The Minnesota Fringe Festival opens on July 30, running until August 9, showing hundreds of plays, improv, musicals, dance and other performance art shows at theaters in Minneapolis.

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is the Midwest’s largest performing arts festival, and is the largest nonjuried, uncensored Fringe in the United States. Artists apply to perform at the festival, the available spaces are filled by a lottery, and it's left up to the artists to put on their best show and to the audience to judge the performances.

Fringe tickets are $12 per show, with discounts for students, seniors, children, and for buying more than five tickets. Or, see unlimited shows with the $150 Ultra Pass.

Get a preview of what will be playing at the festival with the Fringey Awards, a collection of 60-second trailers and teasers for performances in the festival. Vote for up to three of your favorites, and the most popular will win $500 for its creator.

I first heard this local indie rock band late this winter. A couple of months ago, after a raucous day of snowboarding, I tromped to the parking lot, threw my board in the trunk, sat in the car to pull my boots off, turned on the radio, and The Current was playing the Idle Hands' then-latest track, Loaded. The perfect music.

The Idle Hands have been steadily gathering buzz all year. The Secretary, the follow up to Loaded, has been invading the Current's playlists in recent weeks.

It has a lot to do with their live shows. The Idle Hands rocked First Avenue at the South by Southwest Sendoff in March, impressed at SXSW itself, headlined to a packed 331 Club in April, drew crowds to a solo show at Art-A-Whirl in May, and answered the inevitable question - what about the album? - by mesmerizing the Kitty Cat Klub for their CD release party in June.

The five band members, two Irish, three Minnesotan, behave like true headliners. Their confident performances are from a group that knows they are making the music the crowd wants right now. Those people who stand in the first rows and spend the show taking pictures with their iPhone? They put them back in their pockets and dance.

The lead singer is one of those tall skinny indie heartthrobs who sings aksant into the mike in pure britpop style, but the guitars and the drums are pure indie rock. Loaded, their standout track, is simple, catchy and dancable but who needs complicated when you just want to rock out? The Secretary is intense guitars and wailing vocals reminiscent of 1990s British rockers Suede, mixed with the swagger of early Oasis, and dressed in better clothes.

The Idle Hands new album, The Hearts We Broke on the Way to the Show, is out now. The CD is available at the Electric Fetus, Cheapo Discs and local independent record stores.

See them live if you can: right now they are one of Minneapolis' hottest talents - you'll either catch a band at the height of their powers, or one of the early shows of a group that goes on to much bigger things.

The Idle Hands' next show is at Barbette's Bastille Day celebrations on Sunday July 12.

The Bryn Mawr Soap Store, an all-natural soap company, have teamed up with the Summit Brewing Company, to make, you've guessed it, beer soap. The locally-produced, handmade, animal-friendly soap contains hops and Summit Extra Pale Ale, and retails for $2.95 a bar at the Summit Brewing Store. Bryn Mawr's more conventional soaps can be found at just about every co-op in the Twin Cities.

Other local soap company news: Don't let it be said that the Olive Branch Soap Company from Bloomington doesn't have a sense of humor. While looking for a local soap that was more unusual than beer, I discovered that Olive Branch sells Dragon's Blood, Minnehaha Creek, Monkey Farts, and Walleye soap. None contain any of the advertised ingredients, most disappointingly the Walleye soap, which doesn't include any fish, but does have a liquorish scent that works wonders on anglers' smelly hands and supposedly actually attracts fish. Olive Branch Soap can be found at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market, and online.

Just about every city in the Metro Area requires dogs to be leashed when not fenced into a yard. So where can you take your dog to run off leash in the Twin Cities?

There are almost 30 official dog parks in the Twin Cities metro area for Fido to run free in a fenced area.

Minneapolis has five dog parks in the city. Dog owners have to pay an annual fee for their dogs to use the dog park, $35 for the first dog and $25 for each additional dog, higher fees apply to non-Minneapolis residents. Dogs also have to be licenced.

St. Paul has one dog park, the Arlington/Arkwright park. The parks is free to use but dogs must be licensed.

Here's a map of other dog parks in the Twin Cities metro area.