The Skolney Blog

Maryland 45 Fleck's Frauds 44 OT I've certainly seen some embarrassing Gopher football defeats over the years, but this one ranks pretty highly. To blow a 17 point 4th quarter lead, to a team you were 19 point favorites over, and to lose in overtime on one of the worst PAT shanks I have ever seen....incredible. Where is this team winning a game this year? They might not! Illinois next week might be it for games they would even have a chance to be favored in. They are staring at a very real chance to follow up what seemed to be a program changing 2019 season with a winless season. They have NO defense. Maryland is AWFUL, yet they still rolled up a quick 21 on them in the first quarter and then the 17 point comeback, plus an easy OT drive. The offense has been productive on the scoreboard, but Tanner Morgan looks like a mess half the time. That is, when he is allowed to play. Someone needs to explain why he only threw 15 passes all game. Following the 17 point comeback, the Gophe...

2010:  The Social Network was kind of looked at as a joke when they first announced they were making it. Like, why are they making a movie about Facebook?  But the film got the great David Fincher to direct, and the great Aaron Sorkin to write it. Any film with that pair is guaranteed to be great. And the Sorkin dialogue especially is where this film just soars.  Jesse Eisenberg, who up until this was known as kind of an actor who always played the meek nerd, went totally the other way as Mark Zuckerberg. He's a total prick, but you totally buy into his seedy brilliance.  This film also gave Andrew Garfield his big break, and he is great too, and tremendously sympathetic (I always relate to his arc in this). Fincher's sharp casting eye with this film also ended up launching Armie Hammer, Rooney Mara, and even Dakota Johnson. And yes, he even found the one role that that p.o.s. Justin Timberlake can play credibly. I mean, if you gotta cast someone to play ...

They end a 32 year drought. I was in 4th grade the last time they won.  Good series overall. Every game was competitive. Once again the team with the larger payroll wins it all. We still have only 2 champions in this century who were in the bottom half of the league in payroll (and one of those was the cheating Astros). Appalling decision by Kevin Cash to pull Blake Snell in the 6th. Given the stakes this was even worse than Baldelli pulling Maeda and Berrios. Guy is shutting out the Dodgers in a World Series elimination game, but you care more about what the analytics say than what is actually happening. Imagine Jack Morris getting yanked in game 7. Snell won't be pitching again til whenever spring training starts next year, and is pitching the biggest game of his life, and you yank him. Cash will never live this down. Brusdar Graterol wins a ring. The Maeda trade was still a good one by the Twins. The Red Sox have to feel worse about it after giving up Mookie Betts. Thus conclude...

Saturday saw the long awaited return of Big Ten football. Yeah we have had at least some college games every week since mid-September, but this was the first Saturday this fall that felt kind of normal.  And then the Gophers kind of ruined it by getting absolutely dominated at a fan-less TCF Bank Stadium by Michigan 49-24 (it wasn't even that close in reality). The Gophers grabbed a quick 7-0 lead after a blocked punt. But that was Michigan's last punt of the night. The rest of the game was a largely inexperienced Gopher defense getting run the fuck over. Michigan only held the ball for 25 minutes, but averaged almost 9 yards per play. Only a trio of missed field goals kept the visitors from dropping 50. The Gophers offense couldn't keep up. Tanner Morgan was rather awful. He missed a wide open TD on a 4th and goal that was the last chance to stay in the game. And he routinely failed to have any feel for pass rush, once getting blasted and fumbling for a touchdown return. A...

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD (2020) A fluffy Dickens adaptation. It's charming and has some visual flourishes, but nothing in it really stood out that much to me.  KAJILLIONAIRE (2020) A strange deadpan comedy about a family of con artists. This thing really OD's on that indie film quirkiness, but a lot of it works pretty well. The performance by Evan Rachel Wood is a total misfire, but Gina Rodriguez is at maximum scrumptiousness.  THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM (2020) This movie is somewhat of a cross between a faith based film and a Nicholas Sparks film, but manages to avoid the worst aspects of both. It's nothing spectacular, but it charmed me. Katie Holmes is of course terrific. THE LAST SHIFT (2020) Richard Jenkins (also in Kajillionaire) is the night manager at a fast food restaurant who is about to retire after 30 some years. I like movies like this that are centered around people working kind of dead end jobs. Jenkins character is so much of a pathetic sad ...

FALCONS 40 VIKINGS 23 The heartbreaking loss in Seattle a week ago basically slammed the door on the Vikings last true chance to make this a playoff season. And that sucked. But I was at least heartened by seeing the team improve on the field (if not in the win column), and encouraged about the rest of the season full of winnable games. And all that progress, all that improvement, all that hope for this team's near future was fucking obliterated today, as the Vikings go into their bye week having played arguably their most putrid collective game of the Mike Zimmer era. And frankly, at least opened the door slightly to the possibility that that era may be about to end.  I find it hard to really understand how a team that went to the wire against 2 of the 3 remaining undefeated teams in the NFL over the last 3 weeks could swing so completely the other way today and get destroyed at home by a winless Falcons team. Nobody escapes blame today (well except Justin Jefferson and maybe Irv ...

SEAHAWKS 27 VIKINGS 26 I'm not saying this was going to be the springboard to a playoff run or anything like that. It probably wasn't. But this Vikings team came out on the losing end, at the bitter end, in a game that they showed more collective guts and heart than I have seen from any Vikings team in years. And the fact that not only was their fight not rewarded in the win column, but the win was taken away from them on the 3rd of 3 4th down plays that all went against them in the final minutes...well it's just heartbreaking. This is just not going to be a season where things can work out for the Vikings. The first half of SNF was amazing. I could barely even believe my eyes. It was the Vikings playing at the peak of their current ability, particularly on defense. They were facing arguably the best quarterback in football, and imo the MVP of the league so far, Russell Wilson. And they shut him out at halftime. And it wasn't some fluke. Zimmer had this pass rush on fir...