The Rake Magazine

Year: 2008

  • Leave me alone… I am trying to sleep

    I used to think that when I was up at night and my hubby was snoozing, rubbing his back was a nice thing to do.

    Guess it’s not only not nice, but it’s annoying.

    All this time I thought I was being little miss affectionate, but instead… I have been waking up my partner when he is just trying to get some deep sleep.
    I never knew this until today.

    Also I never realized that when I am in a deep sleep and my husband does not WAKE me up to kiss me goodbye, he is not doing it to be mean. He is just trying to let me stay in that pleasant, peaceful world where we sleep like babies.

    Who knew? I didn’t, but I do now.

    All of the people that advise you before you get married to never
    go to sleep angry and always kiss your partner before YOU fall asleep, they got the first part right; but if your partner is in a deep, peaceful sleep and you don’t wake them up for a big smooch, this doesn’t mean you don’t love them. It just means you are being considerate — at least in OUR case.

    There is nothing like affection from your partner (when he or she is awake). I was on the receiving end of that deal this morning, and even though it’s cloudy and cold outside, I feel very warm and fuzzy on the inside. 🙂

    Good luck with the golf game, Honey. I promise from here on out to only kiss you when you are wide awake!

    Hey, you asked for it, Mister, and I KNOW whether you are really sleeping or you’re faking it.

  • momoughttamobiles

    (pictured: the AMG R-class Mercedes. 502HP, 0-60, 4.7 seconds. Meet the Mom who owns one–lives in Excelsior.)

    Mother’s Day manipulative?

    Not for Road Rakes.

    I have always found, for example, that Mimosas pair nicely with a late model Mercedes and/or Maserati. For this reason, you ought consider taking your mom car shopping. Women buy more cars than men anyway (a fact that seems lost on most dealers.)

    May I suggest you sprint over to Sears in that Mercury you only think Mom likes and replace it with something a little more "Momma." The Maserati dealer is just down the street, and if you Mom is a real Foxy Brown then window shop the F-150 Crew Cab Harleys on the Ford lot close by. (Frontage road across the highway from Ridgedale.) 

    I’ve
    clipped some pics of what the most important woman in your life really
    should be driving. She’s probably already flagged these cars, so I’ll
    help you avoid embarassment. Take a peek.

    This is the new Benz on tap for 2010. If your Mother is German (as many Minnesota Moms may be), she’ll love this little coupe.

    This is post is to be continued…just saw my own Mom pull up in the Viggen (two new hips and she still drives a stick.)

    These flowers look puny.

  • Mother's Day: A Stupid, Manipulative Holiday

    I think we’re all in agreement (aren’t we?) that Mother’s Day as it is currently practiced is by far the most commercial, needlessly costly, guilt-induding holiday of all time. For years, I’ve insisted it was begun by a consortium of greedy florists and greeting card manufacturers, and I’ve told my children. . . .please. . . .never to observe it.

    Here’s the truth, sappy as it sounds: Being a mother is a privilege every day. Even when it sucks. Even when you’re punishing someone or cleaning puke out of the carpet or — and believe me, I know whereof I speak — picking up your little darling one after he or she has been caught doing something off limits by the local police. Doesn’t matter. Being a mother is better than anything, and we don’t need some utterly irrelevant day in May for children everywhere to stop and salute, sending flowers that cost 40 percent more than they would any other time of year and sitting through tedious, mediocre brunches where everyone eats too much.

    How, I ask you, does that celebrate the miracle of motherhood?

    But it turns out I was wrong about one thing (ONLY one, mind you): Mother’s Day was not a product of Hallmark. Its roots go back to ancient Greece where people paid tribute to Rhea, the Mother of the
    Gods, each spring. Then in 1872, some weirdo named Julia Ward Howe — who also wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which explains a lot — suggested the idea of an actual, official Mother’s Day. Something tells me if Howe were alive today, she’d be a rabid supporter of George W. Just a hunch. . . .

    Still, even though the history goes way back and has to do with something cool like a Greek goddess, I’m still against any kind of celebration. Particularly the ones that involve everyone getting dressed up in pastel costumes and taking photographs in which babies are squeezed until they smile, then sitting down to some putrid multi-generational meal.

    That said, if you MUST go out for Mother’s Day — and according to the restaurateurs I’m talking to who say this non-holiday is routinely their single biggest day of the year, many of you cannot quell the urge — then try Morton’s. At least they’re doing something different. Something cool. Something outrageously expensive, but not in a scam-like way.

    They’re serving a prix fixe menu, priced at $59 per person, that includes a salad, a choice of entree (beef, salmon, shrimp, or chicken), a side dish, and a gooey dessert. Plus — and this is the beauty part — you can get Mom a champagne cocktail with a hibiscus flower in the bottom of the glass that ACTUALLY BLOOMS (their emphasis, not mine) as the champagne is poured over it. If you don’t believe me, just see above. And this rare and delicate drink can be had for only $16.

    Now, forget everything I said before. This is your mommy. C’mon. Doesn’t she deserve a wet flower and a good hunk of meat?

  • Special 40th Anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey

    In celebration of the 40 years since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Heights Theatre is showing the 1968 masterpiece, digitally remastered in 70mm, a project of Kubrick’s before his death in 1999. This historical depiction of the future raised many questions as to the existance of life and the mysteries of science and space. And who doesn’t love a bunch of monkeys dancing around a mysterious monolith? Follow man from his pre-historic ape-man status, when he first uses tools to conquer his environments — into the present day (the future, at the time the film was made), when man has set out to conquer space, and perhaps even life itself.

    May 9-15, Heights Theatre, 3951 Central Ave. NE, Columbia Heights; $8.

  • There Is Music in Northfield Women Poets’ Anthology, Penchant

    Eleven truth-telling women passionately grieve and celebrate the myriad facets of their complex lives in the new Northfield women’s poet anthology, Penchant. The title implies an inclination, and the title poem, by Karen Herseth Wee, explains that each of these poets possesses a drive:

    "An uncontrollable urge to write, reveal, chant
    aloud that which otherwise stays hidden in the body or mind-"

    But this is not a book merely of blatant or trite self-confession—although it is often personal and intimate. This is a book of many themes. One of the themes is poetry itself, the music of words, and the ability of that music to fill us with emotion. This is a Pen-chant, beginning with the poetic act of observation in Beverly Voldseth’s poem "Her Bath," and ending with Andrea Een’s invitation to "sing as if your life depended on it." If it is true that the audience for poetry is made up mostly of poets, then this volume encourages readers to examine the world with their own eyes and, through the incantatory power of language, to make of that examination, music in their own voice. But more than that, this anthology is a work of art, a concert of voices rich with lived experience, voices practiced in the craft of poetry.

    These women have all lived through decades. Every one of them has been writing for longer than a quarter-century, and they employ their craft skillfully to circumscribe experiences and insights in the way that only poetry can.

    This is a volume I will read again on a lonely evening when it seems no one understands me. For here I have found eleven women, all different from one another in temperament and in voice, who, for years, have nurtured one another’s love of poetry. They also have created a safe haven in which to honestly explore life through words. This long-lived community is a testimony of graceful acceptance. In this place where women gather around words, we, the readers, are welcome to enter in.

    Here we discover, as JoAnne Makela writes, "there is no other place that welcomes my words so…[and] the most important time is set aside for laughing." Tony Easterson, too, writes about this community in "Between Tuesdays," telling us that "at the game of careful stories, everybody wins." Susan Thurston Hamerski celebrates the birth of fellow poet, Mary Moore Easter, sharing the joy of successful community and inviting us to participate. She proclaims, with mirth, a delightful manifesto, imagining a world in which "we call out to each other more often in tenderness than in despair," a world where

    "…we stand before each other, willing to confess
    everything, and find it all reasonable
    if not even good, or
    at the very least, forgivable."

    The wide world, as well as the intimate, unfolds in this anthology. Karen Sandberg celebrates birth [of any child, whether mine or hers, or all of ours] in the poem, "Baby Emma and Baby Sophie Smile at the World." Marie Vogl Gery invites the reader to "open the long-closed door of your heart," reminding us that we are, and that so much of the world is, made to be loved. Mary Moore Easter guides us to understand connections- between past and present, between people who love words, and even between strangers on a bus in Africa. She knows that we are joined together in "all the dreams we carry with us / through the streets from one place to the next."

    This is a large world, emotionally and geographically. These poems deftly carry us from one place to the next. Riki Kölbl Nelson leads us on a journey into a cup of jasmine tea, which, through her memory, takes us to Shanghai and Beijing, Jogjakarta and Ho Chi Minh City. In following poems, she takes us to her birth land, Austria, then back to Minnesota to remind us of two important truths: "Travel is never easy;" and "home is where I am."

    Sigi Leonhard escorts us into journeys of profound emotional depth: first onto a frozen lake, where the black ice is like dark glass; and then into the world of grief, "walking from one room / to another, images attacking the mind…" Her poems line up to reassure us that while "there is no solution" we somehow make art out of our lives, and that the small things we managed to make of our experiences,

    "everything
    Played its brief melody in the concert of daily life, and the music
    They made together, including the dissonances, strange solos,
    Unasked for arias, the music was ravishing."

    The attribute, "ravishing," in its purest sense, applied to something able to fill us with emotion, particularly with joy, may be honestly applied to the poetry-music in Penchant. Scott King, the editor of this collection, believes these poets speak to the importance of history and community, that this is "a collection of poems that, despite the odds and against the rule of profit at all costs, attempts to make a difference." I am certain I am not the only reader who would affirm that the collection does indeed make a difference, as every word and deed and work of art, which move us to consider the multi-faceted truths of life and love, death and grief, make a difference by enriching us.

  • Chop It Off

    My squat little body houses a record number of physical calamities. If
    you have read my latest published story, "Pharma Chameleon," (in the
    March issue of The Rake) you already know that I’m pretty much a bubble
    boy. My latest impediment is a Pterigium (kind of like a nasty veiny weed) on my right eye. As the weird red growth pushes on my pupil, the formerly blue eye is now always bloodshot and weeping. The Pterigium was caused from my over exposure to sunlight. For
    the last fifteen years, I’ve worked outside in the raw elements of
    Minnesota and my eye has been sun scalded, sand blasted, and singed
    with diesel fumes and rancid blue collar profanity. If you are a stoner college kid named Scroggins perma red eyes are no big deal. But I’m 35, and a dad and shit. It isn’t cool to look "Cheeched" when you take your kid to the neighborhood park. I decided to have the growth cut off my eye and undergo ocular reconstructive surgery.

    On the day of my recent surgery, a chipper surgical nurse hooked me up to all sorts of tubes in the pre-op station. She gave me a quizzical look.

    "Are you from the Caribbean?" She asked me. I found the question dumbfounding because I’m as white as Larry Bird.

    "Ugh, no," I replied. "Why?"

    "Most people who have this thingy on their eye spend a lot of time on the ocean," she told me. "So you aren’t a surfer?"

    I assured the nurse that I was indeed no surfer, and that in fact, when it came to swimming, my body was an anvil in the water. A
    few minutes later, my stone faced surgeon breezed in, flipped through
    my chart, stared down at me, wrote the word "right" on a piece of tape
    and stuck it to my face to make sure he fixed the correct eye.

    Then the horror show started. After I was knocked out with anesthesia, I came out too early and awoke in the surgery room during the surgery! I couldn’t move a muscle, but I could see and feel the doctor poking around in my eye socket. My eye was held open with some sort of clamp and I watched the doctor use tweezers on my eyeball. I laid there limp but completely freaking out, anxiety surging through my limbs. I let out a low grumble. The surgeon heard it and snapped, "He’s up! Put him back down!" A medical team scurried around and soon drugs slowly trickled in and the lights began to fade. As I drifted off, I could actually see the surgeon gluing membranes onto my eyeball to help heal the incision. When I woke up in the recovery room, I had humungous white gauze over the eye that looked like the largest maxi pad in history. It was bad enough that I woke up Alfred Hitchcock style during surgery. But
    now I had a feminine hygiene product stuck to my face that my smartass
    brother Tony kept telling people was for my "vagina eye."

    I was blinded for a few days. As my surgically repaired eye adjusted to the new world, I could only keep my eyes open for short periods. My wife rented the hit movie "Eastern Promises" starring the Oscar nominated actor Viggio Mortensen for me to watch. But I couldn’t even see straight so I laid down at the end of the bed and listened to the movie as she watched it. When
    the famous "naked knife fight" scene (in which the hunky actor goes
    bare assed and fights two dudes in a sauna) came on, Sarah
    enthusiastically called out, "You’ve got to see this!" I
    opened my one good eye only to see Viggio Mortensen’s stubby little
    dick darting around on the screen about two inches from my face. It damn near blinded me for life. I shrieked away from the T.V., the actor’s hairy ball sack burning into my cornea forever.

    A month later, a fleshy growth appeared on the eye. It was so gross my wife wouldn’t even look at me. When we got married, apparently the whole "in sickness and health" part of the ceremony was optional. I went back to the surgeon and he reexamined the eye.

    "The fleshy deposit is due to the eye not healing properly," he told me. "But the good news is that I can CHOP IT OFF right here." Now those are three words no patient ever wants to hear. Chop. It. Off. He tilted me back and casually scraped off the growth as if he was using a deli meat slicer at Cub Foods.

    To protect my eye from any further sun damage, I now wear a white golf bucket hat and dark sunglasses. Sure, the surgery was great and it restored my vision. But
    now I look exactly like one of those perverts you see on that hit NBC
    show "To Catch a Predator" where sleazy incognito middle age men creep
    around suburban houses trolling for teenage girls.

    But at least I don’t have a vagina eye anymore.

  • The Neglected Breast

    He
    couldn’t help glancing at her legs. It wasn’t just that they
    were long and slender and perfectly tapered, or that she had swung one
    over the other and now tapped the air with a sling-back stiletto, or
    that they were smooth and tanned and flawless, but that they were bare.
    Like so many young professional women down here, she did not wear stockings
    and for a man of his age and tradition, he found that slightly crass
    and sexy as all get-out.

    She
    had dark eyes and olive skin and over-the-shoulder black hair — too long,
    he felt, for a marriage counselor, although she usually had it in some
    kind of bun or twist or something that held it up. Today, she
    was wearing a pencil skirt, navy blue, a white silk blouse, and
    black-rimmed glasses. He fancied her tossing those glasses on
    to her desk and in one fluid motion, reaching back and releasing that
    bounty of hair. But hell, he thought, even if she had, what would
    I     do about it?

    "Mr.
    Raffort? Mr. Raffort, do you agree with what Mrs. Raffort just
    said?"

    "Art,"
    Mrs. Raffort said. "Doctor LaMetti is speaking to you.
    Arthur!" she jabbed him.

    "What?!"

    "Mrs.
    Raffort says your affection for her has waned."

    "Aw,
    Jesus. Do we have to talk about everything?"

    "I’m
    trying to help you understand each other, Mr. Raffort. I’m not
    asking these questions out of idle curiosity."

    "Right.
    How old are you, anyway?"

    "I
    don’t see the relevance of that."

    "What
    difference does it make, Art?"

    "I
    want to know. For the last month, we’ve been answering every
    little thing she’s asked about us. Can’t I ask one question
    of her?"

    "I’m
    thirty-seven."

    "See?
    I told you. She’s not even Mimi’s age. I’m not going
    to sit here and discuss our love life with a total stranger, especially
    one who’s not even as old as our youngest child."

    "Mr.
    Raffort," she said, taking a breath. "Is it true what Mrs.
    Raffort said about your affections waning?"

    "None
    of your business."

    "It
    is, Doctor. He hardly ever makes love to me anymore, and when he
    does, he never touches me. Not like he used to at least."

    "What
    are you talking about? Of course I touch you when we’re having
    s– Aw, geez, can’t we just get out of here?"

    "Mrs.
    Raffort, would you like to tell Mr. Raffort what you mean by ‘not
    touching you like he used to’?"

    "No,
    she wouldn’t."

    "Well,
    for one thing, he never touches my left breast."

    "My
    God, Helen."

    "Well
    you don’t!"

    "Do
    you have anything you’d like to say to that, Mr. Raffort?"

    "Yes.
    ‘Goodbye.’"

    "Please,
    sir. Sit down. Go ahead, Mrs. Raffort."

    "Well,
    that’s it, really. He touches the right one, but never the left
    one. It’s as though he’s intentionally neglecting it."

    "Oh,
    for Christsake."

    "Ever
    since I had that lump removed."

    "I
    didn’t want to disturb the sutures."

    "They
    were taken out over a year ago, Art."

    He
    glared at his wife, his face reddening.

    "I’ll
    be in the car," he said, and against their pleas, he walked out.

    The
    heat rose visibly from the blacktop as he crossed the parking lot, never
    mind that it was the dead of winter. This was Naples, Florida
    and if it wanted to be 85 degrees with 90 percent humidity in mid-February,
    then by God, that’s what it would be. He opened the car door
    to a plume of hot air, reached inside for his cell phone and saw that
    he had a message. It was the call he had dreaded, or at least
    it had been before he’d had these few days to try on the possibility.
    He pressed ‘call-back’ with an air of acceptance.

    "I’m
    sorry, Art."

    "You’re
    sure."

    "Yes.
    You’re free to get a second opinion, but–"

    "No,
    I figured as much. Well, shit."

    "We
    need to get you in for surgery right away. It’s just on the
    edge of the pancreas, so there’s a chance–"

    "No,
    I’m not having any surgery. No chemo either."

    "But–"

    "I’ve
    already thought this through. Look, my wife’s coming.
    I’ll call you later. Not a word of this to anyone, you understand?"
    and he flipped the phone shut.

    "Well,
    that was the rudest display of behavior you’ve ever exhibited,"
    she said as she approached.

    "I’m
    sorry, I just can’t– Why are we doing this anyway? All these
    years, we’ve been able to solve our own problems and now you want
    to share our most intimate moments with some kid who’s not even–"

    "She’s
    not a kid; she’s a woman. And she’s trying to help us."

    "She’s
    a kid. She says like all the time and sooo.
    ‘I’m like sooo proud to be like
    working with you.’"

    "She
    does not. She never talks that way, and even if she did, so what?
    Every generation has its idioms. God knows ours did."

    "I
    feel as though I’m talking to the grandkids, to Billy. When
    I disagree, I half expect her to say, ‘So sue me.’"

    "Quit
    being ridiculous. Besides, none of this excuses your rudeness."

    "I
    said, ‘I’m sorry,’ OK? Let’s just go home."

    "I
    have to pick up my medication."

    "All
    right. I’ll browse the liquor store."

    "We
    have enough booze."

    "I
    said, ‘browse.’"

  • W.I.F.E.

    "We would probably have a better shot of
    winning the Power ball lottery than having our wives wear this!"

    This was sent to me by my former boyfriend, who is now my good buddy, Rob Vinton. Yes, he is the son of Bobby Vinton, and we met here on a show about

    being the Child of a Celebrity—(Good Company) KSTP TV—in the ’80s.

    The interesting story about Rob is that he played his father Bobbie Vinton in the movie

    GOODFELLAS. Rob is now the Musical Conductor-Road Manager-and handsome bass

    guitarist on the Bobby Vinton Musical Tour.

    Small world in the creative field.

  • Duh. Duh. Duh, Duh Duh?

    If you are going to review films, as my USC intern used to say, then start at the top. So here is my review of Iron Man.

    Because Iron Man is more of a movie than a film, I am not sure what to say. Films engage you. Movies distract you.

    To be honest, Iron Man may well be a film if it weren’t for its one overarching distraction. I waited, as did others, for "the riff." The riff that could be the greatest in hard rock history (so some say). So why does John Farveau wait until the credits to hit us with Ozzy’s opus?

    Oh, and not to, like, totally spoil the fil, um, movie for you but there is one other distraction. Iron Man spends most of his time driving the same Audi R8 I covered in my "How Clinton Wrecked His Ferrari" post.

    Iron Man keeps a full house of cars that are far better than the R8. Try a Saleen S7 — 700 Hp and 750 lb. Or what is surely a replica 427 Cobra and something that looks like a bespoke British exotic (the Ascari perhaps…I’ll place it soon).

    You know, I really don’t know what else to say. Jeff Bridges is bad (as in good) and Iron Man’s suit is b-a-m-f-chillierthankatarinawitt.

    I am distracted.

    P.S. No, my blog picture (taken at the Akron OH public library) ain’t Robert DJ, but then it’s not Sabbath playing "duh, duh, duh, duh, duh" in the movie credits.

    Duh-A-AH-um.

     

     

     

     

  • Acadia Cafe: Shades of the New Riv

    I felt a twinge of nostalgia the other night when I stopped
    in for a bite at the Acadia Café, which recently moved from Franklin and
    Nicollet to Cedar and Riverside. Back in my college days – and for many years
    after, the space was home to the New Riverside Café, run by an anarchist
    collective. In the early years, there were no fixed prices – you were supposed
    to "Eat what you need, pay what you can afford." A sign invited
    customers to practice dishwashing yoga, and I did, once or twice. I remember
    great acoustic music, and a couple of slogans “No Meat, No Bosses” and “The
    Bio-Magnetic Center of the Universe.”
    That was a time of revolutionary dreams and great optimism. Gradually,
    most of that spirit faded away, and the New Riv finally closed because of money
    troubles in 1997.

    But there was something about the Arcadia that evokes a
    little of that spirit – mostly, it’s the busy program of live original music ("no cover songs allowed".
    On Wednesday, when I stopped in, ace accordion player Dan Newton, leader of the
    Café Accordion Orchestra, had put together a program that started with him
    playing with Prairie Home Companion guitarist Pat Donohue at 9 p.m., followed
    by Orkestar Bez Ime playing Balkan Music at 10 p.m., and
    the Mill City Grinders, an old-time string band, at 11. (Dan and the Café
    Accordion Orchestra played at our wedding, so Carol and I are big fans.) We
    couldn’t stick around for the music, but I did have a first-rate Swiss and
    mushroom burger with skin-on fries ($7.25). A note on the menu says the beef comes from humanely raised animals. Carol’s appetizer order of fish and
    chips were a bit greasy, but still good enough to be enjoyable.

    The food menu is pretty basic – burgers, nachos,
    cheese curds, hot and cold sandwiches, but the beer list is one of the best in
    the Twin Cities – 28 beers on tap, and another 40 in bottles, including some
    brews I have never seen before, like a Furthermore
    Knot Stock American Pale Ale from Spring Green, Wisconsin ($4 a pint), and a dozen bottled
    Belgian beers.

    If you park in the ImPark lot behind Midwest Mountaineering, they’ll validate your ticket for up to two hours on weekdays, or all day on weekends.

    Acadia Cafe, 329 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis, 612-874-8702.