Movie Review: "Finding Vivian Maier"

"Finding Vivian Maier": A-.  One man's trash is another man's treasure.  Seldom has there been a better example of that platitude than Finding Vivian Maier, a documentary created by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel.  In 2007 Maloof was in his twenties when he decided that he needed some old pictures to supplement a history book he was writing.  He went to an auction house across the street from his Chicago apartment and offered $380 for a big box of negatives, packaged in paper, sight unseen.  All he found out from the auctioneer was that the images were captured on film by a woman named Vivian Maier.

As he looked over the negatives back in his apartment, Maloof was stuck by what he considered to be astonishing craftsmanship of the photographer.  The composition, the framing, the lighting, the facial expressions and emotions portrayed, all appeared to be extraordinary.  The subjects covered a wide spectrum: the glamorous, the destitute, the lonely, the big shots, the posers, the unaware.  There was also a wide variety of backgrounds: dark alleys, shadowy bridges, crowded sidewalks, dimly lit doorways, stockyards, skid row.  Who was this Vivian Maier?  Maloof had never heard of her before.  Was he looking at the work of a world class photographer?  Maloof thought he might be, but didn't trust his own impressions -- after all, he was a historian, not an artist of any kind -- so he posted several images on the internet without revealing the identity of the photographer, and then invited comments.  The responders confirmed what Maloof suspected. These were, indeed, exceptional pictures.

Maloof's next step was to quickly buy up the boxes of negatives which had been purchased by others from the auctionereer.  The space required to organize and categorize the hundreds of thousands of negatives was immense. The history book would have to wait; he was on the verge of discovering something much bigger and more important.

Maloof also set out to learn more about the mysterious photographer.  How could someone with this gift be so anonymous?  He interviewed over a dozen people on camera, including women who had once hired Maier to nanny their children, and several of the now-adult children themselves.  A common theme materializes.  Maier was enigmatic, and in many ways weird. She kept to herself in her off-duty hours, and made sure to keep her bedroom door locked at all times, regardless of whether she was inside or not.  She was a newspaper hoarder, and even went so far as to rig her stacks when she left her employer's house so that, when she returned, she could tell if anyone had been looking at her collection.

She told someone who had asked about her occupation that she was "kind of a spy."  She was able to get closer than most photographers into her subjects' "space" because the old-style box camera she used, a Rollieflex, enabled her to shoot pictures without having to bring the viewfinder up to her eyes.  Instead, she held the camera belt-high and looked down while she sprang the shutter.  Thus, her subjects were often unaware she was photographing or filming them.

Even those closest to Maier never knew she had such a talent.  The big question which Maloof is unable to find the answer for is this: Why did Vivian keep secret her magnificent gift?  Most artists, whether painters, writers, singers or photographers, want to display their talents to the widest possible audience.  Maier was exactly the opposite.

Maier's extraordinary talent has at last been exposed by Maloof.  He successfully staged exhibitions of Vivian's work in some of the most prestigious art galleries in big cities across the globe, drawing huge crowds to all of those venues. The consensus is that Vivian would have been a legend in her own time had she chosen to unveil her covert hobby. Instead, having died in 2009,  she is honored posthumously.  Regarding the worldwide exhibitions of her art, as one of her former employers told Maloof, Vivian would not have wanted that.

Ordinarily I would not be interested in watching a documentary about a person I know absolutely nothing about.  But since I dragged Momma Cuandito to attend Draft Day with me (reviewed here on April 17, 2014, A-), I thought it was only fair that I go with her to one of her selections.  As indicated above by my A- rating, I'm glad I did.  Good call, Momma Cuan!        

Dillon Hall Diaries: The Tom Tom Thumper

When I attended Notre Dame I was the drummer in two rock bands.  The first was the Dark Ages, which covered a lot of British Invasion tunes.  Our lead guitarist, Chicago South Sider Rich ("Gink") Downes, was a big Keith Richards fan.  Consequently we came pretty close to replicating It's All Over Now, among other Rolling Stones chestnuts.  Day Tripper by the Beatles and the Hollies' Bus Stop were always on our set list.  Our repertoire also included several tunes from the large catalogue of hits by Chicago-based bands like the Cryan' Shames, the Buckinghams and the Shadows Of Knight.  The latter's smash Gloria (itself a cover of the Van Morrison original) was one of my two favorite songs to play because of the drum roll at the end.  If I hadn't consumed too many cold ones by the time we performed it, I went for the rim shot on the last stroke.  My other favorite, the Surfaris' instrumental hit Wipe Out, was a song I'd been playing since high school.  Nothing but tom tom thumping.  (I always thought the song should be titled Work Out.)   Despite our preference for the British and Chicago sounds, the song we performed best was not in either category.  Rather, it was Time Won't Let Me by an underrated outfit from Cleveland called the Outsiders.  The only song on which I sang lead was The Kids Are All Right.  I was probably given that responsibility because none of the other four guys knew the words to that classic by the Who.  Otherwise the lead singer's role went to Sal Santino, a versatile Italian Brooklynite who could dance and sing simultaneously.  Sal had great stage presence, and was a real charmer.

The heyday of the Dark Ages was my sophomore year, 1966-1967.  We played gigs both on and off campus.  Live music was huge then, and it was fun to be a part of that scene. Our big moment in the sun was being selected to play on the South Quad before ND's homecoming game against Army.  We set up right in front of Dillon Hall and drew a big audience.  It may well have been the only gig we ever played without imbibing.  At other shows we were usually up there trying to keep pace with the swilling crowd.

As I have admitted more than once to my son Michael, an extraordinary guitarist who has devoted hundreds of hours to his craft, neither I nor any of my bandmates considered ourselves to be serious musicians.  In all honesty, we were simply "in it" to meet girls and drink (usually) free beer.  The demands of studying were too time consuming to practice more than occasionally.  We shot for once a week, but that was a loosely enforced regimen.  Since we did not write music -- a truth having more to do with talent (or lack thereof) than time -- we were relegated to playing covers.  Sadly, we were playing mostly the same twenty-five or thirty songs in the spring that we'd been playing the previous autumn.  It took time to learn new songs, and time was a luxurious commodity none of us possessed.  Thus, our repertoire became stagnant.  Some weeks it was even hard to find the time to listen to new music, let alone play it.  Things started winding down as we approached the end of the school year.

When I returned to The Bend for the beginning of junior year, I did not even bring my drums with me.  I had spent my summer vacation working the second shift at a sweaty tool and die shop, Olsen Tool Company in Richfield, and as a result I was too pooped to practice much during those three months.  The way things had tailed off in the spring with the Dark Ages, I figured we would not reunite in the fall of '67.  You might say I was correct, but with an asterisk.

Some time in the late autumn of junior year, Gink and Maverick (the Dark Ages' bass player) approached me about a new band they were trying to put together. Gink had formed a friendship with one Kevin Mahoney, an older (mid-twenties) guy who, as I recall, had previously attended Notre Dame but had not graduated.  He had some kind of sales job in The Bend, a perfect match for a person who came across as a big talker and a wheeler dealer.  Kevin definitely had local connections, obviously helpful if not mandatory for landing gigs.  He also had what Gink described as a "common law wife," which in those days simply meant that he lived with his girlfriend, Terry.  (Legally, Indiana has never been a common law state.)  That in itself was pretty cutting edge for 1967, at least in the semi-sheltered culture of Notre Dame, but the icing on the cake was that Terry was black.

Kevin had lined up a high school kid named Drew Lattimore to play lead guitar.  Kevin, Gink and Maverick told me that Drew was lights out, the best guitarist in town.  I figured that had to be hyperbole, since there were many very good bands with very good guitarists in the area.  They also wanted to add an ND underclassman, Bob Daily, as lead singer.  At first I was not all that interested in the proposal.  By the time this initial conversation took place, I had readjusted to life as a totally committed student without the responsibilities that come with being a band member.  Except for a handful of isolated times, I had not even played the drums in over six months.  But the biggest negative for me was the omission of Tom Beamer, one of my best friends at ND, who was the rhythm guitarist in the Dark Ages.  Being in the Dark Ages was a lot of fun.  Playing with Sal, and especially Tom, was the main reason.

Beamo was a pre-med major from Broadview, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago.  With the exception of my cousin Louie, he was and remains the funniest guy I have ever met.  Tom and I lived a few doors away from each other in Cavanaugh Hall freshman year, and escaped the clutches of its rector, Father Micheli, by fleeing to Dillon sophomore year.  (Check out my December 16, 2012 post, Black Matt Lowers The Boom.)  Tom's Dillon roommate and mine were brothers, Ron and Wayne Cuchna, and the four of us hung out together quite a bit.

I have conveniently deleted from my memory most of what Tom and I discussed surrounding the demise of the Dark Ages and my invitation to hook up with Gink and Maverick in a new band.  In retrospect my decision to eventually accept the invitation was misguided, but thankfully Tom and I have remained good friends for almost fifty years.  In fact, I was a groomsman in his wedding, circa 1971, and he was my best man in 1976.

After wrestling with the decision I did decide to give band membership another try, and threw in my lot with Gink and Maverick.  There were probably more (and better) reasons not to do so, including my friendship with Tom and the omnipresent time-budgeting problems.  The Dark Ages was fun; the new band would be more business.  But what twenty year old hasn't made a few dumb decisions?  Part of my rationale was that I missed playing the drums, and I wanted to try to get back into that "hobby" to take my mind off of school for a few hours a week.  The other part, I'm a little embarrassed to write, is that I was flattered when "Salesman Kevin" and my two former bandmates started singing my praises about my "talent" on the skins.  It just goes to show that, under certain circumstances, flattery might get you somewhere.  I knew Kevin was excellent at slinging the BS, yet when he used it on me I fell for it like a real rube.

We decided to have a practice or two with all five band members before anything became official.  That was the first time I met Drew and Bob.  Drew was just a seventeen year old kid, but he was everything I'd been told he would be.  You might say he was the Jonny Lang of South Bend.  Whoever coined the phrase "the hand is quicker than the eye" must have seen Drew work the frets; lightning fast.  The piece de resistance was that he could play We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet by the Blues Magoos, one hit wonders who had reached # 5 on the Billboard charts earlier that year.  We became the only band in The Bend whose guitarist could play that break, so naturally it became our signature song.

I don't remember much about Bob except that, for a lead singer, he was quiet and kind of on the shy side; just the opposite of Sal.  They were both good singers, but with two different styles. Sal was the visceral Levi Stubbs to Bob's smooth Smokey Robinson.  Somehow both techniques worked well in a rock band.

During that musical era there were a number of bands which had goofy but catchy, sometimes nonsensical names: Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Electric Prunes, Vanilla Fudge, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, 13th Floor Elevators, etc.  The guys decided it would be hip to pick a name along the same vein for our new band.  We kicked around a few, and finally settled on Lemon Oil Mahogany.  It would be a better story (and name) if there was some hidden meaning to that choice, but alas, it came out of nowhere.

Kevin may have been full of bluster, but I will admit that he did, in fact, earn the one-sixth cut we agreed to give him to be our manager.  He got us as many gigs as we could handle, which, given the fact that we were up to our eyeballs in school work, amounted to only one or two a month.  We played at some clubs, house parties, bars (if they didn't ask if we were of legal age), and fraternal lodges around South Bend.  Terry was our biggest fan.  She never missed a show, and always showed up with a bunch of her friends.  Kevin always worked the room, passing out business cards with our band's name and his contact information.

Ironically, the most memorable gig we had was the one we never performed.  LOM was booked to play at a union hall in The Bend on Saturday night, April 6, 1968.  As you might know, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis two days before, April 4.  There were riots all over the country, and South Bend was no exception.  I remember Kevin getting ahold of us the next day and telling us that the situation in South Bend was not safe, and that he was going to cancel our booking.  I wouldn't be surprised if that was Terry's idea, but in any event, that's what he did.  Who knows, the venue may have cancelled the show anyway, even if Kevin hadn't himself.

Like many cities in the country, South Bend took awhile to recover from the riots stemming from the King assassination.  The tension was still in the air when we all went home for the summer. Needless to say, we did not book another show during that two month period.

After another summer grind of working at Olsen Tool, I was back at ND in the fall of '68, ready for my senior year.  With studying, going to class, reading and worrying about the Viet Nam war every day, and realizing graduation was on the horizon, Lemon Oil Mahogany took a back seat in our collective minds (at least in the minds of the three of us who were seniors, i.e., Gink, Maverick and me).  We decided that we had had a good run, we'd entertained a lot of people, and we mostly got out of the band experience what we had hoped for originally.  After the Christmas break, LOM never played together again.

***

In the year 2000, Momma Cuandito and I went on a road trip with Jill (The Minnow) and her friend Susan Martinson.  The water parks at Wisconsin Dells and lodging at an Amish farm in central Ohio were two biggies on our itinerary.  The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland was on my must-see list.  As the four of us presented our admission tickets at the door, Jill went up to a uniformed concierge and asked him with a straight face, "Could you please tell us where the Lemon Oil Mahogany exhibition is located?"  The poor guy answered that he didn't know.

Movie Review: "Joe"

"Joe": B+.  The  title character of the movie Joe has to be one of the most complex and interesting characters of this nascent cinema season.  He is an ex-con who (we learn two-thirds of the way through the story) served a prison term of twenty-nine months for assaulting a police officer.  Joe explains the situation to fifteen year old Gary Jones, telling the teenager that he felt his life was in danger when several cops were ready to shoot him as a suspect for a crime he didn't commit.  Since his release from the state pen several years ago, Joe has established himself as a respected citizen of his rural Texas town, the owner of a small business which he operates out of his ramshackle GMC truck.  He employs a half dozen black men who seem to speak in a foreign language; probably just English with a Louisiana Cajun twist.  The men assist Joe in his tree-pruning, land clearing enterprise.  Joe pays his workers in cash, an honest wage for an honest week's work.  Since being released from his incarceration, Joe has turned over a new leaf, or at least he's tried to. He's even buddies with Earl (Aj Wilson McPhaul), the County Sheriff.

I hadn't seen Nicholas Cage since his turn as an honest policeman in the 1994 romantic dramedy, It Could Happen To You.  He has enjoyed steady work since then, but not in movies I desired to attend.  Cage is a natural fit as Joe, a quiet, thinking man who struggles to control the occasional impulsive outburst.  When Joe feels the crisis of the moment overwhelming him, or his latent anger about to erupt, he seeks comfort in the local brothel, where he is a regular.  Those visits provide some of the film's humor.  Joe stops in there as if it was just one of many errands he needed to run, like stopping in at the Coleman Grocery to stock up on food and smokes, or grabbing a quick meal at the local diner.

Tye Sheridan, whose work in Mud (reviewed here on June, 2013, A-) I lauded, once again delivers a masterful performance as Gary.  Gary's sad situation is revealed in the opening scene, as he and his totally inebriated father, Wade (Gary Poulter), have a physical confrontation, the first of many we see throughout the two hour movie.  Indeed, Gary's face is bruised in most scenes, the result of beatings by his raging drunk father.  Gary's mother and mute sister live a miserable life of fear and desperation, always trying to avoid the fury of Wade, aka "G-Daawg," seen frequently rummaging through their crumbling shack looking for hidden money and stashed alcohol.

One day Gary asks Joe for a job, and Joe immediately puts him to work on a trial basis.  The other employees teach Gary the ropes.  They also offer words of advice on how to relate to their boss, Joe.  ("Never look down. Always look Joe in the eye.")  The youngster is a quick learner and even though Joe is not normally easily impressed, he does take Gary under his muscle-bound wing.

G-Daawg is not the only bad guy in the story.  Relatively early on, a scar-faced derelict named Willie-Russell (Ronnie Gene Blevins), seeking revenge for an earlier bar fight, ambushes Joe with a rifle shot to the shoulder.  Soon thereafter, Willie-Russell also has a scuffle with young Gary, who has spotted the would-be assassin throwing his rifle from a bridge into the creek below.  Nearly killing Joe isn't enough for the crazed Willie-Russell; his ugly mug reappears at the most inopportune times, causing Joe to defend himself.

Joe isn't interested in prying into Gary's private life, but the more time they spend together on the job, the more it becomes apparent to Joe that the boy's living conditions may be more than he can handle alone.  The point is driven home when G-Daawg comes to work on Joe's crew for a day.  The in-your-face verbal squabble between G-Daawg and the crew's foreman is one of the highlights of the movie.  The easy route for Joe would be to let things play out and have Gary fight his own battles.  But Joe is the kind of guy who couldn't live with himself if he took that path.  He becomes a father figure to the teenager who so desperately needs one.

The story is marred to some extent by periodically poor script writing and editing.  Two example come to mind.  When one of Joe's female friends, Connie (Adriene Mishler), calls on Joe at his house, she brings along another woman.  But even though Connie stays throughout the day and night, the only time we see the other woman is the three or four seconds when she first accompanies Connie into Joe's house.  Another example is the one-time brief mentioning that Joe has a grandchild.  The child is never seen or referred to again, nor is the child's grandmother or parents.  There is a bizarre scene in the last reel when Joe has stopped at a red light.  He makes eye contact with a woman who is a passenger in the car which has pulled up next to Joe's.  The light turns green, and the cars go their separate ways. Was the woman someone Joe knew, perhaps the "missing" grandmother?  Nothing regarding the child or the mystery woman at the red light pertains to any other part of the story.  In both instances what we have is total superfluousness.

In an odd twist of real world fate, the man who plays G-Daawg, Gary Poulter, was not a professional actor. Rather, he was a homeless man plucked from the streets of Austin by the film's casting director.  This peculiar method was occasionally employed by director David Gordon Green, on the theory that such a person would lend authenticity to the character.  Sadly, Poulter died a few months after filming.  The movie is dedicated to him.  

Movie Review: "Draft Day"

"Draft Day": A-.  Baseball is the National Pastime, but pro football has taken over as the most popular sport in this country.  The reasons are many, some having to do with the physical contact, the action, the pageantry, the popularity of the college game spilling over to the rest of a weekend, gambling, fantasy football, and the scheduling of just one "big game" a week.  The NFL's "hard" salary cap, which unlike baseball severely punishes any franchise making the mistake of exceeding the league-imposed payroll limit, is one of the keys to creating parity among the teams in the league.  (For more about parity in the NFL, see my April 25, 2012 post, The NFL Sells Hope.)

The NFL also does a tremendous job of keeping itself on the sports pages even during the offseason.  You have periods of free agent signings, the big annual scouting combine in Indianapolis at which invited prospects can strut their stuff in front of scouts, "pro days" during which individual players display their wares on their own college campuses in front of another host of scouts, contract renewals of players with their own team, and trades.  But the offseason day which holds the fascination of pro football fans every spring is "draft day," the day (now, evening prime time) on which the first round of the NFL draft of college players is conducted in Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall. The day, which this year falls on May 8, has justifiably been called one of the two biggest non-playing days on the sports calendar (the other being NCAA basketball's Selection Sunday in March).

 

The movie Draft Day successfully renders the aura and spectacle of the event.  Kevin Costner plays Sonny Weaver, Jr., the beleaguered general manager of the Cleveland Browns.  He has a hands-on owner (Frank Langella) who loves being in the spotlight concomitant with having the first overall pick in the draft, and an irascible coach (Denis Leary as Coach Perm) who can't help showing off the Super Bowl ring he won as an assistant with the Cowboys before being hired by Sonny's predecessor as the Brown's head coach.  Of course, the reason the Browns have the first pick in the draft is because they were the worst of the thirty-two NFL teams last season.  Sonny's job is to fix that; he can't afford to make a mistake with his pick.

 

As the GM of the team with the first overall pick, Sonny is constantly on the phone, listening to offers from other GMs who want to make a deal.  It is an interesting relationship, and makes one wonder if there is any honor among thieves. Most GMs would lie to their mother to gain the upper hand in a deal.  Some are ethical and trustworthy but many are scoundrels.  Professional courtesies only extend so far.  To add to the pressure, Coach Perm does not want the team to draft the consensus top college quarterback, cocky Bo Callahan (Josh Pence) from Wisconsin, because Perm hates working with rookies, and besides, he likes the QB the Browns already have, veteran Brian Drew (Tom Welling).

 

Jennifer Garner plays Ali, the Browns' salary cap wonk by day, Sonny's secret girlfriend by night.  The few comic moments in the film include the couple's periodic rendezvous in a small equipment closet close to Sonny's office. They are usually interrupted by the geeky new intern, Rick (Griffin Newman).  Luckily those moments were short enough to allow the story to keep going.  Time can't be wasted and the countdown clock is always ticking.

 

As I've written on a few other occasions, I enjoy works of fiction which use real persons, places and things as opposed to fabricated locales or organizations.  This is a strong point of Draft Day.  The Browns and the other teams involved in the story, like the Seattle Seahawks, the Houston Texans, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills, are real NFL franchises. There are several cameo appearances by such NFL and television luminaries as ESPN's Chris Berman and Jon Gruden, Commissioner Roger Goodell, and former players Neon Deion Sanders and the great Jim Brown.  The viewer feels like she is truly behind the scenes on one of the sport's biggest stages.

 

One additional "plus" is that there is not much time at all spent showing action on the field of play; just a few clips of highlights regarding three or four prospects.  Interpretation of the dialogue does not require any prior knowledge of football jargon.  One does not have to be a pro football fan to enjoy the story.  Wheeling and dealing and verbal confrontations take place in many kinds of businesses.  The business at hand in this movie happens to be professional football, which makes it all the more interesting.

 

Draft Day has been compared in some respects to 2011's Moneyball, to which I also gave a (pre-blog) rating of A-. While the older film was a little more technical, the comparison is a good one.  Both movies are about dashing general managers (Weaver played by Costner, and "real life" Oakland A's GM Billy Beane played by Brad Pitt) who try to outmaneuver their rival counterparts, while at the same time having conflicting philosophies vis-a-vis their head coach/manager (Coach Perm played by Leary, and "real life" A's manager Art Howe played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Regrettably, both movies also contain a totally needless side story.  In Draft Day it's Weaver's relationship with his annoying widowed mother (Ellen Burstyn); in Moneyball it's Beane's relationship with his twelve year old daughter.  If you are into do-it-yourself double features, those two movies together would make a great pairing.    

Three Of The Twins' Many Foibles

Last autumn I promised myself that if Trevor Plouffe was still the Twins' starting third baseman when the 2014 season opened, I would consciously ignore the team at least until May 1.  The Plouffer's presence in the lineup would be proof enough for me that, notwithstanding their annual marketing campaign, the Twins weren't serious about winning this year.  The Twins' honchos, GM Terry Ryan and his right hand man, Rob Antony, prefer that the fans drink the Kool-Aid and believe, first, that the team will be competitive in 2014, and then secondly, in 2015 when our blue ribbon prospects like Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton and Alex Meyer make it to the Bigs, you will have a hard time getting Target Field tickets.

Just as New Year's resolutions have gone down the drain, so has my autumn resolution.  What I was afraid would happen, happened.  The unquestioned truism that baseball is the best sport, coupled with my possibly delusional perception that the Twins currently seem like a bona fide MLB team, at least temporarily based on the twelve regular season games they've played, have already resulted in my tuning them in on several occasions this month, even if doing so means listening to Bert Blyleven when Momma Cuan is in the room.  (When she's not, I use the "Mute" button on the remote.)  Tradition, curiosity and free home plate box seats have also intervened.

Tradition:  Momma Cuan and I have spent at least a week in Fort Myers four of the last five years, and each time attended at least one Twins spring training game at their local facility, Lee County's Hammond Stadium. We couldn't let that streak die, so we saw them play the Pirates there on March 26.  Curiosity:  The following evening, March 27, we had a chance (thanks to a Johnny Bodega connection) to check out two year old Jet Blue Park where the Red Sox have their Fort Myers spring training headquarters.  The opponent for that game was none other than the Twins.  The aggregate total of runs scored by the Twins in the Pirates and Red Sox games was -- get ready -- two!  Freebees:  Then last week, a friend of ours offered us free home plate box tickets for the Twins' second home game of the season against the A's.  It was a beautiful day, we tried out the new rib tips from Butcher & The Boar, downed some craft suds, and enjoyed a highly entertaining game.  After the Twins came back from a first inning 4-0 deficit, the A's ended up winning their eighth game in a row against the Twins, 7 to 4 in eleven innings.  (Ah, yes, Momma Cuan's worst nightmare, an extra inning game!)

As a result of attending those three late March and early April games, I am back in the saddle and my autumn resolution has gone out the window. Am I setting myself up for major disappointment --perhaps another painful 90-plus loss season -- by paying attention to the exploits of our lovable would-be heroes of the diamond?  As of this writing, the Twins are playing .500 ball (6-6), and are only a game behind the first place, big budget Detroit Tigers.

Is the competitive play we've seen so far what we can expect for the duration of the season?  I doubt it.  The Twins have broken my heart too many times before.  A disinterested neutral observer would probably conclude that the Twins have so many problems that writing a book instead of merely a post about them seems more apropos.  But since this is a blog and blog writers draft posts, this post is what you get.  Based on the three games I've seen live, plus an embarrassingly high number of innings I've witnessed via the idiot lantern so far this young season, here are just three things that should cause even the most optimistic of Twins fans to curb their enthusiasm.

1. Clydesdales At The Corners.  The power positions in an ideal lineup are the corner infielders and outfielders, plus the catcher.  This blue print does not, however, excuse those five players from being able to field their respective positions.  If we consider only the positions of left field and right field, the following four players have started twenty-two times out of the possible twenty-four slots (12 games times two positions) so far this season: Josh Willingham (5 starts in left), Oswaldo Arcia (4 starts in right), Jason Kubel (7 starts in left, 2 in right), and Chris Colabello (4 starts in right).  What do these power people have in common? Answer:  They all run like clydesdales.  This obviously translates into a ground coverage problem, exacerbated by two additional factors.  First, none of the Twins' five starting pitchers is a sinker baller, and only one of them, Phil Hughes, has a career strikeouts-per-nine-innings average of over 7.5.  (It's 7.6.)  As a result, when these guys pitch there are a lot of fly balls.  Second, Target Field is a huge park, with lots of room in the gaps.  In fact, Ricky Nolasco told the press when he signed with the Twins as a free agent that he was attracted to Target Field.  He said Target was built for fly ball pitchers like himself because of the difficulties hitters face when trying to bang the ball over the wall.  (No American League park gave up fewer home runs in 2013 than Target Field.)  Center fielder Aaron Hicks can't cover the entire outfield by himself. He can't "cheat" a little to help out, say, the left fielder, because the right fielder is just as slow as the left fielder.  Expect to see a lot of gappers and Texas Leaguers from the opposing batters.

2. Base Running Boo Boos.  Even in the days of The Piranhas (the middle part of the last decade), when the Twins were supposedly fast and were pretty adept at playing small ball, I never considered them to be a good (i.e., smart) base running team.  A good base runner always knows the situation, how to take a lead and maybe even steal a base, how to get a "good read" on a fly ball, how to use his third base coach, how to round a base, how to slide, etc.  You can't coach speed, so the saying goes, but you can coach those other attributes.  This year the Twins finally have Paul Molitor in the dugout instead of being sort of a roving minor league advisor.  Molly's forte is base running.  I am sad to report that so far I have not seen progress in this important department.  The Twins still run the bases poorly.  Two examples follow.

It is a proven scientific fact that one can not run as fast looking over his shoulder as he can looking forward. (If you don't believe me, try it some time.)  Baseball teams figured that out long ago, but it has not sunk in with all of the Twins personnel.  When a ball is hit to the left of straight-away center field, a runner approaching second base can fairly easily see the outfielder nearest to the ball.  The play is "right in front" of the runner, so he should be able to make a judgment of whether he can make it safely to third.  However, when a ball is hit to the right of straight-away center, the play is behind the runner as he approaches second. In that case, the runner is supposed to "pick up his third base coach," who will signal to him whether to pull up at second or attempt to make it to third.  What the runner is not supposed to do in the latter scenario is turn his head sideways and watch the outfielder himself.  When the runner does that, he involuntarily slows down.  (Another result is that the third base coach and the manager start to cuss and pull out their hair.)   The two worst offenders here are Josh Willingham and Trevor Plouffe, but they are not alone.  The Twins are often accused of playing "station-to-station" (i.e., one base at a time) baseball.  Failure to pick up their third base coach on balls hit to right-center or right is one reason.

The second example has to do with one of the oldest base running principles in the book:  You never want to make the first or the third out of the inning at third base.  Why?  You don't want to make the first out of the inning at third base because if you are a runner at second base you are already in scoring position and you shouldn't want to risk killing an offensive inning (i.e., putting up the proverbial "crooked number") before it has a chance to get started.  An outfield single will probably knock you in.  It is not worth gambling on a close play just to advance an extra base.  You don't want to make the third out of the inning at third because you were already in scoring position at second and you want to keep the inning alive.  The only time a running gamble heading to third base is acceptable is if there is exactly one out.  If the runner makes it to third successfully, he is then in a position to score on a sac fly, which he obviously wouldn't be able to do from second base.  In the April 9 game against the A's, with his team trailing 4 to 1, Trevor Plouffe made the third out of the sixth inning  when he attempted to go from first to third on a single to center field by Jason Kubel. Had Plouffe stayed at second, the Twins would have had runners at first and second with two out.  Instead, the inning abruptly ended and Joe Vavra, the Twins third base coach, looked like his dog died.

3. The Splendid Splinter Theory Goes Haywire.  Ted Williams is often called the greatest natural hitter who ever played the game.  He was also known to have a scientific approach to the art of hitting.  Williams' nickname was the Splendid Splinter.  One of the many reasons Williams was such a great hitter was his batting eye.  There is an old story that a pitcher complained to an umpire that the last pitch should have been ruled strike three instead of a ball.  The umpire retorted something to the effect that "if Mr. Williams didn't swing at the pitch it couldn't possibly have been a strike."

One major problem with the Twins is that there are too many of them who think they have the batting eye of the Splendid Splinter.  News Flash: With the possible exception of Joe Mauer, they don't.  In 2013, out of the thirty MLB teams only the dreadful Houston Astros (who lost 111 games last year) had more strikeouts than the Twins.  The Astros were also the only team to have more called third strikes against them than the Twins.  What's even more discouraging is that in the young 2014 season, the Twins are actually averaging more strikeouts per game than last year's sorry statistic (9.33 this season vs. 8.83 last year).  In my June 17, 2013 post (Putting Pressure On The D) I wrote about how the presence of base runners puts pressure on the opponent's defense.  When you strike out a lot, as do the Twins, especially with the bat on your shoulder, the pressure gauge reads "zero."

Part of the blame might go to Tom Brunansky, who took over as hitting coach last year.  I liked Bruno as a player, but consider this:  The last three years (2010-2012) Joe Vavra was the hitting coach, only the Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers (of the thirty MLB teams) averaged striking out fewer times than the Twins!

In summary, the Twins have a lot of weaknesses to correct if they hope to be relevant in the 2014 season. The three problems addressed above are pivotal and require a lot of remedial work.  Good thing there is still a lot of time left this season to address them.  It is amazing how quickly the bloom went off the rose following the unveiling of Target Field in 2010.  Their announced attendance for many home games this season has been in the mid-twenties, which probably means less than 20,000 sets of fannies were actually in the park.   The Twins fans, to their credit, recognize mediocre baseball when they see it.

Regarding Trevor Plouffe, as former ND football coach Charlie Weis was fond of saying, he is what he is, still watching sharply hit balls go by him at The Hot Corner. But the Plouffer has made strides at the plate.  He  is currently hitting .326, good for second highest on the team and eleventh highest in the American League. 

The General Was Out Of Line

The two most important games of the basketball season, the NCAA men's and women's championship games, will take place tonight and tomorrow night.  Yes, I realize that many fans consider the men's semi-final games held last Saturday to be more important than all but the men's final.  Might they be overlooking the fact that the undefeated Irish women are are in Tuesday's title tilt?  Regardless, it's time for a basketball post.

Last Tuesday night the Gophers defeated Florida State in an NIT semi-final game at fabled Madison Square Garden.  One of the two courtside TV analysts was Bobby Knight, referred to by Dick Vitale and other hoops celebrities as "The General."  Anyone who has watched Knight over the years, and especially those who have read John Feinstein's "A Season On The Brink," knows that The General is a horse's patootie.  A case in point illustrates the epithet.

 

The Gophers were clinging to a three point lead with seven seconds remaining, and the Seminoles inbounded the ball on the opposite baseline from their basket.  Both teams were in the double bonus.  Knight opined as if it were gospel that the Gophers needed to foul the Seminole player with the ball before a shot was attempted.  However, the Gophers elected not to foul, choosing instead to play straight-up defense.  Of course, as luck would have it, FSU guard Devon Bookert drained a low percentage three pointer with 0.3 seconds to go, thus forcing the game into overtime.  The gloating Knight immediately castigated head coach Richard Petino for not instructing his players to foul when the Noles inbounded the ball.  "The Minnesota coaches really fell asleep on that one," scolded Knight.  The TV viewers were then treated to Knight repeating his point ad nauseam during the interlude between the end of regulation and the beginning of OT.

 

Wouldn't you know, an almost identical situation then presented itself at the end of the overtime period. Minnesota led by three as the Noles inbounded the ball from the far base line with 6.1 seconds to go. Presumably for the benefit of those late-comers who missed his commentary at the end of regulation, The General reminded us once again that the Gopher coaches "fell asleep" by not fouling at the end of regulation. Yet once again, the Gophs chose not to foul, only this time FSU missed their last desperation field goal attempt.  Final score: Gophers 67, Seminoles 64.

 

The point of fouling the trailing team is to shorten the number of seconds in which they have a chance to run a play before time expires.  Ideally, the leading team wants to limit that very last play to a "catch-and-shoot," for which the chances of success are minimal.  No time to reverse the ball, no time for a dribble drive, no time for screens or a pick 'n' roll, and no time for an offensive put-back.

 

Notwithstanding The General's unhesitatingly harsh vocal opinion regarding the wisdom of having the leading team intentionally foul in end-game situations, the proper strategy is not as cut and dried as Knight would lead us to believe.  There are plenty of head coaches who would have done exactly what Petino did, i.e., instruct his team to play straight-up tenacious defense for the opponent's last possession.

 

Here are some considerations which go into the decision of whether or not to have the leading team foul in end-game scenarios:

 

1. Does my team have "fouls to give," i.e., is the opponent in the bonus?  If my leading team has fouls to give, then having them foul intentionally makes a lot more sense.  (Such was not the case in the Gopher-Noles game.)

 

2. How much time is left?  If it's less than four or five seconds, the need to foul decreases, especially if the ball is in the back court. 

3. Where is the opponent inbounding the ball?  If the location of the inbounds pass is in the back court, it will take at least a few ticks to get the ball into the front court.

 

4. Is our lead three points, or less than three?  If the leading team is up by three points, all the leading team has to do is defend the three; two points won't beat you.  Therefore, the wisdom of intentionally fouling is at least questionable if the lead is three.

 

5. Are any of my players in foul trouble?  This could present a huge problem if the game goes into overtime. Therefore, the leading team's coach, if he opts to foul, might consider inserting a designated fouler (usually a deep reserve with quickness).

 

6. Whom to foul?  This is where a scouting report becomes important.  Try to force the opponent to inbound the ball to a poor free throw shooter.  Double team the opponent's best free throw shooter.

 

7. The Two Worst Things That Could Happen are (i) fouling the opponent while he's in the act of shooting (especially if his shot goes in), or (ii) being called for an intentional foul, even though it is an intentional foul.  The guy who commits the intentional foul has to make it look unintentional so that he doesn't get whistled for an intentional foul, and he has to commit the foul before the opponent goes into the act of shooting.  To mitigate the risk, fouling in the back court is more desirable.

 

8. Is my team good at "playing small"?  The strategy of intentionally fouling is easier to execute with a smaller (and therefore quicker) lineup.  The trade off is that your chance of grabbing a defensive rebound is diminished with a small lineup.  That is a trade off which you, as the coach of the leading team, might not want to accept. 

 

9. Similar to point # 8, is my team good at executing the intentional foul in end-game situations?  By April, the coaches have seen their teams in practice and in thirty or so games since last autumn.  Some teams are good at the execution, and some are not, and no one knows better than the head coach where his team falls on the spectrum.  If my team simply is not good at pulling off the end-game intentional foul, I would not instruct them to to it.

 

I don't have a problem with The General imparting his wisdom to us laymen.  After all, the man did win three NCAA championships.  But to castigate (repeatedly) a head coach for failing to employ the end-game strategy deemed necessary by The General, particularly when there are many smart coaches out there who would consciously instruct his team in the same manner Petino instructed the Gophs, was uncalled for.  Give me the smooth Bill Raftery instead of The General, please.

Movie Review: "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

"The Grand Budapest Hotel": B.  Although I've been told that "people either love Wes Anderson movies or they hate them," I'm afraid I must be an anomaly, falling somewhere in the middle.  I gave Moonrise Kingdom a B- in my July 17, 2012 review.  After being initially torn between grades of B+ and B for his latest effort, The Grand Budapest Hotel, I have settled upon the lower mark.  Hopefully my decision does not derail Wes' career.

The story is told in flashback form by the current elderly proprietor, Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), formerly a "lobby boy" nicknamed "Zero" (Tony Revolori).  Moustafa recounts to a young writer (Jude Law) how, back in the thirties, the Grand Budapest was one of the most fashionable and desirous destination hotels in Europe.  The mountaintop inn was an architectural marvel inside and out, catering to the glitterati and the glamourous.  The key to the prestigious operation was the hotel concierge, M. Gustave, played to perfection by Ralph Fiennes.  Gustave's forte is catering to the libidinous needs of the blue haired grande dames who populate the guest registry.  One of those ladies is Madame D (heavily made-up Tilda Swinton, a favorite of Anderson's).

 

Early on, Zero, a young teenager, is interviewed for a position by Gustave, who asks him why Zero wants to work at the Grand.  When Zero gives the answer Gustave is looking for (viz., "Who wouldn't?"), he is hired.  From that point on, Zero and Gustave are inseparable.  This bond comes into play immediately when Madame D is found murdered.  At the reading of her will, Madame's family, led by her irrational and lunatic son Dmitri (Adrien Brody), becomes outraged upon discovering that the deceased matron has bequeathed a masterpiece oil painting, Boy With Apple, to Gustave.  This being a Wes Anderson movie, Gustave and Zero are able to spirit the painting away from Madame's gallery even though Dmitri and his relatives are in the same building.  Shortly after hiding the treasured artwork in the hotel safe, Gustave is arrested on suspicion of being Madame's murderer.  If not for his faithful protege Zero, Gustave might sit behind bars forever.  But Zero momentarily saves the day, springing Gustave with the help of Zero's girl friend, Agatha (the fetching Saoirse Ronan), in return for which Gustave has promised to make Zero his heir.

 

At this point Gustave's troubles are not over.  Dmitri has hired a blood thirsty assassin, J.G. Jopling (creepy Willem Dafoe), to kill Gustave.  The country is in the midst of a military takeover, with Officer Henckles (Edward Norton) as one of the mainstays.  There is a lot more story left to tell.  Anderson does so using his customary kitschy quirky scenes, many of which contain colorful postcard-like still shots.  One of his touches which I found humorous is his labeling of certain inanimate objects: "Prison Guard Bunk Room," "Air Vent," etc.

 

So, what happens after the jail break? Does the fugitive Gustave avoid the clutches of Jopling and prove his innocence?  What leads to the demise of the Grand?  And most importantly, how does ownership of the hotel end up in the hands of Zero?  The story unfolds in many (too many) short scenes, a little reminiscent of the madcap Mel Brooks movie from 1970, The Twelve Chairs (see my September 30, 2013 Cinema Scan).

 

Under Anderson's direction, odd twists complement otherwise ordinary (at least in movies) actions.  Some examples.  A gun battle which starts out between two men on opposite sides of a sixth floor open air rectangular atrium suddenly expands to include shooters on all four sides blasting away.  In another scene, Gustave and Zero jump on a sled to chase a henchman on skis down a mountain.  The slope turns into an Olympic style slalom course, with both the skier and the sledders zigzagging past the gates.  For the jail break scene, the prisoners don't merely dig a tunnel through the ground floor and emerge on the other side of the fences.  Anderson has them tunneling through several floors and stealthily crawling under the prison guards' beds (and in some cases, hopping over the occupied beds) on their escape route.  When Gustave removes Boy With Apple from the gallery wall, he conveniently replaces it with another painting depicting a pornographic encounter between two lesbians.  Gustave and Zero are in the process of taking a gondola thousands of feet above a mountain pass.  Half way across, they intersect with another gondola carriage containing a man who instructs them to switch places with him right then and there.  They do so, just as easily as if they were on a subway platform instead of a mile above a mountain chasm.  Only in a Wes Anderson movie...