It’s not often that someone reads the Gastronomer’s mind; it’s more likely that someone will read The Rake, if that tells you anything. But a fit of Weltschmerz left me unable to decide what to eat one recent evening, and lucky for me it was a Tuesday, and the psychic Ruth Jordan was at Santorini, … Read more
Confused about the new conceal-and-carry law? Here’s all you need to know, in one convenient location. How do I get the permit? • Take a “gun safety” course from a recognized gun safety instructor. The law specifically recognizes the National Rifle Association as a provider of such instruction (in case you weren’t clear on who … Read more
Who says our new Republican majority isn’t capable of bipartisanship? After passing a law that encourages Minnesotans to carry guns (despite the fact that the only people demanding it were apparently carpetbagging NRA lobbyists and the usual exurban crackpots in tinfoil hats), the legislature is now passing a kind of quid pro quo for lefties. … Read more
Print this out, and no matter how you fold it, somebody’s getting bent. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the file. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it here.
May 28, 2003 I wrote a column last November about a Democrat fund raiser I’d attended with Al Gore. At the time, I noted that I thought we were in for a long period of Republican rule, because the Dems were such inept marketers. Well, the Republicans, at least in the Minnesota Legislature, (who, unlike … Read more
I didn’t know stripping was such a sore spot in rural Minnesota, until I nearly hung for it. Since my move two years ago from East Los Angeles to my boyfriend’s hometown of Cannon Falls, I had little to talk about with all the country wives. I had no recipes to exchange when we sat … Read more
There’s no tarp on the ball field at Cretin and Grand, though snow sprinkles the brownish grass and the morning promises more. A white portable fence arcs in awkward sections from the right to leftfield foul lines, where orange foul poles stand uncertainly against a wicked northwest wind. For a clueless pilgrim seeking the heart … Read more
Forget about those suburban seafood chains where the waiters break into the macarena every half-hour. This self-described “ocean diner” (hey, a pun!) over Macalester-way has a pleasantly casual atmosphere with prices that won’t bite like a shark. The walls are dominated by solid reds and blues, getting a subtly undersea theme over without needing to … Read more
This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices … Read more
At 6,000 performances and counting, the New York production of Warren Manzi’s Hitchcockian thriller is the longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history. Such longevity is doubly amazing in view of Manzi’s criminally sloppy handle on the mystery story; his script is so overstuffed with red herrings, dropped subplots, implausible twists and flat-out plot holes it could … Read more