The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

Trade Talk Galore!

Okay, much as I hate to plunge into things without being sure it is not a waste of time, the Associated Press is calling the KG trade to Boston a done deal and I’m getting a lot of calls to appear on various media to discuss the trade, so it seems a little silly not to have a forum on this blog for it.

In case you haven’t heard the particulars, AP is reporting KG to Boston for Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff, Sebastian Telfair, Gerald Green, and an undisclosed draft pick. (Others, such as the Boston Herald, have also thrown in Ryan Gomes and a 2009 first round pick–all unconfirmed as of now.

This is a trade that now makes sense for both teams. Celtic GM Danny Ainge has Paul Pierce and Ray Allen signed through 2011 and 2010, respectively, at more than $16 million a year apiece. He needs to win now. Adding KG to those aforementioned stars in the East catapults the Celts up with the Bulls and perhaps the Cavs and the Heat as early favorites for the NBA finals.

On the Wolves end, GM Kevin McHale has long lamented the lack of rugged low post play and has coveted Jefferson for that reason. Just 22 years old with two years left on his deal at a combined $6.9 million, he has the potential to be another Elton Brand. The next most valuable piece is Ratliff’s expiring $11 million contract, which is vitally important to a Wolves ownership that was looking at paying Garnett $46 million over the next two years while the team underwent a near top-to-bottom rebuilding with the youth acquired over the last three drafts. Telfair is damaged goods but does play the point and has a clean slate with which to prove himself. Green is freakishly athletic but hasn’t demonstrated he knows how to play basketball. I would say that the third key to the trade behind Jefferson and Ratliff is whether the Wolves receive their own pick back or have to take one of the Celtics picks. Given the Wolves rebuilding mode and the strength of the West, versus the suddenly stacked Celts in the inferior East, the Wolves’ former pick is the one to own down the road.

Other considerations…

One reason this deal is likely “rumored” without confirmation for so long is because the Celts want to ensure they get a contract extension with Garnett totally firmed up if not in writing.

When Al Jefferson was a rookie, Ricky Davis and Mark Blount were veterans on the Celtics whom management obviously wanted to unload. Chemistry is all about pecking orders, and Jefferson has to have his status elevated rapidly and without much disruption if the Wolves are to enjoy good chemistry. In other words, add this trade to the reasons why Minnesota should part with the Boston Bobbsey Twins.

That said, the Wolves will have to find a new way to rebound, having lost the guy who dominated the boards for his team more than anyone in the league over the past three to four years. Can Jefferson, Craig Smith and Corey Brewer be an adequate front line, especially if your backcourt is also smallish, with Foye and McCants the likely starters in any youth movement? Yes, Juwon Howard is also a factor, but if Howard is your rebounding bulwark, you’re in trouble.

July 30, 2007
Discontent

how i feel, courtesy of Voodoo Donut.

I feel like I’ve been offered a jelly donut, only to find a puff of stale air in place of promised jelliness.

There in the pages of the glossy Lake Minnetonks Magazine, ran a snippet that proclaimed the existence of a new Good Day Cafe, right in Wayzata! As I was out and about this morning, I thought a right-nicely turned caramel roll would do the trick on an icky Monday. But no, there is no additional outpost and no plans for one either, it turned out to be a rumor printed as fact. Sad in the short-term, but glad in the long run, I think it would have been too early to expand as the original might have suffered.

And then it got worse … Coastal Seafoods in Wayzata has closed their doors. I am more than bummed about it. A call into the other stores found them open, and the official word is that they could never do the amount of business that they thought they would in Wayzata. I could always count on them for great stuff like Monkfish and Opah which you can’t always find in the Lund’s/Byerly’s bin. I was on the lookout for some Barramundi for a lift to my Monday but now I am lost.

Maybe I’ll drown my sorrows in sushi.

July 30, 2007
The Latest Installment Of The Good News-Bad News Bears

If this shit keeps up I’m going to initiate a class action lawsuit against the Twins on behalf of all the whiplash victims in Twins Territory.

I go away for a week on the heels of a nice little rebound series against the Angels (the Twins had won the first two games when I hit the road for a cabin in Vermont), and the next time I had an opportunity to look they’d dropped five straight.

That was bad news.

On my way back they turned around and won the last two games of the Cleveland series.

That was good news, and when I finally got a chance to investigate further I discovered that while the Twins were going 8-8 in the first two-and-a-half weeks out of the break, Detroit was going 8-10 and losing four in a row, while Cleveland was 8-9 and losing three-of-four to Boston and two-of-three to the Twins. Which meant that as I was getting settled back in at my sweltering apartment in south Minneapolis, Minnesota was seven games back in the Central, having finally, almost miraculously, managed to pick up two games in the standings in two days.

That was more good news, no?

And now the Royals –against whom the Twins have thirteen remaining games– are coming to town for four games. That would have been good news a couple months ago, but at the moment it could go either way. The Royals are vastly improved, and have now won four straight and nine-of-sixteen since the break. They’re also 3-2 against the Twins thus far.

The rest of the way the Twins will face division opponents 35 times (besides the aforementioned thirteen against KC, they have ten games vs. Cleveland, and six against both Detroit and Chicago). They’re 16-21 against Central clubs to this point, so obviously they’re going to have to perform a whole lot better.

More bad news: the Twins have averaged just 3.38 runs a game since the break. Despite being respectable (and in many instances more than respectable) the starting pitchers are 4-7 during that same stretch –Matt Garza, for instance, has a 1.96 ERA in three starts, but has an 0-2 record to show for it.

And as of this moment –with the trade deadline clock approaching the 24-hour mark– there has been no solid indication that any sort of move is imminent.

And that also is bad news, because with the exception of Justin Morneau, Luis Castillo, and (egad!) Jason Tyner, the Twins offense has been brutal. Torii Hunter is hitting just .224 in the second half, and even Joe Mauer is struggling to the point where it might be time to start talking about a sophomore slump.

I’ve been out of commission for a week, so I haven’t yet caught up on any of the local scuttlebutt, but I can’t conceive of anything short of a blockbuster trade that would either raise my blood pressure or significantly improve the Twins’ chances the rest of the way.

July 30, 2007
Grocery Getters That Go

There is a term they bounce around the suburbs called “Grocery Getter.” This usually refers to the egregious waste of fuel smallish women (primarily) expend on driving large SUVs to the grocery store.

But not all women drive monster trucks to market. Some actually drive sensible vehicles to far better places like the Organic Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings in Minneapolis. You may consider it fighting commonism before brunch. In fact, why not have Alex Hoag–Mill City Market “driver” so to speak–explain just how cool this place is. (With husband Chuck to add some context.)

Finally, allow me to share three vehicles that will make the drive to and from this market even better:

1) A nice little BMW X3

2) A more robust Mercedes R-350

3) The Mercedes E-class wagon. In AMG trim this is the the world’s fastest grocery getter. Eats tires for lunch, too.

4&5) I am also very high on the latest Mazda CX-series particularly the CX-7 in a nice shade of really, really dark black.) And I’ve blogged about the 3-Series (in Mazdaspeed trim only), which is an innovative smaller car with room enough to store, if not quite swallow, a weeks worth of produce (organic food is usually smaller in size.)

July 30, 2007
Putting July to Bed

MUSIC
Urban Bohemian – Born and Bred

“Tell me if you want me to give you all my time. I wanna make it good for you cause you blow my mind.” R&B duo Groove Theory had it going on in the ’90s with hit songs like “Tell Me” and “Baby Luv.” And the voice behind the magic was that of Amel Larrieux. These days, she’s gone from theory to practice, but she’s just as groovy. If you’re lucky, you already caught her show last night, and you can even catch a second round; but those of us who are little slower on the uptake can still enjoy her worldly take on contemporary soul.

7 p.m. & 9 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet, Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $35 & $25.

BOOKS
Beau is Back

I’m not a big fan of mystery novels, but every now and then I grab one for a quick flight read — you know, the perfect novel for a two- to four-hour plane ride. I’ve read all sorts of jems. And I have to tell you, though, for the most part, I find it best to stay away from the ones written by women. Oy! I hate to say that. But.. I simply can’t deal with the whole sexy bail bondwoman crap thing. And the chic, urban romances make me want to weep for my gender. Bottom line? It’s nice to read a fluffy mystery novel by a female author and not even notice. Woohoo! We can surpass our gender. Man, woman, mystery freak all, head out for Roseville tonight for a guest appearance and reading by author of Justice Denied, J.A. Jance.

7 p.m., Barnes & Noble Booksellers Roseville II, Har Mar Mall, 2100 Snelling Ave. N., Saint Paul; 651-639-9256.

FILM & MUSIC
The Knotwells and The Tarnished Angel

It’s not much of a secret anymore, but another Monday night means another movie in Loring Park, preceded by music on the green. What should you really listen to before a Douglas Sirks movie? The Walker has done well with the musical selections so far, and tonight is no exception. Country, punk, bluegrass, gypsy — you name it — the Knotwells will serve up the perfect melodic chaos for you to unleash all that energy into the park. Chaos, you say? Only Faulkner can follow. The Tarnished Angels, based on Faulkner’s novel Pylon stars Rock Hudson as a journalist who falls for another man’s wife.

7 p.m., Loring Park, 612.375.7600; free.

ON THE NET
Oddities with which to Start the Week

In the end, nobody wants a dentist who’s a jokester.

But apparently, people do want things made of elephant poo. Go figure!

On that note, let’s end with a duck omelet.

It’s an odd place we live, this world.

July 30, 2007
No Place for the Creative Thing

Among the 14 Pioneer Press employees who took the latest buy-out and departed last Friday was Matt Peiken. Perhaps not a household name like Joe Soucheray or Bob Sansevere, Peiken, 44, is the sort of character who shouldn’t be completely out of step with modern newspapers, but is.

I first met him in 2000, not long after he joined the PiPress. Back when papers like the one in St. Paul had full-time employees to cover things like classical music and books and TV, Peiken was installed as a kind of general assignment “arts writer,” something that today is an unheard of luxury. Not being particularly alert, I couldn’t figure out what he was covering from week to week, only that he had a hell of a lot of opinions on how things ought to be going down in the PiPress and the A&E/features department.

Like most staffs we had weekly meetings to get things on the schedule and supposedly dissect each other’s work. That last part always went over like a cast iron balloon. For myself and a few others who liked the idea of getting in, scheduling the next “feature” (translation: 18″ preview), grabbing our mail, and getting back to work, we were regularly thwarted by Peiken, who, as I said, had an astonishing lot to say about everything … TV, pop music, comedy, theater, bio-science, Boolean valued function, bo-tox, you name it. Most of it was kind of amusing and not entirely irrelevant. But there were times I wanted to strangle the bastard.

What was unequivocal was that Peiken cared. He was sincerely passionate about doing stories that were different and would draw an audience. Like so many others now migrating out of newspaper work, Peiken had a subversive streak that he employed to put a novel spin on the rote and ordinary stories he was assigned and to keep himself fresh.

I called him last Friday as he was packing up. How, I wondered, did he judge his creative satisfaction over his last years at the Pioneer Press as that paper, following the lead of so many others, elevated predictability to a high virtue?

“I tried to make it work,” he said. “I really did. And really that’s all [taking the buy-out] is about. I was close to taking it the last time [Thanksgiving ’06]. But this time my gut was screaming for me to take it. So I did. Because, the way I see it, it really is all about me asking how much faith I have in myself?”

In 2005 Peiken was transfered out of the arts writer job into something called an “urban reporter,” which in fairness, was somebody’s idea of letting Peiken’s innate idiosyncrasy stir up stories from wherever he found them in the city. That lasted a little over a year, at which point he was sent over to the editorial pages, which had been decimated to the point where today it is literally a one person staff, veteran Jim Ragsdale.

“That business with the editorial board was really just through the election cycle,” Peiken explains.

With the campaigns over, the airlock began to slide shut. Peiken was assigned to the suburbs, specifically 12 cities in northern Ramsey county. No matter how much smoke publishers and editors pump, the reality of suburban coverage is that A) Papers don’t have the staff to cover the suburbs adequately; B) As they pretend to cover 12 cities with one or two reporters they are pulling resources away and neglecting topics of interest to almost everyone; and C) Since they’re faking “coverage” with skeleton staffs they will most often settle for rote and predictable coverage of school boards, cops, and developers. Very few suburban reporters get either time and/or encouragement to take time mining and writing stories outside the formula.

There are exceptions of course. But the exceptions will almost always prove the rule.

“I want to be clear. I am not angry, and I’m not a victim,” says Peiken. “In fact, when they told me I was going to the suburbs I told them they had the wrong guy. Obviously I could cover it. But the stories I like to do take more time than a couple days. But they said, ‘We need bodies out there.’ So I went.”

Unlike some suburban reporters Peiken says he actually drove around his area looking for something other than just cops and schools material. (Despite the urgency of their focus on the suburbs neither the Star Tribune nor the Pioneer Press has anything resembling a bureau in any suburb. Suburban reporters mostly cover their beat by phone from their desks downtown.)

[[CORRECTION: This just in from Star Tribune designer Chandra Akkari: The Star Tribune does operate a bureau for its South section in Burnsville, near the Heart of the City development. An editor, three reporters, and one photographer work out of this bureau four days per week, and the office has been in use since November of 2006. Star Tribune South is available Wednesdays inside the Star Tribune in suburbs south of the Minnesota River. The section was started in October 2003. There are also two other suburban weekly sections, North and West, though there are no bureaus at this time for those staffers. The combined circulation of the suburban weeklies is about 120,000.]]

It didn’t work out so well for Peiken. As a guy who, in addition to editing a website for performance poetry has performed in the Fringe Festival, in a show based on a smarmy self-help guru character he wrote a book around, Peiken got jazzed by the talk (“talk,” mind you) of on-line newspapering with all the video bells and whistles. Driving around led him to whip together a couple videos he dubbed “Suburban Satanic,” clearly off-beat takes on life in ‘burbia.

He says he played them for his superiors at the PiPress. And … “They never went anywhere.”

Since Peiken doesn’t strike me as a guy who works blue I’m wondering how bad they could have been that the PiPress wouldn’t … at least … say, “Not bad. But what if we do this.” I mean, don’t you say something to encourage the rare guy who goes and cooks up something entirely on his own time and dime?

Instead, it was the all too-familiar sound of nothingness. No feedback. Nothing. Or in the unspoken … “Cops, schools, developers.”

“That was a sign to me that I had to move on.”

Peiken says he has found the first flush of freedom, “Really exciting. I’ve got all these ideas of things I want to do, a couple non-fiction book proposals, other writing, that it just didn’t make sense any more to stay with the paper. It’s not like I’m wealthy, but for me writing for the paper was always about something more than the check. And for whatever the reasons, my personality didn’t match up with where the paper is going.”

Peiken reiterates that he doesn’t feel like he was pushed out. Rather the institutional voice and perspective of the Pioneer Press was evolving further and further away from what kept him intellectually refreshed and eager to write.

In other words, “A bad fit,” as every manager says who resents spending time getting square pegs to fit in round holes.

Peiken, who will also be attending poker-dealing school, believes this quarter’s PiPress buy-outs will likely require the paper’s management to raid more from what is left of the paper’s features section, in further pursuit of suburban “coverage.”

Maybe the most interesting thing Peiken said was an aside: “You know, never once in all the time I was there, not once, did my editor ever come up to me and ask, ‘What do you think of this?’ I think that’s kind of odd, don’t you?”

Yeah, I do. Maybe they didn’t ask because the loquacious Peiken already told them. But I’m guessing it is something else. Something blander, duller and resigned. Curiosity — or just simple cross-checking — used to be a virtue in newspapers.

July 30, 2007
Why We Fight (Every Day Of The Week)
I came up with a rule, of sorts, that I would refrain from talking about cars on Sunday. But heh, I am also a modernist (at times) and modernists don’t follow every rule (even their own).

Modernism (and schmodernism) aside, here’s another way of looking at it. What’s a man to do when he spots a Maserati GranSport in the parking lot of a shopping mall? Well then you just have to break your own rules and bring it to your readers.

I trust you will agree.*

FILM NOTES: One of only two Maserati GT Gransports in Minneapolis (I keep calling it a Ferrari).
BONUS FILM NOTES: Fifteen minutes later, I came across this equally cool ride — a WS-6 Firebird candied up to 405 RWHP. The owner was a Ranger recently returned from Afghanistan. Here is the car:

BONUS FILM NOTES: And in this short take, the owner of the Pontiac describes how Porsche drivers are easily emasculated. He also touches on the difference between (this link is a little generous) flywheel and rear wheel horsepower–important to note when you hear a Porsche owner start waxing about his/her wheels. I also answer to one of my own friends on this score at the end of this take–he keeps bugging me to sell one of my cars–a slightly candied up 2003 Mustang Cobra.

(* Not that it matters, but I also went a house of worship today. I notice that Garrison K.– fountain of morals — likes to tell us that he goes to church, old-testament-style, too. Good for you, red shoe.)

July 29, 2007

The Simpsons Movie

by Peter Schilling Jr.

This could be the best episode ever and still not live up to the hype. After all, the movie is, what, nearly twenty years in the gestation? Give Matt Groening and company credit for assembling the best writers from seasons’ past and pulling in David Silverman, co-director from Pixar’s superior Monsters, Inc., to help them launch this behemoth. Already acclaimed by British critics as brilliant, the plot is ostensibly about the environment, but reports have it that Green Day, Al Gore, “President” Arnold Schwarzenegger, the religious right, and the New Age left are all skewered. Rumor has it that the story also includes a romance between Lisa and an angst-ridden Irishman, Bart skateboarding in the nude, and the end of the world as we know it.

July 29, 2007

Passion Play

If you’ve ever fallen in love too quickly or divorced with ire or married the same person twice or threatened to maim your new spouse on your honeymoon (and meant it), you must see Private Lives, the 1930 Noel Coward comedy now showing on the McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Guthrie. As someone who’s done all of these things, I feel uniquely qualified to tell you that the story holds up incredibly well and — until the last act, where events devolve in traditional screwball mode — feels current nearly 80 years later.

More important, the theater is a simply gorgeous place, cloaked in brilliant red with a remarkable set that makes you feel sorry for all those poor New Yorkers who must make due with Broadway while we have this lush, stunning venue plus the brilliance of artistic director Joe Dowling (who did not direct this production, but had the good sense to hire Peter Rothstein) AND it costs only $5 to park. . . .

Private Lives is the story of a divorced couple, Amanda and Elyot, who just happen to meet up five years after parting when they are each on their second honeymoons — in adjoining hotel rooms in France. It sounds like a Frank Capra set-up; and, indeed, Coward had a great deal in common with the beloved American director of romantic films like “It Happened One Night.” Only the British playwright was deliciously nasty about the whole messy deal. “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs,” says Elyot in reference to Amanda. And when his new young wife is mewling: “I’d like to cut off your head with a meat ax.” There’s also a beautifully-drawn scene of the two ex-spouses discussing their sexual liaisons, in which Elyot says, “It doesn’t suit women to be promiscuous.” Politically correct this is not, but it does capture a variety of passions. And two things save this play from sinking into misogyny.

The first is, of course, context. Period costumes and a bizarrely frequent use of the word “gay” to mean carefree remind you that this is a different era — one in which a man in high society could demonstrate his love for a woman by spanking her. The other is Amanda herself, a strong, sharp-tongued woman (unlike the bafflingly stupid romantic heroines of today), who spanks right back and responds with, “It doesn’t suit men for women to be promiscuous.”

It is for both of these reasons — context and the character Amanda, who is played by the absolutely marvelous, smoky-voiced Veanne Cox — that I recommend you try Amanda’s Ambrosia. The Guthrie came up with this cocktail specifically for the run of Private Lives: a canny concoction of sparkling wine, Campari, and puréed passion fruit.

Frankly, it looks pretty awful in the glass, all murky and orange-ish and rather thick. But it’s an odd thing about this drink — though I don’t care for the intensely tropical taste of passion fruit (which, by the way, has been proved to help lower blood pressure) and I’m bored by the majority of cheap sparkling wines, together, these ingredients become weirdly interesting. The effervescence of the wine softens the acidic quality of the passion fruit; and it, along with the Campari, stiffens the candylike wine just a bit. As in the case of Amanda, her namesake ambrosia is an acquired taste: aggressive and unique, bold, colorful, and unapologetic. But even if you don’t care for passion fruit or sparkling wine or slinky but outspoken women, it’s well worth a try.

It’s also a great way to get into the spirit of the play, where brandy flows and glasses shatter while two people locked forever in a tumultuous love affair pummel one another before breaking into a kiss.

July 28, 2007

Car Talk (of the Uncommon Kind)

Here’s something for all you folks reading the Saturday paper (and getting really mad that there is nothing of substance to read) or perhaps streaming that silly show “Car Talk” online.

I say silly in a good way. The two guys are a hoot. However I think they discuss really boring cars for the most part. The Road Rake will bring you car talk that is far less common. Which brings me, once again, to the French.

As I said before, I attended Bastille Day at J. Leune a few weeks back. Once the world catches up to “instant journalism” I would have filed these videos more quickly. And yet, perhaps, French cars are the kind of thing that require patience and understanding. With this mind, let me file, as time permits, some of the interesting things I “raked up” during the Citroen Car Show across the street.

FILM NOTES: This first video is narrated by the Treasurer of The Citroen Car Club of Minnesota. He describes a car light years ahead of its time–the Citroen Traction Avant.

FILM NOTES: The back seat of the Traction Avant. This video does not adequately capture the spaciousness (better yet, capaciousness) of this interior. It really was the first station wagon of sorts. Unibody construction too–unheard of in the 1930s–today everyone does it.