Author: Brad Zellar

  • Lost Weekend

    Things would seem to be trending downward at the moment, wouldn’t you say? The Twins have scored a total of 12 runs in their last five games, and managed just five in the weekend series with Boston. Their best hitter is headed for the disabled list –he’s already there, actually. The reigning MVP is batting…

  • Ain't That Pretty At All: Debacle In Tampa Bay

    Those were some of the most rinky-dink baseball games we’re likely to see all year (knock wood). Thank God, at any rate, that we’ve seen the last of the Devil Rays and that convention center/monster truck pit they call a baseball stadium. Seriously, can you recall a series that contained more serious weirdness than that…

  • The Heart’s Ventriloquist

    He knew how to make the heart sing and yodel and howl with joy, could coax from it creaks and croaks and murmurs. He seemed to be able to make it confess its secrets, its hopes and desires, fears and needs. His performances were uncanny, the stuff of growing legend, and would leave audiences spellbound.…

  • Tuesday Night: Twins Vs. Bad News Bears

    Wow. That game featured a dozen different kinds of ugly. It was ugly enough –particularly if you happen to be one of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ 117 fans– that it almost managed to make Big Sid Ponson look pretty. You know, pretty in a greasy, WWF bad guy sort of way. But, what the…

  • Pen Pals Series: Dr. Elaine Pagels

    While a graduate student at Harvard, Dr. Elaine Pagels spent years studying the Nag Hammadi Library manuscripts, and she has turned that research into a sort of Gnostic cottage industry. Her 1979 classic, The Gnostic Gospels, won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was included on the Modern…

  • Minnesota Book Awards

    The annual celebration of Minnesota books and publishing has new sponsors (the entire city of St. Paul seems to have gotten behind this thing), new digs, and plenty of fresh faces this year. But in a state with so much literary activity going on it’s hard to screw up something so basically virtuous. We could…