The Next Food Network Star is looking for contestants for next season’s series. Auditions will be held October 9th in Minneapolis.
Category: Blog Post
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Hit the Theaters in Style
STYLE & ART
Loves Labourers: Art as Fashion, Fashion as Art 2
Mplsart presents an interesting event this evening, as part of MNfashion Weekend. Three visual artists (Adam Garcia, Eric Inkala, and Jennifer Davis) and three clothing designers (Annie Larson, Ra’mon Lawrence, and Crystal Quinn) are teaming up to paint, smear, and de- and re-construct a selection of wearable art. The canvases — which, in this case, are a bunch of cotton hoodies — have been available for pre-purchase at fifty dollars a pop; and buyers have no idea what their piece will look like in the end. (Will it even fit?) It’s likely too late to get your own hoodie, but interested parties might inquire by email. The event should provide for some fascinating visuals, in any case. And there’ll be DJs spinning to boot.Friday at 8 p.m., Beast House, 600 Washington Ave. N., Suite 104, Minneapolis; $50.
THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Jane Eyre at the Guthrie
I hear the patrons on opening night were handed long-stemmed roses as they exited the theater. I attended the second showing, and while I didn’t get a rose (and that’s okay), it would certainly have been an apt crowning of an evening wherein love and beauty sprang from a bed of thorns. I read the bookmany years ago, and although I recognize that my memory of the plot is a bit lacking (since I thought the play was over at intermission), I nevertheless have my own version of images spawned by the novel. The spacious, sparsely-set, thrust stage reflects the continual bleakness of Jane’s environments: the horrid aunt and abusive childhood, the austere institutional upbringing, the lonely post as governess at grand, cold Thornfield, and later, destitution even. The play familiarizes Jane’s experience and a seemingly distant era in a way the book fails to achieve: here are Jane and Mr. Rochester (superbly acted by Stacia Rice and Sean Haberle) in flesh and blood, expressive and tangible. I might add that Mr. Rochester was far more dashing than I’d imagined him, and Jane certainly wasn’t plain. Here and there, I nearly grumbled “romance, shromance,” but I may have been the only one fatigued by the reappearance of the “I’m-not-pretty-but-I’m-smart-and-interesting” theme, whereby a plain woman intrigues and attracts the man by virtue of not being the archetypal prissy, fussy female. And yes, Jane’s rival for Mr. Rochester’s hand was shallow and bubbly with the requisite frilly pink dress. This is no flaw of the play, mind you, as the production quite strictly followed the source material. Just my own little hang-up, and a minor and passing one at that, considering director John Miller-Stephany’s remarks that “Jane Eyre can be compared to a mirror that reflects back onto each viewer what he/she wishes to see.” –Eeva-Liisa Waaraniemi
Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m., Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224; $34-$54.
The Darkest of Dark Comedies
Opening tonight is Frank Theater’s production of The Pillowman, in which a writer’s warped fairytales about torturing and killing children seem to be coming true. Crucifixion, severed fingers, and other unthinkable forms of child abuse figure into Martin McDonagh’s Olivier-Award-winning play; the result is the darkest of dark comedies, with provocative questions of artistic responsibility and censorship woven throughout. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s a consistently funny (if disturbing) play… the big question is if director Wendy Knox can maintain a light, comedic touch, without sacrificing Pillowman’s more tender and thoughtful moments. I saw the gleefully dark opening run at London’s National Theatre in 2004, which deftly walked the line between cartoonish and eerie. Both the London and New York runs were quite successful, featuring famous actors (Jim Broadbent in London; Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup in New York) and drawing packed houses. Will Frank Theater’s production live up to its predecessors? Will it do justice to McDonagh’s script? I will have a review on Monday. –Danielle KurtzlebenFriday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 1 p.m., Dowling Studio, Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224; $18-$34.
FILM
Manda Bala
Let’s call this a hybrid of the fictional Brazilian exposé City of God and Errol Morris’s police procedure doc The Thin Blue Line — both tremendous entertainment. Manda Bala (send a bullet) is a bizarre documentary detailing the rise of corruption in Brazilian culture as well as the country’s kidnapping epidemic. “Men will steal with a gun or a pen,” says one talking head. The film boasts garish cinematography, a dynamite score, and perhaps best of all, a fearless director who can get even the worst, most hardened criminals to open up. Stories include money laundering through a frog farm, images of the booming plastic surgery trade (all the ears cut from kidnap victims need replacing), and kidnappers philosophizing about the meaning of life. –Peter Schilling, Jr.Opens today at Landmark Theatres, 612-825-6006.
Fearless Kids in the Biz
Flaunting its fabulous new facelift, the Parkway Theater opens its doors on Sunday to this month’s Fearless Filmmakers event. Don’t be confused if you see a lot of youngsters lurking about. It’s not the venue; it’s the event. Acknowledging our overwhelming focus on adults in the art world, Fearless Filmmakers has taken a stand to correct the oversight by focusing on “Kids in the Biz.” The evening will begin with music by Now, Now Every Children — a lovely, languid sound. And Joe Minjares, owner of the Parkway and Pepitos Restaurant, will even provide appetizers and drinks. The screenings will begin at 6 p.m., and will include 15 films made by kids between 7 and 17 years old. Following the screening, there will be a Q & A session with the filmmakers, and an after party with a Guitar Hero competition. Sunday at 5 p.m., The Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis; 612-822-3030; $9, students $7, children $5.
ART
Ramble through Red Wing
Red Wing claims to be a city for lovers, poets, and dreamers; so it stands to reason they’d have a notable arts community — and no, they don’t all paint the Mississippi, trees, and birds (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It promises to be a lovely weekend, perhaps a great weekend for a drive and a wander through Red Wing’s many art studios. This weekend marks the 6th annual Studio Ramble Fall Art Tour, with 11 open studios, featuring 27 area artists. Experience a variety of media — pottery, painting, print making, photography, sculpture, textiles, jewelry, computer imaging, Glicée prints, and musical instruments — meet the artists, and purchase original works.Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Red Wing, Minnesota.
MUSIC
Neglected Legends
You have two great shows to choose from this weekend, both of which are being utterly under-promoted. The first is tonight, at Famous Dave’s BBQ & Blues. I have to start paying closer attention to their shows, because I was shocked when I looked for information on Ana Popovic’s show tonight, only to find that the warm-up show was just as stellar. For a mere $5 cover, you can catch Paul Metsa & Sonny Earl at 6 p.m., followed by Popovic at 9 p.m. What a show! Two blues legends, followed by the guitar-shredding pride of Belgrade, “a high-energy blues force who crosses the wires of Hendrix bravado with Bonnie Raitt soul.” Whew!Friday at 6 p.m., Famous Dave’s BBQ & Blues, 3001 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-9900; $5.
The other show worthy of note is the Fat Maw Rooney show this Sunday (9 p.m.) at Trocaderos.
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Rybak to the Slaughter
As mentioned here a couple days ago, Deborah Rybak, most recently media reporter at the Star Tribune, has consented to join forces with me here at Slaughter Central. To be very clear, this is not Ms. Rybak joining The Rake. (The mind boggles at the bloody, bruised-knuckle negotiating it would take to make that happen.) This is simply a couple old pros, neighbors and inveterate gossip-mongers getting together for a little fun. Her presence here also adds much overdue journalistic sobriety, insight and dignity to my vacuity and adolescent raging.
Somewhere back last winter I recalled my former employers at the Pioneer Press swatting me across the back of the head and slamming the latest edition of the Strib in my face every time Rybak scooped me — usually as a result of something she dragged back from her regular round of power lunches. I still wonder, Why do the famous and fatuous want to be seen in public with her and recoil in horror at the thought of lunching with me? Did I answer my own question?
Anyway, the inference of the head-swatting was that, “THIS” –whatever Rybak had covered — “is what you are supposed to be doing. Our readers don’t care about Bill O’Reilly? Get over it!”
I never learned.
In addition to the types of coverage I’ve been doing here since January 1, together we hope to build in some dialogues and more of the media basics; hirings and whackings, with or without further comment.
Separately, our experience has been that daily newspapers see very little value in covering the media universe and none at all in analyzing and commenting on it. Media, to “right-sizing” newspapers is primarily a celebrity gossip beat, with extraordinary emphasis on the comings, goings and ratings of local TV anchors. Deborah and I believe that view is almost completely backwards. Readers, i.e. people who read to acquire knowledge, want more media information, not less, and regard empty-headed gossip “coverage” as valueless.
We both see a literate, critical audience for coverage that uh, declines, to play press agent to the stars and anchors and, like good sports columnists, sees fun to be had in throwing back the curtain on the machinations of what is, let’s face it, a weird, woolly, often silly, vast and omnipresent facet of modern American life.
We plan to devote X-number of hours and posts talking to and about those who control, create and populate Minnesota media–sometimes farther afield than that. We’ll talk about who is schtupping who, figuratively speaking, (or maybe sometimes in actuality). And we will be covering TV, cable and Internet programming, movies and whatever else flickers and interests us.
There is interesting stuff on television, and we have different tastes. She may be bored to tears by “Ice Road Truckers”, and I may not agree that “Californication” perfectly captures Hollywood’s moral malaise. But we see opportunities to gas on about, for example, what in the hell drugs David Milch was using when he wrote, “John from Cincinnati”.
Everyone of course invited to join in, commend us, vilify us and test our vast knowledge of all things media-related … which when you get Alan Greenspan on Jon Stewart’s show is damned near everything under the sun. And yes, we will both rant from time to time. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my Fox News Kool-aid drinkers.
So, by way of introduction …
LAMBERT: Deborah, I’d welcome you, but really this is more of a salvage project, a reclamation effort on your part. You are the cavalry riding to the rescue. But the news late yesterday is that, as was heavily rumored, Par Ridder will NOT be returning as publisher. How shocked were you by this news?RYBAK: Do I need to drag out that old “Casablanca” line? Since we more or less predicted it Wednesday, I would venture to say, not breath-intake shocked, nor even eyes-slightly-widened shocked. I guess when you called me yesterday evening my shock was of the “It’s almost cocktail hour, what are you bugging me for?” variety.
Here’s the phrase that interested me most in the Strib story, “Par is ‘likely’ not to return to the paper.” That tells me that lawyers are talking and I’m sure that exit pay is a major topic.
So how much more is Par going to take home from this misadventure in addition to the “relocation” money we hear he received to move about 5 miles from Sunfish Lake to Kenwood? I wonder if his lawyers want extra because he was so successful in whacking the staff down to size and saving Avista so much money, (well,until those legal fees started piling up).
I wonder if the “national search” for a publisher that interim publisher/Avista concierge Chris Harte mentioned to his staff will also include scanning for bodies to fill the other empty management positions that have turned the formerly executive-stocked fourth floor suites into a ghost town?
Or will everything–including the website–continue to be overlorded from New York?
LAMBERT: So the paper currently has no CFO, no director of high technology. What else am I missing?
RYBAK: Don’t forget there’s no Mike LaBonia, aka “Mikey Bones,” who just bailed on his sales and strategic planning gig to go to the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh yeah, and no director of niche publications, although Jennifer Parratt is getting paid to sit at home and wait for her non-compete to run out. Wonder if she’ll ever come back, now that the guy who hired her is out. Sorry, “likely” to be out.
Plus, during his staff meeting, Harte also clarified that it would be Avista money used to pay everyone’s legal bills …not Strib dough. Does it really matter?
LAMBERT: I’m sorry, Chris Harte telling the staff it’ll be Avista, not the Strib budget paying the $10 million-plus in Par Ridder-related legal fees is not something that would quiet my concerns were I employed there. The overriding issue is that the parent company — Avista — is bleeding out its eyeballs with this Minnesota newspaper deal and the twit they hired to staunch all that has turned out to be a very expensive pain in the ass.
Just as you heard from your sources, the word I heard Thursday morning was that Ridder would not be back. My first question upon hearing the court decision putting him on the beach was, “What is the upside to this guy hanging like a dark cloud over the paper for a year? He has no credibility with his staff. Anecdotally, he’s a joke around town. Who continues to love him, and why?”
I still say, and I’ll take bets, that there is Ridder family money in Avista somewhere, somehow.
I confess of course that I’ll miss Par. I think of him as my Nixon.
RYBAK: You have the weirdest crushes. First Mick Anselmo, now Par. I confess that I’m obsessed right now with Billy Dean Singleton. When he rode into town, the Star Tribune was almost arrogant in its rejection of Singleton’s favorite pasttime–creating joint operating agreements between former newspaper rivals (see Denver Post v. Rocky Mt. News).
Now I wonder if JOA might be the settlement that will satisfy Singleton in his lawsuit. Look at his remarks to the Pioneer Press’s John Welbes: “There are many things that the two newspapers could do together without crossing legal barriers, but that would depend on who we’re working with.”
Now that Par’s gone, and Avista’s investment needs some serious shoring up, what’s standing in the way?
LAMBERT: A JOA would have to be seen as an interim step to a full merger. Until now a merger has been viewed as unlikely because of anti-trust issues. But given the precipitous collapse of newspaper revenue, what DC regulator would oppose the argument that a two-paper universe here in the Twin Cities is no longer sustainable, and that the only possibility for continuing full-scale community “service” is to merge and seriously reduce overhead.
It may be a largely bullshit argument, but I’m thinking it is one that plays better with each passing quarter.
But welcome aboard, dear.
RYBAK: Thanks doll, nice to be here…
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Former A Rebours Owner Sets the Record Straight
Back on the 7th of September, it was — for some bizarre reason — front-page news for the Pioneer Press when A Rebours, the little bistro on St. Peter Street, closed its doors.
Now, I loved A Rebours. The classic menu and long picture window and ridiculously unpronounceable name. But I didn’t think its closing was on par with stories about war or poverty or even the strike of 3,500 union workers at the University of Minnesota. Another odd thing: on the day A Rebours closed, owner Doug Anderson supposedly insisted it was due to circumstances beyond his control — the 35W bridge collapse, for instance, and the general dullness of downtown St. Paul.
"It got to the point where I couldn’t make a living downtown," he reportedly told Kathie Jenkins.
The following day, Jenkins wrote a second piece that said Anderson was selling the restaurant to former W.A. Frost chef Russell Klein and his wife, Desta. And they would soon open a place of their own, called Meritage.
So here was my problem: If A Rebours — an established restaurant — was being driven under by ongoing traffic SNAFU’s caused by the 35W bridge collapse, why would the Kleins dive in and buy it? And if Anderson was in the midst of a negotiation to sell, why would he tell a reporter the location sucks?
Further: Why was the phone number for Nick and Eddie, Anderson’s new Loring Park restaurant which was supposed to open some time in summer, not in service?
Now, you should know up front, I like Doug Anderson.
Last time I talked to him, back in June at A Rebours, he said, "I hate all these haughty food weenies. Who are the customers I love? The people from over on 7th Street who make $50K a year and they’ll come in here and have a cheap bottle of wine and a nice meal and then go home and screw. Not talk about the fucking food."
He told me during the same conversation that he’d recently quit drinking at his wife’s request. And this is what’s truly magnificent about Doug — stone cold sober, he’s less politic and more profane than the rest of us are roaring drunk.
Today, I dropped in on Doug to get the real scoop about A Rebours and Nick and Eddie. And here’s what he said:
He never blamed the 35W bridge collapse for the failure of his restaurant. "Sure, it made traffic difficult, but 35W had nothing to do with what happened," he told me. And he didn’t sell the place, either. Russell and Desta Klein "inherited" it in a complicated deal he calls too "big a fucking mess" to discuss.
He is in debt, no question, and has pledged to repay his lenders by "getting a real job." To that end, he no longer has an interest in Nick and Eddie, which will open on or around October 8 and will be owned by his wife, Jessica Anderson, in partnership with Steve Vranian, formerly the chef at North Coast in Wayzata.
Also, he’s joined a punk rock band, called Sam Planet, that’s "extremely loud." Doug plays guitar.
I don’t know what’s happened over in St. Paul. And I’m pulling for Meritage to do well no matter what the issues between Anderson and Klein, because with the closing of Margaux last week, there’s practically nowhere left in St. Paul to get a decent upscale meal. (The exceptions are Heartland and I Nonni, but neither is downtown.)
As for Doug, I’m hoping against hope that he stays sober, pays off his collectors, makes his loud music, and rejoins his wife and Vranian on Loring Park. We need someone who just wants to sell us cheap wine so we can go home and screw, not talk about, well, you know. . . .
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Parallels between Graffiti and Outdoor Advertising
Chris Ritke posts a video in which Robert Patterson and Chris Seta, with AAP Global, talk about the parallels between graffiti and their work in outdoor advertising.
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Autumn Brew Review
The 7th Annual Autumn Brew Review is scheduled for Saturday, September 29th, in the warehouse lot of the historic Grain Belt Brewery complex, NE Minneapolis.
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Bubblegum-Scented Cologne
Why would a man want to smell like bubblegum? I really hope this isn’t marketed to gross perverts trying to attract young gals.
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Fearless Kids in the Biz
Flaunting its fabulous new facelift, the Parkway Theater opens its doors on Sunday to this month’s Fearless Filmmakers event. Don’t be confused if you see a lot of youngsters in the lurking about. It’s not the venue; it’s the event. Acknowledging our overwhelming focus on adults in the art world, Fearless Filmmakers has taken a stand to correct the oversight by focusing on “Kids in the Biz.” The evening will begin with music by Now, Now Every Children — a lovely, languid sound. And Joe Minjares, owner of the Parkway and Pepitos Restaurant, will even provide appetizers and drinks. The screenings will begin at 6 p.m., and will include 15 films made by kids between 7 and 17 years old. Following the screening, there will be a Q & A session with the filmmakers, and an after party with a Guitar Hero competition.
Sunday at 5 p.m., The Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis; 612-822-3030; $9, students $7, children $5.
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Manda Bala
Let’s call this a hybrid of the fictional Brazilian exposé City of God and Errol Morris’s police procedure doc The Thin Blue Line — both tremendous entertainment. Manda Bala (send a bullet) is a bizarre documentary detailing the rise of corruption in Brazilian culture as well as the country’s kidnapping epidemic. “Men will steal with a gun or a pen,” says one talking head. The film boasts garish cinematography, a dynamite score, and perhaps best of all, a fearless director who can get even the worst, most hardened criminals to open up. Stories include money laundering through a frog farm, images of the booming plastic surgery trade (all the ears cut from kidnap victims need replacing), and kidnappers philosophizing about the meaning of life. –Peter Schilling, Jr.
Opens Friday at Landmark Theatres, 612-825-6006.