The Rake Magazine

Year: 2006

  • Fry Day. Ouch.

    The, uh, preferred weekend agenda:

    Tomorrow night at the Turf Club, they’re offering a crash-course for geeks like me who’ve fallen out of touch with the local indie music scene. The band Diplomacy, whose music is described as rather peppy and yet restrained, will celebrate the release of another new CD. “Try If You Like” Low and Death Cab for Cutie, they say. My dear friends at 2024 Records have even provided this link, which gives a taste of the new disc’s sound: www.2024records.com/preview/

    Two interesting theater happenings that came in after the July deadline: Torch Theater, the new-ish theater troupe belonging to local stage vet (and one helluva Blanche DuBois in a recent production of Streetcar), Stacia Rice, will open Cat on a Hot Tin Roof–and hopefully Rice will be continuing her streak with Tennessee Williams.

    Another interesting theater happening (that I, admittedly, know very little about, other than the fact that I’m intrigued but won’t have time to actually go): Ode To Walt Whitman, something that’s been dubbed as “a puppetry performance that uncovers an unspoken dialogue between Whitman’s Leaves of Grass poems and Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem, Ode to Walt Whitman.” See what I mean?

    I could go on and on. A Night of Short Films and Dadaist Vaudeville With Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls. A costume design retrospective, featuring the work of Theatre de la Jeune Lune resident designer Sonya Berlovitz. The Midwest Bookhunters Bookfair. The Minnesota Orchestra’s free outdoor concert on the waterfront of the quaint, rather summer-like town of Hudson, Wisconsin. Yes sir, I love the summertime. Too bad it’s about half over.

  • I'd bend a rim for the Bicycle Film Festival

    There’s no way the Bicycle Film Fest will get by unnoticed by the likes of me. In fact, I’m so excited that I’m even been contemplating, over my oatmeal this morning, whether I should ride to work–this being something I haven’t done as often as I’d like to this year. I’d like to honor the occasion.

    OK, OK, I’ll admit that, in my case, the Saturday night screening of Peewee’s Big Adventure is probably the biggest draw. Hate to say it folks, but I can probably recite the entire movie by heart, having watched it over and over again, with my kid-brother, during our formative years back in Circle Pines. Second best BFF draw (once again, I’m showing my C.P. roots here): Joe Kid on a Stingray – The History of BMX. Growing up, there was an indoor BMX course right next door, in Lino Lakes. Kids in the C.P. loved this stuff. Too bad the BFF curators didn’t go the route of the 1986 BMX flick Rad, which yielded the hit-song Send Me An Angel and was probably the most inspiring bit of bike culture for me and my freestyling clan.

    In any case, the BFF starts tonight and lasts through the all-day Bike Block Party on Saturday.

  • Art cars hit the wall

    Let’s start the short week on a light note, shall we? Those zany Art Car artists now have their own exhibition at Outsiders and Others Gallery–and they’re working in media other than automobiles, mind you. The official opening is this Saturday evening, but the show’s on view between noon and 5 p.m. today, tomorrow, and Friday as well. Quietly peruse about your merry ways…

  • Right Back Where I Don't Belong

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    I used to sit around late at night, mulling and wondering, and watching dark things scuttling through the long shadows on the floor. I would try, try, try to get the story straight, my story, but the thing was no longer capable of running anything but crooked, and it ran through some thick patches of brush and fog. I would lose it for months at a time.

    I more than once saw that story disappear into a cold, black river in the moonlight, and watched as it climbed right back out on the other side and rambled off into the darkness.

    One time I surprised that son of a bitch as it was sitting in front of a campfire, but the instant I sprung out of the woods it dove directly into the flames and disappeared in a shower of sparks and smoke.

    It was months before I managed to catch up to my story again. I’d received a tip that it was holed up in a trailer on the Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando, but by the time I could get there aboard a Greyhound bus it had already pulled up stakes. I did, though, find an address for a motel in East Memphis, scrawled on a grocery receipt on the kitchen table.

    In Memphis, I barged in on the damn thing while it was asleep in bed. After a strenuous wrestling match I was able to climb back inside the story and inhabit it for eight months before it once again slipped away from me.

    I guess folks would say I’ve been lost ever since.

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  • Consider Me Entertained. Consider Me Astonished.

    There have been so many amazing and gratifying things about the performance of the Twins over the last month. Most of them have been plenty well documented, but it’s still pretty mindblowing (and mindboggling) all the same.

    The truth, of course, is that the Twins really should have five All Stars –Francisco Liriano, Justin Morneau, and Joe Nathan should all be joining Joe Mauer and Johan Santana in Pittsburgh. Nathan is the only guy whose snub isn’t a complete injustice.

    And great as Mauer has been, and as wondrous as he is to watch, the offensive MVP of the team at this point has to be Morneau. It’s hard to argue with twenty-two homeruns and seventy-one runs batted in. I’m too lazy to dig around for the stats myself, but I’d love to see the number of his homeruns and RBI that have given the Twins the lead or come with two outs.

    Mauer, frankly, is something of a mystery to me. Maybe it’s just a fluke, or maybe he needs to be moved to somewhere else in the batting order, but I can’t for the life of me understand how a guy with a .391 batting average, .458 on base percentage, and .546 slugging percentage –hitting in the three hole every night– is fourth on the team in RBI and tied for fourth (with Morneau) in runs scored.

  • What Makes A Man Start Fires?

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    As a child he had been hesitant, self-conscious, and frightened of everything, all products of a certain persuasive calamity of the blood, an inbred insecurity that even the constant certainty that he was loved could not entirely vanquish.

    His response to this crippling insecurity was to act up, and in time, as he grew into a late and awkward adolescence, this acting up became a sort of method acting, which in turn morphed into real fearlessness, an indifferent and heedless brand of fearlessness that was often truly wreckless and dangerous in its manifestations.

    What was initially a public persona designed to attract attention, eventually became a fierce and private quest for oblivion, almost a desire to transcend his old childhood terrors and insecurities by pushing himself time and again to the brink of senselessness and extinction.

    Whenever he stopped moving or pumping chemicals into his body he was bored out of his mind.

    Somehow he managed to settle down, and allowed himself to be almost tamed. He learned how to be almost normal, or at least how to conduct himself as an almost normal human being, at which point he recognized the old hesitation, fear, and self-consciousness creeping back into his bored and exhausted brain.

    And that, of course, was when he once again became truly dangerous.

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  • E…T…C…

    Johan Santana had a 6.35 earned run average after the season opener, and then proceeded to lower his ERA in nine straight starts. From May 17-28 he suffered a little hiccup –during that span he went from an ERA of 3.23 to 3.47– but since then he has lowered it again in six consecutive starts.

    When you consider that Santana’s ERA stood at 5.71 on April 15, and is now at an American League-leading 2.59, it’s pretty astonishing. The guy has shaved more than three runs off his earned run average in two-and-a-half months.

    This is pretty telling, from Jayson Stark at ESPN:

    Normally, it’s not quite we-interrupt-this-program news when a DH hits a home run. But when Twins DH Jason Kubel homered June 13, that was a major development.

    Why? Because it was the first home run all year by any Twins starting DH. Michael Cuddyer homered, while pinch-hitting for the DH, on April 19. But it took a mind-boggling 63 games for a starting DH to make a trot. Which caused loyal reader Kris Breuing to wonder if that set some kind of record for “DH wimpiness.”

    Turns out: Did it ever.

    According to Elias, that’s the most consecutive homerless games by any team’s starting DHs since the invention of DH-ness in 1973. The old record was held by…the Twins (who needed 47 games in 1990). Elsewhere in the division, White Sox starting DHs (i.e. Jim Thome) hit 21 homers before Twins DHs hit any.

  • Fabio vs. Bruce

    Gina seems a fine name for an Alfa Romeo. However, I drive a black Spider Veloce that goes by the name of “Fabio.”

    This car, like all my cars, was named for me. I am not sure that this name has ever hit the mark. I heard that Fabio was gay (after all these years!). While I am not quite sure about the orientation of my Alfa I do know that it would probably look quite decent on the cover of the average Romance novel. A little small, perhaps, but good.

    I did have another however that was expertly named for me. I once drove a Toyota MR2 that had been decommisioned by the Menards Racing Team. This essentially meant that the car had been de-contented of all creature comforts (save a kicker stereo), chipped up and lowered. The name of this care was “Bruce” as in “Lee.”

    Bruce was small, violent and powerful.

    I wish he was still around to kick Fabio’s butt.

  • Bored in the U.S.A.?

    Happy freakin’ Fourth. I always get so depressed after this holiday, knowing that summer’s about half eaten up. So, while I don’t exactly look forward to this occasion, I do tend to make the most of these final days of sunny summer moods. I will be enjoying a much-needed, four-day hiatus… If you need anything from me in the meantime, try the rooftop of my uptown area brownstone. I’ll be the pasty-white thing fanning myself, slathered in 55+, beckoning to my houseboy (uh, boyfriend) to fix me up some pina colada.

    In any case, je vous presente the template social calendar for my fellow pessimists out there, anyone who’ll be weathering the dog days of winter dread come July 5:

    On Saturday, check out Electropolis (with bonus, Alva Star!) at the Nomad. Apparently, there have been some booking problems with other Electropolis shows, and so this will be the last of their shoes in a while. Get your fix!

    There’s also the ARTSOURCING opening night party at the Soap Factory.

    Or, if you’re not that hip, try the Minnesota History Center, where there’s a Red Wing Pottery retrospective opening tomorrow.

    On the big day itself, the most dignified thing to do is to check out the free Minnesota Orchestra concert in Excelsior, set on the banks of Lake Minnetonka. There’s also the very popular Ten Second Film Festival happening down at the Soap Factory, just after the grand finale of fireworks over downtown Minneapolis.

  • Femmes at The Fred

    You know you’re getting old when, if left in charge of suggesting happenings to the general populace, you end up plugging panel discussions two days straight. But there are many reasons why the WARM and the Feminist Art Movement talk–again, at the Weisman–is of interest to me. First, the old Women’s Art Registry Gallery in the Wyman Building is mentioned in one of this month’s feature stories (that collective being a precursor to WARM)–but the writer never goes on to say what exactly became of these artists. There’s also a concurrent exhibition running at the Weisman, WARM: 12 Artists of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota, which takes a look at feminist art from here and beyond. And finally, with the boom of starchitecture that’s been cropping up across town as of late, I figured why not take a step back to appreciate The Fred, which remains one of the most gorgeous structures in the city, far as I can tell.