Johnny E

We're going into the studio after our west coast tour, right after the holidays (first week in january) to record the next CD. So no, we won't have a new CD for this tour, but we're gonna try to have a new CD by the east coast trip in April.

I've nver been to Safari Sam's before, but I'll try to make this date! I missed you guys the last time around, and am kicking myself for doing so. Cheers, Shane We will have two local openers...PLOTZ! and Renfield.

Yes indeed. Looks like Chicago/Michigan in early April. Hopefully we can do some double bills!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE End Date: December 19 2007 Press Contact: Beth Fleenor* The Frank Agency (206) 491-0516 beth@thefrankagency.org www.reptet.com thefrankagency.org/reptet *CDs, photos, and more info available upon request Reptet West Coast Tour Reptet, “a juggernaut jazz band, arresting, compelling, and just plain cranked-up” (Earshot Jazz), is headed down the west coast this December in support of their highly acclaimed 2006 release Do This! “This Seattle sextet does it all: it grooves, it rocks, it squawks – occasionally, it even talks. Mostly it sounds like a New Orleans jazz band on crystal meth.” (Alexander Gelfand / Jazziz- Critics Pick, Best of 2006) The Dates Saturday, December 8th Towne Lounge / 714 SW 20th PL. / Portland OR Sunday, December 9th Cozmic Pizza / 199 West 8th / Eugene, OR Wednesday, December 12th The Green Room / 144 West St. / Reno, NV Thursday, December 13th 21 Grand / 416 25th Street / Oakland, CA Friday, December 14th Caffe Pergolesi / 418 Cedar St. / Santa Cruz, CA Saturday, December 15th Delta of Venus / 122 B Street / Davis, CA Sunday, December 16th The Hemlock Tavern / 1131 Polk Street / San Francisco, CA Monday, December 17th Safari Sam's / 5214 W. Sunset Blvd. / Hollywood, CA Wednesday, December 19th Chop Suey / 1325 E. Madision / Seatttle, WA

If you missed it the first time, well we're doing it again! Voted The Best Northwest Jazz Performance of the Year by Earshot Jazz Magazine Readers Poll... Earshot's Art of Jazz Series Presents The Monktail Creative Music Concern's Raymond Scott Project Thursday, November 8th at the Seattle Art Museum 5:30PM-7:30PM Free w/ museum admission Read more about it in this months Earshot Jazz Magazine (pages 9 & 10)

Wow, I'm a prophet. Thought you were an Atheist! I never said that...

Wow, I'm a prophet. Yeah, except prophets don't generally backtrack two days later: That's because I never thought that it was actually possible for the Sox to choke this hard. But then I watched the Mariners do it and now I'm watching the Red Sox do it. But let's be honest, no one ever expected the M's to do well this season. But the Red Sox on the other hand? Don't they have like the second highest payroll in all of baseball and some kind of wizard/king as GM? And weren't they leading the division by almost 15 games just a couple months ago? Man, the Red Sox are losers, the Patriots are cheaters... I guess there's always the Celtics and Bruins to root for come October.

Wow, I'm a prophet.

Couldn't afford it but i sure did miss it.

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Published: September 18, 2007 The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight. The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators. In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free. The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue. “But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com. What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue. “What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said. The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site. Ms. Schiller would not say how much increased Web traffic the paper expects by eliminating the charges, or how much additional ad revenue the move was expected to generate. Those who have paid in advance for access to TimesSelect will be reimbursed on a prorated basis. Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm, said that there have always been reasons to question the pay model for news sites, and that doubts have grown along with Web traffic and online ad revenue. “The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.” In addition, he said, The Times has been especially effective at using information it collects about its online readers to aim ads specifically to them, increasing their value to advertisers. Many readers lamented their loss of access to the work of the 23 news and opinion columnists of The Times — as did some of the columnists themselves. Some of those writers have such ardent followings that even with access restricted, their work often appeared on the lists of the most e-mailed articles. Experts say that opinion columns are unlikely to generate much ad revenue, but that they can drive a lot of reader traffic to other, more lucrative parts of The Times site, like topic pages devoted to health and technology. The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue. Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online. The Financial Times charges for access to selected material online, much as The New York Times has. The Los Angeles Times tried that model in 2005, charging for access to its arts section, but quickly dropped it after experiencing a sharp decline in Web traffic.

Come on, the guy's awesome! You guys must be racist.

John, I had no clue, probably because in my heart of hearts I am a little rattled lately. (Or maybe you haven't FUCKING noticed.) I do think the M's are playing surprisingly well, and I am kind of torn in that I'd love to see them hold off the Yankees and end their streak of playoff seasons, but at the same time that would mean we'd have to play you in the first round, and that's disconcerting because you had our number most of the season. I can't quite figure that out but a pesky, overachieving team with a strong veteran presence isn't the best playoff matchup. Maybe my best hope is for the M's to win the division and the Halos to get in as wild card. Unlike the Yanks, we seem to know how to beat them when it counts. I like that scenario. Personally the Red Sox scare the hell out of me.

Dan, You do realize I was just ratttling your cage a little, right? I actually think the Red Sox are the strongest team in the AL. I also hate the Yankees with a passion. I have a co-worker from Boston who was in apanic a couple weeks ago because she thought the Yanks were gonna do what they did to the Sox in 78'. I reassured her that it was a completely different team and completely different situation. I reasoned that the curse had been lifted so no need to worry. That said, you gotta admit that the M's have really played well and far exceeded anyone's expectations.

Try TWELVE WEEKS ago. Any team with a 220 million dollar payroll can climb back into the race with that much time to do it. And there is no comparison to '78. This team has easily the best pitching in baseball. That team had no pitching outside of Dennis Eckersley. That team got clobbered by injuries. This team hasn't. (Knock wood) That team had a manager who let personal animosities keep him from making sound decisions (taking Bill Lee out of the rotation). This team has a manager who risks a spot start by Tavarez so that he can line up his rotation the way he wants: Wakefield tonight in Tampa (77 pitches to get through seven shutout innings and earn his 15th win), Dice-K gets an extra day off (his stats are markedly improved on five days rest), and the rotation is set for the Yankee series with Beckett, Dice and Schilling going instead of Wakefield, who's magic against the Yankees has run out. Aren't you bean eaters embarrased to say "Dice-K"? What kinda of cheesy ass nick name is that? Anyway, there is a comparison. and many MANY people are making it. Oh, and I seem to remember a not-so-shabby guy named Luis Tiant on that team, no? The 78' sox had Luis Tiant, Dennis Eckersley and and Mike Torrez as their big three. They had 3.31, 2.99 and 3.96 ERA's respectively (averaging 3.42). The current sox have Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling and Daisuke Matsuzaka. If we take Schilling numbers from last year (since he's been hurt all year) and the projected stats for the other two we get 3.24, 3.97 and 3.59 (averaging 3.60) - .18 higher than the 78' sox. But more than numbers, it's in the air. The yanks are climbing back into this thing in a big way. That doesn't hurt the Mariners nearly as much as it hurts the Sox. You've seen it before, many times Dan. Admit it. The Sox are shitting their pants. You can quote statistics all day long. But at the end of the day, the Yankees are going to bump the Sox right off their game, if not completely out of the playoffs.

I knew there was something the Rangers could succeed at! HA!

Kinda

Dig this: Mariners contending despite poor trends Kevin Hench - FOXSports.com, 8/13/07 A funny thing happened on the way to the sabermetrician's conference. Bill James sprained his VORP, Lee Sinins tore his RCAA, and Sean Forman suffered WHIP-lash. What could cause such calamity for the vaunted members of the Society for American Baseball Research? Ladies and gentlemen, your 2007 Seattle Mariners, the most confounding team in big league history. The M's are 10th in the American League in home runs, dead last in walks (14 behind the Royals), 11th in WHIP and 10th in ERA. Yet by some baffling, stat-defying series of fortunate events, they are 14 games over .500, stalking the Angels in the West and tied with the Yankees in the wild-card race. If, despite their obvious shortcomings, the Mariners make the playoffs, Mike Hargrove and John McLaren should be co-Managers of the Year. For those people wondering how Grover could have bailed on this season despite Seattle's lofty standing at his departure, watching a team with no patience and little power with a rotation featuring Horacio Ramirez and Jeff Weaver takes a toll. Hargrove probably figured "I gotta get outta here because the wheels are coming off this jalopy any second now." At first, it looked like the skipper had timed things perfectly. Seattle sent him off into retirement with its eighth straight win, then began to swoon under McLaren, losing three of four. A seven-game losing streak in July confirmed what decades of sabermetric research had taught us: you cannot win when your offense doesn't draw walks and your rotation doesn't produce quality starts (the M's are 11th in the AL in that category). But now the Mariners have won 10 of 14 and look committed to becoming the all-time thumb in the eye of seamheads everywhere. How the heck are they doing it? Well, it's certainly not with solid starting pitching. Despite playing in pitcher-friendly Safeco, Seattle starters have a 5.12 ERA (12th in the AL), a 1.52 WHIP (13th) and a .295 batting average against (13th). If one pitcher embodies the inexplicable nature of this strange Seattle season it's Ramirez. He has been pounded to the tune of a 7.12 ERA. His WHIP is an ungodly 1.85. In 13 starts covering 67 innings, he has walked exactly as many (29) as he has struck out. So naturally his record is 7-3. Weaver hasn't been so lucky. He is a 3-10, a more appropriate record for his 6.20 ERA. Since-injured stopgap Cha Seung Baek got knocked around to the tune of a 5.74 ERA, yet still managed a 3-3 record in his 11 starts. This leaves us with what constitutes Seattle's Big Three: Felix Hernandez, Miguel Batista and Jarrod Washburn. Though he has shown flashes of ascending to the throne, King Felix stands at 8-6 with a 3.97 ERA. His 1.40 WHIP is good for 26th in the league. Batista, who leads the M's with 12 wins, has improved on his .312 lifetime OBA, holding hitters to a .275 mark, but his 1.51 WHIP is actually worse than his career 1.46. Still, no Seattle starter has been better lately. In his last 11 starts, Batista has lowered his season ERA by over a run to 4.13. And then there's Washburn. The poster child for sabermetric vexation. With a 0.96 ground ball-to-fly ball ratio, you'd assume that no Seattle starter would benefit more from the heavy ocean air of spacious Safeco. And, of course, you'd be wrong. Washburn is 4-3 with a 3.63 ERA on the road and 4-6 with a 4.75 ERA at home. Go figure. No game is more perfectly emblematic of the Seattle season than their June 27 win over the visiting Red Sox. Rookie starter Ryan Feierabend gave up five hits, two walks and a slew of warning-track fly balls as he threw 99 pitches and held Boston scoreless for five innings. (In his next start Feierabend wouldn't be so lucky, allowing 10 runs to the Royals while getting four outs). The M's beat the Sox 2-1 in the bottom of the 11th when their seventh baserunner of the day (Ichiro) scored on a double by Jose Lopez that eluded a confused Manny Ramirez in left. Lopez, the starting second baseman, is a good place to start in dissecting the Mariners' perplexing offense, since he typifies Seattle's swing first, ask questions later approach. He is hitting .258 with a .293 on-base percentage. He is on pace for 561 at-bats and 24 walks. He has eight home runs. All that swinging has produced a mere .362 slugging percentage. But believe it or not, Lopez is actually more patient than his DP partner, shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt who is on pace for 558 at-bats and only 20 walks. And it gets worse. M's catcher Kenji Johjima is on pace to walk 17 times in 499 at-bats. No element of the game has become more venerated under the jeweler's loupe of the sabermetrician than the base on balls. And no team desecrates the walk like these Mariners, whose most famous free-swinger, leadoff man Ichiro, is on pace for 54 walks in 682 at-bats. And yet, despite their reckless impatience, the Mariners have outscored the opposition, 567-555 (a margin that, according to James' run-differential formula, should have them just a few games above .500). How is this possible? Two words: "close" and "late." When the game is tight, Seattle shines. The bullpen, anchored by J.J. Putz, is ridiculous, and the hitters transform in close-and-late situations. Late in tight games — defined by Elias as "results in the 7th inning or later with the batting team ahead by one run, tied, or with the potential tying run at least on deck" — the Mariners are hitting a league-best .296 (the Yankees are second at .264) and their .796 OPS far outpaces No. 2 Cleveland's .753. Sabermetricians hate the word "clutch," and many dismiss it altogether, claiming it simply doesn't exist. Well, it does in Seattle. Yeah baby!!! But the main reason the M's are in the playoff hunt is not their clutch hitting. It's the 'pen, which is 23-7 with a 3.65 ERA. If Seattle makes the playoffs, Putz should win MVP. He is quietly — almost silently, if you go by the sound of opponents' bats — having an Eckersley-esque season. He is 34-for-36 in saves with a 1.48 ERA, a 0.64 WHIP, a .144 OBA with 60 Ks and 9 BBs in 54.2 IP. Putz's lefty setup man, George Sherrill, has been just as dominant. He has a 1.53 ERA, a 0.88 WHIP and lefties are hitting .145 off him. Although Seattle's overall bullpen ERA is fifth in the AL behind league-leader Boston (2.92), their top five relievers — Putz, Sherrill, Sean Green, Brandon Morrow and Eric O'Flaherty — have a combined 2.46 ERA that is more accurately indicative of what the M's send to the hill in winnable games. eat it Dan! Still, can a team make it all the way to the playoffs relying entirely on a gang of (albeit clutch-hitting) free swingers and a lights-out bullpen? Especially a team that already travels more miles than any other in baseball and had a four-game April series in Cleveland snowed out? If they do, the sabermetricians will be snowed too. source

Come on Dan. In your heart of hearts, you know the Sox are gonna blow it. They had a 14 1/2 game lead, what? 8 weeks ago? Feels like 78' to me. Its going to take a minor miracle for your team to hold off the Yankees bro. 6 more game with the Yanks. You'll take two if you're lucky. You know it's true. In your bones you know it's true.

Third best, sorry, that's what I meant. Of course "best" is subjective. But certainly they are in the top two or three -no doubt about that. And since the sox got Gagne, I'd say they Mariners pen IS better than theirs. Your last paragraph is simply a jab. It's not based on reality or facts. It's true that sexon is having an off year. But the rest of the team is picking him up. And the one thing your leaving out of the equation is the fact that the Mariners had an entire 4 game series snowed out at the beginning of the season. The M's have played 121 games, while the Yanks, Detroit and Boston have played 124 and the Angels and Indians have played 123. There's no way we'd get close to the BoSox, Detroit or the Yanks even with the extra games, but we're right in line with the Angels and Indians, two teams we're battling with (the other is Detroit, who happen to be 3rd in the AL for runs allowed - right behind Texas and Chicago). Seattle has the 3rd highest Batting Average in the majors with a .285 average. One one hundreth of a percentage point behind Detriot. You east coasters think that the entire baseball world revolves around the Yankess and BoSox. And that's fine by me. We'll see what happens come October. I think the Angels just proved that they are just as good or better a team than the BoSox. And I still believe that the Yankees will not win another World Series until they get rid of A-Rod. I can't wait to see Ichiro slap Gag-me around in the league chapionship series. If the Sox even make it to the playoffs. Smells like 78' to me.

You obviously don't watch the M's regularly, so let me tip you to some knowledge: The reason the Mariners "barely scored more runs than they've allowed" is because of Weaver (first half) and Ramirez (second half). These guys gave up like 10 runs per game. Weaver has turned things around in the second half and has been one of most consistent pitchers. Ramirez is starting tonight, and if he gives up big runs early (which has been his signature since the all start break) then expect to see him sent down. Our offense kicks ass and our billpen is the best in baseball. 17 games over .500 in the back end of August. Second best record in the AL. Not bad for a team that everyone expected would battle Texas for last place.

I'm gonna Roogalarize You Baby!!!

This is my son Milo watching his daddy play the drums during Reptet's set at Sounds Outside this past Saturday.

Seattle August 4 Trio KVH (Feat. Wayne Horvitz, Briggan Krauss, Dylan van der Schyff) McTuff (Feat. Skerik, Joe Doria, Andy Coe and Dvonne Lewis) Reptet Deal's Number All Day 2-8 PM