's Apparition distribution company went dormant after only a year. Its Joan Jett bio-pic "The Runaways," produced by Pohlad (pictured, left) and starring Kristen Stewart, earned a piddly $3.5 million while its other 2010 release, the Australian noir "The Square," banked just $409,000. "Fair Game," the Naomi Watts/Sean Penn Washington thriller from Pohlad's River Road Entertainment production company, earned nice reviews and an arthouse-respectable $8.2 million, but cost $22 million to produce. Just up the street, Elizabeth Redleaf's (pictured, above) Werc Werk Works invested $4.5 million in Todd Solondz's "Life During Wartime" and recouped less than $300,000 at the box office while "Howl," starring James Franco as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, took in just over $500,000 on an undisclosed budget. At "Wartime's" Venice premiere, Solondz said: "I wasn't sued, I was never fired, and I survived it. That's my great achievement."

Piano man Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti is vague about his age, but not about his Beethoven. Long though it was, his all-Ludwig program Nov. 14 at Macalester College -- proof of the abiding vitality of that peculiar institution we call the piano recital -- was edge- of-the-seat engrossing. If the opening sonatas ("Les Adieux" and "Appassionata") were tellingly individualized, the "Diabelli" Variations (held in some circles to be the greatest piano music ever written) were even better -- as sly, as humane, as transcendent as one could hope to hear.

Concert biz goes bust Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter, got approval for its mega-merger with Ticketmaster -- then took a bath at the box office and on Wall Street thanks to too-aggressive pricing on tickets and service charges. Some concerts got canceled -- including a Twin Cities date by the once-hot Jonas Brothers -- while others were downsized. Lilith Fair, planned for Canterbury Park, moved indoors at Target Center, where it drew only 3,650 paying customers July 18 for a pretty great lineup.

The race is to Swift º If anybody can save the music biz, it's Taylor Swift. She triumphed in a sold-out May 7 concert at Xcel Energy Center after dominating the Grammys, and reconquered the world in October with her critically lauded "Speak Now," the first album in five years to sell 1 million copies in its first week. Next up: A June 14-15 return to the X.

Signing off Ø It was the year several media bigwigs hung up their hats: Don Shelby (left) at WCCO-TV, Eric Eskola at WCCO-AM, Robyne Robinson at KMSP-TV and Bill Kling at Minnesota Public Radio. Robinson wouldn't fade away, however. The day after her last broadcast, she said she was running for lieutenant governor.

When anchors attack Robinson's replacement, former CNN anchor Heidi Collins, made headlines of her own in a post-election interview with Secretary of State Mark Ritchie that came off more as a verbal feud. "I ask. You answer," said Collins, who appeared to be auditioning for Bill O'Reilly's job.

Current affair Perhaps a sign of how big a difference one radio station has made in five years -- or, more likely, of how much that station has benefitted from a voracious music scene that was previously ignored on FM radio -- the all-local fifth anniversary celebration for 89.3 the Current at First Avenue on Jan. 29 immediately sold out and left attendees with a warm winter feeling. P.O.S. arrived after a day of snowboarding, Mason Jennings wore flannel, Solid Gold covered "Minnesoter," and Prince even showed up. So Minnesotan.

Finding 'Haven' A risky move to Hollywood by former Twin Cities restaurateurs Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn finally paid off when Syfy got behind their series "Haven." The drama has been picked up for a second season. Other big breaks for former Minnesotans: Nick Swardson and Nate Berkus launched their own shows, Rebecca Jarvis joined "The Early Show" and Melissa Peterman signed to star in her own sitcom, "Working Class," premiering Jan. 28 on CMT.

Irreplaceable him? º After nearly half a century at the helm, Al Milgrom, the godfather of local art cinema, kinda-sorta took a step back from the daily grind of running Minnesota Film Arts. He will stay on as an adviser to the organization, rechristened the Film Society of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and remain as impresario of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Two programmers and a staff of five are handling week-to-week operations at the society's new home, the St. Anthony Main Theatres. Given the way Milgrom has worked himself ragged over the years, they may want to think about adding more staff.

They don't like Mondays? Walker Art Center's decision to put its popular Monday-night Summer Music & Movies in Loring Park on "hiatus," and instead stage talk-athons in its lobby and field sports on its hill, showed how clueless the Walker is about summer fun. Others tried to pick up what the Walker dropped, but none drew as big a crowd.

Best foot forward º More than 7,000 people -- the museum's biggest opening-night crowd ever -- packed the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Feb. 18 to see "Foot in the Door 4," a once-in-a-decade opportunity for Minnesota artists. Basically, any artwork that could fit inside a 12-inch wooden cube was included in the 5,000- object show. With live music, DJs and drinks, the MIA continued to show the Twin Cities that a night at the museum can be the coolest party in town.

Def jam Capping a year that saw the Guthrie Theater open its doors to hip-hop, Mos Def delivered a stunning live show Aug. 23 on the prestigious Wurtele Thrust Stage. The theatrically minded Brooklyn MC, who does more acting than rapping these days, commanded the audience from atop the set of the Guthrie's "A Streetcar Named Desire" -- at one point yelling out "Stella!"

Forward into the past Confounding the recession, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts reeled in $5 million in gifts of cash and art to jump-start a new collection of contemporary art, enabling it (finally) to join the National Gallery, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and other traditional museums that have embraced modern culture.

Parsons' big bang

We have a much-vaunted theater ecology full of flagship venues and spunky companies that often do memorable work. But sometimes we get a powerful jolt from The Great Out There. Case in point: Oscar winner Estelle Parsons in "August: Osage County." Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is marinated in acid, but what made the March 16-21 production at Ordway Center so indelible was Parsons' pinpoint execution. It was like watching a master swordsman undress an enemy. At the end, everything just fell away.

'Scottsboro Boys' at the Guthrie º It's not often you get celebrated director Susan Stroman, composer John Kander and producer Barry Weissler working on a new musical in Minneapolis. Using the concept of minstrelsy, "Scottsboro Boys" imagined nine African-Americans as song-and-dance men in telling their saga of racial injustice. Stroman's ferocious direction wrenched painful irony from the controversial conceit. It was a hard show to love but easy to admire, and the whole thing got people talking about racism, the appropriation of history and the dynamics of stagecraft. While it did brisk business during its August-September run at the Guthrie (90 percent of capacity), the production wilted on Broadway, closing after 78 performances.

R.Eye.P. Before he left the stage in front of 10,000-plus cheering fans at the Soundset Festival in May, St. Paul rapper/poet/rocker Eyedea flippantly asked the crowd, "Who's coming back next year?" Alas, the real-life Micheal Larsen, 28, died of an accidental drug overdose Oct. 16. His funeral drew musicians from numerous genres as well as throngs of teenage fans, some in the Sharpie-scrawled T-shirts he often wore. The first of several musical tributes sold out First Avenue.

A shot of Achugar Zenon Dance Company has been around for nearly 30 years, long enough to settle into comfy complacency. Fortunately, artistic director Linda Andrews continually seeks out fresh choreographic perspectives -- notably Uruguayan-born, Brooklyn-based Luciana Achugar. In their November performance of "Structures of Feeling," Achugar and the fearless Zenon dancers revealed new ways to consider the immediacy of human relationships through the psychedelic lens of the imagination.

Monster mash Part pop opera, part gay-pride rally, part self-help seminar, Lady Gaga's two-night Monster Ball at sold-out Xcel Energy Center Aug. 30-31 was a ridiculously ambitious, delightfully decadent and lovably confusing evening of performance art, befitting the biggest pop-culture phenom of the century so far. After her second show, Gaga dropped in at St. Paul's Turf Club to play pinball and pose with clubgoers in the bar's photo booth. That's what passes for paparazzi in St. Paul.

Contributors: Mary Abbe, Jon Bream, Colin Covert, Larry Fuchsberg, Neal Justin, Tom Horgen, Caroline Palmer, Rohan Preston, Graydon Royce, Chris Riemenschneider.