This eerily beautiful bit of tornado porn was recorded by a couple sitting in their car as a twister forms in front of them. It looks way too much like some nightmares I’ve had. But the video’s ominous imagery is somewhat offset by the comically frantic exchange between the increasingly freaked-out woman and the forcibly calm dude. I like to think that, in a situation like this, I’d be Mr. Calm Dude, but only after a mighty struggle with my inner hysteric.

M. Butterfly is loosely based on the true story of a French diplomat who became involved with a male Chinese opera star and was eventually convicted of spying for the Chinese. The Guthrie production presents the narrative in a series of flashbacks as told by former diplomat Rene Gallimard as he wastes away in a French prison. He summons for the audience his memories of his time as a junior officer stationed at the French embassy in Beijing. We observe his budding infatuation for Song, a Chinese opera star who plays the lead role in a production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. They eventually form a relationship, but Gallamard somehow never realizes that Song is a man. He also fails to recognize that Song is manipulating him into passing secrets to the Chinese government.

The play is a funny and insightful study of romantic love and the extent to which we will sometimes lie to ourselves and others in order to protect our idealized image of a lover. The cast is uniformly great, but Randy Reyes deserves special mention for his portrayal of Song. He’s been in several Guthrie productions, but here he finally brings his wit and wry delivery to a leading role. The scene in which Song finally reveals his true identity to Gallimard is one of the most intense and well-executed I’ve seen at the Guthrie.

As an aside, I heard several older ladies gasp at the full frontal male nudity, so keep that in mind when deciding to take your grandmother to this production.

One of the major issues to be resolved in the final days of the legislative session is whether the governor would agree to an early Medicaid expansion. You may recall that the recently enacted Affordable Care Act gives states the option to expand Medicaid to adults without children as soon as this year. Hospitals and other medical providers are pushing for this expansion because it would replace the the very fragile General Assistance Medical Care program, the health care program for Minnesota’s poorest citizens that is currently being held together with little more than paper clips and string. Moving these individuals into Medicaid would ensure them better access to medical care while also guaranteeing that providers would get paid.

As late as yesterday, it looked like the governor would refuse to go along with this plan. He vetoed the human services bill containing such a provision and proclaimed that the dollars just don’t exist for an expansion. But today, he seemed to hint that he might agree to such an expansion if the financing method can be negotiated. The expansion would help tens of thousands of people, so I’m hoping that the spirit of compromise eventually carries the day. Pawlenty has the opportunity to end his last legislative session on a somewhat positive note,  which would be a welcome change from so many past sessions.

I’m really trying to understand the DFL’s endgame now that the governor has done what everyone knew he would do: veto the DFL budget bill that included a tax hike for the wealthy. I understand the impulse to paint the governor and Republicans in general as friends of the rich, but this whole exercise seems pointless when less than a week remains in the regular session. And most voters don’t care about politics; they want results. As much as I respect what the DFL leadership is trying to do, I’m not sure they appreciate that this kind of gamesmanship only fuels voter anger.

Here is my review of IM2 in bullet format:

• Can Robert McDowney, Jr.’s smugness switch ever be turned off? What he start weeping uncontrollably if it was?
• Scarlett Johannson is way hotter than she was in Ghost World. It’s like she’s been on a steady diet of hotness over the past several years. 
• More superhero movies should allow their main characters to fuck shit up in a drunken rage. 
• I could barely understand a word that Mickey Rourke’s character said and he wasn’t much of a supervillain. But he gets an A in Badass Russian Gulag Tatts.
• The evil robot drones in the movie bear a suspicious resemblance to my own design.
• Scarlett Johansson. Damn.