Miscellaneous Roundup

A variety of things have caught my eye in the last couple days, but none really warrant extended discussion, so I'll keep this brief. First off, I'm excited to hear that Nick Montana verbally committed to play football at the University of Washington. I don't know if he'll live up to his dad's overwhelming legend, but he's an All American in his junior year of high school, so I count this as a win for the Husky program. Maybe the Sarkisian recruiting machine has just kicked into high gear and this is just the type of news that will help us score some other top recruits. Unfortunately I think we lost out on the Barry Sanders Jr sweepstakes. I think I heard he committed to Oklahoma.

On to the MLB draft. The Mariners incompetence last year in not even being able to lose enough games to net the top pick caused them to miss out on the one player I've heard of - Steven Strasburg. And instead of sticking to their usual tradition of taking a starting pitcher in the hopes of converting him to a middle reliever, taking a catcher that they hope to either trade or turn into a DH, or taking a SS to convert into an out fielder, they tried a different tactic. They took outfielder Dustin Ackley in the hopes of turning him into a 1B or 2B. I don't know much about him, but what I've read sounds promising. Some scouts think he has the stuff to suit up for the M's tomorrow and be reasonably productive for the remainder of the season. Rumor has it we won't see him in the bigs this year though.

Finally, some really exciting news. Futurama is back!!!! After 4 direct to DVD feature length movies which were, to be completely honest, pretty mediocre (with the exception being Bender's Game which I thought was well done) Comedy Central has signed a deal to create 26 new half hour episodes beginning in mid 2010. I officially can't wait. As big a fan as I am of the series, the movies were a bit disappointing and I think that the format was not a good fit for the series. I think the half hour episodes will give us a return of the quality I had come to expect from the series. Now if we can just get some network to bring back Pushing Daisies and Arrested Development....