The Rake Magazine

Month: February 2008

  • Souper Tuesday

    After the all the caucusing, I’m sure you’ll want to burrow into the couch with a piping hot bowl of intellegence and comfort. With each spoonful you’ll feel better, listen a little less to the talking head on the TV and a little more to your inner voice. Soup is egalitarian, soup doesn’t make snide remarks, soup is there for YOU. Saddle up, get your stock bubbling, it’s going to be a long year.

    For the Hillarites, maybe a hearty chicken noodle soup, just like mom used to make.

    For the Obamicans, a rich yet humble wild rice soup to take the edge off the rollicking-crazy changes life is bringing.

    McCainsters might enjoy a little Algerian Jary soup which will give you much needed zing while ensuring long life and good health.

    Mittmen, something with ketch-up? Or this creamy, spicy, crabby soup that tries to cover all the bases?

    And for those that still heart Huckabee, how about a hunter’s stew that’s as tough as Chuck Norris.

    Undecided? Eat Senate Bean Soup every day until you can make a decision.

  • If You Give a Mouse a Nice Bottle of Portuguese Wine

    There’s a picture book called If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff, that I used to read to my children. It goes like this:

    If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.
    When you give him the milk, he’ll probably ask you for a straw.
    When he’s finished, he’ll ask for a napkin.
    Then he will want to look in a mirror to make sure he doesn’t have a milk mustache.
    When he looks into the mirror, he might notice his hair needs a trim. So he will probably ask for a pair of nail scissors.

    The story goes on this way for about a dozen more pages, until the mouse gets very thirsty, requests a second glass of milk, then asks for a cookie to go with it. It’s a tale about the domino effects of life. And I recalled it this afternoon after struggling for nearly a week to write about Irreverente, an absolutely stunning Portuguese wine.

    I bought my first bottle last Thursday and started a blog entry about Irreverente back then, but I wanted to do more than describe how silky and plummy and honey-filled it is, how like Brandy or Port the finish, how it leaves the tastes of cigar leaves and currant in its wake.

    So I pulled up a map of Portugal and started studying it, and then I remembered that Jose Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998, is Portuguese. I’ve read All The Names, Saramago’s most recent book, plowing through his desultory, no-punctuation style to unearth the quiet story of rectitude in anonymity beneath. But I have to admit, I started Blindness, a parable about a plague of sightlessness and the novel that was most responsible for his earning the Nobel, but never finished. It was excellent — stirring — but also just as dark and murky as the title implies.

    I considered, first, trying to read Blindness before writing about the wine (I thought I could get it done over the weekend) but decided that was overkill. So instead, I read a number of reviews and deconstructions online, most of them favorable but a few not, and realized that it probably would be impossible for me to gain a true understanding of Saramago without first reading Albert Camus.

    It’s generally accepted that Camus inspired Saramago, and that his novel The Plague directly precedes Blindness. The truth is, I read The Plague a long, long time ago but I have never, shockingly, read The Stranger, Camus’ other masterpiece, so I strongly considered going to the library to pick up both.

    By this time it was Saturday. I had a dinner party to attend on Saturday night and didn’t make it to the library. Plus, I was bringing a bottle of the Irreverente to the event, partly because it’s my new favorite wine but also because I was hoping someone would say something profound about it. . . .or about Saramago or Camus. . . .over the course of the evening.

    This, however, did not happen. What did happen is that the late night on Saturday was followed by another on Sunday and then a wicked bout of insomnia Sunday night and Monday, which I exploited to read more about Camus. But this caused me even more angst — of course, everything causes me angst when I’m sleepless — because I came to the conclusion around 3 a.m. that I would be a very poor student of Camus, and therefore Saramago, if I did not first establish a firm basis in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre.

    It was a huge amount of work to contemplate, especially as I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t written the wine review already. Finally, this afternoon, sleep-deprived and horrified by my own lack of knowledge regarding Portugal, existentialism, and illness-as-metaphor, I opened my last bottle of Irreverente, drank a glass, and just then received a one-line e-mail from the supplier in response to my query, telling me (in very short form) that Irreverente is a blend of four grapes: Alfochiero, Jaen, Tinta Roriz and Touriqua Nacional.

    I took my cue from this. Mind you, I still intend to read Saramago, Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. But, lucky for you, I have emerged from my circular mouse-and-cookie behavior and am able to say, simply: Go out right now and buy this wine. It’s available at The Wine Thief, Solo Vino, and Byerly’s wine stores.

    And, by the way, if you give it to a mouse, he will immediately become as happy as the ones pictured above. No insomnia or existential hand-wringing at all. Guaranteed.

  • The Three Pointer: Ongoing Progress

    Copyright 2008 NBAE (Photo by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)

    Game # 47, Home Game #23: Houston 92, Minnesota 86

    Season record: 10-37

    1. Telfair and Jaric Stake Their Claims

    It may be a long time before Randy Foye earns the starting point guard position. The blueprint has it that Foye will be at the point just as soon as he works himself into game shape from that truculent knee injury that robbed him of more than half a season. For two games in a row he has been the first player off the bench and the plan is obviously to install him as the floor general for this ballclub as soon as possible.

    But that doesn’t mean he will *earn* the job, especially given the disparity between Foye’s stumblebum narcissism and the perspicacity with which the current PG incumbent, Bassy Telfair, performed tonight in a close loss to Houston that was well-played by both teams. It was perhaps Telfair’s best game of the season, right up there with the Indiana blowout and the near upset of the Celtics. He consistently dribble-penetrated through the tall trees of China (Yao Ming) and Spain (Luis Scola) and at least four of his dozen dimes were highlight-reel quality, the kind that lift a team’s offensive confidence the way a block or a steal lifts a defense.

    My personal favorite was the last of those 12 assists, occurring with 3:31 to play and the Wolves down 4, 78-82. Starting out at the left key, Telfair took a near baseline angle on his drive to the hoop, and Houston’s entire defense, accustomed to his artistry by now, coalesced around both the dribbler and the two big men in or near the paint. And so Bassy just kept going, beneath the hoop and apparently headed toward the corner, the place where he’d fed Ryan Gomes for a trey on the previous possession. But then he suddenly hooked back upward in a tight circle toward the foul line, getting about two steps and four dribbles before sending a bounce pass across the paint to a driving Craig Smith, who laid it in while being fouled by Shane Battier. These are the kinds of moves that make you happy you are watching hoops–so simultaneously splashy and selfless and filled with David vs. Goliath imagery, and happening in such a flash that the collective roar of the crowd is what most ratifies the fact that you have just seen it.

    And in fact we have not seen it very often in the history of the Timberwolves, where even successful points like Sam Cassell and Terrell Brandon didn’t exactly glide in for that flash, or polish up the feed on quite so shiny a silver platter. (That’s why Stephon Marbury was always regarded as the Judas of Wolves’ Camelot for bugging out on KG–and yes I just mixed about a half-dozen historical metaphors.) Hell, Telfair doesn’t do it that often, but tonight he made impartial observers wonder why you’d want a replacement–at least until he missed the jumper Houston dared him to shoot (he was 3-7 FG overall) with the Wolves down one with 51 seconds left to play.

    Foye was horrible. Most of his passes were benign, around-the-horn types delivered either from a standing dribble or after he’d already picked up the ball, not off penetration. He wasn’t quick and he wasn’t smart and he was foolishly too confident for his incomplete recovery to game shape. His lone assist, versus four turnovers, occurred when he fed Al Jefferson at the foul line and Jefferson took a jab step to feint out his opponent and then sailed in off the dribble to slam it home–in other words, an assist that was generously awarded. Yeah, I know that Foye can be special, that he likes the pressure, scores most of his points in the fourth quarter, etc. etc. But people forget that last year he shared half-court sets with some pretty fair passers who demanded double-teams when they got the ball–Kevin Garnett and Ricky Davis. You could run the entire offense through either one of them, and in fact the Wolves did so on a variety of occasions when Foye was the "floor general." The other day, Foye told the media that everybody would know he was back and fully recovered when he had "a big game." I got the distinct impression that he meant 30 points a lot more than he meant a dozen dimes. Anyway, he now has five assists and nine turnovers in four games since his return.

    Then there is Marko Jaric, owner of the team’s most bloated long-term contract, and tarnished by the unfortunate circumstance that he cost Minnesota not only Cassell (who had to go), but a still-to-be-sacrificed first round draft pick. At the beginning of the season, the Wolves could have "disappeared" both Jaric and Telfair and the faithful would have nodded their heads knowingly and figured it was an inevitable part of this rebuilding mop-up. Tonight each inspired in his own way. For Jaric it was chasing around sharpshooter Tracy McGrady until his uniform was sopped and nearly all the color (which wasn’t much to begin with) was drained from his Serbian face.

    This was particularly stirring during the yeoman third period when Houston ran Jaric through innumerable picks and McGrady was given license to take a five-point halftime lead and parlay it into comfortable double-digits, if not an outright blowout. T-Mac yo-yoed on the perimeter, straining Marko through the screens, ever testing for penetration, or angling to get him aloft with an up fake. When the quarter was over, McGrady was 2-8 FG in those 12 minutes, and held scoreless from the jumper he hit at 10:59 to the free throws he made at 2:59. During those eight minutes Jaric was not marvelous or magnificent so much as unrelenting and tunnel-visioned, winning the third period battle even after McGrady’s trey put Houston back on top by 3 in the quarter’s final 67 seconds.

    Although coach Randy Wittman gave Jefferson his first blow of the second half with 8:40 to go in the fourth quarter, he was appropriately loathe to replace Jaric with another defender on McGrady. But when Houston swelled the lead to 10 with 7:10 to play (with McGrady held scoreless in the 4th but with two assists), Witt needed more offensive firepower and subbed in Gomes for Jaric, sliding McCants over to guard T-Mac. McGrady promptly nailed a jumper from just inside the three-point line, then got into the paint (something that almost never happened with Jaric on him) and dished over to Bonzie Wells for a trey that negated two dime-initiated baskets by Telfair and kept the lead at 9. After that, McCants gathered himself and played pretty staunch defense. But McGrady jab-stepped left and nailed a 17-footer to give the Rockets back a one-point lead with 1:10 left to play, then essentially iced it with a trey with 31 seconds remaining to boost the Rockets’ lead to 4. Afterward, Wittman had the answer to my question about Jaric or McCants on T-Mac going before I could finish it, noting the lead that was widening, crediting both players with fine D on a very talented shooter, and saying that the plan had been to get Jaric back in the game at some point. But it didn’t happen.

    2. Shaddy’s Snit

    With 4:37 left in the second period, Rashad McCants was whistled for a charge on one of those calls that could have legitimately gone either way. But McCants was pissed and complained to the officials as the Wolves called timeout. After this extended harangue, Wittman caught Shaddy’s attention as he was headed toward the bench and harshly told him to get over to the sideline. McCants angrily threw his hand up in Wittman’s direction, turned his head away and yelled something on the order of "get fucked" as he went and sat down.

    When play resumed, McCants was obviously still seething. After a trey by McGrady, Shaddy nailed a step-back jumper, but then Rafer Alston hit a three, boosting Houston’s lead to a game-high 10. McCants’ pass was then stolen by Wells, but Corey Brewer stole a McGrady pass in turn a
    nd the Wolves headed down the court. When Jefferson fed the ball to Brewer for a jump shot, McCants was standing in the corner, first calling for the ball and then putting his hands on his hips and delivering a malevolent gaze at everyone. Shaddy’s fury was not lessened by the fact that Brewer hit the jumper and when Houston subsequently called timeout, he stalked to the bench in high dudgeon, yelling and screaming, presumably at the injustice of not getting the ball. Dressed in street clothes, Theo Ratliff came over first and tried to console him, or at least get him to pipe down. The coaches were still conferring with each other away from the sideline but the players couldn’t help but notice McCants going batshit and stole glances, mixed with a few sour looks, his way. When Witt and company came to the sideline and Wittman pulled out his chalkboard, McCants sat down to his right side. His back was to where I was sitting at this point, but it was obvious that his tirade was continuing because Mark Madsen (also in street clothes), a man of infinite patience and goodwill, got a dark look on his face and yelled out something, again presumably to quiet McCants. Finally, Wittman turned to his right, glowered at McCants, and hollared, either "get out of here" or "get the fuck out of here," but in any case, the way McCants’s shoulders kept moving, I assume he kept talking, until Wittman finally hollared again, "Shut up!" and then started to work on the upcoming play.

    When the players broke the huddle, McCants was no longer in the game. McCants continued to talk while on the bench, no longer quite so angry but demonstrably making his case beside Foye, who looked like he simply wanted the whole episode to be over. Shaddy’s teammates likewise regarded his actions as annoying during this entire time. I honestly wondered if there would be a significant blowback. Up in his seats at halfcourt, VP Kevin McHale clearly had a notion as to what was going on and just as clearly didn’t look very happy about it.

    Yet two minutes after the benching, Wittman called for McCants to re-enter the game with 52 seconds left in the half. And during the second half, McCants was given almost exactly the same minutes as in the first half, in almost exactly the same substitution pattern. So, on the surface at least, no hard feelings. When I asked Wittman about the "tiff" after the game, he asked what I meant by tiff. I repeated the "shut up!" part of the conversation and he said, with a good-natured smile on his face, "That’s coaching. When you tell a guy to shut up, it is time for him to shut up." And since it was already near the close of the post-game press conference anyway, he chose that point to walk away from the mic and end it there. McCants was already gone when I got to the locker room.

    3. Honorable Mentions

    Ho-hum, Al Jefferson had 33 points and 16 rebounds, although the four turnovers were a blemish. Meanwhile, unless Ryan Gomes is going off for 35, as he did against Golden State, or zero, as he did in the first of the back-to-back with Chicago, it is very difficult to know whether he has scored 6 or 25, because he gets them so efficiently in rhythm with the flow of the game. Tonight he had just two at the half, but posted ten more after the break, five in each of the third and fourth quarters, while outplaying his doppelganger Shane Battier, who was held scoreless in the second half and finished with just 5 points and 6 rebounds in 33:43.

  • Super Tuesday

    Ok. It’s Super Tuesday, people. If you’re going to do one thing today, then head over to the caucuses to vote. Let this be another record-breaking year for voter participation — even in the primaries.

    Find out where to go for your precint caucuses.

    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    My Journey as an Abortion Doctor

    This being Super Tuesday, why
    don’t you go all out and take on one of the critical issues behind any
    political campaign these days (and for so many years past) – the
    abortion issue. Hear from a twenty-one year veteran on the front lines
    of the abortion war, Susan Wickland, as she discusses her book This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor.
    Having had an abortion at a very young age, and since then helping
    women across the country through their own versions of the experience,
    Wickland has much light to shed on the topic and the women behind it.

    7:30 p.m., Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611.

    LECTURE
    Andrea Palladio: Architecture and Agritecture

    As
    Americans, we are often slow to learn from the past. We believe
    in growth and progress and often have a hard time stopping to take a
    look back at past accomplishments. Well, stubborn Americans, it
    is time to get some schoolin’ from the pages of history. University
    of Minnesota Professor Leon Satkowski will present a lecture tonight
    on Andrea Palladio, one of the most famous Italian architects of the
    16th century. You may be asking yourself, "What does
    a dead Italian architect have to do with me?" Well, plenty actually. Focusing on the Italian villas that Palladio designed to serve as working farms, Satkowski will discuss how we can improve our own modern-day site planning
    and sustainability. In an age where "going-green" is the new
    trend, we might find some not-so-new ways to improve our earth through
    architecture. —Kate Leibfried

    7 p.m., Pohlad Hall, Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6000; free.

    FILM

    Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show


    Vince Vaugh     fans, comedy fans, fans of the Wild West, get ready for a special advanced screening of director Ari Sandel’s new film, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show.
    Follow Vaughn on a 30-city, 30-day, 30-show tour with four energing
    comics. The film takes you behind the scenes from beginning to end as
    Vaughn handpicks his comics and leads them on his 30-day adventure.
    You’ll enjoy laughs both behind and on the scene, as well as a host of
    special guests.

    7:30 p.m., The Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-331-3134; $8.

     

  • Doncha' Wish Your Benz Was …

    You know what they say–if pictures could sing.

    Well this is the last of my photo batch from that National Musee’ D’Automotive in France. I have been saving her picture because she is the car that spoke to me more than any other.

    I think that is because this Benz seems like a female sibiling of the SSK that dominated so many race tracks in the 1930s. I never realized that brute had a twin–much less a sister.

    Don’t you wish?

  • If I were king of the fore-e-e-est

    I hope you all noticed the bold initiative of the Star Tribune, as expressed on their editorial page on Sunday. Yup, they put their heads together, snorted and wheezed with the Herculean effort, pressed hard on their temples to concentrate the intellect, and made their endorsement regarding tomorrow’s "Super Tuesday" nationwide primaries and caucuses.

    And you thought they were too timid to actually make an endorsement without doing a focus group first of what they could get away with without offending their ever shrinking base of readers and advertisers.

    Well, the joke’s on you. The Strib editorial board ain’t afraid of nobody or no thing. Not nobody. Not nohow.

    And just to prove that, they threw caution to the wind, damned the torpedoes, hurled themselves once more into the breach and endorsed…voting.

    As they put it, "Super Tuesday, Too important to miss." If that weren’t endorsement enough, they even said,"It could be a transformative moment in American politics."

    That’s some bold talkin’ there.

    So whatever you do, don’t miss Super Tuesday. It’s too important AND it could be transformative.

    And speaking of "Super", how ’bout them Giants? They made the top of the Strib’s front page today, right above the coverage of the candidates.

  • Yes, Yes Yes, Yes, No!

    Priorities. Priorities. Be on the lookout for Leinenkugel’s Northwoods beer, which, after a two-year hiatus, finally goes on sale today for a limited time. Mmmmm.

    Also, be sure to stop and visit our Multimedia page again for a tour of the Art Shanty Project with Rake intern Tricia Towey. We’ll have a new Owen video for you later this week.

    FILM
    Our Man in Havana

    Unavailable on DVD in the U.S., this 1959
    British noir classic reunites director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene, the
    sly duo who gave us The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, also classics. Here,
    Alec Guinness plays James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman stationed
    in Cuba who is enlisted as a spy for
    Queen and country. Concerned that he is going to lose this prized position,
    Wormold concocts a story about secret rockets, using vacuum cleaner circuit
    diagrams to fool the British Secret Service into believing he’s onto a Russian
    missile scheme. Shot entirely in Cuba-Castro’s government was, at the time,
    eager to encourage a film that portrayed a corrupt Batista regime. —Peter Schilling

    7:30 p.m., Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis;
    612-822-3030, $5.

    MUSIC
    Tim Finn and Alice Peacock

    Minnesota in early February is the perfect place and time for some
    intelligent and effervescent pop to quicken our winter-slogged minds
    and brighten our outlooks across the snow-covered prairie. The chance
    to hear ex-Split Enz frontman (and Crowded House cohort) Tim Finn spin flax into gold while reprising the magical realism of his latest solo disc, Imaginary Kingdom, fills that prescription better than anything else out there this month. At his best—and much of Imaginary Kingdom
    qualifies—Finn blends Paul McCartney’s delightful sense of naïveté with
    Ray Davies’s trenchant eye for social detail. Folk-pop thrush Alice
    Peacock (a White Bear Lake native, donchaknow) has enough insight and
    honesty in her mainstream-safe approach to set the stage as a strong
    opening act. —Britt Robson

    7:30 p.m., Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; $25.

    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    Say Yes to No

    We’ve all seen parents idly sitting by as their children grossly misbehave — not a word, not a "No," not a reprimand, or one of those motherly glares that freeze you at the core. Nothing. And then we complain about the state of youth today. Accoring to psychologist, author, and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family Dr. David Walsh, we just need to learn to say "No!" Join Walsh this evening as he shares some of his strategies for raising healthy, self-reliant kids. He’ll be discussing his new book — offering an antidote to Discipline Deficit Disorder — No, Why Kids of all Ages Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It.

    6:30 p.m., Pohlad Hall, Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6000.

     

  • Who Is Rachel Hutton?

    NOTE: This post originally appeared with a photo that Rachel Hutton herself asked me to remove — in a very nice note that said in part "I realize it’s impossible to stay anonymous. . . .but I spent all last week pulling as many images as possible off the S&S [Simon & Schuster] and BTM [Before the Mortgage] sites." I was happy to do so.  AB

    If you haven’t heard, Rachel Hutton is the new food writing star for City Pages. And it’s about time she got her own gig.

    Back when I was working for Minnesota Monthly as their food and feature writer, Rachel was an associate editor — and a whip-smart devotee of local restaurants. To be honest, she did most of the grunt work for our food section: keeping the listings and calendars up-to-date, writing short "Quick Bite" reviews, and reading my copy with an eagle eye. I was perennially distracted and lost in language; she (a Stanford-trained engineer who decided after graduation that she didn’t want to spend her life designing widgets) offered much-needed common sense.

    In late 2005, my first novel came out. It was a weird experience, frankly. . . .like giving birth to a little literary baby and being graded on the effort in newspapers ranging from the Strib to the Washington Post. Kirkus liked the book but didn’t give it a star; People had a piece on me slated that was canned [mysteriously] at the last minute. I got entirely caught up — forgot (for the first time in my life) to pay my property taxes — and went maybe four or five nights without sleep. That’s when Steve Fox, the publisher of MN Monthly, decided in a surge of Friday afternoon gallantry to throw a party for me. He went to Barnes and Noble and bought a copy of my novel for everyone in the office, ordered a case of wine, and asked me to inscribe the books while people mingled and drank.

    Here’s the thing: Not only was I exhausted, I’m also more than a tad agnosiac. But I’d never told a soul.

    Clinical prosopagnosia is a condition that makes it genuinely impossible for the brain to recognize a human face. Ears, eyes, nose, and mouth all appear, but they fail to fall into a pattern that provokes a memory. Oliver Sacks wrote a terrific essay about one sufferer called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, which appeared in a book of the same name.

    But the point here is that I do not mistake people for hats, and there are some people I recognize. What I am is just sort of foggy on visual details, particularly when it comes to appearance. I rarely understand, for instance, the men other women find attractive (personally, I far prefer Harvey Keitel to George Clooney). And if one of my students cuts her hair or trades her glasses for contact lenses, I’ll certainly need to be re-introduced.

    It’s worth noting, too, the I’m the mother of an autistic son and it’s common for the parents of people with autism to have "shadow" neurological differences, such as agnosia, synesthesia, and a heightened sense of smell. I’m three for three.

    In any case, I finally found Rachel and confessed my problem. I’d been at MN Monthly for a year and a half but recognized only a handful of the 50 or so people who worked there. I could pick out everyone on our immediate staff, the receptionist, the director of sales, and one of the custom publishing people who had a very distinctive voice. With the other 42 or so, I was screwed.

    Rachel immediately (and unfussily) devised a plan. She would stand next to me with a list, open the books one by one and clue me in whenever I froze. "Here’s a copy for Jill," she would say. Or, "Don’t forget, Maryanne has an "e" on the end of her name."

    It was a kindness I’ll never forget. And it was representative of her extraordinary good nature. When I left MN Monthly and Fox did not (as he had suggested he might) hire a celebrity chef or a well-known foodie to take my place, I assumed Rachel would get the job. However, though she DID the job, she never assumed the title.

    Several weeks ago, when it was announced that Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl was taking over as the premier food writer at MN Monthly, I have to say I felt a twinge of dissatisfaction. I like Dara very much and I it goes without saying she’s a knockout writer, but Rachel had put in years of really solid work and there was a big part of me that felt the job should have been hers.

    So I was delighted to find that in one of those inside-baseball sort of trades, Rachel Hutton is moving from MN Monthly to take over Dara’s post at CP.

    OK, she’s not the powerhouse the mighty Moskowitz can be. But Rachel is a hell of an up-and-coming writer, and she’s an incredibly sweet person besides. She’s the one on the left above — and I wouldn’t out her if she were anonymous but her images are readily Googleable because about a year after my book came out with Simon & Schuster, Rachel co-wrote and edited one of her own, Before The Mortgage, with the very same publisher.

    I attended her first reading and publication party. But I’m happy to say, Rachel recognized everyone there, all on her own. And without a bit of prompting, she inscribed a book for me.

  • There Is No Bottom. There Is Simply —Or Not So Simply— the End

    There is another kind of sleep,

    We are talking in it now.

    As children we walked in it, a mile to school,

    And dreamed we dreamed we dreamed.

    —James Galvin, from "Hematite Lake"

    Maris Gomes was very young when he went to sea for the first time, and not much older –still much too young– when the boat on which he was working was capsized in a storm and he swallowed seawater and rolled for hours slowly toward the ocean floor.

    He remembered next to nothing about the moments and hours after he was thrown into the cold ocean. He wasn’t even sure; he may have jumped; he may have had no choice. His last clear memory of the experience was of watching one of his shipmates, a boy not much older than himself named Scruggs Colvin, clinging to some piece of debris from the wreck and drifting out of view, his shouts quickly swallowed up by the darkness and driving rain.

    Maris had been surprised to discover that there were angels in the ocean, living in the ruins of an old shipwreck out of which they had constructed a sort of cathedral of light.

    When the angels first came for him –there were five of them, all young and more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen– Maris had assumed they were mermaids. After a moment, though, there was no mistaking what they were: they had wings, and their flowing hair was haloed with pulsing light. They also had bare feet, and when they kicked their feet the bubbles they created were infused with golden light as well.

    In the time that followed –and Maris had no idea how long it might have been– he was given to understand that the human soul would perish in salt water; it could not escape a drowned body, and the job of the underwater angels was to ferry these drowned souls to the surface for release.

    Among those living in the ruins of the shipwreck there was one very young and inexperienced angel named Doon, and this angel fell immediately in love with Maris, and he with her. This sort of thing was not only discouraged, of course, but was strictly forbidden. Doon was headstrong, however, and in every translucent fiber of her being she was convinced that she and Maris had lived together in a long-ago forest and were fated to spend eternity at the bottom of the sea.

    For his part, Maris regarded Doon as the loveliest creature he had ever seen.

    Doon implored the other angels to allow Maris to stay with her, yet they remained insistent that she release him and let them take his soul to the surface so it could begin its rightful journey. This Doon stubbornly refused to do –in her brief life on earth she had known no great love– and she somehow managed to spirit away a fully compliant Maris to another shipwreck, where together they hid from the other angels and did nothing but hold each other –their bodies tangled like the braid of a parade horse’s tail– and tell stories.

    Doon told Maris she was not so keen on Heaven. "There are no thunderstorms," she said. "No mice. No tears of joy or sorrow. Angels feel only the small, tsk-tsking pity of those who have found safe haven in God’s arms. Heaven sometimes seems smug to me, and I miss being dirty. It is not as beautiful, sad, and various as the world."

    The lovers, alas, were soon enough discovered, and for her disobedience Doon was recalled straightaway to Heaven.

    And it was only then, as he was wrenched from his beloved, that Maris Gomes finally and truly drowned.

    By this point, and much to the satisfaction of the other angels, his soul was deemed beyond retrieval.

  • The Three Pointer: Cruise Control

    Copyright 2008 NBAE (Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)

    Game #46, Home Game #22: LA Clippers 83, Minnesota 104

    Season record: 10-36

    1. Two Matchup Switches

    Sebastian Telfair was in the torture chamber that is Sam Cassell’s offensive bag of tricks. The first two times Cassell called his own number in Friday night’s game, the 6-3 motormouth was backing the 6-foot Bassy down in the low block, then missing the makeable turnaround J’s. After that, he stopped missing, hitting four of his next five shots in the period, plus three FTs that saddled Telfair with two fouls. When Randy Foye subbed in for Telfair, Cassell broke Foye’s ankles with a court-length dribble-layup–consider how back you have to be on defense for ancient Sam to do that to you–then fed Cuttino Mobley for a jumper.

    It was the Clips’ only assist in the period. They were too busy creating their own shots off dribble penetration, as evidenced by their 55% accuracy (11-20 FG) for the period. When an opponent shoots 55% with one assist, they are either pounding one huge matchup or the entire team is breaking down. For Minnesota, it was a little of both: Cassell alone had 13 points, 5 boards and that dime, but the other Clips weren’t too shabby at 6-12 FG as the Wolves were down seven at the period buzzer. Coach Randy Wittman glowered, spun, stamped his foot and hollared at his troops heading to the bench during a timeout.

    But it didn’t get any better in the first half of the second quarter. The Clips were 5-11 FG and coaxed 8 free throws from the too-late Minnesota D, while the Wolves themselves drew nada from the charity stripe. For a five-minute stretch, Minnesota’s offense boiled down to: get the ball to McCants and get the hell out of the way. At least that’s the way McCants saw it. Consigned to the bench apparently due to remnants of a flu that caused him to miss the previous game, he then saw Foye become the Wolves’ first sub. You think he was a little perturbed, perhaps ready to show the world a thing or two? Here is the total sum of the Wolves’ shot selection over a period of 4:17 of the second period:

    11:24: McCants, layup shot missed

    11:22: McCants, tip shot made

    10:46: McCants, jump shot made

    10:16: McCants, driving reverse layup shot made

    9:37: McCants, layup shot missed

    8:31: McCants, driving layup shot made

    7:54: McCants, fadeaway jumper missed

    7:07: McCants, 3pt shot missed

    Twelve seconds later, McCants picked up his third foul of the period and headed for the bench. Those in the pro-Shaddy camp will approvingly note that he made four of those eight shots, which was a damn sight better than the 34.6% Minnesota shot in the first period. Another positive is that five of those eight shots were in the paint–four layup attempts and a tip-in. And if you were there, it was a pretty conclusive demonstration that Rashad McCants can get his own shot pretty much whenever he wants against a decent NBA defense not specifically geared to stop him. But those same people saw that McCants had eyes for nothing but the hoop–his teammates might as well have been trading high-fives with Mad Dog. The three fouls likewise were no coincidence. When Shaddy is trying to rule on the offensive end, he has a tendency to overhype his defense–faux effort, in that he’s not thinking ahead anticipating his man’s move and he’s not moving his feet, at least not as pretty as those traipses through opponents when he’s the one with the ball. Bottom line, the Wolves were down 7 when he began his shooting spree, and down 12 when he grabbed some pine.

    It got as bad as 15, at 30-45 with 5:59 left to the play in the second period, when Telfair likewise picked up his third foul, joustling Cassell, naturally, and joined McCants on the bench. Then, because of two huge matchup switches, the game flipped, flipped hard, and never re-reversed itself.

    The first thing that happened was that Marko Jaric was sent back into the game to replace Telfair–and guard Cassell. What Sammy soon discovered was that Jaric was too large to fit inside the torture chamber. After getting 15 points with one assists and zero turnovers in 12:56 before Jaric came in for Telfair, Cassell registered just two more points, two assists and four turnovers in 14:50 after that.

    The second thing was that unheralded Josh Powell picked up his third foul trying to stop an Al Jefferson layup just 18 seconds after Marko switched in for Bassy. It was just the second bucket of the game for Jefferson, and afterward both Wittman and Jefferson said that was Jefferson’s fault, that he wasn’t being aggressive enough trying to get to the hole. I say they are being unfair to Powell, an undrafted kid in his second year out of North Carolina State who is already on his fourth NBA team and was busting his hump trying to deny Jefferson first the ball and then position. So with Powell’s third, in comes Aaron Williams, who is 6-9 like Powell but 15 pounds lighter at 225. With Elton Brand out all season with a shoulder, Chris Kamen sidelined with the flu (ditto free throw machine Corey Maggette), and Powell on the bench in foul trouble, Aaron Williams was choice #4 to match up with Jefferson. He should have been #5. Jefferson scored 9 points over the next 2:20 and the Wolves were down only 4, 56-52, at the break.

    "Run roughshod" is a good cliche for the second half. The Clips had nothing, shooting 10-34 FG and getting only 27 points in the entire 24 minutes. For the second half of the final quarter, they had a backcourt of 5-10 Brevin Knight and 6-0 Dan Dickau. Wittman called it the best 24 minutes of perimeter D he’s seen this season, but I think all but the final minute–the collapse, in other words–against the Celts in the second half was better, because the opposition was a JV team. I mean, Al Thornton, that stupidly trendy pick for ROY before the season started, was 1-15 FG. Meanwhile, Craig Smith himself had 19 points in the second half, on 8-10 FG.

    2. The Backcourt Jumble

    So what did Jaric’s stellar stopper performance on Cassell–he was plus +24, with 8 assists and but a single turnover–do to enhance his place in the crowded backcourt picture? And what about Shaddy, the Mad Bombadier? Well, the tea leaves on the second question are easier to answer than the first. After the game, I asked Wittman if McCants might have freer rein to let fly when he’s a sub coming off the bench versus when he is a starter. "Yeah," the coach acknowledged, looking down at a stat line that had McCants attempting a dozen shots in 13:36. Then he added, well, how often was he in there with Al, or Gomes?

    And right there you realize that if you’ve got a low block stud in the game alongside a sage, keep-the-ball moving teammate in the frontcourt, *and* a shoot-first point guard just returning from injury but expected to be a pillar for your future, the best place for a protean swingman who can almost always get his own shot might be coming off the bench while those previous three take a breather. Translation: Jefferson and Gomes are two-thirds of any frontcourt allignment from here on out. Sooner, rather than later, Foye will be the point guard. With those three in the game, what you need most is passing, defense, and, especially if it is Witt’s smallball outfit, a little more length. That’s Marko.

    How well McCants takes to this is fairly predictable–not well. His demeanor and behavior have indicated thus far this season that starting matters to him. Will having the opportunity to be the gunner without a conscience compensate at all for this perceived slight?

    When I naturally followed up Witt’s inference by saying, so the idea will be to bring McCants off the bench for instant offense, the coach gave a "we’ll see" reply. But it is hard not to see that’s wha
    t he had in mind. When McCants was jacking up 8 shots in 4 minutes, the man giving him the ball and waving goodbye to the rest of the play was Foye. *That’s* not going to happen too many games in a row. Lest we all had forgotten, Foye has a pretty large ego too. In his postgame comments Friday, he reminded folks that the team is 2-1 since his return, that he is indeed a point guard much more than a two-guard–"it’s the way I play, the way I do things"–and that "You’ll know when I’m back: I’ll have a big game and play more than 24 minutes." Friday’s tote: 2-5 FG, 2 assists, one turnover with a pair of steals. He had more shots and half as many assists as Telfair; only half as many shots yet just one-quarter the assists of Jaric. Stay tuned.

    3. Jefferson to Brewer…

    At least three times on Friday, Al Jefferson set Corey Brewer up for a perfect layup. At least two other times, Jefferson’s pass provided Brewer with a wide open jumper. Brewer finished 2-9 FG, and Jefferson was credited with but two dimes, one of them to Brewer. In other words, Brewer hurried the bunnies Jefferson was pulling out of his hat for him, going too strong on a pair of layup attempts and not assembling the sort of silky flow on practically any of his jumpers that elicit confidence that the ball is going to go in. For the season, Brewer now has 95 makes in 271 attempts, or 35%. The hard part is that he’s missing good shots.

    Now let’s look at the good news in this exchange. Jefferson’s growth at finding the open man when teams collapse on him is becoming manifest. Seriously, Jefferson deserved at least five assists, in just 29:58 on Friday (he didn’t play the entire fourth quarter of the blowout). On Monday, the team that gave the Wolves their worst whupping of the season–the Houston Rockets–come to Target Center. Don’t be surprised if Michael Doleac gets a few Jefferson feeds for midrange jumpers when Houston comes with the double-team. And don’t be surprised if Corey Brewer is on the bench.