Thirsty Thursday Hodgepodge

Welcome friends.  As go time approaches for baby 2, my mind is less coherent than usual, which means some really random stuff might end up coming out in over the course of the next several hundred words.  It also means that I am going to go straight bullet style with this week's hodgepodge instead of trying to make it all flow and all connect.  We'll see how it goes.

- So I pop open Grantland.com this morning and what do I find? Amongst the 203 NFL draft stories and the NBA playoff coverage is a Jonah Keri article on Troy Tulowitzki.  A couple things to not on this article; first off - I was totally on the Tulo train Monday, which means I am pretty sure that Jonah Keri reads the Tater Tot blog.  I mean, how else would you explain the coincidence?  Its not like Jonah Keri gets paid lots of money to follow, write and talk about baseball or anything, so theres little chance he would have notice Tulo if he hadnt read it here.  Actually, with the attention ESPN and its employees pay to the Skankees and Sawks and the amount they ignore anything west of the Mississippi but east of Los Angeles, I wouldnt be surprised if he didnt know Tulo was breaking things.  Yeah, Keri's got better stats and cooler graphics (the TuloGit 2 Quit graphic notwithstanding because it is the greatest graphic ever.  Tulo and Hammer?  I'm in!) but its bascially the same thing that I said.  The second thing (you have to go about halfway down the article) is when you get to the videos showing the difference between Tulo's swing from a couple years ago to his swing this year.  In the still shot of the video on the article, there is a very clear "We Got Tacos" under the score.  I don't know if I would be more excited or more pissed if this "We Get Tacos" thing becomes a nationwide talking point.  I'm thinking it would be pissed, kind of like how even your favorite songs become unbearable when they are played on the radio every 3 minutes.  And living in a world where I hate "We Get Tacos" is just not something that I am prepared to deal with.  Hopefully the masses gloss over it and no one in national media ever mentions it again.  Damn you Jonah Keri...you steal my article and then potentially ruin my taco loving experience.

- The NFL Draft is tonight (obviously).  I know several of you are big football fans (and I am sure that some of you I dont know are as well).  Tonight is the night that we get to find out who the next big things are for our respective teams.  Well, thats at least true for those of us who are Packers and Bears fans.  You Viking fans get to find out who is the next bug bust and who you will be hating for the next 4 to 5 years.  I have some friends who follow the draft very closely and who are up to date on who is going to be picked where and by what team, and I have checked out a couple of mock drafts (thanks Walterfootball.com for providing a database of mock drafts, it makes it so much easier to check them out), but I dont really get all that into the draft.  I'll pay attention to who is picked and where, but I doubt I will watch any of it, mostly because I think Mel Kiper Jr is a minion of Hades.  I mean really, who thinks that sitting around and grading a bunch of young men on things that are only applicable in a very small segment of society is a worth while life venture?  Obviously it has brought him moderate fame and most likely an easy lifestyle, but I am sure there is nothing like looking back on one's life contributions to society and noting that your biggest one is telling the world that Brady Quinn shouldnt fall past the 9 spot in the 2007 draft.  I'm sure no one will mention this to him, not because no one thinks it, but because we have all seen how belligerent he becomes when someone makes a pick he didnt see coming. 
If he gets that up in arms about the Bears picking Kyle Long in the first round ("He HAD A 3RD ROUND GRADE!!!"  Take your 3rd round grade and shove it up your ass, Mel, right next to the imaginary trophy that Kyle Long got for going to the Pro Bowl last year as a rookie...Yup 3rd rounder.), imagine how he would react to someone telling him his life's work is completely meaningless.  I actually have wondered, if at some point in the future mankind has gone through a massive catastrophy, like the ones depecited in so many movies, and much of the past is forgotten or only remembered through artifacts, what will our future selves think if they find one of Mel's NFL Draft Guides.  Anyways, my somewhat educated but not really educated guesses for the important teams tonight: The Packers will take  LB Ryan Shazier to continue their tradition of drafting LBs from Ohio State (AJ HAWK ALERT!!!) and then being disappointed when they realize they have a LB from Ohio State; the Vikings will break the Bears' hearts by taking DT Aaron Donald and beginning to rebuild the inside of their DL; the Bears will try to close a gapping whole at Safety with Calvin Pryor (if this was the old Bears, they would have drafted Johnny Manziel and then tried to explain why having multiple QBs who play with reckless abandon and are openly disliked by their teammates is a good plan.  Who am I kidding, this might happen anyways.  Go Smoking Jay!)

- I wish they would put the NFL draft back in April where it belongs because this is Stanley Cup playoff time.  And that means its time to watch the Hawks destroy whoever happens to have the misfortune of getting matched up with them.  Right now, obviously its the Wild.  Most of the time, I love Wild fans.  They are fairly knowledgeable about hockey (understatement) and mostly good natured and realistic about how good their team is.  And dont get me wrong, the Wild team is pretty good this year and poised for success for the next several years thanks to the emergence of guys like Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter and Eric "He ain't no" Haula "back girl." The Wild have dominated large stretches of games during this series despite being outscored.  Here's the thing though...the Hawks are just better.  They have more depth, they have more skill and they have more experience.  The 1 thing the Wild have going for them is their size and willingness to hit, which the Hawks don't counter well especially with Andrew Shaw out.  In this series, and at the tail end of the Wild-Avalance series, I have seen normally well mannered and reasonable Wild fans turn into Viking fans...they think that every call that is made is purposely made against them and that the whole world is conspiring to keep them from reaching their Championship destiny and that the refs and the league are the only ones who can keep them from beating every team in the NHL (even the ones they arent playing).  I had the following conversation with a pretty knowledgeable Wild fan after the Wild's 4-0 Game 3 victory:

Me: That was a crazy good game for the Wild.  They controlled the puck, managed to get a couple in the net from their top 6 and avoid some potentially bad breaks.  Basically that was best case scenario for them.

Other Person (OPP - You down with OPP?) Yeah, this is really what I was expecting from the Wild the whole time.  I mean, I thought the refs were going to take the game from us during that second period with some of their calls, like they tried to in game 5 of the Colorado series with the no call hold when we were trying to score an empty netter.

Me: Wait, you expected a team that finished in 4th place in their division and whose leading scorer is Jason Pominville to manhandle the defending Cup Champs who also happened to win in 2010 with largely the same core group of players?

OPP: Yeah.  The Wild are going all the way this year.  This is our year. And then the Vikings are going to win the NFC North and the Super Bowl when they draft Blake Bortles.

Me: (Leaving, shaking my head)

I seriously went and sat down and asked myself, "What the fuck just happened?  Did I really experience that?"  I had to replay it in my head to make sure that I was hallucinating or somehow managed to get some PCP slipped into my Mountain Dew.
The Hawks are going to win the series, and it isnt going to be the refs that give it to them.  I stand by my Hawks in 6 prediction.  It is going to be borderline unbearable when the Wild win on Friday to tie the series (the Hawks are not a great road team surprisingly and the Wild are jacked up right now). But a team that cant score isnt going to be a team like the Hawks in 4 out of 5 games like the Wild would need to after going down two games.  It'll be a different story when LA comes calling in the West Finals.

- I have been checking the "stats" on the site traffic pretty regularly in hopes that our German friend continues to visit.  As I mentioned before, it measures the number of views in one week intervals (always 7 days) with the current day being the last of the 7.  Our anonymous German friend has continued to visit, actually more regularly than before.  He or she is now regularly visiting 3 times per 7 day period.  German friend, we would love for you to say hi.  Hell, I would even think about letting you co-manage Kyler's team.

There was some new and exciting news waiting for me when I checked this morning.

Entry	Pageviews
United States	110
Germany	3
Malaysia	1

We've added another nation.  I have no idea why/how people other than those in our league find this blog, but its kinda cool.  I guess there is a chance that one of you is a master hacker who is bouncing your IP address all over the globe like a bad villian in a B level SciFi thriller (called "Attack of the yIPs" and starring Rick Ankiel, Steve Sax, Chuck Knoblauch and, of course James Roday and Dule Hill, because everythign should have Roday and Hill).  If you are doing that, pick some new places, like Micronesia or Iceland.  Anyways, Malaysian friend, leave a message in the comments introducing yourself and telling us how you found your way here.