The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

  • I've been trying to tell you.

    Normally, I would eschew the touting of political events and fundraisers here on Horticulture/Secret of the Day. But considering this further, I figured Why not make an exception for a particularly cool-sounding political fundraiser? I mean, I hate to be the spoiler here for any uninitiated, but my political leanings are rather obvious to start, dontcha think? My guiding principle being: you can lead a horticulture but you cannot, simultaneously, turn her into a Republican.

    And if you’ve bothered to peruse the other blogs here on the site, you’ll know that I am not alone in this. There’s good company in my workplace.

    So here goes: Al Franken, Sheila Heti, Stephen Burt, Thisbe Nissen, and Ed Bok Lee (this last on is purportedly making all the women who work in the office at The Loft swoon) are teaming up to do a Coleen Rowley fundraiser. Yes, she’s that former FBI agent who came clean about what the agency did and didn’t know prior to 9-11, and what they did and didn’t do for that matter. A few years back, she made People Magazine’s Man of the Year, or something like that–she was on the cover anyway. And she’s also a runner, so she’s immediately got cred with me. I’ve even spotted her out running on occasion. And even though she’s at least fifteen years my senior, she’s kicking my ass every time.

    For those of different political leanings, I am not sure how to help you. Perhaps try the Walker Art Center, where there’s a gallery talk about magazine photography–this, in conjunction with the very excellent Diane Arbus exhibition–starring Elizabeth Culbert, associate photo editor at The New Yorker. (cue evil laugh.) Hahahaha…

  • Dopes on Science, Part II

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    Bush to stem cell researchers: “Up yours!”

    Well, it was a bit strange today to see Bush drag out the veto stamp for the first time in his presidency to kill the funding for stem cell research. “It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it,” he said to the applause of hundreds of TV evangelists.

    Let’s not fool ourselves about what happened here. The Congress, up for election in a few months, can read the polls and see that the people want stem cell research to help provide an answer to so many medical questions. The President, on the other hand, who, thank God, will never have to again resort to stealing votes in Florida, Ohio, and the Supreme Court to win an election, was free to cater to the party’s conservative religious base and stand up for the unborn detritus of treatments for infertile women.

    Yes, Bush staked out the simplistic moral high ground on this issue, just as he did in Iraq. It’s just that things aren’t always that simple. While he’s saving the unborn, he just can’t seem to get excited by the reports that the pace of civilian deaths in Iraq now seems to be accelerating, or that Lebanon seems to be on fire, or that Iran, Syria and North Korea seem to be able to do pretty much exactly as they please without the deterrence provided by any credible leadership from the “World’s Only Superpower.(TM)”

    As we scrape the unused fertilized embryos down the lab drain instead of using them for research, I know I’m going to sure be thankful that he have such a moral man at the helm.

  • Mission

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    Last night I ate at Mission American Kitchen with a bunch of friends/business people. We were an odd lot. One end of the table was heavy with work conversation and Blackberry buzzing, the other end, my end, was thick with laughter, The Macallan, and housemade potato chips.

    Our server handled it perfectly.

    He worked his way around the table pouring wine and answering questions, throwing in a saucy comment on one side and deftly describing a salad on the other. He was fun and figured us out pretty quickly. When one of our bunch got a phone call and left the table, they whisked his untouched plate away to keep warm in the kitchen. When he didn’t return for quite awhile, they said they’d get him a new one when he came back. That seems so obvious, but it happens so rarely.

    For all the crappy service that I have to cringe and put up with, it was such a relief to be taken care of with such aplomb.

  • A Public Service Announcement, And A Revelation

    Holy Moses, this Liriano kid looks like he might be for real.

    I’m going to be out of commission for a stretch, and I intend to spend some time during this hiatus trying to uncover another team in recent (or ancient memory) that had two such dominant lefties in its rotation. Ordinarily a handful of teams would come to mind, but I’m a bit brain-fogged at the moment and am drawing blanks.

    Help me out if you feel so inclined, and spare me the arduous task of digging through my shelves full of baseball reference books.

    Also, before I go, here’s a plug for a virtuous event coming up at the Metrodome:

    On Monday, July 31, as the Twins take on the Texas Rangers at the Dome, YouthCARE (Youth for Cultural Appreciation & Racial Equality) will be hosting a bit of a fundraising bash to honor and celebrate the kids that make YouthCARE’s programs exceptional.

    This event will take place at the Metrodome on Monday, with a pre-game celebration beginning at 4:30 p.m., and a 7:10 scheduled game time. Highlights of the evening include: appearances by Tony Oliva, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman; reserved lower level seats; a catered dinner; a silent auction, and more. Tickets are available for $40. All contributions up to $10,000 will be matched by the Thornburg Charitable Foundation.

    YouthCARE is a Twin Cities based nonprofit organization with a successful thirty-two year history of directing leadership development, multi-cultural, and educational programs and services for urban youth, 7-18 years old. YouthCare programs are designed to help youth develop the skills necessary to succeed in a multicultural community; encourage understanding, self-respect, and appreciation and respect for others; help youth make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood; and provide opportunities for disadvantaged youth and youth of color to gain leadership skills.

    For more information, to purchase tickets, or to learn more about YouthCARE’s programs, go to www.YouthCAREmn.org.

  • So little summertime

    It’s been a skimpy week in terms of blogging, what with our production cycle being at its very peek during this–oh-the-terror–“production week.” For that I apologize. I’ve been busy hunting for phantom commas, along with all the other unglamorous schtuff that’s necessary when putting together a magazine. But I have vowed to pull myself away so that a fit of rollicking summer fun can be enjoyed tonight.

    Lookit! A Bluegrass BBQ–with copious amounts of wine courtesy of TC Uncorked–is happening over in Golden Valley tonight. But alas, I can’t go. I’ve already committed myself (i.e., laid down the steep registration fee) to hobbling down Hennepin Avenue during the Torchlight 5K. I’m not sure why runners waste so much dough on entry fees. So that they can accumulate enough T-shirts to get them on of those tacky runner’s quilts made? Hardly. (Hint: there’s a beer party at the Dome, immediately following tonight’s race.) In any case, it’s worth noting that the race opens the traditional Aquatennial Torchlight Parade.

  • Cupboards

    Note that ye former Minnesota Monthly food writer, Ann Bauer, is giving a reading of her book, A Wild Ride up the Cupboards, at The Bookcase of Wayzata tonight.

  • Hot Team, Desperately Seeking Warm Bodies

    For the last several weeks I’d been staring at decidedly long odds and almost liking what I saw. The math didn’t look very good, but it was starting to look like there was at least a possibility that it actually might eventually add up.

    The Twins had played an unreal stretch of baseball. The pitching had come around (for the most part), the team was scoring runs, and there didn’t seem to be much chance of any extended losing streaks with Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano anchoring the rotation.

    Then outfielders starting dropping like Dome doubles, and all of a sudden guys like Rondell White, who supposedly has a bum shoulder and was hitting .235 in a rehab assignment in Rochester, and Jason Tyner and Josh Rabe, two other Rochester outfielders with little or no Major League experience, were being forced into duty.

    The team has continued to win, but at this point the margin for error is mighty slim. Last week Terry Ryan was talking about bolstering the pitching staff for a second-half push, but now what will happen? What are the Twins going to be looking for on the trade market, and what do they have to offer? Anybody have any creative ideas?

    One thing is for certain: Minnesota has to pretty much kick the shit out of its division rivals the rest of the way to have any chance at a wildcard spot. At this point splits aren’t going to gain them any ground, and there’s already that embarrassing 12-21 record against Central teams to consider. Throw out those numbers and the Twins have gone 39-19 against everybody else.

    It also would help, of course, if the team could bottle a little of its home magic (where they’re 34-11) for the road (17-29).

  • Swept Away

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    By the time I got to the River Park, Jurosz was gone. An hour or so earlier I’d encountered a couple of tweaked out ranch hands at the Taco John’s in town, with Jurosz’s beat-to-shit little trailer attached to the hitch of a pick-up truck.

    There was no mistaking the trailer, with its corroded aluminum and faded punk rock stickers. The tweakers told me they’d been hanging out down by the river and had bought the thing from a guy for two hundred bucks. The guy, they said, had a big fire going, and was burning everything he could get his hands on, like he was in a hurry.

    I knew that Jurosz had never been a guy with the ability to get his hands on much or to hold on to whatever he did manage to get his hands on, but these two characters said they’d seen him toss armloads of clothing, books, and cassette tapes into the bonfire. They said the guy looked pretty wasted.

    That guy, I told them, was a good friend of mine. I proceeded to dial Junosz’s cell phone number, at which point one of the tweakers said, “Dude threw his phone in the river.” The other guy gestured to the dog in the bed of the truck and said, “Boomer there went right in and tried to retrieve the phone, but he was shit out of luck.”

    The fire was still smoldering when I arrived. There were a couple of Mexicans who had a trailer just around the bend from Jurosz’s site. I walked down there and asked them if they had any ideas what had become of him and they both shrugged.

    There was an envelope containing two hundred dollars and a photo of Jurosz’s old girlfriend Deena –she hadn’t been around at this point for at least five years– nailed to a tree right next to where the trailer had been, but otherwise there was no sign of Jurosz.

    A couple days after a group of rafters discovered his body washed up on some rocks downriver I received a postcard from the guy who had been one of my oldest friends, and whose struggles had brought me west in the first place. “I had a soul once,” the message on the card read in Jurosz’s almost obsessively neat and microscopic handwriting. “I didn’t sell it or give it away. I didn’t exactly lose it, either. One night, I guess, it just up and left me for a better, more handsome man who didn’t spend so much time alone.”

    I packed my bags, loaded up my truck, shoved a Buddy Guy tape in the deck, and headed back east.

    Just like that I wasn’t in Montana anymore.

    It never ceases to amaze me how quickly a man can change direction, how easily he can erase entire portions of his life and who he once was. People he allowed himself to love. Moments and nights that at the time must surely have seemed like magic and wholly unforgettable.

    I’m also always astonished by how much room there is in this country to run. All a guy really needs is the assurance of more nights, reliable darkness, and a road atlas lousy with places to hide.

    Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me.

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  • The Cockeyed Caravan

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    Sullivan’s Travels, 1941. Directed and written by the inimitable Preston Sturges. Starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake (who’s on the take), the great curmudgeon William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Robert Greig, Eric Blore, Porter Hall, Charles R. Moore, and Jimmy Conlin.

    Playing in Loring Park with Sengalese band Daara J; part of the Walker’s Summer Music and Movies.

    You cannot, in any way, shape or form, find a better thing to do tonight than see Sullivan’s Travels in Loring Park. If the rains come, head on over to the Walker and see it. Call in sick if you work. Tell your lunkheaded boyfriend to go fly a kite if he’s against classic comedies. Skip class, call the babysitter (or better yet, take the kids), walk the dogs later. This is just about the best movie you could see this summer, on the big screen, sitting on the grass while the city pulsates behind you. There’s nothing better.

    Director Preston Sturges was a weirdo of the highest order: bumped around Europe by his free-loving mother, who was a friend of Isadora Duncan; wound up in the cosmetics biz where he invented a kiss-proof lipstick; wrote a smash Broadway comedy on his first try; then, as the Depression hit, turned to movies. He made a lost classic in The Power and the Glory, no relation to the excellent Graham Greene novel, whose non-linear plot was a supposed influence on Citizen Kane. Then Preston Sturges got serious and created a string of the most madcap comedies in Hollywood history, and films that blew a raspberry in the face of rigid American mores of the early 1940s.

    One of which, and perhaps his best (though I personally love the lesser-admired Hail the Conquering Hero, a movie ripe for a remake), is Sullivan’s Travels. It’s the crazy story of a director, John L. Lloyd Sullivan, a depression-era filmmaker of light comedies, such as Ants in Your Pants of 1939 and Hey Hey in the Hayloft. Like many Hollywood personalities, poor Sullivan has a notion to do something of lasting worth. So he gets it into his head to make a serious film entitled O Brother, Where Art Thou (sound familiar?), to address the crushing conditions of his day. Only he grew up with a silver spoon in his piehole and has no idea what it means to be poor. So, disguised as a hobo, he hits the road to live hand to mouth and bum rides on trains.

    Well, as you would expect, he gets more than he bargained for. In Sturges’ capable hands, the guy is at first followed by a coterie of reporters, doctors and filmmakers; ends up in the bedrooms of oversexed widows; and ends up wooing the fetching Veronica Lake. There’s car chases, people falling into pools, and a whole pile of slapstick to frost the confection. But somehow, Sturges is able to have his cake and eat it too: Sullivan, like Preston’s other wonderful films (the ones from 1940-44), has both gales of laughter and soft breezes of melancholy.

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  • Table for One

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    This weekend has been the winter of summer. Whether it’s 60 below or 100 above, it’s all about coping. Because the majority of people in my house are under the age of 16, coping comes only with my help: I’m bored, it’s too hot to go out, there’s nothing on tv, I’m too sticky to read, he’s touching me, she’s breathing on me. Ultimately, the bottom line is that I need a break from my family. I’m not ashamed to say it, I still love them, but I need to get away from them.

    Obviously, if I’m going to escape, I’d prefer that there be good food involved. And since someone (read: the husband) has to stay home and help people cope, it means that I am off on my own, blissfully alone.

    I have no problem eating alone. Some people are self-conscious about the deficiency of a companion; I care not. If the servers feel pity or other eaters glance my way, I really don’t notice. With the lack of chatter and the absense of questions comes a soft void where I can focus on my food. And bonus: no sharing or compromise. I get to pick strictly West Coast oysters and slurp them all, without a single thought as to the etiquette of reaching for the last one.

    Tonight, I think I’ve found the prefect cure. On Sunday and Monday nights during the summer, Solera’s rooftop deck becomes a beautiful escape with screenings of movies and drink specials. I can’t imagine a better night than one that begins with my personal selection of favorite tapas and ends with a cold beer and viewing of In Cold Blood under the stars. Perfectly, wonderfully at a table for one.