I never knew Paul Wellstone, never met him, never interviewed him. I once saw him walking down Grand Avenue, alone, in a knit shirt and short pants. I was driving by with a friend, and I said, "There’s Paul Wellstone," and I was a little taken aback when he looked up and waved, apparently hearing … Read more
The life of a publishing professional is not as glamorous as it might seem. The nights are frequently an extension of the days, which are an extension of the mornings—which is to say, lots of burnt coffee, dull pencils, and hectoring phone calls. The editor of this magazine occasionally slips out for a drink, it’s … Read more
We add our “megadittoes” to the chorus of praise heaped on this Loring Park restaurant since it opened this summer. Although it’s located in a graveyard of failed dining ventures (the unfortunately named “Snoodles” restaurant being only the most recent doomed enterprise), this Indian eatery has culinary chops to spare, and a pleasing atmosphere of … Read more
We rarely think twice about a visit to this Uptown Tex-Mex haven, though it gets awfully loud inside on a busy Friday. So we took advantage of one of September’s last warm nights and grabbed a sidewalk table for some pre-Lagoon noshing. The vegetarian in our party was pleased but not thrilled with her potato … Read more
In anticipation of December’s arrival of the Bolshoi Ballet, also at the Northrop, this much-decorated Swedish troupe presents Mats Eks’ modern reworking of Swan Lake . It makes a certain amount of sense to put the cart before the horse like this; as much as we might like to, we cannot escape the constraints of … Read more
Ironically enough, while guests from France take over the Jeune Lune stage for their production of Hamlet , longtime Jeune Lune director Dominique Serrand is in residence at the Guthrie for another Shakespearean offering, one that’s never been performed at the Guthrie before. Comedy of Errors is one of the Bard’s zany coincidence-ridden farces, and … Read more
Last year’s production of Hamlet worked out so well for Jeune Lune that they’re taking it on the road. But before the company heads out for an East Coast and Midwest tour, they’re restaging the play at their home base for a couple of weeks, where they’ll also return in late November. As in the … Read more
For all its imposing reputation as the play where nothing happens for two hours, Waiting For Godot is Samuel Beckett’s most accessible play, as you might have seen if you caught the recent PBS production of his collected stage works. There’s a famous story about its enthusiastic reception from an audience of hardened lifers at … Read more
For a musician who’s changed directions as many times as Beck has, Sea Change is an apt album title. If our Mr. Hansen has a single style, it’s eclecticism, tossing blues, hip-hop, rock, folk, and whatever else happens to be in the room at the time, into the mix. The irony here is that the … Read more
We were skeptical of Coldplay’s massively huge debut album Parachutes. It seemed like a blatant ripoff of a much better thing—to wit, fellow Scottish navelgazers Travis—and a kind of superbuffed commercial repackaging of Britain’s wave of earnest young acoustic groups. But as the saying goes, you have your whole life to record your first album … Read more