58 thoughts on “November 29, 2017: Tired Pups”

  1. A good friend was named one of Southern Living’s Southerners of the Year, which both strikes me as neighborly and amusing since my friend grew up in a town just north of the People’s Republic & moved to the South a couple years ago. (It’s also richly deserved.) I suppose a profile in Garden & Gun is next.

    1. Assuming I've identified which of those is you friend, I hope when he's ready to take his project nationwide you're able to put him in contact with me. His chosen vocation is necessary and in need of individuals with herculean resolve.

        1. CoC seems to have made this a fun puzzle. I probably would have also guessed Reddin as your friend, what with the beard and time in the Marines.
          Does your friend make canoes? I see in the bio Ruskin "...moved to Clarksdale" and his B&W picture (#24) also looks like Wolfman Jack.
          But I know you spent time in the restaurant industry, so maybe Alcorn-Karavias or Siegel-Gardner (both at #27) or Palmer (#43)?
          DeQuattro (#21) is also beardy and bike fixing sounds like a People's Republic thing.
          Fertel and Freedman (#5) aren't pictured, but maybe one of them, as you're a fan of jazz and blues.
          Terry (#16) seems probably too young
          Curry (#7) seems definitely too young

          1. My friend does not make canoes (alas); I would love to do some paddling with John Ruskey. The restaurant scene angle is a good one, but the only friend I’m still in touch with from those days (my roommate) is in Chicago. (First Michelin star last year!) DeQuattro would be right at home in the People’s Republic, but no connection there. You’re on the right track with Fertel & Freedman, but I don’t know anyone connected to the music scene in New Orleans.

  2. As regards CoC's LTE yesterday, one of ye better men (or ladies) than I really ought to bannerize the Minnesota-in-a-Minnesota. But until then...

  3. Regarding the Wolves, I don't know that anyone's surprised by this minutes allocation. It is Thibs after all...

    2. It hurts not having Bjelly out there, but if Bazzy or Aaron Brooks cant give you any productive minutes even once a week, why are they on the team?

      2. I don't understand Bazz at all. The last two years he showed actual signs of improvement towards being a somewhat useful bench player. But this year he's just been embarrassingly unplayable. He looks less coordinated than Austin Rivers. And there's gotta be some G-league scrap heap PG out there that can give more useful minutes than Aaron Brooks.

  4. I found “On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality“ fascinating. A couple of pull quotes behind the spoiler, which I hope encourage you to read it.

    'A Setting or a Place? Or an Anyplace? Or a No-Place?' SelectShow

    1. Every time a president comes to Minneapolis they double the commute times. They're worse than snow.

    1. I totally agree with the ultimate conclusion of the article that the batters need the pitch clock as much as the pitchers.

  7. I can't remember the last time I've watched a college football game beginning to end, but somehow their playoff system bothers me to no end every year. It really just shows how little power the NCAA has that they can't arrange a decent tournament for the players.

    It's not like it's an unsolvable problem.

    Step #1: Identify 80 teams to make into the actual first division of college football. There are currently 130 teams masquerading as I-A and it's too many. Start with the 64 teams in the "Power 5" conferences, add in some of the better I-A and I-AA schools (hi Stick), if they are interested, from other conferences to get to 80.

    Step #2: Sort the teams regionally into 8 conferences of 10 teams each.

    Step #3: Reverse the stupid backwards nature of the schedule. The meaningless games should be at the end of the season, not the beginning of the season. Each team plays each other team in the conference once, for a total of 9 games.

    Everyone gets a bye week, to help with coordinating logistics for the next two weeks.

    Step #4: Conference challenge week. Pair each conference with an adjacent conference. A1 plays B2, B1 plays A2--these games are the start of the elimination tournament for the national championship. Then you have A3 play B4, A4 play B3, etc., all the way down to A9 vs. B10, A10 vs. B9. Higher seed hosts.

    Step #5: Continue the elimination tournament with the 8 winners from the top games from Conference challenge week, and keep the teams from the same conference on opposite sides of the bracket. For the lower teams, I would suggest continuing to schedule them against teams that have performed similarly. For instance, the A9 vs. B10 loser can play the C9 vs. D10 loser, etc. IMO, it's better for athletes to be in games where teams are closely matched rather than the huge mismatches we tend to see in non-conference play. Also, the politics of bowl game match-ups is completely useless and should go away.

    Now you break for finals, and everyone gets to keep practicing (it never made sense to me that bad teams should be restricted from improving while good teams continue to improve with practice.)

    Step #6: Continue the elimination tournament with the 4 winners from last week--these would be New Year's games. Continue scheduling games algorithmically for the lower-ranked teams as well. The top games outside the championship could be marketed as various bowls (Cotton, Outback, Foster Farms, etc.) At this point, everyone has played 12 games, which I think is a pretty good number for a college football season.

    Step #7: Only the remaining 2 winners from the elimination tournament play this week, in the national championship game.

    There you have it, a well-ordered college football season that would be just as dramatic as the current format, but one that gives each team an equal chance to win the national championship, based only on wins and losses, plus your traditional tiebreakers at the end of the conference schedule (head-to-head, points differential, etc.) No more committees deciding the top N teams, or debates about different computer ranking systems. It even maintains the existence of bowl games and has the added benefit of non-conference schedules that are appropriate for a team's performance level. Teams don't float around based on TV contracts, but rather their geography so that the bulk of their schedule is played nearby, helping keep costs down and keep travel time lower for players who are presumably also trying to study during the season. I also think that the conference challenge week could be pretty fun--I think fans take pride in their conference and it'd give them a reason to care about games farther down the standings.

    1. ubes - I gotta say, I really like the thought you put into this. I am a college football fan (Gophers keep trying to kill that for me), and I appreciate knowing that there are ways - however unlikely to be implemented they may be - that could improve the product.

  8. I know we've largely (deliberately or otherwise) eschewed the topic, but if Garrison Keillor is a fireable sex creep, I'm approching the point of giving up on...I don't know...life or something.

    1. He says the story is a lot more complicated that what was given...I sure hope that the particular agencies are doing due diligence before pulling the trigger.

        1. I don't know about the particulars, but I know that Keillor's descriptions - especially of younger women - have often struck me as physical and/or sexual (hey, I recently just started Lake Wobegon Days!). I think the man is a brilliant writer and has had some fantastic insights, but it doesn't surprise me if he's also kind of a creep.

          1. I have no personal or once-removed evidence of him being a sex creep, but, I do have once-removed evidence (granted, from the mid-1980s) that he can be an a-hole.

    2. I don't know, I was once dragged on a Garrison Keillor cruise (don't get me started), and while I appreciate his humor, in that setting he also seemed more than a bit like a creepy old guy. Maybe it was "just" an air of Dom Draper sexism, but there were some cringe-worthy moments.

      I do feel like there needs to be some nuance to the discussion at large--there are degrees between harassment and rape--and I don't care to pass judgement in cases where I don't know the facts (either way) but for the most part, women have been getting crapped on for years, so on the cosmic scale, a few guys taking the fall publicly relative to years and years (centuries and centuries) of women being treated poorly still keeps the balance of power in favor of the men.

      2. I'm conscious of the "creepy old guy" thing that seems to be going on out there, and don't pretend to declare Keillor immune from it (as you suggest, perhaps the opposite.) Are all these elder-statesmen types just a reflection of the inner wierdo in all of us...just emboldened by their position or power to take actions on thoughts and frustrations most of us wouldn't permit the light of day?

        As I've started recognizing that I may, in fact, be immune to the progression of age (and I have a loooong way to go yet, but why am I holding my newspaper so close to my face?), the less-than-positive personality changes with time one more aspect I don't want to believe will happen.

        2. I doubt that this is a typical progression of age with people of any sort of power -- I believe it's more a symptom of the era that these people (all of us) have grown up, and the mores they experienced during that time. Many of the current scandals are for encounters in the past, not recent, and I hope that it because eyes are being opened.

          1. At the same time, so much of the really wrong stuff was really wrong "back then" too. Let's not pretend it used to be okay to grab a woman while she was sleeping or date minors while in your 30's, and only recently have we realized how terrible that stuff is. At the same time, let's contextualize: it seems like a lot of people are being outed, but lots and lots of people similarly have clean pasts and nothing to worry about . Tom Hanks had a quote when Weinstein was first accused, and said something like "You can't say 'I grew up in a different era' because you know what? So did Tom Hanks, and lots of other people, and those people don't have the same accusations being made against them." (That said, I'm not clearing Hanks or anyone else... there's a great quote somewhere about not looking up to anyone who still alive, because they're going to disappoint you.)

            Anyway, I don't buy that this is a symptom of an era. I think it's probably more a symptom of power, and I'm glad that power structures seem to be changing such that such abuses are better addressed and prevented.

            1. I'm going to disagree though. Just because some people rose above what people turned a blind eye to "back in the day" doesn't mean it wasn't more of the norm then. Same applies to racism, bullying, and a whole lot of other things which were practiced more openly but are now (finally) under the microscope. And if media covered average joes instead of people in power, you'll see that it's systemic.

              1. I agree that its systemic, but I would suggest that the "system" has a lot more to do with power differentials than with significant differences in morality. Indeed, even if the media were covering average joes, you'd find the ones engaged in harassment/assault are generally doing those things to women they have power over, not vice versa.

                  1. Are you saying that people (other than offenders) thought that was morally acceptable 40 years ago?

                    Maybe they did. I can concede that there's been some movement on the social mores. But I think, especially as regards larger offenses, what is wrong now was wrong then, and your Hanks' tend to be proof of that.

                    1. Morally acceptable? I'm not going to go that far, but I think it's safe to say that people were more inclined to believe they could get away with that kind of antic back then. And that includes larger offenses, when victims' rights were less vigorously enforced.

                    2. what Rhu said. Back in the day, women were just that much less respected and that much less powerful. I would add that cultural mores do change over time, but in this case the shift has been from silent majority? disapproval of such boorishness to less-silent-and-sometimes-vocal disapproval of boorishness.

                    3. Isn't that what I was saying? The power differentials have shifted, more than the morals. That's definitely what I was saying.

          1. Wow, I was just going to comment about power as well as fame or money. In my business, I witnessed quite a bit very questionable behavior from owners, managers and corporate types. I have left jobs because of such cultures. Let's be honest, we probably all know people in our lives that if they were rich or famous, would probably be in the news for this type of behavior. I am very encouraged that we are seeing that culture crumble before our eyes. I try not to judge may of these cases before the facts get to a real court of law, but it is really difficult. Luckily, my wife never had to deal with this in a big way, and I hope enough of a deterrent is established that the odds go in the right way for my 16 year old daughter. Somewhat related: It saddens me that we are rolling back some of the equal pay for women traction we gained over the past decade.

  10. Went to see the pups tonight at the smoothie king square. The first looked pretty awful, and then they turned on the gas after A-D gets himself kicked out of the game. Hard to compete with your best player hitting the shower early. Also the pelicant's didn't trot out the baby.

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