People who work in fine dining tend to be night owls who eat their first meal of the day around two p.m. They carry a wine service wherever they go but often lose their car keys. They’re rock ’n’ roll junkies who, more often than not, have been married multiple times. They put up with … Read more
A race car with a dorsal spoiler careened over a jump and passed through a flaming hoop. Then it followed the racetrack in a loop-d-loop and drove through another flaming hoop. Rolando, a video-game tester for Activision Publishing, guided the car via a Playstation 2 controller over a series of flashing, fluorescent arrows that somehow … Read more
My brothers and my mother were all dancers, outside of whatever else they did, like acrobatics, high wire, trapeze,” Donald O’Connor once said. The Hollywood dance icon knew inherently why a dancer is like a circus performer: because both create physical illusions by subverting gravity and harnessing momentum. During his classic and clownish “Make ’Em … Read more
Breaking news: Members of Minneapolis’s pioneering ’70s punk trio, Suicide Commandos, have officially (though with tongues apparently planted firmly in cheek) dubbed themselves a “legacy band.” How appropriate, then, that the Commandos have been tapped to open for yet another rock legend—the supremely fabulous and hugely influential Ms. Joan Jett—for an August 26 Grandstand concert … Read more
Back in the early 1980s, when the Commodore 64 first hit the market and Apple became the first personal computer manufacturer to hit the $1 billion mark for annual sales, Mark Hull had a wife, two kids, a nice house in Fridley, tailor-made suits from Madrid, and a nine-to-five systems analyst job with benefits and … Read more
This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it. Here’s how it all starts: My first-born son has autism. Now that isn’t hopeless or, in my opinion, unlucky. Autism isn’t sick or crazy. It’s rigid and … Read more
There are no gifts to buy, no feasts to plan, no national reason for gathering your relatives. Thankfully, the sultry days of August hold only one sort of holiday: the kind fashioned with an afternoon, a hammock, and a popsicle. Cool and sweet simplicity, delivering reward for very little effort, this frozen treat pays homage … Read more
There is a famous cartoon in the World War II memoir Up Front by Bill Mauldin, the editorial cartoonist for Stars and Stripes. Mauldin’s main characters, GIs Willie and Joe, slump against a wall, exhausted and unshaven, as a spit-shined soldier struts aggressively past them. “That can’t be no combat man,” Willie says to Joe. … Read more
On the waterfront patio of the Harbor Restaurant and Bar, while all manner of yachts floated by, diners in swimsuits chatted happily and passed around a live parrot. Reggae music wafted from the restaurant’s outdoor tiki bar, and when the dreadlocked barkeep took an order (“two caipirinhas, please”), he answered with a Jamaican accent: “Nine … Read more