The Rake Magazine

Month: September 2006

  • Today's Subject Is Failure: One Day Soon That Dam Is Going To Break

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    A night for Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” for roast beef sandwiches with horseradish, for wrenching squalls, for geese sailing across the sky, for the tired old monkey business with the flag and the usual recrimination, for the bowed back and the metaphoric broken teeth.

    What do you take me for, a leader? I am only a little more this every day, maybe a little better or a little worse, but always this same skin, these same bones, the same cross-wired brain and stuttering heart.

    I make a good mix CD. I have decent taste in footwear. I have a way I like to imagine the world, but the world is just a solid, reliable, and challenging reality, and is unconcerned with my imagination.

    But still.

    What an unsettling business, that hamstrung day behind me. This is the time of year when a man should live in the country, where things are clearer and you can watch things develop in a more leisurely fashion. You can see stuff coming from a long way off out there. There’s a lot more darkness of the pleasant kind, and music fills a quiet room the way it never quite can in the city.

    Was it a pale bird or a pale horse I saw in a dream, standing silent and unmoving in a late autumn wood shot full of moonlight?

    Why the fuck should so much depend on a red wheelbarrow, no matter what color it might be?

    Three a.m., pacing and muttering and climbing the walls and karate-kicking like a madman.

    I had waking dreams of the end of the world. I was trapped in a bell tower, tossing pennies –penny after penny from a giant bucket full of pennies– at chickens rooting around in the rubble beneath me. The stairs that could have taken me down from the tower had collapsed. In the distance I saw a line of blindfolded children, holding hands and being led along a trail by two hooded dwarves. I tried to get their attention by banging on the bell with my fists until my knuckles were bloody.

    At exactly this moment in the waking dream, I was standing at the front window, staring down into the street, when I felt what I was certain was a hand grasping my own. I turned around, startled fully awake, and discovered there was no one there.

    Okay, Mister Bones, let’s go out back and see just what you’re up to.

  • Dramatist, Filmmaker, Lipstick King for A Day

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    For those film-loving homebodies too tired to go out on a Wednesday night: American Masters profiles the inimitable Preston Sturges. Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer shows tonight on TPT Channel 2 at 9:00.

    If you recall, the Walker screened two of his films, The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels, in their Summer Music and Movies program this summer. But this guy’s history is nearly as madcap as his flicks. Briefly, the guy’s mother hung with Isadora Duncan, he invented a kissproof lipstick, and became a playwright only when recuperating in a hospital bed (and was an immediate success).

  • Calling All Cooks

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    Dig through your family collections, ladies and gentlemen. Pull the best dish from your repertoire and steel your nerves. You, yes you Betty Lou, could win fame and acclaim in the Great Mill City Farmers Market Taste-Off!

    I know you are hiding a killer dish of some sort (scalloped potatoes? creamed corn? broasted chicken? Granny’s hot-pot? Earl-grey smoked pheasant?) that others consider to be the end-all-beat-all culinary definition of YOU. Why not flaunt it, show it off?

    This Saturday at 10:00am, show up at the Mill City Farmers Market with your masterpiece (enough for 12 samples) and its recipe. Sprightly food maven Sue Zelickson, lanky chef Brenda Langton, and other chefs, farmers, and eaters in general will judge the dishes and bestow great honors and bragging rights.

    Winners will be featured in the first Mill City Farmers Market Cookbook. (Your mantra: I WILL be published. I WILL be published.) Top choices in each category might take home a gift certificate to a local restaurant, limited edition market tote bags, t-shirts, posters and other such spoils.

    Categories are as follows:
    Hors D’Oeuvres (also known in MN as “apps”)
    Salads
    Soups
    Main Dishes
    One-Dish Meals (ooooh, a challenge. crock-pot anyone?)
    Desserts

    Seriously, if my friend Danielle shows up with her Bourbon Brownies, the judges will be too drunk to taste anything else, so if you get a whiff of chocolatey-whiskeyliscious-goodness, elbow in front of her.

    Call the good people at 612-341-7580 with questions.

  • It's a good day for music but I'm chained to my desk

    We’re putting the finishing touches on the October issue today and tomorrow, and so I won’t be able to sneak over to Peazey Plaza for the Minnesota Orchestra’s free, lunchtime concert. (But I’ll likely catch the replay this Sunday at Lake Harriet.) Nor will I make it to Lee’s tonight to see The Derailers. (Ah, the memory of youth, with the sound of dad’s radio wafting out from the garage…) Can’t get to the Built To Spill concert either. Right now this desk is the Center of my Universe.

  • When the Military Knows We're Losing…

    According to the Washington Post today, the U.S. Marine officer in charge of military intelligence in Iraq thinks we’ve already lost a substantial chunk of the country.

    Think about why we’d “stay the course” when the course is a path to defeat.

    It’s not called Cut and Run. It’s called Cut Your Losses.

  • Kieran's: The Path To Enlightenment

    How is it that you firsted respond to Herman Hesse’s book, Siddhartha? For me, I was in about my sophomore or junior year of college when I read the thing, and I found it absolutely riveting. And so I took my color-coded highlighters to it as a Pentecostal would her bible. In particular, I remember underlining some passage in the beginning about Siddhartha’s as of yet meandering and unsuccessful quest for enlightenment. I very much identified with this.

    Looking back upon it now, this was probably the perfect time for me to read that book. I’d taken the requisite eastern religious studies courses, that’s for sure. And my mind was still open to the possibility of mysticism… But reading Siddhartha today would be akin to something my sister did a while back: Having not read Catcher In The Rye when she was fourteen (like the rest of us did), she became interested in it after reading a magazine article about how all those serial killer-types are inspired by it. And then she saw The Silence of the Lambs. She read the book in her late twenties… Hello?

    In any case, I’m glad as all get out that the Lit 6 Project will be having some fun with Siddhartha tonight, and probably at the book’s expense, as part of The Rake’s very cool Raking Through Books party!

  • Got Me A Movie, I Want You To Know: The Best Songs About Movies and the People Who Make Movies

    A bee got into my bonnet the other day, and I started thinking about my favorite songs about the movie industry. Not songs from movies–those are a different beast altogether. And then there’s the songs that were used in movies that are now joined at the hip: “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison will forever be remembered as the point in which Blue Velvet really falls down the rabbit hole.

    No, I want songs that celebrate or lament Hollywood, tributes to the stars or reminiscences of some actor’s tragic demise. Here’s my half-assed list–it is by no means exhaustive. I’m sending out the clarion call: if you can think of others, please send them in. Please spare me Candle in the Wind–that song sucks.

    By the way, these are in no particular order:

    Debaser, The Pixies. A tribute to Bunuel.

    Take, Take, Take and The Union Forever, The White Stripes. The first about an obsession with Rita Hayworth; the second about an obsession with Citizen Kane.

    Lon Chaney, Chickasaw Mudd Puppies. Great song that you’ll never find–these guys (a guitarist and a guy in a big rocking chair, singing and keeping the beat with his boots) are long gone. All about the “Man of a Thousand Faces”. Nearly indecipherable lyrics, most of which are references to his many films.

    The Right Profile, The Clash. And…
    Monty Got A Raw Deal, R.E.M. A pair of songs about the tragic life of Montgomery Clift.

    Act Naturally, Buck Owens (and later sung by Ringo on Help!). “They’re going to put me in the movies…”

    David Duchovny, Bree Sharp. She’s probably regretting not going with Gillian Anderson on this one.

    King of the Mountain, Southern Culture on the Skids. Fab song about a back-woods pornographer.

    Martin Scorsese, King Missile.

    “He makes the best f–king films
    He makes the best f–king films
    If I ever meet him I’m gonna grab his f–kin’ neck and just shake him
    And say thank you thank you for makin’ such excellent f–kin’ movies!”

    That’s a short list, I know, but it’s a Monday morning, and I still haven’t had enough coffee. Send in your suggestions when you’re clear-headed.

  • Why we listen to poets

    I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention today’s five-year anniversary of the September 11 catastrophe. There are, of course, all kinds of memorial concerts going on this evening–at Landmark Center and at the Harriet Bandshell, to name just a couple. But Emigrant Theater is commemorating the event in an interesting way; they’re doing a series of play readings, by local writers, that are inspired by the events of that day. The lineup includes Alan Berks’s Blue Skies Forever and Matt Di Cintio’s Lady Liberty Gets Put Back Together. Cost is just ten bucks, with proceeds benefiting the Minnesota Fire Service Foundation. Showtime: 7:30 p.m., Mixed Blood.

  • Kick-Off

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    This is pretty. I didn’t bake this, no sir.

    This weekend, the weather was perfect for eating. It was chilly enough to inspire a stoking of the stove and grey enough to keep me happily inside without guilt.

    Seriously, I cooked all weekend.

    Saturday the kids and I spent most of the day conspiring how to get the apples off the top-most branches of the tree. Let’s just say that a bevy of ladders, ropes, and long handled saws came into play. After a modest early harvest, and a thrilling game of apple-ball using the wormy ones, it was into-the-kitchen-we-go.

    Staurday clearly called for a roasted chicken, no? Rubbed with butter, crammed with a lemon and some freshly chopped rosemary, it made the house smell like we were trying to sell it. While it was cooking I made some butter-beer-batter bread, in which I impulsively threw the rest of the chopped rosemary. Potatoes were requested, so my daughter and I sliced some thin and covered them with cream in a buttered baking dish. Our green consisted of market green beans with portobellos and fresh thyme. For dessert I took the apples from our tree and sliced around the icky parts. The remaining chunks were carmelized in brown sugar and butter, then poured over squares of puff pastry.

    I knew Sunday was a soup day the minute I woke up. Potato leek soup is always a good remedy for a drizzly, chilled day. I usually like to throw in some lemon thyme if I have it, but I didn’t grow any this year. I did have some lemon basil I bought at the market, which turned out to be a nice substitute. Everyone knows that the best accompaniment to soup is crusty bread, but I’m a little bored with baguettes. I decided to bake some pretzels to go with the soup, but truth be told, it was more for the reason that I had a yummy, buttery one at the fair last week and I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.

    They were ridculously easy to make:

    1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp) dry active yeast
    1 cup warm water
    1 tsp sugar

    Pour together in a bowl and let stand for five minutes, until a littel foamy. Add

    1/2 tsp salt
    2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

    Mix well, get in there with your hands if you have to. Should be a sticky dough. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let stand for 30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees.

    Turn dough onto lightly greased pan and divide into eight pieces, let rest for about five minutes. Combine

    1 cup warm water
    3 T baking soda

    in a separate bowl. Stir to evenly disperse, there shouldn’t be any chunks. Roll dough chunks between your plams to form long ropes. Twist and form pretzels into whatever shape you like. Dip formed dough into the baking soda wash, covering all sides. Let excess drip off, then place pretzel on parchment lined baking tray. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt or herbs or whatever you’d like. Let them sit for at least five minutes.

    Bake in oven for about eight minutes, switching trays half-way through. Immediately after pulling from the oven, brush with melted butter, lots and lots of melted butter.

    Eat them while they’re warm and lick your fingers.

  • Deep, Deep, Deep; Deeper And Deeper We Creep

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    –Image copyright Karel Cudlin

    What am I? What shall I do? What can I believe and hope for? Everything in philosophy can be reduced to this.

    –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms

    As long and as far as they can stare into their magic spyglasses they strive to glimpse ever deeper into the star clutter, those little men with their frightening focus and faraway eyes. Lab-coated pygmies dreaming into the darkness, looking for further evidence of their –and our– insignificance. Let’s face it: they already have in their possession too many useless secrets while the rest of us are still five years old and paralyzed, wonder-stunned in the presence of what are essentially variants on the old Alka-Seltzer rocket, the spider web, and the firefly.

    The world can do whatever it wants with you. Don’t hesitate. It can all go so quickly, everything, and then you’ll be left alone in the dark with a television, trying to either forget or remember your dreams, depending on how far along you are in the process of evaporating.