The Rake Magazine

Year: 2007

  • Chuck 2006: Admirably Mediocre

    Have I mentioned how much I hate Trader Joe’s?

    A little over a year ago, when the California-based grocer moved into Minnesota, and located their inaugural store about a mile from my house in St. Louis Park, the POLICE had to be called in to direct traffic. It was like Lourdes: people streaming in from St. Paul, from Red Wing, from Kansas, for all I know, to witness this retail wonder. The streets in our neighborhood were a mess for weeks. I had to drive to Golden Valley just to buy coffee and bagels.

    So about a month later, when I finally walked into the place myself — this magnificent edifice that so many had traveled so far to experience — I expected to see a bright light and hear a chorus of angels. Instead, I found myself inside a garishly-painted space stocked with haphazard piles of "natural" foods. Only this was the thing. I’m used to my natural food being, you know, natural. But here, at TJ, the apples weren’t bare-naked and glossy and gloriously orchard-like; they were packaged four to a bulbous plastiform container. There were aisles full of fancy [high-fat] multi-colored chips and pre-assembled kits to make various incredibly basic homemade things — salsa and guac and such. Also chocolate "energy" bars, pressed packages of cheese, pump bottles of lotion.

    I passed up the fruit encased in crude oil and went to the dairy section for some plain yogurt. Not yak-milk yogurt, mind you, nothing fancy. Didn’t even have to be organic, though that would have been nice. But I was out of luck. This place had Chocolate Eclair yogurt and Nut-Berry Crunch. All the Lucky Charms varieties of yogurt in bright, rainbow colors. No plain.

    In addition, there was no bulk section: no whole wheat pastry flour, no rice, no white popcorn, no loose leaf tea. There were, however, dozens of different flavors of Trader Joe’s sauces, soups, mixes, cookies, and cakes. In other words, junk. Finally, I bought some tangerine-scented lotion, just to say I’d been. Took it home, used it, broke out in a rash, threw it away. Until this week, that was the last time I was in Trader Joe’s.

    Finally, the traffic’s died down. There are two more Twin Cities TJ locations — an outpost in Maple Grove and brand-spanking new one in Woodbury — so the burden on St. Louis Park has eased up. Plus, I’ve been hearing and hearing (and hearing) about the so-called Two Buck Chuck, which because we’re in Minnesota actually is THREE Buck Chuck (or, more precisely, 2.99 Buck Chuck — but that doesn’t sound as good), and especially the Charles Shaw Chardonnay 2005 which won all sorts of blind taste test wine awards.

    So yesterday, during the sunny, windy peak of a gorgeous autumn afternoon, I walked over to Trader Joe’s and stepped inside. I’d love to continue grumbling, but I must admit, things have improved. The apples were piled in a respectable pyramid this time; the dairy case did contain a couple containers of plain yogurt in and amongst the sparkly, sugary tubs. The aisles, once again, were stack-packed with chips, crackers, and Annie’s instant dinners — the original ersatz organic fare. But Trader Joe’s is, after all, not The Wedge, but rather, I’ve learned, the Super America of sandal-wearing yuppie-hippie-Boomer types who love their psychedelic mac and cheese and wouldn’t know how to cook a pot of quinoa (or pronounce it, for that matter) if their lives depended on it.

    Next, I went into the wine store, where I learned that the 2005 Chard that was so widely talked about has all sold out and what they’re hawking now, for $3 a pop, is the 2006. So I bought a bottle, which the cashier kindly double-bagged for my mile-long walk home. I treated this wine like a prized White Bordeaux from 1998: chilling it at a careful angle, opening it as dusk fell, decanting it gently into a crystal glass. I took a sip and then another. And I had to admit, grudgingly, that it didn’t suck.

    Like most inexpensive party wines, the TBC Chard 2006 is a little frothy when it first meets the mouth, and it causes the tongue to go a little puckery as it slides down the sides. It’s bright and simple — like the sun in a child’s drawing — full of lemony fruit and not a lot else. But what’s remarkable is what it doesn’t have: a sour, metallic, or too-sugary aftertaste. It’s rare, in fact, to find a dirt cheap wine that finishes this clean.

    Still, I was cranky about it — that plain yogurt incident just weighing on me — and I wanted to prove myself wrong. So I did a blind taste test of my own. When my husband came home, I handed him a glass and barked, "Tell me what you think." So without even putting his briefcase down he tasted and smiled and said, "Not bad. It’s a little sweet maybe. But there’s something really good about it, like a nice mid-price Viognier."

    Well, there you have it. It wasn’t the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition, I grant you, but a random test in my living room, performed by a curmudgeonly wine critic (can a woman be a curmudgeon?) and a well-traveled software developer says it is so. If you’re looking for a profoundly ordinary but inoffensive bottle of white wine that costs less than your Sunday New York Times, there is, a legitimate reason to go to Trader Joe’s. Just don’t drive down my street, OK?

  • Protector of Pandas, Friend to Farmers

    We’re sitting at a table in Rice Paper, the little Asian-fusion restaurant in Linden Hills.

    When I asked Jim Harkness, president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, if he would talk to me over dinner he said sure, I should pick the place. His house is in this neighborhood, I reasoned, and he lived in China for more than a decade. He heads up an agency that advocates for family-owned businesses. Rice Paper should be perfect.

    The server hands me a menu and I study it for a second. “What looks good to you?” I ask.

    “Well, nothing, actually,” Harkness says. He is staring at his menu, eyebrows beetling fiercely. Then he looks up. “Oh, I probably should have told you, I’m kind of an anti-fusion snob. I mean, generations went into creating authentic, regional Asian cuisines. Can’t we just stick to one? Why do we have to mess them up by mixing them all together?”

    I have no idea what to say.

    Harkness shrugs. “You never know, maybe I’ll be won over,” he says. “But I doubt it.”

    He’s a young-looking 45, with a handsome, unlined face and dark hair. I attribute this to the way he’s lived: single, unburdened by so much as a cat, following a career path based entirely upon his whims and interests rather than mundane exigencies such as car payments, children, a 401(k). But no matter how solipsistic his approach, there’s no denying Harkness is doing great work.

    He’s just returned, for instance, from a summit in Beijing where he was asked to speak about the trade relationship between China and Africa. I ask him for his position. He begins with a sketch of the history: “China’s leaders came up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, during the Cold War, at a time when the country’s ties to third-world countries were based largely on the movement toward non-alliance. And a big part of their foreign policy has always been this notion of non-interference.” After several minutes, he shifts to the modern day: “In today’s world, a world of global economies, that’s a sort of naïve view and it ends up dovetailing very conveniently with a trade policy that’s focused on getting resources, like oil.” He launches into descriptions of the various groups opposing China and concludes with: “Frankly, I’m not terribly sympathetic to the U.S. or European countries saying that China’s motives in Africa aren’t pure because of our own 400-year history of plunder and colonialism, stretching right up to the present.”

    He takes a breath. The server — who seems to have every table in this busy little restaurant — stops back to ask if we’re ready to order.

    “Not yet,” Harkness tells her. “I’m formulating a theory about Chinese foreign policy here. It takes time.”

    Finally, we choose two dishes, Plantation chicken and a Curry Plate with tofu, and agree to share. He orders a domestic beer (Rice Paper has obtained a beer and wine license since its “dry” opening in 2003), warning me to avoid imported Asian beers because most of them are awful.

    “How did you end up in China in the first place?” I ask.

    He looks perplexed again, then begins at the beginning.

    Harkness grew up just a few miles away, in Minneapolis near 50th and Girard. His parents both were the children of missionaries — his father born in Mozambique, his mother in Korea — so their lifestyle, even with children, was peripatetic. Harkness attended Minneapolis Central High School when he wasn’t traveling with his family, and took classes in Chinese. In 1976, the year he was 14, he was selected along with a group of other high schools students from the United States to visit China as part of a “friendship delegation.”

    “That was the era of ping-pong diplomacy,” he explains. “I think they ran out of other ‘welcoming’ things to do, so they invited this group of high school kids over, wined and dined us, took us to the Great Wall. I thought it was great. Had a mad crush on one of the female Red guards — unrequited, by the way.”

    He returned, finished high school, and took up the Chinese again at the University of Wisconsin. In 1981, he traveled to Tianjin as part of an exchange program. But it wasn’t global politics that Harkness was interested in, it was ornithology. He was — and still is — riveted by birds.

    While earning his master’s degree in sociology at Cornell University, he signed on as a consultant to the International Crane Foundation, based in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The tiny nonprofit happened to be launching a project in China and they were in need of someone who spoke the language.

    Harkness glowers and announces, “In the mountain where there is no tiger, the monkey is king.”

    There is a pause. “Which means?” I prompt.

    “Since none of these salt-of-the-earth Wisconsin bird nuts knew Chinese, they thought I was some worldly sophisticate. I became their king. They’d find some Chinese scientist who didn’t speak English, and I’d be sent to translate and help him artificially inseminate black-necked cranes.”

  • Nick and Eddie: The Mystery of Hipness

    I just can’t figure it out. Doug Anderson’s new restaurant,
    Nick and Eddie, manages to radiate hipness — even uber-hipness, but I can’t put
    my finger on just what does it. It isn’t actually Doug’s restaurant —
    officially, he’s the head waiter. Seems that there were some financial issues
    that Doug isn’t at liberty to discuss, that led to the abrupt closing of his
    last venture, A Rebours, so Doug’s wife Jessica, and the chef, Steve Vranian,
    are the owners of record. But Doug seems to be the creative force behind the
    new Loring Park café and bar.

    At any rate, explaining the hipness: It certainly isn’t the
    décor — bare white walls, Formica-style tabletops and a few yards of velvet
    wallpaper thrown in. It can’t be the menu, which reads like the opposite of
    hip: chopped chicken liver ($5), potato pancakes with smoked whitefish salad
    ($5), braised beef cheeks with parsnip puree ($15), poached salmon with
    sauerkraut and brussel sprouts ($18) — you get the idea. My esteemed colleague,
    Ann Bauer, says it’s the sound system, which is supposed to be a high-tech
    wonder; but the night I visited, we could barely hear the tunes above the din
    of diners.

     

    Maybe it’s the staff. The servers, all dressed in black,
    definitely contribute to the cool factor. On my most recent visit, we were
    waited on by Daniela from Brazil, with a hint of samba in her voice, and Ian
    from Ireland, whose roguish charm and musical brogue was one of the prime
    attractions of the late, lamented Emma’s Café — especially for the ladies.

    Anderson has assembled a stellar team to run the new
    operation. In addition to Jessica Anderson, who doubles as baker and pastry
    chef, there’s chef Vranian, whose resume includes stints at the California
    Café, Murray’s, North Coast, and Jeremiah Tower’s Star’s in San Francisco,
    where Doug and Steve met. General manager Scott Ida worked with Doug at
    Aquavit, and has also worked at other top houses, including Goodfellows and the
    510 Restaurant.

    The food may not be hip, but what I sampled was impressive.
    Call it comfort food with a twist. The beef and cabbage borscht added just a
    hint of spice to a very flavorful meaty broth, while the Belgian endive salad
    with persimmons and hazel was refreshingly light and playful. And I loved the
    beef cheeks – the tenderest meat I’ve had in ages. My wife, who doesn’t eat
    meat, was less impressed with the only vegetarian entrée, billed as wild rice
    and hominy with parsnips roasted beets and Swiss chard. I actually liked that
    dish, too, but it probably would work better as a side dish than as an entrée. But we both loved the dessert, a chocolate
    Ho-Ho, that was just like the real thing, only better.

  • The Last Bite

    I’ve been thinking about the ride home, post dinner party. I think I’ve come up with the perfect parting gift.

    I imagine my guests, driving away after a full evening of good food and good wine, inevitably deconstructing the night and sort of relishing the fact that they won’t have to do dishes when they get home. Sometimes, if they’ve had enough wine over the course of the evening, they’ll sit in the car with that rather stale mouth-feel, not really wishing for more food, but for a different taste.

    That’s why I’m sending everyone away with brownies.

    Dessert at my table isn’t usually an elaborate affair, most of the pomp and circumstance go into the dinner. After a very simple dessert course, there’s usually more wine or port or scotch or sometimes cheese. You never leave my house with that overly sticky, sweet feeling you get after many giant restaurant desserts.

    So just one square of these densely moist brownies should do the trick. With the help of some seasonal spices and a gentle cayenne kick, they easily cut through the staleness and give one last, perfect bite.


    Brownie Bites
    1 cup white whole wheat flour
    1/4 cup all purpose flour
    1 cup Dutch processed cocoa
    4 tsp. cinnamon
    1 tsp. ginger
    1 tsp. nutmeg
    1 tsp. cloves
    1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
    1 tsp. baking powder
    1 tsp. salt
    1 cup granulated sugar
    1 cup dark brown sugar
    3/4 cup vegetable oil
    4 eggs, slightly beaten
    1 tsp. vanilla

    Preheat oven to 350º. Whisk all dry ingredients together in mixing bowl. Add oil, eggs and vanilla. Stir well. Pour into greased 13x9x2 pan and bake on middle rack for about 35 minutes. Tester knife should come out clean. Let cool and dust top with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

  • In Defense of Tom Barnard

    RYBAK: Okay, I’ve spent the last three days watching the media have a field day trashing Tom Barnard (mainly) and his KQRS morning show (secondarily) and I’m just not getting it.

    As we’re all well aware, (since it’s been front page news in the Strib and all over TV), the show ran afoul of Minnesota American Indian leaders for remarks made on a recent show about suicides on the Red Lake Indian reservation. Since then, everyone has stepped up to the plate to take a crack at Barnard– the latest being former St. Paul City Councilman Jay Benanav, who raged in a Strib letter to the editor that, "KQRS lets Tom Barnard" get away with blah, blah, blah.

    Hey, Benanav, (who I believe may have an axe to grind with TB), it wasn’t Tom who made the grossly bigoted remark. It was his terminally stupid sidekick Terry Traen, whose painfully uneducated, ill-informed,tone-deaf pronouncements consistently drag down the show. Have you heard her on terrorists? The Middle East? Or religion? Or geography? Or movies? Take your pick.

    By my transcript reading, Barnard tried to diffuse her remarks in as professional a manner as possible. Now everyone’s calling for him to be fired or to quit.

    Still, nobody seems to be thinking about what actually happened in their rush to kick Barnard for — who knows? Remarks he made a decade ago? The fact that he has the second most popular morning show in the country? Because they can shake money out of the mighty Citadel/ABC coffers?

    I may be in a minority, but I’m not alone in feeling like Tommy B is getting a bum deal in this latest dust-up.

    Ron Rosenbaum, who got pistol-whipped on his KSTP 1500 radio show a couple years back, (for quoting a line from Goodfellas that a listener took as a racial slur), was most sympathetic.

    "There’s nothing more painful than to be dragged through the media circus," Ron commiserated. "And in this case, the comment wasn’t even made by him. I’m not a fan of racist comments, but I don’t think Tom did what he’s accused of doing. People just accepted that he did."

    Even you took a shot the other day, Mr. Lambert, by suggesting that his listeners were all bigots. Or most of them. Or the ones who lived up in Jesse Ventura country. I wasn’t really clear.

    I don’t think you can stereotype an audience like that…not when 31 percent of radio listeners in the Twin Cities tune him in every morning. How about this for a theory? You’re driving in your car and want to listen to something in the morning on your old-fashioned, non-satellite-radio enhanced radio. You can listen to music; tune into MPR/KFAI or another public station for news, or you can take your pick of a number of middling talk shows that mix news with girltalk/sportstalk/teentalk/politicaltalk/whatever.

    But what if you just want to be entertained? To have a couple laughs before you get to your day job? That’s when I tune into KQ.

    There, I get weird news stories–many with local angles, one-liners,comedians and yeah, some stupid adolescent humor. I also get interviews with interesting people. Tom’s interview with docu-king Ken Burns was one of the better ones done during his sweep through town.

    LAMBERT: Well … what is that giant puckering sound I hear? You’re going to have to freshen the lipstick a bit after that one.

    I remember Rosenbaum’s experience pretty well. In fact, I remember writing a column for the PiPress defending him … on the basis largely that there was nothing else in his on-air experience that remotely suggested racial exploitation, much less outright racism. Rosenbaum was railroaded, pure and simple.

    Unfortunately for Barnard, his record on this kind of stuff is nowhere near as clean as Ron’s. There’s a pattern here.

    In this particular episode I get the part about Traen riding the stupid bus. (Although, let’s not omit the detail about Tom pitching that not exactly fact-checked line about the rich tribes not giving anything to the poor tribes). But my point is that knuckleheadedness is something Barnard both engenders and exploits.

    Barnard’s a very shrewd operator. He and every other "shock jock" (tired, badly worn phrase, that one), understand that winning the ratings game means playing down, not up to audiences. Sure he can do an intelligent enough interview with everyone from mountain climber Ed Viesturs to Ken Burns. I’ve never said he was stupid. But the popularity of the show rests on a bedrock of adolescent humor — and hell, I laugh at fart jokes — and blue collar antipathies, which occasionally come back to bite.

    As I’ve been explaining to some of the trolls on the comment board,my run out to the bowling alley in Ramsey years ago was prompted by statistics showing that Jesse Ventura pulled the highest percentage of support in the very same area that Barnard is most popular. Interesting. What gives? I wanted to meet these people. I’m not saying there was any great science to it. I could have gone to a church basement dinner and asked the nice ladies spooning up meatballs what they thought of Barnard. They’d probably have a different view of life.But as local watering holes go, the big bowling alley seemed a good place to chat up a reasonably average enough collection of locals.

    And there were plenty of Barnard and Jesse fans to go around. Beyond that, what can I tell you? They said what they said, and more than just a little of it wasn’t exactly Chamber of Commerce quality stuff. But that’s life.

    I saw the Benanav letter in today’s Strib. He might have helped his cause if he had reminded readers how exactly Barnard and he tangled.Benanav was running against Randy Kelly for mayor of St. Paul in ’02. Kelly was Norm Coleman’s guy, and Barnard blistered Benanav steadily all through the last week of the campaign, including election day morning. No one could ever prove the impact of that kind of advertising", but 400 votes (Kelly’s margin of victory) ain’t much.

    But hey, Tommy needs some good lovin’ from somewhere. Knock yourself out.

    RYBAK: You know, I do appreciate the fact that you took a trip up to a bowling alley in Ramsey to do some field research, but I hardly think we should be taking that as scientific fact. First of all, there are no radio ratings that I have ever seen that pinpoint listeners geographically. Where would you get data like that? Does it exist?

    Second, did you visit a bowling alley in South Minneapolis? St.Paul? Is the correlation really to Ramsey..or could it be to bowlers?

    I am absolutely certain that if you searched cars throughout South Minneapolis and socially conscious Edina, you’d find an ENORMOUS numberof radios with KQ set on the dial–and not for the classic rock.

    Tom Barnard’s career here has lasted almost 40 years, and the guy’s not on the fade–he still dominates the ratings. Just as you’ve written some dud columns and I’ve written some lame-ass stories–everyone has their off days. I’ve even gotten facts WRONG (as you mention thatBarnard did). Have you ever gotten a fact wrong?

    My point is that this episode shouldn’t be recorded in the Barnard ledger that the press dutifully tallies up and regurgitates each time he makes the news–it’s one for Terry Traen. That’s all.

    LAMBERT: I’ll dig through my vast collection offloppy discs and find the old, whacked PiPress story, which explained the geographical confluence, and it was as scientific as the Arbitron ratings and radio research ever gets. But I’ll show what a big guy I am and concede this: This latest flare-up doesn’t rise to the level of theSomali or Hmong episodes. What’s more … (all I do is give and give and give) … I’ll also agree that Barnard takes more heat by virtue of being by far the biggest dog in town.

    But as I’ve said, I’m not accusing the guy of stupidity. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and it is a calculated shtick — that after all this time is second nature to him. His talent is in playing it so well. A little up-scale for them with book learnin’ and plenty of down-scale for the kids in the back of the class. If various interest groups cared what Jason Lewis or Bob Davis were saying they’d probably have as good if not better reasons to go after them. But those guys can only dream of an audience the size of Barnard’s.

    We’re talking about this at all because the guy — for better and for worse — is a bona fide cultural icon in Minnesota, every bit as big (hell, bigger ) than WCCO’s Boone & Erickson in their day. If the license Barnard exercises to win and hold a huge audience is the issue here — and that certainly is what interests me most — I think we can agree that it says something, something real and true about modern Minnesota.

    Maybe you’re on to something after all. Maybe we should thank Tommy for holding up a fog-free mirror to the state of our sensibilities.There’s no gooey gloss on his shtick. Real, tenured cultural anthropologists — as opposed to amateurs like us — can use "The Appeal of Tommy B" as a damned good object lesson.

    But hey, nice going. I’m betting the boy hasn’t gotten that warm a squeeze in a long time.

  • This Saturday's Big Local Media Forum

    The good folks at the Twin Cities Media Alliance — best known for their work producing Twin Cities Daily Planet — (click here for schedule and registration info) are staging a day-long event this Saturday at the Central Library
    in downtown Minneapolis. Major next generation publishers and
    journalists will be in attendance. While some of us may look like
    critters out of a previous generation, if you’re interested in what is
    going down in journalism and what is coming next in terms of on-line
    newspapers — like MinnPost.com and The Daily Mole, both mentioned here numerous times — you’ll find this worth your time. Or, you can always just heckle.

    Robert McChesney,
    U of Illinois professor and author of the excellent book, Rich Media,
    Poor Democracy    , will deliver the keynote speech at around 10:50 AM.
    (The event runs from 9AM to 3 PM, and is free but you must register if you want a box lunch.)

    Immediately prior to McChesney’s talk, a panel titled "The Future of
    News: What Role for Journalists?" will include local heavyweights Joel
    Kramer, (former Strib editor and publisher, now heading up MinnPost), Steve Perry (former City Pages editor, leading The Daily Mole, Eric Black, (former Strib writer now publishing at ericblackink.com,
    Matt Thompson, the Strib’s deputy editor for interactive content, and,
    for comic effect, yours truly. The panel will be moderated by veteran
    writer/poet Rich Broderick, who blogs at The Daily Planet
    .

    RYBAK: Didn’t you just tell me to re-apply lipstick after puckering
    up to a subject in another post. Back at you, Hot Lips…..

  • Happy Halloween!

    Apparently, this has been a very big year for haunted houses. Seems
    like many of them have been sold out every night. Monday night, the
    Soap Factory’s Haunted Basement
    was sold out within the first 20 minutes. I suppose tonight will be
    even worse. But if you’re looking for great Halloween entertainment,
    here are some options:

    A Thrill a Minute — with leg-warmers and all

    Tonight, First Avenue gives you two time periods to choose from for your Halloween festivities. In the Main Room, the Thriller 1980s party will feature a costume contest (judged by Ian of Drinking with Ian), cash prizes, a group of "Zombified Thriller Dancers," and DJing by SovietPanda. If that’s too much big hair and leg-warmers for you, the 7th Street Entry will be hosting a Monster Mash
    oldies dance party — none of the costume contest or cash prize
    craziness; just a night of grooving to Motown, British Invasion, and
    girl groups. –Danielle Kurtzleben

    8 p.m., First Avenue,
    701 First Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-332-1775; Thriller is $6 w/costume
    ($10 without); Monster Mash is $5 ($1 crossover from Main Room).

    Two Heavy Metal Ghouls

    Celebrate
    Halloween with the king of gore. I don’t think he’ll be biting the
    heads off of any doves tonight (although you never know with this guy),
    but Ozzy Osbourne
    is certainly prime ghoul material. This will be the heavy metal (and
    reality TV) legend’s first solo concert in Minneapolis in over four
    years, and the show features special guest Rob Zombie. How appropriate! If you can’t make the show, you might want to consider staying in and watching a few Rob Zombie flicks tonight. Blast the surround-sound, so you can scare all those trick-or-treaters away.

    7:30 p.m., Target Center, 600 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-673-0900; $23-$87.75.

    All Hallow’s Hell

    While Samhain
    actually represents the end of harvest season in Gaelic culture, we
    have conveniently ascribed the ancient holiday to the broader realm of
    the dead, in particular All Souls’ Day, better known as Halloween. The
    end of harvest is a gruesome thing indeed. Deck yourself out in the
    goriest of costumes and head over to the Varsity Theater for Samhain: All Hallows’ Eve "A Match Made in Hell". Apologies to death rock fans, but the precursor band to Danzig is not the headliner for this show. Decoding the actual musical lineup: E.L.nO. stands for Electric Light (no) Orchestra — a band that occasionally forms in order to cover the sublime pop purveyed by Jeff Lynne’s ’70s-era E.L.O.; and MC/VL
    is the MC duo Mighty Clyde and Vicious Lee, who deliver rap in the vein
    of vintage Beastie Boys, with a clownishness fronting their book
    smarts. Headliners Dance Band,
    however, are as straight-up as their name indicates. Counting James
    Brown and Queen among their influences, and widely acknowledged as one
    of the Cities’ best live acts, how likely is it that this show really
    ends at 11? –Julie Caniglia

    8 p.m., Varsity Theater, 1308 4th St. S.E., Minneapolis; $8.

    Creature Feature

    If
    you’re like me and want nothing more than to avoid the Halloween bar
    crowds, without missing out on all the fun, some monster improvisation
    might be just what you need. Head over to the Brave New Workshop for
    tonight’s Creature Feature
    — a fully improvised, live-on-stage, comedic monster movie. Shout out
    your clever suggestions (only when you’re asked for them), and watch a
    monster movie unfold right before your eyes, "chock full of colorful
    characters, high drama, monster movie atmosphere, and hilarity." Now
    that’s more like it!

    8 p.m., Brave New Workshop, 2605 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-6620; $10

    Holy Haunted House

    Of course, you could always opt for something completely non-Halloween-related. The only thing spooky about the Gov’t Mule show this evening is the poster, and perhaps a heavy riff or two. Founded in 1994 as a power trio offshoot of the Allman Brothers Band,
    Gov’t Mule draws from blues, folk, reggae, soul, and jazz. The band,
    originally consisting of guitarist/vocalist Warren Haynes, drummer Matt
    Abts, and bassist Allen Woody, has since added keyboard player Danny
    Louis, and bassist Andy Hess (following Woody’s death in 2000). The
    result is a band with fervent energy, keen chemistry, and masterful
    playing. In 2005, Haynes was ranked No. 23 in Rolling Stone’s list of all-time top guitarists. That’s got to tell you something, no?

    7 p.m., The O’Shaughnessy, College of St. Catherine, 2004 W. Randolph Ave., St. Paul; 651-690-6700; $26 & $29.

  • Is Ben Tracy leaving WCCO? Good Question!

    Short
    answer: yes. This is one of the least surprising announcements in local
    TV circles, as Tracy’s departure was widely anticipated in the wake of
    his close friend Jeff Kiernan’s departure as ‘CCO news director. It was
    just a question of whether he’d follow Kiernan, or jump up to network
    news.

    Here’s General Manager Susan Adams Loyd’s memo to staff (which feels more informal than the press release):

    In just a few minutes, you will be getting a copy of a press release
    regarding Ben Tracy, and I wanted to give you a few minutes heads-up
    about some news related to him. Ben will be joining CBS News in January
    as a network correspondent where he will report for the CBS Early Show
    and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and will be based out of Los
    Angeles.

    Of course we will miss Ben very much, but I hope you feel like I do
    in that this is a great opportunity for him. He is an example of the
    kind of talented people that work here at WCCO. I am not surprised when
    other big stations and the networks call upon our folks for that next
    step. He is hard worker, and the caliber of his reporting has been
    recognized by our viewers over his tenure. Fortunately, because Ben
    will be with CBS, they will continue to enjoy his work.

     

    Ben has agreed to stay through the November book and into December,
    his last day being December 16. Although the process has not been
    initiated yet to find Ben’s replacement, we do plan at this time to
    continue Good Question in some format and fashion.

  • Strib's Hage to join Klobuchar

    In
    what can safely be called a HUGE blow to the Star Tribune’s already
    shaken editorial staff, Dave Hage announced today that he is leaving
    the paper to join Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s staff as communications director.
    Office scuttlebutt holds that newsroom editor D.J. Tice will be tapped
    to replace Hage. That makes sense: Doug Tice provided the conservative
    voice for the Pioneer Press editorial pages when he worked there, and
    has faced some criticism for allegedly bringing that bent into the
    Strib newsroom. Moving him back to the opinion pages would solve that
    situation, plus give publisher Chris Harte the kind of editorial writer
    he appears to be seeking.

     

    Here’s the memo from Scott Gillespie:

    Newsroom staff: During almost 30 years in journalism, Dave Hage has
    been passionate about public service journalism – first as a local news
    reporter, then as a national magazine writer and more recently as a
    member of the Star Tribune’s editorial board.

    Now he’s decided to put that passion to work in politics and government as communications director for Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

    To say we’ll miss Dave’s contributions to the Star Tribune and
    journalism in Minnesota is an understatement. He’s one of the best in
    the profession and has been a tremendous contributor to the newspaper,
    both in News and Editorial. He’s an award-winning journalist who has
    always been humble about his own work while supporting and praising the
    efforts of his colleagues on the third floor.

    Many of you know Dave quite well, but here’s some background for those who might not have worked with him over the years:

    Dave joined the Star Tribune in 1979 as a suburban reporter for the
    Community section, then wrote about labor, business and the economy
    from 1981 to 1991. From 1991 to 1995 he was an economics correspondent
    for U.S. News & World Report in Washington.

    He returned to the Star Tribune as an editorial writer in 1995 and
    has written expertly on a range of subjects including Minnesota’s
    economy, health care, aviation, poverty and agriculture. He’s also
    written two books, No Retreat, No Surrender, a chronicle of the
    meatpackers’ strike at Hormel, co-written with our own Paul Klauda; and Reforming Welfare by Rewarding Work, published by the University of
    Minnesota Press in 2004.

    In his new job, Dave will divide his time between Washington and the Twin Cities.

    I know you’ll join me in wishing Dave and his family all the best.

  • Wolfgang Puck: Eat Locally, Dine at 20.21?

    It’s really good to see that Wolfgang Puck has jumped on the
    sustainable, humanely-raised, locally-grown bandwagon, but when he came
    to town last week to promote his new food policies, I couldn’t resist
    asking him one tough question.

    The Austrian-born chef’s sprawling network of fine-dining
    restaurants, fast-casual outlets and catering operations around the
    country served some 10 million diners last year, so when a guy like
    Puck makes a well-publicized move towards humane and sustainable
    eating, it’s likely to have a real impact.

    The new program, created in partnership with the Humane Society of
    the United States, is called WELL (TM), which stands for Wolfgang’s
    Eating, Loving and Living. (Catchy, huh?) The standards include using
    and serving only eggs from cage-free hens, serving only all-natural or
    organic crate-free pork and veal, and chicken and turkey from farms
    that comply with progressive animal welfare standards, serving only
    certified sustainable seafood, eliminating foie gras, and expanding the
    use of organic foods, and increasing vegetarian offerings.

    The program hasn’t required him to raise prices at his upscale
    restaurant, Puck said, because they already use a lot of sustainable,
    locally produced ingredients. At 20.21, the restaurant at the Walker
    Art Center that Puck operates, the kitchen has already been serving
    local meats and produce, including pork from Fischer Purebred Hogs near
    Waseca, and poultry from Wild Acres near Pequot Lakes. But at his
    fast-food restaurants, he has had to raise some prices by 10 percent or
    so.

    Still, Puck volunteered that Americans need to eat less – and that
    they could eat less, and spend less at his restaurants by ordering
    dishes to share. "I would much rather that they come twice a week and
    spend $40 than come once and spend $80."

    So far, so good, but I had to ask: If people really want to eat
    locally and sustainably, shouldn’t they avoid restaurants owned by big
    national companies like Puck’s, and patronize locally owned businesses?

    The question seemed to catch Puck a bit off-guard. "I think that’s
    stupid," Puck replied. "Why exclude somebody if they do the right
    thing? We do something for the city, so the city supports us. I think
    it makes everybody better. If there is more competition it makes
    everybody work harder and think twice about what to serve. If you only
    had a local scene, it would make everybody stagnate. We are a country
    of different origins different cultures and that’s what makes it
    exciting."

    I mentioned the Cheesecake Factory, and the other national chain
    operators at Southdale as example of big chain restaurants that take
    millions of dollars away from locally-owned independent restaurants,
    but Puck didn’t buy it:

    It is true, but we are a free country. "There is a reason why people
    go to the Cheesecake Factory. If I lose a customer, there’s a reason.
    They might get a better deal there. The food might be better. The
    service might be better. The environment might be better." If the small
    operations want to stay in business, says Puck, they have to innovate.
    "You cannot today just have a little restaurant and keep it going and
    going like it used to be. People today are fickle; they want new
    things."