Blog

The character of 26th and Lyndale has changed little in the last few decades. The C.C. Club still has a decent breakfast and a better jukebox. Though Oar Folkjokeopus is gone, the ancient carpets in Treehouse records steeped so long in Oarfolk essence that a sniff can bring the old days back, as you wander through the bins. But after thirty years as a vegetarian landmark, the Mud Pie restaurant has taken down its shingle.

For fundamentalist vegetarians and the carnivores who dated them, the Mud Pie for those three decades supplied a favorite meeting ground. Even hardcore vegans found multiple menu entries, while the meat-and-potatoes crowd was able to get surprisingly logy on soft, dark bean dishes rich with dairy. Complete with the occasional celebrity sighting (Jon Bon Jovi once ate there, you know), there was nothing more anyone could ask of the Pie. Except Chicago-style hot dogs, of course. Enter the Bulldog.

When Mud Pie owner Robbie Stair hung up his apron, Matt Lokowich picked up his own torch. Having always dreamed of having his own Chicago-dog joint, Lokowich had recently flirted with an offer on the West Bank’s Wienery. When the Mud Pie location opened up, he was on it like a rat on a Cheeto.

We looked in the other day. It was three hours before the dinner bell on opening night, and there were still more power tools out than menus. Lokowich chatted with me with the dispersed attention I’ve found to be characteristic of restaurateurs. He had installed a gorgeous bar, refinished the floors, and brightened the place up in a few hundred other ways. And he was steamed up on the subject of Chicago dogs. “I love Chicago-style dogs! People love Chicago-style dogs,” he said, offering his girth as proof of this fact. “It’s nice to get back to basics.”

Lokowich has gone beyond the basics. Even the most venerable wiener cart isn’t likely to keep twenty selections of cold beer on tap. Why it’s taken so long for this combination to tumble outside the ballpark, nobody knows for sure. But the marriage of Chicago dogs and a beer license is an obvious attraction in all directions.

Also beyond the basics is the honor with which Lokowich treats the heritage of the site. The Mud Pie stained glass remains in place. Since Robbie Stair has himself gone into brewing, the Bulldog will make room at the taps when his first kegs are ready. And just in case someone didn’t get the news and shows up hoping for a square vegetarian meal, the menu offers a veggie burger under the name, naturally, Mud Pie. We checked in a few weeks later to find out how the Mud Pie is selling alongside the dogs and roast beef. Lokowich assures us that the veggie burger is moving briskly. Perhaps even more surprising, he seems to have tapped into real demand with his “No Dog” vegetarian wiener. —Joe Pastoor

John Cosgrove grew up playing football in the small Ulster village of Enniskillen, just north of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It was odd, he said, playing pickup soccer in the intensely nationalistic region. “There we were—kids pretending to be players from Manchester United or Arsenal. Kids of IRA men, yet running around the schoolyard pretending to be Englishmen kicking a ball.” He said, “It didn’t make any sense. But then, if it’s Northern Ireland, it’s not supposed to make any sense.”

They’re not playing in the schoolyard any more, but Cosgrove, who is the manager of the Local, and his boss, Kieran Folliard, proprietor of the Local and Kieran’s, in Minneapolis, and the Liffey, in St. Paul, still kick the ball around with a group of Irishmen. Until this year, their adult recreational league team was sponsored by Kieran’s Irish Pub. But this year, in a fit of Irish solidarity, they changed the team name to Gaelic Stormz and started going to a different Irish pub after each game, instead of always showing up at one of Folliard’s places.

“We’ve got Irishmen from eleven different counties on the side,” said Cosgrove, “so we thought we should just spread it out to all the Irish pubs in town. We wanted to be the Irish side, not the Kieran’s side.” The team, while clearly dominated by Irish, is not so chauvinstic as to exclude other players. The Gaelic Stormz includes an Icelander, a Norwegian, a Canadian, and a recent addition from Lebanon. They even have admitted two Americans—one from Colorado and one from Pittsburgh. There are no native Minnesotans playing for the Stormz.

“We’ve sort of adopted people who’ve come here as foreigners,” said Cosgrove. “The first question we ask when we meet someone is, ‘Where are you from?’ The second is, ‘Do you kick football?’”

Because of roster changes and the change in affiliation, the team had to accept relegation to the lowest level of the league this year. The Stormz are in second place in the bronze division and are planning to move back up next year to where they came from, the silver division. That’s where their traditional rivals, the Englishmen from Brit’s Pub, currently occupy third place. In the past, the annual Kieran’s vs. Brit’s match has drawn as many as five hundred spectators to a recreational-level game that normally attracts only two or three wives or girlfriends. The rivalry, now in its tenth year, stands Brit’s 5–Kieran’s 4. This year, the August 27 game at Fort Snelling won’t count in the standings, but that doesn’t matter to the teams. They are playing for pride and a trophy put up by the Guinness beer distributor. “But we don’t care who puts up the trophy,” said Cosgrove. “I don’t care if it has dog’s bollocks’ name on it, I just want to hold it up in Brit’s team’s face.”

When Folliard opened the Local at Tenth and Nicollet five years ago, he jokingly described the location as being “just a stone’s throw from Brit’s Pub.” But the rivalry between the two traditional hangouts is a friendly one—when it comes to business. When they’re talking soccer, it’s a different matter. Cosgrove fans the flames with his occasional publication The Irish Raconteur, a one-page newspaper he distributes by email. It seems mostly to exist to make fun of the other teams—particularly the one from a block down Nicollet Mall. “Some of the Brit’s guys get a bit angry about the emails,” said Cosgrove. “But it’s all good fun. And being English, for the most part they don’t understand humor.”—Oliver Tuanis

The recent kerfuffle about the telecom scandal has not yet yielded a satisfactory answer to a question that troubles millions. Ellen Anderson, for one, wonders why we are powerless to stop telemarketers from calling us. “Virtually everyone hates telemarketing calls,” said the Minnesota state senator the other day. “Why can’t we pass laws that reflect the public will?”

She ought to know the answer to that question, because she’s tried. Last January, Minnesota’s much-ballyhooed Do Not Call list went into effect after being voted into law. Anticipating relief from the constant ring of the telephone during dinner, 1.3 million Minnesotans put down their forks and subscribed to the list. They have been disappointed with the results. Beyond initiating a stream of self-congratulatory press releases, the list does not seem to work. There are simply too many loopholes: Nonprofit and political organizations are exempt, as are businesses that have a “prior relationship” with a consumer. Telemarketers who pledge to close the deal after the phone is hung up also are free to continue calling.

Unfortunately, the instruments of torture and of salvation turn out to be the same. Consumers who want to complain about telemarketing must make a call to the agency in charge of the list, the Minnesota Department of Commerce. A tedious automated telephone menu system leads you into the Byzantine world of commerce regulation. The investigator we spoke with—off the record—told us that resources were spread thin, and he was getting tired of fielding calls from irate owners of residential telephones.

Of course, assigning the Commerce Department to regulate marketing activity has resulted in the proliferation of that sad, overplayed metaphor of the fox guarding the henhouse. We wanted to see both the fox and the henhouse for ourselves, but the director of communications for the Minnesota Department of Commerce, an evasive man named Bruce Gordon, was not eager to see us. Refusing an in-person interview and tour of the premises, he said, “There is no system to see at the Commerce Department.” A company in Bloomington provides the telephone and computer services for our Do Not Call list. The company, called NCS Pearson, also insists that there is nothing to see at their offices.

It’s a shame that the fully automated system seems not to exist anywhere, since Minnesota taxpayers have so far paid NCS Pearson a very real $250,000. The stewards of our under-performing Do Not Call list will receive another quarter-million dollars before their contract expires on Halloween of 2004.

Taxpayers may be gratified to know that we also foot the bill for two full-time investigators and a part-time supervisor who look into consumer complaints. The Department of Commerce receives an average of 175 consumer complaints a month. To date, only one company—Mid State Marketing of Pequot Lakes—has been fined. They admitted they made four phone calls before checking the list, and took their punishment like a man. Their debt to society? A whopping $250. Who says there is no justice and no accountability?—Robin Shaw

It might have been a lull in the news cycle. It might have been the fact that every news outlet from TV to the daily newspaper wants to be a magazine. (Stories that make you feel good! Pretty pictures! Candid opinion!) But for one glorious week this summer, we were introduced to, fell in love with, and then lost all interest in the “flash mob” phenomenon. There was something really cool and urbane, in the same way that meringue is cool and urbane, about a random group of Twin Citizens, hundreds maybe, overtaking the Mall of America and doing the Robot in the Sears Court. That it was arranged in advance by email was a secret for them to know, and for us to find out.

This particular secret society was so easy to get into, though, that we’re wondering now how many journalists are dying to get off the Minneapolis Mob’s listserv. This was punishment enough for infiltrating the group: Our inbox was flooded with the social theories of every johnny-come-lately mobster who wanted to argue that Minneapolis is just as cool as San Francisco or New York.

Given all the interest flash mobbing attracted, we can’t escape the cynical conclusion that most of us are incredibly bored and well behaved. It takes a herd of pranksters to reveal that the rest of us are merely in the larger herd of individuals who mind our own business, shoulder to the wheel, and so on. But let’s be charitable. The flash mob was nifty because it appeared to be spontaneous, and we can all use a little more spontaneity and surprise in our lives.

In fact, spontaneity is the new black. As usual, the Design Institute at the University is modish. This month, the DI is conducting something they call “The Big Urban Game,” which involves teams of players moving thirty-foot-high inflatable pawns throughout the city, sort of like playing chess by global positioning. The way this well-planned event will be experienced—the way it is meant to be experienced by whatever audience self-generates—is by surprise. The result will be similar to the flash mob; the city becomes not so much a performance space, but a space for spontaneous spectacle. The usual authorities are casting a wary eye and palming their billy clubs.

They need not be too concerned. These things are designed to be ephemeral. That, in fact, is their main asset. Perhaps the neatest contribution to the new spontaneity is the Design Institute’s new typeface. The printed word is typically thought to be the opposite of spontaneous. (Some publications are worse than others, of course.) Fonts are like architecture: They are normally created with permanence in mind. But the Design Insititute commissioned a mutable font, called Twin, that will change (on a computer screen, naturally) over time. Twin is inspired by its namesake, the Twin Cities. It is designed to respond to—what else?—the weather. In cold conditions, it looks formal and distant like Courier. In warmer weather, it grows into a round and playful script.

The split personality of this new typeface raises the question: indecisive or self-conflicted? Either way, it’s a clever invention that pays us the backhanded compliment of an avant-garde prank. We don’t know whether anyone will actually use this new font, but we like its impetuousness. Life can be pretty predictable around here, and nothing changes so fast as the weather. Maybe that’s why we talk about it so much. And now we have an excuse to write about it more, too.

Independent cinema is a bigger growth industry than you might think. A decade ago, there were maybe a hundred film festivals worldwide showcasing foreign films, documentaries, and low-budget fare. Now that number’s about a thousand. Here in Minnesota, the reigning king is the U Film Society’s international festival, one of the largest yearly draws of any arts event in the state. But there’s apparently plenty of room for growth here, too. Two of the newest film fests, Sound Unseen and Central Standard, screen this month, and they ought to be on the radar of any self-respecting fan of indie cinema.

Central Standard, after a modest start last year, has an ambitious slate of thirty-plus feature-length films and dozens of shorts. The focus here is regional: Nearly all the films were shot somewhere other than New York or L.A., including eight Minnesota-made features. The festival opens with the excellent, quirky cop drama Evenhand and a performance by ex-Soul Coughing singer Mike Doughty, who wrote Evenhand’s soundtrack. Other good prospects include local writer/director Patrick Coyle’s moody Detective Fiction, and Speedo, a documentary about demolition-derby king Ed Jager, whose life is as beat-down as one of his post-race cars.

Sound Unseen, now in its fourth year, focuses on movies about music, gathering a wealth of documentaries, concert films, and video collections. Highlights this year include a biography of recording engineer Tom Dowd, who went from the Manhattan Project to become Atlantic Records’ secret weapon; You See Me Laughin’, which profiles gutbucket bluesmen R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, maybe the last authentic Delta blues musicians around; Let Me Be Your Band, about the wacky world of one-man bands; and the long-lost uncut version of Sun Ra’s 1974 sci-fi musical Space Is the Place, a true time capsule of free-jazz fabulousness.

Both festivals are local eruptions of a larger national uprising in independent film. In recent years, festival-circuit giants like Sundance and Cannes have been reduced to a business-driven need to find the next big Hollywood breakout hit. The high-profile festivals, once proudly independent, have become Hollywood’s happy hunting ground, and festival organizers have responded in the most pimp-like fashion: They draw movie-hungry studios and their cash by requiring exclusive premiere rights to the movies they screen. In exchange, of course, indies get their best shot at discovery by the majors. To be sure, the effect on America’s film culture at large is probably positive—this is where movies like Memento, Reservoir Dogs, and Usual Suspects first got noticed and pushed toward a wider public.

The problem is that the odds of any particular movie getting picked up are at least as grim as a minor-league ballplayer’s chance of getting drafted by the Yankees. And the system favors potential blockbusters, so documentaries and offbeat features tend to get shafted. There are only so many slots, and reel after reel of worthy work simply gets lost somewhere between one cocktail party and another. And so the only apparent path to success for hopeful directors was one that strikes an outside observer as insane: Submit your movie to only one festival, and then never show it again anywhere else, even after the premiere, lest the all-important buzz wear off and scare away prospective distributors. “They want the buzz to themselves,” says Sound Unseen programmer Peter Lucas. “But that’s if they pick these films up. Too many filmmakers were doing this and then the films were never seen or heard from again.” Sundance or die.

But there was clearly a niche for the films left behind by the gold rush. What happened was the film world’s version of a fringe festival: the growth of a whole bunch of upstart film events across the country, at places like Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center and San Francisco’s Other Minds. Their primary interest is connecting with local audiences, not with Hollywood dealmakers. Since they’re not obsessed with nabbing national premieres, it also means more sharing between fest-runners in different cities. “If we see something great, we don’t necessarily hoard it,” says Lucas. “We call other programmers and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to show this.’” This has the pleasant effect of creating an ad hoc distribution network, helping solve one of the chief headaches for independent filmmakers. As they ought to have been all along, film festivals become an audience-reaching end in themselves.

“I think it’s become unhealthy for the independents to hold out for Sundance,” agrees Central Standard’s programmer, Todd Hansen. Technical advances and the rise of DVD distribution make the economics of low-budget filmmaking actually work in favor of artists for a change. These days, small filmmakers can turn out high-quality product on an incredibly low budget. Shooting and editing on digital video can be cheaper than buying a used car, and going direct-to-DVD is a genuine alternative to spending five million dollars to break out an indie film via the L.A. pipeline of celluloid. It may not be very high profile, but the alternative before was total obscurity. “No one’s going to have a house in Malibu,” notes Hansen, but a frugal, marketing-savvy filmmaker can build an honest-to-gosh career without ever being noticed by the majors. For instance, Vermont filmmaker John O’Brien, whose comedy Nosey Parker is playing at Central Standard, has made not just one but three films while maintaining another career—as a sheep farmer. (Now there’s a day job that beats waiting tables.)

But to take best advantage of this unheard-of concept of DIY moviemaking, you’ve got to get some screen time in regional theaters, and Hansen hopes that Central Standard will eventually function as a portal for locally made movies to get bookings in out-state towns like Sauk Centre. He’s also taking his case to the airwaves starting October 6, when he’ll host Channel 45’s new indie-film showcase, FilmFinds.

Of course, especially in the present economy, finding sources of funding for nonprofits is no easy job. The audience for indie fare seems to be growing everywhere, but can it be enough to support these proliferating festivals and ensure their survival? “They’re all still happening, so I think that question sort of answers itself,” says Hansen. “There’s a flawed distribution system right now, and there’s a craving for material that’s not reaching people through the heavy overhead and high expense of Hollywood. There’s a huge missed market out there. And Minneapolis is incredible for having supported Iranian-subtitled films for twenty-one years. Not many people have that. It’s a great testament to this town and the savvy of its filmgoers.”

For more information:

Central Standard Film Festival, Sept. 17-21; (612) 338-0871.

Sound Unseen Film Festival, Sept. 26-Oct. 2; (612) 333-4995.

Is it OK for married guys to go to strip clubs? First, let’s get something out in the open right away here: Men are duplicitous scumbags. That doesn’t stop when they get married. Is there a woman alive who truly believes—in her heart of hearts—that her husband is a saint? This is the great white lie we all live with, because it makes life easier: Women pretend their husbands are good and pure, and men—if they’re being watched—do everything they can to help them believe that.

Still, I note a certain irony: Every honest woman I know admits to a strong, irrational desire for the “rebel male.” Like my friend Emily. She likes bad boys. And part of the attraction, she says, is the fairy-tale belief that she’s the only one who has the power to reform him—to turn the frog into a prince. She can make him act responsibly, and this is, of course, a good thing. But I’m sorry to report that she can’t stop him from having unclean thoughts or occasionally trying to look at dirty pictures. The frog lives on.

By the time they manage to jump the broomstick, men have a pretty good idea what’s right and what’s wrong—in the eyes of their wives, the law, and on primetime network TV. Then, shockingly, they persist in having their own private ideas. Married men know that life is good when they officially play by the rules of the fairer sex. However! This does not mean married men think entirely chaste thoughts or that they don’t have a rich fantasy life or that they don’t bend the rules in private. Men who deny this in the company of other men are liars, clinical eunuchs, or politicians. And now, of course, I’ve broken a sacred trust in mentioning this to mixed company.

Why is it impossible to genuinely reform the male of the species? I don’t know. But I suspect if it were possible, no one would like the results. See, science has shown us that men like to look at naked women. Women know this, and they disapprove—unless, of course, they take their clothes off for a living. But look at it from a man’s point of view: This sure feels like biology. If sex were a rational thing, we’d all do it once or twice, and then be done with it. Imagine how much easier life would be if we were like Spock and only had to schedule the old pon faar once every seven years? But no. Males are strongly motivated by a chemical, genetic, or cellular urge to see pretty women without their clothes on.

Now, you’re going to ask why the married man is not satisfied with viewing his own lawfully wedded wife in the buff, and there is no good rational answer to that. All I can say is that more seems to be better. My buddy Carl says one of the great things about the Internet is not only the porn, but the sheer volume and variety of porn. Charles Bukowski used to explain his own philandering by saying that every woman was a mystery he couldn’t resist trying to reveal—and speaking as a married man, I can say this is what Bukowski meant: What does she look like naked? She might have a body like a little submarine, and I want to see it!

I don’t know much about Darwin or Freud, but I know that most male mammals have some kind of biological imperative to spread their seed. Woody Allen said that monogamy was pretty much limited to Catholics and mallards, and he was actually only half right. (Turns out that mallards are polygamous.)

Now, my buddy Pete is happily married. My buddy Don is not. Don recently got out of a relationship that was based pretty much on full-time sex, which was great, of course, but there were other insurmountable problems. (Oddly enough, men can’t subsist on sex alone. But, like bread, it’s a good staple.) Pete has a great wife, sexy and smart. Don is a guy who has for a decade gone to clubs like Choice and Déjà Vu. He’s not especially proud of the fact, nor is he ashamed, although he’s got some great stories. Pete, too, has been Don’s dependable sidekick on these excursions. (Me, I try to avoid it, because I’m a horrible liar and the wife has ESP for this kind of mischief.) Anyway, Don and Pete are good, decent, upstanding, sensitive men who make great and loving spouses, and they’re tired of feeling guilty about wanting to see more naked women more of the time. They argue that it really is all about visual stimulation—nothing more—and that it has no real or at least bad effect on their relationships with women. And the truth of the matter is that they are sick and tired of the prigs, who mostly seem to be Gen X women and their overcompensating men, who insist that a robust desire to look at naked people is evidence of some kind of moral disease. What do you think?

RAKE READERS RESPOND

Oh Stuart,

I’m afraid you’ve done more harm to your gender than simply violating a sacred trust. You’ve managed to succeed in adding yet another robust belch to the dirty-laundry list that includes, “loves the Three Stooges; won’t ask for directions; doesn’t wash hands post-urination; and is generally ruled by the front and center-most extremity.”

That said, OF COURSE you’re in need of visual stimulation! You’re an American man! There hasn’t been a day in your life without it – magazines, billboards, movies, TV, advertising -Goodness knows, I’d never force you to go cold turkey. But BEFORE you enter into a trusting, ring-bearing relationship, be fair and lay all your strip-poker cards on the table.

Chances are you’re marrying an American woman – one who has lived in the constant curvaceous shadow of those ever-present air-brushed beauties (who have seemingly nothing better to do than deliberately bend over, sheepishly glancing back at you while laying a finger on the pink tongue peeking out between pouty lips) and your harmless night out could turn out to be the unwitting catalyst that opens old rejection wounds or recalls low self-esteem moments. Bummer. This woman you love would like to think those competitive, comparative days are over, and that she’s finally entered into a relationship that resides on a higher-heeled plane. Act too stupid in public without her understanding your intent, and you’re tiptoeing down a path that leads to mistrust, which is, by the way, located a hop, skip and a jump from disaster.

Your wife in the buff should be enough, but really “more is better?” Come on. More is better? WE know THAT. There isn’t an honest woman alive who couldn’t write an 800 word essay entitled, “Yes. Size DOES matter.” But, just as a flat-chested babe can sport a fabulous derriere, so can a man lick (sic) his shortcomings… Alas, that won’t stop men from looking at huge breasts; nor will it stop women from longing for a big hunk of “more is better.”

What do I think? Women will always crave attention from someone other than their husbands, and men will crave visual stimulation from women other than their wives. Discuss it. Accept it. Then love each other, make sure one another feels safe, help each other find a purpose, eat, drink, and be married.

—What1WomanThinks

Stuart Greene replies:

I like your point that we all pretty much must live in the shadow of our own insecurities– and must somehow, at the same time, learn to trust and support and love each other.

And I think we do– but of course everyday is a battle against both ourselves and our better halves.

A mundane example: It drives me nuts that the wife leaves her melty snowboots at the top of the basement stairs, and if I ask her kindly and respectfully not to, then she typically tries not to. When I do something that drives her absolutely bananas (I have a lot more of these faults than she does, I’m afraid– dirty dishes in sink, beer cans in the office, unmown lawn, unsorted mail), I do my best to evolve and get it done. Lots of times I don’t much like it, and I’m thinking dark thoughts, but I do it, cuz that’s what adults do.

In any working relationship, there is an understanding that we make sacrifices–particularly in action, because action counts
more than words and sweet thoughts–on behalf of the relationship.

Now– my little exercise in morality was only meant to shed a little light on what we both seem to agree on: certain intractable cognitive realities. Should we try to change the way men think, the way they conduct their own internal realities? Should we expect that of them (us)? Should we all have to base our morality on the lowest common insecurity we have about our own bodies? I don’t have a particularly large, uh, endowment– and it has never made me particularly worried about it, nor does it bother me when my wife notices or comments on some Chippendale dude’s “package.”

Speaking of which, I also loved your insights on the issue of “more is better,” and your honesty about it. but I have to add that I personally am repelled by large breasts, and have a personal fetish along the lines of “small is better,” about which an upcoming column will be concerned.

Let me say that Woody Allen is a child molester. You should do more research before spouting off your very narrow opinion about any subject.

You opinion is very immature and your passive attitude about the realities of the issue only expose your inability to have a truly deep relationship.

By permitting yourself to believe that what you wrote is true you have denied yourself and you wife the respect your relationship deserves. You no more than said that Campbell’s soup is the best when you haven’t matured to Progresso or whatever the richer thicker stuff is called.

If it is true that men should follow the instinct of any animal that fits their sexual desires, because after all he is just an animal, then you can also say that murder and any other survival technique is also acceptable. Maybe next time I see you I should lift my leg and urinate on you, because after all I am just an animal.

Have you figured out the difference between man and animal yet? When your wife divorces you later for being so immature she will probably take the kids away from you because you are such an idiot.

—MC

What you say may certainly be true, but I’m afraid you’re polarizing this into a man versus woman issue. This is part of the problem I’m trying to address, I guess, with honesty, regarding the way most average men think (and act). By your moral lights, every man I know– including some very good and decent family men– are incapable of having a “truly deep” relationship. From my admittedly limited perspective, I just think you’re wrong, because I’ve seen otherwise. Any self-respecting person must feel very uncomfortable indeed with your proposition that he or she does not “think the right thoughts” and therefore is incapable of an evolved relationship– though it’s gratifying to know that there is ~always~ room for my relationship to grow and change in interesting new ways, no matter how great it seems to me right now.

I certainly would never argue that men are ~merely~ animals, just that there seem to be plenty of animal instincts that remain, judging by my extended circle of friends who are in great and healthy marriages.

Unfortunately, Woody Allen still walks free. as I recall, he’s never been charged or convicted, other than in the peanut gallery.

Perhaps if society weren’t so puritanical about sex and nudity, there wouldn’t be this tension between men and their Gen X women? Women I know love sex every bit as much as men, but can reasonably live without it when life circumstances require and do just fine; they don’t need to go to strip clubs. I’ve never been to a strip club, but I would imagine they aren’t the most tasteful joints in town. I think I might be offended, not by the nudity, but by the general atmosphere of all those men lusting after strangers who are obviously exploiting their sex drives for a living.

You say men like to look at pictures of nude women and you include porn in that category. I see a distinction; porn is pretty much about only body parts, big body parts and self gratification, sometimes taking that to new extremes. And it ain’t pretty. The purveyors of porn aren’t sending out this stuff for your ‘pleasure’, they are trying to get you hooked and sell dildos — exploiting sex drives, loneliness, curiosities, whatever, for financial gain.

Ever look at the photo spreads in Playboy of say, maybe 30-40 years ago? Sexism notwithstanding, those photos were beautifully shot and really did showcase the gorgeous female body; all of it (I know, to sell magazines). They were quite modest by today’s standards and didn’t even expose pubic hair; but guess what, they were very sexy pictures.

Doesn’t everyone find themselves attracted to the human body? Isn’t it beautiful, or when not beautiful, at least fascinating? I find it really sad when some degrade it. Painters and sculptors have always and ever will be truly admiring the human form. And they’re not making the quick buck. There are different venues for viewing and appreciating the human body — and people (esp. men) will always want to look. But because society is rather prudish about nudity and sex, strip clubs and porn are the forbidden fruit that cause some men, the ones who still have some growing up to do, to have fun at being bad boy and getting away with it.

Should married men go to strip clubs? Who has the right to tell them they shouldn’t? I look at it this way: I like that my partner admires the female body and he can look all he wants. I just hope that mine is the only one he touches.

—SN

I love your point about prudishness and the human body– although i have to admit I’ve never really understood the argument that “porn” is degrading because it focuses on particular parts of the body (and not necessarily “big”, but that’s another subject altogether.) At the same time, I confess that this is an argument that I’ve used myself and hear quite often from my wife and my more righteous buddies– that depictions of sex or sexuality without “the context” of a relationship and a fully-formed human being (with feelings and fears and a Life and relationships and everything else) is an empty, nasty thing. But that’s starting to feel like an awfully pat, PC answer that may not comport with reality.

It’s just not that simple, I’m beginning to fear. Or maybe it’s even simpler than that. I mean, there is plenty of fine-art photography that focuses on details of “the nude”– including pubic hair, and yes, genitalia. I guess the distinction is supposed to be that one cultivates prurient interest (i.e. turns viewers on in a sexual way) while the other does not. (Does this distinction make any sense to you? Less and less, to me.)

I think I’d also argue that conventions and mores have changed significantly since the golden age of Playboy, which you mention. Back mid-century, photographic nudity of any kind was seen as unmitigated filth by all the usual prigs, it seems to me, and I’d certainly be willing to bet that what is considered tame and acceptable and even beautiful today was considered the hard stuff back in the day (though I admit to being a bit too young to Say anything authoritative at all on this point).

I think your rule is a good one– for moral and practical reasons, the “diner” model (you can look at the menu, but you can’t order) may not be the highest road to take in a marriage, but it’s probably the most honest one.

I agree, too, that the overwhelming emotion in a strip club is one of desperation and frustration ( after all, it’s not legal to get any kind of satisfaction, in the traditional male sense of the word). I don’t know if the business proposition is as complicated as you suspect, though. The purveyors of these services and products don’t need to get anyone hooked, per se– there will always be an endless reservoir of paying clients for the simplest of reasons: Sex feels good. (And sexuality is right up there with eating and sleeping, in terms of involuntary appetites.)

Why didn
’t you just come out and name your column what you really wanted to: Honey, Can I Go to the Strip Club With Don and Pete?

Your first column with the Rake was at its roots a plea to the public in general and perhaps your wife in particular to approve of your desire to see all women with a pretty face or slammin’ figure naked. “It’s a biological reality blahblahMenArePigsblah…” Sorry, but there’s a deeper issue here than that tired old “boys will be boys” crap.

Just because a woman doesn’t happily stock her hubby’s wallet with a crisp stack of ones before he heads for the strip club doesn’t make her a prig, as you say. I don’t want my husband to ogle naked girls, not because I’m a prude, but because it’s hurtful. Maybe it’s real CarrieBradshawNewMillenium to say that I’m okay with my significant other frequenting strip clubs, but I’m really not. And perhaps it’s sooo last season to value the exclusivity of marriage, but I do. You and your buddies, though, think that wives everywhere should just be cool with their guys enjoying the strip club scene. Be a nice, understanding gal, wontcha?

Deal with my behavior with your intellect, not your intuition, which tells you that my going to strip bars doesn’t feel right. Meanwhile, I’ll go ahead and think with my weiner. See you after last call!

But underneath all your chest pounding and caveman proclamations about male sexuality, there is a quiet rumble of guilt about your own “robust desires” that you can’t seem to shake. From what I gleaned from your writing, your wife is one of those women who finds your interest in “more naked women, more of the time” a bit hurtful. You said you steer clear of the strip club scene because your wife disapproves (“I try to avoid it, because I’m a horrible liar and the wife has ESP for this kind of mischief”), thus becoming one of the men you ridicule (the Gen X priggish woman’s overcompensating man). And then you resent that you feel guilty, and you write whiny pieces for the Rake.

Take a second look at the whole “women don’t care” issue. I think you’ll find that a fair amount of women actually do have beef with their husbands checking out other naked people, despite trying to transmit an aura of calm indifference.

After that, if you still feel like going to strip clubs, that’s your business. But dude, just go and stop asking the Twin Cities (and the wife) to sign your permission slip.

—SW

I’ll have to confess up front that I don’t have much interest in going to strip clubs– not really. I suppose that makes my column a little disingenuous. I find strip clubs singularly desperate and bizarre, the moment I stop “thinking with my wiener.” But plenty of my buddies do go, and they’re perfectly good guys–some of the most noble men that I know in the world. Go figure.

One could make the argument that we are all unevolved, but I think that’s kind of a bootless observation. Most men think this way– at least the men I know. It’s more than a “boys will be boys” issue. It’s kind of a “boys will be boys in spite of themselves” issue– by which i mean that we Gen Xers are more than aware of how to walk the walk and talk the talk with our wives, while we certainly act and talk differently with each other. The fact is, we don’t find our essentially prurient interest in the random female form to be nearly as threatening to our primary relationship as our wives and girlfriends do, and I was wrestling to parse this a little bit, without resorting to cliches.

I think it’s totally cool that you, and I suppose my wife, find your husband’s natural appetite for “desirable” women with “slammin” bodies hurtful. But that doesn’t mean you should expect him to pretend, in the privacy of his own mind, that the appetite doesn’t exist. it feels as natural, in many respects, as the hurt you feel. One might say that you are susceptible to jealousy– one of the ugliest and selfish of human emotions (certainly as negative as fantasizing about sex with a stranger) since it would reject or deny a simple, very manageable male reality. (Sex feels good. Sexuality is fun. Women are attractive. You can look, but you can’t touch. ) You want to be the only woman in the world for your husband, and you are– or as close as you’ll get, assuming you have the wonderful kind of relationship you have with your spouse that I have with mine.

I’m sincerely curious whether you ever fantasize about good-looking men, in a totally sexual way– and whether this might be a fundamental difference between men and women. (If you do, do you dismiss it as a morally reprehensible reflex, rather like farting in public?) I tend to think men and women are more alike than not, and I find it slightly depressing that they could be so different on this score. That view would argue that women don’t actually enjoy sex– they aren;t sexual beings– unless it’s with Prince Charming, the Man of Their Dreams. Or the kind of insidious stereotype that women cannot enjoy sex except in the context of a long-term monogamous relationship (which automatically makes women who do NOT meet this stereotype some kind of whore or, naturally, a victim of abuse.) I’m sorry, I just think sexuality is so much more complicated, subtle, beautiful, and individual than any of these political paradigms allow for. But I stray from the context of sex and the married man.

Action is worth more than words, of course. I don’t do things my wife doesn’t want me to do because I’m an adult, and that’s what adults do in working relationships. My point was simply that men carry on this duplicitous mental life. Ask your husband or boyfriend about it, and if he’s perfectly honest with you, he’ll tell you all about it, and maybe your relationship goes to the next level. Or maybe not.

I enjoyed reading your article on men and strip clubs. I couldn’t agree more with you, and I’m tired of my fellow Gen-X males pooh-poohing strip clubs as if they were interactive tours of livestock slaughterhouses.

Sure, we all went to the Alan Alda School of Sensitive Men back in the 80s, only to find that women still need us to kill spiders in the house. What a shock! Women want us to be sensitive, but macho enough to make them weak in the knees, and, of course, every women in the world wants a different combination of these attributes. Welcome to the Love Lottery!

Oh, yes, here come the admonitions from women about, gosh, how hard it must be to be a man – boo hoo! But I find among my friends, and, frankly, in myself, men’s ability to accept the faults and shortcomings of a mate more than women. After the “honeymoon” phrase comes the ever-present mental check-list of every little personality quirk that sends you off the deep end. Unfortunately, one of those quirks we have is enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman. Every beautiful woman. But it doesn’t keep us from massaging your feet, making you dinner, and yes, killing those damn spiders with our big manly shoes.

I like your stuff, Stuart, and I’m looking forward to you stirring the pot a little bit.

—EH

I like luck. I don’t understand it and can’t predict or explain it, but I enjoy courting it and can’t help believing in it. Philosopher Nicholas Rescher—author of Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Everyday Life—contends that without luck, life as we know it would be unsustainable, that the randomness of good and bad luck gives life the spice that makes it palatable. As I see it, luck encompasses a lot of other ideas with jazzier labels: divine intervention, extrasensory perception, mindfulness, and the will of the universe, to name a few.

You could argue with me that these are all distinctly different principles and that to mash them together is to misunderstand them all, and you’d be right enough. But I’m going to do it anyway, because at the end of the day, when the bedside light goes out and you stare at the soft orange glow of the streetlamp on the ceiling, hashing it over, you’re bound to say to yourself how lucky this or that thing was—whether you’re a church-going type, a fatalist, or a sage-burning, meditating, Buddha-loving, place-the-auspicious-green-plant-in-the-southeast-corner-of-the-house-for-wealth sampler type, like me.

Reviewers say that Rescher’s book “offers a realistic view of the nature and operation of luck to help us come to sensible terms with life in a chaotic world.” He interweaves historical examples, from the use of lots in the Bible to Thomas Gataker’s treatise of 1619 on the great English lottery of 1612, from gambling in casinos to playing the stock market. Rescher maintains that “because we are creatures of limited knowledge who do and must make decisions in the light of incomplete information, we are inevitably at the mercy of luck.”

I have a little theory of my own to offer, which is that the more you notice luck, the more of it you find coming toward you. It’s exactly the same as when I was fifteen and my boyfriend drove a brown Cutlass and I suddenly started seeing tenfold more brown Cutlasses driving on the city streets than I ever had before. (This same principle did not, however, apply when my boyfriend two years later drove a black Cadillac hearse as the bandmobile for his pals, but that’s an understandable exception).

I had a very lucky moment a few weeks ago when my childless sister was in town being the good auntie, and my house was crawling with kids and commotion. We were getting ready to rush off to the next activity when I heard our niece Charisma, four years old, hollering at my sister upstairs. I thought it was because she’d been having too much fun with the gang and didn’t want to go back home. But in the same instant, I knew I was wrong. I swung around stupidly looking for her, and heard her holler again. I ran to the window and saw two small bare legs sticking out of the pond and a cascade of long blond hair splayed across the surface of the water.

I screamed something I can’t remember and ran out the front door. Jon bolted for the back door. He got there first, and grabbed her soft white legs with his big brown hands and pulled her out. I carried her in, her wet head pressed against my face. “I want my mama!” she sobbed.

But her mama wasn’t there, she was home with Charisma’s brand-new baby sister, and so it was my daughter Sophie and I who helped peel off the sodden clothes and run the shower and wash the pond scum out of those long curls. Later, Charisma drew a picture of herself, a stick figure with a large head, reaching over the rock ledge of the pond for a “pretty thing,” a floating glass bauble. She then drew the next frame, in which her mouth was open to signify her call for help when she found herself too far over the edge to pull herself up again.

The weird thing about all this is that to call the bit of water in our yard a pond is a stretch, to say the least. It’s not quite three feet deep and it’s about the circumference of a standard umbrella. Benches and gardens encircle it, and no one has ever fallen into it except Charisma, who has done so twice now, and she’s only four. But what I saw out the window was scary enough for me to still be reliving it. I really don’t know if she could have gotten her head stuck under the water. I can’t rule it out, no matter how I’ve tried, and I’ve had to sit many times since and feel the magnitude of my thankfulness for this piece of luck—the baffling phenomenon that touches and humbles us all with the random power of its grand surprise.