The Rake Magazine

It started like this:

My 13-year-old daughter walked into a room where I was reading and my husband was opening a bottle of wine (which she would tell you is what we're always doing, except when we're working or yelling at her) and said, "You remember when I went to Karl and Julia's when I was in third grade and their nanny let us slide down that huge dirt hill all afternoon and you got really mad because it was so dirty and dangerous?"

"Yes," I said, without raising my head.

"And you remember how you said she was stupid because we could have gotten trapped under the falling dirt and suffocated?"

"Yes." This time I looked up at my daughter who is powerful and beautiful and full of metal: braces and piercings and rings.

"She was from Iceland, right? The nanny?"

"Yes." I was waiting for the point, which is almost always your best bet with a teenager. Assuming can be a minefield.

"So, I don't get it. What's the deal with that?" She was looking perturbed, squinching up her nose.

"What?" I asked.

"Hot stupid foreign nannies. That's what all men want: a hot, stupid, foreign nanny. Why is that?"

I turned to my husband — poor guy — who was coming with the wine. "That's what you want?" I said.

"What?" He hadn't been listening. He'd probably been pondering string theory or thinking about our taxes. Some ridiculous thing like that.

"A hot stupid foreign nanny. All men want them. You're a man. So by the transitive property. . . ." (He's a mathematician, so I'll often throw in some irrelevant proof and use it incorrectly, though he's usually kind enough not to point this out.)

"Women, too, Mom," my daughter broke in. "Now be fair. Older women just want hot, stupid, Brazilian pool boys."

"But we don't even have a pool," I said.

"What was the question?" my husband asked, putting on his glasses as if this might help.

"Never mind," the teenager said, rolling her eyes. "I'm going to bed."

Which is too bad, because she brought up an important point. What is the deal with hot, stupid, foreign nannies and the men who love them? Also, what's the deal with George Bush, whom I heard on the radio just the other day, talking about how we're not in a recession — it's a "slowdown" — when about a third of the people I know have lost their jobs, which feels pretty damn recessed to me?

About that recession (sorry, "slowdown"), why is it that some of the restaurants and bars and coffeehouses I visit are like tombs, echoing and about to shut down for lack of human traffic, while others are booming — same as always, it seems — filled to bursting by people waving money who can't wait to get in? It seems strange, but there are few places in the middle, only those on the verge of bankruptcy and those where a spontaneous late-planner still cannot get in.

What's the deal with Earl Grey Tea, which is full of overpowering, flowery bergamot, but ubiquitous? Why is the social service system hemorrhaging while we spend millions on a Middle Eastern war? How come we keep driving so much no matter how high the price of gas? And why aren't more people excited (and thankful) that the writer's union is back to work?

Most important, what possessed anyone to bottle the swill called Old Moon Zinfandel? Granted, it was inexpensive — I bought it myself, for $6 — but a lot of good wines are these days. There are decent $5 Chiantis and passable $7 Bordeaux. This Zin, on the other hand, is vile stuff.

It was just after my daughter departed that my husband handed me a glass. I took a sip and then another, because I couldn't believe anything called "wine" could possibly taste so bad. It was not just flat, but sinister, containing a dead, clayey flavor I imagined turned my tongue a grayish-brown.

So horrible was this wine, just those two swallows left me sickened for the rest of the night. I was up late, drinking lemon water, trying to get the stench out of my mouth and pondering the problem of Stupid Hot Foreign Nannies. The question, of course: What to tell the beautiful girl when she awakened. Because when you're 13 — and when you're 41, it seems — the world just makes no sense.

It struck me as inconsistent when I discovered this:

You can gamble away everything you have at Mystic Lake Casino. Your savings, your kids' college funds, the church collection you were supposed to deposit.

You can eat 10,000 calories in a single sitting at the Mystic Lake buffet for the nominal price of $9.95.

But you cannot drink wine, beer, or any other kind of alcohol on the premises.

Part of me admires and stands behind this policy: Alcohol has devastated the American Indian population — those, putatively, who own and run Mystic Lake — from the day it was introduced. They are a race of people whose bodies do not produce alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that breaks down alcohol so it can be metabolized by the liver. Lack of this substance, paradoxically, not only causes an extreme physical allergy to alcohol, it seems to trigger an unstoppable craving as well. Though I might argue that rich food and fiscal mismanagement have done a great deal of damage to the Indian community as well.

Why, you may be wondering, am I so interested in the policies at Mystic Lake? Well, I’m so glad you asked. It's a complicated story but if you'll indulge me for a few moments, I hope you'll find it's worth your time.

First, I should cop to the fact that I'm 100 percent against state-sanctioned gambling no matter what the proceeds are used to fund. I believe deeply that the Minnesota state lottery is nothing but a tax on the poor who will inevitably donate their money when a prize is at stake. Here's why.

It isn't that they're careless or stupid or unaware of the odds. It's that the amount at stake actually has far more value to someone who is making minimum wage than it does to, say, me. There's a slim chance that I will earn a million dollars: I could sell a book that's made into a movie that busts all the box office records and results in a an enormous payout. I know; it’s unlikely, but it could happen. For someone who is working two jobs, each part-time and without health insurance, at $7.50 an hour, paying for childcare, rent, and upkeep on a perpetually broken-down car, there is no chance. Zero. If they want to make it out of this endless cycle of poverty, buying a lottery ticket is the only way to go.

About Indian gaming, I’m fiercely ambivalent. It provides a viable form of entertainment for people who willingly drive miles and miles to seek it out. And casinos certainly have raised the standard of living for people once confined to impoverished reservations. Still, honestly, I find the whole business loathsome and dangerous and downright sad.

So it perplexes me that certain older people I know think Mystic Lake is a great place to pass their golden years, playing the slots and eating heaps of seafood and whipped cream cake. Their business, I've always told myself. What do I care if they spend their retirement income in such a ridiculous way?

And I didn’t, in fact, until they involved my son.

He turned 20 last week. He is no longer a child. But he is MY child, and he’s been through hell in the past two years. That he has autism is the least of his problems (in fact, quiet, shyness, and mathematical humor are among his most charming attributes). But beginning about a year and a half ago, he was put on atypical anti-psychotics by not one but three different psychiatrists. These drugs are the new panacea of modern medicine — also, coincidentally, the source of enormous kickbacks to doctors from the companies that make them. Ergo, they're being dispensed like aspirin to a legion of non-psychotic individuals, including those with eating disorders, behavior issues, and benign neurological differences like my son's.

Here's the problem. Atypical anti-psychotics block the brain's dopamine receptors. Dopamine regulates a number of things, including movement, mood, sleep, cognition, and pleasure. It is the last that seems to be most problematic when you start messing with dopamine (or when it is naturally depleted, as in Parkinson's Disease); without this hormone, the brain does not register the "reward" inherent in hedonistic activities such as eating, gambling, drinking, and having sex. So people who are dopamine-deficient engage in things that should make them experience pleasure. . . .yet they don't. Which causes them to repeat those activities over and over — eating, drinking, gambling, fucking — in an attempt to achieve their rightful high.

The result: My formerly sweet and guileless son came off a medication he never should have been prescribed in the first place shaky, moody, mean, sleep-disordered, slow to process, and a raging addict. To what? You name it. Pizza, Coca-Cola, cooking wine, card playing, shopping, and girls. In January, after weeks of trying to deal with this snarl of allopathic ills, my husband and I finally — reluctantly — consigned him to a treatment center where he could get the help we were unable to provide.

I raged, sulked, and grieved. For weeks, I couldn't eat, read, write, or sleep. Then, I noticed that though I was a mess, my son was actually getting better. We would visit and find him polite, clean, and neatly dressed. He'd be attending a group session, working a crossword puzzle, or sitting with a few other residents watching As Good As It Gets. He had begun to make good food choices and lose weight; he was talking about getting out and going back to school. The treatment actually seemed to be working. Until his birthday, that is.

I got the call on Wednesday of last week. His grandparents, my former in-laws, had arrived the day before and signed my son out. Then they'd taken him to Mystic Lake, where they paid his way into the buffet then bellied him up to the tables and helped him mound food onto his plate. After three of four trips back, plus seven or eight sodas, they trooped out to the slot machines where my 76-year-old former father-in-law taught my son how to use the poker slots, gave him a pile of cash, and told him to go ahead and gamble until it was gone.

Later, when they dropped him off at the treatment center, Grandma and Grandpa tucked a 7-pound cheesecake in with his birthday gifts, just for good measure.

By the time I saw my son next, on Wednesday afternoon, he was sick, dumb, and dazed. Haltingly, he told the whole story to the counselors who reported to me that they were thinking of discharging him. Clearly we were not serious about seeking treatment, they said, if his relatives were going to take him on casino junkets. What's more, it was illegal for a 20-year-old to gamble. Did I not understand that?

"You're right," I said. "I'm so sorry. Please don't kick him out. I promise, it will never happen again." Though short of killing an elderly couple — which, don't get me wrong, I would be very happy to do if I didn't have two other kids to raise — I cannot think of a way to insure this is true.

So about the alcohol. The fact is, I began to wonder: If his grandparents bought him a 14-course meal and an hour with the slots, did they perhaps treat him to a vodka gimlet, as well? That's when I pulled up the Mystic Lake site and discovered there is no alcohol allowed on the premises. Goddamn lucky for us.

I've already left a note telling staff at the treatment center never again to release my son to a quaint little gray-haired couple from Iowa. Now, I just have to make sure they didn't stop by Schiek's to treat him to a lap dance on the way back from the casino, and I think — maybe, finally — I'll have all the bases covered and be able to rest.

Every morning, I get up all bleary and I pour my coffee and I sit down with my laptop and I tell my little stories. Character, plot, narrative, theme. I think I have a handle on these things. Most days, I feel competent.

Then I read or see something like The Syringa Tree, which is playing at the Jungle Theater until March 9, and everything I know about how to construct a story seems hopelessly naive.

Here's the thing. I know beginning, middle, and end. I understand the journey, the epic, the Once Upon a Time. . . . and Happily Ever After motif. What I do not get is how playwright Pamela Gien took shreds of dialogue and monologue and memory and wove them all together into a sparkling web of a tale that spans 30 years and includes the politics of apartheid, the complicated allegiances of a liberal white South African family, and the shame that comes to those — both white and black — who feel responsible for the vicious acts of their kind.

This is a one-woman show in which one actor (Sarah Agnew at the Jungle) plays 22 different characters — ranging from a six-year-old named Elizabeth Grace to a Catholic priest to Zephyr, a 60-year-old Zulu gardener — using nothing but the pitch of her voice, accents, facial expressions, and body language. She turns ever so slightly to one side, straightens her spine, and suddenly becomes someone else. Never do you wonder whether she is the child or the mother, the white doctor of the black maid. Agnew's body is like liquid on the stage. She skips, weeps, cowers, and grieves. There is a world of people within this single small form.

Watch in particular for the scene that takes place in a car — which does not, of course, actually exist. There are three people in the invisible vehicle: Elizabeth, her mother, Eugenie, and a driver. And Agnew moves in a continuous circle playing them all, carrying on a conversation with herself, until you could swear there actually are three people on the stage.

No less is this alchemy present in the set. There is only a bare stage with a large swing hanging from the rafters, a backdrop cracked with sky-colored hues: pink, yellow, and blue for daytime; gold and green for dusk; shadows with slats of light. A man is beaten, a little girl watches in fear. It all happens before your eyes though of course, there is nothing there, really. Somehow, this amazing play makes you conjure the hat-sized blooming jacarandas and sly Rhodesian freedom fighters all on your own.

How is this done? I only wish I knew. I feel as if I need to get ahold of a copy of the play and shake it until the secret falls out.

Part of it must have to do with Joel Sass's brilliant direction. It is worth noting that Sarah Agnew — who is luminous in this performance (or these performances, as the case may be) — also played Margaret in the Guthrie's recent production of The Home Place. And though Star Tribune theater critic Graydon Royce singled her out as the "most satisfying" among a muddled cast, I, frankly, was hard pressed to see it. There, she faded. Here, in Syringa Tree, she is mesmerizing. But so too is the careful attention to movement, to her position on the stage, to the carefully choregraphed glances she casts to indicate action in another plane.

It is only partly coincidence that I followed this magnificent evening at the theater, a mere 90+ minutes that seemed to go by in half the time, with a South African pinotage.

In truth, I've always wanted to like South African wines. I like the idea of South African wines. But sadly, I've never tasted one that turned me on. Then, I found out there's a Minneapolis company called Etica distibuting only Fair Trade winemakers — those that ensure workers are paid a livable wage, pay producers a premium for their products, adhere to eco-friendly methods, and re-invest in the local communities where there wine is made — and one of their top offerings right now is the 2006 Goue Vallei Pinotage.

Pinotage is the principal grape in South African winemaking. A combination of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut, it has a distinctly dirty taste. I don't mean earthy, peaty, or rich with soil. I mean old ashtray with a hint of green banana peel.

But after becoming entranced by The Syringa Tree, I figured I was in as hospitable a mood as possible. So I opened the Goue Vallei and gave it a try. Perhaps it was due to Gien's work and the memory of Agnew on her swing, but I can safely say this is the best inexpensive Pinotage I recall. It is dirty, but not intensely so. There's a robust layer of fruit, cherry with a whiff of something tropical, and a rutting goat-ish finish that lingers for quite a while.

I find it strange that this wine has no more in common with a French Pinot Noir than it does, say, with an egg salad sandwich. It's not for refined sipping and it's probably best drunk with plenty of sinewy dark meat, such as elk or deer. But it is — like the play — an interesting and entirely different experience. Plus, it's probably the most humane and ecologically-responsible way to drink, right down to the bottle's synthetic cork.

If you want to try a glass, it's on the menu at Birchwood Cafe, The Sample Room, Via, and, of all places, Green Mill. For a complete list of local retailers carrying Etica wines, click here.

But here's my advice: First, you should call The Jungle to reserve your tickets to Syringa Tree.

Here it is, practically the eve of the Oscars, and I've yet to see two of the five movies nominated for best picture. I didn't care for No Country; I liked but did not absolutely love Juno. So far, my money's on There Will Be Blood, which was not only a magnificent film but the richest evocation of loneliness and megalomania I've watched since Citizen Kane.

Saturday night, we decided to see Michael Clayton. My husband, myself, and about 200 other middle-aged, middle-income, mid-level professionals. John and I got to the theater in plenty of time but there was a line, literally, around the block. Round white faces and L.L. Bean-clad bodies for as far as the eye could see. Damn, it's humbling to be confronted with your own incredibly predictable, privileged, demographically determined life. . . .

By the time we'd stood waiting for ten minutes and hemmed and hawed and finally departed because we didn't want to be stuck inside some crowded auditorium with all those other lemmings, it was too late to catch any other show. So we dashed to Hollywood Video and picked up a film sure to make us different from all of THEM: A Cannes winner from last year called Ten Canoes.

Then we stopped at Hennepin-Lake Liquors for a bottle of wine.

Now let me remind you that Henn-Lake DOES NOT TAKE CREDIT CARDS. I do this, of course, because we didn't remember ourselves, and John and I ended up digging through pockets and purse to come up with the price of an Australian Pinot Noir from Lindemans Wine that was bottled — get this — in 2007.

This made the pinot roughly the same age as the orange juice in our refrigerator. And it cost only a tad more at $5.95. But the Lindemans came highly recommended by the girl behind the counter, who was at least 21 years and 2 months old. Also, luckily, we had just enough pennies and dimes between us to take it home — which we did, along with our DVD.

It turned out to be a very odd but charming little film. The first full-length feature ever made in native aboriginal language, Ten Canoes is more fable than drama. It begins with a voiceover narrator, then reverts to a tribe in which an elder is telling a story to his younger brother, then reverts a second time to an ancient camp in which men's instinctual jealousies cause a series of dire things.

This is what I call a "recessive" narrative — one that goes back in time then flashes back yet again, so like concentric ripples in a pond, you can never quite remember where you started. It is, in fact, a structure I advise my undergraduate writing students to avoid. It's nearly always confusing. (Last year's Sweetland suffered from the same problem.) I can think of only two films that used this paradigm well: Sophie's Choice, in which the adult Stingo recalls his young adult years in Brooklyn then yields to Sophie's memories of the war; and The Princess Bride, which broke all the rules anyway and still managed to do everything well.

Ten Canoes is not quite so successful. At least one of the stories — the "middle" one, if you're looking at them chronologically — eventually fizzles out and gets lost. But the cast is extraordinary, actors who do as much with facial expression as they do with words. And it was wonderful simply to be some place else for 90 minutes: In this case, the swampy northern tip of Australia camped by the side of a river with men (mostly) who think nothing of walking around with only a braided string tied around their waists and routinely have three wives at a time.

In the end, the central story — the one that takes place in ancient days — is tight and satisfying, its life lessons relevant even today. And it is comforting to me, somehow, to know that men take the same scatalogical glee in their own body emissions and sexual habits whether they're carrying cell phones or spears. (See the extended flatulence scene, which is oh, so effective, by the way, when done nude.)

And about that wine, you're wondering?

It was. . . .fine. Strawberry, cherry, and raspberry, like liquid candy with a tiny bit of oak (a very tiny bit) and a hefty kick (13.5% alcohol). This is the Tom Collins of wine — appealing, apparently, to those drinkers who are stranded in the decade or two between Juicy Juice and Chatauneuf-de-Pape. Even for we grown-ups, sitting curled up in a big chair and watching a magic realism tale about dignified warriors who giggle as they fart, it was pretty damn good. Especially for six dollars and change.

I used to think hating Diablo Cody was only a regional pasttime. This is, after all, an area lousy with writers who have not written Writers Guild of America award-winning screenplays or gotten incredibly rich and famous or appeared on David Letterman. And sometimes, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, I swear you can hear about 500 of them grumbling: I wrote for City Pages once years ago. . . .and I could have been some skanky sex worker if I were willing to stoop that low. . . .and every single one of those screenplays sitting on my closet shelf is about a million times better than Juno.

Of course no one says exactly this. They jeer at her nom de plume and make fun of the length of her skirts and talk about how Juno — a sweet, decent film in a year full of overblown, overdone losers — sucked anyway. If Cody wins an Oscar, I imagine the gnashing and retching will go on in our local writing community (and believe me, I use that phrase loosely) for years to come.

Now, however, I come to find that the irrational antipathy for Cody has spread. In an article in Slate, writer Dana Stevens describes how what I previously thought of as a Minnesota phenomenon exists from coast to coast. People all over the world, apparently, hate D.C. and her movie (which, by the way, has grossed over $100 million, so some people must like it. . . ). And despite a mostly even-handed exposition of the whole controversy, Stevens herself even gets in a few digs.

In a strangely similar turn of events, it seems Hillary Clinton hating is on an upswing as well. Now, the Bush-Cheney set has always hated Hillary. (Since the day she announced her candidacy, my father has called her "Billary" — which causes me to grind my teeth practically into dust each time we're seated next to one another at Sunday dinner.) But here's a new twist: now, just as with Cody, it is Clinton's putative fellow thinkers who are spewing the most bile.

In "Hate Springs Eternal," his column in the New York Times yesterday, political commentator Paul Krugman wrote, "I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody."

What's going on here? We've got two immensely talented women — and I'm not going to make this a gender thing, because I truly don't think it is — being reviled as sport. Why? Jesus, I don't know. Pure envy in the first case, it seems. Zealous and cult-like political behavior [and let me say, I think this has little to do with Obama himself] in the other.

Now, listen my children: You should know that hate — whatever its genesis — will curdle your blood and cause painful ingrown hairs. It leads to cancer and shingles and bad posture. And more important, it's just bad juju for the rest of us, making this world an uglier place in which to live. So stop it!

And why should you listen to me? Because, I'm going to lead by example. I, too, have allowed hatred to creep into my heart. But I've seen the light and banished the darkness from my soul. I. . . .are you ready for this?. . . .have returned to Trader Joe's.

Back in November, I wrote about their trademark wine, Three-Buck Chuck, in a post that began, "Have I mentioned how much I hate Trader Joe's?" Well shame on me! I have been guilty of doing the devil's work with my foul words. What's more, I've actually, sort of, in a sense changed my mind.

It all started one day last week when I got a craving for white cheddar popcorn. One of my guilty secrets — even back when my soul was sullied — was my love for the snacky popcorn products available only at Trader Joe's. So at 3 in the afternoon, I drove over to get a bag. And while I was there, I stopped into the wine shop and picked up an $8 2006 Bordeaux from Chateau Michel de Vert.

It had a nice label. And we're working on saving money, my husband and I, particularly where wine is concerned. What the hell, I thought. And I trotted home with my white cheddar popcorn, which I ate immediately, and wine, which I uncorked around six o'clock.

I was dismayed even as I poured. The wine had a thin purplish color I didn't quite like. And it tasted. . . awful. A combination of fireplace ash and cough syrup. I took a swallow, gave my husband one. Then we stuck the cork back in and opened a bottle of the Portuguese wine I was raving about last week that we now buy by the case.

I had planned to absorb the eight dollar loss and call it a lesson: Trader Joe's is vile (unless you need a popcorn fix). But then, I recalled something vaguely. I'd heard a rumor, once, that TJ would take back any product for any reason. All you had to do was show up and demand your money back.

I was skeptical even so. I called the manager to ask, Could I return a bottle of wine that wasn't corked or heat-damaged or in any other way defective, simply because it wasn't to my taste?

"Absolutely!" he said. "Just look for me."

And so I did. Yesterday afternoon, I grabbed that old, warm bottle, took it back without so much as a receipt, and the manager — no questions asked — handed me my money. So pleased was I, it seemed natural to pick up yet another ultra-cheap Bordeaux: Les Caves Joseph 2005, which sells for (you're sitting down, right?) $5.99.

Was it special? Er, no. But what do you expect for six bucks. It was a spot-on average table wine, sweet and decent (much like Juno!), with a cherry-ish flavor and a little bit of rough wood.

So. Heed this story. I have seen the light, given up my hatred, and cleansed my spirit with a profoundly mediocre French wine. If I could, I'd buy a thousand bottles, get all the writers and rabid Obama supporters I know, and put them all together in a room. I see a big, diverse Bachannalian event. An orgy of the liberal and literati. All cheaply lubricated, thanks to Trader Joe's.