Category: Article

Martha Clarke has seldom pursued the linear in her storytelling. Like many of the artists she’s interpreted—Franz Kafka and Hieronymus Bosch, for instance—Clarke has a taste for collaging imagery with such a ravenous appetite that the final product invariably takes on the taste of a three-day acid trip. Vienna Lusthaus (Revisited) is no exception. Capturing the tumult of pre-World War I Vienna requires from Clarke a Herculean effort, not of weaving but juggling. But Clarke pulls it off with the colhelp of some able collaborators—composer Richard Peaslee and playwright Charles Mee. Thirty-two vignettes, including music, dance, poetry, and performance, fly in a seamless flow of recurring symbol and gesture. The intensity of the swirl, a distillation of one of history’s most remarkable bursts of energy, threatens to boil over into chaos, but Clarke manages the operation by enveloping the whole in a dry haze of unmovable estrangement. This is dance for brave—and mature—audiences. Northrop, 84 Church St. S.E., (612) 624-2345, www.northrop.umn.edu

Finally someone (besides us) has noticed that the expansive area north of the old warehouse district, recently filled with new condos and townhouses, offices and studios, is ready for a restaurant and club appropriate for the crowd that works and lives nearby. Babalu is that, and a certain draw for heat-seeking souls from the entire metro area. It’s new, it’s unique, it’s a hot retreat in an old warehouse up wide Washington Avenue, where the wind used to blow tumbleweeds over wagon-wheel ruts, but will now blow you into a Latin-Caribbean-Spanish glow. Barely open as we speak, Babalu already has character, from original art by Galician artist Xurxo, to live Latin jazz sounds, comfortable bar, and fine cuisine—the combined creation of Spanish and Latin American chefs. (You chef groupies can trace the kitchen’s lineage through various popular restaurants in town. They know what they’re doing, and we hear co-owner Terrence Large can throw a good party, too.) Brush up on your Spanish, order paella in advance, or try any number of great dishes that are rarely seen around these parts. We love the cazuela de mariscos, the red snapper served on a banana leaf, or the mango jicama sea bass on pumpkin-seed sauce. Valet parking for those of you who don’t live or work nearby. Or consider moving. Babalu, (612) 746-3158

After the black cloud of hell that is known as the holidays in my family, I came down with the “cruise ship flu,” a name which doesn’t begin to paint this evil in the proper light. Never in my adult life have I been this sick. As god is my witness, I shan’t be kneeling in front of the toilet again, lest I accidentally drop Richard Ashcroft’s 14-carat engagement ring in, and even then.

Cry for help? Probably. It’s the first time in 10 years I’ve looked for a job that doesn’t involve kissing some coke-whore program director’s payola-padded, modern-rock white ass. Pride? You betcha. Mail-order plans for kitchen meth lab looking good? Check. Meds? Plenty. Side effects? Does having evening chats with the Care Bears and losing all interest in food, sex, and the outside world qualify as a side effect?

The yardstick I use to gauge my depression has always been what I refer to as the “summer of the penny.” Several years ago, I noticed one red cent laying on the floor in my apartment and each day I saw it, I told myself I should pick it up. Three months later, it was still there, only now it rested gently on a fluffy bed of cat hair. That was as bad as it got.

Well, there WAS the evening I spent on the phone with a nurse from Medformation. One night, after I had dropped a birth control pill under my desk, I was on hands and knees searching. I popped the first small white object I saw into my mouth. Then I sinkingly remembered that for the last week I’d been administering antibiotics to my sick cat, which he would promptly spit out. Stupid human. Was I being paranoid, or did I really have an urge to lie in the clothes basket and paddle a twist-tie around the floor for 45 minutes? God knows, I DO mean to make light of depression, but I will take a hostage if I hear another smug moron say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Wrong, Larry. I think what doesn’t kill you now sloooowly eats away at you, emotionally crippling you, and even more disturbing, makes the Style Network seem important.

We tried to do our part by prying open our wallets and swabbing out the residue of our consumer confidence. We were on the lookout for cheap but meaningful gifts. We were especially interested in one stocking stuffer that was widely advertised—a faceplate for the cell phone described as “patriotic.” What makes a faceplate patriotic? Presumably it’s the colorful red, white, and blue motif—the stars and bars of Old Glory.

Oh, how few sacred symbols we have as a nation! Veneration of the flag is apparently the only thing we can agree on (though adoration of the cell phone is nearly unanimous, too), but at least we can agree on something. Agreement is suddenly chic, and dissent is déclassé. For some reason, this makes a lot of sensible people nervous.

The rest of us know that agreement at a political level is precisely what a slight majority of voters had in mind last November. A brilliant new one-party system has been devised to accomplish more than a two-party system could ever do. Later in January, we’ll get to see it in action.

It’s not entirely clear what Minnesota’s most pressing legislative needs will be with the New Year. Starting on that $4 billion state deficit without raising taxes seems like an interesting idea. At least state Sen. Mady Reiter has her priorities straight. She’ll still work hard to use tobacco funds to build new highways, stop light rail, and try to make it easier for commercial health insurers to make a profit in our state. But before she does all that work of the people, she’ll reintroduce her Pledge of Allegiance bill as soon as she can. It will undoubtedly pass, and may well be the first law Governor Pawlenty inks into existence.

The bill, which made it as far as Governor Ventura’s desk last May before getting vetoed, would require all school children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at least once a week. This despite the fact that about three out of four schools in the state report that they’re already doing it. (Oddly, Reiter refuses to amend the bill to allow teachers to tell their students that reciting the pledge is not mandatory. She says they’re already doing that.) Ventura argued that “patriotism comes from the heart,” rather than from the moral hot-dogging of politicians. It was one of the more persuasive things he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld a man’s right to sue to get nine western states to drop the words “under God” from the pledge. The court will be deciding the case in the next months, though it’s hard to believe they’ll uphold their previous decision, if they know what’s good for them. (“Under God” was not included in the pledge until the McCarthy era, when it was interpolated by Congress—the better to mitigate against the humanist leanings of its original author, Francis Bellamy, who was a damnable socialist.)

It’s curious to see Americans and Minnesotans get so wound up about a few stanzas of Victorian prose. We are not a people who are especially fastidious about dogma and ritual. We are selective in our observance, even a little sloppy, and we are known poetry-haters. If there were any teeth in the laws governing flag etiquette, for example, most of us would be in deep trouble. According to the U.S. Flag Code, our star-spangled banner should not be printed on paper, it should never be used in advertising, and it should not be affixed to any uniform other than the military or the civil service. (It gives us pause to consider every professional athlete getting a ticket for abusing the flag since 9/11.) On top of all that, the proper way to dispose of a worn-out flag is by burning it—but with the right intentions, not the wrong ones. Which is, of course, a matter between you, your God, and your elected representatives.

The other day, the Minnesota Zoo announced the birth of a baby dolphin. The zoo is soliciting $25 sponsorships to help pay for the little calf’s all-fish diet. Once she’s weaned from her mother, she’ll eat up to 20 pounds of fish a day. Where will all that fish come from? Perhaps our thriving local seafood restaurants can offer some help.

Observant Twin Citizens will have noticed that sushi restaurants are proliferating here faster than Starbucks in a strip mall. The old guard still thrives in the warehouse district’s Origami and Sakura in St. Paul. But new shops such as Nami and Sushi Tango are being conceived all the time. Today there are more than 20 sushi restaurants in the metro. Minnesota may boast many amenities and natural resources, but an ocean is not one of them. So how do oceangoing fish migrate to the land of 10,000 lakes?

Most local sushi restaurants rely on more than one wholesaler, and each wholesaler has fish sources that vary by species and season. For example, True World Foods, a Chicago concern which supplies many of the Twin Cities’ restaurants, gets its salmon from farms in Chile and Norway, its Atlantic bluefin tuna from New England in the summer and from the Mediterranean during the rest of the year, and its yellowfin tuna from the Gulf of Mexico.

Fish markets in many big cities are notorious for their links to organized crime. True World has a stranger pedigree: It’s supposedly owned by the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. (Indeed, the Rev. Moon is theologically obsessed with the tuna; it is a central symbol in the faith. Moon has salted his sermons with many fishy pronouncements, such as, “When the tuna bites, [the people] are instantly united as one,” and, “tuna fishing is certainly not a vacation for me; it is a war and a battle.”) When I called True World to check into the Moonies’ involvement, a company representative was reticent. “We have people of many religions working here,” she said.

If fish is to be served truly raw—never frozen—it will keep for about a week from when it is caught. But here’s the catch: According to Minnesota regulations, Atlantic bluefin, yellowfin, and bigeye tuna are the only fish that can be served genuinely raw. Other sushi cuts, including all the clams, eels, urchins, octopi, and what have you, are required to be “fresh frozen,” meaning they have been frozen for a requisite period of time—15 hours in a super cold “blast” freezer or a week in a normal freezer— and thawed for serving. These critters can be kept in a ship’s hold or a refrigerated truck for weeks.

Reassuringly, the Minneapolis Environmental Health Department reports that complaints against sushi restaurants are no higher than any other type of eateries, and the state Health Department has had no reports in recent memory of food-borne disease outbreaks due to sushi. (One local sushi restaurateur laments that when he pulls up customer records in response to a health complaint, he often finds they have “lots of tempura and beer on the bill. But people are very quick to blame sushi instead.”)

In truth, some local restaurants do a delicate dance with the health department and sneak non-tuna specialties that have avoided the oxymoronic “fresh freezing” process. On condition of anonymity, one local chef served me truly raw hotategai (scallop) that had been flown in from the Sea of Japan, and I have to say that the flesh seemed unusually sweet and tantalizing compared to its thawed cousin. On the other hand, I could not tell the difference between a bluefin tuna roll made with fresh frozen fish and one made with raw. The only way to really be sure what you’re eating is to badger your sushi chef—as long as you can convince him you’re not a health inspector.

And now the bad news: The Monterey Aquarium, which tracks fish populations around the world, reports stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna, the most popular sushi fish in Japan and the U.S., are threatened by overfishing, and that salmon farming is degrading ocean habitats and possibly introducing parasites into wild salmon populations. Environmentalists are also concerned by the increased “penning” of tuna, where wild tuna are caught and then fattened in cages before being “harvested.” The Aquarium recommends avoiding bluefin tuna and farmed salmon to avoid depleting or damaging ocean resources. Sorry, Charlie!—Dan Gilchrist

The other night, two-dozen hockey fans milled around the Iron Range Grill. They were biding their time. Across the corridor, in a half hour, the puck would drop on the big sheet of ice at the Xcel Energy Center. The Wild, enjoying a hot streak early in the season, would be facing the Vancouver Canucks, a flourishing new rivalry.

The wait staff in the Grill was decked out in T-shirts featuring the names of Iron Range cities. AITKIN brought an acrid tray of buffalo wings and a schooner of macrobrew to a table situated under a photo-mural of World War II-era hockey teams from the Range. EMBARRASS poured a stiff rum and Coke for a man in an NHL “Original 6” hat. COLERAINE cleared a table whose party gathered around a display case featuring a vintage Chicago Black Hawks jersey—worn when the Hawks held training camp in Hibbing in 1935. The cash register rang again and again.

A cynic might arch an eyebrow at the thought of a third-year franchise peddling history as a commodity like so many giant foam fingers. But that cynic has not met Roger Godin. Godin is the Wild’s official team curator, and as far as anybody can tell, the only curator employed by a professional sports organization in North America. The team’s desire to reconnect with Minnesota’s rich hockey tradition is palpable when you walk into “the X.” And they’ve got the perfect man for the job in Godin, a spry 60-something with twinkling eyes, a keen attention to detail, and a droll smile that suggests he knows something you don’t.

“He just has this remarkably perfect background,” said Matt Majka, the team’s vice president of marketing. “When we were talking about filling this position, we found out that the former director of the Hall of Fame was living two blocks away and was interested in the position.” Indeed, Godin was the first director of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, serving in that capacity from 1971 to 1987. A self-proclaimed “museum guy,” the New York native eventually moved back to his roots on the East Coast, but his road wound back to Minnesota and he became one of the first hires of the fledgling hockey franchise.

Touring the concourses at the X, Godin is in his element. His handiwork is the spearhead of the team’s various initiatives intended to reclaim Minnesota’s status as “The State of Hockey.” From the high school hockey jerseys ringing the arena to the artifacts in the Iron Range Grill, Godin is responsible for curating and maintaining these exhibits.

There are vitrines protecting rare Golden Gopher and U.S.A. Olympic jerseys. There’s an informative exhibit on the Hobey Baker and Patty Kazmaier awards, given annually to the nation’s top male and female players. There’s even an homage to the dear, departed Minnesota North Stars. Near the entrance to Section 109 sits Zamboni No. 37 — yes, the 37th such machine ever built by Frank J. Zamboni & Co. This unit was first used at the old St. Paul Auditorium in 1956. Most of the memorabilia at the X is on loan from the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame and the collections of hockey buffs who want to share their love of the game and its history.

The lasting impression created by a tour of the X is that Wild folks relish Minnesota’s rich hockey heritage and traditions. Godin’s work might be dismissed as window-dressing in other buildings, but to the Wild, these artifacts are as crucial as the ice itself.—Patrick Donnelly

“We are looking for the person on house arrest. Please press the BAT button.” Daniel Lemke hears this on his phone three times a day. It’s called the Alco-sensor. Developed by Mitsubishi, it is one of the few devices that can be called Orwellian without exaggerating. The Alco-sensor is essentially a home breathalyzer with a modem. A central computer at Minnesota Monitoring generates a call to the Alco-sensor client at home. The client sets the device for a fresh test, gets in front of the built-in camera, and blows through a straw into the machine. Minnesota Monitoring gets a printout of the client’s face and the results of a pass/fail sobriety check.

“If you fail, it’s pretty much like you’ve skipped bail,” said Lemke, who allowed The Rake to see the device he took home from a D.W.I. arrest in November. “It’s a condition of release. So if you fail, they’ll come and get you,” said the 40-year-old handyman.

Karen Burkey is a manager at Minnesota Monitoring. I asked her if she is Big Brother, and she laughed. “I guess, kind of.” Her company specializes in what has grown to be a staggering array of products that keep tabs on substance-abuse suspects; drug testing for schools, home kits for parents, urine testing for employers, ankle bracelets, and counseling. Burkey said she’s got about 250 Alco-sensors in service at any given time, and is pleased with the “customer service” record with the machine. The “customer service” concept isn’t as ironic as it seems. Inferior products, Burkey pointed out, often generate false positives from non-alcohol products like cigarettes. This makes an obvious difference to the people who have to blow into the thing three times a day.

Some D.W.I. defense attorneys are incensed by the Alco-sensor. State law now requires $12,000 bail to release any D.W.I. suspect who tests at twice the legal limit (.20 percent or higher blood alcohol) or has a previous conviction. Those who can’t cough up the 12 large (or the $1,200 bond toward it) are allowed to go home with an Alco-sensor.

“The Alco-sensor is punishment before guilt and violates the basic tenets of our rights and freedoms, most importantly the presumption of innocence,” said Lemke’s attorney, Chris Ritts. Adding that it leaves wealthy violators free to post bail and tipple as much as they please pre-trial, he also points out that it amounts to confinement; failure to be home for any of the three scheduled daily calls is an automatic violation. Burkey estimates that her monitoring site gets about five violations a week.

Other attorneys say Alco-sensor benefits less-affluent clients who would otherwise sit in the clink awaiting settlement or trial. But given the house-arrest quality of the program, they’d like it more if suspects could get credit for time served at sentencing. Lemke is hoping to make such a case if he’s found guilty. By his next court date, he will have been married to the machine for more than five weeks.—Joe Pastoor

There’s ice on the banks of the Mississippi, a fact I might have put to good use if I’d noticed earlier. As it is, I’m halfway across—and neck-deep in—a backwater somewhere near Fort Snelling. I can only hope these are the last few steps of a run organized by the Minneapolis Hash House Harriers. The water is cold enough that I can’t help gasping, and my feet have quickly become two points of sharp pain trudging through the mud. As I emerge from the water on the other side, holding my shoes and socks above my head with one hand and a guide rope with the other, I reflect on how quickly I opted for a great deal of acute pain to avoid running a two-mile detour on dry land. In fact, I’ve spent much of my life avoiding running. This is the first time I’ve ever been tempted to take part in a group running activity, and the main attraction was the Hash House Harriers’ motto of being “a drinking club with a running problem.” I figured I hate running, but I like drinking beer, so somewhere on the running-drinking continuum I might find fitness.

My adventure with the club began about two hours earlier, in the parking lot of a St. Paul shopping mall. Twenty of us running drinkers (or, in some cases I suppose, drinking runners) circled up and received a chalk-talk on the basics of hashing. In today’s “hash,” two “hares” started out 15 minutes ahead, marking a trail by bouncing a tennis ball covered in flour, and marking intersections with chalk.

The traditions and vocabulary of the hash have their roots in “hounds and hares,” the English version of hide-and-seek. In 1938, a group of British expatriates in Kuala Lumpur re-created the children’s game with adult refreshments, and there are now more than 1,500 clubs worldwide dedicated to the activity. Along the way, hashers have developed their own traditions, including the use of embarrassing or vulgar nicknames for each other, such as “Balls of Ice,” “Dogbreath,” or “Mr. Ed.” Many people who have hashed together for years do not know each other’s real names.

Once the hares ran off, the rest of us stood around swapping off-color jokes, and a couple of people showed their obsessive commitment to cardiovascular health by smoking cigarettes. Indeed, although a few of the “hashers” had the thin, gazelle-like bearing of a serious runner, most of us would easily fit into what the running world delicately calls the “Clydesdale” category. My dream of the hasher lifestyle as an effective weight-control method seemed optimistic.

And then we were off… on a slow jog, then a walk, then a stop, a double-back, then a walk, then a scramble down a hill, and so on. To keep the run interesting, the hares mark numerous paths, some of which end up being false trails. The faster runners sprinted ahead to scout the prospective paths, while the rest of us milled around in a generally forward-moving direction, waiting to hear which was the “true path.” In fact, the hardest running segment of the day was a jog up the riverbank to a promised martini stop. Unfortunately, the hooch was all gone, which spoiled the mood considerably.

After an hour and a half, up and down the riverbank and over a highway, six of us arrived at the river crossing. Luckily, the submarine experience was followed quickly by a fire in a warming hut, cold beer, and the bag of dry clothes we had been warned to bring along. “Second Base,” a happy-go-lucky nurse from Minneapolis, told me that previous outings have taken them through swamps and multiple river and stream crossings. “I still have marks on my legs from running through the forest last August!” she said. Two of her friends who accompanied her on their first hash were notably unimpressed by the experience. “I thought I’d have time to go shopping this afternoon!” sniffed one.

“Sucks,” a tall real estate assessor from a hashing club in Milwaukee, took another view. “It’s a good way to meet people, it gets you outside, you get to drink, and the chicks get naked,” he confided.

At the post-run soiree in a Richfield basement, the party mood was odd—a weird cross of women’s rugby, Dungeons and Dragons, and “Girls Gone Wild.” While the group was holding its traditional post-run circle to “down the hare”—basically making the trail-setters drink—a couple of women visiting from the Milwaukee club actually took off their tops, while yelling drinking songs at the top of their lungs. In the end, I left neither drunk nor sold on the hashing lifestyle. But I have to agree with another hasher, who said, “It’s a good way to kill an afternoon!”—Dan Gilchrist