The Rake Magazine

Author: rakemag

  • Go Gophers

    Craig Cox [“The Long Bomb,” October] states that the Gophers generate “less revenue in a season that the University of Michigan rakes in during a couple of home games.” This would seem to imply that Michigan has several times the revenue that the Gophers have. Later, he states that Michigan generates twice what the Gophers generate. It is true this is a disparity, but it’s not as great as he initially makes it appear. The author admits that the football program makes money, and these revenues fund the other sports programs. That seems to stand in contrast to other parts of the article, which seems to imply that the football is somehow stealing revenues from other sports. Perhaps he is familiar with the story of the goose that laid the golden egg? Is there evidence that revenues from football, hockey and basketball benefit the entire athletic department? Yes. The money the athletic department has comes from the sports that generate more than they spend. If these revenue-generating sports were canceled, there would be less money available for the whole athletic department.
    If people want to donate their own money to build an on-campus stadium, I don’t see the problem with it. The Gophers have a terrible lease at the Metrodome. A new stadium would certainly bring in more revenue. If he is going to call supporters of an on-campus stadium deluded, at least he could have the courtesy of saying why he thinks it is a deluded idea. Much of his argument centers on the Gophers’ lack of success. However, the Gophers have been to bowl games three out of the last four years, and will go to another bowl game this year. It has not been such a long time since just getting to a bowl game—any bowl game—was a mere dream. It is a sign of success that expectations have been raised so much. He also suggests that college football could reduce the number of scholarships. He may not have noticed, but the NCAA has already done this, with the result of increased parity in Division I football.

    Robert Lent
    Minneapolis

    Congratulations to Craig Cox for his article about what the esteemed writer-broadcaster Frank Deford once called “the cesspool of college athletics.” Along with “military intelligence,” “business ethics,” and “President Bush,” the term “student-athlete” is one of the great oxymorons of our time (emphasis on “morons”). Instead of wasting valuable resources on athletics, the university should concentrate on trying to educate our young people and prepare them to take their places in society. Instead of building stadiums, we should be building more classrooms. Instead of vastly overpaid coaches, we should be spending money to hire and retain the best possible faculty and making tuition as student-accessible as possible. I wouldn’t care if the U won every game in every sport; Minnesota no longer can afford bigtime college athletics. If it’s unrealistic to expect total abandonment of the intercollegiate program, the U at the very least should downgrade from the Big Ten to a much less demanding and costly conference or a modest independent schedule. The Metrodome may not be an ideal facility for the Gophers, the Twins, or the Vikings, but I believe it’s financially stable. For Gopher football fans who yearn for those long-gone golden autumn Saturday afternoons on campus, paint a mural on the ceiling. The Rake would be doing its readers a great service by corroborating Cox’s article with a reprint of Deford’s historic and quite accurate appraisal of college athletics. We know for sure the booster-minded Star Tribune and Pioneer Press never will.
    Willard B. Shapira
    Minneapolis

    One element of downsizing college football that might enable smaller rosters would be a rule change that mirrors college football in the 1950s. For a period of some years, only one substitution was allowed per down. While this provided for a small measure of specialization (e.g., a punter on fourth down, a fragile quarterback who shouldn’t play defense), it basically required most players to line up on both offense and defense. The net result would be a need for smaller rosters and some interesting coaching challenges when you don’t have the luxury of shuttling in well-rested specialists. But frankly, anything that eliminates jobs and roster spots will be resisted by the coaching and athletic department fraternity.
    Jeff Peterson
    Minneapolis

  • Subtract to Fore

    Frank Jossi’s golf article, “The Missing Links” [September], is on target. Golf and cigars were here before they got trendy and will survive. Golf is not for everyone. But it is time to cut back on the overbuilding and let laws of supply and demand take over.
    Jim Bohn
    St. Paul

  • C’mon, Just a Few Details?

    I like it that Stuart Greene is unabashedly a fan of his wife’s front and back porch [“More Than a Mouthful,” October], but there’s one thing he’s missing, summed up in the ancient adage “It’s not what you have, it’s what you do with what you have.” It’s not trivial for two reasons: 1) gravity and age take their toll on both sexes and especially on women after childbirth; and 2) no matter how perfectly proportioned your spouse might be in your mind, a male’s propensity for variety lurks in any marriage. What’s needed is more attention on how us marrieds can keep the sparks flying with the assets we each have. I’ve got ideas and some experience, but I can’t go into details without stirring things up in a bad way on the home front. So Stuart, let’s have more.
    Griff Wigley
    Northfield

  • Straight Talk

    In the mid-nineties, the Hang Ups were the most prominent purveyors of what was sometimes called ’Sota Pop. Lead singer Brian Tighe and his bandmates eschewed bar-scene three-chord punk for heart-on-sleeve harmonies and shimmering layers of melody, best exemplified on songs like “Runway,” “Top of Morning,” and “Jump Start,” the latter two of which you may have heard in the film Chasing Amy or on TV’s Dawson’s Creek. After a major-label merry-go-round for 1999’s Second Story, they’re back on indie turf and set to release their fourth album, simply titled The Hang Ups. It’s the group’s most musically complex and layered album yet, but less harmony-laden and even a little melancholy. Tighe’s other band, the Owls, has released a sublime MP3 single called “Air” and will follow it with an EP in January. The Hang Ups play First Avenue on November 21, and the Owls the Turf Club November 8.

    THE RAKE: What approach did you take recording the new album?
    TIGHE: What really gave the album its start was Brad Kern, who worked a lot with Semisonic. We were interested in doing it in a way where we’d work on it in the studio, but then be able to take it home. We all have digital systems at home where we can add to what we do in the studio. And so we were all able to really think about how we wanted to flesh the tracks out. The songs are still being written in that stage. You’re deciding on melodies and countermelodies and textures and all the things that make a song what it is.

    THE RAKE: Is this the first record you’ve been able to work and rework to that extent?
    TIGHE: It really is. It’s almost too much. You can get bogged down, and I certainly did at times. Endless possibilities. Brad was so good at pulling all these ideas together and really hacking through them that at a certain point we said, “We can just leave Brad to this, and not worry about how it will come together.” Then we were free to explore the endless possibilities, and it would just create more and more of a headache for Brad. But I think he loved it too. That’s his form of creativity.

    THE RAKE: Is there a single story running through the songs?
    TIGHE: I think that one arose through the selection of the songs, but it wasn’t intentional. But it goes through these different aspects of a love life. It goes through some mournful states; there’s this excitement at the beginning of a possible new love. It goes through some pretty weird territory. Loneliness. “You’ve Come Home” is the arrival at the end where you realize that this is true love. And then the last song [“Light Green Sails”] is a send-off, a light note after you’ve come to this pretty heavy realization.

    THE RAKE: And it’s classic Hang Ups, in that it’s got that theme of motion that runs through so many of your songs.
    TIGHE: Right. The traveling, the scenery, and the quality of light. Things that seem to come up a lot.

    THE RAKE: You’re averaging three years between albums. Will we have to wait that long for the next one?
    TIGHE: We recorded at least 20 songs, so there may be a pretty healthy EP not too long after this. We take our time (laughs wryly). But I think the product has always been the most important thing for us, and not so much the promotion of the product. We love the closure when something is finished and you have something to show for it. It’s the best feeling, and really important to the process. I found it really hard to write any new songs in the last year or so, because I knew we were wrapping this thing up, and we had to get these out.

    THE RAKE: How did you feel about your songs “Greyhound Bus” and “Caroline” being picked up and covered by Muzak?
    TIGHE: Apparently “Greyhound Bus” is still going strong in elevators and grocery stores. I was tickled by that. And flattered, because the song has to make it without the lyrics to be easy listening.

  • Desert Island Duffel

    It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, as the saying goes, and Leslie Johnson’s Mississippi Rag has devoted thirty years to keeping the swing alive. Her Bloomington-based newspaper is a torchbearer for early-twentieth-century ragtime and jazz. It may not have Rolling Stone’s circulation numbers, but it has worldwide reach; the Rag is read by jazz fans and musicians in 26 countries. (Locally, it’s available at Shinder’s and through www.mississippirag.com.) Contributors include modern-day ragtime master Butch Thompson and Will Shapira, longtime Twin Cities jazz journalist and Johnson’s husband. The Rag’s specialty is comprehensive profiles of the talented but obscure sidemen of the Jazz Age—like the recent eight-pager on trumpeter Ziggy Elman. It’s invaluable historical documentation of a set of artists often overlooked. For Johnson’s trip into our imaginary island exile, she chose five great singles from the heyday of traditional jazz.

    1. Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five, “West End Blues.” There are some classics that just have to be in there, even though I thought, “Oh jeez, I’d really like to come up with different stuff.” But actually, you just can’t get any better than this. So guess what—that’s number one.

    2. Benny Goodman, “Sing Sing Sing.” That’s the song from his 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. The whole concert is just fabulous, but that’s really a barnburner.

    3. Jelly Roll Morton, “Mournful Serenade.” One of my absolute favorites. It’s melancholy and rhythmic and creates an incredible mood. Twyla Tharp, the dancer, did choreography to it for a single dancer who did the entire dance within a spotlight, confined just to that, and it was wonderful.

    4. “Ragtime Nightingale,” which was written by Joseph Lamb, and I love it played by Max Morath. It’s a classic ragtime tune, with a lovely, irresistible melody. And Max has a touch on piano where he gets a certain poignance to his playing that’s very identifiable. We recently published a two-part article on Joseph Lamb—the first detailed article ever done on him—with the help of his daughter.

    5. George Lewis’s New Orleans Jazz Band, “Burgundy Street Blues.” Lewis had a distinctive style. It has a lilting quality, a dancing quality, and yet on this song it’s sweet and mournful, and very true. He plays an Albert-system clarinet—that’s the old-style New Orleans clarinet. It has a woodier sound and a beautiful, rich lower tone. This blues I can listen to again and again and again. It just goes right to the heart.

  • Sole Survivor

    Back in 1966, Dennis Hale had been sailing for three years, all of them on the 580-foot freighter Daniel J. Morrell. The Morrell was in its sixtieth year, one of the oldest of the many freighters plying the Great Lakes. The ship had just finished its already long season, but when another freighter developed engine trouble, the Morrell was sent in to carry the load. It was late November.

    On the 29th, the Morrell rounded the thumb of Michigan and was hit by a Huron storm that pitched waves of twenty-five feet over its hull. At 2:00 a.m., Hale was awakened by a loud bang. At first he thought it was the anchor hammering against the bow, but when it came a second time he jumped out of bed and headed for the deck. Wearing only undershorts, a life vest, and a pea coat, he soon found himself standing in ice and water, clinging to the deck rail, and inching toward a lifeboat.

    The winds were blowing sixty-five miles per hour. Two flares went up from a group of men huddled at the stern, but they were unaware that a broken antenna had never allowed for a distress signal to go out. As Hale and thirteen of his fellow crewmen waited for their raft to float free, the Morrell suddenly heaved, twisted, and ripped in two. “I can still see the sparks and the tearing steel,” Hale remarked quietly from his home in Ashtabula, Ohio. “The next thing I knew, I was in the water. When I came to the surface, I saw a raft and swam over to it. By the time I got there, two other men had climbed aboard, and we then helped a fourth man on. It was freezing cold and snowing. All I could do was hang on. The storm was over by 5:00 a.m., but by then, two of the men were already dead. The other one died later on.” Throughout that long day no sign of rescue came in sight. “I didn’t expect to make it. For the last twenty-four hours I was more or less just waiting to die. When you’re in a situation like that you don’t care. You just want it to end. It wasn’t important anymore.”

    After thirty-eight hours in the raft, Hale was found and rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. His ankle was broken and his feet were frostbitten, but otherwise, he had sustained only minor injuries. His lack of clothing had actually been a blessing; had he been covered in freezing wet pants, like his shipmates, hypothermia would have set in and, inevitably, he too would have met his end. “That amazes me still,” he said.

    Of the Morrell’s twenty-nine-man crew, Hale was the sole survivor. In fact, Dennis Hale is the only man to have survived a modern Great Lakes shipwreck. “That makes me kind of an odd person, I guess,” he said, brightening. “There’s got to be some reason I survived. Maybe I’m supposed to give others hope. Maybe hearing my story inspires people. I talk at these shipwreck conferences.” He’s done eight this past year and has four more to go. “People are real interested. It puts a shift in their perspective.”

    In 1999, after twenty-three years on dry land, Dennis Hale accepted an offer to sail out on Lake Huron. “It took a long time to accept the invitation. It was a beautiful June day, but I still had to really think about it.”

  • The Wreck of the Madeira

    In late November 1905, one of the worst storms still on record overtook Lake Superior in what became known as the “Mataafa Blow.” Just north of Split Rock, the steamer William Edenborn struggled along the North Shore on its way to Duluth, towing behind it the Madeira, a massive 436-foot schooner-barge. As the winds swelled to sixty miles an hour, the two ships were pounded closer and closer to the dangerous rocks along the coast. Hoping to save his own ship, A.J. Talbot, the Edenborn’s captain, decided to cut the Madeira free, leaving it to drop anchor and ride out the storm on its own. The tow line was cut, at 3:30 in the morning of November 28, but it was too late for the Madeira to cast its anchors. Within minutes the ship began to reel about in the thirty-foot waves until it was smashed into the steep cliff walls of Gold Rock, an outcropping a few miles north of Split Rock.

    Immediately, the violent deluge began to tear the ship apart and threatened to engulf the ten men aboard. But one young crewman named Fred Benson leapt from the heaving ship onto a rocky ledge with a lifeline attached to his belt. In below-zero temperatures, and with towering waves smashing at his back, Benson somehow managed to climb the sixty-foot cliff. He secured his rope and cast it back to the three men trapped on the bow of the ship. Then Benson scrambled along the cliff edge to toss a second line to four sailors holding on at the stern. All seven were able to climb to safety. Only one man, the first mate, was drowned as the ship was dragged down into the icy depths.

    In all, thirty-six seamen were lost in the Mataafa storm, with twenty-nine ships wrecked or damaged. Benson was hailed as a hero in the regional press. To avoid costly improvements to ship construction or the burden of insuring their vessels, the leaders of the Great Lakes shipping industry—-one third of the ships damaged were owned by U.S. Steel—clamored for the government to install more lighthouses along the North Shore. In 1907, Congress appropriated the funds to erect Minnesota’s landmark Split Rock Lighthouse. For years the Madeira remained largely forgotten, until a Duluth diving club, “The Frigid Frogs,” rediscovered it in 1955. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Today, the Minnesota Historical Society estimates the Madeira to be one of Lake Superior’s most popular underwater sites, with about 1,000 divers visiting each year.

  • The Big Blow of 1913

    November is readily acknowledged as the stormiest month on the Great Lakes. Each year around the beginning of this steely month, over the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, two storm tracks converge. From the north bear down the Alberta Clippers, full of freezing polar air. From the lee slopes of the Rockies and across the prairie come the heavy, snow-laden fronts. When the storms hit the lakes, the cold air masses pass over waters that are still holding remnants of their summer warmth. The barometric pressure can plummet and the winds can whip up to hurricane force. Waves will build to over forty feet, and the sky is filled with rain, snow, and sleet.

    The measure of November storms is still the “Big Blow” of 1913. For four days, it engulfed all five of the Great Lakes, blasting in from the northwest as both gale and blizzard. On Superior, the Henry B. Smith disappeared off Marquette with all twenty-five hands. That wreck has never been found. On Lake Huron, 178 seamen were lost in eight separate wrecks, all with no survivors. The winds at the southern end of the lake whipped 640,000 cubic feet of sand across Port Huron canal, completely blocking passage. The captain of the steamer Argo declared that the storm blew his cargo of lumber into the sea “like toothpicks.” Twenty-two inches of snow fell on Cleveland and the winds across Lake Erie were so steady and strong that the lake was literally pushed eastward, dropping the level along the western shore by six feet.

    When the storm was over, twenty ships were lost and tens more were badly damaged. More than 250 men and women died. It was the deadliest storm on the Lakes.

  • Bloggy Position: More Than A Mouthful?

    Posted October 2 by The Rake

    Men are obsessed with boobs, and Kelly is pretty steamed about it.

  • Straight Talk

    You’re probably most familiar with Tom McCarthy from his acting roles in Meet the Parents and TV’s Boston Public, but you may soon be hearing more about him as a director thanks to the impressive Sundance debut of his first behind-the-camera film, The Station Agent, which picked up both screenwriting and audience-favorite awards. It’s a quirky, character-driven comedy about friendship, with an unlikely hero in Finbar McBride (the excellent Peter Dinklage), a taciturn dwarf and “railfan,” or train hobbyist, whose life changes when he inherits a disused railway station in New Jersey. The film opens October 17 at the Uptown Theater.

    THE RAKE: You lived in Minneapolis for a couple of years when you were first getting started as an actor. Do you have fond memories of our town?
    McCARTHY: I lived here in college in 1988 and 1989, acting in an improv comedy troupe called Every Mother’s Nightmare. It was great because you could exist without that much trouble. It wasn’t that expensive. Minneapolis has always been a special place for me, because it’s where I started. In college I wasn’t thinking about becoming an actor. I got here and there were great people, musicians, so many artists and actors. My next-door neighbors were Dave Pirner and Marc Perlman, of the Jayhawks.

    THE RAKE: How did you find the transition to directing? With the tight schedule of an indie shoot, you must have had to learn on the fly.
    McCARTHY: You have to. Basically you’re the captain of a ship and you don’t understand how the ship runs. But luckily you have all these people around who are experts at what they do. Your cinematographer, your sound, your grips, your actors, your producer. You rely on them. You have to make the decisions and get it done, just trust your gut.

    THE RAKE: It’s interesting how much the story grew out of your random discovery of the film’s railway station, before you had even started writing a script.
    McCARTHY: I grew up about half an hour away, and one of my brothers bought a lake house in that area. I was up there visiting him, and I drove past that depot and I said, man, what a great location for a movie. I slipped a note through the door and I said, give me a call, I’m a writer. So this guy called me. He was a railfan, really excited. He invited me to these railfan meetings like you see in the movie. I plunged myself into learning about trains. I was fascinated by the role that depots played in history, and specifically the station agents. These guys became the unofficial mayors of their community. So I thought it’d be interesting if a guy who inherits this depot unwittingly inherits the social responsibility to connect the community.

    THE RAKE: It’s a nice irony that despite his physical differences, Fin is otherwise the most ‘normal’ guy in the movie.
    McCARTHY: Totally. It’s very much a nod to Steve McQueen or John Wayne or Gary Cooper as the mysterious stranger who rides into town and immediately attracts the attention of the townspeople. He’s one of those classical Western heroes. The way he dresses, walks, talks, moves. He says what needs to be said and doesn’t waste time with a lot of words.

    THE RAKE: Peter Dinklage must have been pleased to get a role where his height wasn’t the main focus.
    McCARTHY: We decided that this would not be a movie about being small, about being a dwarf, but about a guy who’s disconnected and how he connects with the community. In some ways being a dwarf was a catalyst, but he could have been a one-armed gunslinger; it’s just anything that makes him different. I think it gave Peter an opportunity to make people forget about his dwarfism and just revel in how good of an actor he is.