Link-O-Rama 2.0: Opening Day, Michele Tafoya's YouTube Stats, Great Moments in HOA Brain ft. Jack Reacher
The Crack of the Bat, the Roar of the Crowd
Thursday is Opening Day for your Minnesota Twins. The outlook for the team is as grim as its been in a decade. Link-O-Rama creator Aaron Gleeman is skeptical as hell, and I share his doubts. Needless to say, I can't wait. It's baseball. Winter's over. (I know it isn't but let me have this.) My prediction: 67-95 and cheap tickets all summer long.
I'll be at Blackstack Brewing for tomorrow's Twins Daily season opener watch party. Say hey if you're in the neighborhood! I'll be the middle-aged guy with a beer.
The World's Foremost Bag Fumbler (Local Angle)
*It's very easy to make fun of Michele Tafoya. She was the sideline reporter for Sunday Night Football, and while interacting with so many Harbaughs can wear on you, it's one of the most sought-after jobs in sports media. Millions of viewers, huge platform, nice paycheck, travel to great American cities and Jacksonville, etc.
She walked away from it all to follow her true passion: Being a right-wing YouTube freak that nobody watches:
555 views. Rather than embarrass her by noting the average Sunday Night Football rating, I'll embarrass her by noting that the below clip of me playing "Smooth" by Santana ft. Rob Thomas has 838 views:
This is despite me never meeting Andy Reid.
Like I said, it's easy to make fun of her. In addition to such an outlandish bag fumble, she's running for US Senate, where she'll either lose to someone more genuinely batshit than she is in the GOP primary or get rinsed in the general by Peggy Flanagan or Angie Craig. It's tempting to feel a little bad for her!
Don't give in to temptation:
Not the kind of quote you want to give, much less defend, in an election year, especially when your nickname in town is "Limo."
Like I said, it's easy to make fun of her. Don't let me stop you.
Stu to U: Let Me Help You
Leave a Future. That's the new University of Minnesota tagline. It's...not great. It replaces "Driven to Discover" which they could have kept for another 20 years and been just fine. But they spent $15 million on a contract with a new marketing partner and, well, there you go. Death by focus group.
As a giver, I'm putting this offer out to the U. I did taglines for my job the last nine years. They were put on the sides of beer trucks and the panels of 12-packs all over the country. No one did a Star Tribune story about how baffling they were.
And since you've once again hired away a St. Cloud State hockey coach, you appear to be open to working with your state-school lessers. I will fix your dumb, dumb tagline for a fraction of that $15 million. Check out these bad boys:
*Rebuild the Dinkytown McDonald's.
*Shower Yourself in Gold.
*Gopher the Gusto (might get a C&D from whoever owns Schlitz now, but shoot your shot).
*If You Enroll We'll Clean the Stub & Herb's Bathrooms.
You have my contact info.
Bitcon
My friend Jason saw the trailer I recently shared for Ben McKenzie's anti-crypto documentary. He's also a movie propmaster, and he let me know that he worked on a crypto heist movie called Bitcon with Jeremy Davies (Lost, Justified, a hundred other roles that call for a twitchy little guy) and Tom Cavanagh (Ed from Ed!). You can watch it on Tubi for free.
I cannot mention Jason without noting that he has a Ghostbusters ambulance:
Back off, man. He's a scientist.
You Don't Mess with the Special Investigators
One of my favorite "turn off your brain and don't think about it too hard" shows is Reacher on Amazon Prime. It features Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher, a very large man. People constantly think they can fight him. It never goes well. He's so big!
Anyway, in real life, one of his neighbors got mad at him and his kids for riding motorcycles in his oddly Edward Scissorhands-esque neighborhood. It went exactly how you'd imagine.
I don't know what kind of "defend the valor of the HOA" mindset leads you to instigate a fight with a huge dude who is also astride a motorcycle, but I did note the assailant's Battle Ground Academy t-shirt. Battle Ground Academy is a private school with a 30K/year tuition bill, and yet not one lesson about fighting Jack Reacher. Public schools stay winning.
See you tomorrow for Minnesota's 81st-best county!
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