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  • Another One from the Mothballs: The Art of Indexing

    I always thought it would be interesting to attempt to tell the story of
    your life purely in index form. I tried it once, without a whole lot of
    success. I’m sure there are others out there like me, though, people for whom
    the indexes of thick biographies are often better and more fascinating reading than
    the books themselves.

    I was obsessed with indexing for a time. I acquired and pored over
    scores of books on the subject (H.B. Wheatley’s How to Make an Index from
    1902, A.L. Clarke’s Manual of Practical Indexing from 1905, Robert L.
    Collison’s Indexes and Indexing from 1959, among others). I even paid way too much money to acquire a copy of Der Index der Verbotenen Bucher (1899),
    which was in a language I do not read, and appears to have no practical bearing
    on my own interest in the subject. The great indexers are legendary obsessives.
    In 1848 a man named William F. Poole published a book called An
    Alphabetical Index to Subjects Treated in Reviews and Other Periodicals to
    Which No Indexes Have Been Published.

    In his more recent Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting, Brian
    C. O’Connor poses the single most relevant question regarding the indexer’s
    art: "Can we design systems that detect the treasure for each
    user?" Perusing indexes it’s clear that every indexer worth his or
    her salt brings to this question a deeply personal set of priorities and
    proclivities. Check it out some time; it’s fascinating to see what sorts
    of bizarre minutiae an indexer will choose to extract from a book’s tangle
    of detail and incident.

    I’ve been collecting these minutiae for years. Here’s just a small sampling
    (and I would, of course, welcome any interesting contributions you might have
    stumbled across):

    From Margaret Drabble’s Angus Wilson: A Biography:

    Fear of falling, 556, 592;
    tendency to fall, 599,
    601;     lack of sense of balance,
    603, 604;     serious fall,
    623-4;     in nursing home,
    642-3.

     

    From Gerald Clarke’s Capote: A Biography:

    Dancing of, 58, 101, 102; eavesdropping and snooping of, 180-81,
    206-7, 294;     as love life advisor,
    166, 168;     sleepwalking of,
    44;     Montalban, Ricardo,
    298.

     

    From Donald Spoto’s The Dark Side of Genius: The
    Life Of Alfred Hitchcock:

    Gastronomic Life: potatoes,
    14;     three-steak meal, 187; gulping, 412; Personal Life, Habits,
    Attitudes, and Traits:     mustache,
    95;     woman in the back of a taxi,
    162, 374, 432, 433, 531;     destruction
    of crockery, 187, 192;     interest
    in strangling, 353, 527;     spiritual
    transvestism, 432-33.

     

    From William Manchester’s Winston Churchill biography, The
    Last Lion    :

    Silk underwear for skin sensitivity, 399; national crisis while bathing, 418-19; attitude while playing polo, 241-42; skin donation to wounded soldier with Kitchener,
    283;     bricklaying, 776,
    883.

     

    From John Baxter’s Bunuel:

    Death, fascination with,
    15, 24;     menagerie, 14; obsessive punctuality, 183; orgies, participation in, 116-17; phone, hating, 295; pistols, fascination with, 202-3.

     

    From David Sweetman’s Van Gogh: His Life and His Art:

    Tooth trouble, 203, 262; wears candles in hat, 278; throws glass at Gauguin, 289; razor attack on Gauguin, 290, 306; kicks attendant, 307.

     

    From Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s Jackson
    Pollock: An American Saga    :

    Beguiling smile of,
    2, 4, 94, 808;     dimples of,
    2-3, 44, 161, 808;     drunken binges
    of    , 2-3, 6, 7, 117, 120, 168, 170, 197, 212-14, 247-48, 249-50, 255,
    266-67, 294-95, 296-98, 302, 306, 310-11, 314, 335-36, 359-60, 448, 449, 491,
    572, 669-71, 686, 844;     fights
    provoked by    , 6, 140-41, 145, 204, 212, 228, 247-48, 265, 267, 297,
    302, 310, 350, 481, 488-89, 498, 570, 572, 715, 755, 900;     mouth harp played by, 208, 220, 247, 833,
    834;     urinary habits of,
    50-51, 469, 478, 489, 541, 612, 671, 753, 760, 762, 770, 788, 813, 818, 867,
    876, 904;     weeping of,
    249, 297, 581, 740, 763, 770, 778, 782, 787, 901, 904;     Ives, Burl, 170, 828.

     

    From Mary Tyler Moore’s After All:

    Richie’s rescued pigeon,
    208-210;     assassination threats,
    269-71;     Blue Chip stamp collecting,
    382-83;     crossword puzzles,
    383;     Gomer Pyle, 113; hitting bottom, 349-50; mother’s addiction to pinball machines,
    12-13;     as inept liar,
    279-82;     O’Neill, Tip,
    280, 281;     Kershaw, Doug,
    236;     Busey, Gary, 207.

  • Married Life: Frustrating, Sort of Like Marriage

    Anachronistic is the best word to describe Married Life, which will be arriving at Landmark’s Edina Cinema on March 21st. The film’s frustratingly whimsical tone washes out its better, darker moments, leaving little to say about marriage.

    Based on the 1953 pulp mystery novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven,
    the film follows the relationships and ethical dilemmas presented by a
    man and his wife, a man and his mistress, a wife and her lover, and the
    rakish friend that likes the mistress. The sum of those four parts is
    supposed to be some sort of conversation about marriage, but it never
    really emerges from its pulp mystery origins. What does emerge is a
    story you’ve seen before: Man decides to kill wife to be with
    mistress. I kept waiting for the movie to offer up something new, a new
    breath of life into a tired story, but ultimately it falls short.

    The problem is rooted in the source material. Commenting on the
    reason he chose the story, writer/ producer/ director Ira Sachs
    explains, “I wanted to make a film that spoke gently and honestly about
    the complexities and intricacies of marriage and intimate life, and
    here was a plot—however outrageous it might seem—that in the end could
    do so in a way both direct and metaphoric.” Unfortunately the direction
    Mr. Sachs takes with the story, a split between whimsical and serious,
    is neither complex nor intricate, making it difficult to take the film
    seriously.

    Mr. Sacks also thinks you’re an idiot. There is a constant, droning
    voice-over during the entire movie, and the characters are shallow and
    poorly developed. With only the slightest provocation they spout off
    their entire life stories, discussing relationships and feelings with
    the clumsy hands of the screen writer pulling the strings in abrupt,
    jerky motions.

    The uncommonly talented cast does a lot to calm the uneven
    writing. Chris Cooper, the pain and disillusionment fused into every
    pore, delivers the sort of nuanced performance that we’ve come to
    expect from him. Rachel McAdams is similarly able to shock a semblance
    of life into Kay, the thinly written object of affection for both
    leading men.

    The acting makes the darker moments of the film resonate, but it
    hits so many bad notes with its thin plot and whimsical execution that
    it’s difficult to take seriously. Ultimately the film neither chills,
    nor comments on marriage at all, but simply wilts away in mediocrity.

  • The Tao of Puerh

    I’ve been hanging out lately at a great little place called Fireroast Mountain Cafe, which besides having wonderful soups, sandwiches, and pastries, serves a perfectly brewed cup of Puerh, which is a rare and wonderful thing.

    A fermented tea that contains microbes — like yogurt of kefir —Puerh has an earthy, amber, slightly caramel flavor. Perfect with a touch of honey. And according to experts going back to the Eastern Han Dynasty, it offers a myriad of health benefits, too. Puerh is said to cleanse the blood and aid in digestion, lowering LDL cholesterol, canceling out the effects of alcohol, and boosting the metabolism. Some people even claim it helps them feel better immediately after a heavy, greasy meal, acting as both fat blocker and antacid.

    I have no idea if any of this is true. What I do know is that Puerh makes me feel good, and it’s rich enough to be a decent substitute for that cup of espresso I crave around 2 o’clock every afternoon.

    The key to making this and other varieties of tea, however, is to get the water temperature and ratio of leaves just right. Black tea, for instance, should be made with water that’s just off the boil and steeped for five minutes; green with water that’s about 10 degrees cooler — e.g. the stuff that comes out of those red-spigoted hot water taps — and steeped for no more than three.

    Puerh, on the other hand, cannot be overcooked. You make it with water that’s at a roiling boil and let it steep forever. . . .10 minutes or so. The key is to use only a teaspoon of leaves, or it can become overpoweringly thick.

    I’ve looked for this tea on the shelves of every grocery store I’ve visited for the past month, but it’s simply not available. Lunds carries everything from infused green to Indian chai to matĂ©, but there is, apparently, only a very small retail market for Puerh. The only place in town I’ve found to buy it in bulk is Tea Source.

    I’m generally unimpressed by the studies touting the health benefits of various foods. But evidence that goes back 2,200 years will tend to sway me. And just to test the veracity of the claims, I recently consumed a large and meaty meal, then drank a cup of carefully prepared Puerh. And while I doubt it completely eliminated the roasted pork, brie, dark chocolate, and heavy cream from my system, I must say, I went to bed feeling amazingly good.

    Those ancient Chinese emperors? I think they were onto something.

  • Born From Jets. A Saab Story.

    (Pictured: The tiny "Ursaab" 92001 which reminds me of a small plane stepped on by an elephant.)

    I give to you, again, a post from Kurt Nelson, skier, writer, road pilot, with a few thoughts on automotive flight:

    Born from Jets: You have all seen the advertising for Saab,
    touting their long heritage in aeronautics and airplane history. Well, this is not really a jet story, but it
    does involve a Saab leaving the ground, so I guess Born from Jets is accurate. Saab was started as an aeronautics company,
    and in the mid 1940s a group of their engineers decided to build a car, which
    resulted in the Saab 92001 or “Ursaab” and the rest is history.

     

    (Pictured: A jet fighter plane in the SAAB Museum, and we all thought Swedes were pacifists.)

    I have had the happy occasion of getting my Saab off the
    ground a number of times over the years, but it was the first time that evokes
    such good memories and makes me continue to look for places to launch.

    A few years ago, my wife and I bought some property in
    Northwest Wisconsin, a very rural area, with great roads, ribbons of blacktop
    that stretch for miles and undulate with the local terrain, over peat bogs and
    thru white pine forests. Where most people just see a road to their cabin, I
    see roads that beckon for me to put my car to the test. It is in that spirit that this story comes.

    Driving alone one morning to go for a mountain bike ride, I
    went past our normal access road, looking for another entry into the
    forest. The road had a large dip, one
    with a steep upside and a flat entry or landing depending on your point of
    view. My immediate thought was, hey, I
    could probably get my car off the ground if I try; and being one who likes to
    try, I gave it a shot.

    I turned around and started into the approach again, but
    with a little more urgency, in fact I
    was giving it thru 3 gears, up to about
    80mph, I rode up the steep side, and launched at the apex, now this was not 3
    feet off the ground, more like all 4 wheels left the pavement for a time, I
    landed softly, but In my usual doubting way I thought, did I really leave terra
    firma, or was this just hopeful thinking.
    I turned around and tried it again.
    This time I hit the steep side at 90, and this time I heard the wheels
    spinning and engine revving as I left the pavement, so I knew that I had
    succeeded in getting weightless albeit for a brief instant.

    A couple of weeks later my wife and I were going to spend
    the day at the property hiking and maybe a mountain bike ride, with a
    picnic. Knowing full well that I was going to let her in on the fun. I approached the dip, and rather than tell
    her what was going to happen I just got on the go peddle, getting the tires to
    chirp in 3 gears. We hit the dip at 90,
    and launched, all the while she was
    laughing with child like joy, and enthusiasm.

    Not only did we get off the ground, we did it twice so I could hear that
    laughter again. how you approach it, and for me and my car born from
    jets, getting in the air is an appropriate nod to heritage.

  • The Three Pointer: Power Outage

    Copyright 2007 NBAE (Photo by David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images)


    Game #57, Road Game #27: Minnesota 84, Cleveland 92

    Season Record: 12-45

    1. The Price of Youth

    What a discouraging game.

    Wanna bet that the Cavaliers had a scout at Target Center for the Wolves win over Utah last Tuesday? Coach Mike Brown seemed to set his stellar defense for a team that would deftly move the ball and present probing, multifaceted threats. In particular, Brown, thinking he had 20-point scorers like Foye, McCants and Gomes to worry about, decided to single-cover Al Jefferson with the Luthuanian leviathan known as Z, and let tall, panther-quick cohorts like Ben Wallace and LeBron James scout the horizon beyond the paint.

    That was fine with Jefferson, who was enjoying the elbow room even before Z (surname Ilgauskas) committed one stupid foul by going over the back on a free throw miss, and then another one showing too hard on a perimeter pick and roll in the first six minutes of play. That sent him to the pine, to be replaced by Anderson Varejao, a Raggedy Andy-headed string-bean quite the opposite of the bald Z. He promptly got flattened (half shoulder, half patented Varejao fffflop) for a Jefferson slam. Brown understandably flipped Varejao over to Gomes and so it was Ben Wallace’s turn to guard Jefferson. By the half, Jefferson had hit half of his 16 field goal attempts for 18 points and 5 offensive rebounds (out of 7 total) at intermission.

    Alas, the rest of the team also had 18 points, on horrendous 7-30 FG. The ball movement and constant stabs at penetration–not to mention the silky, visually pleasant teamwork–so much in evidence against Utah was kaput, with a capital dipthong. Just a few quarters beyond his breakout game against the Jazz, Randy Foye broke back in, displaying all the bad habits that caused me to sour on him earlier this season– the ill-chosen, off-balance jumpers early in the shot clock, the running alongside of his opponent’s dribble so he can he can get a better profile on the man’s successful jumper, and the lazy entry passes that, while not usually stolen, certainly give defenses the time to cogitate and react.

    Hopefully the offensive gameplan was for Ryan Gomes to exploit the smallball matchup and take Ben Wallace out on the perimeter, the only justification I can come up with for the normally prudent Gomes chucking it up like the second coming of Rashad McCants, at 2-7 FG in 11:04. Speak of the devil, Shaddy checked in with 2:41 to play in the first quarter and managed to squeeze off three before the buzzer, then added three more in 8:41 of the second quarter. Three and three make six shot attempts and six misses for zero points in 11:22 first half minutes. Foye? Zip for three but a literal bonus point for being allowed to shoot the technical on a defensive three-second call against Cleveland, and thus transform his halftime goose egg into a straight line. After his first quarter delirium, Gomes came back to earth with but one clank in the second, and thus finished the half with 4 points on 2-8. For those of you slow with the abaci (abacuses?), that’s a collective 2-17 FG and a whopping 5 points from the squad’s second, third, and fouth leading scorers in the first half–and because of shot selection and general disdain for the first pass, let alone the extra pass, they collectively deserved almost every miss.

    This is what happens with a young ballclub. They play well and then they don’t, learning painful lessons on the job. Coach Randy Wittman addressed this after the Toronto loss Wednesday, but it is typical young club behavior, the habit of relaxing after a grand victory. The vexing aspect of it was not so much Toronto, however, but this game, after their Canadian clubbing theoretically taught them the error of instant self-regard. They had the contrast–fun and bloody games a la Utah, or belittling suffocation a la Toronto. The irksome thing is that they mentally opted for another bout of belittling suffocation, this time in Cleveland.

    At the half, Hanny and Pete were marvelling about how nice it was to shoot only 32.6% and yet be down a mere four points at 36-40. But from the time the Cavs’ Devin Brown opened the game by waltzing down for an easy jumper and Randy Foye followed that matador D with a travel, until the time McCants rang the garbage time dinner bell by nailing his 4th quarter treys, there was not a single moment when I seriously thought the Wolves were going to win this game.

    In the second half, Mike Brown took a gander at the stat sheet and decided Big Al needed a double team after all. With Z and Big Ben–and isn’t it ironic that Z is much bigger than both Big Al and Big Ben?–taking turns as the primary matchup and sometimes tag-teaming, with a little guy flashing over to boot, Jefferson had 4 points and 3 boards in 20:36 of the second half after going 18-7 in 20:39 of the first half. With all this attention focused on the undersized center, the undersized power forward, Gomes, managed to sneak outside for a 7-point flurry in 71 seconds to knot the game up at 51-51 midway through the third quarter. But by the end of the third Foye and McCants were a combined 1-14 FG and the Wolves were back down by 7.

    When it was mercifully over, Foye was 1-9 FG for 4 points, two assists, and three turnovers in 33:32, not a good line for a point guard or off guard, even one given a fistful of free passes for making a ginger transition from one-and-a-half to two good knees. McCants had a totally deceptive double-digit night–six of his ten points came on meaningless three-pointers in the final minute of play–but to his (small) credit he did register a team-high 3 assists while finishing sixth in minutes-played at 27:37.

    With just 1:22 to go in the game, the Wolves had amassed but 75 points and visited the free throw line 10 times. For the game they shot 39.1%. Young players or not, it is worrisome that the ballclub, which ranks 29th among 30 NBA teams in points scored per game, can be so inept offensively despite the fact that three players perceived to be cornerstones–Jefferson, Foye, and to a slightly lesser extent McCants–are all much better offensively than they are on defense.

    2. Management Follies

    About the only good thing about owner Glen Taylor’s halftime "interview" with Tom Hanneman tonight was that it spared us the cheerleader report and Sweetwater Jones. As infomerical entertainments go, it was somewhere between the Victoria Principal/Susan Lucci testimonials and the somewhat clownish guy walking around with all those question marks on his suitjacket. Actually the latter wouldn’t be a bad analogy for the current state of the Wolves.

    Taylor let it be known that he is really enjoying this team, especially compared to the underachieving teams of the previous two years. He knows, in other words, that this 12-45 team is not underachieving, but likes the job coach Randy Wittman is doing–Kevin McHale and the rest of the front office are not discussed. He says he has many people telling him and writing him that they like this team better than other recent editions too, and would like to invite still other folks to come out and decide for themselves. And, oh yeah, the new Timberwolves season ticket packages for next year are about to go on sale soon. If Taylor was this subtle in his wedding invitation business, the fancy, script-flowing marital announcements would go out complete with a picture of a the father of the bride holding a shotgun between the groom’s shoulder blades.

    In very much related news, the Wolves have bought out the contract of Theo Ratliff and would very much like to do the same with Antoine Walker. The spin that dumping Ratliff will open up more playing time for rookie Chris Richard is about as disingenuous as the earlier spin that Ratliff’s
    return would enable the Wolves to see how well Al Jefferson plays with a shot-blocking center. Richard got a whole 3:21 worth of burn tonight (his plus +1 led the team, of course), which is approximately how much Ratliff and Jefferson played together after Theo’s return.

    For quite some time now, it has been apparent that Wittman prefers Jefferson at center and Gomes at power forward. Smallball. Game by game, it has worked out much better than I would have imagined. Tonight, for example, the shrunken banshee lineup battled to a 40-40 draw on the boards with the top rebounding team in the NBA. Wittman likes to spread the floor with his small unit and give Jefferson room to operate down low. He also likes the other players utilizing this spacing and their quickness to crash the boards and outhustle as much as outmuscle opponents for position under the hoop. Perhaps this lineup is giving Jefferson experience getting his shot off against the tall timber, and hopefully learning how to survey the floor and dish back out when teams pack the paint to defend him.

    But I can’t embrace it. Anyone who watches Jefferson knows he’s a classic power forward that, even by the standards of the "new" NBA, with its paucity of dominant big men and anti-hand checking rules, is best suited to operate beside a center precisely like Ratliff, who can help out on defense, is laterally quick around the hoop, sets a good example by showing hard on peimeter pick and rolls and doesn’t need the ball. Even if we all know Ratliff wasn’t part of the future here, isn’t that kind of pivot man something this franchise should be manuevering towards? Shouldn’t we get Jefferson and Gomes ingrained in those habits now, in their formative stages? Do we really need Jefferson playing 69% of the center minutes for this ballclub and just 5% of the power forward’s minutes? (According to the 82games.com web data.) And do we really need the Wolves’ 8 most popular 5-man lineups to feature Jefferson as the center–especially when the most popular 5-man lineup that doesn’t feature Jefferson as a cetner puts Mark Madsen in the pivot instead?

    Perhaps there is guerrilla tanking going on here. A Timberwolves team with Jefferson and Ratliff playing beside each other for most of the season would be very close to 20 wins by now, in my opinion, which would vault them ahead of another five teams in addition to Miami. Perhaps that’s a little too close for comfort on losing that Clips’ pick this year for the Jaric deal.

    Then there is the money angle. Taylor himself acknowledged (in the newspaper, of course, not the infomercial) that the buyout would save him a chunk of the remainder of Theo’s $11 million contract this year–on the order of the $3 million or so that he had remaining. Meanwhile, consider that Ratliff has missed 45 games–officially more than half of an 82-game regular season. Consider that with his injury history there is a possibility that he is insured against loss of play due to injury. When I tentatively asked around, through a member of the communications staff, about whether the Wolves were getting any insurance money due to Ratliff’s injury, the staffer reported back that he couldn’t find out. Now that Ratliff is gone, I’ll be a little more aggressive and ask the question myself to Taylor or GM Jim Stack or some other team representative. And I wouldn’t mind if a daily beat writer traveling with the team beat me to it.

    3. Silver Linings

    Not all is amiss and awry in Wolves land tonight, and amid all the dolor, I thought I’d save the best for last. First off, Sebastian Telfair has begun to improve his shot much as he hiked up his court vision and sense of command in prior months. For the past 8 games, Bassy has shot 48%, (12-25) from beyond the arc. He has scored in double figures in 6 of those 8 games, along with running the offense far better than Foye or Jaric or McCants in terms of pace and proactive passing. Let’s face it, he’s the only point guard on the roster. That said, I wouldn’t go so far as to label Telfair a reliable shooter. Tonight, after hitting some big shots in the 3rd quarter and clearly establishing himself as the second-best Timberwolf behind Jefferson, he got a little too happy with himself and clanged a pair of stupid shots that were crucial to helping the Cavs pull away. On the second of these, McCants was literally pointing down toward Jefferson in the paint as Telfair drew iron with a trey. I understand Bassy is feeling–and sort of thriving on–the heat of competition for playing time with Foye, McCants and Jaric (the current short straw man, logging just 6:26 tonight). But excitability is his enemy.

    By contrast, Corey Brewer seems forever excited and unruffled at the same time. The rook’s work on LeBron James tonight was as staunch as one could hope for against a player who wound up with 30 points and 13 assists.(And if we’re talking about real silver linings, that would go to everyone lucky enough to see James’s monster dunk midway through the fourth quarter, when he tried to thread his way through two or three Wolves and stumbled around the foul line, losing the ball a little out in front of him, only to grab it as he stumbled a bit and rise up with literally incredible speed and elevation to slam it home. "That is a different look than anything I have ever seen in my life!" Petersen claimed, rightly going batshit. "TV doesn’t do it justice." Perhaps, but even on TV it looked like somebody hitting the fast forward button on a dude who disappares behind players for a second only to emerge as if jumping on a trampoline to slam it home.)

    Whatever is said about Brewer, and I’ve been pro and con, the guy is dogged and he plays the game like he’s memorized the handbook. Tonight he racked up 15 points (5-10 FG) and 4 steals, but it was his simple foot movement and determination to stay in front of LeBron that was most impressive. Meanwhile, if you want a half full/empty glass, think about how shrewd Brewer’s shot selection is–the ex-Gator almost never shoots outside the flow and rhythm of the offense and hustles hard enough to put himself in many great positions to score. Now consider that despite taking such an inordinately high percentage of good shots, Brewer is still making less than 35% of them. Blame it on his youth, and cross your fingers.

  • What's in a famous last name?

    A note to all three of you who read my blog, 🙂

    I always get a knot in my stomach when I hear people talking about people in the public eye like they know them so well.

    People love to to tell stories about people who come from families that are in the limelight, but do these people really know the person behind the famous last name? Most likely, NO.

    Today, along with many of you, I received the news that Eleanor Mondale’s cancer is back. My head tells me that she will get through this with the same strength she did last time, and my heart is happy that she will have her loving husband Chan and her family by her side.

    When I first met Eleanor, I had heard so many stories about her that I wasn’t sure if we would hit it off or be like oil and water. Well, to say we "hit it off" would be an understatement!

    I knew I would like Eleanor when she scolded me for calling her "Ellie" after our second lunch and made me go back with her to her car and put on something more appropriate to wear before I made a complete idiot out of myself at a charity function.

    Shortly after spending time with another person who was new in my life, Leilani Baker (a makeup artist extraordinariness), it was clear to me that I had met two woman that would change my life forever. After years of so-called friends in my life, I finally experienced real, honest, and true friendship for the first time.

    Let’s face it: we woman can be tougher on each other than we are on our worst enemies.

    To have not one but TWO female friends that are kind, caring, and filled with complete and total unconditional love is a blessing that I thank God for every day. The stories and the adventures that Leilani, Eleanor, and I have shared, and will CONTINUE to share, are so sacred to me that I can’t, in my heart of hearts, come to share those experiences with anyone but my "Two Janes."

    So please, DON’T call me if you are from the media and want a quote to sell papers. This friend of Eleanor is going to respect both the public persona AND the cherished, private person who I call "Farmer Jane."

    I do, however, want to let Eleanor know publicly that I will be happy to shovel up any horse crap if she only promises to take care of herself and get her butt back on the radio. 🙂

    FYI: I am saying that I will help with farm chores for the record so that Eleanor can hold me to it.

    Love ya, cowgirl!!!!

    -Posh Jane 🙂

  • New Group Blog for Foodies: Chef's Table

    In case you haven’t already noticed – we have started a new group
    blog here at the Rake called Chef’s
    Table    . It isn’t just for chefs, though – it’s for restaurateurs, servers, gourmets,
    gourmands, wine sellers, cheese mongers, etc. – anybody who is an active
    participant in the Twin Cities’ lively food scene.

    It’s a chance for chefs and other foodies to tell diners how to get the most our of their restaurant, or invite them to sign up a special dinner, share photos and stories from their latest gastronomic field trip, weigh in on the latest trends, or sound off on obnoxious customers or pet peeves.

    Anybody can post comments on Chef’s Table, but so far,
    membership is by invitation only. If you would like to participate, drop me a
    line at iggers@rakemag.com, and tell me
    a bit about yourself.

    The most recent post is by Henry Chan, owner of Giapponese Sushi
    in Woodbury – the second installment in a series that gives you the
    down-and-dirty about cheap sushi: "To cut costs, frozen tuna is often used,
    lower in quality with almost no flavor, still safe to eat, at almost half the
    price of good fresh tuna…Tuna, salmon, whitefish, just about every fish is
    now available frozen, trimmed and pre-cut. Hell, I’ve even been approached by
    American fish companies asking if I would be interested in buying pre-made
    frozen ready to eat California and spicy tuna rolls!!    " To read more, go to the
    blog…

    Niki Stavrou, owner of Victor’s 1959 CafĂ©, 3756 Grand Ave. S., Minneapolis, also put up a post recently, to clear up a common misconception about Cuban cuisine: "Cuban culture
    is certainly spicy; the people, the music, the politics, you name it. But when
    it comes to cooking we leave the hot peppers for other cultures…

    Niki also sent
    out an email recently to customers on the cafĂ©’s email list, suggesting a
    dinner-and-a-movie combination for tonight: "Thought you would like to know that the Walker
    Art Center is showing a Cuban film this Friday night, February 29th at
    7:30pm. It’s called "The Sugar Curtain" and from everything
    I’ve read on it, sounds like it will be a very interesting film.

    "And
    remember, we open at 4:30pm for dinner so why not make it Cuban dinner and a
    Cuban movie? Make your reservations now and mention that you will be
    attending the film – if you arrive by 6:00pm we promise to have you well-fed
    with plenty of time to get to the movie. (I’m even going to try to sneak out so
    I can see it too!)    ."

    Call the cafe at 612-827-8948 for reservations. To be added to Niki’s email list, send her an email at Cafe1959@aol.com.

     

     

  • Letters from Eurydice VI

    We’re into our final two weeks of performances, so rather than give an account of each, I’ll offer thumbnail impressions of some of our performances to date:

    FEb 14, VOA Women’s Correctional Facility (Opening Day)

    The VOA is normally a high-energy audience: lots of commentary and back-talk to and about the actors as the show is being performed. Not today. They are uncharacteristically quiet. Attentive to be sure, but not very responsive. As I watch the women watch the opening scene, a bat-squeak of anxiety starts chirping inside my head: "Is it (are we) boring them?" But I underestimate Sarah Ruhl’s writing. It’s a quieter play than a Shakespeare play, but the language is more accessible. They’re not bored; they’re listening… intently. And by the end, they’re in tears. The show finishes, and the cast lingers in the paying area. The women surround us (well, mostly young heartthrobs Sonja Parks and Marc Halsey), saying thank you, saying this is the first play they ever saw, shaking hands, touching arms, embracing, asking us where else we will be performing, asking us to sign their programs. I wonder at that gesture. It happens a lot in the prisons and shelters, inmates and the homeless asking for signed programs. Why? What do they do with them? Do they help them to remember, to re-imagine the play? At night, in a cell, in a life, perhaps barren of hope, barren of beauty, barren of that which touches or moves them, what might it mean to look at that program and its signatures of strangers who, briefly, were not? To recall the story, not of a distant figure of myth, but a girl like them facing an impossible choice? A story, written in their lifetime, by a woman they will never meet, who nevertheless found a way to speak to them of them. Is it a comfort, an inspiration to have a brief experience of illumination, or another frustration- a glimpse of something beauteous but forever, in their minds if not their lives, out of reach.

    • Is it for all time, or merely a lark?
    • It it the Lido I see, or only Powderhorn Park?
    • Is it a fancy not worth thinking of?
    • Or is it at long last love?

    Feb 19, St. Stephen’s Center
    A church basement shelter in south Minneapolis. Dinner is just finishing up when we arrive. Lots of people eye us warily as we bring in the set and equipment and start clearing away tables and chairs in the cafeteria to make a playing space. It’s a brutally cold night — below zero outside — which may help boost attendance. Cookies and cider are laid out: snacks, a free show, and the heat is on, ladies and gents. This is a public performance. Unlike the prisons, which are closed, anyone can come to performances in public places, and they have gotten so popular that TTT has placed a reservation requirement and a cap on reservations so as not to squeeze out the intended audience, who can get a little intimidated when too many nicely-dressed, obviously not-in-need-of-a-free-meal types start taking seats. Tonight it looks about half and half. The other thing about public performances is people can leave if they’re bored or just have other priorities. Michelle Hensley always warns the acting company not to take it personally when people up and scarper during the big scene you’ve worked yourself into an emotional lather over for the past four weeks. They’ve just got more important things to do.

    That’s true — most of the time. Tonight, however, one man wearing two winter coats watches the first two scenes and then, in the middle of the third, stands and emphatically starts walking to the exit announcing in a VERY loud and disgusted voice, "I do not BELONG HERE!"

    Guess sub-zero temperatures didn’t sound so bad for this soul after all, compared to sitting through some Greek bullshit play done by patronizing mostly white folks who wouldn’t last 12 hours walking in this man’s shoes. However well-intentioned and welcomed we are, I am often reminded of the opening scene, of the classic opening scene of My Man Godfrey, when the ditzy socialites descend on a depression-era Hooverville looking for homeless man as part of a scavenger hunt party entertainment. "What fun! What larks! The poor people, they’re so, I don’t know, so authentic! Let’s take one with us!" I hope our walk-out stuffed his pockets with cookies so his evening isn’t a total loss. I’ve walked out of plays too, but never when the stakes (staying warm, staying fed) were so high. That night that guy showed the courage of his convictions, and while I didn’t want to trade places, I gave him high marks for character. I hope he had a warm place to go for the night, and some hot java with his cookies before bed.

    Feb 20, Dorothy Day Center

    D-DAY. How apt. When TTT plays Dorothy Day there is always a definite sense of launching yourself up against a hostile beachhead. D-Day is huge — large enough for two full-court basketball games. The biggest venue TTT plays, as well as the most boisterous, un-acoustic, frenetic, and just plain LOUD! And yet, I have a secret fondness for D-Day. For one thing, it was the site of my big Measure For Measure epiphany moment nicely accounted in last year’s TCG/American Theatre Magazine profile article. Mostly, though, D-Day has always represented for me the Broadway of any TTT tour. If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere. And today our work is cut out for us. The good news is that there are a lot of well-wishers and friends in the audience. Nobody gets turned away from a D-Day performance. Apart from the chairs set up in the Eurydice stadium-style seating patters, there are abundant tables and chairs everywhere, most filled with people waiting, not for our show, but see the man about food stamps, get on line for the evening meal, or just keep warm. The bad news is that the room is never still. People are always moving in and out, talking, shouting, getting on with the legitimate warp and woof of their lives, and they ain’t got time for any goddamn plays, thanks all the same.

    In Shakespeare, the energy of the language can push against this background cacophony — but Eurydice is a quiet, contemplative piece, and the competition for the audience’s attention is going to be brutal. Oh, more good news: there’s Graydon Royce, the Star-Tribune critic, settling into his seat to see our play in its most pitiless venue. Swell. In his review of this performance, Graydon remarked he was puzzled, "why Ten Thousand Things thought this delicate and intimate play would do well in a raucous community center, with a constantly migrating audience whose interest level waxed and waned." It’s frustrating for me when critics pose those questions in print. I mean, we were all right there. If he had thought to ask me, I would have told him that nobody plans for any play to do well at D-Day. If TTT picked its plays by their suitability for D-Day all we’d do were endless revivals of Hellzapoppin and Jesus Christ Superstar. In the end it doesn’t make the slightest difference what you do at D-Day. It’s like performing atop erupting Mt. St. Helens or in the eye of a cyclone — no time for subtleties, me hearties, boost your energy, volume, smack those end consonants, and hope we’re all still alive at the end of the day.

    It’s tough going. There’s one man who is actually quite excited about the show and who can’t help dancing about, mimicking the action, much to the distraction and continued amusement of the rest of the audience during some of the quieter moments between Orpheus and Eurydice. People help themselves to the noisy vending machines and shout greetings and instructions across the room. But we have our moments. Leif Jurgensen’s tricycle turn as Lord of the Underworld takes the native hilarity of the environment and channels it, Aikido-like, into a response that builds laugh upon laugh. Lisa Clair’s delightful musical vamping of Orpheus quickly commands the attention of every man in the room between 8 and 80. But some quiet moments are able to compel attention too. Building the string house settles the crowd into an uneasy quiet (well, most people like to gawk at any construction site and see what it’s going to turn into). The father’s river directions speech also seems to momentarily quiet the room, if only because I try to look as many people in the eye as I can while I’m talking, giving the directions directly to them in a way that suggests that they better write this stuff down or at least pay attention!

    The play ends on its poignant, quiet note, we stand to some smattered applause and whatever pause the room had taken to accommodate our play is swept away by more pressing matters — getting in line for dinner, straightening out a landlord-tenant issue, and trying to grab an empty laundry machine to do your load of colors. Even so, there are a few hardy souls, a few survivors who, despite the urgent tasks of simply getting through the day waiting upon them, take the time to step up moist-eyed to say, "Thanks, it was wonderful." And it was, although everyone in the cast could use a stiff drink after this show to strip our sleeves, show our wounds, and share our war stories. We reached some few, some happy few that afternoon, and it felt great.

    And that, dear readers is why TTT celebrates D-Day.

    Next: Eurydice on the Rez…

  • Any Old Business?

    How it is that I…how is it…or, rather, why it is that I…that I seem to
    keep…or, really, that I do keep, that I keep ending up…that every
    single night I look at the clock, I look at the clock and it’s two o’clock in
    the morning, it’s three o’clock in the morning and I…I keep ending up at
    three o’clock in the morning, I keep ending up sitting here with…I don’t
    know, I keep ending up sitting here with all this shit, surrounded by
    all this shit? Night after night I’m sitting here, I’m sitting here night after
    night on the floor with my back against these racks of records, surrounded
    by these shelves full of shit, shelves full of plastic,
    anthropomorphized potatoes and carrots and hamburgers, all of them with
    hats on their heads and pipes in their mouths and their arms paralyzed in an
    embracing gesture that I often find disturbing.

    I’m sitting here with my legs crossed and my back up against all this
    shit…I’m sitting here in this ridiculous and uncomfortable position, night
    after night, delivering incoherent monologues to the beleaguered animal that shares my
    home…and what the fuck is this I’m listening to? Honest to God, explain to me
    if you can why I am sitting here like this, trying to read about the Donner
    party and poor Lewis Keseberg, who was driven by madness and the most desperate
    of circumstances to eat a woman named Mrs. Murphy. "The flesh of starved
    beings contains little nutriment," the cannibal Keseberg assures me.
    "It is like feeding straw to horses. I cannot describe the unutterable
    repugnance with which I tasted the first mouthful of flesh. There is an
    instinct in our nature that revolts at the thought of touching, much less
    eating, a corpse….It has been told that I boasted of my shame –said that I
    enjoyed this horrid food, and that I remarked that human flesh was more
    palatable than California beef. This is a falsehood. It is a horrible,
    revolting falsehood. This food was never otherwise than loathsome, insipid, and
    disgusting." Explain to me why I would continue to read as this poor man
    was asked by his interrogator, Did you boil the flesh? And as he
    responded, "Yes! But to go into the details –to relate the minutiae– is
    too agonizing! I cannot do it! Imagination can supply these. The necessary
    mutilation of the bodies of those who had been my friends rendered the
    ghastliness of my situation more frightful."

    I mean, seriously, holy shit, every fucking night….What is this? Why am I
    sitting here listening to…George Crumb? Is that what the hell this is? Or Morton Feldman? And at some point –this for certain– listening to Lou
    Reed, the idiot prince of rock and roll, listening to that jackass Lou Reed,
    listening to this lunatic Lou Reed reduce Edgar Allan Poe to the most wrenching
    and painful sort of comedy. Are there even one thousand other misguided people
    on the planet who have paid to be thusly abused? Please assure me there are
    not, even as it gives me considerable anguish to know that there almost
    certainly are. But what in God’s name is wrong with me that I would pay
    good money for a CD on which Lou Reed makes a muddled mockery of "The
    Raven"?

    Look, honest to God, this is the fucking truth: No man
    should ever find himself sitting hunched on the
    floor with a pen paralyzed in his fingers listening to Lou Reed’s
    “The Raven” at two o’clock in the morning. No man should ever eat red licorice
    and corn chips for dinner –not at three a.m. Not ever. No man should ever sit
    at four a.m. raking the soiled carpet with his fingers and building
    bewildering piles of lint and scruff and dog dander and pubic hair and chips of
    indeterminate origin. No man should ever put these piles in an ashtray and burn them. No man should ever write such words as those that
    preceded the words ‘No man should ever write such words….’ No man should ever
    spend so many hours sitting in one dank apartment that the liquor of his own
    stench has become intoxicating and the crawling of the hours has reduced him to
    a savage who cannot remember his last truly conscious thought. No man should
    ever sit studying a diagram of the arteries of the brain as if it were a
    satellite photo of a country that no longer exists. No man should ever look up
    from his hunched stupor at five a.m. and find himself gazing into the clearly
    terrified face of an elderly paperboy framed in the window of his front door.

  • Myths, Legends, and Revolution

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Eurydice

    Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Ruhl. We’ve been writing up, and seeing,
    our fill of plays by this hotshot. Still, we’d be fools not to note the
    occasion of the regional premiere of Eurydice, the play that made Ruhl
    a certified superstar (thanks to last summer’s extended Off-Broadway
    run). This production marks Ten Thousand Things’ first tangle with the
    playwright, and their choice of this spirited, fairly modern take on
    the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (retold from the young woman’s
    perspective) should fit nicely with the company’s visually spare yet
    emotionally direct aesthetic—something it more often applies to
    Shakespeare and the ancient Greek playwrights. Among a strong, all-star
    cast, the key players include Sonja Parks, a local actress who performs
    with remarkable force in the title role, and the stately and
    heavens-to-Betsy-he’s-handsome Steve Hendrickson as Eurydice’s father. —Christy DeSmith

    Friday-Sunday at 8 p.m., Ten Thousand Things at Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis;

    612-203-9502; $20.


    You’re My Favorite Kind of Pretty

    Recent conversations with Jon Ferguson,
    that rising star of the local theater scene, revealed a topical theme:
    The man is headlong in love. Since he and his partner, performer Megan Odell of Live Action Set,
    recently welcomed a baby boy into the world, Ferguson—formerly an
    itinerant, couch-surfing bachelor—finds himself an unlikely inhabitant
    of a state of domestic bliss. His latest show, fittingly, explores the
    gradations of romantic relationships: from love at first sight to (with
    any luck) a committed coupling. A cast of fine, crush-worthy
    collaborators lent their own romantic histories to the project,
    including Jennifer Davis,
    whose vivid paintings Ferguson finds distinctly feminine and beautiful,
    and Sara Richardson, a stellar (and dismayingly under-used) performer
    who somehow manages to be both physically lovely and goofy as all
    get-out. —Christy DeSmith

    Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m., Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-340-1725; $18.

    FILM
    The Band’s Visit

    "Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many people remember this. It wasn’t that
    important." So begins The Band’s Visit, an understated little film from Israeli
    director Eran Kolirin. When no one is at the airport to meet the eponymous
    band, the musicians, dressed in baby blue police uniforms and lugging their
    instruments through the village streets, are forced to split up and crash at
    the homes of the bemused inhabitants. But like many unimportant moments in our
    lives, The Band’s Visit is really about those quiet minutes spent connecting
    with fellow human beings, sharing observations, memories, pain, suffering, and,
    of course, love-moments we remember forever. There is little to say about this
    beautiful picture other than that it succeeds marvelously at making us feel
    profoundly happy, a feat that eludes almost every movie out there. —Peter Schilling

    Opens Friday at Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th
    St., Edina; 651-649-4416.

    See Kate Leibfried’s review of The Band’s Visit, and Peter Schilling’s interview with director Eran Kolirin.


    4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

    Bruno Dumont’s "Romanian abortion movie" — 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days — documents a day in the life of two college roommates. Gabita is the
    underprepared pregnant one and Otilia is her friend who, it turns out,
    is willing to do almost anything to help her. The girls prepare for the
    illegal abortion like they would an exam – with a sort of dignified
    verve. They overcome some small setbacks only to be faced with some
    much bigger ones. The overcome those, then a short diversion and then
    the procedure and the clean up. Finally they are left to face the
    reality of what they just did. This is where we leave the characters
    and their struggle in the film’s beautiful final moment. In strictly
    real time we experience these events and the transformations that they
    cause, and this is where the power of the story rises above any
    particular cinematic aesthetic. —from a review by Christopher Hontos

    Opens Friday at Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th
    St., Edina; 651-649-4416.

    MUSIC
    Holy Rollers

    Do it for God, or do it for the vocals. The truth is, contemporary urban gospel is more about rhythm, groove, and vocals, than about Christianity; but you just can’t deny the spirit moving — whatever spirit that may be. It seems to me, we can all stand to let our spirits soar a little, especially at the end of one of the coldest, harshest, more depressing months of the year. Besides, we just don’t get enough gospel in the Twin Cities, so we best enjoy what we can. This evening, Robert Robinson leads more than 100 soulful voices in a celebration of "music and spirituality through the rich tradition of African American
    religious music." Don’t miss this Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir concert.

    Saturday at 7:30 p.m., The O’Shaughnessy, College of St. Catherine, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul; 651-690-6700; $20, children & seniors $15, students $10.

    And on Sunday, catch Atlas Sound, White Rainbow, and Valet at the Triple Rock Social Club.

    SPECIAL EVENT
    The African Diaspora in the Americas

    Tomorrow you have a rare opportunity to celebrate the African Diaspora with people from all over the Americas — and to learn about the decisive role people of African origin have played in the revolutionary process. The event begins at 1 p.m., with keynote speaker JesĂșs ‘Chucho’ GarcĂ­a — founder and leader of the Afro-Venezuelan Network — as he shares his knowledge of the impacts of globalization and militarism on Latin America. Then, join panel discussions (2:30 to 5:30 pm) with Rose Brewer (United States), Raudemar HernĂĄndez (Cuba), Nekima Levy-Pounds (United States), Ruben Joanem (HaitĂ­), Danyika Howell (United States), Jorge Veloz (Venezuela), Lauretta Dawolo (Liberia), Marino CĂłrdova (Colombia), Karla Smith (United States), and Lester Nurse (Puerto Rico). This fabulous intellectual stimulation will be followed by a dinner and artistic performances (5:30 – 9 p.m.) by MarĂ­a Isa (Puerto Rico), Eliezer Santos Freitas (Brazil), Judith PĂ©rez (Venezuela, Yrma Machado (Venezuela), and Karma (United States).

    Saturday from 1-9 p.m., Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, 1301 10th Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-730-0087; free.