The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Back to Iraq

    Twenty-seven years ago, I left Iraq on the first leg of a journey that would take me to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and finally the United States. Today I am an American citizen, a businessman, and the father of three sons. Because my small business, Sindbad’s Café and Market, has become a crossroads for people from all over the Muslim world, and for non-Muslims as well, I am often invited to speak at schools and churches.

    Although I don’t consider myself a spokesman for the Muslim or Arab community, I have tried to be a bridge-builder between cultures. But I hadn’t actually been back to Iraq since I left three decades ago. Over the years, I have kept in touch with my sisters and mother in Iraq, and sent money when I could, though the U.S.-imposed sanctions made that difficult and sometimes impossible. My sisters accepted the help, but not my mother. “I don’t want money. I don’t need money,” she told me. “I want you. I want to fill my eyes with you before I die.”

    Though I wanted to return for a visit, I postponed the trip again and again, held back by the demands of my business, responsibilities to my American family, and fear that if I returned to Iraq, I would not be allowed to leave. In the past year, the calls from Iraq became more urgent—my mother had become gravely ill. But the danger of a trip heightened with the war and occupation. On September 12, my mother passed away. A few days later, my sister Samiah called from Karbala. “We have no mother or father any more,” she said, sobbing. “You are the oldest now. We need you. Please come.” I could wait no longer. On November 11, I left Minneapolis on a one-month journey to my homeland.

    As the plane lifted up into the sky, my memories brought me back to the hot summer day in 1976 when I left Baghdad. I was twenty-five years old. My friends from Najaf had accompanied me to the airport, and as we waited to board, they laughed and chanted, Allah wayak Abossi, “God protect you, Abossi, go and don’t return. You are a lucky man.” Abossi was a comedian popular on Iraqi TV at the time. That was my nickname because I was the funniest one among them.

    Then somebody said, “Sami, be careful, ask your friends to quiet down. If the mukhabarat (secret police) get curious, they could cause some trouble and prevent you from leaving. Get on the plane, make sure it takes off, and then your friends can party on without you.” The festive mood died down, and when the time came to board the plane, I hugged and kissed my friends and said my last goodbyes.

    Remembering that day three decades ago, I thought of my friends Bassem al Har and Fadhel Sunbah. They were classmates of mine at the teachers college in Karbala. After we graduated, Bassem al Har and I met at the teachers club in Najaf almost every night to talk about politics and philosophy, and to play Ping-Pong, backgammon, and billiards. Fadhel was a roommate of mine in the college dorm. He was an artist—quiet, polite, and shy, the best calligrapher in my school. Arabic calligraphy was my passion, too, so there was a bit of a rivalry between us, but he was always better than me. I would look for them when I got to Najaf.

    Peering out the window of the airplane, I could see nothing, but I imagined mountains, and I thought of John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” As I dozed, I dreamt I was a giant bird, soaring over mountains, ignoring the borders between countries.

    In Amsterdam, where I boarded a KLM flight to Damascus, the change of airlines felt like a change of countries: While the Northwest flight attendants had been businesslike and unsmiling, the KLM attendants were relaxed and friendly, and they chatted with the passengers. Some practiced their Arabic.

    We landed in Damascus at two a.m. The Syrian customs officials hardly looked at my bags, even though they were crammed full of gifts for family and friends in Iraq. I hadn’t booked a room, but at the taxi stand, two Pakistani-American ladies from California on pilgrimage, reluctant to travel alone late at night, asked me to share their cab to the Safir Hotel. I jumped in front with our cabby, Tawfik. When he learned that I was an American, he begged me to take him with me when I went home. “Save me!” he said with mock desperation. He grabbed my belt, like a drowning man lunging for a life raft. The Pakistani women, who didn’t speak Arabic, were alarmed by this sudden gesture, but I reassured them—Tawfik was not attacking me.

    The Safir Hotel is a gleaming glass and marble edifice near the Sayeda Zaynab shrine, where Zaynab, daughter of Imam Ali, is buried. (Imam Ali is the cousin of prophet Muhammad and is revered by Shiite Muslims as his rightful successor.) The Pakistanis booked the Safir’s special Ramadan rate, $89 a night. But at the front desk, I discovered a better rate: $39 a night for Arabs. Luckily, I had my old Iraqi passport with me, so I got the discount. My room had all the amenities of a Radisson or a Marriott, and a few more: a copy of the Koran, a set of prayer beads, a prayer rug, disposable slippers, and an arrow on the desk, pointing in the direction of Mecca. Too excited to sleep, I channel-surfed, flipping from Al Jazeera to Al Arabiya. The day’s big news was a truck bombing in Nasiriyah that killed eighteen Italian soldiers.

    The next morning, as I looked out over the city from the balcony of my room, a powerful feeling came over me suddenly, from my feet to the top of my head—I felt like I was home again, or like a fish back in the water.

    After a few hours of sleep and a hot shower, I was ready to hit the road. People asked me if I was afraid to travel to Iraq, but I felt no fear, just a sense of urgency to get on the road—first to see my sister Bushra in Amman, Jordan, and then to keep going until I got to Karbala in Iraq. I was a man on a mission, with Samiah’s pleas ringing in my ears. I checked out, loaded my bags into a taxi, and headed for Al Bramkah Square, to find a taxi for the four-hour ride to Amman.

    The square was noisy, crowded, chaotic. I was soon surrounded by a swarm of boys, offering to carry my bags. A foreigner, somebody who probably has some money, is a target they can’t pass up. Some were as young as eleven. It was sad to see such young children not in school but out in the street, hustling to support their families.

    Inside the taxi terminal, customs officers inspected bags. The young boy who helped me with my luggage suggested a small tip to expedite the inspection process. Fifty Syrian lira—about one dollar—changed hands, the inspector pulled open the zipper of one of my bags, pulled it shut again, and waved us on.

    I offered my young helper the same tip, but he argued for more; after all, he had actually worked for his money, while the customs officer had done nothing. So I gave him another fifty lira, enough to buy a couple of chicken shawirma sandwiches at one of the food stalls on the square.

    At least ten taxis waited for passengers to Amman. None would take just a single fare; three were half full, but none of the drivers were willing to leave without a full car. With a little cooperation, the cabs could be filled one at a time, but that is not the way things work here. The other passengers in my car had been waiting for at least an hour, but I quickly lost my patience. I demanded my passport back from the driver, but, desperate for my fare, he refused. He insisted that another passenger was on the way and we would be leaving shortly.

  • Gay Marriage? Get Used to the Idea

    Until the late sixties, in much of the country, the pigmentation differences between my wife and I would have made us felons had we tried to get married. According to one Virginia judge in 1959, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents.…The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.” When the Supreme Court finally declared the “antimiscegenation” laws unconstitutional in 1967, almost one in three states still had them on the books.

    Today, all but the most hardened bigots accept that banning unions based on skin color is unconstitutional and just plain wrong. And yet many of the same people, such as Gov. Tim Pawlenty, use the same tired, illogical argument—that it is morally wrong—to rail against legally sanctioned same-sex unions. The fact that Minnesota already bans same-sex unions is not enough for this governor. He wants to amend the state constitution to make sure that ban remains beyond the reach of Minnesota’s traditionally civil-rights-minded judiciary. Progressive, fair-minded people need to band together to stop him. All Minnesotans should be able to get the legal and social benefits of a legally sanctioned union.

    Despite the all the jokes, the married life does have a lot of real advantages. Married people get better insurance rates, preferred income-tax treatment, and a host of other legal benefits. Those who doubt the legal perks of marriage should talk to someone who has ended, either through a breakup or death, a less formal (i.e., living together) arrangement. The surviving half of the nonlegally recognized couple does not have the right to inherit that person’s property, can be legally excluded from participating in the funeral arrangements—the list goes on.

    Not surprisingly, many of those who oppose same-sex unions rely heavily on the Bible. Now, I am not anti-Bible—I just believe that using the Bible to justify state-sanctioned discrimination can place one on a very slippery slope. Yes, Leviticus 18:22 states that man “should not lie with mankind, as with womankind: It is abomination.” However, Leviticus also states that a man should not have any contact with a woman while she is “in her period of menstrual uncleanliness”; permits slavery (provided the slaves come from neighboring nations); allows a father to sell his daughter into slavery; and directs believers to kill a neighbor who works on the Sabbath.

    Our Founding Fathers wisely relieved us of the burden of deciding whether to kill our neighbors for cutting the grass on Sunday by creating a Constitution that expressly forbids our government from making any law “respecting the establishment of religion.” And that same Constitution also makes it very clear that we are all entitled to equal protection under the law. Now, when one views these two concepts in the context of same-sex unions, then the efforts to ban them become exposed for what they really are—discrimination based on homophobia-fueled religious dogma. Our current Constitution does not tolerate using religious beliefs as a battering ram for bigotry—which is why Tim Pawlenty wants a constitutional amendment to do his dirty work for him.

    To paraphrase a bumper sticker, Pawlenty and the religious right need to keep their religion out of our laws. Recent court decisions in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Hawaii have held that there is nothing unconstitutional about permitting two human beings of the same sex to join together in a civil union. Whether it is “immoral” is perhaps a religious and personal decision, but it’s not one that should trigger statutory legal prohibitions. Beyond that, one would think that this supposedly “pro-family” governor would want to encourage all people, not just the heterosexual ones, to become part of a committed, monogamous relationship.

    Now, I could understand the virulent opposition if churches were being forced to perform gay marriage ceremonies within their own walls. They are not. If the Jerry Falwells of the world want to refuse to permit a gay couple to make a lifelong commitment to each other in their churches—let ’em. The beauty of the religious freedom mandated by the First Amendment is that it keeps government out of their pulpits. It also keeps the religious right from imposing their narrow views of who is worthy of constitutional protection on the rest of us.

  • Orange Alert

    Orange Alert, everybody. Avoid crowds. But go shopping. Keep the economy strong. Have an emergency plan in place. A central location for you and your family to meet in the event of, oh, I don’t know…an explosion? The deadly release of a new Ben Affleck movie? Wash your hands, please, but masks are for the Jackson family.

    September 12, 2001, I went to the gym. I have a lifetime membership to Bally’s Total Fitness. As it turns out, a person can live a lifetime in just under five hours a year, three of those in the hot tub. But I digress.

    I had resolved that my life would forevermore be one long act of virtue. I hit the treadmill, then the weights. As I struggled to switch plates on the barbell, a rather studly man took pity on me and offered his assistance. He had flawless skin, the color of Ceylon tea, and his arms swelled in beautiful rounds out of his T-shirt. His back, held strong and straight, moved gracefully into powerful legs. His body was a temple, a sculpture, a shrine to decent living and strength.

    He set the bar and stayed to spot me. He talked a little bit about the use of free weights and I noticed that my friend had an accent. Now, I’ve never been off the continent, and I am not what you’d call a citizen of the world. I am, however, in the people business, and I like to hear of other places, even if I can’t go there.

    So I gave Handsome my best line. “Sounds like you got an accent there. Where are you from? North or South Dakota?”

    His eyes clouded over and he said, “Why? Are you afraid that I am a terrorist because I sound different? I am from here, same place as you.”

    I was horrified that I’d offended him and I tried to explain myself. “I was just curious about where your accent comes from. About where you come from and—”

    “I’ll tell you where I come from,” he said quietly, still angry. “I come from a place that has known true devastation, true terror. Look, what has happened, it is tragedy. But it is not devastation. If it were, you and I would not be here right now; we would be fighting to live, to eat. Let me tell you about where I come from.

    “Where I come from, people have the grace to starve to death. Here, if catastrophe reigned, the rich would eat the zoo animals, the middle class would eat their dogs, and the poor would eat each other.” And with that, he stalked off.

    I looked down at the fat pooling in my waist and thought, “I don’t have the grace to starve myself for two hours.” Then I thought: “Oh my God, he’s right!” And, like it or not, that man’s words haunted me as I feebly completed my workout, mind reeling, my eyes furtively darting round the room. Bally’s turned into Cub Foods.

    At first, I settled on the Costco-size person, and then I realized that my normal bulk shopping habits wouldn’t fly in the event of grid failure. Fun-size people would have to do—a more “European” shopping pattern, just buying enough for the day ahead. And suppose there were no market. Could I go “Ventura” and hunt the deadliest prey of all? Honey, I can’t stalk celery. And the only thing I’ve ever killed is time.

    Extreme situations force the strength or weakness of a person’s character out of the spider hole. One thing’s for sure: Disaster will come, be it up close and personal or worldwide and cataclysmic. Is it possible to duct-tape your heart to withstand suffering? Can you buy enough batteries to keep it beating until it heals? How do you go about your life while being prepared?

    This past holiday season under Orange Alert I thought about my gym buddy. Since then, I read the papers a little more carefully, and I still wonder where he comes from. Thing is, it could be a few different places, where grace lives.

  • Errol Morris

    Death. Justice. And very smart people in very strange times. Those are the favored topics of documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death). In his new film, The Fog of War, he finds all three in Robert McNamara, the Kennedy- and Johnson-era defense secretary whose career spanned the WWII-era U.S. firebombings of Japan, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam. Fog looks back at the octogenarian’s time at the White House and draws eleven “lessons,” as Fog’s subtitle calls them, about war, nuclear brinksmanship, and presidential power. It’s a fascinating film that’s all too relevant to today’s geopolitics.

    THE RAKE: Was it hard to get McNamara to sit down with you?

    ERROL MORRIS: Originally he wasn’t going to come at all, and then for an hour. There was this incremental agreement to go on….When he agreed to come up, I don’t think he understood what it meant. I’m interested in very long interviews. Usually, people think it’s going to be half an hour or an hour. Not twenty hours. I would have interviewed him more if I could have.

    You invented a device called the Interrotron, which allows you and your interviewees to look at each other rather than the camera lens. How important is this to your movies?

    The whole deal is that you’re making eye contact. There’s a transaction going back and forth. It’s a first-person deal rather than the third-person deal….The McNamara movie is a sort of exercise in subjectivity. It’s an unchallenged first-person account. You’re almost inside his head. And littered through that intensely subjective account—if you like, almost an interior monologue—are all of these pieces of evidence. Brute facts, phone calls, the memoranda from the Tokyo firebombing. So it’s both intensely objective on the one end and very subjective on the other.

    Before making documentaries, you literally were a private detective. Those job skills obviously still come in handy.

    Tons of movies chronicle investigations, you follow detectives and get a keen sense of what they’re doing, but it’s really pretend investigation. What The Thin Blue Line did, and what this movie does, is, you see a kind of residue of really intense investigation. McNamara was amazed; we came up with these 1945 memos that he wrote, suggesting that they lower the bombing altitudes of the B-29s in order to make the bombing more efficient. I don’t think anyone has seen that stuff since World War Two. But there it is on the screen.

    And you also dug up recordings of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and McNamara discussing how to pull out of Vietnam—in 1963.

    It’s telling you something at variance with the received view of McNamara, that he was responsible for escalating the war. That simple equation of bellicose McNamara plus vacillatory Johnson equals Vietnam. Versus the other equation of bellicose Johnson plus vacillatory McNamara equals Vietnam.
    Because after Kennedy dies, Johnson and the Joint Chiefs want to escalate the fighting.

    And it’s a very different story: What do you do as a presidential advisor when the president gives you a very clear indication that he wants to go to war? And it’s interesting because it’s more complex and in a way more disturbing. It’s not letting McNamara off the hook.

    One of the eleven lessons is “rationality will not save us.” And of course, the question then is—

    What will? I don’t know.

    Are you optimistic about humanity’s future?

    It’s an interesting question to ask me, of all people. Probably not. I like to think of myself as one of those naysayers. But I think that McNamara is right: There’s some kind of internationalism needed. To weaken the United Nations at this time is sheer idiocy. We need to find other ways to address issues than going to war. And we need to control nuclear arms, or we will indeed eventually just blow ourselves to smithereens. Because one of the McNamara lessons—and I think it’s actually the frightening lesson—is that it’s not a world of conspiracies, it’s a world where errors are made repeatedly. There’s confusion, self-deception. Lying. Mistakes. And on and on and on and on.

    The Fog of War opens February 6 at the Uptown Theatre. 2906 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis, (612) 925-6006, www.landmarktheatres.com

  • Getting Fleeced

    February is high season for cross-country skiing around these parts. Minnesota and Wisconsin are the Mecca and Medina of this arcane sport. The American Birkebeiner in Hayward, Wisconsin (February 19; never mind Atkins, you better start carbo-loading today), is all the evidence we need that the nation—and much of the world, actually—comes here to celebrate winter’s most athletic event. Also noted: This week, the second annual City of Lakes Loppet proves that the Twin Cities are the urban center of all this woolly flapdoodle.

    There are other subtle signs. A few weeks ago, we shuffled into the local ski shop. We’d been blessed not only by early snow, but by the serendipitous visit of Thomas Aalsgaard. If you were Norwegian, you’d know that Aalsgaard is the Roger Maris of the cross-country skiing world. (He always stood slightly in the shadow of Bjorn Daehlie, the sport’s undisputed Babe Ruth, even though he had better form and was a faster sprinter. You may recall Daehlie as the single most decorated Olympian, any season, any sport.) A handful of locals turned out to meet a guy who’s the equivalent of a rock star back home.

    Still, it’s the nature of cross-country skiers even in Norway to stand back, to seek solitude and simplicity. We know for sure that the knickers-and-knee-socks folks are notorious pinch-pennies, and we have our own private rage to prove it. If you’ve been on the trail lately, you’ll know that Three Rivers Park District quietly installed a new “fee structure” for Nordic skiing. What used to cost seven dollars per year now costs around seventy dollars per year, and instead of the honor system, you’ll officially be tagged with a misdemeanor if you ski without a whole array of tickets, passes, permissions, and receipts.

    What’s worse than the overall price tag is the strong sense one gets that one is being fleeced by a spanking machine of government agencies, each desperate to get their last measure of pocket lint. The state requires a DNR ski pass to tread on any trail in Minnesota,
    including city and regional parks. Three Rivers wants a patron pass and a skiing pass. All passes are daily or annual, but only certain combinations are available at the park itself, trail passes are needed even if you’re skiing at the downhill areas, but they are not needed for sledding or dog-walking, and…and… If this sounds like far too much mental investment for what was intended to be a soul-salving skate through the woods, then we’re on the same page. We don’t generally go to the park for more paperwork, expense, and irritation.

    Now, there is some payoff for all this fee-taking. The greater Metropolitan area continues to invest in its reputation, the best west of Oslo, for promoting cross-country skiing. The green shirts are hip to the value of trail groomers, quality ski rentals, and warm chalets. They’re even making snow up in Elm Creek Park, a terrific and long overdue idea that lends cross-country the same institutional value as downhill skiing.

    Still, no amount of sugar makes us happy about the medicine. The parks were one of the few places left where regular citizens could enjoy the feeling that the taxes we pay actually underwrite privileges we exercise. Now we’re shelling out both the taxes and the price of admission. Call it government at the point of purchase, and hate it with all your being. If there is a God in heaven, He will send more Republicans to the park to see what they have wrought. Allegedly, we are no longer getting fleeced on April 15. Instead, it’s happening in our leisure time, year-round.

  • The Hottest Ticket in Edina

    Martha Schultz and Julie Cologne enjoyed having a little time away from their husbands and kids, even if it meant hunkering down in a parking lot at four in the morning. The dashboard of Schultz’s Audi station wagon said it was twenty-seven degrees, which must have been the interior temperature, because outside the Edina Community Center, it was certainly colder. That didn’t stop people from gathering at the building one night last February. By five a.m., more than fifty cars had pulled up.

    Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) programs foster child development and parenting skills for pre-kindergarten-age kids and their caregivers. In most cities, parents mail in registration forms, but Edina does it differently. An entire year of ECFE classes gets filled on one winter morning, on a first-come, first-served basis. Last year, Edina’s most “extreme” parent, a guy who wished to be identified only as “Sean F,” got in line at 9:15 p.m. the night before registration began. After several hours alone in a sleeping bag on a large concrete landing, he was surrounded by collapsible camp chairs. Among a circle of fathers passing the time, Tim Savik stood out with his duck boots, snow pants, and a fur hat that extended his six-foot-four frame several inches. Kari Lervick arrived at 4:30 a.m., two hours earlier than she ever had before. In 2002, she had an infant at home and couldn’t leave for the night. So her nanny did the waiting. “I paid her to do it,” Lervick said.

    Despite the jockeying, this was hardly a Who concert. Many parents documented their arrival in a spiral notebook to establish a putative line order and then retreated to heated vehicles. One minivan with its doors swung open would have fit right in at a Vikings tailgating party. Half-empty snack bags littered the interior, where occupants laughed and shared hot cocoa. Mary Sackett, a mother of three who has signed up for ECFE a dozen times, declared this wait her most fun yet. Sackett works afternoons as a nurse, so it’s important that she get into morning ECFE sessions.

    The Edina registration isn’t too daunting for parents who braved similar circumstances in their younger days. Compared to the folks Ruggs Cote recalls seeing when he waited for Pink Floyd tickets, the ECFE crowd is “a lot safer” and “a lot more social,” he said. Refreshments are different too. Six-packs here were mostly bottled water. Of course, “you never know what’s in the hot chocolate,” Sackett joked.

    At five a.m., the ruly mob was allowed inside. Parents claimed available folding chairs or sat on the tile floor, their backs up against metal lockers. The hallway was illuminated only by the occasional glow of a book light or PalmPilot. Some people pulled out card games, others knitting and cross-stitch projects. There was a bucket of popcorn. The floor was a minefield of brushed-steel coffee mugs in every conceivable shape.

    The annual overnight wait isn’t officially sanctioned by the community education office that provides the ECFE program. “We pooh-pooh it publicly,” admitted operations manager Kim Salisbury. Nevertheless, coffee and cookies were available inside, and a table was set up to sell paperbacks of Clifford the Big Red Dog and Captain Underpants.

    Finally, registration began in earnest at 8:30 a.m. Naturally, Sean F got the classes he’d hoped for. But Andy Olsen, just seventeenth in the queue, had to settle for his second choice. Dennis Knoer came prepared for several scenarios. His wife had sent along a detailed plan including first, second, and third priorities for each of their two kids. Knoer was happy-hour hopping the night before, so he “wasn’t real keen on getting out of bed,” he admitted. “But you do what you have to do, right?”

    Cologne and Schultz, at numbers 37 and 38, both got what they came for: a class with a popular teacher named Lisa. Before departing, Schultz fielded a cell-phone call from her husband, who needed instructions on how to make scrambled eggs. Perhaps there is a class for that.

    Participants insist Edina’s ECFE program is worth the wait. Weekly sessions offer parents insights into important issues like potty training, moving to a big-kid bed, and sibling rivalry. Meanwhile, Lervick noted, children get accustomed to the structure and social systems that await them in later life. “They learn how to share,” she said. “They learn how to clean up. They learn how to stand in line.”
    —Scott A. Briggs

  • Toothsome Treat

    “Crisis” may be a strong word for the chocolate situation locally, but the situation is alarming. If you plan to say “I love you” with a box of chocolates on February 14th, options are dwindling. Dependable entry-level fare is still available at any of Fanny Farmer’s metro locations. And nowadays, we can’t turn around without knocking over a display of once-exotic Godiva boxes, which may say as much about our growth as Godiva’s. If Godiva isn’t good enough (it certainly no longer signifies that you went out of your way), Karl Bissinger offers custom-packed boxes from a worthy selection at their Galleria counter.

    But in 2003, some favorite Minnesota chocolatiers have been up against forces as capricious as Eros himself, leaving the market more diminished than we’d like. As proof that a train wreck symbolizes love better than candy, Maude Borup’s warehouse and packing facility in Perham was destroyed when a Burlington Northern lumber car drove through it last October. Unlike the legendary collisions that produced Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, this accident merely trashed the Christmas inventory. Maude Borup co-owner Kim Kalan assured The Rake, however, that demand will be met for the Valentine’s rush. But she did advise that chocolate body frosting—a product not available when the company was founded in 1907—tends to sell out early.

    A more tentative prospect is the future of Mr. B Chocolatier. The Gastronomer has seen many struggling enterprises come and go but was truly taken aback to learn that Mr. B had closed the doors of his only metro storefront. It apparently wasn’t enough to offer the best selection of the very highest quality hand-made chocolates in the Midwest at the metro’s demographic pinnacle, 50th and France. “We just weren’t getting enough traffic,” explained Mr. B’s daughter, Mary Reishus, when reached by landline at their Willmar production facility. Reishus did not blame exorbitant rents for the closure, though she confessed that the triangle-shaped storefront was hard to keep cool enough for the chocolate. “Because of the heat, we had to close the blinds, and people would think we were closed.”

    Fortunately, Mr. B can still be bought at such cosmopolitan locations as St. Cloud; Deadwood, South Dakota; and the Willmar headquarters. And Wuollet bakeries here in the backwater will carry Mr. B, but they won’t be able to hand-pack your personal selections. For that you may need to plan a road trip to Willmar. We’d advise against taking the train.—Joe Pastoor

  • Imperfect Mitch

    Mitch Hedberg is one funny dude. But his shtick—the stoner who’s mistaken the stage door for the restroom or exit—might be affecting his career trajectory. Dope logic and delayed response time is funny to a point, but it’s maybe not the best business plan.

    Strategic Grill Locations, the self-produced 1999 concert CD Hedberg had printed up to sell at shows and on his Web site, didn’t include the early, hilarious joke that provided its title. His new disc for Comedy Central Records, Mitch All Together, takes its title from a routine on the earlier CD.

    The eponymous joke is, understandably, a fan favorite: “They call corn on the cob corn on the cob. But that’s how it comes out of the ground, man. They should call that corn. They should call every other version corn off the cob. It’s not like if you cut off my arm you would call my arm Mitch, but then reattach it and call me Mitch all together.”

    A native of the St. Paul area, Hedberg escaped to Florida after high school to pursue music. But instead of making his name playing bass in a knockoff of Skynyrd or .38 Special, he followed a buddy to a comedy open-mic night and stumbled up onstage. In the years since, he’s appeared on Letterman ten times. He’s done a half-hour Comedy Central special that is among the cable network’s most requested. He wrote, directed, and starred in Los Enchiladas!, a film that premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

    Time columnist Joel Stein christened him the next Seinfeld back in 1999, too. Superstardom seemed to be Hedberg’s destiny. Though Hedberg and Seinfeld have both worked many of the same clubs, both can handle a microphone, and both know better than to appear with children in instant pudding commercials, that’s about as far as the comparison goes. Hedberg’s frozen-banana logic and koala infestations have very little in common with Seinfeld’s meticulous observational comedy. More like Ellen DeGeneres, Emo Philips, and Steven Wright—the master of the non sequitur one-liner to whom he’s most often compared—Hedberg creates his skewed comedic world out of old-fashioned setups and punchlines, then reinvents it joke by joke.

    A lot of comics blather on about hack material like airline food and doomed romance. Few attempt the kind of surreal vaudeville Hedberg performs so effortlessly on Mitch All Together. Like defining the problem with animal crackers. “I think animal crackers make people believe all animals taste the same,” he says. “What does a giraffe taste like? A hippopotamus. I had them back to back.”

    Last May, Hedberg headlined eight shows at the Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis, two shows a night for four nights, to record the new CD. But during at least one of those performances, he spent a considerable part of his set competing with his audience. People wouldn’t quit shouting out setups, all the well-known material from his first CD and his Comedy Central special.

    Fortunately for old fans and new converts alike, Comedy Central has also rereleased an edited version of Strategic Grill Locations, so Hedberg’s imperfect masterpiece will finally be available in stores. Those who didn’t buy it or file-share it a long time ago can now listen to their favorite Hedberg jokes when and as often they want. In turn, maybe they’ll let him give his new material an honest try.

    Back in May at the show I saw, Hedberg ignored the audience requests as long as he could. Near the end of his forty-minute set, he quickly tossed off a few, as if out of professional courtesy. Then he made a dash for the door at the back of the stage. On the disk, he seems to reach the end of his rope as he confronts another night’s gabby audience. “I’ve got a great job. I can talk for forty-five minutes straight. But if someone says one word, they’re out of here,” he blurts, between jokes. But after riffing on the prospects of his audience getting the boot, he gives up. “Go ahead, talk,” he groans. “But just use your hands.”

    It’s hard to believe this is the same Mitch Hedberg who amiably rambled through more than an hour’s worth of half-finished jokes and embarrassed apologies on Strategic Grill Locations—the same Mitch Hedberg who turned unguarded self-deprecation into hilarity. Eight sold-out Acme shows edits down to less than forty minutes of comedy for Mitch All Together. A paucity of new material could explain Hedberg’s somewhat frustrated-sounding delivery. It might also explain why Comedy Central packaged a free DVD with the disc. It includes a short appearance on Premium Blend and two versions of his Comedy Central special.

    Actually, the unedited Comedy Central special here hints at what makes Hedberg’s new CD such a disappointment. As his twenty-five minutes onstage near their end, he’s hasn’t gotten many huge laughs. So like a pro, Hedberg returns to material that worked on his first CD and his earliest Letterman appearances. He finally wins the crowd with his joke about a potato chip company that planned to make tennis balls until a truckload of potatoes arrived. As the laughter swells, he chuckles, “My old shit works better than my new shit. I am out of ideas.”

    He’s wrong. Much of his new material actually works better than his earlier material. The difference is Hedberg himself. What used to be a shy stoner ramble has become a frantic monologue. He sounds exhausted on his new CD, too—too tired to bother winning over an audience with funny new routines.

    Hedberg came back through town last September, opening the Comedy Central Live Tour. As supporting act, Hedberg had just twenty-five minutes in front of audiences who’d paid to see headliners Lewis Black and Dave Attell. It should have been Hedberg’s name on the Orpheum marquee. That would have been a sweet homecoming gig following May’s week underground at the Acme. Five years ago, back when he first started doing many of the jokes his fans now want to hear nightly, that would have been everyone’s prediction. Back before the smoke cleared.

  • Dream Work

    What does it mean if you have a dream about flying through the air strapped to a toilet? Dare I ask? How could I not?

    Since ancient Mesopotamia, where dreams were first recorded, people have meandered the path of wonder in search of meaning in dreams. Dreams have inspired music, literature, mythology, political decisions, and scientific advances. Einstein was spurred toward his theory of relativity by the memory of a childhood dream.

    Somehow, I don’t think my recent experience has potential on that scale. In the dream, I was with my sister in a bright New York coffee shop. We were having some sort of flat-bread sandwich, and I was marveling at how pretty and strange she looked in the poufy 1950s housedress that she had apparently modified to suit her expanding middle. I excused myself to find the restroom, and that’s when the surprises kicked in.

    It turned out the bathroom didn’t have any stalls, just an extraordinary selection of unusual toilets. As I wandered about, trying to decide which toilet to use, the room grew and shifted, becoming something along the lines of an enormous warehouse with toilets in every shape, size, and color. It was hard to commit to a commode, but finally, I did. I chose one that sat like a throne atop a ten-foot pyramid of stairs. Slowly, I climbed. In the dream, the fact that the toilet had a seatbelt didn’t sound any alarms. But it should have. Because as soon as I’d slipped my pants down (glancing furtively toward the door the whole time) and belted myself in, the toilet propelled itself from its high perch and swung forward and down and up again in a wide, thrilling arc through the bright open air of the warehouse. I felt awkward about my pants being down, and peeing was out of the question, but the ride itself was enchanting.

    Carl Jung and other dream researchers have agreed that flying dreams are about ambition and achievement, while a swing as a dream symbol suggests issues hanging in the balance that can be made to swing in your favor if you are patient and cautious. Toilets, I’ve learned, are widely acknowledged to symbolize purification and self-renewal. Public restrooms with no stalls, on the other hand, can indicate frustration about not getting enough privacy. And public nakedness might point to an experience of embarrassment or vulnerability. That’s a lot of material from one strange little dream.

    But there’s probably even more to it than that, because many dream researchers believe that through dreaming we access a certain collective unconscious, and that’s why our dreams might be considered products of a certain universal symbology.

    Kelly Bulkeley is a theological scholar, author, and researcher who started an interesting study in 1996. He gathered dream reports from college undergrads of all political persuasions and ultimately compared the dreams of twenty-eight highly conservative people to those of twenty-eight highly liberal people, with men and women equally represented.

    At an academic conference in the summer of 2001, Bulkeley presented his findings, with the disqualifier that his sample was way too small to be conclusive. But still, it was interesting. People on the right had more nightmares, more dreams in which they lacked power, and more lifelike dreams: “Female rights were especially anxious about family relationships, and male rights had dreams almost devoid of girlfriends,” said Bulkeley. Meanwhile, lefties had fewer nightmares and more dreams of good fortune, personal power, bizarre elements, and, among the males, an “unusually high” number of female characters.

    Bulkeley’s findings (much to his amused surprise) were snatched up by the national media, and political partisans on both sides spun the issue, despite Bulkeley’s disclaimer about the sample size. How could they resist? Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman, quipped, “If George W. Bush were the leader of my party, I’d have trouble sleeping at night, too.” “What do you expect after eight years of William Jefferson Clinton?” retorted Kevin Sheridan of the Republican National Committee.

    However we spin or dismiss our dreams during the waking hours, the significance of dreams is too well established to wave away. Some people can even will their own dreams, after much disciplined practice. Which means that you, too, could take a ride through Manhattan on a flying toilet, if only you set your mind to it.

  • Where Art Thou?

    If you hold on to your hat and hustle over to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, you might catch the Werner Bischoff exhibition. Bischoff did as much as anyone to define photojournalism in mid-century magazines like Du and Paris Match. His work appears on the walls in sixty or seventy frames, a pretty healthy sampling. The MIA staff have helpfully provided about 940 more images on a CD, for a grand total of about one drop in the bucket of Bischoff’s collected work. Which is a telling conundrum. Typically, no museum worth its endowment can exhibit more than a tiny fraction of what it owns.

    More recently, the Web has allowed museums to hold their cards a bit further from their vests. I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the MIA’s extensive photography holdings beyond the Bischoff materials. In an idle moment scanning their collection online, I saw one of my favorite photos ever—a rusty tricycle composed by William Eggleston, titled “Memphis.” Personal obsession and screen resolution being what they are, I called the MIA right away to find out what it takes to get inside to see the real print, in the flesh. Ted Hartwell, the curator of photographs, agreed to be my guide with such eager grace that I wondered if they let just anyone off Third Avenue paw their priceless stuff.

    In tweed and eyeglasses with gray hair and a charming smile, Hartwell fits nicely in the MIA’s small, book-lined photography offices. Meeting with him feels a little like talking to a professor in his office. On the other side of an unmarked door, thousands of photographs sit in a sort of platonic netherworld, art waiting to be reclaimed by living eyes.

    The room is cold and bright, and it brims with black boxes stacked like drawers on metal shelves. The only hint of treasure within is printed on small white labels. Some bear anonymous catalog numbers, others show off iconic names like Hine, Evans, Friedlander, Muybridge—the heavy hitters of photographic history. Basically, it’s the most comprehensive collection in the region, outside of Chicago.

    Though “Memphis” has made its way to the upstairs exhibition gallery within the last year, many works can go years without a public appearance. “What’s on the wall at any given time is only the top layer,” noted Hartwell. Less than five percent of the Institute’s 100,000-piece collection is on display at any given time.

    After an appetizer of Gary Winogrand photographs—I’ve always enjoyed his slightly skewed New York street scenes—I asked Hartwell to track down the Eggleston print. In a moment, “Memphis” was perched without pretense in front of me.

    To remove the added layer of a frame, to touch the matting and carefully peek beneath the protective film, to look as long as you like—well, think of it as the difference between merely meeting someone and establishing a relationship. You may think you like the look of her, but a relationship implies a whole other level of interaction, a deeper connection. Looking at the Eggleston print in person, I notice more, I relate more. It demands all of my attention.

    Hartwell started the collection from scratch about thirty years ago. Through a carefully tended arbor of relationships with photographers, collectors, and donors, he has created a highly personal, stridently “balanced” collection. The holdings do have surprising breadth, ranging from Hartwell’s very first acquisition, a complete set of Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Works periodicals, to one of the nation’s definitive collections: the work of Gilles Peress, one of the contemporary artists who pioneered photography in the New Yorker.

    Hartwell’s own list of rarely shown favorites from the collection includes both the famous and the obscure. He’s a fan of the relative unknowns Bruce Davidson and Bernice Abbott but is not afraid to embrace the overexposed Edward Weston. At the moment, he’s particularly fond of Adolf Fassbender. If I didn’t know how easy it is to request an audience with all this wonderful art, I’d be jealous of all the alone time Hartwell gets here and how frequently he must revise his list.—Stephanie Xenos