Author: rakemag

The genius of Jonathan Richman is that he knows he does “Jonathan Richman” better than anyone else ever could. Normally describing a singer/songwriter as “wacky” seems to be a writer’s polite way of saying this guy is really a childish boob, not a real songwriter. Richman would be the exception. He is a goof, his songs have titles like “You’re Crazy for Taking the Bus” and “I Was Dancing in a Lesbian Bar.” Add to that that he was featured prominently in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary, playing guitar in a tree, no less. But it’s just that silly glee that makes Richman the treasure he is. The only other brilliant man to give Richman a run for his money as King Goof is Robyn Hitchcock. Would you expect anything less from the man who sang, “Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl, so I could (oop) myself in the shower”? 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

If you had to, you could call Bill Frisell a jazz guitarist, but he is really a master at seamlessly mixing a wide range of musical genres, having collaborated with everyone from Elvis Costello to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. One of Frisell’s best albums, 1997’s Nashville, was recorded with members of Allison Krauss’s Union Station band. It’s country music played with grace, sophistication, and a large dose of heart that makes his live shows something to see. With drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Viktor Krauss. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org

Just last month, Jamie Hook took over as executive director of Minnesota Film Arts, which is responsible for the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and the repertory movies shown at the Oak Street Cinema. In Seattle, where Hook spent much of his adult life, he was known as an unconventional and talented wild man (once, at a party, he was spotted slapping his own ass with a giant Mickey Mouse glove). He and his wife, Debbie Girdwood, started a nonprofit film production company called Wiggly World, which had a lot to do with reviving Seattle’s independent film scene. And then he was invited to move to Minneapolis, an offer he couldn’t refuse.

THE RAKE: Don’t you just hate Citizen Kane?

No, I don’t just hate it, but I do think that The Magnificent Ambersons is the superior film, botched ending and all. How can you not love that staircase in the Amberson mansion? Plus, the shot that concludes with George Minafer asserting that he wants to be a yachtsman when he grows up is one of the sacraments of the cinema. And I could watch Joseph Cotten disembowel my mother and it would make me smile.

Has Minneapolis been nice to you?

Minneapolis has been very nice. My landlord even reduced my rent, just to be “nice”—which of course made me paranoid. But now it’s fall and I am a bit concerned that, having arrived only recently, I won’t have time to build up those unvoiced, longstanding, passive-aggressive Lutheran animosities that stay burning in the belly through the deep Minnesotan winter. Otherwise, the city is as lovely as a well-made sandwich. I saw Mark Mallman perform his fifty-six-and-a-half-hour-long song the third day I was here, which truly inspired me.

How is this city different from Seattle?

Seattle is very dreamy, which is both an asset and a liability. Living in Seattle is like dating a Pisces: When things are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad, they are rotten. Minneapolis seems a bit more Cancerian. People hoard their goodness, and dole it out like candy when you most need it. The city is more realistic, pragmatic, and diverse, which is a refreshing change. I would add that it is not a more staid city, however. I have heard more public swearing in Minneapolis than anywhere else I have ever lived, which is a good thing. Certainly, the Twin Cities would really benefit from having more alcoholic public intellectuals. Seattle took a lot of its character from the alternately brilliant and pompous rantings of various public drunks.

What’s your goal at Minnesota Film Arts?

I would love Minnesota Film Arts to grow into the hub of a local filmmaking community that exists independent of the wider industry, at least in terms of artistic accountability and ambition. In so many smaller cities with hefty artistic egos—Seattle, the Twin Cities, Boston, Portland—there is an unfortunate provincial tendency to want to pander to the cultural taste-makers of New York or Los Angeles, without recognizing that the most influential cultural movements inevitably emerge from the artistic basement, so to speak. Music provides the clearest example of this pattern, both in Minneapolis and Seattle.
 
You just made a film, The Naked Proof. Tell us about it.

The Naked Proof is a screwball comedy about a philosopher whose life is undone by a mysterious pregnant woman who may or may not actually exist.  It has been called “a corker,” and Twin Citians will be happy to know that the venerable August Wilson makes his screen debut in the film as a German professor. Whenever we can’t afford to rent another film, you can expect it to show up on the Oak Street calendar.

Your films usually involve your friends as writers or actors. Do you plan to shoot something here in Minneapolis?

I am working hard at making friends so as not to stall my filmmaking career. That’s why you can find me at various sleazy bars most nights of the week. According to my plan, as soon as the universal lubricant has brought about the boost in friendship and popularity that it so recklessly promises, I will embark on a new film. Then, having exhausted and/or destroyed those hard-won friends through the filmmaking process, I will have to flee the Twin Cities to begin the whole silly cycle again in Fargo.

The Minnesota Opera vows to pump up the authentic Japanese flavor of Madame Butterfly this time around. Productions of Puccini’s masterpiece about a geisha who gets crossed by an American sailor rely too often on caricatures of Japanese culture—especially the geishas in their campy kimonos and sets festooned with rice paper. Up to now, the Minnesota Opera has followed suit with their many seasons of Butterfly, which pops up every five years or so. This time they’re under the direction of Colin Graham, a veteran kabuki and opera director, who will undoubtedly infuse the production with subtle influences from real Japanese theater. Without the distraction of those pesky and frequently comic geisha-girl clichés, the Opera can focus on distilling Puccini’s gorgeous music to its heart-wrenching core. Sung in Italian with English super-titles. 345 Washington St., St. Paul; 651-224-4222; www.mnopera.org

Close your eyes and listen to the Jungle Theater’s reprise of Dylan Thomas’s dreamlike Under Milk Wood, which it’s staging for a fifth time to stretch through this year’s holiday season. While there’s little to see in this radio play, there’s plenty to hear—a beautiful, lyrical ramble of poetry, all spoken during a day in the life of the average, unhappy folks living in a Welsh fishing village. Artistic director Bain Boehlke reappears onstage alongside Claudia Wilkens, an adroit local performer who thrives in text-heavy productions (largely on the Jungle stage). Together, they weave a cozy, lyrical collage of language out of Thomas’s script, offering listeners a meditation on what it is to be content together in hopeless misery. 2951 Lyndale Ave. S.; 612-822-7063; www.jungletheater.com

Mixed Blood Theatre is tackling another heady subject; this time it’s the space allotted to African and African-American artists by the whitewashed institution of fine art museums. In Permanent Collection, a new-on-the-job African-American museum director squares off with a white curator concerning the space made available to nonwhite artists. This new play by Philly playwright Thomas Gibbons is inspired by the true-life story of the Barnes Foundation, a suburban Philadelphia museum (currently embroiled in similar controversy) whose collection of impressionist masterpieces is smattered with African folk art. Gibbons and Mixed Blood challenge us to consider what we see when we enter a museum. Who gets to decide what is art? And how do their decisions reinforce a certain narrow view of the world? 1501 Fourth St. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-6131; www.mixedblood.com

If you saw Jeune Lune’s Tartuffe a few years back, you won’t want to miss this second helping of farce à la Molière. The Miser was market-tested in Boston earlier this year, where Jeune Lune co-created the production alongside Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre. Now Jeune Lune is returning the Bostonians’ hospitality by inviting them to Minneapolis for a restaging of the show. Jeune Lune director Dominique Serrand, long known around these parts as a disciple of the great physical comedy tradition, seems more interested in deeper humanistic themes these days. His Tartuffe, for example, played as a thundering warning against the dangers of religious extremism rather than the sex farce to which it is often reduced. 105 First St. N., Minneapolis; 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.com

Zenon Dance Company serves up another feast of new choreography that, as always, is precisely executed by this superior troupe. This year’s fall concert features a sampling of new work by two of our local favorites as well one New York import. Local choreographer Wynn Fricke—whose poetic, individualistic and often fantastical work was recently performed by James Sewell Ballet and Ragamala—will premier a complex and intimate composition. Myron Johnson, best known for masterminding Ballet of the Dolls, rounds out the evening’s ticket with a campy jazz ballet. Zenon also tackles the work of New Yorker Keely Garfield, whose Scent of Mental Love promises to be a power-struggling, sexually charged duet. 1420 Washington Ave. S.; 612-340-1725; www.zenondance.org

Michael and Ann’s boy, Nathan, was robbed. Not that he cared, because he didn’t. But I saw the whole thing, and, of the twelve “Best Bagger” contestants, he was the class of the show. The way he studied the relative bulk, density, shape, and fragility of some twenty-five pounds of groceries. And the way his fingers twitched over the folded bags. Eye of the tiger—cool, focused, dangerous. And when the clock started, the loose and willowy sixteen-year-old (6’2″ and 120 pounds, with groceries) moved in about a hundred directions at once, like a Swedish Vishnu. In one deft move, he cradled the eggs, swooped the boxed-rice side dishes three at a time, and snagged fish crackers on the way into the bag. He was not just lightning-fast and graceful. Nate Bjornberg respected the groceries. Even the Dinty Moore products. He respected the heft and invincibility of the cans, the regular beauty of the box, the golden thirds created by half-gallons of milk. He respected the levity of paper towels, their happy-go-lucky nature. Even though there was no meat or produce in this contest, I can imagine his long fingers reading the prayer of the nectarine in its smooth flesh, and tracing the whole life of the heifer and whether it found any joy as he slipped the round steak in next to the tilapia fillets. I’m just saying, Nate was robbed.

Anyway, the bagging contest. It’s legit. Established and organized by the National Grocer’s Association about thirty-five years ago, it’s open to any bagman, -woman, or -teen employed by a store that is a member of the Grocer’s Association. The Minnesota Grocer’s Association organized the 2004 Best Bagger contest, held recently at the Mall of America, to determine our bagman at the national contest in Las Vegas next February. A couple of things to note: pro bagging is a man’s sport (there were no female contestants among the twelve state challengers) and only eighteen states participate in the national Best Bagger contest. Some stores hold a preliminary competition to determine their representative at the state meet. Nate had already vanquished all comers at his store, the Highland Park Lunds (picking up $100 for the trouble), and spanked the competition in a metro-wide contest (winning another $200). He’s no rookie.

Heats of three baggers face off at long folding tables topped with the same groceries in the same configurations, and two folded paper bags. (The national contest has a heat for both paper and plastic, because we live in a world of choices.) Contestants are provided with a list of the groceries that will be used in the competition and, yes, some do go out and buy them and practice. For most, like Nate, it’s just another day at the office. Scoring criteria are as follows: speed—ten points; proper bag-building—ten points; weight distribution—five points; style/appearance (of the bagger)—five points. As far as speed goes, anything under twenty-five seconds receives full points. Just to give you an idea, all twelve Minnesota baggers filled two bags in less than a minute. Try that yourself at the co-op sometime.

Proper bag-building not only maintains the groceries in pristine condition for the ride home, but also allows the bagger to maximize the grocery load without sacrificing aesthetics. The fundamentals of bag-building? Solid foundation with four square corners, glass should never touch glass, eggs near the top but secure, and paper products on top. Ideally, the two bags should not vary in weight by more than one-half pound; that gets full points. Points for style/appearance are a giveaway. To my eye, Nate clinched it by having had a haircut just for the event, as evidenced by the whitewalls.

When all three contestants in the heat are finished, the panel of judges (board members of the Minnesota Grocer’s Association) record times and weights, inspect the bags, and assign points. Third place at the state checkout earned $100, second place was tipped $150, and first place got $500 plus $250 in travel expenses plus airfare and hotel for two in Las Vegas (since many winners are minors, it’s usually a parent filling the other airplane seat). The purse at the national contest is $2,000 for first, $1,000 for second, and $500 each for third, fourth, and fifth. Minnesota has never had a national champion. There was a lot on the line.

After Nate’s third-place showing, I was a little vexed to learn that he had not worked for ten days because he’d been at soccer tryouts. Soccer tryouts! Nonetheless, he effortlessly dusted Noah Schwalbe of Waconia in a nail-biting bag-off for third place. The second-place finisher was nowhere, in my opinion. And the winner, while formidable, did not demonstrate even half the grocery awareness and sensibility Nate did. Kyle Schultz of Chris’ Food Center in Sandstone took the honors. Last year’s Best Bagger also came from Chris’ Food Center. Eight of the recent champions have come from Chris’ Food Center. In fact, Chris of Chris’ Food Center was a past Minnesota Best Bagger. Does that seem funny to you? Obviously this is a bagging dynasty patterned after the Eastern European sports machine.

Just so, Nate is pretty philosophical about the whole thing, and by that I mean bagging, the bagging contest, and life in general. What he likes best about bagging is “the money, and it’s easy, and it’s something I can get my mind on.” There’s nothing he really doesn’t like about it. Except maybe oozing meat and fish, because it smells. He notices purchases only when people buy weird stuff like Ex-Lax and diapers at the same time. When I asked about the effect of fame and fortune on his work life, Nate replied, “I think I did get a raise.” Spoken like a true artist.—Sarah Barker