Ann Bauer I would watch Philip Seymour Hoffman fold his laundry. Magnolia, 25th Hour, Capote. Like a blond, overfed version of Sean Penn, he is so riveting onscreen — so true in every single role he plays — that the actors around him seem to fade. In The Savages, which I saw this afternoon at the Edina … Read more
I haven’t a clue how to fix most of our huge national scourges. Global warming, gang violence, reality TV. These issues are just too big and ghastly and amorphous. What’s one person to do? But hunger. Now there’s a solvable problem. People are hungry, you feed them. Even tiny efforts make a difference. And every … Read more
Typically, it is heat that frightens me. Perhaps this is because I grew up in Minnesota, but sweltering temperatures seem more sinister — thick and canopy-like and unavoidable — whereas cold has always struck me as surmountable. Until now. It was just last week, on what I assumed then would be the coldest night of … Read more
I’ve spent the day researching the life of Michael Dorris: reading him, reading about him. And the dark, frantic moral of his story seems to be simply that some lives are unlivable. This is not a comforting thought. He was an extraordinary writer. No matter what his myriad sins, this man had a way on … Read more
Here’s how we end up at Gusto Cafe & Wine Bar in Hopkins: It’s Saturday evening and we have nothing to do because the party we thought we were attending actually is next week (someone — that would be me — put it on the wrong space in the calendar) and all the kids are … Read more
And if you’re not eating Japanese yet, what exactly are you waiting for? First, there was a minor surge in the opening of small sushi and bento box places over the past year. Then, last week, in roughly the time it took for 2007 to become 2008, we went from an urban core with shamefully … Read more
Let’s face it. The Days of Wine and Roses are past. This is January, month of frigid temperatures and atonement. And all I have to say is, if you overindulged in December. . . .well, join the club. I’m not a glutton by nature. I don’t typically stuff myself; I’ve been drunk maybe twice in … Read more
Say you were offered the option to go forward or backward in a time machine. Which would you choose? If science fiction is any indication, most people would leap ahead to find out what the world will be like at some future time. Me? I’d go back: to the Last Supper, to Ludwig Beethoven’s Vienna, … Read more
Here’s what happened. Mitch Omer — one of my dearest friends in this world — showed up at my house on Thanksgiving with a red-lined version of Andrew Zimmern’s December column, livid about some of the things it contained. Mitch railed. I defended Andrew on many points. We got into a bit of a tiff, … Read more
So. I was at the Jewish Community Center on Christmas Day — along with what appeared to be every other fitness-minded non-Christian in the western metro — on the elliptical trainer, reading Self magazine, when I ran across an article entitled The Great Sex Diet. And out of a deep sense of professional responsibility, I … Read more