Item World: Local news and views for 6/29

Fluid funniesMinnesota comedians have been a hot commodity on late-night talk shows lately. None has been funnier than Fergus Falls' Chad Daniels on "Conan" last week. His sly, penetrating humor was firing on all cylinders as he discussed his quirky kids. He recently took his 12-year-son to a movie theater where the kid displayed some newly minted tween attitude -- he didn't want to share the same straw with his old man. Why? Saliva. "I don't have a lot of rules at my house," Daniels said, "but one of them is you do not get to have a problem with my bodily fluids if you used to be one of them." Take that, kiddo.TOM HORGEN

Foster the brassThey're already rock stars of the drum-and-bugle-corps world, after winning last year's national DCA Drum Corps Championship. Last weekend, though, the members of Minnesota Brass got to experience a little of what a real rock star's life is like when they joined Foster the People at Target Center. The "Pumped Up Kicks" hitmakers invited the local ensemble to accompany them on "Houdini," the same tune Kenny G blew through on "Saturday Night Live" with FTP. The gig required the 20 Minnesota Brass members to participate in a 5 p.m. sound-check -- "and then we had to wait around for about five hours," musical director Matt Kettelhut told I.W. In that time, they got to enjoy backstage catering and meet with a couple Foster musicians but not frontman Mark Foster ("Nice guys, very appreciative"). When it came time to march out onto the stage and arena floor, Kettlehut said, "It was hard, because everything was pitch black." Once out there, though, "the crowd really erupted for us, which was just fantastic."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

No coasting for NoraIn all the years of Talking Volumes events at the Fitzgerald Theater, I.W. recalls no guest who was livelier and funnier than Nora Ephron. Since that was in November 2010, our sadness at the news of her death this week at age 71 was mixed with surprise. In light of reports that she may have kept a long illness under wraps, we wondered if she was sick even as she regaled a sold-out Fitz with stories about Hollywood, love, divorce, wrinkles and writing. Ephron gave us an interview in which she spoke unsentimentally about senior citizenship, saying that "one of the great nightmares of old age is that you have time to read, but you can't see, and you have time to travel, but you can't walk." Thankfully, she kept writing, producing a couple of best-selling essay collections at an age when she could have been coasting on her many movie-and-book laurels.

CLAUDE PECK

Better late than neverFolks from Live Nation, the world's biggest concert promoter, prided themselves on the efficiency at the inaugural River's Edge Music Festival last weekend in St. Paul. Aside from Dave Matthews Band taking its sweet time in taking the stage (22 minutes late), every stage ran like clockwork. But not all bands did. Brand New went on without lead guitarist Vin Accardi, who had three commercial flights from New York canceled because of bad weather out East. In the end, he chartered a jet and arrived during the band's set, for which a rhythm guitarist had switched over to lead. When Accardi approached Harriet Island with a police escort, he heard Brand New finish a song and thought all his extra efforts to get to the Twin Cities were for naught. But he joined his bandmates for the last half-hour of their set.

JON BREAM

Mall of AmazeballsLike many other visiting stars, Broadway and TV diva Kristin Chenoweth gave shout-outs to Garrison Keillor and Prince ("I've been to his house") during her concert Tuesday at the State Theatre. But she also reminisced about appearing at the Guthrie Theater in "Babes in Arms" (it was Broadway-bound but didn't make it; still she showered the late director Garland Wright with love) and filming "Into Temptation" in Minneapolis (she gave props to director Patrick Coyle). Both acting jobs led her to her favorite Twin Cities pastime -- shopping at the megamall. "I went to the Mall of America on every day off," she said, deviating from her scripted shtick. "I know you're tired of it. For visitors, it's amazeballs."

JON BREAM

Wilco will love youThe first band to play Duluth's Bayfront Festival Park since last week's devastating flooding, Wilco is joining the steady stream of musical support for the city's relief efforts. Red Cross reps will take donations at the Wilco concert, and the Chicago rockers will also donate proceeds from posters sold at their Duluth show Sunday and their Rochester gig Monday. Every Wilco concert poster is designed and screen-printed by reputable poster artists for each city, and they sell for $30. In this case, Minneapolis print designer Florafauna got the call for both shows. "Wilco is so great about their poster art," raved Florafauna's Paul Gardner, who said his Duluth poster was inspired by the Aerial Lift Bridge, while the Rochester print was "more of an abstract influence."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER