Where were you on September 16th, 1989? I know where I was. I was sitting on the couch in my parent’s living room watching the debut episode of American Gladiators. There was nothing cooler to a teenage boy than a show that was part wrestling (but real), part football (big hits), and part war (Assault)?

I loved American Gladiators and watched it religiously throughout high school. Once I got to college I didn’t watch as often, but would catch it on random Saturday nights. Always an excellent show to watch while having a few beers with the guys.

Needless to say, I was looking forward to the revival of American Gladiators earlier this year. I really enjoyed the first season. But as the second season has progressed I’ve gotten more and more annoyed with the show. The following is a list of my issues and suggested changes to get American Gladiators back on track and enjoyable once again.
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When the Twins signed Mike Lamb before the season I was optimistic. While Lamb wasn’t a huge name, he certainly was an improvement over signings from years past (Butch Huskey anyone?). He’s hit over .300 a couple of times and is a .276 lifetime hitter and had just come off a few decent years with Houston.

However, like most of his predecessors (Huskey, Bret Boone, Tony Batista, Phil Nevin, the list goes on) Lamb struggled through the first couple months of the year, and has settled on the bench.

Today I came across an article on ESPN’s Page2 about Lamb.
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In the middle of this article from the STLtoday.com, there’s a nice little story:

Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster Steve Blass once won 19 games in the majors, but he is known more for what took him out of the majors. Suddenly and inexplicably he couldn’t throw a strike. So it was with profound empathy and amazement that Blass called Rick Ankiel’s 20th home run Friday night.

“It’s stunning,” Blass said about Ankiel, the pitcher-turned-slugger. “No one can appreciate what he has done, how he’s come and what he has accomplished like I can. … I can tell you chapter and verse about what happens to you emotionally when you go through what he did and what I did. To hold it together and come out on the other side like he has is tremendous, just tremendous.”

The Wades and I have chatted about this a bit privately, and I think Ankiel’s story is maybe the most under-rated of the year. I think probably because we’ve never really seen anything like it since Babe Ruth. I’m certainly not calling Ankiel the Sultan of anything, I’m just saying that it’s really a tremendous story to be able to be a proficient major leaguer at both pitching and hitting, and especially with the adversity that Ankiel had to face along the way. Impressive stuff, as Mr. Blass would know.

So the basic fact is: the Government, somewhere in the executive branch, possibly even the Big Shrub, committed a felony by wiretapping Americans. Today, the legislative branch, led by the opposition party, covered it up. 99% of the media would rather not cover it, since it could someday be their corporate interests who will need the same thing. The same percentage of the citizenry seems not to care.

You could watch this video to have a slightly deeper insight as to what “politics as usual” did to this country today (and as always, h/t to Glenn Greenwald for the clip).

And for those of you who are saying that things will be different once Obama is in charge - that he’s an agent for Change… he voted for this too. After as recently as October, when he said that he would always oppose it. Sounds a lot like business as usual to me. Maybe Barack thinks this kind of precedent could be useful to him as President. It’s now a fair question to ask.

It’s a sad day for ‘Merica. I assure you that Patrick Henry is halfway to China right now, from spinning in his grave. Go read it for yourselves.

I thought I’d blogged about this before, but my quick search for the orange cat on this site didn’t turn up anything, so I’ll try to set that right this time.

Anyway. I found an old article in the Washington Post this morning, that highlighted one of my newer internet finds: Garfield Minus Garfield. And as it turns out, Jim Davis actually reads and approves of it.

Very nice to see an author who’s cool with someone taking their work and extending/expanding it. Not that he’d authorize a GMG book, no doubt, but still. And seriously, check out Garfield Minus Garfield, it’s kind of like watching a train wreck…