Year: 2002

Few artists who paint dogs have found the vision to deviate from the time-honored themes of poker games and doe-eyed poodles on velvet. Armed with acrylics, canvas, and lots of costume jewelry, newcomer Amy Brazil has finally broken the mold. “Best of Show,” a recent hanging at Hopkins Center for the Arts, has people stopping in their tracks. There’s a lot to get their heads around. “La Chasse Auz Papillion” is a profile of a Great Dane giving thoughtful consideration to a crystal-encrusted butterfly mounted on the canvas over a lime-colored background. Others in the show feature more of these unusual jewelry applications. “Hairy Winston” depicts a Boston Terrier on a harlequin-patterned satin background bordered with rhinestones. “Lady Godiva,” a chocolate colored retriever, poses against a background of gold foil embossed to resemble a chocolate wrapper. “Lady Abigail,” an Afghan Hound draped in faux pearls, is painted on black velvet. An initial stroll past these 17 pieces, while enchanting, was also provoking. Why would someone so talented paint nothing but dogs? Why the jewelry? Why aren’t they ironic? Why do I like them so much? I wanted answers, so I called Amy Brazil.

It turns out that Brazil just really, really likes dogs. She started about two years ago with portraits of her own dogs, Jade and Jackson, a Lhasa apso and springer spaniel. She liked the paintings so much that she went to a dog show in search of more subjects. What happened then can only be described as an epiphany. “I went down to the convention center equipped with a sketch pad and a couple of cameras,” said Brazil. “I was just blown away. I was so overwhelmed that day. After that, everything just started clicking.” Since then, she’s wanted to do nothing but paint, and paint nothing but dogs. “I’m doing what makes me happy, and I’m having a great time doing it. If I’m not up by 5:30 or 6 painting, it’s a bad day.”

Yet somehow the resulting work is not precious or sentimental dreck. Brazil said she tries to reveal human equivalents in the variety of character found in canine breeds. Reminded of Sid Vicious by the legendarily ugly Chinese Crested breed, Brazil created a double portrait (“Sid and Nancy”) on a Sex Pistols-themed background. An “obnoxious” (Brazil’s word) Bob Mackey design favored by Cher in the 70s will supply the background for a work in progress of a doberman depicted as Cher. She will be posed with an Italian greyhound. Naturally, Brazil will call him Sonny. There seems to be no limit to the potential combinations Brazil might conceive and paint in the future. She has nonetheless paid the devil his due. With “Lady Abigail” on black velvet, she gave her nod to the kernel of kitsch that will forever be at the heart of this form. Is she also tempted to update the poker-playing bulldogs? “No,” she said. “It’s already been done, and it was done beautifully.”

When Senator Norm Coleman takes office in Washington next month, he’ll have some big decisions to make, on everything from war to social security. He may also need to decide on a new dentist, a process that certainly can tax a man’s courage. Norm has already proven himself on that score: In 1999, he underwent a procedure to close the gap in his front teeth. “What’s pain? I’m the mayor,” he said at the time. “I deal with pain all the time.”

Deep down, everyone else is afraid of dentists. The dentistry section in the yellow pages is full of big, bold pleas like, “No Scolding Judgements or Lectures” and “We Cater To Cowards”—selling points that would be bizarre for any other business. Plumbers do not need to run ads that say, “The Plunger Doesn’t Hurt, I Swear to God!”

This is bad. First, it’s bad medicine. Terrified people don’t go to the dentist, or go so rarely that their teeth suffer between visits. Second, it’s a bummer for the dentists. And it’s also bad business. Since insurance companies and government programs pick up less of the tab for your dental work than for other medical procedures, it cuts more deeply into dentists’ bottom line if you can’t bear to have them cut deeply into your molars.

Naturally there’s been considerable effort to change public opinion. “I think in the past, dentists were rougher,” said Jeff Johnson, a dentist in Little Falls. “Dentistry’s kind of a rough thing to start with—banging away and drilling away on your teeth. But if you aren’t conscious of a person’s sensitivity to that, you may not see them again.”

The trend is cheery coziness, the style is basement rec-room. Dentists’ lobbies these days are “more living-room-like and much more comfortable,” says Kimberly Harms, a Farmington dentist. She cheerfully admits that she herself is “absolutely terrified” of having her own teeth worked on, and says her own tendency toward phobia has influenced her practice’s high priority on patient amenities, including a juice bar and a private garden with birds and flowers. “We’re basically looking at the patient at every part of the dental visit and saying, ‘What can we do to make that more relaxing?’”

A lot of patients are agreeable to visual distractions, especially during long sessions. Dr. Harms and Dr. Johnson both offer “video glasses,” sort of eye-phones that attach to a DVD player or a VCR and bedazzle patients with their favorite movies. (Just a suggestion: Don’t request Marathon Man.)

But if dentists want to make sure you know they feel sympathetic, they also want to make sure you feel numb. “I think certainly the public has a lower tolerance for discomfort in recent times,” said St. Anthony dentist Joseph Osterbauer. “What society might have considered a necessary evil, they won’t tolerate anymore.” Nitrous oxide has become common, and many offices now use computer-aided anesthetic injections to reduce pain. Once confined to major oral surgery, powerful knockout drugs like Rohypnol and Halcion are increasingly used for routine dental work. “Sedation dentistry,” as it’s known, is rather drastic. But if there’s no other way you can face the drill, the ADA’s official position is that they’d rather see you unconscious than not see you at all.

Rick Kahn was in seclusion. Scorned by Republicans and Democrats alike, he wasn’t opening his door or returning calls. T. Trent Gegax picked up the phone and called anyway.

Gegax is a Newsweek reporter from the Twin Cities. The University of Minnesota graduate grew up in Burnsville, but has since lived in Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, writing about politics and pop culture. He was back in his old stomping grounds on November 5 to cover the much-scrutinized Minnesota senate race. Sensing that the Wellstone memorial would turn out to be pivotal that Tuesday, he wanted feedback from the man at the epicenter of the controversy. Did Kahn have anything to say for himself in the aftermath of his speech?

Surprisingly, Wellstone’s close friend and campaign treasurer answered his phone. After a conversation that lasted less than 10 minutes, Gegax published the results that night in an online article. The scoop was quickly relayed across the country through national outlets such as the Associated Press and Fox News, along with envious local media including KSTP-TV and the Star Tribune.

When we talked to the reporter (he returned our call within a day), Gegax claimed no secret strategy for nailing down the elusive interview. Although his father, Tires Plus founder Tom Gegax, was a well-known Wellstone supporter, Trent said his family’s connections to the campaign were never mentioned. “I just cold-called,” he said. “I was very respectful. I tried to say, ‘I understand you’re in a very difficult situation and I hate the fact that I have to call you, but I just want to get your feelings.’” Kahn was reluctant at first. “And then he said, ‘All I’ll say is, this was a public expression of private grief.’ And then he, of course, kept talking, as people often do.”

This was not the first time Gegax has gotten a big scoop. Remember the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics? He was the first print journalist on the scene for that story, having felt the blast in a nearby press room. A scoop like that can make a reporter’s career. Since then, the former Minnesota Daily writer has covered lots of breaking news, including plane crashes, hurricanes, and school shootings.

“In my job, I unfortunately have to convince people going through serious tragedy to talk,” he said. “I go out of my way to tell them, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to write this piece and I want you to be able to have the first crack at your side of the story.’” The writer was coy about how he got a phone number Kahn would answer. “Sourcing is closely held,” he said.

On the same day Gegax got his exclusive Kahn interview, HBO premiered Journeys With George, a vérité documentary that follows the 2000 Bush presidential campaign from inside the press corps. The film catches Bush in unguarded moments, including his persistent teasing of filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi about her flirtations with a reporter dubbed “Newsweek Man.” The object of Pelosi’s affection was Gegax. “Bush was always kind of nudging us,” Gegax said. “It’s the way he endears himself to other people, especially the press. He gets into their personal lives. He flirts with men and women alike. Sometimes I think it’s genuine. Sometimes I think it’s just a mechanism to get good play.”

For the record, Gegax said nothing serious happened between him and Pelosi (daughter of Nancy, the nation’s new House minority leader). In fact, Newsweek Man is engaged to marry a longtime girlfriend in March. He said he’s amused by the notoriety resulting from Journeys With George, but he hopes to stake his reputation on work like his Kahn interview. “I would prefer to be known as somebody who gets scoops,” he said. “Rather than for coming off as a cad.”

It sounded like something only a Wisconsin native could crave: a butterburger. As a strict vegetarian from Minneapolis going to college in Madison, I couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. Yet Culver’s, the fast-food restaurant offering it, were everywhere. For years, I wondered what could possibly be good about a sandwich whose name was so suggestive of an inevitable angioplasty.

I was driving home from the lake recently, and there it was, right along I-94 just outside Albertville: a Culver’s. They’ve expanded their silly operation into Minnesota, I thought; no outer-ring suburb is safe. Traffic slowed and my thoughts came to a similar standstill. I found myself obsessing about butterburgers. A primitive curiosity stirred in my animal-brain: Could it, as the name implies, be a burger coated and fried in butter? Are we living in 1953? There was only one way to find out.

I enlisted a friend to act as a witness—and to drive, in case this experiment somehow went horribly wrong—and we headed for the nearest Culver’s. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of a franchise in suburban Plymouth. There were butterflies in my stomach as we approached the door. Here, a G.I. tract that had not seen a hamburger in 12 years was about to do battle with a butterburger. I felt nauseated and tried to turn back, but no way. My carnivorous friend hadn’t driven this far for nothing. This was the moment in our friendship, begun in the early days of my allegiance to a vegetative idealism, that she had been waiting for. We pushed onward.

Inside, the bright lights drew our eyes to the menu, where the plain, unornamented butterburger ranked lowest on a list of doubles, triples, combos, and various other carnival variations. I stepped up and ordered a single deluxe meal. I received an empty soda cup and claim plate number 8.

Now for the moment of truth, which came with the modest price tag of $4.46: What is a butterburger? A hamburger patty cooked in butter? The teenage cashier looked at me sheepishly and explained. “They just butter the bun,” he said. “They’ll bring it out to you when it’s ready.”

I approached the soda machine in a state of mild shock. I pressed “here for ice,” and carefully blended Diet Pepsi with Wild Cherry Pepsi. I unwrapped a straw and paused a moment, deep in thought. Could I truly sacrifice both my stomach and my vegetarian ethics for a mere mortal of a burger—even if it came on a buttered bun? A burger precisely like any other that is mass-produced and mass-consumed all over the world every day? I pumped a splurt of ketchup into a paper cup and considered. We took a seat at one of the plastic booths lining the windows in the dining area. An employee, her blond ponytail spouting triumphantly above her blue visor, set down our trays.

The envelope of fries looked so light and carefree next to the object-in-question. The burger—my burger—was folded recklessly in a body bag of white paper. I flipped it over, stripped it of its wrapper, and peered suspiciously under the crown of the bun. It was indeed buttered. Animal-on-animal action. So I did what any other self-respecting Minnesotan should do: I bit into the butterburger.

And then something unexpected happened. The long-forgotten taste of ground beef invited a flood of hamburger-related memories: childhood birthday parties long flushed out in a sea of salad, family barbeques erased by the voodoo of tofu. It was as American as the Thanksgiving holiday when, almost a decade ago, I had eaten meat for the last time. But it was much better than the dry, overcooked turkey that had so thoroughly turned me off to meat. And I say the wondrous white bun will never be obsoleted by its multi-grained cousin. Not as long as it’s buttered, anyway.

Tucked away in cardboard boxes in hundreds of basements and attics lie the forgotten, dusty remnants of “artistic phases” from our younger days, often remembered, if at all, with mortification. A couple of years ago, D.R. Martin found his cardboard box, and what he thought was, “Hey, these aren’t bad.” He had 200 sheets of negatives from his days as a photographer, pictures he’d taken in Duluth, Minneapolis, and Europe in the late 1960s, when he was 18 and smitten by the methods of Henri Cartier-Bresson. That French photographer specialized in the spontaneous shot—what he called “the decisive moment” when the lighting, setting, and subject was suddenly just right. Life organized the composition; the photographer’s art was to recognize those moments and even hunt them down. Martin’s compositions are striking, now with an added sense of being removed from time. An old man peers into an Italian newspaper, oblivious to the frenzied activity of birds around him. A young girl leans against a wall, staring into the distance. Four protesters rest after an event, each lost in their own thoughts. Photography is an instantaneous art, all about being in the right place at the right time. It’s good that these found a new place and time as well. Icebox, 2401 Central Ave. N.E., (612) 788-1790