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:
