Brad Zellar A brief squall of horns opens “Focus on Sanity,” the song that kicked off Ornette Coleman’s seminal Atlantic Records phase. Part fanfare, part detonation, that sound made it plenty clear that the Texas saxophonist was plunging into almost entirely uncharted territory. Twenty-nine years old when he recorded the song in a Hollywood studio in May … Read more
Charlie Callahan and Brian Spanier, creative directors at a Minneapolis agency called Periscope, spent the winter preparing an advertising and marketing juggernaut designed to pitch Twins baseball to the sticks. After several seasons of success on the field and futility at the turnstiles, this year the team scrapped its vaguely self-deprecating “Get to Know ’Em” … Read more
Bloom of fireworks above a black field, the idle of insects throbbing from the damp ditches. Distant petroleum carnival of light, dark steeples, and a watertower announcing the presence of a town. Is that the rattle of a snare drum from somewhere out in the fields? Tell me again what lives in that place beyond … Read more
If you go beyond the Twins’ so-so 8-11 record in Florida and scrutinize what they’ve actually done in those games, you might be tempted to forecast a rather alarming repeat of what made the team so maddening for much of the 2004 season. Look at the runs scored and runs allowed numbers for the AL … Read more
I’m not talking about that old world, mister. I’m trying to forget I ever lived there. All those bastards had ants in their pants, and you’d think it wouldn’t be possible to cram that many drunken jackasses in a Volvo, but you’d be sadly mistaken. I saw it all with my own eyes. Oh, Lord, … Read more
Surprises and disasters large and small could still be looming in the final week of spring training, but right now it looks like the Twins opening day line-up will look like this: Shannon Stewart Jason Bartlett Joe Mauer Justin Morneau Torii Hunter Lew Ford Jacque Jones Michael Cuddyer Luis Rivas With Ford, Jones, and Cuddyer … Read more
Gogol’s last words: ‘A ladder, quick, a ladder!’ —Elias Canetti, The Agony of Flies I’ve never been able to sleep like a normal person, and I literally could count the number of dreams I remember in my lifetime on one hand. This last week, however, I’ve been trying a new medication, and experiencing the sort … Read more
I never stop talking, even when I’m just muddling around the house by myself (which is, to be perfectly honest for a change, most of the time). I’m always spitting out words and pushing them around, hoping to carve a new language out of all the silence and empty space, or at least build something … Read more
That’s a damn good question, really. Most Major League players would tell you that they think spring training is much too long –does it really take nearly six weeks and thirty games to get a team ready for the season? I seriously doubt it, but as long as they’re playing the games you’d like to … Read more
There may be nothing in the world so amusing as a purely rational man. The rational man is a fellow who has not yet been able to convince himself that he’s seen a ghost. The poor bastard has repressed his memories of alien abductions and fits of religious mania. He thinks this world is round. … Read more