The Rake Magazine

Tag: edina

  • Roadkill Bikinis

    Above: I found a roadkill fashion site. Lovely.

    My post on the abuse of automotive icons at church camps has turned up the most amazing things.

    I was informed (by a source who will remain annoymous) that church camps have the strangest of hazing rites (and here you think writing about cars leads to nothing more than a surge of testosterone).

    Above: Boots, not a bikini, but you get the idea. The fur is dyed. Killer.

    For example, one unamed former camper/counselor informed me that at a camp deep in the woods of some unamed forest (let’s say it’s out East to protect the innocent and avoid the wrath of PETA) that the very apogee of leadership at this said camp invovled winning the "Yuck, Yuck, Up Chuck" award for most disgusting costume.

    Apparently this invovled making bikinis from any manner of dipsoable hygeine products and, for a pure sartorial flouish, the skins of freshly killed animals (I don not believe this invovled sacrifice).

    How funny is that?

    While a small coeterie of depraved artists in the world’s fashion capitals conjure up the most revolting ideas (child exploitation, sex with statues, heroin for lunch) a few kids at church camp have out-done them.

    Under the guise of God.

    Old Testament style.

  • God and Man in Edina.

    ABOVE: This is how I prefer to see a Land Rover. Don’t believe that stuff about their ladder frames. Even the bodies break.

    NOTE: I have been receiving personal e-mails related to my recent Edina Mom post. What I find most enlightening about this gentleman’s well-crafted commentary is that God in Edina, it appears, remains in the automotive details. 

    "As both a proud Edina resident and Land Rover owner I am fuming – FUMING – at your recent blog entry. In fact, I’m cancelling my subscription to The Rake today.

    How dare you besmirch my fine city, and my fine vehicle of choice?

    And let me just be bold and speak for Signe (herself an Edina native) and ask yet another question: what better language for an immersion school than French?

    Hey, someday – someday – if Edina keeps educating its children, and if France keeps supporting wars in Africa to bolster former French colonies and wreak genocide on former British colonies in an attempt to keep more French-speakers alive, I have no doubt that more than 50,000 people worldwide will still be speaking French.

    And everyone in Edina will be able to tip his or her beret proudly and say that we were a part of making that happen.

    And, good sir, what better vehicle for an Edina church to model its camps after?

    In many ways, Land Rover is just like many Edina residents – expensive, beautiful to look at, and amazing (on the rare occasions) when they are functional.

    And when they break down? Well, who doesn’t need something else to complain about?

    Look, if you drove a Toyota*, you’d never get to sit in the posh Land Rover service waiting area on beautiful but uncomfortable square leather couches while talking on your Bluetooth headset connected to your Blackberry while watching Fox News on the hi-def flatscreen, drinking Caribou and eating fresh pastries, while looking at (but never make conversation with) your fellow Edina residents, who are also there doing the exact same thing."

    *ed: Doesn’t Toyota manufacture the Prius?


  • Edina Mom. Dead or Alive.

    Last year, I posted a movie on YouTube. It was a candid short film of a Mom sending her kid off to "camp" at a church in Edina. The Mom was wearing a leather Ferrari jacket while burdening her two cherubic children with care packages the size of a Marshall Plan drop. I found the whole vignette ironic, particularly since her kiddies were only going to be gone for three days.

    Today I found myself in the same church lobby, reluctantly sending my own kids off to the same "camp." (I was outvoted, again.)

    There was no Mom to be seen this time. In fact, I counted only two Yukon Denalis (with smallish blondish moms at the wheel, with the air conditioning on and phones at their ears) in the parking lot.

    So you could say that this year a car blogger has little right to comment cynically on a well-heeled woman wearing a jacket that advertises a car she has probably never driven nor could possibly understand.

    If she is still alive. Metaphorically speaking.

    Judging by the sheer lack of uselss Detroit iron in the parking lot this year and far smaller care packages (unless you go to YMCA camps–the only true camps in existence), it may finally be time to bury my unbewitting feminine icon of excess. I am willing to believe that the Edina she symbolizes may well be dead.

    Yet, as a car blogger, I am still troubled.

    Ths "camp," still does its best to "theme" its camp seasons. If your children have played youth sportts in a white suburb you know this means wearables themed in all manners of bad taste. (Buy or die.)

    The camp’s theme this year consisted of logo and color palette appropriated directly from Land Rover. "Roving Far and Wide" it read.

    Edina and commericalism go hand in hand. In spite of my own cynicism, I like the place and live here myself. If it were not for Edina, my two young children would not be fluent in French.

    But Land Rover?

    A church camp in Edina should worship a stronger brand.

     

     

     

     

  • "Edina Mom" above Mammaries

    Look, I deeply understand that trenchant matters of importance are upon us. Hillary is imploding, the silver haired wren is the latest casualty of climate change (speaking as an amateur orthonologist, it matters), sticky sidewalks in downtown Minneapolis are about to be re-introduced due to the flaccid governance of a weak Mayor system in spite of the fervor of one Raymond Thomas.

    And yet.

    From my little corner of the online world, I keep getting comments from suburban daughters protesting what they consider a creepy commentary on an Edina female sending her kids off to "camp."

    While the page views are not about to unseat the Chocolate Rapper or Austin Hall’s hands any time soon, the personal attacks on me have crossed from online to the check-out line at Lunds. I was cornered by a soccer mom last night as I discussed cars with the check-out dude and started talking about the Road Rake. Apparently, her daugther and a friend have been dissing my exposure of a Ferrari-clad mom in the lobby of Colonial Church last summer.

    Note the derision in the daughter’s voice:

    "yah so what she wears a ferrari jacket…. OMG thats outrageous who
    cares like you took the time out of your day to make some video about
    some lady for edina… what i want to know is why are you looking at
    this womens chest reading her shirts when you are sending your kids off
    to camp who cares what shes wearing say goodbye to your kid and then go
    you think your kid is proud that you spend your time making jealous
    videos…"

    The Road Rake will not stoop to answer a coddled cake-eater at YouTube.

    On the other hand, I would like to point out to my blog readers that the chest footage has nothing to do with my observation that a woman, wearing a Ferarri jacket, who sends her kids off to a three-day "camp" with care packages the size of a Marshall Plan drop probably could not tell a real car from real kid.

    George Marshall (pictured) could.