closed for the month

I have some stuff to do by the end of the month, so light bloggage for the next two weeks. Which is too bad, because I want to hold forth on the Chicago Film Festival offerings. In brief -- don't let knee-jerk reactions to Michael Moore prevent you from seeing Bowling for Columbine, regardless of your political stripe. And if a documentary called Tribute comes your way, jump all over it.

Okay, no doubt everyone has once hummed a song just before hearing it on the radio or somewhere public. Or have listened to an album somewhere and heard it later that night. But I never thought this common occurrence would happen with this one.

Some familiar faces in the Metrodome tonight. Dan Gladden is on the radio team, of course, and Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven had camera-range seats. We didn't get to see it, but Kent Hrbek was singing during the 7th-inning stretch. Tomorrow night Tim Laudner -- Boom-Boom Buck-Eighty himself-- will catch Sweetmusic's first pitch. I half expected to see Juan Berenguer on the mound in a trenchcoat.



One thing that was missing, though, was Kirby Puckett. Officially, Minnesota's most beloved sports figure has been keeping a low profile since news of domestic woes hit. But I'm not fooled. I figured out the real story.



Al Newman ate him.

I'm going to have to get closely acquainted with the Yahoo gameweb thingy. Games 1-3 of the Twins-A's series have 3 p.m. CT starts, and they're not on bradcast TV As I understand it, the start times were at the Twins' request, as they share a facility with two football teams. But the local ESPN station isn't joining the early games until 6:00, as it's more profitable to keep the drivetime yapfest on the air. Perhaps this will change now that the series outcome has become less predictable. Until then, I'll just follow the game on the web until 5 and sit in limbo for an hour, and pray nothing interesting happens. Like it did yesterday.