Artcetera: Shaver's son throws a changeup

Sports reporter Ryan Shaver said it was "the toughest tweet I've ever had to write." He announced this week he's leaving KARE 11 — where he worked alongside his father, anchor Randy Shaver — to start a new position with Twin Cities Orthopedics as a digital video/social media specialist. Growing up, all Shaver ever wanted to do was cover sports on TV. Just shy of four years ago, he achieved a double dose of that dream by joining his dad as co-host of "Prep Sports Extra." Shaver married in November and said his father's experience had shown him how difficult it can be to juggle sports reporting and having a family. Randy Shaver, who has worked at KARE since 1983, spent his first three decades there as a sportscaster, a job that required him to be gone for weeks at a time when covering the Olympics, and be on call for breaking news. Shaver said his new role will give him a more consistent schedule while still allowing him to tell "inspirational" stories of athletes who have made remarkable comebacks from severe injuries. "I won't be straying too far from the things I did at KARE that put the pep in my step," he said. His last day with KARE will be July 19.

RACHEL HUTTON

The late Tony Glover had plenty to be proud of, as one-third of the trailblazing Koerner, Ray & Glover as well as a pioneering rock scribe and DJ, and the guy who literally wrote the book on blues harmonica. Nonetheless, "don't brag was his 11th Commandment," emcee Pete Lee recalled Sunday at a memorial for the low-key blues great who dubbed himself Little Sun. Many touched on his deadpan cool. Hearing that the harpist also knew his way around a guitar, his mother-in-law once asked if he'd play at the family campfire. "Peggy, you can't afford me," he told her. Among the dozens of photos on display were snapshots with old compadre Bob Dylan and a telegram he sent after Glover won an award for his liner notes to Dylan's fabled "Royal Albert Hall" album: "Tony, thanks for the eloquent notes. True articles of faith. You were there. Still are. And always will be." Indeed, Glover was there in 1961, manning a tape machine, when Dylan returned to Minneapolis after recording his debut album. While much of that informal session has surfaced on bootlegs, Lee hinted that there is more to come from the Glover archives: "Stay tuned."

TIM CAMPBELL

On the final night of their first tour, musical-comedy trio the Lonely Island were joined by lots of famous guests, including Kendrick Lamar, Michael Bolton and Johnny Depp. But only Seth Meyers and Jose Canseco were live Saturday at the sold-out Armory in Minneapolis. The others appeared via video — or as Muppets, in the case of Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga. The rap-loving trio of three junior-high buddies who landed at "Saturday Night Live" — Andy Samberg and writers Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — told the crowd to meet them outside the Nicollet Mall Panera Bread if they wanted to have sex. "Bad bitches only," they said. More than 50 people showed up at Panera afterward. "We waitin' for you," tweeted Eddie Possehl of St. Paul.

JON BREAM

With their leader Questlove dressed in a purple T-shirt and purple sneakers, the Roots gave an epic performance Sunday at Mystic Lake Casino that was reminiscent of one of Prince's jams at Paisley Park. Playing their first Twin Cities headline gig in 10 years, the Philadelphia hip-hop legends — aka Jimmy Fallon's house band — didn't catch fire until more than half an hour into their 125-minute performance, with a long, jam-packed medley dubbed "Hip Hop 101" that blended snippets of rap favorites, including A Tribe Called Quest's "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo," Black Sheep's "The Choice Is Yours" and the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ten Crack Commandments." The Roots felt like a band that was ready for anything — like Prince at his best. "Doin' it in the park, doin' it after dark, at Paisley Park," rapped frontman Black Thought during one jivey jam.

In his absorbing new book "Ballpark: Baseball in the American City," Pulitzer-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger turns an examination of 100-plus years of stadium design into a page-turner. He reveals himself to be a fan of Target Field and its "intimate game-day experience," calling it "clean, straightforward and modern in an understated way," and "a ballpark without frills but also without pretension." Don't get him started on the Twins' previous home. In a chapter titled the "Era of Concrete Doughnuts," he chronicles the many deficiencies of the "widely disliked" Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. "After years of looking up to see nothing but the white fabric roof of the Metrodome, Twins fans had to be relieved to see their city's skyline," he writes. In his final assessment, the New Yorker sounds almost Midwestern in his quiet praise: "Target Field is amiable, which in the history of baseball parks may be the highest compliment."

RICK NELSON

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