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  • Hillary Owes Rush and Sean

    It was desperate this morning west of the Dry Dock and south of Superior. No coffee! A few beans of de-caf were not going to make it happen, and the likelihood that I was soon going to be stripping off my clothes, painting my warrior-like body barn red with linseed oil and go shrieking off through the woods was pretty damned high until … way back in a corner of the cupboard I found what had to have been a 10 year-old jar of “instant cappuccino” powder … that had hardened to the consistency of lava.

    Apply boiling water. Good enough. What’s on the tube? Oh look, another debate forum. This time the Democrats down at Drake, with George Stephanopoulos doing the moderating.

    I can see why Barack Obama says he’s drawing a line at any more of these things. As much as I get a kick out of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel (and Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd and Joe Biden) firing off a few good, “What have I got to lose?” lines, they ain’t going to happen, and it really is time to start moving on. (Remember, this nomination thing is going to be wrapped up by mid-February, at least for the Democrats.)

    While I remain an Edwards guy, the Hillary supremacy is truly something to behold. How and why is she so far ahead of everyone else? Didn’t we all think she had impossibly high “negatives”? I mean, there was Karl Rove on The Rush Limbaugh Show, reminding us of exactly that just a couple days ago.

    Of course, as Clinton joked this morning, how could she NOT have high negatives after what has been going on in this country for the last 20 years? Twenty years is just about exactly as long as both the Clintons and Limbaugh have been on the national stage.

    There is a great irony underlying Hillary’s current and apparently solid and growing popularity, and it ain’t just old-style party hacks taking fat checks from Big Pharma. As much as anything else it is that Hillary Clinton isn’t now and most likely never has been anything close to the shrewish, ball-busting harridan that Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt, Savage, Medved, O’Reilly, Ingraham, Liddy, yadda yadda and yadda yadda some more have always portrayed her. Not even close.

    Their bullshit earned them good ratings for nearly two decades. But it may be coming back to bite them.

    As Hillary makes the usual campaign appearances and does this relentless debate/forum shtick, we are finding that the caricature of her created by the “vast right-wing conspiracy” has had the effect of setting her bar for likeability so low it comes as a startling surprise to almost everyone — especially those who haven’t paid a lot of attention to her beyond what they hear on the radio — that she is invariably gracious, in addition to being composed and well-versed in the machinery of both politics and diplomacy. It is a variation on the low expectation game. After 15 solid years of nothing but “Hillary the Bitch,” the Hillary the average voter is seeing bears no resemblance … whatsoever.

    I think Edwards still has it right about how to re-set the rules of the game for the American dream, (although, come on John, tell us how you expect to LEGISLATE billions of dollars of profits out of the hands of the HMOs?), but if this thing stays on the track it is on, and Hillary and Bubba return to the White House, they might consider sending Rush and Sean and all their sycophants thank you cards.

  • Gangchen Bar & Restaurant

    At 8:45 on a Friday night, the more popular Eat Street restaurants are still abuzz, but the dining room at 1833 Nicollet Ave. S. is empty. The former Soul City Supper Club has been reborn as the Gangchen Bar & Restaurant, with a logo that includes a martini glass tipped at a rakish angle. A string of festive colorful plastic pennants celebrating the Grand Opening are strung outside the door like prayer flags. There are a few staffers and friends huddled in the bar, watching Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, on the big flat screen TV.

    The restaurant’s name sounds vaguely Asian, hard to place, but it means Snow Mountain in Tibetan (or so our waiter tells us). There is also a monastery in Tibet called Gangchen, and a Gangchen lama, now living in exile in Italy. The walls are painted the color of monks robes, and covered with Tibetan art and photos of the Himalayas. The owners, we learn, are Tibetan; one of them previously owned Tibet’s Corner, which closed last year in Uptown.

    The menu is an eclectic Mix of everything Asian: Chinese egg rolls, Thai and Vietnamese spring rolls, Japanese teriyaki chicken, pad Thai, Singapore noodles, and even Minnesota-style celery chow mein. We sample a few of these: an appetizer of deep-fried shrimp isn’t really tempura-battered, but more in the style of classic Chinese take-out, complete with sweet red dipping sauce. The shrimp with green “Thai style curry” ($9.99) isn’t very Thai, but it’s very spicy and quite tasty. So is the hot and spicy squid, stir-fried with onions, ($12.99), which seems vaguely Vietnamese.

    There are two Tibetan dishes on the menu. On an earlier visit, I tried the thenthu, a hearty and very tasty meal-sized soup with hand-made noodles, cabbage, carrots, and your choice of beef or chicken ($8.99). I would gladly go back and try the momo, steamed dumplings stuffed with seasoned chopped beef ($9.99).

    Service is friendly and attentive, prices are reasonable, and there is a full bar with a small but decent selection wines by the glass.

    Next door at 1831 Nicollet, the former home of Big E’s Soul Food, and then, briefly, the Lucky Star Chinese Restaurant, a new sign above the door says Provencial, Inc., specializing French cuisine and soul food. A hand-written note attached to the door says it will open soon.

    Gangchen Bar & Restaurant, 1833 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis, 612-872-8663.

  • A MacGuffin in Minneapolis

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    Howard Hawks’ magnificent film noir classic, The Big Sleep, opens with a stark, moonlit scene of a car being dragged out of the Malibu Bay with a dead chauffeur inside. Never in the course of the film — which has Humphrey Bogart as private eye Philip Marlowe investigating a blackmailing scheme and falling in love with his client’s elder daughter — is this adequately explained. The chauffeur’s murder is not only left unsolved, it’s very rarely referred to as the mystery/love story unfolds.

    This is what’s known in the movie business as a “MacGuffin,” a device with little relationship to the overall plot that serves mostly as a provocative tidbit to drive viewer attention. And so it is with Harry’s poutine.

    When Harry’s Food & Cocktails opened in early July, much was made of the fact that chef Steven Brown would be offering poutine: a lethal Canadian delicacy comprised of French fries, cheese curds, and gravy. Potential diners easily could have been left with the impression that this was a restaurant good only for the sort of ill-advised thrill-seeking you might get from parachuting into a wind farm. I know I was.

    Imagine my surprise when, after a lovely afternoon movie date and a walk down Washington Avenue, John and I stopped in and found — yes — burgers and fries, but also “breakfast” radishes with butter and sea salt, sautéed arugula, striped bass with truffle caviar, and an assortment of wholesome salads.

    Now, this is the Steven Brown I recall from Levain: a man with a healthy respect for fish, grains, and vegetables. Goateed and silver-haired, he was standing in front of the line at Harry’s, inspecting dishes as they went out, holding a towel (NOT a ladle full of gravy) to wipe off their already pristine rims.

    We had the Sunflower Salad, a truly inspired combination of butter lettuce, golden beets, smoked salmon, and sunflower sprouts that tasted sunny and smoky and fresh. We also had a really nice 2004 Washington Cab, prosaically named Pine and Post — which was young and fruity, as cold-hardy Washington grapes tend to be — for a mere $6.50 a glass.

    In fact, for a place that bills itself as a “cocktail” bar (which can be code for $15 martinis), the wine list is incredibly reasonable. There are a number of six to eight dollar by-the-glass options, including a Toad Hollow Rosé and a Hogue Fumé Blanc. If you’re willing to spring for a bottle, you can get everything from a $24 Willamette Valley Pinot Grigio to a $30 Argentinian Malbec.

    But best of all is the music at Harry’s. General Manager Steven Kleitz is a Kansas City native with a weakness for the blues, who plays mixes featuring Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan. This was, hands down, the most pleasant dining room I’ve spent time in lately.

    And all the talk about poutine? I think, perhaps, that was more publicity stunt than menu planning: the MacGuffin Brown and Kleitz used to get our attention.

  • Another Plug for Eloquent Nude

    Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson is a remarkably resourceful hour-long documentary of the great photographer’s greatest love and the work they inspired in each other. Ms. Wilson, now 93, is candid in her remembrances and the reenactment work of their travels with the likes of Ansel Adams is so skillful you have to remind yourself you’re not watching archival footage. The heart of a fascinating proto-feminist libertine beats within this story. Co-produced by St. Paul native, Julie Gliniany. –by Brian Lambert

    Riverview Theater. 3800 42nd Avenue South. Friday, August 17, 5:30. Saturday and Sunday, August 18 and 19 at noon and 5:30.

  • City Pages Snaps a Towel at Al Franken

    In a world where everyone, especially celebrities are free roaming targets for everyone with a cellphone camera, Al Franken ought to be thankful City Pages’ newshounds don’t have his workout routine up on YouTube. Maybe tomorrow.

    City Pages posted a tiddy by writer Ben Westhoff describing Franken’s goofball antics in his condo work-out room. Reaction ensued. Now, CP editor, Kevin Hoffman, has added a comment defending, one assumes, his decision to run the piece.

    From the comments I gather the piece hasn’t played all that well with Friends of Al and/or more sober-minded news consumers.

    As a person-in-the-public-eye of long-standing I gotta believe Franken is used to this sort of thing. And if he isn’t, God help him if doesn’t start getting used to it. Every politician today is one click of a YouTube upload away from a “macaca meltdown”.

    The City Pages thing is a silly little “gotcha” item, probably of greater risk to City Pages’ currently re-coagulating reputation than Franken’s. (If Steve Perry were dead he’d be churning.) But when you’re a celebrity/senate candidate you’re fair game for damned near anything anyone wants to show or tell about you.

    That said, isn’t there a code of something about work-out behavior and gawking or telling tales of grunting, sweating, whatever? Isn’t it understood among, um, people of quality that what happens in the gym stays in the gym?

    I’m in no position to chastise anyone else for engaging in sophomoric silliness. Rather, my beef with this incident is with the underlying suggestion/assertion from both Westhoff and Hoffman that Franken — a career cut-up — is engaged in some kind of contrived struggle to transform his true self into a serious-minded student of political issues. Clearly, Franken is working, maybe too hard, at impressing Minnesota voters with his command of serious topics. But it is something else to insinuate that he is, you know, maybe, uh, faking it.

    If anything, Franken’s radio show floundered because he wasn’t funny or goofy enough. Too often he had his policy wonk dial yanked past 11. Some of that may have been for show. But anyone who listened understood the guy had done his homework. Put another way, anyone who thinks he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he wades in to Iraq or health care or whatever isn’t paying attention.

    Beyond that, I think there’s an argument to be made that Franken the candidate has to find a balance between the glib, wise-cracking smart-ass most of us enjoyed, and a guy who strikes us as knowledgeable and committed enough to drive more enlightened policies through the U.S. Senate than Norm Coleman. That shouldn’t be too tough. Not among the Twin Cities literati, at least.

    Speaking as an elitist liberal who’d vote for my hydrangea bush before Norm Coleman — WAY too much rubber stamp work, Normie — my advice to Franken is to loosen up on the stump a bit more. These past seven years have been one long, sick joke. Laughter, whether rueful or mocking, can only be cathartic.

  • Stink Fest

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    Garlic is often referred to as the Stinking Rose. Maybe that’s why this Saturday’s Minnesota Garlic Festival is being held waaaaaay out at the Wright County Fairgrounds. I imagine the westerly winds will soften the pungent aromas as they waft toward the Cities, so that on Saturday evening you will be struck by the odd craving for Italian food.

    But me, I’m going in full bore. I like my garlic raw and plentiful and I can’t wait to see what a day of garlic festing brings. I know I’ll be in good company, their line-up of chefs is top notch: Lucia Watson, Mike Phillips of Craftsman, Alex Roberts of Restaurant Alma and Brasa, Philip Becht of The Modern Cafe, Tracy Singleton of Birchwood, and Russell Klein (formerly of WA Frost). Sponsored by the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, would you expect anything less?

    Think of it as your pre-season to next week’s extravaganza….

  • Dog Days

    It’s been a mighty strange season, and I’m frankly exhausted. It obviously doesn’t take a whole lot of psychic energy to follow a genuinely good team. That’s probably not true, though, at least strictly speaking; to really follow any baseball team, day in and day out, takes a tremendous amount of psychic energy. It’s a huge investment of time, attention, and emotion.

    I guess what I’m trying to say, however, is that a good team more consistently rewards you for that time and attention, and the emotional reserves get replenished on a regular basis, allowing you to hang tough through the inevitable disappointments and occasional small heartbreaks.

    I’ve also always felt that a truly lousy team can be oddly satisfying in its own way. Expectations are diminished, futility is almost masochistically entertaining when it’s sustained, and you can sort of sit back, absorb the regular blows, and focus on the peripheral pleasures of baseball: the atmosphere, the development of young players, the incredible athleticism of even marginal stars, and the inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch dramas and decisions that make up every game. I’ve always contended that the teams with the most knowledgeable and loyal fans are the teams that have endured stretches of true futility.

    A team like this year’s version of the Twins, though? A decent team with a core group of excellent players, a promising batch of young pitchers, and absolutely no depth? A team that is distinguished by nothing so much as it’s maddeningly consistent inconsistency? This is the sort of team that kills you.

    I mean, you can bitch until you’re blue in the face about a shitty team and the sorts of complete organizational overhaul that would be necessary to make it competitive again, but real hope is so unrealistic and the malaise tends to be so general in such cases that it’s pointless to even have discussions of the sort we’ve been having all spring and summer this year. Back in the mid-90s nobody would have wasted any breath pining for the acquisition of somebody like Ty Wigginton, or crossing their fingers that the return of Rondell White could make any sort of a difference.

    I suppose you could argue that those discussions and hopes were just as pointless this year, but that’s part of the frustration of a team like the 2007 Twins; all we can do is strap ourselves into the slow-motion roller coaster and bitch and suffer as we lurch up and down and yet somehow still manage to go nowhere. It’s a rare and queasy experience that can make you feel like you’re riding a roller coaster and treading water at the same time.

    Since the All Star break the Twins have been one solid, sustained stretch away from surging right back into contention in the Central, but they haven’t had one solid, consistent surge in them. And as the Tigers and Indians have done everything in their power to make the division a three-team race, the Twins have been utterly unable to hold up their end of the deal.

    And that’s been nothing but frustrating.

  • Life & Style in the Twin Cities

    Under the shadow of the I-35W bridge collapse — but totally unrelated — came the launch of a new website, Minneapolis Picks — your total shopping guide. Don’t be misled by the shopping reference, though; this isn’t just trendy tops and shoes. The site covers everything from independent stores, to restaurants and services, events, and more.

  • Weekly Local Podcast

    Get out that ipod, and upload the latest Flak Radio segment — or upload all of them and catch up. James Norton, former producer of The Al Franken Show, and Taylor Carik, journalist and man-about-town, interview guest hosts, discuss Flak Magazine stories and crazy stuff they find on the internet, and end each segment with — my favorite part — Joel Meyer’s “What Was the Theme?” Can you figure it out? Probably not. It’s never that obvious.

  • Sailor Martin Takes Toyko Film World by Storm

    Our favorite, foul-mouthed, tattoed puppet, Sailor Martin, stars in this remix of the 1962 horror film The Manster.