So, I’m sitting at this casino bar outside of Carlton, Minnesota, last month, and this rather handsome gent rolls up alongside me and says, “Nice mustache-ride joke. Can I buy you a drink?” I’d just closed out the bill at the Black Bear Casino’s “Free Comedy Night Thursdays.” Now, I don’t mean to brag, but … Read more
Until a month ago, I did not think that I lived in “the ghetto.” North Minneapolis, the inner city, and even, on occasion, the ’hood—but not the ghetto. However, that was before a string of troubling incidents occurred in my neighborhood—and before I got some surprising reactions to them from some of my South Minneapolis … Read more
There is a rock god on stage at the Triple Rock Social Club bestriding the speakers like a colossus, his Loverboy T-shirt sacrificed to a Dionysian frenzy, his tongue out and waggling, his fingers pulsating. With a quick kick and flip, he’s down in the crowd, then up on the back bar, strutting around the … Read more
It’s nice to see former Senator Rudy Boschwitz still flying the flannel after all these years. Like any self-respecting legislator on the receiving end of a populist pink slip, he’s gone quietly into the private sector. There, the glad-handing, expense accounts, and corporate logrolling aren’t scrutinized by every craven reporter and party activist (as if … Read more
Not many Americans remember that we were once at war with Finland, and unlike the Vietnamese, Finns have not tended to migrate here and open restaurants that might remind us of this history. Lori Luchsinger and Karen Salmey, therefore, have been left pretty much on their own when it comes to satisfying the metro’s pent-up … Read more
If Richard Pryor were thirty years younger and tapping the same inspirational vein as the South Park guys, he might be very like Dave Chappelle: smart, scatological, splenetic, and not interested in slaughtering sacred cows so much as stampeding the whole herd off a cliff, or maybe through Dick Cheney’s front yard. His sketch series, … Read more
Now here’s a worthy import. The Guthrie Lab closes its 2003-2004 season with a play the London Guardian called “the year’s funniest and most important.” Winning the “triple crown” of British theater awards, Blue/Orange depicts a struggle between two psychiatrists over the care of a soon-to-be-released Afro-Caribbean patient. Christopher suffers from multiple personality disorder, but … Read more
If classic whodunits really float your boat, you’re in luck. It’s reasonable to deduce that you’ll leave the Showboat with suitable closure on Agatha Christie’s crime classic The Mousetrap. It’s an archetypal Christie setup: Snowed in at an ancient manor, guests find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery when one of them turns up brutally … Read more
A humble fugitive trying to lead a life on the straight-and-narrow. A self-righteous inspector chasing the past. An orphan child in love with a man at war. The Victor Hugo classic, on a return trip to the Ordway for three weeks, has more characters than the Michael Jackson trial, but entertains with much more dignity. … Read more
Guyton and Walker are two up-and-comers whose work was most recently seen, respectively, at the Whitney Biennial and at the legendary Paula Cooper gallery in New York. For this show, the pair engaged in some pretty heady collaborative hijinks. They subjected a limited selection of imagery—including a designer couch, a knife blade, a private jet, … Read more