In a few weeks I’m boarding a van in the middle of the night with the man I love and five of the six children we share to drive for fifteen days from Minneapolis to Lake Ontario and back again. We’re going to take the S.S. Badger car ferry across Lake Michigan, ride a dune … Read more
I’ll come clean. Though I produce my own small bit of pop culture, I am not a big fan of the stuff, particularly not movies. On average, I see about three movies a year. I watch about two hours of television a week. And most of that is accidental viewing. My channel surfing is akin … Read more
Best known for the Hitchcock-filmed Strangers on a Train and her series of books about psychotic aesthete Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith was motivated by a muse of bitterness, amorality, and disgust—not necessarily a bad thing for a crime novelist. She died mostly forgotten in 1995, but a full-on revival is ongoing with this her most … Read more
Pitching great Satchel Paige used to tell his teammates to never look back, “because something may be gaining on you.” This is great advice, especially if you are R.T. Rybak and Don Samuels is the guy gaining on you. Why? Because key Minneapolis political insiders increasingly view Mayor Rybak as a “sound bite” schmoozer and … Read more
I feel like throwing up: Willie Mays is screaming at me. He’s slammed the brakes on, and his sports car is screeching to a halt, and he is throwing me out. I feel nauseated, even though I’m perfectly aware of the fact that the “Say Hey Kid” of yore has famously turned into the Say … Read more
The Schell’s brewery is reached by way of a trucker’s nightmare: a narrow twisting ribbon of blacktop that snakes up a wooded hill to the top of the bluffs overlooking the Cotton River on the southern edge of New Ulm. Most of the original brick buildings remain, converted to a museum, a gift shop, and … Read more
Here’s a sign you can post in your very own home or office. Now all you have to do is personally notify everyone who enters the premises, and you, too, can have your very own gun free zone. Please note: the file may take a minute or two to download, or even more with a … Read more
The menu at Bobino founder Chris Paddock’s latest eatery ranges widely over central and South America, but the central organizing concept comes from Brazil’s churrascaria steakhouses, slow-roasting beef on open-flame skewers. On our recent visit we sampled the picanha—one of Mojito’s signature fire-roasted meats rubbed with garlic—and the feijoada, a tasty stew of pork sausage, … Read more
We noticed about a year ago that Jeune Lune just goes from strength to strength—and being, you know, attuned to classical tragedy, we wonder if hubris will bring them back to Earth anytime soon. It seems nothing is too ambitious for this brilliant company, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to a Cirque du Soleil tribute to an … Read more
Seven years, sixteen cities, and up to a million theatergoers later, Triple Espresso’s caffeine high refuses to wear off. This three-man vaudevillian cabaret act, in fact, is among the most successful shows our town’s ever produced, still getting sellout crowds night after night for the laugh-a-minute antics of the has-been trio Maxwell, Butternut, and Bean. … Read more