I was by myself the other day when I stopped in for lunch at SerenTori restaurant, 5748 34th Ave., Minneapolis, so I could only try one dish, which made it kind of a tough choice. The $6.95 lunch specials didn’t sound that appealing – they’re mostly Chinese take-out classics like Sesame Chicken, Egg Foo Young, … Read more
Fool for a Client, Mark Whitney’s politically-tinged Fringe show, is The Shawshank Redemption meets The Pursuit of Happyness. And not only is the painfully funny show tough to perform, since it chronicles some of the roughest periods of Whitney’s life, but it also attempts to examine many of the odd conflicts inherent in today’s political … Read more
Those of you familiar with this site may remember the series of roundtables I held last year between myself, steadfast Twins fan, along with Rake and ex-City Pages baseball columnist Brad Zellar, and former Twin Cities Reader sports columnist (and current Minnpost media columnist) David Brauer. Zellar and Brauer are my kind of conversationalists: They’re … Read more
ART Overflow: A Pleasure Trip Eric Inkala‘s no fool. After a good run of years of painting his coloristic, hazy-dazy, arabesque, Little-Engine-that-Could-meets-Pacman murals (this guy is a tagger of the most whimsical sort) on walls around town, Inkala’s finally been hit by the legitimacy bug. That is, in the manner of graffiti artists gone legit–like … Read more
With their previous entries into the Minnesota Fringe all selling out by the end of their respective festivals, the Four Humors troupe has become something of an August favorite in Minnesota theater. This will be their fourth year participating in the Fringe, and the group is affiliated with three shows that will be playing around … Read more
These angels are useless. The heavenly agents that populate Chris Adrian’s new story collection, A Better Angel, sit idly by their hapless wards, disappointed and impotent. Their existence, it seems, is incidental, and at times they are nothing more than a higher order of fuck-ups. Which somehow makes these angels strikingly believable. A trinity of … Read more
I was excited to be able to catch up with Rachel Teagle and Ben Egerman, two friends of mine and veterans of the Carleton College theater scene. As newcomers to the Fringe, they were kind enough to lend some of their perspective, caffeine induced hysteria, and details about their new show, Orange. The Rake: How … Read more
ART & MUSICGallery Grooves Jazz & Art PartyIf there’s one thing we’re good for here at The Rake, it’s putting on a fantastic party – and the Twin Cities Pan African Fest is the perfect excuse! Satisfy your art-tooth on multiple levels tonight at Altered Esthetics Gallery, where you’ll be lucky enough to lay eyes … Read more
Rake photographer Denis Jeong is set loose in Detroit Lakes and tells us all he sees and hears. See the slideshows (Part 1 and Part 2) chronicalling his weekend, nudity and all. Boom-bam-bop-tap! Boom-bam-bam-pop-pop-pop! Is this what a drum circle sounds like? Maybe not, but that’s the sound I was hearing as I drifted in … Read more
About 50 years ago, the BBC broadcast an April Fools report about the annual spaghetti harvest in Switzerland, and got hundreds of inquiries from viewers who wanted to know where they could buy their own spaghetti trees. Really. So just to be clear on this – the pizzas at the Pizza Farm, (real name: A … Read more