This is what happens when CraigsList, Google and Twitter work together in brilliant harmony.
Step 1: Stumble on a ridiculously overpriced item on CraigsList:
Do you guys feel like doing this again? I suppose it’s a tradition at this point. Like wearing pants outside or giving the finger to Mike Rowe while explaining to no one in particular that people can’t honesty come up to him all the time and ask, “Why Chevy, why now?”
Past winners: 2007, 2008, 2009.
The Twins announced a few planned improvements to their not-quite-new ballpark yesterday, including a big video board in right-field, more radiant heating and wireless. They will also try to eradicate some of the glare issues from the batters eye that the Twins constantly complained about, as if that were the reason Michael Cuddyer had a sub-par year. Still, it will probably have a greater impact on the teams performance than any other offseason move. (*hack*coughEricHacker)
What’s most disappointing about all this is how Twins missed the opportunity to right a wrong. They should move the World Series trophy out of the exclusive Champions Club and into a public area. The only tangible items from Minnesota’s only professional championships rest in a plush club reserved for the beautiful people. I bet Les Straker can’t even afford to see the ‘87 trophy, and he helped win the damn thing. When the Twins were in the Metrodome, they had them in the lobby of their front office, which was accessible to anyone who wandered in from Puckett Place or the stadium concourse. But this was when the Twins were cool and didn’t pander to the rich folk. It’s kinda silly. It’s like if the Declaration of Independence was the center piece of some la-ti-da restaurant for American financial barons and capitol lobbyists.
I wondered if this were standard practice around Major League Baseball. So I called and asked every club that had won a title since they began awarding the Commissioner’s Trophy in 1967.
Diamondbacks (‘01) - Lobby of front office.
Red Sox (‘04, ‘07) - “Front office reception area”
Braves (‘95) - Museum
White Sox (‘05) - “Case by gate 4”
Reds (‘75, ‘76, ‘90) - Hall of Fame
Royals (‘85) - Hall of Fame
Marlins (‘97, ‘03) - “Front office gate 4”
Angels (‘02) - Display in main concourse
Yankees (‘77, ‘78, ‘96, ‘98, ‘99, ‘00, ‘09) - Hall of Fame
A’s (‘72, ‘73, ‘74, ‘89) - Front office lobby
Mets (‘69, ‘86) - Museum
Pirates (‘71, ‘79) - Admin lobby - but “only one of them is here.”
Cardinals (‘67, ‘82, ‘06) - The trophies are currently in boxes, or something. They have no official home while they await construction of the Cardinals Hall of Fame in the adjacent Ballpark Village.
Giants (‘10) - The only team I couldn’t get a hold of. They probably haven’t even decided yet.
These five teams don’t care about their fans -
Dodgers (‘81, ‘88) - Front office. Sounds like you’d have to take a tour to see them.
Tigers (‘68, ‘84) - Champions club
Orioles (‘83, ‘70) - Club Level
Blue Jays (‘92, ‘93) - Admin lobby “but probably need a club level ticket to get there during a game”
Phillies ( ‘80, ‘08)- “In an office, not available to public.”
So the Twins are definitely in the minority. If you want to see the 1987 and 1991 trophies, you’ll need to be well connected, or rich, or stupid. Probably all three.
Or you could take a tour or check them out at TwinsFest, but that would defeat the point of this “research article.”
In the history of music, there has never been an artist as skilled and musically erratic as Ryan Adams. When a popular music figure makes music unlike an earlier and more popular release, the critics always say they are “challenging their audience.” And Ryan Adams is the king of that phenomenon, to the point that his fans have either accepted the challenge or turned away confused and jaded, like a NASA scientist who couldn’t quite cut it.
Every time a band releases something like Pinkerton or Music from the Elder, there are two inevitable questions. 1) Is it any good? and 2) What’s the meaning of this? That second question is almost more important than the first, because music listeners tend to take their favorite artists direction very personally. Everyone wonders what the hell they’re thinking, even if it’s actually decent music. They question the motivation of putting something out that doesn’t sound anything like the successful hit album from two years ago. Is it a joke? Have they gone crazy? Am I seriously expected to enjoy this?
The two aforementioned albums represent good examples of the whole challenging your audience vibe. KISS’s Music from the Elder wasn’t a very good album. It wasn’t good at all. It was, in fact, awful. The motivation behind it only made the ordeal worse. KISS was fading out of the 70’s pretty fast - losing their devoted fans by softening up in order to reach a broader fan base. All the kids took a long enough break from trying to sew cow tongues into their friends mouths to notice that the band cared more about merchandising than making rock n’ roll. Gene and company knew their album sales were slipping because of the softened image and music of the band, so he decided to do something drastic - a concept album written and recorded with the help of a symphony orchestra and a manager who later admitted that many of the disastrous creative decisions were due to his severe cocaine addiction.
The mark of a true artist is to work their craft from the inside out, without thinking of the audience. That KISS album clearly demonstrated that the band (Gene and Paul) motivations were not of an artistic nature. But the same can’t be said for Rivers Cuomo and Weezers’ follow-up to their break-through debut album. Everyone hated Pinkerton when it came out, citing Cuomo’s emotional lyrics about sexual longing and half-Japanese girls, which stood in contrast to the Blue Albums’ fun and nerdy vibe. He must have taken the criticism to heart, because Weezer hasn’t released anything as heartfelt or honest (or half-way decent) since. When people look back at the album, they realize it was Cuomo making the music he felt at the time.
The problem with Ryan Adams is that he’s consistently, absurdly erratic. No one could possibly enjoy all of his music. His accessible albums are pretty musically diverse, but the outliers are so far out there that they make those regular albums feel as predictable as a hipster scoffing at your bicycle. Is there another musician as wildly diverse as Adams? Prince has done a lot of different things over the years, but not that different. (though it would be hard to find, even among the hard-core Prince faithful, anyone who enjoyed Hot Summer or Purple and Gold.) Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones have both had inevitable phases and flops, but they generally stuck to one genre. Ryan Adams is different.
He started out in the band Whiskeytown in the mid-90’s, which Rolling Stone called “the Nirvana of alt-country.” Without really listening to much of it, I’ll just describe it as country soft with a punk punch. That’s where he started. Now let’s look at a bunch of songs that illustrate his song output since then. We’ll move chronologically, but just remember that Adams didn’t move from soft to hard, he bounced all over the place - last year he released sweet acoustic songs and satanic metal.
To completely over-generalize, I’d call this song pretty typical of 70% of his catalog. He’s singing slowly and beautifully to a girl, but there’s definitely an edge.
I wish you would
Come pick me up
Take me out
Fuck me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends
Behind my back
With a smile on your face
And then do it again
I wish you would
This is rockn’roll, but there’s no distortion or anything. That’s why folks were fairly shocked when Adams came out with Rock N Roll. I guess they could ignore his very low-key punk side project with Jesse Malin, The Finger. But they couldn’t ignore this:
This album received very mixed reviews from critics and fans, but Adams reputation as a great alt-country songwriter certainly took a hit. He calmed down for the next five years with the his backing band, the Cardinals, but then word came out that he was releasing his first “fully-realized sci-fi metal concept album.”
And the thing is, you can’t exactly tell why he’s making that amazing piece of art or, say, a satanic, pizza-oriented black metal project with a debut album entitled, “Feel the Laser.” Is he fucking with us? Does he really like it? Does he really expect us to like it? Is this some sort of jab at his record label?
Luckily, Adams has been doing this for so long that people have stopped asking those questions. (they’re still asking about Metal Machine Music, though.) We’ve come to understand that he has a real interest in many types of music, and he enjoys playing different stuff. Not only that, but Adams has a really silly sense of humor, as evidenced by his website that opens with this message:
Welcome to the new PAX•AM Records siteOr the time he hijacked his wife’s Twitter account: (click for large)
My Name is Bongo the Snowman – I’ll be updating you on new releases and news related the PAX•AM roster – with bands such as Ryan Adams, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals and more eclectic tastes such as Ryan Adams. I live on an invisible mountain in the sky. Good Morning.
The offseason is officially underway and things are already getting interesting. The Twins have picked up Jason Kubel’s option and declined Nick Punto’s, but they’re far from done. Here are some letters I’ve received wondering about the direction the ballclub will take this winter.
Like most baseball fans, I have no rooting interest in this years World Series. The Yankees have already been eliminated, leaving two underdog-type teams to fight for their first title in a long time (or ever). I suppose I’ll cheer for the Rangers, since they’re the ones who knocked off New York. Besides, I like when the American League asserts their dominance over an obnoxious NL team.
I thought about trying to attend at least one World Series game this year. It’s pretty cheap to fly to the bay area, but you’d better pack a kayak - tickets to AT&T Park are ridiculous. It’s actually less expensive to fly round-trip to San Fransisco than it is to get into any of the game. On StubHub, the cheapest you’ll find for tonight’s game is $515 bucks. On CraigsList, there are more people begging for tickets than actually selling them. And they’re probably all serial killers.
I’ve bought and sold a few things on CraigsList, but the amount of transactions is relatively tiny compared to the amount of time I spend browsing the site. Holy cow wow I love browsing the site. It’s a slice, nay, a snapshot of humanity, in all it’s disgusting hypersexuality and materialism.
Every section has it’s own quirks and humor. The job section can be overwhelming because there are so many different types of jobs in so many places. There are 31 different categories of jobs on CraigsList, not including a section just for part-time work. And I love that they included an et-cetera section, just in case a job listing doesn’t fit into any of the others. I can imagine someone asking, “So, what line uh work you in?” and I’d reply, “et-cetera.”
Basically, every single job listing is written in a way that makes that position sound absolutely wonderful. Like this one, under the vague heading Project Manager.
A fast growing wholesale business is looking for the right individual to make a huge impact and to help lead the company in growth. Specific responsibilities are: strategic sourcing and vendor relations, accurate fulfilling of custom orders and managing all operations. Other job duties could include margin analysis and pricing and special projects.
Must have a strong project management background with excellent organization skills. Must love details, analysis, decision making and getting things done. Must have strong software skills and be a quick learner in all Microsoft products.
Well, that was disappointing. It wasn’t crushing, though. At least the Twins had the dignity to get dominated, rather than suffering heartbreaking late-inning losses. The home team also primed their fans for disappointment by losing a load of games at the end of the season, wiping out any momentum and fan excitement. Now it’s time for fans to figure out what went wrong and then turn those quick solutions into hashtags. Let’s see how deeply pointless we can get.
Some fans are blaming only The Magical Walrus for the pathetic postseason record. Others are saying that it’s not his fault. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
A manager has two basic jobs. The first is game management - drawing lineups, managing the bullpen and making tactical moves. These decisions don’t matter much unless the game is close, and they’re usually not tough to make if the team is good. The second isn’t really measurable or noticeable, so the stat people don’t talk about it - leading. Managing all the personalities and motivations of 25 players isn’t easy, especially over the course of 162 games in six months.
Did Gardy make so many tactical mistakes that it cost the Twins the series? I don’t think so. Did he not get his players to play? It’s up for debate, but basically impossible to know. Yet I strongly doubt that he needs to tell these guys how to win. These guys have all been there before.
But if you want Gardenhire gone, then you should also cast away Jason Kubel and everyone else who has been sub-par in the playoffs. (nearly everyone)
If you wanted to really solve the Twins postseason failures, from an organizational perspective, you should look at what wins games in October that might be different from winning a division. (power bullpen, ace pitcher, power and speed.) Those are problems worth discussing. The managerial situation is not.
Indeed, it was pointless for me to write this, and pointless for you to read it. Because the bottom line is this: Ron Gardenhire isn’t going anywhere.
There are a lot of emotions heading into the Twins - Yankee division series. These feelings of fear, pride and hope can’t be put into words, but they can be expressed with the help of The Family.
This song kicks a whole bunch of ass. Craig Finn, leader of The Hold Steady and a Minneapolis native, recorded this song with something called The Baseball Project. I’m not sure what that is, but I know they rock. The song is entitled “Don’t Call Them Twinkies,” and sounds like an upbeat, rocking Hold Steady song. But the lyrics are the pure genius, and speak of a true Twins fan experience. (see the rough transcription at the bottom of this page)
You may remember The Hold Steady from their so-so Twins-themed cover of Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Craig Finn is a lifetime Twins fan - he even has a 20-game package to Target Field, although I haven’t spotted him there yet.
This also could spell the demise of the nickname “Twinkies.” There has been a small underground campaign against the term for quite some time, but I doubt if the general population knows about that backlash. This should create a whole legion of annoying fans, eager to correct someone when they say,”Twinkies.”
I wrote the lyrics quickly on tour about a year ago, and then over the next few months played with a few lines that bugged me over time. My intentions were twofold: I wanted to remind people of the proud history of my team, but also to try to capture the language that real sports fans have when boasting or arguing about their teams. I love living in NYC but I really don’t like Yankee fans and the way their team outspends everyone and calls it part of baseball. I had to bring up the fact that the Twins win at baseball in a more admirable way than teams like the Yankees. I had to bring up the awfulness that was the Braves fans’ Tomahawk Chop in the 1991 World Series. I had to bring up Ron Gant, and his infamous brush with Kent Hrbek at first base.
I recorded the vocals this summer at Wild Arctic Studio in Brooklyn with Dean Baltulonis, who knows just about nothing about baseball. I ended up having to explain all the references to him, and when he heard about the Ron Gant play, he suggested we do a harmony on that line, just to make it stick out. I liked that idea.
Since collaborating on the song with The Baseball Project I’ve gone to the new stadium a few times. Downtown Minneapolis is so alive, the bars are bustling, and the Twins are winning. It’s a great summer, and hopefully this song is some way of giving back some of the joy that the Twins have given to me.
