The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Marsalis Brothers Do Ellington

    Even the irrepressible Wynton Marsalis merits no better than third in the current family pecking order after brothers Delfeayo and Branford put out resplendent discs—“Minions Dominion” and “Braggtown,” respectively—in 2006. Now Delfeayo (the trombonist, for those without a scorecard) is kicking off the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest program with a Duke Ellington tribute by an all-star ensemble that features Branford on tenor and soprano sax, pianist Anthony Wonsley (who was superb with Delfeayo at the Dakota this past winter), drummer Winard Harper, and saxophonists Mark Gross and Jason Marshall. Given the level of talent involved, and the titan being honored, expect both the arrangements and the improvisations to be top-notch. 612-371-5656; www.minnesotaorchestra.org www.minnesotaorchestra.org

  • Feist

    Over the past three years, this Canadian punk rocker has metamorphosed into an indie-folk-rock darling, collaborating along the way with Peaches, Broken Social Scene, and the Norwegian folk duo Kings of Convenience. Following a soulful Parisian solo debut (Let It Die in 2004), Leslie Feist’s talent is now firmly cemented with her latest, The Reminder, a combination of alternately buzzy, sultry, brash, and wistful songs. While her music is notably kaleidoscopic in genre, a well-worn gossamer voice is the link that winds throughout Feist’s repertoire; and her songwriting’s poetic approachability has helped her elbow past those run-of-the-mill indie rockers to make it into mainstream stardom. 612-339-7007; www.hennepintheatredistrict.org

  • Charlie Parr

    Maybe it’s the railroads that have tied Minnesota so tightly to the folk music scene since the ’40s. Or maybe it’s the good old Midwestern working-class mentality that permeates the back roads and smaller towns throughout the state. Regardless, our imprint on contemporary folk doesn’t stop at Bob “Zimmerman” Dylan. Hailing from Dylan’s hometown, and clearly influenced by much of the same music as his forebear, Charlie Parr has been quietly shaking the Americana music scene with his authentic rendering of Piedmont-style blues. With the storytelling finesse of Dylan and Woodie Guthrie, the finger-picking mastery of Rev. Gary Davis and Dave Van Ronk, and the raw soul of Robert Johnson and Brownie McGhee, Parr builds on a strong tradition of American folk and blues while addressing the very real issues of the contemporary Midwestern working man. 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org 612-338-6425; www.cabooze.com

  • This Mango Is Now an iPod

    A fruit so juicy that you have to lick your arm after eating it, and a technology so viral that it threatens ubiquity. Are these opposites? Or, in some sense—desire, say—are they the same? They’re things you want and don’t want; they’re too much. That is, roughly, the theme of this show, curated by Soap Factory director Ben Heywood. He’s gathered a selection of odd sculptures and … well, let’s call them “states of affairs” … from the slew of artist submissions the Soap receives annually. None was deemed worthy of taking over the sizable joint; but all were sufficiently tasty to deserve inclusion in this big survey of … what, exactly? The Imaginary as double for Consumer Desire? Dreams of the cost of this era of culture? It’s a complicated picture, but one worth a visit to the cavernous, cool reaches of this vast converted factory. Molly Roth and other recently celebrated local artists share the rooms with young artists from New York and elsewhere. 518 Second St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-623-9176; www.soapfactory.org

  • Shinique Smith and Michael Paul Britto

    Both Shinique Smith and Michael Paul Britto were in a show called “Frequency” at the Studio Museum of Harlem last year, curated by the incisively yet inclusively smart Thelma Golden. Also included was Kalup Linzy, whose hilarious and fond videos of various homefolks recently showed at Midway Contemporary Art in Northeast Minneapolis. Indeed, it seems that much of the most interesting art in circulation around here—including the recent show by Jim Denomie and Andrea Carlson at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Kara Walker’s survey at the Walker—is being done by people with access to at least a couple of different cultures. Maybe that double vision provides the binoculars we need to see the real lay of the land. I’m not sure which of Britto’s videos will be presented, but his Dirrrty Harriet Tubman is pretty funny, an action-thriller parody using a sanctified figure. The thing to ask is, can we all play? Franklin Art Works, 1021 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis; 612-872-7494; www.franklinartworks.org

  • SAD: Illuminating a Northern View of Darkness

    The work in SAD, says curator Diane Mullin, “probes conditions of light, atmosphere, and isolation, addressing how our northern surroundings affect and define us.” Mounting this show in summer is a counterintuitively interesting idea: When the weather gets too good, go and soak up a little soggy gray despair (maybe we’ll discover we’re even SADder than we thought?). The artists involved are all Twin Cities-based: Ana Lois-Borzi sews and crafts bulbous glandular things and makes other body-centric conceptual objets; Jan Estep uses video and embroidery to address the relationship of a lone self to the rest of everything; and Katherine Turczan photographs often isolated human beings here and also in Ukraine. The work of the other artists (Theresa Handy, Chris Larson, Charles Matson Lume, Andrea Stanislav, and Piotr Szyhalski) is equally disparate, and represents a sort of honor roll of the Cities’ most kick-ass conceptualists. 333 E. River Rd., Minneapolis; 612-625-9494, www.weisman.umn.edu

  • A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840–1910

    Paintings by Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Carl Larsson, August Strindberg, Harald Sohlberg, Akseli Gallén-Kallela, Eero Järnefelt, and Fanny Churberg will shimmer on the walls of the MIA. The show explores Nordic attitudes toward nature and the past and present significance of landscape in Nordic culture and thinking. Expect a beautiful show—rampantly pretty as well as expressionistic and emotional. In the face of full-on loveliness, there’s not much to say—so why not go with someone you’re squabbling with? All that stuff will melt away. 612-870-3000; www.artsmia.org

  • The Bog Body

    Chucho and I were searching for golf balls in the protected wetland on the twelfth hole when my feet found a body. There were already several hundred golf balls sitting on the edge of the marsh ready to be cleaned and sold and I’d dug my feet into the mud expecting to feel the cool dimpled cover of another one, but instead, I felt a face.

    Buried in the mud, a golf ball feels like a rock and you curl your foot like a hawk’s claw and yank it out. Over the course of the summer, searching for golf balls in water hazards, my feet had become very sensitive. I likened them to a blind man’s hands, something that you could substitute for eyes.

    Sometimes Chucho and I played this game where he dropped some pocket change on the ground and I put my foot over it and told him exactly how much it was. It was a useless talent knowing that there were 78 cents underneath your foot instead of, say, 82, but the skill came in handy at times like this. When I patted my toes around in the brackish water I knew right away that my foot was pressing down on someone’s nose.

    “There’s a body buried where I’m standing,” I told Chucho. I ran my big toe over its pursed lips. “And it didn’t die happy.”

    “Hold still,” Chucho told me.

    He dove under the water to get a closer look. He was down there forever, swimming right by my feet. He came up with three golf balls, chucked them over to the shore.

    “Well?” I asked.

    “Bog body,” he said. “I’ll go get Dutty.”

     

    Dutty was the greens keep. He was a drunk with a legendary mean streak, but he let us rummage around in the creeks and ponds on the municipal golf course in exchange for giving him a cut. His mail-order bride had recently arrived, a Russian girl named Kika. Chucho and I figured that it was partly our doing that Dutty had been able to finance such a venture. We were none too pleased.

    Three days ago, instead of making us wait on the stoop when we dropped off his money, Dutty had ushered us inside.

    “My trench-footed friends,” he’d said, “I’d like you to meet the missus.”

    His place smelled of grass seed and cigarette butts. There were bags of fertilizer leaning against his TV cabinet. Kika was sitting on the couch, smoking and watching a TV show about penguins.
    “Boys, this is Kika,” Dutty said. “Kika, this is the boys.”

    Kika glanced up at us for a second. She had dyed blond hair and a slightly turned up nose. She grunted something in Russian and then returned to her TV show. She scratched her scalp and she cracked her knuckles and then put her feet up on the milk crates that were doubling as a coffee table. She was sitting right there next to us, but I felt like we were staring at her in some sort of cage, waiting to see what she’d do next. She snuffed out a cigarette in an ashtray and immediately lit up another one.

    Dutty extended his arm out beside Kika like he was showcasing a brand new coupe at a car show. He was beaming. I was thirteen, old enough to understand that I was expected to say something.
    “You’re a lucky man,” I told him.

    “I most certainly am,” he crowed.

     

    As I was waiting in the water, I watched the endangered herons peck at their nests about thirty yards off, their urgent cawing and their skinny legs impatiently tamping the earth to find solid ground. The reeds of the marsh made a pleasant whoosh whenever the wind freshened.

    I didn’t want to move around a lot and lose contact, so I kept my right foot on the body’s head while my left foot explored the rest. I could tell the body was wearing a blazer or something that had a shitload of buttons on it; there was a long skirt, a pair of boots with a sharp heel.

    Bog bodies showed up every couple of years around here. We’d seen the pictures in the papers. They were from centuries ago, whores and heathens strung up by the locals because they didn’t believe in the right god. Or because they didn’t believe in God the right way. They were fully preserved by the salts in the marsh, complete with skin and clothes and their hair parted however they parted it during their time on earth.

    I saw Kika and Chucho walking down the twelfth fairway with a couple of shovels.

    “Dutty went into town,” Chucho explained. “At least that’s what I think Kika just told me.”

    Kika was wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top and her hair was in a ponytail. She was barefoot and I noticed that she’d painted her toenails red.

    “There’s a body,” I said pointing at my feet. “And Chucho and I are going to dig it out.”

    I was speaking slow and loud, hoping that she might gain some meaning from my enunciation and volume.

    Kika responded in Russian. I heard her say the word “Dutty” and then she spit on the ground. She said his name again and spit. “Dutty,” she said. Then she spit three more times right in a row.
    “Lady,” I told her. “I understand. Dutty sucks. We get it.”

    After she was out of spit, Kika flopped down on the edge of the marsh and lit another cigarette. Chucho passed me a shovel and we started digging. After about ten minutes we’d cleared the wet earth around the body. Chucho took the legs and I grabbed onto the shoulders and we lifted it out and set it down on the shore.

    It was a woman. Her skin was this strange silvery metallic color. She was wearing a long skirt and a waistcoat that buttoned all the way up to her chin. Her hair was pulled back into a bun.
    When Kika realized what we’d pulled out of the marsh, she started screaming and pointing at the body and then at us. Who knows what she was thinking? Maybe she thought that we were teenage murderers who liked to dig up our kills and show them to our next victims before we murdered them. Or maybe she was thinking something even worse. Maybe she’d just had enough of this place, enough of Dutty. Her shrieking was tremendous, and it scared the nesting herons and the endangered reticulated wood owls into flight. Chucho moved toward her to calm her down. Kika screamed louder and then she turned and ran off.

    Chucho and I watched her run toward town, wondering if we should stop her, try to explain ourselves. Maybe there was some diagram that we could sketch out that would help her understand that this sort of thing was normal around these parts. Neither of us moved a muscle, though. We were both sick of Dutty; sick of us having to give him more money than we thought he deserved.

    “If he wants her,” Chucho said, “let him go track her down.”

     

    Dutty returned a little while later and we showed him the body. He got on the phone and called it in. In a few minutes, the town’s newspaperman was out at the golf course interviewing us. He posed us next to the bog body and snapped pictures and we pointed and smiled.

    “You seen Kika?” Dutty asked.

    “Haven’t,” I told him.

    Dutty gave me a little nod and then he turned and trudged back up the hill. That day would be the last time any of us ever saw Kika and it seemed like Dutty already knew that she was gone. Dutty was walking up that hill like he was an old man who did not trust the earth to hold his weight. He was walking like there was something strange buried beneath the soles of his feet, and for the life of him he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was.

     

    Fiction fan? Read Brad Zellar’s short fiction blog at www.rakemag.com/yoivanhoe

     

  • Local News, Global Profits

    It’s a bit like motherhood. You can’t be against “localization”—the revolution in reporting that every second- and third-tier newspaper in the country is embracing as vital to its salvation. Like motherhood, “localization” is something you can dress up in pretty sentiment, fake, and do badly, or you can do it well by applying tenderness and toughness in equal measure.

    The Star Tribune is currently being convulsed by the same “localization” mania that has stripped apart (excuse me—“right-sized”) the St. Paul Pioneer Press in the last few years. It is no coincidence that both papers have undergone substantial budget cuts, staff reductions and editorial redirection under the supervision of the same man, Par Ridder. Ridder, of course, is the scion of the famous publishing family who was the publisher of the Pioneer Press before sliding across the river to the Star Tribune.

    General-purpose coverage of Ridder’s purges at both papers, like coverage of the newspaper business’s problems in general, has focused on the slump in advertising and the disappearing readership among young adults. Rarely, though, does superficial coverage in the Strib and Pioneer Press include the demands of the investors Ridder serves, or ask whether those demands for ever-increasing profit margins are realistic. Likewise, the question of whether the quality of the newspaper in question has anything to do with the decreasing readership and advertising never comes up. Nor is there any assessment of what (if anything) the Par Ridders of the world mean by “localization.”

    In newspaper corporate speak, “localization” means stripping away any beat focused on any but the most parochial concerns: individual neighborhoods, city governments, and local sports. In practice, “localization” means “cheap” and “inoffensive.” The editorial focus of both newspapers has been redirected to the minutiae of second- and third-ring suburbs because that’s where higher-income families reside—people advertisers are most eager to reach—and where, silly as it sounds, school sports are a central pillar of the cultural edifice. Moreover, “reporting” on suburban land-use projects, council meetings, and high school football and basketball games has the twofer benefit of being both cheap and easy to do—any writer can read the minutes of a planning commission meeting, or watch a ball game and file a story about it.

    Because the cheap part of localization is what gets published, cheap is easy enough to see. The inoffensive aspect of “localization” is another matter.
    If “localization” meant the aggressive pursuit of stories of relevance to everyone in the metropolitan area, I’d have less of a problem with it. But that hasn’t been what’s happening.

    Northwest Airlines will soon emerge from bankruptcy—after gutting pay and benefits packages for all of its employees—and has said it is projecting profits in excess of $4 billion through 2010. Yet the Metropolitan Airports Commission recently granted Northwest a $239 million subsidy in the form of lower airport fees. Do you know why Northwest deserves such a heavy subsidy? Does either the Star Tribune’s or the Pioneer Press’s coverage of this significant local business strike you as either aggressive or satisfying?

    Or how about UnitedHealth? OK, the years prior to the emergence of Bill McGuire’s backdated options scandal were also prior to the reign of Ridder, but isn’t it remarkable how little journalistic sniffing was done around a company piling up Croesus-like wealth at the same time that crushing increases in health insurance premiums were landing on nearly every family in the state? With enhanced “localization” can we now expect as much persistent coverage of UnitedHealth as of Eden Prairie Senior High’s sports programs?

    And what about localized polling? As of May 25, the Star Tribune will completely close The Minnesota Poll. (It had been moribund since pre-Ridder budget cutting.) If “localization” has any connection to relevance, enterprise, and community service, the regular polling of Minnesotans’ attitudes toward politicians, legislation, and even peripheral matters like ATV use of state lands has value, particularly to legislators trying to see through the fog exuded by lobbyists.
    And don’t get me started on U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.

    Every tuned antenna should pick up the reality that “localization” is empty marketing jargon being broadcast by impatient investors—none of whom are local, and all of whom are far more interested in localizing Twin Cities’ profits into their far-flung and silk-lined pockets.

    Read Brian Lambert’s blog at www.rakemag.com/media; email lambert@rakemag.com

  • The Problem with Positive Thinking

    Because I am writing this column almost two months before it will show up in print, we can have ourselves a little scientific experiment. See, I just read The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, a book designed to help me tap my hidden personal powers, and I’m going to think convincing thoughts in order to test once and for all whether the universe will rearrange itself according to my desires.

    Trying to harness my thoughts is a daunting prospect. If I were to describe my typical mental process, I would say that it works like a machine I used back when I was a waitress at Embers: The Hokey. The Hokey is one of those manual rotary rug cleaners. It doesn’t employ suction. In fact, I’m not sure how it works—early waitresses are rumored to have thrown rocks at the first Hokeys, believing them to be the work of demons.

    Stay with me. Say you had a three-year-old in your section. For an hour and a half, Harried Mama would keep asking for MORE CRACKERS. So you kept giving Harried Mama more crackers and she kept giving them to the three-year-old, who did not eat them, but instead crushed them in tiny fists, sprinkling them all over the carpet below the booster seat. After they would leave, you would get your Hokey. You pushed the Hokey over the crumbs, but it only picked up the big ones, leaving the cracker sand behind to be ground into cracker dust.

    I have always been terribly afraid that my brain, like the Hokey, only picks up the big crumbs. Those morsels are then transferred to the bingo tumbler cage of my frontal lobe, which is hand-cranked by Agnes, who chooses random thoughts one by one and announces them loudly to my nervous system. But Agnes’s eyes aren’t so good anymore and that means sometimes I come home from the grocery store with buttermilk instead of milk and butter.

    The Secret promises to push Agnes down a flight of stairs and turn my Hokey brain into a powerful Dyson, unfailingly sucking up whatever I aim my mind at. Real estate, riches, Rice-A-Roni, it doesn’t matter. It will all be mine if I can only harness my juju and THINK POSITIVELY.

    I bought The Secret by accident, originally thinking that I was buying The Seacrest, a quickie autobiography for beach reading. (I wonder if Ryan Seacrest was in on The Secret a couple of years before everyone else, and that’s why he has his career.) God. See? This is the problem. I just spent the last half-hour thinking about Ryan Seacrest’s bitch strips. Does this mean I will manifest a spray-tanned face framed by blond-highlighted streaks?

    If we could control our thoughts in the first place our lives would probably be much better. It’s not unimaginable that an average person could experience a ten percent increase in quality of life simply by daydreaming about positive things all day instead of brooding about negative ones. Under these circumstances, it will seem as if The Secret works, and those horrid self-help people will continue to fill their Olympic-sized swimming pools with the chicken soup of our souls.

    I have a friend who keeps her house like a modern-day Fred Sanford, calling the mess “creative” rather than recognizing it for what it is—a reflection of stone-cold laziness. She is genuinely stupefied when her dates don’t want to see her again after she invites them over. Time and again she attributes these negative reactions to unassailable forces in the universe. Eventually, I suppose, she will attract someone who loves a little creative mess, or who is a pathological neat freak thrilled to clean up after her. But to me that seems more like waiting the situation out rather than actively conjuring something desirable.

    I use this as an example because there is a significant portion of life we can’t control. Housecleaning is one of the parts we can. If my pal kept her house clean, she could invite somebody over and feel pretty secure that they were judging her on the basis of her personality rather than on the dirty dishes piled in the sink. The secret of The Secret is that it encourages thought rather than action. And that, my friends, is where the heart of all sin lies. And I mean that in a completely secular, universe-embracing way. But what the hell? I’ll try The Secret anyway.

    If it works, I’ll let you know. If not in my next column, then on my TV show.

    Writer, performer, and femme fatale Colleen Kruse can be reached at mscolleenkruse@yahoo.com.