The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

  • Scouting

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    Where are my Girl Scout Cookies?

    My mom’s cookies have been delivered. I saw the Springy green box of Thin Mints on her table yesterday. And yet, my little scout has yet to show up.

    I saw a woman in the orthodontist parking lot horking down a sleeve of Do-Si-Do’s, the peanut-butter sandwich cookies. I was jealous, I can admit that.

    From the minute the doorbell rings and the little scout and I enter into a cookie contract, I wait. I’m a patient woman, but if I don’t hear from her soon, I may start stalking her. There are shortbreads out there with my name on them, dammit!

    Would they be this special if you could get them year-round? I don’t know if I want to answer that.

    And they’re not just for snarfing anymore, either. Look what this culinary student from Woodbury did with the peanut-butter sandwiches and the Caramel deLites. That’s patience.

  • A Modern Version Of A Very Old Story

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    So, then: Even after all that impenetrable darkness and the long, bruising fall, he would live, and emerge gulping and incredulous into a world painted over in a flat coat of muted gray.

    In the old happily-ever-after version of such a tale, a man in the grips of blind despair would be saved by an angel and delivered into the loving arms of a family and a community of which he was an essential and irreplaceable member.

    There are, though, only humans in this place we still insist on calling the real world, but some of them –and even perhaps most of them– are from time to time provided a moment of difficult grace that allows or compels them to perform the sacred duties of angels.

    It happens. It has happened, even if the realities of the present require that a man in the grips of despair be first conscripted to a version of bedlam that is both humiliating and harrowing. Such a man must live through a dress rehearsal of dying on his journey back to life, and he must be able to see in bedlam a mirror as well as a sort of fractured kaleidoscope of the world he lives in.

    He must recognize that he lives in, and belongs in, all versions of that world, and must learn to believe that the terrible and terrifying things he has seen and experienced are gifts just as surely as are the wonders and the wild happiness and the heavenly days he has been allowed. The man has to learn that he is who and where he however helplessly, however reluctantly is, and that is all he has, and it is a precarious –and precious– gift.

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  • The Three-Pointer: Routine Loss

    Game #61, Road Game #30, Miami 105, Minnesota 91

    1. No Center, No Point Guard, No Chance
    The Minnesota Timberwolves do not have a center who can adequately defend the paint. They do not have anyone capable of fulfilling the point guard duties at both ends of the court at even a mediocre level. These are the traditional foundation positions of pro basketball, and while their importance has diminished with the new hand-checking rules, pro basketball teams still need a steady floor general out on the perimeter and a forceful behemoth underneath the basket.

    Let’s get specific. The Miami Heat’s dynamic tandem of Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning manned the center position for 47:02 tonight. They collectively converted 17 of 21 shots, got to the free throw line 18 times (making 12), and finished with 46 points and 14 rebounds. If you’re looking for a moral victory, the Wolves did force 10 turnovers from the two big men, the only blemish on what was otherwise utter domination. Shaq had a season-high 15 points in the first quarter on 7-8 FG, and finished with a season-high 32 for the game. Mark Blount played 35:55, committed 5 fouls and had 5 rebounds while scoring a respectable 17 points. “Fresh” off a long period of inactivity due to an ankle sprain, Mark Madsen committed three fouls in 3:13 and otherwise has a box score full of goose eggs. Craig Smith had four fouls and three rebounds in 17:29, to go with 6 points. Let’s pretend that none of these three spelled Kevin Garnett for the 8:37 he sat and instead collectively played 56:37 at center only. They still registered only half as many points as the ShaqZo monster, and lost the rebounding battle 14-8 while committing 12 fouls.

    Now, Shaq embarrasses a lot of people, and Zo is without question the best backup center in the NBA. But this wasn’t Shaq’s typical game; this was his best game of the season. And even a sub of Zo’s caliber has no business getting 14 points and 5 boards while playing 12:13, which is a possession more than a quarter’s worth of action. Anyone looking at the makeup of this squad at the beginning of this season knew that it was lacking a legitimate banger to relieve the physical and mental wear-and-tear on their finesse-oriented 7-foot superstar. Now we’re in March and while Craig Smith is a pleasant surprise for a second-round draft choice, Blount, Madsen, and the departed Eddie Griffin still leave the squad woefully shy of a bona fide NBA center on defense.

    As for the point guard situation, even the most loyal defenders of Mike James packed their tent and skulked away about a month ago. Remember when James was going to be the third leg of the new MV3 stool alongside KG and Ricky Davis? He was the guy who would slip into the Sam Cassell role, make big shots, take the crunchtime triple-teams off of Garnett or punish the opponents who tried it with his long-range bullseyes–remember, he shot 44% from beyond the arc in Toronto last year. Well, the opponents have been flocking to Garnett, and then Ricky Davis, and James has had more wide open looks than any shooter can possibly hope for this year. Clang! How dis-spiriting is it for a ballclub to work the rock around and set up the shooter, open and in rhythm, only to see that long carom jump-start a fast break the other way? The total overall shooting accuracy for James thus far this year is 41.6%, worse than his three-point shooting a year ago. And he has trouble setting up his teammates. And his defense is pathetic. I’m not going out of my way to rip Mike James, who has always been a decent, standup guy in the locker and a heartwarming underdog story for his career arc: I am merely stating facts that seem as ironclad as the multiplication tables.

    With James frog-marching his season into the toilet, the obvious course of action for the Wolves was to take their lumps helping top draft pick Randy Foye learn the point guard position on the fly. The Wolves already have an off guard they claim to be very excited about in last year’s top draft pick, Rashad McCants–he’s certainly prominent in the “Blueprint for the Future” publicity blitz the brass has recently launched to try and rationalize their failure and distract fans from the short-term dung heap the team is making of this season. And if McCants is somehow a bust, there is always Ricky Davis, the team’s second leading scorer, leader in assists, and second in minutes played. For that matter, the team’s small forwards, Trenton Hassell and Marko Jaric, are also natural off guards.

    Put simply, the team already has a bit of a logjam at off guard and a gaping void at the point. Everybody knows Randy Foye is not ready to be an NBA point guard this season, but he’s smart, he coachable, he’s extremely athletic, and he likes the ball in his hands when the game is on the line–hey, he’s more than 3/4 of the way there in terms of the intangible stuff; now he just needs some fairly painful minutes to make the adjustment. Maybe it will take the rest of this year and all of next year, which was approximately Dwyane Wade’s learning curve, but it is a shrewd, if not sure-fire, gamble–and by the way, a move that would demonstrate to your faithful fans that you actually do have a blueprint for the future. That was the unspoken pact the franchise made with the die-hards about a month or so ago when Foye stepped in for James at the point–it isn’t going to be pretty, but it just might pay off in the long run.

    Then three games ago, Foye gets yanked, in favor of often-injured, little-used sprite Troy Hudson, whose onerous contract figures to keep him with the Wolves at least through the 2008-09 season (it expires a year after that) at more than $6 million per season. Any Timberwolves fan who has watched the team for five years knows exactly what Huddy brings to the menu–an incredibly streaky long-range shot, limited court vision, comfort with an uptempo pace, an affinity for where and when Kevin Garnett likes the ball, and absolutely dreadful defense. A year and a half ago, a sabre-hoops guy over at 82games.com, Dan Rosenbaum, sought to put together an adjusted plus/minus ratings calculation to judge the individual defensive prowess of every player in the NBA. His conclusion? “Troy Hudson probably gets the award for being the worst defender in the league…He is playing a game on the defensive end that is not remotely like anyone else’s in the league.”

    Utah’s Devon Williams discovered that when he repeatedly posted up Hudson with ease, forcing coach Randy Wittman to snatch Foye from the bench in Huddy’s first extended action a week ago. Delonte West discovered it when he torched Hudson en route to a career-high 31 points in Boston’s double-overtime win last Sunday. Smush Parker discovered it as he rang up 11 points in a half-quarter’s worth of action to start the Laker game on Tuesday. And tonight Jason Williams discovered it after Shaq got bored with dunking and began ceding some of the offense to the perimeter. Williams went 9-13 FG without disrupting the normal flow of the offense, as he also chipped in a game-high 6 assists. Although he played 38:56, he got 16 of his 20 points, and 4 of his 6 assists in the 25:06 Huddy was on the court. All told, the Heat scored 68 points in Huddy’s 25:06 of action, and 37 points during the 22:54 Huddy sat on the bench. This is the guy who is eating into the playing time, confidence, and rhythm of the rook who is supposed to be a cornerstone of the Wolves future.

    2. Jaric Being Jaric
    With Trenton Hassell waylaid with an ankle sprain, these games matter more to Marko Jaric’s career trajectory than perhaps anyone else on the squad. Ever since Jaric was embarrassed by Chris Paul in Oklahoma City and then eventually deposed from the starting point guard slot about the midpoint of last season, he’s been something of a foster child on the roster, a man without a set position, generally unhappy with his minutes, often either expressing a desire to be traded or being a hot topic on the trade rumor mill, all the while producing tantalyzing glimpses of how he could be a valuable uber-handyman with the right mindset on the right ballclub–and then, over and over, failing to cinch the impression with any kind of consistent play. (How’s that for a run-on sentence? Watch out William Faulkner!)

    Tonight Jaric the Janus-masked man was in full bloom. He was the Wolves’ best player on the court during the first quarter, continually breaking down his man off the dribble and dishing to open teammates, amassing 4 dimes and making me wonder why this guy isn’t paired with Foye in a backcourt buddy system. Jaric also has a great knack for swiping at the ball when he’s face-up with an opponent, clogging the passing lanes in both a zone scheme and in transition, and doubling down on the big men in the paint.

    Except, as previously mentioned, the Miami bigs had a field day under the hoop, without much bother from Jaric. Was this because Wittman was afraid of leaving James Posey open at the three-point line (Posey was 1-4 beyond the arc, 3-3 from 2-point range), because Jaric wasn’t doubling down quickly enough, or because the rotations never went to Jaric’s side of the court? Jaric did do a lot more harrassing of Shaq in the 3rd quarter, a halftime adjustment that obviously came too late, and set off Williams on Huddy in the process.

    But here is the greater problem with Jaric against the Heat: He didn’t have a field goal (0-3 FG, all from 3-point land) or a rebound in 32:24 of play, and only one assist after the first quarter (still good enough for a game-high 5 on the Wolves). After awhile, the Heat simply played off him, denying him penetration passes and daring him to sink a jumper. He only tried when he was wiiiide open and the shot clock was going down–and couldn’t convert. The game gave one renewed appreciation for the little things we always say Trenton Hassell does, like stick that open j, or box out–with Jaric and Ricky Davis as swing men, Eddie Jones snuck in for 11 rebounds and the Wolves were pounded overall on the glass, 40-28.

    3. On the Fly
    More braintrust follies: In tonight’s “Blueprint for the Future” segment, Personnel VP Kevin McHale says, “we are trying to win with Kevin here…but still trying to win with the young guys…we don’t have a collective soul.” From consistency to chemistry to soulfulness–what’s next, “not enough garlic around our necks under a full moon”? Then Randy Wittman delivers the Wolves’ “keys to the game” which were limiting where Shaq catches the ball for the defense and promoting ball movement on the offense. Well, Shaq led the parade which produced 56 Miami points in the paint, and the Wolves registered only 17 assists on their 36 baskets.

    Then we see the new Wolves add for 2007-08 season tickets. It shows an obviously hung-over dude staring into his open refrigerator. He shuts the door and we see Crunch standing there. The mascot has an airhorn in his hand and starts blasting it in the guy’s ear. I think the punchline was “it’s never too early” to sign up for season tix, but, ah, do you really want to liken entreaties for loyalty–without knowing if KG is even going to be around–with an airhorn at the bedraggled and benumbed crack of consciousness? That’s taking truth in advertising too far.

    The best part of the telecast was color commentator Jim Petersen, who is starting to understand that discussing the Wolves players will be one long bitchfest and so instead has come up with ways to enlighten us about the game itself. Three examples: His explanation about how refs are looking for fouls above or below the waist depending on where they are stationed during a play; his clarification about how a charge can still be called inside the no-charge circle if a player catches the ball while stationed there and then spins into an opponent; and his note that lane violations get called much more frequently on Shaq’s free throws because players know a miss is more likely and start jousting early for position.

    Trying hard versus going through the motions: Yeah, Shaq took the first two months of the season off, along with coach Pat Riley, mailing in the regular season to gear up for the playoffs. But he clearly is focused and at near-prime form now that he smells the post-season, isn’t he? (And apologies/kudos to Peter Weinhold, who I mocked for putting Shaq and KG in the same sentence just a week or so ago.) Meanwhile, nobody hustled harder than Eddie Jones tonight. The best player on the Heat for four season, EJ got dealt and missed the ring on last year’s championship. Bought out by the pitiful Grizzlies, he came back to Miami hell bent on helping the team repeat. If this game is any evidence, he as much as Shaq is providing the bonus play that has enabled the Heat to go 6-2 in Wade’s absence. Now contrast the effort of Shaq and Jones to anyone on the Wolves, from KG on down.

    Finally, no network or basic cable TV game in Atlanta tonight, so I will leave any commentary to those who have NBA Season’s Pass (my ever-reasonable wife convinced me to have a smidgen of a life outside basketball by not buying it). Next trey will be Tuesday night/Wednesday morning after the Indiana game.

  • Unattached

    Tonight, sadly, is your last chance to catch a show so controversial it needs (wants?) bodyguards: The Pope and The Witch, a University of Minnesota production being directed by my former superior at TJL, Robert Rosen (a nice guy). Unfortunately, this means I’ll be missing the whole thing, since I’m taking the evening off to hang out with my friend Andrea Leap and perhaps watch the DVD of Kenneth Anger shorts Peter Schilling just passed my way. (I’m doubly interested because Schilling also passed me a copy of Anger’s classic dish Hollywood Babylon, in which he pooh-poohs all the rapes and suicides that plagued Hollywood’s early years. Anger is an utter asshole, man! He’s got the sharpest of pens, and so this book has been an absolute guilty pleasure–the perfect pairing for evenings on the sofa with boyfriend as he watches Entertainment Tonight.)

    Other stuff: Saturday, last chance to see the David Rathman exhibit at Weinstein Gallery. There’s a Dylan tribute with Martin Devaney and the Rank Strangers at the Turf that same night. And finally, Badly Drawn Boy plays the Fine Line Sunday evening; this band is near ‘n dear to my heart, since my heroin-addicted college boyfriend once offered, with trembling, outstretched hands, an early BDB EP. This happened on the eve of our breakup, and so by then I wasn’t thinking much of the outgoing boyfriend. But I ended up liking the EP very much and have enjoyed the band ever since.

  • Can John Hines Play It Straight?

    I caught John Hines at an awkward moment. The local radio and TV vet was just about to step in to give a deposition. “Its a ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’ thing,” he said.

    I told him I was sorry to hear that. Those things are always some degree of gruesome. “Ah, what the hell,” Hines replied, “I’m getting used to it.”

    The guy has bounced around town and the broadcast business long enough and often enough to know a thing or two about surviving traumatic transition … which will help him as he leaves K102, Clear Channel’s cash-cow country station for morning drive duties at KTLK, about 60 feet down the hall.

    Hines’ arrival is scheduled for the Monday after next, March 19, and he’ll get an extra hour, working 5 to 9 am, as the station cuts back one hour of Dan Conry’s show. The move was announced earlier this week after the station parted ways with Andrew Colton, a TV news guy who was recruited for KTLK out of Florida by Clear Channel brain wizards. Colton was lured up, and given the title of “news director” on the now farcical premise that KTLK was going to offer a bona fide news product.

    (And yes — full disclosure again — I briefly worked there. Which is why I can assure you the idea that the station was ever serious about hiring reporters and going head to head with WCCO, much less MPR, was absurdly implausible from the get-go. No effort was ever made to do anything other than market Fox News and read wire copy.)

    Post-deposition, Hines called back to say that, no, he has no specific agreement that he will continue on with local Clear Channel in the event KTLK’s ratings problems persist and notoriously impatient Clear Channel corporate, (who mandated the idea of an FM talker to local managers), decides enough is enough and flips it over to Smooth Jazz 3.0.

    “You know how these contracts go,” said Hines. “Its basically just a wage agreement. I’m free to leave anytime I want, and they’re free to make their moves.”

    One hopes Hines’ reputation as a broadcasting pro and as a reliable employee to the local empire will protect him from the combination of reckless fiat and/or incompetence afflicting the station thus far.

    “For me, personally, its a challenge,” he says. “The station doesn’t have a, uh, ‘strong market position’, as they say, and after 16 years of doing what I was doing, I want to see if I can help turn the place around.”

    Hines is one of those familiar personalities who has somehow managed not to register as any kind of political ideologue. But, I wondered, is that middle-of-the-road shtick viable on an unapologetically hard right-wing station like KTLK, an other-worldly realm realm where George W. Bush is still given the benefit of the doubt … when he is not being painted as a victim of scurrilous whiners?

    Hines believes he can get away with being a straight morning radio jock. He says morning drive is, or can be, a separate beast entirely from everything else that follows. “There is not a station in town,” he says, “that has a morning show that mirrors exactly what goes on the rest of the day.” (Mmmmmmm. The key word there, John, would be, “exactly”.)

    The previous show was doomed by being forced to pretend the station was some kind of legitimate news source. Hines says, “A lot of elements in the show, like the news clock, [the hourly schedule for traffic, weather, breaks, etc.] will probably change.” And he says he expects to draw in the show’s producer, Christopher Gabriel, a grossly underutilized talent in my estimation.

    Fundamentally though, the issue is the audience KTLK has chosen for itself. By appealing solely and only to the hardest of the hard core Bush-nicks and echo chamber mushrooms, they are in a position where unless their hosts feed that crowd what they want — and regularly — their prospects become more and more limited.

    Hines mentioned Jay Leno’s monologue as the sort of equal abuse comedy that draws a nice audience. And that may be true. But radio is played in tight demographic compartments, and talk radio’s is one of the tightest of all. Despite the overwhelming abundance of comic (tragi-comic?) material sloughing off the current administration you’re risking summary alienation from KTLK’s target demo if you put more than a toe down that path.

    Bottom line though, Hines is a pro who at least knows and understands the true variety of opinion and humor lurking in these towns, and that is waaaay beyond Clear Channel’s usual knuckleheaded view that, “the Twin Cities are no different than any other place” — (a direct quote from one of their barnstorming consultant-gurus).

    Good luck, John.

  • Who's Your Monster?

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    Gwoemul (The Host), 2006. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Joon-ho and Baek Chul-hyun and Ha Won-jun. Starring Song Kang-ho, Ko A-sung, Bae Doon-na, Park Hae-il, Byeon Hee-bong, the cockeyed Paul Lazar, and, as the voice of the beast, Oh Dal-su.

    Now showing exclusively at the Uptown Theatre.

    There’s a multitude of beasts in The Host, a new South Korean monster movie that has hit our shores with all the fanfare of, well, of a giant fish emerging from the Mississippi. Aside from the titular Host, predators include America, Chemicals, Technology, and others–probably dozens of others, small cultural references that elude those of us who don’t live in South Korea. As usual, man has created the creature: here, an anal-retentive American officer has ordered a poor, subservient Korean to dump bottles and bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, where it pours into the mighty Han river. Voila, the Host emerges, one that looks like a catfish, lopes like a greyhound, and pirouettes off bridges with the ease of a Brazilian cliff-diver. Frankly, the creature is beautiful. And in keeping with the tradition of the great monster movies the director, Bong Joon-ho, has made sure to show that the beast in question is as much a victim as the people he pursues for his nightly repast. It is possessed of a sense of dignity, and there is an understanding that, after all, he’s not a serial killer, but merely an animal. Sure, he eats people, but there’s no malice involved. Unlike The Host’s cinematic counterparts (like the meanies in Alien or last year’s Descent) we feel for both victim and killer.

    After The Host’s explanatory prologue (the dumping of formaldehyde), we go to the pacific shores of the Han river, where we get to see our first monster, Gang-du (Song Kang-ho). Gang-du is a giant, a sleepy, hungry giant of a man, who can’t seem to wake up and peel his face off the candy bars he’s selling, and looks as if he’s going to stumble with every lumbering step. He works in a measly little snack stand with his hard-working father (Byeon Hee-bong), a weary man who’s raised his three kids after his wife abandoned the family. And what a family! Aside from the loafer, there’s Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) who, unbelievably, is a professional archer with a tendency to pause before releasing her arrow, disqualifying her in a gold medal international competition, and leading us to wonder just how she’ll fare when she has to kill the big fish. Then there’s older brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il), an unemployed college graduate who is also an unrepentant drunk, frustrated that he cannot find work after studying for so long. Perhaps most incredibly, of the three it is Gang-du, the slob and bum, who has a child, Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung), a sharp little girl and the pride of the family.

    One typical afternoon–typical being Gang-du and his father serving snacks to Seoul’s riverside picnickers–a giant fish swims around the murky waters of the Han. The people stop and stare and taunt the thing as it circles menacingly. Suddenly, in the periphery, the creature has leapt ashore and, again in typical monster movie fashion, sends great waves of people scrambling to flee from its hungry jaws.

    This is an incredible scene, and the director shows off his considerable skills here alone. The live-action churning of the manic crowds like a great human tsunami, coupled with the special effects creature–at this point still a shock to behold–are breathtaking. I haven’t seen such manic choreography in years and years, if ever perhaps. Monsters chasing great crowds of people seem to be a specialty of Asian cinema, perfected, of course, with Godzilla, and something even Spielberg couldn’t capture in his awful Jurassic Park II. Parked cars, trailers, overpasses all become methods of escape and traps where the unfortunate meet their gruesome end. We are swept along in this tide, dually hoping for the escape of the heroes we’ve come to admire, and, really, trying to beat the next guy so that he–not us–will be the monster’s next meal.

    In the confusion the little girl, Hyun-seo, is lost, carried away by the creature to its lair for later devouring. The Host then begins its long route through a variety of genres: government conspiracy (the creature is supposed to have a contagion, giving the Americans and Koreans the right to quarantine our heroes, and keep them from finding her), fairy tale (girl in the lair), comedy, drama, horror. But at its heart is a tale of a dysfunctional family brought together under trying circumstances involving both the beast and the government–so trying, in fact, that at times the film resembles less a creature feature than some sort of odd hybrid between Godzilla, Little Miss Sunshine and Brazil. As a friend put it (albeit about a theater production in town), the film is diffuse, spreading its horror, its humor and pathos, and even its character development around so thinly as director Joon-ho tries to cover everything plaguing Korea in its two hours.

    Some of this works, some of it doesn’t, but what makes The Host narrowly miss being a classic of the genre is that the creature eventually loses its ability to frighten. Apparently the monster’s main weapon of destruction is picking people up with its long tail and smacking them on the sidewalk. We don’t need more blood necessarily, but we do need more thrills, less of the creature in the light, more people being swallowed, and something much more visceral than fatal concussions. Even the monster’s regurgitation of bones and trash lacks slime and blood. As the movie proceeds, Joon-ho then makes the error of taking his criticisms too seriously, and the film eventually begins to slow down considerably.

    But The Host is beautifully directed, well acted, and worth seeing–were it only playing a couple of months later at our local drive-ins! No, The Host is art-house fare, and our suburban and country cousins will have to settle for garbage like Dead Silent instead. And that’s worse than monsters popping out of the Mississippi if you ask me.

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  • Friday

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    Why don’t you begin by telling me about the dreams you said have been troubling you?

    I’m locked out of my house and can’t find the keys.

    I am walking around in an unfamiliar city and everyone I encounter is speaking a language I can’t understand.

    I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the face that is looking back at me.

    I’m moving through a huge crowd with my family and friends and when I turn around they’ve all disappeared.

    I’ve lost my way in a dark forest.

    I’m being swept away in an avalanche.

    I’m falling from a great height.

    I’m in a little flooded boat that is rapidly being carried far out to sea.

    I am drowning.

    I’m being suffocated, strangled, smothered, buried alive.

    I am trapped in a burning building, aboard a sinking ship, in a car that is spinning out of control.

    I open my eyes and can no longer see.

    I open my mouth to speak and nothing comes out.

    I put the needle down on record after record and hear only silence.

    I wake up one morning naked in an unfamiliar room and there is a pile of blood-stained clothes next to the bed.

    An inquisitor I can’t see makes impossible demands of me, and my failure to satisfy these demands will result in my banishment from the kingdom that is my life.

    Driving home from work one day I discover that my address no longer exists; the house I live in and everything in it has disappeared.

    I drive around and around for days at a time and never find my way home.

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  • Dane Smith and Institutional Memory

    Today is Thursday. Star Tribune guild employees who want to take advantage of a voluntary buy-out, triggered by the paper’s handover to Avista Capital Partners this past Monday, have until next Monday, March 12, to notify the powers that be. Most, presumably will wait until the last moment to return their company paper clips and stick pins. One who didn’t bother to wait until next week is Dane Smith, the paper’s dogged, deeply-sourced capitol reporter.

    Like his competitor, Pat Sweeney, who exited the St. Paul Pioneer Press last Thanksgiving, Smith’s departure leaves a rather significant void in a beat that may not register much with “our younger readers”, (a stale mantra of modern newspaper managers — few of whom ever reported a story), but has always been a cornerstone of journalistic responsibility. As in, if you can’t cover, or aren’t willing to cover the state legislature and how the characters there spend taxpayers’ money, you really ought to just become a high school sports daily.

    The Strib still has an entirely solid cast of reporters up on the Hill in Mark Brunswick, Pat Doyle and Pat Lopez. But Dane Smith is a major loss.

    Echoing what he told Paul Schmelzer over at Minnesota Monitor, “This is not a big statement of protest. As much as anything its the fact that I’ve been here exactly 20 years. That’s the max on the buy-out, [40 weeks pay]. And I feel I’m young enough to explore something different.”

    Smith has had preliminary chats with politicos around town. He’d like to “expand on teaching”, which he does down at Inver Grove Community College, “maybe do some public relations work, some government communications, or, who knows, maybe try my hand at academic policy wonkery. I’ve always wanted to be a wonk.”

    The shame would be if he doesn’t write more about the stuff he knows best, the innards, skeletons, past histories, context and curiosities of Minnesota politics. The guy is a walking contemporary history of Minnesota government. But under modern newspaper “rules”, where 25″ has become some kind of major feature, very nearly too long for the “busy reader”, (more mantra), who wants only straight factoidal nuggets with their daily stew of criminal mayhem, sports and “people” coverage (ditto), Smith says he was constantly frustrated by his inability to get more of what he knew into the Star Tribune’s dead tree version.

    “For years I’ve expressed my irritation with space limitations,” says Smith. Where 10 years ago a story filed from his beat might regularly run, “35, 45, 50 inches. Hell, even 70″ if it was a hot profile”, 25″ is now the norm. Worse, for whatever the combination of reasons, he says the Star Tribune’s website still hasn’t been tweaked and tooled to handle the detail-rich, “plus-sized” version of a story, with the speed-read nuggets going on to print. Smith openly laments what he sees as Minnesota Public Radio’s deeper and broader web-based political coverage. “I think MPR has maybe the best political page, don’t you?” (Yes, I do.)

    Not that Smith is ripping his paper. He expresses pride in the work that is still being done there. He seemed genuinely moved by e-mails he was getting from long time Strib colleagues. “I still think the Star Tribune is going to be a very good paper for a very long time. I’ve always thought of it as an intelligent paper. There are still terrific people, terrific reporters over here. And I think that’ll continue under Avista.”

    Is that wishful thinking?

    “Maybe a little. But it is too early to say which way this is going to go.”

    In a different world, the Star Tribune’s new publisher, Par Ridder, fresh aboard after leaping from the afterdeck of the Pioneer Press, would refuse to accept Smith’s resignation, offer him a new deal with written assurances that at minimum the current buy-out offer would apply whenever he might decide to leave and work out the kinks in the web site. But that’s asking pigs to fly.

    Better for all concerned might be Smith hooking up with some new entity that simply wants everything he knows about Minnesota government and politics, day after day.

    He says he’d be happy to keep coming to the capitol. “I think I’m like a horse, you know? Following the same path.”

    Whether some new web or whatever concept can pay the bills remains to be seen. Which is why Smith is keeping all options on the table, as the Bushies like to say when they’re into sabre-rattling.

    “I suppose I could always be a tobacco lobbyist,” he jokes.

    Yeah, and last time I checked the methamphetamine crowd had no representation up on the Hill.

    Smith replies, “I asked a tobacco lobbyist one time if there was anybody he couldn’t work for. And he said, ‘I would never work for pawn brokers’.”

    So we can cross that off the list.

  • Three Films, Three Venues, One Busy Weekend

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    If you’re looking for a distraction from the misery of rain pounding snow into thick, icy crusts, well, you’ve got it in spades this weekend.

    On Friday night, the Alliance Francaise is going to have a screening of the little-seen (as of late) 1983 classic Rue Cases-Negres (Sugar Cane Alley) at 7pm (donations accepted). This is the story of a family trying desperately to rise above their hardscrabble life hacking away at sugar cane in Martinique.

    Saturday morning, the Central Library continues its Movietime For Kids series, a wonderful alternative to the garbage that spews out of the TV at that time (or anytime, really). From 10 to 12, we’ll see Dan the Accordion Man warm up the kids with his awesome riffs, and then watch one of Disney’s truly great films Make Mine Music, which highlights some of the animated shorts from Fantasia, Peter and the Wolf, and The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

    Saturday’s piece de resistance is Intolerable an entertaining and thought-provoking short from director Alison MacLean and starring actor/author/adventurer David Rakoff. Intolerable isn’t so much a story as an actor’s exercise: Rakoff waits at a table and explains to the bewildered talent auditioning for a role in a fictional film called Flight. Essentially, Rakoff explains, the actor is supposed to conjure up that thing that scares them the most, and flee from the room, down the hall (and past the other surprised actors), and not return. It’s not so simple, though, as Rakoff ratchets up the tension by openly provoking some of the poor souls, like the guy who is told that they need him to sing, but not that song, stop snapping your fingers, you’re horrible. “I was called in here to snap!” the guy shouts, though that’s certainly not why he was called in.

    Intolerable is a sharp, intelligent, entertaining short film, a great study of editing, casting prowess, and acting. It also points to the fact that the Oscars are buffoonery on even this scale: I saw all the nominated shorts and none of them, not one, held a candle to this film–with the film that did win, it would be akin to You, Me, and Dupree taking the best picture award.

    Intolerable shows at the Walker Cinema on Saturday night at 7:30 with The Music of Regret, no doubt another quality short that was ignored at the red carpet.

  • Handcuffs?

    Very busy putting together the April issue, but lookit! Tonight is that Policy and a Pint event you’ve been hearing about on the radio–the one employer-tied healthcare. They’re calling it, appropriately, “healthcare handcuffs.”