What's On Joey's Mind: Vol. Something

These are in no particular order, so, you know, there's that. Just a few random things on my mind:

● We've been kind of hard on the DMN here lately, but that's because the DMN has, for whatever reason, made it a point to republish a lot of silly things that have been said by their people on Sports Day On Air. Case in point: Here's Brad Townsend, explaining a few days ago why Scott Feldman should stay in the rotation and Justin Grimm should head back to the minors:

On if the Rangers should replace Scott Feldman with Justin Grimm:

Townsend: “Feldman has been up there for a reason. Ron Washington has been showing confidence in him. Again, I think it’s a little too early to throw Grimm in a consistent situation like that, and he was pitching against the Astros. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

A consistent situation? Huh? Even though Holland and Oswalt were, at the time, well on their way back, and likely no more than 10-14 days away from joining the rotation? Why on earth have they continued to talk about the notion of Ross and/or Grimm entering the rotation as though it's a permanent thing? Is it as simple as them not paying attention?

And there's your DMN rant of the day.

● Hung around on Turntable.fm last night for a bit, and I enjoyed these two trip-hoppy tracks. Give 'em a spin, if you dare:

● Okay, one more brief rant: apparently, if he could make one trade at the deadline, Evan would trade for a .198/.261/.302-hitting Chone Figgins, who's owed $10-plus million through 2013. And Randy Galloway isn't going to vote for Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds when they hit the Hall of Fame ballot, because they were named in the Mitchell Report as PED users, but he IS going to vote for Sammy Sosa, who wasn't named in the Mitchell Report and, therefore, didn't use PEDs ... oh, wait, Sosa also tested positive for PEDs. Because consistency is paramount and all.

I hope you all can understand why I kind of stopped doing the And The Beat Goes On posts. They consume time that could be better allocated towards more productive pursuits like drinking the finest liquors and refining my devastating mid-range jumper, and there's a lot of material that I have to wade through that looks like what I just mentioned, and it makes my brain want to shut down and light itself on fire. In that order.

● Forgot to add this bullet point earlier: I actually kind of enjoyed the Buzz/TAG broadcasts, in part because I've overcome any issues I might have had with Buzz's voice and have grown to appreciate the insight and depth that he lends to a game broadcast, and in part because I think Buzz and TAG have good chemistry and play fairly well off each other. I don't expect that to carry over to the Barnett/TAG broadcasts ...

● Immediately after the Barnett incident, but before it blew up all over the damn country, a few people pointed out that punching "botched robbery henchmen" into Google turned up Tupac with one of the first results. Sure enough ...

Jimmy "Henchmen" Rosemond is responding to claims that he was involved in the 1994 botched robbery of Tupac Shakur that left the rapper wounded several times over.

Inmate Dexter Isaac admitted to the 1994 shooting of Shakur one day before what would have been the West Coast MC's 40th birthday, and while an investigation into his claims has been opened, Rosemond is crying foul through his lawyer.

Although he is currently missing in action, a lawyer for Rosemond has denied Isaac's claims. "It's a flat out lie," Jeffrey Lichtman told the New York Daily News. "Dexter Isaac is not claiming this 17 years later to clear his conscience. He's doing it because he's told anybody who will listen he doesn't want to die in prison. He has kids and wants to work off his sentence. He can't be trusted."

Isaac, who is serving a life sentence for murder, told AllHipHop.com that Henchman paid him $2,500 to rob Shakur, revealing that his conscious would no longer allow him to remain silent. "I want to apologize to his [Tupac's] family and for the mistake I did for that sucker [Rosemond]," he told the website.

Isaac also implicated Rosemond and Bad Boy label-head Sean "Diddy" Combs in the shooting, which took place at Quad Recording Studios in New York City, during the height of the East Coast-West Coast feud spearheaded by Tupac and Biggie. While Shakur survived the shooting, in 1996 he was not so lucky. After being shot on the Las Vegas strip, he died from his injuries six days later in a local hospital.

So, there's at least a small chance that Barnett is actually an avid Tupac fan. (Incidentally, the Barnett incident took place on the day after Tupac's birthday.) And while this is kind of dark, and while I don't necessarily believe Issac's story, my long-standing, conspiracy theorist suspicion formulated from some reading on both cases has been that Puffy was involved to some extent in the murder of either Biggie, Tupac, or both. I don't have hard evidence to back that suspicion up, so you can blow me off or call me out for being full of crap if you want. You're probably right, but I don't care.

Even if you do want to pick that fight, though, you'll have an awfully hard time convincing me that Puffy didn't hasten the demise of modern hip hop music.

● This post is actually vaguely fun. Maybe I'll do more of these on a regular basis. It's like a blog inside of a blog. INCEPTION.