I've thought of it every day for the last several, but failed to make today's Cup a reference to MLK. Boo on me for that.
And boo for the 2012 fial, too.
Plus the weekend. We just didn't want to say anything again.
OH, FOR THE LOVE
I've never really had issues before - in my entire life - messing up the year like that. It must be related to either my age, or the fact that I've never had a gig where I type out the date like this every day.
Anyway, I fixed it, so nobody will ever know.
It's still in the URL. I'd advise not fixing that, however.
I never fix those. I half to leave the half-bakedness somewhere that it can be enjoyed anyway.
*have
Holy perfection. Wow.
Also, is it Movie Tuesday this week as well?
I noticed that this last week's The Onion had 2012 on the front page, and 2011 on all the interior pages.
So at least Spooky has good company.
Discount Double Check. That is all.
I must have missed something.
Only a huge blowup in an ad campaign featuring three different Packers hawking insurance by using their celebration moves on the field to signify some BS about getting "discounts" on insurance.
I am easily amused and not so easily turned off. I actually kind of enjoyed the Discount Double Check/Rodgers advert. Haven't seen the other two Packers' adverts, however. Who were they?
(and Rodgers has been MUCH less ubiquitous on my television than Peyton Manning was for the last, oh, 3-4 years)
(grain of salt: I still enjoy hearing "Stairway to Heaven" on the radio)
BJ Raji & Clay Matthews Jr. were the other Packers in these ads.
I appreciate not seeing Rodgers every commercial break, though I see these ads (and really, ads for insurance in general) far too often for my tastes.
fial. Jr. is long retired, as is his brother, Bruce.
every time I see Clay Matthews III (or AJ Hawk), all I can think about is "dude, get a haircut."
Ah yes, it's III. I always suck at remembering that kind of crap.
Matthews' hair is much nastier looking than Hawk's. He should definitely cut it.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEdcfme_rA
Well that sucked. It was the cherry on top of a miserable last few weeks. I got elminated from Survivor, was sick for a week with strep throat, had a miserable reaction to the antibiotic they gave me last week, then that shit show last night. It felt like watching the Twins flail away against the Yankees. It's like everyone on the team forgot how to play football, Rodgers included. And McCarthy over coached. He has this infuriating habit of pressing the issue way too hard when the team is in a big game, and especially if they're facing adversity. Down by two scores, why in the hell are you running plays that are 20+ yards? Especially when the only player who can catch the damn football is Driver? Sigh.
Oh well. They're less than a year removed from the Super Bowl, they likely weren't going to win it all this year with their pathetic defense, and they have a core that should keep them in the hunt for a few more years. I can't stand any team that's left in the playoffs, yuck. Worst case scenario.
You forgot that Bret Favre is smiling.
Oh, I'm sure he is. Looking forward to his radio interview next year where he wonders why it took Rodgers so long to win a playoff game at Lambeau.
Give it a week or two before you consider opening your wrists, Zack.
The Pack weren't THAT bad. Yes, a bunch of drops, and Rodgers missed a couple of throws (but not really more than a couple). Fumbles happen occasionally. That was mostly bad luck. A few missed tackles hurt as well.
But credit (1) the Giants defense, which played pretty well; and (2) Eli, who played a very good game, and was absolutely great on third down all night.
sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.
Yeah, the Pack should still have a great offense next year but something needs to be done about the defense. They put zero pressure on Eli yesterday and haven't had much of a pass rush all year.
Yeah, they really need to draft another OLB, and a D Lineman who can get some pressure. It will help a ton if Nick Collins can get fully healthy for next year.
This wasn't nearly as brutal as the 2007 NFC championship game, or 4th and 26, or Super Bowl XXXII. So I think I'll survive to see next season. 😉
It's just frustrating that they played their worst game of the year in the playoffs. The offense put far too much pressure on Rodgers & the defense to play perfect games in order to win. That didn't happen, and the season's over. Ah well. It wasn't my fault, at least I can take solace in that!
so, you lived to tell about it!
barely. rolled into chi-town around 2am.
Mikko Koivu out about a month with a shoulder injury. The team has pretty much been in free fall mode since Koivu's last injury. The Wild went from 'wow, look at that!' to 'another rebuilding year' pretty damned quick thanks to about 1000 injuries
gross
I kept waiting for things to turn around before running another "All They Do is Win" post. It has now been on a 6-week hiatus and I don't believe the end is in sight. 'another rebuilding year'
That's exactly what I thought the season would be. Then they won a bunch of close games and I thought, "Maybe a playoff win or two?" Now I'm back to the "another rebuilding year" mindset - but at least I now believe Yeo and Fletcher know what they're doing.
Day off today while the kids are in school and the wife is at work. Moneyball it is!
Dollar theater dropped Moneyball the day before I was planning on seeing it. 🙁
I saw moneyball for the second time on my flight home. I also saw most of Columbiana which could be the worst movie ever made.
Yeah, Columbiana was awful in every way. It fails miserably in everything it tries. Hated that movie.
My friends in a punk band have a 3 song EP available for download here. I feel a bit of a bad friend, this has been out for over a year and I just figured it out. Until recently they were known as The Vagabonds, but have moved to London and changed their name to TV.
httpv://youtu.be/zuxR3zuiGYg
And if you liked that small sampling, you can find their latest singles here and here available for streaming.
This just in: Barry Bonds was very good for a very, very long time. Also, look at that malingerer who was the third best player in the game over the past five years.
What a bum.
He's still a puss.
If you're casting about for things to distract yourself this afternoon, check out Chris Jaffe's article, "The Possible Upcoming Cooperstown Ballot Apocalypse," over at The Hardball Times. The potential eye-popping logjam in 2016 is at the end of the article, but I strongly suggest reading the entire piece.
I think it's < 50% that Bonds ever gets in during the BBWAA vote. Will the VC let him in? Does he have any friends in the game besides Willie Mays, who, in all likelihood won't be around all that much longer? I would say that Barry Bonds probably won't get into the HOF.
It is absolutely appalling to think that the best player of our generation -- and the best player since Ruth, if not the BPOAT, might need a Rich Lederer to campaign him into the HOF.
Yea, he seems to have been a dick. That didn't stop Ty Cobb from getting in the HOF, or any number of out-and-out racists (probably including Cobb) or otherwise less-than-admirable human beings. And Bonds was a HOF performer even before his head ballooned to the size of a watermelon.
The PED thing is just bullcrap. It will be doubly shameful if apparently good guys like Jeff Bagwell become collateral damage to keeping Bonds out of the HOF.
That didn't stop Ty Cobb from getting in the HOF, or any number of out-and-out racists (probably including Cobb) or otherwise less-than-admirable human beings.
This gets brought up by tons of people in both the baseball media and blogosphere every year around HoF time, and at some juncture it needs to be pointed out that the groups and individuals that Cobb and others were racist toward didn't have a HoF vote when Cobb was elected. In some ways it's a grossly false equivalence to compare the election of players like Cobb and Enos Slaughter to Bonds' scenario. I get that maybe for the good of the Hall the BBWAA should be the bigger party, but it's not like Bonds has anyone but himself to blame if he doesn't get elected, just as Ty Cobb wouldn't have anyone to blame but himself it the BBWAA had enough minority members willing to impede his election back in 1936.
As for the PED thing, Bud Selig has done an amazing job shriking all responsibility as Commissioner when dealing with the historical fallout of the Steroid Era. If the Comissioner's Office set the standard for judging the era, the BBWAA would have a much harder time denying certain players' merit. I'm every bit as upset about what's happening to Bagwell as anyone else on the Internet, but any complaints with how the BBWAA chooses to handle Hall of Fame candidacies should be addressed first and foremost to Allan H. Selig.
Do you think that Bonds would have juiced had baseball as an institution turned a blind eye to the whole thing? I don't think he would have. But, clowns like Canseco, Giambi, and Sosa were so juiced and with no apparent repercussions that apparently Barry turned to Victor Conte.
Eventually, Bud was coerced into cleaning up the sport. But, like you say, he's as culpable as anybody.
That's primarily a counterfactual argument which rests entirely on one's assessment of Bonds' personal integrity and character, and I don't think anyone on the planet, perhaps including Bonds, has sufficient insight into Barry Bonds' character to give a plausible answer to that question.
I agree that the decision not to meaningfully enforce the policy was a massive failure on Selig's part. But Selig's non-enforcement of that policy doesn't automatically put PEDs into Bonds' system, either. Bonds wasn't the kind of player so marginally talented that he was in danger of being dropped from a roster if he didn't use like everyone else, and he yet still made a choice to put it there himself. He wasn't some innocent mediocrity motivated by a decision to save his big league job - rather, he seems to have been motivated primarily out of intense jealousy of the attention lavished on other, less talented players who were using and making headlines, and, perhaps secondarily, greed. That's an understandable, human decision, but that doesn't make it something for which he doesn't bear responsibility.
What is more unfortunate than Bonds' possible omission from the Hall is that Selig's decision, compounded by the decision to use by top players like Clemens and Bonds, has collateral damage for players like Jeff Bagwell and Jim Thome, and has the potential to cast doubts on even guys like Ken Griffey Jr., none of whom have been connected to PED usage other than by traffickers of hearsay and speculation.
What is more unfortunate than Bonds' possible omission from the Hall is that Selig's decision, compounded by the decision to use by top players like Clemens and Bonds, has collateral damage for players like Jeff Bagwell and Jim Thome, and has the potential to cast doubts on even guys like Ken Griffey Jr., none of whom have been connected to PED usage other than by traffickers of hearsay and speculation.
This is a big part of what I was trying to get at, although I think the reaction against Bonds goes waaaaay beyond his apparent PED usage. I think his personality and relations with the press and public have colored public opinion to a tremendous degree. Replace Bonds with Puckett or Thome, retaining all of the performance marks AND the "alleged" steroid use, and I think you get a much, much, much more sympathetic electorate.
You mean that you think Top Jimmy would have a different reaction to a Torii Hunter positive test than a Joe Mauer positive test?
Heh. Yea, probably. Torii would do "anything to win." Joe is a pussy who can't stay healthy and resorts to the needle -- the weak man's way out.
I absolutely agree - reactions to Bonds would be tempered significantly if he'd been less openly antagonistic.
In some ways it's a grossly false equivalence to compare the election of players like Cobb and Enos Slaughter to Bonds' scenario.
In some ways, I suppose. But the big picture here that I was trying to point to is that the HOF has no shortage of, as I put it, arguably "less-than-admirable human beings."
You don't need to have blacks with voting rights to the HOF in order for voters to take issue with a white racist (although it probably helps), just as you don't need to have writers who are friendly, widely respected individuals in order for voters to take issue with someone who is surly, self-centered and dickish (to the press or generally).
It will be doubly shameful if apparently good guys like Jeff Bagwell become collateral damage to keeping Bonds out of the HOF.
I (mildly) object to a characterization of Bagwell as a "good guy" in contrast with Bonds. Sure, Bonds took steroids in an era where everyone on the inside really knew what was going on and was willing to turn a blind eye to it at the time. I don't think that makes him a bad guy any more than the thousands of players taking amphetamines were bad guys or the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of pitchers who doctored the ball over the years (potentially endangering the health of the hitters they were pitching to) were "bad guys."
Give me an amphetamine inquisition and maybe I'll play along with the steroid inquisition.
This.
My point about Bagwell was two-fold: first, that he is "apparently" a "good guy" (although who among us really knows?), in contrast to Bonds, who "apparently" is a dick. Second, that he allegedly didn't take PEDs (but who among us really knows?) whereas Bonds allegedly did (or so we almost all think).
The comments about PEDs weren't intended to imply anything about whether Bonds is a dick or Bagwell is a good guy. I see those as quite separate issues, although both likely will play a role in the voting for the Hall.
I see. From a personality standpoint, I don't really object (or care.) There certainly isn't much (any?) evidence that Bonds was great fun to hang out with. I sort of suspected that was your point, but then I wouldn't have gotten to stir the pot. 🙂
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
🙂
Here's a wrinkle, though. Fay Vincent banned use of illegal substances, including (by name) steroids, from the game in 1991. This was, as far as I'm aware, the first time amphetamines were banned by baseball (unauthorized use was certainly illegal by federal law much earlier). Bonds is being held to the same standard as his peer group of candidates.
As for conducting an amphetamine inquisition to make things "fair" to Bonds, you'd have to backward-litigate this for the entire Hall. That's simply impossible. Some will claim that means Bonds is ultimately judged by an unfair standard compared to his predecessors, but others might suggest that continuing to turn a blind eye to drug usage is as intellectually dishonest as excluding candidates with low batting averages or insufficient RBI totals simply because that was the prior practice.
Do you really need a rule inside of the sport of baseball to specify that the illegal consumption of a drug is banned?
I can see needing an enforcement mechanism if consumption of the drug is something you care about, but I'm not sure that you need a specific rule that says that doing sh!t that can get you arrested and jailed is outside the bounds of permissible behavior for an employee. "Best interests of baseball" and stuff.
I think the ban was intended to do exactly that - connecting the drugs' illegality with internal enforcement. Of course, testing wasn't instituted until 2003, but Vincent hadn't been Commissioner for eleven years by that point.
Fornication is a misdemeanor in Minnesota. Adultery is a felony. All fornicators are breaking the law, even if it's not enforced, and should be treated with disdain for being the criminals that they are. Adulterers are felonious and certainly belong in prison.
well, we can't have those f@#&*@ers running around loose, can we? [additional Forbidden Zone comments redacted]
and consensual sodomy between adults is likewise a crime in Minnesota (and many other states), according to the law. Thanks, Boss. I'll keep that in mind.
No need to remember that. See Lawrence v. Texas.
w00t. I'll be sure to tell the Mrs.
I realize that this is an absurd non-sequitor. However, the idea that lack of an enforcement mechanism or any penalty isn't important is hard for me to swallow. Baseball as an entity was complicit in illegal drug use for decades. Do we really think that amphetamine use would have been as big a part of baseball as girlfriends on the road if in fact the clubs actually discouraged their use? At the risk of being counterfactual, I'm going to say hell, no. If, instead of turning a blind eye to pots of coffee brewed with amphetamines in them, baseball would have said, none of this or we're turning you in, players would have still used them with impugnity?
Fornication, although against the law, is generally accepted in today's society. Amphetamine use, although against the law, was generally accepted in baseball. I think it was the same for steroids, too. A cynic might suggest that the installment of the rules by Mr. Vincent was nothing more than lip service and that there was still a de facto acceptance of both steroids and amphetamines right up to the point where the US Congress intervened.
A cynic might suggest that the installment of the rules by Mr. Vincent was nothing more than lip service and that there was still a de facto acceptance of both steroids and amphetamines right up to the point where the US Congress intervened.
A cynic would have to accept that Vincent's motivations, whatever they were, were moot before 13 September 1989 and after 07 September 1992.
prior to the Curt Flood case and the Messersmith case, how did employment law regard baseball players? They weren't exactly "at will" employees because of the Reserve Clause. What were they, then?
They were bound by a contract.
If anyone wants to fornicate openly at work and see if they can keep their job, let them go ahead.
Yeah, that's frowned on by my employer, although not all employers frown upon it (pr0n!). Amphetamine and steroid use were not frowned on by baseball.
Drinking is legal, but my employer prohibits it on company property. Baseball players for years were provided with alcohol after every game and some maybe still are. And apparently, it's not uncommon to drink during the game. Obviously, the system itself has operated in ways that regular employers do not. The problem, in my opinion, has been with the way that they conduct their business and what they have systematically tolerated in the workplace for decades.
Bonds is being held to the same standard as his peer group of candidates.
What standard? The standard of looking the other way until things got so out of hand that Bonds broke the single-season and career HR record and baseball finally needed a fall guy? I'm sure when Sosa and McGwire were going at the single-season record no one expected any funny business, right? Except that they did, and baseball decided not to do anything about it.
There was no drop in steroid usage until they started testing and I'm sure there was no drop in amphetamine usage until they started testing.
As for conducting an amphetamine inquisition to make things "fair" to Bonds, you'd have to backward-litigate this for the entire Hall.
In terms of the steroid inquisition, it's not about Bonds being held to a different standard. It's about not wanting to go down the "did he or didn't he" road. Attempting to "backward-litigate" for steroid usage is just as impossible as trying to do the same for amphetamine usage. For all I know Puckett was on steroids and I don't think it's such a crazy idea to think that he was. When do I get to buy the book written by two investigative journalists looking to drag his name through the mud?
If the BBWAA wanted this to be an issue, they should have made it an issue in the '90s. Of course, they were happy to look the other way after the strike because they wanted bigger ratings just as much as Selig and company. Once the ratings came back, they were happy to capitalize on the scandal.
Very suspicious rise in HRs in 1986.
and a suspicious trough in HRs in 1988-93??
The Steroids of the 80's were inefficient and worked better when in used in a multi-substance cocaine-steroid regimen. Then in the 90's, pharmacology found a way to build the cocaine into the steroids.
If McGwire was already in the Hall and Bonds wasn't elected, that would indicate Bonds was being held to a different standard. Bonds became perhaps the most visible figure in the sport's systemic practice of PED use, but he's hardly the only high profile player being subjected to the fallout. If you want to make the argument that enforcement wasn't instituted until after Bonds broke the record, that's fine, but don't forget that there was also a collective bargaining agreement which needed to be negotiated in 2002. In both their record-breaking seasons Bonds and McGwire were subject to the same standards negotiated under the 1996 CBA. Baseball couldn't have unilaterally instituted testing prior to its expiration even if it wanted to following McGwire and Sosa's record-breaking 1998 seasons.
For all I know Puckett was on steroids and I don't think it's such a crazy idea to think that he was. When do I get to buy the book written by two investigative journalists looking to drag his name through the mud?
Email Frank Deford. I'm sure he'd oblige if you can point to a large enough market for a book on the steroid usage of a player who retired over 16 years ago and has been dead for nearly six years. Even hacks like him have to eat.
If the BBWAA wanted this to be an issue, they should have made it an issue in the '90s. Of course, they were happy to look the other way after the strike because they wanted bigger ratings just as much as Selig and company.
You're suggesting that the average BBWAA member of that time, a newspaper journalist, would sit on the sports scoop of the century because he wanted to help goose the ratings of media outlets in completely different mediums? Steve Wilstein first saw "androstenedione" written on a bottle in McGwire's locker in July 1998. He conducted research and reported the story for the AP on 21 August. What was Bud Selig's response?
"I think what Mark McGwire has accomplished is so remarkable, and he has handled it all so beautifully, we want to do everything we can to enjoy a great moment in baseball history." - Selig, 24 August 1998
Granted, many in the baseball media initially echoed Selig's opinion (would you want to publicly admit you'd been scooped?). But if you're implying that this went completely ignored by the media at the very time McGwire and Sosa were in the process of breaking Maris' record, that's simply not the case.
I think the media dug just as far as they thought was prudent at the time. Likely many of them knew there was a bigger story there but none of them was brave enough to really go after it. Call me a cynic, but I'm sure there was more than one who was just as cowardly as Bonds in the matter.
Email Frank Deford. I'm sure he'd oblige if you can point to a large enough market for a book on the steroid usage of a player who retired over 16 years ago and has been dead for nearly six years. Even hacks like him have to eat.
But why aren't we concerned with Puckett's usage if we're so concerned with Bonds' usage? So we should hold Puckett to a different standard because he's been dead for six years? Because it turns out to be inconvenient to hold everyone to a fictional steroids standard? (What is the threshold anyway? If a guy injected once, then not a first-ballot HOFer, but maybe after that? If he used for a season but then gave it up, maybe let him in after 8-9 years on the ballot? How about guys who knew that other guys were juicing but didn't say anything about it?)
My example was chosen to show that this is a wild goose chase that no one is actually interested in following through on. You claim that it's too much work to figure out which players used amphetamines but aren't even willing to examine potential steroid abuse from all of the already-elected HOFers who played in the '80s and '90s?
You claim that it's too much work to figure out which players used amphetamines but aren't even willing to examine potential steroid abuse from all of the already-elected HOFers who played in the '80s and '90s?
Forty players who played at least party of their careers from 1980-present have been inducted into the Hall of Fame so far. If there is an individual with the funding and stature to conduct forty separate extensive investigations of those players' careers, to include interviews with every teammate, team official, coach, trainer, bat boy, grounds crew member, and janitor with whom they ever came into contact at any level of the game, not to mention that player's family, agent(s), and friends, in the quest to determine whether or not there is a potentially a steroid user already in the Hall of Fame, let them go ahead. I would be very interested to read their findings in twenty to thirty years, assuming they can get enough people to talk to them, and establish enough credible evidence to convince a publisher that that they aren't immediately in danger of an expensive suit for libel upon publication.
Mike Schmidt has admitted to using greenies. Willie Stargell was said to have dispensed them in the Pirates clubhouse. Willie Mays had his liquid amphetamines. There you go. In or out?
Or are you going to differentiate between one PED and another?
So you're in effect saying that no one entering the HOF will be subject to the same level of scrutiny that Bonds received as the subject of Game of Shadows, but at the same time you're saying that Bonds is being held to the same standard that everyone else is?
SBG:
Mike Schmidt admitted to using greenies in 2006, eleven years after he was elected. John Milner claimed that Willie Mays had his red juice in his locker in 1985; Mays had been elected to the Hall six years earlier. Milner, Dave Parker and Dale Berra claimed Stargell distributed greenies, but I don't know of any actual evidence being presented apart from their testimony. Stargell was elected three years later. I don't believe the grand jury found that either Mays or Stargell had used them, although I don't know how vigorously it was pursued at the time.
No matter how you frame the question, this isn't just about equating or differentiating between one PED or another, but also the policy in place at the time they were used, and if players were previously punished for their usage. I think the much more interesting question you could have asked is whether Tim Raines (or Paul Molitor) belongs in the Hall if Bonds doesn't get in, or if Dave Parker deserves consideration if Bonds does get in. As far as I'm aware, Raines, Molitor, and Parker used PEDs at a time when they weren't against MLB policy, meaning MLB couldn't internally regulate whether or not players could be suspended for use of PEDs without presumably running afoul of labor law. Sure, they could turn players in to the Feds for use, but they couldn't begin to self-regulate that part of their labor force without internal policy. The same situation doesn't apply to the time during which Bonds used.
To the point, though - the electorate which voted for Mays in 1979, Stargell in 1988, and Schmidt in 1995 is not the same as the electorate voting for Bonds and his contemporaries. Just because one group chose to overlook potential drug usage doesn't mean another is beholden to the same policy, nor should it. I think it's safe to say that more is known now about PEDs, particularly and especially by the fans, than was the case previously. It's not some grand hypocrisy to insist that, based both on what we know now and the policies MLB instituted in the interim, that players be held to a higher standard of cleanliness. Yes, I understand this is complicated by how much, and when, was known by reporters particularly between 1995-2003. But from an institutional standpoint, I don't see how insisting on better standards for Hall candidates is hypocritical.
Ubes:
I'm saying no one who has heretofore entered the HoF has been subject to the level of scrutiny that Bonds has received, but that goes for Bonds' contemporaries as much as it does for Bonds himself.
As much as? Yeah, I'm sure everyone who played with Bonds has been subject to exactly as much scrutiny as Bonds. If that was even remotely the case, I wouldn't be following this line of reasoning. The writers want to hold some players to a standard that they can't be bothered to hold other players to because it would literally be too much work to investigate everyone as thoroughly as Bonds has been investigated. I'm not going to pretend that Bonds didn't cheat, but I'd prefer the writers didn't act as though they know who did cheat and who didn't cheat. They don't and they won't.
A replay of Chelsea - Sunderland is on FSN North right now. EEE will be delayed until tomorrow since ManCity is playing today. I know they aren't a team of anyone here, but it's important to keep tabs on the top of the table.
The cause of a reduced influx of talented players like Pedro Muñoz, J.C. Romero and José Morales?
Hollinger rankings today:
Denver: 10
Minnesota: 15
NYK: 20
The Knicks lose again at home as their high volume shooter got 33 points, but took 27 shots and 16 free throws to get it.
I finally get off my lazy duff to go mail some stuff I've been meaning to get out for about a week, only for it to be a holiday. I need to plan better.
I don't know what it is about Arizona, but I'm sick for the fourth time in two months. It's getting old.
I'd like to blame the dryness, but Yakima's dryer than this place. More likely, it's the fact that I now have two kids going to school, so twice the chances of them bringing something home. Sour Cream's a preschooler, too, so she spends about a third of the year having a runny nose at the very least.
Heh, the way my last comment linked into the sidebar it looks like I'm taking part of the way more serious conversation going on above between the Boss and the bS. Yeah, I'm easily amused, so what?
I'm home. Home sweet home. My bottle of unpasteurized imperial stout made it home un-confiscated and in one piece along with my embargo cigar and peat smoked irish whisky. Tasting notes to follow.
Home sweet Texas? If so, welcome back to the states, brother. I'm glad it didn't suck all that hard at the end.
Welcome back, meat. May your next trip abroad be filled with rainbows.
I was misled - dude on the Bushmill's tour said that the main difference between the Irish Whiskeys and the Scots was the Irish used no smoking. Maybe that's just Bushmills...
I was told something similar at Jameson, but the Cooley Distillery disagrees.
Uh, Third Monday Movie Day will be tomorrow, dudes. Stuff at Casa de Leche + being sick as a dog = Whoops.
I've been sitting on a Movie day LTE for a few days, but I guess I can wait one more.
Me and NBB touched on some movie stuff yesterday in the CoC. I'm just no good at this doing stuff on schedule, either.
Betty White turns 90 tomorrow. It will be a big day, for sure.
And she's still a regular on a show. That's incredible.
you got approximately 58 years to get your own show
In fairness, I've already done one. I mean, nobody outside a few people at Fox saw it, but...
Man, I hope this thing is still happening.
I thought this said Barry White. I thought he was holdonlling up pretty well for that age.
And he is no longer alive, nevermind.
We have not been below zero yet this winter. If we can make it 'till Thursday, it will the latest ever recorded in MPLS. Forecast is for -3 Wednesday night/Thursday morning.
I kid you not.
The nickname for the town I'm staying in tonite is ManchVegas. An effort is underway to get the nickname to be changed to ManchHattan.
From The Hippo (local free fish wrapper) that I snatched in the lobby: City councilors in Concord gave the OK to chickens - backyard chickens, that is. According to an article in the Concord Monitor, the council signed off on letting residents raise as many as five chickens per household for personal consumption, and none of the chickens can be roosters. Residents get 21 months of chickens before the city council will review how things are going.
Not to pick nits, but things aren't going to go too far without some roosters, right?
Seems sexist to me.
My neighbors here in South Minneapolis have chickens in their backyard. When we first moved, Sheenie kept hearing them in the morning and could not figure out why.
Roosters aren't required. Eggs that are laid in that case are sterile.
Selected snippets from The Hippo - Concord Community Education:
Monday:
Archery
Psychic Development I
Intuitive Powers of the Mind to Awaken Your Spiritual Self
Song Writing, Introduction
Understanding Stock Market
Violin Made Easy
Tuesday:
Chair Caning
Gluten Free Living
Learn to do Voice Over
Reiki 1 & 2
Sour Dough Bread Making
Wednesday:
Garden Record Keeping
Laughter: The Best Medicine
Parenting Your Gifted Child
Psychic Development II
Ancient Wisdom for the Modern World
Self Hypnosis
Tibetan Bowl Sound Relaxation
Thursday:
Ballroom Dance:
Triple Step Swing
Advanced Beginners
Using the Right Side of the Brain
Living and Working GREEN
Native People of New England: Pre-contact to Present
Selling at a Farmer's Market
Saturday:
Chinese Games for All Ages - Majiang and Chinese Chess
Kinda reads like a Reader's Digest table of contents combined with a New Age spa therapy list.
I've thought of it every day for the last several, but failed to make today's Cup a reference to MLK. Boo on me for that.
And boo for the 2012 fial, too.
Plus the weekend. We just didn't want to say anything again.
OH, FOR THE LOVE
I've never really had issues before - in my entire life - messing up the year like that. It must be related to either my age, or the fact that I've never had a gig where I type out the date like this every day.
Anyway, I fixed it, so nobody will ever know.
It's still in the URL. I'd advise not fixing that, however.
I never fix those. I half to leave the half-bakedness somewhere that it can be enjoyed anyway.
*have
Holy perfection. Wow.
Also, is it Movie Tuesday this week as well?
I noticed that this last week's The Onion had 2012 on the front page, and 2011 on all the interior pages.
So at least Spooky has good company.
Discount Double Check. That is all.
I must have missed something.
Only a huge blowup in an ad campaign featuring three different Packers hawking insurance by using their celebration moves on the field to signify some BS about getting "discounts" on insurance.
I am easily amused and not so easily turned off. I actually kind of enjoyed the Discount Double Check/Rodgers advert. Haven't seen the other two Packers' adverts, however. Who were they?
(and Rodgers has been MUCH less ubiquitous on my television than Peyton Manning was for the last, oh, 3-4 years)
(grain of salt: I still enjoy hearing "Stairway to Heaven" on the radio)
BJ Raji & Clay Matthews Jr. were the other Packers in these ads.
I appreciate not seeing Rodgers every commercial break, though I see these ads (and really, ads for insurance in general) far too often for my tastes.
fial. Jr. is long retired, as is his brother, Bruce.
every time I see Clay Matthews III (or AJ Hawk), all I can think about is "dude, get a haircut."
Ah yes, it's III. I always suck at remembering that kind of crap.
Matthews' hair is much nastier looking than Hawk's. He should definitely cut it.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEdcfme_rA
Well that sucked. It was the cherry on top of a miserable last few weeks. I got elminated from Survivor, was sick for a week with strep throat, had a miserable reaction to the antibiotic they gave me last week, then that shit show last night. It felt like watching the Twins flail away against the Yankees. It's like everyone on the team forgot how to play football, Rodgers included. And McCarthy over coached. He has this infuriating habit of pressing the issue way too hard when the team is in a big game, and especially if they're facing adversity. Down by two scores, why in the hell are you running plays that are 20+ yards? Especially when the only player who can catch the damn football is Driver? Sigh.
Oh well. They're less than a year removed from the Super Bowl, they likely weren't going to win it all this year with their pathetic defense, and they have a core that should keep them in the hunt for a few more years. I can't stand any team that's left in the playoffs, yuck. Worst case scenario.
You forgot that Bret Favre is smiling.
Oh, I'm sure he is. Looking forward to his radio interview next year where he wonders why it took Rodgers so long to win a playoff game at Lambeau.
Give it a week or two before you consider opening your wrists, Zack.
The Pack weren't THAT bad. Yes, a bunch of drops, and Rodgers missed a couple of throws (but not really more than a couple). Fumbles happen occasionally. That was mostly bad luck. A few missed tackles hurt as well.
But credit (1) the Giants defense, which played pretty well; and (2) Eli, who played a very good game, and was absolutely great on third down all night.
sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.
Yeah, the Pack should still have a great offense next year but something needs to be done about the defense. They put zero pressure on Eli yesterday and haven't had much of a pass rush all year.
Yeah, they really need to draft another OLB, and a D Lineman who can get some pressure. It will help a ton if Nick Collins can get fully healthy for next year.
This wasn't nearly as brutal as the 2007 NFC championship game, or 4th and 26, or Super Bowl XXXII. So I think I'll survive to see next season. 😉
It's just frustrating that they played their worst game of the year in the playoffs. The offense put far too much pressure on Rodgers & the defense to play perfect games in order to win. That didn't happen, and the season's over. Ah well. It wasn't my fault, at least I can take solace in that!
so, you lived to tell about it!
barely. rolled into chi-town around 2am.
Mikko Koivu out about a month with a shoulder injury. The team has pretty much been in free fall mode since Koivu's last injury. The Wild went from 'wow, look at that!' to 'another rebuilding year' pretty damned quick thanks to about 1000 injuries
gross
I kept waiting for things to turn around before running another "All They Do is Win" post. It has now been on a 6-week hiatus and I don't believe the end is in sight.
'another rebuilding year'
That's exactly what I thought the season would be. Then they won a bunch of close games and I thought, "Maybe a playoff win or two?" Now I'm back to the "another rebuilding year" mindset - but at least I now believe Yeo and Fletcher know what they're doing.
Day off today while the kids are in school and the wife is at work. Moneyball it is!
Dollar theater dropped Moneyball the day before I was planning on seeing it. 🙁
I saw moneyball for the second time on my flight home. I also saw most of Columbiana which could be the worst movie ever made.
Yeah, Columbiana was awful in every way. It fails miserably in everything it tries. Hated that movie.
My friends in a punk band have a 3 song EP available for download here. I feel a bit of a bad friend, this has been out for over a year and I just figured it out. Until recently they were known as The Vagabonds, but have moved to London and changed their name to TV.
httpv://youtu.be/zuxR3zuiGYg
And if you liked that small sampling, you can find their latest singles here and here available for streaming.
This just in: Barry Bonds was very good for a very, very long time. Also, look at that malingerer who was the third best player in the game over the past five years.
What a bum.
He's still a puss.
If you're casting about for things to distract yourself this afternoon, check out Chris Jaffe's article, "The Possible Upcoming Cooperstown Ballot Apocalypse," over at The Hardball Times. The potential eye-popping logjam in 2016 is at the end of the article, but I strongly suggest reading the entire piece.
I think it's < 50% that Bonds ever gets in during the BBWAA vote. Will the VC let him in? Does he have any friends in the game besides Willie Mays, who, in all likelihood won't be around all that much longer? I would say that Barry Bonds probably won't get into the HOF.
It is absolutely appalling to think that the best player of our generation -- and the best player since Ruth, if not the BPOAT, might need a Rich Lederer to campaign him into the HOF.
Yea, he seems to have been a dick. That didn't stop Ty Cobb from getting in the HOF, or any number of out-and-out racists (probably including Cobb) or otherwise less-than-admirable human beings. And Bonds was a HOF performer even before his head ballooned to the size of a watermelon.
The PED thing is just bullcrap. It will be doubly shameful if apparently good guys like Jeff Bagwell become collateral damage to keeping Bonds out of the HOF.
This gets brought up by tons of people in both the baseball media and blogosphere every year around HoF time, and at some juncture it needs to be pointed out that the groups and individuals that Cobb and others were racist toward didn't have a HoF vote when Cobb was elected. In some ways it's a grossly false equivalence to compare the election of players like Cobb and Enos Slaughter to Bonds' scenario. I get that maybe for the good of the Hall the BBWAA should be the bigger party, but it's not like Bonds has anyone but himself to blame if he doesn't get elected, just as Ty Cobb wouldn't have anyone to blame but himself it the BBWAA had enough minority members willing to impede his election back in 1936.
As for the PED thing, Bud Selig has done an amazing job shriking all responsibility as Commissioner when dealing with the historical fallout of the Steroid Era. If the Comissioner's Office set the standard for judging the era, the BBWAA would have a much harder time denying certain players' merit. I'm every bit as upset about what's happening to Bagwell as anyone else on the Internet, but any complaints with how the BBWAA chooses to handle Hall of Fame candidacies should be addressed first and foremost to Allan H. Selig.
Do you think that Bonds would have juiced had baseball as an institution turned a blind eye to the whole thing? I don't think he would have. But, clowns like Canseco, Giambi, and Sosa were so juiced and with no apparent repercussions that apparently Barry turned to Victor Conte.
Eventually, Bud was coerced into cleaning up the sport. But, like you say, he's as culpable as anybody.
That's primarily a counterfactual argument which rests entirely on one's assessment of Bonds' personal integrity and character, and I don't think anyone on the planet, perhaps including Bonds, has sufficient insight into Barry Bonds' character to give a plausible answer to that question.
I agree that the decision not to meaningfully enforce the policy was a massive failure on Selig's part. But Selig's non-enforcement of that policy doesn't automatically put PEDs into Bonds' system, either. Bonds wasn't the kind of player so marginally talented that he was in danger of being dropped from a roster if he didn't use like everyone else, and he yet still made a choice to put it there himself. He wasn't some innocent mediocrity motivated by a decision to save his big league job - rather, he seems to have been motivated primarily out of intense jealousy of the attention lavished on other, less talented players who were using and making headlines, and, perhaps secondarily, greed. That's an understandable, human decision, but that doesn't make it something for which he doesn't bear responsibility.
What is more unfortunate than Bonds' possible omission from the Hall is that Selig's decision, compounded by the decision to use by top players like Clemens and Bonds, has collateral damage for players like Jeff Bagwell and Jim Thome, and has the potential to cast doubts on even guys like Ken Griffey Jr., none of whom have been connected to PED usage other than by traffickers of hearsay and speculation.
This is a big part of what I was trying to get at, although I think the reaction against Bonds goes waaaaay beyond his apparent PED usage. I think his personality and relations with the press and public have colored public opinion to a tremendous degree. Replace Bonds with Puckett or Thome, retaining all of the performance marks AND the "alleged" steroid use, and I think you get a much, much, much more sympathetic electorate.
You mean that you think Top Jimmy would have a different reaction to a Torii Hunter positive test than a Joe Mauer positive test?
Heh. Yea, probably. Torii would do "anything to win." Joe is a pussy who can't stay healthy and resorts to the needle -- the weak man's way out.
I absolutely agree - reactions to Bonds would be tempered significantly if he'd been less openly antagonistic.
In some ways, I suppose. But the big picture here that I was trying to point to is that the HOF has no shortage of, as I put it, arguably "less-than-admirable human beings."
You don't need to have blacks with voting rights to the HOF in order for voters to take issue with a white racist (although it probably helps), just as you don't need to have writers who are friendly, widely respected individuals in order for voters to take issue with someone who is surly, self-centered and dickish (to the press or generally).
It will be doubly shameful if apparently good guys like Jeff Bagwell become collateral damage to keeping Bonds out of the HOF.
I (mildly) object to a characterization of Bagwell as a "good guy" in contrast with Bonds. Sure, Bonds took steroids in an era where everyone on the inside really knew what was going on and was willing to turn a blind eye to it at the time. I don't think that makes him a bad guy any more than the thousands of players taking amphetamines were bad guys or the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of pitchers who doctored the ball over the years (potentially endangering the health of the hitters they were pitching to) were "bad guys."
Give me an amphetamine inquisition and maybe I'll play along with the steroid inquisition.
This.
My point about Bagwell was two-fold: first, that he is "apparently" a "good guy" (although who among us really knows?), in contrast to Bonds, who "apparently" is a dick. Second, that he allegedly didn't take PEDs (but who among us really knows?) whereas Bonds allegedly did (or so we almost all think).
The comments about PEDs weren't intended to imply anything about whether Bonds is a dick or Bagwell is a good guy. I see those as quite separate issues, although both likely will play a role in the voting for the Hall.
I see. From a personality standpoint, I don't really object (or care.) There certainly isn't much (any?) evidence that Bonds was great fun to hang out with. I sort of suspected that was your point, but then I wouldn't have gotten to stir the pot. 🙂
🙂
Here's a wrinkle, though. Fay Vincent banned use of illegal substances, including (by name) steroids, from the game in 1991. This was, as far as I'm aware, the first time amphetamines were banned by baseball (unauthorized use was certainly illegal by federal law much earlier). Bonds is being held to the same standard as his peer group of candidates.
As for conducting an amphetamine inquisition to make things "fair" to Bonds, you'd have to backward-litigate this for the entire Hall. That's simply impossible. Some will claim that means Bonds is ultimately judged by an unfair standard compared to his predecessors, but others might suggest that continuing to turn a blind eye to drug usage is as intellectually dishonest as excluding candidates with low batting averages or insufficient RBI totals simply because that was the prior practice.
Do you really need a rule inside of the sport of baseball to specify that the illegal consumption of a drug is banned?
I can see needing an enforcement mechanism if consumption of the drug is something you care about, but I'm not sure that you need a specific rule that says that doing sh!t that can get you arrested and jailed is outside the bounds of permissible behavior for an employee. "Best interests of baseball" and stuff.
I think the ban was intended to do exactly that - connecting the drugs' illegality with internal enforcement. Of course, testing wasn't instituted until 2003, but Vincent hadn't been Commissioner for eleven years by that point.
Fornication is a misdemeanor in Minnesota. Adultery is a felony. All fornicators are breaking the law, even if it's not enforced, and should be treated with disdain for being the criminals that they are. Adulterers are felonious and certainly belong in prison.
well, we can't have those f@#&*@ers running around loose, can we? [additional Forbidden Zone comments redacted]
and consensual sodomy between adults is likewise a crime in Minnesota (and many other states), according to the law. Thanks, Boss. I'll keep that in mind.
No need to remember that. See Lawrence v. Texas.
w00t. I'll be sure to tell the Mrs.
I realize that this is an absurd non-sequitor. However, the idea that lack of an enforcement mechanism or any penalty isn't important is hard for me to swallow. Baseball as an entity was complicit in illegal drug use for decades. Do we really think that amphetamine use would have been as big a part of baseball as girlfriends on the road if in fact the clubs actually discouraged their use? At the risk of being counterfactual, I'm going to say hell, no. If, instead of turning a blind eye to pots of coffee brewed with amphetamines in them, baseball would have said, none of this or we're turning you in, players would have still used them with impugnity?
Fornication, although against the law, is generally accepted in today's society. Amphetamine use, although against the law, was generally accepted in baseball. I think it was the same for steroids, too. A cynic might suggest that the installment of the rules by Mr. Vincent was nothing more than lip service and that there was still a de facto acceptance of both steroids and amphetamines right up to the point where the US Congress intervened.
A cynic would have to accept that Vincent's motivations, whatever they were, were moot before 13 September 1989 and after 07 September 1992.
prior to the Curt Flood case and the Messersmith case, how did employment law regard baseball players? They weren't exactly "at will" employees because of the Reserve Clause. What were they, then?
They were bound by a contract.
If anyone wants to fornicate openly at work and see if they can keep their job, let them go ahead.
Yeah, that's frowned on by my employer, although not all employers frown upon it (pr0n!). Amphetamine and steroid use were not frowned on by baseball.
Drinking is legal, but my employer prohibits it on company property. Baseball players for years were provided with alcohol after every game and some maybe still are. And apparently, it's not uncommon to drink during the game. Obviously, the system itself has operated in ways that regular employers do not. The problem, in my opinion, has been with the way that they conduct their business and what they have systematically tolerated in the workplace for decades.
What standard? The standard of looking the other way until things got so out of hand that Bonds broke the single-season and career HR record and baseball finally needed a fall guy? I'm sure when Sosa and McGwire were going at the single-season record no one expected any funny business, right? Except that they did, and baseball decided not to do anything about it.
There was no drop in steroid usage until they started testing and I'm sure there was no drop in amphetamine usage until they started testing.
In terms of the steroid inquisition, it's not about Bonds being held to a different standard. It's about not wanting to go down the "did he or didn't he" road. Attempting to "backward-litigate" for steroid usage is just as impossible as trying to do the same for amphetamine usage. For all I know Puckett was on steroids and I don't think it's such a crazy idea to think that he was. When do I get to buy the book written by two investigative journalists looking to drag his name through the mud?
If the BBWAA wanted this to be an issue, they should have made it an issue in the '90s. Of course, they were happy to look the other way after the strike because they wanted bigger ratings just as much as Selig and company. Once the ratings came back, they were happy to capitalize on the scandal.
Very suspicious rise in HRs in 1986.
and a suspicious trough in HRs in 1988-93??
The Steroids of the 80's were inefficient and worked better when in used in a multi-substance cocaine-steroid regimen. Then in the 90's, pharmacology found a way to build the cocaine into the steroids.
Look it up.
If McGwire was already in the Hall and Bonds wasn't elected, that would indicate Bonds was being held to a different standard. Bonds became perhaps the most visible figure in the sport's systemic practice of PED use, but he's hardly the only high profile player being subjected to the fallout. If you want to make the argument that enforcement wasn't instituted until after Bonds broke the record, that's fine, but don't forget that there was also a collective bargaining agreement which needed to be negotiated in 2002. In both their record-breaking seasons Bonds and McGwire were subject to the same standards negotiated under the 1996 CBA. Baseball couldn't have unilaterally instituted testing prior to its expiration even if it wanted to following McGwire and Sosa's record-breaking 1998 seasons.
Email Frank Deford. I'm sure he'd oblige if you can point to a large enough market for a book on the steroid usage of a player who retired over 16 years ago and has been dead for nearly six years. Even hacks like him have to eat.
You're suggesting that the average BBWAA member of that time, a newspaper journalist, would sit on the sports scoop of the century because he wanted to help goose the ratings of media outlets in completely different mediums? Steve Wilstein first saw "androstenedione" written on a bottle in McGwire's locker in July 1998. He conducted research and reported the story for the AP on 21 August. What was Bud Selig's response?
Granted, many in the baseball media initially echoed Selig's opinion (would you want to publicly admit you'd been scooped?). But if you're implying that this went completely ignored by the media at the very time McGwire and Sosa were in the process of breaking Maris' record, that's simply not the case.
I think the media dug just as far as they thought was prudent at the time. Likely many of them knew there was a bigger story there but none of them was brave enough to really go after it. Call me a cynic, but I'm sure there was more than one who was just as cowardly as Bonds in the matter.
But why aren't we concerned with Puckett's usage if we're so concerned with Bonds' usage? So we should hold Puckett to a different standard because he's been dead for six years? Because it turns out to be inconvenient to hold everyone to a fictional steroids standard? (What is the threshold anyway? If a guy injected once, then not a first-ballot HOFer, but maybe after that? If he used for a season but then gave it up, maybe let him in after 8-9 years on the ballot? How about guys who knew that other guys were juicing but didn't say anything about it?)
My example was chosen to show that this is a wild goose chase that no one is actually interested in following through on. You claim that it's too much work to figure out which players used amphetamines but aren't even willing to examine potential steroid abuse from all of the already-elected HOFers who played in the '80s and '90s?
Forty players who played at least party of their careers from 1980-present have been inducted into the Hall of Fame so far. If there is an individual with the funding and stature to conduct forty separate extensive investigations of those players' careers, to include interviews with every teammate, team official, coach, trainer, bat boy, grounds crew member, and janitor with whom they ever came into contact at any level of the game, not to mention that player's family, agent(s), and friends, in the quest to determine whether or not there is a potentially a steroid user already in the Hall of Fame, let them go ahead. I would be very interested to read their findings in twenty to thirty years, assuming they can get enough people to talk to them, and establish enough credible evidence to convince a publisher that that they aren't immediately in danger of an expensive suit for libel upon publication.
Mike Schmidt has admitted to using greenies. Willie Stargell was said to have dispensed them in the Pirates clubhouse. Willie Mays had his liquid amphetamines. There you go. In or out?
Or are you going to differentiate between one PED and another?
So you're in effect saying that no one entering the HOF will be subject to the same level of scrutiny that Bonds received as the subject of Game of Shadows, but at the same time you're saying that Bonds is being held to the same standard that everyone else is?
SBG:
Mike Schmidt admitted to using greenies in 2006, eleven years after he was elected. John Milner claimed that Willie Mays had his red juice in his locker in 1985; Mays had been elected to the Hall six years earlier. Milner, Dave Parker and Dale Berra claimed Stargell distributed greenies, but I don't know of any actual evidence being presented apart from their testimony. Stargell was elected three years later. I don't believe the grand jury found that either Mays or Stargell had used them, although I don't know how vigorously it was pursued at the time.
No matter how you frame the question, this isn't just about equating or differentiating between one PED or another, but also the policy in place at the time they were used, and if players were previously punished for their usage. I think the much more interesting question you could have asked is whether Tim Raines (or Paul Molitor) belongs in the Hall if Bonds doesn't get in, or if Dave Parker deserves consideration if Bonds does get in. As far as I'm aware, Raines, Molitor, and Parker used PEDs at a time when they weren't against MLB policy, meaning MLB couldn't internally regulate whether or not players could be suspended for use of PEDs without presumably running afoul of labor law. Sure, they could turn players in to the Feds for use, but they couldn't begin to self-regulate that part of their labor force without internal policy. The same situation doesn't apply to the time during which Bonds used.
To the point, though - the electorate which voted for Mays in 1979, Stargell in 1988, and Schmidt in 1995 is not the same as the electorate voting for Bonds and his contemporaries. Just because one group chose to overlook potential drug usage doesn't mean another is beholden to the same policy, nor should it. I think it's safe to say that more is known now about PEDs, particularly and especially by the fans, than was the case previously. It's not some grand hypocrisy to insist that, based both on what we know now and the policies MLB instituted in the interim, that players be held to a higher standard of cleanliness. Yes, I understand this is complicated by how much, and when, was known by reporters particularly between 1995-2003. But from an institutional standpoint, I don't see how insisting on better standards for Hall candidates is hypocritical.
Ubes:
I'm saying no one who has heretofore entered the HoF has been subject to the level of scrutiny that Bonds has received, but that goes for Bonds' contemporaries as much as it does for Bonds himself.
As much as? Yeah, I'm sure everyone who played with Bonds has been subject to exactly as much scrutiny as Bonds. If that was even remotely the case, I wouldn't be following this line of reasoning. The writers want to hold some players to a standard that they can't be bothered to hold other players to because it would literally be too much work to investigate everyone as thoroughly as Bonds has been investigated. I'm not going to pretend that Bonds didn't cheat, but I'd prefer the writers didn't act as though they know who did cheat and who didn't cheat. They don't and they won't.
A replay of Chelsea - Sunderland is on FSN North right now. EEE will be delayed until tomorrow since ManCity is playing today. I know they aren't a team of anyone here, but it's important to keep tabs on the top of the table.
The cause of a reduced influx of talented players like Pedro Muñoz, J.C. Romero and José Morales?
Hollinger rankings today:
Denver: 10
Minnesota: 15
NYK: 20
The Knicks lose again at home as their high volume shooter got 33 points, but took 27 shots and 16 free throws to get it.
I finally get off my lazy duff to go mail some stuff I've been meaning to get out for about a week, only for it to be a holiday. I need to plan better.
I don't know what it is about Arizona, but I'm sick for the fourth time in two months. It's getting old.
I'd like to blame the dryness, but Yakima's dryer than this place. More likely, it's the fact that I now have two kids going to school, so twice the chances of them bringing something home. Sour Cream's a preschooler, too, so she spends about a third of the year having a runny nose at the very least.
That explains a lot.
Sheesh, tell me something I don't know.
Heh, the way my last comment linked into the sidebar it looks like I'm taking part of the way more serious conversation going on above between the Boss and the bS. Yeah, I'm easily amused, so what?
I'm home. Home sweet home. My bottle of unpasteurized imperial stout made it home un-confiscated and in one piece along with my embargo cigar and peat smoked irish whisky. Tasting notes to follow.
Home sweet Texas? If so, welcome back to the states, brother. I'm glad it didn't suck all that hard at the end.
Welcome back, meat. May your next trip abroad be filled with rainbows.
I was misled - dude on the Bushmill's tour said that the main difference between the Irish Whiskeys and the Scots was the Irish used no smoking. Maybe that's just Bushmills...
I was told something similar at Jameson, but the Cooley Distillery disagrees.
Uh, Third
MondayMovie Day will be tomorrow, dudes. Stuff at Casa de Leche + being sick as a dog = Whoops.I've been sitting on a Movie day LTE for a few days, but I guess I can wait one more.
Me and NBB touched on some movie stuff yesterday in the CoC. I'm just no good at this doing stuff on schedule, either.
Betty White turns 90 tomorrow. It will be a big day, for sure.
And she's still a regular on a show. That's incredible.
you got approximately 58 years to get your own show
In fairness, I've already done one. I mean, nobody outside a few people at Fox saw it, but...
Man, I hope this thing is still happening.
I thought this said Barry White. I thought he was holdonlling up pretty well for that age.
And he is no longer alive, nevermind.
We have not been below zero yet this winter. If we can make it 'till Thursday, it will the latest ever recorded in MPLS. Forecast is for -3 Wednesday night/Thursday morning.
I kid you not.
The nickname for the town I'm staying in tonite is ManchVegas. An effort is underway to get the nickname to be changed to ManchHattan.
From The Hippo (local free fish wrapper) that I snatched in the lobby: City councilors in Concord gave the OK to chickens - backyard chickens, that is. According to an article in the Concord Monitor, the council signed off on letting residents raise as many as five chickens per household for personal consumption, and none of the chickens can be roosters. Residents get 21 months of chickens before the city council will review how things are going.
Not to pick nits, but things aren't going to go too far without some roosters, right?
Seems sexist to me.
My neighbors here in South Minneapolis have chickens in their backyard. When we first moved, Sheenie kept hearing them in the morning and could not figure out why.
Roosters aren't required. Eggs that are laid in that case are sterile.
Selected snippets from The Hippo - Concord Community Education:
Monday:
Archery
Psychic Development I
Intuitive Powers of the Mind to Awaken Your Spiritual Self
Song Writing, Introduction
Understanding Stock Market
Violin Made Easy
Tuesday:
Chair Caning
Gluten Free Living
Learn to do Voice Over
Reiki 1 & 2
Sour Dough Bread Making
Wednesday:
Garden Record Keeping
Laughter: The Best Medicine
Parenting Your Gifted Child
Psychic Development II
Ancient Wisdom for the Modern World
Self Hypnosis
Tibetan Bowl Sound Relaxation
Thursday:
Ballroom Dance:
Triple Step Swing
Advanced Beginners
Using the Right Side of the Brain
Living and Working GREEN
Native People of New England: Pre-contact to Present
Selling at a Farmer's Market
Saturday:
Chinese Games for All Ages - Majiang and Chinese Chess
Kinda reads like a Reader's Digest table of contents combined with a New Age spa therapy list.