The Rake Magazine

Author: rakemag

  • Vito's still on the street corner

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    Tell me again Dr. Frist what you’ll do for me

    The outcry is mounting against the new bankruptcy bill making its way through Congress. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the credit card companies, in particular, are behind the move to deny bankruptcy protection to the victims of what amounts to organized crime.

    Molly Ivins weighed in today on the bill that’s going to do it’s best to overturn the early American prohibition against debtors prisons. Ok, they’re not going to actually put the people who can’t pay off their credit cards in jail, but we’ll certainly do the next best thing and lock them into a hoosegow of despair from which they can never escape. Think that’s a bit melodramatic? Read this from the Washington Post.

    Some senators, Mark Dayton among them, tried to amend the bill as is moved through the Senate last week. Dayton ridiculously tried to limit credit card interest to 30 (yes, thirty) percent. That was slapped down, as were all other well-considered attempts to prevent selling the poor to their tormentors.

    The Star Tribune did a series last fall “Borrowing Trouble”. With some spectacular reporting–the sort that makes us proud to be journalists–Ron Nixon, Terry Collins and Dee DePass came up with a compelling series of how storefront lenders, tax preparers and mortgage companies prey on those who don’t, for one reason or another, have access to “traditional” banking services. Yes folks, loan sharking is now legal. Who needs organized crime when you have legitimate corner store fronts? Who needs leg breakers when you have Congress?

    The navigation at the Strib site is a little screwed up (you have to go back to part one to be able to navigate to the other two parts) but it’s worth the effort to read the whole story…especially when you get to the part about who is behind some of the most egregious schemes to torment the low income among us. (Ok, as a public service, here are links to part 2 and part 3.) I won’t spoil the surprise except to say that their corporate symbol should be changed from a team of horses to something which would more accurately represent what that team of horses leaves behind for all the rest of us to step in.

  • Shrill Typist

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    One of the continuing mysteries in my life is how anyone can take Ann Coulter seriously.

    She’s the living example of how so called authors can take a smidgen of material and turn it into the most bald-faced lies…and get away with it. Thank God for Al Franken, who knows a lie when he sees one and says so.

    Unfortunately most journalists, especially of the broadcast variety, have long ago succombed to the myth of “balance.” You know, that’s what it’s called when they have one side on and let them lie through their teeth and then have the other side on. They are the ones, who, when they try to correct anything, are called traitors to America.

    So, it was with amusement that I ran across this. A very funny piece on what to call Coulter’s next book. Now if the author had only not tried to balance it by letting the distinctly un-funny Coulter have the last word…

  • Pre-disgusted

    At the risk of getting too self referential here, I’m going to recommend Brad Zellar’s blog entry from yesterday.

    It’s about why his blog is the antithesis of this one. The editor and I are often fairly earnest here…in a Buck Turgidson sort of way. Brad, though, has defined his take perfectly. He’s disgusted, or as a good friend of mine once said about a conference we were attending, “I thought I’d save time this year and come ‘pre-disgusted’.”

    We’ve achieved a “pre-disgusted” state ourselves these days and admit that we only open the newspaper now to confirm our suspicions that the level of discussion on Republican key issues is not going to rise about the natural level of the whale shit that it is.

    To wit:
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    this lovely addition to high mindedness by the same evil bastards who brought you the Swift Boat Liars for the Destruction of Kerry.

    They are now after AARP for God’s sake. My mother and father belong to AARP (admittedly mostly for the motel discounts) but I can assure you that Mom is probably not for gay marriage, and while my Dad doesn’t give a damn what other people do in the privacy of their own justice of the peace’s office, he certainly isn’t against veterans. He is one, and not one of the guys like Bush who were maybe members of the Third Messkit Repair Batallion, if they got even that close to the shooting. He was a Ranger in WW II and has a big chunk out of one leg, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts and the nightmares to prove it.

    He was a life long Republican till Bush became President, but now says Bush is “the worst President of my lifetime…and I was alive when Hoover was President.” Is he disgusted? You bet.

    But is he disgusted with Bush? Not as much as he is with the morons who are letting him get away with it. You know who you are.

  • Can't we all just get along?

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    Please can I have some health insurance?

    Representative Jim Ramstad gave us a good chuckle this morning in his Strib op-ed piece, “Too much at stake for continued partisan warfare.”

    He rattles off a litany of the nation’s problems: social security, hungry children, crisis in public schools, out of control health care costs, national security, dependence on foreign oil, etc, and calls for a bipartisan effort to solve them. He goes on to say, “I’m not talking about singing “Kumbaya,” holding hands on the Capitol steps.”

    Well, Jim, that’s exactly what you are talking about. In case you haven’t noticed, your party now controls both houses of congress and the White House. If your party were really in power for the good of the people as you see it, they could do all these things.

    For example, they could raise the retirement age a squeak and eliminate the limit on the amount of income that is taxed for Social Security benefits. They could add to, rather than cut, poverty programs, especially for children. The party of Lincoln could establish a reasonable basic health care system for all Americans that would make our businesses more, not less, competitive internationally. You could put a tax on gasoline that would raise the price to somewhere near what the rest of the world pays, and use the income from that tax to repair roads and bridges and build a mass transit system that would use less gas. While you are at it, you could put a huge tax on gas guzzlers and require car manufacturers to increase their fleet mileage. You could pay for increased security measures where we really need it–around our ports and chemical plants–instead of sending seven times as much money per capita for increased security measures to Wyoming (home of Dick Cheney) than you do to New York.

    I could go on, but you get the point, Jim. It’s your party, firmly in the control of the DeLay wing, which is against all those things you say the country needs. They are the ones who want to cut taxes at the same time we’re at war in order to starve the government enough to effectively repeal the New Deal.

    Jim, if you really think these things need doing, you need to round up the few remaining moderates in your party and get together with some of the same from the Democratic side and get to work to wrest the power from those who simply want to destroy government.

    Writing a polyannaish letter to the Strib ain’t gonna cut it.

  • One Hundred Rakish Years!

    Dear Reader, in an effort to clear our accounts and our desks each March, we lay before you our laurels and our brickbats. (We noticed from the account books that we have gone through quite a few brickbats, without really knowing what a brickbat is, or where one might be obtained at a reasonable cost.)

    We are proud of our many achievements over the years. You know, no government or private institution has ever been looted, thanks to our vigorous editorial policy. The availability of Chicago-style hot dogs is assured and sustainable. Ever notice how everyone stops courteously when a traffic light is on the fritz? This is the power of a pointed editorial during troubled times! We have also been staggeringly effective, we don’t mind saying, in keeping Whippy Dip stores in Iowa, where they belong.

    Contrary to popular opinion derived from this astonishing record, though, The Rake’s influence is not unlimited. Here, in all modesty, we need to clear the air: We did not teach Fran Tarkenton how to scramble, although we certainly did not discourage him from doing it. We would have done everything within our power to stop the great disaster of the Third Avenue Bridge, but we were in traffic court when the City of Minneapolis built it. And despite expending great editorial resources on the matter, we have so far not succeeded in having Spoonbridge and Cherry moved to the city impound lot. (That garish yellow seventies sculpture, however—the one deposited at the farthest possible corner on the grounds of the Federal Reserve Bank? That was us.) We also wish now that we hadn’t cooperated in burning that last Minneapolis streetcar. (We were printed on highly flammable, uncoated paper at the time. Nostra maxima culpa!) We do say, though, that the recent troubling incursion of Asian attack carp has nothing to do with a small boat we keep moored in Northeast, nor the broken aquarium in the closet.

    Never mind all that. Let’s try to focus on the good, people. With varying degrees of success, we have applied the full measure of our energy to the popularity of ice hockey, the proper care of Red Wing boots, the Brothers’ pastrami on rye, and that huge Long Island iced tea they used to serve at the Nankin. We have owned a secondhand purple blazer with Denny Hecker’s name embroidered in it.

    One certainly cannot assess the success of a publication these days without mention of its “business operations,” and in this respect, we have far exceeded our modest editorial achievements. Our resistance to the “Best of the Twin Cities” issues, not to mention our refusal to print hundreds of alloy medallions and affix them to expensive sheets of congratulatory vellum, signed by our editor—well, there are signs that our efforts have slowly starved that particular illness. It has also saved our handwriting. The fever breaks, the sun rises, and all feel equal under the kind gaze of The Rake.

    In other advertising news, we were still trying to land the Sliced Bread contract when it became the most popular campaign in memory—all on the rumor of a single quarter page sometime in the fiscal year! So powerful and relentless is our marketing muscle that the mere suggestion of an ad buy was enough to set off a panic in bakeries throughout the land. It was deemed unnecessary to go through the motions of actually printing that ad. Alas, the check was not tendered, either. The price one pays for being a pioneer!

    People understandably want to know how we do it. Here is how: Paper, not plastic. Chocolate. Clarinets and tambourines. Rolling stops. Magic Markers. Big hair. AAA batteries. Yellow. Running in place. And of course, you, Constant Reader.

  • The Jacket

    We saw Adrian Brody coming from a long way away, ever since King of the Hill. It’s not just his charm (his ads for Ermenegildo Zegna make us weak in the knees); his talent leads him to play characters who are subject to a heartbreaking array of misfortunes, humiliations, and trials. Here he plays Jack Starks, a Gulf War vet who’s accused of murdering a police officer and sent to a mental institution. And then things get terrifying: his doctor is Kris Kristofferson. Horrors! The creepy doctor’s treatment plan involves stowing Starks in a body drawer in the morgue, where he descends into a madness broken only by the certainty that he will die in four days. The very idea gives us an anxiety attack–but you know we’ll be at the theater on opening day.

  • End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones

    Every Ramones fan knows the band was made up of weirdos. That’s a big part of why we loved them. Joey was a beanpole geek, Johnny a mop-topped grump, Dee Dee a streetwise cartoon boyÑthey were a lot like the screwed-up teenagers that we were. Of course, they also blew away the reigning “classic rock” genre with their two-minute buzzsaw rants. We laughed at their songs about sniffing glue and beating on brats–then wondered if they were perhaps serious. As End of the Century shows, yes, they probably were. Even fans, though, will be surprised to learn the extent of their dysfunction as revealed in this lengthy warts-and-all rockumentary.

  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

    For those of us who think Tom Stoppard is the greatest English playwright since Shakespeare, the DVD release of the movie of his first play has been eagerly anticipated since that date about six years ago when we put it on our Amazon wish list. The 1967 play introduced Stoppard’s conceit of a play within a Shakespeare play (later used to such great effect in Shakespeare in Love) to take on the big themes of whether it’s better to be alive or dead if you happened to be buried in a box, what we can and can’t know, and, in a great sight gag that was cut off the side in the VHS version, Newton’s conservation of momentum. Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern–or is it the other way around?

  • Jeff Chang, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

    For Chang, hip-hop isn’t just a reigning musical genre; it’s a rising force getting ready to reshape the nation. As a co-founder of the influential hip-hop label Solesides and producer of groups like the Ghetto Prophets, the man knows firsthand the power of the beat to change culture, politics, and society. One of the nation’s most passionate hip-hop historians, he’s analyzed the sounds and the scene for publications including Vibe, The Village Voice, and Spin. His tour for Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, which collects his essays on the hip-hop generation, makes two stops here: a reading and discussion, replete with beats, at Barnes and Noble; and a talk in conjunction with Intermedia Arts’ “Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop Evolution” program, to be followed by breakdancing and spoken word by Twin Cities hip-hop artists. Barnes and Noble, 2401 Fairview Ave. N., Roseville; Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-871-4444;

  • Dorota Maslowska

    When U.S. publishers give teenagers book deals, there’s usually some hard partying in the pages. Snow White follows that rule–to the consternation of book-loving Poland, which reluctantly nominated the then-nineteen-year-old Maslowska for the Nike Prize, its highest literary honor. Maslowska’s tale of addiction and self-destruction is so brutal it has been compared to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. In post-Communist Eastern Europe, Andrzej “Nails” Robakoski bounces among women after his girlfriend gives him the boot. He’s even more confused by what’s happening to his country, which becomes comically corrupt as the Russian black market reorders all of society, or so it seems. But who knows Nails’s paranoia might have something to do with all those drugs he’s been taking.