The Wake

Staring through the musty air at my favorite dive bar, tucked away at a small table in the darkest corner I saw a nicely-dressed man, sporting a pale blue button-down shirt, sitting next to a woman, hair coiffed carefully into a sloppy bun, wearing enough makeup to feign drag-queen status. They smiled a lot, chuckled awkwardly during conversation and frequently spent time silently staring into the distance both wearing expressions of horror and duress. A first date. They struggled for a while longer, maintaining conversation, looking as though they were choking back the urge to vomit, but still putting all …

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Growing up in a small town does interesting things to a person. Small towners are a different breed. It is especially obvious in the years following high school. I came from a town in northern Minnesota of 900 people and graduated from a class of 80. After attending one of the largest universities in the nation and living in a major city, I realized how different my fellow townies and I compare to your average college student. First of all, in a small-town high school cliques don’t really develop like in other places. Of course you have your different groups, …

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The title of Peter Rosen’s new documentary poses the question that has perplexed both the art-snob elite and the everyday people since man first laid eyes upon an art gallery wall, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I don’t get it.” Who Gets to Call It Art? recounts the modern art revolution that took place in the United States at the dawn of the 1960s and its rapid rise from misunderstood fringe movement to lucrative commercial commodity. With testimonies from the times’ illustrious and notorious artists and an arsenal of the era’s prolific and perplexing pieces to appease the eye, Who …

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So many of my favorite Friday nights begin sprawled out on red satin sheets. This is a luxury that I am not often afforded, so you can understand my delight when I discovered Ari Herstand’s Happy Hour Happenings at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown. It’s tough to find a more perfect marriage of great local music, a gorgeous venue (air mattresses!), free admission, and killer drink specials.Ari’s happy hour performance at the Varsity Theater is an acoustic pop/rock genre bending treat from one man, one guitar, one trumpet, one piano, and one loop station. His fusion of folk, hip-hop and …

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Times are bleak, my friends. As we arrive back from our respective spring breaks, we are faced with the most horrifying of truths: the rest of the semester is downhill from here. Fear not. Out of the darkness shines a light, something to strive for: music festival season! And what a good season it promises to be. Naturally, one cannot peruse such offerings without proper guidance, so we’ve whipped up a handy little chart devoted to the best of the best:Coachella
April 29-30
Empire Polo Field in Indio, California
Tickets: $85/day, $165 for limited weekend passesThis beloved arts and music …

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Three cases of beer, four and a half jugs of vodka, and two dozen bottles of wine fueled patrons and partygoers down Quincy Street’s crumbling brick road for Art on Quincy, an art crawl in Northeast Minneapolis. The participating galleries—Altered Esthetics, Density, and Q.Arma—presented three distinct atmospheres for one night of visual sensation. And despite the copious amount of free booze, no one got down on their hands and knees to explore the exhibit’s 160-plus works by more than 60 artists. Sin is sexy at Altered EstheticsStepping from a winter-darkened landscape into Altered Esthetics is like crawling out of a …

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March was an odd month. The weather proved to be unpredictable, and spring break was over before the untimely snow even started melting. Luckily, Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins brought some stability to this bizarre time of the year.Lewis, known best as the vocalist for the indie-rock band Rilo Kiley, is touring in support her first solo record, titled Rabbit Fur Coat. On March 12, the singer and her band provided their audience with an evening of simple, earnest, and beautiful music—proving that these things still have a place in the realm of rock. Matching the simplicity of the …

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I saw the best minds of my generation ignore themselves, starving raving saccharin,
Dragging themselves into disheveled sheets at dawn looking for an angry burger,
Slickhaired infants chilling for the latest heavenly hookup to the dazey dynamo in the machinery of nightlife,
Who credit carded and ends oriented and silk striped and down with sat up slouching in the supernatural glow of neonatal niches floating past Starbucks contemplating static,
Who bared their brands to Idol under the El and never saw Risperdalized angels wandering on hospital floors disarrayed,
Who passed through universities with aviator-dressed eyes hallucinating glass boots and …

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W.B. Yeats writes his own death. Words in algorithms and sentences like polynomials, he crafts his poem “Under Ben Bulben” into a will. He forgets to mention who gets the mahogany dinner table or the bank account, and writes, rather, of where the ground should break for his final resting place. He writes of how, exactly, he would like his legacy to breathe and stretch and sigh and endure. He tells a reader: Bury me under this mountain Ben Bulben, here in the Drumcliff churchyard in County Sligo, Ireland. Right here. He is, of course, much more poetic.The day I …

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Questions of race, relationships and rage on campus were recently raised through hip hop inside Dinkytown’s Varsity Theater when The Hip Hop Committee, an unofficial student group, put on the dialogue and spoken word based production, “HOW IT IS: The Space Between You And Everyone Else,” at the end of March.The production, based on interviews with college students from all over the country, touched on many “gray areas,” says senior Toussaint Morrison, writer, co-director, actor and head of the Hip Hop Committee. Scenes include: a frat rejecting a biracial student and accusing him of carrying drugs; a theater professor allowing …

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Stephanie Miller doesn’t have delusions of political grandeur. She really just wants to entertain you. But if she can change your mind while she’s at it, then that’s even better. Miller, radio’s highest-rated female progressive talk show host, is a comedienne and daughter of former U.S. Representative William Miller, running mate to Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election. A long-time radio host, she launched the nationally-syndicated The Stephanie Miller Show in September 2004 and will be coming to the U on April 6 for a live broadcast. “We’re really looking forward to it,” she says. “In radio, you’re …

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We poison the air with every flick of the light switch. Whether we know it or not, we each are guilty of pouring tons of toxic materials into our environment by using the modern marvel of electricity. Our society depends on it. Our planet suffers for it. But the Twin Cities’ power providers are seeking to change all of that.Xcel Energy, the Twin Cities’ major power provider, has begun a project to clean up their power plants’ emissions. Dubbing the plan the Metro Emissions Reduction Project (MERP), the billion dollar renovation project is already in the third year of its …

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Minnesota Student Association elections begin April 11, which means that Emily Serafy Cox, current MSA president will be out of office on July 1. Freshly home from an International Women’s Student Leadership Conference in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, she sits down with The Wake to discuss her term, her future and politics at the U.Cox’s first words as MSA president-elect were “You’re shitting me.” She received a phone call from Margaret Cahill while riding her bike. Cox thought she had lost the race when Cahill told her, “Thanks for running a great campaign.” But then Cahill …

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Several members of the U’s Cycling Club stepped into the St. Paul Gym for practice with sun-scorched arms and legs, a look even Hank Hill would be jealous of. Their newly acquired farmer’s tans were the result of a spring break expedition to Tucson, Ariz. which included 60-70 miles of cycling per day, and a 25-mile climb up rock-infested Mt. Lemmon. Despite the rigorous routine in Arizona, the cycling club is very accepting of riders with little cycling experience. On the trip some riders had never been on a group ride before, and about half the people who join the …

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It was a cold February night when a group of nine amateurs took the ice for the first time as a team. These athletes, known collectively as the Fortknighters, were unskilled, uncoordinated and undersized. Only one of these “athletes” knew that there were special shoes meant for playing broomball. Some teams wore hockey helmets, while certain members of this team opted for bicycle helmets. For their first game, the Fortknighters’ lineup consisted of LT in the net, KrS-1 and Heart ‘n Soule playing defense with Michael Myers and the Notorious BRIE playing forwards. This group took the ice like wolves …

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