The Rake Magazine

Year: 2007

  • Butch Cassidy Jumps into the Vat

    Back in October, I wrote about a downright decent jug wine from Three Thieves, which I bought more for the John Wayne-ness of the design and the silver screwcap than the substance inside.

    Today, it was announced that Newman’s Own, the food company-cum-charity owned by Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, is adding wine to its list of wares. And their partner in this venture is Rebel Wine Co., the parent of Three Thieves and brother or sister (or distant cousin) to the more pedestrian Sutter Home.

    Newman’s Own already produces everything from bottled salad dressing to organic fig cookies to healthier-than-thou pet food. And its founders appear to exert a power second only to Oprah’s. Most winemakers wait for years to produce their first vintage. But Newman’s Own will release its first wines — a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon, both from California — in December. Each will retail for approximately $16 a bottle, making Butch Cassidy’s jug of hooch roughly 40 percent more expensive than Three Thieves.

    I like the idea behind Newman’s Own. It was founded by Newman and his friend A.E. Hotchner, the author of King of the Hill, in 1982. It’s a for-profit corporation that gives 100 percent of its net (after taxes and operating costs) to educational and charitable organizations, including Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a summer program for seriously ill children in Connecticut. The company’s spot-on tagline: Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good.

    I’m amused by the baldly kitschy, folksy way they market their products, with Paul and Joanne dressed up like the couple from American Gothic on many of the labels. Then there’s Paul in a straw hat and bowtie, Paul in a sombrero, Paul like Julius Caesar with a tomato smashed on top of his head.

    But about their products I am, frankly, torn. There’s no doubt in my mind they’re more expensive (by 10-30%) than foodstuffs of similar quality. Yet, this is a company that’s given away $200 million; that premium clearly is going to good use. What’s more, I’ve never seen a food company so forthcoming with information: go on the Newman’s Own website and you can find detailed ingredient and nutrition data on every single thing they sell.

    It remains to be seen whether the Newman’s Own cachet is enough to put a $16 price tag on what likely will be a garden-variety California Chardonnay. With really solid French, South American, Spanish, and Italian wines selling for under $12 a bottle, it will be a tough leap for me to make. I might prefer to drink a white Rhone wine and make my own charitable donations.

  • An Endless River of Potatoes

    My first night in that shitty motel room in a tiny Wyoming town I was exhausted and wiped out on malt liquor and I slept in my clothes on top of the bedspread. All night I dreamt of potatoes on a conveyor belt, an endless river of potatoes.

    I’d driven straight through, twenty hours, to claim my mother’s body from the Wyoming Women’s Prison in Lusk. She’d been there for twelve years, after being convicted of paying a couple of greaseballs to whack my stepfather. My mother had worked with the two punks at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and she’d paid them 800 bucks to do a job that they’d botched badly.

    I’m not entirely clear on how she ended up in Wyoming in the first place, but my mother had already done a previous, short stint at Lusk, this for embezzling money from the towing company she was working for in Sheridan.

    I had learned from her infrequent letters that she was battling breast cancer, but I never knew quite what to believe when it came to my mother, and, despite her increasingly pitiful pleas, I hadn’t been out to visit her.

    My father had been killed at the tail end of the war in Vietnam, and he was buried back in his old hometown in Wisconsin, alongside his parents and one of his brothers. I had no idea what I was going to do with my mother’s body, but I knew there wasn’t much I could afford, including, I felt certain, shipping her to Wisconsin to be buried next to my dad.

    I met a chain-smoking old reverend out at the prison. He was hunch-backed and had faded tattoos up and down both his arms, all the way to the wrists. His white collar was filthy with grease, and the shoulders of his black shirt were so heavily dusted with dandruff that it looked like he’d been doused with baby powder.

    The reverend didn’t have a whole lot of good advice for me, but he wanted me to know that my mother had been "redeemed." I didn’t ask for elaboration, but I got some anyway. She had turned her life around in prison, he told me, and had developed a deep, personal relationship with Christ. I heard a good deal more about this business, and the upshot was that she’d purportedly been at peace with herself when she died.

    I guess I was happy enough to hear that. Good for her, I thought. It didn’t, though, much help me with my own present dilemma. I made a few inquiries and realized pretty quickly that a coffin and burial were out of the question. I made arrangements to have her cremated in Lusk.

     

    It was approaching dusk when I went downtown to pick up my mother’s ashes, and afterwards, as I walked back up the street to my car, a kid in a devil mask burst from a bush, shook a plastic pitchfork in my face, and dashed back off down the sidewalk. It was, I just then realized, Halloween.

    I decided not to wait around another night, and gassed up the car and got back on the highway. At some point I stopped and got a motel room along the road, and I took the box with my mother’s ashes into the room with me and set them next to the television. It creeped me out having them there, though, and because I was having a hard time sleeping I finally hauled them back out to the car at three o’clock in the morning.

    The next day I realized that I didn’t want the ashes sitting there in the car with me all the way back across the country. They were in a plain cardboard box, and there was just something about it that bothered and distracted me. It also didn’t seem right to just shove them in the trunk.

    At some point I pulled off at a primitive rest stop that was situated right on a fast moving river, and I hauled the ashes down to the shore, tore open the box, and removed the twist tie from the plastic bag. I crept out into the river a bit on some rocks and turned the box upside down. It was sort of nice at first; a little cloud hung in the air for a moment, drifted a bit on the wind, and then settled on the surface of the water and was carried away. The last batch, though, was sort of clumped together, and I had to thump the bottom of the box to dislodge the rest of the contents. A heavy clod of the stuff finally tumbled from the box, hit the water with a splash, and promptly sank like a stone.

    The whole thing seemed sort of cold and pathetic, so I closed my eyes, tossed a quarter in near where my mother had entered the river, and wished her peace.

  • The Vengeful Virgin

    “Low-cut gowns.” That’s all boyfriend had to read (in the ad copy) before agreeing to accompany me to RetroRama, the Minnesota Historical Society’s celebration of ’50s pulp. Does Minnesota have a particular connection to pulp, other than the impressive collection of titles now residing in the dusty basements of a few area bookstores? I guess we’ll
    soon find out. As for me, I’ve found inspiration in a few of Gil Brewer’s
    titles: Satan Is a Woman, Backwoods Tease, Nude on Thin Ice, and, of course, The Vengeful Virgin. Not to be a dead giveaway, but I’ll be there with my trusty sidekick, monsieur Elph, so as to keep all eyes on the glorious cleavage—plus, with any luck, a few dozen sweater girls, ruby-red lipstick, sparkling jewels, and at least one stiletto through some sucker’s heart. The fellas are supposed to wear fedoras and blah blah blah … There’ll also be dancing and a performance by the Lit 6 Project. For tips on what to wear, visit the Historical Society’s handy, little tutorial (halfway down the page).

    p.s. My good friend Adam Demers made the ad above—with the help of the artist Thomas Allen, but of course.

     

  • BREAKING NEWS [UPDATED]: Scott Libin Named WCCO-TV News Director

    As we projected, WCCO-TV announced Scott Libin as its new news director to staff this afternoon. Libin, former news director at KSTP-TV, comes back to the Twin Cities from his job as managing editor for on-ine content at the Poynter Institute, the journalistic think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida.

    Libin replaces Jeff Kiernan, who left the station in September for WBZ-TV in Boston. That leaves only Libin’s former employer KSTP with a news director slot to fill. (Prevailing belief there is that GM Rob Hubbard will hire from within this time.)

    Lambert spoke with Libin from his Poynter office this afternoon and filed the following:

     Scott made a point of saying all the right things. Like how, "Even when I was at KSTP I greatly admired the work they were doing at WCCO." (He’s never been accused of not having a smooth, political touch.)

    But the current situation has two lines of thinking. One is that the mini-franchises the station has built with unique segments like "Reality Check", "In the Know" and "Good Question" are heading Ch. 4 into an irresistible direction for more a feature-ish style of news product, something the new guy — Libin — would be expected to build upon.

    The other is that these same mini-franchises have become a bit of a velvet trap (only one, "Reality Check", has much of a news punch), and that attention to tougher news coverage has slackened as time and resources migrated their way. Point being that the new guy — Libin — would have to do something about that.

    So, what is it? Ying or yang?

    "I don’t know," was Libin’s response. "And frankly, I think it’d be pretty foolish of me to plant my flag on anything before I’m in the building. But listen, my impression of ‘CCO has always been that they do a very credible, very solid job of covering the news of the day and breaking news, and that while it isn’t exactly rocket science to want to build on what is working, I don’t know that the way you do that, necessarily, is by multiplying the exact same elements."

    One upside to WCCO comes as a consequence of Libin’s somewhat professorial personality. As much as he loves to talk the nuts, bolts and theory of journalism, he does actually listen. (And as Don Shelby’s boss he’ll have to learn to listen a lot. … oh settle down, that’s a joke.) As WCCO knows from fairly recent memory, (the crowd that preceded Kiernan), fatal symptoms of bad managers include those who arrive with no curiosity about the staff”s institutional memory, no apparent curiosity in what anyone else thinks might be a good next move and a wholly unearned, "New Sheriff in Town" attitude.

    "Yeah," said Libin, "I’m not really one of those characters who comes in and marks his territory as a first order of business. I’ll take some time to talk to people, and see what I can learn." (He says he’s taking a flight up Sunday and plans on schmoozing the troops most of Monday.)

    Another facet in Libin’s favor over the 24 others who interviewed for the job might have been the Poynter factor, in the context of the very imminent convergence of the Internet and TV and the transition to all-digital transmission on February 17, 2009. Given the average four to five year life cycle of most news directors, both these epochal events in the history of media will likely occur on his watch at ‘CCO. And down at Poynter, convergence and transition are the kinds of topics they sprinkle on their Froot Loops for breakfast.

    Does Libin have any deep thoughts he’d like to share before starting work here, Dec. 3?

    "Well," he says, "I wouldn’t bet on any news organization that isn’t dealing with those issues on a daily basis. But overall, after hearing that newspapers are dead, that the book is dead and that TV is dead, I still think there’s plenty of life in the TV beast. I’m looking forward to this."

    Libin will be gratified to know that the ‘CCO newsroom broke into applause when his name was announced this afternoon.

     

    Here’s the official WCCO press release:

    Scott Libin has been named News Director of WCCO-TV, it was announced today by Susan Adams Loyd, WCCO-TV Vice President and General Manager. Libin, who is currently managing editor of Poynter Online and a faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., will oversee the station’s day-to-day news operation beginning Dec. 3.

    "Scott Libin is a highly regarded news executive," said Loyd. "Colleagues and competitors tip their hat to his leadership abilities and eloquence. He has many qualities that make him the perfect fit for this position, particularly his journalistic integrity, along with strong ties to the Twin Cities. We are thrilled to welcome Scott to the WCCO family."

    "I’ve admired WCCO for so many years," said Libin. "It’s a truly exceptional television station recognized and respected by journalists across the country. I’m honored by the opportunity to be a part of it, and I can hardly wait to get started. This would be an extraordinary job for any news director. But beyond that, my wife and I are very excited about getting back to the Twin Cities, to family and friends, and to be a part of a community we really love."

    At Poynter, Libin is responsible for daily online coverage and edit content for the country’s No. 1 Web site serving journalists. He also leads seminars for journalists. This was Libin’s second time working for Poynter. From 1995 to 1998, he taught management, producing, reporting and ethics there.

    Libin is known locally as he was the News Director for KSTP-TV in St. Paul from 1998 to 2003. He was responsible for producing eight hours of daily news for the market’s first duopoly (KSTP and KSTC) and was leading the charge when KSTP won the NPPA Station of the Year award twice and the regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence, Best Newscast and Spot News Coverage. Prior to that, Libin was Vice President of News at WGHP-TV in Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem, N.C. He was managing editor, weekend anchor and senior reporter for this station from 1986 to 1991. Before getting into television, Libin was a Congressional Press Secretary for the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

    Libin graduated with honors from the University of Richmond, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and journalism. He earned his Master of Arts in journalism and public affairs from American University. His wife, Michelle, grew up in Bloomington and has family across the Twin Cities.

    WCCO-TV is part of the CBS Television Station Division, a division of CBS Corporation.

     

     

  • Prominent Local Attorney Wins "Golden Wingnut" Award!

    Not being much of a fan of show biz and media award shows –
    I mean, what explains WCCO’s “Good Question” guy beating out Pat Kessler for “Best
    Political Reporting” or whatever it was called at this year’s local Emmys? – I usually
    just ignore the latest Winner du Jour.

    Except … when the news gets as good as the news this morning.

    I mean
    we here at The Slaughter are nothing if not (also) local-local, hyper-local,
    and when a prominent local attorney walks away with the championship in a
    national media competition we have an obligation – to you – to report the good
    news.

    I am a fan of Kevin Drum, who blogs as “The Political Animal”
    for The Washington Monthly, and I admit that I have both followed avidly and
    voted in his contest for the “Golden Wingnut Awards”, his first annual
    competition to honor the most unhinged, delusional, delirious, no-relation-to-anything-on-this-planet
    nut-baggery posted in all the blogs in all the world … which I think is saying
    something. Furthermore, this year’s award is uniquely prestigious by virtue of being the 1st Annual competition, meaning it includes every astoundingly lunatic, over-the-top thing ever written in the history of the Internet up until this year.

    Now do you appreciate the depth of this competition?

    But enough with the suspense. Ladies and gentlemen a huge round
    of applause for Minneapolis
    attorney, John Hinderaker, a.k.a. “Hind Rocket”, the sharpest shiv at Powerlineblog.com,
    Time magazine’s 2004 “Blog of the Year” for his July 2005 posting titled, “Stroke
    of Genius?” The guy smoked serious wingers like — the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin and Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds — by 2-to-1!

    The breathless opening to Hinderaker’s Wingnut Hall of Fame post:

    A Stroke of Genius?

    It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision
    and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like
    a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one
    masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

     

    Now that is what I call separating yourself from the herd.

    Mr. Hinderaker is notable for being both a highly influential far right-wing
    blogger, (the giddy intellectual chops on display in the above quote clearly demonstrate his
    appeal to the echo chamber crowd), and, historically, a huge source of concern
    to the upper managers of the Star Tribune, at least under the leadership of
    Anders Gyllenhaal.

    Powerline’s persistent, high national-profile ridiculing of the paper’s
    alleged “liberal bias” and “political correctness” was – despite Gyllenhaal’s
    denials – a key motivating factor in the ascension of Katherine Kersten from
    Op-Ed think tank contributor to metro columnist. Moreover Powerline’s call-and-shout
    alliance/mentorship with Kersten continues to make them important, albeit un-credited
    contributors to the paper’s new, uh, “balanced” tone.

    Anyway, nice going, John. You’re a credit to the local culture. We couldn’t
    be more proud.

    Here is a complete list of all the other contenders in Drum’s contest, none of whom, as I say, really
    came close to topping Hinderaker for sheer, I-can-no-longer-feel-my-body hyperbole.

  • Cookery Books: Next Gen

    I don’t really want to think about Christmas yet, I shun any holiday movies/songs until after Thanksgiving. I even direct my 4 year old to avert his gaze from the shiny shiny currently draped all over Target.

    And yet, I have to begin thinking of what I’m going to send as my "holiday card" because it’s rarely just a holiday card. I used to send mock-newsletters that detailed every sniffle and horrible disease we had suffered over the year, but that grew boring. Two years ago I sent a family DVD (complete with a pack of microwave popcorn) and that was a stitch. Last year I did nothing, I bailed completely.

    So this year I’m sending everyone a collection of the family’s favorite recipes, complete with photos and snarky comments, natch. I’m thinking of calling it The Hot 12, and I just have to figure out the media: CD, recipe cards, bound book, printed on magnet paper…I’m not sure yet.

    But that’s the beauty of the cookbook, it’s evolving along with the way we cook. My shelf of cookbooks, which I peruse regularly, is stacked with everything from glossy chef diatribes to crumbly 1928 vintage antique store finds. I have a file on the Epicurious site that is crammed with hundreds of favorites, and a collection of hand scrabbled notecards housed stylishly in my Russel + Hazel organizer. I use them all, I haven’t given up one way for another, different meals and different situations call for different methods.

    And you don’t have to be a food writer to compile your own cookbook. Epicurious has launched TasteBook, with which you download your favorite recipes from the site into a custom book they’ll create for you.

    Many uber-creative cooks have been making use of Blurb to realize their dream of authorship. Download the software for free and you can design your own pages in input your own recipes.

    If anyone knows about the future of food and cooking, it’s got to be Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago. He’s a big name with those who fancy molecular gastronomy and deconstructionism. He’s a man of atomized shrimp and caramel bubbles, of course he wouldn’t do a cookbook like anyone else. His deal with Ten Speed Press includes a new paradigm for royalties and a web-based addendum complete with video demos and further instruction.

    Maybe I’ll try to pull that off next year …

  • El Meson and Cafe Ena get Happy – New Taqueria Planned

    El Meson, at 35th and Lyndale Ave. S., and its sister restaurant, Cafe Ena  at 46th and Grand, have both started offering happy hours. The details are a little different: El Meson is Sunday to Thursday 4-6, while Cafe Ena’s is Sunday to Friday 3-5. but the basic deal is the same: glasses of wine for $3, sangria for $4 and Mexican beers for $2.50, plus reduced prices on starters. It’s a chance to sample some of the new tapas on El Meson’s menu, like the patatas, chorizo, potatoes, onions and peppers in a sherry glaze, $4 (regularly $7.95). Chef Hector Ruiz has also added half a dozen new entrees to the menu, ranging from a chicken breast with tomato-asparagus-saffron risotto to Serrano-ham wrapped scallops with Manchego-caper mashed potatoes in a lemon butter sauce. 

    Ruiz and his wife/partner, Erin Ungerman plan to open a taqueria, Los Indios,at 910 W. Lake Street sometime next spring. Ruiz says he’ll serve the kind of food he grew up on in Axochiapan, Morelos, with recipes from his mother, Victorina Ruiz. The menu doesn’t really sound very different from what’s available at other local taquerias: tacos, tortas, chicken adobo, pork in tomatillo sauce, bistek encebollado, but it’s a safe bet that Ruiz, who trained at Brown Institute’s Cordon Bleu program, and interned with Alain Senderens in Paris, will add a few creative twists to those classics. 

  • The Three Pointer: Sick and Twisted

    Regular Season Game #3, Home Game # 2: Orlando 111, Minnesota 100

    1. Not Enough Talent

    The title of this trey is more than a tad melodramatic for what in many respects was the most mundane of the Wolves’ three losses thus far this season. "Sick" refers to the flu bug that made Theo Ratliff a game time scratch; "twisted" is what happened to Rashad McCants’ ankle late in the first quarter, sending him to the sidelines for the rest of the game.

    Minus their best defender and most formidable counter to Orlando’s monster wunderkind Dwight Howard, then losing their principal perimeter scorer after he’d sunk all four of his shots in 10:41 of play and actually seemed to be playing in the flow of the offense, preordained defeat this evening. Because even under the best of circumstances the Wolves don’t have enough talent to beat most opponents on skill alone.

    What happens instead is that players take on tasks and roles that are slightly beyond their ken. Take Greg Buckner for example. He’s a consummate pro, a smart guy with a good work ethic and a fairly solid, well rounded game; a reliable 7th or 8th man on a playoff team. But Theo’s sickness lands Buckner in tonight’s starting lineup as Al Jefferson gets bumped from power forward to center to replace Theo against Howard; Ryan Gomes moves from small forward to power forward to guard Rashard Lewis, and Buckner slots in for Gomes. Then McCants’s ankle tweak adds more playing time for Buckner, who ultimately logs 39:17 on the court. His final numbers look good: 18 points (on 7-13 FG), three rebounds and three assists.

    But, with no disrespect intended toward Buckner, who has already exceeded my expectations, no team makes the playoffs having him average 13 shots (second most tonight behind Al Jefferson’s 20) and nearly forty minutes played per game (a team high). He is a spine-stiffening defensive specialist, a role player called upon for toughness and stability for significant but limited doses that ideally add up to about 15-25 minutes per contest.

    Inconsistency is another byproduct of players assuming roles and burdens that are slightly larger than their perfect fit. Two of the most inept Timberwolves during the club’s first pair of losses–Marko Jaric and Corey Brewer–had by far their best games of the season. I’ll be shocked if Jaric puts up another 10 assist/1 turnover game the rest of his days in a Wolves uniform, and if Brewer nails a pair of contested three-pointers and pulls down as many as six rebounds in the same game again between now and the end of the calendar year, it will be a pleasant surprise. Meanwhile, Ryan Gomes and Bassy Telfair had by far their wrost games of the season thus far, further complicating the team’s player rotations and substitution patterms when everyone on the roster is relatively healthy. For Gomes, it evaporated some of his aura as Mr. Consistency. For Telfair it reignites questions about his viability in this league–he had an egregious, killer turnover with a minute to go and the Wolves down 6, and had another tough night shooting (1-5 FG). On a more talented and experienced ballclub, the roles are more clearly defined and players have the luxury of growing into (otherwise known as earning) them; or they get a longer grace period before they’re at risk of losing them.

     

    2. Wittman Improved

    The litany of reasons why Coach Randy Wittman didn’t have a good year last season go beyond his terrible 12-30 record (after his fired predecessor went 20-20) and have been amply discussed on this site. Promises were made by the Wolves braintrust that we’d see an improved Wittman (and thus a better ballclub) once he had the team under his control right from training camp. Yes, Witt essentially had nowhere to go but up, but there are tangible signs of a more assured and effective performance this year. For three straight games the Wolves have jumped out to large first quarter leads, for example, indicating that Wittman has his team prepared to play at the opening tip.

    The coach’s postgame press briefing offered other hopeful signs. Although the Wolves were once again on the short end of a free throw disparity, 44-25, Wittman appropriately blamed his team for not penetrating to the hoop and drawing fouls on offense, and too often trying for the steal or the big play instead sticking to fundamental, foot-moving defense at the other end of the floor. He pointedly noted that Orlando was in the penalty with eight minutes to play in the final period.

    When he subbed in Buckner and Jefferson for Gomes and Smith with 10:44 to play in that stanza and the Wolves down 14, 76-90, I thought: He is going with veterans (Jaric, Antoine Walker and Corey Brewer were also on the floor), he must really want this game. But as Wittman explained after the game, it went beyond experience. "We tried to get the floor spread with Antoine [going small at the power forward], create plays; not settle for jump shots but get to the line," he says. The result was a 14-2 run that put the Wolves back in the game.

     

    3.Hit and Run

    Wittman was tough on Al Jefferson too, claiming that Jefferson was being too indecisive and not immediately aggressive the first three quarters. But I saw the "indecisive" up-fakes, a Jeff trademark fans already can embrace, as a game-long weapon in his arsenal. Any time your big man can ring up 25 points (11-20 FG) and 10 rebounds in 35:11 against a highly skilled intimidator like Dwight Howard, it is a very good night’s work–especially sans McCants for three quarters.

    On the flipside, this was by far the Wolves’ worst defensive effort thus far this season. Playing without starting point guard Jameer Nelson, the Magic shot 56 percent from the field (18-32) and compiled a 13/2 assist to turnover ratio in the second and third quarters, a testimonial to the lack of defensive pressure provided by the Wolves. This was in sharp contrast to the 4/5 A/TO the Magic posted in the first period. I think McCants’s injury played a role in that too.

    Rashad Lewis temporarily silenced his many naysayers and earned a piece of that fat contract he signed during the off-season by canning three tough treys in two minutes of crunchtime, expanding Orlando’s lead from 92-90 to 101-95 with less than four minutes to play.

  • Mmmm… Say "Yes"

    WINE & DINE
    The Rake’s World Flavors Tour Continues

    Roasted zucchini, red pepper and onion tapanade with a
    tangerine-swirled Chardonnay/Colombard blend. A light salad in between.
    Gruyere fondue with apples and a medium-bodied Rhone. Bittersweet
    Callebaut chocolate fondue with an array of colorful companions, not the
    least of which is a Rosenblum Desiree chocolate Zinfandel port. Mouth
    watering yet? Bathe yourself in decadence tonight at our World Flavors Tour.
    Enjoy a multiple-course cheese and chocolate fondue tasting menu with
    our favorite wine pairings at The Times Bar & Cafe. Space is
    limited, and reservations are required, so secure your spot.

    7-9 p.m., The Times Bar & Cafe, 201 E. Hennepin Ave., Northeast Minneapolis; 612-617-8098; $40.


    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    Alex Ross with the Turtle Island String Quartet

    The New Yorker is forgiven the recent transgressions of its pop-music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, because it has a superb music critic in Alex Ross.
    With descriptive, often sonorific prose, Ross possesses the rare
    ability to make his classical music criticism sing. Fans will be
    delighted to know that he just wrote a book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
    Tonight, he discusses that book, a highly readable treatise on the
    bewildering sorts of classical music produced during the twentieth
    century (a body of work that triggers plenty of gag reflexes, but
    influenced a generation of jazz, pop, and rock musicians nonetheless).
    Ross is joined by Performance Today host Fred Child as well as the genre-defying band, Turtle Island String Quartet. —Christy DeSmith

    7:30 p.m., Fitzgerald Theater, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul; 651-290-1221; $20, but see our Promotions page to get a deal.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Confront It with a Pen

    While there are certainly several other great things to do tonight, I myself will be attending the opening of Pen, at the Guthrie. Written by David Marshall Grant, author of Snakebit, Pen tells the story of a 17-year-old boy struggling with his mother’s illness and his father’s abandon. It’s a New Year’s tale, actually, and while Thanksgiving still stands in the way of the approaching celebration, we might find ourselves inspired to confront our own demons and start clearing the path for the new year. After all, many of us will need the coming month to pick up the pieces. Fortunately, these family messes get resolved much faster on stage. If only life could be so perfectly scripted. Tonight’s performance — starring Marc Halsey (a 2007 graduate of the UofM/Guthrie BFA program), Michelle Barber, and Philip Callen — is directed by Rob Melrose, artistic director of The Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco.

    7:30 p.m. (through Nov. 25), Guthrie Theater, Dowling Studio, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224, $18 to $34.


    Me Thinks the Lady Doth Not Protest

    A wackier theatrical option for the evening would be the Commedia Beauregard production of The Young Lady’s Consent. Translated by playwright Christopher Kidder from a Spanish comedy, The Young Lady’s Consent tells a sorted tale about a beautiful (and dutiful) daughter, her greedy mother, her dashing lover, his idealistic uncle, and a supporting cast of wise-cracking servants. I think perhaps this qualifies as a "wild romp" — arranged marriages, mistaken identities, misplaced love notes, sideways parakeets, and all the typical old-school comedic fodder. The production features Jerome R. Marzullo, Jane Hammill, Matt Weng, Lauren B. Wills, Aaron Konigsmark, Jesse Dorst, and Melissa Bechthold, with new songs by Don Eitel, formerly of Starting Gate Productions. And it’s one of those fair and lovely nights where you simply pay what you can. What you can, folks. Open up those wallets, or keep your last dollar for tomorrow’s bus fare. Just be fair.

    8 p.m., Lowry Lab Theater, 350 Saint Peter St., St. Paul; 651-209-6689; $15 – pay what you can.

    MUSIC
    Twenty Years Is a Mighty Long Time

    Don’t miss The Rippington’s on their 20th anniversary tour. Fortunately you can catch them tonight or tomorrow night, so you have some options. Founded by
    Grammy-nominated guitarist Russ Freeman, the group has enjoyed its fair share of success. I heard their music described as soundtracks for the soul once — I can’t remember by whom — but it was perfectly fitting. Get your groove on with the white-man’s funk.

    8 p.m., Rossi’s Blue Star.,
    80 S. 9th St., Minneapolis; 612-312-2828; $35, with dinner $65.

    Also playing this evening: Verona Grove with Shocks Stars at Winona State University — Lourdes Hall.

  • Stinking fast Stingray Upon Us

    I’ve always had a thing for the Corvette Stingray. While the basic style of the car has never been improved on since the mid-60s (see image above) it appears the fastest Corvette of all time is upon us.

    Based on the Corvette Z06, the "Blue Devil" Corvette will add a supercharger to its 7-liter V8 to pump out close to 700 HP. That massive engine will be enshrined in a carbon-fiber based body that brings its weight down to that of Cobalt SS (a passable econobox that handles well) or about 2900 lbs. Apparently the car will sticker at around $100.000.00.

    I don’t have 0-60 times but I have heard somewhere under 3 seconds (imagine that.) If this proves the case then the SS or BlueDevil Corvette (whatever they call it) will be the best automotive performance bargain of all time. (Much like the current Corvette Z06.)