Author: Hans Eisenbeis

I was surprised to see, by way of MNSpeak, that a new local beer brewery has arrived called “Surly.” That’s a brand already known to dirt-bag bicyclists and gas-huffing bike couriers here and everywhere. The original Surly is, of course, a homegrown steel-and-wool bike operation affiliated with Quality Bike Parts out in Bloomington. The original Surly makes a number of popular products, but the closest they get to brewing beer, as opposed to merely drinking it, is the Jethro Tool–a combination lug tightener, bottle opener, and prog-rock memento. The close association in some people’s minds of beer and bikes may cause some cognitive dissonance; or perhaps it will just help along in the process of reducing brain-load to match the naturally occuring reduction of brain-capacity seen in at least one dirtbag beer-chugging cyclist, namely me. If my beer and my bike share the same name, I suppose that frees up a few more brain cells scheduled for demolition in my enthusiasm for both.

Good to be back. Funny how a week away can recharge the batteries, and the fear and loathing of a return to the office–how many fires to put out? How many angry emails and phone calls? What unfortunate mistakes revealed? What oversights in the budget, and disappointments on the spreadsheets?–quickly dissipates in the good will of the New Year.

That, and the continuing dominance of the Minnesota Wild. I’m not kidding. I was most disgusted to get home Monday, find that my TiVo had recorded the Wild’s Saturday game against the much-hated Canucks, only to learn that the silly device had recorded the pay-per-view channel, which I had not paid for and therefore would not be viewing. I need to work out this kink. Unfortunately, the Wild are bouncing around between at least four channels, and each channel lists the games differently. Since TiVo operates on a database according to channel listings, the only way to passively record the Wild wherever they might appear is to use a keyword search. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the technical details, other than to say that so far TiVo has found only one way to really annoy me, and that is relative to sports events. It is unforgiving of overtime and stops recording at the end of regulation no matter what the score (a real liability so far this season). What’s worse is that it appears to have no way to facilitate a “season pass” to every Wild game on whatever channel it might appear. It’s no good at all.

So I’m really bitching and moaning about technology here to deflect my disaapointment at missing what must have been a whale of a game–the Wild beating the Canucks finally on their fourth try this season, and apparently really shaming Naslund, Bertouzzi, the especially cretinous Ruutu, and the rest of that thuggish Vancouver scrum. The Canucks are one of the only things I dislike about Canada. (The other would be Canucks fans: annoying in their knowledge of the game, but never using their powers for good. Two years ago, I got in a barefisted email brawl about the WIld’s “ugly” dump and chase style, which I correctly identified by its simpler and more noble name, forechecking. And anyway, the Wild handed the Canucks a glorious shit sandwich in that memorable playoff series. Touche!)

Last night was an another amazing win, this time against the Red Wings (who have the nuts to call Detroit “hockey town,” a slap in the face to every little berg in the fine state of Minnesota–know who the US Women’s Olympic hockey team is playing tonight? The Warroad high school boy’s team!), and the Wild are surprised to find themselves suddenly at the helm of a rocket that’s blasting straight at the heart of playoff contention.

Dwayne Roloson was especially impressive in the net last night–almost blasphemously so. You may have been as surprised as I was to see him take the second intermission interview on OLN. (Nevermind his protestations to Michael Russo at the Strib; you can count the number of times Roli has appeared in TV intermissions this year on one hand and still keep a firm grip on your beer stein.) Hockey is a game that is ruled by superstition–it makes baseball voodoo look like ninth-grade algebra, when it comes to crossing fingers, tying shoes the same way, wearing the same lucky socks, drinking at the same water fountain, carrying the same lint in the watch pocket, and so on. And no hockey player is more superstitious–i mean SCARY superstitious than a goaltender, who must carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Even though the world will forgive him for both good goals and bad goals (you really have to blow it at the professional level, or be a Canuck tender, to catch the open wrath of hometown fans and teammates) you will not forgive yourself. For many years, goalie coaches taught their acolytes that no matter what the final score of the game was, you had lost it if you’d allowed four points or more. I’ll go into greater detail some other time about a particular subject that riles me–the proliferation of “flop” goaltending– but not here, not know. Suffice to say that the Wild last night clearly identified Detroit goalie Chris Osgood’s weakness–the two-hole, low on the glove-hand side–and they nailed it at every opportunity, which paid off twice and set up the win.

The main thing going for the Wild right now is an astonishing ability to a) kill penalties in what OLN annoyingly keeps calling “the NEW NHL,” and b) really capitalize on very minor mistakes. The more I watch modern pro hockey, as compared to, say, the college or high school game, it is precisely this point that keeps standing in high relief. Pros find very tiny cracks and instantly turn them into bullseyes. Right now, the WIld are finding the breaks, taking them, getting the bounces, and winning games. And it’s a joy to watch ’em.

I’m away from the desk this week. In all the sturm und drang of Christmas–I understand there’s a war on it–I failed to mention last week that I had a local radio appointment you might have been interested in. Anyway, I had a delightful time yesterday hanging out with the gifted and gorgeous Kerri Miller at MPR’s midmorning program. I was the local lightweight on an otherwise auspicious panel of commentators. The subject was the year in media–which of course is a huge subject that got boiled down to the Valerie Plame/Judy Miller story, the Times phone-tapping story (why’d they hold it for a year?), the Post’s “black sites” story (why’d they decline to locate any?), and Kurt Eichenwald’s putative Pulitzer for his Times story about online child pornography (why’d Jack Shafer have a problem with it, and why won’t anyone be his friend at this vulnerable time of the year?).

So much to cover, so little time. Anyway, you can listen to us barely scratch the surface here. I’d direct you to pay special attention to the comments of Alex Jones, who has some eloquent old-school things to say in these complex times, especially about “competing values systems” (confidentiality versus truth; impartiality versus justice; personal interest versus national interest).

Also, watch the Minnesota Wild. They are ripping up the ice, and finally getting the bounces they deserve. See you next week.

Also, new issue out today in the real world. We hope you enjoy it.

I seem to have worked out the losing streak, in that I can watch the Wild now and they can win. But I don’t seem to be able to see it through to the end. Three games in a row now–Boston, Montreal, and Dallas–have had quirks of one kind or another. In the middle of the first period against Boston, the screen suddenly blazed like full sunlight on a glacial field of snow.

This condition persisted through the commercials, although I could make out the brand names and logos. I got disgusted and did not watch the end of the game, which was a loss. This same televisual malady occurred during the Montreal game, this time in the third period. It was a win that I could not enjoy. And last night, the Dallas Stars. It was a delightful and much deserved and long overdue win–a win I missed because my TiVo ended the game on time, whereas the game did not end on time. The reason for the divergence was the apparently unscheduled announcement, at the head of the game, of the 2006 U.S. Olympic hockey team. All of the players on the national team are now pro hockey players who come from Michigan, which I find vaguely depressing. Being the site of the announcement of the roster for the Feb Olympics in Italy is a mild honor, I suppose, but not worth confounding the TiVo, in my view. But one notable fact is that Mike Modano, longtime Star, was named yet again to the team, for like the fifth time. Modano back in the day never struck me as a franchise player of any kind. He was skilled and young and seemed to get himself, Phil Esposito style, in the right place at the right time, but struck me as the kind of guy who would follow a dislocated franchise rather than honor any kind of loyalty to the trunk community that had established and supported that franchise. In other words, a sort of mercenary player whose loyalty to management has certainly endured the test of time, though he has never been all that lovable to fans, it seems to me. And, to be charitable, I have to say that he has aged gracefully–which in modern sports is more or less the equivalent of aging without serious injury, and thus winning the war of accretion in a contact sport. But he was given a moment to speak publicly on the PA, after beiong named to the olympic squad, and made a pleasant and gracious though kinda clumsy thankee to the good local folks of Minnesota whose memory might run back all those years to the ruddy-faced rookie that defacto became the sole survivor of the Minnesota North Stars in its next lifetime as a formidible but irritating sun-belt franchise in a city that wouldn’t know a Zamboni from a salt lick. Plus, Modano has grown into his uniform, and he wears a light beard and his nose has filled out, undoubtedly thanks to the elbows and forearms of the league’s defensemen, and the prcocious poise he had on the ice has become such a habit that it looks like it actually belongs to him and was not borrowed. Nothing against the guy, but frankly nothing for him either–which, being a goddam Dallas Star, puts him slightly to the side of the good, even though he is now the enemy, and he earns his keep with elegant assists and venomous top-o-the-circle wrist-rockets. So it was triply awesome that the Wild were able to hammer home the win, at home, in the third, against a team with such an ugly origin, and an ugly uniform to match, the shame of Norm Greene. I count the Stars very near the bottom for bad taste in unis, in the running with the godawful Ducks and that team from Florida, the whosie-whatsits. (Incidentally, the best hockey uniforms are almost always red–Detroit, the CCCP, Chicago, Wisconsin, Boston College. Or maybe it’s because those teams cling to classic stylings. I’ve always hated the Wild logo–what is it, a rabid hamster?–but like the color palette. As I mentioned last week, I think the Wild’s retro sweater is one for the ages, if it ever loses the whiff of faux.)

Yesterday Radar magazine closed–again. And true to established pattern, editor Maer Roshan is not conceding defeat, he’s just back to trying to find another financial backer. Roshan has managed to be gainfiully employed in launching his magazine for three years now, while putting out a total of five issues. Nice work if you can get it!

There’s no question that one of the more idiotic things a person can do with his money is try to launch a stand-alone glossy national magazine, but it was never clear to me how they thought such an erratic, periodic publishing schedule would ever fly. Never has an editor got more press and more buzz for doing so little as Roshan has now for thirty-six months– excluding his former mentor Tina Brown, of course.

It seems to me that what Radar really needed was some sort of unique business model as selling proposition to advertisers, and the “we’ll-publish -whenever-we-get-enough-ad-pages-put-together” approach was apparently not unique enough to convince ad-buyers to drop the 15 to 20 grand per page that Radar was asking. Cool counts for a lot among readers, and to a lesser degree, among advertisers. But I’m convinced that ninety percent of cool is the rather mundane job of showing up, punching the clock, and publishing on a regular basis. Nothing says “we’re a legitimate business, dammit” like doing what other magazines do–that is, publishing at least once a month, bimonthly in a pinch.

But regularlity is not just a good business practice. It’s necessary to establish a creative rhythm and continuity. Hell hath no fury like a writer who has been sandbagged. A magazine that is published quarterly at best doesn’t have much chance of inspiring the people it most needs to inspire: those who are responsible for creating it. When I first looked through Radar (which never managed to send me any copies, although I’d dutifully subscribed), I thought it felt like a magazine put together by a managing editor. It contained a lot of well executed material without any obvious overarching vision or voice. But now I think that may have been a function of never having enough pages or enough issues to fully realize whatever vision was sown there.

Then too, financier Mort Zuckerman is coming in for some heat from the likes of Keith Kelly at the New York Post. This is justified. Zuckerman and a partner had committed $20 million to get Radar off the ground, but decided to pull the plug after spending just half of that. An insider at Radar said that Zuckerman left $1.3 million “on the table” in withdrawing their backing in the midst of production on the next issue, which was pencilled in for late January street date. The Post’s Page Six also suggests that Zuckerman caved to the lobbying of powerful friends who did not wish to be written about in such an irreverent periodical. If there is a grain of truth to that, it would have been slathered into oblivion by the vaseline of massive ad sales–if those massive ad sales had ever materialized. For disappointed staffers and contributors, that kind of gossip is a ready-to-hand self-servicing lube; it is shorthand for saying “we were doing our job TOO well. The man shut us down.”

A person has to wonder what Roshan and his minions were doing with all that money and time. I know lunches in Manhattan tend to be long and expensive, but it’s hard to believe that the rest of their time could be adequately occupied with self-googling and Gawker. It is, of course, terribly bad form to criticize Roshan. He’s a good, smart, popular editor who obviously knows a few powerful people around town. But the real reason one’s conscience is troubled by razzing the Radar folks is that we all secretly know what a magazine like that represents–hope. When a smart young editor gets the backing of big money to create a nifty magazine from scratch for himself and people like him–well, it gives everyone in the business a little spring in their step and joy in their hearts. Not every magazine in the world has to model itself on LuckyCargoDomino, and not every editor has to pretend he isn’t publishing a catalog.

I’ve been meaning for awhile to write a bit about the Minnesota Wild, and how nice it is to have the NHL back this season. Well, not nice exactly. Just another demand on my time, actually, but at least there is TiVo. I wrote last year that there were no truly great hockey writers on the continent or in the language–at least not since Ken Dryden–and I wanted to take a stab at a new sort of hockey writing that honored the flow of the game, the rich metaphors, the blah de blah blah. I’m not gonna be that guy, but just as an exercise, I thought maybe I’d type something up now and again.

There really can be no good hockey writing without good play-by-play recall; and beyond describing assists, goals, saves, and penalty shots, good play-by-play is very difficult to write, because hockey is a game of intense serendipity. Writing about the general direction of a period, much less a game, is an exercise in extreme editing and summarizing.

In hockey, as in basketball, there are basic “plays” for breaking out, configurations for two-on-ones and so on, channels and lanes, and general philosophies. But in hockey, what results when these plans clash with the plans of your rival, mixed with funny bounces, breakdowns in communication, referees of varying degrees of watchfulness, unforeseen matchups, unintended rebounds, slop around the goals–well, the complexity of any given situation is boggling. In Basketball, each rush results in either a basket or not. Hockey is so much more complicated than that.

I missed last nights win against the Islan ders, which seems a shame, because I have lately been operating in a cloud of suspicion that the Wild are losing because I am watching, and this is confirmation. But I did see Saturday’s (Firday’s?) heartbreaking loss to the Flyers– heartbreaking, of course, because of their winning goal in the final minute of the game, but heartbreaking too because the Wild had dominated play for most of the game, anbd they’d done it in a very interesting way that, to me, represents the future of the game.

I’m talking about forechecking, the positive/aggressive half of dump-and-chase, which is the much derided style and philosophy of Jaques Lemaire. In enemy territory, this style of play seeks out the corners rather than the open ice. When the puck is behind the goal line, in particular, you see Wild players collopase on the puck and on the net; you see a lot of scrappy hitting and scrumming, short quick passes, one-timers at the net, jabbing rebounds. It’s not the prettiest form of hockey, although there are occasionally glorious bursts from the top of the circle, or from the slot, which has become an open channel. That’s because the defense and opposing wingers are forced into the corners.

But when I say “the future of the game,” I mean the open-ice form of forechecking– the seemingly futile runs at loose pucks, forcing the pass from behind the defensive net even when the zone has been conceeded and all have fallen back for a clash in neutral ice. What I saw Friday (or Saturday, or whenever the hell I got around to watching the game on TiVo) impressed me, because Minnesota forwards–especially Marian Gaborik–were forcing a lot of plays on the forecheck in open ice, and getting the bounces. It is very easy for a player in this situation to make the perfunctory run and cycle, a swipe with the stick– a gesture more than anything that is one of those little things you do to look like you are working. It’s a longstanding tradition of hopelessness, but a mark of honor at least that you make these sorts of gestures, or risk being singled out for being a laggard long before you’re ever celebrated for being a realist. The odds are very much against you, but it also becomes one of those parts of an otherwise unpredictable game where hustle eventually DOES payoff, and where you can determine your own fate and take the game into your own hands for a few brief moments. Which is all it takes to shake the frost off the back of the net.

By the way, I find it very gratifying that the Flyers have held firm with their traditional uniforms–that classic logo and the fire-hydrant orange (yes orange–fire hydrants were never red in my neighborhood). In my mind, this provides historical continutity, and pays tribute to what I think of as the golden age of the Flyers circa 1976, with Bobby Clark, Kenny” The Rat” Linseman, Bernie Parent, and that big thug Dave “the Hammer” Schultz.

Great traditional uniforms let every hockey fan recall their own private golden age. The Wild, of course, don’t yet have a golden age–except maybe the magical first and third seasons–but I still love their retro red jersey the best, for reasons I’ll go into some other time.

Here’s last night’s MPR commentary, for those who have asked. I’d warn you when they’re coming, but I often find out after you do. (They’re prerecorded–thank gawd. Live radio is truly for the professionals.)

Bike Commuter

For the past five years, I’ve been a bike commuter. But last year was the first time I gave up the car entirely, and rode right through the winter. My coworkers find this astonishing and demoralizing. I tell them its just a matter of the right clothes-nothing high-tech or glitzy, just a lot of wool. And if you can get around in the snow with two-wheel drive, I can generally get around fine with one-wheel drive.

Being a good, modest Minnesotan, I would never say that I ride the bike to save the world. Nor do I ride to save against the high cost of gas, although I can appreciate that. I ride for purely selfish reasons–I like it and it’s good for me. And I don’t mean physically, although it’s certainly not bad in that way. The value of my ten-mile bicycle commute each day, each way is spiritual. As I ride down the old railroad corridor of the Cedar Lake bike path, dodging killdeer and jackrabbits, I often glance up at the I-394 overpass and see gridlocked cars coming in from the western suburbs. Honking, squeeling brakes, a slight hanging smog. I can feel the road rage in the air. I have to say, I sometimes laugh out a loud, a little wickedly. During rush hour, I can get to work about ten minutes faster on my bike–without ever losing my temper.

I’m sure scientists have been able to measure all the ways that exercise is good for a person, and the psychologists will tell you that it releases endorphins and adrenaline. Exercise can become an obsession because it relieves stress. It’s certainly better for you than drugs, alcohol, or shopping. For me, it gives me a half hour of time to clear my head, to transition from home to work. I suppose that would be possible in a long car commute. But I once lived in New York and had a two-hour commute into Manhattan by car and train–and I recall arriving at work feeling shattered rather than centered.

My family, like so many others, has always dreamed of living in the country. My wife Jessica and I both grew up on farms and in small towns, and we’d love to give our kids that experience. But work in the city, and home in the country means one thing: cars, every day. I don’t think I can do it.

A couple years ago, a widely cited study said that Twin Citizens commuted by bicycle more than any other American city of comparable size. At the time, I was skeptical. Riding the Cedar Lake bike path each day, I’d noticed one of those counting boxes with the black hose running across the path. I’d also noticed kids jumping up and down on that hose. I quietly kept this information to myself. Why would I want to ruin the happy story that hardy Minnesotans think so little of winter weather that we ride our bikes year around?

But in the years since then, I have seen the proliferation of bicycles around town. New bike paths have been painted and paved, million dollar bike bridges have been built. I even saw recently that the Univeristy of Minnesota is paying bike commuters a hundred dollars a piece to study our commuting patterns with a little GPS unit attached to our handlebars. If we’re not careful, we may become another Copenhagen, where almost ninety percent of the population use bikes as their primary daily vehicle. I say the more the merrier; I look forward to the day when bike traffic slows to a rage-inducing crawl around Lake Calhoun, and I’ll have to jump on the parkway–where they used to drive cars–to avoid the traffic.

Over at Los Angeles magazine, the redoubtable R.J. Smith writes about the Village Voice-New Times merger in progress. I like R.J.; I think he’s a solid and accessible writer who knows how to turn a phrase and how to let it sing by not overworking its setting.

This is a complaint I’ve had about alternative weeklies for a while; many of them lack discipline in the writing (and therefore in the editing). That’s not the same thing as saying they are badly written or badly edited; they could just be better, not by using bigger or more words, but by using more precise words, and less of them.

I guess it’s not much of a lesson to have learned, but to my eye and ear, much of the writing I like best is signified as much by what is not written as by what is. That kind of writing is good for two reasons. First, it’s a more artful use of language (yes, silence is a writerly tool; what serious musician doesn’t know how to use pauses and descresendos and retardando?) Second, it gives readers credit for having read a thing or two in the years and days leading up to the moment when this brilliant expose in this cheeky alt-weekly landed in their lap ready to change their lives.

Smith is one of those breed of music writers who graduated from music criticism to music journalism, and from there to unadulterated journalism when required. He serves he’ll as well as anyone I can think of to represent the past of the alt-weekly, and quite possibly the future. (Los Angeles magazine. When good alt-weeklies die, do they become glossy city monthlies?)

My only bone to pick with his assessment is his main premise: That alt-weeklies are mainly for children. OK, then: the youth. It is a cliche repeated many times over that the alternative press is the organ of youth culture, youth movement. Whatever the kids are up to today, well, read all about it in The Stranger, or The New Times, or the Pitch, or The Scene. That was true at one time, particularly the period of time that made alterntative weeklies so successful, both as businesses and journalistic enterprises. That period of time was the eighties and the nineties, and the people mainly responsible for the “commodification of the cool” were Gen X music critics and their boomer bosses, who cashed in on the spontaneous human combustion of homegrown alternative rock.

Of course the alternative press existed for a long time before Kurt Cobain. And it surely existed for the “youth” of America. But I think of the alternative press of the 50s, 60s, and 70s as a vehicle of ageless counterculture, decentralized, jerry-rigged, irreverent, doing good work but having much fun, getting by on a shoestring, because a shoestring was still a metric that could hold up the bottom line. That can’t happen anymore (although I hear they still take your shoestrings at the county jail–a shoestring can’t save you, but it’s still works as the ultimate escape strategy).

So the larger question is: What has happened to the alternative press? Well, in my view it aged, but it never grew up. But its readership did grow up. People I know who were avid readers of the alternative press simply don’t find much to read in them anymore. They are not jaded, they just wish to be rewarded for spending their time with the newspaper; to see their alt-weeklies operating like time-machines back to 1989, replete with the same politics and record reviews of their youth, driven by the same passions, still writing too many words about too few subjects other than the author, leavened with too much depressing news about intractable realities– well, you can understand how a busy young professional with kids and mortgage and car payments doesn’t feel too guilty about giving up old habits like the alternative weekly, he hasn’t seen a show or bought a CD or written a letter to his congressman for about five years. He knows he should, mainly because a lot of free newspapers are reminding him that he should. Maybe he will. Next week.

Alternatively, of course, the Alt Weekly could engage a new, younger readership to bury the old one. I personally believe–in fact I know, because they come through our office every 15 weeks or so, as interns–that there are plenty of kids who somehow, against all odds, picked up the habit of reading for pleasure and edification. But the cards are stacked so highly against them getting into the production end of things–the writing and the editing and the shot-calling–that we the print media have pretty much ceded these readers to the Web (as R.J. Smith suspects).

So what’s the solution? Probably focusing not so much on readerships as on readers, writing not to demographics but to curiosities. What has your alt-weekly done lately that made you happy to be a reader? What have you read in newsprint lately that met the highest standard of the written word–the story that is more painful to stop reading than to finish?

Fell asleep again with the boy. That means waking up at roughly midnight, wide awake, overheated. One would think that in the next two to three hours, it would be possible for me to clean the kitchen. It is not. Too many books to read, magazines. Rereading Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island (not getting very far very fast), making a big dent in my Special Top Secret Assignment, but look the new New Yorker, Rik Hertzberg, Seymour Hersh, Louis Menand, Peter Schjeldahl all in this week–are they doing it to me on purpose? And a surprise: Finally a Margaret Talbot article I can actually read. (New Yorker editors have worked their most powerful ju-ju, something New York Times magazine editors never could do.) But I am falling behind. So I forced myself to bed at 2:30, with hopes of actually being asleep by 3. I pulled the futon couch open, because by this time nthe bed is full of the wife and kids. The dog is brazen, climbs aboard, farts. An ungodly smell. The guinea pig down the hall makes a kind of constant rattling as it drinks from its little stainless tube with the ball bearing in the end. The dog dreams heavily and all four paws are trotting against my back. In the morning, I ran around waking up kids, only to be shushed by the wife. No school today. Well, that gives me a good solid hour to clean the kitchen, which is piled high with pots and pans. When I finally get to the bottom, both sinks are empty. Their little strainer plugs are full–one side rice, the other side beans. I thought to myself: A complete protein!