Monday Open Thread: May 14, 2018

Happy Monday, everyone!

First off, happy belated Mother’s Day to all of the moms who are reading, thank you for all you do for your families. Thankfully, my wife shares my disdain for fighting crowds and following the herd, so I wasn’t forced into going out to dinner yesterday. I grilled breakfast, then we worked in the yard, went up to our daughter’s memorial and had ice cream, then came home & worked in the yard some more. It’s also our 7th anniversary today (don’t ask, because I have no idea how she’s tolerated me for seven years), so we’re just going to go out to eat tonight, when there won’t be many other folks at the restaurant.

It’s finally Monday, and we get to kick off another exciting work week. I love spring, the weather is perfect, the fishing is getting hotter and hotter, and there is TONS of work to be done in the yard. I don’t think I spent any daylight hours indoors this weekend, other than to go show a property on Saturday. Other than that, I was outside, except for a short period of rain when I went to the garage to work (I didn’t want to mess up my hair).

Around the DN since our last open thread:

Potential sites for the 2019 and 2020 draft have been released, per Chris. I didn’t see Bismarck on the list, must be a mistake.

Chris shared the WCCO piece about Maya Washington’s book, detailing the journey of her father, Gene Washington, to the NFL as one of the first draft selections of the newly formed Minnesota Vikings in 1967.

Chris has some sound advice for those who wish to engage in wagering for entertainment purposes only: take the over on the Vikings 2018 win total. The powers that be in Vegas currently have the Vikings at 10 wins.

The NFL lost one of the great ones, as legendary coach Chuck Knox passed away yesterday at the age of 86.

Vikings news from other sources and news from around the rest of the NFL:

Over at the Strib, Souhan looks at one important metric that analytics don’t account for: personalites. I agree with him on this one, I think team cohesion and player personalities play a vital role in a team’s success.

At Vikings.com, watch Linval Joseph and Sheldon Richardson as they joined PA in the studio, join Pete Bercich in the film room as he looks at Mike Hughes, and there are more weekend vids to sift through in the media vault.

From NFL.com, the Saints say they won’t lean on Kamara despite Ingram being banned. I’m not shocked, I’m guessing they’ll stick to their status quo of throwing 16,000 times a game. They’ve done that since they signed Brees & the bags came off the fans’ heads in the mid 00s.

Someone at ESPN had the guts to post the annual “this could be the year the Browns turn it around” piece. Seriously, we see/hear/read it every year, and every year, the same thing happens. I won’t believe it until I see it. Make no mistake, there are many reasons to agree, but then you look at the track record and the laundry list of reasons they should have turned it around in prior years, and the ensuing results, and you have to laugh. So, take a read and laugh like I did. Laughing is good for you, they say.

We come to today’s media selection.

For my wife on our anniversary, I insisted we play this one at our wedding. I didn’t really have any “musts” for the wedding stuff, and we kept it pretty low-key and simple, as the day isn’t about “stuff”, in our opinion, BUT I did insist on two things: 1) we have some polka at the dance, and 2) If I have to do the dumb traditional bride/groom dance thing, we had to play this one by Ernest Tubb, one of the all-time greats.

Again, we all know the rules, but in case someone is new:

-No discussion of politics or religion
-No feeding of the trolls
-This isn’t a male version of The View, so leave the gender hatred at the door
-Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must
-Speaking of which, if discussing a newer show or movie, please use spoiler tags
-No pictures that could get someone fired or in serious trouble with their employer
-If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away
-While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open. Belly up & tie one on. Don’t forget to tip your waitress, & try the tiger meat.