Last month was a good one in the annals of human sexuality. Early in May, a Winona, Minnesota, student got kicked out of high school for wearing a button that said “I Heart My Vagina.” Carrie Rethlefsen, an eighteen-year-old senior, had seen a recent college production of The Vagina Monologues, and decided to take up … Read more
America-bashing is so in vogue. Teenagers, especially, are vulnerable to this general sense of “how bad we are,” based on a couple of tragic elections and a war of lies. I’m brokenhearted over these things, too, but the “how bad we are” mantra grows wearisome when it comes from what is, according to a recent … Read more
Hi! I’m Colleen Kruse. I’m that pal of yours who is the proud owner of the Richard Caruso Molecular Hairsetter, the Miracle Blade/Ginsu Knife Garnish Set, the Euro Broom, the Magic Bullet, the Vitamix. Let’s not forget the Kitchen Plus 2000, either. These products are the fruits of hours spent watching late-night infomercials. I was … Read more
In springtime, every man’s fancy turns to love–and, in my case, to commencement speeches. I love reading them, listening to them, critiquing them, even the bad ones. I dream of marching with colleagues through a cheering thong of graduates, resplendent in flowing robes, and delivering a simple yet powerful address that brings the youthful crowd … Read more
Clint Maxwell works out of an old creosote-smeared boathouse in East Beaver Bay on the North Shore of Lake Superior. His boat is a seatless iron tub, twenty feet long, like a dumpster with a prow and an outboard. The other day, he was casting off to check his nets. It was a bitterly cold, … Read more
So who is that guy who’s seemingly been hogging the karaoke machine for four hours straight in the Hunan Garden bar? He is Ray Evangelista, and he has been offering evening entertainment at this downtown St. Paul restaurant three nights a week, six hours each night, for the past sixteen years. Hunan Garden owner Joe … Read more
Last year, Bob Dylan turned up in a Victoria’s Secret ad, and I’ve been troubled about it ever since. On a possibly related note, a couple of friends recently mentioned their discomfort with “the dudes who seem to be permanently wandering” the larger lingerie departments, who don’t seem to be shopping or accompanying anyone in … Read more
The Michael Jackson trial in Santa Maria, California, is actually an autopsy. Anyone with a pocketful of perspective understands that the King of Pop has already died a slow public death, remembered less and less for his musical gifts, recognized more for his eccentricities. The best that can be said about this is that it … Read more
Just the other day, tickets for the next Cirque du Soleil show in Minneapolis went on sale. Cirque du Soleil has a lot to answer for in these parts. Five years ago, Charlie and Julie Zelle took their children, Charlotte and Nick, on a family trip to see the trampoline queens and contortionists at a … Read more
Everybody seems to have a blog these days. Your angry libertarian neighbor probably has one, not to mention the cat hoarder across the street, and the tortured teenage poet up the block. In the public mind, unfortunately, the excitable political bloggers tend to be regarded as representative—or perhaps symptomatic—of the whole phenomenon, and they certainly … Read more