The Wake

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Rosa Parks sat resolutely on the bus. Rock Hudson was a fine, gay actor. Cole Dennis changed history with his brilliant writing and chiseled pectorals. Anna Nicole Smith was a national joke.As you’ve all probably heard — and you’d better have because I would like to think of myself as having an informed readership — Anna Nicole Smith recently died. Everyone seems to think that this is hi-freaking-larious. I have not gone one day since then without overhearing someone joking and laughing about it.As I said, Anna Nicole Smith was a national joke. Maybe …

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A pair of grand openings representing the cultures of celebrity and coffee has occurred at the University’s Wilson Library in the past two weeks. Though they are physically separated by three of Wilson’s six floors, these two unveilings are more closely related than they appear at first glance. The fourth floor of Wilson Library was radiating with warmth and energy on yet another cold evening last Friday during the debut of the most recent Gorman Rare Art Books exhibit, The Birth of Celebrity Culture in the City of Lights (1880-1900). The exhibition, which runs until April 27, showcases a …

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As the stage lights come up, five people stand in small bowls, singing and motioning as though they’re in a shower. One by one, they recall being children in South Africa, and the moment that they realized things were changing, and they were becoming adults. Each of them speak of the difficulty of the past and the desire to move forward. As the sequence comes to a close, one actor describes the past as covered in dust, and says that “until we go back and claim each piece, we will never be free.”Each of these actors grew up in South …

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Sunday, February 11 the Twin Cities Theater Company presented the last of eight performances of The Shape of Things at the Old Arizona Theater. Local acting teacher and consultant Randy Reyes directed the play, written by Neil Labute in 2001.Buddy Haardt, a University of Minnesota Guthrie Theater Professional Actor Training Program student, stars as Adam, a somewhat nerdy and socially awkward undergrad at a small university. While working as a guard at the local art museum Adam runs into Evelyn (Kate Lawrey), a rebellious art student working on her masters thesis. Adam, who has hardly even talked to …

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The San Francisco Psychedelic exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art presents a strange juxtaposition. It is slightly uncomfortable to see photographs embodying the boundary-snubbing acid trip that is the 1960s counter-culture movement lined up in one of Minnesota’s most respectable art museums. “[I convinced myself] that the Institute should build a collection of photographs of the late 1960s San Francisco musicians, a genre overlooked by most other art museums,” explains assistant curator Christian A. Peterson. Peterson’s idea took shape and the San Francisco Psychedelic exhibit was born: a collection of concert posters, CD cover photos, and other miscellaneous art …

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In our society there is often a division placed between art and science. Proof of this is in every CLA joke made by jeering IT students. But is it possible for art and science to truly get along? Jamie Schumacher would like to think so, and she is not alone.Schumacher, a soft-spoken yet eloquent woman, is the curator for Altered Esthetics, a fairly recent addition to the art gallery community of northeast Minneapolis. Currently, the gallery is preparing for a new exhibit: (Scientific) Aesthetics.A friend of Schumacher’s, a geology student at the University of Minnesota, generated the idea for this …

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Entering into the second hour at the monster truck rally, someone asks if the cloud of exhaust fumes and floating dirt hovering above the rally might get a person high. Checking with Alice, the biology major, she says we would be more inclined to acquire nausea, but her words fade away when the deafening roar of Martial Law, the monster truck, echoes so hard throughout the dome that our chairs vibrate, and we’re sitting in the upper deck.But that isn’t all one experiences while attending his or her first monster truck rally, or “Monster Jam” as the children’s t-shirts refer …

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Shook evenly, the burst of petrolnostrils of children racingeyes on the back of the back of the backof the pick-me-up dirt cloudsone shiver one shoulderI see the grave digging grace of the ambulance chaseOn these wounded hills—spider-likeskeletons mashed together from the buttof rubber heels and dirty pawsof that bobcat wandering.Sing praise to beaten onelimping around the dirtan orgasmic coma shotas machine lies still on backwheels lulling a spinspin, spin.

Engines blaring loudA spectacle of powerWhere are my nachos?

“Evolution’s not dead! It’s dancing in the middle of the floor with a lampshade on it’s head!” stated University of Minnesota, Morris Professor Paul Meyers. On February 13, just one day after Charles Darwin’s birthday, the Bell History Museum held a discussion on the topic of evolution as a part of its Café Scientifique series at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown. This evening was, of course, not without incident. Many a voice was cautiously raised in acts of interjection, bold by our mild mannered Minnesotan standards. Things failed to genuinely heat up until moments before the evening reached its conclusion, …

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Each year a graduate student in the University’s Art History Department gets the chance to work with Wilson Library’s art librarian to curate an exhibit from the Gorman Rare Art Book Collection. This year Sarah Sik created “The Birth of Celebrity Culture in the City of Lights (1880 – 1900)” — an exhibit that focuses on the Parisian preoccupation with celebrity culture at the turn of the twentieth century.The exhibit, which is presented by the University of Minnesota Libraries in conjunction with the department of art history, runs now through April 27, in the James Ford Bell Library on the …

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From the first kick to the final whistle” are words of wisdom every soccer coach has bestowed upon his players. It’s also the first line of text in the movie Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, and an indication of things to come. Directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, this movie cites only one actor in its cast: Zinedine Zidane. He’s a man among boys on the pitch and a god among mortals in France. Though he’s Algerian by descent, the French love him enough that they would likely elect him president if he so desired. He led his nation …

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What do I know about being a minority? I suppose that depends on your definition. What I do know however, through leftover cold war stigma and a childhood of being the ostracized Russian girl, is that you don’t have to have different colored skin to be, well, different. What I also know is that, in retrospect, difference is a good thing, even when it involves ESL classes and eating borsch.A few weeks ago a friend and classmate of mine, Ali Jaafar, wrote an article for this magazine in which he explained his belief that any classification based on …

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You’ve seen them in restaurants, cocktail parties and at the grocery store. You’ve heard them talking in class, on the bus or at the coffee shop. You watch the skinny, unshaven guy lock up a ten-speed outside of Subway and listen to him order the veggie delight, and then it hits you. There are people that live and work in the real world that don’t eat meat. Somehow they don’t shrivel up and die and their bones don’t shatter from the impending force of gravity. They call themselves vegetarians.I’ve been a vegetarian for a while now, and if there’s anything …

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Valentine’s Day is the perfect example of a holiday that has been co-opted by the Hallmark Card. Although each year February 14 seems to become more publicized and more commercialized, for every person giving roses and chocolate there seem to be just as many who aim for something more unique. This year, the Minnesota Historical Society provided one such opportunity for lovebirds in search of something off the beaten path.Victorian Poetry Slam. That may look like a typo, but on Saturday February 9, The James J. Hill House opened its doors for an event that could not be described any …

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