The Rake Magazine

Year: 2007

  • RetroRama Redux

    car.jpgThe Minnesota History Center certainly hit upon a fetish last night. The place was so crowded at the first-ever RetroRama that a girl couldn’t even get a pink martini. Note to self: Next time, heed that time-honored tradition of packing a flask in your stockings.

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    Even though I couldn’t get a drink and didn’t come close to the retro hors d’oeuvres, I did get an eyeful of fabulous vintage wear. The partygoers were decked out in all manner of dandy suits and New Look-inspired dresses. I ran into such throwbacks as Lit Sixer Stephanie Wilbur Ash and Southern gentleman-about-town Andy Sturdevant. (Pardon the horrible lighting here. This is but a low-tech blog and I am but an idiot with an Elph.)

    retail 2.jpgPeople-watching aside, the evening existed in four or so parts:

    Part One: Shop. Succotash and Up Six were on hand to sell lots of nifty stuff. But, because I had to rush off to the fashion show, I wasn’t able to snag these gorgeous silver ankle boots.

    tiedress.jpgPart Two: Fashion Show. (I just said that …) Various local designers took inspiration from the History Center’s archives, and came up with …

    A tie skirt, and it was cool as heck …

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    A bad-boy suit with some bad-ass details … (The model wasn’t bad either.)

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    Slinky satin lingerie …

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    A sexy, showgirl-style headdress …

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    And last, but certainly not least, this gorgeous, New Look-shaped dress made from upholstery fabrics and stitched together with gold and black thread. The dress, designed by Allyson J. Thornton, was inspired by a dress worn by Miss Minnesota 1948. Here we have Miss Minnesota 2007 modeling what was everyone’s favorite piece of the evening.

    And here we have a detail shot of the fabric. Mmm, Mmm.

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    clutch.jpg Part Three: Arts and Crafts. The History Center crafts council kindly provided us with plenty of leather scraps and duct tape. I made this deco-esque clutch, whereas my friend Adam made the artsy tie below. Sadly, both items are headed straight for the trash bin. (Note: Adam’s tie, cool though it may be, had to be taped onto his shirt.)

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    Part Four: The New Standards. None for me, thanks …

  • Predictably, the Paulose Connection Deepens While Strib Group-Think Muddles

    One of the mustier traditions of newspaper writing is the amount of group-think involved in crafting the first paragraph of a story — in journalism jargon known as “the lede”. Tradition says that the first paragraph should contain the essence of all the information to follow. Tradition also implies that that first paragraph represent the newspaper’s institutional attitude toward the story.

    Despite abundant evidence that modern readers value a little punch and style as much as a, uh, “fair and balanced” recitation of facts, when you read a story like this morning’s Star Tribune piece titled, “Concerns over Heffelfinger reportedly raised at Justice”, you can smell the hands of nervous, second-guessing, group-thinking editors all over it.

    As I and many others having been saying for weeks now — including the Strib’s editorial page and, most prominently, columnist Nick Coleman — the Strib, there’s no kind way to put this, has flat-out failed to properly (i.e. adequately) explore the high likelihood that the abrupt departure of US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger may in some way be related to the rather large, politically and ethically significant firing of eight other US Attorneys that erupted into a national scandal five months ago and is still building.

    A group-think lede, with handful of editors re-re-re-re-crafting that all-important first paragraph to properly assert the paper’s institutional thinking/position on a given story gives you a contrast like we see today between the original reporting from D.C. and the Strib’s massaging for local consumption.

    Here, first, is the lede paragraph in the latest story from the Strib’s former D.C. bureau, McClatchy Newspapers.
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    WASHINGTON – The Bush administration considered firing the former U.S. attorney in Minnesota, but he left his job voluntarily before the list of attorneys to be ousted was completed, two congressional aides said Thursday.
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    (The entire piece is here).

    Not a lot of style. But punchy and direct to the key point … that thanks to new testimony by a former Justice Department official with knowledge of the whole affair — Kyle Sampson — the story has now taken a leap well beyond “presumption” vis a vis Mr. Heffelfinger.

    Cut now to the Strib’s “crafting” of the same news:
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    WASHINGTON – Senior Justice Department officials raised concerns about then-U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger sometime after October 2005, according to a congressional aide familiar with what a former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told House and Senate staff members last week.
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    Never mind the complete absence of style and the convoluted splatter of dulling bureaucratic verbiage like “senior”, “aides”,”officials” and “staff members”, how about the complete avoidance of the rather essential and connective word, “fire”? Note also how the McClatchy report — the latest in a series of precisely the sort of professional, skeptical reporting newspapers normally expect of their DC bureaus and that the Strib has declined to re-print — distills the essence of the whole business into THE FIRST SENTENCE.

    Namely, “The Bush administration considered firing the former U.S. Attorney in Minnesota … ,” while the Strib committee prefers instead, “Senior Justice Department officials raised concerns … ” yadda yadda. (Other recent MCClatchy reports here, here and here.

    Can we agree that by now all arrows are pointing well past and beyond the hapless Alberto Gonzales and directly at, “The Bush administration”? Note to Strib political editor group: I think it is now … safe … to say that the “Bush administration” had something to do with this.

    Also note that despite the appearance of a long-awaited link — courtesy of “a congressional aide familiar with … [zzzzz]”, the Strib plays the revelation inside on A4. (On the front page — breaking news on eating disorders). As I say, Strib group-thinkers have consistently decided against re-printing their former colleagues’ work on this story, preferring instead to either ignore McClatchy reports entirely or re-craft them into something more, shall we say, “appropriate” for their institutional voice. (Shades of punching up those New York Times pieces they run every so often.)

    At this point in the US Attorneys-Heffelfinger-Paulose story, with Monica Goodling, Paulose’s close-personal friend, having been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony on the matter, with Gonzales being asked to prepare, you know, actual answers to all the questions he could not “recall” last week and with subpoenas approved for Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, I’m guessing the Strib’s group-thinkers are praying for an asteroid impact to distract public attention from the bizzare lack of editorial judgment they’ve displayed in this significant, substantive matter.

    And while I’m at it, yes, if it weren’t for Nick Coleman pushing and prodding and writing on this story, the Strib would have as much relevance on the Heffelfinger angle as the Excelsior-Shorewood Sun Sailor. Coleman hit it again this morning with a “lede” that plays like this:

    “Minnesota’s U.S. attorney, Rachel K. Paulose, has waged a public relations campaign to salvage her position since allegations were raised that her appointment was part of the Bush administration’s efforts to place political loyalists in U.S. attorney offices, especially in states expected to be “battlegrounds” in the 2008 election.” The whole column is here.

    I’ve read more style out of the boy, but that lede gets directly to the heart of the story — a significant local angle on a major national scandal — that the Strib’s group-thinkers have chosen instead to minimize/suppress/downplay/ignore/hope will go away … take your pick.

  • Movies for the Young (and the Young at Heart)

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    Once again, your best bets this weekend, cinema-wise, are to be found at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, and the Childish Film Festival within it in particular.

    This weekend sees a pair of international features for kids and some awesome animated shorts. On Saturday, take the young ones to Flights of Fancy, wonderful shorts from around the world (11 am at the Oak Street Cinema). Later, older kids (pre-teens, still), will get a kick from the delightful Lepel (Spoon). Lepel is yet another manic Danish film, this time about a kid whose lost his parents when their hot air balloon spirits them away. And once again, like in Bonkers a week earlier, Lepel doesn’t shy away from some tetchy adult issues, like falling in love. You and your kid will have a blast! (Saturday at 2:30 at the Oak).

    I didn’t get a chance to screen the South African film A Boy Called Twist, but I’m thrilled at the thought of catching it on Sunday. Again, this is ostensibly a kids’ flick. But Twist is billed as a “contemporary telling of Dickens’ Oliver Twist“, which, I have to say, is an awesome idea (and reflects Roman Polanski’s lack of imagination that he didn’t do it himself with his recent, dull-as-dirt adaptation). Set on the streets of Cape Town, with a young boy joining Fagin’s den of thieves and miscreants, Twist promises to be a wonder. Showing Sunday at 11am at the Oak Street Cinema.

  • B Happy, B Pudding

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    ramps, my dears, ramps!

    It looks like a nice weekend for a drive, no? Choose wisely and head down to the historic LeDuc Mansion in Hastings for a little food festival sponsored by the Northern Heartland Food and Wine Learning Center.

    Check out wine and cheese pairings with Nan Bailly of Alexis Bailly Vineyards and Patrick the Cheeseguy (he’s funny). Get into the kick of Spring by sampling some local wild edibles (I’m thinking ramps and morels), maple syrup, duck eggs, honey, herb plants and more. Saturday from 1pm – 4pm.

    If you’re going to stay metro, you can at least rejoice that it’s an open weekend for both the Mpls and St. Paul Farmers Markets. Even if you’re only buying flowers, at least you can start the season off right with freshly squeezed lemonade and a Polish for breakfast.

    I plan to muck around the yard this weekend. I stopped by Lucia’s Take Home the other day, and the fresh bread of the day happened to be the Aztec loaf: slightly laced with chili spice and dotted with nubs of dark chocolate. It’s that earthy/spicy chocolate and heat combination that I love. Two loaves please.

    The first, I turned into a bread pudding. Not too sweet, just custardy and dusky enough to hit the spot. If you lean on the sweeter side you can either add more sugar or pair it with freshly whipped cream touched with Kahlua. It may not seem Springy, but thankfully there is no season for bread. The second loaf is destined to become Sunday morning’s French toast.

    Aztec Bread Pudding
    1 loaf Lucia’s Aztec loaf, ripped into 1 inch pieces
    5 eggs
    2 cups milk
    1 1/2 cups cream
    1 tsp vanilla
    1 T Penzey’s pie spice
    1/4 cup sugar
    sprinkling of brown sugar

    Butter a 13×9 baking dish, pre-heat oven to 350.
    Rip or cut bread into hunks and set aside in a big, big bowl.
    In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, cream, vanilla, spices, and sugar. Dump over the bread hunks and mix thoroughly, bread should soak up much of the liquid and look plump and squidgy. Pour into pan, cover and refrigerate for a couple hours. Uncover, sprinkle with brown sugar, and cook for about an hour or until the custard is set and the top looks crunchy.

  • One Moment Sometimes Doesn't Lead To Another

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    The little house with its peeling paint and mossy shingles was set well back from the street and appeared to be floating in a sea of saffron grass bleached by the sun and burnished by the fleeting sweep of twilight.

    It was hot. There wasn’t a shadow left in which to take refuge, and there wasn’t a single thing moving in any direction.

    If you stood in the middle of the street you would hear the unreal, thrumming silence of dusk in a dead-end place and you’d smell the rain that would creep in after darkness fell. If you stood still and listened hard you could probably hear the surf of truck traffic on the highway at the edge of town. And if you stood there long enough you might eventually see a child aboard a bicycle glide silently like a dream fragment through the intersection at the end of the block.

    You might.

    But you might not. There weren’t a lot of children around anymore.

    If you took a few steps up the front sidewalk you’d smell the cigarette smoke that was drifting in almost rhythmic waves through the window screen. And if you were bored or curious enough to press your face to the screen you’d see an unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread out on a card table, a windmill and a field of red tulips shot full of jagged holes. You’d see an orange plastic ashtray with a burning cigarette wedged in one of the badly-stained slots, and an abandoned game of Solitaire lined up on a coffee table. An old woman would be sitting there in a faded sun dress imprinted with a pattern of what might have been sunflowers. Across the room from her, sitting utterly still in a recliner, his bare feet just jutting into the left side of the frame (you’d have to move or crane your neck to take him all in), would be a shirtless man wearing nothing but boxer shorts and holding a pistol in his lap.

    From another room in the house you’d hear the disconsolate burst of a television laugh track.

    You wouldn’t necessarily know this, though, so I’ll tell you: I’ve fired that gun before, but I’ve been waiting my whole life to really shoot something.

  • Friday's for Music, Saturday Sports, and Sunday Dining

    Ok. If you want to meet Sarah Jessica Parker, stop by Macy’s at noon. She’ll be there promoting her new Lovely fragrance — and talking to those starry-eyed enough to spend over $125 on a gift set. 12:00 p.m., first floor cosmetics, Macy’s, 700 On The Mall, Minneapolis; 612-375-3199.

    Good, now let’s get to the good stuff…

    MUSIC
    The Books

    books_250x154.jpg“Using samples from obscure movies, as well as their own singing, mixing, and instrumentation, Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto construct melodic sound collages and electronic songs so catchy as to be genre defying. On the Massachusetts duo’s 2003 release, The Lemon of Pink, for example, the title track alone contains seamless movements between folk song, art singing, and acoustic picking. In ‘Be Good To Them Always,’ from their latest, Lost and Safe, a squall of reverb and electric guitar is paired with the intoned refrain: ‘You know, I simply cannot understand people.’ However, the Books’ technique and repertoire, while rock solid, don’t always translate to the stage. And so their live concerts are a whole other beast — sometimes inconsistent, but worth checking out.”

    8 and 10:30 p.m., McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-375-7600; $16 ($13 members).

    Afro-Cuban Jazz Legend in Our Backyard

    nachito-0w.jpgThere’s actually quite a lot of decent music tonight for all musical tastes, but for a guaranteed great jazz performance, plan on spending the evening at the Dakota. Start the evening off with former ¡Cubanismo! pianist and bandleader Nachito Herrera. I simply cannot get over how lucky we are to have this Afro-Cuban jazz legend as a neighbor. And I can’t get enough of him. See him every chance you get, folks. And this evening, you can stay for the late-night show as well — a tribute to trumpet great and the elite of ennui vocalists, Chet Baker.

    8 p.m., The Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet Ave S., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $15.

    SPORTS AND PERFORMANCE
    Leave Saturday for the Girls

    rollergirl.large.jpgSaturday night brings to an end the Minnesota RollerGirls’ third season. Go cheer on your team — or all of them — at the Season Championships. The winner of this bout will take home the first prize and the Golden Skate Award. In celebration of the season closer, there’s a lot going on before, during, and after the bout, so you might as well make it a full evening fare. Start out with a fan-appreciation barbecue in Rice Park — right behind the Roy. You could win a Minnesota RollerGirls polycarbonate water bottle or — if that doesn’t turn you on for whatever odd reason — a brand new scooter. Then enjoy two back-to-back periods as the four Minnesota RollerGirls home teams battle it out. And it doesn’t end there. Top off the night with an after-party at Station 4.

    Saturday from 4-7 p.m., BBQ, Rice Park, St. Paul. 7:30 p.m., Roy Wilkins Auditorium, RiverCentre, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-265-4800; $12-$14. After hour, Station 4, 201 E 4th St., Saint Paul; 651-298-0173.

    DINING
    Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is — Literally

    craftsmanfood0105007.jpgTop the weekend off with a palate pleaser. Join Mike Phillips of The Craftsman Restaurant for a special chefs dinner. Phillips has invited six Slow Food Minnesota chefs (Steven Brown, Ken Goff, Scott Pampuch, Alex Roberts, Lenny Russo, and Tanya Siebenaler) to create a seven-course meal with seasonal, local, sustainably produced ingredients. Each chef will be responsible for one course, and each course will be served with the appropriate wine. Call 612-722-0175 to see if you can still reserve a spot.

    Sunday at 5:30 p.m., The Craftsman Restaurant, 4300 E Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-722-0175; $130 ($115 Slow Food members).

    Have a great weekend!

  • Serious Weirdness: Wednesday Night/Thursday Afternoon

    Four runs is the magic number in baseball. If you look at the way things break down year in and year out, the team that scores four runs or more wins the vast majority of its games.

    The Twins have now scored three or fewer runs in four straight games (all losses), and are on their way to their fifth straight as I type. Not counting today, they are now 3-8 when they’ve scored four or fewer runs.

    The pitching hasn’t been great –too many long innings, too much nibbling, too many pitches, too many base runners, too many early deficits– but the offense has squandered opportunity after opportunity in every game. We’ve seen lousy at bats (and a seemingly endless series of broken bats), misfortune (and stupidity) on the base paths, non-existent clutch hitting, and stranded runners galore. It has been very, very painful to watch.

    You can go ahead and write off the offensive frustrations as an early slump, and I do expect the Twins will eventually snap out of it. Still, I do believe it’s not too early to conclude that the team needs to shake things up at the top of the order. Alexi Casilla is an entertaining player, but at present –with the exception of speed– he possesses none of the requisites of a leadoff hitter. He’s a bottom-of-the-order guy. Nick Punto? He’s a bottom-of-the-order guy.

    At the moment, unfortunately, the Twins roster is full of bottom-of-the-order guys, and the middle-of-the-order guys are either scuffling or producing in a vacuum.

    Bottom line: everybody’s pressing, and it sucks.

    What do you think are the priorities for management at this point, other than obviously getting some of the walking wounded back in the lineup? At what point do they give up on Ponson and fly somebody in from Rochester? And given that staff in Rochester, who gets the first call? Is it time for Terry Ryan to start thinking about trading some of that AAA pitching talent (Scott Baker) for some offense? If so, who do they trade (Scott Baker) and what could they get (for Scott Baker)?

    How often do you suppose a guy could put up a pitching line like Boof did today (five IP, three hits, and seven walks) and leave a game without surrendering any runs? I’m just going to guess not very often. Seriously, that was a thing of wretched beauty: seven walks and eight strikeouts in five innings.

  • Pulitzer Winner Charlie Savage Interviewed

    Glenn Greenwald talks with the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage about his reporting that won him a Pulitzer for National Reporting a couple weeks back. Savage got into and continued writing on President Bush’s use of “signing statements”, an arcane and complicated issue with no sex appeal and very little in the way of guaranteed instant response from the average reader. Never mind, as he says in this interview, that the abuse of signing statements reveals a unifying theme in many of this administration’s most serious blunders.

    Talking about why the Globe kept on running the signing-statement stories when so many other papers ignored it — it did light up the lefty blogosphere, which Savage notes — he says this:
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    The Associated Press article reporting on the Pulitzer awards quoted you as follows: “The Globe for a while was throwing it out on the front page when a lot of people were ignoring it, and that took a lot of courage.”.

    Can you elaborate on that? Who was ignoring it? And why do you believe it took “courage” for The Globe to continue to publish your articles on signing statements?

    “The Globe, unlike some regional papers, has made a decision to continue doing its own enterprise reporting in Washington. This means that the Globe can highlight its own stories rather than taking the safer route of joining in a single national agenda set in consensus with others. I think it took courage on the part of editors to keep putting the paper’s reputation behind a very complex story that was not being echoed on the front pages of other publications. I believe this experience shows why it is very important to maintain a diversity of journalistic thought in Washington.”
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    The issue of “consensus” coverage, (the truly snide have been known to call it “pack journalism”), has always been troublesome, leaving huge voids in coverage of stories with less of that “readers want to know” appeal. That trouble has been aggravated as regional papers have either done away with Washington bureaus entirely, or reduced them in size to, say, a single, industrious intern, who, unless they’re a fledgling Charlie Savage are in no position to dispute their silverback editors’ notion of “the story of the day”.

    Since writing his Pulitzer-winning series on the signing statements Savage has popped a couple excellent pieces on the background of Alberto Gonzales’ acolytes in the present, uh, Justice department. Click the link for one of them.

  • Classical Twists

    DANCE AND PERFORMANCE
    Back from Budapest

    Nav-mirror -small.jpgTonight begins the Zenon Dance Company’s 24th Spring Season. You have until May 6th to catch the exciting new program, featuring four disparate new works by four different choreographers, including local favorite Danny Buraczeski. Set to the music of jazz legends Bill Evans and Don Pullen, Buraczeski’s piece, Evidence of Things Unseen makes its U.S. premiere this evening. In fact, the night is full of premieres. Hungarian choreographers Gyula Berger and Márta Ladjánszki bring their energetic new works to the stage for the first time ever in the United States. And Catching Her Tears, choreographed by New York’s Colleen Thomas, makes a world premiere. This powerful piece will be accompanied live by New York cellist, Chris Lancaster.

    8 p.m., Ritz Theater, 345 13th Avenue NE, Minneapolis; 612-436-1129; $26.

    Not Just Ballroom, But Beyond

    200704_beyond_ballroom.jpgThe idea of ballroom dancing makes me gag just a little. Mind you, I love a good tango, a mambo, a cha cha, or a waltz; but really? Ballroom dancing? Maybe it’s the goofy little figure-skating outfits. Or the impact of so many Dirty Dancing clichés. It’s really quite unjustified. So if you’re looking for a way to bring a little respect and honor back into the mix — to elevate ballroom dancing to its time-honored status — give the the Beyond Ballroom Dance Company a shot. Their new show, Spinning Wheel brings partnership ballroom dancing into the 21st century with a series of eclectic vignettes.

    8 p.m., Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis; 612-340-1725; $25 or pay-as-able (tonight only).

    MUSIC
    Alienation and Grace

    Ryman06_Pierce_2_001.sized.jpgAs a native of Alabama, Pierce Pettis couldn’t help but be influenced by the most rooted elements of the American South, but in the end, he’s about as classic a folk singer as you get. I’m talking old school here, from the soulful, spiritual yearning to the chatter between songs — and even in the middle of a song. It’s all about stories. No song is left hanging, without context. This is the folk way, always trying to paint a bigger picture. According to Pettis, all of his songs can be reduced to two things: alienation and grace. His lyrics are simple and insightful, resting largely on his innate ability to capture universals in human experience from humorous and mundane aspects of our daily existence. The harmonies are sweet, the percussion is tenuous, and the guitar and vocals are strong and impassioned. But best of all, he puts on a great show.

    7:30 p.m., Gingko Coffeehouse, 721 N. Snelling Ave., St. Paul; 651-645-2647; $12.

    Watch and listen to Pierce Pettis.

    DISCUSSION AND MUSIC
    Making Music with Dessa

    dessanps4.jpgDessa Darling — local Renaissance woman, spoken word poet, and Doomtree emcee — shares her art and artistic process with you as part of the fifth season of Making Music. She’s bright. She’s beautiful. And she can serve up a rhyme as well as the best of them, shocking you with her silky-smooth undertones when the moment calls for it. Go check her out, and learn a thing or two. Tonight’s show, hosted by local musician JG Everest (Lateduster, Vicious Vicious), features an interview, a live demonstration, prizes, and an opportunity to ask Dessa any questions you have about her music.

    8-10 p.m., Coffman Memorial Union, The Whole, 300 Washington Ave. SE, Minneapolis, 612-624-INFO; free.

    DINING AND HELPING
    Eat for AIDS

    DOLLogo2006.jpgTonight is the 13th annual Dining Out for Life, so now that Restaurant Week is over, it’s time to eat out again. This year, over 130 restaurants will be donating a portion of the evening’s proceeds to The Aliveness Project, a non-profit organization that provides support services to people with HIV, and their families. Print a list of the restaurants here. Otherwise, just head on over to participating restaurant Sapor. It’s not so so beautiful out today, but their outdoor patio is finally open, and you Minnesotans are weird about the weather. And considering the number of sun dresses I’ve being seeing, while I’m still freezing, you’ll probably appreciate a happy hour beer, or four, on the patio — all in the name of philanthropy. But remember, just because you had a few beers, or even dinner, on Dining Out for Life day, doesn’t mean you can’t just mail The Aliveness Project a big fat check tomorrow.

    11:30 a.m. – 2 a.m. (Happy Hour 5-7 p.m.), Sapor Cafe, 428 Washington Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-375-1971.

    FASHION by Christy DeSmith
    Retrorama: New Twists on Old Styles

    The Minnesota History Center’s RetroRama event is tonight. Five local designers, including Voltage producer Anna Lee, went digging through the History Center’s enormous textile archives, trolling for inspiration. Tonight’s runway show features their vintage-styled dresses, menswear, and accessories. Also on display will be various pieces from the History Center archives (too fragile for the teetering models to touch). The New Standards (vintage entities unto themselves) will provide the musical backdrop while stand-up retro retailers such as Succotash and Up Six sell their wares. Martinis and mid-century appetizers (pigs in blankets?) will be handily available, too.

    7 p.m., Minnesota Historical Society, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-259-3015.

    And a couple other things:
    Ensemble, a classy women’s boutique in Linden Halls, is hosting a leather sale today through Sunday. Shoes are 75% off; Liz Mole handbags are rumored to be half off. Ensemble, 2812 W. 43rd St., Minneapolis; 612-922-9450.

    On Sunday, in conjunction with the Intermedia Arts annual B-Girl Be Summit, Moxie Hair Salon hosts its B-Girl Be fundraising event with proceeds benefiting B-Girl Be, an organization hell-bent on advancing the role of women in hip-hop. There, you can get a sassy Moxie cut for a mere $30 while enjoying live breakdancers, DJs, and lady-like rhyme-sayers. But first, you need to call for an appointment. 9 a.m. – 9 p.m., Moxie Hair Salon, 2649 Lyndale Ave. S, Minneapolis; 612-813-0330; $30.

  • Who Cares if Katie Survives?

    I confess to having paid very little attention to Katie Couric. Maybe it really is because I am at heart a digusting, unrepentant misogynist. Or maybe — just maybe — I like a certain gravity of bona fides in my network news readers. Knowing a bit about CBS president, Les Moonves, from having observed his steady climb through CBS entertainment to his current lofty perch as CEO of CBS, the courtship of Katie and her investiture in Dan Rather’s chair is just so perfectly in keeping with the Moonves ethos.

    Moonves is an extraordinarily facile corporate player, a former actor with a normally shrewd ear for consumer trends and audience tastes … at least in entertainment. In the aftermath of the Rather implosion, a debacle fueled by a combination of overreaching and Swift Boating, Moonves calculated that America would accept a performer instead of another globe-trotting warhorse easily tarred as a sympathizer of one sort or another.

    It appears Moonves was wrong. According to Gail Shister’s story, now heatedly and personally disputed by CBS top dogs Sean McManus and Rick Kaplan, Couric already has one leg swinging over the abyss — at the bottom of which is an “upgraded” reassignment to “48 Hours Mysteries” or CBS’s “The Early Show”. (Wait … is that mongrel still on? Let me check. … OK. Yes.)

    If Shister’s telling can be trusted — and I’ll trust her before I trust Couric’s protecting suits — Couric has not played well with CBS’s warhorses, which, I am not too modest to say, is exactly what I predicted would happen.

    Within every network news division there still exists a proud and very wary core of veterans. Primaery among these are reporters who have actually covered this planet’s myriad horrors in person, as opposed to interviewing the survivors on a Manhattan couch two weeks later. THAT crowd was always going to be Couric’s biggest challenge. The Bob Schieffers, “Baghdad Bob” Simons, etc. are wily old bulls with, dare I say, every right to have a hard-on for cutie-pie pretenders.

    Their animus likely worsens when the cutie-pie isn’t just popping up in field reports on the evening news, but anchoring the damn thing, and representing all of them at three or four times the money they’re making … simultaneous with Moonves and McManus slicing out overseas bureaus, travel budgets and generally de-contenting the brand they’ve worked for decades to imbue with Big “J” journalistic honor.

    The inside-baseball irony here is that Shister, who was recently “reassigned” from the regular, tough and very distinctive media reporting she has done for 20-plus years to “TV trend features” by her new bosses at the Philadelphia Inquirer, (which went from Knight-Ridder ownership, to McClatchy, to a very Star Tribune-like private investor group called Philadelphia Media Holdings), is fighting essentially the same battle as the old CBS warhorses … who appear to be her sources for her Couric story.

    The same dumbing down that sees marketplace wisdom in yanking someone like Shister away from reporting and interpreting news among America’s media elites to friggin’ “trend” stories on, I don’t know what, Sanjaya’s second act, is eroding the value of both newspapers and TV news. And by “value” we mean value to existing, regular consumers, not value to a presumptive “young adult” audience that doesn’t give a damn about anything other than who Simon Cowell sneers at next, or who only recognizes Katie Couric from all the free publicity she’s gotten from the supermarket tabloids.

    Oh, don’t get me started.

    But let me suggest to CBS, Moonves and McManus that if they still want to play a glamour card on the evening news anchor desk, but next time with some actual street-level, smoke-and-cordite reporting crede, they could do worse than try out Lara Logan.

    I’d pay more attention.