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October 26, 2005

Greatest Hits

Hello everyone. Today I'm "phoning it in" as the Twins Geek used to say. Today I'm going to list out some of the "greatest hits" of the Greet Machine, or in other words the most popular posts I have made on this humble blog. And not necessarily because I think they are great or because I think they are popular, but because I can see they are popular based on hit statistics.

People hit this blog through Google probably 70% of the time, meaning Google is my top referer. I've mentioned before that the term "rabbits" is by far the most popular search, but here are some of the other posts that get hit from Google.

• Life of Pi
  If you haven't noticed, my review for the book Life of Pi gets a lot of traffic for some reason. One person even attached his own essay in the comments!
  
  
• New U2
  A simple post about my favorite U2 albums that turned into an argument between Cheesehead Craig and I over which is the better band, U2 or Metallica. In the argument I list statistics on who has sold more albums, and now people come from far and wide to get that data (through Google).
  
  
• Revenge of the Sith
  In this post I listed my favorite quotes from Star Wars and most people get to it looking for quotes from Revenge of the Sith. Of course, I don't have any quotes from that movie so people probably leave disappointed. Incidentally, you'll note that I have a picture of Emperor Palpatine on this post and I refer to him as Phil Krinkie. If you do an image search for "Krinkie" on Google, that picture of Palpatine is the 9th result. That thrills me to no end.
  
  
• Founding Brothers
  Another book review post that gets a lot of traffic. In fact, one commenter said that based on my review he is going to use the book in his class. That is pretty slick.
  
  
• Texas and Stadiums
  I get a lot of hits for this post where I break down the deal for the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas. This and my breakdown of the deal to build a new Marlins stadium are two of my biggest stadium related posts.
  
  
• Parkinson's Law of Triviality
  If you do a search in Google for this famous/humorous law, my post on it is the top result. This is amazing to me. My post on Parkinson's Law itself is on the third page of Google results.
  
  
• Songs for a Desert Island II
  Of all my songs in this series, my interpretation of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" gets the most hits. Although I really think I nailed it with my interpretation of "Strawberry Fields Forever."
  
  
• Kids and Poop
  This post in which I detail a little BM mishap with one of my kids gets a ton of traffic. I must admit, it is a humorous story.
  
  
• Restaurants to Avoid
  Any time someone searches for a restaurant in St. Paul that is on this list, this post comes up. It lists restaurants that signed a petition against a tax for a Twins stadium. Note that I have take off the comments for this post. I was sick of all the comments from anti-stadium people who said they would use the list to pick restaurants from now on! Ha!
  
  
• Top 5 Rock and Roll Guitarists
  This post gets a lot of traffic mainly because if you do a search for "top 5 rock and roll guitarists" it is number one on the list! Again, that is amazing.
  
  
• Brew-haha in the Backyard
  This summer Milwaukee had an event called the "Big Brew Ha." This post which details a trip made by CC and me to Milwaukee, and a bet lost by me, gets hit a lot because of this event.
  
  

That's all I got time for. I'll add more later because I'm sure there are some I forgot.

Posted by snackeru at October 26, 2005 8:00 AM | Lists

Comments

In your Marlins stadium post, I found this little nugget:

"So, in conclusion, the Twins need to come up with a rock solid plan, and start thinking about paying for at least half. If they did these things I think we might actually see a new Twins stadium in this state."

By your own criteria the team only met one of these goals. Their current offer of $125 million toward a nearly $500 million stadium is about 25%. So why have you still focused the blame squarely on the government? True, it would be nice for the governor or legislature to at least say "We wish Pohlad would put up some more cash" but I think their refusal to call the special session should give a slight hint to the Twins that their offer isn't quite up to par yet. It's come a long way from their phantom contributions of old, and we'd all like to see this resolved, but I'm still not impressed with any deal where Pohlad's share is paid off within a year or two of opening (naming rights, attendance/revenue boom, etc, not even considering the jump in franchise value), yet the public is on the hook for 30+ years of continuing contributions.

Posted by: spycake at October 26, 2005 11:50 AM

Boy, spycake, you sure do like asking the tough questions! Yes, I do wish Pohlad would have come out with a plan that had the Twins paying for half. I even called Dave St. Peter and asked him about this (given that the Gophers are paying for over half too). Of course, he told me that each stadium effort is unique and blah, blah, blah. It is obvious to me they have no intention of ever offering half.

Here is the kicker, though: Even with the Marlins offering half, their bill still did not pass. The Florida state legislature still turned them down. I now firmly believe the same would happen here.

So, it really doesn't matter how much the Twins agree to contribute. Our state legislature would still find fault with the plan. Like you say, it would be a step in the right direction, but I truly feel our state legislature would be too stupid to act on it.

Yes, the Twins deserve some of the blame (a lot of the blame) for this not being resolved yet. However, the anti-stadium crowd supplies enough finger pointing towards the Twins. The Twins negotiated with Hennepin County (even before the plan came out I wrote to Opat begging him to demand half), and they came up with this plan. I suppport(ed) the plan based on this negotiation and the words of Opat who said this was the best they could come up with.

Obviously it hasn't worked out. It may not matter who to blame now anyway. Like you said below, you may start cheering for lower-level sports from now on. I think we should all get ready to start doing that.

Posted by: Shane at October 26, 2005 12:24 PM

So you honestly believe that no matter what plan the Twins present, the legislature will turn them down? I disagree. The original team proposals, way back in 1997, had similar dollar/percentage configurations to today's plan, but the team contribution was disguised as loans/guaranteed paybacks. It's hardly the extent of proper negotiation strategy to now say "Okay, you got us -- we'll just make the money real now". I think (and you think, apparently) the team could do A LOT more on this front.

If they offered half (which would be DOUBLE their present offer), I honestly think the legislature and the public could finally see some negotiating progress, that it's not just a repackaged version of past Twins/MLB hardball tactics.

Truly, though, I want to see a public commission propose a stadium plan of what we NEED, rather than what the team/league WANTS. And hopefully they could propose a reasonable partnership in financing the thing. Of course, both of these things would likely be refused by the team/league -- I mean, it wouldn't maximize their revenues and minimize their investment anymore, would it? (It appears I'm just as jaded about the pro sports powers-that-be as you are about the legislature)

Posted by: spycake at October 26, 2005 9:44 PM