The Rake Magazine

Month: May 2005

  • A Long Time Ago, Somewhere Else In The World

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    After a time the beggars just sort of receded and became a peripheral blur in my daily routine, the traffic I had to navigate each day on my way to work. There were almost no cars in my part of town. A number of people had beat-up motor scooters or bicycles, but the narrow maze of dusty streets and terraces broken up by steep steps was largely impassable by automobile.

    I don’t know how long it took me to get used to the beggars, or at least to learn to not really see them. Not long, to be appallingly honest. Even as on some level, of course, you never got entirely used to the daily swarm of children, old women, and various categories of broken men. But if you let their presence bother you as much as it should have bothered you, you wouldn’t have survived long in that place.

    Whenever a group of foreign workers would get together we’d inevitably find ourselves talking about the beggars in ways that were shamefully abstract, as if they were pests –mosquitos, perhaps, or pigeons. Some nuisance you needed a strategy to cope with. This sort of strategic distance was necessary, I suppose, for practical, day-to-day survival in that country. Your compassion and mercy needed to be generalized and concentrated on the big picture, which was something that never really seemed to come into clear focus; if anything, in fact, it seemed to be continually receding to the horizon and growing smaller and more hopelessly fuzzed all the time. Still, we all agreed that it did us –or them– no good to give the beggars money or buy their useless trinkets.

    I still remember one particular boy I would encounter every day, folded up like a large cricket on a dirty mat on the sidewalk, his emaciated legs bent behind him at impossible angles. “See me,” he would call out in a croaking, damaged tenor. “Look at me.”

    I recall giving him what amounted to perhaps fifty cents one morning, and I was upbraided by one of my supervisors –a young Frenchwoman– all the way to the office.

    It’s strange, I haven’t found myself thinking about those people for years now, and for quite a long time, I believe, I had succeeded in not thinking of them as people at all.

  • Uncle Jumbo's Playground

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    –Illustration by James Dankert

    Fridays aren’t gonna work for me. I’m not a writer, dammit. I can’t be expected to drag my ass home from the day job (and I do mean drag my ass; some days it feels like I’m hauling a Volkswagon Beetle behind me), watch a baseball game, and then sit down and grind out some nonsense simply because Zellar feels like taking the day off and making merry.

    Sometimes I feel like making merry myself, even if I do have a substantially different definition of what that phrase means than the average person. Last night, for instance: I didn’t feel up to venturing out to the Dome, so I hunkered down at home with a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Best (truly the best beer-bang for your buck when you’re pinching pennies) and a bag of Cheetos, which I enjoy because they stain the shit out of my face, hands, and clothes and when I finish a bag I look like I’ve actually been doing hard labor in some kind of mine. I also ate some pork and beans (mixed with Ken Davis barbecue sauce) cold and right out of the can. I like to imagine that I might be one of the last people in America –other than, perhaps, a few rare old-school hobos, if in fact there remain any such characters in existence– who still eats pork and beans out of the can.

    What, some people occasionally wonder, does any of this have to do with baseball? And my answer is: everything. The game is all about ritual and routine, and I have as many –if different– rituals as a fan as I ever did as a player. Being a baseball fan should not be a passive activity, and it’s not an appropriate activity for the self-conscious. Athletes always talk about being in “the zone,” and even as a spectator the game is only truly excruciating or enjoyable to me if I can manage to find my way into a zone of oblivion all my own. Maybe that’s why I prefer sitting at home and watching on television to putting up with the aggravations and distractions of a crowd at the ballpark. When I actually go to a game, someone or something is always intruding on my oblivion, and these intrusions are often incredibly hostile. I also don’t wish to have my responses and behavior choreographed by anything other than what happens on the field.

    Some people –many people– can’t stand to have their ballpark “experience” ruined by the behavior of a genuine fan, but that’s not my problem. When people object to my behavior at a game –and this happens all the time– it’s inevitably out of concern for the kids around me. One of the most pathetic fallacies in the world is that baseball is all about the kids. That’s nonsense. Unless a kid knows how to keep score, define the infield fly rule, and pay attention, parents or guardians have no business bringing them to a baseball game. Anybody who’s had to sit around a gaggle of squirming brats at the Dome recognizes that most kids would rather be somewhere else. Most of the time they’d rather be standing in line at the concession stands or running up the aisle to the bathroom.

    I’ve been booed mercilessly on a number of occasions for wrestling a foul ball away from some kid (or pack of feral kids), and when this has happened I can tell you in all honesty that I’ve never felt anything but exultant. I’ve caught maybe a dozen balls over the years, and, truth be told, they don’t mean anything to me at this point, but I’ll still wade into the throng out of principle. I can see all sorts of lessons in this for the kids: Life’s not fair. Respect your elders. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and little dogs should stay the hell out of the way of the big dogs. The sturdier animal gets the foul ball. Shut your mouth and watch the game or go to Camp Snoopy where you belong. Don’t mess with Jumbo.

    I can’t find much to bitch about regarding last night’s game. I love watching Carlos Silva pitch, and his performance last night was a thing of beauty. It’s easy to forget that this is a big guy who’s supposedly pitching with a messed-up knee.

    I still don’t much like the offense of this team, and worry about the strength of the bench over the long haul. If you’re one of these people who seriously believes that Nick Punto or Juan Castro are the answers to any question worth asking, the odds aren’t very good that we’re ever going to be able to have a civilized discourse.

    Because Silva was so great last night we can try to forget about the fact that the Twins stranded eleven runners, and Torii Hunter (.237 BA, .314 OBP, .396 SLG) grounded into two double plays with the bases loaded, and is now 0-8 with the bags packed for the season. This is a guy who right now is a serious candidate for the most overrated player in all of baseball.

    The futility of the entire team with the bases loaded (9-51 for a .176 BA) is ridiculous, and might be either a pure fluke or a sign that the Twins just aren’t a very disciplined team. Right now I’d say it’s probably a little bit of both.

  • I Suppose It's Time I Started Looking Around For A New Barber

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    It’s probably something of a red flag when your barber has a Superman logo tattooed on his forearm. And this is probably not the sort of monologue you want to hear from some guy while he’s cutting your hair:

    I’m not shitting you, I’m at the end of my fucking rope here. I know damn well that people look at me when I keep shaking my head like crazy, but it’s like I’m trying to erase something from my brain, you know? Like my brain is a fucking Etch-A-Sketch. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe some of the bullshit I’ve been through. My ex-wife has put me through the wringer, I shit you not. You’d think I was made of money. Hello? Did I happen to mention when I married you that I was a fucking barber? I’m pretty sure I did.

    I had a guy in here earlier, and when I told him that I was at the end of my fucking rope, he says, “Well, from the looks of things, I don’t suppose you’re lying.” So, okay, it’s that obvious, okay? I’m not a guy who can keep shit bottled up inside. Like I always told the old lady, “What you see is what you get. I’m not hiding anything.”

    I’m serious, though, everywhere I turn it seems like there’s a brick wall waiting for me, and the punks in my neighborhood have spray-painted the word “Fuck” in big red letters right across that brick wall. It’s like every day I wake up from one nightmare and slip right into another. The same shitty food, day after day. The same fucking undercover deadbeats shuffling by my house, the same bogus utility truck parked at the curb out front, the guy behind the wheel pretending to read a newspaper.

    You think I don’t know what’s going on? Do these people really think I’m that fucking stupid? I ask my next-door neighbor if he’s ever seen anybody suspicious-looking lurking around in my backyard when I’m not around, and he gets all nervous and says he hasn’t seen a thing. Then, a couple nights later, I notice a small red light in the dark window of his bedroom, clearly the battery lights of a video camera that’s pointed right at me.

    I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m this close —this fucking close [gripping a fistful of my hair with one hand, he shoves his scissors in front of my eyes and executes one quick, aggressive snip]– to snapping.

  • We Wouldn't Want to Belong to a Club That Would Have Us As A Member

    We’ve mentioned before the many, many awards that are minted each year for every little print publication under the sun. Some forms of industrial recognition are more credible than others, of course, but mostly they are an exercise in narcissism. We’re not sure anyone outside the industry cares that much, given that any publication that has been around for more than ten years has, at some point, with or without its own knowledge or participation, become a bonafide “award-winning” publication.

    Last week, the City and Regional Magazine Awards were announced, and in our view this is a middling to negligable honor. Usually, it’s a good sign when a third party conducts the judging process, and the CRMAs are peddled along by the University of Missouri School of Journalism, using a full-to-bursting masthead of credible magazine professionals.

    The problem with the CRMAs, though, is that the City and Regional Magazine Association itself limits who can enter the competition. As a point of policy, anyone can enter. As a point of practice, the people at the offices of the CRMA get to decide who is allowed into the competition, and they are happy to reject the applications of anyone they might feel threatened by.

    We’re strictly observers of it all, not participants, but we find it interesting that bloom is off the rose when it comes to perennial favorite Texas Monthly. Anecdotally, everyone agrees that it’s one of the best magazines in the nation (we think so too), but TM has been getting shut out in the CRMAs and the ASMEs in the past two or three years. (Well, bronze and silver awards are not exactly getting shut-out. But a magazine that regularly receives national notice against Big Leaguers like The New Yorker and The Atlantic should easily dominate the somewhat silly CRMAs. It’s a little like having a Pulitzer winner come in second at the local library’s “what I did for my summer vacation” competition.) Probably the judges are eager to give others a chance, and wish to let TM lie fallow for a few years. Be that as it may, we think it’s about time Chicago magazine got some recognition, even at Texas Monthly’s cost.

  • Asses of Evil

    There’s another article in today’s Miami Herald about Luis Posada Carriles. (Search their archives for a long list of more stories on this jerk.) Here’s the basic deal: Posada blew up a Cuban airliner that was on its way to Venezuela. He blew up some hotels in Havana. He tortured leftist prisoners in Venezuela.

    Even putting aside the torture thing, which is wholeheartedly endorsed by the Bush administration, the airplane and hotel bombings kind of make him a terrorist, don’t they? Of course, there is the annoying mitigating circumstance that Posada was working for (gasp) the CIA at the time of the airplane bombing, but U.S. law clearly prohibits offering asylum to terrorists.

    But, there’s also the law of South Florida, particularly Miami, which is, for all practical purposes, the Batista government of Cuba in exile. So, if Jeb-boy is gonna carry Florida in 2008, brother W probably ain’t gonna send a Cuban “freedom fighter” to Castro’s buddies in Venezuela to be tried.

    Gee, even Libya turned over the Lockerbie bombers. (Of course, in Gaddifi’s defense, he didn’t have to worry about elections.) But, if Libya was once a charter member of the Axis of Evil club, what does that make us?

  • Kristina Larsson

    Kristina Larsson always wanted to dance, but she was turned off by the phony smiles she saw fixed on the faces of most performers. “When I saw flamenco, I thought, ‘Wow! They’re not smiling!’” she says. It was that subtle epiphany that helped this Minnesotan fall in love with a dance associated with the sultry climes of Southern Spain. It happened on her thirty-eighth birthday: She had been wandering around Paris for six months, a painter/waitress on her first visit overseas, and three weeks before her return home, she decided to take a flamenco class. “That was the end of life as I formerly knew it.” Now Larsson’s own company and dance school, Anda Flamenco, is part of a surprisingly robust local flamenco scene. “It’s the climate,” says Larsson. “We’re attracted to opposites.” Kristina de Sacramento, as she’s known onstage at nightspots like Babalu and Nochee, travels to Spain every year to study dance. What if she should become stranded on a desert island en route? Here’s what she’d want to have on hand:


    1. I’d bring my cat. Cats fascinate me. Time stops, and I feel like a kid when I watch them. They are the most amazing physical creatures. When I’m teaching flamenco to non-dancers, I teach them to walk like a panther. That creeping weightlessness, that impending doom to the prey–that’s very much an idee of flamenco. You stalk the audience a lot.



    2. My dancing shoes and a board to dance on. I’d need a board because the shoes wouldn’t make sound on the sand, and that sound is essential to the dance. Flamenco shoes are like an instrument. The only good ones are made in Spain. They have steel arches. The heels and the points of the shoe have tiny nails in them, to give support and make sound. They are like castanets. Every maker’s shoes sound different. I have maybe twenty pairs.



    3. I’d need a singer to accompany my dancing. In the Twin Cities we have a great cantaora (a native flamenco singer), Mar”a Elena Òla Cordobesa,Ó which is why I’m still here. It’s a great honor to be able to work with her.



    4. A homing pigeon, so I can stay in communication with friends and family. That undulation of love and ideas is very sustaining for me. I can write the messages with ink and paper I make from things on the island.



    5. Some beautiful human-made thing to inspire me to remember hopes and dreams and the ability of the spirit to soar above the mundane. Maybe a stained-glass window from some cathedral. Didn’t Matisse make paper cutouts at the end of his life that were made into windows? He, for me, represented both the joy and delightful transcendence of life.



    For more on the Anda Flamenco Company and School, go to www.andaflamenco.com.

  • Sayulita, Mexico

    Paulette writes:

    Rake, Rake — whose got my Rake.

    Well, I have two men on vacation in Sayulita Mexico, vying for a Rake
    read. They had to take turns. Here are pix of both sitting on a palapa
    at the top of “gringo hill” — there’s no specific evidence of place,
    but you can see the Pacific in the background — which is far, far down
    the hill.

    Frankly — outside of the barking roosters and crowing dogs
    — pure paradise. Glad to have had you with us!

    The cute young guy is
    Steve Lauterbach presently of Salt Lake City, Utah. The cute gray beard
    is George Warren of Lino Lakes, MN (my hubby).

    Sayulita is a community
    about 30-40 miles north of Puerto Vallarta and many many worlds apart.
    Unfortunately, it is a boom-town in the making — development is
    everywhere and what might have been reasonable real estate just three
    years ago is now far beyond the reach of everyone except the
    Californians — who are convinced they have a new Carmel in the making.
    And — unfortunately — they are probably right. Oh well — there’s
    lots of coast in Mexico before Paradise is Lost.

    Send along your Rakish travel shots, if we publish yours in the
    magazine, we’ll send you a non-thermal, non-extreme Rake T-shirt and a
    $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E.,
    Minneapolis).

    If we publish yours on our website, then we’ll send you nothing, but
    you will be considered Rakish and that alone is well worth it.

    Keep the submissions coming!

    Paulette Warren

  • Nicaraguan Border

    Mark writes:

    I had the opportunity to catch up on the latest edition of the Rake
    while waiting in line to cross into Nicaragua from Costa Rica on
    vacation… and there was plenty of time to catch up. There were a
    total of three stops crossing the border where we had to pay both
    coming and going, but the best part was the fumigation tunnel – kind of
    like a car wash in the US, but instead of water they apply some unknown
    chemicals.

    Send along your Rakish travel shots, if we publish yours in the
    magazine, we’ll send you a non-thermal, non-extreme Rake T-shirt and a
    $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E., Minneapolis).

    If we publish yours on our website, then we’ll send you nothing, but
    you will be considered Rakish and that alone is well worth it.

    Keep the submissions coming!

    Mark Themig

  • Chateau Golan Winery, Israel

    Stefan writes:

    Sharon, Liam and I just returned from two weeks in Israel.

    We carried a copy of the Rake with us to the Golan Heights and gave into the pull of pop culture and took a few shots with the Rake!
    The shot of us is in front of the Chateau Golan Winery at a Moshav just
    a few clicks from the Syrian border.

    Send along your Rakish travel shots, if we publish yours in the
    magazine, we’ll send you a non-thermal, non-extreme Rake T-shirt and a
    $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E.,
    Minneapolis).

    If we publish yours on our website, then we’ll send you
    nothing, but you will be considered Rakish and that alone is well worth
    it.

    Keep the submissions coming!

    Stefan Plambeck

  • Seattle, Washington

    John writes:

    The spaceships have landed and I am going to try and seduce them with a Rake Magazine. Really though, just one week in Seattle and one week back in the T.C. I bring a Rake
    Mag with me whenever I fly. It’s great reading material in the
    air/airport. Plus, when I get to my destination I’ll pass it on to
    someone from somewhere else to read! P.S. Yes, it was raining…and
    there should be a “Rake Magazine” for Seattle.

    Send along your Rakish travel shots, if we publish yours in the magazine, we’ll send you a non-thermal, non-extreme Rake T-shirt and a $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E., Minneapolis).

    If we publish yours on our website, then we’ll send you nothing,
    but you will be considered Rakish and that alone is well worth it.

    Keep the submissions coming!

    John Schoeben