Author: Ann Bauer

  • Eat a duck, save a doberman

    Ah, the dilemma of being an upright mammal. Each of us — excepting strict vegans, of course — must make peace with his or her spot on the food chain. Are we carnivores, herbivores, or pesci-vegetarians? Do we eat fowl but not red meat, because cows have sad eyes while chickens are mostly irritating? Is…

  • Sup like a steelworker

    The latest Parasole restaurant opened for dinner last night in Maple Grove. It’s called Pittsburgh Blue, named for the way he-men in the Rust Belt eat their steak: charred on the exterior, cold and bloody inside. Why, you may ask, is a restaurant geared toward steelworkers located in the pink collar capital of the Midwest?…

  • Once, full of light

    Oddly, the last two movies I’ve seen have had more or less the same storyline: impoverished street musician suddenly finds success but suffers many personal losses along the way. The first was La Vie en Rose, a biopic about the French singer Edith Piaf. It was long — 140 minutes — and as violent a…

  • White on a whim

    Perversely, after a summer of drinking meaty, dry red wines, when the cool weather set in this week, I suddenly got a hankering for white. A woman’s body is fickle, as I tell my husband often. One day, you slip into your size-7 jeans and run around the world bending every which way like an…

  • For news junkies with spatial skills

    Lists bore you? Don’t bother. You can get breaking news in a colorful, jagged puzzle format at newsmap. Even if you don’t find anything interesting, it’s a great screen to stare at. Kind of like an Escher.

  • A little Jersey armpit

    So I’m talking to my friend Schneider today and he asks, “Are you watching Wine Library TV?” “Damn,” I think to myself. “I guess it’s time to bite the bullet and get cable.” First I find out there’s this show on HBO featuring dysfunctional couples having real sex; not good sex, mind you, and never…