The Rake Magazine

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  • The Wages of Sin

    “Dirty Dancing” by Sarah Luck Pearson [June] presents a very one-sided view of the people who are impacted by strip clubs. For the past ten years, through my work at an organization called Adults Saving Kids, I have learned a side of stripping that most people never hear about and is seldom expressed in the mainstream media. I carry with me the stories of many different kinds of people: There are the women who have survived the drug abuse, harassment, and prostitution and who are sad for the women they know who are still trapped in stripping. There are the women whose pimps shipped them around the country to various strip clubs and consigned them, like some tradable commodity, to club owners and their customers. There are the men who are recovering from sexual addiction who have spent thousands of dollars on their strip-club fantasies, only to lose those they really loved. There is the former strip-club manager who clearly articulates the manipulation and deceit that goes on at the strip clubs, and lives and struggles with the fact that he helped destroy lives. There are the devastated parents and siblings of young women whose lives and careers got derailed because of being manipulated into stripping and from there into prostitution. There are the women who work downtown who feel the harassment from their male co-workers who have just returned from a business lunch at a strip club. There is the child who was left in the car in the parking lot for several hours while daddy was inside the strip club living out his fantasy. Fortunately, all of their stories are also protected by the First Amendment. Unfortunately, most folks do not hear these stories because strip clubs and other sexually oriented businesses dominate the media with claims of their First Amendment rights being attacked. It seems that if we are really concerned about protecting First Amendment rights, we first need to give a voice to those people who have been silenced, damaged, and destroyed by “harmless” activities at strip clubs. Once we have a complete and balanced picture of what’s really going on, each of us can judge for ourselves whose rights are being violated.
    Amy Hartman
    St. Paul

  • Home and Abroad

    Imperialists come in all shapes and sizes. Some claim their god gave them the right to take away other people’s land and market the produce of their orange groves. Others never visit the places or people whose lives they dominate through the sale of brown sticky drinks and their cinematic equivalent.

    And then there are the unlikely ones, such as the poet Catullus. In the middle of the first century B.C. Rome was taking on territory at a greater rate than ever before. It was the custom for young men who aspired to a political career (or whose fathers aspired to one for them) to spend a year or more in a province as an honorary attaché on the governor’s staff, picking up tips, both informative and financial. Catullus did not find the wide plains of what is now northwestern Turkey at all to his liking. He was clearly happier in a sleazy pub off the Forum in Rome (“salax taberna,” as in “salacious tavern”), even if he did accuse its regulars of rogering his lady love Lesbia, “than whom no woman will ever be more greatly loved.” He was especially bitter about a Spaniard called Egnatius who favored as a dentifrice (so Catullus claimed) a fluid for the production of which he held, shall we say, an unassailable monopoly. [Uh, his own urine.—Editors]

    Perhaps Catullus could have learned to like living abroad for his country. One thinks of that remarkable generation of British Arabists who tried to put the Near East back on its feet after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Hamilton, who engineered the Hamilton Road through the Zagros Mountains, the first road to link Persia with northern Iraq, was perhaps a natural for strenuous service. Lawrence, too, of course. But less so Canon Wigram who spent years living in the remote mountain villages of the Assyrian Christians, not proselytizing but providing every kind of help—medical, liturgical, typographical, political.

    Still less, one might have thought, Gertrude Bell. When that formidable lady first came to the East it was to fall in love with a young diplomat under the plane trees of the British Legation in Teheran and to translate the wine-and-roses poems of Hafiz, the Persian national poet. Yet she learned to travel rough, to do astounding amounts of pioneer work in Byzantine and early Islamic archaeology (she was the power behind the Baghdad Museum, the one recently looted) and to become the trusted political counselor of the first King of independent Iraq (while remaining resolutely against Votes for Women at home).

    The memoirs written by this generation shine with love of the Levant, the land, its languages, its people. Try Sir Arnold Wilson’s S.W. Persia or Hamilton’s Road through Kurdistan (and if it’s you that has my copy of the latter, please could I have it back). Alas, it will have been papers precisely of this period that were lost in the holocaust of the Iraqi National Archives horrifyingly described by Robert Fisk in the last week of the recent war.

    Gertrude Bell died in Baghdad. Catullus sailed a yacht back from Asia Minor, down the Bosporus, past Byzantium, through the Greek islands, up the Adriatic. He made his homecoming not to Rome, but to northern Italy, where his family lived. The yacht was allowed a serene retirement on the limpid waters of Lake Garda. No serene retirement for young Catullus. He went on writing, riling other poets, especially Julius Caesar’s Chief Engineer, a multifutuent but incompetent versifier whom Catullus liked to call Mentula, (crudely translated by the late Professor Swanson as Mantool and by the witty James Michie as John Thomas). Catullus’s father invited Caesar to dinner when the great man was in northern Italy and made his son apologize.

    One does not know what they drank, but the enterprising firm of Bitari has invented a pleasant red wine grown in the hills near Verona, the poet’s home, and named it after him. Catullo is 60 percent Cabernet (not a grape one associates with this part of the world) and 40 percent Corvino (which one does—it is the main variety in Valpolicella). The blend is mighty successful; my friend the wine merchant, with whom I discussed a bottle of this one sunny evening, thought it tasted rather like Pinot Noir, which is to say that it slipped down all too quickly, promoting pleasure more than thought and pastime with good company. Order it at your salax taberna, or take it to the lake and listen to the water chuckling up against the dock sharing your pleasure at being home.

  • Vanilla, Vanilla, Baby!

    He’s so vanilla, she said. She meant he was plain and simple, an accountant type with no spark, not an artist. She meant he was boring and uninventive, without passion and not worth my time. But when food is your language, definitions begin to skew. I understood her to mean he was delicious and seductive in ancient and darkly mysterious ways. That he remained unique while cultivating a universal appeal, worldly yet homey. That he was an artist and could show me the sweet nuances of life, all the while smelling like freshly baked cookies. If he truly was vanilla, he was certainly worth my time.

    In point of fact, it’s hard to find anyone who truly doesn’t like vanilla. Some of us (although not the majority) go for the zanier ice cream flavors, but that’s hardly a full rejection of vanilla itself. Have you ever come across anyone on a strict vanilla-free regimen? On the contrary, vanilla seems to be doing a bit of a spotlight dance lately. Witness the vanilla flavoring in high-end vodkas, leading to vanilla martinis in fashionable hands across the land. Vanilla Coke, while marketing to a new generation, is really reviving an old classic, though I think it tastes like liquid frosting. And in the past decade vanilla has become a signature scent among marketers who peddle candles and perfumes for enticing the opposite sex. All this from a “plain and simple” plant?

    The Totonaca people of the Vera Cruz region of Mexico have long known the divine properties of vanilla. Their ancestors were the first to cultivate the crop. They believed it to be a gift from the gods, with a mythology surrounding a pair of fallen lovers whose sacred blood marked the spot where a strong vine and beautiful flower grew to fill the air with the aroma of true love and beauty.

    The lovely flower is what links vanilla to the vast family of orchids, of which vanilla is the only edible fruit produced. It starts with the climbing vine that is pruned and trained to keep within reach of workers. After three years, the vine is ready to bear the small, trumpet-shaped celadon orchids. These temperamental flowers bloom for one day and must be fertilized in order to produce vanilla beans. Fortunately not all the flowers open on the same day, but over a period of a few months. In Mexico, the native Melipone bee took on the Herculean task of pollination—creating a 300-year monopoly on its home turf. It wasn’t until the 1800s that hand pollination took over and opened up markets all around the world. The plant is sustainable within a 20-degree band around the equator. Today Madagascar and Indonesia grow the best and the most vanilla, with Tahiti following close behind.

    The vanilla pods are ready for harvesting six to nine months after pollination. Growers need to have a bit of a gambling soul, because the longer they leave the bean on the vine, the bigger the pod and the more valuable the crop. But they risk that pesky old burr in the behind, vanilla rustlers! Somebody might sneak into camp and liberate those pods before you wake up. Robbery was so bad in Madagascar that growers began to brand the green pods with markings that survived the curing process.

    It’s only after the curing process that the beans take on distinct flavors and aromas that differ so greatly among varieties. Like wine, vanilla nuances are affected by climatic differences, soil composition, and processing techniques. Mexican vanilla comes from indigenous plant stock and has a very smooth and creamy flavor. Bourbon vanilla originated from the same plant stock of Mexico, but was cultivated in the Bourbon Islands off Africa; this is the familiar and the most commonly used vanilla in extracts. Indonesia is the second largest producer of vanilla, with a vanilla that is woody, astringent and phenolic. Tahitian vanilla comes from the same Mexican stock, but has mutated over time into a separate species that is distinct in its own right. Tahitian vanilla tends to be sweeter and fruitier with a fatter bean and more floral fragrance than the other vanillas.

    This worldly vision of vanilla might be shocking to those who know it only as the small brown extract bottle nestled in the cupboard between the baking powder and the cinnamon. But originally, it was all about the bean—extracts have only been available for the last 100 years. The first vanilla extracts were made by pharmacists searching for stomach soothers. Variations on the bean now include vanilla flavoring, imitation vanilla, vanilla paste, vanilla powder, double strength extract, etc.

    But people these days are looking back to the bean. Definitely more expensive than the extract, the long dried pods look like something out of a voodoo recipe. To get at the good stuff you must delicately slice open the dried pod and scrape out the seeds into whatever concoction you choose. The sweet, damp darkness holds much of the flavor, but the pod still embraces its own fragrances and can be used for many more infusions.

    Vanilla sugar is one of those rare treats from the bean. Chopped vanilla infuses granulated sugar with the mellow and soft tones of the pod, making your morning coffee and cereal a divine revelation. The locally made Golden Fig’s version seems perfectly balanced and can be used in baking and cooking, or dabbed behind the ear.

    In past years, Mexican vanilla has fallen on hard times, with much of the former growing region dedicated to oil wells and orange groves. But a group of growers are working to re-establish ancient land rights and ritual techniques. These boutique vanillas are aiming to re-educate the world about the story of vanilla and many of them offer a unique vacation opportunity to witness firsthand the production of the sweet nectar of the gods.

  • West Nile, MN

    Dave Neitzel’s view of the dog-eat-dog, mosquito-suck-bird world begins from his third-floor office in the faceless Minnesota Department of Health building, which sits quietly on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus. Neitzel is an ornithologist and entomologist who works on vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. He’s an expert on the West Nile virus.

    It turns out the virus had a fairly innocuous arrival here in Minnesota last year. Slowly making its way across the state, it sent a few horses to Elysian Fields and several hundred birds went talons-up. But there were relatively few human infections.

    “Fortunately, there were no West Nile virus deaths here in Minnesota,” remarked Neitzel. He said there were 48 cases, most of which resulted in not much more than a hat-stretching headache. Sixteen were more serious cases of meningitis and encephalitis, but no one died. On the wall behind him was a big state map with the 2002 West Nile data on it. I pointed to it and asked, “Any big surprise from last year’s Tote Board?”

    “Yeah, there was,” he explained. “About three-quarters of our human cases were out in western or central Minnesota, and only a quarter of the cases were in the seven-county metropolitan area. That’s different than in the East, where most cases occurred in urban areas.” Down in Illinois, they had almost 900 cases—and most were right in Chicago.

    It turns out that the mosquito that carries the virus is different here than down there. “Once you get west of the Mississippi River, the main bird-feeding mosquito becomes Culex tarsalis, a much more rural mosquito that develops in plains and semi-open country,” he explained. “We have some of those bugs that get into the metro, but mostly they’re out farther west.” I suppose they hate the traffic and vote Republican like everyone else.

    This summer the Department of Health is asking Minnesotans to report any birds they believe may have died under what they call on their web site “unusual circumstances.” Now, short of flying kamikaze into the picture window, I wonder whether the public knows what the usual circumstances of avian death might be. “Right, it was kind of hard to word that,” Neitzel chuckled. “We certainly appreciate the help from the public—this surveillance is public-driven. But there has to be an understanding that we can’t test every bird. I had one guy in particular who was very mad because we didn’t pick up a crow he had seen on the side of Highway 394. And I tried to explain that was a bird that was most likely hit by a vehicle, and he said, ‘Well, it may have been sick and unable to avoid the vehicle…’” Neitzel trailed off, sensing the ridiculousness of the conversation all over again. But he was just getting warmed up.

    “We had one person request that we test a mosquito they had found.” Neitzel laughed. “Another guy wanted information on Chronic Waste Nile Disease.”—Craig Bowron

  • What Can You Do For Brown?

    Katy is very proud of her pair of UPS brown socks. She bugged the UPS guy continually to bring her a catalog of all the UPS clothes she could order. Even after weeks of pestering, he never came through with this alleged catalog. One day, however, he handed her a brand new pair of heavyweight socks with the gold UPS logo embroidered on the cuff. When she asked how much she owed him, he replied hastily, “Forget about it,” and sped away in his square truck. Perhaps they were “hush socks” to stop her from asking about how she could get a UPS uniform.

    Who wouldn’t want one of those pairs of UPS shorts to impress their friends? More certain than the first appearance of milfoil in Lake Harriet, all the UPS, USPS, and Fed Ex carriers show up one day in short-sleeved shirts, short pants, and those color-coordinated socks. Do they all decide at the same time when summer has begun?

    I queried Mark, the UPS man who comes to my office, about these mysterious-yet-casual uniforms. He appeared relaxed—perhaps a little too relaxed—when he responded. “We can pull out our shorts anytime. There’s even a UPS guy in the skyways who wears them all year round.” Do they have a dress code? “Oh yeah, we always have to wear our uniform every day. UPS gives us our five uniforms, one for each day of the week.” Doesn’t that make for a lot of laundry? “They wash our uniforms and even mend them when they have holes. We only have to buy our socks and shoes.” Aha! Finally we’re getting somewhere.

    Before I could ask Bob if he got tired of wearing brown and if they let him bring his uniforms home, he dashed out the door. (They always seem to be in such a rush.)

    I soon learned the reason for the secretiveness surrounding the man in brown. A rumor spread across the Internet a few months ago that UPS trucks had been stolen and a large quantity ($32,000 worth, supposedly) of UPS uniforms had been purchased on the Internet auction site eBay by Al Qaeda terrorists hoping to use them as disguises to enter office buildings.

    My regular mailman, Denny, had more time to chat, so I asked him if United States Postal Service regulations were as strict. “They give us an allotment every year of about $300 and have all sorts of catalogs of clothes you can buy,” he replied. “I usually order my uniforms off the Internet, though, just because it’s so cheap. When postal carriers retire, they usually just donate their old clothes. That’s where I picked up these shorts. They have holes in the pockets, but I don’t care.” Apparently his dress code isn’t super-rigid, since Denny also prefers to spice up his wardrobe with a Harley-Davidson headband.

    In any case, the urban myth of terrorists posing as UPS carriers was debunked. UPS spokesperson Kristen Petrella said, “Totally untrue, 110 percent false, no substance. UPS does not condone the sale of its uniforms and we do investigate any reports of unauthorized use.” With the one exception of UPS socks. Perhaps socks were deemed not enough of a uniform to fool anybody.—Eric Dregni

  • Sympathy for the Devil’s Game

    In a world gone mad with wi-fi, razor-thin laptops, and Xboxes, Dave Slabiak is fighting to preserve a questionable American icon—the pinball machine. “I live, breathe, and eat pinball,” he said the other day, staring through his Buddy Holly glasses to make sure his interviewer took in the gravity of the statement.

    Slabiak is a charitable guy who will pump a couple bucks of quarters into a pinball machine after he’s done playing, in hopes that some teenage slacker might chance upon the freebie and take a liking to it. He is also a founding member of the Twin Cities Pinball Enthusiasts (TCPE) who are dedicated to all things having to do with pinball.

    They meet once a month to drop quarters into their favorite public machines and to practice their “bangbacks” and “drop stops” while talking shop. Players like Jen McGaffey, one of the few women in the group of mostly 30-something men, reconnoiter the Twin Cities in search of surviving pinball machines. “We just drive by spots, mostly bars and bowling alleys, and pick ’em,” she said, explaining her scouting technique between sips of a tall Long Island Ice Tea.

    At a recent meeting, enthusiasts gathered around three dinging cabinets in a back corner of the American Sports Café on Como Avenue. There was trouble: The lights on the Attack from Mars playfield were burnt out, so you couldn’t see the silver ball jetting off the bumpers.

    “Geez,” 34-year-old Jeff Kasten lamented. “I did recon on this place for the guys who maintain the machines. I told them the lights were out and there was gunk on the flippers making them stick and that ten to fifteen people were showing up to play. You’d think they could fix them.”

    Indeed, operators who view the machines as dinosaurs and fail to maintain them are especially scorned by the TCPE. Several big vending operators own machines in locations all over town, but they tend to focus on video games because they generate the most cash. It’s a catch-22, said Slabiak. They don’t see pinball as a big money-maker so they let the machines deteriorate, then fewer people want to play them.

    “It’s all about being analog in a digital world,” said one aficionado who was clad in a tight black T-shirt and refused to give his name. “It’s not a Luddite thing or about embracing the old. It is about putting it all in context and enjoying what remains valuable.” After some needling, he explained his need for anonymity. It seems pinball’s unseemly reputation would not be looked upon sympathetically by his boss; he works as a governmental policy analyst.

    Pinball’s association with hoodlum culture is long-standing. The image of the greaser with the Camel straight dangling from his lips while he bangs the flippers, or of freaked-out rock operas (think Tommy) don’t help. But the bad rap goes back further than that. It all stems from pinball’s historical roots as a gambling device.

    Even though pinball’s precursor, bagatelle, was played by Honest Abe Lincoln himself, many of the early 20th century versions had cash payouts. And when they didn’t, tavern owners would frequently offer prizes for high scores. Early laws actually made pinball illegal in several states until the 70s.

    Twin Cities enthusiasts embrace the outlaw image. “It’s an introvert’s way of gaming,” mused the government worker. “You’re turning your back on a crowd in a bar and engaging in something you are trying to get better at—by yourself.”

    The game’s more recent evolution has mirrored other dark aspects of American culture. Like six-figure inflation. In the old days of chime-ringing reels, scores in the thousands earned you the knocking sound of a free game. Today, there’s been a clear case of score-inflation, where tallies in the ten-millions are mediocre. Games are also heavily commercialized today. South Park and Austin Powers are recent pinball themes. These newer games are not necessarily a hit just because they’re pinball machines. “Now they are catering to Attention Deficit Disorder,” complained our Deep Throat.

    “The arcades, the 7-Elevens—that’s all gone now,” said Slabiak ruefully. “We are just people who are trying to enjoy this hobby and promote the sport.”

    As The Rake made our way to the door after a night of free games and mixed drinks, it was put more succinctly by the guy with the backwards baseball hat. “Pinball kicks ass,” he slurred. “Put that in your newspaper.”—John Tribbett

  • Flame On!

    Tom Hazelmyer may not be the first guy you’d think of as an art gallery owner. An ex-Marine and gun collector, his greatest claim to notoriety is Amphetamine Reptile Records, the Minneapolis-based punk-rock label he founded that defined the angriest and most abrasive wing of the hardcore movement of the 80s and 90s. AmRep built its reputation on furious, working-class acts like Helmet, the Melvins, and the Cows.

    Hazelmyer lived and breathed the DIY ethic, not just running the label but designing most of the artwork. And one of his marketing brainstorms—putting the AmRep logo on a Zippo lighter—grew into a full-fledged side business: FlameRite, which distributes Zippos that have been embossed with designs chosen by Hazelmyer from a who’s who of underground artists including Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.

    As age, boredom, and the death throes of grunge made AmRep a chore, Hazelmyer scaled back to a nearly 100-percent back-catalog operation. Instead he concentrated on raising his three kids and the family business—the three Grumpy’s bars in Minneapolis and Coon Rapids. FlameRite continued as much for fun as anything else. But with his instinct for spotting a cultural trend, he soon realized he was onto something bigger—the ground floor of the burgeoning “low-brow” art movement, a pop-culture melange of collectible toys, retro commercial art, motorcycle decals, underground comics, graffiti, and Japanese anime. Many of the names most often checked—Shepard Fairey, Frank Kozic, Kaz—also grace FlameRites.

    It’s art, to be sure, but from artists who drink Budweiser because they like to, not because they’re trying to be ironic. Putting their work on a lighter wasn’t just a sales trick, but part of the whole point. “Merchandising in any art was, for god knows how long, just verboten,” said Hazelmyer when we looked in on him the other day.

    This style of art wasn’t getting much play in local galleries. But Hazelmyer’s always been good at punk rock’s Andy Hardy routine: If your favorite work isn’t getting seen, put on the show yourself. “Like Kozic. For years he was doing shows across the entire world—Europe, Japan, Los Angeles, New York. Totally accessible guy, and no one ever bothered to bring him to Minneapolis,” Hazelmyer grumbled. “He’s a friend of mine, and I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. We’ve got the bar downtown, we’ve got the side room.’ I just started doing it.” And in March, he moved the art showings to Ox-Op, a tidy red-and-white gallery converted from garages in Grumpy’s back-lot in downtown Minneapolis. (“The rent is right,” he notes dryly.) He’s also recently collected the FlameRite designs in the trim and groovy book Scorched Art.

    Hazelmyer has gleeful sarcasm for the mainstream gallery world’s tendency to enshrine “a piece of string with a rock on the end of it” as a major work. But graphic design has always been a big part of his life, and of course punk’s look is nearly as important as the music itself. In that sense, the move from punk pioneer to gallery owner is a completely natural progression, with the Zippos as the bridge.

    “The two have gone hand in hand, doing the art gallery and the lighters,” said Haze, running a finger down the gallery’s upcoming schedule. Most are artists with whom he’s created lighters. “They trust me, they know I’ll pay. I say, ‘You want to come to town and do an art show?’ They go, ‘Shit, no problem.’ Versus just calling somebody up in L.A., they have no idea who you are, and you’re trying to talk them into coming to Minnesota in January. Not an easy task. I always promise them lots of liquor and we’ll go shooting.”—Christopher Bahn

  • Dude, where’s my truck-like car thing?

    You’ve seen them: the new passenger vehicles with pickup truck beds sprouting from their behinds. The Subaru Baja, the Chevrolet Avalanche, the Cadillac Escalade EXT. An automotive slice of the 70s slid into this century, along with the bell-bottoms and halter-tops. Avacado-colored refrigerators can’t be far off. But can any of these freshly minted sleds accept the mantle of the defunct, classic, koan-like El Camino?

    Actually, the laughable-yet-venerable Chevrolet El Camino was itself a knockoff. Ford was first with the Ranchero, a short, boxy coupe in the front with a pickup bed on the back, launched in the 1957 model year. With the cat-like agility for which Detroit was then known, General Motors had a copy in showrooms by 1959. Ranchero production ended in 1979 around a half-million cars (or are they trucks?), but El Camino the imitator kept going for nearly a decade more, delivering more than a million vehicles to customers bewitched by the car/truck enigma.

    Now, more than 15 years after the last El Camino rolled off the line, General Motors has treated the public to the spectacle of the Cadillac Escalade EXT waddling down the street, wagging its stubby little tail of a pickup bed. I called General Motors to see if they could tell me how this self-inflicted caricature of a truck came to pass. But first, I wanted to find out if there was any truth to the rumor that Chevy was bringing back the real El Camino.

    “To be honest with you, I’ve not heard anything like that,” said GM spokesman Tom Beaman from the bucket seat of his Pontiac, Michigan, office. “I’ve not heard that rumor.”

    In the interest of full disclosure, readers should know that I started this rumor myself. But what’s going on with all these SUVs with truck boxes stuck on the end, I asked Beaman? It turned out to be about mulch. “We call it the ‘family tree,’” he explained, “and it all springs from the basic full-sized truck architecture.” He went on to elaborate about the many lifestyles that can be accommodated by mating different configurations with one basic truck frame. “You want to be able to take five people across the country on a family vacation, but when you get back you want to be able to get mulch and peat moss and stuff like that in the back. An Escalade buyer often times, honestly, they may not put anything in the back. But it’s good to know that it’s there if they want to use it.

    Subaru spokesman Rob Moran was much more definite about who’s supposed to be driving their little mutant Baja. “What’s different about our customers is that they are more inclined to outdoor activities. Things like mountain biking, kayaking, outdoor sports, climbing, that kind of thing.” In other words, GenXers are supposed to be walking out of Mountain Dew commercials in droves to shell out more than $20K for this little buggy. Might it also be the spiritual heir of the El Camino, I asked?

    “I don’t think so.” Moran pointed out the four seats and some distant Subaru ancestry in the Brat, a truckish little unibody that Subaru smuggled under the chicken tax into the American market in the 70s.

    But the lower, cuter, car-like profile of the Baja left a persistent afterimage in my head of the original ugly ducklings of those bygone days. I found a guy with a lovingly restored 1972 Ford Ranchero. Joe Anton, an amiable General Mills machinist, kindly agreed to drive with me to a Subaru lot and park it next to a Baja to see if they would resonate on the same frequency. Side by side, they looked like an unlikely pair. But whatever hooked this guy on the Ranchero was, in some form, present in the Baja. “This thing is so cute,” he said to Morrie’s Subaru General Manager Charlie Rassouli, who had generously provided the Baja for this experiment. “When I see one of these, the first thing I think, is ‘I want one!’” This, of course, makes perfect ad copy and could not have been planned better. Joe did not, however, offer his coveted Ranchero for trade.

    I asked Charlie who is actually buying the Baja from him. Is it a Gen-X car for extreme sportster dudes? “I would say the demographic right now is older than that. We’re finding a lot of part-time gardeners and things like that,” said Charlie. Mulch again.—Joe Pastoor

  • Joshing Around

    On a recent Wednesday evening, hundreds of overdressed teenage girls gathered outside Southdale’s MegaStar movie theater. Squeezed into their tightest jeans and tiniest tees, they hummed with excitement as they waited for Josh Hartnett, the movie star and Minnesota native, to arrive. Hartnett was making a rare appearance to raise money for a local charity called Cornerhouse, an agency that assists sexually-abused children. Crazed, er, loyal fans and self-respecting do-gooders alike had paid $35 for a sold-out sneak-premiere of his latest movie, Hollywood Homicide. It was 7 p.m. Some of the girls had been waiting for more than six hours.

    We don’t get many premieres around these parts, so here’s the rundown: Hartnett was going to stroll through a traditional “red carpet” reception to say hey to the public and the press, introduce the film, and then sit down to watch it with his family. He doesn’t like Hollywood premieres, Hartnett told The Rake later, but this was different. This was for a good cause.

    He was to arrive at 8. The swarm of girls continued to grow. A dozen girls killed time and burned off some pent-up steam by taping an exploitative promo for Channel 5, in which they claimed that, while they liked Josh, they loved Channel 5. Let us tell you: They were lying. When Hartnett, dressed down in a long-sleeved black shirt and casually scruffy jeans, climbed out of a black SUV and onto the red carpet (really), he was welcomed by pure, unadulterated, insane, mad lust. Cameras started snapping, flashes started blinding, and the crush of the crowd tightened. The sheer hormonal energy of the crowd, expended primarily through ear-splitting screeches and screams, was powerful enough to curb this state’s dependence on oil. Instead, we could be living on the love of teenage girls. We haven’t seen such convincing local evidence of this untapped resource since the Beatles played Met Stadium back in 1965.

    The shy Hartnett took the adoring mob’s attention in calm if uncomfortable stride; the 25-year-old’s normally Chunnel-deep eyes did appear slightly more deer-in-headlights than previously suggested by the star’s magazine cover shots. (That was him on the cover of last month’s Teen People, you know.) Arms crossed over his broad chest, Harnett headed to the right side of the carpet, where reporters were roped off and kicking like bulls. He answered a few questions and then crossed to the left side, where he scribbled away his signature’s eBay value and presumably lost some of his hearing. Zigzagging his way down the line, he reached the theater door in 10 minutes. With a tight-lipped smile and a stiff-armed wave, he disappeared into the depths of the theater.

    Brief as it was, the excitement of Hartnett’s appearance far surpassed that of the crowning of the state’s fattest sow at the State Fair, although it might be rivaled by the opening of the fourth lane on 494. (Commuters are really going to have to get their numbers up, though.) These girls, some bearing “I love Josh” across cheeks, chins, chests, and possibly elsewhere, were so high-energy that this Rake correspondent didn’t tell them the guy owns a home on Lake of the Isles and can be found drinking at The King and I nearly every weekend. —Katie Quirk

  • Bump on the Head

    The true north is Canada, of course. But we like to believe that we’re essentially a northern people. True, that knob on the very crown of our state qualifies as the northernmost point in the lower 48. The legend on the street has long been that a mapmaker zigged when he should have zagged, creating the Northwest Angle before getting his bearings straight and heading off again on the 49th parallel.

    That myth is an oddly pleasing one, because it rings with pitch-perfect Minnesota modesty—especially for anyone who’s tried to find a portage in the Boundary Waters substituting map and compass for hard experience. Still, the myth isn’t very likely. The most common explanation as to how we got that little bump on our arrowhead is that anyone on the U.S. side who cared about where to draw the border back in 1783 wanted to include the northwestern-most point of Lake of the Woods, just in case it turned out that the mighty Mississippi River originated there. (The other theory—mundane but most likely of all—is that the cattywampus line was drawn in consideration of commercial fur-trading routes, the only germane travel that was going on in the area, decades before white men laid eyes on Lake Itasca.) The border was fixed for good in 1818, and never seriously challenged, until a few years ago. Back in the summer of 1998, Northwest Anglers were threatening to secede if legislators didn’t work out a thorny fishing-rights dispute with Canada. It just goes to show you that some of the things we hold most dear are subject, like everything else, to change. Borders move in funny directions, and to a Canadian, even Minnesotans are soft-headed southerners.

    There was a time when Minnesotans could count on death, taxes, and summer road closures. Despite rumors, the grim reaper and the taxman aren’t taking a vacation this year that we know of. But we have noticed considerably less road work. This is gratifying, until we realize that the taxes we might have paid to sustain Crosstown Commons will now go to replace our prematurely blown struts and shocks. Funny how everything is connected, but the price stays the same.

    We’ve enjoyed about all the fireworks we can tolerate on the roads and highways, and now there is no need to drive in any direction other than the nearest supermarket to buy the formerly illegal stash of firecrackers, Roman candles, and bottle rockets that used to be the pleasure of Wisconsin and South Dakota roadside merchants. Yes, we swell with pride when we consider the far-reaching social ramifications of recent legislative sessions.

    We supposedly embrace change, at least when it comes to seasons. Summer is upon us, and if we can resist complaining about the heat and the bugs, we might remember the bitter cold that is but a few months behind us. (And ahead of us.) In the north, we have a growing season that would not likely sustain local populations. There would be long nordic faces indeed if we didn’t get sweet corn from Georgia in June and from Iowa in July.

    The closer you get to true north, the less self-sufficiency you find. One would think this realization would encourage a sense of global, or at least continental, citizenship. But selfishness—like love and now fireworks—recognizes no borders. Is life in Minnesota becoming meaner? Does it worry you? We come from ethnic stock that hates to ask for help or directions. And if boorishness becomes our lot, we can probably expect a few more bumps on the head before we find our way.