Author: rakemag

This movie appears primed to be summer’s guiltiest pleasure: A sleek, sexy shoot-’em-up starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who are, as you read this, undoubtedly having lots of naked fun in some exotic, far-flung location. But you’ll have to read more about that in some other publication. Back to the movie, in which the Butt and the Lips play a married couple, each of whom secretly works as a hired assassin. The secret gets out when they are both hired to kill their respective spouses. Who could be behind such a dastardly plot? Jennifer Aniston, of course.

Clowes made the rare transition from favorite doodler of nerdy underdogs everywhere to Hollywood inspiration, when the movie adapted from his Ghost World graphic novel become a cult hit. The Oscar nomination he won for its screenplay hasn’t convinced him to mainstream his talents, however. In Ice Haven he continues to chronicle the idiocies and idiosyncracies of local characters who are quite ordinary, altogether bizarre, and often both. Clowes’s characters always seem to resemble our co-workers or neighbors–only he seems to know them better than we do. His expressive and largely unflattering drawings have an unrelenting flatness that is belied by his ability to reveal the hidden depths of personality. In Ice Haven he spies on a small Midwestern town experiencing a series of events loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb story.

Lauren Slater’ 2004 book, Opening Skinner’s Box, raised a storm when she wrote about the experiments neobehaviorist B.F. Skinner ran on his infant daughter by confining her in a box. Deborah Skinner herself rose from the annals of science to defend her father and condemn Slater. In Blue Beyond Blue, Slater moves into the fiction she’s been accused of writing, offering a set of adult fairy tales that explore the psychology of human relationships. At once amusing and deeply fascinating, the stories reveal that many of us are caught up in archetypes beyond our control, no matter how hard we try to write our own stories.

Specimen Days spans hundreds of years, from the Industrial Revolution to a post-apocalyptic world (you can decide how far in the future that is). It’s filled with ghosts, terrorists, neurotics, aliens, adolescent prophets, and artificial humans. This all might sound more like Neil Gaiman rewriting the Left Behind series than classic Cunningham, but if Specimen Days lives up to the ambition of this Pulitzer winner’s previous works, we’re guaranteed another languorous, haunting tale. A week after the book’s publication (on June 14), Cunningham will appear at the Fitzgerald with the poet Marie Howe as part of the Literary Friendships With Garrison Keillor series. Fitzgerald Theater, 651-290-1221, www.fitzgeraldtheater.org

Wisconsin writer C.J. Hribal explores post-World War II America through the activities of one family in his new novel, The Company Car. The story begins in 1952, with a couple getting married on It’s Your Wedding, a television show in Chicago. As the next fifty years unfold, they get taken for a ride by forces beyond their control. The patriarch is continually in search of safety and stability for his family, but neither protective parents nor small towns (part of the book is set in Augsbury, the fictional Wisconsin town where Hribal set previous novels like American Beauty) can block the machinations of a larger society experiencing great changes. 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633

Forget cops and firemen; the bravest and most pitiable public servants we know are the teachers. It takes guts to face a roomful of kids these days. The neglected ones are prone to kicking. The coddled ones are prone to calling in their parents to change a grade or a rule. And the crazy ones? Well, who knows what they will do. In Charles Baxter’s latest novel, Saul and Patsy, one of Saul’s more screwed-up students becomes obsessed with his teacher’s home life, and eventually inserts himself into it. Creepy, funny, and knowing, this novel shows why local writer Baxter has developed an appreciative audience outside of the often cloistered Twin Cities literary scene. 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633

Every time I sit down to write this column, I have to abandon my first five ideas for fear that I will hurt someone’s feelings. I don’t write fiction and I’m not clever enough to disguise people’s identities. I know a boatload of freaks, and sometimes I wish I could tell you all about them. I have a mail-carrier story I’m dying to tell, but he might make the connection and spit between the pages of my Pottery Barn catalog, or make my subscription to Us Weekly become Us Monthly.

Some freaks you work with, some you sleep with, and some you share genealogy with. I do try to respect their privacy. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is I overcompensate by revealing my own spleen every chance I get. So I have this radio show, and frequently kind strangers will sheepishly say to me, “I feel as though I know you,” to which I respond, “Umm, that’s because you do.” Someone asks me how I’m doing; “Fine, thanks, and you?” is not a part of my makeup. Why I feel compelled to verbally rip out an internal organ and lay it in their lap confounds me, and yet I keep doing it. Usually I’m quite sensitive to the people who just want to get a quick answer and be done with me; these are the people I punish. “Oh you’re in a hurry? Well, I brought Satchmo, my oldest cat, the one who smells like waffles and fabric softener, to the vet and discovered she only has two teeth! They start off with thirty, y’know?” Maybe this is all in preparation for my golden years, when it will be socially acceptable and practically expected to tell strangers about my lower back pain, paranoid conspiracy theories, and general feelings of loneliness. I’m just getting one huge-ass head start. By the way, I have nothing but the highest praise for employees of the United States Postal Service. Email Mary at popularcreeps.yahoo.com

Vultures are watching you eat? If you’re not picnicking near a fragrant deer carcass, then you must be dining at Hell’s Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis. This breakfast-and-lunch spot is known for its red walls, devilish Ralph Steadman artwork, stuffed vulture mascots, and divinely fluffy yet tart lemon-ricotta pancakes. Those pancakes will remain on the new menu that chef and majority owner Mitch Omer is creating, while some other entrees go to heaven to make room for new ideas. We caught up with Omer to see what life is like in the restaurant underworld.

When Hell’s Kitchen first opened, you had construction problems, money woes, a motorcycle accident, and a break-in. Your first customer dined and dashed. Are things better now?

We just celebrated our third anniversary. All the wrinkles have been worked out, and I just gave bonuses to my staff. About three-quarters of my people have been here at least two years, and half of them since we opened. That’s really unusual for food service.

Why do they stick around?

We pay them a good wage and we treat them good. It’s nothing more than that and it’s nothing less. Though we do give little perks. Everybody who works in the kitchen gets a set of professional knives after they work with us for a year.

Your staff is notably punk and liberally pierced. Is that something you cultivate?

I don’t care about tattoos or piercings–I don’t care about any physical bullshit like that. Sure, most of my staff has tattoos, and I’ve got a kitchen server with more metal in her face than anyone I know. I actually have seen complaints about them on customer comment cards, but I don’t really give a rat’s ass. I throw those comments away. They are meaningless to me. Those customers aren’t looking at the food or the service when they are talking about the way a server looks. This isn’t Perkins.

Surely people don’t go to a place named Hell’s Kitchen expecting a prim and proper wait staff?

No. But I do get some people in here on Salvation Sundays who are taken aback. I’ve got a real passion for old-time gospel music, and we play that on Sundays. Some of our Sunday clientele may be surprised. But I defy anybody in town to say they’ve got better servers.

The food, on the other hand, can get a bit hoity-toity.

I think the food speaks for itself. We were operating in the black our first year, which never happens in the restaurant business.

Have you had any dud menu items?

I tried special items for Weight Watchers, Atkins, and South Beach diets, because my mom and everyone else seemed to be going on them. But that’s not the way I eat, and I think it came through, because I didn’t sell shit. So now I don’t offer anything low-fat. The trends go on, but they go on around me. I cook my French fries in lard because that’s the best flavor that you can get. I do food for my tastes and my tastes only.

So now you’re changing the menu. Were you getting bored cooking the same things?

No, because I have incredible specials. I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants where the specials are what you’ve got too much of in the freezer. That’s not how I do it. I really make the specials special. Money’s no object and the quality of the food is no object. One of the most popular specials is a Wellington Benedict. I deconstruct a beef Wellington: I take pate de foie gras, a certified Angus beef tenderloin, I put it on brioche, I make a black truffle hollandaise. All of those are pricy ingredients, so people end up paying twenty dollars for a breakfast entree, but they can’t find it anywhere else.

Do you plan to open a second circle of Hell?

We go to Puerto Rico every year–my wife is from there. If I had the money, I’d open a second restaurant in San Juan. I don’t see any other place where I want to spend that much time. We get people calling from Seattle, San Francisco, New York, saying, “You’ve got to open here.” No, I don’t. I’m happy with what I’ve got. Food service beats the shit out of people. It just absolutely wears them out, but I’m having the best time of my life.

Hell’s Kitchen is located at 89 10th St. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-4700; www.hellskitcheninc.com

Paul Auster (pictured) is the kind of poet they don’t make anymore: sexy in a dark-eyed Cary Grant kind of way, vaguely mysterious, and someone who actually makes a living by writing. Not by writing poems, of course–he’s best known as a novelist (and the writer of screenplays including Blue, with Wayne Wang). But for this event, part of the Walker’s Contemporary Art in Conversation series, he gets to indulge the poetic talents that launched his writing career. After reading selections from his Collected Poems, published just last year, he’ll be joined onstage by Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer; in keeping with the Walker’s multidisciplinary approach to things, it’s anybody’s guess as to where their dialogue will go. 612-375-7622; www.walkerart.org

Even the ultra-chic get puckish, and Alfred’s Grand Petit Magasin (big little store) has seen to a solution. Shopping in this modish and diverse mini-department store is hardly taxing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t kick up your Jimmy Choos for a while and compare purchases over a snack at Alfred’s Cafe. Crusty baguettes, elegantly composed salads, and spicy crostini plates all play well to ladies who lunch. Set your bag down and order one of the tartines, open-faced sandwich decked with such lovely things as oven-roasted tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, ripe cheeses and, on the rosemary-marinated chicken breast version, a biting and sweet raspberry mustard. 4388 France Ave. S., Edina; 952-345-6696; www.alfredsgpm.com