At a recent screening of The Assassination of Richard Nixon, the director, Niels Mueller, showed up for a question and answer session. It quickly became apparent that his questioners didn’t care so much about the film’s story as what it was like to work with Sean Penn and how Mueller got his movie made. How … Read more
It’s doubtful that people will camp out in order to be the first inside the newly expanded Walker Art Center, but who knows? They did at Ikea in Bloomington last year; surely some flapdoodle ought to accompany the unveiling of a shimmering contemporary art center designed by avant-garde Swiss architects. However, to members of the … Read more
Neal Viemeister, a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota, can’t pinpoint exactly what prompted him to hire the Greek undergrad as a research assistant back in the 1970s. He searched his memory—“Well, John knocked at my door looking for research experience, which impressed me, that an undergraduate would be that motivated and courageous. He … Read more
Dear Reader, in an effort to clear our accounts and our desks each March, we lay before you our laurels and our brickbats. (We noticed from the account books that we have gone through quite a few brickbats, without really knowing what a brickbat is, or where one might be obtained at a reasonable cost.) … Read more
If you were a Minneapolis bohemian ten years ago, you might have found yourself packed into a downtown nightclub for what was then one of the city’s most popular bands, the Beatifics. Back then, the band was promoting its first album, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, a collection of gloomy love’s-lost lyrics and power-pop … Read more
Some people find great pleasure in a roomful of antiques. Others wonder, not without their own selfish pleasure, who gets to do the dusting. In either case, ever since “Famous” Dave Anderson piled stoneware crocks, license plates, mounted deer heads, and loads of other vintage goods from his personal collection into his Linden Hills BBQ … Read more
According to hundreds of billboards, bus sides, and direct mailings: Do. Of course, you are already doing something. You are reading a billboard. As you do, you learn this is not enough in the doing department. You should “groove your body for ten minutes three times a day.” Grooving includes such agreeable activities as dog … Read more
In America today, Jesus is pop culture’s King of Kings, a force in politics, film, music, and books. In the world of contemporary art, though, his presence is less established. While modern curators always seems to make room for dung-smeared Madonnas and crucifixes in urine, where are the works of genuine, unironic reverence? Not in … Read more
Unless you happen to be as rugged as I am—which is, I realize, highly unlikely—you probably aren’t familiar with the Peakbaggers, a loose-knit but increasingly large group of highly motivated self-starters determined to scale the highest points of all fifty states (and, for the true completists among us, the District of Columbia). The Peakbaggers also … Read more
Minnesotans have every reason to be proud of the numerous smoking bans on the way for bars and restaurants in municipalities throughout the state. After all, the clean-air initiatives associate us with such enlightened populations as the city of New York, the state of California, and even the entire country of Ireland, where the average … Read more