Korean boy group BE:MAX has canceled its Saturday St. Paul appearance because of visa issues, the group said on social media.

They were slated to be the headlining band at what organizers are touting as Minnesota’s first K-pop convention at St. Paul RiverCentre beginning at 11 a.m. Saturday.

KPopMinneCon will feature music performances, dances, influencers, beauty and food vendors and merchandise. Performers include Ted Park and influencer Beom Han is also scheduled to appear. The event will celebrate the Korean pop music community in the Midwest, according to presenter MNKPopConnect.

The band posted on social media that when they arrived at the airport to fly to the United States they had to cancel the trip “due to the unexpected cancellation of our visa.”

It was unclear Saturday morning whether the entire festival would be canceled, however stories on its social media account after the announcement showed the festival organizers were preparing for attendees still.

The convention was advertised as offering an all-in-one ticket covering both entry and concert access, with flexible in-and-out privileges. Activities include panels, dance challenges, and Korean and Asian food trucks serving a variety of cuisines.

BE:MAX was scheduled to perform at 8 p.m.

Meet and greets run from 3-6 p.m. and include performers Ted Park, Alan Z, Lucid Lee (LUC:ID), Ramiro Brave and Mimi Yang.

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Amy Lindgren

Have you been thinking about taking a second job to supplement your income? Maybe you already juggle jobs and gigs in what some people call “portfolio work.”  If so, you might be a good candidate for a different approach to multiple streams of income.

Instead of pursuing a random selection of work opportunities, what about building two career paths simultaneously?

The reasons for doubling up could include the classic moonlighting justifications: Extra cash and something to fall back on.

But the real difference when you’re switching from a gig mindset to career mode is the commitment you’re making to both areas of work. It could be that you love both fields, or you want to build experience in both before choosing one. Or, it could just be that you don’t know any better.

That last one belongs to me and probably isn’t true of other people. More on that in a minute.

Whatever your reasons, dual-careerists face some decisions. For example, how would you divide your time between the two pursuits? Among the variations to consider are situations where one career takes the most time, or one is intermittent, or both are part-time or perhaps seasonal.

In any case, most people wouldn’t last long holding down two full-time jobs, at least not in two different professions. (Remember that the remote workers you hear about with multiple full-time jobs generally perform the same task in each one.)

Another question is how to build two career paths simultaneously. To keep this from becoming too theoretical, I’m going to use my own example. In my case, the two paths both involve self-employment, which brings us back to “not knowing any better.”

When I was young and goofy (goofier, anyway), I believed the statistics about business startup. In the mid 1980s, the number touted was something like, “Three out of five businesses will fail in the first year.”

If I’m going to fail at least three times, I thought, why not speed things up and launch businesses two at a time? I had already started and closed two businesses sequentially (house cleaning followed by house painting), which had taken three years altogether. Now I would start the third and fourth businesses simultaneously, on the assumption that one would probably fail but the other might make it.

What I didn’t count on was that both businesses would survive. Having gained enormously more insight, I now know their survival was rooted in choosing work I’m suited for. Where the first two businesses were one-person manual labor services, the third and fourth businesses were a résumé typing service that quickly morphed into a career-strategies company and a writing service that I have kept as a one-person operation.

No guarantees, but if I’d operated from my strengths at the beginning, I might not have business failure stories to tell. But then I might have missed the fun of following two paths at once, not to mention the rewards.

If this idea appeals to you, or you’re already doing something similar, these tips might save you time or mis-steps.

• 1. Choose two careers that are compatible. A career that requires your presence doesn’t pair well with one that demands travel, for example.

• 2. Keep the paths distinct. Rather than two quite similar careers, look for two that suit different sides of your personality. This helps you avoid burnout while also providing that “something to fall back on” if things go south.

• 3. Consider a self-employment / staff combo. Following two careers is already challenging; doing them both as an employee could add messy logistics. If at least one of your paths is under your own control, you’ll be able to flex better. On the other hand, I maybe wouldn’t advise two self-employment tracks. Steady income and benefits are also nice.

• 4. Take stock frequently. If one path feels like a slog, give yourself permission to demote it to a side interest.

• 5. Let one career dominate. One might take more time or require more financial resources. Or, one might be your “public” profession while you pursue the other in a quiet manner. This imbalance will let you breathe and reflect more on each path, rather than pushing both forward at the same pace. It also helps financially if one doesn’t demand expensive space or marketing.

• 6. Grow your skills in both careers. Building skills and expertise requires some combination of ongoing training, networking, reading, professional memberships and more. That’s what defines these paths as careers and not just side hustles or gigs. It’s also what makes them rewarding, both personally and professionally.

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

The current popular sentiment, expressed uniformly as the result of profound sadness, suggests that we live in the Minnesota that we no longer recognize. A hateful young fellow with guns took care of that when he fired wildly through the stained glass windows of Annunciation Catholic Church and in South Minneapolis on a beautiful morning when the Annunciation schoolkids were assembled for their first school Mass of the year.

Bullets flew and glass shattered. Two children were killed, Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, and many others injured. The shooter killed himself.

It was such an egregious act of evil that it transcended speechlessness and almost instantly compelled a new and useful response, “pray with your feet.” I took it to mean hand-wringing is over. Hoping for the best at the next school Mass is over. Praying with your feet means to move, to advance, to take, literally, steps to make sure innocents are not gunned down in church or school by a madman.

And perhaps a Minnesota we do recognize has responded by a particularly Minnesota curiosity. We all knew the affected, if not personally, then by the parish underground party hotline. It’s not even exclusive to Catholics. It’s just the way things are around here. In the Twin Cities, people are known by the parish they belong to. It’s an uncanny part of initial conversations.

“Where did you grow up?”

“South Minneapolis.”

“Annunciation?”

“Well, it would have been Annunciation, but the dividing line was 50th Street. I was north of 50th, so I went to Visitation.”

Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody whose niece goes to Annunciation. Everybody knows somebody whose uncle went to Annunciation, aunt, grandmother, wife’s best friend’s cousin. The same thing happens in St. Paul, with Nativity, or St. Luke’s (I don’t care what they call it now, I went to St. Luke’s) or St. Agnes or Holy Spirit or St. Casimir’s.

During golf the other day, a guy said, unasked, “my mom and my uncle went to Annunciation. My grandmother on my mom’s side was the church secretary.”

“That was your school?”

“I was north of 50th, went to Visitation.”

Everybody knows those Annunciation kids because all you have to do is look next door, or across the street, or under the roof of the house of a kid you used to have. And there they are, posing for the first-day-of-school picture on the stoop, smiling, brand-new shoes and uniform shirts, one of them pointing at the camera as if to say, “Here I come!”

Every single parishioner in the Twin Cities, in the state, is now enlisted in what we might call the Fletcher Merkel or Harper Moyski security team, praying with their feet. The idea that the government will prevent shootings in the future is preposterous. We don’t need their boilerplate resolutions, or their grandstanding or their empty promises. In fact, get out of our way. This is our problem. Praying with your feet will be the answer. In fact, it is already happening here. Last week at Mass, there were quite a few heads on swivels. That started before Mass and continued until the doors were locked. Another Annunciation cannot happen and people can no longer just hope for the best.

Just days after the sadness at Annunciation, the feeling outside the church of doing something was palpable, not the endless tyranny of hoping somebody else does something. No, we will act. We are alert.

We will pray with our feet.

We owe it to all those kids who point at the camera and say with their bravado and their innocence and grace, “Here we come!”

That can be a Minnesota we’ll be happy to recognize.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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By Wendy Lee, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Want to get Generation Alpha into movie theaters? Look to video games.

Kids still like to go to the movies, according to a high-profile new research report. But the franchises they care about are not the traditional Hollywood popcorn fare.

Seven of the top 10 entertainment franchises that the youngest generation of moviegoers cares about are video game properties, according to a recent study by National Research Group (NRG).

The top five titles that Gen Alpha kids, generally considered to be those ages 12 and under, say they talk most about were Roblox, “Minecraft,” “Fortnite,” “Grand Theft Auto” and “Pokémon,” all of which originated from the world of video games. The highest-ranked non-video game property was Marvel and Walt Disney Co.’s “The Avengers,” at No. 6.

Studios have started to catch on. Spring’s “A Minecraft Movie,” based on the popular game where users build and explore different worlds, was such a huge success. The film, adapted by Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment for the big screen, grossed $955 million at the global box office, according to Comscore. Young fans packed the theater, cheering during scenes important to gamers.

“Gaming is a deeply important part of Gen Alpha culture because it provides an essential venue for socialization,” said Fergus Navaratnam-Blair, NRG’s vice president of trends and futures. “Social gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite give them the opportunity to spend time with their friends, build communities, and develop a sense of their own identity.”

That could present a shift in the way theaters and studios cater to Gen Alpha, a key demographic born 2013 onward, to their future survival. Compared with millennials and Gen X, a higher percentage of Gen Alpha members (38%) said they would see a movie in a theater instead of waiting for it to come to a streaming service if their friends were talking about it, NRG said.

Nearly 60% of Gen Alpha members said they enjoy watching movies in theaters more than at home, according to NRG, which surveyed more than 6,000 U.S. moviegoers in May and June of this year. The majority of kids surveyed ages 6-to-12 said the reason why they go to the theater is to spend time with friends and family and “to make seeing the movie feel like a special event,” according to NRG.

“We are seeing the signs within this demographic that they do really value the experience of watching movies in theaters,” Navaratnam-Blair said. “The fact that they have grown up surrounded by phones, tablets, other sorts of devices, if anything, that seems to have made them more appreciative of the opportunities that they do get to switch up from all of that.”

Stories that resonate with Gen Alpha can come from franchises they are already familiar with, like “Minecraft,” or ones such as “Wicked” that inspire them to create fan fiction or show off their fandom by dressing up like the characters, he said.

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Already, studios are marketing their films to reach younger consumers on platforms they frequent including Roblox and TikTok.

Movie theaters can help cater to Gen Alpha by making the viewing an experience, such as selling food that is matched to what characters are eating on screen, Navaratnam-Blair said.

Younger audiences also can still be attracted to seeing a movie in a theater if it’s a special event that happens after the title has started streaming. For example, many people attended sing-along showings of the popular animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” in theaters even after streaming it first on Netflix. The sing-along version of the film was the No. 1 movie domestically during the weekend it was briefly in theaters, with an estimated $18 million in ticket sales.

“This is a generation that does offer hope for the future of theatrical moviegoing,” Navaratnam-Blair said. “We just need to understand what it is they’re looking for, that experience, and play into it in a way that gives them what they’re looking for out of that.”

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.