Thanks, Comcast

I was going to post last night but unfortunately for everyone, or fortunately, whatever, Comcast is a dick and my internet was down from 8:15 until 12:15.  I know the exact timing it was out because I was doing an internet fantasy football draft and was unable to log in to the draft room or log in anywhere really since, you know, I had no internet.  I considered going to a bar somewhere like a BW3 that would have free wi-fi so I could be the weirdo with the laptop drinking beer by himself, but then a generous soul offered to email me every single pick so I could follow long on my phone and then email him my picks whenever it was my turn.  It actually went rather smoothly.

Anyway, you guys remember how two years ago I told you how Hakeem Nicks was going to be awesome and then he was?  And last year how I was pimping Dez Bryant and now he's looking like he's going to be special?  Well I got a third guy.  I don't think his upside is on the Nicks/Bryant level, but he has a chance to reach the next tier and right now nobody is paying any attention to him or even knows who he is, and in a lot of drafts he isn't even getting drafted.  I really wish I could tell you who I'm talking about, but I have my big keeper league draft this weekend and then an auction on Labor Day.  Since too many people in those leagues read this crap, I'm going to have to keep it under wraps until after then.  Sorry.

And speaking of keeping things under wraps, over labor day weekend Snacks and I are taking our dad on an awesome trip.  It's a surprise and he sometimes reads this and I'm sure is super proud, so I can't spill the info here, but I plan to take a computer with me and update from the place that we're going.  Stay tuned.  On to the sporty sports:

-  So I guess we might as well start with the Twins, and we'll specifically go with the fact that Kubel and Thome were put on waivers, a fact which for some reason seems to have a lot of people spazzing out even though it's basically standard operating procedure and if they're smart the Twins will throw almost everybody out there at some point.  It's pretty simple, at some point some team will claim each of them - and they will both get claimed - and then the Twins will try to work out a trade.  In Thome's case they'll probably take whatever they can get because there's zero reason to hold on to him, but in Kubel's case they'll probably ask for quite a bit more.

That's good because Kubel has real value to a contender, now and in the future, but also not good because they're probably under some misguided notion that not trading him will help them sign him.  If they want to.  I don't know.  I don't even know if they should, but I'm pretty sure I'd take him over Cuddyer.  Maybe trade Kubel for a second-tier prospect, then sign either him or Cuddy, whoever offers the bigger discount.  And if you can't sign either of them who gives a crap, right?  And speaking of that why isn't Cuddy on waivers yet?  And Pavano?  And every reliever on the roster?

Seriously, this team as currently constructed has no shot to do anything ever.  Might as well move everything that has value and isn't part of your long term plans while you can.  Kubel, Cuddyer, Thome, Pavano, Blackburn, Nathan, Capps, basically every other reliever and possibly Danny Valencia are clearly not part of the future.  I see no reason why not to ship 'em all out of here.  You could get a decent return for everybody except Blackburn.  Start over.  Move on.  It's over.  This team sucks forever.  They can't even win a series against Baltimore for god's sake.

Which reminds me of a fun little nugget I heard on the radio today, and you'll never believe this but it illustrates once again how much of a complete moron P.A. is.  Since every Twins fan just watched J.J. Hardy homer against the team Monday night and then hear about how he has more home runs than every other Twin and basically a better HR rate than the entire team combined and P.A. is a giant homerdouche he had to down play Hardy, and act like the retard that he is.  So he went with, "Everyone who is saying the Twins should have kept Hardy is just saying that in retrospect, I don't remember anybody caring when they traded him" which is super bizarre because I remember everyone hating that trade - I know I did and I put it on paper.

Oh look.  I decided to check the first three Twins blogs I could think of to see what they had to say.  Aaron Gleeman called the move "questionable", Twinkie Town said, "Do I think it's a bad deal?  Definitely.", and Nick's Twins blog used the headline, "Hardy Trade Cripples Infield Depth." And those were the only three places I checked, that's not exactly nobody.  I think the only people who liked this trade were Bill Smith, P.A., Bert Blyleven, and Sid Hartman since Hardy wasn't a gritty gamer who hustled and gritted his way around the field because he was a pussy unlike captain gritty mchustlepants Nick Punto.

Oh, and then even better he started going on and on about how obviously Hardy didn't have much worth because no teams wanted him and Baltimore was the only team who would make a deal.  I'm not kidding he honestly said this.  Then, with the least research anybody has ever done ever, I find this link.  In case you are too lazy or don't know how to click on links, it is an article by Lavelle Neal which quotes Bill Smith as saying there were "at least a half dozen teams" interested in Hardy.  So I guess my point is that P.A. is still incredibly dumb and anybody who listens to his show and thinks he knows anything about anything is so dumb they probably like Olive Garden.

-  In the entertainment world I recently watched Trespass.  Not a recent movie by any means, but I'm not sure I've seen it.  To refresh you, it's the one where Bill Paxton and that guy from Shawshank are hunting for gold in an abandoned factory and end up in a shoot-out with Ice-T, Ice Cube, Argyle from Die Hard, and Deebo from when he was still skinny.  It was mind-blowing to see the two Ices in the same movie, and even worse to see how terrible their acting was, especially because this movie actually came after Boyz N the Hood, which I thought Cube was pretty solid in, although two years before his mini-breakout in Higher Learning and 3 before his total breakout in Friday.  It's really a shame he died in 1998 after Player's Club,  I wonder how far his career could have gone, maybe a more "street" Denzel.  Shame we'll never know.

Ice-T, on the other hand, was terrible in this and has always been terrible, outside of being tolerable in Law & Order:  SVU (although to be fair I haven't seen Leprechaun in the Hood, which seems like a glaring weakness in my movie watching history).  There is, of course, the one notable exception of Surviving the Game, which is an awesome awesome awesome movie and I will fucking fight anyone who says otherwise.  Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, Ice-T in his best ever role ever, the black dude from Rudy, and Dr. Cox in a movie about hunting homeless people for sport?  Hell.  Yes.  God I want to watch this now.  Ask Snacks, he'll tell you how good this was.  Ice-T should have just quit acting after this and he'd be a legend.  "Hey Burns, always check the barrell."

Seriously, this movie is so good dude.  I can sum it up in three pictures:

Holy crap this movie is so awesome.  I have no idea why you are sitting there watching something stupid when you could be watching this. 

-  Apparently Rick Adelman interviewed with the Timberwolves which leads me to believe he either really likes hookers, really likes drugs, has a serious gambling debt, or perhaps collects Faberge eggs because the only reason I can figure a guy like Adelman would want the Wolves job is a desperate need for immediate money.   Why join this mess instead of waiting a year and waiting for a more attractive job to turn up?  He's made the playoffs like, 20 times, so why go to a trainwreck?  Maybe he likes a challenge I guess, but why not go for the Sunday crossword instead of the one billion piece puzzle of the sky?  Weird.

-  Finally, we got us a new blog to check out,Still Got Hope, which focuses on gopher football for some reason.  I actually sort of  know one of the guys (from the internet) and even though he's kind of a doofus and looks like Shrek his first post made me laugh even though it was about Tutu Atwell which I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't lived it, and their intro post was nice as well.  I recommend you give them a read.  They're known as a poor man's Down with Goldy according to me.