When it’s snowing and everything is white, it looks like an Alaskan weather station,” said Chris Lange of his office building on Garfield Avenue South in Minneapolis. Even in balmier weather, the headquarters of Mono, the two-year-old advertising agency co-founded by Lange, is striking enough that people will stop in “at least once a week” … Read more
The new school year is upon us, and with it, a fresh start at shoring up the moral levees that keep back the roiling waters of sin. The Minnesota State High School League has banned “midriff-baring” cheerleading uniforms, and we feel conflicted—and not because of any confessed perversion. This is one of those touchy issues … Read more
It all started when celebrity journalist Ken Baker saw Saddam Hussein getting a dental exam on TV. “I thought, Hmm. You don’t see people getting their mouths examined on TV very often. Then I thought, What just happened? This is weird.” Hussein’s capture, carefully packaged for television and announced just when missing WMDs were becoming … Read more
Never mind that this film shares a name with a brand of adult incontinence products. Legions of grad students and pizza delivery people have been joyously anticipating its opening day, perhaps, you might say, to a pants-wetting degree. That’s because Serenity takes up where the short-lived but beloved TV series Firefly, from Joss Whedon, left … Read more
This season, the Guthrie’s WORLDStage Series has some especially meaty, contemporary takes on classic texts. This Macbeth, for instance, plucked from an ultra-hip niche of London’s theater scene by impresario James Morrison, is recast in a nameless but unmistakably modern African nation. It features an all-black cast with one exception: the character of Lady Macbeth, … Read more
Whaazzzaahhp?! It erupted from my niece with as much guttural bass as a five-year-old could muster, accompanied by a grin and a vigorous shake of the head. When asked if she heard that at school, she began hopping around the living room. “Everyone’s saying it!” she said. “The big kids are saying it, the little … Read more
Robert Altman didn’t see much of Minnesota. During his month-long stay in St. Paul this summer, he ventured beyond the Fitzgerald Theater and his hotel but once or twice. He came, though, and even if he didn’t see much, it seems as if he was out to conquer. He left for Hollywood with footage for … Read more
I was chatting on the phone the other day with an old buddy, someone I haven’t seen for at least eight years. Lives change, people drift apart, you know how it is. About an hour and a half into this gossip-a-thon, I remembered the reason why this friend and I drifted apart. All we ever … Read more
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of Canoeing With the Cree, Eric Sevareid’s charming story about canoeing from Minneapolis to the Hudson Bay in the summer of 1930. Thank goodness for something timeless; the Minnesota Historical Society has been in charge of the last several reprintings—including a new anniversary edition—and they haven’t even reset the … Read more
Reality TV is, of course, an oxymoron. There’s reality—pimples and disappointments and paper jams. And there’s TV—Jennifer Aniston. These two concepts were meant to inhabit parallel planes and never intersect. That’s the natural order of the universe, like hot air rising and white pants attracting food. Tampering with this law of nature is an abomination. … Read more