February 5, 2009

Link-O-Rama

  • Rashad McCants is having a rough couple of months. First he was glued to the bench when the guy who drafted him took over as coach and now he's been dumped by Kim Kardashian's sister:

    Khloe was devastated when she discovered evidence that Rashad was cheating with girls online. She confronted him, and he reacted angrily and tried to deny the story at first before admitting that it was true. He'd been hooking up with girls over Facebook for the past two weeks.

    Finally an answer to my long-standing "what's the point of Facebook?" question!

  • Tyler Durden is apparently working for Comcast now. Who knew?
  • Official Television Critic of AG.com Alan Sepinwall pegged "boom, roasted" as his favorite line from The Office's brilliant post-Super Bowl show, but I'm going with: "No arms and no legs is basically how you exist now, Kevin. You don't do anything." In fact, replace "Kevin" with "Aaron" and that could be the tagline for this blog. Or my whole life.
  • Speaking of The Office, the inevitable has happened.
  • Jon Weisman is one of the few baseball bloggers who started before me (by a month, back in 2002) and is still going strong, so it was great to see that Dodger Thoughts has been snatched up by the Los Angeles Times. Weisman is a features editor at Variety, so he's hardly the stereotypical kid typing from his parents' basement, but it's somewhat surprising that more newspapers haven't brought prominent bloggers into the fold to boost their online content.

    Several years ago the Minneapolis Star Tribune convinced John Bonnes to move his Twins Geek blog to their site, but that was short-lived amid union-related issues and since then most newspapers have turned their beat writers into bloggers. Still, it seems natural that, for instance, U.S.S. Mariner's superb content and huge audience would be of interest to one of the Seattle newspapers. As the line between "mainstream" and "blogger" continues to blur my guess is that we'll see more moves like Weisman's.

  • Speaking of the line between mainsteam and blogger, this television report from 1981 about "online newspapers" that take two hours to download is tremendously amusing:


    Naturally much of the piece seems silly looking back nearly 30 years later, but the report's conclusion holds up pretty well: "Engineers now predict that a day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that's a few years off. So for the moment at least, this fellow [a man selling newspapers on the street] isn't worried about being out of job."
  • Former Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Elisha Cuthbert looks good in a recent pictorial for Complex, but this disturbing news puts everything into question.
  • As part of cutbacks at ESPN, Jeff Pearlman has left ESPN.com for SI.com:

    Unfortunately, like most places these days, ESPN has been struggling. This is just my take, but it seems the network/website/magazine became obsessed with adding every big journalism name out there. So it started unloading tons and tons of money on the Rick Reillys of the business. Rick, of course, is a wonderful talent. But what have they done with him? At some point, ESPN seemed to be hiring for the sake of hiring. They treated journalists in the way sports organizations treat players--gobbling up "free agents" without much thought. Now, they're loaded with big names, but is the finished product that much better? Probably not.

    Good or bad my first impression of a sports columnist tends to stick, but my initial take was way off on two well-known guys: Pearlman and Jason Whitlock. At first they both struck me as Jay Mariotti-style columnists who were more interested in creating controversy than actually producing good writing, but I've since come to appreciate them both as very good, entertaining columnists who genuinely have a lot of interesting (and sometimes controversial) stuff to say. Also, neither engages in much poultry humor.

  • This picture of Jessica Alba is perhaps the greatest example of worlds colliding since Relationship George killed Independent George.
  • The money, fame, and massive audience didn't do it, but reading about how he watched the Super Bowl at a party with "my friend Ace" while knowing that he's talking about Adam Carolla officially made me jealous of Bill Simmons.
  • Friend of AG.com and Rotoworld Baseball Draft Guide contributor Conor Glassey has been hired full time by Baseball America, where he'll write about prospects and keep tabs on my over/under bet with BA boss John Manuel regarding Nick Blackburn winning 70 career games.
  • Beyonce appears to have put on a little weight, but her dancing remains fantastic:


    Be warned, men. Apparently that's what happens when you put a ring on it.
  • It's been quite a comeback for Mickey Rourke, who's now free to chat up A-list actresses on the red carpet with his hand down his pants and date 21-year-olds.
  • With both Nick Coleman and Katherine Kersten on their way out, the Star Tribune is in search of two new columnists. Sadly, David Brauer of MinnPost notes that both positions will be filled by current Star Tribune staffers, which severely limits the fun that could have been had nominating people for the gigs. Given those limitations my nominees would be Sid Hartman and Jim Souhan, because presumably that would at least get them out of the sports section. UPDATE: Nevermind.
  • Artie Lange, looking good as always. Actually, that picture isn't far off from what you'd find here at the Minnesota headquarters for Rotoworld during an average work day.
  • Jay Busbee of Yahoo! Sports ranked the "50 worst announcers in sports today" and I'm in near-total agreement with the top 10, but picking Paul Allen of KFAN for No. 39 surprised me if only because he's the Vikings' radio announcer and nearly everyone else on the list has a significantly more prominent gig. Plus, in my admittedly limited exposure to Vikings games on radio Allen seemingly does a decent (albeit excitably homerish) job. Picking a guy who no one outside of Minnesota knows just seems odd.
  • Speaking of announcers, I've been impressed with the Gus Johnson-Shon Morris duo on Big Ten Network. Johnson makes any game sound thrilling and Morris has a good sense of humor to go along with some pretty solid analyst skills. They make an excellent team and definitely qualify as the biggest bright spot for a network that has struggled to produce watchable programming to surround games.
  • Jeff MacGregor of ESPN.com put together a handy, Mad Libs-style guide for sportswriters covering the Super Bowl.
  • On baseball's all-time leaderboards Jim Rice ranks 55th in homers, 56th in RBIs, 89th in slugging percentage, and is not among the top 100 in batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, hits, or runs. He was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame. On football's all-time leaderboards Cris Carter ranks third in catches, fourth in receiving touchdowns, seventh in receiving yards, eighth in total touchdowns, and 24th in total yards from scrimmage. He was recently denied induction into the Hall of Fame. Huh?
  • New blog to check out: Sports on a Stick.
  • Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Jimi Hendrix performing a live cover version of the Chuck Berry classic "Johnny B. Goode":


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