Get a jump on a weekend of great theater, as the winter season picks back up. (There’s TONS of great theater going on this month and on through April, far as I know.) Best bet for tonight? Opening night of Theatre Latte Da‘s production of Susannah, the famous American, Appalachian-inspired opera that’s based on the biblical story of Susannah and the mean, nasty Elders.
Year: 2007
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Oh, Y from Honolulu
More on the Sam Osterhout ‘n Geoff Herbach show: If you haven’t yet seen the Lit 6 Project in action, there’s a chance tonight when the troupe’s lead funnymen riff a two-man show on the rotten weeks they’re having. It’s free. It’s at the Mill City Cafe–not to be confused with the Mill City Museum. And if last weekend’s Electric Arc show was any indication, these fellows aren’t in the slump their characters claim to be. That was one helluva funny show, even boyfriend liked it! My only regret is not having my new digital camera along, so that I could capture the increasingly diverse demographics of the Electric Arc fan set. Looks like they’ll have to cool it on the geriatric jokes.
O.K., so that’s not the dirt I had promised to dish, but Sam ‘n Geoff aren’t the only ones on a downswing.
On a brighter note, my newest coworker, Jon Lurie, just sent this fabulous e-greeting, comprised entirely of satellite shots of letter-shaped buildings. Oh, Y from Honolulu / How I lingered upon thee.
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McWow
Maybe it’s because they’re just too McSkinny in Japan.
Maybe it’s because they have a history of readily accepting improbable, huge monsters.
Maybe it’s because they love restaurants with a toilet theme.Whatever it is, Japan is getting the Mega Mac.
If that freaks you, wait until you find out what the hell Grimace actually is.
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Back Door Lovin'
Among those of us who experienced what might be called a “difficult” relationship with mainstream newspapering, one of the jokes about newspapers’ numbing institutional voice was that that voice must never, ever risk offending the kind of fine and decent ladies you find serving meatballs and lefse at a Lutheran church dinner. Such ladies were the acid test for hyper-cautious, risk-averse newspapering, for what flew and what didn’t. If you could imagine the meatball ladies being shocked, the story or phrasing got the “delete” button.
Well, here’s a dark secret. The average second and third tier daily newspaper newsroom was/is full of incipient Lutheran meatball ladies (and men), people who have assigned themselves the task of rigorously assessing the naughtiness quotient of topics and wording. If you’re a reporter, good luck getting every day, garden variety, workplace-tested sexual vernacular past that crowd.
So imagine my amazement, (and sophomoric amusement), when I leafed through the latest edition of Vita.Mn, the Star Tribune’s latest weekly vehicle for, like, rollin’ with the dudes. There was “Alexis on the Sexes”, the freebie’s sex columnist, dispensing sage counsel and I dare say, encouragement to couples interested in exploring the exotic delights of anal sex.
Well … from my experience with daily newspapering, I can assure you that decent women and certainly no men in the newsroom would dare mention such a concept above a furtive whisper, the latter out of fear of a call from HR. (A bit of an exaggeration there. In certain “safe zones”, such topics were discussed, sometimes ad nauseam).
Vita.Mn of course isn’t a mainstream daily, is it? But unlike the various free weeklies that have come and gone around town this one IS owned and operated and edited by the Star Tribune, where encouraging readers to try anal sex is about as remote a concept as suggesting some Hadassah lady set herself on fire on the Guthrie thrust stage.
I called Tim Campbell, the droll fellow who edits Vita.Mn AND the Strib’s A&E section. I asked about the reaction to the column. “About what you’d expect,” he said. Not much from the public, really. The target audience of precocious teens, college kids, twenty-somethings and pervy geezers took it all in stride, and in fact, said Campbell, they respond far more to fashion stories than “Alexis on the Sexes”. (The presumption being, I guess, that all the aforementioned, with the exception of the pathetic pervy geezers, long ago included anal sex as a regular part of their sexual regimen and therefore are really far more concerned with accessory trends.)
Campbell said the intra-newsroom chatter about the column was also fairly predictable, with the usual guardians of righteous propriety, (“a-choomeatball …”), expressing horror and declaring … again … the great and grand institution of the Star Tribune was poised, verily, on the precipice of a terrible slippery slope. If back door lovin’ was now appropriate conversation within their sacred, Big “J” journalistic halls, (and mine you, without a breath of moral condemnation!), why every facet of truth, fairness and accuracy, will soon be dragged into disrepute.
As I say, attempts by mainstream newspapers to reach those much-coveted “younger readers” are often laughable. (I mean look at WHO is pretending to be hip!). Such attempts are doomed until Big “J” papers figure out a way to interact with that crowd on … the crowd’s terms … not the terms of the paper’s risk averse, (and often extraordinarily nerdy), meatball ladies/men-in-training. If that means a sex column, so be it. But don’t — and Campbell has not — then censor the sex columnist.
Frankly, I suspect today’s kids have access to so much sexual information — and sexual bullshit — they hardly demand it from an actual paper newspaper. But, if you’re the big, lumbering corporate publisher trying to reach kids, talking sex comes with the territory, which means you’ve got to demonstrate a semblance of crede. As in tossing in a column on tips and tricks for back door lovin’ with an attitude of nonchalance.
Somehow that led me to ask Campbell if Claude Peck and Rick Nelson’s
very amusing, very gay Sunday “conversation” column, “Withering Glance”, might be a good fit for Vita.Mn? You know, maybe in an expanded, unfettered sort of form?Campbell thought a moment, conceded that when Peck and Nelson get into vivisecting fashion disasters Vita.Mn’s audience would probably connect, but then, on second thought, no. “I think they’re probably just too old.”
Brutal. And just when you were thinking every gay guy was forever hip. Instead … Peck and Nelson consigned to a wing of the same musty floor as other geezers and meatball ladies, the hetero ones who woo-hooed and scowled at the mere mention of back door love.
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Filling in the Blanks
There’s nuthin’ much going on this evening, and I wouldn’t want to lead you astray. But check back tomorrow for more information about the free Herbach n’ Osterhout show.
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Robert Drinan
Robert Drinan was a Jesuit priest and law professor at Georgetown who served in Congress during the seventies and was the first member of Congress to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. He died today.
He argued that Nixon should be impeached for the secret bombing of Cambodia, not for the secret break in to the Watergate offices of the Democratic Party.
In 1998, he testified at the Clinton impeachment hearings and gave then judiciary chairman Henry Hyde both a law and a morality lesson. I couldn’t find the exact quotes on line, but I remember one exchange that went something like this: Drinan told Hyde that he would be judged, too, for what he did regarding impeachment. Hyde sensed Drinan wasn’t talking about politics and shot back, “Do you mean God will judge me.” Drinan said, pointing his finger, “That’s exactly what I mean.”
A Jesuit priest and one of the country’s most respected constituional lawyers–Hyde was out of his depth.
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Shiver
Two things of note this cold, Monday evening: One, another discussion about the making of The Grapes of Wrath, this one moderated by Star Tribune book editor, Sally Williams; two, Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts (not to be confused with Minnesota’s very own M.W.–this is a different fella), which plays the Dakota.
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Three Dozen
Today is my birthday.
Looking back, the past year held various cooking victories: the ice cream follies of the summer (basil/lemon, chocolate/zinfandel, strawberry/balsamic, Guiness, sake/cucumber sorbet)…a few good looking loaves of ciabatta, and one really ugly but tasty boule … the perfect Stephanie pizza (pesto, prosciutto, arugula, and egg cracked on top) … a five layer cake that looked exactly like a giant Crabby Patty … oh there must be more.
There have been some failures as well, like Thanksgiving dinner. I never told you about that? Huh.
But tonight nobody has to cook, and everybody has been asking where I want to spend my birthday dinner.
There are so many great options. I’d love a quiet evening at Restaurant Alma, so simply elegant. And if I hadn’t had sushi on Friday, I would be parked at BaGu Sushi, my new raw fish favorite. We could jazz it up and go to The Oceanaire, because three dozen oysters for three dozen years would seem quite appropriate to me. If it were just me, I’d snag a seat at the 112 Eatery bar and selfishly order for three.
But it’s not just me. It is the six-pack that comprises my family and it is a Monday and it is freakin’ cold outside (as it always is). So it may not be fancy, or cutting edge, but we are heading to the LT tonight, where a worthy and luscious double California cheeseburger will grace my little paper plate. Topped off with softy fries and 1919 Rootbeer from the tap, this soul satisfying meal will happily kick-off the next 364.
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Elif Shafak CANCELLED
PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT CANCELLED.
“If there is a thief in a novel,” said Elif Shafak recently, “it doesn’t make the novelist a thief.” Nevertheless, the Turkish novelist faced three years in prison for the purported crime of “insulting Turkishness” by having an Armenian character in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul refer to Turks as “butchers.” What’s more, Shafak was forced to watch her televised trial from the hospital bed where she had just given birth to her first child. Though she was acquitted, the case shed light on the culture clash within Turkish society. Shafak herself pointed to “those who want an open and democratic society” on one side, and, on the other, “those who speak the language of fear … [who are] so aggressive that they manage to manipulate the political agenda and give the country a black eye.” Sound familiar? 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6174; www.friendsofmpl.org -
The End of the High Road
Even casual strollers of downtown St. Paul will most likely notice the majestic High Bridge, just west of the business district. Towering above the other bridges of the city’s scenic Mississippi River valley and summiting at 160 feet above the Big Muddy, the High Bridge carries Smith Avenue from the bustling West Seventh Street commercial strip to … where, exactly?
Even for many St. Paul natives, this can be a tough question. To the naked eye, Smith Avenue crosses the river to the high bluffs on the city’s West Side, and seems to disappear up a steep hill into a leafy residential area known as Cherokee Park. But if you follow the Avenue to the top of that incline, you reach Annapolis Street eleven blocks later, the dividing line between St. Paul and the suburb of West St. Paul. While some West Side merchants hope Smith will become the next Grand Avenue, plenty of locals hope that it doesn’t. Unlike its bigger-scale cousin, which has been colonized by chain stores, Smith Avenue still boasts that rare hip-yet-unpretentious vibe. This is still essentially a working-class neighborhood full of pre-war, single-family homes with modest yards, so pick-up trucks outnumber SUVs on the streets, and neckties are few and far between. Here, the West Side’s large Latino population mingles easily with the hipsters and elderly white folk who live nearby.
The Annapolis intersection is anchored by several retail businesses. Thanks to two of them—the Old Man River Cafe and Caspers’ Cherokee Sirloin Room—it’s possible to walk down Smith and smell roasting coffee and sizzling steaks all at once. The coffee shop, owned by a pair of former journalists, occupies an old brick building that for seventy years was a pharmacy. Today, it serves not only as an outlet for its own line of java, but as a hub for the neighborhood’s social and political life, attracting a cross-section of local residents, Smith Avenue commuters, and West Side political junkies and activists.
Across the street at the Sirloin Room—an excellent example of a family-owned institution that stuck around long enough to circle back into relevance—a dark, woody bar captures that feel of the comfy neighborhood joint, but with a hint of edge, especially on weekends. The place has been there since 1970, longer if you count the twenty-some years it was the Cherokee Tavern, before the Casper family bought it.
West St. Paul Antiques is the corner’s cultural attraction. While it has a fine collection of antiques for purchase, it’s also fascinating as a museum. In its basement is perhaps the most overwhelming collection of St. Paul Winter Carnival memorabilia ever assembled in one place. Where else could you find the marching band uniforms of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s 1948 Torchlight Parade Drill Team?
Farther down Smith toward Dodd Road, a few more small shops build on the arts-and-crafts theme of the corner. The Lisan Gallery of Art and Design shows mostly local artists such as June Young and Jodi Hills but is also providing a venue for artists from the Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, scene that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Next door at Fine Restorations, woodworking artisan Vanya Hoeffding does complicated repair jobs on treasured antique furniture while Classic Upholstery handles the more rank-and-file cases. Throw in a pair of picture framing shops, and you have a reminder of what it was to walk Grand Avenue in the 1970s.