Quote of the Week, courtesy of White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who initially thoughtPaul Konerko suffered a season-ending knee injury after crumbling to the ground Tuesday night:
I think he was out for good. I think he was that football player, the guy who kisses all the good-looking girls.
For anyone who doesn't speak fluent Ozzie, "that football player who kisses all the good-looking girls" is Tom Brady. Fortunately for the White Sox and unfortunately for the Twins' playoff chances, it sounds like Konerko avoided a major injury.
As the Boston Heraldnotes, David Ortiz's sacrifice bunt in the 12th inning Wednesday night "was his first since April 14, 2001, for the Minnesota Twins." Along with 284 homers and a .287/.383/.553 hitting line in 5,370 career plate appearances, Ortiz has now laid down two sacrifices.
Speaking of Ortiz, he got his hands on footage of Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon dressing up in drag and dancing with a guy for some sort of high school production and naturally did what any good teammate would do in that situation, assembling all the players and various media members together in the clubhouse to watch the video:
The whole thing is basically 343 seconds of comedy gold, including a clearly shell-shocked Papelbon discussing his "sexuality" with an absolutely giddy Ortiz afterward, but my favorite part of the video is Big Papi holding court in the clubhouse wearing a red headband, matching knee-high socks, and a blue robe with his name and jersey number on the back. Papelbon in a blonde wig was a marginally less absurd look.
Minneapolis Star Tribune television critic Neal Justin penned a very nice write-up about HBO's new show, True Blood, which has me hooked after one episode.
On the other hand, I've basically given up on Entourage, which has very quickly gone from somewhat amusing to aggressively annoying. Of course, Emmanuelle Chriqui reprising her role still might have the power to change my mind.
If you've got an hour to kill, Ian Parker's odd, 8,300-word profile of Alec Baldwin in The New Yorker is a fascinating read.
Jessica Alba's odds of reclaiming the Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com title are slowly rising following her pregnancy, but Elisha Cuthbert's stock is plummeting even without a good excuse like "child birth."
Next time you see me worrying about the potential level of reader participation here, remind me not to be such a doofus. My "hope" for the first-ever AG.com "live chat" earlier this week was that "at least a few dozen of you can take a break from whatever it is you do on a Monday afternoon to join me." That goal proved just slightly off when 331 people showed up to ask a total of 436 questions in a bit over two hours.
Considering the lack of warning and seemingly less than ideal Monday afternoon time slot that's pretty damn amazing to me and obviously shows that there would be plenty of interest in making the live chat a weekly feature. My plan is to do a live chat here one afternoon each week, but I'm looking for some feedback on whether Monday or Wednesday would be the best fit (for now at least Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday aren't doable for me). If you're interested in the live chats, please cast your vote:
UPDATE: The poll is closed. Thanks for voting.
Incidentally, my Rotoworld live chat yesterday afternoon featured 5,195 questions from 2,067 people, which is insane. Despite answering an average of 1.25 questions per minute for over two hours, by the end every other query was some variation of "why aren't you answering my question?!" Fielding football questions from a 2,000-person angry mob is surprisingly entertaining, but it was a lot more fun having something resembling an actual chat with a more manageable, laid back audience here.
Shockingly, an industry that reportedly continues to hand huge money to Jay Mariotti also continues to have problems sustaining readership and turning profits.
Overwhelmingly Obvious Headline of the Week, via (what else?) Sid Hartman's recent Star Tribunecolumn: "Tarvaris Jackson still needs to win over fans." Gee, ya think? In equally shocking local news, "Aaron Gleeman still needs to not eat as much" and "Twins bullpen still needs to stop losing games."
If anyone reading this from Sue McLean & Associates feels like giving me a couple complimentary tickets to Susan Tedeschi's upcoming concert in Minneapolis, I'll gladly provide some nice plugs here. You know, in addition to that one.
I'd never heard of The Gabe Dixon Band before last week, but they made of a fan of me by doing "Till You're Gone" on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, which is now this week's AG.com-approved music video (skip ahead to the 1:15 mark to bypass the comedy stylings of Craig Ferguson):
Once you're done here, check out my latest "Daily Dose" column over at Rotoworld.
