Twins tickets just went on sale and while I was "standing" in their virtual line for almost an hour before hitting the front of it, I was only able to secure one pair of tickets for the Yankees/twinkies series the end of September. And while I know I will be able to secure tickets to the other two games via stub-hub, I was hoping for a little more efficiency than that. The site went belly-up as soon as I attempted to buy any other tickets; sure as heck hope I don't get charged for the other 8-10 times I tried to purchase tickets to the Tuesday night and Wednesday day games.

But who knows? Perhaps the Twins will be buried again as they were in 2011 and tickets will be easy to come by; perhaps the Yankees will have locked up the AL-East by then. On the other hand it would be swell to get to see them clinch, too.

Spending so much time staring at the schedule I did note that the Texas Rangers visit Target Field the first week of the season (my birthday weekend no less) for three games. What's intriguing about that is the opportunity to see Yu Darvish, the newest Japanese pitching "sensation," in what could be just his 2nd Major League start. I will be there for sure...

Ryan Braun got off on a technicality and seemingly no one is really "happy" about this. Doesn't look like it's going to quell the conversation as reps from MLB "vehemently disagreed" with the outcome. And a quote from an anonymous player was very telling: the player joked that the drug testing system was clearly not working because so few players were getting caught. The more things change the more they stay the same: meanwhile, Jose Canseco is trying to play his way back into the "show."

And the A's signed Manny Ramirez which should get filed under Jose; Manny being Manny has already had the dread-locked thug mistake one of his teammates for the "video guy." I would bet that Beane's scheme is to have Manny hitting the cover off the ball, rested from serving his 50-game suspension, and be able to move him to a contender for some great prospects come mid to end of July.

So, I watched the movie I ghost-wrote last night and have to give it a grade of C. It wasn't the worst movie I have ever seen (including those that I wrote) but I guessed the problem early on. I was given the assignment of writing a movie without much dialogue and that's what I delivered as the first draft. Recalling that I was hired to do the first re-write and add some dialogue I was hoping that the director didn't get scared off by trying to make the film with as little speaking as possible. Alas, most of the stuff that was added (by other writer(s)) is dialogue and most of it fails miserably.

The biggest problem is the lead actor who is barely believable in the scenes sans talking, but as soon as he has to open his mouth all that goes by the wayside. He should have stuck to just directing; there are a number of effective scenes -- even some pretty unnerving and/or scary -- when it is just action, but the movie kind of stops in its tracks when there are dialogue scenes.

Oh well. What do I know? Maybe it will be a big hit. I hope so for their sake and for my back-end, but... yeah.

Cheers,
Brian