The Rake Magazine

On a recent sunny afternoon in Minneapolis, four fabulous looking ladies put some serious sass into the usually bland game of golf. As the young fasionistas shimmied across the grounds of the Walker Museum’s new Artist Designed Mini Golf Course, the women combined ample cleavage and golf putters to make the fantasy of millions of American males finally come true. Astroturf never looked sexier.

 

The gorgeous golf girls, who were all in their twenties and in ridiculous high heels, casually flitted around the unique sculptures/golf holes that were on display, even occasionally trying to hit a ball. On Hole Two, where numerous empty glass bottles hung from ropes over the putting green, the group giggled lightly as one of the women jokingly did a sexy come hither burlesque walk through the bottles. Ten feet away, a male golfer in a classic visor and Dockers nearly swallowed his tongue.

Immediately following the four sultry women, my son and I stepped onto the golf course and the whole sex vibe instantly died. I’m a stocky Barney Rubble look alike and my son is Bam Bam dressed in Gap Kid clothes. There is no greater buzzkill in the world than a four year old boy wielding a golf club. With his index finger rammed up his nostril, constant barrage of mind numbing questions, and possible hot pile of poop in his pants, my son is two legged anti-Viagra.

When the four hotties sauntered off to Hole Three, we moved onto the platform to the Hole Two bottle fun. Without a single word of instruction from me (I’m about as good at golf as I am at speaking Mandarin), Murphy drew the club back behind his ear and violently slap shot his golf ball all the way across the frame and out onto the lawn. The sex kittens playfully giggled as my son tore off into the bottle maze to find his ball. Within seconds, he couldn’t navigate the bottles dangling from above and soon looked like a drunk staggering around in a house of mirrors. I reached in and lead him out. After he retrieved his ball, he promptly slam dunked the thing into the cup and raced to the next hole.

The course was at times difficult and at others just plain odd. With the sports aspect taking a back seat to wenches and weird metal roosters, at times I felt like it was something Andy Warhol probably came up with in gym class while all the dick hard jocks were tagging him with dodge balls. But each hole was inspiring and unique and the entire local artist congregation designed environmentally sound and challenging pieces.

There were holes with water towers, giant carpeted waves, Paul Bunyan, and even one where we shot our balls into Teddy Roosevelt’s mouth. And amazingly, they were all made from recycled or reused materials like crushed glass and rubber tires. We spent a solid ten minutes at a hole where we had to peddle a stationary bike backwards to shoot our ball into a giant pinball machine, then use the hand brakes to move the flippers, and finally had to putt our balls through a labyrinth of slots.

We finished golfing and took a nice leisurely stroll through the Sculpture Garden across the street. With the heat slowly fading away and the blue sky just beginning to fill with stars, we walked hand and hand under an awesome summer sky that was filled with both day and night. We playfully chased each other into a grove of trees where our innocent Father and Son moment was punctured by the sight of two young people dry humping the bejesus out of each other on a secluded bench.

After I saw my son’s worried expression, I told him, “Those people are just wrestling.”

“Like those two bears at the zoo?” he innocently asked.

“Ugh, yep.”

(I chuckled because every time we see two living creatures engaged in foreplay or intercourse, whether it is two horny twenty-somethings fresh from two-for-one drinks at Liquor Lyles or mating grizzlies at the Minnesota Zoo, I always tell him that they are just wrestling. And I don’t know why I do this. Maybe it’s because I went to Catholic school for thirteen years and was told that God would send a plague of locusts after me if I had premarital sex. The whole wrestling excuse seems to cover all the logistics of the situation. But I can’t help but think that when my son has his first sexual intercourse experience [when he’s married of course!] he will greet his partner with a flying forearm shiver as he leaps off the bedpost.)

We quickly left the happy humpers and returned to the golf course to eat a small snack from the golf shack which featured food from Wolfgang Puck’s Gallery 8 Cafe. Darkness was just beginning to cover the grounds and the downtown city lights twinkled in the distance. The course was now bustling with a whole legion of people on dates. There were straight couples and gay dudes, all noodling each other as they swung golf clubs around. As we walked to the car, you could feel waves of summer loving wafting off the golf course.

Who knew that a sport normally reserved for rich white guys could be such an aphrodisiac?

At the end of July, I will be trekking to Montana to write a story about a man who lives on top of a mountain in the most remote corner of Glacier National Park.

Since this dude literally lives on top of a mountain, I have to hike up hill for six straight miles (with an elevation gain of 3,000 feet) through grizzly bear infested wilderness just to talk to him. I’ve hired a professional Twin Cities photographer named John McCambridge to shoot the story.

As our journey draws closer, I recently fretted to McCambridge about how in fact are two bumbling idiots like us going to make it up a god damn mountain? "The only thing I’m carrying up there is a camera and my will to live,” McCambridge jokingly replied. Easy for him to say. He’s built like one of those wild Scotsmen from the movie “Braveheart.”

Me on the other hand, well, I just kind of…suck. In an attempt to not die on the mountain, I started exercising to get ready for the journey. I thought I’d start with a bike ride around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis. The last time I rode a bike in earnest was when I looked like Duane Allman and played hacky sack in the oval of the University of Montana. This is to say it was a lifetime ago. I hooked up the kid carriage on the back of my bike, loaded up my son and his cousin Elliot, and off we went.

Within two blocks of my house, the wind was so violent it was as if I were pedaling in soup. Then the two kids started chirping. “Where are we going? Do you like elephants? Who's Darth Maul? Can we have treats at wherever you are taking us? Why are you going so slowly? Why is your skin purple?” It felt like I was carrying those two old crumudginey bastards from the Muppet Show on my back. The biking was a bad call. Hated the bike.

So I started jogging. The next day, I put my son in the stroller and we headed down to Lake Harriet. I began the jog with a little trot. But after only a few feet, I realized that pushing a forty pound kid and trying to run really, really blows. In a miracle from God, I made it to the concession stand where I quickly bought my son a box of the famous Lake Harriet popcorn (which is basically buttered flavored crack rock) to shut him up. As I started jogging again, several packs of beautiful people sprinted past me. These little clicks of runners --all dressed in their fancy sweat wicking shirts and flowing shorts-- were so annoying I wanted to hockey fight them right in the path. They passed me at full speed and gobbled up miles like Pac-Man eating up dots. The worst part was that they were casually talking the entire time they ran. I, on the other hand, looked like Chris Farley choking on a pork chop.

Near the beach, I ran into my dad. Big Smitty was doing the half running/half walking thing where the person moves with an odd tightness, not quite sure if they should run slower or walk faster. In my dad’s case, he just looked like a man trying to hold a poop in. When he saw me jogging towards him, a look of bewilderment came across his face.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m jogging. Trying to get in shape for my Montana trip,” I said.

“You gonna need more than that,” he said. The iPod that I bought him two weeks ago dangled off his pocket. I preloaded the thing with 200 of his favorite songs so that he could rock out as he exercised. It was nice to see him using it. He fiddled with the iPod and said, “Hey, how do I get this thingy to play a different song. All it plays is Mustang Sally.”

I took a look at the iPod and realized that somehow my dad had screwed the menu up so badly that he’d been listening to Otis Redding’s “Mustang Sally” on repeat for two straight weeks. I clicked a few options on the menu and got it working. He trotted off, his butt turtling a poo, singing some sunny Beach Boys song. The whole scene made me chuckle and it got me through the last grueling mile. I guarantee that Big Smitty, at least once, had gotten so frustrated by his new iPod and its lame ability to only play one song that he turned the thing upside down and smacked it like Fonzi trying to fix something.

I asked some twenty year olds at my work to make me some music mixes to run to. On one mix it was all whiny British guys and the other featured growling white chicks. I was really grooving to this one mix (titled “Two Forty Gordy,” a sly reference to fat people) when all of a sudden the up tempo rock music went off and there were five straight songs of slow folk music. This would be fine if you were sitting in a coffee shop, but I was sweating my ass off trying to make it up the Newton Avenue hill. I asked the kid who made it why on earth would he slow down the music on an exercise mix?

“It was for your cool down period, bro,” he told me. “Like the circuit training at Lifetime Fitness.” Cool down? What the hell is a cool down? I was going old school on this exercise shit. I simply was going to run until I fell over. I don’t think Rocky was listening to the soft melodies of “Teghan and Sarah” when he was in Russia carrying logs in the deep snow.

After a few weeks, I was feeling good. Although my frantic Alaskan sled dog running style led many of my neighbors to believe that I was being chased by something, things started to pick up. I could jog for longer stretches without feeling like my lungs were going to explode.

On a recent afternoon jog, I ran past the Milo’s sandwich shop in Linden Hills and saw McCambridge the photographer completely going to town on a sub the size of a muffler. His cheeks were stuffed full and he could hardly talk. Then I realized something: I don’t have to be in shape at all for our journey up the mountain. I will just let the big guy go first up the hill and let him be the pace car, nice and steady. And if we do see a grizzly bear, all I have to do is be faster than McCambridge.

I think I’m going to make it up that mountain after all. Just maybe not in one piece.

On the loading dock of my work, a truck driver named Tater takes a seat in the shade and fans his sweat soaked crotch with a celebrity gossip magazine. Under the broiling summer sun, the tubby trucker is quickly roasted like a luau pig; his fleshy face turns heart-attack red and his sleeveless t-shirt stinks to high heaven. As I unload pallets of topsoil off his truck with a forklift, we chit-chat and have a rather high-brow discussion about how awesome barbeque flavored Corn Nuts taste. When we're finished talking, Tater stands up and eloquently says, "Y'all got a toilet? I need to take a dump."

When Tater waddles back from the bathroom all sweaty and winded, I'm knee deep in the stank of my daily working class grind.

"This Jennifer Lopez is something, huh," Tater boasts and jabs a chubby finger at a picture of the pop star in his soiled gossip magazine. "I'd wear her ass for a hat."

Mere seconds after Tater departs, a group of my coworkers run out of the store like terrified villagers frantically fleeing a foreign invader.

"It smells like the zoo in there," a young cashier chokes, a cupped hand protecting her nose and mouth. After I perform an exorcism on the bathroom, an unholy odor festers in the store and clings to my clothes. Good times.

At 8 a.m. the garden center opens and once again becomes the Ellis Island of labor. We hire the wretched, the stupid, the gimpy, the soused, and put them to work for the summer.

A college kid named Hafner shows up to work with only one shoe on. He gives me no explanation for the blunder. Hafner is majoring in aerospace engineering, making him an actual rocket scientist. But it appears that putting two shoes on this morning was too difficult a task. I send him home to find the other shoe and he comes back wearing lime green flip flops. I send him home a second time because labor regulations prohibit the wearing of "kick ass beach wear" on a job site.

Just as I finish watering a section of evergreen shrubs, a rusted out Buick slows down at the back gate. The Rooney Brothers fall out while the jalopy is still moving. They are a half hour late and wear matching purple welts under their eyes

"Hey boss man," Tommy Rooney greets me nonchalantly. They both are eating hard shell tacos for breakfast and a dirty red sauce rings their lips. Tommy finishes his taco in two bites and then puts a chunk of chewing tobacco into his lip for dessert. Danny Rooney rocks nervously back and forth, holding his taco to the side.

"We lost the remote for our TV!" Tommy blurts out randomly.

"Is that why you two are late?" I ask.

"No, it's got nothin' to do with the remote control," Tommy says and shoots me a stupid look. "We're late because there are bats in our apartment that kept us up all night. And we each drank a case of beer."

"But dude, check this out: We lost our remote control and hated having to get up off the couch to turn the channel. It was an issue who'd get up."

That explains their fresh black eyes.

"O.K."

"So we went out and bought a wheelchair. Now we can drink and watch TV and no one has to get up. We just roll on over, change the channel, and roll back. Isn't that awesome?"

"Actually, it is..." I begin to say just as Danny drops to a knee and dry heaves onto the asphalt.

Tommy takes out his cell phone and takes a couple of snapshots. "I'm soooo Facebookin' this."

In my mind, I've fired these two idiots four hundred times a piece. But who am I going to hire that is eager to shovel dirt for eight straight hours? I'm so desperate for workers these days that if an applicant wrote on his application that his previous work experience was "Al Qaeda," I'd still hire them.

"Didn't spill a drop of my taco, bro," Danny says proudly, as he rises off the pavement and washes his mouth out with Mountain Dew.

Now that's a skill you can't put on a resume.

Giving a sharp sword to a hyper-ass eight-year-old boy goes against all parental logic. But that's exactly what happened at the "Knight for a Day Camp," a place where kids are whole-heartedly encouraged to go completely medieval.

The "Knight for a Day" summer camp was put on by The Oakeshott Institute, a Twin Cities foundation that promotes the interest of ancient arms, armor, and legends, through hands-on education. The Oakeshott Institute, nestled in a remodeled 1880s church, is a virtual Hogwarts Academy right in the middle of Dinkytown. Ever since Harry Potter rode in on his magic broomstick, whipping up a wand-waving fever, children of all ages have been looking for mythical activities to partake in. To accommodate all these eager Muggles, the Oakeshott faculty has put together a Viking and chivalry summer course as an alternative to the usual park-board fodder of hula hoops and endless games of tag-you're-it.

On a recent Friday morning, I watched weapons instructor Galan Poor, a wiry young man with a huge thicket of hair so wild it looked like it might come alive and talk, stand before a captivated classroom of children and teach them the art of war.

"Get me a sword!" Mr. Poor told his assistant. A college intern then raced to a glass case housing a treasure chest of ancient killing devices that included a sword used in the First Crusade. Amongst the axes, spears, and daggers, a rusted Viking sword was chosen and handed to Mr. Poor. He demonstrated to the class how the Vikings used a chopping and hacking motion, and not the sharp-pointed fencing-style attack that has been made popular in movies. In long elaborate swoops, Poor gently brought the blade down on a dummy's neck and wrists.

"Hack here to cut off his hand!" explained Poor. "Hack it like a piece of tough meat. And swoop down to cut off his foot!"

The blade made a slight ting as he connected with the metal rings of the chain mail draped over the dummy. The class sat still as crows on a wire, anxiously awaiting their turn to engage each other and pretend to have their own limbs hacked off. It wasn't exactly a game of kickball.

Mr. Poor then moved to a dry erase board, where he gave a detailed NFL style play-by-play of Friday's lesson: The Shield Wall. The kids were going to reenact the legendary 1066 Battle of Hastings, where the Anglo-Saxons held off an entire Norman army by standing atop a hill and forming a tight barrier with their shields. The kids learned all about the war for England's crown, the ancient art of defense, and the physics of the Shield Wall: If the shields were lined up correctly, even these little runts would be able to withstand the mightiest of blows (in this case, rubber dodge balls.) A dozen boys were so enthralled in the lesson about flaming arrows and knights on horseback that there was no mention of boobies, wieners, or farts, which is the holy trinity of discussion amongst pubescent boys.

The campers had spent the entire week building helmets, shields, and chain mail and were finally ready to use their wares in action. Today was battle day.

With the boom-boom base of low riders bumping down Como Avenue as a backdrop, Van Cleve Park near the University of Minnesota campus became the battleground for the thrown of England. On a small grassy knoll, the kids formed a Shield Wall using wooden replica shields that had authentic paint and art design. A tiny kid, who resembled Chicken Little in every way but the beak, pounded his shield and howled with rage. A big lunker of a ten year old stood in the middle and smirked, "This is soooooooo Brave Heart."

Rubber balls flew through across the park and tagged the Shield Wall, filling the air with a sharp slapping sound. The inner city tuffs playing pick-up ball on the basketball court adjacent to the fields stopped their game to watch the mayhem exploding all around the children. A camper with shaggy, summer-streaked hair bent his knees and deflected the balls being thrown at him from the camp councilors. He yelled out in delight as the balls ricocheted off him and back down the hill. The big kid in the middle shouted out, "Hold the wall! Hold the wall!"

After twenty minutes, the kids were spent and Battle of Hastings turned into a glorious massacre. The runts stationed at the corners of the Shield Wall grew tired and were picked off. The wall loosened and all the kids were bombarded with rubber balls. The history lesson was lost as one solitary Velcro shoe was shot into the summer sky as a sign for peace. The kids crumbled to the grass in theatrical mock death.

But a lone girl kept the battle alive. She stood amongst the wiggling bodies of her fallen comrades and tried her best to soldier on. Seven balls came at her and she was comically peppered in the head, stomach, and leg. She wailed with sheer joy.

"She would've cried for days if I had sent her to soccer camp like the rest of the kids," Maggie Swanson's mom said about her courageous daughter. "But she loves this."

The beleaguered campers took a break and sat in a shady grove of trees. Then a burly instructor laid out spears with tennis balls on the tips and boasted with a great Hail Caesar flair, "Let the Children play with spears!"

The kids sprang up, grabbed spears, and bolted through the park. A gangly boy, who couldn't throw a ball to save his life, chucked a spear and hit a target dead on. Congratulatory cheers rang out as chivalry was brought back to the Twin Cities.

 

In the last couple of years, the Twin Cities has gained a reputation as a hipster Mecca; the chic architecture (new Guthrie, Walker, and Central Library) has garnished international praise, the rocking music scene is hotter than ever with both indie and mainstream bands (Atmosphere on Conan! The Hold Steady opens for The Rolling Stones!), and a powerhouse literary scene has now become a screenwriting oil well thanks to Diablo Cody and the Cohen Bros and their shiny new Oscars. For crying out loud, Esquire Magazine even named Nye's Bar the Best Bar in America. The kudos are great and all, but underneath this sparkly new façade lurks a part of the city that is rarely mentioned in the national media: nerds. A spastic biblical plague has besieged us and now the Twin Cities is so infested with dweebs and smarty pants douche bags that all of Prince's paisley purple funk can't cover up our dorkiness. Minneapolis-once a city so proud of its seismic punk rock and giant cherry spoon-has now become Nerdapolis.

Everywhere I go in the Twin Cities, I'm accosted by some freak that brings the coolness down several notches. Just yesterday, a cashier at the super hip Calhoun Whole Foods scolded me for not knowing the meaning of the different colored light sabers used in the Star Wars movies. My four year old son had brought his toy light saber to the store and when we got to the checkout, the cashier looked down and seriously inspected his stupid plastic toy. The dude then gave me an exaggerated expression of relief.

"Thanks god that light saber is green," grocery clerk Dave scoffed.

"Excuse me?" I replied, walking straight into the nerd trap. Then Dave preceded to give me an in depth analysis about how in the legendary Sci-Fi series the evil Darth Sidious's saber was red and Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi's was blue and that if my son's light saber would've been a color other than green that meant he could've been in an alliance with some god damn thing called the "Siths". I don't think grocery Dave understood that I recently bought the toy at Walgreens because my kid just successfully went a week without shitting his pants and not for some galactic rebellion.

After we loaded our four bags of groceries into the car, we naturally decided that there was nothing to eat and went out to eat at Punch Pizza. As we stood in the long line waiting to order, two ladies in business suits stood at the cashier, where they unmercifully grilled the pizza cook.

"Were the tomatoes in your sauce vine ripened? This buffalo cheese you have on the menu...how long was it aged?"

Then several other asshole foodies joined in on the tomato inquisition. As they held up the entire line (at dinnertime nonetheless), a full blown debate broke out on the merits of Roma tomatoes versus sun dried tomatoes. I tried my best not to stab these culinary wonks in the eye with my son's GREEN light saber. I mean come on... food nerds? Aren't we the city that birthed the Replacements?

A few days later at the local garden center where I work, I meet the grand marshal of the nerd parade that is barreling through our fair city. This woman came in to the store with an exotic blue parrot perched on her shoulder. She eagerly drew attention from every human within five miles and enthusiastically fielded questions about the pet. Then she approached me and asked if we carried a plant named, "Antirrhinum". Now a normal person (or non-dumbass) would come in and ask if we had any Snapdragons. Oh, but not this super smart plant nerd. She only referred to plants by their proper botanical name. When I showed her the table filled with flowering Snapdragons she smiled and asked me, "Did you see my parrot?" just in case I missed the giant blue jungle bird squawking two feet from my face.

Just when I was starting to get bitter about the death of cool in Minneapolis, the city turned me on my ear. I recently went to the Southdale Movie Theater to catch a film with my wife and witnessed a massive nerd spawning in the lobby. Since the theater was filled with nothing but blockbusters, the nerds had ascended in full force to catch the latest comic book turned into film. As I paid for the tickets, we witnessed a gaggle of men in various shades of trench coats and skinny jeans gawking at all the movie posters and mammoth action hero advertisements in the lobby. The nerd herd was so stimulated by the new Batman, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Kung Fu Panda, and Iron Man advertisements that the lobby was basically a super hero porn shop. And when they saw the ten foot tall statue of The Hulk by the concession stand it was boner city. I walked by them with my wife and got a good chuckle out of these grown ass men bowing down before an angry green cartoon monster.

But they were watching me as well. As Sarah and I turned the corner to go in the theater that was showing Sex and the City I heard them loudly snicker at me. Their disdain echoed in my head because I had just been called out for being the lame guy going to see a total chick flick. And they were completely right on. As our "date movie" began, I couldn't help but think: If dudes who know the name of the sand pit monster in Return of the Jedi think that I'm a major loser then that makes me the biggest nerd in the whole city.

Ouch.