The Rake Magazine

Year: 2006

  • Blunt Instrument

    bond1.gif

    Casino Royale    , 2006. Directed by Martin Campbell, written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and the ubiquitous Paul Haggis. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Giancaro Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, Isaach De Bankole, and Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, who seems obliged to poke his ugly mug into all the big-budget movies.

    There’s a moment in the opening of Casino Royale, when our hero, James Bond, is shown dispatching his very first victim in the sink of a public lavatory. Shot in black and white, the blacks as rich as India ink and the whites as glaring as a flash bulb, the scene is notable for its wretchedness, and an early signal that this isn’t Pierce Brosnan’s world anymore. Apparently, a double-0 agent must waste two enemies before reaching such exalted status. The aforementioned kill is shown in flashback, and now our hero, played by Daniel Craig, sits patiently in the office of his next victim, who assures him that the second kill is easier. Actually, he tries to assure Bond, but is blown through his chair by a single bullet before he can finish that sentence.

    Of course, if Martin Campbell had any wit about him, this opening scene wouldn’t have been in monochrome, but in the sun-drenched technicolor of the 60s, taking us back to the real beginning. But no one has ever accused a Bond film of excessive imagination.

    Casino Royale is supposedly a return to the old-style Bond, the “literate” Bond from Ian Fleming’s potboilers. As it stands, it is not a stretch to say it’s the best Bond in ages, though context is everything: there has literally not been a decent bond since Sean Connery flexed his golden torso in Thunderball, which itself was nothing but fluff. But the comparisons should end there, for Connery’s Bond was at least a product of its time, its politics somewhat reassuring to the zeitgeist of the 60s. The new Bond seems content to give us creaky imperialism, the usual idiotic women, gadgets that, in this world, now seem like nothing any third world country with a few bucks doesn’t own. Worse, Casino Royale has an overlong plot, ham-handed direction, and makes the especially tragic mistake of being, quite simply, in its second half, the most dull big-budget film of the year.

    After the hideous credit sequence has run its course, we open with the usual gangbusters: Bond is sweating away his afternoon in some tropical locale, this time Uganda, watching a mongoose and a cobra fight to the death while a fire-scarred villain waits for his opportunity to make some shady deal. Soon, their cover is blown, and Bond races after the bad guy in a spectacular chase through a construction area… killing scores of innocent Ugandans, whose lives, considering their lack of close up, seem to be less worthwhile than the mongoose or snake. The bad guy is an amazing creature, possessed of the dexterity of a flying squirrel and Jackie Chan, leaping and pirouetting off girders, elevators, cranes, you name it. Finally, Bond chases him down, waltzes into an Embassy (from who knows where), shoots the villain down and razes the building.

    What justifies such wanton behavior on the part of the British government? Apparently, this Scarface was a terrorist, which is enough for us. The new Bond tosses the ‘t’ word around with more aplomb than the Republicans before election day. Who the hell is this Ugandan guy? Instead of the story of a man who undoubtedly grew up living in abject poverty, who turned into a terrorist and somehow managed to morph into this gravity-defying creature, we get… James Bond. And how he learned to love martinis and lose his soul.

    The story is the usual silliness: an uber-villain named Le Chiffre, who weeps blood, makes tons of money by arming the world’s terrorists. Somehow, it is suggested, he made a figurative killing off 9/11, apparently by unloading boxcutters at a low rate. Anyway, Le Chiffre’s latest plot was thwarted by Bond, in a chase scene whose best moments were stolen from The Road Warrior. Having lost his shirt, Le Chiffre must win back his money in a high-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em tournament in Montenegro. Bond is the best card player, so naturally he’s called upon to prevail. Along the way he meets the supposedly intelligent though regally daft Vesper Lynd, played by a beautiful woman named Eva Green, who is slathered under some of the worst makeup since Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Worse, Green is an actress with the range of a sock puppet, draining what little life there is from this film in every scene. Eventually, Bond beats Le Chiffre, is abducted and has his testicles whacked (literally), and finds a traitor in his midst.

    The film is being called ‘dark’, in that Craig’s Bond can be seen brooding, is testy, then falls in love with Ms. Lynd, and has a supposedly grim ending that references Titanic, of all films. Of course, a decent filmmaker can use lighting and camera angles, set design and editing to suggest despair, so it’s difficult to feel the angst in a film so harshly lit and pedantically shot. The film takes its sweet time going anywhere, and then just when you begin to get bored, screenwriter Paul Haggis steps in to pour syrup on the audience. Bond falls in love, Bond loses girl, Bond becomes jaded. Two and a half hours later the film comes to a close, and you wander out stunned, wondering just when you’ll stop being fooled by the hype and watch something original for a change.

    Earnestness is the raison d’etre of Casino Royale, which is a real shame, because there’s so much you could do to tweak this ridiculous scenario–from Britain’s always failed attempts at outdoing its American counterparts on the foreign policy front, to the fact that nowadays your average teenage hacker has better gadgets than Bond and Company. Not to mention the fact that maybe they could give Bond a woman who is a real foil. Perhaps a lesbian. Or perhaps Bond could be black.

    God forbid this franchise should acknowledge the 21st century.

    The old Bonds reassured us and gave us some needed confidence during a cold war that had everyone on the edge. We often forget that the first three Bonds were testaments to ingenuity–they were big moneymakers made on virtually no budget whatsoever. From Russia With Love could be considered the most literate, and even it had a sense of camp that was evident in its day. We can look now at the dopey blondes and brunettes that hung on Connery’s every smirk, but what do these silly women and their swinging bustline do for us today? Vesper Lynd isn’t fun or funny, and her barbs lack bite (and she certainly isn’t brainy). Above all, why should we give a rat’s ass about James Bond, about his development as a killer and a man, his learning not to trust people, or even about his dispatching villains, most of whom are from third-world countries? If Uganda’s the worst you can throw at us, you might as well resurrect S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

    Judging from its box-office take last weekend, this series will be around for a long time, the machine pumping out these witless packages every two years. But if it’s nostalgia you want, rent the originals. If it’s action you want… I guess you could still rent the originals. See Casino Royale if you’re a Bond addict, if your DVD player is broken, or you’re stuck in a small town and it’s a choice between this and, say, Happy Feet. Or read the book. Your own imagination can certainly do no worse.

    bond2.gif

  • T-Day Countdown

    tday.JPG

    Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for the following reasons:
    1. No gifts. I love giving gifts, I just hate pretending to like the teal suede and faux fur vests of my life.

    2. It’s not religious. It’ll never be turned into something more palatable and washed out so that everyone feels fuzzy and unoffended.

    3. It’s all about food. The whole point of the day is to eat well and be happy and thankful that you can. It’s the only celebration of the year where the feast is real show.

    As for the family angst, that’s just gravy.

    The only thing more certain than long lines at the grocery store, is the abundance of cooking advice offered by every media outlet on the planet. So I’ll play along….

    Go Turducken! because it’s more than a meal, it’s a David Blaine moment.

    Watch Home for the Holidays with Holly Hunter or Pieces of April with Katie Holmes-Cruise before cooking, it will help remind you that there are bigger disasters than what you will likely produce. Confidence, dahling!

    Cocktail.

    If anyone asks “What can I bring” tell them $20. Or bread. Or wine, that may or may not be consumed with the meal.

    Forget the fancy name-place cards, I’ve got two words for you: hand turkey.

  • B-Ball Me

    Happy short week, eh? There aren’t a lot of notable arts and entertainment happenings going on tonight. But there is that sneak preview party for the Minnesota History Center’s Baseball As America exhibition–although a ticket will set you back a little ways ($25-$50). Won’t it be worth it, though, to hang out with Baseball Hall of Famers like Harmon Killebrew, Ryne Sandberg and Paul Molitor?

  • Dear Miss Yennish…

    you.jpg

    “There simply aren’t enough letters in the alphabet,” Mr. Lyle Baumgartner announced to his freshmen English class one afternoon. “As presently constructed the language is wholly inadequate to express the depth of my feelings.”

    He stared out at the blank or incredulous faces of his students. He then leaned on his desk with his left arm while dramatically and delicately touching his chest near his heart with his right hand. With this visibly trembling hand he made a patting motion and fluttered his fingers.

    There was a long moment of silence while Baumgartner surveyed the class and appeared to be rummaging in his skull for additional words with which to furnish his address. A lumpy, rumpled character with a head of greasy and thinning black hair, Mr. Baumgartner was legendary for his dandruff, his indescribable cologne, and for having worn the same pair of scuffed and clunky brown shoes every day for more than a decade. He was also notorious for once having had a hysterical breakdown while reading aloud from A Day No Pigs Would Die.

    “I know,” he said, “that many of you are familiar with Miss Yennish, the distinguished business education instructor at this high school. What you may not know, however, is that that comely woman has laid claim to my soul, even as she remains blithely indifferent and even, one might say, blind to not only my affection, but also to my very existence. My every effort to woo the object of my desire having proved entirely ineffectual, I find myself driven to a level of distraction and despair that verges on the maniacal. Given this unhappy set of circumstances I am going to ask that, in lieu of your regular assignment, each of you compose a letter to Miss Yennish on my behalf. This assignment will be graded, and those missives I find to be most heartfelt, ardent, and artfully constructed will receive extra credit. They will also be delivered to Endora Yennish’s home, along with a dozen red roses and a poem of my own composition.”

    you don't know.jpg

  • Giving and Getting

    The Gorilla Under the Tree

    Give
    Offense: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

    Passing the Buck

    Rules of the Game

     

    The Gorilla Under the Tree
    by Mary Lucia

    We’ve all heard the harried holiday shopper ask, “What do you give the person who has everything?” Come on. Is there someone on your gift-giving list who really has everything? Does this person have my black 1940s horsehide jacket that was ripped off from the 7th Street Entry dressing room in December of 1999? Because, dude, I’d really like that back.

    The more important question to me is, what gift do you give someone you’ve been at horrible odds with for the good part of a year? More specifically, what if this someone is a member of your immediate family?

    If you were brought up Catholic, you no doubt have between five and seventeen siblings (give or take a few), and you are therefore familiar with the name-drawing arrangement for gift-giving. Last year, I drew the name of a sibling with whom the last words I had exchanged were via voicemail—something to the effect of, “You’re a black hole. Lose my number.”

    Being Catholic as well as female, I felt wicked guilty for saying those pointed things, no matter how necessary it was for me to unleash. I still could’ve phrased them with kindness: “You are a talented and sensitive black hole. When you get a minute, please lose my number.”

    I wracked my brain to come up with the right peace offering. What gift says “I’m sorry I said the things I said, though I meant every word”? I was nearly drifting off to sleep when the answer came to me like a vision. I would give the gift of absurdity.

    The next day, I went online and Googled “full-body adult gorilla costume.” As I typed in my credit-card number, I wondered what kind of interesting spam lists this purchase would put me on. I felt giddy receiving the big package and thought surely it would magically heal the rift.

    Christmas Eve came, and it happened that our mom was feeling quite ill and frail. With a laundry list of vague symptoms, she bowed out of the evening’s festivities.

    We are a Christmas-morning gift-opening kind of family, so I thought my gorilla suit would now have to possess the power not only to mend my broken-kin fence but also to heal the sick. I needed a Christmas miracle.

    Early the next morning, I awoke to a voicemail from one of my sisters. She was with our mom, who had collapsed and been taken to the hospital by ambulance, barely registering a pulse.

    For reasons I still can’t explain, we allowed that one sister to deal with the ER drama alone. The rest of us, for the sake of my young nephews, decided to proceed with the gift opening that morning and deal with the 40/18 blood pressure of our hospitalized mother afterward.

    The festively wrapped gorilla suit sat under the tree, but no one was feeling merry. We jumped every time the phone rang, awaiting some news. When it was finally time for its recipient to open the gorilla-suit gift, I grew nervous. The spirit in which I had bought it was now heavily overshadowed by the morning’s turn of events.

    First to be pulled out of the box was the costume’s hairy black head. Huge reaction. Big laughs and much needed levity were had by all. A series of “Try it on!” chants followed.

    A look of grave seriousness crossed the recipient’s face, and a sincere explanation was made: “Normally I would, but I have the strongest feeling that the second I get it on, we’ll receive the call from the hospital informing us our mother is dead, and I’ll forever have to remember that I received this news dressed as a gorilla. I don’t think I can live with that.”

    God bless us every one.

    P.S. My mom is fine, and I love my family.

    Mary Lucia is a music host for Minnesota Public Radio’s the Current.

     

    Give
    by Stephen Burt

    A gift in general is a grim thing, an obligation, a social tie; the best gifts make us forget they are gifts even as we, years later, remember the giver—they are at worst what we always wanted, at best what we never knew we could love. Do not give live animals. Gifts imply wants. Gift in German is poison. Gang of Four sang “Return the Gift” and meant to make bodies sway angularly in self-hatred, guilty for each privilege they receive. Scrawl sang “What Did We Give Away?” They gave us their songs for ten years; in a room full of air, near the end, I was one of few takers. Everyone give it up for the opening act: They gave it everything they had.

    Turn away from friends’ or lovers’ faces as they open any gift from you, lest you believe they chose to show false joy. A baby will give everything new meaning, even or especially phonemes to which the language gives no meaning at all. Give me your tiny hand, unable to answer or call each gesture and hour a gift. Children, surrendering, declare “I give.” Gifted and Talented.

    Give each question at least five minutes before you give the next one your time instead. The not-so-rich can give until it hurts; the rich instead give graciously, yielding gratitude, losing nothing important—or else do not give at all. By the time you read this sentence, bad guys will have given up control over one part of our government, unless—given to cynicism, glib fatigue, habit, or fear—too many voters gave up or gave in. Information, memory, and affection you can give out and yet keep; secrets, however, once shared, are given to shrivel and fade. A gift economy is an economy still: see potlach on Vancouver Island, then see Hanukkah in Bethesda, Christmas in White Plains, the day after Thanksgiving for the caterers’ daughters and sons.

    Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope, I’m not the kind of girl who gives up just like that; did you think that I was going to give it up for you, this time? Give this and time extended resonance, an open book, an open question, wide-open blue eyes, an open adoption, a commitment to open source, and yet beware of geeks baring gifts. What gives, who hesitates, why keeps its counsel, giving only how away. It is a gift to be complicated, so much so that your friends try to figure you out. For years I folded and saved the wrapping paper on every birthday and Hanukkah present, accumulating paisley, shiny, striped, and printed rectangles in drawers, as if to remember the fact of their gift.

    Stephen Burt’s new book of poems is Parallel Play (Graywolf); his new chapbook is Shot Clocks: Poems for the WNBA.He teaches at Macalester College.

     

    Offense: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
    by Alan Berks

    Ten years ago, my girlfriend’s brother came to stay with us for the holidays. He was younger than we were and aloof and melancholy. A few months earlier he had spent three days in jail for dealing pot at his high school. He was as cool as I imagined I wasn’t. For some reason I felt hopelessly square around this guy, and I worried that my girlfriend would dump me as soon as he told her this truth about me.

    Then one day, while we were sitting around the living room smoking some of his pot, he decided to let me know that he—unlike his parents—didn’t have any problem with his sister living with a Jew. He liked Jews, he said. He just didn’t think he could be one because it was such a cynical religion.

    “Cynical?” I asked. “How so?” Until that moment, I hadn’t considered that my cynicism was a genetic by-product of my Semitism.

    “Well,” he said, as though it were obvious, “refusing to accept Jesus as Christ, and all.”

    Oh . . . ooooh. I assured him that I wasn’t cynical at all about Jesus. I simply didn’t think about him. Jesus wasn’t really a part of my universe. Like Australian football. Or menstrual cramps. I neither denied him nor accepted him. Being Jewish, I honestly didn’t give him a second thought.

    I think I offended the poor kid.

    A few days later, his parents showed up at our doorstep with shopping bags full of Christmas gifts. They even brought a big, beautifully wrapped present for me. “For your Hanukkah,” they said. Such a lovely menorah they gave me.

    “Apparently, you think that the only appropriate gift for a Jew is a Jew gift?” I did say that, out loud. I couldn’t help myself.

    We offend when we assume that everyone is like us, shares our values and sense of humor—or, at least, we feel that they should. We take offense for the same reason. We give and take offense when we don’t see the individuals in front of us and acknowledge their right to be different from us. I don’t care whether you actually love Jews because they’re so smart and funny. Or if you think that writers make good, sensitive husbands. I’m offended when you see me as a category instead of as a person.

    The perfect gift, on the other hand, is the one that affirms individuality. The perfect gift shows how specifically the giver cares for you as a distinct individual. Two years ago, my wife gave me a pocket watch with an inscription from a Pablo Neruda poem; you probably wouldn’t want it but it’s priceless to me.

    Offense is much easier to give than the perfect gift, however, and I believe the results can be the same. My girlfriend’s parents may not have seen me as an individual when they arrived, but they certainly did by the time they left. Plus, I understood that they gave me a gift at all because they meant as well as circumstances allowed. A boy they did not know was living with their girl, out of wedlock. I had offended them first, the moment I signed the lease with her.

    As a result of that holiday ten years ago, I’ve developed a certain appreciation for giving and taking offense. In fact, if you don’t know how to give someone the perfect gift, consider giving offense. If you’re lucky, they’ll take it. Then you’ll really have something to talk about around the Christmas tree—I mean holiday tree—I mean Kwanzaa bush—I mean, what the fuck are you calling it these days? Have a happy December.

    Alan Berks is a playwright, actor, teacher. Cocreator of Thirst Theater, he can be found drinking and enjoying daring, inexpensive, professional theater every Mon-day night at Jitters Café and Martini Bar in Minneapolis. His solo show Goats was recently nominated for a New York Innovative Theater Award.

    Passing the Buck
    by Nathan Dungan

    Who knows how countertrends begin? My hunch is that they start as conversations among a few people who share a certain uneasiness with the status quo, and then take root.

    I recall one such conversation back in the fall of 1995, in a town just outside Philadelphia. My friend Bill and I were engaged in one of our routine philosophical debates on the state of the culture. On this occasion, we had taken up the topic of the holidays.

    I remember Bill—an Ivy League grad, Lutheran pastor, and father of three—lamenting the unrelenting pressure that families and individuals are under at the holidays to “deliver the goods,” literally and figuratively. God help us if we didn’t buy everything on the spreadsheet that we used to refer to as a wish list; hurt feelings, misdirected anger, and moping were sure to follow.

    Bill and I agreed that regardless of where you fall on the socioeconomic continuum, the culture of consumption doesn’t discriminate, especially during the holidays. In short, it’s a 360-degree marketing assault promising that gifts equal love and happiness.

    For me, each year as the holidays approach, it feels like I’m standing at the base of a huge mountain. I realize I have to scale it, but there are a couple of problems: I’m not in shape for the climb, and I don’t have the proper gear. However, lacking better alternatives, I begin the ascent.

    Bill and I didn’t start a countertrend back in 1995. That was already well under way, thanks to the creators of Buy Nothing Day, the annual anticonsumerism event celebrated worldwide at the end of November. Rather, thanks to Bill and our periodic philosophical discussions, I learned how to do the holiday thing a bit differently, devising an approach somewhere between hiding under a blanket the day after Thanksgiving and going into a manic frenzy while ascending Macy’s preholiday mountain.

    During our conversations, Bill had shared how his wife’s parents had become disillusioned with the relentless emphasis on holiday spending—especially as it was influencing their grandchildren. After consulting with their adult children and in-laws, this couple decided to start a new tradition. In addition to giving gifts to each grandchild, they also gave each a “share check.”

    The process was simple. The share check was nothing more than a bank check from Bill’s in-laws with everything filled in except “pay to the order of.” That line was left blank because it was the responsibility of the grandchildren to give the money away to causes or organizations they were passionate about. The grandparents’ goal: Introduce a counter-rhythm of gratitude amid the cacophony of “it’s all about me.”

    Since 1995, I have told this story to thousands of people who are searching for an alternative to holiday hype. I, too, am a believer, having used the share check for years with family and friends. And the best part? It really works. We have received thank-you notes from junior high school band directors, church groups, a homeless shelter, the Humane Society, and YouthCARE (an urban youth organization)—each grateful for being a recipient of someone’s share check.

    Imagine if this were the norm rather than the exception. The impact, on individuals and organizations alike, would be profound. It’s almost too simple: Buy a little less and help change the world.

    Nathan Dungan is the president and founder of Share Save Spend, an organization that helps youth and adults develop and maintain healthy financial habits.

    Rules of the Game
    by Penny Winton

    Giving and Getting. The best game in town—anywhere, anytime. (We are talking about eleemosynary gestures, of course, not self-indulgences.) It’s about creating one thing, expanding another, lightening up a life, leveling the playing field a bit, and trying to get others to join your team. (Oh, block that metaphor!) It’s about preserving something or even reversing something. The game of Giving and Getting can be about handing someone the proverbial bootstrap, putting food on a table, easing the amount of adversity that someone has to overcome. It can be about opening doors and opening eyes to things that enrich and refresh, and to people who need to endow them; in other words, it’s not just about giving your own money, but also about getting others to do so.

    Since, as the saying goes, “We can never get enough of what we didn’t want in the first place”—the big, the pricey, the transient, the excess—let’s play at giving to and getting for. Following are a few rules of the game.

    Giving. Do not “give until it hurts.” Whoever thought that one up? Pain and martyrdom will move you back ten squares. Give until it feels as good as it can get.

    If you are rich, never, ever voice that hackneyed protest that you are benevolent only because you must give back to the community that has been so good to you. (As opposed to the hapless souls “the community” has not been good to?) Queen for a Day is another game entirely.

    Give with conviction. You could even try a little outrage. Think about a three-year-old who learns to remove the phone from its cradle and take it to a special hiding place when daddy goes nuts. How about all the subtle and not-so-subtle forms of institutionalized racism and homophobia? It hurts. How about library closings? Books are a basic right! Even a little outrage will move your piece along on the board.

    Getting. Giving comes first. You can’t go out and try to get without giving.

    Have a good story, pleeeease—a positive, promising story about your fund-raising cause so that everyone is happy to be asked and happy to contribute.

    Wringing your hands and whining about how the “Cause for All Seasons” will collapse if someone doesn’t pony up practically disqualifies you from ever playing again. The world turns without the CFAS. If yours is in such crisis, maybe it deserves to fold.

    It’s all right to have fun. Actually, you have to have fun. If you don’t, you must default. The world doesn’t need more people on pity pots. Go buy yourself a Lamborghini or designer jeans, but do not contaminate the lively, visionary, gratifying, satisfying, energizing game of Giving and Getting.

    The next thing you know, you’ll be passing Go and collecting two hundred dollars. Ah, ah, ah. Remember: You can never get enough of what you didn’t want in the first place.

    Just think, it’s a total freebie to wake up in the morning knowing you’ve made the world a little more comfortable, a bit more civil, or a lot more just for someone, and you had a good time doing it. Even if you don’t notice that, your children will.

    Penny Winton lives in the NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) on the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. She thinks she knows all there is to know about philanthropic stuff, but her husband, Mike, may know more. She loves every award she has ever won, including one for swimming in a relay across Lake Minnetonka when she was sixty-six.

     

  • Postcards from Saudi Arabia

    While Sudan and Qatar might be tougher bets, most Americans could spin a globe and pinpoint Saudi Arabia’s deserts with relative ease. Even if your geography fails you, you’ve no doubt at least heard of Saudi and perhaps recall Peter O’Toole shouting across the desert sands in Lawrence of Arabia. The average American might know that the country is the world’s largest oil producer, that it has two coasts—its arid land mass is sandwiched between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf—and that it is one of America’s allies in the Middle East (this, in spite of the fact that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national). You might also believe, if you’ve watched certain afternoon talk shows, that women there are imprisoned in their homes and regularly beaten. Or, if you are a Michael Moore fan, that the princes of the Saudi Kingdom have conspired with the Bush family to start wars for oil. If you listen to right-wing radio, you might think that the country is almost entirely populated by people who hate freedom.

    My wife and I have friends in Saudi Arabia. Bob and Reem—he from rural Pennsylvania, she a Saudi national from Jeddah—are a pair of doctors who live in one of the many employee compounds designed to give Westerners a little slice of home in the desert. They have been asking us to visit for too many years, hoping not only to show off their country but to bring a bit of understanding about the place to Americans—any Americans. So recently, my wife and I became unlikely tourists for three weeks in the desert kingdom.

     

    It’s not easy to visit Saudi Arabia. There’s really no such thing as a tourist visa. Westerners go to Saudi because they are working for the government, have business there (usually oil business), or are pilgrims on a Hajj. Upon calling the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, and inquiring about how to get a visa, I was asked my occupation. But the attaché interrupted before I could say “writer.” “Ah, ah, ah! I don’t want to hear it. Listen . . . get someone to say you’re working for them, and you’re all set.”

    “But I’m not—”

    “Ah, ah, ah! Forget it! Just do like I say, and you’ll be fine.” With that, he hung up.

    Fortunately, Reem’s family has Vitamin Waw, or Wasta, what the Saudis refer to as “connections.” Her uncle agreed to sponsor me as a contractor with his vast refrigeration company. And just like that, we had the necessary documentation. “You’re going to have to lie to airport security?” a neighbor asked. “That’s ballsy.” He had a point. For the remaining weeks before we landed at the Dammam Airport, I cooked up a long story about my work in the refrigeration business, hoping my lie wouldn’t be exposed.

  • Like Petting a Packaged Ham

    I’m standing at the Dairy Queen on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, waiting to order a chocolate cone. Ahead of me is the new American nuclear family: two boys, a father, and a mother cooing to a Chihuahua clutched to her chest in a front-loading doggy knapsack. A few weeks later, Us Weekly runs a photograph of Susan Sarandon with a suede bag dangling from the crook of her elbow, a frothy little white dog peering out of it.

    Like cell phones, lattes to go, and iPods, the toy dog has become something of a fashion accessory, not so much walked these days as worn. According to the American Kennel Club, four of the top ten most popular breeds since 2000 have been small ones—Yorkshire terriers, dachshunds, shih tzus, and miniature schnauzers. The most popular dogs of the day are not much bigger than the designer bags in which they are carried. To me, they seem more like the white mice I owned as a child—forever in danger of being crushed or having a nervous breakdown.

    But there is one meaty exception. The toy dog for me, and anyone else who’s grouchy about the trends (dog-related or otherwise), is the pug—the anti-toy-dog toy dog.

    Technically the largest member of the toy-dog category, the pug has the disarming quality of looking simultaneously guilty and repentant. And, unlike my friend’s perpetually quaking toy poodle, pugs are steadfast and substantial; petting one is like petting a packaged ham, and with the largest of the breed weighing in at around eighteen pounds, they are too heavy to carry on your person.

    With their bulging, Peter-Lorre-like eyes and deeply furrowed brows, pugs seem to have a melancholy response to all questions directed at them—whether regarding a red rubber ball or the current state of the world. The Dutch call them mopshond, taken from the word mopperen, which means to grumble. A pug would be the perfect companion to join me when I rent Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth on DVD.

    Pim was the first pug I ever met. She lived across the street, and I would watch her taking short, slow walks with her owner. One night, my boyfriend and I stopped to say hello. But Pim seemed to be growling at us, so we backed away. “That means she likes you,” said her owner.

    This made sense to me. I am the sort of person who is routinely told to lighten up, and my own relatives have been known to wonder aloud whether it’s OK to hug me. Despite my ferocious love for family and friends, my desire to be embraced and cherished, there’s something about me that roars when people get close. But if I had a pug at the end of my leash, my way of showing affection might start to make sense. Both the pug and I growl with pleasure.

    At a recent pet store Pug Meetup in Burnsville, where pug owners and potential owners had gathered, a woman asked if I wanted a black or fawn-colored pug. On her lap was Daisy, a fawn—giddy and wheezing from running, her tongue curled up like ribbon candy beneath her nose. I was smitten but uncertain. I didn’t want to be exposed as a pug-loving imposter, especially not here, with a high-spirited herd of twenty circling the room in great bursts of speed. “I’m still trying to decide,” I replied, which was true enough.

    For now, I’ve got a pug reference manual and a mug shot of Pugsy Malone, a canine malcontent made famous by the Internet and greeting cards. His grave expression confirms that I’m in good company for all my worrying about the war, my old car, drowning polar bears, and roaming centipedes.

  • A Kind of Hush

    Sarah Lemanczyk, photo by Karl Herber / karlherber.com

    Looking up at the St. Paul Central Library’s four stories of pink Tennessee marble makes you feel small. The Italian Renaissance building, its façade decorated in classical columns and pilasters, looks as though it belongs in a city of grander scale. And indeed, it’s a remnant of a time when St. Paul was more connected to the East Coast—a time when local developers still looked east for inspiration. (Central Library got its spark from New York architect Electus Litchfield.) The interior walls and stairs are wrapped in gray Mankato stone and marble. The chandeliers are gilded and ubiquitous. There is an almost medieval feeling of privilege in being allowed to walk these halls, especially if the object of your desires is not astronomical secrets printed on musty scrolls, but rather, the Trading Places DVD.

    Central Library opened its doors in 1917, funded mostly by selling city bonds. In 2000, those doors, along with the rest of the library, received a two-year, $15.9 million renovation. It was the first major restoration in the library’s history; it improved access to the stacks and added more computers while still, somehow, preserving the building’s old-world charms. These days, libraries are generally built to be bright, efficient spaces. And then there’s the Central library.

    After passing through a hive of library-related activity—checkout, return, security cameras—the atmosphere becomes hushed, the lights dimmed. Wide stone staircases endlessly curve upward. (You can hear your footsteps.) Chandeliers provide the only light. The aura is rich; the environs silent—quite a feat, considering the building is over 90,000 square feet and holds over a quarter million books.

    One of the only outright deviations to the library’s aesthetic is the wide-open children’s section on the first floor. It’s divided into two sections: one with plush, circular sofas for lounging teens; the other with a mass of carpeted space in which kids can run, jump, and shout about their love of reading. Other nods to modernity are the wide, navigable mezzanine stacks and islands of Internet-enabled computers. At any given time, most of the desks that house these machines will be occupied—havens for the older, the ambitious, and the asleep.

    Attached to the public library is the James J. Hill Reference Library, which was funded in large part by Gilded Age railroad mogul and philanthropist James J. Hill. Though it’s technically a separate library, no trip to Central is complete without a pass through the Hill’s reading room, a soaring three-story chamber with floor-to-ceiling books, narrow balconies, winding staircases, and large private tables. Here you’ll find free coffee, a clientele sporting button-downs and sensible heels, and all the back issues of Chemical Market Report you’ll ever need.

    But the real magic is in the building’s public side, the more average side. As you sink into one of the magazine room’s leatherette armchairs with the latest Lonely Planet guide to somewhere warm, a view of Rice Park spreads out before you. The clunky start-and-stop of the copier machine echoes from behind a row of long, dark wooden tables. It’s the kind of place where, beneath the glorious beamed ceilings and angel friezes, an everyday dad wrapped in Sean John fleece sits with his nose in a book while his young son intermittently doodles and stares out the tall arched windows, his feet dangling high above the stone floor.

  • Life on the Mississippi

    When Phil Harder has a hankering to check out a band at 7th Street Entry, he doesn’t have to hop in his car and drive downtown from his home on Marshall Street, just north of Broadway. In Harder’s neighborhood—a lovely admixture of industrial scrap yards, hip galleries, and such hangouts as the Sample Room and the 331 Club—it’s not uncommon for him to step out his back door and descend a treacherous flight of homemade stairs to the muddy banks of the Mississippi River. There, at a dock he shares with neighbors, Harder climbs into his salmon-colored, eighteen-foot Shell Lake Cuddy Cabin vintage motorboat. He can cruise into the city for a rock show, or, if the mood strikes, take a leisurely trip to shoot some footage for a music video or movie—or just sit and watch as houseboats, canoes, and ore barges drift on by.

    Harder is a purveyor of fine music videos (for Prince, Low, and Foo Fighters, to name but a few), a soon-to-be feature filmmaker, and one of the few riverfront property owners in all of Minneapolis. Much like a character in Huckleberry Finn, he leads a life that seems to be an extension of the fabled river.

    Harder and his wife, Isabelle, discovered their house in 1997 while gazing at a satellite image of Minneapolis during a visit to the old Science Museum in St. Paul. Both of them grew up on rivers—Phil fished and made rafts on Wisconsin’s Black River while Isabelle pondered the international barges rumbling down the Nieuwe Maas in the Netherlands—and their eyes naturally wandered down the meandering black strip on the map that was the Mississippi. They were shocked to find, bunched in a group in Northeast, riverfront properties in the city.

    Within a year, they had purchased a duplex that Harder describes as a “typical 1891 working-man’s home.” The two-story, white clapboard farmhouse, with a backyard that drops swiftly into the Mississippi, is one of only eight or so homes in Minneapolis perched directly on the river. Once a cheap rental, the building has been restored by the Harders so that the front looks no different from fifty years ago while the back features a boxy, stained-wood and glass addition that sticks out, allowing a view of the river that hadn’t existed before. Both the add-on and the home’s interior were created with an amalgam of found materials. Inside are tangerine- and lemon-colored kitchen cabinets (a discovery from Bauer Brothers Salvage), which look like something from A Clockwork Orange and border a living room where the original beveled-glass doors and woodwork mix with futuristic chairs scored from the University of Minnesota ReUse Center.

    Much of the footage in Harder’s videos and short movies utilize “found” locations around the river. Harder’s especially fond of his short film, Mr. Mississippi, in which he plays a rube in a vintage Shell Lake boat who picks up a blind, tuxedoed hitchhiker and trucks him downriver. Over the years, Harder has become a connoisseur of river culture and can enlighten any guest on the history of certain piles of nondescript rock offshore (old platforms for loggers to direct their wares into the current, and the spot from which the blind hitchhiker hitched). He enjoys the industrial sounds of the Caterpillar machines, grinding their engines and dumping metal, that emanate from the scrap yard across the river. “We were looking for a little country in the city,” Harder said, while descending the riverbank stairs to the rickety dock he built with lumber foraged from a variety of sources. With this place, they certainly seem to have found their Eden.

  • A Shopper’s Nordic Trek

    Any foray into local Scandinavian style—as purveyed by a number of area emporiums, boutiques, and gift shops—rightly begins at Ingebretsen’s. This stalwart Lake Street retailer offers Scandinavian wares in their most basic forms: wool cardigans with pewter clasps, traditional Norwegian hardanger doily cloths and embroidery, and countless varieties of the painted wooden Dala horse. For Minnesotans—especially those who grew up in small towns like Lindstrom (aka “Little Sweden”) or Norwegian Northfield—there’s a certain familiarity in the way the gray-haired shopgirls at Ingebretsen’s tidy up after their guests. Presiding over a stock of Vikings miniatures and recordings by Finland’s Lahti Symphony, they keep the store’s displays looking bountiful but orderly, just as we northerly types like it. At the far end of the store, just in time to fatten up for the season, the shopper finds a spread of Firkløver chocolates, gingerbread cookies, and lutefisk. And there’s more to marvel at behind the meat counter: blood sausage, pickled herring, sardines.

    As handy as Ingebretsen’s may be for those in need of Icelandic Christmas cards, it has not, in recent years, been quite what we had in mind for certain style-conscious folks on our shopping lists who might appreciate something “Scandinavian.” From the 1950s on, most people have taken the adjective to describe stunning-yet-simple designs for furniture and housewares. Modern Scandinavian design evolved amid the new, and rather liberal, brand of social democracy—not unlike Minnesota’s own—in Northern Europe following World War II. The result of tinkering with an array of newly developed and inexpensive materials—such as plastics, pressed wood, and enameled aluminum—the new domestic goods were touted as efficient in both function and production. Scandinavians regarded them as tools for bettering their standard of living.

    Steeped as they are in Scandinavian heritage, the Twin Cities have long been dotted with a great many retailers offering merchandise from that part of the world. Many of them cater to loft dwellers in search of what’s new and hot in home design—which oftentimes turns out to be classics dating back to the much-heralded arrival of Scandinavian design stateside some fifty years ago. For example, goods made from the bright, graphic fabrics produced by Marimekko—with quirky names such as Kivet, Korsi, and Unikko—have been a constant (and recently reinvigorated) presence at just about every store purporting to be Scandinavian. Saga Living, on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, boasts the most expansive Marimekko collection in these parts. Another mainstay, the Aalto vase—a wavy-shaped piece unveiled in 1936 by Finnish designer Alvar Aalto (above)—today is manufactured by Iittala, the renowned glassware company of the same national origin. Scandia, a furniture store on Washington Avenue (not far from the Metrodome), carries a reissue of Danish designer Poul Henningsen’s famous “brain lamp.” And Danish Teak Classics, housed in a Northeast Minneapolis warehouse space, is a trove of mid-century furniture designs from familiar names like Hans Wegner and Borge Mogensen as well as unknowns; its parallelogram-shaped coffee table would serve as the perfect centerpiece for any minimalist living room—though its price would deplete this admirer’s savings account twice.

    While these purveyors of modern and contemporary Scandinavian design don’t go in for Dala-horse doorstops or braided wool sweaters, they do have a soft spot for the moose—a creature indigenous to the Scandinavian folk arts. Finnstyle—a sleek, sparsely appointed store in downtown Minneapolis—offers moose-shaped napkin rings skillfully carved from individual wood discs and, for those who entertain more casually, paper napkins bearing a minimal but friendly-looking moose profile. Another popular item at several Scandinavian boutiques is a moose-shaped keychain made from cork, while at Nordic Home, a store with outlets in Edina and Minneapolis’ warehouse district, the moose silhouette adorns rugs and fleece blankets that are draped across birchwood-framed sofas and easy chairs. Ingebretsen’s, too, has some moose-themed items. But there’s some indication the venerable retailer is forging ahead—into porcupine territory, with a stack of polymer coasters.

    No survey of Scandinavian style is complete without a visit to Ikea, the Swedish-born behemoth famous for its cheaper-than-imaginable designs in pressed wood and plastic. Here, as at the boutiques, the merchandise is often artfully displayed and the designers prominently credited, even on the tag for a $5.99 knotted rug. A closer look reveals the extent to which many of the store’s young designers borrow liberally from their mid-century Scandinavian forebears; for instance, the $69.99 Knappa Klöver floor lamp has, at first glance, an uncanny resemblance to Henningsen’s iconic brain lamp. In fact, if the shopper of modest means unburdens herself of snobbery—and the burning desire for a reissued Arne Jacobsen chair—she will realize that cut-rate Ikea, in its way, carries on the tradition of those venerable designers. Such reasoning also serves to make a two-hundred-dollar Ikea coffee table seem a much more attractive purchase.