A few weeks ago, William Shatner stopped by Riverside, Iowa, to audition locals for Invasion Iowa, a sci-fi screenplay he supposedly co-wrote with Leonard Nimoy. It turned out to be a put-on. There will be no Invasion Iowa, only a reality-TV show making fun of Riversiders. Why did Shatner, an unapologetic Canadian, decide to pick … Read more
Ghoulish white faces with dark eyes lurked beneath the chandeliers and timber beams. They whispered in Slavic-sounding accents. A man with pointy ears and a deformed face shuffled under the candelabrum shaped like a dragon, muttering to himself. This was a particularly strange evening at the historic James J. Hill House, because everyone present was … Read more
I’d just been dumped by a guy when I first heard about the Bakken Museum’s vibrator collection. Minneapolis’s Bakken, for the record, bills itself as “The Museum of Electricity in Life,” and since my bulb had just gone out, I thought looking into the long history of self-satisfaction might be a pleasant diversion. I learned … Read more
Once upon a time, high school seniors all had their yearbook pictures taken against a blue marbleized background, just like everybody else on picture day. Maybe they posed with chin in hand or had a halo of backlighting, but their portraits were all pretty much the same. One day, an ambitious but anonymous photographer saw … Read more
Peter Bruce is a slight, sandy-haired, serious man who moves and speaks quickly and with purpose. Bruce loves the skyways, how when it’s raining or too hot or too cold they convey people between offices and restaurants and stores. While most people have never heard of him, anyone who’s connected with the skyways—whether in retail … Read more
Smooth jazz killed my brother Randy. He was coming into the S curves on I-5 just south of Seattle, listening to radio KYEZ, “Mellow Sounds of the Spheres,” when the music transported him into a trance-like state and he crashed into the side of a sixteen-wheeler bringing engine parts into Boeing. I called Randy on … Read more
They came out of nowhere. Or so it seemed to those of us who think we’re hip to the Twin Cities’ dance scene. They surfaced—or maybe the better word is “erupted”—last November at Choreographers’ Evening, Walker Art Center’s annual smorgasbord of classic, offbeat, up-and-coming, or just plain zany talent. Ten Foot Five caused a commotion … Read more
Other countries’ politics are always a mystery. Of course, it helps to know some history. Then you can at least ask how they got here from there, rather than merely measure how different they are from us, how they fail to meet our highest standards of democracy, feminism, etc. But even disinterested interest is sometimes … Read more
Far be it from me to question the wisdom of Mother Angelica, but why does her Eternal Word Television Network exile its hottest property to the small-screen Aleutians of Saturday afternoon? With a roster of repeats and retreads trying to fill up a twenty-four-hour cable schedule, EWTN leaves only disoccupied weekenders to savor G.K. Chesterton: … Read more
Mars’s newest paintings address the demons of mental illness, yet they dig through the ugliness to find something beautiful within. That is, they achieve the feat of being simultaneously repellent and alluring: His depictions of monsters are horrific on the surface, but rendered in such rich detail and glowing colors that their humanity cannot be … Read more