It's Christmas, So Let's Pretend I'm Larry King

I'll tell you, this blogging thing - not as easy as it looks...

Talked to Carl Pavano the other day. I gotta say, I never thought I'd meet another man who liked cigarette boats as much as I do... It's hard not to like this Ryan Doumit signing. The guy's just a winner at every level, except in the pros... I had one of these new-fangled Russian tea cakes the other day. Gotta say, I'm going to stick with cookies that are made out of cookie dough instead of drywall... I really think Target Field needs some artificial turf, just to give it that throwback 1970s feel...

I hear Kenny Chesney's coming to Target Field for a concert next year. It's hard to believe that, just five short years ago, that man was making a living being shot out of a cannon every day at county fairs up and down the Midwest... I like to put my suspenders on backwards, just to feel alive... That Josh Willingham just looks dangerous to me. I'm not sure I'd feel safe in the left field bleachers with him out there... I used to feel the same way with Delmon Young, except I was worrying for Delmon's safety, not mine...

I'm pretty sure my friends at the DMV gave me somebody else's license photo this time around... You want to talk about underpaid players, you start with Albert Pujols, and then you forget about the rest of the list... When I found out Andy Rooney had passed on, I said, "Larry, things are gonna be all right"... I've got a message for the folks at Chili's: your "chicken crispers" are never crispy, and it's making me worry that they're not made out of chicken, either...

Joe Mauer's marrying a girl with which he attended high school? Anybody that nice and normal must have some serious skeletons to hide... I'll bet Justin Morneau cries at the wedding. He seems like he might be that one guy at your wedding that cries against all odds... 2011's Pie of the Year was "cherry," and nobody can argue otherwise...

If you put Drew Butera and Ben Revere on a standard-issue softball field and made them compete in a home run derby, would either hit more than one home run before making ten "outs?" I say no... If the Twins send Tsuyoshi Nishioka to the minor leagues this year, can we then all agree to pretend that the whole thing never happened?... I had somebody tell me the other day that they liked Trevor Plouffe's power hitting, which seems generous for a guy who hit a homer once every forty plate appearances last year...

Luke Hughes is eventually going to figure out that cricket will never catch on in America, and he'll go home... I've really turned around on ice girls at hockey games. Those gals can shovel my ice shavings any time... That last thought was actually about my driveway and nothing else... I once told Woody Allen that nobody would ever make a successful movie about an astronaut in a banana suit, and I still think I'm right...

I'll leave you all with my famous gun-to-the-head predictions... The Twins will lose the season series to the Royals in 2012... Kevin Slowey will write an upopular book about his time in Colorado... This will again not be the year that alcoholic cider catches on in a big way... Facebook will implode, thanks to all of its users getting old and beginning to use it as an excuse to blast baby pictures to the whole world, rather than actually connecting with others... And finally: this is the year that Bud Selig finally finds that pair of reading glasses that he's been looking for on and off since 1982.