We’re always invigorated by a brisk autumn of theatergoing; this year, the season has been even more robust thanks to a trio of theater-themed parties. There was no shortage of spectacle on the opening-night galas at the Guthrie Theater and the Children’s Theater, where the line between costume and couture was wonderfully blurred. Where else … Read more
A disheveled man paced the intersection of Snelling and University avenues, waving his arms as he described to passersby how his car had broken down and he’d been sleeping at the nearby Catholic church. If somebody would spare some change, he promised, he’d be on his way. The man had plenty of pedestrians to talk … Read more
Dan Buettner is best known as a writer and extreme adventurer who rode his bike around the world from east to west and from north to south through the Americas and Africa and Europe and Asia. He has crossed the roadless Sahara desert, numerous jungles, and active war zones. He has contracted dozens of diseases … Read more
She didn’t tell me exactly what I have to wear, she just said to “dress my ass up,” Char tells Stephan. The three dust-topped round bulbs over the bathroom mirror whiten her face to stark, a finger of pewter shadows like chalk drawings under her eyes as she leans in close, paints in tiny pointillism … Read more
Not long after the new Design Collective boutique opened in Uptown, its display window featured a two-tiered, amphibious-looking skirt whose ruffles, shaped with wires, were so impressive they stopped a passerby in her tracks. “It makes me think of a nudibranch,” explained Barrett Johanneson, months later, as he fished the skirt out of the trunk … Read more
Not so long ago, if you heard “wipe” used as a noun, you probably thought of a baby’s bottom. That was in the late nineties, when baby wipes made up eighty-two percent of the “wipe market.” Now, of course, you can buy disposable cloths soaked in just about any kind of fluid and stuffed into … Read more
Every year there’s a ritual in my house: My wife gathers all of her Jane Austen novels from the bookshelf and reads them in chronological order. Once that liturgy is complete, she devours all five hours of the landmark BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, or Bridget Jones’s Diary, the Laurence Olivier Pride, Bride and … Read more
It’s time to take that other monthly business more seriously. Yeah, I know this is the November issue. But, gentle readers, I am speaking to you from the recent past of October third! Boooooooo! I am the ghost of October third! And where I’m coming from, it’s still National Breast Cancer Awareness month. So let’s … Read more
Sitting on my desk is the final “absolute, no kidding, no extensions possible” request for my submission to the Harvard and Radcliffe Class of 1981 Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report. After twenty-five years, Harvard wants an accounting of what I have done with my life. I ignored the three or four previous requests because I had trials … Read more
If, in the past few weeks, you’ve encountered a super-strange message in your fortune cookie at a local Chinese restaurant (like A skyscraper can fall just by looking at it. Yet ‘War is over if you want It.’ or Think of something you understand until you no longer understand it. Or, simply, Wait.), then you … Read more