The Rake Magazine

Year: 2006

  • Wheel of Fortune

    An open letter to anyone not wanting to leave their houses today, and to those inextricably linked to their laptops–especially the music-heads: Have you tried Pandora.com? I know I already mentioned this website yesterday, but I was as of then just a dabbler. Twenty-four hours later and I’m a full-fledged pro. Pandora lets you enter a song or an artist you like and then, magically, “the music genome project” cranks out similar-sounding songs and artists, T.I.Y.L.-style. I entered “Tired of Being Alone” by Al Green, which conjured up some jazzy yet soulful tunes by The Rhondels, The Mad Lads, Percy Sledge, and, sadly, Billy Joel. (But I was able to click “I don’t like it” the second I caught wind of what was coming–“Easy Money.” Pandora then moved it along to the next song.)

    I also made “stations” a la Joni Mitchell (Ani Difranco, Beth Orton, even one gawd-awful cover of “Big Yellow Taxi” by Amy Grant); Guided By Voices (Sonic Youth and countless same-sounding indie guitar-rock songs–this has not been my favorite station); and Buck Ownes (Jim Ed Brown, Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Yeehaw!). So taken by the Buck Owens jag, I even tried to make a station inspired by The Mavericks’ hit, “All You Ever Do is Bring Me Down,” but that just turned-up a disastrous Garth Brooks/Toby Keith mix, which I abandoned immediately. Eclecticism has its risks.

    Plus, Pandora’s totally legal since the entire sight was designed to inspire knee-jerk spending at amazon.com. Genius!

  • One More Day Aboard The Teeth Kicker

    forgive.jpg

    The kind of thing that always happens to me is I’ll go to the store to buy a book on what happened when and I’ll get lost and confused once I get there, forget what I drove out there for, and end up with a book on how to cook things in fifteen minutes, which I certainly don’t need since everything I cook –or, rather, eat– takes less than fifteen minutes to prepare. Most of it doesn’t even involve any preparation at all, unless you consider tearing open a bag of Twizzlers with your teeth a sort of preparation.

    But the point I’m trying to make is that I won’t get the book I wanted in the first place –the what-happened-when book– and by the time I get home with the book I didn’t want and don’t need I won’t even remember why I wanted the other book to begin with.

    I don’t remember things, I guess you could put it that way. Or: I’m easily confused, or perhaps just plain confused. Which, now that I think of it, was probably why I wanted the what-happened-when book after all.

    I also have this problem where I don’t feel like anything. Has that ever happened to you? I mean really don’t feel like anything. I’d even go so far as to say that I don’t feel anything, period, if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t feel like anything, which I suppose might qualify as feeling something.

    paul.jpg

  • The Yard Calls, Friends Still in Town, the Movies are Generally Insipid

    This just in from our Hollywood Operative: Neil LaBute, who you’d would think would know better, is trying his hand remaking The Wicker Man. Big mistake.

    The original Wicker Man is a triumph of ham, of cheap thrills, creepy Scottish countrysides made even creepier by poor camerawork, and a ridiculous script that seems as if it were concocted by the lovely fools at Hammer Studios (it wasn’t). It’s a product of its times, the free-lovin’ late 60s and early 70s. There were sexy witches with near-beehive haircuts, almost-hippies in thick Scottish sweaters, all of whom spend time screwing each other’s brains out in the town square, and educate their children that this is good religion.

    The new Wicker Man–watch the preview here–looks as if a corporate vampyre drained the story of its life.

    And this: so you can buy your very own Fisher Price Academy Award. Laugh, or cry?

    And finally: you want a movie to see? Check out “Zero For Conduct” at the Walker. Playing every hour on the hour (when open), through June. When I get a minute, I’ll check it out and write it up.

  • Magic Stix

    Seasoned_Skewers_Assorted_TN.jpg

    I usually mistrust gimmicky food things. I don’t own an avocado slicer and I’ll never buy an adjustable hambuger press. But that doesn’t mean that, every once in a while, something super cool can’t be found.

    I know that this week everyone is eating out at spectacular restaurants to help fight hunger, but think ahead to your next grill event and think Seasoned Skewers.

    These sticks are amazing, I found them at Kitchen Window. They’re grilling sticks seasoned with flavors like citrus rosemary, garlic herb, honey bourbon and they actually work! All you do is thread your meat or veg of choice on the stick, let it sit and infuse for a few sips of your cocktail, then grill, bake or broil — your choice. I would soak the sicks in some white wine, beer or water before you grill, they’ll be less likely to burn.

    Cynically, I thought there would probably be a hint of flavor, just at the center of the meat which touched the stick, but I was wrong. Our little chicken bites were pretty flavorful through and through, the fiesta flavor actually burned my tongue.

    Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

  • Crawling to the next thing

    Today’s Secret: Cinema Revolution hosts its monthly Cinema des Artistes film event tonight, when they’ll be showing L’Intrus, a 2004 film-of-few-words by French filmmaker Claire Denis. This should be a pretty hip-n-happening scene at the Varsity Theatre. But I guess I, in particular, will never know ’cause I won’t be there. Can we lean on Schilling for this one?

    It can be pretty tiring to come up with all these “secrets” when you don’t particularly feel like going out. This isn’t my usual state-of-affairs… What’s wrong with me lately? My idea of fun these days: biking the thirty miles to my kid-cousin’s grad party, which I’m toying with for the weekend, or shopping the designer racks at Fashion Avenue, in Edina. Last I was there I spotted a super-sexy, size six Marc Jacobs priced under two hundred–which would’ve made for a really good secret, come to think of it, especially since it didn’t fit and I had to leave it behind.

    What to do when you don’t want to do anything? Surf endlessly for new music on Pandora? Gorge in the quiet corners of some Restaurant Week eateries? Continue to list every gallery event in the greater metro, which can be perused at-will over the lunch hours, leaving the evenings free for watching the news? Dump the boy-who’s-a-friend, who’s pretty open-minded as red-blooded American males go, but still, at his core, prefers spending his Sunday nights on the sofa with a six-pack of three-two over, say, a production of Riverdance? Or is this just cyclical “down time” that is to be embraced? Suggestions are greatly appreciated.

  • This Day Is Tuesday

    garage-moon and stars.jpg

    The day the world ended, God sat quietly alone in a huge room, alternately dozing off and turning the pages of a fat scrapbook. God could remember everything, and this no doubt saddened Him.

    Far below Him there were, here and there, people floating in boats and still –many of them, anyway– praying. There were also a number of people, those who had spent years planning and waiting for the end of the world, who were holed up in places where the water and the destruction had not yet arrived. Some of them were high up on mountains or hidden away in caves deep in the earth. Like the people in the boats, these others were given additional time to pray and puzzle over the position in which they found themselves.

    It was more and more difficult for any of these survivors to think of this additional time as any kind of blessing, yet still the most desperate –and they were all, of course, desperate– prayed in their terror for survival. They still wanted to live.

    The purest among them prayed for forgiveness.

    One man, alone in a valley deep in the mountains somewhere, managed to live in ignorance, and then denial, for a number of days. When he finally recognized the seriousness of what had occurred, the man ventured out into the valley, where there was still green grass and patches of bright flowers. And there in the middle of this valley the man eased a kite up into what was left of the sky.

    Seeing this –the man in the high grass, staring up with a smile of unmistakable joy on his face at the ragged kite rattling in the wind– God’s heart stirred.

    garage-pumpkin.jpg

  • Internationalism threatens America

    JQuist.jpg
    Julie Quist wants to save your children from the horrors of knowledge about other countries.

    A story in the Strib today mentioned growing opposition in some quarters (such as the sixth district Republican ones that nominated Michele Bachmann for Congress) to the growing trend in Minnesota school districts to adopt the International Baccalaureate method of teaching.

    According to the opponents cited in the Strib, the IB is “un-American” because it “teaches global citizenship as a priority over American citizenship,” according to Julie Quist, VP of EdWatch, a conservative advocacy group.

    You may remember Julie as the wife of Allen Quist, the leader of the radical conservative attempt to take over the Minnesota Republican Party, and the Republican endorsed governor candidate who, thank God, lost the primary to Arne Carlson in 1994. (If you want to remember what that was about, look here.)

    If you want our state to be the international subject of ridicule, like the cretins in Kansas who wanted to teach creationism, look no further than the cretins at EdWatch. They are out there and want inform all education by the jingoist and radical Christian agenda they’re pushing. Now didn’t we just get all upset when the Saudis were doing the same thing?

  • Sit down for this

    I don’t go out nearly as often as these posts might have you believe. And as I grow older, I find myself becoming more and more of a “coach potato,” sprawled out leg-long, eating chili-cheese chips, and watching second-rate DVDs some nights, when I’m not out trolling for stories or reviewing theater productions. So, while the Goldstein Museum’s just-opened 125 Years of Sitting exhibition isn’t exactly exciting to the movers and shakers of the world, pursuers of the art of sitting, such as myself, should find it interesting–situated as it is in the city that houses famous chair-designer Bill Stumpf.

    Yaaaawn.

  • Social rank demerits

    Man do I want tickets to Saturday night’s Symphony Ball! Mostly because it’s the closest thing Minneapolis has to the Costume Institute Gala, and the Strib folks always end-up doing some sort of fashion run-down after the fact. I wonder which over-embellished, designer dresses have been plucked off the Oval Room eighty percent-off rack in anticipation? But alas, I am not young-n-pretty or old-n-rich enough to afford tickets. I’m stuck at that strange, in-between phase–no longer an ingenue, not yet a dame. Sigh.

    I’ll make do with these other goings-on: Petrified Forest at Gremlin Theatre (another freelance stint) (also, sorry not to link, but the Gremlin website appears to be down), Pine Eyes at the Walker, and, hopefully, drinking copious quantities of grand margarita in my friend’s backyard.

    The wish list: West Bank Story at Bedlam Theatre–I’ll see it some other weekend, and Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys at the Cedar.

  • Of Witches and Ice Cream

    Tower.jpg

    It’s hard enough to find a good Ice Cream Social anymore, let alone an Ice Cream Social associated with a beautifully enigmatic water tower.

    The familiar icon of the Prospect Park/East River Road neighborhood is locally referred to as The Witch’s Hat and Friday is its day of days.

    One day a year the tower opens and admits the curious. We get just one chance to see the blooming cities from under the black peak. And in celebration there’s ice cream! And brats, and popcorn, and more ice cream! Don’t even get me started on the good luck of finding a Cupcake Walk among the games and festivities.

    Once you’ve climbed the tower and milled around with neighborhood residents, seek out another gem of the area, Signature Cafe, and hold down a perfect patio table while plotting your own neighborhood Ice Cream Social.