rakemag What a fabulous idea! Leave it to The Rake to figure out that men have a pretty good fashion sense when it comes to their ladies by sending four of them on a shopping trip [“Guys and Paper Dolls,” February]. My husband has this same knack. I think it works for guys who are especially … Read more
After reading Joseph Hart’s article “When Harry Met Betty” [February], I pulled my well-used 1974 Betty Crocker’s Cookbook off the shelf and turned to page 108 to refresh my memories of the cake my mother used to bake in the 1950s. Under the “Orange Chiffon Cake” heading, Betty Crocker included the following bit of info, … Read more
Stephanie March reported last month that Super Bowl Sunday is the number one day for avocado consumption in the U.S. Reader Dennis Lien pointed out to us that, according to the California Avocado Commission, Cinco de Mayo-related sales account for fourteen million pounds of the green god of fruits, while Super Bowl-related sales are in … Read more
I live in Minneapolis, the fiftieth state in the union, known far and wide as the “Moon Crater State” and “Green Grocer to the World.” There are more than one thousand lakes in Minneapolis, and herds of bearded reindeer in the North Country. I’m sorry—Minnesota is the fiftieth state in the union, etc. Minneapolis is … Read more
Melody Gilbert has always considered herself a global citizen of sorts, having worked in television and film everywhere from Wisconsin to Romania. But in 2001, her sportswriter husband Mark Wollemann landed a job at the Star Tribune, and the couple settled down in Minneapolis. That was when her work as a documentary filmmaker started to … Read more
Dan Slager was a wide-eyed college graduate when he moved in 1989 from his home state of Michigan to Manhattan with a futon tied to his car and “a sense that New York was where you went if you were interested in literary books.” He landed a job as an editorial assistant at William Morrow … Read more
Will Black Book mark Paul Verhoeven’s triumphant return? The guy behind such gut-wrenching “classics” as RoboCop, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers seemed to have the potential to become one of our most talked-about directors, a bastard hybrid of Sam Peckinpah and Fellini at his most indulgent. Then, however, his career slipped into the toilet with … Read more
Imagine that your casual evening walk has suddenly landed you in a minefield. That’s the kind of tension radiating from this acclaimed thriller, in which an unnamed woman is spirited off to a hotel room to wait (and wait some more) for orders—which are to detonate a bomb in Times Square. With tiny yet terrifying … Read more
In what many will call a “searing drama,” a dentist rekindles his friendship with a college classmate who lost his wife and child in the September 11th attacks. Don Cheadle plays Alan, a stable fellow who, like his suffering pal Charlie, has lost something of himself on the road to success. The two men play … Read more
Joe Boyd had his fingers in all sorts of music-history pies. While still in his early twenties and freshly graduated from Harvard, he served as Muddy Waters’ tour manager. Then, when Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, it was a young Boyd who performed the fateful (and, some would claim, sacrilegious) … Read more