Year: 2002

Beer, music, bowling, spoken word, food, cabaret. Could you ask for more? Social from breakfast to bar time, BLB is a mainstay for any trendsetter or wannabe. The mix of 40s-era paneling, dreadlocks, bowling trophies, and ahi tuna somehow comingle in an electric atmosphere for anybody looking for something different. Over the past several years Bryant-Lake’s compact, 85-seat theater has become a hot spot for good local entertainment. On nearly any night of the week you’ll find one or two shows offered, be it music, comedy, or even a little drama. If you’re not in the mood for art, don a pair of ancient suede three-tones and work on your average. Chances are you’ll have to wait for a lane–the six-year-olds on lane one are nearly finished, but the tattooed and pierced bunch on lane two is a smaller group. Brush up on your bowling etiquette, though; when Roger is “in” he takes no funny stuff. While you’re waiting you can pick from fare that ranges from a turkey, sauerkraut, Swiss, and thousand island sammy to a warm fig salad in a balsamic reduction. Bryant-Lake Bowl, (612) 825-3737

Pepito’s is the kind of festive neighborhood joint where even a bad date can turn into a good time. Big flavor is matched by big portions and plenty of hospitality that only gets better once the margaritas arrive. It seems to be a method that works. For more than 20 years this family-run restaurant has been dishing it up with verve, and its popularity shows in its regulars. Some staffers have been around for years, too. And that’s always a good sign. Likewise, take a look at the brass name plaques in the booths: Janet Jackson, Kenny Loggins, Diana Pierce, and innumerable Viking linemen. Sure, it’s hammy, but it’s fun, too. Just what a family should be, and since Pepito’s offers the best deal on kids meals in town ($1.95 buys a child-size entree, a drink with free refills, and an ice-cream sundae!), you can afford to feed your family there as often as you wish. For bigger appetites, the homemade standards are all here–huge enchiladas filled with about a pound of beans, chunky salsa, and spicy pork dishes that are hot enough to bring a trickle to your brow. Sunday brunch offers a zesty array of Mexican comfort foods at an all-you-can-eat bargain, or you can drop in later in the evening for live entertainment. Pepitos, (612) 822-2104

Spyhouse? A house of spies? Yes, Q, they’re everywhere in this place. Spies from Africa, spies from Hong Kong, spies from behind the old iron curtain. Spies who look like Jack Kerouac, spies who wish they wrote like him, and spies who seem weathered enough that they might have hung out with him in ’54. Mostly, the spies look like they fell off a Pucci runway, hep, swankish, and charmed with life in this moment. They go nicely with the dense smoke, the Ero Saarinen decor, and the music of Montovani, Cale, or Mr. Bungle (perhaps in quick succession), typically played at a volume that is not to be ignored. Unlike most coffee bars that pretend to show art, the Spyhouse earnestly shows talent that would make Bond glance over Ursula’s shoulder. Outside, on one of Minneapolis’ most worldly streets, you and your fellow spies can enjoy a table in the May sun while the Vietnamese women make their way to the market or a mysterious shadow slips into the Mexican psychic’s place across the street. And though you can’t get your martini either shaken or stirred you can get an incredible cup of Sumatra for $1.85. The Spyhouse, (612) 871-3177

If you know anything about investing, you know about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett, often referred to as the "World’s Greatest Investor", is the helmsman of Berkshire Hathaway, which is a holding company that owns Geico Insurance, General Re reinsurance, Dexter Shoes, The Buffalo (NY) News, See’s Candy, and several others. It also holds major stakes in American Express, The Washington Post, and Coca-Cola. Buffett has some peculiar notions that he has managed to hold onto during the Internet and Telcom boom: He doesn’t invest in anything he doesn’t understand. So, he buys insurance, brick, and shoe companies that just turn out consistent profits, while we all piss away the 401K on fiber-optic switch companies with funny names and web sites. His management philosophy is best summed up by the following quote from this year’s annual letter to shareholders. "Why, you might ask, didn’t I recognize the above facts [of terrorist risk] before September 11th? The answer, sadly, is that I did–but I didn’t convert thought into action. I violated the Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does." He takes responsibility for his own shortcomings–not a textbook character trait of American captains of industry. So, why go to the annual meeting? Because you get to listen to Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger tell you everything they know for about six hours on a Saturday. The actual business of the meeting is dispatched in five minutes, and then they both take questions. If you get tired of listening, you can go to the auditorium basement and actually buy products of Berkshire subsidiaries. Before the Saturday meeting, there is a Friday evening cocktail reception at Borsheim’s, the west Omaha jewelry store that Berkshire owns, and where everything is for sale at deep discounts for shareholders. After the Saturday meeting, Buffett appears at the Omaha Royals minor league baseball game and patiently sits for pictures and signs autographs for anyone who wants. Sunday, the sale continues at Borsheim’s and at Nebraska Furniture Mart, another Berkshire holding. One catch–admission is open only to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. If you were a shareholder as of March 6, you have received your admission information by now. If you bought your shares after that date, you can bring a current broker’s statement for admission at the door. The price of one Berkshire "A" share is, as of this writing, $71,100. Lucky for you, they issued "B" shares a couple of years ago, which are going for only $2,362 today. You also have to pay $6 each if you want the baseball tickets, but they throw in the parking and a hot dog. Berkshire Hathaway, www.berkshirehathaway.com

Novelist, essayist, and short story writer Jamaica Kincaid will read from her new novel, Mr. Potter. In this latest book, what is possibly her most luminous and ambitious work to date, the author breathes life into an individual consciousness emerging gloriously out of an unexamined life. Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John’s, Antigua, West Indies in 1949. After emigrating to the United States and becoming a U.S. citizen, she married composer Allen Shawn and, in 1973, changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid. With the 1983 publication of her book of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, Kincaid made her arrival as an important new voice in American fiction, receiving the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983. She is the author of six novels, and she credits the United States as the place where “I did find myself and did find my voice… what I really feel about America is that it’s given me a place to be myself–but myself as I was formed somewhere else.” Kincaid’s obsession with the island of Antigua comes to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur who makes his living along the roads that pass the only towns he has ever seen and the graveyard where he will be buried. J. B. Davis Auditorium, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul; Ruminator Books, (651) 659-0587

Judith Guest, one of Minnesota’s most acclaimed authors, will read from Ice Walk and will discuss writing and publishing her works, which include Ordinary People (1976), Second Heaven (1982), Killing Time in St. Cloud (1988), and Errands (1997). Guest’s latest work was co-created with artists Michael Lizama and Jana Pullman, both of Minneapolis. Author and artists collaborated to create Ice Walk through the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), whose mission is “to advance the book as a vital contemporary art form, preserving the traditional crafts of bookmaking and engaging people in learning, production, interpretive and collaborative experiences.” Thus, the final product, as much an original work of art as a book, was a nominee for the Fine Press category of the Minnesota Book Awards. The MCBA, established in 1983, is currently the most comprehensive independent book arts facility in the nation, serving “masters and novices, artists and students, teachers, designers, writers, families, and youth.” Arden Hills Library, 1941 W. County Rd. E-2; MCBA, (612) 215-2520

Climbers are, of course, risk-takers by definition. But they don’t have a death-wish. On the contrary, they have a life-wish. It’s a complicated thing, but basically it comes down to this: Living close to the edge has a way of sharpening your senses, of making you feel more alive. Coming out of a decade’s worth of mountaineering literature that produced some real peaks (John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air) and valleys (Anatoli Boukreev’s The Climb), this may be the first popular entertainment since The Eiger Sanction to combine the thrills of high-peak technical alpinism with the spills of international intrigue. It’s the true story of four of America’s most gifted climbers who were camped high on the walls of Mount Zhioltaya Stena. They were within spitting distance of Afghanistan when their expedition was hijacked by Islamic extremists. Marched at gunpoint to within an inch of their lives, they escaped by doing the one thing a climber would never wish on his worst enemy: They pushed their captor… well, you already know the title. Childs has written a striking book that ups the ante on your typical mountaineering apology. It’s one thing to put yourself in that kind of danger. It’s quite another to push someone else into it. Childs reads at Ruminator Books in St. Paul, May 2, (651) 699-0587. Accompany-ing the author will be John Dickey, one of the climbers.

We took Crying at the Movies to bed with us like a bad cold, prepared to wallow in it and nurse it, not realizing it was a page-turner. This memoir by Madelon Sprengnether, University of Minnesota English Professor and creative writing instructor, is a story of self-discovery told through the very adult–and very childlike–process of seeing a film story and relating it to personal history. The book winds its way through eight films and more than five decades in the writer’s life, in a rich form that intrigues as much for its clear presentation of the various film stories as it does for the private and powerful tale of Sprengnether’s life. It’s not necessary to have seen the movies or to understand much about psychoanalysis to gather the lifelong struggle of a woman who’s father drowned when she was just nine, and who lives for years in a home where this traumatic event is neither discussed nor felt. Blending screen stories, film images, literary quotes, and a mystical chronology, the memoir flows from the shadows and images of home movies, through the recollection of suppressed emotions and memories, to the reality of Sprengnether’s mother’s death, funeral, and burial told in concrete detail. After reading this dense volume published by Graywolf Press, the impulse will not be to lie in bed, but to gaze into the shadows and snapshots, the rented movies and real-life memories, and realize, as Joy does in the 1993 film Shadowlands, “Pain then is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal.”

Hedwig is the victim of a bungled sex-change operation, a gay immigrant from Berlin who reinvents himself as a rock ‘n’ roll drag queen. The Angry Inch is both Hedwig’s band and, er, what she has left after the operation. Does this sound like your idea of a hit show? If not, you might be surprised to learn that Outward Spiral Theatre, which is producing the Twin Cities premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has already had to extend its run twice. Audiences, straight as well as bent, haven’t merely accepted this show–they’ve embraced it. And the reasons for its success aren’t really that hard to understand. Hedwig is a solidly crafted piece of theater based on a remarkably simple concept: It’s a stage musical in the form of a small-club rock concert, using autobiographical songs and between-song patter to develop the main character and tell her story. In the title role, Jason S. Little incarnates that icon of gay culture, the diva who suffers as brilliantly as she sings; he gives us not only the over-the-top artifice that the character wears like a suit of armor, but also the nakedly vulnerable interior. It’s a fine performance and an enjoyably twisted evening of musical theater. Loring Playhouse, (612) 486-5757

Yes, this is the show in which Nicole Kidman appeared nude on Broadway. Now that we’ve gotten that bit of trivia out of the way, let’s consider the play itself, a meditation on couples and coupling. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s classic La Ronde, The Blue Room is structured as a circle of interlocking encounters. Each of the two actors plays five characters, and each character appears in two scenes with characters of the opposite sex, according to the pattern A+B, B+C, C+D, etc. Thus there are 10 scenes total, and each scene contains an internal blackout during which the characters make love–in many cases for the first time, which of course forever alters relations between them. In short, The Blue Room is a complex piece that demands tour de force performances from its actors. Fortunately it’s being produced at the Jungle, where the acting is always the main attraction and where you can usually count on seeing the best actors in town. This production features Kirsten Frantzich, who slew Jungle audiences a year ago in the role of a dog (Sylvia), and Kris L. Nelson, who spent last summer mopping the Guthrie stage with a television star (Once in a Lifetime). Bain Boehlke directs and designs with his customary insight and flair. The Jungle Theater, (612) 822-7063