The Rake Magazine

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  • Theater and Song

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Double Your Pleasure

    907burlesque.jpgTheatre Limina invites you to “double your pleasure, double your fun,” tonight at its 2nd Annual Burlesque Show and Fundraiser. Two years, two purposes, two nights, two babes at a time (and so much more). “Order up your favorite cocktail, and watch our bawdy babes shake their bitchin’ booties. We’ve got hungry harlots, prurient poets, tarty tramps, and licentious ladies of the evening.” Tonight is preview night, but don’t miss out on Sunday’s benefit performance and silent auction.

    7p.m., Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-82-8949; $15.

    Home Place

    907homeplace.jpgBrian Friel is one of Northern Ireland’s most celebrated playwrights today. Dancing at Lughnasa, probably his most successful play, won three Tony Awards in 1992, including Best Play; and Translations, an earlier work, has gone on to become a telling allegory of the troubles in Northern Ireland. Now, his most recent work, The Home Place makes its American premiere after a sold-out season in Dublin and another successful season in London. And it’s all happening right here, at the Guthrie. Set in a big house in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, The Home Place tells the story of a landlord and his son, whose lives come undone with the arrival of an English cousin.

    7:30 p.m., McGuire Proscenium Stage, Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224; $29-$49.

    MUSIC
    Lavay Smith & The Red Hot Skillet Lickers

    907lake.jpgFirst there was Bessie Smith, then Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday. Now, there’s Lavay Smith, today’s jazz and blues diva. And just as Bessie had Clarence Williams, just as Billie had Lester Young and Count Basie, just as Dinah had Max Roach, Lavay Smith has the Red Hot Skillet Lickers at her back — and you can’t ask for a more swingin’ jazz and blues band these days. Enjoy their vast array of original compositions and jazz and blues classics tonight and tomorrow night.

    7 and 9 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $30 and $20.

    Sons and Daughters of Folk

    907pietaB.jpgIt’s hard to resist mentioning her father when writing about Pieta Brown. Sure, it’s a great claim to fame in its own right — to be Greg Brown’s daughter; to grow up in his midst, in his embrace, his love; to be the subject of so many beautiful songs. But the truth is, Pieta is much more than this. While some might say that she reflects her father’s greatness like the very moon — actually, the light is all her own. She’s been in town quite a bit lately, but tonight’s performance is a double whammy, as the Iowa girl will perform alongside another great “seedling.” Benson Ramsey — son of Greg Brown’s longtime producer and sideman Bo Ramsey — now makes up half of The Pines, an up-and-coming roots, blues, and indie rock duo (with David Huckfelt). While it’s certainly more common to see Pieta sharing a stage with Bo than with Benson, I suspect this is not the first time the two have played together; at least now they’re not wearing diapers.

    7:30 p.m., Varsity Theater, 1308 4th St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-604-0222; $12.

    Qui? Quien? Who? Huh?

    907qui.jpgWhile they’ve been around for seven years, there’s a pretty good chance you hadn’t heard of Qui until last year, when drummer/vocalist Paul Christensen and guitarist/vocalist Matt Cronk were joined by vocalist David Yow of The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid fame. Heck, let’s be honest: There’s a pretty good chance this is the first you’ve heard of them. But that would mean you’re no longer on the cutting edge of the whacked-out indie punk-rock world. Can you live with that? Either way, it might be worth your while to go see 7th Street Entry, 701 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-332-1775; $12.

  • Local Radio. It Ain't Pretty.

    A commenter asks Ms. Rybak and me to say something about the sorry state — make that “the perpetually sorry state” of Twin Cities radio, since people have been complaining about how dull, dim-witted, choked-with-advertising and uninspired local radio is since I started paying attention to it back in 1989.

    It’s not like it has gotten any better, generally speaking, but where would we begin?

    First though, just to catch up, two stations parted ways with their program directors last week. First, Doug Westerman, briefly my boss, at KTLK-FM, was shown the door, then Erin Rasmussen at FM-107. There had been some gossip that Westerman’s departure might signal the much-anticipated format switch at KTLk, away from conservative talk to … God knows what. But by replacing Westerman with a talk radio program director from Memphis, Steve Versnick — via WLW in Cincinnati, the signal would seem to be that Clear Channel will stick with, delusional 29%-er talk at least through next year’s election, which has been my bet for a while.

    The move at FM-107, a.k.a. “The Chick Station”, home of Kevyn Burger, Lori & Julia and more recently, Andrew Zimmern and Colleen Kruse, is more like looking for fresh ideas.

    The next quarterly Arbitron ratings won’t be out until later next month, but trends since the “spring book” show very little change other than an overall bump upwards for KSTP-AM, very likely due to Twins baseball — which provides the station with virtually no revenue.

    What the commenter wants I think is a grand overview, a station-by-station analysis, which might be an interesting project. But it’ll take a while to gather the deepest of my/our deep thoughts.

    Until then here’s a blurb a friend sent my way. It comes from Tom Taylor a veteran radio analyst/information trader, who has a successful independent until he sold and joined forces with … (cue Darth Vader theme) … Clear Channel.

    Taylor’s headline is: After Clear Channel goes private — will there be an exodus of management talent?

    He writes: One observer e-mails me to predict that “many folks at the management level are just waiting for their payday from the stock buyout. Watch and see. Fueling that is the feedback from the recent managers meeting. Market managers were told that they will be given their revenue goals from above, and then they’re expected to hit them. So much for bottom-up budgeting. The subtle hint was that ‘You’ll hit them, or we won’t be seeing you at this meeting next year.’” He goes on to say that managers feel particularly helpless because “in reality, local markets have discretion on less than 20% of the expense line items in the budget” and that “a large percentage of promotion and research decisions are made in San Antonio,” leading to what he calls “micromanagement.”

    I include this only because the “Clear Channelization” of the seven stations the company owns in the Twin Cities and as well as the extent to which competitors acquire Clear Channel-like attitudes toward programming, salary levels and ad clutter is arguably the underlying malaise effecting this market and many others.

    Clear Channel is going back to private status some time in the next few months, a move that will — you guessed it — re-line the pockets of the company’s major investors, some of whom joined the Gilded Age when it went public several years ago.

    Finally, after nine straight months of blogging, I’m taking a brief break. I couldn’t leave town until the Par Ridder follies reached some kind of conclusion. The Slaughter will be in Ms. Rybak’s more than capable hands until I get back on Oct. 5, although she too will be away soon for a few days.

  • Welcome the Lynx Kittens

    The Minnesota Zoo is excited to announce the arrival of two Lynx kittens. They are still getting used to their new exhibit, spending more time outside each day.

  • Somali Horror Flick

    Beautiful! Beautiful! We have what is, as far as I know, our first local Somali horror flick coming next month. Check out the trailer.

    And if I’m wrong about the first-ever-local-Somali-horror-flick claim, please educate me.

  • Conquering Maple Grove, Then the World

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    Here’s my theory: the brains behind Parasole Restaurant Holdings (owners of Manny’s, Chino Latino, Good Earth, Muffuletta, Figlio, Salut, and Pittsburgh Blue; and originators of Oceanaire and Buca di Beppo) have buried enormous, powerful magnets beneath all their restaurants. Then they abducted the entire citizenry of our state, one by one, and implanted corresponding metal chips in our necks.

    Now maybe I’ve just watched too many old episodes of the X-Files. But you have to admit, it would explain a lot.

    I was at Pittsburgh Blue, the newest Parasole creation, last Saturday. And it was mobbed: mobbed in that can’t-get-into-the-parking-lot, six-deep-at-the-bar sort of way. The food was good, tasty but definitely not arterial-cleansing. It was mammoth and meaty: salads heaped with bacon, huge hunks of beef, the best yellow corn I’ve ever tasted, though I’d bet my next paycheck it was swimming in heavy cream. People were — literally — eating it up.

    The same thing happened when Salut opened in 2005: I remember walking in one night and asking for a table, to which the young host gave a snort. “How’s a week from Thursday?” she asked before disappearing again into the fray. It’s still packed every night. And now, Parasole is planning to open a second one next spring, in the Milton Mall, across from J Crew on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. The restaurant will be about the same size as the one in Edina, but Salut St. Paul will sport a large, secluded patio, rather than having its outdoor dining streetside.

    And the partners at Parasole are already thinking about the next Pittsburgh Blue location, too; less than three weeks after opening, PB Maple Grove is looking at a “run rate” (that’s restaurant-speak for annual gross profit predictions, based on the average so far) of more than $7 million. It’s a potential gold mine.

    Phil Roberts, co-founder of Parasole, says they’re scouting for locations like Maple Grove and Edina. “We’re talking about the Chicago suburbs,” Roberts told me. “Places like Northbrook. But Northbrook is just a metaphor for the kind of place we want: a high-income bedroom community.

    In fact, Roberts is — even as I write — on his way to Honolulu, home to one of the biggest Buca di Beppos in the country (piles of pasta on the beach. . . .it doesn’t sound right to me, but that’s why I’m not a restaurant mogul) to shop for real estate. There’s talk that Parasole will start doing “communities” of restaurants in particularly favorable locations.

    Imagine: a Manny’s, a Chino Latino, a Salut, and a Pittsburgh Blue all lined up like storefronts on Hawaii’s white sands. Mark my words. Tourists will begin disappearing for a couple hours at a time and when they come back, they’ll all have incisions just under the left ear and a rabid craving for bacon, steak, creamed corn, and red wine.

  • America's Next Hot Porn Star

    I guess the next top chefs and models just weren’t enough. Now we’ve got a new cable pay-per-view show setting out to find America’s Next Hot Porn Star. Just what we’ve all been waiting for…

    Porn invariably becomes the ultimate exploiter of every medium.

    $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

  • A Heavy Handed Pillowman

    THEATER REVIEW by Danielle Kurtzleben

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    Everyone was excited for the opening of Frank Theater’s The Pillowman. The Star Tribune on Friday ran an article on lead actor Jim Lichtseidl: “Funnyman Jim Lichtseidl exercises his dark side with a meaty role,” read the subheader. The Pioneer Press also ran an interview with Lichtseidl and Luverne Seifert, another Pillowman star: “It’s almost guaranteed that sparks will fly,” the PiPress proclaimed. Expectations were high, and the show succeeds…sort of. Frank’s production of The Pillowman is good, but too overwrought to be much more.

    Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman focuses on Katurian (Lichtseidl), a writer of grisly tales in which children are tortured and killed. When a number of child murders resembling his stories take place, Katurian is detained for questioning by the totalitarian state in which he lives. He is interrogated by detectives Ariel (Chris Carlson) and Tupolski (Seifert), who have also detained Katurian’s mentally disabled brother, Michal (Grant Richey), as a way of baiting Katurian into confessing.

    Katurian is on stage for the entire play, but is ironically forced into the background. Pillowman is about artistic responsibility, and Katurian and his art seem to be present only to generate a reaction from Tupolski, Ariel, and Michal. This is not to say that Lichtseidl disappoints; to the contrary, Lichtseidl gives Katurian what depth he can, and his big-brother relationship with Michal is sweet and sincere. But the plot itself gives Lichtseidl little to work with, and as a result he is underused. The role of Katurian proves that serious does not equal “meaty.” In this case, it just means the eye of the storm.

    Fortunately, the rest of the storm is entertaining. Seifert and Carlson are wonderful as the good-cop/bad-cop team of Ariel and Tupolski. Carlson’s Ariel is high-strung and constantly enraged; Seifert’s Tupolski is docile but menacing — together they are mean and unfair and completely engrossing. Seifert is so deliciously nasty that you can’t help but laugh. Grant Richey also succeeds in the role of Michal, uttering even the most disturbing of lines with innocence and vulnerability.

    Pillowman is heavy — it discusses child torture, for God’s sake. And furthermore, it’s about the importance of Art with a capital A. Sometimes it sounds more like a debate in a college literature course than a play. One can’t expect to feel uplifted, but Frank’s production can feel suffocating. There are periods of interrogation so uniformly intense that they drag and grow dull. Nearly every surface is a greenish, corroded metal. The compartment in which Katurian’s stories are acted out hulks over the small Dowling Studio stage, taking up considerable space but only used for about 20 minutes total. The between-scene music is loud and throbbing. Taken separately, these elements could be considered stylized and — especially in the case of the corroded set — kind of cool-looking. But taken together with McDonagh’s script (itself a bit heavy-handed) the whole thing screams “DISTURBING!” and doesn’t really let you think otherwise. It’s hard to see this genre-busting play as anything more than a psychological thriller in this environment, which is a shame. While entertaining, Frank’s Pillowman could use a lighter touch to create some sort of balance, or even a bit of breathing room.

  • Another Lost Winnable Game

    The Kansas City Chiefs will be fortunate to win five games this season. And at the rate they are going, so will the Minnesota Vikings. Yesterday’s flop was the kind of tone-setter that evaporates a team’s fan base in a hurry. Other media folks who pay more attention, and are certainly more passionate, about the Vikes than I am, have already pointed out the silliness of keeping their only offensive weapon on the sidelines during their last possession. But where is the widespread umbrage over the absolutely pathetic performance of Bryant McKinnie, who was alternately manhandled and blown through by defensive end Jared Allen?

    Allen’s line wasn’t too shabby–Eight tackles, two sacks, two pass deflections, three quarterback hurries and a forced fumble. He was without question the dominant player of the game, mostly at McKinnie’s expense. And when the Chiefs went to the primo pass rush late in the 4th quarter, Allen was moved inside, opposite Steve Hutchinson. Put simply, the Vikes once again got mashed at one of their precious few areas of supposed strength on offense. And, to bring this full circle, had McKinnie and Hutchinson not been so bedeviled by the heat (I’m offering up that excuse anyway), perhaps Coach Childress might have deigned to play Peterson even if he was a tad deficient in pass protection.

    For the second week in a row, Cedric Griffin also got burned, once on the Chiefs touchdown and once when he missed a tackle that otherwise would have forced a punt and saved points. With Antoine Winfield having another strong game (even saving a potential touchdown by Drummond on a punt return), opponents will continue to flame Griffin until he improves or gets replaced.

    I know this is beginning to sound like a rerun of my last Vikings diatribe, but that’s because the troubling problems are becoming chronic. To wit, the horrible, horrible receiving corps. Yes, the tight end Shiancoe had a really nice day, and caught that TD pass from Mewelde Moore plain as day. He’s got good hands and length–he’s no Kleinsasser. But the wideouts don’t get separation and don’t catch well in traffic–assuming the ballclub had a QB who could deliver the ball are the rate occasions they were open. And assuming the offensive line allowed the QB time to survey the field….

    You get the drift. Brad Childress is threatening to become a trivia question destined to stump Vikings die-hards around about 2019. As in who was the coach in 2006 and 2007?

    PS–for all you Wolves fans. I’ll throw something up sometime tomorrow or Wednesday after Tuesday afternoon luncheon with team officials.

  • Niggling with "The War"

    Proving once again that if God himself arrived on Earth X% of the chattering classes would complain that his luminous vestments were not luminous enough, his beard had split ends, his diction was stilted and (for balance) Satan thought him intellectually lacking, the niggling over Ken Burns’ “The War” has begun.

    OK, so we’re off to a shaky start comparing Burns to God, (some of his recent interviewers have come close), but come on, is anyone out there doing better stuff on this scale anywhere in this country? The answer to that is, “No”. Personally, I locked in from the first frame last night and see no purpose in niggling, other than to bait/engender an argument. I’m a fan of Burns’ “style”, the pace, the panning, the narration, the “fiddles”. Not only doesn’t it bother me, I regard the time in frame and hours spent overall as a valuable antidote to the ADHD-pacing and “money shot” structure of way too many feature films and network documentaries. (In my opinion, Burns’ “Lewis & Clark”, which he described as a “visual valentine to the American West” is the apex of this style. Gorgeous. Hypnotic. Plug it into a plasma set.)

    I have not seen all of “The War”. (I am still trying to convince PBS that I am worthy of press screeners, even though my last name is no longer the prestigious “St. Paul Pioneer Press”). Burns has said that last night’s opener was essentially a full-length scene-setter, designed to establish the characters from the four towns he chose to build his story upon. But the nigglers are already complaining that Burns’ is treading on overly-familiar ground, hasn’t revealed anything new about WWII, or why humans fight, and is already resorting to visual cliches of repeated stock footage.

    Among the less-than-thrilled … my new co-blogger, Ms. Rybak. She of course is so much younger than me she can be forgiven for not remembering WWII. Hell, she’s such a pup she barely remembers Duran Duran.

    Since I haven’t seen the next 12 hours I’ll reserve judgment on whether Burns goes anywhere new, anywhere no filmmaker before him has ever gone, and whether he creates an epiphanic moment whereby the human affinity for war is laid bare, Dick Cheney is dragged out behind the barn and peace petals blanket the planet.

    But the Burns’ “style”, even the 14 and a half hours, he commits to these epics has the effect of a deep immersion class from the best professor on campus. You absorb his films. You LIVE in them, and the hours you spend with the rhythms and characters, especially the ground level characters he’s chosen here instead of generals and historians, provide insights and qualities “ordinary” documentarians struggle to capture, condense, condense again and and contextualize in an hour, or even more laughably, a 12-minute, “20/20” piece.

    What amuses me first is the insistence on … speed … even from middle-aged book readers, who you’d think would know better and appreciate comprehensiveness. The vibe is: WE already know about Guadalcanal, the battle of Midway and MacArthur’s screw-ups. So come on! Chop chop. Let’s get to something new or at least get to the end … faster.

    Burns has told every interviewer that he was inspired to make “The War” after reading a poll that showed a shockingly high percentage of American school children so ignorant of who fought who and why in WWII they believed the United States and Germany were allies against the Russians. (Holy shit.)

    Knowing that those people soon become voting age adults capable of being swayed by cheap demagoguery, you may, if you’re Ken Burns, decide to devote a year and a half to re-telling an oft-told tale in a different way, (going light on the politicians and admirals). But the nigglers are arguing that this is exactly what the Burns “style” is failing to engage — the imagination and attention of teenagers and twenty-somethings who have no interest in the background noise about wars of their own generation, much less their grandparents’.

    Burns has hinted he may take on the Vietnam War somewhere down the line. If the nigglers are upset that “The War” isn’t ideologically-driven enough, THAT adventure may be more provocative.

    Alessandra Stanley’s review in The New York Times hits on the notion that the film is too tightly focused on America. Really? I mean, I understand the need to find something to niggle about under deadline pressure, but this is clearly a film about the American experience of WWII. (I’d love to see a similar film from a Russian or Japanese filmmaker with access to their archives.)

    Even in the scene-setter opening I sense that Burns’ decision to speak from the perspective of GIs, flyers, sailors, nurses and relatives at home offers valuable illumination about how little the average soldier then (and probably now) cared about or followed (or even had access to) world events that drew him into the maw of war. Only the Jewish guy from Waterbury, CT. recalled having followed the ravings and fascism of Hitler with any particular interest before enlisting. Most other young men, as Minnesotan (and soon to be folk hero) Sam Hynes, says, were simply swept up into the current, often with a cartoonish notion of war and the promise of instant adulthood and an adventure far more interesting than anything they’d find at home.

    If all the “war” nigglers are really complaining about the lack of direct relation to the disaster in Iraq, I think they might be guilty of being too short-sighted and literal-minded. I’m guessing that by the time “The War” wraps next weekend, viewers who don’t demand some kind of Michael Bay-meets-Michael Moore hybrid, will have had a remarkably fulfilling experience, even without learning anything new about naval strategies at Midway.

  • Fortress Wine: Talk about focus!

    Here’s a winery on Mt. Konocti in Napa Valley’s Lake County that produces exactly ONE wine: a Sauvignon Blanc made of 100% Musque clone grapes.

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    “My husband believes in doing one thing well before he moves on to something else,” said Barbara Snider, co-owner of Fortress Vineyards and — by the way — mother to Tim Snider, who happens to be vice president of the much larger Fess Parker Winery as well as the son-in-law of Fess himself. “We decided to focus on the Sauvignon Blanc until we got it just right.”

    I’d say the Sniders (senior) can start experimenting with Pinot Noir.

    Their Sauvignon Blanc 2004 is almost startlingly clean, with a nose of cucumber, citrus, and minerals, and a full flavor like a lime that’s been cut with a steel knife. The finish is bigger than you might expect; there’s even a tiny hint of vanilla in the wine’s wake. But the overall experience is one of clear, sparkling water, tart fruit, and flinty soil.

    My husband and I split a bottle last night while sitting outside on what probably was the last sultry night of the year. A perfect way to punctuate the end of summer.