The Skolney Blog

1990: Goodfellas is better than any of The Godfather films. I frankly don't think it's close. A strong case could be made that it's also the best thing ever directed by Martin Scorsese. I hadn't watched this film all the way through in a really long time before doing the anniversary viewing, and I really got into it. This is absolutely peak Ray Liotta, and peak Joe Pesci (just a few months before he menaced Kevin McAllister). Deniro was great as well. Only performance I never liked was Lorraine Bracco as Liotta's wife. It's just a great exploration of this world, and told so well. Nothing is confusing, everything is interesting and entertaining. There's great comedy. Iconic scenes everywhere. I have no idea when I first saw this. This is one of those films that has just always hung around as one I thought was really good, but not a favorite. 2000: Now this film is completely forgotten. Even I forget about it. When I was looking up the...

Astros 3 Twins 1 The playoff losing streak that will never end hits 18. Facing not just the continuation of the most ridiculous losing streak that has ever been, but the indignity of being swept at home in the playoffs by a sub-.500 team, the Minnesota Twins dug deep, gathered all their collective will to win and....gave the same garbage effort as they did in game 1 and got swept. I'm so over this franchise.  All Twins playoff games FEEL like reruns, but this one really was.  Again we had the Twins loading the bases in the 1st only to not score. Again we had the bats do NOTHING the rest of the game. Again we had a starting pitcher give exactly the kind of start you want and need, only to get no run support and get pulled early for no reason.  Again we had easy first guess bullpen management mistakes that led to the winning runs. And so again a Twins season goes down the drain. Rocco Baldelli has done one thing for sure in 2 seasons of playoff failure. He has made me appre...

Astros 4 Twins 1 The Minnesota Twins are a laughingstock of a professional sports franchise. They are a disgrace. Never more so than now, as they lost their SEVENTEENTH straight playoff game.  This wasn't the Yankees. This wasn't even Oakland. This was a sub-.500 Astros club, with the worst road record in baseball, against the Twins with the best home record in baseball. The Twins had their ace on the mound, and didn't have to face Verlander. They got Buxton back healthy. They led deep into the ballgame. Hell, even Taylor Rogers had a good outing.  Nope. Didn't matter. It never matters. It never will matter.  Because the Minnesota Twins are a laughingstock, a franchise that will always shit the bed in the playoffs, regardless of circumstance or opponent or venue. They are a disgrace to those players who won championships in 87 and 91.  The Bomba Squad is now 4 for 4 in complete postseason no shows. That 1st inning today was all we needed to see to know what this game...

The final Sunday of the weirdest of all baseball seasons was pretty damn weird too. It began with the Twins simply needing to win to take the division, or have the White Sox lose.  The Cubs got up 10-1 on the Sox very early, so we seemed on easy street regardless of what the Twins actually did. The Twins game was tied late, but the was no real drama. And then there WAS, as the Cubs started trotting out the worst of their bullpen and the Sox turned a 10-1 game into a 10-8 game in a matter of 2 innings. And then the Reds took the lead in the 10th.  Oh god. After all of this (the Sox collapse, the Twins surge, and the Cubs leading by 9 runs), the Twins were STILL going to wind up opening the playoffs against the Yankees, and have another season go down the drain.  But Operation Avoid New York finally came through. The Cubs stopped the rally and got the win, clinching the division for the Twins, who themselves lost. So finally, for the first time since 2006 the Twins will get...

The Seattle Storm finished off their sweep of the Lynx.  The buzzer beater loss of game 1 became a competitive but convincing loss in game 2 and now game 3 was kind of just a cakewalk for the Storm.  I'm gonna be totally honest with this one. I saw almost none of game 3. But I saw enough from the first 2 games to know that Seattle was just flat out better (if not for Stewart's injury last year they'd be going for a threepeat), but that this Lynx club was worthy of being one the WNBA's final four. The issue was not even beating Seattle in this series. That wasn't going to happen, even if they did steal game 1. The issue is how do you close that gap to where you are on an even level with Seattle.  It's a good question to have, cause it means you are on the right path. The Lynx have so aced their brief post-dynasty era that what may have originally seemed destined for a long rebuild instead saw them have a terrific 2020 season, and their 1st playoff win in 3 years....

TITANS 31 VIKINGS 30 So close. The Vikings were so close to not just getting their first win of 2020 but saving their hopes for a competitive season. Instead, we sit at 0-3, a loss caused at least in part by the very things that looked to be leading the way to victory. And any realistic chance that this will be a playoff season appears to have already evaporated. At times today this very much looked like it would be a full on redemption day for many of the pieces of this team that have been sputtering. This was definitely, under better circumstances, going to be a day where the story was the offense. This time, the opening drive wasn't a scoring drive. And the 2nd drive ended quickly in a Dalvin fumble. But after this the offense was really looking good for a while. Cook ran great, They didn't just run him up the middle all the time. He got outside and had room to run all over the place, including one long touchdown burst. He finished with a career high 181.  The passing game w...

I sure didn't see this coming on the afternoon of September 17th. On that day, the Twins lost their 3rd of 4 against the White Sox. It was a pretty awful series that left the Twins 3 back in the division AND gave Chicago the tiebreaker, so it was essentially a 4 game deficit. But then a strange, stunning, potentially wonderful thing happened. The White Sox collapsed. They lost 2 of 3 to the Reds, and now have been swept in a 4 gamer by Cleveland, which included TWO walkoff homeruns.  On our side the Twins rebounded to take 2 of 3 at Wrigley, and then swept 2 from the pesky Tigers. Add it all up and heading into the final weekend of the season the Twins have a 1 game lead, and a magic number of 3.  All the Twins have to do is get a home sweep over the lowly Reds (who to be fair are trying to hang on to one of the NL's 8 spots). The White Sox have a series against the crosstown Cubs, who are in the playoffs but still haven't secured their own division. So it seems pretty like...

Ah yes...tanking. That most desirable of strategies for fans of losing football teams. Lose a couple games early? Fuck it. Tank the season. Hey why not? Tanking is how all NFL teams get great young franchise quarterbacks and win super bowls. Except that's not how it works. That's not how it works at all. Putting aside the stupidity of acting like a shiny new quarterback is the solution to all our problems, and also ignoring how seedy it is to root against your own team, there is also this one simple truth: TANKING DOES NOT WORK! It doesn't work, and it is also not needed. This isn't the NBA where a couple spots in a draft order can mean the difference between Shaquille O'Neal and Christian Laettner. In the NFL you can get a franchise QB (or star at any other position for that matter) anywhere. But I'm here for a deep dive on this belief that you have to tank because you have to be able to draft a QB with the #1 pick or at least top 5 to actually find a QB. Nope....

Colts 28 Vikings 11 It has been a LONG time since a Vikings season was basically over before summer even ended. I'm not QUITE ready to go there yet with the 2020 Vikings, but I sure am teetering after today's grotesque loss in Indianapolis. I could excuse a drubbing on defense like we saw last week, under the circumstances. But today it was the other side of the ball, the side that I thought was going to be a major strength this year, that was a complete and utter failure and doomed any hopes of avoiding 0-2. I am beyond disappointed so far in Gary Kubiak. After today's debacle he is looking like the second coming of John Defilippo. Cause I have not seen such a putrid, seemingly deliberately bad offensive game plan since those awful games that got the aforementioned Defillippo fired in 2018. Last week was messy, but the offense had so little time on the field before the Packers got up big that it kind of threw everything out of whack. And the offense did produce, albeit in ...

Well there's no turning back now. The Twins are officially in the playoffs after beating the Cubs tonight.  And Operation Avoid New York has imploded completely over the last couple days. We are 3 up on Cleveland, with the tiebreaker. Tampa has beat up on Baltimore to maintain a 3 1/2 game lead atm over the Yankees. Dread it. Run from it. The Yankees are inevitable. The only matter left to be decided is which one of us has home field advantage for that first round series. The Twins hold a 1 game lead in that race, and I don't know what the tiebreaker would be. I know what will happen. You know what will happen. But what can you do? Maybe this will be that 1 in 14 million. And those are about the right odds. 

RBG died. Her death is sad, but honestly way more sad than the death of an old woman who lived a full life is what it means for what is now going to happen for this country. Trump and Moscow Mitch will fast track her replacement, and it will be someone even worse than Brett the frat boy rapist. Biden will win the election. But Trump will sue (or someone will sue on his behalf), and it will get kicked up to the now fully fascist SCOTUS.  And regardless of facts, independent of any evidence or reason, SCOTUS will overturn Biden's win and hand Trump a 2nd term. And then it will REALLY be time for massive violent revolution. We will literally be left with no other option. Get ready.

Lynx 80 Mercury 79 The Lynx season that came.out of nowhere looked like it was about to end tonight, as Phoenix was rushing down the court in the final seconds, and as Skyler Diggins-Smith tossed up a 3 at the buzzer. Oh well, it was a fun season, with a great deal of promise for the future. But a funny thing happened. The shot by Phoenix didn't fall. The Lynx won! They move on to a semifinal series against either Seattle or Las Vegas (still undetermined as I write this). It wasn't always pretty. But this Lynx team has spent this whole shortened season getting themselves into.predicaments and then getting out of them. What's one more? Early on it looked like another one and done clunker like the last 2 years. Sylvia Fowles was back, but she didn't look very good, and her presence seemed to have knocked the whole team out of sync. This team spent weeks learning to play without her. And when Fowles hit the bench for the first time the Lynx immediately wiped out their earl...

CAPONE (2020) I don't know why Josh Trank chose this as his "comeback" directorial effort after the failed Fantastic Four relaunch. I don't know why Tom Hardy agreed to star in it when the whole performance is done in an unintelligible mumble growl. I mean, it's at least a novel idea for a biopic, it shows Capone right at the end, but man is it a hard movie to sit through.  WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS (2020) Another entry into the "sick kids romance" genre. In this case only the guy is sick. He has schizophrenia. The lead actor is pretty good in a tough role. His love interest is the wonderful Taylor Russell from Waves, who I am very much buying stock in. They have fun chemistry. It bugged me that the whole 3rd act exists solely so he can go off his meds for no reason. Dude, just take your pills.  HIGH ANXIETY (1977) I would probably have liked this more if I had more personal knowledge of the Hitchcock films being spoofed here (although I did catch some of ...

Not technically. No they still have 10 games left, and they will be in the playoffs. But they are done.  Because the sickest cosmic joke in all of sports is about to happen again. Even in this bizarre 60 game season with an 8 team playoff field, the Twins are going to have to play the Yankees in the playoffs. As if 2020 hasn't been bad enough  The Twins no show against the White Sox in the first 2 games of the biggest series of the season has all but clinched the central for Chicago. The Twins sit 4 back from Chicago in the loss column. And their sweep of Cleveland last weekend means they are 3 up on them. So the Twins are close to locked into 2nd place.  Over in the east the Yankees have jumped back ahead of Toronto, yet sit 4 back of Tampa. So the Yankees are nearly locked in to 2nd as well. It wouldn't matter if the Twins or Yankees finish with the better record. Either way that's the first round matchup. Whoever finishes 2nd in the west, likely Houston, is going to be...

Packers 43 Vikings 34 The Vikings opened their 60th season in an empty stadium, but I think even the cardboard cutouts in the endzones were disappointed by the performance of the team. This was bad. This was very bad. This was the worst defensive performance of the Mike Zimmer era, and honestly probably one of the worst in the whole 60 years. I think we all knew that there were going to be some rough games with this extremely young group of corners, and this defense that has had an unprecedented loss of veteran talent since they had last taken the field in January. But today was honestly way worse than even my biggest fears. It was like every single nightmare scenario at once, made all the worse considering who got to benefit from our misfortune.  It didn't start this way. Early on this defense was in very much a bend but don't break mode. Green Bay took the opening kickoff and went right down the field, but we stiffened deep and held them to a field goal. And our first drive o...

I have no idea what is going to happen with the Vikings this season. None. The only thing I feel very sure of is that, even if they have a down season it still won't be BAD. Mike Zimmer teams don't have bad seasons. 2016 and 2018 are looked back on so negatively, but even there they won 8 games both those years. And even in 2014, Zimmer was a rookie coach inheriting a rock bottom defense, who also lost his starting QB and star running back before summer even ended, and still went 7-9. Zimmer does not let things spiral out of control like that. Officially I am picking 9-7, which would mean it's a step back year.  The losses from week 1 2019 to Sunday just on the defensive side are insane. Hunter, Griffen, Joseph, Weatherly, Rhodes, Waynes, Alexander. All gone, plus losing Michael Pierce. That's an absurd loss of manpower. This alone could make the biggest difference this season, even if Hunter is only out a few weeks and even if players like Odenigbo, Holton Hill, and ro...

We knew this, of course. We knew he was the main reason that now 190,000 Americans are dead that did not have to be.  But we still thought that it was as much Trump's incompetence as anything else.  Nope. He deliberately caused every death. He is a fucking murderer. He should be executed the second he leaves office, if not sooner.  Bob Woodward released audio of conversations with the orange ape, in which Trump admitted way back in March that COVID is far more contagious than the flu, and that it spreads through the air. I'm not at all happy that Bob Woodward sat on this incriminating audio for so long, but what's done is done there.  But Traitor Trump never talked like this, or acted like this, in public. It was always downplaying the virus (in those rare times when he even admitted it existed) and flat out lying about what the virus is like.  His sycophants, the anti-mask freaks who believe his every word, then spent the entire spring and summer fighting again...

Yeah it might be foolish to even try predicting what's going to happen in this season like no other. COVID will hang over the whole season even if the league avoids having the issues MLB has had. I do think they will have minimal delays or postponements. But an even bigger wrench is the lack of fans, and thus probably the lack of any home field advantage. Some teams really rely on that a lot (like the Vikings). Some teams will have some fans from the start, some will start with empty stadiums, and who knows what the situation will be by December. Will more fans be allowed in by then, and thus favor teams with more late season home games? And how will the lack of a real offseason, or any preseason games effect play? Nobody has seen any game action since last year. Will that favor older, more veteran teams? Will it doom any teams with new coaching staffs? Will it lead to more injuries? Point being I could be even more wrong with my predictions than usual. But here goes nothing. AFC E...

Well here we go. The Twins get a couple days off, before their final 15 games, including the next 10, with their last cracks at the Indians and White Sox, plus a 3 gamer at Wrigley. Those 10 days will most likely determine what this team is. They are very securely in the playoffs again, after following their 6 game losing streak by winning 7 of 9, and even showing some life on offense. So those few days of panic are in the rearview. But there is still a lot to play for. I don't buy the argument that seeding doesn't matter. We still don't know for sure yet if there will be a playoff bubble. The Twins still could have true home games, and even in this fan-less season they have a much better home record. And you want to have that last at bat in your back pocket. Can they overtake Cleveland and Chicago? I remain skeptical, cause I have seen this lineup struggle so mightily all season. Now, they have scored 6+ in 3 of the last 4 games, so they have shown some improvement. Donald...

The Vikings cut the roster down to their initial 53 today.  As these things go, this was not much of an eye opener. No major surprises in the cuts. Maybe more noteworthy is who wasn't cut...at least for now, as more moves have to be coming. I'll just go position by position. QB: Both Jake Browning and Nate Stanley were cut, although either one could be added to the expanded practice squad. Mannion stays, although if Josh Rosen clears waivers I give him a strong look  RB: Only surprise is that Ameer Abdullah made it. I figured he was gone with KJ Osborn likely taking over as the returner. WR: 7 made it, although 2 listed (Osborn and the out of nowhere apparent special teams stud Dan Chisena) figure to never see the field at receiver. Was a little surprised Alexander Hollins got cut. TE: Nothing surprising at all here.  OL: Probably the most surprising cut of the day was Aviante Collins, the combo guy who has hung around here for a few years, with injuries largely keeping h...

For 20 years, Christopher Nolan has been churning out one amazing film after another. Nobody other than probably Quentin Tarantino is a more sure thing. The catch is that when a bar is set so high, anything short of that bar can feel like a disappointment. And yeah, I kinda feel disappointed by Tenet. It's an amazing film to watch, don't get me wrong. It has all the grand spectacle of a Nolan film, with some of his most technically marvelous set pieces. It has big ideas. It has an excellent cast. But holy shit is it tough to follow in any way. It is one of the most thoroughly confusing plots I have ever encountered. And, for at least this one film, Nolan's gift for making complicated films easy to follow eludes him. I was lost almost the entire time, so surprising from a filmmaker who has made films with complicated plots (Inception, Interstellar) and structures (Memento, Dunkirk) feel so streamlined.  We knew from the trailers that the plot involved some sort of time trave...

So the big story today was a Kirk Cousins appearance on either a radio show or podcast, in which he talked about the coronavirus and masks and his approach to the whole thing. And it became the story of the day, basically. And it was a total smear campaign against Kirk Cousins. If you went by any of the headlines on the story or the discussions you would think that Kirk Cousins was an anti-masker like one of these freaks you see at Walmart throwing a temper tantrum because they're expected to wear a mask. Kirk said nothing of the sort. The only thing Kirk said that was wrong was him kind of downplaying how useful masks are against spreading COVID. Masks ARE provably helpful. They aren't 100%, but they do help. But Kirk was not saying that he does not wear masks or he won't wear masks or he's opposed to wearing masks due to some sort of political or religious belief.  Quite the opposite. He said quite specifically that out of respect for other people he will wear masks...