I have never been away from the WGOM for a whole week.  Hopefully you all can point me to any awesome threads I missed.  And, this may be really pretentious, but I thought I'd recap some highlights and lowlights of my trip.  This was my first ever road trip, and aside from a flight to Yakima to see Spooky, I had never left the Midwest before.  So the last week I was awash with a whole lotta new.

Continue reading What I Did On My Summer Vacation →

Considered one of the greatest albums to come out of the British post-punk period (1979-1984), Entertainment! is an album of grim politics, alienation, and loathsome sexuality. However it is also an album that musically breaks out from the typical 12…1234 cadence of most punk albums. Ambitious in scope, leftist in its politics, jarring in its music, Entertainment! is one of my favorite albums from the 1970’s and one that sounds just as vital today as it did over 30 years ago.

One of the first things one notices upon playing Entertainment! is that it is funky. The bass is deep and heavy throughout and the album is extremely danceable. In fact a popular Minneapolis band from the early 1980’s, The Phones, covered two songs from this album and would fill the dance floor singing Damaged Goods and I Found that Essence Rare (good thing we weren’t listening to the lyrics, as they are somewhat of a downer). Besides the bass, the guitar work also deserves mention. Always jarring, at times sounding like china busting up into shards in an all-tile bathroom, the guitars were played in a way that was never heard on a major label album and have been copied many times since.  Vocally, the lyrics are sung in that deadpan, affected British accent that was made popular by other British bands like Wire and Joy Division.  The album ends with Anthrax, with its feedback-heavy wailing guitars while two different lyrics are being sung-spoke in each ear (one is basically a treatise on why Gang of 4 doesn’t do love songs).  Amazingly enough, the original single has even harsher guitars (yes I have the single too).

Even if you don’t want to listen to the lyrics, the album is a great listen either alone or at a party. It really is the high water mark of those art-school educated British bands that came out in the late 1970’s and 80’s and as I said above, just as fresh today as it was in 1979 (You recently  heard the opening guitar riff from Nature’s Not In It in a Xbox Kinect commercial).  I’ve carried this album with me since 1981 and listen to it often whenever I need an uplift and want to listen to something that you don’t hear much anywhere else. For that reason, Entertainment! is a classic that deserves your attention.

EDIT:  BTW, when listening to this album, turn it up to 11!

I don't know how many people here are free on Easter Monday, but it's a public holiday here. If you're available for a Monday pod recording, please say so in the comments and we'll see if we can get Episode 3 out to everyone.

This week's fungo comes to you via sean's link in the CoC:

Another year, another piece about Twins hitters complaining about Target Field's dimensions. Fine, guys, we get the point: you don't like the challenge of scoring runs in a ballpark which might actually allow you to field a competitive team. Mr. Pohlad, tear down this ballpark!

In its place, the Citizens of the WGOM will build you a new ballpark in which you can play a child's game for boo-coo bucks. The only hitch is, we get to pick a ballpark from baseball's past - whether it's a defunct major league park, a current or former minor league park, or a park from the Japanese league, it doesn't matter - and that will be your new home ballpark. We will magically insert it into the warehouse district (and magically make the Multifoods Tower/33 South Sixth invisible). After that, it's up to you and the front office to figure out how to win there (for the sake of things, we'll assume the Twins can figure out how leverage their "new" home to make enough money to win in an old ballpark like Fenway or Wrigley).

Gentlemen, your nominations, please.

This week's question is pretty simple:

If your baseball skills had been good enough to get you to the majors, who would be your number one comparable player on your baseball-reference page? In other words, which actual major leaguer's style of play and skills most closely resemble the ideal version of your own when you played? And what number is on your jersey?

What does the WGOM's roster look like?

I suppose some may quibble with this statement, but I think the Twins have been fairly judicious when it comes to retiring player numbers. Four of the six are Hall of Famers who spent all or significant portions of their career in a Twins uniform, and the other two are franchise players who, while not Hall of Famers, had great careers and have tremendous resonance among fans.

If you ask most Twins fans who their favorite all-time Twins player is, you'd probably stand to receive more answers with a name represented by one of the numbers above than any other name. While that's all well and good, I think the more interesting answers are the unexpected players who get mentioned. With that in mind, who is your favorite Twin of all time who is not honored with a retired number? If your answer would be a recent player, who is your favorite Twin who hasn't played for the team in the last decade?

Mine is the guy in this photo.