The Wake

The University of Minnesota women’s basketball team’s success relied on a highly-touted senior leader, a pillar-like presence in the paint and confident players riding an emotional tidal wave. But as the team progressed further into the season, adaptability also proved vital to its success. The Gophers were still adapting to a second-year head coach and learning how to deal with high expectations heading into this season. Now they have to deal with the pressure of being labeled the best basketball team on campus. Considering their track record, I won’t be the one to say this group of …

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You know you’re good when the University of Minnesota men’s tennis coach Dave Geatz wants you to play for his team after he watches you at a national tournament at age 14. You know you’re really good when you’re the first freshman in the state of Arkansas to win a state tournament at the high-school level. And when you beat a No. 1 seed and a No. 2 seed on your way to Big 10 singles tournament championship in 2003, everyone begins to notice how good you really are. This is the story of Chris Wettengel, …

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Comedian Denis Leary, who smokes like a chimney and guzzles longnecks, isn’t a ringing endorsement on the state of health in America, but had insightful commentary on exercise in one of his bits. “I’m not a workout guy, but I understood Nautilus. It made sense. There were arm machines and leg machines. But have you seen these people who are using the stair-master? Huh? Have we turned into gerbils ladies and gentlemen?”It isn’t the stair-master and it may still be on a stationary bike, but there’s certainly nothing stationary about it. Simply put, a spinning class would send Denis Leary …

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“The Dynasty Begins.” This was the inscription on a sign held by Thomas Vanek and Tyler Hirsch of the Gophers men’s hockey team, who attended the men’s hockey intramural championship game at Ridder Arena. Along with Vanek and Hirsch, nearly 30 spectators witnessed the youngest hockey intramural team ever to win a championship, intramural supervisor Steve Schreader said. The Sanford All-Stars, comprised of 10 freshmen and two sophomores, outlasted the Perenium Falcons for a 2-1 victory and the championship. The championship game proved to be more of a struggle for the All-Stars than they may have expected …

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Considering the majority of actors are female, it’s perplexing that so few women-written, women-performed plays actually make it to the stage. Now, in honor of women’s history month, locally-based Theatre Limina is putting on Parallel Lives. Written by comedians Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy, the play was originally part of the duo’s Kathy and Mo Show. Using the same skit style of comedy used in Saturday Night Live, the play boldly addresses issues surrounding being female in our society. Although the play encompasses multiple characters and multiple perspectives, only two actors make up the cast. Sarah Cantleberry, one of the …

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What if your worst memories could be erased, the moments when you felt the most pain, humiliation or guilt? Is your brain working now, filtering through all the bad moments you wish you could zap first? For me, that bad memory exists in a dimly-lit hallway, outside a locked door; the end of a five-year relationship. What is it for you: a fallout with a lover, friend, a death or a goodbye? But there’s a catch: along with that bad memory will go its good counterparts. The pain that person caused will be absent but so will the happiness that …

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Ahhh! There’s nothing quite like that first cup of coffee to start the day. And with my beautiful, and insulated The Passion of the Christ™? coffee mug, I can remind myself as well as others around me the sacrifice that Jesus made for mankind…now if I could only figure out why people fiercely avoid me in the workplace? We’ve all heard about the merchandise tied with Mel Gibson’s film, and as absurd as the very notion – why not? The Passion is on track to well surpass the $300 million mark on its fifth weekend in the US. And, I …

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When Dave Grohl released Probot, I decided to put away my prejudice against him for his more well-known (not to mention overrated, lacking talent, etc) bands. Grohl has quite simply made an amazing metal album with the help of some of the genre’s most talented and under recognized voices. Featured here are Cronos (Venom), Max Cavalera (Sepultura), Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), Mike Dean (Corrosion of Conformity), Kurt Brecht (D.R.I.), Lee Dorian (Cathedral/Napalm Death), Wino (The Obsessed), Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost), Snake (Voivod), Eric Wagner (Trouble) and King Diamond (Mercyful Fate). Grohl is responsible for almost all of the instrumentation, although …

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The Walkmen leisurely claimed the 400 Bar stage as their own, clad in light sweaters and button down shirts. Surprisingly un-hipster, they resembled average twenty-something easterners while strapping on their guitars and letting out the first few organ notes of “What’s In it For Me,” the first track off of their spectacularly moody new LP, Bows & Arrows. Singer Hamilton Leithauser questioned with his trademark wail, “What’s in it for me/ I came here for a good time/ Now you’re telling me to leave.” Just then, the drums kicked in - and the show was forever changed. Drummer …

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In the world of jazz, The Bad Plus are like an airborne C-130 Gunship. Circling over their weak and unsuspecting prey - those cheap, doctor-jazz producing pukesmiths (see Kenny G. and Michael Bolton) - they unleash an ivory-strewn arsenal, obliterating all traces of their too-smooth targets. The band is a virtual shitty-music-killing-machine. Their latest, Give, swings this musical-mediocrity massacre into ravenous, army-of-the-dead mode, with zombie-like proficiency, The Bad Plus stop at nothing until every ear-ache-inducing, imitation jazz artist is d-e-s-t-r-o-y-e-d, pul-ver-ized, terminated, musically disemboweled in their wake. Whether in the Españacana-rumba-rythym of “Cheney Piñata” or the techno-bowlified, futura space-jazz of …

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“I was just out in L.A. and The Strokes were in town,” Ben Kweller tells me. “We hung out all night.”The twenty-three year old, retro-fried rocker sounds a lot like Buddy Holly. Soft-spoken with a southern rancher’s drawl, you’d think he was the underpaid star of some Hollywood B-list Western film – not a budding, Big Apple breakout artist. But for Kweller, now a ten-year veteran of the music biz, such conflicting imagery is nothing out of the ordinary; the Texas Troubadour has been a walking contradiction ever since he was old enough to reach the piano keys.When Kweller’s first …

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2D (pronounced “second”) is an astonishing collaborative effort between two of Minnesota’s finest. A Whisper in the Noise from Minneapolis plays an intricate manic rage of emotion with their songs, crafting a beautiful form of post-rock that ebbs and flows with fervent aggressiveness. If Thousands from Duluth provide the subtle details in between the cracks, melding ambient bliss with ethereal soundscapes that lull the listener to a distant place. The bands blend together like clockwork, each performing with subtlety and grace. Both are also able to capture the kind of melancholic brilliance and emotion that will give the listener the …

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Like a bad cowlick you can’t keep flat, Courtney Love thrust herself back into the spotlight, this time without the benefit of drug-induced breakdowns or distribution battles. Love’s debut solo album, America’s Sweetheart, depicts her as anything but. Her days with Hole branded her as an Amazonian savior. Sure, she’d made some mistakes, but that just made her more credible. She was the patron saint of bored and hurting women everywhere. Listening to America’s Sweetheart, however, you can almost hear her shooting up between takes. Love has gone from a rock spectacle to sideshow spectacle. On “Life Despite God,” she …

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Question: How does one obtain the dream of becoming a celebrated band? Answer: hard work, dedication, and a love for the music. Cowboy Curtis, a home grown Minneapolis band, has done all of this and more to establish themselves as a fixture in the local music scene. By following the forming of their band, getting gigs, creating great music and putting out the coveted CD, the ambiguity of making music is revealed. Forming a Band: Cowboy Curtis’s birth took place after Neal Perbix (vocals, guitar) started playing with Jake Hanson (vocals, guitar and keyboards) in high school. Submerged in …

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The letters FCC got an entirely different meaning on March 10th, as the Fuck Clear Channel Tour came to Minneapolis. Headlining the tour was rapper Sage Francis.Mac Lethal and Grand Buffet opened for Francis. Mac Lethal, out first, rapped about issues concerning ex-girlfriends and child abuse. His style was similar to that of Francis. Even his delivery seemed to be in the same vein as the headliner. Grand Buffet followed Mac Lethal. They entertained along with “DJ CD Player,” as they called their Walkman, which spewed out the wacky beats that appeared to be their trademark. Francis took the stage …

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