So we received this e-mail from a PR person with SELF Magazine today:
I hope you are having a great day. SELF's October issue features ESPN's Erin Andrews, looking amazing and demoing the latest workout craze-CrossFit. I thought you may be interested in this and the photos. Attached is the feature and a few photo options. Also below is a link to the behind-the-scenes video. Please let me know if you would like any of the other photos.
We asked people on Twitter what we should do with this information. One suggestion: We send back some pictures of ourselves doing a series of exercises (and presumably looking amazing). Ultimately, though, Arizona/Illinois Gopher Girl won out. She dared us to include the pictures -- call it a test, on our part, to see if EA is still page view gold -- along with a post about the end of R.E.M. and the official retirement of Mike Modano. So, here we go:
WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH? (Phrase used on request. Apparently the frequency is "never again.")
We used to hate, hate, hate R.E.M. Our 1988, heavy metal-loving ears couldn't wrap themselves around the pedestrian twang and off-kilter voice. But times change. People change. Somewhere along the way, we picked up a used copy of R.E.M.'s "Eponymous" -- ironically a compilation of all the songs we thought we hated in the 1980s -- and ended up loving it. Our favorite R.E.M. song remains South Central Rain. Their breakup doesn't hit us as hard as it would plenty of people, but it doesn't make us feel any younger or better about music.
Mike Modano was a very good player during the four years he was with the North Stars, scoring at least 28 goals per season before the franchise up and MOVED TO DALLAS. If that had never happened, well, a lot of things would be different. But we've often wondered what Modano's place in local sports lore would have been. Sure, he still counts as one of us. What if the vast majority of his 561 goals and 1,374 points -- both NHL records for U.S. born players -- had happened while he played for the pro team in the state of hockey? It seems fairly clear that Norm Green robbed Modano of his legacy, just as he robbed this state of pro hockey for so many years. But maybe that's just us.
