AaronGleeman.com

• Now that I know Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Mila Kunis can cook I'm strongly considering being attracted to her.

• Joe Christensen and Phil Miller have officially switched Minneapolis Star Tribune beats, with Christensen moving to Gophers football and Miller taking over the Twins.

• Lindsay Lohan hasn't started making porn movies (yet), but she has started making movies with pornstars.

• Life imitates an Alanis Morissette song.

• Going behind the scenes of HardballTalk reveals an important discussion between co-workers.

• I probably listen to more podcasts than anyone in the world, so I don't say this lightly: Jeff Garlin talking to Larry David for an hour might be my favorite podcast ever.

• Last week's missed connection was a false alarm, but this one has to be me, right?

• On this week's episode we asked listeners to submit some designs for a potential "Gleeman and The Geek" t-shirt and so far I've received three of them. You can see one here and one here, and here's the third one just because I think it's the most amusing:

In a lot of ways that might be the most accurate portrayal of two people ever, but for now at least we'll keep looking. I'm offering $50 and a free t-shirt to the creator of any design we use, so if you want to put your skills to work please e-mail me.

• There's a lot of really good comedy coming to Minnesota soon. Nick Offerman will be at Mill City Nights on February 18, Tom Segura will be at Acme Comedy Company on February 23, and Bill Burr will be at the State Theatre on March 23. My dad has had a "poker club" for around 50 years and I'm thinking about starting a "going to comedy shows" club.

• Speaking of Offerman, even as a big "West Wing" fan I didn't remember his time on the show.

• Mystic Lake is also opening up a new comedy club in addition to the big showroom where I saw Artie Lange, Dave Attell, Jim Norton, and Amy Schumer a couple months ago. I'm sensing an oncoming battle between my love of stand-up comedy and my love of not leaving the house.

• In terms of this week's best oral histories, it was a tie between Nick Punto sliding into first base and the history of "Good Will Hunting." Punto would have won if he ran through the bag.

• I watched the fascinating, well done, and weird documentary/mystery "The Imposter," which tells the incredible story of a 13-year-old from Texas who went missing in 1994 and was found four years later in Spain, reuniting with his family. Or so it seemed. An artfully layered narrative of interviews, news accounts, and dramatic recreations shows nothing was as it appeared, from the disappearance to the return to the family's reaction. Highly recommended.

• And in a story with some eery similarities to "The Imposter" a 5-year-old abducted from Indiana in 1994 was found this week living (and married) in Minnesota.

• Jonathan Abrams of Grantland has quickly become one of my favorite long-form writers and his latest gem is about the intertwined careers of Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse.

• Save the date: Twins Daily is planning a post-Twins Fest get-together on January 26 at Hubert's across from the Metrodome. I might be there doing some podcasting and I'll definitely be there doing some drinking.

• For some reason Louis Amundson botching the layup in the middle of a blowout loss makes this Ricky Rubio pass even more ridiculous.

Through his first seven games back Rubio has 25 points and 35 assists.

• Jon Heyman being Jon Heyman. And again. And again. And again.

• Numerous incidents of drunk driving, spousal abuse, and various other crimes go unpunished by MLB every season, but they continue to suspend minor leaguers for smoking pot.

• What should the Twins do with Brian Duensing?

• "Gleeman and The Geek" listeners who enjoy when we're interrupted by a drunk person will be delighted by this week's episode, which also included Parker Hageman of Twins Daily joining me for a lengthy discussion of the Twins' involvement in sabermetrics.

• On a related note, I highly recommend the buffalo chicken panino at Panino Brothers in Eden Prairie. It was so good that I barely regretted going off my strict calorie limit and only forced myself to go twice as long as usual on the elliptical machine afterward.

• This tweet is more or less Twitter in a nutshell, complete with the inevitable your/you're error and so much more.

• Thinking someone is great looking is a powerful thing. For instance, I paid to watch Emily Blunt in "Salmon Fishing In The Yemen." And it wasn't bad!

• Michael Keaton on "WTF" with Marc Maron was so damn good.

• Couper Moorhead of NBA.com wrote an interesting article showing how teams are adapting defensively to the increased focus on corner three-pointers.

• Some of this week's weird and random search engine queries that brought people here:

- "Craig Calcaterra's skinny Jewish friend"
- "Van Morrison divorce"
- "Lazy 19-year-old living at home"
- "Troy Aikman's kids"
- "Aubrey Plaza ties up guy"
- "Jim Thome sex life"
- "What does one pound feel like?"
- "Chuck Knoblauch fat"
- "Mixed wrestling Alison Brie"
- "Terry Kunze college stats"
- "Jason Kubel's sister"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Grace Potter (sans The Nocturnals) singing an acoustic version of "Stars":

Interested in supporting AG.com by becoming a "sponsor of the week"? Click here for details.

• I'm pretty convinced that it will rank somewhere between incredibly embarrassing and utterly humiliating, but at Paul Allen's urging and in the name of good radio "Girls Gone Gleeman" is a dating game-style show that's going to happen on KFAN live from the state fair next month. I'll pass along full details later, but in the meantime you can listen to us brainstorming on the air yesterday (mixed in with a bunch of Twins talk during an hour-long segment).

• Based on this St. Paul Pioneer Press headline for Ben Goessling's article, the Twins now have the same problem that's plagued bloggers.

• Join the club, Demi.

• Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David more or less shooting the shit for a day is basically perfect.

• Delmon Young has a gorgeous new mustache, which more than makes up for his .700 OPS.

• Zubaz, white limousines, pitching machines, and Minnesota fashion icons of the 1980s.

• I've given up trying to explain Jason Marquis since the Twins released him.

• Behold, the most Carlos Gomez thing in the history of Carlos Gomez things.

And of course the at-bat ends the only way the at-bat could possibly end.

• I give Michael Phelps credit for not being afraid to further his stoner reputation.

• Kevin Love apparently stays awake on flights to document his Olympic teammates sleeping.

• I'm thinking about trying to put $100,000 together just to hang out with Hakeem Olajuwon.

• Gordon Ramsay making $38 million per year may seem like a lot, but that breaks down to less than 50 dollars per television show.

• On a related note, as a loyal Twitter follower seeing Chelsea Peretti make a brief cameo as an unhappy diner on Hell's Kitchen cracked me up.

• Cal Ripken Jr.'s mother was abducted at gunpoint and Orioles manager Buck Showalter shared a similarly scary story about his mother.

• Warning: Don't use the bathroom around Michael Morse.

• Pirates prospect Starling Marte debuted last night and homered on the first pitch he saw.

• I like to watch Ted Berg make sandwiches.

• As a kid I often wrote stuff on my mom's old typewriter for absolutely no reason other than it seemed fun, but as an adult I'm not quite pretentious enough to install this on my laptop.

• Here's a Google Chat transcript of what happened when my mom asked me why Twitter wasn't working yesterday afternoon:

I waited another half-hour to fess up, and only because Twitter finally started working again.

• Interesting news in the online sportswriting world, as former Fanhouse founding editor and Yahoo! director of blogs Jamie Mottram has a new job with USA Today Sports Media Group.

• An original baseball blogger, Jon Weisman, celebrated 10 years of Dodger Thoughts.

• Now that Alex Rodriguez is old and injured, what are his chances of breaking Barry Bonds' all-time homer record? I'm glad you asked.

• It turns out the mask makes everyone as scary as Bane.

• The Trade Deadline Rises.

• Movie recommendation: The Prestige, which is the film Christopher Nolan directed in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It somehow flew under my radar until now, but has a few of the usual Nolan favorites in an interesting story and is well worth a $1.99 rental on Amazon.

• Speaking of the usual Nolan favorites, this made me laugh.

• Thanks to Barnabas Piper for naming Gleeman and The Geek as one of his favorite podcasts.

• According to this completely scientific poll, AG.com is the second-best "sports blog" and I'm the ninth-best "sports talk radio personality."

• Every day hundreds of people arrive at AG.com via search engine queries and most of them are Googling stuff like "Gleeman" or "Twins blog." I'm also amused by the weird and seemingly random searches that lead people here, so here are some of my favorites from this week:

- "Chuck Knoblauch fat"
- "Dick Bremer hates Kevin Slowey"
- "B.J. Hermsen salary"
- "Rene Tosoni salary"
- "Dana Wessel hair"
- "Kate Bilo age"
- "Evan Longoria dating Kate Upton"
- "Why does Matt Capps suck so badly"
- "Is eating a pound of carrots really zero points"
- "How many children does Brett Myers have"
- "Sasha Gray blog"
- "Patrick Reusse diet"
- "Jay-Z is not left-handed"
- "Kathy Kepler ballet"
- "Is a .199 batting average good"
- "Jenna Fischer covered post-it notes"

And then there were like 500 variations of "how to lose 150 pounds."

• Finally, in honor of Paul Allen describing me to potential dating game applicants as having "a George Michael beard" this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Faith":

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ballplayer: Pelotero, a controversial new documentary about baseball prospects in the Dominican Republic starring Miguel Sano as a 16-year-old.

• Otis Redding is my favorite musician of all time and the amazing thing about the quality and depth of his work is that he died in a plane crash at age 26. His music is often the soundtrack to my writing and it never ceases to make me sad when I think about how many great songs we missed out on. Today would have been his 70th birthday and to celebrate I'll be listening to non-stop Otis. Whether you're a fellow fan or unfamiliar with him, give these songs a try:

- "I've Got Dreams to Remember"
- "That's How Strong My Love Is"
- "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay"
- "Hard To Handle"
- "Try A Little Tenderness"
- "The Happy Song"
- "Your One And Only Man"
- "My Girl"
- "Shake"

And once you're done listening to those, you're encouraged to shake it like a bowl of soup.

• This is why I need an agent.

• It takes some real skill to write an article for MLB.com that would more easily fit in The Onion.

• Adele is the Donovan McNabb of female British soul singers.

• I've always avoided marrying Hank Aaron for specifically this reason. Lauren Lauren!

• Gus Johnson finally gets a much-deserved bigger stage by going from CBS to FOX and one of his broadcast partners for NFL games is Tim Brewster.

• One question was missing from this interview: "Why does Aaron Gleeman sound like you?"

• As a Minnesotan I'm firmly on the "pop" side of the heated pop-versus-soda debate, but we can hopefully all agree to make fun of the people who call it "coke" regardless of the brand.

• If you're going to sit directly behind Brooklyn Decker at an Andy Roddick tennis match, this is basically the perfect shirt to wear.

• As a rookie Jerome Williams was too scared to correct any Giants coaches or players when they called him by the wrong name, so they thought he was "Jeremy" for two years. Seriously.

• I'm going to be on 1500-ESPN before the Twins-Tigers game Saturday afternoon, talking with Darren Wolfson from 1:30 to 2:30. Tune in, listen online, and/or give us a call.

• Larry David's rules of society are pretty, pretty, pretty good:

Words to live by, especially if you're really into having fights with strangers.

• Louis C.K.'s great tribute to George Carlin was equal parts hilarious and touching.

• It's good to see that Elisha Cuthbert has finally recovered from being stripped of the Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com title in 2006.

• I hated Jonathan Taylor Thomas because every girl in my elementary school loved him. And now I hate him because his 30th birthday makes me feel very old. Other than that, we're cool.

• Alex Rodriguez is so cheap that he spent less than one year's salary on his new house.

• Brock Lesnar's first fight in 14 months will be one of the biggest in UFC history.

• My cooking show again wasn't mentioned, but everything else sounds good to me.

• In back-to-back games the Twins' official lineup card--which is typed out and signed by Ron Gardenhire--listed Brian Dinkelman as "Dinkleman" and Liam Hendriks as "Hendricks."

• Stephen Strasburg returned to the big leagues 12 months and three days after Tommy John elbow surgery and averaged 96.7 miles per hour with his fastball.

• I finally watched Source Code. It was a B-minus execution of an A-plus concept, but still pretty enjoyable. Seems like it kinda flew under the radar, but definitely worth renting.

• On a related note, there won't be a problem as long as he stays away from Aubrey Plaza.

• Fantasy football continues to take over the world.

• Thanks to Kirsten Brown of K-Bro's Baseball Blog for the new "Gleeman and The Geek" logo.

• And if you haven't listened to this week's podcast yet, click here. It was a fun/weird one.

• My latest weight-loss effort reached the sixth-month mark Wednesday and I'm very happy to report that I'm down 102 pounds. That sounds impressive and it was definitely hard work, but without question the biggest key to losing 102 pounds in six months is being really, really fat to begin with. I also still have lots more work to do, so anyone who sees me can't be blamed for thinking: "Wait, he still looks like this after losing 102 pounds?!"

Because of all that I'm always sort of embarrassed to talk about losing weight, but hopefully it serves as motivation for me to keep going and maybe even for other people to make a change as well. Certainly if I can do it, you can do it. I didn't have any surgeries or go on any extreme diets, so simply cutting way back on calorie intake and working out on an elliptical machine for a half-hour or so each day can have a significant impact. Now we'll see if I can avoid relapsing.

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is the King of Soul performing "You Left The Water Running":

• I defy anyone to find a better lead paragraph for a news story: "A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria when he mooned a group of Hell's Angels, hurled a puppy at them, and then escaped on a bulldozer."

• In one of the greatest "worlds colliding" moments in comedy history, Ricky Gervais will play himself in the upcoming season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. He once interviewed Larry David for a show on the BBC and the result was predictably fantastic.

• Speaking of David, his ex-wife has what I'd call diverse taste.

• You know you've fallen off the dieting and exercise wagon again when a list like this starts to sound appealing. No. 9 is obviously right up my alley.

• I'd follow the Jason Phillips approach to dating, but I'm not sure I can afford to give out that many baseballs.

• This baby from Brazil is by far the best dancer I've seen since Elaine Benes:

I fully expect table-top diaper dancing to really take off now.

• Sometimes you must turn to Adam Carolla for helping analyzing bad relief pitching.

• I'm not a Celtics fan, but these pictures alone could be enough to make Maria Menounos an Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate. This picture doesn't hurt her cause either.

• During my appearance on 1500-ESPN radio earlier this week Tom Pelissero and Phil Mackey hinted at the Twins being legitimately interested in Cliff Lee, and Pelissero put his inside info in writing yesterday. I'm still very skeptical about the Twins' actual chances of landing Lee, but that they're even kicking the tires on him is plenty interesting.

• Believe it or not, this man dated Alyssa Milano.

• I'm addicted to WhatIfSports.com's Hardball Dynasty game and my league has one franchise open with a new season set to begin next week. Hardball Dynasty is not fantasy baseball, but rather an incredibly detailed simulation of running a fictional MLB organization from rookie-ball to the majors, so due to the steep learning curve and time commitment required we're looking for an owner with previous Hardball Dynasty experience. If you're interested, let me know.

• Bert Blyleven would probably say that Kenshin Kawakami just doesn't know how to win.

• Tom Powers' column about the Ubaldo Jimenez-Francisco Liriano matchup would've been a lot shorter if he'd just said, "Get off my lawn!" Gotta sell those newspapers, I suppose.

• Pedro Cerrano thinks this minor leaguer went a little over the top with his home run trot:

My favorite part of the whole thing is the shoulder shrug at the end.

• One day Lou Piniella went crazy on Steve Stone for having the gall to criticize him and the next day the Cubs' manager followed Stone's advice.

• Two years after his initial arrest for drug possession, former KFAN radio host Jeff Dubay has violated his probation for a second time by using cocaine. Don't do (hard) drugs, kids.

• From the people who brought you Twinkie Town comes SB Nation Minnesota, about which my MinnPost colleague David Brauer wrote an interesting article earlier this week.

• Have love, Cameron Diaz will travel.

• I'm hoping that most of the people who read this blog also read my work on NBCSports.com, but for those of you who don't Hardball Talk underwent an extensive re-design this week. As with any kind of big change the re-design is getting mixed reviews, but if you like my writing or Craig Calcaterra's writing you should check out Hardball Talk because we essentially tag-team blog throughout the day, every day, pumping out dozens of entries.

• Speaking of which, here are some highlights from my NBCSports.com blogging this week:

- Alex Gordon is apparently too good for the Royals
- Before the injuries hit, Mark Mulder was having a great career
- Dustin Pedroia puts on a knee brace and his hitting shoes
- Diamondbacks trade Conor Jackson to A's
- Darin Erstad says "I'm done" after 14 seasons
- Ubaldo Jimenez beats Twins, improves to 13-1 with 1.15 ERA
- Dustin McGowan lasts just eight pitches before another setback

• Finally, in honor of the aforementioned Ms. Diaz, this week's AG.com-approved music video is The Black Keys doing a live cover version of "Have Love, Will Travel" by Richard Berry: