The Rake Magazine

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  • Tears of a Clown, Redux

    I was born a clown, and in retrospect my parents were incredibly good sports about what must surely have been on a number of levels a shock and a disappointment. They’d been trying for years to have a child, and they accepted me immediately as a blessing and loved me unconditionally for what I was.

    My father likes to tell the story of how on the day I was born he went right out and bought me my first pair of big red shoes. I took my first tentative steps in those shoes.

    From the very beginning my lips were preternaturally large, and I have never required much in the way of embellishment beyond a basic application of lipstick for color and a bit of accenting around the outline. I have no memory of being outfitted with my rubber nose, but from the first time I can recall gazing at my reflection in a mirror it was a source of great pride and enduring pleasure.

    One morning in early childhood I awoke to discover that overnight my chin and jowls had acquired an application of Vaseline and coffee grounds.

    I was, I am told, an uncommonly stubborn and willful child, with a clear and unwavering self-image. I was as a result always allowed to choose my own clothing, and favored a ragged old porkpie hat, an oversized smock with red polka dots and shiny buttons, and baggy trousers covered with brightly colored patches. I was a very happy boy, and a happy clown.

    Childhood is of course an awkward and confusing time in the life of a clown. By the time I was old enough to attend school I had grown used to the charmed attention of adults. All of those I had come in contact with had seemed both amused and enchanted to find themselves in the presence of a happy little clown. I suppose in hindsight there was a good deal of condescension in this response, but I loved the attention all the same. I craved and needed attention; there was nothing I could do about it. It was hard-wired in my brain. My self-esteem was entirely dependent on entertaining people and making them laugh.

    My parents were an unfailingly compliant audience. They adored me, and I could induce heaving fits of laughter in them with little more than a wide-eyed grin or a startled spit-take at the breakfast table.To their credit they never pushed me. They didn’t have to. I was, however, an unusually sheltered child, and though I don’t believe this was ever a conscious decision on the part of my parents, I had had precious little interaction with other children by the time I started elementary school. As such I was utterly unprepared for the reactions I received from the other students. I understood neither the casual cruelty of children, nor the irrational fear that clowns seem to inspire in so many youngsters.

    There were long, unhappy stretches where I got the shit kicked out of me every day I went to school. Bullies on the playground held me down and wiped my beard of coffee grounds from my face; they stole my ragged hat, stepped on my big red shoes, and tore the shiny buttons from my polka dot shirt.

    In my teenage years I would stand alone and friendless in the darkened gymnasium at school dances. No girl would dance with me. Even balloons could not get me a date. I eventually taught myself a few simple magic tricks to try to impress my classmates, but it was too little, too late.

    In what I can now see was a desperate plea for help and attention, I fell in with a bad group of self-destructive adolescents during my junior year of high school, and was persuaded to join a heavy metal band called Lucifer’s Dong. The band was terrible, and was completely and justifiably ignored. I also realized pretty quickly that I was just a gimic the band hoped would help it to secure a certain reputation, and practices tended to be little more than a series of mean-spirited jokes at my expense.

    Even so, it was only at my parents’ insistence that I quit Lucifer’s Dong.

    I ate too much candy, gained a great deal of weight, and learned that a clown is simply not equipped to handle the brutal truth.

    By the time I dropped out of high school to join the circus my fate was sealed: I would be a sad-faced clown to the end of my days.

  • The New Mini. A Maximum Bummer.

    I have driven the new Mini Cooper. So has half the British Press (the one that matters–Jeremy Clarkson in particular–he is the "dog’s bollocks.")

    The universal rap on the new car is that it has been "Americanized." In other words, the automotive equivalent of a nice hot casserole. Its a little bigger, the dashboard is less fussy, it has a few more HP (under 10) and it is sprung a tad bit more softly.

    Pulease. I have written about this car before (see "Big–a meditation on the MIni Cooper). At that time I pondered whether this joyous little piece of sculptured iron was a "Chick Car." I came to the conclusion that if it was, I would change my sex (I already have a gender neutral name, like "Pat", a little snip and we’d be done. Like Hedwig, sorta.)

    The previous Mini was that much fun.

    This new Mini is, how shall I say, all hat and no cattle. Style without substance. It has been egregiously compromised by the Germans and I hold BMW responsible.

    Here are my road notes: The new Mini compared to gen one.

    "Interior: grown up and that’s good. Exterior: bigger, er, no, no make that bulbous (compared to the first generation.) Clutch engagement: Damp noodle (I am reminded of that oxymoronic concept called "British cuisine") Turn-in: Cool but not crisp. Handling: More distant, like an ex-girlfriend. Throttle response: Gen one: atta-boy Gen-two: La-Z-Boy
    Suspension: see "La-Z-Boy." Desire to drive like a German person: nein, nahzink, no vay (can you hear me BMW?)."

    Where the rubber meets the road: In world where a little Honda pumps out 200 HP and DODGE CALIBERS (for chrissake) 300 HP, you need peerless driving dynamics and "feel" to do better with less power. The previous Mini did just that. The current Mini does not. It will sell but its soul has been sold.

  • The TV Writers Strike: Reverb into Newsrooms?

    The average couch tuber probably isn’t tracking this TV writers strike too much. Not beyond fretting over an early end to Heroes and no new Daily Shows. Beyond that the affected "workers," a lot of smart-ass Bimmer-driving West L.A. espresso sippers, are never going to win an outpouring of empathy from the people who obsessively consume their programming.

    I’m not going to argue that this is the moral equivalent of the Harlan County coal miners, but as so many businesses, media in particular, try to find a way to monetize the Internet, this particular strike seems likely to set some important precedents for a lot of industries, possibly even newspapers.

    For a short (and funny) primer on the basics of the TV strike, check out this video posted yesterday by The Daily Show writers.

    The central claim is this: On one hand a media tycoon like Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, (Viacom owns Paramount Pictures, CBS, MTV, Blockbuster video, etc.), will sue YouTube for $1 billion based on its perceived effect — financial — to his value, while simultaneously arguing that there isn’t enough value on the Net to justify sharing …. ANYTHING … brought in via new technologies with the people who created it.

    No one knows for sure what tomorrow will bring, but the TV writers are smart enough to know that unless they nail down every possibility today they will continue seeing zip tomorrow … as billions in value pile up around the feet of the Redstones, and Rupert Murdochs of the planet.

    Ron Moore, showrunner for the series, Battlestar Galactica gave an interview offering a tangible example of how the media empires are overplaying their hand.

    He says:

    "Fundamentally this is about the internet, and this is about whether
    writers get paid for material that is made for the internet or if
    they’re paid for material that is broadcast on the internet that was
    developed for TV or movies.

    "I had a situation last year on Battlestar Galactica where we were asked by Universal to do webisodes, which at that point were very new and ‘Oooh, webisodes! What does that
    mean?’ It was all very new stuff. And it was very eye opening, because
    the studio’s position was ‘Oh, we’re not going to pay anybody to do
    this. You have to do this, because you work on the show. And we’re not
    going to pay you to write it. We’re not going to pay the director, and
    we’re not going to pay the actors.’ At which point we said ‘No thanks,
    we won’t do it.’"

    "We got in this long, protracted thing and eventually they agreed to
    pay everybody involved. But then, as we got deeper into it, they said
    ‘But we’re not going to put any credits on it. You’re not going to be
    credited for this work. And we can use it later, in any fashion that we
    want.’ At which point I said ‘Well, then we’re done and I’m not going
    to deliver the webisodes to you.’ And they came and they took them out
    of the editing room anyway — which they have every right to do. They
    own the material — But it was that experience that really showed me
    that that’s what this is all about. If there’s not an agreement with
    the studios about the internet, that specifically says ‘This is covered
    material, you have to pay us a formula – whatever that formula turns
    out to be – for use of the material and how it’s all done,’ the studios
    will simply rape and pillage."

    If you missed it, Damon Lindelhof, co-creator/writer of NBC’s Lost, wrote an Op-Ed piece in last Sunday’s New York Times, a key assertion of his was this:

    "Twenty percent of American homes now contain hard drives that store
    movies and television shows indefinitely and allows you to fast-forward
    through commercials. These devices will probably proliferate at a
    significant rate and soon, almost everyone will have them. They’ll also
    get smaller and smaller, rendering the box that holds them obsolete,
    and the rectangular screen in your living room won’t really be a
    television anymore, it’ll be a computer. And running into the back of
    that computer, the wire that delivers unto you everything you watch? It
    won’t be cable; it will be the Internet."

    He adds:

    "My show, Lost, has been streamed hundreds of millions of times
    since it was made available on ABC’s website. The downloads require
    the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network
    obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get
    nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99
    each). Again, we get nothing.

    If this strike lasts longer than
    three months, an entire season of television will end this December. No
    dramas. No comedies. No Daily Show. The strike will also prevent any
    pilots from being shot in the spring, so even if the strike is settled
    by then, you won’t see any new shows until the following January. As in
    2009. Both the guild and the studios we are negotiating with do agree
    on one thing: this situation would be brutal."

    With talk that a long strike, relegating viewers to 52-week runs of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Tila Tecquila (and worse) could do for internet "programming" what the 1988 writers strike did for cable programming this Los Angeles Times piece, with a quote from Twin Cities-based media guru, John Rash, lays out the consumer conundrum. In short, pulp TV junkies though we may be, most of us have been spoiled by the production values of scripted television.

    Personally, I’ve got a stack of unwatched DVDs six feet high, college basketball will soon be in high gear and I can happily spend months without a fresh episode of Two and a Half Men.

    But the somewhat out-of-left field relation to newspaper writers is not so much that Katherine Kersten deserves a cut of every dollar Avista Capital Partners might make re-packaging her "Worst of the Flying Imams" columns for dowloading, but rather the pressure to add blogging and other web-related work to the existing job description … without additional compensation.

    It goes without saying that there aren’t more than a half dozen writers at either paper with the leverage to demand more compensation for anything, even if they agreed to spit polish the publisher’s car. But the point is … the future, man.

    The Pioneer Press recently wrapped a new contract with Dean Singleton’s Media News group and Guild officer/reporter Alex Friedrich says discussions of additional duties were pretty much brushed away in the rush to conclude negotiations quickly.

    "There is no new language in the contract that forces us provide any new work for the web," says Friedrich. There was also no discussion of anyone getting paid more for blogging and taking pictures, etc.

    Friedrich says the Guild made the point that they see a need to "get this thing laid out" in the not -too distant future, but that it just didn’t happen this time around.

    "Our big thing," he says, "is what ‘What are we going to judged on?’ All of us recognize that things are changing, and I know I don’t mind taking a picture. But I want some assurance that I won’t be dinged if it takes time away from my main job."

    The bet here is that, win or lose, the TV writers will establish precedents for a lot of other "creative" industries.

  • T-Day Seven Days Out: The Bird

    The bird is the word.

    We used to go to my aunt’s house in North Oaks for Thanksgiving. I clearly remember her perched on a chair next to the oven, heater and scotch in one hand, turkey baster in the other as she dutifully doused the bird every five minutes. From that chair she barked orders to the rest of the family to execute the remainder of the meal, I was in charge of rolling butter into pretty balls. Others can mash the potatoes or slice the beets, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t leave her post or her mission, all in the name of moisture.

    A dry turkey is a sin. You don’t build an entire feast around one main protein only to realize you’ve served a chew-toy. I can’t seem to get my mother-in-law to see that you don’t need to start cooking the bird at 6am for a 4pm dinner. Gravy needn’t be the real main course, there is another way.

    In the past few years, it’s been all about the brine. Brining a turkey involves soaking the thawed bird in a salt and herb solution. The theory is that the meat absorbs the flavorful solution and the proteins, when heated, lock the moisture inside. Although it does change the texture slightly, the resulting meat is ultra-moist, even when slightly overcooked.

    Change the flavor of your brine with the addition of cider or different herbs, just don’t oversalt. The first time I made my own brine, my turkey tasted like ham. There are a ton of good brines on the market, Golden Fig’s locally made brine mix is one of the best.

    If your bird is frozen, start thawing it in the fridge on Monday. By Tuesday, you should mix your brine solution and let it sit overnight. If you don’t have a big enough pot or bucket, don’t worry, there are plenty of giant bags meant for brining. I don’t even need to say that you shouldn’t use a scented garbage bag, do I? Get the bird into the solution by Wednesday and let it soak until you get it ready for the oven.

    I guarantee that any old-timers who haven’t had a brined bird will flip over the juiciness.

    Now for the ultimate question: to baste or not to baste? I’ve never basted a brined bird, and have yet to be disappointed. I have a chef friend that laughs at the basters, swearing that they only thing you have to do is slow-roast the bird at a low temp wrapped in parchment paper and foil, followed with a turn under high heat to add the crispiness.

    I’m sure I could have explained this all in detail to my aunt, but I fear not even a lecture from the turkey himself could have moved her from her perch.

  • Up North

    The Minnesota heat waves had passed in September when, visiting her
    sister, Anna Lefebvre, in Minneapolis Theresa Gumbleton and her
    sidekick, the shaded Sheila Sheils from Derry and Carndonagh, Ireland
    took a few days Up North lake lounging on Lower South Long Lake.

    Theresa Gumbleton and Sheila Sheils, Lower South Long Lake
    Red Handed

  • India

    Reading The Rake in a hand-pulled rickshaw is not recommended for a weak stomach. Tim Leone-Getten and Leslie Olmen visited Calcutta, India with other area teachers on a South Asia teacher exchange program with Hamline University and Relief International.

    Tim Leone-Getten and Leslie Olmen, Calcutta
    Red Handed

  • Food Police to the World

    Jim Harkness never expected to return to Minnesota. A native of South Minneapolis who studied Chinese in high school, he started his career as an activist specializing in Asian birds, then giant pandas. His work took him to China often, and eventually he became a full-time resident of Beijing, working first with the Ford Foundation, then serving as executive director of World Wildlife Fund China.

    But in 2005, when he heard the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)—a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that promotes sustainable farming and ecosystems—was searching for a new president, Harkness picked up and moved back home.

    “When I was first told about IATP, I’ll admit, it sounded removed from my lofty ideals,” Harkness says. “But when I saw what this organization does, looking at issues that affect everyone in this world, I realized that food is a very powerful force.”

    IATP was born out of the farm movement in the 1980s that opposed global trade and supported a traditional model for rural family farms. Today, the organization is still fighting the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, on the premise that both promote nonsustainable, commercial farming that harms both the environment and public health.

    Also among the major issues IATP addresses are the federal subsidies that favor commodity crops such as corn, soybeans, and wheat—as well as the corporate farm entities that produce them—over smaller, independently owned operations that produce a diverse range of foods. The result, according to Harkness, is that roughly eighty-five percent of arable land in the Midwest’s “Farm Belt” is devoted to soybeans and corn. This in turn leads to an economy where other foods must be shipped in from around the country and overseas—making them both ecologically damaging and expensive—while processed products, made with soy byproducts and corn syrup, are plentiful and cheap.

    “Over a fifteen-year period, from about 1985 to 2000, the cost of fresh produce went up thirty-five percent, whereas the price of ground beef and Coca-Cola, in real terms, went down about an equivalent amount,” Harkness says. “That’s because feedlots and the soft-drink industry suddenly had all this very cheap raw material at their disposal, which they would not have had without massive government intervention. And if you look at the onset of America’s obesity crisis, it coincides almost exactly with these changes in policies.”

    According to Food Without Thought, IATP’s 2006 report, childhood obesity skyrocketed between 1970 and 2000—at the same time as spending on processed food climbed to forty percent of the average American’s grocery bill, while produce dropped to claim less than nine percent. Perhaps most alarming: The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup rose one-thousand percent. A cheap, shelf-stable sweetener found in soft drinks and most processed foods, corn syrup provides no nutrients and very little usable energy, but must be processed entirely by the liver, like a toxin. So concurrent with the rise in obesity has been a surge in cases of type 2 diabetes.

    Harkness and IATP are waging battles on many different fronts. The key is for the tiny agency to operate on whatever level is appropriate to the issue at hand, explains Harkness. A major initiative is to lobby for changes in the federal price support system of payments to farmers, so most of IATP’s energy is devoted to rewriting the byzantine national farm bill and swaying national lawmakers. (Part of this involves countering messages from large-scale agribusinesses such as Cargill and General Mills, which is one reason IATP is based in Minnesota.) One goal is to develop language around a “common farmer/public health policy platform” for the next farm bill, developing policies that are good for both producers and consumers.

    But Harkness and his staff also work locally—in North Minneapolis, for instance—to establish farmer’s markets in urban neighborhoods and encourage low-income residents to buy fresh food. Regionally, their top concern right now is the growing enthusiasm for farms that will produce corn exclusively for ethanol. And Internationally, they’re focused on exposing how the World Trade Organization’s policies shape our communities and our lives. IATP’s promotion of fair trade practices has even led to a for-profit company of its own: Peace Coffee is perhaps its best-known success.

    “I took this job because for most of my life, I’ve been concerned with social justice and the sustainability of our planet,” Harkness says. “And I keep working toward those goals using all sorts of different means, whether it’s talking about conserving pandas or giving people decent, affordable food to eat.”

  • Be Kind: Go To Rewind

    Um, I hardly ever do this. But since I missed the big
    opening of the Gucci boutique at Nordstrom MOA last week, I figure I’d better slobber over some other local shop or other. Now, I assume that some of you, like me,
    are decidedly lacking in coin these days, and therefore cannot rationalize the
    purchase of a new GG bag. So, I’ve decided to take you to a shop that won’t
    unravel the billfold …

    Rewind is a vintage store on Johnson Street in Northeast
    Minneapolis    . Of course, this corner of the world is particularly tough to get
    to now that the 35W bridge is gone, especially if you’re coming from the
    Southside. But it’s worth the trek. I stopped in Tuesday night, and the first
    thing I spotted once inside: A slice of Uptown history.

     

    Schlampp’s Furs was a high-buck store in the Uptown Area
    that closed in, oh, I think it was sometime in the ’70s. (I don’t have my
    Uptown History book with me at the office today, but I’m pretty sure that’s
    where I acquired this hazy factoid). Now, here’s the cool thing: At stores vintage
    and consignment stores all over town, you will occasionally spot a beautiful 40s, 50s, or 60s-era Schlampp’s store-brand coat—and no, they’re not all fur. But they are extremely
    well-made. Last year, I picked up a 60s-era slate-blue wool one with big buttons and a
    flattering sash along the waistline. (But that wasn’t at Rewind. It was at
    Everyday People.) This one I’d like to buy for my mother.

    Note that Rewind favors looks from the 70s and 80s. For
    example, these killer boats …

    This knit Ella Moss dress I’d like to buy but, sadly, I
    implemented a Christmas gifts-only policy as of the first paycheck of November. Here’s a question, while I’m at it: Is it tacky to buy presents second-hand? I
    think not.

    Love this season’s over-sized sweaters, but choke every time
    you spy the associated price tags? Here’s a lovely vintage version, from Sears
    …

    Finally, check the selection of clutches. We love clutches
    and, yes, sadly, that has much to do with packing these teensy purses into the
    ginormous, back-breaking sacks we all lug around these days.

  • Groovy Throat-Singing Indigenous Men Who Do Good Deed

    ART, MUSIC, AND WINE
    Groove to the Music, Groove on the Art

    That’s right, folks; it’s time for another Gallery Grooves, The Rake’s monthly art, jazz, and
    wine event. Socialize and discuss the latest jazz with Kevin Barnes
    from KBEM, and enjoy free libations compliments of The Wine Company. The Hennepin History Museum’s current exhibition, Studies from Life,
    feature costume and object portraits by Minneapolis artist Timothy G.
    Piotrowski    . Come meet Piotrowski and learn more about how he uniquely
    interprets and photographs the Hennepin History Museum’s luscious costume
    collections on living models against a back-drop of vintage furniture,
    art objects, and historic locations. Tonight’s featured jazz selections include Champian Fulton’s Champian, Herbie Hancock’s River, and New York Voices’ A Day Like This.

    7-9 p.m., Hennepin History Museum, 2303 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-870-1329.

    FILM
    Journeyman

    Finally someone addresses the so-called “boy problem,” and it’s just some punk with a camera and a PhD father as the subject. No, seriously folks: Kevin Obsatz is a young, but plenty talented, filmmaker with several upstanding shorts under his belt. But his latest, and most ambitious, project (his first documentary) deals with the culture’s desperate need to engage boys in rites of passage (partly on account of their fatherlessness). The film asks at least one interesting question: Are men afraid of boys? Here, we have our own interesting question: Will there be footage of savage men running through woods wearing nothing but codpieces and warrior paint? Yes, friends, that looks to be the case. It’s worth noting: The subject matter is related to that of Protagonist, a documentary soon to be released nationally. But here we have a local bent, replete with home-grown experts like Dr. David Walsh and Kevin’s dad, Dr. Michael Obsatz, someone who’s been involved in mentoring boys and men. —Christy DeSmith

    7 p.m., Riverview Theatre, 3800 42nd Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-729-7369; $8.

    MUSIC
    Huun-Huur-Tu

    Do you know the guy in the upper left corner of our website? His name is Owen, and he’s an odd sort of chap. In fact, a couple of months ago, he even took a Tuvan throat singing class. Tonight, you can get the real deal. (Owen still has a lot of practicing to do.) "Throatsingers, as they’re called, can produce up to four notes at the
    same time, layered one on top of the other, rumbling like an earthquake
    or whistling like a mutant cricket. It’s unearthly stuff, seemingly
    more likely to come from Mars than the open steppes north of Mongolia.
    Huun-Huur-Tu is only one of several Tuvan groups who’ve successfully
    conquered Western world-music stages, and they’re probably the ones
    least influenced by outside genres and electric guitars… But the four fellows in Huun-Huur-Tu are all masters of the genre and
    have the advantage of numbers—to hear the full quartet boom out
    together into a reverberating, rich kargyraa will send a tingle up and
    down your spine."

    7:30 p.m., Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; $25.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Indigenous Voices

    What happens when Indian of the Future and Buffalo Man face off? Who wins the epic battle to protect Indian Country? The past? The future? Something entirely different? Beats me. But John Bently Spang and Marcus Amerman seem to have an answer. Interested? You ought to be. This evening brings you the answers… or at least one step closer.

    7:30 p.m., Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. S.,
    Minneapolis; 612-871-4444; $12 (members $8).

    GOOD DEED
    Green Thursday

    Forget Black Friday, which is just around the corner. Today is Green Thursday, and that’s somehow so much better. If only we knew what it was… Ok. Today kicks off a three-day eCycling event. No, you can leave the bicycle at home. This is three days of major electronics recycling. Today through Saturday you’ll see truckloads of TVs, VCRs, toasters, computers, and monitors being hauled to the Mall of America — not to sell them, not to buy them, but to simply save them from the landfills (or to save our landfills from them, rather). Grab your crappy electronic equipment — now is the time — and drop it off. Heck, you can always buy a new one at the mall, right? The Environmental Protection Agency puts electronics at the top of the black list when it comes to environmental threats. Just think of it as planting a tree.

    6 a.m. – 7 p.m., Mall of America, Met Lot, just north of the Mall and near Ikea.

  • The Three Pointer: A Breakthrough W

    Home Game #3: Minnesota 108, Sacramento 103

    Season Record: 1-5

    1. Mea Culpa–For Now

    I thought Rashad McCants had a horrible game during last Saturday night’s Wolves loss to the Kings in Sacramento, and quite righteously said so. Thought he was a narcissistic gunner who sabotaged the team’s offensive priority of pounding the ball into Al Jefferson in the paint. And when McCants stubbornly came out playing the same way tonight against these very same Kings at the Target Center–missing two shots and turning the ball over two times before Jefferson even got a touch in the half-court set as the Kings raced to a 7-1 lead in the first two and a half minutes of the first quarter–I started sharpening the knives to slice him up again in this trey.

    Except that after that heat check, McCants began looking for Jefferson and others a bit more. And then when he did start gunning again, and pirouetting through the lane, the ball was going in on a pretty regular basis. He finished with a career-high 33 points, on 13-22 FG, 4-7 from beyond the arc and 3-5 from the line. More importantly, that second turnover early in the first period was his last. Jefferson likewise got off, to the tune of 23 points (11-16 FG), including 13 first half points on just eight shots in a glorious display of footwork, shooting touch, and the psycho-physics of ignoring elbows and hands in your face, but it was McCants who made most of the big shots that cinched the victory down the stretch.

    I still think this is a risky circumstance. I don’t buy Kent Youngblood’s column in the Strib today, in which Shaddy says "We’re a post-first offense. Our main objective is to get it into Al and play off of that," and adds that he hopes "people will really see what I can do," followed by Youngblood opining, "But he won’t force it." Really? Right after he just compared himself to Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade earlier in the piece? And after we’ve seen him continually force it first, to see if he can take over, and only then defer to Jeff?

    Tonight, things worked the way they were supposed to work, with McCants and Jefferson forming a dynamic outside-inside punch that forced the Kings to pick their poison. And there are those who will logically ask, why can’t the team strive for that every game and just play out the hot hand? My response is that young teams create an identity by establishing patterns; and that one key to good team chemistry is a consensual pecking order. McCants has a strong enough sense of self confidence to believe he is the alpha option on offense, and not Jefferson, if his shots are falling early. And yes, that could disrupt the team’s progress this season.

    So why is this point called Mea Culpa? Because tonight the Wolves made it work and very effectively rebutted my kvetching. Because the greater lesson, for this game anyway, might well be that Minnesota does indeed have a dynamic scorer on the perimeter who can also take it to the hole, which was far from a sure thing before the season started, and must be taken as a very good sign, or at least a pleasant dilemma, should pecking order questions arise due to McCants’s continued strong production. I can suspect that the risk remains, and the situation won’t last, but those who were chiding me about this last time I brought it up were vindicated by this win. Hats off to both McCants and Jefferson for enabling the other.

     

    2. A Veteran’s Poise, and the Serbian Sidekick

    Even in this season of the post-Garnett rubble, it wouldn’t be productive for Coach Randy Wittman to just let all the kids play without salting in a few veterans for ballast. (How’s that for a multi-mixed metaphor?) A series of 20, 30, 40 point losses while the rooks and sophs and young newbies to the squad try to read the license plates of the trucks rolling over them isn’t quite the way to engender either confidence or perspective and context. The team needs some poise. And believe it or not, tonight–with Greg Buckner hobbled and Theo Ratliff merely adequate–that means they needed Antoine Walker, who filled the void with grace and intelligence.

    Everyone knows that ‘Toine and the Wolves have a footnote relationship, and that even under the best of circumstances, ‘Toine likes doing the big things. such as launching three-pointers and dominating the rock. But tonight he was the balm, the sage, the guy who was more valuable on the court than he appears to be in the box score. He dutifully banged with the Kings’ two very different bruisers, forward Ron Artest and center Brad Miller, and held his own defending against both.

    When it was apparent that the Wolves didn’t have numbers in their favor on the fast break, it was Walker who slowed it down and brought the ball back out to set up a play. It was Walker who knew the Wolves had a foul to give–and committed it to waylay a Kings’ play–near the end of the third quarter; Walker who also fouled Miller from behind before he could dispose of an easy putback through the hoop; Walker who drove the lane with the shot clock going down; Walker feeding both Jefferson and Shaddy and fostering ball movement in general. He finished with 19 points in 29:33, plus a pair of steals and four rebounds. Given that his presence on the Wolves means that Ricky Davis and Mark Blount have taken their dysfunction to Miami, any other positives he produces for the rest of the season is all gravy.

    Some might wonder why I didn’t cite Marko Jaric as the veteran poise tonight. After all, he’s been with the team much longer than Walker, plays the point, and had a game-high plus +12 and a game-high 8 rebounds in 25:24. The quick answer is that Marko is not poise, not balm, not sage. I suspect you will cut him much more slack and like him a lot better if you realize he is not a leader in most any way. He is, however a glorious sidekick when you’re bent on stoking an adrenaline rush. When bodies are flying around and the ballclub is in that sweet, overlapping zone in the venn diagram of being loosey-goosey and razor-sharp, Jaric thrives like no other and winds up being a super character actor in the prevailing drama. Tonight, given the added advantage of matching up against Slovenian Beno Udrih, whose game Jaric almost surely knows well, he was a large pain in the Kings’ posterior, crashing the boards, diving on the floor for loose balls, snatching a pair of steals and dropping three dimes on his teammates.

     

    3.The Boon of Defensive Aggression and other Quick Takes

    Last Saturday the Wolves limited the Kings to just 40.5% shooting (30-74) and 100 points. Tonight Sacramento shot 50% (39-78) and scored 103 points. Yet I think Minnesota’s defense was more effective tonight. The reason? Pick and roll defense. "We worked on it this week and decided to just be aggressive," Wittman said in the postgame press conference. "Before we were playing one part soft and then one part aggressive." Sometimes this varied approach confuses the opposition. But it also brings forth a cascade of whistles from the refs.

    Flip Saunders used to preach that "the more aggressive team gets the calls." In other words, if you are consistently laying a body on somebody and dogging their every dribble, the refs become accustomed to it and consider it part of your "normal" defense. But if you play loose or soft on one play and aggressively the next, the disparity is heightened and is the aggression seems harsher.

    Coming into tonight’s game, the Wolves had been hamstrung by an exorbitant disparity in fouls, and thus free throws. Opponents were getting to the line an average of 30 times; the Wolves, just 13. Obviously, that’s a huge disadvantage. Tonight, the Wolves were pretty much on their standard pace, generating 12 before the Kings were forced to foul in attempt to overcome a fairly big deficit late in the game, resulting in an additional ten free throws for the Wolves in the final minute and four seconds of play. But
    the real difference was that the Wolves enabled the Kings to get to the line only 14 times, or less than half the season average for Wolves opponents. Yes, the Kings made more field goals and ultimately more points in tonight’s second meeting than as compared to Saturday’s game, but there is something energy sucking and momentum-depressing about frequent stoppages in play that allow opponents to score when the clock isn’t ticking. Making hard, aggressive "shows" on the pick-and-roll, and then sustaining that aggressive approach to the end of the play reduced the whistles. So did better footwork and a slightly more lenient officiating crew.

    Randy Wittman coached a good game from the sidelines, voicing his verbal displeasure more frequently in the first half at a plethora of mental mistakes, and deploying a crisp rotation schedule that had nine different playing logging at least 20 minutes of action. But even the mere 3:42 that second-round pick and backup center Chris Richard received is instructive of Witt’s acumen. Richard subbed in to be matched against another, younger rookie in Sac center Spencer Hawes. In addition, Richard’s college teammate Corey Brewer was with him on the floor during his stint and assisted on a nifty pick and roll that resulted in a Richard slam dunk. Nice of the coach to give the kid an optimal chance to succeed.

    Point guard Sebastian Telfair had one of those inexplicable games where he recorded eight assists and three steals in merely 20:13, yet still seemed inept at decision-making and ineffectual on defense en route to a team-worst minus-3.

    Finally, I never would have thought that less than three weeks into the season scrappy rook Corey Brewer would be giving currently moribund vet Ryan Gomes a run for his money at the starting small forward position.