AaronGleeman.com

• My favorite The Onion headline in a while: "250 Million Americans Still Need Guests On Their Podcasts This Week."

• "Minnetonka Man" is back in the news!

• Last weekend's party bus outing to St. Cloud for a Northwoods League game was a big success. Platinum Transportation Services provided 20 adults with the perfect venue to act like idiots, the St. Cloud Rox welcomed us in style, and the only major incident was John Bonnes dancing.

• Parker Hageman recapped the #StearnsCountyPartyBus on "The Sportive" podcast, offering up an extremely flattering portrayal of my role.

• It's tough to blame Glen Perkins for being upset that he couldn't go on the party bus.

• Indians closer Chris Perez and his wife got arrested for having marijuana delivered to their house in their dog's name.

• Anyone interested in regional linguistic differences like "pop" versus "soda" will love these heat maps representing the entire country.

• This week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode featured lots of talk about Miguel Sano's move up to Double-A, the Twins' draft picks, and the debauchery in St. Cloud.

• In addition to being one half of my favorite podcast Dave Shumka also makes amusing video compilations of David Letterman's running inside joke with drummers:

Seriously though, "Stop Podcasting Yourself" is something you should be listening to.

• I think we should all go to the Twins' open tryout at the Metrodome next week.

• Eddie Guardado, whom the Twins are inducting into their Hall of Fame this weekend, ranked 26th on my countdown of the best Twins of all time.

• I wore JNCO jeans throughout junior high school despite having zero skateboarding ability, so this BuzzFeed list was a painful way to relive being a poser with terrible fashion sense.

• Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee" is back for a second season and the first episode provides the latest evidence that Sarah Silverman is the best.

• "Man shot inside Pizza Luce in downtown Minneapolis" isn't a surprising headline if you read my recap of last year's SABR convention and remember my late-night adventures there.

• This is probably the most important news story in the history of the internet.

• There's never been a better advertisement for Checkerboard Pizza's chicken wings, but even washing your hands afterward is pretty amazing.

• Three of the greats: Norm MacDonald, Gilbert Gottfried, and Gilbert Gottfried's laugh.

• Stuff learned re-watching "The Sopranos" a decade later: Buster Bluth was Junior Soprano's chemotherapy nurse, Meadow Soprano was a big Jonny Lang fan, and Omar Little may not have been the best host.

• "Mr. Show" and "Breaking Bad" fans will enjoy Bob Odenkirk's chat with Paul F. Tompkins:

"Let's start the horseshit!"

• After experiencing his first draft as the Astros' pro scouting director former Baseball Prospectus writer Kevin Goldstein talked to Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller about life behind the scenes.

• Jon Hamm's second cousin was drafted by the Nationals in the 14th round.

• My favorite part of Esquire's interview with Christina Hendricks: "They asked me what a man should drink and I said Scotch."

• As a Hebrew school expellee I loved hearing Seth Rogan and Marc Maron commiserate about how they both made Hebrew school teachers cry as kids.

• On a related note, Maron was a guest on Joan Rivers' in-bed talk show and her first words to him were: "All right, you're Jewish."

• Dodgers fans are buying a whole bunch of Yasiel Puig stuff.

• Twitter has a great sense of humor.

• New podcast discovery: "Lady To Lady" with Tess Barker, Barbara Gray, and Brandie Posey, which I discovered via the Alison Agosti episode because she's always a great guest.

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

- "Miguel Sano huge"
- "Roy Smalley plastic surgery"
- "How long before cake turns to pounds?"
- "Carson Cistulli's wife"
- "Where is Bill Smith now?"
- "Is Ryan Braun a jerk?"
- "Larry David with beard"
- "Is Drew Butera still playing?"
- "Twins in House of Cards"
- "Joe Mauer pulled balls"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Downtown Train" by Tom Waits:

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ticket King, a local ticket broker that doesn't charge check-out fees, offers in-store pickup, and specializes in Twins tickets. Please support them for supporting AG.com.

• For most of my life I dreamed of being a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I gave up on that ever happening a while back, but this might be the next-best thing: Star Tribune metro reporter Ben Johnson wrote a lengthy article about me and my weird career path and AG.com reaching 10 million visitors. I haven't seen a copy of the physical newspaper yet, but the article got top billing in the "West Metro" section of the website:

Thanks to Johnson for being such a pleasure to deal with and to various people for saying nice things about me. My mom and grandma are very happy. Give it a read.

• I'm mostly just happy that the photographer didn't ask me to pose like this.

• Matt Harvey never even gave me a chance.

• Glen Perkins' highly effective "make every Twins fan fall in love with him" tour continues with an amusing collection of quotes in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

• I've been using Twitter wrong this whole time. Also, who won Miss Minnesota this year?

• Rays prospect Joshua Sale provides more evidence of the strong correlation linking being an asshole and not knowing the difference between "your" and "you're."

• I have a few openings in my "Hardball Dynasty" league on WhatIfSports and the new season begins next week. If you're interested in joining, please read this first.

• As someone who really got hooked on poker from watching ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker in 2003, Grantland's oral history of Chris Moneymaker and company was a great read.

• If you're curious about who the Twins will select with the No. 4 overall pick in next week's draft, I profiled all the potential targets from Mark Appel to Reese McGuire.

• And on this week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode we went even more in depth talking with special guest Jeremy Nygaard about the upcoming draft and also tried to figure out the Twins' reasoning behind all the recent roster moves.

• Who wore it better? Zubaz edition, starring me and another St. Paul boy born in 1983:

My limo was bigger than Joe Mauer's trophy, if nothing else.

• Nick Swarsdon on "Norm MacDonald Live" has to be one of the five funniest interviews ever by someone wearing a Timberwolves hat.

• It took a while, but Carlos Gomez has become one of the best players in baseball at age 27.

• My weekly appearance on Paul Allen's show was derailed by talk of what exactly goes on in my bedroom and then things went downhill from there.

• Speaking of PA, he randomly sat behind Parker Hageman at Wednesday night's Twins-Brewers game and they both got on television reacting to Chris Parmelee's great catch. Of course, if you look at the video from another angle Hageman tried to pull a Steve Bartman and failed.

• Once upon a time reading "some college, no degree is not going to cut it" would've scared me.

• Curtis Granderson is donating $5 million to his alma mater, which is about 10 percent of his lifetime earnings. In related news, every six months someone from the University of Minnesota calls me looking for money, I offer to donate in exchange for a diploma, and they hang up.

• I like that my HardballTalk blogmate Craig Calcaterra is now a leading source for pictures of dudes in their underwear.

• This week's Carson Cistulli-Dayn Perry chat/business meeting included Cistulli revealing that he's "both a talented and enthusiastic dancer" with "legitimate moves" and Perry explaining that he "would out-dead lift the shit out of Rob Neyer."

• Yu Darvish has nearly as many strikeouts as the Twins' entire starting rotation.

• I'm sure there's an official video for "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk, but I'll choose to believe this is it:

That's co-produced by Minnesota native, stand-up comedian, and Twitter rascal Joe Mande.

• MinnPost is a non-profit organization and as part of their fundraising efforts you can hang out with me (and John Bonnes) in a Target Field suite and watch the Twins-Tigers game on June 15.

• Chris Colabello wore the wrong uniform Tuesday night and no one noticed until after the game.

• SABR posted details of all the research presentations scheduled for this year's convention, which is July 31 to August 4 in Philadelphia. I've gone to every convention since 2004.

• Why did the Twins send down Oswaldo Arcia and when are they going to call up Kyle Gibson?

• Comedian/writer Morgan Murphy was a really enjoyable guest on Jay Mohr's podcast because she talked about my three favorite things: Sports, comedy, and depression.

• "Sound City" is one of the best music documentaries I've ever seen and it's available on Amazon for just 99 cents this week. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

• If you're interested in becoming an AG.com sponsor, next week's spot hasn't been reserved yet and you can read all the details here.

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

- "Is Kevin Slowey for real?"
- "Elisabeth Moss feet obsession"
- "Robby Incmikoski is how old?"
- "Caleb Thielbar's mom"
- "Jon Bones KFAN"
- "Ryan Doumit shirtless"
- "Was Gary Gaetti any good for the Twins?"
- "Craig Calcaterra fan fiction"
- "Who are the FSN Girls dating?"
- "Meatsauce work KFAN pizza"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Dreams" by The Game:

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ticket King, a local ticket broker that doesn't charge check-out fees, offers in-store pickup, and specializes in Twins tickets. Please support them for supporting AG.com.

• News story lead sentence of the week: "In one instance, a bar in New Jersey mixed rubbing alcohol with caramel food coloring and served it as scotch."

• Behold, the dumbest PR pitch I've ever gotten. And that's saying something.

• If you've always wanted to hear a compilation of Alonzo Mourning being mentioned in rap songs this is your lucky day. Also, almost every lyric was "Mourning like Alonzo."

• According to the guy who invented the GIF it's pronounced "jif" rather than "gif." I will, however, continue saying "jif or gif, whichever way you say it" every time I speak the word.

• One thing I know for certain about GIFs? They were made for Delmon Young.

• Never forget: "Brian Dozier is going to be the next big thing for the Twins."

• I take a similar approach to dating, but thankfully a Honda Fit doesn't cause much damage.

• On this week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode we talked a lot about Kyle Gibson and Chris Colabello, and then John Bonnes got creeped out by my choice of romantic music.

• On a related note, I've been spending way too much time thinking of intro/outro songs for the radio show. They need to have a strong opening riff and first 30-45 seconds and be free of curse words, which rules out a ton of good ones. Here's my preliminary list, in alphabetical order.

• I've been wondering what my old pal and former FSN sideline reporter Robby Incmikoski is up to in his new gig with the Pirates and based on this video he's doing a lot of dry cleaning:

They were nice enough to provide him with a shower too, at least.

• I'm in search of a new role model after this devastating news, but we'll always have Super Stan.

• White Sox left-hander Chris Sale is a great pitcher, but as a lifelong fatso reading about how he eats like a pig and can't put on any weight makes me instinctively want to hate him forever.

• Paul Allen warned that he had "a big surprise" planned for my weekly Thursday appearance on his show and it turned out to be my mom, three grade school friends, and a former "date" telling stories for a "This Is Your Life"-style segment. Here's photographic evidence of the story my mom told.

• And to think, I used to be considered the young baseball blogger as a 19-year-old.

• Hard as it is to believe, the Twins' rotation has actually been worse than last year's mess.

• I got a similar welcome to the NBC Sports office, except with cartons of Chinese food.

• Red Sox reliever Koji Uehara feels strongly about getting a high-five from Shane Victorino.

• Try to imagine one of the Minnesota newspapers running a story like this about a Twins player.

• Sabermetrics in urban planning? Sure, why not.

• Old friend Francisco Liriano is off to a great start with the Pirates.

• As someone forever nostalgic about 1990s music Target Field's just-announced July concert is intriguing, but I'm boycotting until Mase gets involved.

• This is easily the angriest I've ever been about anything.

• Nick Offerman playing Alison Brie's father in a movie is going to break the internet and "The Kings Of Summer" looks pretty good too:

Lots of other funny people in the cast too.

• Jen Kirkman, who's always a great podcast guest, has started her own podcast.

• Question of the Week over at HardballTalk: If you could have a lengthy but mediocre MLB career would you choose to be a fifth starter (like Kevin Correia or Bruce Chen), a middle reliever (like Brandon Lyon or Chad Qualls), or a platoon hitter (like Reed Johnson or Jonny Gomes)? I gave my answer in the comments section.

• Pamela Adlon, who voiced Bobby Hill on "King Of The Hill" and was in both of Louis C.K.'s television shows, was predictably a great/crazy guest on "WTF" with Marc Maron.

• Congratulations to Link-O-Rama regular Dana Wessel for his new gig with KTWIN-96.3, which adds a great producer and the best hair in Minnesota radio.

• In terms of Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidates, can this count as a first date?

• Positive customer service experiences are so rare that I feel like sharing one. Some keys on my year-old Macbook stopped working, so I took it to the Apple Store in Ridgedale Mall. It's my first non-PC and so naturally I was expecting the worst, but everyone there was incredibly helpful and friendly. And despite a 3-5 day repair timetable I got the Macbook back within 48 hours after the parts arrived and had a nice chat about the Twins with a Mac Genius who reads AG.com.

(If you're curious: He wants Aaron Hicks sent down, thinks the payroll is too low, and was sad to learn that I don't get to hang out with Dan Cole over at KFAN.)

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

- "Can glass carry 150 pounds?"
- "Crush on Moira Kelly"
- "Kyle Kinane weight"
- "Have been lazy for 29 years"
- "Hardcore porn on Netflix"
- "Ryan Doumit shirtless"
- "Haralabos Voulgaris shirtless"
- "Al Newman clarinet"
- "What's the real news on Glen Perkins?"
- "How old is LaVelle E. Neal?"
- "How long on an elliptical to burn a beer?"
- "Similarities between Lindsay Lohan and Mila Kunis"

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

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ticket King, a local ticket broker that doesn't charge check-out fees, offers in-store pickup, and specializes in Twins tickets. Please support them for supporting AG.com.

• We spent 20 minutes talking about this story on this week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode, but the headline should be enough to draw you in: "Tammy Jung, 23, feeds on 5,000 calories a day through a funnel in hope to become an obese internet star." Also: NSFW (sort of).

• Gophers football assistant coach Matt Limegrover lost 175 pounds via gastric bypass surgery.

• This is the reason why I'm afraid to get married. Also, girls have cooties.

• Seriously though, if you were in prison for a year what's the first thing you'd wanna do once you got out? OK, so maybe the second thing. And feel free to throw on some jeans and a t-shirt.

• Having reserved a "party bus" for an outing next month I'm starting to think maybe we should scratch LeSean McCoy from the guest list.

• I did a podcast that isn't mine and swore a lot "like a true baby."

• If you watched this week's "Kitchen Nightmares" in which Gordon Ramsay quit for the first time in 100 episodes you'll love this follow-up to the insanity of the restaurant owners.

• I've long been mostly ambivalent about "The Office" and Thursday night's finale didn't change much, but it was great to read the story of how a superfan/blogger landed a speaking role.

• Joe Mauer is now the active career leader in batting average.

• Byron Buxton hit a walk-off grand slam Thursday night at low Single-A and there's video.

• Last week I mentioned the Michael Schur/Ken Tremendous-created show on FOX co-starring Andre Braugher and Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate Chelsea Peretti. Here's the first preview for "Brooklyn Nine-Nine":

As far as network sitcoms go that looks pretty decent, albeit predictably broad. I'll check it out.

• Speaking of Peretti, she joined Adam Scott and Harris Wittels for another silly installment of "Farts and Procreation" on "Comedy Bang Bang." At this point the inside jokes have inside jokes, but I love it.

• Learning that the "Seinfeld" finale aired 15 years ago this week makes me feel old, but not as old as knowing that most of my wardrobe is still white sneakers, dad jeans, and collared shirts.

• Bryce Harper somehow avoided a serious injury despite crashing full speed, head first into the outfield wall like he was someone at a mall who didn't notice a glass door in front of them.

• On this week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode it finally occurred to me that I can choose the intro and outro music now that we're on the radio. I'll let you guess how long it took before Mase made an appearance. Oh, and also John Bonnes was on vacation and Parker Hageman subbed for him like Lou Gehrig stepping into the Yankees' lineup for Wally Pipp.

• I do about 90 percent of my interacting with people via Gchat, so I enjoyed this quiz.

• I was out of town at the SABR convention when Jason Tyner hit his only career homer and two people called me to break the news. It was memorable for the people actually involved too.

• I try not to link to a ton of my HardballTalk posts here in the hopes that most AG.com readers are already reading that stuff too, but just a reminder: I write about baseball all day, every day at HardballTalk on NBCSports.com. I also babble about various things all day, every day on Twitter.

• I checked out the British television show "Pulling" after comedian Rob Delaney recommended it on Twitter and ended up watching the entire series in less than a week. Here's a sample:

It's a bit like if "Sex and The City" were actually funny, but also the characters were crazy.

• I also started watching the HBO show "Enlightened" and like it a lot, but now I'm mad at myself for not realizing that and telling other people to watch before it got canceled.

• The constant shit-talking between Marc Maron and Kumail Nanjiani on "Doug Loves Movies" completely derailed the show and was also extremely funny.

• If you weren't already a Marc Gasol fan his dropping Winston Wolfe quotes in postgame interviews should seal the deal.

• My favorite moment from my weekly appearance on KFAN with Paul Allen came during a break, when he turned to me and asked: "Do you like '90s rap?" And that was after I'd outed myself as a Hawk Harrelson fan.

• I finally saw "Jack Reacher" and it was like an action movie parody. Cheesy dialogue with never-ending cliches and over-acting. So bad. And the Wikipedia page for the Jack Reacher character in Lee Child's novels is hilarious.

• Two of my favorite Minnesotans, Kulap Vilaysack and Joe Mande, teamed up on this week's "Who Charted?"

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

- "Kevin Correia stopped throwing fastballs"
- "Fee clip art of umpires fighting"
- "Gleeman gum"
- "Who does Clete Thomas play for?"
- "Porn star that looks like Kate Mara"
- "Started watching 'Dawson's Creek' on Netflix"
- "Marc Maron shirtless"
- "How much does Kate Upton give to charity?"
- "Where is Joe Christensen and who is Phil Miller?"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is a live version of "Sail" by Awolnation:

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ticket King, a local ticket broker that doesn't charge check-out fees, offers in-store pickup, and specializes in Twins tickets. Please support them for supporting AG.com.

• I'd say Otis Nixon's mugshot is a pretty compelling argument against using crack cocaine, but even in his baseball-playing prime he always looked 60 years old.

• Glen Perkins' sabermetric legend continues to grow. Not only did he go through his advanced stats one-by-one and explain them all, he's trying to convert other Twins pitchers into stat-heads.

• Like that old saying goes, be careful whose urine you borrow.

• See, now this is why I'm scared to sign up for J-Date.

• Science is cool and all, but I've got about 15 years of personal evidence to the contrary.

• Who were the best Twins prospects of the 2000s and how did they turn out?

• Growing up my friends and I probably watched/rented "Kids" a dozen times, so 18 years after the controversial movie was made it's fascinating and also sad to read about the actors' lives.

• Speaking of movies I loved as a kid, "Hoop Dreams" co-star William Gates' son is going to play Division I college basketball.

• On a related note, I was talking with people on Twitter about my favorite movies and came up with this preliminary list:

1. "Seven"
2. "The Godfather"
3. "No Country For Old Men"
4. "Pulp Fiction"
5. "Boogie Nights"
6. "Blue Valentine"
7. "The Shawshank Redemption"
8. "Memento"
9. "Dog Day Afternoon"
10. "Hoop Dreams"

I'm probably forgetting one or two because I didn't put a whole lot of thought into the initial list, but I might spend a little more time on it and come up with a top 50. Also, looking at those 10 movies apparently I only like comedy on television.

• On this week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode we got kicked off the radio.

• If you like "Between Two Ferns" with Zach Galifianakis you'll really like "Between Two Ferns" with Zach Galifianakis when his James Franco interview turns into a Lonely Island video:

"Of all the art projects that you've done, what has made people roll their eyes the hardest?"

• In addition to being a former Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com, Elisha Cuthbert is a world-class eye-roller at hockey games.

• I'm one of those Blackberry-using weirdos, but this may finally convince me to get an iPhone.

• Setting aside the fact that he didn't actually tag the runner, this is a pretty amazing play by a 6-foot-5 catcher.

• As someone who recently lost 150 pounds strictly through diet/exercise and is now struggling to keep the weight off I'm fascinated by Chris Christie opting for surgery. I don't blame him, since I considered doing the same at times when obesity felt impossible to conquer, but the relapse rate for surgery is frighteningly high and trying to keep the surgery secret suggests he's not thrilled with what the choice says about him. Beating obesity sadly isn't as simple as losing weight.

• How did nachos and cheese become a ballpark staple?

• Wearing glasses is increasingly popular among people who don't actually need glasses, but as someone who's been wearing them since ninth grade I nodded along to almost every item here.

• Did you know that Twins Daily blogger Parker Hageman was in "Tiger Beat" magazine?

• During my weekly appearance on KFAN with Paul Allen we discussed the Twins, but also the etiquette of following and unfollowing people on Twitter. And also how my mom is stalking him.

• As far as Ron Gardenhire quotes go, I think I like "we're heroes on the internet" even more than "fire it through the internet." Also, he's officially too self-aware now. Not as much fun.

• I'll watch any video in which comedians make jokes while drinking too much, especially if they star Kyle Kinane:

"Just a case of the spits."

• Todd Barry's podcast is only three episodes old, but it's already become one of my favorites. Good, laid-back conversations with funny, interesting people who aren't regulars in the comedy podcasting world. This week's chat with Julieanne Smolinski was particularly enjoyable.

• "Community" fans should definitely check out "WTF" with Marc Maron this week, because he talked to Gillian Jacobs one day and Alison Brie a couple days later. They were both great.

• If you've never listened to "Comedy Bang Bang" before this week's fourth-anniversary episode is a perfect representation of the show.

• Netflix documentary recommendation: "The Restauranteur" about businessman and restaurant mogul Danny Meyer, featuring "Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio with hair.

• "Parks and Recreation" creator Michael Schur, who's also known as Ken Tremendous from his "Fire Joe Morgan" blogging days, has created a new FOX show co-starring Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate Chelsea Peretti and the always great Andre Braugher.

• Oh, and NBC renewed "Parks and Recreation" for another season.

• My favorite cheesy reality show, "Bar Rescue" on Spike, is back for another 20 episodes.

• "The Sportive" was good this week because Holly Manthei was such a great guest that she carried everyone else.

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

- "Jay R. Ferguson shirtless"
- "I love Bob Einstein"
- "Scott Diamond Jew"
- "Casey Fien Jewish"
- "Ryan Doumit Jewish"
- "Jon Taffer hair transplants"
- "Where is Drew Butera playing baseball?"
- "Where can I find naked picture of Scott Conant?"
- "Matt Capps dating"
- "Matt Harvey's sister"
- "Mae Whitman monologues"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Still Not a Player" by Big Punisher:

This week's blog content is sponsored by Curt's Salsa, a locally owned salsa company that believes in fresh ingredients and rooting for the little guy. Please support them for supporting AG.com.