The Skolney Blog

1991: Alright, let's get into it. From basically the day I saw this movie in theaters, through probably the next year or so, I had a HUUUUUGE crush on Anna Chlumsky. I only saw this movie once in theaters, but when it hit video the next summer I am pretty sure I rented it more than any movie ever. Had to be 4 or 5 times, and then I watched it 2 or 3 times each time. I was pretty obsessed. I even had the soundtrack.  Now, My Girl did not last. I see it at 12, obsess over it at 13. But by the time I hit high school the movie had fallen way off my radar. One, I get too old even then to be crushing on a girl who was like 11, but also, by the time I hit high school I've switched over so much to rap music and flicks like Boyz N The Hood that a cute little coming of age comedy just gets bowled over. My tastes changed so fast. We did get a sequel during my freshman year, and I was rather excited for it, but it just didn't click at all. And the original movie kind of jus...

In theaters: ANTLERS A long delayed horror movie. In a decrepit mining town, a monster escapes a mine and people start getting killed. Involved somehow is a young kid, whose teacher (Keri Russell) sees something wrong and tries to help. This thing is fucking bleak, man, but really effective and unsettling. There is a ton of gore, but not a lot of typical scares. It's a story and character driven horror flick, which are always the best kind.  THE FRENCH DISPATCH After not really getting into Wes Anderson movies early.in his career, I've been on board with them all for like 15 years. The good streak kind of ends here though. I just wasn't into this one. I even dozed off a couple times. This is actually a good structure for Anderson, allowing for a collection of short stories and asides. Problem is, other than the Benicio Del Toro/Adrien Brody/Lea Seydoux one nothing here is particularly funny or interesting. All there is is the style. SPENCER Director Pablo Larrain's last...

49ERS 34 VIKINGS 26 Well, we did get a couple days to actually enjoy this Vikings season.  The high coming off the victory over the Packers lasted just a couple days. Then the Everson Griffen thing happened, which is of course not about football, but then sort of IS when you factor in how it effects the rest of the team. It was just one more blindside hit to this franchise in 2021, a season that just never lets up in forcing the Vikings to deal with major adversity, and often not of their own doing. The Vikings took a bunch more hits on Sunday out in San Francisco, during a hugely frustrating and at times positively chaotic loss to a fellow NFC wild card hopeful. Going in this was already a terrible matchup, to face a 49ers team built around running the ball. Add in Dalvin Tomlinson being out with COVID and we had our top 4 guys out on the defensive front, from a team already struggling to stop the run. It's pretty much the singular reason I picked the Vikings to lose.  But th...

Gophers 23 Badgers 13 Alright, they got it done. After a season that looked like it was going to end up a big fat zero, the Gophers saved their best win for last. They took down the Wisconsin Badgers and won control of the axe. I don't think it is the superhuman achievement that some do to win this game. I don't think it salvages everything from this season. We still have the embarrassing loss to Bowling Green. We still have the embarrassing loss to  Illinois. We still threw away a golden opportunity to win at Iowa and win the Big Ten West. Those realities don't go away just because we got a win against Wisconsin and got to troll them a little bit at home (Badger fans whining almost as much as the Packtards). But this was a good win, and a better win than the 2018 game at Madison because while that Wisconsin team was rather terrible, this was a ranked Wisconsin team that had often looked dominant after a shaky start to the year. And they didn't curl up into a ball after...

VIKINGS 34 PACKERS 31 There was only one way the Vikings were going to pull off their biggest win of 2021 on Sunday, facing the 8-2 Packers. They had to stand up and really go at them. They couldn't play cautious. They couldn't play passive. They had to punch and punch hard. They spent the afternoon doing just that. And because of it, they have not just re-asserted themselves as one of the NFC's top wild card contenders, they have opened that door just a little to still have a chance at a division title.  The first punch came on Green Bay's 1st offensive play, as a short pass from Aaron Rodgers to an uncovered Davante Adams became a 37 yard gain. But the Vikings 1st half defense was solid, and held them to a long field goal. The Vikings countered with almost an identical drive. One big pass to Jefferson, but we too settled for a long Greg Joseph field goal. But that early deep shot was not an outlier. Our next series concluded with a deep shot to JJ, who came up just sh...

I got suckered in. For a few days I actually began to have hope that this little Nazi fucker was going to get what he deserved. Cause the general theory is that a longer deliberation raises the odds of  a conviction, because it takes people longer to agree on sending someone to prison than not. So much for that. The result of this shamockery of a trial wound up being what we all feared it would be. A murderer walks free. Because the judge made a joke of the whole proceedings. Because this little prick put on a hilariously fake performance and cried on the stand. Because this white jury saw a cherubic white kid and thought he couldn't possibly have done what all evidence and logic showed that he did. What Rittenhouse did was travel to another state, and head, armed with an assault rifle, into a large protest situation that he had no business being at. He can claim he was there to administer medical aid all he wants to, but he had no qualifications to do this any more than he had aut...

VIKINGS 27 CHARGERS 20 Finally the script got a rewrite! Game #9 of this volatile Vikings season seemed to be following along the same script that almost every other game this season has used. Until the Vikings flipped the script, and got probably their biggest win of 2021. Naturally going into this game this seemed like the biggest no win scenario of the season. Obviously the season was already teetering after the last 2 weeks. We had maybe the worst off the field week of the season, both with football and non-football related issues. Major injuries all over the defense, a unit already having to come off a nearly 100 play effort last week. On the road against a potent offense. But I picked the Vikings to win cause this felt like a rally around each other situation. And despite a lot of mistakes,  bad penalties, and shaky coaching at times, this time the Vikings overcame them and made the key plays at the key moments. The expected shootout never really materialized. The first half ...

Iowa 27 Gophers 22 Make it 1-8 in the two big rivalry games for PJ Fleck following today's rather embarrassing debacle loss at Iowa. This game was there to be had. Iowa is not that great. The Gophers played with energy and spirit. But their head coach screwed them, largely through a series of terrible 4th down decisions, and his refusal to just admit that his senior quarterback is a liability.  The Gophers first scoring drive led to a 4th and goal at the Iowa 2. Playing as a road dog, and desperately needing to play from a position of advantage, Fleck played coward and kicked the field goal to then tie the game at 3. Later in the half they faced another 4th and short from just inside the 40. This time there was really no choice but to go for it, and the play actually resulted in a nifty long, rumbling touchdown to a fullback, tying the game at 10. Following a turnover, the Gophers again drove deep in Iowa territory. Here it was more bad clock management than anything. The Gophers r...

At long last Britney Spears is free from her unjust, illegal conservatorship. Almost 14 years of her life under the control of her drunken abusive dad, and various other leeches. Britney is a goddess for being able to not only survive that, but remain the sweet woman that all her fans love. So what now? Whatever she wants. She's going to be getting married and probably having at least 1 more kid. It will likely be a very long time before she ever does music again. And that fine. She owes nothing to her fans. I hope she and her lawyer go after Jamie and all the leeches. Not one of them should walk away from this. I hope she gets back all her money. They stole tens if not hundreds of millions from her. But beyond that I just hope she can be relaxed and happy. Forever. 

This past week marked the 20th anniversary of the release of "Britney", Britney Spears 3rd album. For me, this isn't just an anniversary of an album, but of an era. "Britney" is always in the discussion for the title of my favorite Britney album, but there is never a question that this was my favorite Britney era. This had it all. You have this amazing album. But you also have the iconic VMA performance. You have the career altering Slave single and video. You have another slew of major TV appearances, as this was still peak era TRL. You have the HBO concert special showcasing her Dream Within A Dream tour. A couple weeks after the special I got to see it in person at Target Center, my 1st ever Britney concert. It was a religious experience. And an incredible show. There is no overstating how huge her first 3 albums were, and seeing those hits all live was unreal. We got another iconic, perfect video and single with I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman, the song ...

RAVENS 34 VIKINGS 31 OT I have seen enough. It is time for the Minnesota Vikings to fire Mike Zimmer. I hate it. It brings me zero joy to say this. But it is time. Today was inexcusable. As last week was inexcusable. As next week will probably be inexcusable if this madness is allowed to continue any longer.  It makes no logical sense, but the only thing I can think that is going on any more is that either Zimmer, or Klint Kubiak, or both, are deliberately sabotaging this team and with it their own careers. Today was like a bad rerun. Faced with a tough road test against a good Ravens team, and Lamar Jackson, one of the trickier QBs to play, this was a scenario where we would finally learn if this coaching staff was willing to let this offense loose. Baltimore has a bad pass defense. Playing the ultra conservative game was not going to fly. Stop me if you have heard this before, but the Vikings opening drive was really good. We found six when Kirk threw a deep ball dime to JJ. For ...

Illinois 14 Fleck's Frauds 6 Days ago, out of nowhere, the U of M announced another contract extension for PJ Fleck, tacking on a couple more years to his existing deal, that now runs through 2028. They did this for no reason, and before the 2 big games of the season, against Iowa and Wisconsin, which will determine if this season would be a success or another failure like every non-2019 Fleck season has been. And then they go out and suffer a home loss every bit as embarrassing as their historic blunder against Bowling Green, losing 14-6 at home to Illinois in a game that was not nearly as close as that score implies. It was 7-0 before I even got home from morning errands, and 14-0 before the end of 1. 14 points should not be a mountain to climb with 3 quarters to go, yet the Goofs didn't finally get on the board until less than 5 minutes remained (and even then couldn't make a damn PAT). The defense escapes blame. They played fine. The offense was a catastrophe. The offen...

Eternals was always going to be a different approach for the MCU. New characters, unknown to most audiences. A director, Chloe Zhao, known for small art house fare, including the great Oscar winning Nomadland. Even the trailers made it plain that this was something new for the most successful movie franchise in the world. Critics keep saying that the MCU is inferior because of how they stick so closely to a formula (as if that's a bad thing when the formula is this consistently good). So here comes a film that is very much a different beast in this franchise. The vibe of Eternals is very different. It provides most of the same things that other MCU films deliver, but in a package as unique as we have ever seen. And yet critics have slammed this harder than any MCU film. Add in the fandom menace dipshits who were always going to hate on this film due to 1. The director being a woman, and 2. The cast being this diverse, and you get the most hated MCU film ever, basically before it is...

COWBOYS 20 VIKINGS 16 On Halloween Night 2021 we may have seen the burial of the Mike Zimmer era of Vikings football. What a debacle. What a fiasco. What a gross, unforgivable display of deliberate incompetence. And all in front of a national TV audience (and WAY too many annoying Dallas fans at the purple palace).  With two weeks to prepare, facing a team without its starting quarterback, at home and largely healthy going in...this is what the Minnesota Vikings put forth? But, as is so often the case, it wasn't bad at the start. We take the ball first, and roll right down the field to an easy touchdown. Same thing as the Cleveland game. And then, just like that game, the offense was comatose after that.  After a whole week of drama about who would start at QB for Dallas, it turned out to be green backup Cooper Rush. And he did get Dallas into field goal range on their opening drive. But Greg Zuerlein missed the kick. Okay, so let's keep rolling. But the offense never rolled. ...