The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

  • Shampoo or Carcinogenic Slop?

    Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face, will be reading from her book at the U of M tomorrow evening. The effect, probably, will be a chorus of indignant gasps from a congregation of eco-conscious consumers. Malkan’s book chronicles all the harmful chemicals found in everyday cosmetics, like lead in our lipstick, coal tar in our shampoo, and dioxane in baby soap. What
    the … ?

    So long as it resides in Minneapolis any such forum must also include Horst Rechelbacher. (Other panelists include Jeanne Rizzo, RN; Jane Houlihan, V.P., Environmental Working Group and architect of the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database; and Lindsay Dahl, coordinator for the Minnesota Healthy Legacy Coalition.) Rechelbacher, of course, is founder of both Aveda and Intelligent Nutrients. I’m a fan of both product lines, even if my pocketbook mandates the occasional Suave purchase.

    Random aside: Some of my favorite local legends concern cash-strapped students at the Aveda Institute getting busted for using non-Aveda products. True story: My best friend from high school, who studied massage, was walking to class one day when a teacher approached and said scornfully: “Do I smell a synthetic fragrance on you?” She was kicked out for the rest of the day. You’d think that, for $20,000+ per year, she could have worn whatever the hell she wants. I recently asked my stylist, who also graduated from Aveda, whether these stories were true. Her response was an emphatic “yes!”

    Helpful aside: If you want to checkup on your favorite cosmetic, Rizzo’s database is quite helpful. As it turns out, my favorite face lotion, Neutrogena Original Formula Anti-Wrinkle Cream SPF 15 (with Retinol A), received a “moderate hazard” rating and includes ingredients linked to cancer and developmental/reproductive toxicity. Yikes! And who knew Neutrogena was still engaging in animal testing! Fooled again by another eco-feigny name, I suppose.

  • You Can't Sue City Hall

    John Ashcroft, the predecessor of Alberto Gonzales and
    former title holder of “Craziest Attorney General since John Mitchell” has an op-ed
    piece     in today’s NY Times. In it he argues that the telecommunication
    companies who provided access for the Bush administration’s illegal wiretaps
    should be held immune from lawsuits.

    As he says, “Whatever one feels about the underlying
    intelligence activities or the legal basis on which they were initially
    established, it would be unfair and contrary to the interests of the United
    States to allow litigation that tries to hold private telecommunications
    companies liable for them.”

    I can see his point. Because if the administration can
    blithely get away with breaking the law, why shouldn’t the companies who helped
    the do it get away with it too? It wouldn’t be fair to stick them with the
    blame just because they didn’t listen to their mother when she said, “Well, just
    because George or Dick or John or Alberto jumps off the bridge, that doesn’t
    mean you have to jump off the bridge, too.”

    It’s easy to see why Ashcroft is advocating the immunity.
    After all, since leaving the Attorney General’s office, he’s made his living as
    a consultant—and op-ed writer—for, you guessed it, telecom companies.

    But, whatever his motives, I’m going to have to agree with
    him on this one, although not for the reasons he cites. No, revealing
    procedures of our intelligence community during the discovery process is not
    the most dangerous possible outcome of these lawsuits. (I mean, c’mon, do you
    think the guys who outed Valerie Plame really give a damn about that?) Not granting immunity from lawsuits to the
    telecoms is far more dangerous than letting the lawsuits proceed for the reason
    that this suit would inevitably end up in the Supreme Court.

    Imagine what would happen there. If you can’t, let me help
    you. What if the Court decided that it’s alright for people to break black-letter
    law if the president says so? Because if it came to that, that’s the only logical way to let the
    telecoms off the legal hook.

    And if we had the highest court deciding that it’s okay to
    break the law, pretty soon we’re gonna be hearing things like “Freedom is
    Slavery” or “War is Peace” or “Ignorance is Strength.”

    It’s not that far fetched. After all, Big Brother is already
    watching.

  • John Hines Out at KTLK

    John Hines’ 17 year-run with Clear Channel and what Clear Channel was before it was Clear Channel ended this morning — a Monday, go figure — when he was told he was being removed from his morning job at KTLK (100.3-FM). Hines was a standard at Clear Channel’s country music K102 until this past March when he shifted over — by his choice — to add a little mainstream professional sheen to ratings-deprived KTLK, an all right-wing talk station.

    Hines shrugged off the move when reached by phone around noon today. "It’s a part of the business. I accept that. They said we’re going in a different direction, and I get that."

    He said his six-month non-compete and six-month severance will tie him over, and until then he will happily entertain offers from other stations in the market. The most obvious of those being KSTP AM 1500, where rumors are swirling about their interest in KFAN’s Dan Barreiro — most likely for afternoon drive, were Barreiro to leave Clear Channel, and were Joe Soucheray agree to earlier tee-times — and where the usual, often clueless "experts" believe KSTP could use help in mornings.

    AM-1500’s program director, Steve Konrad, hadn’t heard about the Hines move when I called. "Hines? Really?" Konrad avoided any direct mention of Barreiro other than to state the obvious. "He’s a talent". On any possible interest in Hines, he said, "A well known, popular host? You always have to be open to someone like that."

    We are awaiting a response to our call to Hines’ boss, Steve Versnick.

    The first question to him being, "What new direction?" KTLK was originally pitched as a 21st century version of WCCO. Almost immediately it took an entirely familiar, hard right-wing turn and has stayed there despite consistently disappointing ratings.

    The hiring of Hines suggested to some that the station, then supervised by regional boss, Mick Anselmo, was beginning an evolution into something more mainstream. Another rumor floating in the wind last week was that Anselmo’s replacement, Mike Crusham, had decided the time had finally come to "blow up" the struggling FM talk experiment, supposedly to go in that more WCCO-like direction, with bona fide news.

    The problem there being that bona fide news would require bona fide reporters out on bona fide streets, something Clear Channel has been unwilling to do until now and, with the entire 1200-station company about to return to private ownership, it seems even less likely to bother with in the future. (Reporters cost money, and separating themselves from Hines’ hefty salary — likely in the $250K range — is an early example of 5% to 8% expense cutting expected across the Clear Channel empire.)

    More likely — another bit of gabble on the grapevine — is moving comparatively cheap Dan Conry into morning drive and dropping yet another (cheap) syndicated act, Glenn Beck, etc, into the 8 to 11 slot.

     

     

     

  • Water Wars

    First, it was Alice Waters who said NO to bottled water at Chez Panisse. Suddenly, something that seemed so lovely and useful (fresh, clean water wherever I go!) became downright evil, and almost … dirty.

    Fast Company’s piece outlined much of the concerns and issues held by conservationists.

    Restauranteurs have been stepping lightly it seems to me. On one hand, they want to serve the guest a quality product. On the other hand, they want to give the guest what they want, or don’t want. And on the last hand, they want to make money: can you push bottled water and still court a return visit from the ethical guest?

    It seems there is a sparkly idea on the front: house-bottled water. In a Gourmet Weekly e-newletter, I read about a restaurant that is now selling all-you-can-drink house-bottled water for $2.50. And they’re not alone. But this isn’t any old tap water, this is highly filtered tap water, bottled with connsumate care. It would never, ever be just tap-filled in the wait-station by a harried server … no, never.

    Is there anyone in town doing this? yet?

    Check out what the food cognoscenti from across the country are saying about it.

  • The Three Pointer: A Decent 0-2

    Home Game #1: Denver 99, Wolves 91

    Road Game #1  Wolves 93, New York Knicks 97

    1. Egos in the Backcourt

    For people who imagined that the Timberwolves might surprise the dour prognosticators and post thirty wins or more this season, it was probably a frustrating opening weekend to the 2007-08 campaign. But for those of us intrigued by the olio of young and old skill sets on this squad and how they might be sifted, culled and exposed to the harsh light of competition, it was a mostly pleasurable experience; one that indicates that our curiosity might continue to be piqued and our hoops aesthetic not completely insulted.

    Or, in less lofty parlance, this team has come out of training camp pulling for each other and squeakin’ their sneakers with hustle. Coach Randy Wittman doesn’t seem like the clueless sideline stalker and hypocritically faux disciplinarian he portrayed last season. There’s much to laud, and to wince at. Above all, the first two games were neither dull nor hopeless.

    One bit of good news is that both members of the starting backcourt, Sebastian Telfair and Rashad McCants, have shown up eager to play. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to make them forget how. Both have been hyped and hated on during their brief careers, both have recently been handed a golden opportunity (the Foye injury and the Davis trade), and both know they have a declining window of time (for Telfair it may be a matter of weeks) to justify a significant role on this team. Consequently, both find it difficult to resist the impulse to take matters into their own hands.

    Their offenses aren’t equal. To my mind, McCants has the bigger upside and better future, yet he’s actually been a more egregious disrupter of controlled, intelligent, team basketball. During the Wolves’ opening night loss to the Nuggets, Shaddy frequently drove into traffic or otherwise strove to make the great play when a mundane one, let alone good, would have better served the ballclub. The result was five turnovers, four fouls, and a lousy minus-9 in 29:47. Versus the Knicks it was more foul trouble, resulting in his disqualification halfway through the fourth period and just 22 minutes of PT overall (he was minus-2). Furthermore, Shaddy was extremely unhappy with the way the game was being called against him, and petulantly stood with his hands on his hips, not sitting down, after going to the sidelines with his sixth foul.

     Yes, the free throw disparity has been glaring–the Wolves were outshot at the line 38-19 on Friday and a whopping 39-10 tonight–and some of it is disrespect for young no-names by the refs. But McCants also isn’t displaying the sort of fundamentally sound defense he often flexed last season, and that seems to happen more often when his shot if falling and he’s more prominent on offense (he been 9-18 and 5-11 from the field in about 52 total minutes thus far this year). He isn’t moving his feet as well and he’s more apt to go for the high-risk, high-reward play like a steal, blocked shot, or taking a charge. It’s not incurable, and when he does work within the flow of the offense, he’s proving to be a potent scorer who may be putting some of those microfracture aftermath worries to rest, so even a slight attitude adjustment and dialing down of the ego would be benefical all the way around.

     Telfair has on balance been a pleasant eye-opener, especially compared to the prevailing opinion of his game when the Wolves first acquired him in the Garnett trade from Boston. On opening day, he did a decent job on Allen Iverson (albeit was less stellar when AI and Mike Wilks comprised a small backcourt tandem in the fourth quarter), coming up with three steals and registering a mere minus-1 in 35:17 of an eventual eight-point loss. Tonight agains the Knicks, it was seven assists and zero turnovers (for a composite 12/3 assist/turnover ratio thus far) and a nifty plus +5 in 36:58 of a four point loss.

    But missed shots can be akin to turnovers, especially when you’re the point guard assigned with the task of getting your more accurate shooting and advantageously matched-up teammates the rock. Telfair is a career .387 shooter who has never converted 40 percent of his heaves in any of his three NBA seasons. In the third quarter tonight he received a nice, creative feed from Al Jefferson (a rare occurrence), blew the layup, and then immaturely strained to atone by driving into traffic and hoisting an airball on the very next possession. For the season he is 8-27 FG, with no free throw attempts, in a combined 72:15 of action while Jefferson is 14-29 FG in 74:49. In other words, the bricklaying point guard is shooting at almost exactly the same frequency as the meat-and-potatoes franchise cornerstone who is supposed to be the focus, and primary locus, of the offense.

     

    2. Theo The Magnificent–At One End of the Court

    The Nuggets-Wolves tilt Friday night was one of the more enjoyable games performed at Target Center in recent years, and the primary entertainment was watching a pair of defensive masters, Denver’s Marcus Camby and Minnesota’s Theo Ratliff, ply their craft. Nobody was getting anything unscathed in the paint, and when Melo Anthony went straight at Ratliff for an attempted slam, Theo met him well above the rim and almost earned a non-call for the graceful control of the sky-wire ballet on the collision.

    Ratliff owns three NBA shot-blocking titles and Camby is the reigning champ, but both also know position defense, and the subtler intimidation of looming without committing and risking a foul. Whenever one of them went to the sidelines, the other team seemed to enjoy a huge advantage, and when both rested, the incredible intensity that seemed to pervade the game mostly drained away. Except for a 31 second stint at the very end of the game, Wittman always substituted Craig Smith in for Ratliff. Smith was a team worst minus-15 in 18:12, while Ratliff was a team-best plus +7 in 29:16.

     Ratliff also seemed thoroughly integrated in the Wolves’ offense on Friday, with ten FGA and a team-high 9 FTA in 29:16. It made some sense because Denver had obviously scouted Minnesota enough to know that priorities one and two were taking the ball out of Jefferson’s hands, and with Camby and Najera and Nene and K-Mart, they had the guile and muscle to work the agenda. But Ratliff still seems best suited for a small modicum of touches, for a variety of reasons: At 34 and coming off back surgery (and two other operations before that), you want him conserving his energy for what he does best, which is at the defensive end of the court. Second, Ratliff is a one-year rental, and while it is wonderful to have him enable a little risk and confidence for his teammates on D, no point in habitualizing anything he does on offense. Besides, at best he is merely adequate at generating points.

    After the Denver game, I asked Wittman if he called any plays for Theo. He replied that with all Ratliff contributes, he does call his number every now and then. But I think Ratliff is mature enough and cognizant enough of his own strengths and weaknesses, to understand why he’d be utilized almost completely for his defensive prowess. In any case, Theo turned the ball over four times tonight, at a time when Jefferson had turgid defender Zach Randolph guarding him. Sure, Ratliff’s man Eddy Curry is equally inept on D, but the point is, Minnesota needs to establish the long and the short term habit of force-feeding Jefferson, particularly when the matchup is so skewed in his favor. Ratliff should be rewarded for running the floor, as happened tonight when he beat Curry in transition for a slam dunk, and when he’s wide open because of the attention Jefferson draws. But it wouldn’t bother me, or seem inappropriate, for Ratliff to adopt an offensive identity very similar to what Ervin Johnson executed during Minnesota’s most successful season a few years back–as a very infrequent, but sneakily effect
    ive option when teams totally ignored him down in the paint.

    But in any case, if you enjoy lunch-bucket defense from a wily, still extraordinarily wiry maestro in the paint, Ratliff is perhaps the best reason to attend a Wolves game. Catch him while he’s still healthy.

     

    3. Quick Hits

     Ryan Gomes got into some foul trouble guarding Melo on Friday, but he completely snuffed out Quinton Richardson against the Knicks. Richardson was scoreless in 29:53; Gomes led the Wolves with 19 points in 36:03. On the other hand, Greg Buckner looked like a world beater, and maybe a mob henchman, for the way he bodied up Melo and meted out a couple of choice fouls down near the hoop Friday. But against the Knicks, unless the Wolves’ pick and roll rotations got screwed up or someone blew an assignment not apprarent to the folks in the stands, Buckner regularly got toasted off dribble penetration by Jamal Crawford.

     The learning curve for Corey Brewer looks to be long and slow. It is a tad disconcerting to see how lost the 7th pick in the NBA, a three-year collegian, looked in his first two games.

    Sound observations from others: Jim Petersen commented about how sluggish the pace became when Marko Jaric subbed in as point guard for Telfair. Pete also ripped Jaric for his perpetualy whining attitude and unhappiness over his role on the team. And in media row on Friday, KFAN/Vikings/Canterbury voice Paul Allen approvingly pointed out the nastier enforcement edge the Wolves seemed to be adopting after a flagrant foul by Jaric was followed by a hard foul by Buckner.

  • Bringing out the Monsters in Our Closets

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    The Creature and Creator within Us

    Once again, The Rake is honored to promote an event in which one of our very own staff members is participating. Apparently, it’s a big year for our sales team — at least on the artistic front. Last month, our sales coordinator, Mary Olson, had an art exhibit; and this month, another member of our sales team, Valerie Rigsbee, is performing in Frankenstein Incarnate: The Passions of Mary Shelley. The Theater Unbound production — written by Anne Bertram, directed by Carin Bratlie, and featuring an all-female cast — weaves together a narrative of the life of Mary Shelley with the story that made her famous. Much like her novel, Shelley’s own life often blurred the lines between creature and creator — a fact fully exploited by this unique production. While the show is certainly worth the full price of admission, tonight you can enjoy a one-time-only pay-what-you-can performance. Don’t miss it.

    7:30 p.m., The Neighborhood House in the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center, 179 Robie St. E., St. Paul; 612-721-1186; $18 – pay what you can.

     

    MUSIC
    John Abercrombie Quartet

    John Abercrombie is among the most influential guitarists in jazz history. True, this should certainly be enough to lure you out tonight; but let’s not neglect the other talented members of his quartet. Master violinist Mark Feldman has been a soloist in some of the best orchestras across the globe, as well as performing with a broad scope of artist from Mark Dressner, to Cheryl Crow, to Johnny Cash. As Herbie Hancock’s bassist of choice, Scott Colley is no less impressive. His greatest and latest success has been as composer and bandleader. And, of course, drummer Joey Baron doesn’t fall behind. In addition to playing with the Bill Frisell Band
    for ten years, he has performed with an
    impressive list of musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie,
    Tony Bennett, Chet Baker, Laurie Anderson, David Bowie,
    David Sanborn, and
    John Scofield. The four together, well… just plain old shouldn’t be missed. Their skill and familiarity with the music enable them to take jazz to its fullest expression.

    7 & 9:30 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet, Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $27 & $20.

    FILM
    Samuel Fuller’s Finest

    Pickup on South Street has a plot, and a good one: in a crowded subway, Skip McCoy (the great Richard Widmark) lifts a wallet from Candy (Jean Peters). Trouble is, the broad’s unwittingly delivering a red-hot MacGuffin:
    a piece of microfilm that contains the blueprint for some awful
    government weapon. See, our lady’s delivering the stuff right into the
    hands of tough, yet subtly effeminate Communists. The Feds were
    following her, hoping to catch Candy in the act and nabbing the lot all
    at once. Only Skip fouled everything up. Now everyone’s chasing our
    hero (if you can call a cheap hood a hero). For his part, Skip’s after
    the bag of money he knows the Commies will pony up for the microfilm.
    He’s no patriot–he simply wants the cash and the Feds can go to hell.
    So the FBI’s after Skip. Candy falls for him. And the ruthless brute,
    police captain Dan Tiger (Murvyn Vye) is trying to nail our pickpocket
    for the fourth and final time. Four strikes and you’re in Sing Sing for the rest of your days. See our full review. —Peter Schilling

    8 p.m., Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave., Minneapolis; 612-822-3030; $6.

    LECTURE
    A Chat with David Marshall Grant

    The first performance of the Guthrie’s latest play, Pen, was just this past weekend. And this evening, director Rob Melrose will lead an informal chat with Pen playwright David Marshall Grant, who will discuss his varied work in television, film, and theater — as both actor and playwright. Grant’s first play, Snakebit, was nominated for both a 1999 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award. His current play, set in the late ’60s, chronicles the struggles of a 17-year-old boy to cope with his mother’s illness and the bitterness that ensues.

    4 p.m., Guthrie Learning Center, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612.377.2224; $15.

    ART
    Journey Toward Healing

    Yesterday was the opening of a new Gage Family Art Gallery exhibit, featuring collages by Janette Maley and photographs by Arthur Hand. "As wife and husband, the two artists had separate careers until 1998
    when Maley was diagnosed with breast cancer — a fact that redefined
    their artistic output." Since then, Maley has become the subject of her own collages, as she explores self-image and our culture’s idea of beauty. Meanwhile, Hand has focused on documenting his wife’s struggles with the illness — chemo, radiation, surgery — through a series of powerful photographs. It’s an intense exhibit, with gruesome subject matter, of course, but the result is an amazing transformation into a thing of beauty.

    8 a.m. – 8 p.m., The Gage Family Art Gallery, 2211 Riverside Ave. S., Second Level, Lindell Library, Minneapolis; 612-330-152.

  • Tangled

    I have no desire to be a shepherd of men.

    But, no, that’s not really true. Perhaps there’s nothing I’d like more than to be a shepherd of men, providing the men in question were willing to play the role of sheep. If they are going to insist on being men, however, no thanks; I want no part of that thankless job.

    ‘Shepherd,’ though, sounds like a humble enough job title, but is a ‘humble enough job title’ what anyone truly wants? A humble enough fellow, perhaps, but I’m not sure I fit that bill.

    I don’t know, quite honestly, what I want to be or do, other than to sit quietly listening to Charley Patton and Roscoe Mitchell and some of these thousands of other people I have sitting around here waiting to be listened to.

    But, you might ask (and you might be right to ask), can I really claim to be ‘sitting quietly’ if I am, in fact, listening to music, particularly music that some might describe as caterwauling or keening?

    Point taken.

    At any rate, a herder of sheep would, I’d think, have plenty of opportunities to sit quietly, or even to sit listening to music, provided he is allowed to drag a boombox and a bag of CDs with him out into the…what do they call them, those places where sheep roam about? Something bigger than a pasture. A range? Yes, range sounds right, or close enough.

    I imagine, though, that a fellow would have to venture to far flung places to find employment as a shepherd, and I seriously doubt I have either the wherewithal or the qualifications to undertake such venturing or secure such employment.

    Which leaves me in the same position in which I seem to find myself every Sunday night about this time: Here.

  • Gothic Wine

    I’m midway through a novel called We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is both the most riveting and the most grotesque book I’ve read in years. Published in 2003 by a New York writer (female) named Lionel Shriver, the manuscript was rejected by reams of American publishers for being too dark — about a subject too forbidden — for the mainstream. Eventually it found a British publisher and won the Orange Prize before it found its way back over the Atlantic.

    Kevin is the story of a Columbine-style high school shooter, narrated by his mother — a woman who, it comes out through her twisted and inconsistent narrative, never wanted him in the first place. She became pregnant on a whim, mostly to please her husband, but regretted it immediately. She felt trapped by the alien inside her while pregnant, went through 30+ hours of labor, then was handed a baby for whom she felt. . . .absolutely nothing. And then only a growing revulsion.

    I’ve given birth to three children. And each time I was handed a scrunched-up, waxy little baby in a hospital blanket, I immediately filled with an exhausted joy and loved my new creature in an absolutely fiery way. I cannot imagine feeling differently. Or rather, I couldn’t, ’til Shriver. Her brilliance is that for fleeting moments, while reading this wickedly mangled novel, I got a real glimpse of what it would be like.

    After a few chapters of this (and there have been more than a few, for I am so driven to read this book, I find myself cutting dinner short), I need to put it down and drink something strong and bracing. The sort of elixir one might be given after surviving a car accident and hiking through a snowstorm to call for help.

     

    So tonight, I opened a bottle of Klinker Brick Winery Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel 2005. With nearly 16 percent alcohol, it’s more like sherry or cognac than wine. And it’s strong, with a sulfurous scent of sweet cherry and oil. It’s heavy in the mouth — more like a Malbec than a Zin — and figgy in flavor, with blueberry, camphor, and a stinging finish that clears the sinuses and opens the nose.

    If you like a hot, jammy wine with the viscous consistency of blood, the Klinker Brick Zin may be worth a try. I, frankly, don’t care for it. My taste runs to woodier, drier, starker wines. But as I lift the book and return to the spiraling tale of Kevin — which I can’t stop reading though I know even now how badly it will end — I take very small sips. Because sometimes, a little pain feels right.

  • Sleep and Indifference

    Pickup on South Street, playing Monday night at the Parkway Theater.

    The tombs are beautiful,
    the naked Latin and the engraved fatal dates,
    the coming together of marble and flowers
    and the little plazas cool as courtyards
    and the many yesterdays of history
    today stilled and unique.
    We mistake that peace for death
    and we believe we long for our end
    when what we long for is sleep and indifference.
    –detail from Jorge Luis Borges’ "La Recoleta"

    When Moe Williams wakes every morning, she can barely move her hips for the pain. As she sits up and puts her glasses on, it makes her ashamed to see the filth she lives in–when she was younger she could keep a clean house. Arthritis, a bad ticker, swollen ankles, have all conspired to keep Moe buckled and nearly broken. Life has worn her down.

    Moe sells ties. And in her advanced years she can barely lug that satchel of cheap neckties around town. Up and down the stairs, up and down the sidewalks, up and down and into the subways. Tossed out of Wall Street by some cheap cop who doesn’t know a hard worker when he sees one. Sipping coffee to make it last longer. Taping the soles of her shoes to do the same. Moe eats cheaply and has long ago stopped caring about the taste of food.

    Her joys are simple and come in a pair: visiting the cemetery and walking amongst the dead she hasn’t known, the respectable people who had the cash to put themselves into a nice plot with a good view and air that doesn’t reek of taxicabs and reverberate with the sound of the El. And she likes to listen to her Victrola, though she can barely crank the thing anymore. Oh, everything aches now.

    All Moe has to go by is that grift: selling the names of cannons–pickpockets–to the cops. Every little bit helps, every little bit gets her closer to Borges’ eternal sleep and sweet indifference. The money she gets from New York’s finest, rolled in a tight bundle and kept on her day and night, will buy her a plot of land next to some banker. Most importantly, it’ll get her a good place to rest forever.

    Pickup on South Street has a plot, and a good one: in a crowded subway, Skip McCoy (the great Richard Widmark) lifts a wallet from Candy (Jean Peters). Trouble is, the broad’s unwittingly delivering a red-hot MacGuffin: a piece of microfilm that contains the blueprint for some awful government weapon. See, our lady’s delivering the stuff right into the hands of tough, yet subtly effeminate Communists. The Feds were following her, hoping to catch Candy in the act and nabbing the lot all at once. Only Skip fouled everything up. Now everyone’s chasing our hero (if you can call a cheap hood a hero). For his part, Skip’s after the bag of money he knows the Commies will pony up for the microfilm. He’s no patriot–he simply wants the cash and the Feds can go to hell. So the FBI’s after Skip. Candy falls for him. And the ruthless brute, police captain Dan Tiger (Murvyn Vye) is trying to nail our pickpocket for the fourth and final time. Four strikes and you’re in Sing Sing for the rest of your days.

    As with any great film–and Pickup is a great film, probably Samuel Fuller’s finest–the plot matters little in the overall picture. And the big picture is the emphasis on the small details. Fuller may or may not have intended to capture these details so beautifully: he was a raging, wonderful ape of a filmmaker who chewed cigars and shoved his cameras in the faces of his troupe. His plots moved at the speed of a tabloid headline falling hot off the press. There’s an unwholesome violence in his films–in one scene it is as if he provoked Richard Kiley (playing Candy’s former beau and current Commie heavy) and Jean Peters to bring a primal loathing to a rolling boil and let it spill and burn the both of them. His characters seethe and sweat, live in shacks and are as sad and selfish as every poor sucker I’ve known.

    Then there’s Thelma Ritter. Thelma always looked worn, as if she’d never once trusted her turn as a character actress to pay the bill and so spent her evenings pouring coffee at an all-night diner. Character actors get little room to express themselves, a few minutes here and there, fusing the story together as it leaves one star and alights on another. She was playfully irritable in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and held her own in the bitchy maelstrom of All About Eve. But in Pickup on South Street, Thelma Ritter grabbed what little she had, and ran with it.

    Her Moe is hardly memorable at first, just a lady in a policeman’s office, peddling ties. Slowly she comes to assert herself, her character a woman so tired all she can do is wait for the quietude of death. She’s saving for that plot and equally terrified she’ll be buried, nameless, in the Potter’s Field. She rats out on pickpockets, thieves, and grifters, cashing in her leads to whatever cop’ll fork over the money. Oddly enough, these pickpockets, thieves and grifters all hold Moe close to their collective hearts. Moe is one of them.

    Pay attention, now: Moe, tired, aching, lonely as all hell and hoping only for a sip of cheap liquor and five minutes of music, returns home and finds a killer in the shadows. Moe Williams does not tremble or cry for help, nor does she fight back. She has failed to escape from poverty and worse, failed to escape an eternal fate in Potter’s Field. But she shrugs off the irony of this cruel world, summons up the dignity that she has also banked these many years, and reaches for a weary and spectacular grace.

    Go see this beautiful little noir Monday night at the Parkway. Don’t rent it on DVD, at home with the lights on and the cat meowing, the phone waiting to ring. Watch it in the dark of the Parkway, with other people who will be moved with you. This damn film reeks with the aroma of the New York City docks and crowded subways. You’ll marvel together at fat, blankeyed Lightning Louie (the great Victor Perry, uncredited, one of only two movies he ever made) slurping noodles and then asking for more; Widmark pulling beer from the river, resting in his skiff, swinging in his hammock in the coolest pad in New York (but one that must have smelled like… what? The river? Cigs? Fish?); a giant grunting on the tugboat to the cemetery, as he moves coffins to get to Moe’s; the diners, the docks, the subways. Lose yourself in Pickup on South Street for one night, in a crowded movie theater, and give Thelma Ritter her due.

  • Old Arizona. . . It's Probably New To You

    I mentioned to Jeremy last week that I’d driven by a strange little place called Old Arizona, right at the southern end of Eat Street where Nicollet dead-ends. There was a cluster of brightly-painted, Southwestern buildings with a stone courtyard and a cloth sign strung from the posts that said Cafe and Wine Bar.

    "Yeah, what is that place?" he asked. "I’ve always wondered."

    And that’s when I knew I was onto something. Because if Iggers hasn’t been to an eatery, you know it’s either two minutes old or way, WAY off the grid.

    So I went to Old Arizona, walking in to find a tidy, happy little cafe strung with chili pepper lights, decorated with shelves of Fiestaware, and smelling of simmering soup. Two white-haired women sat at the table in the front window. One of them wore an apron that said "Elizabeth." I asked where I might find the proprietors and both of them stood.

    It turns out Old Arizona has been in existence, on this gritty end of Nicollet in what was, 100 years ago, Twin City Scenic Company — a manufacturer of hand-painted vaudeville sets — since 1993. ("Oh, people think we’re new all the time," the ladies said.) It’s the brain child of Darcy Knight and Elizabeth Trumble, two former film staffers who met while working on the set of Bill Pohlad‘s Old Explorers back in 1989 and decided together to build something that had never even been conceived of before.

    You see, Old Arizona is not any old charming 12-seat cafe and wine bar. It’s a theater, performance venue, party room, yoga studio, feng shui consultancy, chocolate "lounge," tea shop, and — most importantly — a thriving after-school program for at-risk youth. Knight and Trumble just rescued the historic Log Cabin Flowers structure, because it was going to be destroyed, and hauled it all the way from Franklin Avenue to their own side yard. Oh, and if all goes according to plan, they’re going to open an off-sale wine store in the coming months.

    And for 14 years, they’ve been doing all of this together, just the two of them, with no employees except a 3/4-time coordinator for the after-school programs.

    The cafe serves from 11-7 Wednesday through Saturday (except when it doesn’t — more on this below). Trumble does all the cooking. She has a very limited menu, but what she does make is exquisite: Michael’s Favorite, a sandwich of Brie, tart apple, arugula and fig spread on ciabatta; a grilled Rachel, with Jarlsburg and plenty of sauerkraut; and the Old Arizona Signature Sandwich, with oven-roasted turkey and Dubliner cheddar with raspberry chipotle mayo. There’s a fresh, organic soup each day. A wine list that includes a Gabbiano Pinot Grigio, the Chateau St. Jean Fumé Blanc, and a Malbec from the Argentinian winery Altos Las Hormigas.

    Old Arizona’s tea shop is a mystical collage of Laughing Buddha statues, waterfalls, organic herbs, and incense, as well as books on herbology, Feng Shui, eastern medicine, and witchcraft. Also tea, which they sell in small plastic bags by the ounce. There’s top-quality chocolate, too. And behind this, a theatrical space that seats 120 (it accomodates 200 standing) which they rent out for wedding receptions, artist’s shows, and private parties.

    On any given day, they might have half a dozen customers in the cafe — more in the weeks after the performance space is rented and people have been made aware they exist. But typically, those extras dwindle away, leaving the stalwart regulars who can’t get enough of Michael’s Favorite or wouldn’t know where else to get their jasmine pearl tea.

    One of the reasons, I suspect, is that Knight and Trumble are rather erratic about their hours of operation. They close if one of them is ill or they must, for whatever reason, leave town. (This coming Friday and Saturday, for instance, they’ll be in Wisconsin with their friend Ali Salim, helping him celebrate the film Sweetland, on which they both worked. So Old Arizona will be closed.) They keep talking about hiring someone to work alongside them, but somehow that never happens. The money isn’t there. And besides, they have more important things on their minds.

    Because the fact is that The Arizona Bridge Project — the umbrella name for their girls’ programs — is really at the heart of this thing. Eighteen years ago, before she met Trumble, Knight was living in the neighborhood and becoming aware of the problems facing its youth.

    "I watched young girls sell themselves out on the street corner," Knight says. "And I found myself pacing every night, wondering why someone wasn’t doing something about this."

    So she set out to do exactly that. And while her entrepreneurial ideas may seem a bit ungrounded in the reality of the commercial mainstream, her vision for an after-school program that would keep girls off the streets has become very real. The Arizona Bridge Project has served thousands of young women, ages 13-17, providing them with food, care, and a variety of programming ranging from songwriting to visual arts to dance. Old Arizona has received funding from Hennepin County, the McKnight Foundation, and (before Avista took over) the former Star Tribune Foundation. They also accept private donations.

    "It’s all about teenage girls who need us finding their way here," says Knight. "That’s really what we’re about."

    This is all quite odd, I grant you. The food, the wine, the tea, the chocolate, the spiritual message, and the kids. The haphazard hours and sprawling "complex" and mixed missions. But if you spend an hour with Trumble and Knight, as I did, I swear: somehow, it all starts to make sense. And you’d be hard pressed to find a cozier place for a bowl of homemade soup.