Playing one of the year's most memorable shows seen by fewer than 100 people, country-rocker Bobby Bare Jr. was less put off by the low turnout at the 400 Bar last week than by the picture of him published by local alt-weekly Pulse. The photo actually showed his father, an old-guard Nashville songwriter and teddy-bear tycoon who looked ready for Branson, Mo. Young Bobby hypothesized that somebody forgot to type in "Jr." when searching for the photo on Yahoo. "If you're the guy who did this, then you owe me a beer because that's just [expletive] sick," he said. Junior showed he's no poor sport, though, when he invited up the Jayhawks' Gary Louris - who was seen earlier that night hanging with another son-of, Jakob Dylan, at Gluek's. Bare's band led Louris through an encore that molded the Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl" and the Who's "Baba O'Reilly" into one song. Daddy never could have pulled off that one. (C.R.) TUBE JOB
Minneapolis writer Dennis Cass has a new television column in GQ Magazine, that arbiter of all things cool and male. "The Small Screen" is unlike the typical armchair critique. It gives a behind-the-scenes look at TV, starting with the new police show "Without a Trace." Cass will follow up with five more columns - for December, he got to hang with Bernie Mac. A column for GQ is a plum gig, so let's ask a GQ-style question: Just how plum? "I'm a rookie," Cass said. "I'm not making Dominick Dunne money, but it's pretty good." (J.T.)
GENDER BENDER
First a University of Minnesota design committee lopped off the penis of Andrew Leicester's "Platonic Figure" sculpture. Now a "U" landscape architect has wrapped a copper mesh skirt around the 30-feet-tall stainless steel humanoid that stands outside the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science building. The Minneapolis-based artist insists that the $154,000 sculpture never really had a penis, although the point of its cone-shaped torso originally extended suggestively between its legs. Recently he let Kristine Miller, an assistant professor of landscape architecture, add the skirt to spark debate about gender issues, especially in the guy-heavy engineering department. Leicester likes seeing his sculpture used as "an armature for various debates" but said the skirt "doesn't hang right. It looks like something out of `Spartacus,' when it should have been tutu-like, with tulle and more flounce." (M.A.)
PIRNER'S T
And now, an update on the news that shook the world (or at least the Hard Rock Cafe's New York PR folks, when I.W. wrote about it two weeks ago): Dave Pirner has given the Minneapolis Hard Rock the OK to keep his SpaghettiOs T-shirt. The rock-a-burger chain reportedly offered to return the wardrobe item to the Soul Asylum frontman, but he told them to keep it after being convinced that they had bought it through a legitimate collector. (C.R.)
WHAT WOULD PHILIP THINK?
It was all about modern and contemporary architecture Saturday as I.W. motored west for a smart lunch at James Dayton's Minnetonka Center for the Arts in Wayzata. Next stop was the 1952 Philip Johnson house, commissioned by former Minneapolis Institute of Arts director Richard (Dicky) Davis. This was the museum's annual Holiday House Home Tour, in which busloads of gawkers pass through fancy homes lavishly bedecked by area florists. "We asked the florists to tone it down this year" in accordance with the glass-and-brick minimalism of the Johnson house, said our tour guide. Also bedecking the marble-floored, 6,500-square-foot house were carvings, masks, textiles and pottery in the collection of new owners Robert and Carolyn Nelson. If this was toned-down, thought I.W., we'd hate to see toned-up. Anyhoo, we also got a peek at the fantasyland guest house nearby on the 11-acre property. The 2,300-square-foot house was commissioned in 1987 by Mike and Penny Winton, longtime owners of the Johnson house, to accommodate visiting grandkids. Imagine having your treehouse designed by Frank Gehry. (C.P.)
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