In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, farm animals overthrew the evil Mr. Jones and created a utopia where “all animals are equal.” However, the pigs, who led the uprising, gradually began acting more like the hated Jones. By the book’s end, the pigs had morphed into porcine Mr. Joneses and the farm into a place where … Read more
There are three golden things that never perish: gold, honey, and the sun. An archaeologist friend of mine once put this to the test. She was excavating at the Bronze Age citadel built at Mycenae during the Greek Civil War when her team came across a large jar full of honey. They agreed it would … Read more
One of my favorite ways to pass the time while standing in line at the grocery store is to analyze the contents of the carts of the people around me. I like the incongruity of it. Gazing up and down the lines, it’s not unusual to see a cart containing a sack of generic Froot … Read more
On November 2, 2004, perennial candidate Kevin Kolosky will achieve something that few, if any Minnesota lawyers ever have: He will have run for judge nearly as many times as he has argued before a jury. Starting in 1994, literally weeks after passing the bar exam, Kolosky started campaigning, opposing whatever hapless soul he believes … Read more
Other countries’ politics are always a mystery. Of course, it helps to know some history. Then you can at least ask how they got here from there, rather than merely measure how different they are from us, how they fail to meet our highest standards of democracy, feminism, etc. But even disinterested interest is sometimes … Read more
I was sorting through an old box of videotapes the other night and came across an unmarked VHS cassette with no case. I popped it in the VCR, hit play, and for the next half hour, marveled at the human animal’s capacity for selective memory. 1993. I was a barista in an espresso bar downtown. … Read more
Remember Brian Herron? Just three summers ago, the former Minneapolis City Council member was the poster boy for political graft after the FBI videotaped him accepting a $10,000 bribe. This very public crash-and-burn earned him a year in prison and spawned an investigation of the entire Minneapolis City Council. Political wags claim that Sharon Sayles-Belton … Read more
There is a Gresham’s Law in music; bad tunes drive out good. On Sunday you hear a competent choir render a subtle and melodious anthem by Herbert Howells. You are then obliged to join in a repetitive praise chorus of the sort whose words and tune suggest that the righteous are those who have enjoyed … Read more
We’ve hit an interesting point in the arc of TV storytelling. It’s almost completely self-referential. Like monks from those earlier Dark Ages, copying illuminated manuscripts over and over again, today’s Hollywood hacks are feeding internally until there is no discernable output or input of ideas. Only yeasty, subdividing molecules of “Cop,” “Hot Chick”/“Dopey Chick”/“Brainy Chick,” … Read more
Thirty columns ago, in the very first issue of The Rake — March 2002 — I wrote that “being a real brother is not as important as being a real man. Real men think for themselves and live with the consequences of their decisions.” I admit that I took some defiant pride in the not-so-veiled … Read more