The Rake Magazine

Author: rakemag

  • A man of appetites

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    Puck was a man of huge appetites. I don’t mean the ones that made him prone to stroke, but the ones that made him figuratively larger than life.

    I knew Kirby, not well, but some. I helped report a little about the Twins when I was at City Pages. I played in his pool tournament several years and proudly endured his jibes when I missed an easy shot. There were a bunch of us who had money who paid $500 to play in that tournament. Yeah, we felt good about donating to children’s heart research, but we mostly felt good to be with Kirby, because he always made you feel like a friend.

    He did that with everyone, whether you paid or not. Over on MNSpeak is the remembrance of my son of his first meet with Kirby. He was only 4 years old and we were at one of the last spring training games in Orlando. It was after the game and Kirby and Tony Oliva were spending some extra time giving hitting instruction to a kid who had no chance of making the big league team, but those two guys were still working with him when they could have been at the club house buffet.

    As they were winding up, my wife yelled, “Hey, Kirby, wanna meet your biggest fan?” I thought she meant me, but Kirby walked right over to Matt and talked to him for several minutes. He signed his autograph book, as did Tony, and as he was getting ready to leave, he said, “Matt, wanna have good luck?” Matt nodded. “Here, rub my head,” he said, and leaned over the low fence so the short child could touch his newly shaved head. “I let all the ballplayers do that so we win,” he said, initiating a four-year-old then and there into the secret society of real ballplayers.

    I last ran into Kirby a couple of years ago in a parking lot on First Avenue. He was waiting outside a limo, dressed in a suit, his right eye gone, but the smile still bright. It was after his troubles with Tonya and the woman in the restroom. He was somehow smaller than he had been.

    I went up to him and reintroduced myself and my wife, and he just turned it on. “How you doin’, Tom? You and Kris just have a nice dinner? I did, too. Just waitin’ for my friends now.”

    All I could think to say was, “Kirby, we love you. Hang in there.” We both teared up as we walked on to our car.

    Unfortunately, he couldn’t hang in there. In the end, his demon appetites for all that life offers, both good and bad, got him.

    But when he’s your friend, as he was to anyone who met him, you have to overlook some things and consider the whole. He was, in the whole, a good man.

    Tom Bartel

  • An Oscar Bright Spot

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    An actor for president? No way Americans would ever do that.

    Our old friend David Carr did a nice job of blogging from the Oscars yesterday.

    But perhaps his best observation was to simply quote George Clooney’s acceptance speech. In case you were watching a basketball game or something, here it is: “You know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it’s probably a good thing. We’re the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.”

    For my money, this guy’s a lot more in touch with how things actually are than our buddy Bush. Another good piece in the Times this morning by Paul Krugman on just that topic. (Sorry you have to subscribe to read it.) As I’ve said before, you can cancel the Strib subscription if you have to.

  • Spinning out hate

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    He’d be assassinated today, too.

    I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or cry yesterday when I heard that Michele Bachmann had “scolded” the God Hates Fags protesters at the funeral of the Minnesota soldier who had been killed in Iraq. As Bachmann explained, it’s not that God doesn’t hate fags, it’s just that he doesn’t hate them enough to desecrate a soldier’s funeral.

    No, really. She just wants it put to a vote of the people of Minnesota as to whether or not God hates fags. Michele, do you really think the people of any state should get to vote on what God does or doesn’t hate? That’s what we have a legislature for, right? So, if you can just get your Senate colleagues to vote on what God hates or doesn’t hate, that will just have to do. Leave the people out of it, because, frankly, if we’ve learned anything about what people will vote for these days, it’s that they’ll vote for damn near anything that fills their little minds with hateful crap.

    Michele, you should consider the possibility that appendicitis is only the first warning that an overload of vile prejudice can cause pain…maybe pain sent from, yes, God. Sent to punish you. Yeah, I know the mind of God, too. That’s it. You are in deep shit now.

    I was sort of wondering as you were about to go under the knife, as the pain in your side gave way to the anasthesia, if a thought flashed through your mind: “God, please don’t let my surgeon be gay.”

    The only thing that saved Michele from being the real highlight of my day, however, was the thought of George W. Bush spreading flower petals at the memorial to Mohandas Gandhi in India. You can’t make up stuff like that.

    It gives me a huge pain to even mention those two men in the same sentence. God, please give me a tiny portion of the Mahatma’s capacity to forgive.

    Never mind. Someday, Bush, when someone explains to you who Gandhi was (other than some guy in a Ben Kingsley movie) you’ll be ashamed.

    Actually, you probably won’t.

  • All Arabs Look Alike

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    “Ok, Cheney, just you and me. Shotguns at 10 paces.”

    I just couldn’t let this go, but it popped onto my computer a few minutes ago when I used Yahoo for the first time in months. The headline that jumped at me was this: Bush Confident Bin Laden Will Be Captured.

    Big talk from a guy who has spent four and one half years “hunting” Osama, which, in case you are keeping score, is now one year more than we spent on Adolf Hitler. And three years more than we spent deposing Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with attacking the United States, and couldn’t have done so even if he wanted to…because he had no weapons.

    The only more preposterous crap we’ve been hearing lately is from all the flacks telling us that there is no civil war in Iraq. Here’s a clue, Sean Hannity: when there is a country that has two factions and those factions are trying their best to kill each other, that’s the definition of a civil war.

    I guess you could say it’s not a civil war only if you don’t admit that Iraq is really one country, and that countries don’t really matter much at all in the Muslim world anyway. What does seem to matter is whether you are Sunni or Shiite. And if you define your boundaries that way, we don’t have a civil war, we have a world war in the making, with the world’s oil supply right in the middle.

    And when that all goes to hell, Hugo Chavez will be holding a lot of cards in the big game. When are we planning to topple his statue in Caracas?

  • Jon Langford

    The Mekons, who came roaring out of Leeds in the wake of British punk’s late-seventies explosion, remain shining exemplars of a band as a committed, progressive community. Jon Langford, a Mekons ringleader, is now rolling through his fourth decade of creating provocative and politically charged music and art. The man remains ridiculously busy, with various working bands (the Waco Brothers and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, among others) and other musical collaborations, plus art: prints and paintings that incorporate influences ranging from Jose Guadelupe Posada to some of the great poster artists of the twentieth century. His artwork also shares a political sensibility–not to mention a keen understanding for the dark back alleys of American popular culture–with his music. 2402 E. Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-331-3889; www.roguebuddha.com

  • Mala Ke Manke: Indian Drawings from the Collection of Subhash Kapoor

    When your dad knows so much about antiques and fine art that people like Jackie Kennedy come to him seeking help in building their personal collections, you either watch closely and soak it all up, or rebel and become a stockbroker. Subhash Kapoor chose wisely, taking up where his father left off and cultivating an astonishing knowledge of Asian art while also running a New York gallery and building his own collection. The latter includes material dating back several centuries and spanning a variety of regions, styles, and subject matter. The selection on view at the Weisman focuses on drawings: complete works as well as fascinating sketches used to plan murals. 333 East River Rd., Minneapolis; 612-625-9494; www.weisman.umn.edu

  • Chris Felver

    Working in portraiture must be a little unnerving at times. Imagine all those eyes staring back at you in the darkroom. Perhaps that’s why Chris Felver, who is best known for his portraits of “creative revolutionaries” (writers, poets, filmmakers, actors, musicians, and protesters) turned his back on all those eyes and wandered outside. The latest work from this San Franciscan seeks out and amplifies patterns and structures in stone walls, walkways, windows, and other structures–starkly beautiful abstractions based in the concrete, man-made world. 611 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-312-1122; www.thegrandhand.com

  • Kiki Smith: A Gathering

    While some artists can explore one theme or medium for years, Kiki Smith is notable for how far and wide she has ranged in her work. Despite its variety, you can see it shifting, in a sense, from the micro to the macro. In the eighties, Smith was sculpting individual body parts and organs, moving from there to life-size human forms, with an emphasis on the female body. Then she began looking at the larger cultural world, incorporating elements from folklore, myths, and religion, often by using animals that have symbolic roles in those stories. While this retrospective brings together 125 pieces, Smith herself has curated one gallery as an intimate “cabinet of wonders,” showcasing some of her oldest and most recent works. 612-0375-7600; www.walkerart.org

  • Allegra Goodman

    Allegra Goodman is one of those ridiculous prodigies who managed to sustain and build on her early buzz. Her first collection of stories, Total Immersion, was written while she was an undergraduate at Harvard, and she’s since published another collection and a couple of novels, including the remarkable Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Intuition initially seems like a bit of a departure, but on closer inspection, the book explores many of the writer’s signature preoccupations. Goodman is particularly adept at zeroing in on individuals within closed communities and intensely collaborative situations. In this case, that means a cash-strapped research lab where a group of scientists believes it has stumbled onto a cure for cancer. When the discovery is scrutinized and deemed fraudulent, Goodman’s novel becomes a mystery that addresses such complex and timely subjects as medical ethics and unchecked human ambition.

  • Colson Whitehead

    Here’s a guy whose novels always start with really good ideas. In fact, Whitehead’s jacket copy often is more interesting than other authors’ entire novels. That’s an impressive gift, indeed. Nor does he disappoint over the long haul, spinning those ideas–hooks, really–into clever, entertaining, and deceptively weighty stories. For instance, his first novel, The Intuitionist, which focuses on a group of elevator inspectors, addresses questions of racial equality and upward mobility. Whitehead’s latest zeitgeist comedy of manners and errors involves a former whiz-bang “nomenclature consultant” who is summoned to help the citizens of a community choose a new name for their town. Given WhiteheadÕs track record, that should be good raw material for his imagination to work with.