Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.
CP: Is it just me, or has our entire metro area seemed dipped in honey of late? From the gay-wedding all-nighter at City Hall on July 31, to the picturesque mist curling above St. Anthony Falls caused by all our rain, there's a golden glow around.
RN: Totally. All that precipitation means that I can't remember a greener August, and I'm old. Our local landscape is so lush that I'm beginning to wonder if we're seeing the first signs of a climate-change-driven rain forest.
CP: What else are you loving of late? Besides that new, fully legal, spouse of yours?
RN: Well, since I can't possibly best that joyous situation, I'll turn to something vacuous like pop culture and say the Netflix series "Orange Is the New Black." I've barely watched and I'm already in so deep I'm going to need an intervention.
CP: It hasn't been easy, but I have been a paragon of parse-it-out-gradually virtue on the story of a women's prison. While "Oz" was all testosterone and hyper-violence, "Orange" is all characters in an unusual living situation. Highly recommended. What else?
RN: I'm a teensy bit nuts about Sandcastle, the chef-powered beachside concession stand on the western shore of Lake Nokomis. I wish I could gush endlessly about a summer movie, but not yet. I'm hopeful for Woody Allen's latest, "Blue Jasmine."
CP: I'm still thinking about that salad with watermelon, chèvre and arugula at Sandcastle. In movies, my niece, Megan, and I just saw "The Way Way Back," titled after that backward-facing seat in old station wagons. Loved sitting in that seat as a child, and loved the movie. Toni Collette is good in nearly everything, Allison Janney as the boozy beach-house neighbor is a stitch, and the awkward boy's story is deftly told.
