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Skyways & Icehouses

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Walker has been on the bleeding edge of the museum business–yes, it’s a business. And the good people here in the Twin Cities have been happy to serve as a petri dish for a commercial plan that often involves a delicate balance between populism and serious art, juxtaposing an ephemeral lightweight like Claes Oldenburg with an important aesthete like Anselm Kiefer. In other words, fine arts institutions need to attract a broad range of the public (think “Spoonbridge”) in order to get the support they need to do their more important work (think “The Order of Angels”). At this point, they must compete with pop culture for a limited supply of money and attention. This particular show is a wonderful distillation of that conundrum. Opie’s stark photos of skyways and ice houses open up like a matroshka doll to reveal numerous layers of the dichotomy. Photographs are accessible in a populist way, but these images are formalist in the extreme. Skyways are permanent, ice houses are temporary. See what we mean? This is the kind of show we love–simple on the surface, but bursting with the possibility of endless mental gymnastics once you ask, “Why?” WAC, (612) 375-7622

It’s been eight years since the Canadian sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall wrapped up their wickedly funny eponymous TV show. Like a bad Behind the Music episode, it appeared relations were strained, to the point that Dave Foley (who landed on the highly successful NewsRadio) was barely in the troupe’s 1996 swan-song motion picture Brain Candy. Thankfully, the gods of scatological comedy have smiled upon us, as Foley joins fellow Kids Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson for their second comedy tour. The last time they were in town, they didn’t disappoint, even though a week off had left them a little rusty (their fumble recoveries were Carson-esque). It’s going to be “Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl” for Generation X–don’t miss it. State Theatre, (612) 339-7007

There can’t be many authors who’ve given their name to a distinct sociological “type.” But so it is with Nick Hornby Man. The British writer of High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and About A Boy has become a convenient shorthand for a certain kind of feckless modern male. Nick Hornby Man is confused, child-like, self-centered and crippled by a fear of commitment. This sorry specimen struggles to maintain an adult relationship with a member of the opposite sex. However, he can name every captain of the Arsenal soccer team since 1945 or reel off his All-Time Top-Five Teen Death Songs at the drop of a hat.

The cult success of Hornby’s books in the U.S. shows that Nick Hornby Man is a more or less universal concept. There’s nothing unique to Britain about geeky males being messed up about women. Hornby’s American fans might not understand the offside rule (clue: it’s a soccer thing) but they know that weary feeling that their beloved team can only be relied upon to let then down, whether that team is Arsenal FC or the Pittsburgh Steelers. Similarly, it’s no stretch to imagine slacker music obsessives bamboozling each other with their killer compilation tapes in Seattle as well as London.

Will, the hero of the novel (and now the movie) About A Boy, is Nick Hornby Man in excelsis. He’s a shallow, selfish idler who divides his days into half-hour “units” of time (having a bath: one unit; watching the dreary British TV game show Countdown: one unit; reading the paper: two units). Will doesn’t “do” anything, in the pen-pushing, wage-earning, nine-to-five sense. Instead he survives on the royalties from a sappy Christmas song left to him by his embittered, one-hit-wonder father. Will’s life changes, though, when he starts dating single mothers. The reason? They’re grateful, ego-massaging, and, rather conveniently, they sooner or later tend to bail out in a guilt-free parting. So Will “invents” a son and joins a single parents’ support group through which he meets Marcus, a nerdy 12-year-old who’s bullied at school, and his mother Fiona, a suicidally depressed, hairy-sweatered hippie.

Will’s deception is soon discovered, but he and Marcus form an unlikely bond. Under Will’s guidance, Marcus begins to “fit in” at school with the right tennies and CDs. Will, meanwhile, discovers that being a father figure, even one in a weird, non-nuclear family, is just as enjoyable as sitting around in his sleek bachelor pad, getting stoned in front of the TV.

All Hornby books (even the recent How To Be Good with his first female protagonist) are gentle, sentimental entertainments in which people “connect” and “grow” emotionally. And so it is with About A Boy. Hornby’s chief talent is in selling this old-fashioned idea to a hip, bored, cynical audience (post-grunge men, basically) via his razor-sharp wit and a gift for observation that a stand-up comic would kill for.

Movie versions of Hornby’s books, though, have been problematic. On one level they’re eminently filmable, packed with great dialogue and universal themes. However, all the books are set in the same small corner of North London, roughly bordered by the Arsenal football ground to the north and Kings Cross railway station to the south. It’s where Hornby lives. He’s a man who clearly subscribes to the age-old write-about-what-you-know maxim, quipping, “I’m not convinced that South London is sufficiently different from North London to justify the tube fare.”

Which begs the question: Should filmmakers stay faithful to this parochial world or risk transplanting the action? The lumpy, unengaging screening of Fever Pitch, starring Colin Firth (Bridget Jones’s Diary), failed to make much impression on the U.S. box office. High Fidelity meanwhile was drastically Americanized—as if a “real” London setting would be too much for an audience already sold on the faux Brittania of Austin Powers or Four Weddings And A Funeral. High Fidelity was a success, but effectively a new work, with John Cusack in the lead role and a shift in the action from ’80s London to millennial Chicago. Aside from a cloying, feel–good climax, the spirit of the story was surprisingly unmolested, and the producers simply updated the arcane music references.

For the cinematic version of About A Boy, directors Paul and Chris Weitz were hired, provoking visions of teen slapstick and, possibly, a few sex scenes involving pastries. In reality, the creators of American Pie have done nothing of the sort. Their real achievement was to give the whole enterprise a sharper sense of comic timing. This is an incredibly faithful version, trimming only the flab and updating the action from 1993 to the present. The kids at Marcus’s school listen to, say, Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” rather than Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” This tweak does force a significant change in the climactic scene, a different crisis than the one brought on in the novel by Kurt Cobain’s suicide. But no Hornby fan could argue with how they’ve solved it.

They’d also struggle to find fault with the key performances. Hugh Grant, replete with new, non-floppy haircut and trendy urban wardrobe, seems to have no difficulty getting into the head of Will. This is, remember, a self-styled “tatty human being” who squirms at an invitation to become godfather to a friend’s daughter before confessing that when she’s 18 he’ll probably, you know, try to sleep with her. He should be thoroughly unlikeable but the audience can’t help but warm to him—the kind of role for which Grant is, of course, a natural. It helps too that his underage foil is never pathetic or precious. Nicholas Hoult is better than any child actor in their first major role has a right to be. And there’s one further recommendation for this engaging, uplifting, funny film. It also shows the highest fidelity to Hornby’s chronic obsession with obscure pop music. The musical score is ripe with moments of dappled loveliness, childlike exuberance, and classic pop—commissioned at the author’s suggestion from a satisfyingly cultish Mancunian bumbler known as Badly Drawn Boy. Nick Hornby Men the world over—and the women who love them—will not be disappointed.

About A Boy, starring Hugh Grant, opens May 17 at a theater near you.

Rob Fearn is the reviews editor of Q, the brilliant British music magazine.

This week, as a backdrop to my birthday, winter ended, my two junker cars got towed away for good, my younger daughter learned to ride solo on her two-wheeler, and my neighbor Mike returned from wintering in Mexico. Needless to say, all this has made me eager to travel.

I can’t believe it’s been 18 years since my first getaway to Mexico. I planned it myself, secretly, with an atlas and a phone book, in the weeks before my 16th birthday. When the morning of the big day arrived, I skipped school and hopped an MTC to the Greyhound terminal. I had enough money for a one-way ticket to El Paso and $67 for food and sundries en route. I wore an unattractive light gray Members Only jacket and baggy jeans, and carried a purple tote bag with the word “Ciao!” embroidered on the small label. I had braces on my teeth and a genuinely traumatic hair-do leftover from a perm gone wrong at a discount beauty school.

Nevertheless, I was shedding the stresses of my greasy job at Arby’s, the unwelcome adjustment to my 11th new school in 11 years, and the day-to-day unpleasantries of poverty and social isolation. I was happy to be hitting the road, and almost sick with adrenaline and anticipation as I counted out the bills for bus fare.

Despite sweaty palms and a dry throat, I had the benefit of recent experience with cross-country bus trips. Just before my freshman year of high school, I’d plunked down my summer babysitting cash and left the driving to Greyhound for a ride West from Minnesota to Wyoming to visit my best friend Holly in Casper, where I had lived for six years. That trip had been mostly uneventful, with the exception of a few unusual but harmless seatmates and one jarring snafu in rural Wyoming, when my 14-day bus pass expired earlier than I’d calculated, and a stickler at the transfer station refused to let me back on the bus.

However, my bus fare was hitch-free this time around. It was the whole entering-a-foreign-country thing that had me worried. I had to walk across the border from El Paso to Juárez and figure out, with two years of high-school Spanish and a pocket dictionary, how to traverse the 1,500 miles south to Cuernavaca, where I expected to look up a family for whom I’d babysat regularly before they’d moved away to Mexico.

My first shock came when I tried to ask a pedestrian how to find the train station and he apparently thought I’d asked him to lead me to a hotel. Which he did. By this time I’d been traveling alone by bus for three days and nights, my $67 was dwindling, I was dirty, tired, and losing my sense of adventure. My purple tote bag was growing heavier and heavier under the setting Mexican sun. So, at 16 years and a few days old, 1,500 miles from home, having never seriously taken up any of the usual teenaged pastimes of cigarettes, alcohol, or boys, I followed this Mexican man up the dimly lit staircase of a shabby hotel and collapsed in exhaustion on the pink polyester bedspread. I awoke to the nostril-burning scent of aftershave hovering above me, and when I opened my eyes my travel companion was staring down at me, ready for a kiss.

I lurched out of his way, exclaiming in Spanish and English and every gesture in between that he had gotten the wrong idea. And then I said something I thought he would understand in either language: “I am a Catholic girl!” I wasn’t Catholic, then or now, but the point was well taken, and suddenly this man handed over his wallet, his license, and a stream of earnest apologies and promises that he would do nothing further to offend or harm me. I believed him. Maybe because I could tell he was a good person and meant what he said, or maybe because I was desperate and without a better alternative. Either way, he kept his promises and slept upright in a chair through the night while I lay half awake on the bed. In the morning we ate eggs at a street-side cafe and he walked me to the train station, where he acted as my translator. What he said I don’t know, but somehow he convinced the border patrol to let me on the train with a Dayton’s student charge card as my only I.D.

The train carried me through the Mexican countryside to the city of Chihuahua, where I boarded a bus to Mexico City. From there, finally, I transferred onto the bus that would complete the final leg of my journey to Cuernavaca. By now I’d been on the road about a week, and when I disembarked at the Cuernavaca station, the intensity of my desire to find my American friends was staggering. I found a pay phone and fumbled through my bag for the appropriate foreign coins. I didn’t know their phone number, and suddenly the assumption I’d left home with—of being able to find my friends once I “got to town”—seemed foolish and impossible. I wandered the station in search of a phone book, furiously blinking back tears.

I was afraid to ask for help, since I was pretty sure I’d burst out sobbing and expose my stupidity. I ended up doing both, and to add injury to insult, the friends I had traveled 3,000 miles to see were no longer living in Cuernavaca. I was broke and 16. My attempt to make my way in Cuernavaca failed. The American minister and his wife who gave me shelter didn’t take long to track down my mother and send me back home to all that I’d left behind, including my trusty job at Arby’s.

About a year later, I was working the “window,” and a pretty woman with a soft, southern drawl and two not-so-little-anymore girls drove through ordering Adventure Meals (I’m not making that up, that’s what Arby’s kids’ meals were called then). It was my friend from Cuernavaca. She parked the car and brought her girls into the restaurant; I took my break and we all reminisced. It turned out they’d moved to Guadalajara about a year before I’d come.

I shudder to think of the things that might have happened on that birthday jaunt. Sometimes the thought of that pungent aftershave draws forth a memory so vivid it stops me short. But then again, I’m here to tell the tale, and more importantly, I’ve got a tale to tell. Houses are bought and sold, jobs are gained and lost, the remains of the passing year are turned under every fall and unearthed each spring…and cars, apparently, are towed away with surprising regularity. But our adventures are beyond all that. Our adventures are inspired—breathed in to transform us, breathed out again as the people we’ve now become.

Jeannine Ouellette is a Minneapolis writer and teacher who loves steep hills and hardy shrub roses.

Things are hopping this year at the new Fifth Precinct station house just south of the beleaguered Lake Street K-Mart. New crime stats show Whittier Park pulling ahead of Third Precinct neighbor Phillips, which has hogged the crime spotlight for the better part of a decade. In February, Whittier reported 167 “part one” crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft, auto theft, and arson) to Phillips’ 131. Add a homicide to the normally tranquil Linden Hills neighborhood, and it seems like Fifth Precinct cops have plenty to do. Thus one may wonder why they’re so concerned about graffiti.

But under the controversial CODEFOR program, the Minneapolis Police Department operates a two-member anti-graffiti team out of the Fifth Precinct. CODEFOR stands for Computer Optimized Deployment Focused On Results, which in the king’s English means “look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves.” Acting on the fashionable theory that petty crimes create an environment that incubates more serious ones, CODEFOR has gained attention by cracking down on loiterers, jaywalkers, prostitutes, and other small-time offenders. The indirect effect these efforts have on serious crime are then tracked and analyzed on—what else?—computers.

Naturally, graffiti ended up in the mix. And that’s a good thing, according to Sgt. Rick Duncan, who serves as top banana of the team. Just don’t look for the “Computer Optimized” part any time soon. The City of Minneapolis’ budget crunch has indefinitely postponed Duncan’s planned web site, which would have given the public direct access to the fight against taggers and “writers” (as spray-paint artists optimistically describe themselves).

Even by CODEFOR standards, graffiti doesn’t sit high on the food chain of crime, which also may explain why funds have still not arrived for Duncan’s team to go dot-com. Gang tags account for only about 20 percent of graffiti complaints. Talking on his office telephone the other day, Duncan acknowledged that most taggers and writers have a low crossover rate into other illegal activity. “That’s pretty much it,” he said. Still, Duncan noted that graffiti artists tend to be well-connected to “the drug culture.” Plus, he wryly observed, “most of the paint ain’t bought.” In other cities, he added, violent turf wars have broken out among writers trying to protect their urban playgrounds.

On the subject of legitimate space for writers, Duncan offered this utopian thought: “If we could have a wall where I knew that only graffiti would be on that wall and would be nowhere else in the city, I think I’d build it.” But the nearest thing to such a wall, the Intermedia Arts building on Lyndale Avenue, just a few blocks north of Lake Street, offers no such comfort, even though it’s officially fair game for anyone with a spray can. “Because of that Intermedia Arts wall, you can’t go a five block radius without seeing stop signs and mailboxes covered with graffiti.”

The north wall of nearby Herkimer brewpub is thickening with regular applications of stainkiller, and general manager Chad Jamrozy confirmed that there is no graffiti shortage in that neck of Minneapolis. He doesn’t blame it on Intermedia, though. “Graffiti is really just part of the background in any urban environment,” he said, noting that his bathroom walls sometimes get more ink than the exterior.

Despite Intermedia’s trademark graffiti walls, Tom Borrup offers no defense for what he calls “aerosol art” in unauthorized places. The executive director of Intermedia Arts for more than 20 years, he’s posted admonishments on his walls asking writers to “respect the neighborhood,” among other things. “Tagging,” he opined, “is just bad behavior and destruction of property. It’s not art.” Even so, he acknowledged that more than a few “aerosol artists” practice on unsanctioned sites, motivated by exhibitionism or just a desire for space. And others, he asserted, may not feel they leave a wall any worse off for the enhancements they leave behind. “Those are the architectural critics,” said Borrup with bemused chagrin. “But it’s bad behavior. They shouldn’t do it.” In this respect, Borrup said he and Duncan are “on the same page,” even though Intermedia’s walls put a burr under the Sergeant’s saddle.

If Borrup played the square on the subject of illegal aerosol art, Sgt. Duncan revealed a jot of hipness in his heart, despite his line of work. “I’ve said all along that graffiti is an art form. It has to be. If you can go down to the Walker Art Center and see a screen door propped up against a wall and they can call it art, you’ve gotta call graffiti art. The problem is you can’t go and put it on somebody else’s property without their permission. Do I like graffiti? Some of it’s pretty cool stuff.”

The nondescript, institutional door on the fourth floor of the University of Minnesota’s Bell Library is a portal to the past. Stepping through it, you find yourself in an oak paneled English renaissance room with carved stone columns, a working fireplace, and delicate stained-glass windows. Just beyond, in a modern reading room, lies a trove of rare books and maps. One amateur historian has been coming here for more than two years, trying to unravel a mystery that could have a revolutionary solution.

Gavin Menzies is retired from the British navy, where he commanded a nuclear submarine. In his leisure, he’s come to believe that a large Chinese fleet led by a eunuch admiral explored much of the world and circumnavigated the globe early in the 15th century—long before Christopher Columbus was a glint in his father’s eye. Maps from these journeys then found their way into the hands of European mapmakers and explorers. An expert on navigation, Menzies bases his theory on European maps, records of Chinese expeditions to East Africa, and what he claims are seven Chinese shipwrecks in the Caribbean. He plans to publish a book detailing his findings this fall.

In researching his theory, Menzies turned to the University’s James Ford Bell Library, which owns two important pieces of evidence: a hand-drawn Venetian navigational chart from 1424, and a globe from 1507. Founded in 1953, the Bell Library is perhaps the most famous rare book and map library in the United States, and is well known around the world for its large collection covering European expansion from 1400 to 1800.

The Portolan 1424 chart is a piece of yellowed sheepskin measuring two by three feet. It’s colorfully ornamented with wild animals and the cardinal points. The chart circumscribes the western coast of Europe and North Africa. The names of ports and tributaries are recorded in fading ink, and far out in the Atlantic, two chains of islands are rendered in brilliant red and blue pigment.

“Some people say these are Florida and Newfoundland, some say it’s Taiwan,” explains Carol Urness, curator emeritus of the library. A short, gray-haired, no-nonsense professor of history, she says Menzies believes the islands are Puerto Rico and Guadaloupe in the Caribbean Sea. “I find his arguments convincing,” she adds, with the smile of a professional skeptic. After working with Menzies for two years, Urness has come to respect him for his creative thinking—although she’s not sure whether he can prove his theory.

The other alluring clue is the globe. German geographer Martin Waldseemuller’s globe was the first to be printed on a press, not hand-drawn. It’s also the first map that refers to the New World as “America.” Of the 1,200 that were originally published, only three have survived—the Bell’s and two others. Manufactured shortly after Columbus’ first voyage in 1492, it shows the general shape of the west coast of South America, as well as virtually all the of the earth’s major landmasses. “How do you get the west coast of South America when the Europeans hadn’t yet been there?” Urness asks with a twinkle in her eye.

They were decked out in sweatpants and fuzzy bunny slippers, and equipped with coolers of Mountain Dew, beef jerky, and Little Debbie snack cakes. One morning a few weeks ago, 34 committed souls bivouacked at the Heights Theater in Columbia Heights. They came prepared to spend an entire weekend watching films they’d already seen while forsaking sleep, showers, and unscheduled bathroom breaks. Their motivation? A new Guinness world record for non-stop movie watching.

ACT II, a Twin Cities company that is the world’s largest manufacturer of microwave popcorn, sponsored the marathon as a fund-raiser for local Boys and Girls Clubs. Some participants claimed to be drawn by the bargain appeal: 27 movies for a one-time $5 admission. But most were clearly motivated by the event’s “extreme” nature. Sure, the schedule mixed revered classics such as Ben Hur and Casablanca with guilty pleasures such as Animal House and Top Gun. But in truth, the bill could just as well have been filled with the likes of Waterworld and Freddy Got Fingered. After all, no one seemed concerned when a poorly assembled print subjected the audience to a version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that briefly ran scenes out of sequence, and played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” at least three times. Attendee Nick Gipe was lucid enough to dub this “the Quentin Tarantino version.”

Running continuously from Friday morning through the following Sunday evening, the movie marathon generated its own drama. To accommodate contestants during designated bathroom breaks, portable johns were set up in the theater parking lot. But a blast of unexpected winter weather obviated the convenience considerably. “If you sit down on the seat at 10 degrees, it pretty much locks everything up,” confirmed William Pike, whose shaved head wasn’t helping him retain body heat. “It’s tough to make it all work in five minutes.” Pike, a relatively mature marathoner at 38, brought foam seat cushions to the Heights to help ease anticipated pain. St. Olaf College student Pip Gengenbach drew hourly hash marks on his arm as if logging prison time. Brent Swanson had conducted Internet research on sleep deprivation and came equipped with smelling salts. Others asked official witnesses to smack them periodically with Nerf implements. Army reservist Jason Dreyer drew upon military training for battle fatigue, contracting facial muscles to keep his blood pumping. Food stashes were strategic too. Swanson’s included 18 hard-boiled eggs. “It’s just a matter of eating good and not eating junk food,” explained Nicole O’Donnell, with a Burger King cup in hand, and a cookie dough/Oreo Dairy Queen Blizzard on order.

By 4 a.m. Saturday—after nine films —few record-chasers had dropped out, but there were hints of a hard road ahead. “There’s a really bad stretch coming up, with Annie and then a silent film and then another movie from 1931,” noted Nathan Wickman. “That’s going to be tough.” At 8:30 Sunday morning, nearly 48 hours after the first reel of Dr. Strangelove, half the original 34 contestants remained. When Greta Guck quietly picked up her cooler in the middle of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, her exit garnered the kind of slow, respectful applause usually reserved for athletes who walk away from on-the-field injuries. “I’m out,” Guck managed to mumble on her way through the theater door, speaking in a low growl that made her sound as though she’d been stuck in a refrigerator. “I’m really lightheaded. I can’t take it anymore.” She wasn’t alone. Although 12 participants (including Gengenbach, Swanson, Dreyer, and O’Donnell—the sole woman among them) saw their way into the record books and landed their faces on future packages of microwave popcorn, others were happy to go home early, even if the decision wasn’t their own. Soon after Guck’s departure, event staff spotted a row of young girls and their adult chaperone, all with their eyes shut. Sally Matthews, 15, insisted she had been awake when the disqualification came down, but she stopped short of registering a formal protest. “We are not going back in there,” she declared, relieved to avoid “that Russian film” (Dr. Zhivago). “I skipped 40 Days and 40 Nights for this,” she said in disgust. “At least we got a T-shirt.”