matt weighs in

Here are five random thoughts I had on the treadmill today:

1) Why am I on this treadmill? Didn’t I used to think they were for lazy people?

2) It sure is hot in here. I wonder how much longer the sun will be shining on me through these windows. These floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Minneapolis are pretty cool.

3) I wonder if the middle-aged lady next to me is also listening to The Killers. Probably not. These guys rock.

4) I wonder what the record is for most teeth lost after falling and hitting one’s face on the handles/display. I bet it’s not in Guiness.

5) Could I keep up this pace in a street race? Probably not. I bet I could at least beat the lady here not listening to The Killers.

It’s amazing what things float through the mind when we’re just walking and running for minutes and minutes or hours at a time. Since I’m getting back into the routine of working out, expect more thoughts from a treadmill in the future.

There have been many newsworthy items the last few weeks. Here are my thoughts:

At this point, it seems like old news given the hoopla, but Michael Jackson died almost one month ago. His name still comes up in Twitter’s trending topics, but I’m surprised it has quieted down as much as it has. Too much other stuff going on for people to continue to care with whom his kids end up living? Are people King-of-Popped out? Rolling Stone, in the past, has not put words on the cover to celebrate someone’s life – they just let the picture alone tell the story of what someone in music meant. I am surprised they didn’t do this with Jackson. Fewer words than usual, but still a little over the top with “Michael Jackson’s Final Days” underneath his picture.

My friend, Dave, wrote a blog post a couple weeks ago about Jackson’s death and the coverage that had some interesting comments. The way he allowed his life to play out is sad, and his public image probably needs to be split into chapters, if possible.

First 30 years: made great music for all-time, awesome entertainer, cared about others in the world, did great things for himself and others. A true icon.
Final 20 years: still entertained sometimes, but did all these weird things Dave mentions that really sullied his legacy. Wasted talent, money, image and good will. A true tabloid icon.

It would have been very interesting to see how his scheduled upcoming tour would have played out, whether he could bring it at age 50 for 50 shows. Regardless, fans around the world still cried in his presence and were willing, no, itching to see an aging pop star do it again.

People want to remember him only one way: either as the greatest entertainer of our lifetime or as the acquitted child molester. I’m going with the hybrid memory of Michael Jackson. Celebrate him as the greatest entertainer, who should have been loved for all-time by everyone, but decided to waste it by doing all these stupid things. What’s wrong with having it both ways?

I had a feeling the Lebron James-getting-dunked-on video was more hype than hysteria. In the couple weeks between when the story leaked and when videos finally became available, I never read or heard from someone who was there who said that it was absolutely out of this world. People talked about it, but only to discuss the supposed cover-up. Until I saw the video, I didn’t know that it happened in the half-court set, that Lebron was a help defender, and that Jordan Crawford didn’t even jump over the King to send it home. Lebron was more to the side. If dunking on his hand is a big deal, then my-oh-my, what a dunk. The real thing, though, (from the camera angles we have) was very disappointing.

Just a few words about the peephole video of ESPN’s Erin Andrews as she is getting ready in her private hotel room. The guys or gals involved in this should be put away, charged with emotional rape, criminal indecency, and pure idiocy. They have put a woman who was doing really good things in her job in a position where she might not be as good or as comfortable going out and doing it in the future.

Admittedly, she gained popularity because she is an attractive woman talking sports, but she did it without all the photo shoots some women on tv end up doing to gain publicity. She covered basketball at Duke, Indiana, UCLA, went to the College World Series, talked letters with kids at the National Spelling Bee – anything and everything to get on the air and gain experience. And she actually does a good job, from what I remember in her appearances. She seems comfortable in front of the camera, doesn’t ask the usual questions, and looks interested in what the person she is interviewing has to say. Many sideline reporters will be too serious, as though what the interviewee has to say will change sports forever, but she laughs with them and gets them to answer outside the cliches.

I wonder what comments she’ll hear when she goes to Cameron Indoor Stadium this winter. It seems over the top, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her life as a sports reporter is soon over. Working with men all day, visiting college campuses all the time, she is going to hear stuff that she never should have to hear, all because a couple people thought it would be funny to make themselves famous by becoming criminals. Just sad, and as the internet shows, it happens all the time to people.

Finally, the Minnesota Twins. What a mess their pitching staff has become. Starting pitchers have a great outing, but can’t finish strong. Batters give them a big lead, but the starters and relievers implode and can’t finish strong. Relief pitchers holding everything together for a couple batters, but totally blow it at the end.

The manager, Ron Gardenhire, is really in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation when he gets to the latter half of games right now. Leave the starters in, and they’ve shown they can’t go that last inning. Bring in a reliever and they can’t hold it. Gardy has been ripped for doing both in the last week, and he can’t win at this point. He just has to hope that his relief guys are going to come in and pitch well to finish the game. His plan has always been to bring the relievers in for the 7th or 8th inning. He has to stick to it at this point, as nothing is reliable. As long as Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel hit as a group as well as they have been, the run support will be there. And right now, the team needs all the runs they can get.

The guy shot himself in the leg.

Plaxico Burress, multi-millionaire wide receiver for the New York Giants, shot himself in the leg, apparently. I’m not one that is going to rail on star athletes or entertainers for wanting to go out and have some fun once in a while. Plax wasn’t even going to play two days later, due to a hamstring injury. Maybe it had been a while since he had been out. I don’t know.

However, instead of spending a few hundred bucks for 2-3 very large men to stand around him for a couple hours, he decides to carry a gun in his sweatpants. COME ON!

How does he not have anyone around him that knows this and talks him out of it? He’s the same age as I am…how can he not know that maybe it’s a bad idea for him, a well-known New York athlete, to go someplace where he thinks he needs to protect himself with a gun? My only thought is that he’s gone nuts and just doesn’t know any better.

In this day and age, where celebrities have to be “on” 24/7, it blows my mind whenever someone in the public eye messes up in this way. STAY HOME! No one is going to care if he didn’t go out that night. And his name wouldn’t be in the news for something so stupid. And he’d still be playing for the best team in the league with a chance to win a 2nd consecutive Super Bowl title. But that chance has been blown. And there’s a good chance he’ll spend time in jail. Remember Michael Vick?

Spend the extra dough. My guess is that there are thousands of tough guys in New York/New Jersey who would have no problem using a gun if the situation warranted it. Plax needs to hire them. At least he’d be able to move and dance without making himself look like a damn fool. He’s paid to not fumble a football, and he’s in the news for fumbling a handgun. I wonder if they can rename the winner of the “Turkey of the Year” award?

I won’t pretend to understand how Myanmar is governed. I haven’t read enough about it. However, if nothing else, the last 8 days have showed us that their governing style does not allow them to help their citizens when they need it most, if they even care. Take this story from the New York Times. Replace the words cyclone with hurricane, Myanmar with Louisiana, Yangon with New Orleans and military/junta with Bush Administration. Imagine the outcry and protests.

It’s one thing to ignore those who need help in normal times, but quite another to ignore those who need help in times of unbelievable circumstances and peril. I read an article this past weekend wondering if the U.N. or the U.S. needs to stage a humanitarian invasion of Myanmar if it isn’t opened up more fully to foreign aid soon.

This is a U.S. invasion I could throw my support behind.

Based on Kevin Garnett’s career, who would have thought that he would be the only star (out of four on the court) who would stand out in the Celtics-Cleveland game Tuesday night? He scored 28 points, including the game winning shot, whereas LeBron James, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen combined to only make four shots (Ray Allen didn’t score at all – makes me feel much better about my own game last Sunday in my rec league).

I’m fine with Kobe Bryant winning the NBA MVP this year. He’s had better stats, including being the scoring champion, in past years, but with all the turmoil he caused before the season, he played great, forced his teammates to be involved and the Lakers front office finally gave him some real help (Pau Gasol) for the first time since Shaq left a few years ago. Wednesday night, he’ll be out to prove the award was no fluke in game 2 of their series against Utah.

A couple links I saw while surfing on Wednesday:

NASA photos of Myanmar before and after the devastating cyclone last weekend. They need tons of aid, but it sounds like it’s going to be a struggle just to get food, water and other supplies to the places needing it most.

Photobombers. I love it, but never knew it had a name.

I first read this story on Friday morning and thought there has to be more to it. Kids don’t just get suspended for buying souvenir swords on a trip. A quick Google search Friday night after putting Elliot to bed led me to this discussion going on at www.topix.com, including comments by kids from Eagan and Apple Valley claiming to have been on the trip.

I assume that since it was a school-sponsored trip, the administration felt all rules for school grounds expanded wherever the students’ traveled in Europe. They had swords in their possession, which could be weapons, therefore the administration ruled they had to be suspended.

I’m not sure I can agree with this, since I will also assume that they were allowed some free time to explore on their own. Also, the swords were apparently in taped-up boxes ready to be shipped home. Other students had to have snitched on them, but if the boxes were taped, how did officials determine what was inside? Was there also an invasion of privacy here?

The kids and parents had to sign some kind of waiver to go on the trip. I would be very interested in reading this waiver, as it did specify policy on alcohol and weapons. I think the schools are really going out of their way to enforce their zero-tolerance policy in this situation. How is it showing favoritism, as some would argue, to these students if the administration would have ruled that what they did was ok?

I just cannot wrap my head around seeing that this decision was right, and your comments to help me understand are welcome. The swords were in a frggin’ box, for cryin’ out loud.

My dad was a superintendent of schools for our district for about 25 years, so it will be interesting to get an insider’s point of view on this. What are your thoughts? I guess the redeeming part of this story, if there is one, is that the kids get to continue their studies at home, so the senior should still be able to attend college in the fall.

Okay, I’m back at it. You can stop holding your breath in anticipation now. I hope you have noticed some additions in the sidebar of the main page – Twitter (or tweets), which we love and force ourselves not to update every hour and our Flickr pictures, which we have to do better to update more often. We can even send our tweets by text message, which we did Friday night from Chino Latino in Uptown. You’ve been warned. I’m working on a few other things that may or may not screw up the sight if I mess them up, but I’ll try to keep that to a minimum, or at least contact my friend Dave, who’s recently been experiencing some updating pains. That’s the joy of the interweb.

A few thoughts on a Sunday night to catch up:

1. We could get some closure to the Democratic race on Tuesday. Most polls show Hillary with only a slight edge in Pennsylvania (down from earlier in the month), but nowhere near significant enough to make up much ground in delegates. I didn’t see the most recent debate last week, but most accounts were fairly disgusted with ABC’s lines of questioning. Two different recaps are here and here. I have thoughts on what Obama said at the private fundraiser in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, but he looks to have weathered the ridiculous reactions to it (hint as to how I feel about those reactions).

2. The NCAA basketball tournament was exciting as advertised. I have to admit that I fully jumped on the Davidson bandwagon after they disposed of Georgetown, who, most unfortunately, was my pick to win the whole damn thing. I had G’town in my pool with Laura’s family, who mostly live on the West Coast and had a predictably strong UCLA bias. Congrats to those in Missouri who were biased to Kansas, and, therefore, came out on top in the pool.

3. The NBA playoffs have started, and they are living up to their billing, as expected. I watched about 52 of the 58 minutes in Game 1 between San Antonio and Phoenix. The Suns were ahead most of the game and should have won, but were in foul trouble when it mattered – I’m not a big fan of refs and usually tell whoever will listen that I know I could do better in stripes.

The game was almost unwatchable for two reasons: every ref call was followed by players whining about it (this grows tiresome) and THE PA ANNOUNCER AND THE MUSIC WERE SO LOUD THROUGHOUT THE GAME THAT I ALMOST TURNED DOWN THE SOUND ON THE TV (bet you want to stop reading after I just screamed at you for five seconds). They do this at MN Timberwolves games, too. Music plays while the game is going on, and the game announcer thinks it’s his job to get the crowd going. The game should be exciting enough to keep the fans in it. This was evident during last year’s playoff games between Golden State and Dallas. GS’s crowd was so amped that they drowned out the music. I can’t imagine the next time that might happen at Target Center.

4. Elliot is walking. I can’t tell you the non-stop joy this is to watch him keep his balance on grass, dirt and sand. It’s great comedy, and I may start taking bets with people as to whether or not he can stay on his feet for more than five seconds on different terrain. I would take the over every time.

5. I miss Johan.

6. I watched three of the six MN Wild games and listened to two others on the radio. They only led for about four minutes in the six games played (about 380 minutes total), but with my limited hockey knowledge, they controlled play for most of the series. They ran into a Colorado Avalanche team whose goalie won the series for them (you can’t overlook their overall defense, though). I think the Wild were done in by a team that played their game better than they did in the series. The Wild are coached to be defensive minded first and take advantage of opportunities to score when the opponents give it to them. This series they lost, they were the aggressive team the majority of the time, and Colorado scored when they had the chance. Only one goalie was MVP in this series.

It’s appropriate that I write this as we watch the semifinals of the Minnesota State High School Hockey tournament. It has been a pretty good week. Happenings in no particular order: state hockey tournament (it’s so big that it’s played on the biggest sports station in the midwest, the Fan Radio Network), Brett Favre finally retired, had riveting elections in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday night and it will all culminate on Saturday morning with a first attempt to brew our own batch of beer at home (actually at a friend’s house, as he has done it before, is much more responsible than me and has a turkey fryer in which to make the process go faster).

First, Favre. There was some pretty ill-intentioned ribbing of my brother-in-law, a Packer fan, this week. The ribbing from me and other Vikings fans revolved around “Favre sucks,” “Go cry some more,” “Now he can swallow pain-killers in peace,” and “Damn, the Packers and Favre suck.” That kind of stuff.

I tried making the point that it wasn’t that we really hated Favre so much, but we hated the way he ended up making Vikings fans feel – he won another Super Bowl for their franchise, broke a ridiculous number of QB records as the Vikings went through an average of one QB every two years, held press conferences to tell us he would hold other press conferences to tell us whether or not he might retire, and to top it off, had every national broadcast team love him up every frickin’ time he was on national television. Absolutely sickening.

Filthy Packer fans had reason to be optimistic every dang year, because they knew he was going to be under center each game (275 straight). I loved it when the Packers had a horrible year two years ago. I thought for sure he was done then (then all the non-press conferences only to announce he was coming back), and he comes back and leads them to the brink of the Super Bowl. I’m just glad he laid an egg in his final game and threw an interception on his final pass to lose the game for the Packers. That’s what I’ll hold on to, even though I guess I’ll solute a pretty damn good career for a pretty damn good quarterback for a pretty damn insufferable fan base. Oh, and he had one of the worst acted athlete cameo roles of all time in There’s Something About Mary. I’ll solute Fav-ruh for that, too.

I like that there’s at least one race for President still going on in one of the parties. Why not let it take a little longer to decide which Democratic candidate will have the chance to make history in November. Good for the Republicans for choosing their candidate already. From the list they had, it shouldn’t have taken long to come up with the best of the worst. Anything can happen, of course, but they cannot be confident with their nominee. Experience, sure, and a great American, but not much of an independent thinker anymore. The race will do that to a candidate.

Clinton and Obama is riveting to watch. Emotional crowds and speeches (unlike the stinker McCain laid on Tuesday night), aides resigning, an ex-President getting called out for hurting the campaign and the whole woman and minority angles. Fascinating stuff, with at least another six weeks of seeing who might fall apart first (Obama needs a big boost soon).

We’re brewing an amber ale for our first batch, and we’re leaving the house at 7:30am on Saturday morning to do it (we being me, Siena and Elliot, so they can play with kids their own age). But blueberry pancakes await at our destination. I’ll let you know how the beer turns out, as we’re hoping to have it at Elliot’s 1st birthday party in two weeks.

I was moaning and groaning a month ago about election season and how I really didn’t want it to be here, how I couldn’t believe we had been hearing from candidates for over a year now and how the primaries and caucuses shouldn’t happen until closer to spring. I don’t think I’ve changed my mind much on this; however, I am very, very excited about the Democratic candidates and am having a hard time deciding who I whole-heartedly support (maybe I need Bush to come be my “decider”).

Sure, I placed a vote at the MN caucus on Tuesday night, but was it for who I really believe in? Should I support the candidate who has pretty much started a movement across the country and has songs inspired by his speeches? Or do I support the candidate who knows exactly what she’ll do from day one and won’t waste any time if she steps into the White House on January 20, 2009?

According to the Presidential-match survey I took later on caucus night, I probably wrote down the wrong name. But I don’t feel bad at this point, because I know I will be supporting either the first female or first African-American President of the United States come election time in November.

Damn, that feels good to write.

Other thoughts…

It’s a good thing Laura planned an awesome 31st birthday for me last week. I had been bummed leading up to it, because the Johan Santana trade finally went through. You know how I feel about this. I could not feel more terrible about the Twins upcoming season. The only 2 things I’m seriously looking forward to are seeing if Liriano will be the same as he was before and knowing that I’ll ride the light rail to the Metrodome to watch a game, which will make Siena and Elliot very happy (and me).

Next, the Super Bowl…that freaking Super Bowl. Eli Manning – Super Bowl MVP, Super Bowl-winning quarterback. Patriots not coming up with one stop in the 4th quarter when they needed it. 3rd and 11 – 1st down. And most unbelievable of all…The Great Escape, as I call it. 3rd and 5, 2 defensive hands on his jersey, he spins away, heaves it just to get rid of it and a guy with 7 catches all year (7, right?) pins the freaking ball to his helmet as he’s falling to the ground AND HANGS ON while a guy is punching at the ball, his helmet and him. No way the Giants should have won that game. No way they should have even had a chance to win that game. No way the Patriots should have come out as conservative as they did to begin the game and NO WAY SHOULD ELI MANNING EVER BE SUPER BOWL MVP OVER TOM BRADY, RANDY MOSS, BILL BELICHECK AND THE PATRIOTS DYNASTY.

If I was a betting man, I would have been taken to the cleaners. I chastised everyone who picked the Giants leading up to the game. I still think it was a bad bet to make, but you can’t argue with the results. If you took the Giants, you shouldn’t have, but enjoy your filet mignon, nice bottle of wine and bippity-boppity-bacon wrapped shrimp you can buy with your winnings.

Finally, KG (may) come to town on Friday. Doesn’t look like he’ll play, but I hope the Timberwolves still do some sort of video tribute to him before the game or halftime.

He put this franchise on his shoulders for 11 years and despite managements’ mis-management of the team, took them to the playoffs more times than they should have gone and played with anybody they asked him to play with. He put up hall-of-fame numbers while making hall-of-fame money.

He was worth every penny.

Random thoughts on the sporting world heading into the last weekend of 2007:

* Has anyone cared about the bowl games, yet? You know a playoff is needed when the biggest story, so far, is whether or not a guy on the sidelines (not even a coach, player or trainer) touched a bouncing ball before his team recovered. Even if he didn’t touch it, shouldn’t they have been penalized for all those guys being on the field, which would give the other team the ball back anyway? Apparently, Chris Jessie is the head coach’s stepson and in charge of coordinating the team’s travel and hotel reservations. And he’s on the sideline of a bowl game. Oh well. There is a BS in BCS (one of my favorite sayings, by the way).

* KG won’t let the Celtics slow down all year. I doubt they’ll match the Bulls’ 72 victories from ’95-’96, but damn, he has lit something under Paul Pierce that will carry them to a #1 seed in the East and well into June 2008. However, is it possible that KG’s current team sets the all-time win record, while his former team sets the all-time loss record? Can’t wait to see the outcome of their Feb. 8^th game at Target Center (note to Laura: that’s close to my birthday).

* NBA season has 6 months to go? Maybe thoughts on that another time, although it is now more intriguing than it has been in years. I miss “NBA on NBC” – one of my favorite lead-in tv musical anthems of all-time. I know some of you are humming it right now.

* I believe the Vikings blew their season last Sunday night at home against Washington. Win and they were in the playoffs, which no one could have foreseen after 34-0 in Lambeau. I heard the guys on KFAN’s morning show (AM-1130 in the Twin Cities) talking after the Washington game that if it had been outdoors, instead of in the ‘dome, the outcome would have been different. Really? What part of this Vikings team is so tough that playing in 18 degree, snowy weather gives us more faith in them to produce in such a huge game?

* I think the Giants will beat the Patriots, leaving the Pats 15-1 on the year. I want them to go 16-0 and win the Super Bowl (since the Vikings will be out of it, of course), but the Giants seem to do something every year to save Tom Coughlin’s job. They’ll win this game, giving them 11 wins, then won’t do much in the playoffs, but he’ll still have his job and that constipation-type pained look on his face.

* Johan’s still here, so I have hope the Twins will re-sign him. By the way, less than 2 months until pitchers and catchers report.

Happy New Year to all and to all a big drink!