Sometimes nerds are awesome, like when the seriously attempt to answer burning questions such as: "How long did Bill Murray spend trapped in the film Groundhog Day?" There's even a pie chart.
My MinnPost colleague David Brauerreports that the St. Paul Pioneer Press is shaking up its sports section a bit, moving John Shipley from Wild coverage to secondary Twins writer behind Kelsie Smith and having Shipley, Ray Richardson, and Brian Murphy split the Timberwolves beat. Now if only they could somehow find a way to make the newspaper's website less of an unusable disaster.
Joe Maddon has added to his trademark hipster glasses by dying his hair black, which means that earrings, Ed Hardy t-shirts, and a tribal tattoo can't be too far away for the 55-year-old Rays manager.
UPDATE: Too late on the Ed Hardy t-shirts thing, apparently. And I was just kidding!
Gregg Rosenthal's plan to take over the world is progressing nicely, as the Wall Street Journal just named Rotoworld the best website for fantasy football draft preparation while "judging for ease of use, value, features, and configurability to the myriad scoring rules used by various fantasy leagues." Their conclusion? "Rotoworld provided so much information and value it is hands down our No. 1 pick."
Speaking of Rotoworld's football content, Chris Wesselingwrote a tremendous article about Vikings rookie Percy Harvin's upside this season.
I've been to dozens of Northern League games back when the St. Paul Saints were in the league, but was never lucky enough to see opposing managers brawl along the third-base line:
The game was in Canada, so naturally the play-by-play guy yelled out, "Oh, it's the old hockey fight!" And my favorite part is that no one was suspended for the incident that involved two middle-aged men in charge of running their respective professional baseball teams punching each other in the face.
Bill Simmons did another great interview on his ESPN.com podcast, this time with Steve Nash. Lots of interesting questions, lots of worthwhile topics, and 50 minutes of actual conversation. I'm convinced that he's one of the best interviewers around and Nash was very good too.
Matt Keough made an All-Star team, pitched in the playoffs, and won 58 games in the big leagues, yet when TMZ.com reports on his recent DUI arrest he's merely "Matt Keough of The Real Housewives of Orange County."
During the last Olympics my statement that Usain Bolt's accomplishments were superior to Michael Phelps' accomplishments drew a lot of negative reaction, but running will forever be more impressive to me than swimming and Bolt continues to dominate. This week Bolt shattered his own world records for both 100 meters and 200 meters, including "the biggest improvement in the 100-meter record since electronic timing began in 1968." And he can even show off his skills on dry land.
If you've ever wanted to see a 6-foot-6, 300-pound man hit a baseball 400 feet and then sprint 360 feet in 15 seconds, make sure to check out the footage of Kyle Blanks' inside-the-park homer Tuesday.
As always I'm the last person in the world to see every big movie, but I finally caught Tropic Thunder on HBO earlier this week and loved it. Started extraordinarily strong and sagged a little bit at times, but overall very enjoyable with tons of funny moments. I'd give it an A-minus.
A recent study shows that short children aren't necessarily treated differently than tall children, but to me the far more interesting tidbits from the New York Daily Newsarticle are that the average American adult male is just 5-foot-9 and there's a National Organization of Short Statured Adults called NOSSA. I've never really thought of myself as that tall at around 6-foot-2, and I'd definitely rather be short than fat. Of course, the grass is always greener on the non-obese side of the fence.
Speaking of obese, Washington Post blogger Dan Steinberg put together a roundup of stories about how out of shape Stephen Strasburg was when he first arrived at San Diego State. He weighed 250 pounds, was throwing up 10 minutes into the team's first workout, had teammates wondering if there was something medically wrong with him, and earned the nickname "Slothburg." And just two years later he's the best pitching prospect in baseball with a deal worth over $15 million. Amazing.
As one of the few people who loved Lucky Louieon HBO, I'm excited to see that Louie C.K. is getting a new show on FX. The network is also producing a new show about "a group of longtime guy friends who participate in a fantasy football league," which sounds pretty lame even to someone who works for a fantasy sports website. FX does a lot of good stuff though, so we'll see.
According to a recent study, 40 percent of Twitter updates are "pointless babble." First, that number seems low to me. Second, pointless babble can be entertaining if the people doing the babbling are interesting. I'm still getting the hang of what type of stuff to post on Twitter, but have gotten a lot of good feedback from people who enjoy my updates and have somehow accumulated over 1,000 "followers" who signed up to have my unique brand of pointless babble delivered right to them. I'm addicted.
