“I’m home!” Lydia cries out. “Dov’è la biblioteca?” says Lyle. He’s at the stove, his back to her, tossing something into a pot. His voice is steady, reassuring, as seductive as the all-night jazz radio host who inhabits the parallel universe that of late has revealed itself to Lydia—a world populated with graveyard shift workers, … Read more
Last spring brought a nasty shock. I was walking down a leafy side street off Como Avenue, hoping to admire in passing the jolly gingerbread woodwork around the eaves of the tumbledown duplex where my POSSLQ and I shared our first Minnesota home. The place was in pretty poor nick when we rented it twenty … Read more
Tonight. 9 PM, TPT. Ch.2 (Tomorrow, 9 p.m. ch. 17) Once whoever comes next and historians begin clearing rubble from the administration of George W. Bush and trying to explain how this disaster happened the smart ones will start by boring into Dick Cheney’s bunker. If there’s any doubt left that Cheney is the ideological … Read more
What could be your key to fame and glory, the secret to a happy marriage, and the only way to make it through the entertaining season with grace and aplomb? Why, it’s the cocktail party, dahling. Libations aside, the best reason for hosting this type of gathering is that success doesn’t depend on a mass … Read more
Patricia Olive has no children. So you’d think she’d be spared that dinnertime nightmare: This one hates vegetables, this one eats only bologna sandwiches with ketchup, this one weeps about dead animals every time you serve beef. But when the Guthrie Theater staged Six Degrees of Separation in 2003, the veteran props manager got a … Read more
You can argue whether globalization is good for the planet or good for workers, but when it comes to gastronomy, the influx of foreign flavors has definitely enlivened the local dining scene. Mention fusion cuisine nowadays, and people are likely to think of the high-end stylings of celebrity chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. … Read more
Thank you for the insightful and sympathetic comments about Michael Brecker [“Honorable Exit,” October]. Every day as I work, I listen to and come to know the work of countless musicians/composers … thank God for wireless headphones! It’s hard for me to believe that Michael Brecker was dying as I listen to Pilgrimage. I can’t … Read more
Wow, what a great article Ann Bauer wrote on The Rocky Horror Picture Show [“The Sweet (and Saucy) Transvestite,” October]. When my teenage daughters found a copy of the movie and wanted to know what it was about I described it as an “American classic.” I hoped they would file it next to McLintock! and … Read more
I love [the Band Box Diner]. The chef, and I mean, a chef, came from Caffe Solo [“The Original All-American,” October]. He introduced garlic chicken with mashed potatoes to Minneapolis. He is so nice and runs a wonderful grill. You can have a classic diner dinner and chat him up at the same time. He … Read more
OK, let me see if I have this right. You published an article about the director of the St. Paul Public Library, and you made some errors, which you corrected and for which you apologized [Letters, October]. You could not fact-check the article, you say, because Minneapolis doesn’t have a reference librarian available on Sunday … Read more