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  • Top Ten Tastes of 2007

    Truth to tell, I’m not a big fan of these end-of-year Top Ten lists. They tend, I think, to be both subjective and showy: meaning listmakers record either what’s obscurely relevant to them or what will demonstrate their great intellect and breadth of knowledge, or both.

    Two years ago, for instance, every book reviewer in America was raving about the Zadie Smith novel On Beauty, which I bought (in hardcover) and tried to bull my way through but could not abide. Then I went back and looked over the articles I’d read; suddenly I realized they sounded remarkably similar to one another. Follow the leader, it seemed to me. Being a fan of the young, beautiful, biracial Smith was simply the style that year.

    Please take my list for what it is: a random recollection of my ten most memorable eating experiences of the year, touched by all the emotional, irrational, and regional variables that make one meal sing like a chorus of angels while another — equally well-prepared — falls flat.

    1. Pizza Lucé — The Ruby Rae, an upside-down pie with spinach, tomatoes, Italian sausage, and crushed hot peppers, covered in a thick red sauce and sprinkled with parmesan; our favorite takeout meal.
    2. The Sample Room — Roasted Vegetables on Wilted Spinach, a huge plate of greens, warm, hearty roasted vegetables (such as squash or beets), and a balsamic vinaigrette; great for a cold winter night.
    3. Kinhdo — Tofu with Spicy Peppers and Extra Cabbage, a stewlike vegetarian meal over white rice and hot, hot, hot (are you sensing a theme here?); best eaten at home on paper plates.
    4. Atlas Grill — Fire-Roasted Salmon over mixed greens, a simple, nearly untouched piece of fish flashed over fire and served with fresh leaves of arugula, maché, and the like.
    5. Restaurant Alma — Roasted Duck with Baby Brussels Sprouts, as simple and wholesome a meal as I had all year and so fresh, I could have been dining on the farm.
    6. W.A. Frost — Cauliflower and Goat Cheese Soup, a creamy, savory mixture as warm as the crackling fire in the dining room and topped with fresh tomato purée plus a dollop of nutty green pesto.
    7. Hell’s Kitchen — Huevos Rancheros, a crisp tortilla layered with hash browns, scrambled eggs, black beans, heaps of cheese, salsa and a big scoop of sour cream; breakfast enough to last you all day.
    8. Coffee News — Carrot Cake, five layers high and covered in cream cheese frosting; this is my occasional indulgence before teaching a night class at Macalester.
    9. Lake Avenue Cafe (Duluth) — Black Bean Burrito, a hot wrap stuffed with beans and feta cheese, served with homemade corn salsa; my standard after the motorcycle trip to the North Shore.
    10. Home — John’s Satay, a combination of peanut butter, serrano peppers, and lime juice; nothing tastes better to me on a night when I’m tired, hormonal, or coming down with a cold — I’ll even eat it on popcorn.

     

    And there you have it: a list reflecting my personal tastes (I think it’s pretty obvious, I’m partial to spicy food, black beans, and goat cheese) and highlighting a handful of really excellent restaurants, plus my husband’s best recipe.

    But as I said, "expert" Top Ten lists are by definition self-limiting and narrow. What’s important is not what I liked this year but what you did. So. . . what did you eat that you loved in 2007?

  • Local Boys Sing, While Heathens Turn Pages

    MUSIC
    Gear Daddies Add Boxing Day Show Just for You

    The English might have Boxing Day, but we have the Gear Daddies. And who needs another commonwealth holiday when we can have good old American country rockers. With their shows on the 28th and 29th already sold out, the band has shown some Austin, Minnesota flexibility by adding an extra show to their tour. Get ready to drive your Zamboni, peeps. "That right there is one expensive machine." —Kate McDonald

    8 p.m., The Fine Line Music Café, 318 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-338-8100; $31.

    MORE MUSIC
    Not So Bad at All, and Then Some

    A band called The Bad Plus — covering the likes of Black Sabbath and Nirvana — might not conger immediate thoughts of your typical jazz trio, but this is precisely the appeal of the Minneapolis-grown group. From their beginnings, playing weekend gigs in Minnesota in 2000, The Bad Plus has gotten national attention with their unique sound and style that fuses jazz with rock and roll. —Kate McDonald

    7 & 9:30 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club, 1010 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $40 & $28.

    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    John Allen Paulus — Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up

    Hot on the heels of the birth of Christ comes yet another assault on
    religious belief. God knows, the godless have been on the pop culture
    offensive of late (see: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Philip Pullman
    et al.), and if the other side of the barricades didn’t have such an
    overwhelming historical foothold, you could almost accuse the atheists
    of piling on. The irony of so many of the recent irreligious screeds is
    that they tend to be marked by the same brand of repellent intolerance
    that has been the appalling hallmark of God’s zealots through the ages.
    It seems sad that even the unbelievers are reduced to preaching to
    their choirs. As to whether John Allen Paulos
    has any truly fresh light to shed on the subject—hint: It says right
    there in the title that the man’s a mathematician, and his book
    undertakes all manner of logical refutations of God’s existence
    (yawn)—I’m afraid he’s ultimately just another dog barking at cars. —Brad Zellar

    Available today at bookstore nationwide.

  • My First Rake Mea Culpa

    More like a mea maxima culpa. 

    In my very first guest post here, I used the Rachel Bliss show at Cliché as an illustration of art works on display in places other than galleries, something that happens more and more here in Minneapolis.

    And then I posted the work of the wrong Bliss.

    The artwork I posted — and have removed from this blog — came from Rachel Bliss in Pennsylvania and did not appear at Cliché.  We were informed that the images on the site, like many pieces on artist sites, are copyrighted and require permission to use. 

    I meant to use some pictures from the Minneapolis Rachael Bliss, who did in fact have an opening at the clothing store in Uptown.   You can now see her images in the original post. 

    My apologies to Rachel and Rachael and to Cliché for the confusion.

     

  • A Cratchit Family Christmas

    I read this the morning of every Christmas Eve. It helps remind me of the essential importance of a humble, shared feast. I gift this to all cooks as they start their ovens.

    Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course — and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah.

    There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last. Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows. But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up and bring it in.

    Suppose it should not be done enough. Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose — a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid. All sorts of horrors were supposed.

    Hallo. A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

    Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

    At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

    These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

    `A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us.’

    Which all the family re-echoed.

    `God bless us every one.’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

    — A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  • Let Nothing You Dismay: Rock the Bells

    It’s strange to me that nobody seems to expect anything in the way of an explanation these days. Nothing in the world surprises anyone anymore, unless, you know, someone decides to go all Jerry Bruckheimer with their rage.

    I guess I’m not a person who can live without explanations or surprise.

    Does the ticking of that clock bother you?

    I’m waiting like everyone else. In the morning I’ll get in my car and drive and blast music and try to get my heart to open, and I’ll go through it all and it will smart a little bit and it will be bittersweet and it won’t be like it once was, because so many essential hearts are now absent, but it will be something I nonetheless look forward to because I can’t help myself.

    For a few hours, and maybe even longer, I might even be able to
    forget about the saddle on my back, and perhaps no one will notice that
    I’m now so stooped that I can’t even see who or what is riding me. It’s
    more likely, of course, that they will notice –how could they not?– but won’t say anything out of kindness and courtesy.

    The
    truth is they all probably know a whole lot more than I do, and can see
    me more clearly than I could ever hope to see myself. All I know
    anymore is that whatever’s in the saddle is reckless, heedless, and
    something of a mess maker. He’s steered me into all sorts of places I
    don’t belong, and left behind quite a trail of wreckage. Oh, shit yes,
    my rider and me, we’ve broken all sorts of stuff that’ll never be
    fixed.

    Still, I’ll do what I always do and try to feel whole while doing it. I’ll go to a little family market that has been downtown for more than a century, and I will buy oysters and cream, just as I did when I tagged along with my father as a child.

    And I’ll go at midnight and sit with my mother and what is left of my family and we will listen once again to the stories about that long, long ago night when a wondrous bright star appeared to shepherds tending their flocks in the fields and an angel spoke to them of great tidings and three wise men were drawn to a manger in a town in the Middle East where an outlaw was born. And whether you believe those stories or not, you cannot deny that they are stories that contain all the essential wonder and magic and mysteries and hope of most good stories, then just as now. And you cannot deny that they are stories that forever changed the world, for the better and for the worse, in what sometimes seems like equal measure.

    I know that I’ll lift up my voice and sing, because it’s what I’ve always done; it’s tradition, ritual, a habit yoked to memory, and it feels good. And I’ll see all sorts of people who were part of the tribe that raised and educated me and kicked my ass out into the world. And in the early hours of Christmas morning, I will walk with my dog through the quiet, snowy streets that as a child I raced through on my stingray bike in the settling dusk of a thousand summer nights. With any luck snow will be falling, or there will be a clear, deep sky crammed with stars, and up and down every street I will remember dozens of voices and faces and the sound of laugher in dark backyards and the smell of my father’s cologne and all those Christmas mornings so long ago now, when I laid awake almost breathless with anticipation in the darkness of my bedroom, listening for sleighbells and waiting for the first light of morning.

  • The Cure for Scrooginess: A Hot Martini at Oceanaire

    I’ve spent only one Christmas alone — and by "alone," I mean myself and three young kids.

    I was recently divorced. My parents were visiting my sister’s family in Philadelphia. And my ex-husband, a "recovering" Catholic and practicing alcoholic at the time, had slid into his annual holiday slump. This is how I found myself in a movie theater Christmas Eve, with my three all lined up and feeling — I’m sure — a lot less melancholy about the situation than I.

    In fact, they were very good sports. We went home and had frosted pumpkin bars around our kitchen table then separated and went to bed. The next day, we watched a video and stayed in our pajamas until well past noon. Everyone survived. And yet. . . .It was a little lonely. Even for the four of us clustered together in a tight little snow-covered house. Though we had movies and sugary treats to keep us occupied. Despite the fact that we’re Jewish, for God’s sake!

    It is a fact of this ceaselessly commercial and bedecked season that being alone — or even with others but not celebrating — feels odd and empty. Everything is too quiet. Houses are either unoccupied or bursting. All the stores that were jam-packed only 24 hours ago are closed. You can’t go to the gym or the library or the mall. Here in Minnesota, it’s often too cold even to take a walk.

    That’s why my family now throws a small party on December 25 for all the people we know who are far from home or sharing kids with an ex-spouse or non-Christians who would ignore the holiday and go to work only their offices are securely closed. (We never give gifts on this day: it’s an irrational but deeply-held principle of mine that the only way to buck the mercenary nature of Christmas is simply to opt out.) And in its more profit-conscious but equally merry way, I’m sure, Oceanaire is doing the same — holding a special dinner on Christmas Eve.

    They can’t announce their specials yet, because chef Rick Kimmes doesn’t decide what to feature until the daily fish shipment comes in. But the front of the house is promising a Bing Crosby’s White Christmas theme with vintage holiday songs and hot drinks including buttered rum, eggnog, peppermint patties, hot toddies, and a warm Café con Leche martini made of coffee liqueur, vodka, butterscotch schnapps, and heavy cream.

    Now granted, this won’t solve the problem of single mothers or orphans or elderly shut-ins, but if Charles Dickens taught us one thing with his timeless Ebenezer Scrooge it’s that all the money in the world doesn’t stop a man from contemplating his own mortaility in a cold bed alone on Christmas. I suggest our local Ebenezers drop off a donation at Sharing and Caring Hands or some other philanthropic organization before stopping in at Oceanaire for crooned carols, warm food, and a good stiff drink.

    And just in case you can’t make it on Christmas Eve, be assured, all these warm winter concoctions will be available at least throughout the holiday season, until the New Year.

    Oceanaire is taking reservations up to 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, 612-333-2277.

  • The Best Place to Hide A Wine Bar

    If you really wanted to hide a sophisticated little wine bar
    where nobody would find it, where would you put it? Eden Prairie? Hilltop?

    How about, in the back room The Newsroom on the
    Nicollet Mall?

    You could easily walk into The Newsroom., a high-decibel
    newspaper-themed restaurant plastered with newspaper headlines and packed with
    video monitors,  spend the evening
    dining on deep-fried Brie curds, chicken Caesar salad and coconut shrimp, and
    never have an inkling that  there’s a terrific
    little wine bar called Taste in the back, with a completely different
    menu and wine selection. You could even search the Newsroom web site and not
    find a single mention of it. And if you came on a Monday or Tuesday, all you
    would find is a darkened room.

    On a Wednesday night when we visited, there was one lonely
    soul at the bar, and nobody in the little mezzanine hideaway where we settled
    in on a couch. Is it always this empty, I asked our server. Yes, she said.
    Nobody knows about it. We could have canoodled all evening with anyone – except
    our server – intruding on our privacy.

    The list of wines by the glass – actually small carafes –
    includes a few familiar names: a J. Lohr Chardonnay ($13.50/$25), a Rodney
    Strong Cabernet ($14/$26), but most are more obscure: a Quinto dos Grillos from
    Portugal ($13.50/$25), a Salneval Albarino ($11/$20) from Spain, a really
    delightful Ruche di Castagnole from Italy, (imported by Bonny Doon, ($8.75/
    $15.50). The prices seem a bit high, until you notice the size: the smaller pour
    is eight ounces, and the larger is 16 ounces – the equivalent of three glasses
    at most places.

    The menu is built around tastes -bite-sized portions of
    cheeses, hot and cold appetizers and sweets priced from $1.95 to $3.95 The
    cheeses ($1.95-$2.25) are well-chosen – a nicely ripened wedge of Humboldt Fog
    goat cheese, a creamy blue Fourme D’Ambert, an Italian truffled goat cheese and
    several more. The only big blunder is the bread, ($1.95 for a quarter baguette,
    $3.50 for a half) with no crust, and the soft, cottony texture that comes from
    being stored in plastic. 

    The cold starters run the gamut from a tuna ceviche, (four
    tasting spoons for $3.95), coarsely chopped chunks marinated in a habanero
    cilantro vinaigrette to a beet salad with micro greens and a sherry Roquefort
    dressing ($2.55), while the hot starters range from asparagus risotto croquettes with grilled tomato sauce ($2.65)  to a sake-infused
    scallop served with green tea soba noodles ($2.95). Some items were memorable (like the pear carpaccio with blue cheese crisp ($2.95), and others were not – like the cross-cut
    coriander cumin fries with a gorgonzola cream sauce ($3.95), but the pricing is very reasonable and the overall batting average is pretty high. Weekdays, the happy hour specials (offered till 6:30), include a featured wine and a selection of draft beers for $3 a glass, plus mini-sandwicbes and appetizers for $2-4. 

    We passed on the desserts, but the options include a
    chocolate wafer with chai ice cream, blueberry blini with lemon crème fraiche,
    and a blue cheese and port mousse with pear (all $2.95).

    Taste Wine Bar, in The Newsroom, 990 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, 612-343-0073.

  • The Three Pointer: Redemption Song

    Game # 25, Home Game #13: Indiana 118, Minnesota 131

    Season record: 4-21

    I usually condense two weekend games into a single trey, but tonight’s victory over Indiana was sufficiently exciting and worthy of individual comment that I’ve decided to file this now and let you folks add comments to this and tomorrow night’s road game against New Orleans. I’ll return for a trey after the Golden State game on Wednesday night. Until then, Happy Holidays, and hoops, to all.

    1. The Iron Man

    "When you’re having fun on an NBA floor there is nothing better in the world," said Sebastian Telfair after he played all 48 minutes of the second-highest scoring game in Timberwolves history. Amen to that, Bassy, for you are the MVP of the best three quarters this squad has played in over a year, perhaps two. And the shocking transformation Telfair has made from handy punchline to hardy point guard is complete. He’ll have bad games, maybe even a bunch of them, but now it should be regarded as a slump rather than confirmation of his eventual ticket to Europe and the entree to moralistic fables about NY playground kids not making the NBA leap.

    For weeks now, Telfair has been accruing evidence against initially heavy odds that he belongs in this league, as a credible backup if not a starter. His 780 minutes are second most on the squad behind Jefferson. He’s averaging 10.3 ppg on 42.5% shooting–hardly great, but not awful, and better to the eye than on paper–and boasts a 2.8-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, Tonight he seized the opportunity the Pacers provided him. As coach Randy Wittman said after the game, "We knew [Indiana] would trap outside and if he got by the big men on the high pick and roll he could get what he wanted."

    Simple enough, until you realize that the key to Minnesota’s 40-point second quarter was relying on a point guard who didn’t go to college and is only nine months older than Corey Brewer having the sense to recognize the looming trap and then the sinew and quickness to thread through it and finish at the hoop. Coming into the quarter down a whopping 20 points, 20-40, Telfair stuck a 16-footer and drove for a layup in the first 75 seconds. A minute later, when Indiana changed up the trap, he fed to Antoine Walker for a trey. Then a flurry; three driving layups in three minutes time and that huge deficit had been halved and then some with more than six minutes to play in the period. When the quarter was over, the entire Indiana team had scored 15 points and dished out 4 assists, while Telfair registered a dozen (5-6 FG 2-2 FT) and issued 4 assists himself, three of them treys by Walker plus a jumper by Corey Brewer. Put simply, Bassy was responsible for 26 points in the second quarter and the Wolves, after being absolutely flattened in the first quarter, yielding 11 baskets on Indiana’s first 12 shots, miraculously had a 5-point lead at the break.

    Three things in particular stand out about Telfair this game. One is his synergy with Corey Brewer, a staple this entire season. Brewer and Bassy are very similar in many respects; both put great pace into the game, fueled by a natural desire to keep going until deterred. Both try to leaven their suspect shooting with smart and quick passing; rarely do you see either one of them simply dribble and survey the floor. And both play all 94 feet on defense, knowing they must rely on speed and guile instead of brawn, looking for poke-check steals, scrambling to stay in front of their man as long and often as possible, and willing to expend the energy rather than concede the layup on a Timberwolves turnover.

    The second is Telfair’s toughness. Tonight he went way up against one of the Pacer’s bigs, trying to keep a high rebound afloat, only to bend back a tad too far in his effort and be slightly undercut enough to land on his rear and back–just as Pacer center Jeff Foster was heading up court to trample him with one calf while kicking him in the head with the other. This was the second quarter of a game in which Telfair never sat. According to Wittman after the game, he probably won’t sit tomorrow night versus Chris Paul and the Hornets on the tail end of a back to back. But while his second half numbers indicated some fatigue tonight–he had 11 points, 4 assists and a turnover after going 16-7-0 in the first half–he expended his emergency fuel where it mattered most, continuing to play staunch defense on Jamaal Tinsley, who shot just 3-10 FG and finished with 8 points and 10 assists after coming into the game averaging 14.8 and 8.7, respectively.

    Finally, one of Telfair’s four second period layups, perhaps the last one, was a dribble-drive through three defenders culminating in a hand-switch of the ball while he was in mid air, and a left-haned banker. It had echoes of the playground and Jordan about it; the kind of shot you only attempt, let alone make, if you’re clueless and desperate or in a groove and very, very confident. When asked by Myles Brown of slamonline.com after the game if this was his best game of the season, Telfair replied, "absolutely." Brown followed up by inquiring what the difference was between the Telfair of two years ago and the one today, Bassy shrugged, squinted for a couple of beats, and then said simply, "Confidence."

    2. The Leader

    The flu bug nailed Rashad McCants as well as Marko Jaric, who both stayed away from the arena tonight. Buckner, Foye and Ratliff are hurt. So is Antoine Walker, but not enough not to heed the call and slap some tape on his aching ankle. Yup, less than a day after telling the Strib that he’d tried to come back too soon earlier this season and was going to let the ankle heal this time, ‘Toine suited up, then buried the Pacers for 23 points in 24:58 en route to a game-best plus +21.

    Remember that high pick and roll Wittman was describing? Well, if the Pacers chose to defend Telfair’s drives, Walker was waiting out beyond the arc. He sank a half-dozen of them in 10 attempts, forming an inside-outside attack that turned the game for the Wolves after that brutal first quarter.

    But it was more than the points, or the solid defense Walker played on ersatz star Jermaine O’Neal. (A not-so-brief detour here to rip O’Neal. Those of us spoiled by years of watching Kevin Garnett never take a night off got a taste of what it looks like when a perennial all-star attitudinally lies down like a dog. Even on two good ankles, Walker has no business negating O’Neal in the low block. JO’s game was epitomized by a play in the fourth quarter where O’Neal was content to watch a long rebound from Al Jefferson’s missed shot go out of bounds. Except that Jefferson hustled over and grabbed it by the sideline, then spun into the lane and dropped a layup over O’Neal. "I think we got him frustrated," Wittman said after the game. That’s charitably diplomatic. O’Neal finished with 8 points on 3-11 shooting and 5 rebounds in 33:59 (he did add 6 assists), plus a minus -18 in a 13-point loss. By contrast, Jefferson had 29 points and 13 rebounds (2 assists) in 33:18. It was a pathetic display by Indiana’s most talented player, who looks to be engaging in a "work slowdown" in an effort to be traded.) No, along with accurate treys and dogged defense, Walker once again demonstrated how a wizened vet with little to gain on a terrible team can exercise the kind of leadership simultaneously designed to brighten the moment and enhance the future.

    For one thing, ‘Toine broke out the shimmy, that little end zone dance transferred to the hardwood that once punctuated particularly meaningful ‘Toine treys on a fairly regular basis. When Walker was in his prime, that shimmy felt arrogant, self-aggrandizing and stupidly provocative, a red flag to the other team. Tonight, in a game where the Wolves had just encountered a first quarter beatdown, had seen their star, Al Jefferson repair to the dressing room for stitches after being elbowed in the mouth, and had been called out the previous
    game by their coach for not having the gumption to respond to a challenge, ‘Toine’s first official shimmy in a Wolves uniform was perfectly timed to announce that the cavalry was here. It announced that not only weren’t the Wolves going to meekly slink away or choke after a lead had been established, but they were going to revel in their temporal greatness and stand confident in their ability to withstand the blowback. If the Wolves lose that game, as they had lost so many others, ‘Toine looks like a fool. But 59 seconds after the Wolves had come all the way back to finally tie it at 52, Walker nailed a trey to boost the lead to 5, at 57-52, with 45 seconds left in the half, and then took that chance, esentially announcing to his team–"I got your back, let’s have some fun and send a message that we plan on keeping this lead."

    Then there is the strong mentorship that Walker is exercising with Gerald Green. Many times during televised road games the camera would catch Walker, waylaid in street clothes with his ankle injury, leaning over talking to Green at GG’s customary spot at the end of the bench. Over the weeks it has become apparent that Walker talks to Green a lot. Tonight it was obvious that Green appreciates the attention and looks to ‘Toine for support and direction.

    With both McCants and Jaric felled by flu, Green was the first player off the bench as the first quarter carnage was wrought, with Walker joining him on the court about a minute and a half later. Now I’ve pretty much done nothing but rip GG whenever I’ve raised his name thus far this season, so let me say that whatever influence Walker had on Green tonight, it was still Green who looked to pass instead of shoot for almost his entire first stint on the floor. It was Green who fought through the brief panics about not knowing who to guard and eventually landed his assignment, usually in time enough not to burn the Wolves. And it was Green who slowly but steadily built from square one, gaining the confidence to do more than the most rudimentary team activity on offense and defense, finishing with 12 points, 4 rebounds and 5 assists in 16 minutes, his best game of the season thus far.

    But having Walker around certainly didn’t hurt. ‘Toine was talking a lot to GG, and shepherding him occasionally on defense. After one  timeout, Walker gathered his teammates together as they took the floor and was talking animatedly in a semi-circle with them before play resumed. On the next two defensive possessions, Green was yelling out switches and impending picks, clearly communicating–the first time I’ve seen him do that this year. What’s more, Walker rewarded Green’s initial ball movement by canning a feed from GG for a trey at the end of the first quarter and again within the first three minutes of the second (remarkably enough, at that point I’m not sure Green had taken a single shot).

    In the third quarter, Wittman countered Indiana’s zone by bringing Green and Walker in together with 7:10 to play in the period and the Wolves up five. Green immediately went off, nailing a trey and a 20-footer in between two assists to Jefferson, one a beautifully executed pick and roll. Walker and his other teammates kept stoking him and for the first time all year, Green began to play both naturally and intelligently, with the right rotations and shot selection. With a little more than four minutes to play in the quarter, Walker threw a football pass to a streaking Green, who was fouled on the layup attempt. As the crowd cheered, Walker extended his arm to the sky and held up his index finger in celebration. At the other end of the court, Green spotted him and extended his arm and index finger. Then he hit both free throws, bumping the Wolves’ lead to 16.

    After the game, a buoyant Telfair said that he and his teammates had been asking for a shimmy out of Walker. "He said if he hit a couple of shots tonight he might do one," Telfair claimed, then later added, "He was a huge factor in this win. And he’s really helping us in the locker room."

    3. The Gambler

    In the last trey, I highlighted the fact that Coach Randy Wittman had called out his team after the Golden State loss, strongly implying that his players lacked the confidence, bravery and competitive spirit to rebuff an opponent’s challenge and then rebound with a run of their own. Noting that some players were injured, I said a coach can’t use that kind of language too frequently, and questioned the timing.

    I still think it was a gamble, that, if the Wolves had gone into the tank, would have further jeopardized Witt’s effectiveness this season. But that was a chance the coach was not only willing to take, but obviously felt like he had to put out there, and tonight he was proven to be right and effective in his tactics. In fact, it is almost as if he wrote the storybook. After the Golden State loss, Witt repeated the contention that when an opponent hits the Wolves, they have to absorb the blow and fight back. Earlier this season, but not earlier this week, he had said when a team hits you in the mouth you have to fight back. Well, tonight the Wolves were not only missing Jaric but their premiere outside threat, McCants. What’s more, their best player, Jefferson, literally got hit in the mouth at a time when the Wolves had already allowed 12 assists and generated only one turnover while allowing the Pacers to shoot 75% (15-20 FG) in the first quarter. And the Wolves did exactly what Wittman had dared them to do, and mocked and belittled them for not doing; they essentially said "enough is enough" and overcame a 20-point deficit with renewed effort and determination and sheer toughness.

    After expressing how proud he was of his team, Wittman also took the opportunity to call out the Strib for suggesting, in a front page story today, that the current Wolves team might rank among the worst ever in the NBA in terms of wins and losses at the end of the season. After enduring so much criticism in recent days–from present company included–the coach probably felt justified in doling a little of it back. "These kids, they’ve got feelings too…We are all human beings and that hurt," Wittman said to beat writer Jerry Zgoda, who wrote the piece.

    Yet whatever tension might have existed necessarily dissipated in the wake of such a convincing, and unlikely, of course, victory. After a few good natured comments, Wittman concluded his postgame comments with a simple, "Merry Christmas, you guys."

    And to all a good night.

  • Men: Great Hearts, Weak Noses

    I had dinner with Robert Bly last week. Now you may think the biggest perks of my job involve food and wine and freebies but it’s not true. The best thing is meeting people like Bly and being able to ask anything I want.

    And here’s what I wanted to know: What’s up with men?

    I was sitting in a booth at Cue, drinking a glass of M. Chapoutier Côtes du Rhône, which you may know by now is one of my favorite affordable wines. I also like that Chapoutier is one of only two winemakers in the world who puts a braille label on all of his bottles because, he says, wine selection shouldn’t be limited by people’s ability to see.

    Bly was sipping a Bombay Sapphire martini while eating roasted ringneck pheasant. And we were discussing Peer Gynt, the 1867 Norwegian play about a hapless, self-absorbed young man, which Bly had — just hours before — finished adapting so that it contains, for the first time in history, Ibsen’s original rhyme scheme in English.

    "This is a great play about a wild young man," Bly told me. "Gynt is loved by women but hardly knows his own father. And the play asks what happens to such a man?"

    This, of course, is a perennial theme of Bly’s as well. In addition to being an internationally-recognized poet and translator, he wrote Iron John: A Book About Men and helped found the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement, a 1990’s-era self-help method for men that involved storytelling, new age shamanism, forest gatherings and drums. Yes, it sounds like voodoo.

    But ask Bly about the rites, as I did that night, and his explanation is clear: "We were just pleased to be with other men who weren’t brutal or cruel," he told me. "The men who came weren’t angry with women, they loved women. If anything, they were angry at their fathers." The one thing his followers shared was a hunger to be recognized by older men. "The question they were asking," Bly said, "was, Am I worthwhile as a man? That’s all they needed to know."

    It happens, coincidentally, that I have for several months been reading books by men: those muscular, intelligent but addled, sex-fueled American types ranging from Saul Bellow to Richard Ford. Currently, I’m in the middle of Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs, a novel as uneven as a hastily-gathered deck of cards, but one that I nevertheless like.

    It’s about a man named Lucy. (You can imagine, I’m sure, why he needs assurance that he is worthwhile.) As a child, Lucy is accosted by a bunch of older boys and locked in a trunk down near the blood-red Cayoga River. Terrified, he passes out and awakens hours later to the sounds of a couple having sex on the ground at his side. (Why they didn’t wonder about a trunk on a riverbank, I cannot say. . . .this is one of the ragged elements of the book.) The woman hears him shifting and throws open the lid of the trunk — naked from the waist up, of course — thus freeing the boy who gets out, walks home along the river, and finds his father waiting for him on the bridge by their house.

    It cannot be coincidence that there is everything in this scene that Bly described: the brutality of boys and the joy at seeing a bare-chested woman and the desire only to be gathered up by his father and safely transported home. It is, I’m beginning to see, a ubiquitous and rather winsome theme in men’s literature and lives — this need to be comforted, to be carried, to be loved.

    I’m a big fan of men: wife to one and ex-wife (still good friend) to another, as well as the mother of two nearly-grown sons. I can speak to the softness that exists in all of them, the hunger, as Bly put it.

    So I found myself wondering one day about men and wine. There is a strange, swooning, wide-eyed fever that men bring to their drinking. The same one, it seems to me, they bring to most everything else, be it war or stamp collecting or golf. And maybe it is the reason that most of the world’s winemakers and tasters and raters and vendors even today are men, though women have been proven, scientifically, to have a far more acute sense of smell. Biologically speaking, Robert Parker should be a woman in her 30’s, not a 60-year-old guy with an outdated JD.

    As a woman wine writer, I can hardly claim prejudice. After all, you’re reading me. But I’ve been examining these men and their stories, thinking about what I can take from them — Bly and his moonlit drum beating, Russo and his childhood fear and fantasy, Chapoutier and his gallant but quixotic mission to make wine buying easier for the blind. Then there’s the man I met the other day.

    I was at Costco, where I’d gone to buy a case of the Chapoutier Cotes du Rhone for a party. Why would I battle the traffic and noise and hotdog stink of that hellhole? Because here the Chapoutier sells for $8.59 a bottle rather than $12. This fact — and a Xanax — were enough to get me through the horror of a Christmas shopping throng. Only then, there was no wine! Luckily, I found a man in a red apron who lifted another case off a high shelf.

    Selling wine was his hobby, the man told me. And he wasn’t just a fan of the wine I was buying, he was avid, recommending it to everyone he knew. As I was checking out, he came running over to hand me a sheaf of background materials. I mentioned that I was a writer, told him my name, and said I might post the information. . . .then felt ill and called it an early night. He called the Rake first thing the next morning and demanded to know where my new column was, leaving his number so we could alert him the moment it went up.

    I’m not complaining. In fact, I think if there’s something we women can learn from men, it’s to indulge in a little reckless enthusiasm and genuine need. Men in the woods, telling each other fairytales and beating drums. It kind of makes sense.

  • Andy Cilek Thinks You’re an Idiot

    Last year, instant runoff voting
    was approved by an overwhelming majority of Minneapolis residents. 65
    percent of voters, to be exact. Given that it’s difficult to find
    65 percent of people to agree with something as uncontroversial as whether
    Britney Spears’ contributions to the gene pool violate environmental
    protection statutes and constitute illegal dumping, a 65 percent mandate
    seems fairly miraculous – and all the more unassailable for its unique
    nature in today’s partisan atmosphere. So why is Andy Cilek and his
    Minnesota Voters Alliance suing the city to prevent the new system from
    starting? Especially when Minneapolis residents seem fairly convinced
    the new system will help third party candidates, increase election turnouts,
    and generally make the world a better place, complete with smiling,
    magical, winged unicorns cavorting in the streets with adorably fuzzy
    animals and martini making robots in every household.

    To answer the question of why
    a "non-partisan" killjoy is looking to piss all over a rare bipartisan
    voter mandate that somehow didn’t bring the Earth’s rotation to
    a world-ending halt, we need to start off by defining instant runoff
    voting. Keep in mind however, that there is no hope of understanding
    a system obviously designed by the Elder Gods – a system created with
    impossible angles never meant to be understood by the base animal that
    is man. In fact, the poor unenlightened masses Mr. Cilek and his ilk
    are so desperately trying to protect were clearly hopped up on special K and were offered special service
    packages     in return
    for their vote when they stopped off at polling places last year. That’s
    the only explanation for the measure’s passage. But despite this fundamentally
    unknowable nature of this concept, the effort must be made.

    Instant runoff voting, at its
    most base level, involves ranking candidates on a ballot in order of
    preference so that, in the event no one receives a clear majority, the
    candidate receiving the fewest "number one" votes is dropped from
    the ballot and everyone who gave those "number one" votes has their
    "number two" votes applied – and on down the line until someone
    receives a majority of the votes. Fairly simple and straightforward,
    no? So why does Mr. Cilek think Minneapolis residents are too addlepated,
    inbred, and generally too fucking dumb to understand the process?

    In fact, to help illustrate
    just how close the average Minneapolis resident’s mental capacity
    is to that of Jessica Simpson, the Minnesota Voters Alliance engaged
    in a highly scientific survey to demonstrate that Minneapolis voters
    didn’t even understand what they were voting for last year and just
    filled in the pretty circle on the ballot. Mr. Cilek’s flunkies talked
    to "about 300 people" and found less than three voters who could
    explain the instant runoff system. Of course, it’s entirely possibly
    the survey was taken at a Sigma Chi fraternity party on the U campus
    (keg stands are really an underutilized opportunity to take the pulse
    of the community), or while canvassing the city’s finer gentlemen’s
    clubs (I’ve heard the dancers at Sinners are particularly well informed, though
    the ones at Schiek’s have fascinating opinions on farm subsidies)
    – but we may never know, since there’s no published methodology,
    or even official results. We’re just expected to take the Alliance’s
    word for it – non-partisan political organizations being so credible
    these days. Plus, to put it bluntly – I have no damn clue exactly
    how my TV works, but I manage to tune in to Robot Chicken just fine. And I’ve got news for
    you…Seth Green is a
    fucked up little man    .

    Of course, the stultifying
    idiocy endemic to Minneapolis isn’t the only reason the Alliance opposes
    instant runoff voting. It’s unconstitutional and disenfranchises voters!
    I’m not a constitutional scholar, or even a Talmudic one, but I can’t
    really see how a system used by all sorts of countries that have managed
    to figure out the whole affordable health care thing, and even a few
    states right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. that don’t seem to
    feel that it violates the whole "one person, one vote" concept.
    And as for disenfranchising people? I, and most other political analysts,
    fail to see how giving people the opportunity to vote for the candidate
    that best matches their ideology, be it Republican, Democrat, or cannibalistic
    anarcho-syndicalist, without feeling as if they’ll be wasting their
    vote. So Mr. Cilek response is to use his angry monkey style– that is, throwing a whole bunch
    of shit against the wall in the hopes that some of it sticks. This is
    not to be confused with tiger style, crane style, or the ever popular doggy style.