The Rake Magazine

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  • Halloween or Christmas-Which Is Scarier?

    How many shopping days left until Christmas? Well, whatever it is, it’s not enough. Cry all you want during your next trip to Target about the Bleeding Skull Halloween costumes hanging next to the icicle lights and the faux-fir tree display. Do you hear what I hear? It’s the rat-a-tat-tat of mass merchants gunning for our rummy-tum-tums.

    Every year around this time I kick myself for not starting earlier. Like, oh, I don’t know: maybe in August? The idea would be to try to spread the financial strain over weeks and weeks rather than concentrate it into one hellish month of gorging and gouging. Like dental work, I put it off until it’s too late, or till it hurts. Forget credit card purchases and “deferred billing.” All over the department stores the cheery signs declare, “No payments until February 3rd!” What a good idea. I can see myself now, coming to in the aftermath of holiday parties and get-togethers with an extra layer of gelatinous chub quilting my jowls, and, surprise, about five hundred dollars in the hole. It won’t just seem like the darkest day of the year, it truly will be.

    There’s also an intricate system of checks and balances involved in gift giving. Who to buy for? How much is too much? How little says, “This really is the least I could do?” It’s not the thought that counts anymore, but the deliberation. What you give says so much about what you think about the other person. Last year, my sister’s gift told me that she thought I was the kind of person who made her own doughnuts.

    Some couples give detailed “wish lists” to one another. This is wrong. The only acceptable time for a person over the age of twelve who is not a bride to request a specific gift is when they’re asking for bone marrow, a kidney, or primary custody of the children. Which is essentially a form of re-gifting.

    And then there’s the gift of gab. Some people just give till it hurts. You know you’ve been there. Office party: knocking back a styrofoam cup of warm, nutmeg-speckled sluice while eyeing the cutie-pie standing at the buffet table near the pumpkin squares. But before you can make your move, darkness descends in the form of a boring coworker. You try to escape, but the air around you is quickly converted to sleeping gas, and soon a coagulated topskin forms on your egg, milk, and booze treat. Initially you listen, then move on to presenting an outward show of listening (which is just as good to your captor) while your eyes glaze over like a holiday ham. Meanwhile the sugar plum over at the buffet has wandered out of flirting range.

    Among my extended group of friends, we try to have a little fun with tradition. This year, instead of “Secret Santa” gifts, we’re having “Surprised Santa.” We’ll meet for dinner and drinks at a lovely, expensively priced bistro. We will imbibe to our heart’s content, and at closing time, in ones and in pairs, stealthily sneak out of the cafe until there is only one of us left holding the check. Santa!

    Budgeting for a family during the holiday season can be tough. When I was a kid, my mom used to stuff our stockings with toiletries, things she was going to have to buy for us anyway. Years later, I imagine her raiding the medicine cabinet well past midnight on Christmas Eve: While her family sleeps, her vision clouded by exhaustion, she desperately tries to decide which one of us kids would appreciate the extra toothbrush versus the Doan’s Backache Pills.

    Bestowing gifts on family and friends now is more of a challenge. Most people I know have too much swag already. Our houses look like Pier One. The things we could all use, like patience, goodwill, and faith, are in short supply. Most of us wander through this time of year wound as tight as a spool of curling ribbon. Be sure to make time for yourself. Maybe do a little retail therapy.

  • Take No Shorts

    You may shoot me with your words,
    But still, like air, I’ll rise.
    -Maya Angelou

    Ever since she toppled incumbent Jackie Cherryhomes in 2001, Minneapolis Fifth Ward council member Natalie Johnson Lee, the council’s lone African-American woman, has continued to rise. She has successfully deflected and deflated those wanting to blow her off-especially the North Side wannabes and has-beens who are bitter that Johnson Lee derailed the Cherryhomes gravy train, and the DFL potentates who mock her as an “Angela Davis with funky hair.”

    “These are the same people who said that I could not beat Jackie. They are mad because, through me, people who have been disrespected are getting access,” she told me recently.

    Johnson Lee got her “incredible fighting spirit,” as one council member called it, growing up scrappy, black, and working class in Oklahoma City. According to Johnson Lee, a single mother at seventeen, her family taught her that she had “every right to be who I was.” Their motto was “don’t give no shorts [Johnsonspeak for slighting someone] and don’t take no shorts.”

    After high school, she landed in Philadelphia and earned a two-year accounting degree. From there, she started working for General Mills, who eventually enticed her to Minnesota. After a stint in the corporate “big house,” as she puts it, Johnson Lee got into employment training jobs, first at the Urban League and then the Employers Association.

    When husband Travis failed to unseat DFLer Cherryhomes in 1997, Johnson Lee decided to take up the mantle in 2001 under the Green Party banner. She firmly believes that her husband, who managed her campaign, paved the way for her improbable seventy-six-vote victory margin against the allegedly unbeatable Cherryhomes.

    Johnson Lee, who won with little support or respect from old North Side guardians like the Urban League and the black clergy, suddenly had to play nice with people who had actively campaigned against her. She says of her relationships with them, “We’re cool now. We have conversations together.” But the tightness in her voice betrays her knowledge that many in the old guard would knock her off in a hot minute. “Jackie gave them a lot of goodies over the years. They were understandably reluctant to give them up.”

    Getting the proper respect is a recurring theme with Johnson Lee. Those who know her on the council say that she can be quick to turn a phrase or a look into a sign of disrespect. Says one of her closest allies, “Disrespecting Natalie is a very bad thing to do. If she senses that people are not taking her seriously, she will get in their face.”

    Some well-placed political veterans, such as former council member Lisa McDonald, say this in-your-face approach is just what Minneapolis politicos need. “Natalie is the only one at City Hall shaking it up and rattling cages. What has Don Samuels done besides sit in a tent and go hungry? She sure has [Mayor] R.T. Rybak’s shorts in a bundle.” Still, McDonald believes that Johnson Lee could use more political “savoir faire” instead of sometimes “needlessly pissing people off.”

    Some of Johnson Lee’s council colleagues agree with McDonald. One member flatly told me her “stuff is raggedy” and that she relies too heavily on others to do the heavy lifting on tough procedural battles. Johnson Lee counters that she refuses to use Robert’s Rules as a “manipulation tool.” “I can go head to head with the best of them when I need to.”

    Yet the criticism, despite Johnson Lee’s tough exterior, stings a little. “The learning curve here has been huge,” she admits. “I’ve had to get used to the backstabbing nature of Minneapolis politics. I’ve had to try to work with people like R.T. Rybak, who thinks he is a great teacher, but is not always very teachable, especially when it comes to black people.” After pausing for a moment, she says, “I make no apologies for who I am and how I serve the people who sent me here. R.T., the old DFL machine, the black preachers-they did not make me and will not define me. I have just as much right to advocate, negotiate, and yes, piss people off-as any other Minneapolis council member. This is my house, too.”

  • Rice Paper Asian Fusion Restaurant

    The coolest thing about the place is the secret door to the kitchen hidden in the bamboo mural on the back wall. But there’s a lot to like about this cozy green eatery a stone’s throw from Wild Rumpus bookstore in Linden Hills. (Note: Please do not throw stones at Wild Rumpus.) For instance, the spring rolls-fresh and crisp with a Thai-basil kick and served with a sweet peanut sauce. The menu isn’t huge-a dozen entrees, roughly, but it ranges through Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese offerings and doesn’t shy away from the unexpected. Next time we return-soon, probably-we’ll put in another order for the tamarind rice trio, a sweet-and-sour chicken dish with three scoops of rice topped with green-onion oil, coconut, and a reprise of that fine peanut sauce. Also good, if a bit less immediately appealing, is the bo la lot-beef rolls wrapped in grape-like la lot leaves, with mint and coriander to add a couple of extra layers of flavor. It’s also a nice touch to have a few unusual soft-drink choices-such as the surprisingly mild Ginseng-Up, like an orange cream soda, and the intriguingly named Soursop Juice.

  • Eye of the Storm Theatre's Slither

    It is usually considered a bad sign when you go to the theater and hear hissing, but in this case it’ll be coming from onstage, not the audience. Playwright Carson Kreitzer’s new work, getting its world premiere in this production by Eye of the Storm, interweaves the stories of four women throughout history who all share a connection with snakes. Eve, a Cretan snake princess, a carny snake dancer, and a snake-handling minister take us through the human fascination with serpents, and woman’s link with these creatures, for good and evil. After an outstanding 12-year history, this will be the last go-round for Eye of the Storm, as director and creative force Casey Stangl moves on to other pastures. That’s the kind of news that stings sharper than a serpent’s tooth. Theater Garage, 711 W. Franklin Ave. (612) 343-3390, www.ticketworks.com

  • Twelfth Night/Othello

    What would Shakespearean theatre be without men in drag? Or jigs danced the way sixteenth-century Tudors might have gotten jiggy with them? The better to show audiences what plays were like when the Bard was in charge, this touring production by London’s Globe Theatre is doing things the old-fashioned way. Besides period costumes and music, that means an all-male cast-which should work pretty well for Twelfth Night, which is at its heart a gender-bending farce in the first place. Meanwhile, Joe Dowling and the hometown Guthrie crew are busily putting together their own touring production-the first national tour by the company in 17 years-of another bit of bardolatry with Othello, featuring longtime Penumbra actor Lester Purry in the lead as the tragically jealous Moor.
    Guthrie, 725 Vineland Pl.; Guthrie Lab,
    700 N. First St., (612) 377-2224,
    www.guthrietheater.org

  • 8ight Seasons

    We’ve heard of a meeting of the minds, but what’s about to go down at O’Shaughnessy is a definitive meeting of the feet. In a premiere collaboration, two of the Twin Cities’ big-dog dance companies, Jazzdance and Minnesota Dance Theatre, are joining forces to bring us 8ight Seasons, an ambitious dance party set to the tune of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Jazzdance will perform last season’s hit, “Las Cuatro Estaciones,” guided by Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s reinterpretation of Vivaldi. Meanwhile, MDT adds their own dash of Argentine flavor with a jazz-and-tango six-dancer piece. It’s spring right now in South America, so this might be a good antidote to autumnal blahs. If any arts community knows the profound effects of season, it’s us, and it’s about time we all saw it in a more poetic light.
    O’Shaughnessy, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, (651) 690-6700, www.stkate.edu/oshaughnessy

  • I Love a Parade's Found Faces Project

    Over the past few years we’ve become big fans of the raw power of outsider art. It might sometimes (all right, often) lack in technical chops, but the work of inspired amateurs can be compelling precisely because their muse doesn’t know all the rules. For four years, the Northeast Minneapolis nonprofit I Love a Parade has been using art as a means to help the chronically homeless learn job skills, get their lives together, and, not incidentally, express themselves. Past projects have included fabric dolls and masks of remarkable grace and sensitivity, but the current exhibition is more personal and in some ways more affecting: Twenty plaster-casted life masks of Parade’s clientele, embellished by the artists themselves or their fellows. Eyes are closed and expressions placid-it’s the result of having to keep still while the mask is cast, but it gives these faces a dreamlike quality, an anchor for the literalized hopes and disappointments etched on their faces like stigmata. Meet the stories behind the faces at an artists’ reception 6-8 p.m. November 1.
    First Congregational Church,
    500 Eighth St. S.E., Minneapolis,
    (612) 706-2740, www.iloveaparade.org

  • Sacred Symbols: 4,000 Years of Ancient American Art

    That there’s more to ancient American art than simple pottery and whittled sticks is wholly evident in the MIA’s impressive collection of early masterpieces. Recently returned from a yearlong tour of French museums, the exhibit highlights 180 artifacts from all across pre-Columbian America, ranging in media from jade to gold to wood to stone. That’s a lot of territory to cover, and Sacred Symbols does its best to school you in the wide range of expression displayed by the Incan, Mayan, and other cultures represented here. Many of the items have particular religious or political significance, but they’re beautiful and complex on their own terms. And the personality on display is striking: the red ceramic statue of a Peruvian nobleman with a stern and staring face, the smiling Mexican dog who might have been the storm god’s pet, the enigmatic (and to us, a little creepy) baby-like figurine made by the Olmec people.
    MIA, 2400 Third Ave. S., (612) 870-3131, www.artsmia.org

  • Guided By Voices

    Keeping on top of the full range of Robert Pollard’s seeming millions of solo albums and official Guided By Voices work is, frankly, more work than anyone should have to put in. It’s far too late, we suspect, to hope that he’ll hook up with a producer who can make him focus on quality over quantity and shoot for a dozen polished songs instead of two dozen songs that share four dozen half-formed great ideas. But that just isn’t what GBV is about-there have always been diamonds in the rockpile, but you have to be willing to mine them yourself. Their latest disc, August’s Earthquake Glue, is no exception-gifted, surreal lyric imagery and crunchy, powerful rawk that works brilliantly about fifty percent of the time. Pollard’s catalog of tunes is just crying out for a really well-done best-of compilation, and this month sees a pretty good, if not perfect, attempt. Two of them, really-there’s the single disc Human Amusements at Hourly Rates, and a slightly different version on the box set Hardcore UFOs, the rest of which, five discs of rarities and live stuff, only contributes to the GBV sprawl problem.
    First Avenue, 701 First Ave. N.,
    (612) 332-1775, www.first-avenue.com

  • Brenda Weiler

    Weiler’s last record was called Fly Me Back, but she’s flown away instead. A highlight of the local folk scene throughout the late nineties (and winner of three Minnesota Music Awards), Weiler now lives in Portland, Oregon, where she’s just finished her fourth studio album, Cold Weather, out this month. (And it’s nice to see some cold weather we actually looked forward to.) Weiler never fails to bring style and comforting originality to her songs, and performing live, she has a captivating intimacy. You find yourself wanting to call her by her first name and ask her to hang out with you and your friends. Her new album is as insightful as we’d hoped it would be. She’s showing a new, darker side to her songwriting, as on the record’s opening song “Faucet.” And “Medicine” and “Christmas Sweater,” done in Weiler’s typically low-key fashion, make us want to sit back, relax, and press repeat.
    400 Bar, 400 Cedar Ave., (612) 332-2903, www.400bar.com