Author: Shannon Olson

Barely two hours after the first round of American Idol auditions began, the sidewalk outside Target Center is abuzz with distressed-looking people on cell phones, seeking, no doubt, some form of satellite consolation. Some of them are tearful. Some are stone-faced. These folks are among the many who sang their hearts out for thirty seconds, were thanked, and told to go home. The few who made it through to the next round are trying to be quiet about their success, because they were told they had to be, though some of the good news has leaked out anyway.

One woman props a large sign up against a brick pillar, thunks her Coach bag on the ground, and flips open her cell phone. The homemade sign, decorated with glitter, reads “I can get Simon to peel me a grape.” She’s dressed in a striking red cape, skinny black pants, and a black-lace bustier à la Vanity from the 1980s. She holds an empty martini glass. When she finishes her call, I ask her if she made it to the next round. “I can’t tell you,” she says, somewhat blithely. When I tell her that a few other people already told me she had, she says, “Can’t say. You know, they’ve got their rules.” When I ask her name, she says, “I can’t tell you.” When I ask her if she can tell me what song she sang, she says she can’t do that either, but looks at the sign and offers this description: “It’s a fun one. It’s about a woman telling a man what to do to make her happy.”

Whether her apparent success is the product of her promise of carnal pleasures for the show’s nastiest judge or her raw talent is anyone’s guess. Shannon Thompson of Edina and Sheila Romero from West St. Paul met during a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the North Como Presbyterian Church in Roseville and decided to try out together. Of her audition, Shannon said, “It was horrible. I messed it up and added an ‘oh, crap,’ to the chorus.” Sheila, who’s had voice lessons since she was ten, said, “It’s hard to compete with 6,999 other people, or however many they’re saying are here.”

Which sort of begs the question, why bother? The answer to which is surprisingly universal.

“American Idol is going to go down in history as a huge part of pop culture,” said Kalii Palmer from Nashville, “and I can say I was part of it.”

“It’s kind of a rush,” commented Janel Sorenson. “And I like the attention. I can say that I did it.”

She and her friend Joshua were both still waiting on the sidewalk for their auditions, and both had tried out last year in different cities. Joshua spent a big part of his childhood on the Ivory Coast because his parents were missionaries and now works as a shift manager at an Arby’s in a Minneapolis suburb. “I’m goin’ for salary manager!” he shouted, with some apparent irony, pumping a fist in the air. At last year’s tryout in Denver, he didn’t make the first cut but was allowed to sing his entire song, and was hoping for at least the same good fortune this time.

American Idol seems, indeed, to be a sort of contemporary Woodstock. For most, there’s the feeling of having been part of a big cultural happening. But there is also the appeal of being chosen, the promise of that fleeting, Warholian fifteen minutes, though the selection criteria are as elusive as Osama bin Laden. Actually, it all seems to have less to do with singing and more to do with singing as a vehicle for celebrity.

Andrea Leap is an instructor at the MacPhail Center for Music and helped two of her students prepare to audition. “There’s personal taste, and that’s hard to account for,” Leap comments. “They’re looking for a very special aesthetic, something with broad appeal, all-American, whatever that is. You can’t be too threateningly unique.” (So we can assume that had Bjork tried out, she would’ve gotten the chop.)

“It’s certainly increased the enrollment in voice lessons,” Leap says of the show. But she’s quick to add that the students who’ve been inspired by watching American Idol “aren’t necessarily into being singers, they’re into being famous. I don’t know how to teach that.”

For his part, Tiki Cross will stick to smaller venues. After singing a few bars of Kenny Rogers’ “She Believes in Me” for the Idol judges, he was told his voice was too strong, despite the fact that a previous audition had gone really well. That one had been in his living room, before a different panel of judges: his three children. His oldest son, eight-year-old Dajeon, had played Simon. His daughter, Gloria, ten months, was Paula. And Taveon, Gloria’s twin brother, had played Randy. “Randy sang along with me,” said Cross. “Paula said, ‘Good, Daddy,’ and Simon actually clapped. I was really surprised by that. So I thought I was doing pretty good,” he laughs. “But you know, they all said, ‘You’re our American Idol, Dad,’ and that’s what counts.”

To each his or her own consolation. “We’re going to do retail therapy at the Mall of America,” said Kalii Palmer, who had brought her mother along for support. “And I need a big thing of fries.”

Michael McGillis is at the Franconia Sculpture Park, standing in a pile of cut-and-scattered wood. He’s wearing shorts, heavy work boots, and a straw hat, and is looking sweaty and overwhelmed. His work in progress, Paper Cut, isn’t really turning out the way he’d planned.

He began by digging a curving trench; in his mind’s eye, he would then lay cut wood horizontally on either side of the trench, so that people could walk through it and feel like they were parting the Red Sea, only they’d be parting the trees, stacked like cordwood and towering over their heads. “People become the cutters themselves,” notes McGillis of his original vision. A visitor would feel enveloped, overwhelmed—kind of how McGillis seems to be feeling now.

He and his helpers don’t dig for long before they hit the water table. So much for the deep trench. He also isn’t able to get as many of the white and red oak and ash trees as the project required. As the installation is developing now, you’ll have to be really short to get the total experience. But all of his sculptural installations seem to have gone this way, McGillis admits. “It’s about improvising.”

When McGillis is finished, you won’t be able to really see the installation from a distance because it will blend in with the landscape. But up close, as you walk into it, the experience will be quite different. Like some of his other pieces, McGillis will paint the ends of the trees an unearthly, iridescent color. “Maybe a blue,” he says. “I want it to be a bright, almost impossible space.”

Which is exactly what Franconia is for the artists who travel there to work for various periods of time and at various points in their careers. Some, like McGillis, who is here on a Jerome Foundation grant, have already built successful careers as sculptors. Others are moving toward that goal; still others are just getting started.

I had pictured a summer at Franconia as the sort of bacchanal for sculptors that the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference is supposed to be for writers. But here McGillis was, actually puzzling over his art and trying to get his project done so he could go home to his wife, toddler, and newborn.

His work is one of the first pieces to be installed on Franconia’s new site. After renting land for eleven years, the park will soon have a permanent home on its own land, down the road about half a mile from its current spot. John Hock, Franconia’s founding and artistic director, works tirelessly to keep what one of the interns calls “a sculptor’s paradise” thriving. Somehow, he’s hooked up with Slumberland, which has entirely furnished the new house where the sculptors will stay with items including leather couches that are sure to get plenty of use in the coming months. The Jacuzzi (which came with the place) has already been the site for a number of physics experiments. It’s a two-person tub, but it turns out you can actually get about eight people in it. Of that water-displacement exercise, Hock says with a snort, “We proved that water flows downward.” Aha. This is what I was waiting to hear.

Back at the original park, Coral Lambert comments matter-of-factly to a passing middle-aged guy who’s covered in dust and powder: “You’re dirty.” Indeed, this place is a beehive of filthy sculptors. Getting ready for the hot metal pour the next day, the artists are taking turns breaking up the old radiators and theater chairs that will become tomorrow’s art, and putting the finishing touches on their molds.

Tonight, they will stay up as long as it takes to get their projects ready for pouring. How early they rise on any given day “depends on how much you’ve had to drink the night before,” smirks one of the interns, but tomorrow they’ll all be up early. Which is not to say you can’t both work and play hard. I go on a cold-beer run with Melanie Van Houten, a faculty member at St. Kate’s who is spending part of the summer here by helping out and working on her own stuff. Tomorrow, she’ll be “mold captain,” in charge of lining up the molds and orchestrating the pourings. Everyone who goes anywhere near the molten iron, the temperature of which ranges from 2,750 to 3,000 degrees, will be wearing heavy leather and work boots.

The fruits of all this labor will be on display in September, when Franconia hosts one of its last shows on its current grounds. The mid-career artists really do seem to be working on their art, and while they might enjoy an occasional moonlit skinny-dip in the nearby St. Croix River, it’s up to the interns to keep things carnal. I happened to walk in on two of them while making my way to what I thought was the bathroom. After knocking, I opened the door and found the artists covered in sheets from the shoulder down, engaged in a pleasant mid-afternoon conversation about sculpture and form, no doubt.

But of course, art is an exploration of the human experience. One good-looking young man explains the process of drilling holes in the molds for pouring and venting. “There’s a lot of heat and pressure building up,” he says.
And sometimes you’ve just gotta blow it off. I overhear stories of late-night underwear dancing (a male intern wears a leopard-print thong for such occasions), and a particular evening spent underneath a large sculpture. “There were a whole bunch of us,” says one artist-in-training, “and we were butt naked and playing the trombone.” So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.

“I consider myself extremely lucky,” artist Judy Onofrio has said. “Every day, I have the opportunity to construct a world of memory, humor, and stories through my work in the studio. Best of all, I live in that world and invite others in.”

It is in this spirit of openness that the 2005 McKnight Distinguished Artist recently ushered an entire busload of adult learners into her home and studio and allowed them to roam her three-acre backyard hillside garden, populated by plastic swans and sculptures like the odalisk made of Jell-O molds. Onofrio is perhaps best recognized by Twin Citizens who remember her 1993 exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, titled Judyland, which featured huge conglomerate pieces made of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup bottles. Before our private tour, those of us who’d signed up for the University of Minnesota Curiosity Camp course “Come One, Come All to Judyland” had already been treated to a morning lecture on the artist’s work, as well as a boxed lunch on the bus en route to Onofrio’s solo exhibit Come One, Come All at the Rochester Arts Center.

In her studio, two assistants were busy building the foundations for new pieces. Ryan worked in metal, and Jeremy, sitting at a large table littered with wooden parts, explained, “My task for today was to make a whole bunch of birds.” Those birds, which would be covered in an epoxy, smoothed, and painted until they looked like delicate porcelain creatures, represent a new direction in Onofrio’s work, an artist taking flight. Despite having a studio stacked high with storage boxes labeled “hummingbirds,” “lamp parts,” “bottle caps,” “door knobs,” “swans,” “animals and parts,” “fish,” “lids,” “dogs,” “tile,” “tiny tile,” “castors,” and the less-specific “political,” Onofrio is relying less on the found objects that are her trademark. Though she’s long had a penchant for bringing home buckets of garage sale junk, she admitted that she recently has been casting off entire warehouses of stored stuff. “Most of the found objects are pretty meaningless to me now,” Onofrio said.

Onofrio began working in clay in the 60s, then moved on to large, soft textile works with an overt, overstuffed sensuality (think three-dimensional O’Keeffe paintings, think sea cucumbers). For a time she was creating large-scale wooden structures that, once finished, were set ablaze. (Onofrio confesses to being something of a pyromaniac.) It was after back surgery limited her mobility that she turned to her trademark assemblage, beginning with small brooches made from found objects—buttons and broken cups—and moving on to much larger pieces inspired by such diverse projects as Gaudi’s spiraling masterpieces, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa.

Onofrio approaches her work with that same sort of religious fervor and devotion. Her pieces, noted University of Minnesota Professor Robert Silberman, are “a testament to the decorative impulse,” but also are notable for the attention Onofrio pays to “both detail and coherence,” achieving in their chaos an incredible balance of color and form.

The pieces in Come One, Come All were inspired by Onofrio’s memories of and dreams about the circus. The serene, ceramic-looking faces of women and monkeys, with their ruby lips and high cheekbones, call to mind Jeff Koons, but without the insincerity. Onofrio’s work is sensual, open, playful. And while recent pieces rely much more on movement, balance, and created forms—monkeys, elephants, acrobats, a crab, birds—closer inspection reveals that same attention to surface decoration, in cut shells and beads, along with the occasional cup handle, juice squeezer, or squirrel figurine found at a flea market.

In the studio, demonstrating how she’s been experimenting with the positioning of objects in a new sculpture, Onofrio commented, “It’s like constant change and revision, playing with how the object interacts with the figure … I [still] have a collage aesthetic. I’m always moving things around and looking at the relationship between objects.” Onofrio spends hours in her studio fiddling around until she finds the right balance. “It’s like, you make this precious thing, and does it work? And you have a big band saw up there if it doesn’t.”

Perhaps Onofrio’s transition to creating her own forms, instead of relying on found pieces, represents a kind of confidence in her own internal narrative and impulses. In a recent piece, Delicate Balance, for example, a woman does a one-handed balancing act, held aloft by two men, with a parrot poised on an index finger. Her new work, said Onofrio, is “about finding the content, and not having to show all my junk to everyone.”

A few miles from the McStop off 35W, down a road that winds along black-dirt fields and stretches into downtown Lakeville, you’ll find the last Twin Cities-area Ben Franklin five-and-dime store. Once a staple of small-town Minnesota, and the anchor in any tiny downtown, Ben Franklin was the place we all biked to on our beat-up Schwinns, the ones with the banana seats and girly bars. It always had that Ben Franklin-y smell—worn industrial carpeting, mothballs, yarn, and potpourri. Our Ben Franklin had Tupperware containers filled with penny candy, latch hook rug kits, and costume jewelry that you’d buy for your mom on her birthday. It was your destination for Pop Rocks and Wacky Paks bubblegum cards, Charleston Chews and Slopoke suckers, Laffy Taffy, and Lik-m-Aid Fun Dip.

When I arrive at the Lakeville store during a spring downpour, owner Scott Erickson is on a ladder, holding a flashlight, and visible only from the chest down. He’s moved one of the ceiling aside to locate the source of a new drip. A bucket is balanced on top of the ladder, and the tell-tale rusty rings of water spots dot the ceiling all over the store. “It’s been a really bad day,” the young woman who’s helping him says, apologizing for his gruff greeting. “He’s usually really nice.”

How often does anyone walk into a business these days and actually meet the owner? How often does anyone receive a needless apology from the owner—who is holding a big bucket of rainwater—for being gruff? A red-haired guy of medium build, Erickson is soon to be fifty, but doesn’t look it, and has owned the store for half of his life. While enterprises like SuperTarget, Fleet Farm, and Gander Mountain are thriving just off the freeway, little Ben Franklin hangs on in a quiet downtown that depends on the loyalty of a citizenry that is increasingly composed of commuters. Enggren’s grocery store across the street, which celebrated its one-hundredth birthday in March, was forced to close its doors only a month later, another victim of tight profit margins. “A grocery store is your anchor,” says Erickson, who is worried about the decrease in traffic that the absence of Enggren’s will bring. “To tell the truth, the last six months, it’s been a struggle. You need the community to support you.” And in turn, Erickson tries to supply what the community needs, and to keep prices low.

I should come back on a drier day in the fall, Erickson tells me, when more than seventy pairs of pants will be hanging from the ceiling, part of Lakeville’s homecoming celebration, a sort of commercial display of fall colors. It’s become tradition that the kids, elementary through high school (and there are now twelve elementary schools, four middle schools, and two Lakeville high schools) decorate their pants, spending anywhere from fifty to one hundred dollars to add flair—rhinestones and paint and anything else that screams school spirit. To give kids ideas, Erickson and his perky staff of local teenagers will hang pants from past years all over the store. “The kids really go wild on Homecoming,” says Erickson. It’s the kind of mom ’n’ pop touch that you won’t find at Target. Nor will you find at Target Harry the Quaker Parrot, who lives next to the counter and says “Hello” and “Pretty bird,” and busily gnaws on cardboard. Nor Marley the Golden Retriever, who watches over the store during the week.

Nor will you find at the corporate stores small, homemade pricing signs and craft suggestions, written in the cheerful bubble script of the young women who work there, and who know exactly where every little thing in the store can be found. These things include candles, raffia, Lakeville Panthers spirit wear, water pistols, greeting cards, Elmer’s glue and paperboard, bacon bits and paprika, feather boas and backpacks, beading kits and needlepoint supplies, and tables of fabric. Aluminum roasting pans and laundry detergent. White Rain shampoo and extension cords. A God Bless America shot glass. All of the things you remember, in other words, as well as the sorts of things you might need in a hurry. Not to mention such modern additions as a universal, hands-free mobile-phone adaptor.

“It’s tough,” says Erickson, “but we’re going to stick it out as long as we can. People don’t realize what they have, until it’s gone.”

As I was standing recently in front of MinneNAPolis PowerNap Suites, a dimly lit store in the Mall of America, a herd of teenagers in hooded sweatshirts and sagging, crack-revealing jeans sauntered by and collectively stated the obvious: “Dude! Check it out. No way. This place is, like, for napping. Who would do that?”

In fact, according to owner Steev RamsDell, the suites have hosted just over 1,250 soporific souls since they opened in November. He showed me the “Deep Space” room, which could also aptly be titled the “Teenage Star Trek Geek Suite.” Deep black and speckled with glow-in-the-dark paint, the room has a bunk bed with a desk, small TV, a constellation lamp, a lava lamp, and a handful of plastic spacemen who seemed to be descending an electrical cord. Lying in the bunk bed, one can stare at the starry ceiling and imagine any number of alien invasions.

Which begs a few questions.

“We do a lot of cleaning here,” said RamsDell, who explains that fresh linens and robes are brought in after each use. “We’re always cleaning.”

“About sixty percent of our traffic is from out-of-towners,” he said, listing tired flight crews and pooped shoppers from Wisconsin among his customers. “Some people want to take a nap before they do the two- or three-hour drive home.” And not everyone naps. The suites, he claimed, have helped at least one person garner employment, a man who got a call for an interview while he was at the mall, “so he came in here and booked an hour to talk on the phone.” Could he get reception in the “Deep Space” room? Replied RamsDell, “I’ve called China from in there.”

Though paying up to a dollar per minute for a short snooze may seem like a nutty idea, RamsDell envisions an America where, “in three to five years, places to nap will be everywhere, like ATMs.” Places to nap, in fact, are already everywhere—heating grates on any number of city sidewalks, for example, or bus-stop shelters, or at the mall, on any number of benches—but it’s a matter of comfort. Take the massage chairs in the mall. “You close your eyes and try to relax,” noted RamsDell in his lullaby voice, “but who’s watching your bags? How can you relax when people are walking by and staring at you?” He’s banking that America’s insomniac millions might just be ready to shell out for some quality Z’s. Popular MetroNap, for example, offers the poor, tired, and hungry—well, just the tired—of New York quality napping in one of its partially enclosed pods, but even that leaves the fatigued open for public viewing. The powernap suites are locked. “Take Starbucks,” says RamsDell, who conducts business in bedroom slippers. “No one believed people would pay five dollars for coffee.”

The Mall of America has been a test location of sorts for PowerNap Suites and the company is currently in negotiations to open at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the nation’s sixth-busiest hub. The hardest part about opening at the airport, said RamsDell, are issues related to insurance and liability. How do you figure out, as he put it, “the risk of resting and relaxing?” For insurance purposes and for the public’s information, there have been a few misconceptions to clear up. Only one person is allowed in the napping room at a time, with some exceptions—nursing mothers, for example. But RamsDell said that there really is no downside to this gentle enterprise in our sleep-deprived culture. “It’s one hundred percent beneficial,” he asserted.

All of the rooms had a kitschy, homemade quality. The “12 Fathoms” suite had a leather massaging chair and a flat-screen television screening a scene of roaring surf, but it was also decorated with what appear to be rummage-sale finds—shower curtains with underwater scenes, a stuffed shark, and, tacked to the wall, a toilet seat with a fish design.

When it was time for my nap, the “Asian Mist” room was taken, so I chose the “Mesa Plateau,” with a cattle skull on the wall that would make Georgia O’Keeffe feel right at home. A staff member settled me in, placing my feet in the Chi machine, adjusting the support pillows, spritzing an eye pillow with aromatherapy spray, placing the body-warming panels over me, putting the music on a “rain and thunder,” setting, then, finally, closing the door. There’s no way I’ll fall asleep here, I thought as the thunder gently rumbled the table (it’s connected to the audio system). A rainforest monkey screeched in my headphones, and I made a mental list of things I’d like to buy at Williams-Sonoma.

The next thing I knew, a girl in a staff T-shirt was handing me a glass of water. “Take your time,” she said, “waking up.” —Shannon Olson

Late last year, toy giant Mattel and media behemoth Clear Channel Entertainment breathlessly announced the formation of an “acclaimed, award-winning creative team to bring ‘Barbie™ Live in Fairytopia!™’ to stages across north America.” For the first time ever (!), Barbie’s tiny, impossibly three-dimensional form (by most estimates, a 39-21-33 D-cup) will be springing to life onstage. Said Richard Dickson, senior vice president of worldwide Mattel brands, “We have truly assembled a Broadway-caliber, all-star lineup of behind-the-scenes masters that will transport audiences to the magical land of Fairytopia, where glittery fairies and magical creatures will delight hearts and create new lifelong memories for Barbie fans of all ages.” Okay, then.

Obviously, whoever is chosen for the lead role has some seriously stacked heels to fill.

For those who haven’t been sitting on their hands waiting, here’s some background: The hour-long production is based on the straight-to-DVD movie Barbie Fairytopia, in which Elina (played by Barbie) lives inside a Peony as a wingless fairy in a lush and magical land. Elina wakes up one morning to find that her home’s petals have yellowed and the formerly flighty fairies of Fairytopia are no longer airborne. The source of this calamity? A horrible potion created by the evil Laverna and dropped over the land like napalm by gigantic birds.

What’s the flightless Elina to do? She has no wings. And yet, since the other fairies are now grounded and are “not used to walking,” she is the only one who can save them.

At this point, those of us who grew up in the 1970s with Malibu Barbie can’t help but ask, What about the impossible arch of her foot, which precludes any real physical activity? And how far can any respectable fairy lug those gigantic hooters? Finally, who on earth could play such a role? And won’t she tip over?

The logical casting choice is, of course, Pamela Anderson. But before an open casting call in December (which was televised on Good Morning America), director Eric Schaeffer announced, “The actress that we end up casting in the role of Elina must have tremendous singing and dancing skills, as well as strong athletic capabilities. Barbie Live in Fairytopia will tour eighty cities and is an elaborate stage production that includes a number of special effects—including flying.” Schaeffer also offered this further elaboration: “The actress we cast needs to have the sparkle and charisma necessary to act as the world’s most famous fashion doll in our production.”

While it’s true that a Barbie doll is purchased somewhere on the planet every three seconds, my memories of Barbie do not include any awed notions regarding her charisma. Rather, I remember trying to pound her breasts flat, swishing her around in the bathtub, and shooting her down the stairs. And I’ve discovered that my abusive relationship with Barbie was not unique.

According to the Mattel website, Barbie creator Ruth Handler believed that “little girls needed … a doll that would inspire them to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up.” And thus we’ve had astronaut Barbie, Barbie for President, Dr. Barbie, and Hard Rock Café Barbie. But a 2004 study by two professors from Western Connecticut State University revealed that though girls do participate in imaginative, role-model type play with their Barbies (playing house, sending them off to work), they more commonly engage in something called “torture play,” and this occurs almost exclusively with their Barbie dolls. One sixth-grade girl recalled, “I stripped [my Barbies] and threw them in the snow. When it became spring and they all thawed, I picked them up and my brother and my sister and I, because they didn’t like Barbie either, took my mom’s [chicken] bones scissors … and so we cut them in half.” The researchers noted that while the girls thought torture play with Barbie was “humorous,” they also offered a rationale for their abuse: According to “the overall consensus among the girls,” Barbie was punished “‘because she is the only one that looks perfect.’” In fact, Barbie has been “resculpted” several times since her invention to accommodate complaints about the unreasonable expectations she creates for girls. Her new, sleeker form features reduced breasts and a thicker waist. (And it’s worth noting that in the Fairytopia movie, she seems to be a humble size C and is sporting a mere one- or two-inch wedge, more sensible for running through the magic meadow.)

But given such hostility toward impossible perfection, wouldn’t it make sense to create a few dolls that live less in a fantastical land and more in the realm of reality? I asked a group of thirty-something women what they would suggest, now that they’ve come of age, for a more realistic role model:

“How about,” suggested Michelle, “burnt-out middle-aged teacher Barbie with a Caesarian scar? How about a Subaru with dog-hair Barbie accessory? Or a Barbie outfit: Mom jeans and holiday vest.”

Dawn, a freelance photographer who is seven months pregnant, suggested Moody and Bloated Barbie, Do I Have to Get Out of Bed? Barbie, and I Can’t Zip Up My Pants Barbie.

Melanie envisioned a Condo Barbie: “She doesn’t have a big yard, or a dog, but has a place that’s her own. There is a good opportunity to add other dolls, like a neighbor friend, and the creepy neighbor who hits on her, and then maybe even a whole redneck family that lives in an adjacent house and shoots off illegal fireworks in the middle of the night, complete with big howling coon dog.”

Barbie Live in Fairytopia is set to open in April on a stage in Ohio (performances in the Twin Cities are not yet scheduled), but producers say they won’t announce who’ll play the charismatic lead until mid- to late February.

Maybe they’re having trouble finding a real-life Barbie.—Shannon Olson

Maybe you’ve seen the new billboards on Snelling, Grand, or Highway 94: “Banana Chips Can Cause Figure Skating,” and “Fun-Size a Cow”—ads enjoining us to rediscover or reconsider the meat snack, those salty mystery sticks most of us save for camping trips or are storing for the apocalypse. Those tough, pungent treats most of us last ate in junior high school.

Beef. It’s what’s dried, sheathed, and vacuum-packed for dinner?

The Atkins years were good to America’s meat snack industry; the sector’s smokin’ hot sales climbed steadily in the 1990s, fueled by carb-free fiends hoping to reach ketogenic nirvana. Mintel International Group reported that in 2004, meat snack sales exceeded $2.65 billion. But those beefed-up numbers can’t climb forever, and as Americans reclaim their carbohydrates, the meat snack industry has scrambled to expand its consumer appeal. Reporter Michael Browne noted in a recent Convenience Store News article that meat snacks, “once strictly the province of blue-collar, rural male customers … have taken off in the past few years among a wider consumer base. Women, Baby Boomers, younger people, and Hispanic customers have all taken to snacking on meat in all its forms—jerky, sticks, nuggets, and bites.” I couldn’t recall recently snacking on meat in any of those forms, but was interested to learn that others of my gender might be nibbling their brains out, attracted by new, “softer textures, bite-sized pieces and milder meat flavors [that clearly favor] the new female user.”

The meat snack masters have apparently experimented with pastel packaging, sweeter honey ham sticks, other light meats like turkey, chicken, and even emu, and the seemingly irresistible reclosable bag!, all in an effort to lure the fairer sex.

I decided it was time to poll the ladies.

Girls, what would it take to get you into a meat snack today? In any of its forms—jerky, sticks, nuggets or bites? I asked around.

“The one time I purchased and ate a Slim Jim, I had an allergic reaction to the MSG in it, which caused my throat to nearly swell shut,” reported Lynn. “So, as much as I love a smoky, meaty treat, they will have to reformulate the recipe before this lady will bite again. Unless, of course, I learn to do tracheotomies on myself.”

Anne suggested making meat snacks vegetarian. (Done, done, and done, ladies!) “Or maybe tout them as something you eat when you have PMS?” she added. (Though much industry attention has been paid to impulse and point-of-purchase displays, it is worth noting that no one has yet thought to put beef jerky next to the tampons.)

Michele offered that meat snacks might be more appealing if they were not made from “meat flavored meat stuff,” or “meat-like items,” or meat from “the jungle.” They might also be more attractive to the female palate if they were “made from candy.”

None of the women I polled found pastel packaging to be a selling point, although Melanie, an architect, had this to say: “The more I think about it, meat sticks are usually in heavy-colored packaging—blacks, browns, reds, maroon. Maybe if they went with a lighter color—even a tan—it could psychologically make people view them as less heavy foods. All of the lower fat meats are lighter in color—chicken, turkey—and I equate dark-colored meats with high fat. How many grams of fat are there per serving of beef jerky anyway? Shit, I love beef!”

Which is good, because though the industry has tried to introduce ostrich, alligator, and chicken jerky, beef remains its best seller.

The upshot seems to be that meat snacks, be they jerked or kippered, in nuggets or resealable bags, are still enjoying a decidedly survivalist and masculine profile.

“It’s a rare day when I purchase a meat snack,” my friend Jess weighed in. “And usually it’s to accompany a trip to a cabin up north with some Knob Creek in hand.”—Shannon Olson

Offering perhaps conclusive proof that fewer Americans are reading these days, Best Buy’s health and wellness retail experiment, called Eq-Life, will soon occupy the space vacated by Grand Avenue’s now defunct independent bookstore, Bound to Be Read. It’s worth noting that about a mile down the street, the space left open by Ruminator’s closure is now a Patagonia store. Do Americans prefer fleecy jackets, scented candles, and heart monitors to the comforts of a good read? Mike Marolt, the president of Eq-Life, is hoping they do. Marolt’s own brainchild, the new store bills itself as a neighborhood resource for health, wellness, and technology, seemingly unlikely bedfellows. Its first test store, which opened in Richfield earlier this year, has been successful enough that Marolt has decided to expand the control group, opening both the St. Paul store and another in Stillwater later this year.

So what, exactly, is Eq-Life? And why is Best Buy trafficking in health and wellness? And what the devil does that have to do with technology? Before visiting the Richfield store, I pictured a group of women in hot pink capri pants who’d been lured in by the pedicure stations and had gone ahead and purchased more expensive cell phones and picked up an MP3 player on their way out the door, walking ever so gingerly in flip-flops toward their SUVs to protect freshly polished toes. Surely this was Best Buy’s way of selling computers and corollaries—peripherals? Whatever—to women who are intimidated by geeky techno-babble at the company’s warehouse stores, yes? Well, not exactly.

Imagine that by some magic of origami, O magazine could be folded out into an eighteen-thousand-square-foot retail space, and you’re getting a little bit closer. Borrowing from the Latin root aequilibrium—or perhaps just abbreviating the English cognate—Eq-Life seeks to provide its customers with an array of goods and services that “help people find balance,” said Sue Lee, who handles PR for the enterprise. These include salon and spa services (“Sea Facials,” the “Exfoliating Citrus Spa Manicure,” the “Gentleman’s Buff & Shine”); a range of self-help and health care texts (from He’s Just Not That Into You and What Not to Wear to Conquering Infertility and How Full Is Your Bucket?) to organic towels, tampons, and cleaning supplies, upscale scales that read your body fat and metabolic age, blood pressure monitors, fountains, air purifiers, motion detectors for keeping track of grandma, digital pedometers, nail polish, and herbal supplements. It is also the only retail location in the country licensed to sell something that everybody needs at a good party: defibrillators. And it offers consultations with nurse practitioners, diabetes and diet specialists, and members of the Geek Squad.

Mike Marolt believes that the connections between wellness and technology are untapped and many, and noted that one of the store’s most popular resources has been the health notes kiosk, where customers can tap a screen for information on everything from acid reflux to zinc malabsorption. And he knows what you’re thinking: The customer base isn’t just women. “Throughout our research we kept coming back to an equally balanced demographic, progressively minded around health and wellness, people who are online researching this information—highly engaged health and wellness consumers.”

However, many of Eq-Life’s new St. Paul neighbors are worried about all those highly engaged health and wellness consumers logging off and heading to Grand Avenue. Parking will be a huge issue in the already congested Victoria Crossing neighborhood. Then, too, Eq-Life may threaten smaller businesses in the area that offer similar products and services. While Patagonia seems to have received a warm welcome, so far Eq-Life has suffered a fair amount of conflict. Luckily, it has plenty of stuff to deal with that sort of stress. And if precedent is any sign, Eq-Life on Grand will be fine. When I asked Jennifer, a customer loading up on bath products at the Richfield store, why she had come in that day, she laughed and said, “My friend raves about this place. She’s a product whore!” There is undoubtedly an herbal remedy for that, too.

—Shannon Olson

Maybe I’m just jealous because my therapist has never given me a flat-screen TV, but it seemed that for a while, every time I turned on the Dr. Phil show, someone who’d struggled to face his or her demons was being rewarded with merchandise from Circuit City or a travel package from Orbitz.com. I’ve long admired Dr. Phil, but over the last year I began wondering what had happened to the big, balding man I’d come to think of as a friendly sort of sage with a heavy Texas drawl—a cognitive behaviorist cowboy, slinging sound advice and shooting down denial. Had he been swallowed whole by Bob Barker? Tell them what they’ve won, Bob! The Price is Right. The Pathology is Right. The Life Lesson is Right. On one episode, Dr. Phil reunited a twenty-something with the mother who’d given her up for adoption. “I never stopped thinking about you!” the mother cried, or something like that, and embraced her daughter. They were sent off on an all-expenses paid trip, and I thought, I’m not sure I’d want to vacation with a stranger I just met, and who also happened to abandon me as a child. Moments later, and with more clarity, I thought, What’s my problem? It’s a vacation. I’d go anywhere Dr. Phil would send me.

Dr. Phil launched his televised therapy career on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the year the focus of that show was “Finding Your Spirit” and Oprah hauled in a succession of psychologists and therapists in an effort to help us all, en masse, knock down whatever blocks were preventing us from becoming our most “authentic selves.” That era of Oprah brought Gary Zukav, author of The Seat of the Soul and The Dancing Wu Li Masters; it brought Iyanla Vanzant, author of Yesterday I Cried and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up. And then there was Dr. Phil’s “Get Real Challenge,” during which a group of people were sequestered for a week of therapy boot camp with the doctor. Their hard work and epiphanies were videotaped and aired throughout a season of Oprah, as Dr. Phil and Oprah commented on the happenings like those two old Muppets in the balcony.

It was great television. The folks in the “Get Real Challenge” sobbed and confronted, spoke the truth and got real and left with a lighter psychological load, carry-ons instead of heavy-duty Samsonites. And Dr. Phil and Oprah were explicit about their intention—the point of airing everyone’s dirty laundry wasn’t to engender any kind of schadenfreude in the audience, but instead, they hoped, to provide models of insight and bravery for us couch potatoes. Maybe we would see something of ourselves in those stories of marriages gone awry, of family feuds, of feeling disconnected. Maybe it would get us off our butts to get real, too.

But what did it mean to “get real”? While Oprah was finding her spirit and we rooted around for ours, we were encouraged to be grateful for small daily blessings, to come to terms with our painful pasts and live in the present with clarity, and to take responsibility for our choices. The effect was a sort of “Free to Be You and Me” for adults. (Remember when Rosey Grier sang, “It’s all right to cry. Crying gets the sad out of you”?) Soon, it seemed that every celebrity who appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show needed a Kleenex. Promoting his darker drama, The Majestic, Jim Carrey burst into tears; when Oprah acknowledged John Travolta’s good heart, he, too, turned on the faucets. Halle Berry got real about ex-hubby Eric Benet’s sex addiction, but then later showed Oprah and the studio audience how to use a bullwhip (Catwoman was about to open). Tom Cruise, of course, recently did perhaps the ultimate job of getting real, unleashing all those pent-up emotions and bouncing away on Oprah’s couch.

Everyone was getting real, and then suddenly everyone—real folks like us—was getting presents. Sure, Martha Stewart has her good things, but they usually require some elbow grease, pinecones, and a staple gun. On Oprah’s first “favorite things” show, a stunned and ecstatic audience left with thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise, and they did absolutely nothing. And in perhaps her best-known giveaway, an entire Oprah audience left with Pontiacs.

This spring, Dr. Phil, whose show is produced by Harpo Productions, Oprah’s company, celebrated his five-hundredth episode. And since her appearances on Oprah, Iyanla Vanzant has become the lead therapist on Starting Over, a reality show in which a group of women live in a house together and beat their demons to a pulp, and whose tagline is Life Has Never Been More Real. Hasn’t life always been real, even if it’s been shitty?

 

Somehow, while trying to figure out what goes into getting real, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs popped into my mind. My rudimentary understanding of Maslow’s work is that he placed human motivation and development on a sort of ladder. On the bottom rungs were basic physiological requirements—air, food, water, shelter, sex. Higher up came needs for safety, then social needs like love, belonging, and acceptance. Once those needs were met, Maslow believed humans were driven to meet a need for esteem—to behave in ways that allowed them to feel respect and achievement. Finally, at the top of the ladder sat self-actualization: the need to become all that one is capable of being. To be one’s most authentic self, as Oprah might say. To Get Real.

According to my college psychology textbook, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Eleanor Roosevelt had all climbed to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. (So much for sex.) This led to my assumption that anyone reaching self-actualization would be poor and/or have no fashion sense and/or have wrinkled skin and glasses. But Oprah has self-actualized—she is living to the fullest and giving back to the community. Who knew that giving back meant Pontiacs and Wacoal bras and Josh Groban CDs?

Could it be that, in America, the top rungs of the ladder have collapsed on themselves? Have our social and esteem needs become conflated with self-actualization? When Oprah was finding her spirit, I sobbed along with everyone else who felt lost and empty and was looking to connect with the world in a more profound way. When Oprah found a good bra, I got on the Internet and ordered it. The transition from internal satisfaction to, shall we say, external support had been, ah, seamless. Then Dr. Phil, along with handing out advice, began giving out the goods, too.

Couples on Dr. Phil’s “Premarital Boot Camp” shows ran through obstacle courses together, dealt with surprise visits from the in-laws (another kind of obstacle course), cared for fake babies, and answered tough questions about religion, money, and their expectations about sex. (One guy wanted to do it two or three times a day once he was married; his bride-to-be was terrified.) The boot campers were rewarded for their efforts with cash, electronics, and honeymoons. On the “Desperate Spouses” show, a harried househusband with five kids lamented his one-hundred-pound weight gain. He had given all of his energy to the children, and eaten all of their leftover food. To help him “reclaim” himself, he was rewarded with golf at a local club, a gentleman’s day at a spa, and a one-year gym membership.

On what was billed as “the most intense Dr. Phil ever,” the good doc confronted Sheila, who had nearly beaten her alcoholic husband to death and had contacted the show in desperation after seeing Dr. Phil help an abusive alcoholic. Then he delivered a caveat regarding “getting real” on TV. “I’ve never been under the misapprehension or illusion that I’m doing eight-minute cures or one-hour cures on this stage,” Dr. Phil told Sheila, her husband Steve, and the audience. “I’m trying to be a mental-emotional compass. I’m trying to point people in the right direction.”

 

Maybe I was just bitter. But was I the only one getting confused by the maddening jumble of makeover shows—Trading Spaces, Queer Eye, Ambush Makeover—and the talk-therapy/life-makeover/self-improvement shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil? Had self-actualization in America come to include freshly painted walls, designer active wear, and teeth whitening? Because it really did seem that the less screwed up you were, the more likely you were to leave the Dr. Phil show with presents.

In search of answers, I turned to my own expert. Kirk Olson works at Minneapolis’ Iconoculture Inc., where he brings together research and psychological and semiotic theories, all in an effort to understand what captures our attention and makes us open our wallets. I asked him what he thought about the conflation of game show-style giveaways and authentic therapeutic or spiritual progress.

“A plasma TV is not about self-actualization; it’s about esteem,” Olson said, suggesting that when Dr. Phil gives someone a television, he’s recognizing the progress that person has made. But shouldn’t the progress be its own reward? “The reality,” Olson gently reminded me, “is that Dr. Phil, though he may be a psychologist, is also an entertainer. And Oprah as well is an entertainer.”

Olson also revealed some new thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. “We don’t look at it as a ladder,” he started off. A person living without safety, he explained, is certainly able to think about God (one of the higher concerns formerly reserved for the self-actualized), “and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of working toward making their neighborhood a better place.” The ladder, he suggested, is really something more fluid, and scholars have since added some rungs. Between esteem and self-actualization now exists the need for self-expression, and beyond self-actualization has emerged transcendence, a position concerned with helping others.

“There is a desire among people to be recognized,” Olson said, and so when Dr. Phil gives away a TV, “in the viewer there is a feeling that they’re watching someone with status be generous; they’re watching him give back to others. And with Oprah,” he continued, “people do feel that it’s coming from a genuine place.” It’s true—I recalled that all those audience members who drove off in their Pontiacs had been chosen specifically because they were hardworking folks who really did need cars but couldn’t afford them. And that the guests on Dr. Phil (and even Montel, who’s been bringing in his own doctors lately) are getting therapy after they leave the show that they probably wouldn’t be able to pay for themselves.

Maybe Oprah and Dr. Phil—along with the host of other shows devoted to making our lives more productive and aesthetically pleasing and mentally healthy—have picked up where our government has left off. The corporate-sponsored, advertising-subsidized makeover/therapy shows have reached out to give the public a helping hand. Making us feel like we belong to a more generous society, eight minutes to an hour at a time.