The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

  • Dogs, Monkeys, Pups, Ghosts, and Fire

    ART

    Alec Soth: Dog Days, Bogotá

    One of these photos—a scruffy dog isolated in the center of
    the frame—appeared in passing on a web page and immediately snagged my
    eye. There was no attribution provided but I thought, that’s got to be Soth. And
    it was. Why was this goofy, tragic dog as good as a signature? For a
    young guy, Soth seems to have an old guy’s emotional chops—and not just
    any old guy. If you want to see Lear as a dog, or Cordelia as a ghetto
    kid, then go see this show. You’ll be so happy you’ll cry your eyes out
    and go home confused—the best possible outcome for an art show. —Ann Klefstad

    Opening reception Friday from 6 to 8:30 p.m., Weinstein Gallery, 908 W. 46th St., Minneapolis; 612-822-1722.

    WINE & DINE
    Wild about Wine

    Sun bears and chardonnay, monkeys and merlot; join us for a wine
    tasting that is wild, exotic, and tropical! This second annual tasting
    will take place along the Minnesota Zoo’s Tropics Trail featuring a
    variety of wines. Proceeds benefit Minnesota Zoo conservation programs.

    Saturday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., Minnesota Zoo, 13000 Zoo Blvd., Apple Valley; 952-431-9200; $50.

    MUSIC
    Meat Puppets

    The supposedly big news is that Cris Kirkwood
    is back from drug addiction and a stint in jail. But the exciting part
    is that older bro Curt Kirkwood—the alpha talent responsible for both
    the blistering, psychedelic guitar explosions and the sardonic,
    semi-sage lyrics thatare the Pups’ signature one-two punch—has responded to the sibling reunion by spooling forth Rise to Your Knees. While perhaps not as crystalline or cow-punked as vintage classics like Meat Puppets II from
    the ’80s, it’s a strong Meat Puppets collection from the same lineage,
    which augurs well for the trio (a new drummer is on board) as they prove
    that contemporaries of The Replacements and The Minutemen can still raise and daze a ruckus in 2007. —Britt Robson

    Saturday at 8 p.m., Varsity Theater, 1308 Fourth St. SE, Minneapolis; 612-604-0222; $15.

    Ghostface Killah/Rakim/Brother Ali

    This is the most informative seminar on hip-hop microphone skills the Twin Cities will likely ever experience. While Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, and KRS-One would all get some votes, Rakim is
    rightfully regarded as the greatest MC who ever drew breath, duemostly
    to his quicksilver-smooth flow and pioneering, now
    pervasively influential, rhyme schemes. The Wu-Tanger Ghostface Killah is
    a gloriously idiosyncratic word-slinger who has dropped as
    many five-star discs as Jay-Z over the past decade, without Jigga’s
    boorish materialism. And Brother Ali has pulled slightly ahead of Atmosphere’s Slug
    in their thrilling competition for best local rhyme slayer. Speaking of
    competition, we suspect that none of these three will be slacking when
    the potential for embarrassment by comparison is so high and nigh. —Britt Robson

    Sunday at 8 p.m., First Avenue, 701 First Ave. N., Minneapolis, 612-338-8388; $30.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Shining City

    Along with Sarah Ruhl (see here), Minneapolis is also conducting a love affair with Irish playwrights. There was Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman at Frank Theatre in September and Brian Friel’s tragic The Home Place, currently on stage at the Guthrie; now the Jungle Theater adds to the bleak themes put forth by Irishmen with Conor McPherson’s Shining City. Billed as a “ghost story for the holidays,” it’s certainly no Christmas Carol. John
    is a widower who seeks therapy when he starts seeing his wife’s ghost
    everywhere. But his own past, and that of his troubled therapist, prove
    to be more haunting. Uplifting? Maybe not. But arresting? Probably so.
    What’s more, the play is directed by local favorite Joel Sass, who also
    quietly assumed the title of associate artistic director at the Jungle
    this past year. Rumor has it he’s being groomed to succeed founding
    artistic director Bain Boehlke. —Danielle Kurtzleben, photo by Ann Marsden

    Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Jungle Theater, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-7063; $36,$28.

    FILM
    Lake of Fire

    Seventeen years in the making, Lake of Fire, the epic abortion documentary by Tony Kaye (best known for American History X), has
    finally arrived. Mercifully shot in silvery 35mm black and white (thus
    making its horribly graphic imagery that much less disturbing), Lake of Firees chews
    narration to rely on 152 minutes of talking heads, protests, and, of
    course, actual abortions. Kaye has been unflagging in his insistence
    that the film does not fall on either side of the debate, and that he
    seeks only to give us images and information necessary to help the
    viewer see both sides of the issue. Oddly enough, the film doesn’t move
    entirely into the present day—some viewers have already complained that
    the movie barely addresses RU-486 (the abortion pill) which has radically changed the face of the debate. —Peter Schilling

    Opens Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday & Sunday 4:30 & 7:30 p.m., Bell Auditorium, 10 Church St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-627-4430.

  • The Waste Land

    No Country for Old Men opens with a series of shots of a dry, desolate Texas, a place that seems unkind to both man and beast. Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) begins to speak in voice-over, ruminating on his life, on his being a sheriff, admiring the men who served before him, and lamenting the way that crime has spun out of control these days.

    His words come straight from Cormac McCarthy’s source novel, but if the scene looks familiar, it’s because the Coen Brothers have used it before. Shot by shot, this scene is cribbed from their debut picture Blood Simple. There, the sleazy detective, played by the great character actor M. Emmett Walsh, delivered lines that were so much more potent that McCarthy’s overwrought sermon. Walsh muses on the Russians, and how Communists are theoretically supposed to help each other out in life. Not in his backyard. "What I know is Texas," he says. "And down here… you’re on your own."

    The Coens have been known for borrowing from other movies, which is no crime except in the fact that, as I pointed out in November’s Rake, it seems as though they’re more concerned with winking at their sly references than actually developing character or building tight plots. Oddly enough, No Country continues that trend, except that the Coens have taken to devouring their own tails: this movie references their own films repeatedly, with shots that mimic Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing and Fargo. Once again, with No Country for Old Men, they’ve made a slick, entertaining film utterly devoid of emotional resonance and meaning. It’s as empty as a toy gun.

    By now, we all know the story: Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out antelope hunting in the Texas plains when he comes across a drug deal gone bad. A number of dead bodies are rotting in the sun, inexplicably left untouched by the desert animals (this is noted later and then casually dismissed in that "coyotes don’t eat Mexicans".) Moss discovers a truck bed full of bags of some illicit drugs, investigates further and finds a satchel containing two million dollars. Of course, people will be after that two million bucks, including Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem.)

    We’ve been introduced to Chigurh earlier–he was arrested and then strangled a sheriff’s deputy with a pair of handcuffs. This maniac wanders around Texas with a slaughterhouse stun gun, murdering or toying with the ever-polite townsfolk of rural Texas, caricatures that have stepped right off the set of Fargo. Chigurh is not a real human being, but a force of nature. He is hired to go after the money, but for whatever reason doesn’t really seem to care about the money. In fact, he kills the men who hired him, has no regard for the police who pursue him, and basically wrecks everything in his path. He goes after bumpkins at truck stops, old chicken farmers, blows up automobiles, shoots up small towns, walks into high-rises to blast businessmen, kills other hit men, hotel desk clerks, you name it. No one can stop the man. If he is a man.

    Tommy Lee Jones’ Sheriff Bell serves as our moral guide, and is the utterly ineffective arm of the law who is chasing Moss in the hopes of saving him from Chigurh. In the course of the film, he will ruminate at length about the decline of Western Civilization, usually over a cup of coffee. He will do little else.

    Ah, but there’s more–the men who were involved in the drug deal, a number of faceless Mexicans who are easily dispatched and their white counterparts. The Mexicans don’t talk, don’t get any screen time except to die easily, while the white guys are given time to wonder about the phenomenon that is Anton Chigurh. One of these is the bounty hunter Carson Wells, who compares Chigurh to the bubonic plague. Hint, hint, our killing machine is a random act of the God of the Old Testament, just like plague, just like floods, just like locusts. In case you didn’t get it, the lesson will be repeated throughout.

    No Country for Old Men is exciting in much the same way as John Carpenter’s original Halloween, except that it’s long, talky, and its characters nothing more than props on which Cormac McCarthy can drape his endless moralizing. Tommy Lee Jones, looking wearied from the lawlessness and chaos spinning out of his control, gives us one of his few weak performances. There is little reason for his inability to deal with the changing society–if it is changing (one fellow officer blames their woes on piercings and tattoos, as if that’s what’s prompted Chigurh to roam about blasting people.) Jones had a similar role, that he bit into with relish, in the superior In the Valley of Elah. There he was a vet who saw the same thing: values challenged in a modern society that seems in a state of flux. Here he stares and speaks, a man without urgency, who seems more interested in sipping coffee and figuring out what the killings mean than actually solving anything.

    This is clearly the Coens most "serious" film. And yet, it is full of references to their other movies, ones that didn’t think quite as highly of themselves, and at times it’s hard not to laugh at the similarities. Like when Llewelyn hurls his bag of money over the fence at the U.S.-Mexican border and into the reeds, hoping it will suffice as a hiding spot. This is right out of Fargo, when Steve Buscemi digs a hole in the snow with an ice scraper, hoping to hide his loot. Or Chigurh slowing down in his car, leaning over with his gun and shooting at a hawk, just to indicate what a bad-ass he is. Shot by shot it’s the same as the one in Raising Arizona, when Randall "Tex" Cobb, the demon motorcyclist, blows rabbits away from his motorcycle while Nick Cage narrates, "He was especially cruel to little things," a line that would be a good fit here.

    As usual in a Coen film, the "small" people in No Country for Old Men are dolts with goofy accents, people who wouldn’t give second thought to giving a man a smile and directions into town even if he were holding a bloody axe and covered in chunks of flesh. The Coens seem unwilling to trust their actors to bring more to their small roles than the lines they read–great films allow the small parts to shine, to enrich the overall plot. Here, they’re dead, empty. And Kelly McDonald, playing Llewelyn’s wife Carla Jean, is simply awful, with a grating accent to match her mother’s. Javier Bardem is very good, with what he has to work with. His Anton Chigurh is chilling. But more so than any other horror villain? Bardem seems to have taken a cue from Sir Anthony Hopkins–this’ll probably win him his Oscar.

    There are moments of genuine suspense here, and the Coens are crack filmmakers when it comes to shooting scenes of chase and gunplay. They have an eye for detail that remains impressive, like sweating milk bottles, scuff marks on a tile floor (from the strangling of the first sheriff’s deputy), dust swirling through the light of a hole where a lock used to be as Chigurh waits for another victim.

    If only they would devote as much attention to their characters and their plots. What are the motivations of these people? Llewelyn takes the money, but never talks about what it would mean to him. Chigurh never addresses why he’s intent on killing people, any people. At times the gunplay gets so out of hand you wonder where all
    the rest of the world has gone–how the hell do you shoot up a Main Street in a small town and not have the cops arrive or other folks darting about for their lives?

    Worst of all, the fate of Llewelyn Moss indicates a cavalier or contemptuous attitude from both Cormac McCarthy and the Coens. The climax of this film happens offscreen, merely an afterthought, to allow the Meaning of the Story to be hammered into our brains, just in case we didn’t get it in the first two hours. All Moss’ work, all his pain and suffering, all the multitude of death that he’s seen, merely drifts away so that Sheriff Bell can drink coffee and philosophize in not one but two lengthy scenes. Imagine this in, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or Halloween–law enforcement officers stopping from chasing these teen-killers to stop at a diner to mutter things like "the crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure." Well, it’s hard to take its measure because it’s not real. Chigurh isn’t any more a reflection of the modern criminal than Freddie or Mike Myers. But that this ostensibly probing dialogue comes at the expense of understanding Moss’ plight is a disgrace.

    The act is getting old. No Country for Old Men was no great shakes of a novel, and now it is an overpraised thriller, impressed with itself, all technique and no heart. I’ll take Blood Simple, as it was brief and funny in spots, or, even better, cheap 70s fare like Charley Varrick or the great modern noir One False Move, both heartfelt, moving thrillers. I want to see movies about people. No Country for Old Men is a story about men struggling in a waste land of conflicting moralities, but the real waste land is the filmmakers’ attitude towards their characters. Maybe someday the Coens will abandon their props, look around, and see the human beings that live and breathe around them.

  • Parties, Poetry, Mystery, and Virgins

    ART, MUSIC, FOOD

    10,000 Arts Party

    Join us this evening for a highly charged 10,000 Arts Party at The Bakken Museum.
    This electric event features the music of Bella Koshka and performances
    of Mary Shelley Finding Frankenstein by the Bakken Science Theatre. You’d think that’d be enough, but not even close! Tonight’s event also features Four Seasons Dance, Live Action Set, Minnesota
    School of Botanical Art    , The Bakken’s Amber Jewelry Collection, Ear
    Things by Laura    , Lowell Lundeen Jewelry, Lightening Photo Exhibit by
    Photopixels    , Recycled Art by House of Balls, and a projected art show of
    MNartists’ work by Clement Shimizu. Plus, enjoy beverage sampling and featured appetizers by Simon
    Delivers’     local favorites.

    6-9:30 p.m., The Bakken Museum, 3527 Zenith Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-926-3878.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Melancholy Play

    You heard it here first, folks: Sarah Ruhl
    is the hottest contemporary playwright in the country right now, and her
    work is particularly popular in Minneapolis. While Ruhl’s The Clean House continues at Mixed Blood (through November 18), 3 Sticks, a gem of a troupe, takes on Ruhl’s remarkable Melancholy Play. (There’s more on the horizon, including Ten Thousand Things’ production of Ruhl’s Eurydicein
    February.) This contemporary farce concerns Ruhl’s distinction between
    depression and melancholy—the latter, she postures, can be a beautiful,
    even healthy, thing—but that’s not to say this is heavy material. After
    all, one character is so melancholic she turns into an almond. And the
    almond, as Ruhl writes in her notes for the play, is shaped the very
    same as the amygdala, the part of the human brain that processes emotion. —Christy DeSmith

    7 p.m., Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-825-8949; $12-$15.

    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    Loft Instructors Read from Their Work

    There’s nothing quite so rewarding as hearing an author read his/her own work. Good or bad — the author’s own rendition opens a new avenue for interpretation, and a very important one at that. Granted, I’ve heard my fair share of wretched readings in the past, suprising ones that blare out the distinction between pen and tongue, that remind us that writing is something to be done in silence. But somehow I highly doubt that’s what is in store for us this evening as Loft instructors Cindra Halm and Carol Pearce Bjorlie share their work and show us how it’s done. Surely Halm creates her poetry in a space between pen and tongue, the birthplace of sound and rhythm. And surely Bjorlie… surely Bjorlie… (Sorry, but it sounds so beautiful. See. Words do sound.) Surely Bjorlie can sing her poetry as masterfully as she plays that cello. “As a musician, I
    listen with every fiber of my being," claims Bjorlie. "As a writer, I listen for the ‘still small voice’ inside.” Tonight, we have a rare opportunity hear that ‘still small voice’ ourselves.

    7 p.m., The Loft Literary Center, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-215-2575.

    Protect and Defend

    If you prefer a good political thriller over poetry, you might want to head out to Galleria this evening to meet New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn. His latest novel, Protect and Defend, begins in the heart of Iran,
    where billions of dollars are being spent on the development of a
    nuclear program. As you can imagine, all hell breaks loose. Israel attacks. Iran cries out for blood. U.S. counterintelligence steps in — of course. And the threat of war ensues. How will Mitch Rapp save the day this time?

    7:30 p.m., Barnes & Noble Booksellers Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633; free.

    FILM
    Perestroika

    I have to admit (and please don’t be offended by this), my favorite all-time movie line is from Slava Tsuckerman’s Liquid Sky: "I kill with my [female body part]." (You figure it out.) It’s no wonder his sci-fi heroin film became a cult classic. But tonight you can catch a different side of Tsuckerman, perhaps a more mature side at this point, in a test-screening — the first showing ever — of his new film Perestroika. The film, currently being prepared for the 2008 Berlin Film Festival stars the great F. Murray Abraham (Salieri from Amadeus, a role that won him the Oscar), Ally Sheedy and Sam Robards.

    7:30 p.m., Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; $8 (students $6, members/seniors $5).

    STYLE AND MORE
    The Vengeful Virgin

    “Low-cut gowns.” That’s all my boyfriend had to read (in the ad copy) before agreeing to accompany me to RetroRama, the Minnesota Historical Society’s celebration of ’50s pulp. Does Minnesota have a particular connection to pulp, other than the impressive collection of titles now residing in the dusty basements of a few area bookstores? I guess we’ll soon find out. As for me, I’ve found inspiration in a few of Gil Brewer’s titles: Satan Is a Woman, Backwoods Tease, Nude on Thin Ice, and, of course, The Vengeful Virgin.
    Not to be a dead giveaway, but I’ll be there with my trusty sidekick,
    monsieur Elph, so as to keep all eyes on the glorious cleavage—plus,
    with any luck, a few dozen sweater girls, ruby-red lipstick, sparkling
    jewels, and at least one stiletto through some sucker’s heart. The
    fellas are supposed to wear fedoras and blah blah blah … There’ll also
    be dancing and a performance by the Lit 6 Project. For tips on what to wear, visit the Historical Society’s handy, little tutorial (halfway down the page). —Christy DeSmith

    7 to 11 p.m., Minnesota History Center, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-259-3000; $15, MHS members $12.

  • MinnPost Debut: A "Thoughtful" Approach to News

    RYBAK: Sigh.

    For some time, I’ve put off writing a post about today’s 11 a.m. debut of what’s being touted in some circles as the divine answer to the Twin Cities’ current Crisis in Journalism. I’m referring, of course, to the launch of MinnPost.com, the online newspaper creation of Joel Kramer, the former Star Tribune editor-turned-publisher-turned journalistic manumitter.

    Kramer stepped forward this summer to, I guess, rescue the Twin Cities from the ravages of PiPress owner Dean Singleton and the faceless Avista-owned Star Tribune. Both, you see, have condensed news, bought off and spit out reporters at such an alarming rate (well, alarming if you’re a reporter), that it seems Kramer decided it was his sacred duty to restore Twin Cities journalism to its illustrious past.

    I want to put some emphasis on the word “sacred.” It contributes to the fact that—as much as I’m trying to keep an open mind about MinnPost and as much as I would like to see it succeed as a kick-ass publication—the whole undertaking makes my teeth hurt.

    As Kramer makes clear in his rather dry lectures–um, presentations– (one of which I recently attended) that there will be nothing frivolous about MinnPost. No sports scores, no stocks, no movie, music or theater reviews. No oddball, newsy feature stories that gave newspapers of old their vibrancy. Instead, Kramer emphasized, his new publication is designed to attract “news-intense,” “civically-engaged” readers, the sort of readers “who like to read The Economist,” and who value news written by “high quality” “professional” reporters “who care about Minnesota.”

    Hence, his new publication’s motto: “A Thoughtful Approach to News.”

    That’s where my hackles really start heading north.

    Let’s talk about how Thoughtful it is to tout this new online/new media approach, then, just to be on the safe side, announce that you’ll be passing out 2,000 printed copies of the paper every day. They won’t look like a paper, mind you, (just eight sheets of 8×11 paper stapled together) and they’ll be handed out on street corners in downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul, the 494 strip and Edina. How Thoughtful is it, when you’re operating on a shoestring and paying only your editors full-time wages, to be spending 20 cents a copy on that endeavor, for a total of $104,000 per year? Oh, and then brag about the fact that, as a non-profit, you’ve already raised about $120,000. Guess we know where those Thoughtfully-donated dollars will be going.

    It just doesn’t make sense.

    Nor does it make sense to tout yourself as an online version of the extraordinarily popular Slate and Salon online journals where little similarity exists. Kramer has taken pains to distance his Thoughtful Approach to News from Thoughtless, opinionated outfits (well, like ours). However, Slate was just described recently in the New York Observer (probably not a Thoughtful enough publication to suit Kramer) as a fixture of “opinion journalism.” The San Francisco-based Salon is an online magazine (as opposed to a collection of tiny posts or news stories) which prominently features reviews and articles about music, books, and films.

    LAMBERT: Damn, talk about a tough crowd. I knew I needed a little sharper knife when I was alone in here, but you, girl, are one hard sell. Do you heckle funeral eulogies? … not to make any connection between funerals and the arrival of MinnPost.I’ve listened to more than a few of Kramer’s presentations, and I concede they aren’t exactly 20 minutes of Chris Rock. And I’m assuming he will steer MinnPost in a direction I wouldn’t go … entirely.

    But before anyone accuses me of being closed off and utterly negative to MinnPost I have to say I admire and will root for anyone who can deliver more credible content into the public news diet. Too many people consume too much fact-free bullshit. Anyone who is working to re-balance that situation has my support. Moreover, I admire someone who is willing to stick $250k of his own money into the venture and actively work at it, as Kramer has and is.

    I attended his open house, too. Remember? I was the one encouraging hugs between you and my old drinking buddy, Neal Justin, (who we told we were going to rip for his new Monday column, and which we did a couple days ago). The concept and the cost of this 2,000 stapled copies thing strikes me as kind of funky. The sort of thing that could be the first item red-lined when someone screams, “belt-tightening!” But I do recall Kramer talking about some kind of feature/analysis style sports coverage.

    In fact, one of the more interesting conversations I had over at the MinnPost office was with ex-Strib Timberwolves beat writer, Steve Aschburner, who will contribute stories to the site. Steve’s separation from the Strib was one of the most hamhanded of many hamhanded episodes. But he seems philosophical about it now.He said two things that I found interesting. One, he sees in Kramer – for all his wonkiness and lack of hip-hop cred – “an actual leader,” as he put it. A much overlooked factor in the struggles of modern newsrooms is that while the staffs may be aging-to-aged veterans, middle level editing/managing jobs – thankless eye-glazing jobs — are often handled by comparatively inexperienced people for whom budget control is as high or higher a priority than quality writing and reporting. Too many, in my experience, don’t even qualify as avid newspaper readers themselves. I’m paraphrasing here, but Aschburner’s view was that, “I’m tired of being told to respect and follow somebody just because they’ve been handed a title. With Joel, I have no proble
    m following his direction because he’s proven he can lead.”

    The other thing Aschburner mentioned was that as a sports writer he doubts he’ll have the difficulty making the transition to the less formal and freer style of the Web. Sports departments everywhere have long had a special license for language, attitude and commentary that newsroom managers in other departments – some for reasons of inexperience, others for reasons of incompetence and/or timidity – don’t allow their staffs.

    RYBAK: I truly am sorry. I don’t mean to be so nasty. But as a ratty-ass reporter, undue pretentiousness beckons like an overfull balloon to a pinholder. Oops, there I go again, not being Thoughtful.

    I want to say something nice about J-Kram, so you’ll get off my butt. I wasn’t working at the Strib when Joel was in the building. But my homies say that he was one of the finest editors the paper ever had during his days in the newsroom. A guy you wanted looking over your shoulder as you wrote. The best.

    Once he ascended to the publisher’s suite, however, opinion shifts. Kramer the publisher, in order to save journalism back in the mid-1990s, implemented procedures at the Strib that remain laughable to this day.

    He divided its reporters into “teams,” (which totally Balkanized the newsroom), and engaged in a whole bunch of newsroom renaming: Subscribers became “reader-customers,” the managing editor became the “news leader,” and the newspaper became “perhaps the most ridiculed newspaper in the country,” according to a New York Times article about the Strib written in 1995. Kramer, the once-accessible editor dug in his heels and stubbornly defended his rampant jargonism, which was dismantled after he left the paper.

    I see Joel the editor in his commitment to an ambitious undertaking like this and in seeking to bring some legitimate news gathering back to the marketplace, even if I think he is severely underpaying the talent. There are some real standouts among the reporters he’s signed up and I look forward to seeing their bylines regularly.

    However, I see Joel the publisher in his stubborn belief that he knows better than anyone else when it comes to the Internet. If he really believed in the Internet, he wouldn’t be messing around with handing out expensive stapled copies of an online paper. If he really understood the Internet, I think MinnPost would be a lot more Daily Mole and a lot less refried mainstream media.

    That said, I’ll be reading with great interest.

    LAMBERT: The other issue that caught my attention was when he declared that MinnPost, with people like Doug Grow, Britt Robson, Susan Albright, David Brauer, my old buddy Sarah Janecek, G.R. Anderson and Steve Berg, to mention just a few, would not be offering political endorsements … on the advice of his attorneys and their interpretation of the 501(c)3 statutes.

    I don’t get this.

    As it is, MinnPost might be tilted more heavily left-of-center than the old Strib – Sarah can’t do all the righty lifting – but other than porn and Britney Spears (a redundancy, I suppose) nothing drives traffic like politics, and a fair and open Op-Ed board-style discussion of candidates and referendums would be pretty damned interesting.

    This will be a fascinating test of the appetites and affinities of web users, web-intense users. Will Kramer appeal to an MPR quality audience with a product that goes only a little bit further than the existing daily papers? Or will he find that the stories/posts that earn the largest audience – and hold out the greatest potential for ad revenue – point in him a different direction, possibly more Slate and Salon than StarTribune.com?

    I wish him and his crew the best.

  • Butch Cassidy Jumps into the Vat

    Back in October, I wrote about a downright decent jug wine from Three Thieves, which I bought more for the John Wayne-ness of the design and the silver screwcap than the substance inside.

    Today, it was announced that Newman’s Own, the food company-cum-charity owned by Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, is adding wine to its list of wares. And their partner in this venture is Rebel Wine Co., the parent of Three Thieves and brother or sister (or distant cousin) to the more pedestrian Sutter Home.

    Newman’s Own already produces everything from bottled salad dressing to organic fig cookies to healthier-than-thou pet food. And its founders appear to exert a power second only to Oprah’s. Most winemakers wait for years to produce their first vintage. But Newman’s Own will release its first wines — a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon, both from California — in December. Each will retail for approximately $16 a bottle, making Butch Cassidy’s jug of hooch roughly 40 percent more expensive than Three Thieves.

    I like the idea behind Newman’s Own. It was founded by Newman and his friend A.E. Hotchner, the author of King of the Hill, in 1982. It’s a for-profit corporation that gives 100 percent of its net (after taxes and operating costs) to educational and charitable organizations, including Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a summer program for seriously ill children in Connecticut. The company’s spot-on tagline: Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good.

    I’m amused by the baldly kitschy, folksy way they market their products, with Paul and Joanne dressed up like the couple from American Gothic on many of the labels. Then there’s Paul in a straw hat and bowtie, Paul in a sombrero, Paul like Julius Caesar with a tomato smashed on top of his head.

    But about their products I am, frankly, torn. There’s no doubt in my mind they’re more expensive (by 10-30%) than foodstuffs of similar quality. Yet, this is a company that’s given away $200 million; that premium clearly is going to good use. What’s more, I’ve never seen a food company so forthcoming with information: go on the Newman’s Own website and you can find detailed ingredient and nutrition data on every single thing they sell.

    It remains to be seen whether the Newman’s Own cachet is enough to put a $16 price tag on what likely will be a garden-variety California Chardonnay. With really solid French, South American, Spanish, and Italian wines selling for under $12 a bottle, it will be a tough leap for me to make. I might prefer to drink a white Rhone wine and make my own charitable donations.

  • An Endless River of Potatoes

    My first night in that shitty motel room in a tiny Wyoming town I was exhausted and wiped out on malt liquor and I slept in my clothes on top of the bedspread. All night I dreamt of potatoes on a conveyor belt, an endless river of potatoes.

    I’d driven straight through, twenty hours, to claim my mother’s body from the Wyoming Women’s Prison in Lusk. She’d been there for twelve years, after being convicted of paying a couple of greaseballs to whack my stepfather. My mother had worked with the two punks at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and she’d paid them 800 bucks to do a job that they’d botched badly.

    I’m not entirely clear on how she ended up in Wyoming in the first place, but my mother had already done a previous, short stint at Lusk, this for embezzling money from the towing company she was working for in Sheridan.

    I had learned from her infrequent letters that she was battling breast cancer, but I never knew quite what to believe when it came to my mother, and, despite her increasingly pitiful pleas, I hadn’t been out to visit her.

    My father had been killed at the tail end of the war in Vietnam, and he was buried back in his old hometown in Wisconsin, alongside his parents and one of his brothers. I had no idea what I was going to do with my mother’s body, but I knew there wasn’t much I could afford, including, I felt certain, shipping her to Wisconsin to be buried next to my dad.

    I met a chain-smoking old reverend out at the prison. He was hunch-backed and had faded tattoos up and down both his arms, all the way to the wrists. His white collar was filthy with grease, and the shoulders of his black shirt were so heavily dusted with dandruff that it looked like he’d been doused with baby powder.

    The reverend didn’t have a whole lot of good advice for me, but he wanted me to know that my mother had been "redeemed." I didn’t ask for elaboration, but I got some anyway. She had turned her life around in prison, he told me, and had developed a deep, personal relationship with Christ. I heard a good deal more about this business, and the upshot was that she’d purportedly been at peace with herself when she died.

    I guess I was happy enough to hear that. Good for her, I thought. It didn’t, though, much help me with my own present dilemma. I made a few inquiries and realized pretty quickly that a coffin and burial were out of the question. I made arrangements to have her cremated in Lusk.

     

    It was approaching dusk when I went downtown to pick up my mother’s ashes, and afterwards, as I walked back up the street to my car, a kid in a devil mask burst from a bush, shook a plastic pitchfork in my face, and dashed back off down the sidewalk. It was, I just then realized, Halloween.

    I decided not to wait around another night, and gassed up the car and got back on the highway. At some point I stopped and got a motel room along the road, and I took the box with my mother’s ashes into the room with me and set them next to the television. It creeped me out having them there, though, and because I was having a hard time sleeping I finally hauled them back out to the car at three o’clock in the morning.

    The next day I realized that I didn’t want the ashes sitting there in the car with me all the way back across the country. They were in a plain cardboard box, and there was just something about it that bothered and distracted me. It also didn’t seem right to just shove them in the trunk.

    At some point I pulled off at a primitive rest stop that was situated right on a fast moving river, and I hauled the ashes down to the shore, tore open the box, and removed the twist tie from the plastic bag. I crept out into the river a bit on some rocks and turned the box upside down. It was sort of nice at first; a little cloud hung in the air for a moment, drifted a bit on the wind, and then settled on the surface of the water and was carried away. The last batch, though, was sort of clumped together, and I had to thump the bottom of the box to dislodge the rest of the contents. A heavy clod of the stuff finally tumbled from the box, hit the water with a splash, and promptly sank like a stone.

    The whole thing seemed sort of cold and pathetic, so I closed my eyes, tossed a quarter in near where my mother had entered the river, and wished her peace.

  • The Vengeful Virgin

    “Low-cut gowns.” That’s all boyfriend had to read (in the ad copy) before agreeing to accompany me to RetroRama, the Minnesota Historical Society’s celebration of ’50s pulp. Does Minnesota have a particular connection to pulp, other than the impressive collection of titles now residing in the dusty basements of a few area bookstores? I guess we’ll
    soon find out. As for me, I’ve found inspiration in a few of Gil Brewer’s
    titles: Satan Is a Woman, Backwoods Tease, Nude on Thin Ice, and, of course, The Vengeful Virgin. Not to be a dead giveaway, but I’ll be there with my trusty sidekick, monsieur Elph, so as to keep all eyes on the glorious cleavage—plus, with any luck, a few dozen sweater girls, ruby-red lipstick, sparkling jewels, and at least one stiletto through some sucker’s heart. The fellas are supposed to wear fedoras and blah blah blah … There’ll also be dancing and a performance by the Lit 6 Project. For tips on what to wear, visit the Historical Society’s handy, little tutorial (halfway down the page).

    p.s. My good friend Adam Demers made the ad above—with the help of the artist Thomas Allen, but of course.

     

  • BREAKING NEWS [UPDATED]: Scott Libin Named WCCO-TV News Director

    As we projected, WCCO-TV announced Scott Libin as its new news director to staff this afternoon. Libin, former news director at KSTP-TV, comes back to the Twin Cities from his job as managing editor for on-ine content at the Poynter Institute, the journalistic think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida.

    Libin replaces Jeff Kiernan, who left the station in September for WBZ-TV in Boston. That leaves only Libin’s former employer KSTP with a news director slot to fill. (Prevailing belief there is that GM Rob Hubbard will hire from within this time.)

    Lambert spoke with Libin from his Poynter office this afternoon and filed the following:

     Scott made a point of saying all the right things. Like how, "Even when I was at KSTP I greatly admired the work they were doing at WCCO." (He’s never been accused of not having a smooth, political touch.)

    But the current situation has two lines of thinking. One is that the mini-franchises the station has built with unique segments like "Reality Check", "In the Know" and "Good Question" are heading Ch. 4 into an irresistible direction for more a feature-ish style of news product, something the new guy — Libin — would be expected to build upon.

    The other is that these same mini-franchises have become a bit of a velvet trap (only one, "Reality Check", has much of a news punch), and that attention to tougher news coverage has slackened as time and resources migrated their way. Point being that the new guy — Libin — would have to do something about that.

    So, what is it? Ying or yang?

    "I don’t know," was Libin’s response. "And frankly, I think it’d be pretty foolish of me to plant my flag on anything before I’m in the building. But listen, my impression of ‘CCO has always been that they do a very credible, very solid job of covering the news of the day and breaking news, and that while it isn’t exactly rocket science to want to build on what is working, I don’t know that the way you do that, necessarily, is by multiplying the exact same elements."

    One upside to WCCO comes as a consequence of Libin’s somewhat professorial personality. As much as he loves to talk the nuts, bolts and theory of journalism, he does actually listen. (And as Don Shelby’s boss he’ll have to learn to listen a lot. … oh settle down, that’s a joke.) As WCCO knows from fairly recent memory, (the crowd that preceded Kiernan), fatal symptoms of bad managers include those who arrive with no curiosity about the staff”s institutional memory, no apparent curiosity in what anyone else thinks might be a good next move and a wholly unearned, "New Sheriff in Town" attitude.

    "Yeah," said Libin, "I’m not really one of those characters who comes in and marks his territory as a first order of business. I’ll take some time to talk to people, and see what I can learn." (He says he’s taking a flight up Sunday and plans on schmoozing the troops most of Monday.)

    Another facet in Libin’s favor over the 24 others who interviewed for the job might have been the Poynter factor, in the context of the very imminent convergence of the Internet and TV and the transition to all-digital transmission on February 17, 2009. Given the average four to five year life cycle of most news directors, both these epochal events in the history of media will likely occur on his watch at ‘CCO. And down at Poynter, convergence and transition are the kinds of topics they sprinkle on their Froot Loops for breakfast.

    Does Libin have any deep thoughts he’d like to share before starting work here, Dec. 3?

    "Well," he says, "I wouldn’t bet on any news organization that isn’t dealing with those issues on a daily basis. But overall, after hearing that newspapers are dead, that the book is dead and that TV is dead, I still think there’s plenty of life in the TV beast. I’m looking forward to this."

    Libin will be gratified to know that the ‘CCO newsroom broke into applause when his name was announced this afternoon.

     

    Here’s the official WCCO press release:

    Scott Libin has been named News Director of WCCO-TV, it was announced today by Susan Adams Loyd, WCCO-TV Vice President and General Manager. Libin, who is currently managing editor of Poynter Online and a faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., will oversee the station’s day-to-day news operation beginning Dec. 3.

    "Scott Libin is a highly regarded news executive," said Loyd. "Colleagues and competitors tip their hat to his leadership abilities and eloquence. He has many qualities that make him the perfect fit for this position, particularly his journalistic integrity, along with strong ties to the Twin Cities. We are thrilled to welcome Scott to the WCCO family."

    "I’ve admired WCCO for so many years," said Libin. "It’s a truly exceptional television station recognized and respected by journalists across the country. I’m honored by the opportunity to be a part of it, and I can hardly wait to get started. This would be an extraordinary job for any news director. But beyond that, my wife and I are very excited about getting back to the Twin Cities, to family and friends, and to be a part of a community we really love."

    At Poynter, Libin is responsible for daily online coverage and edit content for the country’s No. 1 Web site serving journalists. He also leads seminars for journalists. This was Libin’s second time working for Poynter. From 1995 to 1998, he taught management, producing, reporting and ethics there.

    Libin is known locally as he was the News Director for KSTP-TV in St. Paul from 1998 to 2003. He was responsible for producing eight hours of daily news for the market’s first duopoly (KSTP and KSTC) and was leading the charge when KSTP won the NPPA Station of the Year award twice and the regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence, Best Newscast and Spot News Coverage. Prior to that, Libin was Vice President of News at WGHP-TV in Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem, N.C. He was managing editor, weekend anchor and senior reporter for this station from 1986 to 1991. Before getting into television, Libin was a Congressional Press Secretary for the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

    Libin graduated with honors from the University of Richmond, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and journalism. He earned his Master of Arts in journalism and public affairs from American University. His wife, Michelle, grew up in Bloomington and has family across the Twin Cities.

    WCCO-TV is part of the CBS Television Station Division, a division of CBS Corporation.

     

     

  • Prominent Local Attorney Wins "Golden Wingnut" Award!

    Not being much of a fan of show biz and media award shows –
    I mean, what explains WCCO’s “Good Question” guy beating out Pat Kessler for “Best
    Political Reporting” or whatever it was called at this year’s local Emmys? – I usually
    just ignore the latest Winner du Jour.

    Except … when the news gets as good as the news this morning.

    I mean
    we here at The Slaughter are nothing if not (also) local-local, hyper-local,
    and when a prominent local attorney walks away with the championship in a
    national media competition we have an obligation – to you – to report the good
    news.

    I am a fan of Kevin Drum, who blogs as “The Political Animal”
    for The Washington Monthly, and I admit that I have both followed avidly and
    voted in his contest for the “Golden Wingnut Awards”, his first annual
    competition to honor the most unhinged, delusional, delirious, no-relation-to-anything-on-this-planet
    nut-baggery posted in all the blogs in all the world … which I think is saying
    something. Furthermore, this year’s award is uniquely prestigious by virtue of being the 1st Annual competition, meaning it includes every astoundingly lunatic, over-the-top thing ever written in the history of the Internet up until this year.

    Now do you appreciate the depth of this competition?

    But enough with the suspense. Ladies and gentlemen a huge round
    of applause for Minneapolis
    attorney, John Hinderaker, a.k.a. “Hind Rocket”, the sharpest shiv at Powerlineblog.com,
    Time magazine’s 2004 “Blog of the Year” for his July 2005 posting titled, “Stroke
    of Genius?” The guy smoked serious wingers like — the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin and Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds — by 2-to-1!

    The breathless opening to Hinderaker’s Wingnut Hall of Fame post:

    A Stroke of Genius?

    It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision
    and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like
    a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one
    masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

     

    Now that is what I call separating yourself from the herd.

    Mr. Hinderaker is notable for being both a highly influential far right-wing
    blogger, (the giddy intellectual chops on display in the above quote clearly demonstrate his
    appeal to the echo chamber crowd), and, historically, a huge source of concern
    to the upper managers of the Star Tribune, at least under the leadership of
    Anders Gyllenhaal.

    Powerline’s persistent, high national-profile ridiculing of the paper’s
    alleged “liberal bias” and “political correctness” was – despite Gyllenhaal’s
    denials – a key motivating factor in the ascension of Katherine Kersten from
    Op-Ed think tank contributor to metro columnist. Moreover Powerline’s call-and-shout
    alliance/mentorship with Kersten continues to make them important, albeit un-credited
    contributors to the paper’s new, uh, “balanced” tone.

    Anyway, nice going, John. You’re a credit to the local culture. We couldn’t
    be more proud.

    Here is a complete list of all the other contenders in Drum’s contest, none of whom, as I say, really
    came close to topping Hinderaker for sheer, I-can-no-longer-feel-my-body hyperbole.

  • Cookery Books: Next Gen

    I don’t really want to think about Christmas yet, I shun any holiday movies/songs until after Thanksgiving. I even direct my 4 year old to avert his gaze from the shiny shiny currently draped all over Target.

    And yet, I have to begin thinking of what I’m going to send as my "holiday card" because it’s rarely just a holiday card. I used to send mock-newsletters that detailed every sniffle and horrible disease we had suffered over the year, but that grew boring. Two years ago I sent a family DVD (complete with a pack of microwave popcorn) and that was a stitch. Last year I did nothing, I bailed completely.

    So this year I’m sending everyone a collection of the family’s favorite recipes, complete with photos and snarky comments, natch. I’m thinking of calling it The Hot 12, and I just have to figure out the media: CD, recipe cards, bound book, printed on magnet paper…I’m not sure yet.

    But that’s the beauty of the cookbook, it’s evolving along with the way we cook. My shelf of cookbooks, which I peruse regularly, is stacked with everything from glossy chef diatribes to crumbly 1928 vintage antique store finds. I have a file on the Epicurious site that is crammed with hundreds of favorites, and a collection of hand scrabbled notecards housed stylishly in my Russel + Hazel organizer. I use them all, I haven’t given up one way for another, different meals and different situations call for different methods.

    And you don’t have to be a food writer to compile your own cookbook. Epicurious has launched TasteBook, with which you download your favorite recipes from the site into a custom book they’ll create for you.

    Many uber-creative cooks have been making use of Blurb to realize their dream of authorship. Download the software for free and you can design your own pages in input your own recipes.

    If anyone knows about the future of food and cooking, it’s got to be Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago. He’s a big name with those who fancy molecular gastronomy and deconstructionism. He’s a man of atomized shrimp and caramel bubbles, of course he wouldn’t do a cookbook like anyone else. His deal with Ten Speed Press includes a new paradigm for royalties and a web-based addendum complete with video demos and further instruction.

    Maybe I’ll try to pull that off next year …