The Rake Magazine

Year: 2005

  • Macbeth

    This season, the Guthrie’s WORLDStage Series has some especially meaty, contemporary takes on classic texts. This Macbeth, for instance, plucked from an ultra-hip niche of London’s theater scene by impresario James Morrison, is recast in a nameless but unmistakably modern African nation. It features an all-black cast with one exception: the character of Lady Macbeth, drawn from the real-life story of a white aid worker who married a Ugandan warlord. Even more interesting: The Three Witches are modeled after the notorious cross-dressing combatants in former Liberian president Charles Taylor’s militia. Their boas and frilly dresses summon mystical powers. 700 First St N.; www.guthrietheater.org

  • Serenity

    Never mind that this film shares a name with a brand of adult incontinence products. Legions of grad students and pizza delivery people have been joyously anticipating its opening day, perhaps, you might say, to a pants-wetting degree. That’s because Serenity takes up where the short-lived but beloved TV series Firefly, from Joss Whedon, left off. Fans of Whedon, who brought the world Buffy the Vampire Slayer, boast a zombie-like and academic devotion to this writer and director. While he has talked about making a Buffy movie, Serenity is the next best thing. Set in outer space, starring Nathan Fillion (from the TV series), and blessed with a movie-sized special effects budget, these two hours take the Firefly story several steps further. Dark comedy, clever dialogue, and winning characters make this film stand on its own–no TV exposure required.

  • We Miss You Too

    I was so stoked to get The Rake in my mailbox today and I had to use severe discipline to not actually dive into it while I was supposed to be working. My indelible Minnesota work ethic accompanied me to California. So I waited until I finished my day and took my walk, cooked myself some dinner, poured myself a nice glass of chardonnay (I live in the Napa Valley after all) and sat down to enjoy my Rake in the midst of one of our rare hot summer evenings. I immediately dove right into The Rake masthead where I ever so eagerly await your personal answers to some really profound question like “how to beat the heat,” then I turned to the Rakish Angle. How can it be that everyone in Minnesota bitches about the heat all summer long? Now that I have moved away, I have two words for you (which I utter all the time when people ask “what brought you to California?”): Minnesota winters! Still, I love all Minnesota has to offer.

    Ronda Carlson
    Yountville, CA

  • Fine Art Photography

    I would like to correct a statement attributed to me in the round-table discussion of the Musicapolis photography exhibit [“Music City!” August].  In response to a question about whether we thought of ourselves as artists, I was quoted as saying that I didn’t think that a photographer doing commercial work was an artist and, while I can’t recall the exact words of the conversation where several people were talking, I have to say that nothing could be more opposite of my actual opinion. I absolutely think commercial work can be art, even great art. I look for inspiration from photographers like Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and Anton Corbijn, all of whom have done incredible, important work while shooting commercially. As a working commercial photographer currently exhibiting work in a gallery, I fear I came across as both hypocritical and insulting to other photographers, some of whom are showing work in this same exhibit.

    Tony Nelson
    Minneapolis

  • But the Devil Is In the Details

    Your commentary on the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s planned “adjustment of Highway 1” [The Rakish Angle, August] brought to mind an oft-repeated and varyingly attributed proverb. To wit, God writes straight with curved lines.

    Stuart Klipper
    Minneapolis

  • Oddysseus of the Airwaves

    ODDYSSEUS OF THE AIRWAVES
    I can’t decide which grabbed me the most, Jennifer Vogel’s perceptive style or T.D. Mischke’s peripatetic journey—both the literal aimless search and his dedicated exploration of life’s nuances at the “cutting edge” [“Old-Fashioned Cutting-Edge Radio,” July]. The daunting journey of Vogel through the maze of Tommy’s cortex seemed at times bound not to find an exit—and yet she did. In the end we see a variation of the everyman/woman theme. It’s that combination of luck, serendipity, and the pervasive drive to find the right niche: a quiet place—a nest to explore and to emerge as the adult without losing that precious whimsy of the inner child. In that reservoir of curiosity and fantasy too often hidden from the world, Mischke invokes the “tapoceta tapoceta” of Walter Mitty, or perhaps he is more akin to Robin Williams’ Good Morning, Vietnam. Then for contrast we see the emergence of another facet of this performance artist: The Iconoclast. One can only congratulate this versatility. Add his refreshing honesty amid the current cacophony of phony snake-oil salesmen on the air and one finds a budding renaissance man. T.D.’s odyssey

    “on the rods” conveyed me to a distant place: the 1927 front-page story in my hometown Daily News relating my three-day sojourn at age twelve with the 101 Ranch and Wild West Show. It was only one of several later extended departures by freight train and hitchhiking in search of the golden dream of an acting career in Hollywood. I finally found my niche in a book on the shelf of a World War II troop ship. We were part of a convoy headed for the European front. The book was Where Do People Take Their Troubles, by Lee R. Steiner. It opened a window to the then-new field of clinical psychology. After the war and thirty very satisfying years in that profession, I am still intrigued and continue to explore the drive and motivation of the “fledgling’s” irrepressible inner forces. Mischke’s tale exemplifies the essence of the rite of passage shared by countless pilgrims. Unlike some less fortunate others, his tour landed him in a good place thanks to his unique, unfettered talent.
    Eugene Kline
    Minneapolis

  • Pickles!

    LETTER OF THE MONTH

    When the significant other tossed the carefully torn Rake page with the pickle recipe [Down the Hatch, July], my hair was on fire, and only pickle juice could put it out. We’d already been to the farmers’ market to capture the things we needed to make the lovelies … I didn’t want to face a bag full of soggy cukes while I ran after the garbage truck trying one last time to sort through the pile. All this by way of saying thanks for being online in a way that made it an easy couple of keystrokes to recapture the article and the recipe. I’m loving your efforts. Every month. The Rake is on the coffee table with the rest of the gang.
    Michele Periolat
    Maplewood

  • Help for the Iraqi constitutional process

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    The right to bare arms…and more

    I was sitting around with a few wags yesterday and we were talking about the problems the Iraqis (if there is such a thing–as opposed to Sunni, or Shiite or Kurd, that is) were having in getting some agreement on a constitution. Aside from the squabbles over oil revenues and autonomy of regions which make the differences in 1787 between Virginia and Massachusetts seem…dare I say…tame by comparison, there’s the sticky problem of Islam, and all the implications for dress codes, tonsorial customs and which way is east conundrums.

    So we took a look at our own Bill of Rights and offered the following hints for articles they could adapt:

    Article 1: Freedom of religion. It’s alright to kill anyone who doesn’t like my brand of Islam. Christians and Jews, you better take off now.

    Article 2: The Right to Bare Arms: Women north of Baghdad get to wear sleeveless dresses. Women south of Baghdad get to wear sleeveless dresses only if they have no arms, which we can arrange.

    Article 3: No soldiers in your house. Soldiers destroying your house, that’s ok.

    Article 4: No unreasonable search and seizure, unless it’s a world power looking for weapons we don’t have.

    Article 5: No one shall be forced to testify against himself after we rip out his tongue for blasphemy.

    Article 6: You have the right to a speedy trial, after we hold you in Guantanamo for as long as we damn well please.

    Article 7: You can sue anyone you like for any amount over 20 dollars, or blow him up with a car bomb, whichever is more convenient.

    Article 8: No cruel or unusual punishment, unless we think the pictures are funny.

    Article 9 and 10: Anything else you can think of, but if it ain’t in the Koran, forget about it.

    Since this is sort of the way things are running over there now, we figured they should have no trouble agreeing. And, once this constitution is in force, Bush will have his exit strategy. I say we give them all the encouragement we can to adopt our suggestions so we can get the hell out of there.

  • I Couldn't Tell You What I Was Thinking

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    I apologize for that last entry. I apparently wrote [sic] it during the empirical blackout in which I have been lost the last several days.

    I confess that it makes absolutely no sense to me, and although it is not uncommon for things that show up here to make no sense to me in the cold light of day, very seldom do I literally have no memory of having even written the words in question.

    At some point in the early hours of the morning this entry —this, these words– was typed, I discovered that I was clutching a crumpled ATM receipt in my fist on which was scrawled this quote from Hippocrates: “If the matters which are purged be such as should be purged, the evacuation is beneficial, and easily borne; but, if otherwise, with difficulty.” Turning this scrap of paper over in my hand I found another sentence, also attributed to Hippocrates: “A woman does not become ambidexterous.”

    I was seated in a green chair. I had a pen in my right hand (I almost always have a pen in my right hand; I’m like Bob Dole in that way, I guess, although I believe Dole grips his pen in his left hand, and for entirely different reasons). Charley Patton was moaning softly from the stereo in the background. I had no recollection of consulting Hippocrates, and couldn’t imagine owning a book of any sort that would contain the words which were jotted on that receipt. I looked around the room where I was seated, hoping that I would find the source of these quotes. I moved a great number of things around, in fact, but did not find what I was looking for. I wandered into the next room and investigated the various piles of books that were heaped all over the place there. Still no Hippocrates.

    Blessedly, I suppose, my mind in the wee hours (okay, fine, my mind in general) is like that of a severely cross-wired lab rat, and I eventually found myself back in the green chair, slumped in my habitual stupor. From the stereo Arthur Rubinstein, I believe, was playing Chopin’s Nocturnes; I realized that I was now thinking about something that I have spent a great deal of time thinking about over the years. And that is this: How much control, I wonder, does a parrot’s owner have over the bird’s command of the language, such as it is; or, specifically, the words and sentences it learns to speak?

    From that launching point I wondered –presuming one has real control over such things– what words or phrases I would choose to teach a parrot. It seems like this would be an important question. You’re presumably going to have to live with these words for as long as you own the parrot.

    Given this assumption, I’d think you’d want to teach the bird to say something wise, beautiful, or consoling. But what? Parrots, I’d think, are more likely to be aphorists rather than storytellers, so you’d probably want to choose something short and sweet.

    People’s first instinct –which is almost always a tragic one– is to teach a bird to say something funny or profane. They want to make an insult comedian out of the parrot rather than a philosopher or a poet, but I imagine the severely limited wiseacre routine would get old in a hurry.

    I can’t imagine living with a bird that cursed me or shrieked my name all day long.

    I recall once visiting a couple of my acquaintance that had taught their parrot to do a terse and terrible John Wayne impression. “Howdy pilgrim!” the bird would drawl over and over, until I wanted desperately to run the damn thing through with a knitting needle.

    I also have some dim memory from my childhood of a parrot that had learned to say, “You bet your sweet bippy!” I think you’ll agree that it would be unacceptable to have such a bird in your home.

    I thought for a long time about what words I would teach my parrot (even though, I should probably admit, I would never, under any circumstances, actually wish to own a parrot, or a bird of any kind). I’m still thinking about it, in fact, and when and if I manage to narrow it down I’ll let you know what I’ve come up with. In the meantime, feel free to send me your own suggestions.

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  • Uncle Jumbo's Playground

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    –Illustration by James Dankert

    I’m back, but –like the Twins– just barely.

    Zellar’s had a muzzle on me ever since I tried to dictate a column to his answering machine in the middle of the night. This, of course, was after I’d had a few beers, and after the Twins had finished kicking the shit out of my kidneys for three hours. Based on that information, of course, you could safely conclude that this incident occurred pretty much any night in the last couple months.

    I don’t remember, frankly. And I don’t much care.

    I will tell you this, though: Jumbo’s not about to start turning cartwheels just because the Twins have won six straight and pulled within shooting distance of the wild card lead. Big fat whoop. They’ve got a lot of atoning to do. During that 11-19 slide coming out of the All Star-break I pulled a groin muscle karate-kicking at the television in a screaming fit of rage, and I gained sixteen pounds. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell, but I’m sure my doctor –who I see every five years whether I need to or not– wouldn’t be happy about it. I’ve no doubt he’d tell me (as he tells me each time I visit his office) to “lay off the snack foods.” Fat chance of that, I’m afraid. I’ve also no doubt he’d tell me that if my cholesterol gets any higher I could essentially tap a vein and use my blood as a substitute for cream cheese, something that might one day prove necessary.

    We all realize that if the offense on this team had been even slightly better than half-assed for the last several months all these August and September games against the White Sox might have actually meant something. That doesn’t get us anywhere, though, and I’m having a hard time getting all fired up about a wild card race. I don’t believe in the wild card –never have– and I think it’s an abomination that so many teams that have knee-walked into the playoffs have managed to win World Series titles over the last ten years, or whatever it’s been.

    I’ve never been through anything with a baseball team like what I’ve been through this summer with this team. If my life wasn’t already completely ruined, the last five months would have completely ruined my life. I’m prepared to swear on what’s left of my broken mother’s body that if I had been batting clean-up for the Twins this season they’d have won –at minimum– a half dozen games that they lost. At minimum. I believe this in my fat, clotted heart.

    In my only Whiffleball outing of the summer (at Blooming Void’s fifteenth-annual Loose Meat Festival Drungo Hazewood Whiffleball Classic) I dominated the competition, and singlehandedly carried my club (The Jerkwater Herd) to the title. Every year The Herd is essentially me and whatever warm (or even not so warm) bodies I can rustle up at the Lucky Seven Tavern, and every year it doesn’t matter, as long as Jumbo gets to pitch and swing the bat.

    I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I am the greatest Whiffleball pitcher on the planet. I am unhittable. I’m a lefty, and I’d make Jacque Jones look like…well, actually, I suppose he’d look like Jacque Jones. He wouldn’t have a prayer against my hard heat and nasty slider. Not to mention my trademark off-speed pitch, The Egret.

    Believe me, you don’t ever want to have to see The Egret.

    To get back to the Twins for a very brief moment: Can I just say that Carlos Silva is my new hero? I can’t imagine he looks all that great without a shirt on (which is one thing all of my heroes have in common), but the man is a warrior. He might be the only guy on that team that I’d like to have over to my house for a barbecue, and after we’d had a few beers I’d even teach him how to throw The Egret.

    Finally (or perhaps by the way), I’ve decided to become a demolition derby driver. My old man wasn’t the brightest bulb on the marquee, but I’ll always remember when he took me to the demolition derby at the Groat County fairgrounds one year. In the middle of the thing, between pulls on his Grain Belt long neck, he gestured out to the track and said, “Would you look at that? That right there is life in a nutshell. You keep getting up every morning and eating your shit sandwiches and you know what you’ll grow up to be? A survivor, my boy, the winner of the freaking demolition derby.”