Katherine Lanpher has moved on from MPR, but before she left she helped broaden the vistas of the Talking Volumes radio book club by getting Neil Gaiman, who perhaps may not draw the same crowd as Anna Quindlen. Gaiman, who will discuss his recent kid-lit creeper Coraline, is best known for creating the nineties graphic-novel series Sandman, which made him cock of the walk for smart, edgy writers in the contemporary fantasy genre. He has also written and illustrated children’s books, mature novels, screenplays, and even rock songs…why can’t we be more like that Gaiman guy? And he’s still only in his early forties! While Oxbridge graduates like Martin Amis, Tina Brown, and Nick Hornby hog all the headlines, Neil Gaiman is probably the only Brit Pack literary figure likely to be remembered in thirty years. Gaiman hasn’t sold out: It’s not his fault that Norman Mailer hosannaed him by saying, “Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it’s about time.” Nor can we blame Gaiman for Tori Amos choosing to sing about him repeatedly on her albums.
Fitzgerald, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul, (651) 290-1221, www.fitzgeraldtheater.org
Month: January 2004
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Neil Gaiman
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Haven Kimmel
North Carolina writer Kimmel’s third book, Something Rising (Light and Swift), isn’t quite strong enough to justify that optimistic title. But there’s merit in the story of Cassie Claiborne, an emotionally wounded girl from poor rural Indiana whose preternatural talent for shooting pool might be her ticket out of town, or at least toward reconciliation with her self-absorbed father. That skill is the one good thing she inherits from her dad, but even so, it inspires nothing more paternal in him than grudging rivalry. Besides Cassie herself, her father is the most interesting character in the book, and it’s a shame Kimmel drops him from the storyline so early. If their poisonous relationship had been developed further, it could have made for a fascinating book. Instead, we get long sections on Cassie’s life as an aimless teen in rural Indiana—ground Kimmel covered extensively in both her previous books. But despite the unfocused plot and occasionally clumsy description (“his haircut seemed fresh and raw”), Kimmel captures Cassie’s self-destructive nature, and there’s a nice moment late in the book when Cassie sadly realizes that, like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, she could’ve been a contender. Given another draft, this book could have been one too.
Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, ruminator.com -
Wine, wine, wine! Wild Horses on Bended Knee
The saints of February are a rum lot. The larger their reputation, the less can be said for certain about their lives and activities—and vice versa. The blameless virgin Saint Scholastica, twin sister of Saint Benedict, is relatively well documented—for someone who lived fifteen hundred years ago. But she is remembered only for the name of a distinguished college in Duluth, and for the fact that on her feast day (February 10) in 1355 no fewer than sixty-three Oxford scholars were killed in a riot, which began as a difference of opinion about the beer in the Swindlestock Tavern in the city center.
By contrast, nothing is known for certain about the fourth century’s Saint Blasius (February 3), but in the Middle Ages he had a mighty reputation for curing sore throats and as the patron of workmen who combed raw wool—thanks to legend that the Roman authorities tortured him by scarifying his sides with metal combs. Similarly, Saint Agatha (February 5) is entirely legendary. But she was regularly invoked in medieval Sicily to prevent volcanic eruptions from Mount Etna, no doubt on account of the myth that her martyrdom involved double mastectomy.
In such company it is scarcely surprising that there is not much that is true, or even likely, to tell about the best known of all the February saints, the patron of tacky Hallmark cards, unseasonable single red roses, and the midweek catering trade. We know for certain there was a shrine dedicated to a Saint Valentine just outside Rome as early as 352. The rest is legend—in fact, two legends: one revolving round Valentine of Rome, the other around Valentine of Terni, a hill-city many miles to the north. It was not until the time of Chaucer, a millennium after the construction of the Roman shrine, that we find people pairing off on February 14, and they seem to have been inspired not by the alleged deeds of either Valentine, but by noticing that this was the time when small birds found their mates. Fourteenth-century folk were as good at inventing traditions as the Victorians.
In our gray world (and what is grayer than the slush churned by the buses in Uptown on a February evening?), it is a poor heart that never rejoices. There ought to be something that can warm and lubricate your Valentine’s Day (and, no doubt, your valentine). Everyone I ask about this suggests champagne. I disagree. For one thing, it’s cold, and what sensible person wants to add extra chill to a Minnesota winter? Second, even in small quantities it dries you out, causing particularly grim and enervating hangovers. But most important, the energy it imparts is evanescent; it lifts the spirits only to dump them good and hard afterward. Macbeth’s porter might well have been thinking of champagne when he said that much drink is an equivocator with lechery: “It provokes the desire, but it takes away from the performance.” Those who propose champagne are welcome to my share.
I will choose something heart-warming, fruity, and red. Pinot noir is the grape from which the French make Burgundy. For a fraction of the cost of a bottle of good Burgundy (in fact, about twenty dollars—but your sweetheart’s worth it!), you can share Wild Horse pinot noir from the Central Coast of California, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The winery, founded little more than twenty years ago, gets its name from the local wild mustangs, descended from the horses brought by the Spaniards to the California missions. Wild Horse gathers grapes from vineyards spread widely across the region.
Wild Horse pinot noir would be good on its own, with pâté or cheese, or with a wide variety of food. It is a wine that would look warm by firelight. I can imagine it well with roast wild duck, but you would need to cook a brace—they mate for life, not just for February. Good luck with your own valentine legend.
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For Those About To Get Off The Rock…
It wasn’t love, but it was enough to risk his life for. It was the first morning of 1992 at five a.m. on Madeline Island and the bar had emptied out when Tommy Nelson, the ponytailed owner of Tommy’s Burned Down Café, spun out onto Lake Superior in his 1972 Cadillac Fleetwood and was surprised that the ice held. He already had the record for the earliest crossing: Two years before, he’d driven the two-and-a-half miles of ice to mainland Bayfield, Wisconsin, in a one-ton Chevy Van only fifteen days after the ferries had quit running. But more than that was the confidence that came from being from a long line of indestructible islanders—the Nelson clan, who, among other things, had run the ferries, windsled, and ice road for years. In the passenger seat of the Fleetwood was Tommy’s twenty-one-year-old cousin, Brian Nelson, also a tester of lake fate. Even so, he objected to this foolhardy attempt, and perhaps it was this challenge less than the girl or the booze that made Tommy go through with it. Fifteen days before the ferry quit running, weeks before the amphibious windsled navigated across the channel, and a month before the ice road opened to cars, Tommy gunned it. It’s easy to imagine Tommy’s thin, tan face in a wild grin, his signature Hawaiian shirt despite the cold, and his startling pirate’s laugh at the deliciousness of danger. Twelve years later, he calls it a mix of courage and stupidity. His brother, Arnie Nelson, is in a position to be professionally critical of his brother’s behavior. Arnie is the unofficial commissioner of winter transport. With thirty years’ experience shuttling island residents and children to school on the windsled, and the only authority trusted to open or close the ice road, he thought differently. “You sit up at that bar,” said Arnie, his voice both authoritative and playful, “and the ice gets thicker real fast. I could hold the record if I wanted, but I can’t. People follow me. And it’s the ones behind you who can have problems with the cracks you made.”
But Tommy has always devoted himself to making cracks in the norm. Besides, isolation was not what the man—a bar owner, after all, who greeted you in the summer with a hearty “Welcome to paradise!”—was willing to accept.
“I had no intention of going to Bayfield, but boredom being what it is… Or, as Jimmy Buffet said, ‘I just shot five holes in my freezer, I think I have cabin fever.’ And then there was this girl,” said Tommy. “The record is always set by islanders for an obvious reason: to get the hell off the island.”
They made it across, perhaps flipping an ice cake or two behind, hitting the ice curb on the beach, flatting their tires. And the girl, new record not withstanding, was asleep in Bayfield. “You never get the girl at five a.m.,” Tommy said sagely. “This was extreme sports before they were invented. Sometimes you just have to get off the Rock. Especially when a Nelson is rutting.”
Isolation is the last thing you think about on Madeline Island in the summer. The local population of 220 swells to over 2,500 in the high season, with the ferry chugging back and forth all day every day. Tourists from Chicago, the Twin Cities, and farther away overwhelm the fourteen-mile-long island. It’s an eclectic crowd of family budget travelers, wealthy yacht clubbers, bikers, snowbirds, bohemians, and descendents of early island settlers who all miraculously converge under the glowing tent of Tommy’s Burned Down Café, an outdoor bar/monument to irreverence. (“Let’s Make Getting in Trouble Fun Again” is among the many signs posted on the premises.) Eastern Europeans wait tables, artists arrive to make metal sculptures in the annual “Wrestle With Steel,” kids pack in for the music camp, preppy vessels proliferate in the harbor. Show up on a summer weekend without a reservation, as I did once, and you’re lucky to be lent a spare tent to sleep on the beach.
Yet while the world arrives in fleets during the summer, there is a period during the winter when Lake Superior would become an impassable moat if not for generations of islanders inventing ways to bridge themselves to the world once again. When temperatures drop to freezing, Chequamegon Bay freezes in layers, the ice penned in between the Apostle Islands and the mainland. Generally, the windward side of Madeline doesn’t freeze (only three times in recorded history has Lake Superior frozen entirely). Beyond the islands, a frigid ocean of open water and drifting ice extends to Michigan.
The durable ferries mount a slow fight against the ice, first shattering the glass plates, then slicing and reslicing a channel each day until the weight of the vessels can no longer break a path through ten inches of ice. The battle can exhaust captain and passengers alike: Last year, the ferry took a record nine hours to get across, instead of the usual twenty-three minutes. What follows is a period of time when nothing but a plane can make the jump from mainland to island. It’s then that the islanders perversely start to wish for colder, nastier weather so the bay will freeze to support an ice road, liberating them from their dependence on the Nelson family ferries. When the ice road is declared safe, there are no more timetables or fees. People can journey to the mainland on a whim. The irony is that while the island offers an escape from the mainland much of the year, locals feel most free when the island ceases to exist as an island and is annexed by ice to the mainland. Madeline could be called a part-time island: Just when cabin fever is setting in, nature remedies it with the ice road.
But there is the trouble of waiting through the freeze-up, the limbo of unstable ice in January before the ice road can support unrestricted traffic. This transitional period is mirrored in spring, when the ice grays as it weakens. The water that normally collects on the surface of the ice road because of surface melting from the sun (they call it “the island carwash”) disappears and you worry; “candling” has riddled the ice with holes that drain the meltwater. Seagulls ominously start to circle above the warm currents of the sandbar. Small herring or smelt may appear on the ice road, attracted up through the holes by the light. It’s during this in-between time when they no longer have the freedom of their own boat or car, or even the ferry, that the islanders would be stuck—if not for inventing their own way off the “Rock.”
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Valentine in My Cubicle
Despite the married man’s frequent lament, there are married women out there who have healthy and wide-ranging and even naughty appetites. True, we know that men need to work extra hard to make sure that they’re doing their part in the way of romance. But women are every bit as capable of wanton, physical desire.
One of my favorite Valentine’s Day traditions with my precious is giving each other a sexy wish list. We each write down five things we want to try, no limits, no rules. We trade lists and we each get veto power over one of the items on the others’ list. Maybe next month I’ll go into details, but my point here is that women can be every bit as perverse as men, given the opportunity.
Case in point: Last year, my precious dared me to show up at her office in nothing but a trench coat, and to ravish her in the boardroom while secretaries and middle managers strolled by the curtained windows completely unaware. It was a blast for both of us.
Lots of people fantasize about getting naughty at work. I’m not sure what that says about their level of engagement in their jobs, but I do know there’s a little childish kick to be had by breaking the rules and risking getting caught. (Actually, it’s a bit more powerful and insidious than that—think of all the politicians who have gambled away their whole careers and all their dignity just to get physical for a few minutes. I blame the media. Then again, I wonder why none of them are ever caught doing the nasty with their wives. Maybe we just didn’t hear about it when Bill and Hillary, uh, took off their jackets in the Oval Office.)
Just last week, I was helping Melanie move. She got a promotion from her old cubicle to her new one, and she had a few boxes of office supplies and doodads. The bottom fell out of the box I was carrying, desk crap rained down on the carpet, and among the paperclips, file folders, family pictures, and an old telephone headset was a big surprise: a well-used, uh, vibrating device.
Melanie turned a bright shade of red, grabbed it, and stuffed it into her handbag. “A gag birthday present. From Emily in accounting,” she stammered. I just smiled and shook my head. “Sure, Mel.” I didn’t want to be mean, but both of us knew what I might ask Emily the next time I saw her at the water cooler.
It’s not like that, though. Mel and Emily and I are good office buddies who actually talk pretty frankly about stuff, and I hang with their husbands on occasion. The women are always giving me the female perspective on things. But now, of course, it had gotten personal. I decided to be cool about it. If Mel wanted to tell me more, that was her business. But I was curious. Did she—you know—at work?
The short answer was yes, the long answer was none of my business. But this got me to thinking and speculating. Did Mel slip off to the bathroom when she felt the primal urge? Did she go to her car? I thought it was kind of cool that she could be so straightforward about it—as if it were no different from a break she might take to powder her nose or get a cup of coffee.
Is it morally wrong to get sexy at work? I know most employers won’t touch that subject with a ten-foot pole. They forbid it as best they can, as well they should. The most obvious reason is to eliminate harassment and the abuse of power. But if there is no victim—either Mel with her electronic friend, or me with my lawful wife—the issue is not so black and white. The social proscriptions against it make it titillating, and the shame of getting caught would certainly be punishment enough.
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All In The Wrist
To all those people whose mothers told them, “You’ll never amount to anything sitting on your ass all day playing those damn video games!”—this one’s for you.
The “Robolounge” is in a dank corner of the Xcel Energy Center. Its denizens, Michael “Buddha” Novak and Tim Dufour, run the robotic cameras used to dramatic effect in telecasts of Wild hockey games on FOX Sports Net. These are cameras that go where no human camera operator could realistically go. Novak and Dufour are a pair of thirtysomething photojournalists who get paid to fiddle with their joysticks for three hours a night, certainly the dream of any PlayStation-addled adolescent who enjoys a dose of hockey to break up the monotony of a Grand Theft Auto marathon.
The robotic cameras—or robocams, as the knowledgeable call them—have been used in one form or another for a decade, bringing fans so close to the action that they’re ducking every Marian Gaborik slapshot or Matt Johnson haymaker in their rec room. Novak operates the camera stationed behind the net in the west end of the arena, while Dufour’s robocam is mounted above the glass at center ice between the penalty boxes.
From those vantage points, the two cameras, each with a lens about the size of a puck, capture the speed and fury of Wild games from an angle impossible to replicate with any of the other seven cameras throughout the building.
“The secret is to try to make it look like it’s not on a motor, that it’s smooth and steady,” Dufour said. He and Novak are both trained on stationary and handheld cameras, and they operate the more standard equipment for KMSP-TV (Channel 9) telecasts. But when the game’s on FSN, you’ll find the two in the Robolounge—actually, just a couple of tables tucked under the seats, hidden behind a maze of room dividers that provides a buffer from fans stumbling to a nearby restroom.
The cameras are controlled by a three-piece console that features a zoom wheel, a focus mechanism, and a joystick that dictates its 360-degree movements, not unlike your standard video game setup. In fact, Novak insists his experience as a gamer is crucial to his ability to master the robocam.
“It sounds weird, but I think I shoot better if I play PlayStation,” he said. “When I play video games, I’m just grooving on hand-eye coordination, because these are really subtle movements. Gaming is great practice. I wish I could write that off—I haven’t found a way to do it yet.”
Since the images captured by the robocams are most often used in replays, the guys must have a steady hand. (They’ll cut to the goal cam for live shots only during power plays.) “If we’re jerky at all, when they slow it down in a replay, it amplifies anything we don’t like about a shot,” Novak said. Both men frequently mentioned the importance of being “in the flow” of the game in order to perform at peak levels. And peak performance is a must with hockey. “In basketball, if you miss a basket you’re going to get plenty of others,” Novak said. “Sure, if you miss a big slam-dunk, that’s unfortunate. But in hockey, if you miss a goal, you’re screwed. You’re hosed. You’re the goat. So, it’s a challenge because of the speed.”
But the speed of the game is what makes the robocams such a valuable tool to FSN director Dave Dittman. “It’s one thing to sit on a wide shot and show all the ice. But we try to get down close and show the speed, the action of the game, the hard hitting, and that’s what having the robos right on top of the glass has done,” Dittman said.
Robocams are used in other sports, including baseball and basketball. In drag racing, they literally save lives. Running a track-level stationary camera in that sport puts the camera operator in great peril. “I only ran it once, and it’s the scariest camera in all of sports,” Novak said. “It’s right on the wall two hundred feet down from the starting line, and the cars are going three hundred miles an hour past you. If there’s a problem…we call it the suicide cam, because you have less than a second to react or it can take you out. Two cameramen got killed using that camera when it was farther down the track.”
When ESPN took over the drag-racing package, they replaced the track-level stationary camera with a robocam, where technology not only protects the operator but helps fans track the dragsters better, because with a flick of the wrist, the robocam can pan 180 degrees in less than a second.
As the pregame skate continued, and the sound system fittingly cranked out U2’s “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” Mike Miller, who runs the robocam for the Gopher hockey telecasts at Mariucci Arena, strolled into the Robolounge. Miller said operating the robocam is fun, though it can lead to the ultimate game over. “It’s like a video game,” Miller said. “Except if you lose, you’re fired.”—Patrick Donnelly
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A Sight for Queer Eyes
Kyan Douglas from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy was due to appear, but he was a half-hour late. The regulars at Boom, the chic gay bar in Nordeast, nonchalantly settled into shiny silver perches around the bar. A few had dinner while the bartender confirmed and poured their usual drinks. Even with a twenty-five dollar cover charge for the main event, and the traffic that kept the celebrity from a timely arrival, the mood was strictly relaxed. The regulars were simply biding their well-groomed time until the pod’s scheduled return to the mother ship. There would be no need for fashion advice around here tonight; Kyan was coming home.
The bartender slid a Sam Adams to a handsome older man at the bar and gave his update: “My therapist won’t let me make any major decisions right now; I just had another divorce.” Next to Sam sat another good-looking gentleman, a single gold ring offsetting the dark skin of his hand, which occasionally touched his glass of white wine. Across the bar, two young couples drank cocktails and spoke like old friends, batting the conversational shuttlecock back and forth. Farther down, two neatly bearded professorial types and a plain middle-aged woman arrived. They accompanied a nervous-looking man with a slight combover. Were they his support group for his first night “out”?
“I know one good thing about breaking up,” said the bartender, patting his flat stomach. “And that’s going back to the gym.” Another regular named Anthony drank a rum and Coke with a girlfriend. She obviously wasn’t trying to hook up with Anthony or anyone else in the bar. “I just like looking,” she said, before shrinking back into her supporting role. Anthony didn’t see any other of his usual friends in the crowd. “All these weird people are freaking me out.”
Just as a woman wearing strappy spring sandals and nude pantyhose leaned in to order a pinot grigio, Douglas arrived. He looked slightly frazzled—no surprise, considering the full day of appearances he’d performed for his handlers from Clear Channel Communications. Douglas, though, looked like he’d barely survived his stop at the Mall of America, where mullets and nose hairs roam free.
If there really were a gay S.W.A.T. team, Carson Kressley (Queer Eye’s snippy fashion guy) would be the bad cop, arriving at the accident scene to check for clean underwear, ready with a naughty double entendre. But Kyan Douglas would be the listener, gently guiding the hapless breeder to the bathroom for a product check. Sending Carson to Minnesota may very well have resulted in a horrible necktie lynching incident. “What the hell are you talkin’ about, puttin’ my tie around my waist like a belt?” Douglas was the perfect fit for a Minnesota visit; locals here seem to like their queers a lot like their ethnic food: not too spicy—well, maybe with just a little “zhoojzing.”
Douglas moved through the crowd, displaying a tasteful medley of queer-eye tips on toast: firm handshake, direct eye contact, receptive and attentive introductions. He leaned in for questions and threw out a big laugh, while executing a perfect sister-don’t-I-know-it upper arm squeeze at the same time.
Asked if it felt good to return to the secret clubhouse where all the eyes were queer, he ducked in to share his answer, “Once I got here I realized I got to say ‘nice shirt’ and ‘nice pants’ a lot more.”
Reminded of the surprisingly transcendent episode in which Douglas coaxed a man out from under his toupee and his mother (and possibly the closet, according to fans on the Queer Eye Web site), Douglas closed his eyes briefly and said, “Yes, that was one of my favorites.”
Kyan Douglas, the patron saint of product, looked a tad overwhelmed by his own transformation to product. Luckily his fans were there to keep him in touch with his perfectly colored roots. As he passed through to the heavy curtains to Oddfellows, where he would dine with people who had ponied up a hundred bucks to watch him eat, a man standing at the coat check said, “No, I didn’t get his picture. If I want one, I’ll just call him. I’ve got his cell phone number.”—Sari Gordon
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Back-End Fulfillment
In December, the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board hired a new superintendent, a fellow who had neither applied nor interviewed for the position. The candidate was not even at the meeting when the board voted 5 to 4 to hire him. The board president, a guy named Bob, simply said that they were lucky to get someone of the candidate’s caliber.
And so I ask the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board: What am I, chopped liver? I didn’t apply for the job either. At the time of the board’s meeting, I believe I was home watching CSI and paging through fashion magazines—and if that’s not not applying for the job, I don’t know what is.
This surely gives perpetual job hunters like me hope for the myriad ways one can land a job. Over my working life I have sent out millions, maybe even hundreds, of résumés. I have gotten rejection letter after rejection letter. I decided to be more proactive and I wrote to all the companies to which I had applied, and simply rejected their rejection letter.
To whom it may concern:
Thank you for your interest in my interest in your company. Unfortunately the position your company has does not meet my specific needs at this time. Therefore, I am requesting the return of my résumé, to be sent to a better company with a better position. I will, however, keep my résumé on file in case another opportunity for which your company may be qualified becomes available.
Sincerely,
Mary Jo Pehl
It is clear now that I have simply shot myself in the foot by actually applying for jobs in the first place. Statistics show that if you don’t send a résumé to a potential employer, it is less likely to get lost in the mail or to be ignored. Experts say that if you do not have an interview with a potential employer who never got your résumé in the first place, you are less likely to say the F-word during the interview process. And now, after the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s bold innovation in the employment process, I’m awfully excited about all the jobs I may be up for that I have no idea even exist.
In fact, I daresay the whole employment scenario would be perfected if, after I were hired for the job I didn’t apply for, I could do the job at home in my pajamas while watching television, making personal calls, paging through magazines, and eating chocolates. Somewhere out there, a team of human resources professionals is about to make me a very lucrative offer for a high-paying position as a chocolate-eating magazine reader. I await.
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For the Love of Oysters
Casanova was a scoundrel. He was a scalawag, banned from Venice and disqualified from a career with the Church. He scammed rich and poor alike at every turn. And he was a lawyer. Yet, if he were to make a few appearances between now and November, he might get elected president. For despite all his failings, or maybe because of them, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova knew how to make the ladies smile. By his own account in his famous History of My Life, he canoodled with 122 or so lovelies, from nuns to noblewomen. Though some think gossip fueled much of the reputation that made him such a titillating figure in Europe’s eighteenth-century society, many more pore over his multi-volume memoirs looking for the secret to his amorous success. These Casanovitiates try to emulate his behavior in hopes of getting similar results. Of course, to truly follow his lead, they’d have to squander fortunes, be imprisoned in numerous European cities, lie, cheat, steal, and eat at least fifty raw oysters a day. To some, it is the latter that is most reprehensible.
Throwing back more than a dozen raw oysters before every meal was de rigueur for Casanova. Some of his most pleasurable memories have him eating them in the bathtub (not by himself, of course). Could this be the secret to his potency? Ever since Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, sprang forth from the sea foam on an oyster shell, giving us Eros, oysters have been known as an aphrodisiac. In this day and age, the era of Viagra and the Penis Enlargement Patch, it seems almost too easy to just suck down a few oysters and have a roll in the hay. But perhaps slippery things aren’t for beginners. Quite possibly, they’re advanced cuisine and meant only for those serious about the arts of eating and love.
To quote Jonathan Swift, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” It seems astonishing that someone could find along the shore an object that looks like a rock, pry it open, and think the viscous contents fit to eat. The first connoisseurs had to be the Romans, who were so passionate for the bivalves that they sent scores of slaves to gather them from the English Channel and paid their weight in gold. Aristotle first tried to understand how they bred in 320 B.C., when he described their spontaneous generation. While oysters do have gender, they may change their sex a few times throughout their life. An oyster releases “spat,” which must attach itself to a fixed object like a rock, tree roots, or pilings in order to grow into another oyster.
The old oyster code declared that one should never eat an oyster in a month without an r, namely May through August. Whether that was because of natural breeding schedules or poor refrigeration in hot months, it’s no concern now. Today’s farming techniques and health codes allow us to slurp oysters all year long.
There are three general classifications of oysters: Atlantic, Pacific, and Olympia. Within each classification are hundreds of varieties named for the specific waters in which the members of the Ostreidae family grow. As oysters filter their surrounding waters, they take on properties of the area. An oyster grown in Chincoteague Bay will have different flavors from one grown near Pine Island.
Atlantic oysters are also generally known as Blue Points. To many, they provide the quintessential oyster experience. The cold waters of the eastern seaboard lend a clean, salty taste and firmer flesh, best for eating raw. Good bets include Malpeque, with its bright flavor and crisp lettuce finish, and Belon, with a lemony flavor and zingy aftertaste. Also look for Tatamagouche, Glidden Point, Caraquet, and Wellfleet.
Pacific oysters can grow to be twelve inches long and end up as quite a mouthful. But their meat is creamier and mellower than that of their Atlantic brethren and, in some varieties, quite delicate. Totten, Malaspina, and Little Skookum are all great. Plump, smoky, and a touch sweet, Hog’s Island is the most flavorful of the West Coast oysters. Kumamoto should be every oyster virgin’s first. Small and easy to handle, it’s buttery with a fruity finish.
The Olympia is in a class of its own. Native to the Pacific Coast, it naturally grows in Puget Sound. Although small in stature, rarely exceeding two inches, the Olympia has a firm texture and salty, metallic taste. Now let’s face it, it’s the texture that’s scary. (But if you liken it to snot, you should be slapped. Grow up.) Yet there are other things you put in your mouth that, if you think about it, are far more disgusting. Some people are unsure about how to eat an oyster—tilt it back or use a fork, to sauce or not to sauce, and do you chew? Just remember, there is nothing sexier than confidence. Pick up the half shell. You may want to loosen the meat a bit with a fork, but don’t dump out the water. Do a nice, brief squeeze of lemon, bring the shell to your lips, and tip it in. Close your eyes. Think of the ocean and chew your oyster a few times before letting it slip down. Dare to taste the metallic tinge on your tongue and the cucumber in the finish. Do not “shoot” the oyster.
Knowledge is the base of true confidence, and Kitchen Window in Uptown offers classes with Chef Rick Kimmes of Oceanaire, who is a true oyster addict. Now you are ready to get a table with your baby at the romantic and alluring Lurcat. Order a couple of trays, confidently choosing a selection of East and West Coast varieties, and know that not only is it a fun thing to do with your mouth, but oysters contain a lot of zinc, phosphorus, and iodine, which are conducive to stamina. Go, you scalawag!
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No Deposit, No Return, No Love
It was 5:30 a.m. and it was pushing thirty below outside the Kemps Dairy on Minneapolis’s North Side. Mike White whistled a sunny tune as he loaded milk crates into the back of his truck. Like Dick Gephardt’s dad, he’s a milkman. Unlike Dick Gephardt’s dad, he’s still on his route. He delivers five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year—in the snow, rain, heat, or humidity. “Just another day for a milkman,” White said, with a wink. “We’ve done this before.”
The milkman legacy runs three generations deep in the White family. It began with his grandfather, Emmett White, who delivered for the Ewald Dairy on Golden Valley Road in the late thirties. Back then, most of the deliveries were made by horse, although the first Divco trucks were just then going into service.
When people think about home delivery today, they picture mega-companies like SimonDelivers or Schwan’s, operating with hundreds of employees. Mike White is a member of a group of fifty independent milkmen. In a kind of nod to the new competitors on the block, the loose association is called Milkman Delivers. White thinks both the association and the competition are good for his own business, because they promote the idea of home delivery—an idea that has more or less vanished in a cloud of single-occupancy cars headed to the grocery warehouse.
The stars were fading from the blue-black sky as I followed Mike to the door of his first stop. It was a two-story house with a gray Volkswagen Passat parked in the driveway. “These people won’t mind if you come in,” he said. Mike and I walked right into the kitchen without so much as a knock. The mother of the household, Mary, greeted us as if we were family. She was still combing out her morning hair. “Girls,” she called. “Mike’s here.” Two girls ran down the steps to spy on us. “I love my milkman,” Mary said. “I just like it simple. Old-fashioned. I’m not into technology.”
Mike got hooked on the business as a kid. His father, Jim, took him to the dairy to watch the bottles getting filled. “We would grab a chocolate milk right off the line,” he recalled. He helped his dad pack the truck with ice and ran the glass bottles to the doorsteps.
Some of Mike’s customers have been with him for twenty-six years. A few are second generation—kids he watched grow up, now with families of their own. “I have all kinds of customers, from everyday people just scraping by, to some who have so many millions they don’t know what to do with them,” Mike said. He loaded cottage cheese for his next stop. Decades on the truck have made it possible for him to divine the empty spaces in the refrigerators on his route. “Some customers don’t even give me a list. I just put it in the fridge. They come home and it’s all taken care of.”
A typical day spans ten to twelve hours, and he carries as much as sixty pounds of dairy and frozen food into a customer’s home. “I wouldn’t recommend it for the non-hardy,” he said, stooping for a plastic crate. In almost three decades, he’s had a total of two weeks’ vacation. “I don’t break. I eat my sandwich as I go. No time for lollygagging.”
The snow crunched under our feet as we approached a Kenwood home. Mike pulled a doggy biscuit from his pocket. “Secrets of the trade,” he said, as two freshly trimmed poodles circled in the kitchen. Darla, a pretty blond housekeeper answered the door. There was an antique Ewald Dairy milk box at her feet. Milkman and loyal client chatted amiably, but Mike suddenly looked alarmed and stopped short. “I forgot something!” He jogged back to his truck, and Darla looked at me with a coy smile. “Sometimes he brings me a treat,” she confided. Mike returned with a box of orange creme bars.
Back on the truck, I asked him how the milkman was different from the dot-com upstarts, and he laughed. “We’re the guys who show up and the old lady asks, ‘Can you change the light bulb?’” he said. “We deliver. They drop the stuff off at the curb and run.”—John Tribbett