Author: rakemag

When name-checking guitar gods, technical show-offs like Michael Hedges, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Preston Reed, and Joe Satriani come to mind. But one would be hard-pressed to find a young lady among their ranks, someone who spent her formative years noodling away in string-based obsession. Until Kaki King came along, that is. This twenty-five-year-old is that kind of guitarist, a majestic talent whose mind moves as quickly as her hands, and whose style is already stunningly distinctive and brazenly experimental. On this, her third album, the producer John McEntire (who’s worked with the likes of Stereolab and Tortoise) injects a faintly indie air into King’s atmospheric playing.

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne would make a fine old-time carnival barker, beckoning us into a world of wonder and weirdness, dressed in his white suit and flanked by people dressed like stuffed animals. So it is not ironic at all that the Lips are playing the State Fair. Their latest, At War With the Mystics, is their most political, but with songs like “Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber),” they are in little danger of becoming overly serious. 651-642-2262; www.mnstatefair.org

Capping off the populist Sommerfest series is the catchiest darn opera ever written. Taking the role of the titular seductress in this semi-staged production is the smoky-eyed American mezzo-soprano Angela Horn (pictured on next page), a New York-based singer who’s regarded nationwide as one of the finest interpreters of the sultry Carmen character. In fact, Sommerfest music director Andrew Litton directed Horn in a production of Carmen last year, in Vail, Colorado, after which he announced, “Angela Horn is Carmen.” The cast also includes hometown-girl-made-good Jennifer Baldwin Peden, who returns to the role she played at Theatre de la Jeune Lune: the sweet little peasant girl Micaela. Perfect for a Minnesotan! 612-371-5656; www.mnorch.org

As the menu at Café Brenda has long made clear, Brenda Langton was one of the first Twin Cities chefs to recognize the value of local food producers. Her newest venture, Spoonriver, is a stylish, next-generation expression of those ideals. Brunch after the farmers market might consist of tea-poached eggs or a garden leek omelette, and loft dwellers in the neighborhood can stop in for take-out meals that go way beyond roast chicken or deli sandwiches. Still, that doesn’t mean that dinner can’t be an event, with entrées like orange blossom apricots stuffed with goat cheese, or trout with a passion-fruit lomi crab sauce. 750 2nd St. S., Minneapolis; 612-436-2236; www.spoonriverrestaurant.com

Not quite ice cream but more than a snow cone, Italian ices are smooth concoctions flavored with purees of fruits like mango and strawberry. At the new Grand Italian Ice Café, the only thing better than a root beer ice is a root beer ice with a giant scoop of custard added to it—creating what is known as a “gelati.” This place is versatile enough to offer coffee and sandwiches, but we’re banking on the beautiful texture and flavor of their ices to carry them through the chill months. 976 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-290-2704

Billed as an “American comedy,” Steven Dietz’s eerie, densely packed play premiered last fall at the esteemed Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Last of the Boys contends with the specter of the Vietnam War and takes place in a present-day trailer park that, appropriately, sits on a toxic dump site; there, a vet is still wrestling with the ghosts, lies, and psychic wounds he earned while serving his country. He receives a visit from an old war buddy, who brings along his much-younger thirty-five-year-old girlfriend, who is the daughter of a fallen soldier. Ultimately, the play leaves us swimming in the divergent paths these three take in trying to reconcile the blows they’ve been dealt by the Vietnam War. 612-822-7063; www.jungletheater.com

An old-fashioned version of this whole desert-island charade would have had author, television writer, and occasional standup comic Merrill Markoe bringing along her “collected works of Robert Benchley,” because “his silly rage at minutiae combined with great word usage is both a comfort and a reminder to have perspective.” But nowadays, the people who play our desert-island game usually assume their iBook is a given. So, in that spirit, here’s what Markoe would bring:

1. A DVD with all the contents of the National Library on it.

2. And I’d have access to all the music (via downloads) and literature and news in the world. Making me think: To hell with Benchley. I’m going ahead with the Mac and the library instead. I should add at this point that my boyfriend accuses me of wrecking hypothetical scenarios with my literal-mindedness. He may have a point. I am sick with worry that I will wake up on my first desert-island night and realize I wasted two of my five items on a useless piece of equipment because I can’t recharge the battery or plug the damn thing in. That is why I have no choice but to make item number three …

3. A Costco store. Just one container of Costco seasoned salt can last for up to three generations. My friend Elayne Boosler said that the first time she unpacked her groceries from Costco, she started to cry because it hit her she would never live long enough to use up all that ketchup. Of course, I could get a Costco but what if there is no one paying the bills—will there be no electricity? Or does my Costco arrive complete with employees who come over on their own boat and leave at the end of the day? And do I need to put my Costco card on this list? See. My boyfriend is right. And you know what? The last thing I need in stressful circumstances is for someone to make me feel bad about myself. That is why he will not make this list. But now that I don’t have a boyfriend, and I don’t know if my Costco comes with employees, I am going to need some companionship. So …

4. A pregnant shepherd/lab/border collie mix. Because if I am going to populate the island with dogs (and I can—there’s plenty of dog food at Costco), I don’t want purebreds. I want big happy smart dogs who will continually look at me with those buoyant expressions that indicate they think everything is going not just great, but even better than we expected!

5. One thing I don’t think they have at Costco: A computer animation program that comes with a tutorial. Now I will finally have the time to not only learn computer animation, but I will be able to draw and paint and save my work from the mold and moisture in sea air and the fading of that cruel desert-island sun.

Often regarded as Tom Stoppard’s best play, this production is a—perhaps the—high point in the Guthrie’s 2006-07 season. A masterpiece of wit that also grapples with romantic love and the havoc wrought by extramarital affairs, the story centers around Henry, a successful playwright often thought to be a stand-in for Stoppard. Henry has just penned a play about infidelity—and, no surprise, there is certainly a “play within a play” dynamic about this. But it is his real-life circumstances that leave him wondering whether he has finally found the “real thing” in his new mistress and in his life’s work as a writer—which he must now crank out in short order to fund alimony payments to the wife he betrayed. 612-377-2224; www.guthrietheater.org