July 1, 2011

Link-O-Rama

This week's Link-O-Rama is sponsored by Wholesale Gold and Diamond Distributors in Minneapolis, so please help support AG.com by considering them for your jewelry needs ...

• Baseball is nice and all, but I think I've finally found my sport.

• I wish Otis Redding would come out with as much post-death material at Tupac.

• Thankfully they didn't print any of my personal information. How embarrassing.

• Just by walking down the street Chrissy Teigen shows why supermodels are supermodels.

• As you might expect, Bruce Springsteen's eulogy for Clarence Clemons was pretty amazing.

• If forced to guess which female cast member on The Office was formerly an NFL cheerleader every single person would be wrong.

Dave Chappelle took all the time he used to spend being funny and used it to work out.

Jim Riggleman sure knows how to celebrate being fired. And now he's my colleague. Sort of.

• Don't let the Sports Illustrated poll fool you: LeBron James stinks at baseball.

• Being traded to Cleveland probably isn't much fun post-James, but it's tough to feel too sorry for Omri Casspi these days.

• Weird question (that reveals too much about me) of the week: Do you ever lie while getting a haircut?

• I recently finished re-watching all five seasons of The Wire and even the second time around it was so amazing that I started to get angry with just a handful of episodes remaining. I also came to the realization that my fashion sense is the exact same as Dukie's. I'm not sure what the best way is to convince anyone who hasn't yet watched The Wire to take the plunge, but here's a video of every epigraph from my favorite television drama of all time:

As the great Lester Freamon put it: "All the pieces matter." What a f***ing show.

• In the latest installment of "other media members reacting to  Sid Hartman doing things" an amused Dana Wessel is joined by a delighted Phil Mackey.

• For several reasons Tanguay Ngombo will go down as the most David Kahn draft pick in the history of David Kahn draft picks.

• I e-mailed this link to my mom, who remains the world's biggest Kevin Garnett fan, and she replied: "She might just be a friend and he just forgot his ring on his nightstand."

• Much like the person in this story, whenever a nude, redheaded actress drunkenly knocks on my hotel room door in the wee hours of the morning my immediate reaction is to call security.

Lindsay Lohan is doing great, as usual.

David Eckstein isn't even playing, yet he still leads the league in "grit and desire."

• As a big Party Down fan, my hopes are officially up.

• OK, now this whole government shutdown thing is getting serious.

• After watching his various appearance this week I'm in favor of making Louis CK all-time talk show guest, like all-time quarterback. Here's part one of his Jimmy Kimmel Live interview:

His segment on The Daily Show was hilarious too and if you don't laugh at those two videos we probably can't be friends. Also, watch his show on FX.

• This week's reminder that I went to journalism school.

Cheick Kongo's crazy knockout of Pat Barry at last weekend's UFC event is the equivalent of a baseball team scoring 10 runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win 10-9.

• Locally trained MMA fighter Brett Rogers couldn't beat Josh Barnett at the Strikeforce event two weekends ago, so instead he beat up his wife.

• On his podcast Joe Rogan repeatedly warned that he likely couldn't pass up the ridiculous money they were offering, so he's back as the host of Fear Factor.

• Before last week my only experience with Brazilian food was gorging myself at a steakhouse, but I'm officially a fan of the cuisine after eating at Samba in Hopkins.

• Recommended podcast of the week: Rob Delaney (the stand-up comic, not the former Twins pitching prospect) was a great guest on "Jordan, Jesse, Go!"

• Last weekend I was at a local baseball tournament where they raffled off a game-used Luis Rivas bat, which longtime AG.com readers will hopefully find as funny as I did. At one point the announcer told the crowd: "There haven't been many sold, so pretty good chance you'd win."

• Another old friend, J.C. Romero, has found a new home with the Nationals ... at Triple-A.

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Tom Waits growling his original The Wire theme, "Way Down In The Hole":

January 7, 2011

Link-O-Rama

• In what can't possibly be merely a coincidence, my 28th birthday was Monday and that same day Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Mila Kunis announced her breakup with longtime boyfriend Macaulay Culkin. The wheels are in motion, people!

• Speaking of Kunis, her co-star Natalie Portman gave an accurate answer when asked what the makers of Black Swan did to ensure that both women and men would want to see a movie about ballet: "A lesbian scene. Everyone wants to see that." And sure enough, the movie has already grossed over $50 million after being made on a $13 million budget.

Adrian Beltre really, really hates it when someone touches the top of his head, so naturally his teammates do it constantly.

• My house smells like this 24/7 anyway, so I guess I just saved $13.

• A sixth-grade Aaron Gleeman would've been thrilled with this news. Better late than never.

• One of my favorite podcasters, Marc Maron, was profiled this week in the New York Times.

• After seeing True Grit last week, I was shocked to learn what Mattie Ross actually looks like.

• My fellow Louis C.K. fans will enjoy this 11-installment series of 15-minute clips from the time he hosted a three-hour radio show by himself. It was part stand-up comedy and part Loveline.

Jon Paul Morosi of FOXSports.com tells the story of how a baseball blogger helped get Bert Blyleven into the Hall of Fame after 14 years on the ballot. I'm guessing there's a good chance Blyleven will thank Rich Lederer in his induction speech.

Hurley Reyes won $114 million playing 4-8-15-16-23-42 in the lottery on Lost, but in real life so many peopled used his numbers that they each got just $150.

• If you watch only one video this week starring a man with "a head like a f***ing orange," make it this one:

That's what genius looks like.

• After winning the bidding for Tsuyoshi Nishoka and finishing runner-up for Hisashi Iwakuma it'll be interesting to see if the Twins make a legitimate push for Japanese superstar pitcher Yu Darvish next offseason.

Salma Hayek is a 44-year-old mother. That's all.

Robert DeNiro has been agreeing to star in almost exclusively bad films for the past decade, so at this point you'd think it wouldn't cost so much for him to make another one.

• I'd been holding out to keep my chance at the Gophers job intact.

Brad Radke is one of the biggest names among the first-timers on next year's Hall of Fame ballot, which is hopefully good news for Barry Larkin, Jeff Bagwell, and Tim Raines.

• Now that Andrew Luck has decided to stay in school for his senior season, teams at the top of the draft should really consider making Maria Menounos their top quarterback target, if only because the old "she'd look good in a [fill in the blank] uniform" cliche applies to all 32 teams.

Good for Boston Herald columnist Steve Buckley, although I'm still curious how long it'll take before one of the players he writes about does the same.

• I haven't seen the whole movie, but Let Me In contains one of the most interesting scenes in recent memory.

• I finally signed up for Netflix steaming and highly recommended it for $8 a month, especially if you use this website to help find stuff worth watching. Some early recommendations: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Super High Me, Restrepo, King of Kong, I Am Comic, Hard Eight.

• Finally, because I'm slowly but surely starting to appreciate Bruce Springsteen in my old age this week's AG.com-approved music video is The E Street Band with a live version of "Rosalita" from five years before I was born:

July 2, 2010

Link-O-Rama

• Once upon a time Steve Carrell leaving The Office would have made me sad, but it's tough to get too worked up given how far the show has slipped recently. It was a good run.

Mariano Rivera is the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history and the New York Times has an amazing video breakdown that sheds some light on how he's been able to dominate for 15 years with basically one pitch.

• Despite being among the most brutal reviews of all time the Washington Post account actually increases my interest in a Courtney Love concert.

• Losing to the Twins wasn't even close to the worst part of Johan Santana's week. Setting aside everything else, my first question is what kind of maniac has sex and then immediately plays tennis?

• Starting next year the Mets will pay Bobby Bonilla a $1.2 million annual salary through 2035.

• While the TwinsCentric viewing party watched the Twins' ridiculous extra-inning win over the Phillies last week one of the televisions at Park Tavern showed an Amanda Bynes movie. We naturally spent the final few innings debating which movie it was, to the point that Seth Stohs missed Ryan Howard's game-ending strikeout because he was busy looking at her IMDB page on his phone. Less than 24 hours later Bynes retired from acting at age 24. Eerie, huh?

• Hopefully they'll also be able to trade him for Tom Gugliotta.

• Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate Kelly Brook spent the week modeling various bikinis while on vacation. Surely no further commentary is necessary.

• Video of the "100 Greatest Movie Insults" is almost as not-safe-for-work as it is fun to watch:

My favorite is "go home and get your shine box," but anything from Alex Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross and R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket is pretty great too.

Ron Artest celebrated an NBA title just like you'd expect Ron Artest to celebrate an NBA title.

• I'm apparently one of the few people who loved Louis C.K.'s first show that got canceled by HBO after one season, so it's no surprise that I also love his new show on FX. They're running back-to-back episodes every Tuesday night and I highly recommend watching assuming that you enjoy things that are really funny. And if you've never seen his amazing stand-up before, watch this recent set on Lopez Tonight. If you don't laugh, we can't be friends any more.

Party Down deserved far better than to be canceled after two seasons on STARZ, but it was such a good show and so overlooked that most of the actors got better gigs. Adam Scott will be a regular on Parks and Recreation and my crush on Lizzy Caplan will live on forever.

Freaks and Geeks is another show that deserved much better, but at least the Independent Film Channel will now be home to the old episodes nearly a decade after NBC sadly canceled the series after one amazing season. IFC also has Arrested Development re-runs.

• There's still time for the Twins to choose him over Joe Mauer.

• Some rare good news from the newspaper world: Let go by the St. Pioneer Press a year ago, friend of AG.com Phil Miller has been hired full time by the Minneapolis Star Tribune after doing a bunch of part-time work for them recently. I'm a little sad that Miller will be covering Gophers football after previously reporting on the Twins and Timberwolves, but his writing is so good it might actually get me to read about Tim Brewster and company. Maybe.

Conan O'Brien can feel good knowing that at least no one is watching Jay Leno.

• My weight-loss effort was a total failure last month and the fact that there's a donut shop opening soon about a block from my house isn't going to help.

• Next time you get frustrated by a Twins baserunning mistake, remember Ruben Rivera:

Jon Miller's play-by-play really takes the clip to a whole new level.

• Rather than make some lame joke about fumbling, I'll simply link to Adrian Peterson and his Playboy-posing fiancee.

• Having chatted with him about such things, let's just say that this drawing of Jon Heyman is not a self-portrait.

David Kahn has accomplished in two years what two decades filled mostly with losing could not, because between the draft and first couple days of free agency I'm giving serious thought to picking a new favorite NBA team. Any suggestions?

• This song randomly got stuck in my head last week despite not hearing it for 15 years, and I defy you to find a superior lyric: "Leave you kinda startled like the funk off a Frito / Make your man jealous while hoes cheese like Doritos."

• Based on this quote, I'd guess Ron Gardenhire reads Twins blogs, but not this Twins blog or any of the Twins blogs I read.

• A pair of Twins blogs Gardenhire and you should check out: OMG MN Twins and Knuckleballs.

• For whatever reason I was very late to the Drew Magary party, but he's quickly become one of my favorite writers because of absurd-yet-interesting things like this. As for the question on the table, I'd definitely take the over on 25,000.

• Friend of AG.com and awesome poker writer Paul McGuire has a new book called Lost Vegas that I can guarantee will be worth reading.

• I've been writing the "Daily Dose" column on Rotoworld each weekday since April 3, 2006, so it definitely feels weird to say that today's is my 515th and final column.

• On a related note, here are some highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Can Ubaldo Jimenez be the first 30-game winner since 1968?
- Stephen Strasburg's teammates let him down again in loss
- The next 300-game winner? How about Jamie Moyer?
- Pat Burrell apparently left his bat back in the National League
- White Sox are winning, so rookie Dayan Viciedo isn't playing
- GM says Carlos Zambrano's contract wasn't a bad deal ... and he's right
- White Sox reportedly targeting Nationals slugger Adam Dunn

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Eddie Vedder joining Bruce Springsteen for a live version of "No Surrender":