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  • Cold Poem for a Cold Monday

    Employing a tactic I’m pretty sure I’ve picked up from the current presidential administration, I’ve decided to take a new approach to truth. Namely, I’m going to make it up. And make it up in such a way that justifies every decision I decide(d), and in such a way that makes me feel better about my life, and the enveloping society thereof.

    So here goes: Everyone is reading.

    And because everyone is reading, there is a high demand for poetry.
    And because there is a high demand for poetry, once a week, possibly on Mondays, but certainly not limited to Mondays, I’m going to try really hard to post a Poem Worth Reading on this blog.

    I know I know I know, this is supposed to be a blog about books, and probably shouldn’t contain any actual literature, unless it’s hyper-linked. Nevertheless, poems are great. They’re (often) short, and powerful, and sometimes they even rhyme, which makes you feel happy for reasons you probably can’t define very well. And people should read more of them. More, even, than they already are. Which is lots. Because everybody is reading. Obviously.

    This week’s Poem Worth Reading is by Allen Ginsberg, from his collection Kaddish and Other Poems, which came out sometime ago (1961).

    Read it. Everyone else is. There’s self-deprecation involved. And cats. God, it’s honest-seeming. Parts are omitted. If you want them in, let me know and I’ll add them. A little dark, but it’s cold outside.

    "Mescaline"

    Rotting Ginsberg, I stared in the mirror naked today
    I noticed the old skull, I’m getting balder
    my pate gleams in the kitchen light under thin hair
    like the skull of some monk in old catacombs lighted by a guard with flashlight
    followed by a mob of tourists
    so there is death
    my kitten mews, and looks into the closet
    Boito sings on the phonograph tonight his ancient song of
    angels
    Beato Angelico’s universe
    The cat’s gone mad and scraowls around the floor
    …
    Yes, I should be good, I should get married
    find out what it’s all about
    but I can’t stand these women all over me
    smell of Naomi
    erk, I’m stuck with this familiar rotting ginsberg
    can’t stand boys even anymore
    can’t stand
    can’t stand
    and who wants to get fucked up the ass, really/
    Immense seas passing over
    the flow of time
    and who wants to be famous and sign autographs like a movie star

    I want to know
    I want I want ridiculous to know to know WHAT rotting ginsberg
    I want to know what happens after I rot
    because I’m already rotting
    my hair’s falling out I’ve got a belly I’m sick of sex
    my ass drags in the universe I know too much
    and not enough
    I want to know what happens after I die
    well I’ll find out soon enough
    do I really need to know now?
    is that any use at all use use use
    death death death death death
    god god god god god god god the Lone Ranger
    the rhythm of the typewriter

    What can I do to Heavy by pounding on Typewriter
    I’m stuck change the record Gregory ah excellent he’s doing just that
    and I am too conscious of a million ears
    at present creepy ears, making commerce
    too many pictures in the newspapers
    faded yellowed press clippings
    I’m going away from the poem to be a drak contemplative

    trash of the mind
    trash of the world
    man is half trash
    all trash in the grave

    What can Williams be thinking in Paterson, death so much on him
    so soon so soon
    Williams, what is death?
    Do you fact the great question now each moment
    or do you forget at breakfast looking at your old ugly love in the face
    are you prepared to be reborn
    to give release to this world to enter a heaven
    or give release, give release
    and all be done – and see a lifetime -all eternity – gone over
    into naught, a trick question proposed by the moon to the answerless earth
    No Glory for man! No Glory for Man! No glory for me! No me!

    No point writing when the spirit doth not lead

    NY, 1959

  • As If

    Psychology class, at the Saint Paul campus, ended its session. Two students remained. He opened the door for her. She wore a baggy, off-white dress shirt with a narrow, new-wave neck tie. She approached. As if gentlemen’s rules, he opened the door wider. She stopped a few paces from the door.

    He extended his arm, as if displaying to her, go first. She tapped her foot, showing as if the nerve. He raised his brow as if he had all day. She folded her arms as if she couldn’t take this bull anymore about men thinking women are weak. Ha! He shrugged as if, C’mon, just walk through the damn door. She placed her hand on her chest as if scumbags like you make this world what it is.

    He brushed his sleeve, rubbing his eyes as if, Boo-hoo, you poor helpless feminist. Making a hacking sound, she stuck her tongue out as if barfing from chauvinism. He slammed the door as if declaring war. She scowled, shaking her finger as if there are other exits in this room, like windows, so would he hold one open for her, too? He pointed to the window as if to dare her. She made an oinker sound.

    He clucked like a chicken. She threw her book bag at him. He mooed like a cow. She gnashed her teeth to a grind. He slapped his own face. She grunted like a Neanderthal. He screamed, "Oh, as if!"

    She spun around three times and charged toward the window, while flailing her arms. He said, "Whatever."

    She crashed through the top story window, smashing atop the sidewalk. He rushed to the window and said, "Oh, my Lord."

    She rolled over and looked directly at him before dying in a dramatic pose as if Christianity is the only Afterlife. He exhaled as if in her Afterlife gateways open automatically, without anyone else there to hold them, at least he hoped.

  • He Stole What?! Where?!

    What!?

    I just got word from ZATZ Publishing that a top Mexican press person was caught stealing BlackBerries from the White House during a meeting between Bush and Canadian and Mexican leaders.

    Today, Fox News reported that Rafael Quintero Curiel, lead press
    advance person for the Mexican Delegation was caught stealing six or
    seven BlackBerry devices belonging to White House staffers who were
    attending meetings between U.S. President George W. Bush and Canadian
    and Mexican leaders in New Orleans this week. Unfortunately, Quintero
    Curiel was caught after the devices had been in his possession for some
    time.

    You’ve got to be kidding me!

    I wonder what the going rate for a BlackBerry is in Mexico these days.

    There is some concern, of course, as to the amount of information the BlackBerries may have contained.

    "That’s the equivalent in strategic U.S. government information of about 28,000 printed pages of data, or seven complete sets of all seven Harry Potter novels. And that’s per BlackBerry. Given today’s incident, that’s seven times seven complete sets of all seven Harry Potter novels. Scared yet?"

     Great. Why couldn’t it have been the Canadians?

  • The Cost of Silence

    I am writing this letter as an apology to people who have migrated here
    from Mexico, Central America, and South America. I am Anishinabe, indigenous to what is now called Minnesota. I am also a playwright.
    Within the last year I was approached by a production company, OffLeash
    Area    , to write a play with them called Border Crossing. It was my
    understanding this play would address the inhumane issues people
    confront when entering the United States.

    As a Native American,
    I am interested in the stories of the indigenous people of this
    continent we call Turtle Island and the peoples of what is now known as
    South America. I am interested in the impact the building of the wall
    between Mexico and the United States has on Native Nations whose
    reservations created by the United States straddle this man-made
    border, also made by the United States. That is part of the story I had
    hoped to tell. In November ’07, I did research for a week in the Sonora
    desert southwest of Tucson on the Tohono O’odham Reservation. I had
    hoped to include a very strong voice for Indigenous people in this
    piece. I had hoped to include a very strong voice for Migrant people in
    this piece.

    In my interviews with people I heard stories of inhumane treatment.
    I heard stories of a sea of sorrow — a desert littered with the bones
    of people trying to get here for a better future for themselves and for
    their future generations. I heard stories of joy, hope, survival, and
    celebration.

    I am writing this apology because this is not the story that is
    being told in Border Crossing. It is not your story, and your voice has
    been removed from the piece. I wrote dialogue for native peoples. That
    dialogue was cut. I wrote dialogue for the characters crossing the
    desert. That dialogue was cut. I argued to give voice to the oppressed.
    My voice was silenced. I am sorry. I understand any anger on your part
    where you would question why I, as a Native American, would have
    thought that I could tell your story.

    If you have questions or comments to me, I am open to dialogue.

    Miigwitch

    Marcie Rendon, Anishinabe Playwright, Minneapolis
    Letter

  • Classic with a Twist

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet

    Romeo and Juliet — when we hear this we think of a bittersweet tale. We think of doomed love. But we usually think of it against a backdrop of festivity and decadence. Now, 3AM Productions presents a different look at Shakespeare’s great tragedy — perhaps a more realistic one (as if we need more realism). Perhaps a more contemporary one. Definitely a darker one, a dingier one, a dirtier one. Set against the backdrop of a fallen city, the Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet highlights the crippling effects of violence on an entire city — "the destruction that awaits any society that insists on attacking itself." Told through the eyes of the chorus, the play uses a more contemporary, crumbling industrial setting — the Grain Belt Brewery — to show how love can become the one motivating factor to rise above our current blood-thirsty quest for power. (A mighty lesson indeed.)

    7:30 p.m.,, Grain Belt Brewery Bottling House, 77 and 79 Thirteenth Ave. NE, Minneapolis; 612-781-3019.

    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    Poets Exchange: Christina Davis

    Join the Loft this evening for the first-ever State-to-State Poets Exchange event. Now, poets from the Big Apple and the Mini Apple can connect to active literary communities outside their home state — which means of course that we get to enjoy a bunch of New York poets (and they ours). Our first visitor will be poet Christina Davis, author of Forth A Raven, and finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Award and the Foreword Book of the Year Award. Davis will give a public reading and on-stage interview on her current work in progress. A reception will follow.

    7 p.m., Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis.

    FILM
    You Can’t Take It With You

    Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart — is there a more feel-good combination out there? If you need your heart warmed tonight, then head over to the Parkway for this evening’s screening of You Can’t Take It With You. The 1938 film, which launched Stewart into the public’s embrace, won two Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. The lovely Jean Arthur plays a member of an extremely whacky and eccentric family who falls in love with Stewart, a stuffy rich boy. Comedy ensues in this final feature of Take-up Productions’ latest series — Sweet Escapism: Screwball Comedies of the Great Depression.

    7:30 p.m. Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-3030.

  • Surdyks USED to be pleasant

    On a Saturday afternoon you can run many errands.  One great example is
    tasting the many cheeses at Surdyks and even sample some wine. My
    roommate and I did just this.

    After spending an hour of doing this and hunting for two nice bottles
    of wine, it was time to check out.  I was then asked for my I.D., which
    I was happy to give up.  I am 31, and getting asked for identification
    is getting less frequent. The worker then asked for my roommate’s I.D.
    When he realized that he didn’t have his, the transaction was
    cancelled and we left empty handed.  When I spoke to a manger named Rob. He informed me [rudely] that he can’t change the law and that
    they can be fined. I also found out that the best thing to do is lie
    about who you are shopping with, if anyone at all.

    Surdyk’s tagline should be, "Drink our wine for free, but if you don’t lie to us, you can’t buy it."  

    One side-note:  The wine sample worker was not asking for identification.

    I will not be returning to this store ever again—and I will not be
    bringing my mom there as I do dozens of times a year.  It is a shame
    that the laws are as they are.  But, it is more of a shame that a store
    with great products promotes lying and allows a manager to treat an [of
    age] patron with rudeness.

    David Lee, Columbia Heights
    Letter

  • Callaloo and Churrasco: Adventures on 38th St.

    The Twin Cities’ gastronomic bio-diversity seems to be concentrated in three
    main hot zones: Eat Street (Nicollet Ave.), with its mix of Mexican, Chinese,
    Vietnamese and German eateries; Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis, where
    the blend is Indian, Mexican, Ecuadorian, and Middle Eastern; and University
    Avenue in Saint Paul, where Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, and Thai
    restaurants predominate.

    But another hot zone seems to be emerging — in recent
    months, several new ethic restaurants have opened up along East 38th
    St. in south Minneapolis and on nearby streets. The former Jamaica Jamaica at 3761 Bloomington Ave.
    S. is now home to Marla’s Caribbean Cuisine. It’s a sister restaurant to the
    original Marla’s at Lake and Emerson, but with a different menu — more
    Caribbean fare and fewer Indian dishes — except for those that have taken root
    in the East Indies. Marla Jadoonanan herself is now cooking at the new
    restaurant, and is keeping the Lake St. store open until she can find a buyer.

    Some of the new Caribbean dishes on the menu — like the
    Callaloo, and the salt fish and ackee — are carry-overs from another family
    restaurant. Marla happens to be the sister of Harry Singh, who has been dishing
    out Trinidad-style West Indian cuisine at Harry Singh’s
    Original Caribbean Restaurant     in various locations for the last three
    decades. Fans of New Orleans gumbo will love the callaloo, a savory and slimy
    stew of shrimp, spinach, okra, and spices. Many other favorites from Harry’s
    menu are also featured, including Caribbean curries, Jamaican jerk, Caribbean-style
    fried rice and chow mein, and a big selection of roti wraps and parathas,
    stuffed with jerk or curried meats, fish, or vegetarian fillings

    A few blocks down, the retro ’50s diner at 1024 E. 38th
    St. that cycled quickly through incarnations as Mary Eileen’s Café and
    Mazzitello’s Restaurant is now La Bahia Picanteria Restaurant. It’s got a few tables and a tiny counter. The menu
    promises Spanish & Italian food, but it’s really mostly Ecuadorian, with a
    little bit of everything else thrown in — a few spaghetti dishes, broasted
    chicken, buffalo chicken wings, a hamburger, and a burrito. Ecuadorian
    restaurants are popping up all over town — we now have Sabor Latino and
    Charly’s Polleria in Northeast, Guayaquil and Los Andes on Lake Street. Ecuadorians make up a big part of the local restaurant workforce, or so I am told. La Bahia is small and unassuming, but the waitress and cook were friendly — and maybe a little surprised to see a non-Ecuadorian customer.

    My churrasco ($10.50) was typical — a generous portion
    of thinly sliced grilled marinated top sirloin topped with a savory sauce of
    grilled onions, peppers, and carrots, accompanied by rice, seasoned French
    fries, two fried eggs, and half a ripe avocado. There is a lot more that I would
    like to try — the caldo de bolas — a stuffed plantain dumpling soup
    traditionally made with beef, that has an odd resemblance to matzo ball soup
    ($9.25); hornado (roast pork) served with mote (hominy) and llapingacho (fried
    mashed potatoes with cheese) ($9.25); and ceviche de camarones ($8.25) — a shrimp
    cocktail marinated with onions, tomatoes and lime. Weekend specials include
    cows foot soup, catfish soup, and morcilla a la brasa, a grilled homemade
    Ecuadorian sausage, stuffed with rice and veggies ($9.50).

    Not too far away, at 4157 Cedar Ave. S., the former Paradise Pastry Shop is now the Lucuma Bakery & Deli, offering a unique combination of Peruvian, Colombian, and Mexican cuisine. The selection of baked goods in the pastry case looked a bit forlorn, but there is lots to explore on the menu. Breakfast options include Mexican and Peruvian tamales, or chorizo sausage with arepas (Colombian corn cakes.) I haven’t tried any of the Mexican burritos, quesadillas, chimichangas, etc., but I can recommend the Peruvian seco de carne ($8.50), chunks of beef in a very savory cilantro and spinach sauce, served with steamed rice. There’s lots more that sounds interesting, including the carapulcra, sundried tomatoes in a Peruvian aji salsa ($9.50), and the cau cau, a beef tripe stew with hierba buena sauce ($9.50).

  • A Midsummer Night's Wine

    So it seems the kids from Fame (who, by the way, are now eligible for AARP) have gotten together with Cyndi Lauper and a couple writers from the early days of Saturday Night Live to adapt Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Guthrie.

    That, and I suppose Joe Dowling had a hand in it, too.

    This is a wild, colorful, aggressively sexual production. And by that, I don’t mean sexy. "Sexy," to me, is nuanced and flirtatious, suggestive, tempting, a little bit hidden. Sexual is in your face. It’s full frontal, bumping and grinding. It’s Ground Zero. It’s Rich Goldsmith‘s headlines. It’s Namir Smallwood‘s Puck in a glittering coral codpiece.

    This is not to say I didn’t like the play. There were wonderful dance numbers, great (skimpy) costumes, and a fabulous sparkly egg in which Titania and Bottom the ass get it on. I enjoyed the Guthrie’s production for what it was: grand spectacle.

    But I did miss the air of sweetness and optimism that typically wafts through Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is a play I associate with whimsy and tentative romance and the suspension of disbelief. It is, in my experience (which involves seeing it perhaps five other times on stages including the former Guthrie’s and studying it in Stratford-upon-Avon) a story about the mischievous yet goodnatured spirit world that helps guide the loves and lives of mortals. It contains a play within a play — which was executed beautifully in the Guthrie’s current production as wry slapstick — and a layering of comical missed chances, magic, and a sense that everyone will be rightfully paired in the end.

    Contrast that with Dowling’s modern vision: An alien landscape in which sci-fi fairies drop from the sky and prod underwear-clad couples to lurch from love to lust and back to love again.

    If you go for this sort of thing, I urge you to see it and stop by Cue on your way up for a glass of Flor de Pingus 2005. This Spanish red from the Ribera del Duero region is fruity and floral on the nose. But it tastes completely different than it smells: earthy, plummy, and HOT. I mean, this wine scorches on the way down your throat; it’s dry on the tongue, and the finish is pure whisky.

    Flor de Pingus is like a well-built Spanish guy in tight leather. . . .You know, someone old enough to know what he’s doing but young enough to do it well. At 14.8% alcohol and a little more than $100 a bottle, it costs about the same as two tickets to the show.

    But this wine is really sexy, not just sexual. It has shades and nuances, and an impish, spiritual gleam. Which is, if you ask me, well worth the price of admission.

  • More Fesenjoon. No Sex.

    Back in January, I submitted a blog called Sex and the Fat Man that was about my forthcoming novel in which a large hero has a lot of quality sex and fesenjoon — the dish over which he and the lady with whom he has all that great sex fall in love.

    For the past four months, Sex and the Fat Man has remained in the top 10 most popular daily blogs. NOT, I’m sorry to say, because the world is so breathlessly awaiting my new novel that people are crawling the Web to find information. Nor because the eating public is rife with fesenjoon fanatics who were swooning over my description of the version served at Shiraz Fireroasted Cuisine.

    No, the only reason my blog rates hundreds of hits a day is because it begins with the word "sex." So I want to be totally up front here: there is no sex in my story today. No allusions to sex. No hints of sex. Just fesenjoon.

    I was lunching at Atlas Grill & Clubroom yesterday when Gholam-Abbas Shahbazi, the head chef whom everyone calls simply "Abbas," wandered through. I asked if Abbas would be willing to make me fesenjoon some time. And he said, "It’s on the menu! Only I call it pomegranate-walnut chicken; otherwise, no one would know what it was." It was Americanized, he admitted. But I know Abbas and whatever he makes tends to be good, so I decided to give it a try.

    The meal that arrived was deconstructed fesenjoon. Typically, this dish is like stew made of chopped chicken, pomegranate juice, carmelized onions, crushed walnuts, and citron, served over rice. Here, however, the chicken was two boneless breasts topped with a thick gravy of pomegranate and walnuts. The rice (basmati, perfectly cooked) was mounded to the side and topped with citron. There were vegetables garnishing the plate.

    And it was fabulous.

    Meaty, sweet, plummy with pomegranate sauce and that brickle-ish hint from the salty nuts. Lighter than the standard typically served in the Middle East, the Atlas take on fesenjoon is ideal for lunch. And this was fortunate, because after my dining companion and I had finished, Abbas suddenly appeared with a dish of homemade ice cream.

    I’m not an ice cream eater. First of all, it’s too cold (makes my teeth hurt) and sweet. For me, it’s all about salt, wine, and coffee. But in order to be polite, I took a spoonful and my mouth filled with a difficult but wonderful taste. This was rosewater, saffron, and pistachio — a triangle of red, yellow, and green. And it took full moments to wait out each flavor: the rose so strong it was like a fairytale (then the princess began to sing and rose petals streamed from her lips), the saffron delicate — vanilla with spice — and the pistachios whole and satisfyingly crunchy at the end.

    It wasn’t as good as sex. I’ll give you that. But it was close.

  • Diesel. Rhymes with Weasel.

    …and in the same breath–the Prius, indisputably an automobile for ryhmes-with-wussies…

    If only for the simple fact that buying
    "green" right now is just plain dumb. And please, before you cleanse your computer screen with Mommy’s blood-decorated stole, consider these three logical points:

    a) With a hybrid you are buying into
    a somewhat untested technology that is merely fashionable at the moment.

    b) You are buying at a ridiculous
    premium.

    c) If you buy a diesel you are still
    polluting more than a gas engine, and your Crocs just won’t cut it at the
    average truck stop where you’ll have to buy your gas (neither will your
    Mercedes E320 Bluetec*.)

    If unassailable intelligence fails you,
    then realize by overpaying for "green" you are giving up a cool
    $5000.00 (at least) that you could use for these really hot bicycles:

    1) The latest iteration of the Trek Madonne series.

    2) The Specialized Robauix series.

    3) Anything by Cervelo’.

    4) Anything by Bianchi.

    If you really want to fight global
    warming, then ride one of these to work.** They are available at Penn
    Cycle, Erik’s, or Kenwood Cyclery, and now is the perfect time to buy 2007 close-outs.

    Unless you weasel out of it.

    *Valliant effort by Mercedes and I love the torque, but, as yet, unproven in the USA as they just don’t drive that far in Europe.

    **And
    buy a nice gas-only econobox with some style like the Honda Fit, the
    new Mistubishi Lancer Ralliart or the new SEMA Chevy HHR panel van
    (cooler than the Mini Clubman and much faster, hence cooler…).