My hat is silent no more

Here it is everybody! What you've all been waiting for—Raking the Muck interviews my lucky Mossimo hat!!

RTM: First of all, thanks for sitting down with us. I know you have a lot going on right now.

Hat: The pleasure is all mine it's great to be here.

RTM: Okay, just in case people aren't familiar with your work how about a little background?

Hat: Well I was purchased at a Macy's in—I want to say 1995? September of '95? Something like that. So I guess that makes me 11 almost 12?

RTM: Wow time flies!

Hat: It does, it really does.

RTM: Do you feel old?

Hat: (Laughs) Yeah sometimes. With visible sweat stains and tears in the brim cloth—I'm definitely showing my age.

RTM: So Chris has always been your primary owner then?

Hat: Right. Although there was a period of time—

RTM: Oh right your pilgrimage.

Hat: Yeah. In the late 90's I went on one of those "finding yourself" trips. I was gone about a year.

RTM: I remember Chris was pretty broken up over that. Sort of a falling out between you two?

Hat: Kind of. I don't really like to talk about it. Chris writes it off as me just being "lost behind the couch."

RTM: Because that's where he found you?

Hat: Right. That's where I ended up but that wasn't actually where the journey started. I spent some time with the Maharishi and later the Tibetan monks but it was behind the couch where I found lasting inner peace.

RTM: How so?

Hat: A Gold Toe sock shaman showed me the way. Next day Chris finds me and I'm back on his sweaty head. True story.

RTM: So you've been in business ever since?

Hat: Pretty much. I definitely get regular use. This despite hardly being the newest hat in the closet—but hey, steady work is better than no work at all!

RTM: Any thoughts of settling down or starting a family?

Hat: Not really. The single life is good to me. I've dated a few stocking caps but nothing serious.

RTM: Do you have any independent projects in the works?

Hat: A few. Right now I'm auditioning for the lead role in the Bruckheimer/Bay version of Lidsville. Ultimately though I'd like to direct.

RTM: Thanks for the interview and best of luck—you've touched many lives.

Hat: Thank you, it's been fun!

Does Mittens have free will?

Don't buy this game

Man is this a turd. This has to be one of the worst games for the DS and maybe one of the worst games I've ever played.

I didn't get 5 minutes into it before shutting it off in disgust. With it being the only baseball game for the DS (and only $20) I figured I'd give it a shot.

It's basically a port of the Game Boy Advance version although the graphics and framerate are pathetic even compared to that system!

The pitching and batting mechanics are atrocious and impossible to figure out and on top of that there is no "Season" mode so you can only play single exhibition games. That wouldn't be so terrible if it was actually a fun game to play but it's not.

I desperately want a portable baseball game so I'm going to try to swap it out for Baseball Advance or one of the older GBA baseball games.

The DS is such an awesome system and way more popular (and better) than the PSP so I don't see why it deserves such a crappy effort from the 2K Sports people.

Roger Corman's Fantastic Four

Still not as terrible as the one with Jessica Alba:

Super Mauer Brothers

Here's a nice story from the Pioneer Press (you know the less-terrible Twin Cities newspaper?) updating us on the whereabouts of the other Mauer's.

I like Jake's attitude and Billy is selling Chevy's now? Crazy.
The Mauer's are truly the Baldwin's of Major League Baseball.

Grandpa Mauer was right about this one

Global Warming

Arctic Global Warming Expedition Called Off Because of Extreme Cold

From the AP article:

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

Let me see if I have this straight:

Warmer Temperatures = Global Warming
Colder Temperatures = Also could be Global Warming

The technical term for this phenomena can be found here.

The worst baseball team slogan ever

Seriously, "Back to the Grind"?

The grind of what? Not selling-out your newly renovated ballpark even as you are a recent World Champion in the 3rd largest market in the country?

I prefer Sox pride!

We will never forget...

Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum

'Jaws' on UltraScreen in Minnesota

Looks like the Spielberg masterpiece "Jaws" will be playing up at Oakdale Cinema on their "Ultrascreen" (whatever that is exactly—basically a ginormous movie screen) on March 15.

It's only $5—anyone wanna go?

My blog is OK

In case you haven't noticed this World Wide Interweb thing has really taken off.

At the forefront of the Information Superfreeway explosion lies the blog. Just five or six years ago it would have taken you many hours of painful HTML coding to post poorly written, ill-informed essays and embarrassingly personal and occasionally offensive journal entries—now we can do these things in a matter of seconds.

When I started blogging some 3 years ago just having a "blog" was enough. I could (and did!) post many entries on topics ranging from the War in Iraq to McGee and Me! and it didn't matter how inane it was because it was on a blog! Look at me I have a blog!

Now, of course, everyone has a blog and on top of that it seems these blogs are getting much more sophisticated and specific in their subject matter. Personally I've thought of dedicating my blog exclusively to the subject of Rax restaurant memorabilia just for the sake of being different and keeping with the times...

But then I think, "Hey, my blog is okay". Not great, not spectacular or life changing but OK.

Sure it's no slashdot.org or even barrynet.com but I figure as long as I can keep my little corner of the web at least as interesting as the Wikipedia entry for Solarbabies I'll feel that I have accomplished something.

In conclusion, my promise to you gentle readers is to keep this blog on par with movies about post-apocalyptic roller skating teens!

The Onion publishes one actually funny article a year now

This is it, and I wish it were true.

Also check out Lark News to see the big winners!

This is ridiculous