Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

Aaron Hicks Back to the Minors

aaron hicks - mn twins

Aaron Hicks has been given several opportunities to succeed with the Minnesota Twins. Yet, with each opportunity, he still can’t seem to figure out what it takes to play in the big leagues. When the Twins traded away both Denard Span and Ben Revere for pitching during the 2012 offseason, it left an opening in center field. The organization felt, that Hicks would be able to man the position although he’d not played any higher than Double-A New Britain. During Spring Training, Hicks batted .370/.407/.644 with 4 home runs, 18 RBIs and 18 runs scored. Because of this performance,...

Movie Review -- 'It Follows' Might Be the Best Teen Horror Movie of All Time

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Perfection is an elusive thing. Critics like to reduce films, good and bad, to a shortlist of buzzwords like "character" or "plot" or "cinematography," but the truth is that the ideal movie is always changing. That special something that makes It Follows the perfect movie for right here, right now, didn't just jump out and attack me. Throughout the film I thought I sensed it, but I wasn't sure if it was real. It stalked me home from the theater. It kept me awake at night. It simply would not go away no matter how hard I tried to shrug it off. With every lurid, scintillating shock scare, every development in its modest teenage soap opera, I felt like I was experiencing something I had always wanted but never been able to put into...

Where Does it Snow the Most? Minnesota vs. Boston (and the Rest of the U.S.)

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Spring is in the air, and I'm feeling a little guilty. I feel like we Minnesotans got away with something this past winter. In terms of snowfall, the East Coast — specifically Boston — was hit harder and more often than a Brad Radke fastball. Every time I turned on the TV, it seemed there was another report of those poor suckers out east shoveling themselves out from under a fresh pile of snow. Meanwhile, here in the Great North, where the white stuff is supposed to fall all the time, we had barely enough accumulation to build a ...

Music Review: 'Carrie and Lowell' Is Another Masterpiece From Sufjan Stevens

Carrie and Lowell

Nobody embodies all the myths of the singer/songwriter better than Sufjan Stevens. On the one hand there’s the genius: the multi-instrumental prodigy who seems to have been born to effortlessly, even naively conjure sheer Orphean beauty through noise. On the other is the recluse. The few glimpses he allows into his private world, including a role on his church’s worship team, are as unremarkable as his orchestrations are impossibly grand. Equally important the enigma. Stevens conforms to no audience or expectation besides himself and his own. One moment he’s singing solemn hymns to Jesus. The next he’s shouting F-bombs in a neurotic frenzy. Either you keep...

Adrian Peterson Called Out By Former NFL Player

Peterson greatest viking of all time

Adrian Peterson has been in the middle of the offseason storm for the Minnesota Vikings so far in 2015 -- with the team failing to make a splash in free agency (they rarely have under Rick Spielman), Peterson has been the focus of the team, all the media and subsequently, the fans. Will the heralded, whiny running back return to the purple next season? Speculation was high the Vikings would ship out the disgruntled running back and his massive contract for draft picks -- when the demand didn't meet the speculation come free agency, and the Vikings organization...

Minnesota United Kickoff Event at MOA Sunday

Minnesota United Kick-Off event

Ready to celebrate Wednesday's announcement that Minnesota will be getting a Major League Soccer team? Join the team at Mall of America from 1-3 p.m. on Sunday as the team prepares for the upcoming NASL season.

You might not be able to party like you're tailgating for a Minnesota Kicks game (throwback), but you will be able to see, take pictures and get...

John Oliver Hammers Another Societal Injustice

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Comedian John Oliver and his show Last Weekend Tonight has taken up the cause to highlight injustices in the world today -- last week he bashed the "non-profit" NCAA and collegiate sports, this week he is challenging the American municipality system. (In the past I wrote a piece about Oliver's attack on the FIFA corruption.) Oliver not only does a great job mixing comedy with real issues, much akin to the soon retiring...

Minnesota United Awarded MLS Expansion

MLS Minnesota The "beautiful game" is set to grow in this beautiful state as Major League Soccer and the Minnesota United announced the team's selection as a new MLS team in a press conference with MLS Commissioner Don Garber and United owner Bill McGuire Wednesday. The "#MNU2MLS" move puts the Twin Cities as the ninth metro area to host all five major league teams (Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area and Washington D.C. are the others).
"Today is the culmination of a journey that began a number of years ago for our good friend Bill McGuire," Garber said. "This started as a project about taking a team that has deep...

Movie Review -- 'The Divergent Series: Insurgent' Rebels Against Intelligence

Insurgent_2 I enjoy fantasy. There’s a place for big, broad, occasionally dumb movies like The Avengers and Star Wars and The Hunger Games. There’s so much cynicism in the world. Why question genuine enjoyment? Even with Divergent and Insurgent, which, let’s face it, are blatant knockoffs meant to fill the void left by better series, I can’t say I was bored. That zip line over the Chicago skyline in the first film is gravitationally dubious, but every ten-year-old in the world knows that when a five mile zip line ceases to excite you, you’ve lost something fundamental to the human experience.

Myths are all, on some level, daydreams. Daydreams are impervious to criticism. It’s no coincidence that Tris...

Coming This Summer -- 2015 Color Vibe 5K

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Since the temperatures have officially hit above 40 degrees and we are finally un-thawing from winter’s grasp, I started to search for fun things to do in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area this summer. An event I have heard about time and time again is this weird phenomenon where people pay to throw colored powder at each other, while running. That’s right, the nationally recognized event, The Color Vibe 5K, is coming to the Twin Cities. Not to be confused with The Color Run, this run...