The Rake Magazine

Month: January 2004

  • Where Art Thou?

    If you hold on to your hat and hustle over to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, you might catch the Werner Bischoff exhibition. Bischoff did as much as anyone to define photojournalism in mid-century magazines like Du and Paris Match. His work appears on the walls in sixty or seventy frames, a pretty healthy sampling. The MIA staff have helpfully provided about 940 more images on a CD, for a grand total of about one drop in the bucket of Bischoff’s collected work. Which is a telling conundrum. Typically, no museum worth its endowment can exhibit more than a tiny fraction of what it owns.

    More recently, the Web has allowed museums to hold their cards a bit further from their vests. I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the MIA’s extensive photography holdings beyond the Bischoff materials. In an idle moment scanning their collection online, I saw one of my favorite photos ever—a rusty tricycle composed by William Eggleston, titled “Memphis.” Personal obsession and screen resolution being what they are, I called the MIA right away to find out what it takes to get inside to see the real print, in the flesh. Ted Hartwell, the curator of photographs, agreed to be my guide with such eager grace that I wondered if they let just anyone off Third Avenue paw their priceless stuff.

    In tweed and eyeglasses with gray hair and a charming smile, Hartwell fits nicely in the MIA’s small, book-lined photography offices. Meeting with him feels a little like talking to a professor in his office. On the other side of an unmarked door, thousands of photographs sit in a sort of platonic netherworld, art waiting to be reclaimed by living eyes.

    The room is cold and bright, and it brims with black boxes stacked like drawers on metal shelves. The only hint of treasure within is printed on small white labels. Some bear anonymous catalog numbers, others show off iconic names like Hine, Evans, Friedlander, Muybridge—the heavy hitters of photographic history. Basically, it’s the most comprehensive collection in the region, outside of Chicago.

    Though “Memphis” has made its way to the upstairs exhibition gallery within the last year, many works can go years without a public appearance. “What’s on the wall at any given time is only the top layer,” noted Hartwell. Less than five percent of the Institute’s 100,000-piece collection is on display at any given time.

    After an appetizer of Gary Winogrand photographs—I’ve always enjoyed his slightly skewed New York street scenes—I asked Hartwell to track down the Eggleston print. In a moment, “Memphis” was perched without pretense in front of me.

    To remove the added layer of a frame, to touch the matting and carefully peek beneath the protective film, to look as long as you like—well, think of it as the difference between merely meeting someone and establishing a relationship. You may think you like the look of her, but a relationship implies a whole other level of interaction, a deeper connection. Looking at the Eggleston print in person, I notice more, I relate more. It demands all of my attention.

    Hartwell started the collection from scratch about thirty years ago. Through a carefully tended arbor of relationships with photographers, collectors, and donors, he has created a highly personal, stridently “balanced” collection. The holdings do have surprising breadth, ranging from Hartwell’s very first acquisition, a complete set of Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Works periodicals, to one of the nation’s definitive collections: the work of Gilles Peress, one of the contemporary artists who pioneered photography in the New Yorker.

    Hartwell’s own list of rarely shown favorites from the collection includes both the famous and the obscure. He’s a fan of the relative unknowns Bruce Davidson and Bernice Abbott but is not afraid to embrace the overexposed Edward Weston. At the moment, he’s particularly fond of Adolf Fassbender. If I didn’t know how easy it is to request an audience with all this wonderful art, I’d be jealous of all the alone time Hartwell gets here and how frequently he must revise his list.—Stephanie Xenos

  • You Gotta Pay to Play—not!

    I read with gratitude Joe Pastoor’s recent article “All Shook Down: Is ASCAP kneecapping your corner coffee shop?”[November]. As one of those interviewed for the article, I offer these observations. BMI spokesman Jerry Bailey is not correct when he says that “if a business owner is not playing BMI music, he/she has nothing to worry about.” For fifteen years I have scrupulously avoided singing “cover tunes” (songs written and copyrighted by others) solely because of copyright considerations. And yet I lost a steady job as the only musician at Schemmy’s Restaurant in Rhinebeck, New York, after the owners received a series of threatening letters from BMI. Despite several communications on my part, BMI refused to concede my right to play my own songs copyrighted in my own name, and traditional folk songs in the public domain, anywhere I want to, whether or not the venue has a performance license from BMI. “We’re not going to give you that,” said Craig Stamm, director of general licensing for BMI. Ultimately, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled in my favor on both counts. But, as Pastoor notes, by then I had lost the gig. Schemmy’s Restaurant decided not to have live music or even play CDs, rather than face a protracted battle with an unrepentant BMI. The net result is indeed that there are fewer places for artists to get started. Laurie Hughes of ASCAP denies this by saying,“If a club is playing all original music, they don’t need a license. Copyright holders don’t need permission to play their own works.” This is true, of course—but I had to wage a seven-month battle with BMI to secure this right for all songwriters across the country. BMI had attempted to extort royalties from my employers for my performance of my songs, and of my arrangements of the traditional songs of my ancestors. I believe BMI essentially thought they could obtain royalties for my music, even though I have never joined BMI. They cannot. This is America. We have the right to remain independent.
    Richard Hayes Phillips, Canton, NY

  • Uh, Start Here: Missingchildrenmn.org

    I will share Clinton Collins’ outrage over the alleged disproportionate amount of coverage given to the Dru Sjodin abduction if he can provide the name of a young female university student of color who was abducted from the parking lot of her part-time employer in Minnesota/North Dakota. Does the fact that I can’t think of a single incident prove Collins’s point, or have there simply not been similar cases? The claim that there is an increase in the uproar over this crime because the suspect has “swarthy” skin color is ridiculous. What concerns many people is that our criminal justice system allowed an untreated convicted violent sexual predator to commit another crime by not providing for indefinite incarceration. Finally, Clarence Thomas was not a competent candidate for the high position to which he was eventually confirmed. His incompetency had nothing to do with his race but rather with his lack of demonstrated experience and intellectual depth. If those who objected to his confirmation had broached these matters, they would certainly have been accused of racism. The allegations of sexual impropriety were made by a black woman who was consequently crucified through unfair and untrue allegations by the right wing proponents of Thomas’s confirmation. Does Collins have a concern about the racist condemnation of Professor Hill?
    J.M. Workman, St. Paul

  • Free Fact-Checking, with Interest!

    About the book Bly published of Neruda translations in the mid-sixties, author Jon Zurn quotes Bly as saying “I think that was the first time he’d been published in the U.S.” That’s not so. The first Neruda poems in English that were published in a book in the U.S. seem to have been in Three Spanish American poets: Pellicer, Neruda [and] Andrade (Albuquerque, Sage Books 1942). But subsequent editions devoted solely to English translations of Neruda’s writings were issued by the estimable New Directions in 1946, New York-based Masses & Mainstream in 1950, Grove Press in 1961, and City Lights in 1962.
    Chris Dodge
    Utne magazine librarian
    Minneapolis

  • Bly or Blithe?

    I grew up in Madison, Minnesota. My school bus downshifted on the gravel road right in front of Robert Bly’s familial home every day for nearly twelve years. That area is my home and my people. I know them and I miss them. And far from what you imagine, they have plenty of “intellectual musings.” Far more than any genius found at Harvard or Princeton. Most of those folks don’t need to contemplate anything any further than the end of their own grass and the gravel-covered driveway. They “get” life. They just understand it without having to go to the farthest ends of the Earth looking for some way to explain it all. They just know it because they just do. Just because Bly didn’t fit in isn’t the fault of anyone out there. Those pointy-headed intellectuals who feel they think “differently” delude themselves into thinking they are the bright ones. Every day, farm folks live their lives with just as much generosity, strength, savvy, and grace as you will see anywhere else you’d care to look. Those folks have more horse sense than all the intellectuals on Lowry Hill rolled into an oatstraw bale. Never underestimate the intellect of a farmer.
    Sue Connor Mills, Carver

  • Bly, Bly Love

    As both a feminist and a longtime admirer of Robert Bly’s work, I find myself wanting to respond to your excellent, in-depth article [“The Dude Abides,” January]. Not so long ago I ran into one of Bly’s “woodsy drummers,” who expressed amazement that I didn’t find anything wrong with what he was doing. Unless Bly and his drummers are propounding things I haven’t heard of yet (or clandestinely burning women at the stake), I fully support his movement. What’s wrong with men recognizing that there’s something wrong with men in this society, and trying to make themselves more whole? We have—statistically—one of the more violent countries in the world, and more than ninety percent of our violent crimes are committed by men. Something is very wrong here. Like many women I know, I’m tired of trying to teach men how to become human. If they want to do it themselves, I for one am all for it. (Yes, of course I’m speaking in generalities; I know there are also very well-balanced men…on occasion.) When we relegate emotional and cultural work to females, both sexes lose out. Having said that, I would also like to note that many of the early alarmist responses by feminists are also understandable. They were justifiably afraid of the directions this idea might go; groups like the Promise Keepers and the “white men’s rights” bunch bear out their concerns. But that is certainly not the fault of Robert Bly or his movement. As for you, Mr. Bly: Please keep on drumming, dancing, dreaming, writing, and working the clay of those archetypes.
    Gail Cerridwen, Anoka

  • Designer Labels

    “Wigger” is just another stereotype put upon a certain group of people to criticize who they are [“Has Your Shizzle Gone Fazizzle?,” January]. Ethnicity doesn’t greatly affect personality. It is mostly a person’s environment that influences their behavior. One should feel free to be him or herself without worrying if they are acting like everyone else in their own racial category. America categorizes people who act similarly, and makes a smaller category for those who are considered out-of-the-ordinary. As long as your true character shows, race doesn’t matter. I do agree with the article about this: If you’re going to use Ebonics, at least know what they mean. I get tired of whites exaggerating in their attempts to mimic black culture.
    Caitlin Rolf, Minneapolis

  • Cry for the Others, Too

    Clinton Collins’ essay [Free the Jackson Five, January] on the Dru Sjodin case and the inequities of valuing lives due to skin color really hit home with me. Long ago, when I was a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I was raped by two men who threatened to kill me and dump my body in the nearby Mississippi River. It was nighttime. I wasn’t sure I’d make it out alive. The year was 1968. I never reported the incident. Now, I watch more than closely any article on a woman who “disappears.” Some are found dead, some are never found. In the past several years, I’ve noticed the difference as to how much press the disappearance of a white women gets as opposed to women of color. Having come very close to being one of the disappeared, I feel very strongly for each of these women I hear about and the horrific circumstances I know they’ve endured. Thank you for being a voice for the women who are only mentioned on page two or three of the newspaper—whose disappearance or death only gets small mention, or perhaps no mention at all. As a community, we need to examine ourselves. Why do we allow this inequity to exist? We need to wake up.
    Jeanne Cowan

  • Dream Work

    What does it mean if you have a dream about flying through the air strapped to a toilet? Dare I ask? How could I not?

    Since ancient Mesopotamia, where dreams were first recorded, people have meandered the path of wonder in search of meaning in dreams. Dreams have inspired music, literature, mythology, political decisions, and scientific advances. Einstein was spurred toward his theory of relativity by the memory of a childhood dream.

    Somehow, I don’t think my recent experience has potential on that scale. In the dream, I was with my sister in a bright New York coffee shop. We were having some sort of flat-bread sandwich, and I was marveling at how pretty and strange she looked in the poufy 1950s housedress that she had apparently modified to suit her expanding middle. I excused myself to find the restroom, and that’s when the surprises kicked in.

    It turned out the bathroom didn’t have any stalls, just an extraordinary selection of unusual toilets. As I wandered about, trying to decide which toilet to use, the room grew and shifted, becoming something along the lines of an enormous warehouse with toilets in every shape, size, and color. It was hard to commit to a commode, but finally, I did. I chose one that sat like a throne atop a ten-foot pyramid of stairs. Slowly, I climbed. In the dream, the fact that the toilet had a seatbelt didn’t sound any alarms. But it should have. Because as soon as I’d slipped my pants down (glancing furtively toward the door the whole time) and belted myself in, the toilet propelled itself from its high perch and swung forward and down and up again in a wide, thrilling arc through the bright open air of the warehouse. I felt awkward about my pants being down, and peeing was out of the question, but the ride itself was enchanting.

    Carl Jung and other dream researchers have agreed that flying dreams are about ambition and achievement, while a swing as a dream symbol suggests issues hanging in the balance that can be made to swing in your favor if you are patient and cautious. Toilets, I’ve learned, are widely acknowledged to symbolize purification and self-renewal. Public restrooms with no stalls, on the other hand, can indicate frustration about not getting enough privacy. And public nakedness might point to an experience of embarrassment or vulnerability. That’s a lot of material from one strange little dream.

    But there’s probably even more to it than that, because many dream researchers believe that through dreaming we access a certain collective unconscious, and that’s why our dreams might be considered products of a certain universal symbology.

    Kelly Bulkeley is a theological scholar, author, and researcher who started an interesting study in 1996. He gathered dream reports from college undergrads of all political persuasions and ultimately compared the dreams of twenty-eight highly conservative people to those of twenty-eight highly liberal people, with men and women equally represented.

    At an academic conference in the summer of 2001, Bulkeley presented his findings, with the disqualifier that his sample was way too small to be conclusive. But still, it was interesting. People on the right had more nightmares, more dreams in which they lacked power, and more lifelike dreams: “Female rights were especially anxious about family relationships, and male rights had dreams almost devoid of girlfriends,” said Bulkeley. Meanwhile, lefties had fewer nightmares and more dreams of good fortune, personal power, bizarre elements, and, among the males, an “unusually high” number of female characters.

    Bulkeley’s findings (much to his amused surprise) were snatched up by the national media, and political partisans on both sides spun the issue, despite Bulkeley’s disclaimer about the sample size. How could they resist? Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman, quipped, “If George W. Bush were the leader of my party, I’d have trouble sleeping at night, too.” “What do you expect after eight years of William Jefferson Clinton?” retorted Kevin Sheridan of the Republican National Committee.

    However we spin or dismiss our dreams during the waking hours, the significance of dreams is too well established to wave away. Some people can even will their own dreams, after much disciplined practice. Which means that you, too, could take a ride through Manhattan on a flying toilet, if only you set your mind to it.

  • Imperfect Mitch

    Mitch Hedberg is one funny dude. But his shtick—the stoner who’s mistaken the stage door for the restroom or exit—might be affecting his career trajectory. Dope logic and delayed response time is funny to a point, but it’s maybe not the best business plan.

    Strategic Grill Locations, the self-produced 1999 concert CD Hedberg had printed up to sell at shows and on his Web site, didn’t include the early, hilarious joke that provided its title. His new disc for Comedy Central Records, Mitch All Together, takes its title from a routine on the earlier CD.

    The eponymous joke is, understandably, a fan favorite: “They call corn on the cob corn on the cob. But that’s how it comes out of the ground, man. They should call that corn. They should call every other version corn off the cob. It’s not like if you cut off my arm you would call my arm Mitch, but then reattach it and call me Mitch all together.”

    A native of the St. Paul area, Hedberg escaped to Florida after high school to pursue music. But instead of making his name playing bass in a knockoff of Skynyrd or .38 Special, he followed a buddy to a comedy open-mic night and stumbled up onstage. In the years since, he’s appeared on Letterman ten times. He’s done a half-hour Comedy Central special that is among the cable network’s most requested. He wrote, directed, and starred in Los Enchiladas!, a film that premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

    Time columnist Joel Stein christened him the next Seinfeld back in 1999, too. Superstardom seemed to be Hedberg’s destiny. Though Hedberg and Seinfeld have both worked many of the same clubs, both can handle a microphone, and both know better than to appear with children in instant pudding commercials, that’s about as far as the comparison goes. Hedberg’s frozen-banana logic and koala infestations have very little in common with Seinfeld’s meticulous observational comedy. More like Ellen DeGeneres, Emo Philips, and Steven Wright—the master of the non sequitur one-liner to whom he’s most often compared—Hedberg creates his skewed comedic world out of old-fashioned setups and punchlines, then reinvents it joke by joke.

    A lot of comics blather on about hack material like airline food and doomed romance. Few attempt the kind of surreal vaudeville Hedberg performs so effortlessly on Mitch All Together. Like defining the problem with animal crackers. “I think animal crackers make people believe all animals taste the same,” he says. “What does a giraffe taste like? A hippopotamus. I had them back to back.”

    Last May, Hedberg headlined eight shows at the Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis, two shows a night for four nights, to record the new CD. But during at least one of those performances, he spent a considerable part of his set competing with his audience. People wouldn’t quit shouting out setups, all the well-known material from his first CD and his Comedy Central special.

    Fortunately for old fans and new converts alike, Comedy Central has also rereleased an edited version of Strategic Grill Locations, so Hedberg’s imperfect masterpiece will finally be available in stores. Those who didn’t buy it or file-share it a long time ago can now listen to their favorite Hedberg jokes when and as often they want. In turn, maybe they’ll let him give his new material an honest try.

    Back in May at the show I saw, Hedberg ignored the audience requests as long as he could. Near the end of his forty-minute set, he quickly tossed off a few, as if out of professional courtesy. Then he made a dash for the door at the back of the stage. On the disk, he seems to reach the end of his rope as he confronts another night’s gabby audience. “I’ve got a great job. I can talk for forty-five minutes straight. But if someone says one word, they’re out of here,” he blurts, between jokes. But after riffing on the prospects of his audience getting the boot, he gives up. “Go ahead, talk,” he groans. “But just use your hands.”

    It’s hard to believe this is the same Mitch Hedberg who amiably rambled through more than an hour’s worth of half-finished jokes and embarrassed apologies on Strategic Grill Locations—the same Mitch Hedberg who turned unguarded self-deprecation into hilarity. Eight sold-out Acme shows edits down to less than forty minutes of comedy for Mitch All Together. A paucity of new material could explain Hedberg’s somewhat frustrated-sounding delivery. It might also explain why Comedy Central packaged a free DVD with the disc. It includes a short appearance on Premium Blend and two versions of his Comedy Central special.

    Actually, the unedited Comedy Central special here hints at what makes Hedberg’s new CD such a disappointment. As his twenty-five minutes onstage near their end, he’s hasn’t gotten many huge laughs. So like a pro, Hedberg returns to material that worked on his first CD and his earliest Letterman appearances. He finally wins the crowd with his joke about a potato chip company that planned to make tennis balls until a truckload of potatoes arrived. As the laughter swells, he chuckles, “My old shit works better than my new shit. I am out of ideas.”

    He’s wrong. Much of his new material actually works better than his earlier material. The difference is Hedberg himself. What used to be a shy stoner ramble has become a frantic monologue. He sounds exhausted on his new CD, too—too tired to bother winning over an audience with funny new routines.

    Hedberg came back through town last September, opening the Comedy Central Live Tour. As supporting act, Hedberg had just twenty-five minutes in front of audiences who’d paid to see headliners Lewis Black and Dave Attell. It should have been Hedberg’s name on the Orpheum marquee. That would have been a sweet homecoming gig following May’s week underground at the Acme. Five years ago, back when he first started doing many of the jokes his fans now want to hear nightly, that would have been everyone’s prediction. Back before the smoke cleared.