The Rake Magazine

Back in the early 1980s, when the Commodore 64 first hit the market and Apple became the first personal computer manufacturer to hit the $1 billion mark for annual sales, Mark Hull had a wife, two kids, a nice house in Fridley, tailor-made suits from Madrid, and a nine-to-five systems analyst job with benefits and … Read more

My brothers and my mother were all dancers, outside of whatever else they did, like acrobatics, high wire, trapeze,” Donald O’Connor once said. The Hollywood dance icon knew inherently why a dancer is like a circus performer: because both create physical illusions by subverting gravity and harnessing momentum. During his classic and clownish “Make ’Em … Read more

A race car with a dorsal spoiler careened over a jump and passed through a flaming hoop. Then it followed the racetrack in a loop-d-loop and drove through another flaming hoop. Rolando, a video-game tester for Activision Publishing, guided the car via a Playstation 2 controller over a series of flashing, fluorescent arrows that somehow … Read more

People who work in fine dining tend to be night owls who eat their first meal of the day around two p.m. They carry a wine service wherever they go but often lose their car keys. They’re rock ’n’ roll junkies who, more often than not, have been married multiple times. They put up with … Read more