Year: 2002

We’ve made Canada the brunt of a few good jokes over the years, but they know it’s all in good fun. Besides, we Minnesotans are about as close to the Canadians as any American can legally be without renouncing citizenship. The problem isn’t so much that Canada doesn’t have a national identity separate from America’s (we do cast a pretty broad shadow, after all), but that they don’t embrace the one they have. All their best artists invariably pull up stakes and move south—Alanis Morissette, Neil Young, Barenaked Ladies, heck, even Peter Jennings turned tail on the True North as soon as the siren call of superstardom beckoned him to the land of sin. In recent years, though, Canadians have begun to quietly nurture a hipster underground of punkers posing as traditional folk artists, especially among the celtic folk fiddlers and cloggers out on the Atlantic provinces. Sadly, this micro-movement was nearly capsized by that Nova Scotian nitwit Ashley MacIsaac. Now Great Big Sea promises to heal the wounds and further the cause. This Newfoundland quartet is, for want of a better comparison, a Gen-Y Canadian version of Boiled in Lead—which is to say a cleaner, less angry version with someone who sounds a lot like Gordon Lightfoot singing. (That’s a good thing! Just wait until next month’s Broken Clock.)

A writer—a pulp novelist, a man who’s betrayed his own talent and, by his reckoning, every important relationship he’s ever known—lies in a hospital bed, delirious from disease. He can’t grip a pen; he can’t move at all without excruciating pain. To keep from going mad, he sets out to rewrite in his head The Singing Detective, his now-ancient first novel. But the world intrudes at every turn. Characters from his childhood and his wrecked marriage start turning up in his imaginings and take the story away from him. The serial’s writer, Dennis Potter—who died eight years ago this month—is wholly unknown in America, but he was one of the finest playwrights of Britain’s post-war generation, a fact too little noticed because he did all his writing for television. Potter, you should know, suffered from the same disease as his singing detective, Philip Marlow, a periodically flairing condition known as psoriatic arthropathy. The disease defined a great deal about Potter’s life; from time to time he was prone to thinking it had a moral dimension, and that if he could solve the riddle of his own life it might purge his illness. The Singing Detective is his brilliant, desperate effort to do just that, and in the process it redeems every cliché about the healing power of art.

There is no shortage of theories regarding the fever dreams of David Lynch. We have our own: He’s a walking clinical study of high-functioning autism, a man who lives—quite literally, by all appearances—in a private world that turns the everyday back on us in grotesquely refracted ways. All of Lynch’s most emblematic works (this movie, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) say the same thing: There is a world inside the world, more corrupt and more Byzantine than you can imagine. An ironic streak of puritanism colors Lynch’s notion of evil; you see it in the way he represents good (Laura Dern and Kyle McLachlan in Blue Velvet) and the glee he takes in brutality toward the unrighteous. But none of this even begins to explain the peculiar emotional force of these little dream-quests. As for Mulholland Drive, consider this Rakish Viewers’ Tip®: The plot isn’t tough to fathom if you take for granted that the first two hours are a dream dreamt by a character who doesn’t have a line until the last 20 minutes.

In the gritty alley behind Sex World, in downtown Minneapolis’ notorious Warehouse District, you can stumble upon a whole microcosm of vibrant activity. We’re not talking about the inebriated college kids pissing in corners after a night of drinking, though there is plenty of that, nor any of the unseemliness you might hope to encounter in such a nefarious block. No, the action here is the steady hum of One on One Bicycle Studio, getting ready for business. Gene Oberpriller is preparing to open the enterprise this spring. But unlike most shops who try to be all things to everybody, Oberpriller says he wants to serve the thriving subculture of urban cyclists who eschew the image of a typical bicycle “enthusiast.”

Anyone who passes through downtown Minneapolis these days can’t help but notice that the city is increasingly a bike town. Sideburned messengers, service-sector workers riding department-store clunkers, workaday folks with their pants tucked carefully into their dress socks; they all descend upon the city on their bikes. People seem to be catching on to the simple reality that bicycles are the best way to get around the city, especially the downtown area.

Oberpriller has lived in the warehouse district for more than 10 years, where he’s known to some for his raucous late-night parties and bike rallies. Among local cyclists he’s a colossus; he’s been a pro-level racer in BMX, mountain, road, and cyclocross disciplines. And now he’s become something of an economist. “Downtown is the fastest growing neighborhood in the city,” he says. “The Riverfront housing developments have the potential to bring in 10,000 new residents. And the recreational trail corridors, such as the Cedar Lake Bike Highway and the River Road/Stone Arch Bridge see as many as 3,000 people a day.”

That kind of increase in the downtown biking population will naturally mean more people needing a place to fix flats and replace chains. Until now, there really hasn’t been a bike shop downtown. (Several years ago, a small shop called Downtown Bikes tried, but didn’t make it.) Oberpriller’s shop will offer new and “recycled” bikes. In the spirit of Sanford & Son, One on One will also be a salvage operation, much like an auto parts junkyard, for people who need cheap parts. The basement of Oberpriller’s studio is brimming with wheels, handlebars, and general bike detritus gathered over a decade of trash-picking and dumpster diving. “One on One will provide the cheapest and most efficient means of transportation downtown,” says Oberpriller. “We want people to realize, especially in the urban environment, that there is an alternative to automobiles. It’s simple, really. Ride, don’t drive.”

It holds up pretty well, all things considered, but then we’re suckers for baseball movies. Tim Robbins’ turn as screwy southpaw Nuke LaLoosh (a baseball picture without clichés just isn’t a baseball picture) represents the funniest performance in le cinema du baseball since the hapless, ever befuddled William Bendix assayed the title role in The Babe Ruth Story. Susan Sarandon is likewise masterful as Annie, the temptress/muse/ home-team slut who undertakes to make Nuke a man. And Kevin Costner is—well, Kevin Costner. The man has made a second career of baseball films. (Field of Dreams, For Love of the Game—and wouldn’t a few pickup games have done a lot to spruce up Dances With Wolves?) Special bonus for Rakish readers: If you act now, the new special edition DVD is available from Amazon.com in a specially priced two-pack with The Natural, Robert Redford’s baseball horror flick about a preternaturally gifted young outfielder whose face is inexplicably melting.

“That comes to $7.10,” says the laconic clerk at Byerly’s. The woman in front of me methodically unsnaps her purse, unfolds her pocketbook, fumbles with a ballpoint, and begins to write a check. She drafts the month, F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y, while I begin to simmer. Why can’t it be May? She applies her careful, mid-century penmanship now to her check register. Slowly, slowly she folds her check at the perforation, and extracts it from the book. Inwardly, I scream, “DEBIT CARD! DEBIT CARD!”

In other states, people left their checkbooks in the 80s. Try handing the Soup Nazi a check in Manhattan, and he likely won’t be as polite as the uptown Minneapolis branch of Old Chicago. When they stopped accepting checks recently, they handed out notes of apology with every bill. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope that our great food, cold beer, and friendly service will maintain your relationship with us as customers, friends, and neighbors.

Others may laugh at us for writing checks for 87 cents and our “check writing stations” for the handicapped. And they do, according to Buzz Anderson, president of the Minnesota Retailers Association. “When we talk to retailers in other parts of the country they say, ‘What?! You still accept checks in your state?’”

But Anderson says our acceptance of checks stems from our history of being neighborly. “I think it says something about our culture and tradition and history,” he says. He even remembers when retailers wrote counter checks for customers. “We’re still a pretty honest bunch of folks.”

Jason Korstange, a TCF director, wishes people would stop using so many checks, because they cost a lot more to process than any other form of payment. He says checks aren’t as safe as most people think either. A dozen different people may handle your check before it gets back to you. “There’s still a hardcore group of people who don’t plan on changing,” says Kathy Paese, a Federal Reserve System researcher. “Checks are going to be around for a while. They’re not going away anytime soon.” Paese describes the hardcore group as older Americans. We’ve noticed they’re probably a little more polite, a little more reserved, and a little more Minnesotan than average.

It’s hard to believe that Jeune Lune has never before staged a Greek tragedy. The highly stylized drama of that period would seem to provide fertile ground for the highly stylized productions of this French-derived theater company. Medea, however, is a bit of a surprising choice. Of all the ancient Greek tragedians (all three of them) whose works have not been entirely lost, Euripides is by far the most modern, by far the most concerned with the intricacies of character. Except for the ending, the gods are absent from Medea; this is a play about the messy business of being human. And that’s the weakness of this production, because Jeune Lune’s strengths lie more in the physical than in the psychological. Moreover, Medea is a tough show to pull off unless you have an actress with commanding stage presence to play the title character. Although Barbara Berlovitz is a fine actress in the right role, she’s not the scenery-chomping dynamo this job requires. Still, it’s interesting to see how Jeune Lune’s style matches up with the challenges presented by the script. And watch for Charles Schuminski as Aegeus, King of Athens, who makes his entrance looking remarkably like Jesus Christ Superstar.

Art
by Yasmina Reza
Park Square Theatre, through April 13
What is Art? Three answers come to mind. First, it’s a play that asks the question, What is art? In other words, Art has genuine intellectual content—something we don’t encounter very often in the contemporary American theater. (More’s the pity.) Second, Art is a play with a somewhat misleading title. Yes, on one level it’s about aesthetics; but on another more dramatic level it’s about human relationships. A better title might be The Shock of Discovering Your Best Friend Is a Complete Idiot. That’s what happens in the play: A man buys an all-white painting which he takes quite seriously, thus endangering his friendship with another man who thinks the painting is the height of pretentiousness. Third, Art is one of the most critically lauded new plays to come along in years, and critics aren’t always wrong. This production marks not only the area premiere of Art, but also the return to directing of Richard Cook, Park Square’s artistic director, after a two-year hiatus. Well-known local actors Peter Moore, Jim Stowell, and Peter Gregory Thompson make up the cast. And if you need another reason to see the show, you can tell your friends that you saw Art for art’s sake.

“Don’t worry if you fuck it up. Just go out there and have a good time,” said Jay Leno. That was the backhanded advice he gave Nick Swardson in his dressing room, moments before Nick’s Tonight Show debut a few weeks ago. And Nick didn’t. In the vernacular of stand-up comedians, he crushed.

There’s something creepy and disingenuous about Jay Leno. No, I wouldn’t have been watching, but I owe Nick $100 (he scalped some Radiohead tickets for me last year), and I figured writing about him for The Rake would even our accounts. Regardless of these unusual circumstances, I certainly won’t be the last guy from Minnesota to brag about knowing Nick Swardson. I mean, the guy’s funny enough to skip Letterman. Not many comics love The Tonight Show anymore either. Partly because without Carson behind the desk, booking that show is no longer the crowning moment of a comic’s career, and partly because Jay is perceived as something of an ass. In fact, it was staff turnover that finally opened the Tonight Show door for Nick. “A lot of people really didn’t think my style was Tonight Show,” Nick told me afterward. “The former bookers were old school. And they just thought I was a little too different.”

Nick is different the way Minneapolis rock bands are different. He has that Westerberg impishness that plays as well on First Avenue’s mainstage as it does on a comedy club stage. Sure, he jokes about the “Wheel of Fortune” (“Why don’t the contestants cheat? I would. I’ll take a B, Pat. Sorry, no Bs. I said P, Pat. I’m not stupid, I think I know what I said.”) and his grandmother (“Nicholas! You should fight crime!”), but there’s something a little subversive, a little punk about him. In fact, he talks about his set as if he was fronting a band—Radiohead, to be specific—and says he feels pressure to play the big hits while what he really wants to do is trot out the more experimental stuff. “I just want to do my Amnesiac set because that’s in my head.” Because he’s my friend, and because I’m a Radiohead fan, I forgive him for such a hipster play on words. Besides, his stuff cracks up real rock stars too. Nick recently opened up for band-of-the-moment the Strokes in L.A. after they caught his act in New York.

Ultimately, Nick’s Tonight Show experience softened his opinion of Jay, who asked Nick over to the couch after his performance (there’s still prestige in that gesture). “He was so nice, and that really makes a difference. I really won’t be slamming the show as much,” said Nick prudently.