This will be my last Max About Town column, although I will likely be doing some writing for the site down the road, as MinnPost’s Hollywood correspondent.

It probably should be noted, at some point, in some local media, that it is pretty much impossible to directly make a living making art in the Twin Cities. There are arts-related jobs that will provide somebody with a steady paychec

The Twin Cities are littered with the Peanuts gang. Starting in 2000, local artists took 101 statues of Snoopy, decorated them with mirrors or splashes of paint, and propped them up throughout town.

We’ve finally come out of the holiday season, which is a good time for the local arts — they tend to do popular holiday-themed events that bring in a welcome infusion of funds — but can be a bit of a downtime for a critic.

My first exposure to performance art was in Los Angeles in the early ’90s. I was living in a building called the Nirvana, on Orange and Franklin just around the corner from the Chinese Theater.

The history of Twin Cities garage band music isn’t very well remembered, but, if it is remembered, it’s origins tend to begin with a Christmas holiday: 
In Christmas of 1962, three Minneapolis band members vacationed at Balboa Island, Calif.

If postmodernism is dead, what are we in now? Artistically speaking, we seem to be in uncertain times.

Christmas is almost upon us, and, let’s face it, this is a pretty idiosyncratic holiday. Everybody has their own family traditions, which can vary wildly from house to house.

It may not be a very Christmas-y thing to do, but I have been pondering “Boardwalk Empire” lately, which just completed its second season on HBO.

I have been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories (available online here), and they’re great, and almost completely forgotten.

 
There is a moment, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, when consulting detective Sherlock Holmes accuses his faithful assistant Watson of sensationalizing his stories for publication. Producer Lionel Wigram, responsible for both 200

I must open this column with another of those tiresome full disclosures that journalistic ethics compel me to write with some frequency.

Have we reached a point when the American Christmas has stopped absorbing new traditions? That seems such a shame to me, as the holiday is, as it stands, already such a delightful gumbo of various international practices.

I respect comedian Louis C.K. for a lot of reasons, and it has increased with the release of a new concert film, as I shall detail.

I think it is fair to say that there is no film I have spent more time thinking about than “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It’s a film I find enormously affecting, and always have, and so will only watch it alone, as I don’t especially wis

Screenwriter Diablo Cody’s “Young Adult,” set in Minnesota, is being marketed as a comedy, but it’s more like an occasionally wry tragedy.

I have a funny relationship with Christmas, and it’s one that makes my parents uncomfortable.
Specifically, I love the holiday.

Last week I mentioned that Minnesota seems to have a regional variation of what the Australians call “tall poppy syndrome,” in which those who seem to be getting a little too big for their britches must be taken down a notch or two.

We live in a germophobic time, and perhaps we should. Our medical horror stories are now ones of tiny monsters that invade our bodies, and how they have evolved to be resistant to our defenses against them, and so they ravage us.

Usually I don’t put myself in the company of children, who I view with the same suspicion that I view drunk adults.