The Morning After . . .

What happens if the Minnesota Orchestra and management never agree?

Date: June 1, 2042

MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA MUSICIANS CELEBRATE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF  LOCKOUT!

The six surviving musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra plan to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their historic lockout with a wine-and-cheese party at cellist Tony Ross’s house. Despite the seemingly intractable nature of the contract dispute between the musicians and management, hopes are high that the 30-year mark in the negotiations will provide…

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Review: The Primrose Path @ The Guthrie is worth walking down

 

Before discussing the Guthrie’s new play, The Primrose Path, I must admit up front that I have a strong Turgenev bias. In my college Russian Literature class, we slogged through Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, enduring their endless existential agonies as instructed. But it wasn’t until we read Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons that I stopped…

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Don’t be Fooled, More Real: Art in the Age of Truthiness is brilliant

Some years ago, in a report that may or may not be credible, it was asserted that young people supposedly get more of their news now from fake news shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report than they do from real news shows or newspapers—which the kiddies don’t watch or read, in…

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New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s visit; and Andy Warhol is in town . . . again.

I had the honor Thursday night (and again Friday morning) of meeting and introducing the legendary New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast to the crowd gathered for the Hennepin County Library Association’s Pen Pals Lecture Series at Hopkins Center for the Arts.

A short, thin, lovely woman with big glasses and the rapid-fire wit of a lifelong New Yorker (though her husband is from Golden Valley),…

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Minnesota and the Civil War: Yes, We Were There

I will be the first to admit that when it comes to the history of the Civil War, the role Minnesotans might have played does not leap immediately to mind. No battles were fought here, after all, hardly any black people lived here in the mid-1800s, and to even participate in the war, one…

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Will your brain explode if you see The Book of Mormon?

Permit me to talk seriously for a moment about The Book of Mormon, the sacrilegious song-fest popping eyeballs and frying neurons this week at The Orpheum Theatre. Written by the creators of Comedy Central’s naughty-nice cartoon, South Park, The Book of Mormon is the devil spawn of America’s dedication to the twin freedoms of…

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Frozen Docs Series: ‘The House I Live In’

These days, documentary filmmakers are shouldering much of the burden and bother of investigative journalism that newspapers, magazines, and the rest of the media-massage complex has largely abandoned. But to see them, one has to make an extra effort, and, for a couple of hours at least, choose the nutritious vegetables of education over the indulgent delights of entertainment—though the best in the genre do…

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Why Nicholas David Didn’t Win The Voice (and that’s okay)

 

Drat. I was right (below) about Nicholas David’s chances on The Voice, but the fact that he came in third place behind Terry McDermott exposed some of the show’s bogusness when it comes to voting. Frankly, it’s amazing he got as far as he did, given the bias these kinds of shows have…

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Here’s the ONLY WAY Nicholas David can win The Voice finale tonight.

As almost everyone in the Twin Cities knows by now, our newest hometown hero, Nicholas David—aka Nicholas “The Feelin” Mrozinski (as featured in the June 2009 issue of Mpls/St.Paul magazine)—is singing/fighting for his television life Monday night. But if we want him to win, there are a few peculiarities about the voting system employed by…

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