The Rake Magazine

Month: May 2007

  • “This is it, baby”

    The character of a city is largely shaped by the extent to which it can nurture grand and modest dreams in equal proportion. Everybody, of course, has their own notion regarding what constitutes a grand or modest dream. But to be truly interesting places, a city’s neighborhoods need small businesses that manage to conflate both sorts into singular brick-and-mortar entities that, over time, become important landmarks. A truly useful map of any great city would reveal a galaxy of such essential places—places like Tom’s Popcorn Shop in South Minneapolis.

    Located since 1971 on Cedar Avenue just north of Minnehaha Parkway, Tom’s is the kind of quiet institution that has somehow survived the myriad changes and challenges that have claimed so many small businesses in recent decades. The continued existence of the place feels frankly improbable, and represents something of a litmus test: When you visit Tom’s Popcorn do you see a grand dream or a modest dream?

    Brian Goetz, who has been behind the counter at the shop for almost three decades, is the sort of entertaining curmudgeon who instinctively hesitates to call his family business any kind of dream (unless he’s being sarcastic, which he pretty much always is), even as it’s clear that he loves his job and somehow belongs exactly where he is.

    Goetz is a burly, deadpan character who always seems to be doing two or three things at once. His dad—that would be Tom—bought the shop from the original owner in 1979. “I’m not quite sure what he was thinking,” Goetz said. “He’s never had a good answer for why he bought the place, but I went to work for him right away—not very happily, I can tell you that.”

    Goetz is running the place today because … well, because a number of other things didn’t work out. “I worked at Shakey’s Pizza doing food prep for a time,” he said. “And then I went to Normandale to become a copper. I actually got my license and worked up in Dakota County for a while, but I didn’t much like it. What a crappy job. Too much paperwork, and I was making peanuts. My dad was an electrician, but he had to punch a time clock, and I knew that wasn’t gonna work for me either. I guess you could say I’m kind of anti-bureaucracy. So here I am, for the rest of eternity. I have no backup plan—this is it, baby.”

    Tom’s Popcorn is a tiny storefront jammed into a seriously truncated, early strip mall tucked into the middle of a neighborhood. It shares the real estate with a defunct Chinese restaurant and a convenience store. The shop is pretty much a one-man operation; Goetz drives in from his house near Hastings six days a week. He works alone, which is how he prefers it. “Having someone else here annoys the hell out of me,” he said. “I like people on that side of the counter.”

    While fresh, buttered popcorn remains the staple of his business, Goetz also peddles ice cream, and upwards of fifty different versions of flavored or “enhanced” corn. He’s always experimenting. On any given day you might find grape, lime, peanut butter, chocolate, caramel, or hot and spicy varieties alongside such mainstays as caramel corn, cheese corn, and Goetz’s signature TC mix: a caramel/cheese combination.

    There are also, somewhat curiously, chainsaw sculptures for sale (the proprietor’s sideline), as well as, occasionally, bundles of firewood.

    Over the course of several visits, Tom’s Popcorn was bustling with business. Everyone who came in the door received a robust greeting, a greeting that was inevitably followed by some sort of hard time—good natured, it seemed, although with Goetz it’s not always easy to tell.

    An older fellow requested a large bag of buttered popcorn with extra salt, and as Goetz prepared the order he shot the man a stern look and said, “Got a death wish, do you?” Two teenage boys ordering malts got grief for dawdling, but seemed to take Goetz’s ribbing in stride.

    “I’ll pick on the customers,” he said a few moments later. “Sometimes I might really be hacked off, but I’ve learned that you can get away with almost anything just as long as you say it with a smile on your face.”

    There’s not much of a safety net for a small operator like Goetz; he has no health insurance, but despite a recent broken ankle he doesn’t seem much concerned. “I always tell the wife that if things get too bad she should just roll me in a ditch somewhere and be done with it.”

    Though the winter months are a challenge, Goetz continues to make the drive to Minneapolis from his home. “January, February, and March are terrible,” he said. “It’s just bleak. Really, really bleak.” When asked whether he ever considers closing up shop for a few weeks or months, Goetz answered with almost alarming rapidity. “No,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to do that. The wife’s at home. I come here to hide out.”

    As one visitor prepared to leave, another customer entered the shop. “How’s it going, Brian?” the man asked.

    “Living the dream, as always,” Goetz said, clearly in jest. It was obvious, though, that this was one of those jokes that, however unconsciously, harbored a good deal of truth.

  • The World’s Toughest Indian

    When Sherman Alexie came to town last month to promote
    Flight    , a novel in which a teenager nicknamed Zits is driven to the verge of committing mass murder, one of his intentions was to continue his fight with author and University of Minnesota English professor David Treuer. Alexie’s smile was ever-present throughout our interview in the lobby of the Millenium Hotel, even (perhaps especially) as the subject of Treuer’s criticism was broached. I had feared—needlessly—that Alexie would be sensitive about responding to the disparagement that appeared in Treuer’s recent book, Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual. Treuer, a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, compared Alexie’s Reservation Blues to one of the most despised books ever written about Indians, Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree, and argues that the popularity of Alexie, Erdrich, and other Native American writers rests not on their skills, but on readers’ assumptions that their tales are accurate depictions of Indian life. Alexie clearly relished the opportunity to respond to the charges on Treuer’s home turf.

    How do you see the Twin Cities area in terms of its status in Native America?
    It is the capital of Indian USA. It’s the center of Native American indigenous urban life.

    What makes it so?
    Sheer population, the number of tribes that are represented in the city, and the rowdiness. I feel more Indian in Minneapolis than I do on my own damn reservation. I feel more appreciated here. And as rowdy as I can be, and as competitive, it’s still nice to be appreciated.

    One criticism I often hear about your work is that it’s not political.
    Isn’t political? Everything is political.

    Right, I know, but you’re not Dennis Banks.
    Fuck Dennis Banks. Thank god. I wake up every morning thanking god I’m not Dennis Banks; I say that because of his willingness to pick up the gun. No FBI agents are going to die as a result of my books. No Indians are going to die as a result of my books.

    In what way is Flight political?
    It’s political when the character Zits says, “How do you tell the difference between the good and the bad guys when they say the same things?”

    You clearly understand the psychology of someone who could perpetrate mass murder. How did you come to that?
    I’ve felt that rage. I’ve been that mad, growing up on the rez, being bullied, being frustrated, having all sorts of fantasies about killing people. If I’d had a more fragile mental state or less supportive parents, who knows?

    Can you extend that understanding to those who commit terrorist acts like 9/11?
    Oh yeah. It’s narcissistic adolescent male rage. It gets me so mad when liberals say the terrorists were “freedom fighters. They were reacting to oppressive conditions.” Bullshit. They were upper-class, college-educated, cosmopolitan world travelers. How do you think they blended into Europe and the United States? They were spoiled-brat rich kids who were frustrated for various penis-related reasons; they were flying dicks is what they were. I understand their narcissism. I am afflicted with a minor league version of it myself.

    Native people have been living a subsistence lifestyle for centuries. Now that you don’t need to live that way, how does that history play out in your life?
    Was it Dolly Parton—no, it was Mae West who said, “I’ve been rich. I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” I do not romanticize poverty whatsoever. Not even remotely. I was there and it’s a miserable, terrifying existence. I am tattooed by my poverty, and so even now that I’m upper-class it is a part of who I am.

    Is there an aspect of the poverty you grew up with that you’re now thankful for?
    Thankful for? Oh god, no. If I had a time machine I’d go back to 1972 with thirty-thousand dollars and invest it wisely.

    What about people you’ve met along the way who’ve never been poor? There must be things that you know that they’ll never understand.
    I’ll take their problems. That’s going to be my sons. You know, they’re brand-new Indians. They have never seen an Indian take so much as a sip of alcohol.

    Are you bringing them up in any sense in a traditional way?
    No.

    Do you plan to teach them their Native language?
    No.

    Why not?
    Nostalgia is terminal. Whatever language they decide to learn and use, that’s their decision. I’m teaching them mine, English.

    When you go around you must talk to a lot of people like me who ask stupid questions. What are some of the stupidest questions people ask you?
    You haven’t yet, but oh god! This fog of privilege that surrounds me has blinded people to the fact that I’m still Indian, so they ask these theoretical questions that have to do with Indians as if it’s two non-Indians in the discussion, as if I don’t deal with these issues every day. My brother works at the casino; my sister works for Indian Health Service. They all live in that same HUD house that I grew up in.

    That’s like me saying—and I grew up Jewish— I’m poor now so I’m no longer Jewish.
    Yeah. [Laughs.] Yeah, so that’s been sort of the tone. But this book in particular has caused stupid questions.

    Can you share any of them?
    It might be the way we promoted the book; the cover says Flight is my first novel in ten years, which is true. But I was in a bookstore in Iowa, and the owner, who I’ve known for years, said “Well, you dropped off the map.” And I said, “You mean the three books of poems, two books of short stories, and two movies I’ve made since Indian Killer is dropping off the map? You mean, being named one of the New Yorker’s Writers for the Twenty-First Century doesn’t count? You mean the three stories in The New Yorker, the essays in Time magazine, Men’s Journal, The New York Times, the
    LA Times    , the hundreds of appearances I’ve given. What the fuck are you talking about?”

    Do you have any guilty literary pleasures?
    Why would I feel guilty about enjoying something? That’s the kind of question you ask John Updike. And John Updike’s more than happy to answer it. But, I mean, I’m a kid from the rez. I still eat potted meat product.

    Gross.
    You know. I still like Funyuns. I pour Tabasco sauce on my French fries. I feel highly sacred and traditional when I’m reading westerns and murder mysteries, because that was my dad. Oh, you know what I get a guilty pleasure from? I love bad reviews—of me.

    Really?
    David Treuer’s book that just hammers on me, reading that really feels like reading porn. We’ve been having an email exchange since he trashed me.

    What’s been the tone of your exchange with Treuer?
    Oh, I just give him shit.

    Does he respond?
    He quit responding.

    Was he surprised to hear from you?
    No, because we were friendly over the years. I, in fact, wrote him letters of recommendation when his first book got sent out; publishers called me to ask me if he was real. At one point, when his major publishing career wasn’t going well, I helped him contact my agent. I’m saying this stuff because this is where he lives and I want the world to know this: He wrote a book to show off for white folks, and we Indians were giggling at him.

    What’s his problem with you?
    He’s insecure about his Indian identity because he’s blond and short. But, as I told him, “David, no matter what you write, it’s autobiography. And you’ve said so much about yourself, more than you realize.” When David and other Native scholars criticize me, it’s like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and David and his ilk are like the Neanderthals with bone clubs and I’m the monolith [laughs].

    You just like mixing it up.
    I’m competitive and I love it. I told him, “David, you can intellectualize, you can go sentence by sentence, you can pull my bad sentences out of my books—there are plenty of them—you can say this fails or that fails, you can point out bad reviews or whatever. But in the end, when I get up in front of people, when people read my books, they connect in an inexplicable way. They always have. And I don’t know what it is, you don’t know what it is, but there’s something."

     


    Click To Play Interview Clip

    Alexie discusses Zits, the teenage narrator of his new novel.

  • Ron Carlson

    Hugely respected by his peers and routinely showered with accolades in the form of rave reviews and literary prizes, Ron Carlson remains a largely unknown writer to the sort of folks who pluck their reading choices out of the new arrivals pig pile at the local [sic] book behemoth. There’s no particular reason to expect this to change any time soon, but that’s a dirty, rotten shame. Carlson is good—very good—a truly first-rate craftsman and storyteller, and a master of the short story form. Five Skies is Carlson’s first novel in more than two decades, and Publishers Weekly has called it “a tour de force of grief, atonement, and the cost of loyalty.” 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633; www.barnesandnoble.com

  • Barbarella

    This irreverent modern dance production is inspired by Jean-Claude Forest’s cheeky ’60s comic strip Barbarella. But it’s more closely related to the 1968 sci-fi movie Forest’s book inspired. Just as Jane Fonda did in that movie version, Dolls dancer Heather Cadigan gets things started with a zero-gravity striptease. In this instance, however, the achievement owes more to the performer’s limberness than to primitive, mid-century F/X. From there on out, the intergalactic mission finds Cadigan shimmying and wall-dancing in little more than her go-go boots. (Rumors that Cadigan would don something akin to Fonda’s famous see-through plastic breastplate couldn’t be confirmed.) Of course, the Dolls’ artistic director Myron Johnson couldn’t resist the temptation to inject Barbarella with some twenty-first-century-style modernity. He keeps his comments on media, women, and war on the slight side, but shamelessly mashes the film’s bubblegum score with P. Diddy and Christina Aguilera. 345 13th Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-436-1129; www.balletofthedolls.org

  • Woody Allen

    It’s been twenty-five years since a new collection of Woody Allen’s short humor appeared in print. You’re welcome to argue this point until you’re blue in the face, but he hasn’t made a truly great—or at least consistently funny—film in almost as long. It’s easy, then, to forget how truly fresh and funny Allen once was. The material in his early collections (and in his best films) was marked by his trademark neuroses as well as by an ability to blend high and low culture with often inspired and hilarious results. Allen’s work occasionally pops up in The New Yorker (where many of the pieces in Mere Anarchy originally appeared), and while there’s a palpable strain in some of the more uneven selections, the man is still capable of being very funny, very smart, and hyper-literate, often within the same paragraph.

  • Andrei Codrescu

    “For years now I have published my poems in funny magazines / So that nobody would notice / How sad they were,”
    Andrei Codrescu     wrote in his 1980 “Paper on Humor.” Despite his acutely ironic sense of humor and his archetypal Jewish wit, Codrescu nonetheless seems an odd proposition for the Minnesota Public Radio’s American Humorists Series. More than a humorist, Codrescu is one of our nation’s leading proponents of critical thought. From the time the then 20-year old Codrescu arrived in the United States in the 1960s, the Romanian-born writer and thinker has been exploring and examining American culture in myriad forms—poetry, essays, novels, screenplays, and even a National Public Radio column, all of which display his trademark sardonic wit, thirst for the unusual, and playful defiance of all categorization. 651-290-1221; www.fitzgeraldtheater.publicradio.org

  • Ian McEwan

    Ian McEwan is at a stage in his writing life where he could be coasting on his laurels or organizing his papers for the inevitable memoir(s). McEwan, though, is not that kind of writer—at least not yet. More than a dozen books into his career, he seems to be getting only better and more ambitious. His recent string of novels—most notably Atonement and Saturday—have displayed increasing thematic and structural complexity, as well as a warmth and compassion that was often missing from his early fiction. His latest novel is a slim piece of work, but manages to pack an epic’s worth of telling details into its examination of an often calamitous marriage.

  • Laurie Lindeen's Playlist

    Minneapolis’s music scene in the ’80s is a persistent source of nostalgia, pride, and perhaps even fairy tales. Laurie Lindeen was there; her role as guitarist and vocalist in Zuzu’s Petals, an all-girl Minneapolis rock band, put her front and center for plenty of storied music moments. She even went on to marry the crown prince of that era, Paul Westerberg. These days, Lindeen lives a much quieter life with Westerberg and their son; she recently earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota, a course of study that helped her produce Petal Pusher, a brand-new memoir about her days (and mostly nights) in Zuzu’s Petals and the surrounding music scene. In honor of the book’s release, we asked Lindeen what songs she likes these days. Yes, we hoped for an aural blast from the past. And we got what we wanted. “I’m stuck on my old records,” said Lindeen. “My all-time favorite records are all I ever play.”

    1. X, Los Angeles (and most other X records)
    I went to the X show last summer at the Fine Line because they were my absolute all-time favorite back in the day. I made an over-forty-thinking-she’s-nineteen ass of myself, drinking, dancing, shouting the words to every song, giving Exene my favorite bracelet (which I miss horribly), winking back at Billy Zoom (who must be seventy), shamelessly flirting with John Doe (who’s aging with grace and rugged good looks) … it wasn’t pretty. After that night I re-ordered all of my X albums on CD and they’ve been in heavy rotation for almost a year (this includes The Knitters’ Poor Little Critter on the Road).

    2. Roxy Music, “Editions of You” from For Your Pleasure
    When my first “music boyfriend” in Madison, Wisconsin, introduced me to this song, it was already old. I’ve listened to it at least once a week for the past twenty-some years. Like other early Roxy stuff, this song is so foppish and glam and wild and jazzy and hard-rocking all at the same time, and it is filled with words to live by, like “stay cool is still the main rule” and “too much cheesecake too soon.” When I saw Roxy at Northrop a few summers ago, where I also made a foaming-at-the-mouth ass of myself, they closed with “Editions of You.” Even better, Poses-era Rufus Wainwright opened the show and I’ve listened to Poses at least once a month since.

    3. Robyn Hitchcock, I Often Dream of Trains
    I don’t know if it has to do with the time, place, or age you are when something grabs you hard, but for me this record is my Pet Sounds or Music from Big Pink or Sticky Fingers. Maybe it’s the sound—hollow and stripped down and driven by piano and acoustic guitar and harmonica. Or the first line of the first song: “This could be the day I’ve waited for all my life.” An inviting greeting like that will always keep me coming back for more. It’s a haunted, intimate, lonely record that is not depressed or depressing. Even though Robyn Hitchcock often hides behind cleverness and the absurd, try as he may have, he couldn’t keep his soul out of this record and for that I am forever grateful.

    4. The Jayhawks, Blue Earth
    Yesterday was a warm, sunny, spring day and as I drove to meet a friend for lunch at the Birchwood, I blasted this record in the car with the windows down. I can’t get over how strong the vocals, lyrics, and licks are on this record—it was such a fun, free time when it came out and the Jayhawks were so freaking great and untouched by the things that can wear a band down. It must be the equivalent of when my dad used to play a Buck Owens record on a Saturday afternoon, singing along with over-the-top jubilance (though I think Buck was born worn down).

    5. “Family-friendly” music
    My son is already Ramones-centric at the age of nine, but I’m having a hard time letting go of our favorite sing-along records. I’m not ready to give up Dan Zanes (especially Night Time), Burl Ives, Leadbelly, and Tom T. Hall—I still secretly listen to them alone in the car. (American folk songs should never be ignored for very long.)

    Joni Mitchell, For the Roses (followed by Court and Spark, Ladies of the Canyon, and Blue, in that order, at least one a week.)

    I’ve never been a Hejira girl, but you can’t touch Joni when it comes to originality, innovation, lyrics that should be called poems, snaky chords, brave vocals, and emotional intelligence. Amen.

    Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story is available now. As part of The Current Fakebook series, Lindeen reads from the book June 16 at the Fitzgerald Theater. Zuzu’s Petals is playing a reunion show for the occasion; joining them onstage will be music luminaries such as Paul Westerberg, Mark Olson, Steve Wynn, John Eller, Lori Barbero, Ed Ackerson, and Marc Perlman. 651-290-1221; www.mpr.org

  • Moving Water and Earth

    When Father Louis Hennepin first saw the great falls of the Mississippi in 1680, he was on furlough from a prolonged captivity at Mille Lacs Lake. The Flemish cleric and his Dakota escorts portaged downstream along the east bank on what is now Main Street in Minneapolis, then beheld the cataract he would later document to be forty or fifty feet high. This figure was exaggerated (though somewhat prescient), but empirical accuracy was never a missionary priority, and Hennepin ventured only to tally souls. The cataract was called Minirara by his guides in honor of the water’s playful descent, close phonetic kin to the nearby “laughing waters” memorialized by Longfellow. But unlike the classic bridal veil at Minnehaha Creek, here a great flood spilled over ledges across a half-mile of river, spouting and tumbling through fields of broken limestone, producing a thunder that drew the ear from miles away. The dutiful Hennepin divested the site of its evocative animism, and christened the falls for Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things.

    Not until Zebulon Pike’s 1805 expedition was the only waterfall on the Mississippi technically surveyed at just over sixteen feet, about as high as an upended canoe. This natural wonder quickly became a scenic refuge for southern tourists escaping the summer heat. But money men were also scheming along the riverbanks, seeing only industrial power uncapitalized, and by 1870 the falls had been completely harnessed by the young city’s industrial pioneers. They had no notion that their seizure of the river’s power also halted a geologic process in its final moments.

    The St. Anthony Falls of the seventeenth century—splendid, romantic, and terrible as they were to Dakota and Franciscan alike—were the faint echo of their cataclysmic origins just downstream from St. Paul. A dozen millennia ago, a surge of ice-age runoff first flooded over and eroded the stubborn Platteville limestone to create a cataract just as impressive as today’s Niagara Falls (another natural wonder first documented by Father Hennepin). Absent the ambitions and interventions of Minneapolis millers, the river would by now have eroded to the last reach of the Platteville limestone twelve miles from its start, and our legendary falls would have dissolved into a series of rapids through the underlying sandstone.

    Even the newest residents of condominia overlooking this site should recognize St. Anthony Falls’ major components: the central spillway, or apron; the millpond fronting St. Anthony Main, which once powered a large share of the city’s industry but now generates a thread of the electricity we consume; and the boondoggle Upper St. Anthony Falls lock on the downtown side.

    There’s a fourth component, however, that has for decades gone virtually unnoticed: The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, a bastion of water-power research embedded in the middle of the river on Hennepin Island. Rampant nature created these falls, but engineers have preserved them, and so it is most fitting that the last significant use of the Falls of St. Anthony is a playground for engineers.

     

  • Jolly Good

    Just a quick note on what felt like a very necessary win accomplished in absolutely necessary fashion, or something like that.

    After Friday night’s 13-inning affair –a game that featured another shitty performance from Ramon Ortiz and valiant comebacks that ultimately came up short– the Twins desperately needed to give their beleaguered bullpen (Pat Neshek and Matt Guerrier, in particular) a breather. To accomplish that they were going to have to get a solid start from Carlos Silva. Solid-plus, something better than merely good or decent. Seven innings, minimum.

    Given the Jackal’s recent track record, that seemed like a long shot, but Silva more than delivered, going seven-and-a-third innings and surrendering only two runs. And the offense did just enough against A.J. Burnett (three hits, four runs, three of them earned) to eke out a 4-2 victory, take their third straight series, and give themselves another shot (and their middle relievers another day of rest) tomorrow afternoon with Johan Santana taking the mound against the White Sox.

    With the Central proving to be almost exactly as tough as everybody was predicting back in April, the Twins are facing a seriously uphill battle in closing the gap. The last week, however, has demonstrated that this is another pretty resilient team. With the bullpen plagued by injury and, increasingly, overwork, and with Slowey and Garza waiting in Rochester, doesn’t it make perfect sense to call up at least one of those guys and move Ortiz into the bullpen to eat up middle innings?

    Granted, it’s improbable that either Slowey or Garza will be this year’s Francisco Liriano, but –what the hell– it still makes perfect sense to me.

    Also, what do you do with the batting order when Joe Mauer finally comes back? Since Mauer’s been on the DL, Luis Castillo has been streaking in the leadoff spot, and Morneau has been a monster batting cleanup. At this point the sad truth is that Mauer would actually be a perfect guy to bat second, given his bat control, low strikeout totals, and often ridiculous willingness to lay down a bunt. I don’t think, though, that Gardenhire is going to pencil Mauer in the two-hole, or move Morneau into the third slot. Batting the two lefties back-to-back goes against basic baseball logic, but nonetheless seems perfectly logical to me. I’d want to get Morneau to the plate in the first inning as often as possible, and with Castillo and Mauer in front of him, and Cuddyer and Hunter behind him, that’s an awful lot of RBI possibilities, and little wiggle room to pitch around the MVP.