The Rake Magazine

Month: August 2006

  • It's Not Like I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up

    I still love baseball. I still make an attempt to at least keep tabs on every game, and religiously scroll through the boxscores every morning. I don’t know, quite honestly, why it’s been so hard to write about the Twins this year (and, truth be told, through the second half of last season).

    Actually, I do know. I’m lazy and I’m busy, a brutal, impossible combination. Life keeps changing speeds on me. Baseball used to be the perfect antidote for almost any funk or malaise –if, in fact, funk and malaise are two different things. And baseball still is the perfect antidote. Donald Hall once wrote, “The diamonds and rituals of baseball create an elegant, trivial, enchanted grid on which our suffering, shapeless, sinful day leans for the momentary grace of order.” I love that quote, even if it’s exactly the sort of overwrought thing that highbrows have been writing about baseball forever.

    It’s true, though. And I yearn for that “momentary grace of order,” and yearn even more for those increasingly rare shapeless days.

    I’ve felt swamped all summer, and even though I haven’t found much time or energy at the end of the day to write about baseball, the game has continued to be a refuge. And, God knows, there’s been plenty to write about this year.

    There are freak storms, freak accidents and freak injuries. This has been a freak season.

    The Twins have been both confounding and astonishing, although astonishing has been winning out more often than not in the last several months. The season sure as hell hasn’t played out like anyone could have imagined back in April, and the team’s brutal start, coupled with the breakaway surge of the Tigers and White Sox, sapped a good deal of my early optimism.

    That wretched start still pisses me off, but it’s amazing nonetheless to check out the standings every day and recognize how far the Twins have come. It seems truly impossible that they’re actually in the post-season hunt.

    They’re a damn good team, though, and while hindsight is whatever it is, they had the makings –at least on paper– of the damn good team they’ve become way back in January. For a front office that’s displayed some awfully canny (and uncanny) instincts over the years, the Twins’ brain trust made some pretty poor choices over the winter.

    The signings of Tony Batista and Rondell White were bad decisions, but the real blunders were the April choice of Juan Castro over Jason Bartlett and the early mishandling of Michael Cuddyer.

    Cuddyer has been jerked around since his first call-up, moved from position to position, yanked in and out of the line-up, and shuttled back and forth between Triple A and the Majors. What he’s done since he’s been permanently installed as a starter has been pretty much exactly what his minor league numbers suggested he would do. Consider this, from last night’s postgame notes: Cuddyer now has thirty-two RBI with runners in scoring position and two outs. Of his 104 hits, fifty-two have been for extra bases. He also has nine outfield assists, which is third in the AL.

    Castro over Bartlett looks more preposterous and indefensible by the day. Castro was a 34-year-old career .233 hitter with a reputation as an excellent fielder. Unfortunately, we didn’t even see much to justify that last business in his 2006 stint with the Twins.

    Given what Bartlett went through when the team broke camp in Florida, it would have been easy for him to go out to Rochester with a head full of doubts and questions. Perhaps knowing that Castro was holding down the starting shortstop job in Minnesota gave him motivation and, even more likely, confidence. Regardless, he did what he had to do, Castro didn’t do anything, and Bartlett finally received his pardon in mid-June.

    In fifty-six games since his call-up, Bartlett has hit .369 with a .435 on base percentage. In that same span the Twins have gone 41-15, and have crept back into contention. During Castro’s 2006 stint, the team was 29-34.

    You can’t blame Minnesota’s poor start entirely on Castro, of course. He’s just not that significant. He was a blip to begin with. Batista and White were wretched, the starting pitching was a mess, and Justin Morneau, batting sixth, was scuffling. Francisco Liriano was in the bullpen, Dennys Reyes and Pat Neshek weren’t even on the radar, and there was no reason in the world to expect that we’d see Jason Tyner –let alone Josh Rabe– in a Twins jersey in the middle of a pennant race.

    Four of the Twins’ opening day starters –White, Bastista, Castro, and Shannon Stewart– are either gone or have been insignificant factor’s in the team’s remarkable surge.

    That the club has been able to reinvent itself on the fly, and not only climb its way out of such a huge hole but actually put itself in a position to be a factor down the stretch and into the playoffs, is one of the great baseball stories of the year.

  • Open space and plenty to drink

    Two outdoor concerts happening today, which I’ll recommend, with feeling, since the window of opportunity is closing on these things: On my side of the river, out in the courtyard at the Mill City Musuem, there’s Desdamona (gee, I remember when she was just a wee thing at the Artist Quarter’s open mic) and The New Congress–a “neo-soul” band whose praises I can sing (even if not any of their songs) since the bass player’s girlfriend works here at The Rake. Just yesterday she was bragging about the band winning a “Single of the Year” honor at the L.A. Music Awards.

    Across the river, the Minnesota Museum of American Art’s Patio Nights party doubles as Gallery Grooves. (This means there’ll be plenty of gratis wine ‘n cheese, in case you didn’t immediately catch my drift.) Starting at 8, there’ll be live performances by Kill The Vultures and Chill 7, as well as some fire dancing (gasp!). But the thing I love most about these parties is how, at least in spirit, they celebrate the best of the AMPERS radio network. These under-funded community stations are in a struggle, you know… But every Saturday morning, in particular, I thank heavens Phil Nusbaum and the Bluegrass Review are still around! Another one of AMPERS’ finest–Kevin Barnes, also from Jazz 88/KBEM–will be there tonight spinning some tunes.

  • Puff Pastry?

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    This isn’t your average bake sale. You probably won’t find suburban moms in their J.Jill capris sweetly smiling over bundt cake. That’s because it’s …

    The Big Gay Bake Sale!

    This Saturday from 6-10pm, Patrick’s Cabaret is hosting The Big Gay Bake Sale as a fundraiser for the Flaming Film Festival. Beyond bakery items, they promise a live date auction, queer kissing booth, drag show, raffle, music by Central Standard, plus a kicky apron contest!

    Do you think there will be bread baked into naughty shapes? I can’t wait to see the fabulous cupcakes…

    Patrick’s Cabaret
    3010 Minehaha Ave S
    Mpls.MN 55406

  • Sexy Sexy Sound Unseen

    I’m going to venture across enemy lines here (not really…), and refer you to Jim Walsh’s post about the First Avenue HayDay documentary that’s screening tonight as the kickoff for Sound Unseen. I mean, Walsh was there, man… Me, during the First Avenue heyday, well, I was a fourth grade nothing kicking about on my Huffy bicycle. So, tonight then: there’s the concert footage-crammed screening at the Riverview, for one. Two: there’s an apres-party at the Hex, starring “Capes N’ Tates” (wink-wink) as well as that Wednesday night stalwart, DJ Jake Rudh.

  • The Hate That Love Produced

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    Clash By Night, 1952. Directed by Fritz Lang, written by Alfred Hayes (from the play by Clifford Odets). Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe, J. Carrol Naish, Keith Andes, and Silvio Minciotti.

    Available on DVD locally at Cinema Revolution.

    San Xavier, location unknown. Probably it’s California, but it could be Washington, Oregon. A fishing town where the guys get up too early to snag fish and the girls stay on shore gutting the same and stuffing its rancid meat into cans. Afterwards they fight and drink and make love and maybe, just maybe, a drop of kindness squeaks out somewhere. Usually not.

    Clash By Night is a simple story, a love triangle, as blue-collar as it gets. At once a naturalistic film about first-generation American fishermen (ideally Italian and Irish, though none of them appear as such), it is really about what happens to people when they’re down and out and when love–or a lack of the stuff–warps them. And it warps them good.

    The facts: Enter Mae (Barbara Stanwyck). Back after ten years of chasing wealthy men around, with only a suitcase and a headache to show for it. She walks into the town of San Xavier and back to her brother’s home. This brother, Joe Doyle (played by TV stalwart and forgettable actor Keith Andres) isn’t happy. He’s a tough who just wants to fish and smack his girlfriend, Peggy (Monroe), around. Of course, Peggy’s often the one belting him across the chops, and can understand Mae’s urge to get out of this dump.

    Now enter Jerry, a big lunk with a heart of gold. He owns a fishing boat, lives with his father and his uncle, the latter of the two being probably the biggest asshole I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. Perhaps Fritz Lang thought it’d be beneficial if one of the audience had an urge to throttle someone themselves. Anyway, Jerry’s a nice guy who falls hard for Mae.

    Enter Earl (the great Robert Ryan). He’s something else. His wife is a burlesque dancer, on the road and spending his dough, ignoring him while she struts and sleeps her way across the country. In typical Odets fashion, Earl says he wants to “stick pins in her and see if she bleeds.” He likes Mae, and from the start it’s obvious that Mae likes him. After some awkward courtship, Jerry finally marries Mae, but not before the slimy Earl tries to get his meathooks into her.

    The film is truly about men and women clashing in the night, fighting and screwing, barking at one another and cornering each other in the cramped bars and kitchens of this backwater fishing town. And it’s beautiful. Beautiful because Fritz Lang knew enough to invest in his people, to cast wonderful actors who make every moment come alive. Paul Douglas is simply riveting as the shmuck who can’t grasp that his wife is wrong for him, and when he turns into a beast it’s as real the blasts of hot air bellowing from his nostrils. There are touching moments–the father, played by Silvio Minciotti (where the hell did this actor come from?), going from irritable and lonely to quiet and pensive as he plays his accordion in the shadows to his new granddaughter.

    And then there’s Stanwyck and Ryan. Two of the most pathetic creatures you’ll ever see mess up a good thing. When they’re together the lines just sizzle, exchanges like:

    “You’re the type of guy who needs a new suit of clothes or a new love affair. But he doesn’t know which…”

    or this one,

    “You can’t make me any smaller. I’m preshrunk.”

    All this under a full moon, drunk, cigarettes poking out of their mouths. But every actor resonates, they exist even when they’re not in the scene, so when we see Stanwyck and Ryan, we know that Paul Douglas is lurking in town, hurt, angry. And when he’s alone, we know his wife and her lover are out amusing themselves, and we want them to succeed, and hating ourselves for thinking such a thing.

    Clash By Night has its dull spots, most notably in the scenes with Marilyn Monroe and Keith Andes. It’s a bit long in the tooth. But it’s also a film they don’t make anymore–searing melodrama, shot through with noir-style camera angles, and filled with actors who seem to have shot up with hate and bile before the director yelled “action!” There are love stories today, weak, spineless things that don’t understand that everyone who loves also hates… at times with equal passion. This one doesn’t forget.

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  • IFP Party

    IFP (Independent Feature Project, d’uh) is throwing itself a lil’ soiree this evening. It’s a fundraiser for the organization–which is dedicated to promoting the work, locally, of independent screenwriters, filmmakers, and photographers. But it’ll only set you back about fifteen bucks, so it’s cheap as benefit events go. Expect to be fed, watered, and entertained by 1) IFP’s currently running Ken Olson photography exhibition and 2) a screening of several short flicks, including the best picks from this year’s 48 Hour Film Festival.

  • The Judy Holliday Experience

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    Adam’s Rib, showing tonight at the Walker’s Summer Music and Movies in Loring Park.

    Tonight, when you go see Adam’s Rib, pay close attention to Judy Holliday, would you? Judy Holliday, the not-so-bright blonde, butt of jokes, with the fluttery voice and look of kindness and near-despair. She’s a fool, no doubt about it. The dopey girl who has to quickly thumb through a manual to fire a gun at her no-good husband. Who talks like a Brooklynite in the worst way. Judy Holliday, playing the poor gal who seems lost on the witness stand, but firm in her love of her family. Judy Holliday, who picks up this fantastic film and hoists it on her narrow shoulders. Make no mistake about it: while Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy have never been better, while they’re the brains of this marvel, Judy Holliday is its beating heart, is its pained soul.

    Rumor has it that Kate and Rib director George Cukor and writer Garson Kanin conspired to cast Holliday in the role of the dopey blonde to show Columbia mogul Harry Cohn that she was just right to play the lead in the movie version of the play Born Yesterday. She won an Oscar for that role, which put her on the map. Unfortunately, the map was Ditzville, a role she couldn’t escape… for a time.

    But Holliday was smart. Compare her to Jean Hagen, the gal Holliday’s husband is running around on. Now I like Jean Hagen–she’s screechy and wicked and perfect in Singin’ in the Rain–but she’s one note, very simple. Holliday is simply brilliant. Watch her in the first interview with Kate Hepburn in Adam’s Rib, the way she is confused and yet confident within herself, correcting Hepburn on a number of occasions.

    When Hollywood, in its brilliance, thought to keep her pigeonholed as the ditz, Holliday went back to Broadway and started again, taking on more ambitious roles, flexing her muscles.

    Then breast cancer took her at age 43. So instead of a career that might have taken off in a variety of strange angles (who knows what the following decades and directors would have done for her?), Judy Holliday was gone. Too soon.

    So tonight, if you decide to visit Loring Park to watch this sweet little picture, pay attention to Judy Holliday. She is still staring at us, imploring us to pay attention to her character’s plight, still drawing our attention away from the circus in the courtroom, to the woman who has to go home to her kids each night.

  • Motivation

    I was on eGullet the other day and I found this site where you could make motivational posters, like the kind with cheesy moonscapes and sailboat pics above “inspirational” and “pithy” sayings.

    I’ve created these for you:

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    Check out the others from eGullet food crew.

  • Lady of the Rib

    Only worthwhile happening tonight: the music and movies in the park event, this time with Vicious Vicious and a certain flick called Adam’s Rib. The new film playing over at the Bell is interesting–a documentary called Beauty Academy of Kabul, about women studying cosmetology in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

  • Living Through

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    Those days were an iron wagon loaded with rocks that we dragged through muddy fields with our teeth.

    You were a magnificent burning boat that would not sink.

    We were as prepared as anyone could be who was facing a long night like that. We had, at any rate, been preparing for it for decades. There had been tests –test after test, many of them grueling and sprung on us almost completely unawares– and drills and close calls and false alarms.

    We were all familiar –achingly familiar– with that urgent walk through the darkness and humidity of nights just like this one, from which we’d finally emerge, perpetually stunned and blinking, into those long hallways of brutal light and blinding white walls, into the maze of that place, a maze that seemed constantly to be shifting and expanding and spiraling ever higher.

    On nights like that, that building, that complex, would feel as vast and silent as a library in the worst and most inscrutable sort of nightmare, yet there were reminders everywhere of what the place was up to and how crowded it was with battered pilgrims in all manner of distress.

    It was always astonishing to me how a place so full of suffering could be so hushed. The rising and falling of helicopters was a dull thrumming that you felt mostly in your feet. The hallways were zealously lacquered to such a sheen that you’d find yourself almost tip-toeing like a cat burglar to avoid the squeak of rubber or the clatter of heels.

    Sometimes, like that night, that morning, it felt like a holy place. There were saints everywhere, plaster mostly, with disturbingly abject or imploring looks on their faces. The image of Jesus strung up on the cross repeated itself again and again; again and again you encountered the grief of Mary.

    Most of the sufferers, hidden away behind white doors with whispering pneumatic releases, were in the hands of the most reprehensibly competent sort of unbelievers.

    That night, that morning, you were somewhere in that maze, wired and plumbed like a man who was going to be electrocuted and saved in the same instant.

    We knew when we once again retraced our steps that morning that this time we would not be coming back for you. We knew that you were ready, even if we were not, for a long journey for which you would require no shoes, no wallet or driver’s license, no comb, razor, or shaving cream, none of the things, in fact, that we would carry away with us in plastic bags.

    You and I had driven across the country together, east and west, and across Canada. We’d sat in the bleachers at spring training ballparks. You were always so happy, so eager, so utterly prepared to be amazed.

    Now that’s a pretty swing.

    That is one beautiful bird.

    Isn’t that something?

    We stood together one night on a dark beach in Florida, where astronauts had recently been blown from the sky. We saw the lights of boats in the distance, trolling still for wreckage. You shook your head and said, “It’s hard to even imagine,” but you were already a marked man, and the way you said it I could tell that it wasn’t, in fact, so hard for you to imagine at all.

    If you could see me now –and I like to think that you can– you’d know that I’ve already lost so much of what you gave me.

    (Four short years.)

    (Four long years.)

    And you’d know –I know you know– that I’m going to get it all back.

    I hope that your voyage, wherever it has taken you and whatever it has entailed, has been as eventful and full of wonder as the life you lived, and that the muffled clanging of that battered bell you lugged around, rattling behind your ribcage all those years, is now just a receding memory. I like to imagine you’ve seen some astonishing things, and that you are living now in some version of one of the old comfortable stories that you believed in so passionately.

    It gives me pleasure to think that you are at peace, and even greater pleasure to know that you lived, so fiercely, so gently, and that you were mine and ours, and that I belong to you still, and always.