“A photo is all I have left of her,” Chris Lang, the boyfriend of murdered college student Dru Sjodin, told a Judiciary Policy and Finance Committee at the Minnesota House of Representatives. His testimony culminated with a heated statement about Level Three sex offenders: “They’re not like normal people. I think they’re wired wrong. They’re … Read more
Nearly a decade ago, in an endearingly inept campaign to counter his Entertainment Tonight anchorguy blandsomeness, John Tesh embellished a series of magazine articles with casual expletives and weird, crude asides. “Well, [fatherhood] hasn’t helped with the sex life,” he told GQ in August 1995. “I get no time on the breasts anymore, ’cause the … Read more
Imagine: It’s springtime, there’s a sense of optimism in the air. Best Buy is about to open its new corporate headquarters in Richfield. Everyone’s talking about it. Some say it will usher the Twin Cities into a new era; others argue about whether or not that’s a good thing. Wanting to include the community in … Read more
It’s a bitterly cold Tuesday evening in mid-January, the kind of subzero, dangerously low windchill night when Minnesotans are apt to crank up the boiler and hunker down in front of “American Idol” and “Law & Order,” so it’s a little surprising to find more than fifty constituents gathered in the living room of a … Read more
Notwithstanding our love of the single-occupant automobile, we were very excited about the arrival of the light-rail train this spring. We love strolling down Fifth Street past the bright new Warehouse District station. It gaily announces the time and date on its prim marquees and generally looks as if it expects our train to shoosh … Read more
My thirteen-year-old daughter Sophie is a dyed-in-the-wool lifelong vegetarian, occasional vegan, and budding animal rights activist. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that as a result of this latter interest she’d be the butt of a lot of jokes in her lifetime, but she found out on her own not long ago when … Read more
I don’t know whether I was having a nightmare, but I recently woke up wondering what it takes to produce 48,000 meals a day. So I invited myself to the St. Paul Public Schools’ nutrition services headquarters to find out. The answer, supplied in the person of Director Jean Ronnei, is nerves of steel. District … Read more
Much is being made nationally of so-called “NASCAR dads,” allegedly a flag-waving bloc of voters who drive pick-up trucks, belong to the NRA, and tend to favor football and beer. The colloquial wisdom is that NASCAR dads are concentrated in the South, and in Indianapolis. But according to some experts, there is a healthy crop … Read more
O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? My girlish companions at the modeling agency would make much sport of such a name. Yet my heart is thine. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to Romeo, the more I have, for both are infinite. Were not … Read more
After a long winter of channel surfing, The Rake took heed of the growing evening light and resolved to check out some of the local culture that those freezing nights had held at bay. The other night, we trekked down to a new local favorite, the Mill City Museum, where a lecture was underway by … Read more