A couple weeks ago, Don and I went out for breakfast on a Sunday morning. We were chatting amiably over our eggs and sausage, and we overheard a married couple having one of those painful heart-to-hearts. It turned out, he was getting his ass chewed for “looking at” our waitress. She was attractive, and Don … Read more
It’s Saturday night at Lili’s Burlesque Revue, and Sweetpea is center stage, vibrating her derriere like a paint shaker at Home Depot. The diminutive brunette’s dance routine is a combination of kooky showmanship and gymnastic prowess. Arriving onstage in a frumpy 1950s housecoat, bath cap, and cat’s-eye specs, she peels off the Grandma outfit layer … Read more
In the seconds between shoving my third and fourth White Castle-sized pork sandwich down my throat, I yelled across the lavishly appointed basement toward my host. He and his wife had invited fifty Twin Cities WASPs, and me, to watch Mike Tyson’s pay-per-view, main-event boxing match in Las Vegas against heavyweight Frans Botha on their … Read more
Fear is Elias Merhige’s business, as you’ll know from his earlier films like the avant-garde creeper Begotten and the 2000 arthouse hit Shadow of the Vampire, with its witty premise that the villain in the great 1922 silent film Nosferatu had been played by a real vampire. His new film Suspect Zero stars Aaron Eckhart … Read more
If you were born after, say, 1955, chances are you think clowns are scary. Whether your fear is rooted in pedophilic scandal, horror flicks, or a bad audience-participation experience, for you a bulbous red nose and size-100 shoes can turn a perfectly pleasant parade into a cavalcade of unease. “They don’t look all that friendly,” … Read more
The late summer evenings take my mind back thirty years to a leafy lane on the Devon-Dorset border, the western edge of the countryside familiar to readers of Thomas Hardy’s novels. We had spent the day otter-hunting, the finest of all forms of venery, requiring intimate understanding of the habits of the otter, but offering … Read more
That afternoon, I remember, I’d attempted to perform back surgery on a dwarf who had gotten so stooped and hump-shouldered that she could barely walk. Neighborhood children had been throwing rocks at her for years. She was brilliant and very funny, but struggled with a terrible speech impediment, and was also cursed with a disastrous … Read more
We were a little disturbed by the explosion. All around the city, there was a sudden, violent eruption of elegant apartments, lofts, row-houses, and condominiums. And it wasn’t just along the Mississippi or in the Warehouse District. It was where a gas station had stood at Fiftieth Street in Linden Hills. It was where something … Read more
The saying goes that slow and steady wins the race. If so, give Low the gold. This Duluth indie-rock trio—guitarist Alan Sparhawk, his wife Mimi Parker on drums, and bassist Zak Sally—have become internationally renowned for a contemplative, ethereal sound reminiscent of Galaxie 500 and the early Cure. Their new retrospective box set, A Lifetime … Read more
I should preface everything by saying that for me the scariest scene in Rosemary’s Baby was not when the middle-aged Satan worshippers drugged Mia Farrow and forced her to have “relations” with the Beast Master, thus planting the seed of Lucifer in her waif-like womb. For me, the real horror began when, upon moving into … Read more