The Rake Magazine

What's really goin' on this weekend in all this hot hot heat:

Well, for one, the Momentum Dance Series, as sponsored by the Southern Theater and Walker Art Center, will pick up much speed tonight when a troupe of dancers, performers, and clowns (but not in the Mooseburger sense) known as the Live Action Set (they're famous for their show Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban, which was a Fringe Festival hit a few years back) marries their work to the pretty music of Spaghetti Western String Co. Also showing with Momentum this weekend/tonight is a video/movement hybrid called Holiday House. (But I don't know as much about the performance troupe in this case--The BodyCartography Project.)

Then on Saturday, the Lit 6 Project is performing another radio show at the Bryant Lake Bowl--but not until the late hour of 10 p.m. Woe is me, how ever will I make it awake that long?!?! But it should be worth it since they're not doing another show till September!!

NOTE: There will be no Secret on Monday, as I'll be locked in a wireless-free zone from 6 a.m. on. (Fashion shoot, not prison!)

So, there's going to be this big, Cirque du Soleil-style spectacle of a show put on by all the aerialists-in-training at Circus Juventas, the St. Paul-based circus school for youth. Pazzanni, as the show's called (sounds mysterious, no?), opens this afternoon... But d'Oh! Word is this first show is sold out! And at just fifteen bucks a pop, you can be sure that trend to continue, despite the fact that these be kiddy aerialists. (But they are the best ones Circus Juventas has to offer, at that! Plus, the company has invited real-life master Venetian mask makers to help pull off a certain Venetian carnivale effect.) I mention this today just in case the thing goes gangbusters and the run sells out completely.

Lookit: Barnes and Noble Galleria is hosting a reading by Robert Sullivan, author of the aptly-named CROSS COUNTRY: Fifteen Years and Ninety Thousand Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant. (Check the NYTimes review.) It's worth noting that Sullivan is a contributing editor at Vogue... a magazine I can better tolerate now that I've read the "Age Issue." (You, too, can be "Vogue at any age," but first check the depressing essay about being sixty in the back of the book.)

In any case, the real reason I'm interested in Sullivan's travels is that, Man, have I got a hankering to go on a road trip! I'm tired of sitting in my office--which, yes, is actually just a cubicle and, despite how many cheery photos I tack up, it persists to be as gray as the skies were this past Monday night. I want away from my computer. I want to sweat it out in the car for so long. And I'd very much like to have along my high school friend Mary. After all these years, she and I still share a taste in music and we've even memorized many of the same lyrics. This is what makes an ideal road trip companion--someone to groove with! We'd probably pass the time belting out Joni Mitchell songs, trying like hell to hit those high notes. Coincidentally, this is the same friend who passed me a copy of On The Road in and about eleventh grade.

Sullivan's book contends that these road trips are something we Americans have in common with one another. Meet me there if you care later for a long, lingering drive up I-35 and then into Wisconsin on 70. We'll hit every bar stop along the way.

Tuesday isn't normally thought to be a good night for catching live theater, but if it's The Gatsby you're wanting, then it's the Gatsby you're getting (and besides, there's really not much else going on tonight, so you might as well give yourselves the excuse to enjoy the new building you helped pay for). And I'd venture to guess that this night of the week offers your best chance to score the cheap rush tickets. Also, the acclaimed I Am My Own Wife show, at the Jungle, has just extended its Tuesday-through-Sunday evening run through August 6--which means it'll intersect with the Fringe, soon to open on August 3. I thought that was a no-no for the small- to mid-sized theater types, but maybe not if you've got a hit on your hands.

Uff. Going out on school nights... Last night's Golden Smog show made it especially difficult to get out of bed this morning. Was anyone else there? Want to send in your impromptu reviews? Am I the only one who thinks it wasn't worth packing in with all those other sweaty, stinky bodies, with the occasional asshole hollering "Where's Jeff?" I won't even get into the fact that the guys quite obviously hadn't rehearsed. By the time I got home, well past midnight, my mid thigh-length cotton dress was drenched and hanging down past my knees. And to make matters worse, I had been stupid enough to wear steel-toed cowboy boots (a decision based upon the experiences of all those peeps stepping on my toes at various other crammed concerts).

Whether or not you were at last night's show, there's another opportunity to live out what's left of your rock-n-roll lifestyles tonight, when Beth Orton plays the same First Avenue main room. Now, I've seen her play live twice before. Both shows appeared/sounded boppy and, at the very least, rehearsed. This show's gonna be hot!