Author: rakemag

Klinkenborg got our attention a decade ago when he was a visiting professor down in Northfield. Ever since then, he’s been writing thoughtful little meditations on the New York Times op-ed page under the rubric “A Rural Life.” We’re not sure how one ends up with a job like this—paid to say whatever crosses your mind, from the comfort of the family farm, in the Paper of Record. (We suspect it may have something to do with stringing together visiting professorships from coast to coast. That and sitting on the Times editorial board.) But it certainly helps if your prose is as effortless and clever as Klinkenborg’s. Perhaps he’ll reveal precisely how he does it at his February 29 reading at Ruminator Books from this, his third book.

Funny Times, the monthly humor newspaper, may seem a little old-school compared to hip upstarts like The Onion and ModernHumorist.com, but it can still deliver a quality product. With essayists like Garrison Keillor and P.J. O’Rourke and comics by Lynda Barry and Matt Groening, their 60,000 subscribers always get their money’s worth of humor with a lefty slant. Funny Times has compiled some of their best pieces for Funny Times presents: The Best of the Best American Humor, featuring the talents of Spalding Gray, Ted Rall, Hunter S. Thompson, Dave Barry, and St. Paul cartoonist and Rake contributor Andy Singer. Big Brain Comics in downtown Minneapolis will host a signing by Singer and others from American Humor, as well as the recently released Attitude, which features 21 hipster cartoonists including Singer and P.S. Mueller and is edited by Rall. Humor, politics, and fun—now more than ever. Big Brain Comics, 81 S. 10th St., (612) 338-4390

William Gibson may not exactly be the next Philip K. Dick, but who wants to be a Dick? Gibson has achieved significantly more commercial success than his sci-fi forebear, and may not have the same literary gravitas, but he still can spin a pretty great yarn. The coiner of the word “cyberspace” also created cyberpunk as a literary form. And although Dick beat him to the idea of the dystopian future (what a simple idea—that humans may actually be moving backward through time, morally speaking), Gibson has already explored galaxies of headspace from “Johnny Mnemonic” to Neuromancer to Idoru. Here he’ll be reading from Pattern Recognition, a brand new caper in the same style, though set in a present that Gibson has been envisioning for 20 years. Barnes & Noble Edina, Galleria mall, (952) 920-0633, bn.com

Have you noticed? Knitting is back in a big way—we find more and more of our Gen X friends picking up the needles and trying their hand at a sweater for the kids, a hat for mom. Here, a traveling exhibition finally arrives in the heartland of American Scandiphilia—literally hundreds of amazing samples from this noble art. Sweaters, hats, scarves, socks, and mittens are just the tip of the berg. (By the way, kids around the age of seven tend to pick up knitting the way they pick up languages—so much faster than their entrenched parents.) American Swedish Institute, 2600 Park Ave., (612) 871-4907, www.americanswedishinst.org

Penumbra’s milestone 25th season is in a big way due to a guy in the audience during their very first production—August Wilson, arguably the foremost living dramatist in America. In 1981, Penumbra staged Wilson’s first professionally produced play, forging a relationship that’s stayed close ever since. Wilson went on to wow Broadway with his 1984 drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, part of a ten-play project chronicling the African-American experience decade by decade through the 20th century, and a string of triumphs from there included Pulitzers for Fences and The Piano Lesson. As his fortunes rose, so did Penumbra’s, which became as inextricably linked to his biography as the Globe is with Shakespeare. The theater gained a lasting national reputation and enduring audience, which they’re celebrating this season with an all-Wilson docket, winding up with the Midwest premiere in May of his latest, the Tony-winning King Hedley II. In Two Trains, Wilson focuses on the denizens of a rundown diner in 1969 Pittsburgh as they fight to get through those tumultuous times, including Vietnam, the breakdown of the inner city and the rise of black power. Penumbra Theatre, (651) 224-3180, www.penumbratheatre.com

Wintertime begins with deceptive familiarity, as if it’s going to be a frothy dinner-theater bedroom farce with all the wacky, naughty shenanigans familiar to regular viewers of Frasier. Spending a romantic weekend at the family cabin, young Jonathan is just about to propose to his girlfriend when—whoops!—in walks his mother wearing a negligee and swilling champagne. She’s there to have an affair with a caddish Frenchman named Francois. Total mood-killer. Soon enough, Jonathan’s dad and his boyfriend show up for the same reason, and the next-door lesbian couple pops in to complicate things further. What makes Wintertime stand out is that playwright Charles Mee doesn’t milk it only for laughs, but goes for a mood more multifaceted and disturbing, with a surprise shock in the second act that deliberately knocks the action off the tracks. Mee cheerily constructs Wintertime with elements from musicals, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and the avant-garde, making his work somewhat unclassifiable, yet certainly boisterous and witty. At its heart, though, are cutting questions on the permanence and value of love, and it’s safe to say he doesn’t leave the audience any easy answers. After all, that’s for Mee to know, and you to find out. Guthrie Lab, 700 N. 1st St., (612) 377-2224, www.guthrietheater.org

For four years now, this installment of one-person shows has orbited August’s Fringe Festival at six months’ distance around the calendar, like a minor planet of local theater. Like the Fringe, the guiding philosophy here is “anything goes,” something not likely to change much as longtime curator Dean Seal hands over the controls to Joshua Scrimshaw, himself a local performance artist of anarchic bent. That’s the beautiful thing about not having to share the stage—nobody crushes a promising idea just because it sounds stupid at first. (Of course, that’s also the curse, but let’s not worry about that right now.) When they go well, one-person shows create an intimacy between performer and audience that’s uniquely electric. There’s no safety net, and nobody to get in the way. The eight productions here range from the punk-and-puppetry take on Greek tragedy “Medea, Medea” to Maria Cheng’s “Sworded Tales & Spirit Treks,” a serious-minded exploration of spirituality through a mix of storytelling, swordplay, tai chi and modern dance. Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S., (612) 871-4444, www.intermediaarts.org

Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy helped jumpstart the late-80s wave of new indie film voices, and Van Sant’s work remains compelling thanks to his willingness to experiment rather than stay safe. That also breeds maddening inconsistency, and so his career is peppered with misfires and outright failures which are still some of his most interesting work—yes, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues has its moments. Good Will Hunting balanced indie cred with the needs of mainstream Hollywood drama, although launching the stardom of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon may yet be an ancillary effect to regret. The Walker’s month-long retrospective screens Van Sant’s entire filmography, winding up with an appearance by the man himself for the local debut of his latest film, Gerry. It’s an audacious jump back to his experimental roots, a relief after the cliché-ridden Finding Forrester, which threatened a future of earnest male-bonding tearjerkers. Gerry is a minimalist, nearly plot-free road movie (co-written with stars Damon and Casey Affleck, Ben’s brother) that’s more avant-garde in its formlessness than any of Van Sant’s previous features. It’s opening to mixed reviews elsewhere, and based on his track record, it’s too soon to tell whether that means misunderstood classic, noble experiment gone wrong, or both. Walker Art Center, (612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

Here comes the second of a projected trilogy about a sweeping, epic battle for the future of a civilization; instead of orcs, this one has Kentuckians. Gods and Generals takes us back two years from the action of the first film, Gettysburg, to chronicle the most destructive war ever fought on American soil from its beginning to the titanic Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. That’s a lot of ground to cover, so be prepared for an epic three-and-a-half-hour battle between your butt and the theater seat. The DVD supposedly will clock in at twice that length. The combat scenes promise to be stunning, given the participation of thousands of re-enactment hobbyists who’ve had years to get this right—that’s what we call Method acting. Bob Dylan fans take note: he’s got a new song, “Cross the Green Mountain,” on the soundtrack.

The marketing behind DVDs has been clever. Videotapes are disposable, and after about 25 viewings, utterly worthless. DVDs have acquired the “preciousness” of keepsakes—heirlooms to pass down from generation to generation. (“That was your grandfather’s Godfather trilogy—and now it’s yours!”) Combine that with our post-9/11 anxiety and need for the comforts of our youth, most notably, sitcoms of the 1970s. Did we ever think we would want the entire Land of the Lost series in wide-screen with digitally-enhanced surround-sound? 70s fare like All in the Family, Good Times, and Sanford and Son, had their share of laughs, but also dealt with rape, gang violence, racism (and chronic fake heart attacks). They had the gravity and substance that reflected that tumultuous time in America, while these days we prefer to retreat to Temptation Island and Survivor: The Amazon.