Franken can't hide love for corn

Sen. Al Franken knows how to find a few minutes of semi-privacy at the State Fair so he can eat an ear of corn.

He was sitting on the grass, behind a bench. Most fairgoers' eyes are focused upward, especially if they are not on those streets frequented by horses and cows. Many people walked by without noticing him down there.

Since his was the first famous face I spotted after several hours at the fair, I decided I'd better shoot some startribune.com/video of him and his ear of corn.

The staffer sitting next to him, who came over to find out why I was videotaping Franken, blocked my video shot, then claimed she didn't realize she'd done so. She looked much smarter than she sounded at that moment.

Friday morning, I called Franken's office to find out if he was intentionally or unintentionally clever. Franken staffer Marc Kimball said: "The only thing that was intentional was the corn. We made a beeline for it when we got there. He doesn't have a lot of time. That's one of his pleasures at the fair -- in fact, he went twice yesterday."

Franken-steering

In other political moves from Sen. Franken on Day 2:

"Just got cut off by Al Franken on the way to the fair. Funny," wrote WCCO-TV's "Good Question" guy Jason DeRusha on Twitter Friday.

DeRusha's tweet included a photo of the offending vehicle.

I had Strib library staffer John Wareham run the plate, and according to the vehicle records a Lupient dealership leased those wheels to one "Senator Al Franken."

DeRusha wished he'd been quicker with his camera when I called to find out if Franken was the driver.

"He was in the passenger seat, had the window rolled down. He kind of leaned out the window, physically signaling," DeRusha said.

I interpreted the details DeRusha gave me regarding the signal as: Coming over! Not, Please let me in.

"Growing up in Chicago, I kind of admired the aggressive driving moves," DeRusha said with a laugh.

There was an even heartier laugh from Kimball, who just wanted it stressed that "Senator Franken was not driving."

A quiet Bush visit

Not a tweet on Twitter from former First Lady Laura Bush about her trip to Minnesota last week.

Mrs. Bush and former President George W. Bush were at the Twin Cities home of POPPcom telecommunications owner and CEO Bill Popp and his wife, Teri.

W's appearance at Popp's was to raise money for the former prez's presidential library, I'm told. George and Sally Pillsbury were spotted there.

Hey, Mrs. Bush: The reason I follow interesting people on Twitter is so I can track their steps into and out of Minnesota. There were no tweetable moments from your time here?

Barreiro's stroller strategy

Stroller vengeance shall NOT be Dan Barreiro's?

Shortly after the KFAN show host and his wife, Catherine, welcomed baby girl Giovanna Raquel Maria into the world, Mr. Negativity was feeling all full in several loving ways.

"Things are going very well so far. Mom and baby are looking great, and I'm head over heels in love again," Barreiro e-mailed.

I told him Giovanna and Raquel were a couple of awful sexy names. (While babies are not sexy, this one is a beauty, as you can see in my startribune.com/video starring Franken.)

"Raquel was my late Mother's name; she would have loved this moment," he wrote tenderly before returning to savage form: "As a man who often got his Achilles heel snapped at the State Fair by triple-wide stroller terrorists, I intend to go out and buy the biggest and baddest stroller ever and get my revenge."

Monday Barreiro told me there'd been a stroller blunder. "We bought the narrowest one. I should give people what they wanted," he said. "So we might have to buy another stroller, one of those triple-wide Winnebagos. What I have now is way too narrow to do any damage, [although] I could still snap an Achilles."

That's just more macheesemo, Big Daddy, until you buy the macho stroller on steroids.

C.J. is at 612.332.TIPS or cj@startribune.com. E-mailers, please state a subject -- "Hello" doesn't count. Attachments are not opened, so don't even try. More of her attitude can be seen on Fox 9 Thursday mornings.