We will be close to the tequila, and far from the internet for the next week or so. If the two come within close proximity, we’ll try to scratch out a few thoughts about free trade, the Tropic of Cancer, the European vs. English sizing of huarachis, and so on. In the meantime, enjoy the new issue of The Rake which you passed on your way in.
There will be a quiz.
Yesterday, Philip Johnson died. He was the architect who designed Minneapolis’ most recognized skyscraper, the IDS Center. While the building has got its fair share of respect over the years, we’re at a loss to explain why Minnesotans have been so eternally grateful that they have refused to dishonor the man or the building by putting up any building that would exceed it in height. There is surely a phallic joke to be wrung from this. (Our first skyscraper! We never had it bigger! Such a lover!) But we’ll leave that up to you, dear reader. In the broad sweep of 20th century architecture, the IDS is not all that remarkable, and we’re not sure why we’ve granted it this special, ceremonial status into perpetuity—despite several newer scrapers being, uh, erected to within a few feet of the Big Johnson. You know, we didn’t stop writing sonnets to the Foshay tower just because it was eclipsed by, as Guindon once wrote (possibly his best gag ever), “the box it came in.”
May told me something, Sarah says.
My heart beats in stutters. Like I’m guilty.
What did she tell you?
I laughed. I shouldn’t have laughed.
What did she tell you?
It was her friend’s aunt. She died.
You laughed at that?
She died at her own forty-fifth birthday party.
Why did you laugh?
Sarah puts her head on my shoulder. I stroke her hair. The futon under us. Not exactly soft. Sarah moves closer to me. I rub down her back.
Mmmmm, she purrs. I can hear the blood in my brain. I’m worried she’ll leave me. I’m worried she’ll tell me something I don’t want to hear, reveal some truth about herself so horrible that I’ll want to leave her.
So … why did you laugh? I finally blurt.
I shouldn’t have. She starts giggling. Her body against me, spastic ripples.
I can see you feel bad about it.
I do!
Well?
It was her forty-fifth birthday. All her friends surprised her at a local pub. Her husband arranged it. Everything was going great. Until—
Sarah snorts back laughter.
Until she––she––ha!––ate a pickled egg.
What? I’m laughing, too. Pretending to laugh. She ate a pickled egg?
Sarah suddenly stops laughing. She choked on it.
On the egg?
With her husband watching.
Couldn’t they do the … the …
The Heimlich?
Ya.
It doesn’t work on pickled eggs. Too soft. They get stuck in the airway.
Really?
She died.
Sarah moves away. The warm spot where her body was.
I shouldn’t have laughed, she says.
Fall coming. I order bulbs from a company. I am going to plant them in the front. I charge them to my credit card.
Sarah doesn’t know.
I wait for them.
It will be a surprise.
Sarah comes home from work.
That bitch! She says.
Who?
You know.
Leila?
No. I like Leila.
Then who?
The new girl.
The new girl?
Julie.
Ah.
I take a sip of my beer.
She’s a blonde, Sarah says. You like blondes.
My shoulders tighten. I stir the sauce. I am making spaghetti.
Sarah opens the fridge. She squats down, starts spooning yesterday’s rice.
Hey! I’m making dinner.
I’m hungry.
You can’t wait ten minutes?
Sarah gobbles another spoonful. She stands up.
She stole my file. She took it. It was supposed to be my file and she took it. I offered to trade with her, but she wouldn’t. She said, I’ve already put work into this. I’ve already reviewed it.
Why wouldn’t she trade with you?
She’s a bitch.
I put pasta in boiling water.
She’s got big tits, Sarah says.
I look down at the roiling water.
Sarah cups her chest.
It’s Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. We go to synagogue with my parents. My parents frequent a makeshift synagogue in the basement of a Jewish old people’s home.
There is the small regular congregation, plus a motley conglomeration of balding oldsters equipped with an array of walkers and wheelchairs.
A partition separates men from women. I sit with my dad; Sarah sits with my mom.
The rabbi makes a rambling speech about salvation and being inscribed in the great book of life. So many old people in one room. Dust swirls and with every word from the rabbi it feels like the elderly are shifting closer, surrounding me. Sweat down the inside of my dress shirt. I stare at my shoes. Concentrate on breathing. Try not to let Dad see that I’m concentrating on breathing.
An old guy blows the shofar. Sounds like throat clearing amplified by microphone.
After, in the parking lot, Sarah and my mother giggle and laugh.
What’s so funny? I say.
My mother holds up the white paper doily that Sarah put on her hair to cover her head in the synagogue.
When we sat down, my mother says, The old woman behind us right away tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see what she wanted. She said: Excuse me, she shouldn’t be wearing that. So I said, Why shouldn’t she? And you know what she said? She said: That’s only for married ladies.
Sarah and my mom look at each other and giggle again.
I make a confused face.
She thought I was sixteen, Sarah says proudly.
I exhale. Cold fall air.
I want to get a new bed, I say to Sarah. That futon is hard. It hurts my back.
What’s wrong with your back?
Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with my back.
Sarah looks down at her plate. She pushes her food around. Doesn’t eat.
I saw a kid today, she says. I think he’s borderline schizophrenic.
How can you be borderline schizophrenic? I take a big bite of chicken. I chew triumphantly. Swallow. You either are. Or you aren’t.
The hour before Sarah comes home from work is the worst. I pace from the kitchen to the living room. I sit down on the couch. Flip through the channels. Jump up again. Stir whatever I’ve just stirred. Toss the salad. Again.
As soon as she gets home I wrap her up in a huge hug. She pushes me away, laughing.
What about something like this? I say. I show Sarah a picture from the catalog.
Sarah looks at the catalog. Flips through the pictures. I can feel myself grinning. I break out into a sweat.
How much is it? she says.
I’ll buy it for you.
Is it more than a thousand?
Do you like it?
Sarah looks at her plate.
Goddammit! I grab the catalog out of her hands. I throw it at the floor. Forget it.
She just sits there, I tell Sarah. She doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t say anything?
She takes notes. She’s always taking notes.
Do you lie on a couch?
No. I say. It isn’t like the movies.
What do you talk about?
Sarah is getting dressed. She slips into a bra.
Do you talk about me?
My wife says: This time next year, I’ll be pregnant.
My doctor says: This isn’t like going to see a normal doctor. Here, we just talk.
My father is having trouble at work. Plus, he’s depressed.
It runs in the family, I say.
We are walking on a local nature path. Ahead of us, two overweight women in spandex march resolutely. One of the women––the fatter of the two––wears a belt around her bulging waist. Clipped to the belt like ammunition are twelve tiny plastic bottles of water.
What do you mean? Dad says.
I shrug.
Doctor, I say, sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.
The air is dry and scratchy in the doctor’s office.
Do you feel that way right now? she says.
I nod.
The doctor writes me a referral. To a place called the Relaxation Clinic.
At the Relaxation Clinic an elderly blind woman named Beatrice arranges us on a row of beds. We are in a dark room. She talks about our inner beauty. I close my eyes. The music is what you’d expect: organ, pan flute, something that sounds like running water.
We tense muscles. Then relax.
Breathe, Beatrice recommends. Take breath into your gorgeous souls.
I jerk up when hands touch my chest.
Just lie there, Beatrice soothes. She rubs in ovals.
An old lady touching my chest.
You’re breathing from your lungs. Try breathing from your belly.
Beatrice’s hands snake down to my stomach.
My eyes closed, I imagine it from her perspective: Caressing a stranger’s stomach, the entire scene shrouded in impenetrable gloom.
I fill up my abdomen with air. It swells, tightens.
Good, Beatrice says. Good.
I do her.
It hurts, she moans.
I keep doing her.
Sarah was friends with a retired man, married, in his late sixties. The man would send her his stories, librettos, little notes. Once a month, they would meet for lunch.
Then, out of the blue, a long letter arrived, announcing the man’s love for Sarah. Forbidden fruit, he called her.
So are we getting that bed, or not?
Sarah looks up from her book. Something about dreams and reality.
Does your back still hurt?
I practice what I’ve learned so far.
I tense my muscles. I “inflate my inner balloon.” I “show my medal.” I “do the swan.” I close my eyes and try to “imagine my special place.”
Open my eyes. Look at the clock.
Four minutes have passed.
Sarah and I are surveying our living room.
Sarah drags a finger along the top of the stereo, shows me her gray print.
Patti has a cleaner, Sarah says.
We could get a cleaner, I offer.
Sarah with smudges under her eyes. The greasy, waning light of late afternoon.
We can afford it, I say.
I know we can afford it
So why don’t we?
It just seems so … Sarah stares out the living room window, streaked with smears.
So … what?
I don’t know.
Bourgeois? I say. I spit a little as I throw out words. Ostentatious? Middle class? Suburban? Luxurious? Spoiled?
Sarah backs away from me.
Jewish, she says.
Sarah asks me if I think my treatment is helping.
I’m not sure, I say.
She fidgets with the remote. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on mute.
Sarah comes home from work.
Did you jerk off today?
She knows I did.
Close your eyes and think about your special place, blind Beatrice advises.
I think about those bulbs. Sarah’s face in the spring.
Lakewood Cemetery, situated between Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet in South Minneapolis, is a place of big lawns and grand monuments. It is one of the city’s fanciest and most meticulously maintained community spaces. Indeed, it holds the graves of some of our state’s most prestigious former citizens, including Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Paul and Sheila Wellstone, Les Kouba, and Tiny Tim, among a whole lot of Washburns, Pillsburys, and others.
But it’s also the site of a little-known though equally inspiring local treasure: the domed and tiled Lakewood Memorial Chapel. Completed in 1910, it is described by some as the “most perfect example of Byzantine mosaic art in the United States.”
Now, a person can’t just trot up the steps and sashay inside. That would be rather too casual for Lakewood. Instead, visitors must stop by the office near the cemetery’s front gates and ask permission. A member of the staff, friendlier and more obliging than you might expect, then calls over to the crematory, located beneath the chapel, and somebody trudges up the stairs to unlock the door and flip on the lights. And there you are, alone in one of the most gorgeous interiors in Minneapolis.
The walls and ceilings appear to be made of light and color. Every square inch of them. And they are, in fact, adorned with more than ten million fingernail-sized tesserae: shards of marble, colored stone, and glass fused with gold and silver. This is the kind of place that once made people fall to their knees, mistaking beauty for God. Except that here, the symbolism is more earthy and less partisan than you’d find in a church, synagogue, or mosque. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed make no appearances.
One alcove features a row of olive trees, known for their legendary healing properties; differently hued leaves represent the various stages of life. In each corner of the chapel’s largest room, female figures represent each of the four virtues—Love, Hope, Faith, and Memory. Even the shadows of their flowing robes are intricately rendered in tiles, as are their mood-appropriate expressions; Love looks straight ahead, Hope gazes upward, Faith looks off to the side, and Memory peers downward, hand to cheek. She seems a bit forlorn, as Memory should.
The chapel was planned at the turn of the century by Minnesota architect Harry Wild Jones and New York designer Charles R. Lamb, in order that Lakewood, founded in 1871, should have a suitable site for funerals. The exterior is modeled on the Haghia Sophia, the domed church built in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian in what is now Istanbul. The interior is inspired by Venice’s ornate San Marco Cathedral. In fact, when it came time to create the mosaics, Lamb traveled to Rome and hired six of Italy’s finest tile artists—they’d just completed a project in the Vatican. In Venice, they crafted the tesserae by hand, attached them to gummed cloth, and shipped them to Minneapolis. Then, in 1909, the artists arrived in person to assemble the chapel’s interior mosaics.
As you sit on one of the dozen or so wooden benches, your eye is drawn upward, into the dome. Here, your deepest and most churlish thoughts are captured by the butterfly wings of twelve gilded angels who wear brilliantly colored garlands, gowns, and halos. The intricacy of the ceiling makes it seem infinite; it reminds me of trying to count stars on a black country night. Encircling the dome are twenty-four stained-glass windows, which throw a soft glow on the angels. They also serve as a sundial, telling astute observers not only the time, but also the time of year.
It is a remarkable feat, an ingenious creation that mingles layers of meaning with stunning visual appeal. It leaves one feeling both contemplative and inspired, but not the least bit oppressed. Yet, strangely, sadly, hardly anybody ever sees this chapel, except at funerals for the city’s favored sons and daughters. “If this chapel were somewhere in Europe, thousands of Americans would visit it each year,” wrote a rhapsodic journalist in 1931. “Never have we seen anything to equal it in this country.”—Jennifer Vogel
Odd how few poets emerged from the Second World War. The First World War produced plenty. Some, like Rupert Brooke, thought they were going to be Homeric heroes––he died without hearing a shot fired in anger, and is buried on the island of Scyrus, where Achilles hid among the women. Others—Charles Sorley, Wilfrid Owen, Siegfried Sassoon—tried to express the horror of the Western Front.
But the only poet I know of from the Second War is Keith Douglas. He served in a cavalry regiment that had only recently exchanged its horses for tanks. He wondered at the unconcern of his brother-officers fighting in North Africa. It seemed that their hearts were not in the Libyan Desert, but galloping behind foxhounds in the Shires: “It is not gunfire I hear, but a hunting horn.” Foxhunting with hounds, the sport of “this gentle, obsolescent breed of heroes, unicorns almost,” is this month being banned by a new and ill-informed law rammed through a spiteful British Parliament by dubiously constitutional means. English country folk are furious—all sorts of people, not just Keith Douglas’s unicorns. The ban has nothing to do with guns; in fact, shooting will be the crueler, less effective alternative to hunting with hounds. Nor is it a matter of animal welfare; everyone agrees that foxes must be controlled by man in order to maintain the balance of nature. It has everything to do with urban disdain for the countryside and the realities of the natural world. How can you legislate against terriers digging or dogs chasing rabbits?
The realities of nature are like tannin in red wine; too much is tiresome, but without them life is bland. Tannins are what give you the astringent taste in the middle of the mouthful. Until the early nineteenth century, there was thought to be only one type of tannin, the kind that can be extracted from the oak-apple, an unpalatable parasite of the oak tree, the size of a small brown Brussels sprout. In the Middle Ages, oak apples were used as an ingredient in the ink monks used to write manuscripts on parchment. Small boys would be sent round the hedgerows to gather the year’s supply in their frozen fingers. If you have ever sucked a fountain-pen nib (try anything once except adultery and Morris dancing!), you can imagine how bitter this tannin might be.
In fact, different types of tannin are present in all sorts of emulsions of foliage. You can taste it in tea. No doubt there are tannins in the frothy tisane of autumn leaves that drifts on the surface of the Mississippi downstream from St. Anthony Falls after the snowmelt each year.
There are pleasing tannins at the center of a very palatable red wine from the Rhone that I came across recently––I say palatable deliberately, because the tannins are most apparent when the tongue is rubbed against the roof of the mouth. This wine is the 2003 red Beaumes-de-Venise from Paul Jaboulet ainé (available locally for around fifteen dollars).
Beaumes-de-Venise is a pretty, Provençal town famous mainly for its sweet white wine, made from the Muscat grape, Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise. Red Beaumes-de-Venise is made from Grenache and Syrah, the most popular grapes for red wine in the Rhône valley, and would go well with duck or goose or any red meat or powerful cheese. Indeed, I have seen it take on a haggis and win. (Wonderful thing, haggis––why do Americans not eat heart or liver or kidneys, especially kidneys?)
Two-thousand-three was a hot summer in the south of France. While hordes of Parisians roared along narrow roads during les grandes vacances and English visitors went to view the place where Peter Mayle lived before his books made it too popular for him to continue to live there, while no doubt some wistful souls went to see the ruins they read of in the charming tales of Alphonse Daudet, the country’s grapes ripened rapidly. Sugars developed in the skins; the sharper acids were muted. The wine that resulted is intense and ripely redolent of soft fruit and alcohol, as well as having the aforementioned tannins at its center.
Tannins ensure longevity. Drink a bottle now, and keep another for later, to see how the tannins mellow. This is intense enough to be wine for poets. One of the more eloquent Parliamentary defenders of foxhunting called her sport “our music, our poetry, our art.” There is certainly plenty of good hunting verse. God alone knows if any poet can make sense of the chaos that has been created in Mesopotamia by the politicians of our two great nations.
One of the upsides of not being a serious athlete is that you can feel a little less guilty about smoking and drinking with impunity. But you can always count on certain subcultural elements to contradict even that plain truth. Bike couriers, for example. They seem to take special pleasure in doing everything, well, extreme. While a credible courier would never use that word (uncool), there is no other that adequately describes the lifestyle. A fifty-mile ride on a single-speed bike without brakes; a twelve of Pabst; a pack of American Spirits. These are core competencies.
“I don’t want to work in a box breathing recycled air. And I don’t want to drive in a box to get to that box,” said Christian Klempp the other day. He was summing up why he’s been sweating it as a Minneapolis bicycle courier and “alley cat” bike racer for the past eight years. When Klempp isn’t spinning across town with legal or architectural documents for the messenger company he co-owns, he is planning Minneapolis’s biggest alley-cat event, the Stupor Bowl.
These races are the unofficial sport of messengers everywhere: part athletic feat, part scavenger hunt, and—for those seeking the overall Stupor Bowl title—part drinking game. The eighth annual bowl is slated for the wintry Saturday of the big football game, February 5, and the hometown team always hopes for the worst possible weather. “Couriers come from all over, and we want them to see the conditions we have to work in,” said Klempp.
A large number of these courier-contestants, along with being game for your surreptitious Sno-Ball and malt liquor ingesting competition, are also smokers. Fred Eisenberey, an eighteen-year courier veteran and smoker, said “probably forty percent” of his colleagues are puffers. “It’s significantly higher than the general population.” Any random day outside Nicollet Mall’s Dunn Brothers coffee shop gives visual confirmation that these everyday athletes light up in high numbers.
In fact, the numbers were high enough to entice Canadian cigarette maker Dunhill to sponsor the Vancouver alley cat known as the Human Powered Rollercoaster in the mid-nineties. “The registration packet even included a pack of Dunhill cigarettes,” said Klempp, reminiscing about the days when tobacco manufacturers could still sponsor sporting events without shame.
Though Eisenberey concedes that smoking is part of the rebel image of the bike-messenger industry, he wishes he’d never started. He has been rolling his own for the past quarter-decade in an effort to avoid toxic glues and additives. Still, he bristles at any suggestion that he kick the habit. “Minnesota is such a ‘mommy state,’ where absolutely nothing is allowed. I mean, it took someone like Jesse Ventura to finally let us play with sparklers. Everyone here knows what is better for me, but I don’t think smoking has slowed me down much.”
It would seem that Eisenberey hasn’t been taking it slow at all. In addition to bicycling all day and in all weather, he is an active underwater hockey player and snorkeler. “I have an above-average lung capacity and always have. I’m known for spending a lot of time on the bottom of the pool. I really don’t think smoking has been as harmful to me as overeating or drinking too much.”
Smoking is not a pastime shared by many other athletes. Jay, a half-pack-a-day smoker who wished to be identified only by his first name, holds an impressive 3:14 time in the Twin Cities Marathon and doesn’t see other long-distance runners smoking at events. “It is not really the venue or location to smoke. The two activities do not go hand in hand, for obvious reasons.” Still, he occasionally lights up while waiting in line to get his race bib, just for the sadistic pleasure of seeing fellow racers clear a wide and outraged berth. “It’s obvious” that his times would be better if he never smoked, he says. But what isn’t so clear is the effect of all that healthy cardiovascular exercise on a serious smoker. Is it possible that all that vigorous exercise could somehow reverse the ill effects of continued smoking? In other words, could one cancel out the other?w
Dr. Mark Johns, a physician at St. Mary’s in Duluth, said, “I am not aware of any studies that directly address this question; however, it is interesting to note that there is data to support the use of pulmonary rehab in patients with emphysema.” While the research work from the American Thoracic Society does not indicate a survival benefit for smokers who exercise, it does show promise for an improved quality of life. So what does this mean to jocks who do indulge in smokes? Dr. Johns interpreted the data like this: “You’ll die just as soon. But hey, you’ll be happier until that day comes.”—Lucie Amundsen
It’s February, and if you aren’t carbo-loading for the Birkebeiner, then you could be carbo-loading on behalf of your local public broadcaster. Can it be long before the next round of pledge drives hits the airwaves? The last time this happened, I volunteered all over town to sample the culture and the carbohydrates.
First I went to KFAI, the little community radio station on the West Bank, where I sometimes have a show. When I arrived, another woman and a man (not a couple, forty-something) were already there to volunteer. They wore jeans and sweaters. It was early on a weekday morning so, naturally, I was still in my pajamas. No one seemed to mind. With its natural light and the smell of good, strong coffee, KFAI’s war room was a lot like my neighborhood coffee shop; there were books of poetry (written by an on-air host) for volunteers to take home. There was one small card table, and all three of us sat around it, talking about films, restaurants, and the changing Twin Cities scene. And we answered the phone. Between calls, we’d eat bagels and homemade coffee cake. My best call came from a woman at a violin repair shop, who can’t receive KFAI’s signal unless she turns off the lights. One of my two fellow volunteers said she was having such a good time that she planned to come back next week.
Next up: Minnesota Public Radio. On this weekday morning, there were maybe twenty volunteers. The youngest looked to be about thirty, and more than a few were probably in their seventies. A few of us wore grubby jeans, but most dressed in workplace casual. MPR’s vibe is very office-like. We started with a twenty-minute presentation on filling out pledge forms, conducted by a woman using a pointer. After the lecture, we filed into a room with one window and about thirty cubicles—stopping first for food. The spread was strictly breakfast-meeting: bagels, pastries, fruit, and coffee, although I was happy to see I didn’t have to use non-dairy creamer. I found a cubicle and struck up a conversation with my neighbor, a freelance classical musician who’s been volunteering at MPR for years. He remembered taking pledges sitting at a table in the hall and said, “Cubicles are much better,” which is something I never thought I’d hear someone say. Like me, he must need a fix of office life every once in a while. In fact, I found myself longing nostalgically for happy hour, with free nachos and all the chicken wings I could eat after a long day driving the mouse.
Meanwhile, I talked with my neighbor about skiing and I answered the phone. I took a call from a man making a sizeable pledge in memory of his stepson, who was murdered in St. Paul. I got up to check out the freebies, mostly books on financial planning. “‘Sound Money’ must have weeded out their library,” my neighbor said when I came back with a book on retirement options.
My last stop was Twin Cities Public Television. It was a Saturday night, and I felt a little out of place in a group of about forty people, mostly in their sixties and seventies, wearing pressed slacks and pressed sweaters. I even spotted my first Christmas sweater of the 2004 holiday season. Since we were seated at two long tables and could talk only to our immediate neighbors, answering phones at TPT was a lot like those dinners with relatives I see only once a year. The conversation focused on the weather, winter driving, the shortage of flu shots, and local television personalities. Unlike a family dinner, everyone at the table could simultaneously surf the web and talk on the phone. My best call was from a woman who worried that her premium might include the disco ball clearly visible on that evening’s programming. I was able to talk her down from this harrowing emotional ledge.
When it was time for food at TPT, I have to admit that I expected green bean casserole and Jell-O salad. But the spread was totally slumber-party: pizza, ice cream, and popcorn. The staff contributed to the family-room atmosphere, drawing names out of a hat for the freebies. A woman next to me got a Sesame Street T-shirt, which she traded with her neighbor for a video of a Sarah Brightman special. They were both happy.
—Maria Rubinstein
In the past three weeks, I’ve been browsed 253 times, though I wonder if that number includes the twice-daily peek I take at my own profile, like a quick glance in the mirror as I pass by. Tickle.com first lured me to its domain with a promise to rate my intelligence. While other indicators have given me a good read on my own mental candlepower (solid annual report cards, successfully playing along with Jeopardy!, a decent employment exam at Outback Steakhouse), recent unspectacular GRE results had left me wounded. Forty multiple-choice clicks later, I was back up there where I belong, “extremely higher than average.” I was identified as a “facts curator” in the company of geniuses like Bill Gates. My self-esteem in good repair, I got briefly addicted and dug up every other Tickle quiz I could find: the “Ultimate Personality Test” (Observer—kind-hearted, intuitive, good mediator); the “Values Test” (Loyal Rebel—honors relationships and truth-telling); the “What Breed of Dog are You?” test (Chihuahua—energetic, devoted, and passionate). I ended my binge of self-love with the “Confidence Test” (Your Confidence Level is High!)
Tickle founder James Currier said the idea for his website came to him in a 1998 Harvard Business School class. After he and his peers took a career personality test, he noticed a dramatic improvement in their interpersonal relationships. “Everyone is interested in themselves,” he said. Perhaps it is true that you must first love yourself before you can love others.
Tickle’s quizzes are divided into “Fun tests” (Who’s your TV Family? How Hip are You?) and “Ph.D. Premium” tests. The latter deal with serious topics like “Relationship,” “Career,” and “Personality.” Tickle claims that these little exams are “Ph.D.-certified.” By this, they mean they are “the highest-quality and most-scientific tests available on the Internet, meeting standards on par with the academic world,” said a Tickle spokeswoman named Christy Albright. “Each test takes five to ten months to design, construct, validate, and launch.” If a solid record of profitability and a recent ninety-four-million-dollar acquisition by Monster.com are any indication, Tickle is doing something right. While the site gives away teaser test results, it makes bank through in-depth Ph.D. analyses, a plethora of pop-ups, and emailing priveleges in the “Matchmaking” domain, which I succumbed to in order to contact a certain blond jokester.
Ty Tashiro, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, is skeptical of Tickle’s methods and claims. “Most licensed psychologists would question the ethics of giving psychological feedback with no expert around to explain or work with the results,” he said. He would say that. Still, this may explain Tickle’s consistently positive feedback, which, in my experience, is not at all “on par with the academic world.” At best, Tickle provides keen insight into the human psyche; at worst, it is a high-tech fortune cookie.
After my last real-world relationship dissolved, I leapt from Tickle’s self-indulgent quizzes to its “Matchmaking” area. Time to move beyond self-love. The good news was, I could take my test results with me. I created a profile and filled out the TrueMatch questionnaire, well on my way to discovering love matches. Searching my digital archives, I found just the right photo to present myself as attractive, charming, and hip. It would be my passport to love.
While getting acquainted with the bells and whistles on Tickle’s matchmaking service, I requested a Chemistry Report with myself. I was greeted with the headline, “Will tdapra and tdapra sizzle or fizzle?” There was my photograph, posted twice, side by side, each over-the-shoulder gaze looking out through the computer screen with a mix of intrigue and playfulness. I looked like a pair of sassy identical twins. According to Tickle,
What will make you sizzle:
Feeling safe and comfortable
Frequent relationship check-ins
Someone’s who’s interested in making
the relationship unique
Someone’s who’s equally excited by the
world around you
What will make you fizzle:
Getting too comfortable in a rut (We have
been watching a lot of “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns.)
Your partner needing to check in on feelings
a lot (We thought this was a good thing!)
Getting confused about who does what in
the relationship (Yes, this could be a problem with us.)
Butting heads (There’s that Loyal Rebel factor.)
Over the next couple of weeks, I exchanged emails with a half-dozen guys (for a monthly fee of $19.95) and met one for coffee. While passing notes with electronic admirers gave me something to look forward to while checking my in-box, meeting in person proved to be less than spectacular. After my first cup-of-something-warm encounter, I returned home, ever so glad to be back in the company of myself (“feeling safe and comfortable”). I turned on my computer and immediately checked my email for more potential love matches. When I browsed my list of Tickle favorites, I caught a glimpse of my photo and noticed the little orange fuel gauge above it at full capacity. “Compatibility rating: 100%.” I clicked on “Chat with me,” and a laughing blue box popped up. “Unfortunately,” it read, “you cannot chat with yourself.”—Tara DaPra
With its cast of starving poets and musicians and creative squatters, Puccini’s La Bohème has not only inspired generations of bohemians; some would say it’s the best known and most accessible opera in the canon. When someone goes to the opera for the first time, frequently it’s to see La Bohème. It has also been the touchstone for many hip, latter-day shows, such as Rent and Moulin Rouge. Yet a modern-day Rodolfo who showed up in hopes of cadging a rush ticket to the Minnesota Opera’s recent production would have been disappointed; the entire run was sold out to business suits and little black cocktail dresses.
So it is with perhaps a little romantic vengeance that one should anticipate Theatre Latté Da’s intimate production of La Bohème, opening later this month. It will feature a stripped-down, hot-rod cast and a small musical troupe, instead of the typical hullaballoo. This Bohème comes on the heels of many other tiny opera productions that have been staged recently, a trend spearheaded by Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the North Star Opera Company.
Traditionalists often cringe when smaller, underfunded arts organizations go capering with Rossini, Stravinsky, and the like. There are good reasons to worry. These shows minimize ensemble singers, reduce orchestrations for a small band or piano quintet, and they often cast a singer or two who can’t hit the score’s original key. In other words, the producers of these operas are saving money and passing those savings along to you. Tickets to see these shows are in the ballpark of fifteen to thirty dollars, a relative bargain.
In the case of Theatre Latté Da, it’s taking some bold liberties with the world’s best-known opera. Although the company has kept the score and libretto intact, and all singing will be in the original key, artistic director Peter Rothstein is tearing La Bohème from its 1830s roots and planting it in the 1930s—still in Paris, still in the Latin Quarter apartment of some starving artists, but this time on the eve of Nazi occupation. “I think La Bohème is rooted in a specific place but not a specific time,” said Rothstein. “I wanted to put the show in a world that heightens its theme of loss of innocence.”
Minus the usual orchestra and large ensemble of singers, Rothstein’s production amplifies the story’s darker elements. “It’s difficult to find a character’s vulnerability when there’s an eighty-piece orchestra playing below them,” said Rothstein. The real trick in transferring Bohème to the 1930s was to orchestrate the score for guitar, piano, violin, clarinet, flute, and—mon dieu!—accordion. In other words, the full complement of Parisian street and café instruments.
“It’s going to sound extraordinarily different,” said Joe Schlefke, who, as music director on the project, is the guy responsible for introducing an accordion to Puccini. “But it’s not sacrilege. We’re trying to be respectful of the whole piece.” As it is written, La Boheme’s characters—Mimi, Rodolpho, Colline, and the rest—are all in their twenties, but the show’s vocal demands usually require well-seasoned singers in their forties or fifties. The dimensions of the 130-seat Loring Playhouse Theater loosen those restrictions, allowing Latté Da to cast age-appropriately (read: cheap grad-student talent). “Our singers aren’t made for big houses,” said Schlefke, who gets to add whispers and other subtleties that wouldn’t play well in the 1,900-seat Ordway. Besides, said Rothstein, “Mimi dies of consumption. You can’t believe that when she weighs two-twenty.”—Christy DeSmith