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  • F is for Fhima

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    Louis XIII in Southdale is dead. Closed.

    The sign reads: Unfortunately, Louis XIII as a concept has failed and we’re forced to close our doors. We hope to open soon under a new concept.

    Huh.

    The “concept” has failed. We’re “forced” to close our doors. It’s really not our fault, we’re actually brilliant, it’s you people who don’t get it. Our will is to keep this smashing restaurant open, but against our will, it must close. Is that it?

    Clearly it wasn’t due to overblown ego. No chance did it have anything to do with bad business sense (I believe he JUST hired a bookkeeper). And yet people keep throwing him money because he has “passion”?

    I suggest a new note for the door: The king is dead. Sorry about the greed and about forgetting that a restaurant is a living, working world that feeds people, not just a “concept” to add to the press kit. Hopefully, if we can pull our heads out of our asses and think about food and people again, we might be able to promise AND deliver.

  • A Plug For the Good Guys

    Since it seems as if The Oak Street Cinema isn’t going to open its doors to rep cinema anytime soon (if ever), fans of the old school can head on down tonight to the Matchbox Coffee Shop (1306 2nd Avenue NE–just off Broadway) where the affable Barry Kryshka is going to show Watermelon Man. According to Barry, they’ll show Melvin van Peeble’s bizarro comedy “come hell or high water”–which might be the case if the weather doesn’t break. If my in-laws weren’t in town, I’d be there.

    ASPIRING FILMMAKERS: Head on down to the Bell Auditorium tomorrow to glom the rules for the 24 Hour Feature Film Challenge. Check out the link for all the info…

  • Almost The Weekend Agenda

    Something you could do tonight or put-off ’til the weekend: Shawn McConneloug and her Orchestra are presenting SHE Captains, a multi-media dance piece that roughly recreates the life of a sixteen-century she-pirate named Grace O’Malley. The real secret here is that Shawn McConneloug and company don’t perform very often, and when they do, the result has if inventive, often transcendental. Cool tidbit about the show: This film-music-dance hodgepodge is set to the music of Gracie’s homeland of Ireland, everything from traditional Celtic fare to The Pogues. The show takes place up in nordeast, at the Thorp Building. Tonight through Monday.

    In that same vein: The experimental thespians comprising Flaneur Productions are pairing up with Franklin Art Works to present the Heliotrope Festival of Underground, Underexposed, and Unusual Music. Tonight through Saturday.

    Tonight only: The Rake’s very own Gallery Grooves event crashes at Jean Stephen Galleries tonight. Have fun!

  • Bergman, Schikaneder, and… Oh, it was Mozart

    The Schubert Club is embroiled in its Saint Paul Summer Song Festival, in case you hadn’t noticed. And as part of that festival, they’re showing Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 behind-the-scenes film The Magic Flute–popularly regarded as the finest operatic film ever made, probably because Bergman made nice with the artifice of live opera by lugging his camera equipment into a real-life Swedish opera house and even, on occasion, panning to the audience, indeed using them as characters. Swedish baritone Hakan Hagegard, immortalized by this film as Papageno as well as for being an all-around nice fella, is attending tonight’s showing. Our friend Stephanie Curtis The Movie Maven, from Minnesota Public Radio, hosts. Five smacks gets you in. www.schubert.org/Concerts-SongFest.html

  • Wednesday, I'm Supposing

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    Moving books around on the shelves, a quilt of my own making taking shape and standing solid against the wall. All those stories that have both saved and ruined me.

    This image is somewhere on those shelves: the testicles of Uranus, bobbing in a moon-shattered sea, headed for Cyprus. What a foul and wonderful story.

    Sleepless, I still have these moments where there is only one lost, endangered spot left sputtering sense in my skull. Some nights, though, it all gets fuzzed and disappears behind a scrim.

    I would like to demand something bigger from my life, but that’s never been my racket, even if I once thought I would someday be everything. Yet, even now, expectations. If patience is a virtue, well, we can’t all be virtuous, certainly.

    It’s a special type of ruination, to have to do all your dreaming awake, to be simultaneously sleepwalking and full of desire.

    I always seem to be reduced to thinking about what I should be thinking about any of this.

    Surely it’s not truly throwing up your arms to believe that someone will somehow speak to you. Somebody will eventually think of something and save us all.

    And, since I’m just letting my fingers talk this morning, this: Can a man be a ringmaster, walk the highwire, and both be and tame the lion?

    I take something sharp in my mouth, crude hook ground ragged and dangerous against stone. I swallow it unbaited, hoping to snag something gasping and desperate to live, wanting to yank it up out of me to flop and glimmer on the dark floor at my feet. All the while Blind Somebody Something howls from the speakers in the corner.

    Now the bruised light is lapping at the windows and birds are stirring in the trees. Yet surely, still, this day brings with it at least one more pure opportunity to be stunned.

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  • CJ blows the lid on Raking Through Books

    If you hadn’t already noticed, The Rake’s Raking Through Books happy hour book event topped out CJ this past weekend. That big, juicy affair happens tonight.

  • It Takes a Rat

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    What if I take my kids to see Cars and they turn into NASCAR fans? I don’t want them to set up lawn chairs and coolers in front of the TV and start shouting “Don’t bogart the Cheese Whiz!”

    I was afraid after Babe that we’d have to forego the piggies’ gift of bacon, but the DVD seems to have been scratched and mislaid.

    The only kid-time foodies I can come up with: the French chef in Little Mermaid who sang “Le Poisson” whilst nearly chopping up Sebastian the crab, and Wallace who has my youngest waggling his fingers and proclaiming “Look, cheeeeese Grommit” every time we pass the brimming bin at Surdyk’s.

    But there is a new hero on the horizon: Ratatouille. Next summer, Pixar will release the story of a rat in Paris who simply longs for the best food in the best food city on earth. Now that’s a rodent I can get behind.

  • Conversations Real and Imagined: Route 17 and 21 Film Critics

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    “OK, see, the thing I’ve got in my head is that we’re finally nearing the Armageddon because even the Godless are starting to freak out. Hollywood, that’s the Gomorrah of our time, and what’s going on? Religion. Look at it: Da Vinci Code, The Omen, that Mel Gibson thing with the Indians, even that Al Gore Truth movie’s about a liberal freak-out. The Break-Up’s about figuring out godlessness and even X-Men is about defeating the mutant who goes against God. Nacho Libre takes place in a monastery. Poseidon, too, is a remake of a film with a priest at its center, even though it has a name reflecting ancient, heretical gods.

    “A stretch, you say? Have you seen those movies? You saw Mission: Impossible–notice I didn’t mention that one. They said Jesus was a stretch my friend. And until you’ve walked in the valley, as I have, down at Southdale, let me tell you, you can’t see it. Hollywood’s scared, scared of the savior, scared of the end of time…”

    …

    “If you ask me, The Break Up ought to be about how a sexy woman like Jennifer Aniston breaks the hell up with that fat bastard, what’s his name, and all his fat friends. Why the hell would any girl that looked like Jenn-A sleep with a tub like that?”

    …

    “I sometimes wonder if that Muslim thing isn’t such a good idea–graven images and all, you can’t have likenesses of Allah and such. OK, you can’t have a likeness of Mohammed, whatever. I’m thinking more of Christ and God, this stuff applied to Christianity. Yeah, you’d lose all that great art but you wouldn’t have the Da Vinci Code either. Or that 3-D Jesus I saw at a garage sale last week. They’re both freakshows–mark my words, you’ll see dozens of copies of the book and the movie along with that Left Behind shit at the sales in just a year. Scary, man, truly scary…”

    …

    “You know what would be cool? If there was a Yugo in that Cars movie. I saw one of those on the highway, and it seemed to me like you get a lot of jokes out of that. Old jokes, maybe, but I liked Yugos…”

    …

    “Well, now, I’ve listened to nearly nine hundred shows of A Prairie Home Companion in a row, without break. 882 to be precise. To my knowledge, I’ve heard every show there is, and I have a record of every guest and song and advertisement. The joke ads, that is. I began at the dawn of my streak, but have since added journals that reflect recordings I’ve heard that weren’t in chronological order. Someday, someone at Minnesota Public Radio will want this information.

    “My problem is trying to figure out where to put the movie. Because I saw it, as well as listened. I’ve seen the show live twice, but there wasn’t a conflict because it was a broadcasted show. Obviously, the movie has not been broadcast. Also, were the musical guests real? Do they count? One of them died backstage, but of course he isn’t really dead. And then again Meryl Streep actually appeared at the Hollywood Bowl show, which I have notes for.

    “I’m thinking the best solution is a separate volume for the movie, don’t you think? With specific details? Good idea… perhaps I should write Mr. Keillor…”

    …

    “Over The Hedge was stupid. I hate Over The Hedge! I want to see Cars but I hate Over The Hedge! Why can’t I see Cars? I hate Over The Hedge!”

    …

    “OK, so it’s gross and I’m crazy. But I would lick the sweat and bugs off Guy Pierce anytime…”

    …

    “So there’s this new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, OK? And they’ve got this website, with the sound of creaking signs and stuff, OK? So I go to check out the trailer, and I can’t–’cause you can’t see it until after ten p.m., OK? Damn, man, this sumbitch is gonna have some gore, right in the preview. I’m waitin’, waitin’, can’t wait, and ten comes, and the God-damn thing’s nothing more than a normal short–nothing scary, just the usual. The movie might be good, but shit, wait ’til ten, there’s got to be some real cuttin’ up, heads and stuff, OK? Well, there’s not. Nothing. God-damn.”

    …

    “Wow. I wouldn’t want to be that Brandon guy from the new Superman. Look at Christopher Reeves–and the guy from the TV show offed himself. Cursed, that’s all there is to it. At the least, the guy’s going to lose his shirt in the stock market…”

    …

    “God, summer movies suck my brains out my eyes…”

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  • Those are people who died

    So, I’ve decided to divulge a few “secrets” about the Body Worlds exhibit, for the benefit of those who haven’t seen it. I saw the exhibit on Saturday evening, and it was still unsettling my supper come Sunday afternoon.

    OK, it wasn’t that gross. But there were a few seconds when I became dizzingly aware of what was surrounding me–dead people. I had to sit down. But most of the time, I was able to block the notion that these had once been living, breathing folks, probably because they had been pulled apart and posed in such ridiculous fashions–“the gymnast,” “the runner,” “the basketball player” and so on, with brains and spinal cords spilling out their backsides. But then I came upon “Lady of Muscles and Nerves,” or something like that, and I could very much see the structure of her face. (NOTE: the female plastinates have considerably more poetic names–the most ridiculous being “Phoenix with two birds,” and yes, this kneeling plastinate is indeed freeing two plastinated birds from her clutch.) Then there was the guy whose tattoos you can see–a sailor, I surmised, based upon the tattooed ships and big-breasted lady, now cut to pieces, like bread.

    There’s also the much-touted “fetus” room–separate because we’re apparently so much more sensitive about plastinating itty-bitty humans than we are the big ones. Once inside, however, I understood why the museum had portioned this room apart, for the benefit of the weak and weary (like me): An eight-month pregnant woman who had died suddenly is plastinated along with her baby, the stomach sliced apart to reveal the tot.

    I thought the “audio tour,” in which Gunther von Hagen grapples with whether or not plastinates are science or art (Uh, it’s science, d’Uh), was a complete waste of dough–a waste of time even more so.

    But I’m glad I toughed out the exhibit.

  • I Kid You Not

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    I used to think that if I could just get my hands on a sweet potato all my luck would change. If I could just get me some bacon, some butter and eggs, or one of them lollypops.

    Life’s not so simple, I guess.

    Boy, did I ever find that out.

    I was nobody’s rooster, nobody’s wolf, king bee, or tomcat. I was a hog for nobody’s love, a smooth lothario only in my dreams.

    Come to think of it, I didn’t even have any dreams.

    And backdoor man? My god, I couldn’t even get my foot in the front door.

    Crawling kingsnake? Pas moi.

    What was I then? What did I have, if sweet potato I had none? I was a poor man with stones in my shoes, stones in my pathway, blues falling down like hail. I was moaning in the moonlight. I was howling all night long. Bedbugs threw me out of my own bed.

    Did I mention the stones in my shoes? Did I mention it was raining in my heart? That I believed it was raining all over the world?

    I was only impersonating whatever it was I was impersonating in the hopes of getting my hands on a sweet potato.

    I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that I had a hellhound on my trail, but it was certainly possible. It sure did feel like that sometimes, anyway.

    By golly, sometimes it sure as Sam Hell did feel just like that.

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