Month: December 2007

  • Enjoy a Primitive Chicago Happy Hour

    FILMChicago Restored! Who better to tell ya about all that jazz then the people who were actually living it? At the end of the roaring ’20s, a little film was made that incorporated all the music, gin, and debauchery of the times. While the movie originally met with fear, the premise inspired the hit Bob…

  • Swallowing the Wormwood

    It is a firmly established fact about human beings that we want what we cannot have. Once stores run out of Furbees or fetal Cabbage Patch babies or giggling Elmos, suddenly every mother’s child must have one. When exorbitantly-priced iPhones hit the market already in limited supply, people line up at 2 a.m. I’ve heard…

  • freedom of expression

    This "freedom of expression booth" at the MSP airport most likely won’t be looked at in the same way after this year’s Senator Craig escapade. But one of the most important — and one of the most overlooked — aspects our visual culture is fonts, particularly in our instructional messages. Recognize the style in the…

  • Rachel Bliss at Cliché

    Minneapolis-St.Paul is a Midwestern oasis for the visual arts. In fact, we here in the Twin Cities have visual arts all over the place, damn near everywhere you look… or where you aren’t looking, as is often the case. The visual arts don’t just hang at big name institutions like MIA or le Walker and…

  • Top Ten Tastes of 2007

    Truth to tell, I’m not a big fan of these end-of-year Top Ten lists. They tend, I think, to be both subjective and showy: meaning listmakers record either what’s obscurely relevant to them or what will demonstrate their great intellect and breadth of knowledge, or both. Two years ago, for instance, every book reviewer in…

  • Local Boys Sing, While Heathens Turn Pages

    MUSIC Gear Daddies Add Boxing Day Show Just for You The English might have Boxing Day, but we have the Gear Daddies. And who needs another commonwealth holiday when we can have good old American country rockers. With their shows on the 28th and 29th already sold out, the band has shown some Austin, Minnesota…