Eric Ramsay came to Minnesota United for the opportunity to be a first-division head coach and navigate the challenges within a new-to-him league in a foreign country.

One obstacle course Ramsay will continue to have to navigate is how, unlike in England, MLS plays through FIFA international windows and during the summer, when major confederation tournaments take place. This combo will present a mix of impediments for him in June.

MNUFC is preparing for the possibility that 10 or more players will be called into their respective national teams next month, leaving the riding-high Loons shorthanded for a handful of league games.

“I’m trying not to get bogged down in frustration, and find some silver linings because we’ve mapped out roughly what we will have,” Ramsay told the Pioneer Press, without sharing details.

The exact amount of call-ups is not yet known and will be made official by specific federations. Some players might be named to provisional squads before that specific roster is finalized, while others might be called up for friendlies and perhaps not report, so the full number is a bit of a moving target as well. There also might be compromises made on how long certain players are away from MNUFC.

The official FIFA window is June 3-11, with MNUFC playing FC Dallas at Allianz Field on June 8, but there are other tournaments, in particular Copa America, which runs into July.

MNUFC has deployed 25 total players in MLS this season and 16 across the recent double-game week. Ramsay envisions calling on more depth pieces and members of the developmental team, MNUFC2, when international players are called up.

“It’s making sure we are training at a high level and making sure that we are really pushing the guys, making sure that we are really consistent with the messages we give, so anyone coming into our system, I suppose, is really familiar with what we are asking of them and the principles are really clear,” Ramsay said. “Then we are making sure that players have enough minutes across the games. I think we are in a really good place in that sense. Hopefully next week is another step.”

MNUFC has three games over an eight-day stretch starting Saturday at Colorado and an extended road trip to Los Angeles FC on May 29 before coming home to play Sporting Kansas City on June 1.

Ramsay, who was briefly an assistant coach with the Wales men’s national team in 2023, knows the sense of pride to be involved with one’s national team and he doesn’t want to take that opportunity away from players.

“The other side of the coin, and it’s a point I will make to the group, I feel like this group and this situation that we are in now can really serve everyone’s individual agendas, for lack of a better phrase,” Ramsay said. “The better we do, the more interest there is in (MNUFC), the more likely players are going to go play for their national team.”

The best example of that is striker Tani Oluwaseyi, who has a team-high five goals for the Loons (7-2-3, 24 points). His 1.01 goals per 90 minutes has helped push MNUFC to second place in the Western Conference.

Oluwaseyi’s name has been mentioned for a potential call-up to the Canadian men’s national team. Canada plays two friendlies in early June followed by Copa America from June 20 to July 14.

“If, in the future, (Oluwaseyi) goes away with Canada, he comes back with a bit more weight and a bit more stronger sense of self, I think that is a good thing for us,” Ramsay said. “I want to make sure we don’t deprive players of that.”

Loons goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair already has been named to Canada’s Copa America team and will get a chance to win the starting job for this summer. Longtime mainstay Milan Borjan is not in the team and St. Clair will compete with Maxime Crepeau of the Portland Timbers.

“Now it’s going to be little bit of a competition” St. Clair said. “The respect we both have for each other is definitely very high. Of course we both want our name to be the No. 1, but I think whoever does get called will definitely support (the other). I think the whole union with Team Canada is probably the strongest I’ve been around. Credit to (former head coach) John Herdman, the brotherhood was definitely real.”

Canada named Jesse Marsh its new head coach on May 13, and the American will start immediately. The uncertain leadership St. Clair felt with the Loons to begin 2024 had carried over to Canada as they started the year with interim head coach Mauro Biello.

“It’s clarity — similar to the situation was here (in Minnesota),” St. Clair said. “Interim for so long, but nobody knew what the direction is. Now you hear the name. I’ve never worked with (Marsch) in the past, so … once we get to camp, being able to hear his ideas. … It’s someone that seems motivated and happy to be a part of moving the country forward.”

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Pang Yang has been named director of the Ramsey County Library after serving as deputy director since 2021.

Pang Yang was named director of the Ramsey County Library on May 23, 2024, after serving as deputy director since 2021. (Courtesy of Ramsey County)

The director of the library provides the vision, long-range strategic planning, leadership, and direction for library locations in Maplewood, Mounds View, New Brighton, North St. Paul, Roseville, Shoreview, and White Bear Lake. The director also oversees more than 100 employees.

The Ramsey County Library locations circulate more than 2.4 million items annually — books, audiobooks, electronic books, movies, music, games, and other items.

Yang brings more than 20 years of library experience to the post, including working at the St. Paul Library for 17 years where she most recently served as a library manager. When she joined the county during the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked with staff to ensure the community had access to resources and programs while making sure staff had a safe and healthy working environment, according to Ramsey County officials.

“We are thrilled that Pang Yang has accepted the position of library director,” said Deputy County Manager Kari Collins, in a statement. “Her talent, dedication to our mission, and innovative leadership make her an invaluable asset to our team. With her vision and strategic approach, we know our connections with partners and community will only grow and strengthen the library making it an even more inclusive and welcoming place for all.”

In her free time Yang volunteers as a board member with the MORE School, serves on the Capital Improvement Budget Committee for the city of St. Paul, and is a volunteer tax preparer for Prepare and Prosper.

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Jason Bracelin | Las Vegas Review-Journal (TNS)

LAS VEGAS — Just what are Vegas’ most haunting haunts?

Fair question, fright fans, and we’re here with the answers.

If you’re down for some clown-inspired scares, a visit to the city’s most macabre shop or just a good ol’ fashioned slice of “Murder Pizza,” here’s your guide to five of Vegas’ creepiest visits.

Items found from the home featured in the documentary “Demon House” are displayed in Zak Bagans’ The Haunted Museum. (Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)

Zak Bagans’ The Haunted Museum

He calls it a hostel for the afterlife.

Zak Bagans is on the screen, introducing the grisly, guided tour through his Haunted Museum (600 E. Charleston Blvd.).

Right hand in the air, the experience begins with a pledge, which we recite in unison: “This building is known to contain ghosts, spirits and cursed objects. By entering we agree that management will not be liable for any action by these unseen forces.”

Seem like a bit much?

Well, wait until you get an eyeful of a real-life severed head or Ted Bundy’s ice pick or the original wooden staircase from the “Demon House” in Gary, Indiana.

If you don’t have a stomach encased in iron and/or a Pepto Bismol I.V. drip handy, chances are that this truly unsettling journey will get your gut churning at some point.

Exploring over 30 rooms in this ornate, labyrinthine, 13,000 square-foot property originally built in 1938, we confront a mix of real-life horrors — a recreation of Robert Berdella’s torture chamber just might be the most disturbing thing we’ve ever witnessed — and the supernatural, from recordings of exorcisms to an encounter the Dybbuk Box, which some consider to be the world’s most haunted object.

You’ll see Jack Kevorkian’s Volkswagon van, where he assisted in hundreds of suicides, the shovel that Ed Gein used to dig up women’s corpses and maybe get a jump scare or two from a creepy clown — really, is there any other kind?

At two hours, this tour will test your mettle for the macabre.

Taxidermy items on display at Cemetery Pulp, a shop of oddities, comics and more, on Nov. 17, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)

Cemetery Pulp

“Welcome to the Creepshow,” reads a small, foldable sign on the sidewalk out front, “a wondrous place where we will put your kidney in a jar and unattended children will be taught how to taxidermy the dog.”

That’s a fitting introduction to arguably Las Vegas’ most atypical store: Cemetery Pulp (3950 Sunset Road), the city’s first — and most likely only — combination oddities/comic book shop.

It’s the city’s self-anointed “home for the weird and nerdy.”

Oh, and the dead.

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There’s lots and lots of dead stuff here amid the Vincent Price air fresheners, spinal cord candles, gleaming silver dental hammers (ouchy!), tomes like “199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die,” ornate crosses (inverted, of course). Here, you’ll encounter enough taxidermied wildlife mounts to decorate a half-dozen hunting lodges and myriad stuffed animals in anthropomorphic poses — Leering possum in a pink baby doll dress? Check. Tiara-sporting raccoon gripping a crucifix of bones? As if you have to ask. — alongside jars of embalmed rodents and luminous diaphanized snakes translucent in the light.

Additionally, there are near-weekly classes on how to pin everything from tarantulas to beetles to moths, as well as Dungeons and Dragons sessions, tarot card readings, concerts and the stray round-table discussion with morticians.

All in all, it’s quite the lively place — you know, considering all the dead stuff.

Justin Abundo, technical director of Escape IT, stands on the set of Three Doors at Escape It, on April 11, 2023, in Las Vegas. (Chitose Suzuki/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)

Escape It

“Where are you?”

A clown’s disembodied voice soundtracks our journey, singsongy and sinister at once, a lullaby with teeth.

A decrepit-looking house looms amid the fog, its weathered facade suggestive of rot and decay.

It’s a life-sized totem of death.

Said house is where Pennywise lives, sleeps and feasts on stray children in the smash horror franchise “It.”

It’s re-created with such minute attention to detail here at the Escape It (273 S. Martin Luther King Blvd.), a hybrid escape room/haunted house/immersive fright attraction, that it feels like we’ve been transported to the outskirts of Derry, Maine, where “It” is set.

This is one of many clowns featured in Escape It on April 11, 2023, in Las Vegas. (Chitose Suzuki/Las Vegas Review-Journal//TNS)

At 31,000 square feet, with over 20 interactive rooms set in a mammoth warehouse owned by Walker’s Furniture next door, the place is almost as big as the $1.1 billion worldwide box-office receipts for the films it’s based on, “It Chapter 1” and “It Chapter 2,” with each installment of the series featured in a separate attraction here.

You’ll traverse sewers, and abattoirs — complete with slaughterhouse smells, naturally — dank garages and much, much more, with most rooms featuring a puzzle to be solved, which can be an especially challenging task to complete with jangled nerves.

The complex also features a collection of “It” memorabilia, culled from the Warner Bros. archives.

To borrow a line from Pennywise himself, that’s a whole lot of “tasty, tasty, beautiful fear.”

Army of the Dead

The zombie tiger beckons.

Missing an eye, looking like one of Siegfried and Roy’s massive cats given an acid bath, the towering, fabricated creature looms in the lobby of the Army of the Dead VR experience at Area15 (3215 S. Rancho Dr.) as a harbinger of things to come.

But first, our guide gives us some marching orders before the games begin.

“Shoot them in the face before they eat your face,” he commands.

Got it.

Army of Dead is based on 2o21 Netflix horror flick of the same name, which opens with some truly gnarly scenes of Vegas getting ravaged and savaged by zombie Elvis impersonators, undead showgirls and more in a geyser of gore like Old Faithful spewing blood and entrails in place of water and steam.

It’s in this landscape that the experience takes place.

The action begins when players board the Las Vengeance Tactical Taco Truck, where — VR headset on, gun in hands — we travel down a decimated Strip and wage war on fast-charging brain eaters.

We pass an MGM Grand reduced to rubble, get chased by a spear-hurling zombie riding a horse and, yes, encounter the aforementioned tiger.

Gotta say, blasting seemingly unending hordes of the living dead really works up the appetite.

Speaking of which…

A menu is seen at Sliced Pizza, on May 8, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Chitose Suzuki / Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)

Sliced

Freddy Krueger’s on the TV, “Murder Pie” is on the menu.

As horror flicks play on the big screen behind the counter, “Forbidden Fried Pickles” and “Haunting Jalapeno Poppers” serve as appetizers for those with a taste for blood, guts and pizza.

Here at Sliced (2129 S. Industrial Road), Vegas’ eeriest eatery, there are offerings named after ax murderers (the Voorhees BBQ Chicken Pizza), chainsaw murderers (the Leatherface Meat Pizza) serial murderers (the Buffalo Bill Chicken Pizza) and more, all of them featuring Sliced’s signature black crust, which, as we all know, is way, way more evil than the plain ‘ol dough from those scaredy cats at Pizza Hut.

For horror fans, this place is worth visiting even if you’re not hungry: it’s like a mini-museum of the macabre, with Art the Clown from “Terrifier” manning the DJ booth, life-size werewolves, a pair of nasty little buggers from ’80s cult classic “Ghoulies,” and more, along with a few arcade games, including “Alien” pinball.

If you do dine in, make sure to save room for dessert: the “Killer Cannoli” and “Terror Misu” are to die for — perhaps literally.

©2024 Las Vegas Review-Journal. Visit reviewjournal.com.. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Widespread cannabis dispensaries are one step closer to reality after the Minnesota Legislature at the end of session approved a bill speeding up the process for licensing.

Before the bill passed in the final weekend of the session, a bipartisan House-Senate panel settled on a licensing preapproval process for entrepreneurs to apply without having a retail or business space. People who have faced past harms because of the over-prosecution of marijuana laws, known as “social equity applicants,” also get priority and early approval for those licenses.

However, Rep. Nolan West, R-Blaine, the only Republican lawmaker on the joint committee, told MPR News on earlier this week that the lack of a property requirement and shifting from a merit-based to a lottery-based system to award licenses are among his top concerns. West voted against the agreement.

Rep. Nolan West, R-Blaine. (Courtesy of the candidate)

“By that very nature, it’s all minimum standards, and basically, luck of the draw,” West said. “And without a property requirement, it’s very easy for people to game the system, because you can do a lot of applications under a lot of names, especially if you don’t have to have a piece of property attached to each one of those applications.”

Regulators have said the lottery will help get around potential litigation that has slowed the implementation of cannabis business licensing in other states.

Stricter rules

The conference committee did approve stricter rules and anti-predatory language to ensure the people applying for licenses are truly the ones who would run the business, as well as disclosure of each person’s percentage of ownership.

It also added a cap on the number of licenses.

There have been issues in other states that rolled out social equity licenses where those applicants who can’t get enough capital to sustain their business are forced to give up their share to investors — in essence, those larger, richer companies “rent a minority.”

In a use-it-or-lose-it provision, applicants who secure a license don’t have to utilize it for 18 months. That lack of urgency concerns West if Minnesota plans to stick to a timeline of getting the legal marijuana industry up and running in 2025.

An industry in its infancy

Earlier this month, Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville told MPR News the “legalized and regulated industry is in its infancy, and we’re here to continue the work we started last year. Like any new industry, it will not be fully grown on day one. This bill works to ensure a successful market launch and support the industry and Minnesotans involved in this industry as it grows and develops.”

Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville.  (Courtesy of the Minnesota Senate)

Regarding social equity applicants, West is “against the concept as a whole because it’s fundamentally unfair.”

He added, “I do support people who are convicted of a cannabis offense getting special treatment because they got the raw end of the deal. But just saying you live somewhere and you get special treatment — that doesn’t sit right with me.”

West said he was pleased that the definition of social equity applicants now extends to military veterans.

As for being the sole GOP member of the conference committee, West says he was working in “good faith” and likely had “more influence than probably any Republican in the entire Legislature” on marijuana law, but is still disappointed by the lack of inclusion of his caucus’ perspective.

The final bill also includes $2.73 million for the Office of Cannabis Management for product testing and enforcement and provides cannabis patients and their caregivers more freedom around possessing plants.

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