The Rake: Features

Enter the World of Brian Andreas and the Story People

Cristina Cordova — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:03:29 -0500

Once upon a time there was a young girl who wandered in search of a very specific story. She looked in bookstores and couldn't find it. She walked through library stacks but never found it. Finally, she went to the storyteller himself. He was sitting in a park, waiting for her. He seemed eager to help. But when she asked, he said he had never heard such a story.

"But you wrote it!" said the girl. "It had a grandfather and a granddaughter who were fishing on a lake in a blue boat."

Oral Distractions

Cristina Cordova — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:07:17 -0500

"I'm probably more middle of the road than most people I went to film school with," says Dan Orozco, host of Butter City, the hottest talk show to cover filmmaking since Siskel and Ebert ruled the airwaves, "I like movies that I can eat a whole thing of popcorn and drink a whole can of soda to. I think Truffaut called those ‘oral distractions' because he hated movie theaters that sold that stuff."

"God talked to me today"

Cristina Cordova — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:10:01 -0500

The first time it happened, he was sitting in the kitchen behind me.

I was at the counter cutting vegetables for dinner when my older son said, "When God talked to me earlier today, before I went to school..."

That's how he spoke as a child. He was only 11, but his diction was formal, biblical almost, and he habitually attached clauses to make his points more precise. If he heard from God, it would be important to know not only that it was today and that it was early but also that it had occurred before school.

Minnesota Naughty

Cristina Cordova — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:31:45 -0500

The lights dimmed, and a hush fell over the Ritz Theater. Two hundred and fifty bodies leaned forward in anticipation, and two hundred and fifty sets of eyes stared straight ahead at the empty stage. The audience remained suspended in this moment as the silence caressed their ears and the darkness teased their imaginations. Then, in a sudden burst of sound, the band started playing and the tension was broken.

Fashioning a Movement

Lisa Pahl — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:06:30 -0600

To highlight our semi-annual selection of new fashion, we turned to a population that—let’s face it, unfair as it seems—looks delightful no matter what they’re wearing. Our models are four dance students at the University of Minnesota and their choreographer (who moonlights as The Rake’s stylist); we captured them during a rehearsal at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance on the Minneapolis campus.

All the News That Fits—and Then Some

Lisa Pahl — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:24:23 -0600

There’s an awful lot of talk about the news lately, but not, unfortunately, the sort of constructive conversation that promotes critical thinking and engages people with their neighborhoods, their country, or their world. No, what people are talking about is the media, or, more specifically, and more onerously, the business of media. The Star Tribune is losing readers, pages, and staff.

Planet Pickett

Lisa Pahl — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:04:52 -0600

A gauntlet of black-and-white portraits of jazz luminaries lines the walls of the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant on the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Nearly all of these musicians have appeared at the Dakota in one of its two incarnations. The trick with this sort of self-promotion-as-interior-decoration is in the execution.

Do You Really Believe?

Lisa Pahl — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:01:59 -0600

One morning last summer, leaving my apartment on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, I noticed there weren’t many people outside. It was a fine June day, but there wasn’t the usual line of cars in front of Starbucks. No commuters schlepping insulated mochas, no dog walkers, no window washers at Cafe Latté, and no one else waiting for the 7:23 bus to downtown Minneapolis.

Who Doesn’t Love Sam & Sylvia Kaplan?

Cristina Cordova — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:54:12 -0600

Years ago, comedian Bill Murray was talking with the press about great careers, longevity, and what really defines success. Murray had had several hits at the time, made good money, was considered for practically every big-budget comedy script in town, and by any Hollywood standard was the envy of his peers.

Over the Coals 2007

Cristina Cordova — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:34:33 -0600

BUSINESS

On the other hand, we recommend that you call Duluth “Paris.”

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Scientology: The Local Source

Ann Bauer — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:26:33 -0600

Until last week, everything I knew about Scientology came from Tom Cruise on Oprah, and from an experience I had last summer.
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Diabulimia: Delicious but Deadly

Cristina Cordova — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:59:29 -0600

Imagine you have a medical condition that causes you to lose weight. And miraculously, the more you eat, the more you lose. Pastry for breakfast, pasta with clam sauce for lunch, a five-course dinner with crusty bread and any dessert you like, plus snacks in between -- the sweeter the better. Follow this diet and you can drop five pounds by tomorrow morning, shrink a dress size for the weekend, show up at your high school reunion enviably trim.
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The Death and Life of American Imagination

cristina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:51:00 -0500

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Go{pher} Broke

cristina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:55:10 -0500

University of Minnesota Athletics Director Joel Maturi is a triple-A battery of a man. Walk into his office at the Bierman Athletic Building on the East Bank and he leaps out of his chair and shakes your hand as if you’re about to parachute out of an airplane together. Trim and fit at 62, Maturi is glib and empathetic.
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What do you do?

admin — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

We are children, and then we work. If we’re fortunate, at any rate, we’re allowed to experience our childhood as children, and able, when the time comes to make our way in the world, to find work. Meaningful work, if we’re truly fortunate.
The truth, though, is that the introductory icebreaker for youngsters—“How old are you?”—is too quickly replaced by “What do you do?”
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News Hole

admin — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500

photo by Raffy Abasolo
(Cover photo by Brian Hayes)
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Crazy

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it.

Here’s how it all starts: My first-born son has autism.
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The Voyage of the Heath Ledger

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

On June 17, 2006, we quietly paddled the Heath Ledger across the Canadian border. We hadn’t exactly planned to sneak into Canada. Joe and I were on a mission—to reach Hudson Bay by canoe, still hundreds of miles to the northeast—and as we approached the border we realized that interactions with government officials might endanger that mission. For one thing, we were unsure whether the guards would let Joe, with his extensive juvenile record, into the country.
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Destination: Tomorrow!

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Later this month, the World Future Society brings its annual conference, including a Minnesota Futures Day, to Minneapolis. To mark the occasion, Dregni sat down with the most outspoken member of the Society’s Minnesota chapter, Hank Lederer, who forecast possible advancements over the next century for the book, Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of Our Fantastic Future (see page 38).
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Twin Cities on Two Wheels

admin — Tue, 29 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The bicycle has long been a primary mode of transportation in countries around the world, but in the U.S., we’ve tended to view this vehicle as a child’s toy (one destined to gather dust in the garage once the child receives a driver’s license) or a specialized implement meant only for aerobic sport junkies. But all kinds of signs indicate that the humble two-wheeler is poised for something much bigger on our shores.
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Moving Water and Earth

admin — Tue, 29 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500
When Father Louis Hennepin first saw the great falls of the Mississippi in 1680, he was on furlough from a prolonged captivity at Mille Lacs Lake. The Flemish cleric and his Dakota escorts portaged downstream along the east bank on what is now Main Street in Minneapolis, then beheld the cataract he would later document to be forty or fifty feet high. This figure was exaggerated (though somewhat prescient), but empirical accuracy was never a missionary priority, and Hennepin ventured only to tally souls.
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Pimp My E-Ride

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500

John Herou isn’t your typical electric-car ideologue. The founder of e-ride Industries possesses a bright strain of idealism to be sure, but fundamentally he’s a practical man, an inventor and classic car buff, more entrepreneur than tree hugger. The cars he builds, called neighborhood electric vehicles because by law they can go only twenty-five miles per hour and drive on streets with commensurate speed limits, are distinctly Minnesotan.
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Cat Scratch Fever

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500

About a year ago, on an April afternoon, Al Wolter drove to his neighbor’s house in Sandstone to help with a controlled burn. The neighbor, Cynthia Gamble, a wild-animal trainer, was his best female friend and the two regularly shared cocktails and sang karaoke together on his home machine. “She had an earthy sense of humor,” he said, an affectionate way of indicating that Cyndi could tell a good dirty joke. Gamble seemed to be most comfortable with male friends and often phoned Wolter to let off steam about personal problems. Lately, the problems had been mounting.
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Marathon Man

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Beyond a long window that offered a panoramic view of the Minneapolis skyline, the end-of-the-workday exodus was already under way. Traffic was snarled on the streets stretching all the way downtown. Dave St. Peter had his back to the window, and he was looking and sounding like a man whose day was just getting started. St. Peter has a big, open, Midwestern face—it could be the face of a small-town high-school principal or insurance salesman—and he somehow manages to come across as both relaxed and impatient.
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Country Girl

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Over the last few months, I have met with Fozia Mussa several times to hear about her journey from sheltered teenager in a tiny Somali village to life as a working Minneapolis mother of five children (ranging from nine months to twelve years).
Out of respect for Somali custom, I could not interview Mussa alone, and certainly not in private. Instead, she and I would convene along with several of her Somali friends at restaurants close to their college in Bloomington.
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Learning to Speak

admin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600
It’s a bit foggy aboard the Queen Mary 2 on our second day out of New York. The sky merges seamlessly with the ocean, obliterating the horizon in mushy blue-grayness. But deep inside this massive vessel—the newest, largest, fastest, and most luxurious ocean liner in the world—and behind the doors of the Illuminations auditorium, the stage lights are so bright that I can’t see anyone beyond the second row. What I know (and sense acutely) is that there are 150 people in the room, and that their attention, in just a moment, will be trained on me.
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Murder by Numbers

admin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Viewed through the prism of memory, some years take on a character, a distinctive tone. In 2006, crime reclaimed its place on the front pages of newspapers across the United States, including the Star Tribune. And in this year of murder, Courtney Brown and Trevor Marsh were like twin poles on a violent globe. Brown died on a Saturday night in September, while walking with friends near the intersection of Lyndale Avenue North and Dowling Avenue. He had been playing basketball.
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The One-Woman Solution

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600

When the tinny tinkle of “Joy to the World, the Lord is Come” begins playing on the cell phone, everyone in range in the Star Tribune newsroom knows who’s getting a call. It is Katherine Kersten, the paper’s unapologetically religious and fiercely conservative metro columnist.
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When Harry Met Betty

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600

One of life’s great truths—one that we desperately seek to avoid with proverbs and catechisms and even magazine articles—is that beneath its surface lies complexity. Our beloved fictions of heroes and villains crumble with scrutiny, leaving only convolution, shifting meanings, and unstable realities. The same is true of things. Even the simplest object has its hidden history of longing, love, and despair. Take, for example, cake. Chiffon cake.
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Postcards from Saudi Arabia

admin — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600

While Sudan and Qatar might be tougher bets, most Americans could spin a globe and pinpoint Saudi Arabia’s deserts with relative ease. Even if your geography fails you, you’ve no doubt at least heard of Saudi and perhaps recall Peter O’Toole shouting across the desert sands in Lawrence of Arabia.
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