The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • From Devil's Food to the Dark Side

    Betty Crocker is perfect. She bakes
    flawless pies and gives sage advice, such as: "A fricasse without
    dumplings is like a wedding without a bride." Also, unlike another
    domestic goddess that we know of, she’s never been in the slammer. It’s
    easy to be the perfect woman, though, when you don’t actually exist. An
    invention of General Mills, Crocker was created to sell flour and serve as
    the company’s face.

    Susan Marks, on the other hand — a Minneapolis-based writer and filmmaker — is quite real. In her book, Finding Betty Crocker, she tells the history of
    Betty Crocker and the person who was largely responsible for creating her
    image—Margerie Husted, a woman who was anything but the typical image
    of Betty Crocker. A company exec who married late and never had
    children, Husted served as Betty’s voice on her popular radio show.
    She endeavored to empower women by validating domestic work and later
    lectured about issues such as the inequality of pay and recognition for
    women in business.

    Marks has since moved on from Betty Crocker, however; and her new project takes our homespun peppermint rooms into much darker territory. As her mother says, she has gone from Devil’s Food to the dark side. Marks is filming a
    documentary about murder. And dolls.

    When Corinne May Botz’s book The
    Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death     first came out, Marks devoured
    it and then wanted to know more. Her new documentary, Our Wildest
    Dreams: A True Crime Documentary of Dolls and Murder     explores the
    story behind the Nutshell Studies, a series of dollhouses built by
    Chicago heiress Frances Lee Glessner in the 1940s. Each dollhouse
    depicts a murder scene in minute detail, from the blood spattered
    candy-striped wallpaper to the victim’s stockings (knit by Glessner on
    a pair of straight pins). The dollhouses were built in order to train
    police officers and are still used for this purpose today. Susan’s
    documentary is currently in production with the king of campy noir
    himself, John Waters, providing the narration.

    At first it may seem a bit odd that Susan should go from studying
    strudel recipes to examining miniature murders with a magnifying glass.
    When you talk to Susan though, she’ll tell you that the stories of
    Betty Crocker and Frances Lee Glessner have more in common than one
    might think. Both involve women who yearned to do something outside of
    the role that society had prescribed for them, and both succeeded in
    doing so by taking their "womanly" interests, flipping them upside down,
    and then climbing right up on top of them in order to succeed in the
    male-dominated realms of business and forensic science. However, if you’re
    still left wondering what the hell a fricassee is, I’ll bet
    Susan Marks knows.

  • Campfire

    One
    muggy Minnesota morning during the summer straddling the scrawny divide
    between my fanciful childhood and jaded adolescence, my best friend
    Robby and I found religion. It’d been hiding, not surprisingly, inside
    the whitewashed pine chapel of Lake Bronson Galilee Lutheran Bible
    Camp.

    Robby
    and I first met, with a magnetic force, five years earlier at a
    baptism. Hayseeds both, we each had Elmer’s Glue skin, John Deere
    green eyes, and an electric shock of curly blond hair. We also shared
    a passion for C.S. Lewis’s stories, a furious love of outdoor
    exploration, and a consuming need to spend time together. Bible Camp
    was just an annual extension of that need.

    The morning we discovered religion, head counselor Neil finished Rise And Shine services by directing all campers to join hands around the chapel’s suspended oak cross in a chorus of “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.”

    Robby took my hand in his.

    Seven
    measures into the round, late morning humidity oozed in through the
    levered windows. Sunlight beamed through the bible stenciled into the
    center of the most prominent stained glass window, angelfying each
    crooning countenance. Robby’s slick and gamy hand swung gently with
    mine in time with the music.

    Just
    before the last bit, Neil twirled his finger in the sunlit dust,
    indicating we should repeat the entire hymn, splitting the stanzas
    between the boys and the girls. With exponential vigor the music
    bounced from us to the chapel walls and back again. This swirl of
    echoes tugged at me with an insistent, muscular strength.

    Something
    was at work. The song, the sunlight, the heat, Robby’s hand,
    collectively they pierced through my skin, infusing a soulful mood. I
    felt sheltered, peaceful, and poised.

    “I
    feel…religious,” I thought. Not a jarring revelation, as I was after
    all in church, in bible camp. But God wasn’t really what I was there
    for, and yet, in some form, He appeared anyway. How odd. Eventually
    Neil axed the air, and everyone filtered out into the muggy broth,
    eager to shed their clammy church clothes for swim trunks.

    But
    neither Robby nor I could recede easily into camp tomfoolery. He too
    had felt simultaneously elevated and anchored by the music. While
    changing in our cabin we discussed that feeling, then religion, which
    inevitably fell to talk of Heaven.

    “Maybe
    it’s like Narnia,” Robby gushed. “Aslan, enchanted candies, talking
    animals!” Any other camper would have saved face by chiding this
    fancy, but I admitted I had a similar hope. Heaven had to incorporate
    some childish magic, or it’d just be eternally dull.

    Later
    that day we sprawled on our coconut-scented beach towels on the coarse
    pebbles above Nestea-colored Lake Bronson. Our conversation hadn’t
    stopped, so naturally we came to hell. On this subject we knew only
    what we’d been taught by rural Lutheranism: whoever accepts Christ as
    his savior has a free pass through Heaven’s Gate, as long as he asks
    regularly, meaningfully, for forgiveness of all sins. But within
    individual families, the rules were murkier.

    Robby’s
    family was bent meekly inward toward his father, Herald, who ruled
    fiercely, religiously, using confusion as a tool and hell as a strap.
    And occasionally he used an actual strap.

    “Sometimes,”
    Robby confessed, “like when we stole those crabapples, I’ll think,
    ‘What if I died, right now? Would I wake up in hell just because I
    haven’t, yet, told God, sorry?’”

    “It’s
    a puzzle,” I admitted. “And what about all the sins we forgot to ask
    God’s forgiveness for? What happens to those when we die?”
    Robby frowned. “It’s not like we see a priest; nobody’s hearing the sins and asking, ‘Sure that’s all of them?’”

    “Right,” I said scraping sand from my taffy. “It’s just God and us.”
    Lutherans
    are proud to have removed the Catholic’s confessional middleman, but at
    that moment I feared perhaps we’d been too efficient.

  • Oral Distractions

    "I’m probably more middle of the road than most people I went to film school with," says Dan Orozco, host of Butter City, the hottest talk show to cover filmmaking since Siskel and Ebert ruled the airwaves, "I like movies that I can eat a whole thing of popcorn and drink a whole can of soda to. I think Truffaut called those ‘oral distractions’ because he hated movie theaters that sold that stuff."

    Forgoing François’ sniffing disregard, "oral distraction" applies in an entirely complimentary way to Butter City, a weekly half-hour program that airs 10 pm Sunday nights on three TV frequencies: TPT Channel 17 (13 if you have cable), MTN Channel 16, and SPNN Channel 17. The generally one-on-one broadcast’s guest list is made up entirely of people in or from the state of Minnesota who are in some way connected with movie making or movie exhibition. The year-old program is the brainchild of producer Myron Berdahl, a corporate analyst and screenwriter, and aficionado of films ever since he served in the Navy on the USS Nimitz, where the 1980 time-travel adventure The Final Countdown was shot. Myron explains the show’s title and theme this way: "When you go to the theater what are you usually armed with? A barrelful of buttered popcorn, right? You’re leaving reality behind and going into this new realm, this new city — Butter City!"

    I interviewed Myron, along with host Dan, director Heinz Iwen and the rest of the crew at the SPNN studios in downtown St. Paul, where they were getting set to make two back-to-back episodes. Myron, taking a rare breather from his distracting, and slightly militaristic, producing duties, went on to explain, "The title was going to be either Butter City or Twin Cities Art Talk. When you go through the TV guide, and you see Twin Cities Art Talk or Butter City, which would you choose to watch?" This leads to two impetuses behind his creation: to not only give local filmmakers a chance to get more publicity and tell their stories, but to also add some spark to the frequently dry realms of public television and, especially, cable access, whose biggest diversion from erudite forums so far has been the booze-laced Drinking With Ian.

    Heinz, who has worked for fifteen years as a freelance director and editor — or, as he likes to call himself, "video mercenary" — for SPNN and other outlets, points out that community-based television can have its real-life dramas, especially when it comes to obscenity and bluenoses forever on the lookout for it. "Wednesday evening I work on a Vietnamese news show. To break it up, they get these music videos from Vietnam. I got a long e-mail from a lady who described, in detail, how, in one video, a male dancer’s hand brushed across the breast of a female dancer for 3.4 seconds. 3.4 seconds! What, was she timing this?"

    However this concerned citizen measured the beastly act, she nearly caused that program to go off the air, thanks to the threat of a $25,000 fine from the FCC. Such could be the fate of Butter City if they are not careful, as they so far have been, about cleaning up foul language and other unsightly elements of sex and violence from clips that guests bring to share. That applied to those from my own films, which were featured on an episode I taped a few weeks prior, and which were pockmarked with more audio excisions than a 50 Cent video. I also inadvertently dated the broadcast by making reference to a couple of future projects.

    "I don’t mention time or say ‘boy, it’s hot out today’ or talk about next week’s or last week’s show," explains Dan, who was hired by Myron based on his four years of hosting Cinema Lounge at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, "Each show exists in a vacuum in and of itself so that it can be replayed anytime. The other thing I don’t do is mention where we are. Sometimes I’ll say ‘local filmmakers’ or ‘Midwest’ or ‘Minnesota’, but I really try to make it universally appealing."

    The set for Butter City, though modest by the standards of even two-chair chat shows, should appeal to anyone remotely appreciative of cinema. An old-fashioned 16 mm projector looms like a sentinel over where Dan sits, a monitor for playing clips dominates the center, and a manual typewriter is perched snugly by the guest chair. From this Raymond Chandleresque mechanism’s spool dangles a sheet of paper, which bears the first few lines of a script Myron, himself, wrote. This may be the same one that he dispatched to Ellen Burstyn at the Toronto Film Festival and to which he hoped she would lend a "mystical aura."

  • How to Buy a New Car

    The first thing
    I do is research the customer service program of the company that makes
    that new car I have my eyes on. The last thing I want to do is
    buy a product that makes one go to the dealer and pay $100 to ask a
    question. The Internet and all its frauds has also taught me that
    I don’t want an 800 number thrown at me with someone on the other
    end who is struggling with my language and knows nothing about the environment
    my car and I live in—mostly near zero many months of the year.

    I’d also like
    to know how much of the price they are asking goes to pay for advertising
    and trying to sell people on something they shouldn’t be buying.
    Money spent for this stuff just takes away the product’s value and
    adds to my costs: costs I don’t want to pay for. Sell me the
    car; don’t sell me 30% car and 70% BS. Sure, just send me the figures
    on the ratio on this, I’d appreciate it.

    This next step
    I don’t bother the poor salesperson with, I go directly to the SEC
    filings of the company to find the answer. I don’t make much
    more than the average U.S. income and it’s fine with me if others
    make more or less than I do. But I would like to know what the
    management is pulling from the company making this machine that is waiting
    for me. It better be reasonable or I’m not contributing, OK?
    Just post it on the window with the price: that would save us consumers
    a lot time.

    My final checkpoint
    is pretty easy, and it would be helpful if this would just be placed
    on the sticker, too, with the price that no one ever pays. My
    1996 Ford gets 25 MPG and that’s too much if I am going to follow
    Czar Gore’s mandate to shrink our carbon footprint on this planet.
    It would probably last another five years with care. Now how much
    carbon would be emitted in making the new car? I’d sure like
    a new MINI, but how much energy would it take to turn out this shiny
    new gem? If keeping my loyal old Ford for five more years would
    amount to less of a carbon footprint and suck of energy, the better
    environmental answer is drive what I have. When do the lines cross
    and I can get a new one? Until I know that, I’m staying green.

  • Errol Morris Speaks

    In his latest documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris is addressing questions no one has bothered to ask and finding answers no one has bothered to tell.

    With an Academy Award under his belt for Fog of War, Errol Morris continues to investigate and research stories that many people have undoubtedly turned away from. Standard Operating Procedure, his newest film, delves into the lives of the soldiers and prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Using intrigue and intensity, Morris brings to life the stories surrounding the haunting and epic photographs of prisoners in the Middle East.

    The Rake sat down with Morris to discuss his latest artistic achievement, and his thoughts on the importance of his latest film.

    Roger Ebert compared you to directors like Hitchcock and Fellini. What does it feel like to be compared to some of the greatest filmmakers in history?

    Well, what really feels good is actually having Roger Ebert as a champion for so many years of my work. He’s someone who I’ve come to know pretty well. At first it surprised me because he put the first film that I ever made on his list of the top ten films of all time. Sometimes I think I can’t actually make a film that Roger is going to like more than that first film, but he’s liked an awful lot of them (laughs). He’s an incredibly good guy. I’m delighted that he’s said so many kind things about me. The Hitchcock remark is one among many and I’m grateful.

    Which film did he put on his top ten list?

    Gates of Heaven

    What is it that draws you to making documentary films?

    I don’t know if it’s making documentary films or if it’s just making films. I’m a filmmaker. They’re films about real things, they’re things about reality but they’re constructed in many ways like a traditional movie. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best Hollywood photographers and I think this [Standard Operating Procedure] is an interesting movie, as a movie even independent of all the questions you might address.

    Do you enjoy making documentaries rather than fiction films?

    Well, I plan to do a hybrid film with some fiction. I think I enjoy all of it. I enjoy investigating, that’s one thing I do enjoy. I made a film, the Thin Blue Line, where I was able to get an innocent man out of jail, which was the end of a two-year long investigation, and now I’ve been investigating the photographs of Abu Ghraib. In a similar kind of way I’ve been trying to ask questions that I don’t think anyone else has asked about: why the photographs were taken in the first place and what they mean.

    When did you first get the idea to document the lives and photographs of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib?

    Probably when I first started to become aware of the photographs. It would have been in April and May of 2004. These are photographs that have been seen by an awful lot of people. I started to wonder and have discussions with friends of mine and everybody had a different opinion on why the photographs were taken, no one seemed to know much about it. I thought no one has bothered to talk to the people who took these photographs, wouldn’t that be of interest.

    Did you find this product to be emotionally draining at all?

    Yes, very draining. I mean it’s really hard when you’re investigating with a camera to get people to actually agree to be interviewed and getting them to open up in the interview, that’s all really time consuming and hard. I know I’ve been asked quite often if it’s easy to get these interviews and the answer is no, it was not easy, it’s was really hard.

    How did get the soldiers to agree to be interviewed?

    It was kind of a crazy sort of networking. You talk to one person and they know someone, they like speaking to me, so they’ll say something nice and another person will come in and it’s gradually making your way into this whole group of people.

    One of the biggest things I noticed, personally, when watching Standard Operating Procedure was my ability to become numb to the images and stories.

    How so?

    After a certain amount of time I started to understand that the soldiers used this technique as a survival tactic. And I could sympathize with where they were coming from.

    Well that’s good! I think the idea is to put people watching the movie in their shoes so they can see them not as monsters but as people and to imagine what the hell would I do if I were put in that situation.

    Well that was definitely the most powerful things I felt when watching the film.

    Well that’s good, that’s what I hope to do, so thank you.

    The film only tells the story from the soldiers’ perspectives. Did you attempt to interview any of the prisoners?

    I interviewed one prisoner. I didn’t want to interview prisoners at random, just like I didn’t want to interviews at random, I wanted to stick to the photographs. There’s this incredible story about the hooded man, the iconic photograph of the man on the box with the wires tied to his hands, and there was this impostor, a guy who claimed he was the hooded man and in fact wasn’t. I was fascinated by that story of two people claiming to be the guy under the hood. It’s like the unknown soldier except the unknown Abu Ghraib victim. I tried really hard to find the people who were in the photographs, like the guy who they call "Gus" on the leash with Lynddie England, the guy with the hood on the box, I tried really really hard and I could not find them. I did find the impostor, of course he was well known at the time but I interviewed him. That interview was really interesting because I asked him about [the American soldier] Sabrina Harman, and as a prisoner, he has really nothing to gain from saying anything nice about any American, and he said he liked Sabrina and that she was "a good one," which was interesting to hear.

    Did you contemplate putting that interview into the film?

    I didn’t for a whole number of reasons. It’s tricky, I didn’t interview him on film, in fact it was over a series of phone conversations. The movie has its own style to it and when you start bringing in characters from left field, the movie could simply fall apart. I thought it was best in the end to stick with the soldiers. You feel what it must have been like to be a prisoner there, I think that’s part of the story as well and that’s in the movie, whether you’re looking at the dogs, the man on the box, the ants, any of that stuff.

    The beginning and ending of the documentary opens and closes with pictures of the sunrise and sunset. Why did you choose to use photographs that stand in stark contrast with the mood of the rest of the film?

    Well I don’t think they’re in that much stark contrast. They’re certainly photographs, and the movie is about photographs, so I like the idea that these were actual photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, not just sunrise or sunset. It begins with a sunset and ends with a sunrise and follows Tim Dugan’s (the khaki construtor who opens and closes the movie) story coming to Abu Ghraib and of course the story of sitting out watching what he calls the birdies fly away at sunrise every morning.

    The main focus of the film was the stories and photographs by the soldiers. Do you think there is room for interpretation?

    I think that we’ll know more and more about as time goes on. The surprising thing, and I hope this is what the movie does, is that you look at a photograph you thought you understood and you see you do not understand it and that the photograph really has a different story connected to it than the story that you thought. Wether it’s Sabrina Harman smiling with her thumb up, you think
    she’s connected to the murder of this prisoner, but you find out she’s trying to expose a murder, there’s a huge difference, in how we view these people and how we look at these photographs, it’s two different things.

    Was there a particular moment in the film that stood out the most to you?

    Well, there’s a lot of stuff in there, from the leash photograph to the worst night of all, the human pyramid, it’s going into the world of those photographs, which are all burned into our minds, particularly mine since I spent so much time with them over the last couple of years. I like a lot of moments in the film. I like Lynddie England at the end when she talks about her son Carter, and how she would do it all over again. I like Javal saying "I think I know what I can do, and I think I know what I can’ do". We often think about these people who were at Abu Ghraib as being faceless automatons, evil-doers or monsters, what I like is that they emerge as people. And they’re all asking ethical questions. There’s a deep feeling of being trapped there, like some kind of Samuel Beckett play and that there is really no way out. I asked myself, what would I do? Your commanding officers have essentially told you to shut the fuck up. You’re in the military and people seem to be shocked that you follow orders in the military. What do you think people do in the military? If your commanding officer tells you to do such and such in the military, you DO what you’re told to do, yet they all questioned it. Sabrina knew what she was doing was wrong and she struggled constantly with ethical issues and ethical questions. I think it’s very powerful.

    Why did you choose to use re-enactments during the filming of Standard Operating Procedure?

    The term re-enactment might not be the best term.

    What term would you use?

    Well, I have used re-enactments, so I have myself to blame (laughs) but they’re visualizations of ideas. An interview is a kind of re-enactment, when someone is talking about the past. When Lynndie England is talking about the experience of being in a photograph or taking a photograph, she is re-enacting the past for us in words. Often I will take things that people say and I will put them in what you can imagine as a typography like bold-faced, italics or underlined. If a soldier talks about a drop of blood on his uniform and he wonders whether he’s complicit, and we see the drop of blood, not because I’m trying to pretend that you’re back in Abu Ghraib in 2003, but because I want you to think about what he’s thinking, his own complicity in the war and the meaning of that drop of blood. Across the board I think visualizations help bring the photographs and stories about the photographs to life.

    Why do you think this documentary is important for the public to see?

    I think it’s the issues at hand, not issues about torture but issues about fair play. We’re talking about scapegoats, people who have been blamed for the failure of the war and I’d like to set that record straight. I do not like the idea of powerful, important men at the top of the chain of command walking away from all of this pinning medals on each others’ chests and the lowliest soldiers taking all the blame, to me it’s un-American and wrong, I would go so far as to say even cowardly.

  • The Surreal Bourgeois Life of Eluded Love

    Ra’mon-Lawrence A. Coleman
    Hometown: Chicago, Il. (born and raised on the South Side)

    Alum of the distinguished School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ra’mon-Lawrence A. Coleman received concurrent Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Fashion Design and Performing Arts. Previous to this he attended the University of Iowa, where he studied Biology and Art History. The native Chicagoan has held an array of design positions in Denmark, London, Milan, New York, Chicago, and most recently Minneapolis, where he has begun fervently establishing the ra’mon-lawrence label.

    "Growing up I was always an artistic child. However, looking back, I never had aspirations for a career in fashion. I wanted to be a Neurosurgeon. I loved science; I still do. One day, I found myself saying, ‘I could be a great surgeon, but I don’t think I could be a passionate surgeon.’ When I began studying performing arts, I was introduced to costume design, which ultimately lead me to pursue fashion design. I have merged all these backgrounds to create a constant commentary on the human form. I view myself as a perpetual student. I’m a whirlwind of high energy, and my design esthetic reflects that. There is always an element of the dramatic; it ranges from just under the radar to over the top."

    —What does the label stand for? What is your design philosophy?

    "The ra’mon-lawrence label is about sophisticated innovation and versatility. Each garment is created with meticulous intentions, but with an effortless feeling. Details are an essential element to each design. Whether it’s ornate beading on an evening shift dress or hand finishing on a sheer tee, the importance on handwork can be seen on every garment. I don’t think about just what a woman needs, I also address what she craves. My work philosophy is simple; without continually pursuing knowledge, and immersing oneself in new experiences, I feel that a person becomes stagnant. This is the mantra of the woman I design for. Fashion should never be taken seriously. True fashion blurs all lines. It serves as a commentary to society, whether through absurdity or conformity.

    "This collection for me isn’t just about putting on an event, but establishing the beginning stages of brand exclusivity."

    —What influenced your current collection? Who are your favorite designers?

    "The concept of The Eluded Love collection is inspired by the paintings of Johannes Vermeer from the Dutch Golden Age, the modern photographs of the Dutch photojournalist, Erwin Olaf, and the narrative of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Both Vermeer and Olaf have a mastery of depicting domestic interior scenes of what would be considered ‘ordinary bourgeois life.’ Their usage of color and light as a direct reflection of emotion serves as the focal point for my color palette as well as fabrication. Both Olaf’s photographs and Kafka’s novella push the boundaries of perception, by blurring reality into fantasy. I translated all of these into what I see as a ‘surreal bourgeois life.’

    "Through the use of multi-textural fabrics and architectural silhouettes I am exploring the idea of volume versus tailoring, art versus fashion, absurd versus ordinary. The notion of extreme proportions as well as unexpected ‘convertible elements’ drives the essence of each silhouette. Eluded Love is an organic reaction to the ideals of romanticism that stimulates one’s imagination. Open your mind and enjoy.

    "’The imagination is the spur of delights… all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?’ —Marquis de Sade

    "Some of my favorite designers are Alexander McQueen, Raf Simmons (Jil Sander), Muccia Prada (Prada), Olivier Theyskens (Rochas), Heidi Slimane (Dior Homme), Chris Benz, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough (Proenza Schouler), Karl Lagerfeld (everything he touches), Marc Jacobs (everything he breaths on), & Rachel Roy."

    —You’ve done Voltage: Fashion Amplified before, and also have been a part of other fashion weekend exhibitions — how different is producing your own show, compared to working in a group format?

    "It’s very different for me. While the concept is purely based on my own direction, I am still working in a group format. I have a production staff that I have made integral to every aspect of the show. I wanted to give the opportunity to several talented individuals in the local industry that have not stepped into the lime light yet. They have been a great inspiration to me. There is this freshness to the production that I am confident everyone will enjoy. The thing that is so exciting for me in the format is there is more freedom to be spontaneous. I like to work organically, and constantly evolve the way I am approaching a collection (even up until the last moment).

    "Sometimes, that doesn’t work if you showing as a collective group of designers, because it can effect the overall flow. After such an amazing response from my showing at last year’s Voltage, I knew it was time for me to take my aspirations to the next level."


    —What was the process of creating a show of this scale?

    "After establishing my concept, it was my mission to find a core group to become my production staff. I knew I had high ambitions for this event, so I need to make sure I had a strong support system to make it happen. After that it was a whirlwind of things: finding the right venue, establishing sponsorships, venue concept, PR/Marketing, casting, soundtrack, among other things."


    —What is the tie between your show and the American Diabetes Association?

    "Several of my family members are diabetic. It was something that I was always aware of growing up, but really didn’t understand. Both my
    parents had diabetes. A few years ago, my Dad passed away from complications related to diabetes. That was an eye opener for me. Since then I have been actively contributing the American Diabetes Association. While this event has benefits for the brand’s exposure, what is even more important is the contribution we will be able to make to the association as well as the education we can pass on to others.

    • Total: 20.8 million children and adults — 7.0% of the population — have diabetes.
    • Diagnosed: 14.6 million people
    • Undiagnosed: 6.2 million people
    • Pre-diabetes: 54 million people
    • 1.5 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people aged 20 years or older in 2005

    "Just imagine how much of this could either be preventive or treatable with the right amount of education or funding."

    Ra’mon’s collection will be featured in Voltage 2008: Fashion Amplified, on April 16th, and will be available exclusively through www.ramonlawrence.com, June 1st or by special order.

    Be sure to check out the Eluded Love slideshow and the Voltage Preview slideshow. 

  • In Defense of Street Art

    I
    was a street artist. If you prefer, I was a vandal. I started out, as
    most artists do, humbly. A can of russet Rustoleum with a couple of
    friends, scrawling vague leftist slogans on the abandoned railroad factory
    buildings in my hometown. Alleyway dumpsters and streetlit governmental
    properties were my first canvases. Then came small stencils: a tiny
    smokestack to spray on the outside of the asbestos-stuffed empty shells
    of our small town’s industrial past. They were just little gestures,
    not even aesthetically pleasing, but to us it was the start of
    something incredibly thrilling. We were honor students, very straight-laced
    for the most part, and no one would have suspected that we were living
    double lives, our backpacks and car trunks filled with neon ordnance.
    We learned the lore of the street here and there and on the internet.
    Don’t breath in the paint. Carry the paint and stencils in an empty
    pizza box. Use spray-adhesive to attach the stencils to the surface.
    Spray carefully to avoid overspray. From the small stencils, the tiny
    disobediences, we moved on to bigger, more ambitious projects.

    But as we matured we grew to realize that street art is much more than
    scribbling your name on an alt-weekly dispenser box or sticking your
    priority mail sticker in a bathroom stall. After working on the street
    for some time, I became convinced of the legitimacy of the medium. Because
    just what is the role of the artist? Is it purely aesthetic? To politicize?
    To inform? To provoke, to offend, to educate? Just what makes someone
    an artist, anyway? When do they become an artist? Certainly, there are
    very many varied reasons and motivations that drive each individual.
    But something every artist has in common is their primary responsibility
    to follow their vision, wherever it may lead them, even if that is into
    alleys and train yards. And at that time in my life, that’s where
    my vision was leading me. I had never considered myself an "artist"
    before, didn’t take any classes in school, but I saw a way that I
    could help make the world more beautiful (or at least more interesting)
    and relieve the monotony of my small-town life at the same time.

    For
    a year or two, I worked exclusively in stencil graffiti and wheatpaste
    media. I have since moved on to new media, but it was an exciting and
    informative time in my life. I vandalized dozens of public places and
    broke many laws; yet I feel that the gifts I and my associates gave
    the public outweigh whatever laws we broke. But I won’t claim that
    the desire to give beautiful art to the public is every street artist’s
    motive. Of course there will always be those people who just want to
    scrawl obscenities in alleys and on storefronts. Just remember, everyone
    has to start somewhere, and often people graduate from crudities to
    more expressive works.

    Working
    on the street has many virtues. If you choose your place wisely, many
    more people will see it than in one of the many small galleries that
    the average artist can reasonably expect to be exhibited in. Think of
    some of the busy intersections in downtown Minneapolis: if an artist
    was enterprising and determined enough, he could have more people see
    his work every day than do pass through the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa.
    The street is an unintended refutation of the insular art world; most
    street artists do not have the advantage of an expensive art education
    and contacts within the industry. An abundance of good art often does
    not get exhibited, for whatever reason. Many artists do not want to
    spend time applying to galleries, making friends in the industry, and
    waiting months or years for a show. They want people to see their art
    right now, as soon as possible.

    Think
    of the high cost of starting to paint- you have to buy oils, thinner,
    brushes, canvas, etc. Then you have to learn to paint, which is typically
    requires an expensive art education if you want to learn with any proficiency.
    All the street artist needs is a cheap can of Krylon from the local
    hardware store. And who’s going to teach them? The only way the street
    artist learns is through practice and self-motivation. There is no street
    artist’s college (although the Minneapolis College of Art and Design
    does teach a class on street art, and as artists such as Banksy and
    Shepard Fairey gain prominence in the art world, perhaps it will become
    an accepted BFA program somewhere). This need to figure out everything
    for themselves leads to innovation, technical prowess, and self-sufficiency.
    Street art is the most egalitarian of art movements. One cannot go to
    art school for it, the production costs are much more affordable, and
    the artist can choose to exhibit wherever he or she pleases.

    And
    what interest they create on bland surfaces! Last year I lived in Marcy-Holmes,
    one of the most "graffitied" neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Walking
    through the neighborhood was a constant fascination, viewing the struggle
    between the area taggers and the maintenance men. The back and forth
    between the whitewashes, paint pens, spray cans, and stickers was like
    a hyperaccelerated archeology, in which eras of art could be seen day
    to day. It’s the logical continuation of the cave paintings at Lascaux.
    Each side tries to evade the common tautology; the cycle of life on
    the street. The artist seeks to innovate by creating new visual forms
    of expression in new places (up telephone poles, underground, skywriting),
    and the street-cleaner seeks to establish more effective modes of repression
    (increasing the police force, new paint removers, neighborhood watches).
    The street artist has an almost unlimited opportunity for exhibition,
    scrawling a sociology on the walls of our caves.

  • Milwaukee & Franklin Avenues

    The
    antithesis of Milwaukee Avenue—the Seward neighborhood’s secret
    boulevard of late 19th century homes—is the Cedars 94 apartment
    complex, located just across from Milwaukee on Franklin’s north side.
    Where Milwaukee Avenue has dozens of brick homes with low front porches
    and gingerbread gables, the apartments have faded wooden shingles and
    a chain-link security fence. Where Milwaukee Avenue has forsythia, lilac,
    and crabapple trees along its center, Cedars 94 has cement courtyards
    and is bound by the roar of traffic from Franklin and Interstate 94.

    But
    both places share a similar legacy. Milwaukee Avenue’s homes, built
    between 1883 and 1895, were intended for Scandinavian immigrants who
    labored in the nearby railroad yards. Crowding as many homes as he could
    onto narrow lots, developer William Ragan created the first planned
    workers’ community in Minneapolis, and got the most for his buck.
    Then, Milwaukee Avenue was a starting place for newcomers—not a destination.

    In
    1974, the quaint homes, in disrepair and slated for demolition, were
    listed on the National Register of Historic Places and gradually revitalized,
    some with mind-blowing color schemes: a yellow brick home with buttercup
    yellow gables, sky-blue trim, and tangerine accents. Part of its charm
    today lies in its relative silence—a pedestrian-only urban avenue
    where it’s possible to hear the wind in the trees, the faint tinkling
    of glass wind chimes, or nothing.

    In
    the window of Charles A. Hoffman Handmade Guitars and Stringed Instrument
    Repair, on the corner of Milwaukee and Franklin, a young man bends over
    a honey-colored guitar and gently restrings it. Mr. Hoffman builds 25
    guitars per year and runs a brisk repair business. On a Saturday morning
    the small shop, fragrant with the sharp, clean smell of wood, is warm
    and musical as customers try out guitars. Easy, a black poodle with
    a ‘70s afro, pads behind the counter where an ornate silver cash register
    sits beside a flat-screen monitor and ergonomic keyboard.

    The
    Swedish potato sausage and lingonberry jam that might have been here
    100 years ago have given way to green tea spices and spongy disks of
    Ethiopian flatbread at the Shabelle Grocery and Meat Market and to the
    Seward Community Coop’s dark and leafy organic produce. At the 2nd
    Moon Coffee Café, two poets, bathed in the blue haze of a Mac screen,
    discuss publication: "Do you have any work out there?"

    "I’m
    still struck (as when I saw my first Pasque-flower)/Now at the single
    soft shoot of daffodil arching, slow/Through the face of the rock-like
    ground and on: up: through/The flinty shingle of March-blown sleet and
    snow/On the winter-wasted ice-bound lawns of Milwaukee Avenue."

    The
    lyrical, hardscrabble poet Thomas McGrath lived in Cedars 94 in the
    1980s until his death in 1990. The first-floor, single-level apartment
    was easier for him to manage, and he chain smoked and wrote poems like
    "The Black Train" in longhand at his dining-room table. Many afternoons,
    he crossed Franklin to Tracy’s Saloon for a hamburger and a Scotch.
    It seems unlikely that he would have been out on Milwaukee Avenue on
    such a March day, negotiating the slick sidewalks with his cane and
    unsteady gait. More likely, he was at home, looking out of the sliding
    glass doors to his own winter-wasted concrete patio, imagining something
    beautiful rising up out of the snow.

    Notes:

    1. Paragraph 2: Building
      dates for Milwaukee Avenue, developer and reference to Scandinavian
      workers: Minnesota Historical Society; Rail workers reference from "Milwaukee
      Avenue      " by Gary Hiebert, 2001. Reference to Scandinavian immigrants
      also found in "History of Milwaukee Avenue," Milwaukee Avenue Homeowners
      Association.
    2. Paragraph 3: Date
      for listing on National Register of Historic Places: Minnesota Historical
      Society.
    3. Paragraph 4: Reference
      for number of guitars built each year by Charles Hoffman-conversation
      with Mr. Hoffman on January 6, 2007.
    4. Paragraph 6: Lines
      from "The Black Train," by Thomas McGrath, from Selected Poems:
      1938-1988,       Copper Canyon Press, 1988; page 156.
    5. Paragraph 7: Notes
      about Thomas McGrath are my own personal notes. I worked for Tom from
      1986-1988, transcribing his poems and letters in his apartment at Cedars
      94.

  • Meet Aaron

    Aaron Eckhart doesn’t like too much attention. It makes him uncomfortable, which oddly enough, isn’t such an odd thing for an actor. Sure, there are artists that live for the limelight, but then there are others that live for the art (not that you can’t live for both, mind you). Eckhart is not a spotlight fiend. That much is clear. He doesn’t look uncomfortable, mind you, but he tells me so; and it’s clear from his quiet, pensive approach that he’s not out for the big headline, that he’s not going to flex his muscles to impress me. If I’m not impressed by his soft-spoken, steadfast approach, by his honesty, by his glorious chin, well, too bad for me.

    Now on tour, promoting his latest film, Meet Bill, Eckhart is going through the arduous task of interview upon interview. Somehow, he remains unresentful. Sure, it’s his job (I guess), but I caught the man coming straight out of one interview, into the next, and then on his way to another. How much fun can that be? And when I questioned him, he simply replied, "I never say the same thing twice. Maybe that’s a bad thing."

    "A bad thing?" I asked.

    Sure. "They always use the same thing anyway, so it really doesn’t matter what I say."

    And, yes, we do. Don’t we?

    "It’s a vicious circle, but on the other hand if the circle works why make it a square. You know what I mean? See I’ve never said that before. Why make a circle a square?"

    Why make a circle a square? Good question. And yet, I know he’s worried that I’ll take it out of context somehow. Why make a circle a square? Somehow, I’ll pose a question about his new film. ‘Your character is clearly confused and dissatisfied. He goes through a number of changes, and yet at the end I didn’t quite get the sense that he has truly arrived somewhere new. Why didn’t he blah, blah, blah?’ (Eckhart likes his blah, blah, blahs.) Why make a circle a square?

    I try to reassure him that I won’t do this, that somehow, I’m different from all other journalists (I’m not), but why make a circle a square?

    "What I say as a dry joke just comes off flat," Eckhart continues. "In print things don’t translate."

    And he’s right. Few know that better than The Rake, I think, recalling our vain attempts at humor and sarcasm, recalling the negative feedback, all the people who just didn’t get the joke.

    While Meet Bill is a fun physical comedy — far better than I might have imagined, based on the seemingly cheap Jessica Alba trailers — it’s still a slapstick comedy, and I’m left wondering why Eckhart is listed as executive producer, why a man with such interesting acting experience and only one production credit (a co-production credit, at that) under his belt, would take this on above a more nobel endeavor.

    I’m naïve, of course, to ask the question.

    "I have to say, my producorial involvement is minimal," answers Eckhart. "I don’t want to pretend that I was instrumental in this movie at all. When I come on or do a movie, I guess, that’s one of the perks that I get. Maybe sometimes it helps in casting. It’s a gift."

    —So there was no financial backing?

    "None whatsoever. It frankly kind of embarrasses me that it’s on there. But it’s one of the things that people do because it looks good. I don’t want to offend the other producers by taking credit. On small movies like this, because they don’t have a lot of money to give you, this can be another incentive. That’s kind of what it is. I just acted in the movie."

    Now it all makes sense to me. Eckhart has no interest in producing.

    "I’d rather go clean toilets than produce movies," he jokes. "What producers have to do — probably a lot of your job, too — is call people, follow up on people, try to make people honor their commitments. It’s hell. You know?" (Yes, I know.)

    "Filmmaking is tiresome. It’s a long, arduous job, and you have to be a marathon runner to do it. For an actor, you just get in and get out. You don’t have to deal with pre-production. You don’t have to deal with post. You don’t have to deal with the money people, the pressure, the business, selling it. I’m far away from all that sort of stuff.

    "I’m an actor. I have a lot to accomplish in acting, things that I want to do as an actor. I admire people like Clooney and these guys who do the whole enchilada. They do everything, and they make a great product. It’s unbelievable. And a lot of actors do that. Maybe another time. Maybe I’ll direct a traffic commercial. Like a PSA or something. On the environment." (He’s joking again, of course, though it may not be a bad idea.)

  • Auralee's Playlist

    Auralee Likes is co-owner of Hymie’s Records, one of the few places in town where you can still unload a box or two of records, or stumble upon some amazing finds.

    While processing records in the store we get exposed to zillions of records in every genre imaginable, but this list is the stuff I crank up time after time, mostly when I’m alone. I’m a shoegazing-country-folky-punk-funk-disco freak. My first 45 was Blondie’s Heart of Glass, in second
    grade.

    The Fall, Extricate, 1988
    I love everything they’ve ever put out, but lately I keep going back to this album, especially the song "Littlest Rebel." I never tire of their dynamic, angsty dance music, or Mark E. Smith’s snotty accent.

    Dog Faced Hermans, Mental Blocks For All Ages, 1991
    I saw this agressive group from Amsterdam playing in the basement of Motor Oil Cafe/Speedboat Gallery (R.I.P.), in Minneapolis back in the early ’90s. Apparently, one fan could not contain his enthusiasm and so treated the crowd to what would be my first, only, and hopefully last witnessing of full-on public masturbation, front and center on the floor at singer/trumpette Marion’s feet. The band didn’t miss a beat as he was hauled away. After the show I found him up in the gallery, to my horror, sitting next to my mom as she was reading a book. He asked, "Is that your mom?" I nodded, and he slurred, "I think your mom and me are a lot alike." Great first experience of a punk show for a Wisconsin mom.


    Big Black    , Atomizer, 1985
    Sonic terror, menacing and abrasive. I have a tape of this, with Cop Shoot Cop on the other side, in my truck, but I can’t even listen to it since the speakers suck; you can’t listen to this stuff quietly. And for some reason, if I play it at home it seems to make my dog nervous.

    Beangirl, Boner For a Beer
    The heyday for witnessing this local, kooky, hippy, bar rock spectacle is long gone, as singer Steph Dickson morphed into the slightly more sophisticated Tulip Sweet and Her Trail of Tears and moved her kazoo to NYC. A few band members still lurk around these parts, so maybe you can score a copy of this nonstop teenage river party tape. Or call the radio stations and request that they play "Donut Trailer."

    Meat Puppets, Up On The Sun, 1985
    This was the first alternative band I latched onto back in my high school daze. Wait, I don’t think alternative was coined as a genre yet. Well, it was alternative to listening to classic rock radio for me. Kurt Kirkwood’s monotonish vocals and the rambling shimmering guitars still have a timeless appeal. Favorite song: "2 Rivers."

    Slits, Cut, 1979
    Naked muddy fun dub punk gal heroes. Completely underrated.

    Charles Manson, Lie: the Love and the Terror Cult, Awareness Records
    This record contains acoustic alienation recordings prior to the murder splurge. I’m afraid, had I met him back then, I would have fell under his spell, shaved my head, and baked him muffins every day — as opposed to carving up people. He’s a unique voice and talented song rambler. Whenever I play this it seems like folks really dig it until they ask who it is and get all weirded out. His stuff recorded in Vacaville Penitentiary is great, too.

    David Candy    , Play Power
    For all of spastic-gospel-punk-screecher Ian Svenonius’ incarnations (Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War), this is his switcheroo to sophisticated, eerie, dream soundtrack easy listening. His recitation of an entire exotic pudding recipe provides a great introduction to his recent pocketbook offering The Psychic Soviet (Drag City).

    Lungfish
    This is my favorite Dischord band. See local band Thieves for an instrumental approximation. Last time I saw Thieves, at Medusa, I couldn’t escape Lungfish vocalist Daniel Higgs’ conscious vocals seething in my head while they were playing, and if I had any guts I would have quickly grown an Abe Lincoln beard, channeled him, jumped on stage, and grabbed the mic.

    My Dad Is Dead, Chopping Down The Family Tree
    I found myself drawn to this mysterious cardboard-covered CD at Inner Sleeve Records, in Wisconsin, around 1991. I liked the name and abstract art, so I took a chance. I fell for Mark Edwards’ direct, forlorn, hopeful lyrics and was impressed by the big sound coming from what is mainly a one-man band. If you dig Interpol you might enjoy this. The 33-rpm EPs on Scat Records are special re-recordings, different from the LP versions.