The Wake

She doesn’t fit the stereotype. She’s got a nice body, yes, but not in an overt way. She does not spend time in the tanning bed nor are her boobs made of silicon. She describes herself as shy and nerdy and says she doesn’t like to party.

She pays her way through college by dancing at one of Minneapolis’s most popular strip clubs. But she’s not unintelligent, and she’s not a victim.

The press lately would have us believe that the economy is forcing hordes of intelligent, pure college graduates to turn to …

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Nestled above the now-defunct Manhattan Loft on Washington Avenue lies the office of the Minneapolis Film Arts (MFA)— an aesthetic milieu of films that seem to filter in and out with the passing of time. Dates on Post-its and colorful writings on whiteboards line the parameters of the cozy yet work-loaded suite, while The String Quartet plays adaptations of the Arcade Fire and Elliott Smith in the background. Even on a Sunday afternoon, coordinators Ryan Oestreich and Rena Hartman are busily occupied: the 27th Annual Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) is only a few weeks …

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Four of the first six short films screened at the festival have smoking in them. My film, A Living Contradiction, is the fifth being screened. The camera’s subject matter is a runner. I knew I should’ve had the runner smoke. Fuck.

I am going to predict the outcome of the film festival. The judge’s selection for best short film will be Liška. This film festival was no contest. Liška had plenty of room for improvement [to the filmmaker: The pauses at the end of the film were poorly placed and too frequent. The cigarette falling from the girl’s mouth fell all …

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There comes a time in every person’s life when they must appeal to a power greater than themselves.

In this particular case it was Susan Tillman.

The woman was on fire, she was pissed and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say she was this close to gouging Marnie’s eye out with a cuticle clipper. In all her melodramatic glory, Susie did not take disappointment well. Her short attention span, among that of her short temper, and her lack of patience with anything she didn’t gaze down on with a smile…all attributed to a diatribe which would make the most seasoned queen …

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Please take a moment to look down at your shirt. Have you worn it before? If yes, congratulations! You are not only living economically in the recession, but you are stylish and trendy—a real recessionista! It may have taken twenty years, but you’re a cool kid now.

Sarcasm aside, the current glorification of recessionistas in the media is inescapable. Prominent recessionistas include First Lady Michelle Obama and her family, and for the moment there is no cooler company to keep. The freshly inaugurated First Family occupies the limelight though leading a decidedly …

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People, especially Republicans, have been labeling people and things as socialist lately. It’s like the magic bullet in American politics: call your opponent a socialist, and you gain the high ground, because socialism is evil and capitalism is wonderful. This is nothing new in a down-and-dirty political system that encourages its participants to say anything to defeat their opponents.

But there’s a funny difference this time: it’s not working. While the champions of free market capitalism continue to cry commie about bank takeovers and bailouts, government interference in the auto-industry, and the expansion of government health care coverage, the average American …

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Since most of mainstream hip-hop’s lyrics tend to center on themes like hoes, cash, and more hoes, it comes as no surprise that the genre is, for the most part, panned by critics and serious music listeners alike. However, in what has become a truly historic year for America, rap artist Lil’ Wayne has succeeded in winning over some of those skeptics. By emphasizing quantity over quality, Wayne has, without a doubt, become the most ubiquitous and prolific figure in the hip-hop universe. Wayne has earned more Grammy nominations than Radiohead and been …

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A comprehensive and in-depth answer to the question of what a novel is and what a novel can do:

A novel has three basic characteristics:

1. It is ostensibly fictional.
2. It is written in prose.
3. It is a long-form work.

Elucidations/clarifications:

1. A novel is by definition assumed to be fictional (and generally claims to be fictional (on the publication information page if not in the text of the novel itself)), though it may be drawn entirely from life, be narrated as though recounting true events, be filled with factual information of all kinds, or contain original journalism and reporting.

2. The primary method of …

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I do love books, but they take so long to read. Even if I read all day every day, I make no headway into the vault of books I want to read; in fact, reading only makes that stockpile grow larger, for each book read provokes desire for a half-dozen more. But upon reflection, it is good that books come in the form that they do, because if books were food I would eat until no more would fit into me—until I was backed up all the way to the rim of my esophagus—and then I would vomit them all …

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My sunny afternoon turned bitterly cold when I saw the NY Times homepage of my web browser – “At Least 12 Slain in Binghamton, N.Y.”

Maybe this gunman had his reasons, maybe he didn’t. Clearly, though, he didn’t consider life’s worth - he also took his own life. Claiming hostages in an immigration center, a place full of people craving to take part in the American dream, and showing them how ugly America can get is a perplexing irony whose motives I can’t grasp. What will it do? Had the man lived, his world would’ve been stripped of any kind of …

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