When it comes to artistic fallout from the attacks on the Twin Towers, what we’ve seen so far has been, for the most part, a boatload of opportunistic crap. (Yeah, Toby Keith, that includes you.) Foer’s second novel looks like a brilliant exception, however. In “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” nine-year-old Oskar Schell attempts to … Read more
Danny Buraczeski is trading in his dancing shoes for a pair of comfy house slippers. After twenty-five years of rat-tat-tatting in Minnesota, he’s closing down Jazzdance, the clearinghouse of kineticism, spectacle, and imagination he gave birth to. The company is cooking up a finale inspired by everyone and everything from Duke Ellington and Judy Garland … Read more
After a year of observing the construction at Walker Art Center as artistic spectacle–the slow-dancing crane, the scaffolding-as-sculpture, the huge, billowing plastic tarps–we’re as excited as the next guy to finally revisit the museum proper. Of course, the expansion, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, promises to be spectacular in its own right (see The … Read more
Cleveland #6 After all these years of wishing to be invisible, you’d think I’d feel okay when it finally came to pass. But no, I view my seeming invisibility with the same sort of distress that I had previously viewed attention: the impetus is negative and I am somehow inadequate. So while the ability to … Read more
In the world of relationship “deal breakers,” money matters, drug issues, and infidelity tend to overshadow what I consider to be the real compatibility issues. Starting with a biggie: ultimate control over the thermostat. If, like me, you are a fresh-air fiend and need windows cracked in subzero weather, you’d best pair up with someone … Read more
I’d read plenty about Buffalo Ridge, the windiest swath of Minnesota, located in the state’s grassy and treeless southwest quadrant, before I ever got there. I’d heard stories of hats blowing off, of windburn, of tumbleweeds that just kept tumbling. People living in the area are said to suffer perpetual bad hair days. But it … Read more
Lilies, for many, are a wonderful way to celebrate spring’s arrival. But I think they stink. Besides sparking memories of funeral homes, they drop that awful rusty pollen that cannot be brushed out of the first linen of the season. It may be their innocent and elegant pose that lands them starring roles in vernal … Read more
This November, Minneapolis’s only African-American City Council members, Natalie Johnson Lee and Don Samuels, will go head to head for the same council seat. Redistricting has yanked Samuels’s troubled Jordan neighborhood out of the Third Ward, the old “Nordeast,” and fused it with the Fifth Ward. The Fifth Ward, meanwhile, lost the Warehouse District and … Read more
Not too long ago, I worked at a suburban branch of a major weight loss chain. As day jobs go, it wasn’t too bad. We wore our own clothes with understated name tags—no absurd lab coats or ill-fitting logo’ed shirts. The job consisted of light filing and listening to lite rock. As weight loss consultants … Read more
“I’m not materialistic or anything,” said Dave King, sprawled on his living room shag carpet with his infant daughter. “I’m just interested in being around things people have really labored over.” King, of course, knows well what it means to labor over one’s work. As a songwriter and drummer for Happy Apple, the Bad Plus, … Read more