Blog

A wee nip, a bit of indulgence the night before, and the next day you’ve got a blistering headache. Your tongue’s as rough as a berber rug and somehow the cool tile of the bathroom floor is more comfortable than your space-age mattress. What’s to be done?

When it comes to a hangover, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. A friend of mine says an old Slav he knows swears by cow-patty tea. The Mongols used to drink tomato juice garnished with a sheep’s eyeball. Chimney sweeps favored milk with a spoonful of soot.

The sous chef where I work wants to try using one of those green mega-multi juices in the health food store as a mixer for his liquor. He’ll have the curse and the cure in one frosty salt-rimmed glass. This sounds like an abomination to me, like committing the sin in the confessional just to be closer to redemption. No report from him yet if this works.

Really, once you’ve poisoned your body with drink, the only cure is time. But there are certain titillating remedies that may provide relief, even if it’s only to tell yourself that you are doing something to ease the pain. When the genie you let out of the bottle scrambles your brains on the inside of your non-nonstick skull, you’re ready to try something—anything—for a little respite.

First and foremost, drink a non-alcoholic beverage like water. You need to rehydrate: Alcohol wrings you out and hangs you out to dry. Juice or sports drink will help get those electrolytes back in balance and provides fructose (sugar) to burn up alcohol. So have a glass of o.j. with your breakfast.

If your tummy can take it, eat some eggs. The protein boosts metabolism to clear the toxic sludge out of your system. Eggs are also rich in cysteine, an amino acid that can help bust free radicals that accumulate as the liver breaks down alcohol. Cysteine is available in supplement form as N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC), but wouldn’t you rather have the huevos rancheros? Or go ahead and have one of those “Heart Attack on a Plate” specials, say, a greasy hash-stack combo. The oil and fat will help your body absorb the vitamins it’s lacking.

If you’re really bad off, you could try some activated charcoal, the stuff they use at poison control centers just before they pump your stomach. It absorbs impurities. But if you can’t stomach the idea of munching on the Kingsford, cabbage does much the same thing—helping isolate, bind, and eliminate toxins. Personally, I get bilious just thinking about sauerkraut, so I opt for a nice burn on my hash browns.

A “morning after” tea of kudzu, an ancient Chinese remedy, might also do the trick. Studies have suggested that kudzu may lessen the effects of intoxication. Daidzin, a chemical compound found in the plant, may curtail the craving for booze. So, if the intense pain behind your eyes doesn’t make you swear off the sauce, maybe the tea will.
Tomato products are a longtime favorite among regular revelers. Some say the acidity of tomato is too much for delicate stomachs, but a host of morning-after beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) such as the Bloody Bull, Dancing Bull, Bloody Mary, Virgin Mary, and the Prairie Oyster attest to the soothing power of the tomato. Many of these pick-me-ups contain some combination of tomato juice, raw egg, Tabasco, and pepper. Sometimes beef broth, lemon, and a splash of alcohol (usually a clear one like vodka—you might stay away from“brown” liquors for a while, buster) are also tossed in the shaker.

How does it take the edge off? Well, the tomato provides a healthy dose of vitamin C, an antioxidant that builds the immune system and neutralizes toxins. The pepper or Tabasco contains capsicum, a natural analgesic that may ratchet down the pain. And the egg, of course, provides protein and cysteine.

As for the hair of the dog, it’s supposedly the byproducts of the alcohol that actually cause the pain, so putting a little liquor back in the system may make you feel better. The clock is reset, if you will. But the new booze will eventually be broken down into toxins, so the hair of the dog really just delays the inevitable, unless you plan on being drunk forever.

Caffeine is a double-edged sword. It alleviates headache but contributes to dehydration. To me, the thought of a morning without coffee is like descending a few more levels into hell. I suggest alternating the java with water or juice.
And what’s the best breakfast place to ease you into the morning after the night before? Everyone has their favorite, but mine include the Uptown Bar (for the big Bloody Mary and the pint glasses you can take home), Mickey’s Diner (sometimes when it’s still the night before), Al’s Breakfast (best if the service is surly and the guy behind me is whistling “The Girl from Ipanema” through his nose—it gives me a reason to be irritable) or any little diner to which someone else, clean and sober and unhung, is willing to drive me.

If this all sounds like a bunch of hooey and does nothing to save you from the knee-trembling, stomach-churning, lip-quivering effects of your latest hangover, consider the advice of writer Robert Benchly: “A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.” Maybe. But I say a good three-egg scramble is better than lying in a pool of your own stinking sweat waiting to die. Besides, even the condemned get a last meal.

In case you’re so addled that you don’t remember how to get to the Twin Cities most celebrated breakfast joints:

Al’s Breakfast
413 14th Ave. S.E., Minneapolis
(612) 331-9991

Mickey’s Diner
36 W. 7th St., St. Paul
(651) 222-5633

Uptown Bar & Cafe
3018 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis
(612) 823-4719

White walls, white coats, white plates. No, this isn’t Ecolab. It’s the Walker Art Center’s cafeteria-restaurant situated quietly above one of the most beautiful contemporary art collections in the country. The people behind the counter believe their offerings should be equal to the stuff on the walls. Even though the menu changes daily—a rarity in this town—the desserts are always indicative of real standards, and Gallery 8 never skimps. That goes for the green on the salads, the red on the tomato bisque soups, and the yellow on the plain and tall egg-salad sandwich. Take your white plate to the terrace on a sunny, snow-free day, and you can enjoy one of the most beautiful, calming views of our fair city. The Claes Oldenburg Mickey Mouse sculpture will make your day, and a glass of good Chardonnay will make it extra pretty. (612) 375-7553.

This family-owned Italian restaurant, just blocks from downtown, has been a Northeast institution since 1951. Owner Steve Elwell bought the place from his grandma, Rose Totino—whose portrait is on proud display throughout the interior—10 years ago. Up until then, Rose and her husband Jim operated the eatery, which they originally opened with the intent to offer take-out pizza only. But customers wanted to sit down and enjoy a slice, so the Totinos added tables, and 10 years down the road, started offering their pizzas for sale in the frozen-to-go state. Eventually Rose and Jim sold off the frozen pizza empire to Pillsbury, who still manufactures it. But back at the little Italian kitchen, their eldest grandson sticks to Grandma Rose’s tradition of homemade-from-scratch food. While Totino’s is fondly believed by its aficionados to be the most underrated restaurant in town, the place—which isn’t small—is jammed on Friday and Saturday nights. Maybe it’s the heaping portions, authentic retro atmosphere, friendly service, and reasonable prices. Special number two is wildly popular, because you get a big helping of spaghetti with spicy Totino’s marinara and a meatball and a taste of pizza, plus a bowl of ice cream (vanilla or spumoni). But we love the cheese ravioli best of all. It’s made with a mysterious and flavorful blend of cheeses and herbs and comes with that delicious red sauce. Yum. The pizza is unique and bready (and bears no resemblance to the frozen party pizzas, by the way), the salad is surprisingly good—a tangy vinegar dressing almost makes up for the inevitable iceberg lettuce—and the meatballs are classic. And Totino’s offers a full selection of run-of-the-mill beer and wine. So come on, forget your frozen pizza bias and give an old classic the respect it deserves. You won’t be disappointed.

Succulent beef wraps itself in lemongrass and water chestnuts; rich bites of chicken mingle with spicy peppers and peapods; the fried rice is savory, the egg rolls zesty. But it’s the tofu that’s truly extraordinary. You must try the tofu. In this rainbow of wonderful flavor the tofu falls like a cloud into a hot tub of sesame oil—soft, crisp, delicious, and always perfect at Kinhdo. In a town where Vietnamese cuisine actually means cuisine, Kinhdo stands a head above most of the competition (even if the decor still screams in vinyl). There are no duds on the menu. Instead, some of the specialties are truly outstanding. Dishes such as the stir-fry basil unfold on a dozen different turns of the palette. Great food on the (reasonably) cheap has its downside: Some evenings, it’s a long wait for a table. If you’re willing, you can always join the loyal cast of regular take-out characters. Better yet, drop in for a late lunch and watch the cook’s assistant delicately hand shape the evening’s wontons by the hundreds while her mentor (her aunt, her great aunt, her great, great aunt?) peers critically from over the top of the current issue of Forbes magazine. With three locations, you don’t have to travel far even if you do encounter a waiting list. (612) 870-1295.

Given the choice between self-proclaimed “Greatest Living American Writer” Neal Pollack and self-proclaimed “Best Band in the World” Tenacious D, we’re inclined to go with the latter. Not only does Jack Black do a better job of keeping his chest hair under control, but rock stars are a hell of a lot more fun to lampoon than exceedingly egoistic writers, whom Pollack lambastes by satirical example in his first-person Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature (new to paperback). From Conan O’Brien’s relentless self-deprecation to Pollack’s relentless self-aggrandizement, turn-of-the-millennium comedy seems mighty preoccupied with the overstated self-image. What gives? Did Seinfeld and family sitcoms simply wring all the laughs out of ordinary life? Maybe so. But as the buzz surrounding the McSweeney’s clique of wry, irreverent young writers ebbs, Pollack’s grand delusions sound more and more like a desperate (read: not-so-funny) and disposable kind of shtick. As with his cohort and benefactor, Dave Eggers, it’ll take another couple of books (er, sorry—“anthologies”) to properly measure how much literary mettle lies behind the hokum. Judge for yourself—and catch a glimpse of all the local McSweeney’s groupies at this St. Paul reading.

(Harcourt)

Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher’s groundbreaking classic on the not-so-pretty realities facing adolescent girls, spent almost three years on the New York Times bestseller list. Since then, just about every word Pipher has written has turned to gold. Her last two books, Another Country and The Shelter of Each Other, explored the demands of caring for our aging parents, and the transforming needs of the American family, respectively. Those were also bestsellers. Now this “great wise woman of American psychology” turns her attention to the intriguing and complex issue of immigration and the changing constitution of the American “melting pot.” Pipher was apparently inspired to write this new one when her Nebraska town became an official refugee resettlement center. Suddenly people from 52 countries—including Sudan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Vietnam—walked and shopped and congregated in the same Lincoln streets which had previously been populated by an essentially unchanged demographic for decades. As a therapist and “cultural broker,” Piper spoke with new Americans about family, culture shock, and resettlement issues such as work and school. Her conversations reveal much about distant cultures, and even more about our culture as witnessed through the eyes of the other. Harcourt is donating a portion of the proceeds from this book to the Pipher Refugee Relief Fund. Pipher reads on Monday, April 8, at 7:30 p.m at Weyerhaeuser Chapel, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul.

Magicians occupy a peculiar place in American pop culture. Logically, they should be an anachronism, an antiquated relic of a time when simpletons were easily duped by non-digitally enhanced sleight-of-hand, a time when minstrel shows and vaudeville competed for ye olde American’s hard-earned entertainment dollar. After all, who could possibly be duped by an old-fashioned rabbit-in-the-hat act in an age where television and film can create entire universes out of cyber-scratch?

Yet magic has not only survived but thrived. Blockbusters like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Star Wars series all draw heavily on magical forces, while David Blaine has unsuccessfully attempted to make magic cool by dating Fiona Apple and hanging out with Leonardo DiCaprio. Blaine, like many of his peers, has thrived largely because he’s working a niche—in his case as the world’s only “street magician,” a patently ridiculous title that conjures up images of B-boys pulling alley cats out of trash cans and gangsta-ass magicians capping their enemies with elaborate card tricks.

Blaine’s street magic has admittedly breathed new life into the field, but he’s only one of a number of magicians who’ve discovered and cultivated a marketable, magical niche. Smart asses Penn & Teller have cornered the market on hip, ironic anti-magic, while their ideological opposite, Siegfried & Roy, dominate the über–kitschy world of tiger-enhanced, Vegas-style conjuration. Harry Blackstone Jr., Doug Henning, and Harry Houdini all have that “dead” thing working for them, which leaves only David Copperfield, perhaps the most famous solo magician of them all. But what is the secret to his appeal? Unlike Blaine, he’s never canoodled with Fiona Apple or kept it real with his street magic, and he doesn’t possess the hipness and credibility of Penn & Teller, or the camp value of Siegfried & Roy. Yet he remains a pop-culture fixture and one of the highest paid entertainers in the world. Why?

Like all inquiries into the strange, unfathomable, and extremely dorky, mine began with a search on the web. And like nearly all web searches, mine yielded a bizarre web of exhibitionism, broken links and dreams, emotional neediness, and paranoia. My journey into the unknown began, naturally enough, with Copperfield’s own site, a clean, minimalist site distinguished only by its unintentionally revealing “rumors” section. In it, Copperfield addresses the various rumors that have plagued him throughout his career. The rumor that ruffles him the most, of course, is that he’s gayer than Siegfried & Roy on a Judy Garland-themed float on Gay Pride day in San Francisco. “Of course not!” begins Mr. Copperfield’s amusingly defensive response, the exclamation point seemingly intended to illustrate just how not gay he is. Elsewhere, Copperfield refutes the rumor that his marriage to Claudia Schiffer was a sham. “She doesn’t need the dough, and frankly, I don’t need to pay a woman to be seen with me.” Presumably this means his leggy female assistants are volunteers, or at least fans whose payment consists of getting to bask in their idol’s reflected glory.

As a source for advertising about herbal viagra and penile enlargement, the internet is, of course, priceless. As a conduit for other kinds of information, however, it’s extremely limited. So The Rake decided to go straight to the source and attend a David Copperfield show in advance of his appearance here. More specifically, we attended the seventh of eight shows the highy virile magician played over four nights at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, Illinois.
As befits a decidedly non-homosexual performer, Copperfield made his grand entrance on a motorcycle. Granted, he wasn’t actually riding the motorcycle, but merely sitting on such a masculine machine was enough to assuage any lingering doubts about his sexuality. He then began his show in earnest, mixing Catskills-style banter with vague new-age talk about the importance of escape and fantasy (the loose theme of the matinee show) and magic tricks that felt uncannily like slight variations on tricks he and every other magician have been doing for years.

And though Copperfield’s dark good looks have won him a reputation as the Fabio of magic, onstage he’s disconcertingly life-sized, less romance-novel hero than reasonably handsome Jewish dentist, right down to his George Hamilton-like perma-tan. Copperfield’s onstage patter is similarly humanizing: He might be able to walk through the Great Wall of China, but he has considerable difficulty getting his audience helpers to do what he tells them to. At one point, Copperfield grew visibly irritated by an especially confused senior, but later tipped the moral scales back in his favor by magically reuniting a sad-sack grandma with her estranged granddaughter through a “portal” connecting the show with a tropical island. It was pure, unadulterated cheese, but at least it was cheese of some scope and vision, which is more than can be said of nearly everything that preceded it. At another point, Copperfield brought out a clown for some urine-related comedy, followed by a barrage of Michael Jackson jokes that so amused the pair that they giggled for more than a minute, making only the feeblest attempt to muffle their guffaws.

By the time Copperfield finished sleepwalking through his final trick, it was difficult to conceive of anyone, no matter how devoted, being impressed by the show. Walking out of the magic man’s schlockfest, I was confused. Copperfield’s appeal still eluded me. I have faith though that fans will keep coming, fattening up Copperfield’s bankbook and ego, and making sure he retains his vaunted thirteenth place on the list of the world’s highest paid entertainers. That, perhaps, is the most impressive trick of all.

David Copperfield appears at the State Theatre, April 26-28, 2002.