rakemag At 6,000 performances and counting, the New York production of Warren Manzi’s Hitchcockian thriller is the longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history. Such longevity is doubly amazing in view of Manzi’s criminally sloppy handle on the mystery story; his script is so overstuffed with red herrings, dropped subplots, implausible twists and flat-out plot holes it could … Read more
This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices … Read more
Forget about those suburban seafood chains where the waiters break into the macarena every half-hour. This self-described “ocean diner” (hey, a pun!) over Macalester-way has a pleasantly casual atmosphere with prices that won’t bite like a shark. The walls are dominated by solid reds and blues, getting a subtly undersea theme over without needing to … Read more
We’re sports fans around here, no matter what our other pretensions. One of our favorite diversions is watching the tournaments that clog the calendar in this season. This year, though, we’re oddly sensitized to the fact that most sports coverage is heavily dependent on military metaphors. To judge from our local sports journalists and commentators, … Read more
You can keep your J.Lo; we’ll take the Jayhawks. Rainy Day Music, their seventh disc, pulls back from the slickness of 2000’s Smile for a sound anchored more deeply in the acoustic. It’s an evolution that sprung in part from continued lineup shifts and the impossibility of touring with a full band in the wake … Read more
The other day, Amtrak announced that the Empire Builder—the famous train from Seattle to St. Paul—could not make it through its normal route at Glacier National Park here in Montana. “Snow slides” threatened the tracks, and passengers were routed around the hazard on buses. In the last five weeks we’ve gotten ten feet of snow. … Read more
Let’s all do our part to make sure the state can afford its single most important obligation to the people: building new highways and adding lanes out to Eagan, beloved constituency of our Governor and State Auditor. Sacrifices must be made, of course, and we’re ready. In these troubling times, Minnesota families must assume a … Read more
Usually I enjoy your “letters” from far-flung places. They give insight into what’s going on on the ground. That said, what the heck were you guys thinking when you published Wade Savage’s “Letter from Baghdad” [The Rakish Angle, March]? Is the fact that a Minnesotan was there, like a Kilroy on the wall, more important … Read more
I greatly enjoyed Stephanie March’s “Taters!” in the March 2003 issue. However, I believe that the potato is heading once again for Cinderella status. If you have a look at the new U.S. Government “Food Pyramid,” the potato is now considered a most unfortunate form of carbohydrate. Richard Webb, Minneapolis
Terrific article on the history of TCRT and the light rail system [“Get Rail,” March]. Best researched in the last 30 years. A nice postscript would be totaling up the cost of all the light rail studies that have been done over the last 40 years. Richard Landry, Minneapolis