JSngry

Momentum in sports is highly overrated, at least in terms of one game to the next. Remember when Pujols launched that rocket off of Lidge vs. the Astros. Almost every sportswriter came out said "No way the Astros can overcome that!" but of course they did. There was a fascinating (to me, anyway) debate on Lone Star Ball earlier this year about whether or not there really was such a thing as "momentum", meaning that if it was truly real, it could be manufactured at will, or at least channeled/controlled in some consistent manner, or at the very least, measured in some way. The argument was made that it's actually an "optical illusion" of some sort, a by-product of the "randomness factor", a time when everything goes right not because of any particular, exact stimuli, but,,,just because. That runs counter-intuitive to everything I know and have seen, but on the other hand, the way it can leave just as quickly and arbitrarily as it comes suggest that maybe that is right after all. I'm not fully convinced one way or the other, not now. But what it definitely suggests is that the players who don't get flustered by those shifts in randomness but just keep playing their game the way they play it are more apt to survive in the end, provided, of course, that their game is in fact that good to begin with. Maybe that's the real "championship mentality", just honing your skills as finely as they can be honed and then keep on keepin' on no matter what. Now that's something I can believe in.

Add confusing the hell out of the DFW Sports Media Industry (and the sycophantic element of their fandom), which has had its gag reflex permanently numbed by years of Cowboy/Mavs c**ks***ing to the list. Please!

I like fun! Seriously!

And see, that's the part I have a hard time getting with, the "when it really, really, really matters" part....I don't know but that except when lives are truly on the line that it ever "matters" to such an extent...not in that way...Within the confines of the profession, yes, but outside of that...st some point, everything becomes "outside of that", ya' know? This gets complicated for me, because in my life, I've seen a lot of "champions" who have actually been miserable failures, and I've seen a lot of "nobodies" who were actually champions, at least in the sense that even when they got beat, they were never beaten. I know that's not how "sports" work, and not really how "in the world" works, but...there's short term "glory", there's long term triumph, and in my eyes, those paths only sometimes cross. So why do I want the Rangers to win? Mainly, I guess, to see what it's like to have a team you love end the season on top. Never had that before (liked the early JJ/JJ Cowboys, but mainly because they were the Anti-SchrammLandry...never really loved them for themselves). And also to see some "vindication" for the whole "concept" of this organization, of Wash, of the way the team is built and the way that it plays, but....there will always be naysayers, so even that is...silly. Maybe the whole "reconciliation of sports and music thing" is beyond me.

Jeff Sullivan: http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2011/10/25/2512498/quickly-on-game-5-of-the-world-series I don't know about the flags having question marks on them, that seems a little silly, but...this whole thing...at some point you just gotta sit back, say a heartfelt "thank you" to whatever and whoever you say such things to, and then just watch it all play out.

wow

Just be prepared for randomness...Murphy's muffing of the ball in left was just as random an occurrence as was him bouncing that ball off of Rzepczynski...and imagine what could have happened if Feliz' Strike 3 against Berkman would have caromed off of Napoli just a little wilder...

Hey Silky, does your board software translate the posts into a different language than they're written in, or what? And who are these "most active traders", anyway?

People in a parade!

Yeah, very un-Miles-ian...but I guess at this point he wasn't quite fully "Miles" yet, eh?

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/doug_mulray/nice_legs__shame_about_the_fez/

Is it just me, or do Miles' cuffs seem a little high?

Ron T. Ennis of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram got this magnificent shot of Beltre's...shot last night.

Dude, I tell you, I've watched damn near every game this season (might've not been able to watch 7 or 8, but caught all but 2 of those on radio), and the one thing I've never seen them do is quit, even after digging themselves into some inescapable holes through their own faults. They do not quit. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard Wash talk about how his guys come to battle, and the come to battle for nine innings, every day, I might not be rich, but you and I could have a nice meal somewhere, I'll tell you that! When LaRussa lifted Lynn after the intentional walk, I was thinking WTF??? LaRussa's story is that the bullpen heard him wrong two times in a row about what pitcher he wanted up. What caused this sudden lack of hearing was not elaborated upon, as was not the Pujols-initiated hit and run call that resulted in Freese being thrown out in the 7th(?). Game 5 Strike Zone: Preeeeeety generous, and just a teence moreso for the Cards. But oh well!

Was that not the most randomly crazy game yet? C.J. comes out like a man doth burdened, we get a little clownball from two usually defenders, and its 2-0. Mitch Moreland redeems himsel (don't tell anybody, but I'm pretty sure it was more of a blast than was Puhols'), Cj. keeps bending and not breaking, here comes Beltre, and now it's tied. I've come to develop a fairly good "weather sense" about when runs are going to come, and whne the bottom of the 8th began to play out,I felt that this was it. And so it was. But nefti still be liking his drama. Not all of us do, ya' know... One more Ranegr win - 27 outs and fewer mistakes than the other guy, and the season is over on Wednesday. Definitely by Thursday. No guarantees of anything, of course, but between the way they played last nigh and teh way the played tonight, I'm convinced that whatever happens, it will happen with the Texas Rangers playing their hearts out, brains preferred, but occasionally optional. What a series, What a season. And what a bunch of goofyass baseball playin' convention of charachters to spend some time with over the course of almost a year. God bless America!

"No right life in a wrong world" is made extra-difficult by spending your money when you don't have to, just to get something you want in a package that makes it look like something it's not. That's all I'm saying.

Well, see, there you go. Everything else stems from that. You want your music in the form of "product", which is cool, I totally understand, but...let's not pretend that that is still the only option available, and let's not pretend that paying for a needle drop or a lifting of somebody else's mastering is anything other than it is. Back in the day, some guy tried to get me to either pay him straight up or else let him have his pick from my collection for the "privilege" of dubbing some of his albums. It appears that this guy was just a little ahead of his time....

This excerpt from a Cardinals fan's post pretty much sums up where I am right now, finally: No less than two, no more than three games left in this year's season. In those remaining games, there will be heroes and there will be goats. Of course, I want the heores to be Rangers, but what fan fan doesn't want that for their team? The reality is simple, and a little abrupt - both these teams "deserve" to be here, but a few others, given a few random acts of the universe, would be here instead, and would just as much deserve to be here as well. Same for the outcomes of the remaining games - unless somebody just steps up and goes out of their way to play bad baseball, good players can have bad games and not-so-good players can have great games. And great players can have greater games, and "bad" players can have even worse games. You want to think that over the course of the year that averages and tendencies come to the fore, and they do, most definitely, but realistically, the aggregate is composed of little more than an ongoing set of individuals, and those individuals,...they can be just as glorious as they can be upsetting. The only real difference between a Regular Season Game 49 and World Series Game 7 is that there's no game to played after the latter, so the "finality" is real, but only because the season is designed to end there, not because it's The Ultimate Judge Of Your Ability. Of course, there's all sorts of social, emotional, and economic constructs, rewards, and penalties built on top of that difference, but...if it is exactly the randomness of play, the fact that every possible outcome of every single pitch can only be measured in terms of probability instead of certainty, that necessitates the playing of the games, then maybe it's a good idea to appreciate that randomness when contemplating the outcome of something like a "championship" series between two teams of this caliber at this particular point. Remember when the WS was a best of nine? Well, neither do I, but it just goes to show you that the pursuit and appreciation of excellence (a real, measurable, albeit multi-faceted, quality) occurs within constructs that are more or less wholly arbitrary (think about the all the statistical implications if the home team came to bat in the bottom of the 9th even if they were already ahead, and really, if it's a "balanced" statistical sample you want, why not? How many home runs, strikeouts, double plays, you name it, have been "lost" because of this construct? Of course, there's no point to playing any further when the home team is ahead in the bottom of the ninth, the outcome of the game is already determined, but... when evaluating the absoluteness of evaluating "performance", a little appreciation of the somewhat arbitrary nature of the cutoff point might be in order, at least sometimes. It's kinda like those guys back in the day whose true brilliance was said to have never been captured because of the limits of the 78 - do you judge them as half-realized talents because they didn't/couldn't do "it" within the known, proscribed limitations? I mean, one the one hand...but on the other... Now, having said all this...if C.J. Wilson steps on his dick again this evening, he might as well just go ahead and cut it off. But that's just emotion talking.

Guess who?

If I remember those colorful Ray Avery mail order sales sheets from the early 80s correctly, they weren't priced THAT far below other, more "regular" LP reissue series. And of course those "blatancy" complaints will then go for those "Sounds of Swing", "Bandstand", "Ajax", "Ajazz" etc. etc. LP series (featuring strictly STUDIO recordings, no airshots) too, right? Yep. Don't think I bought any of those...what I did buy was Alamac, another wacky bootleg label of "unofficial" recordings. And my Boris Rose stuff was always either in the cutout bins or on the sleeves for a couple of bucks less than regular albums. Then again, I seem to remember getting on Ray Avery's mailing list and buying not too much from him because his prices were not favorable to what I could find by doing the legwork and hitting old dusty mom & pop shops. But that, all of it, was in a different time, place, and market dynamic. I mean, I know some people still want something "real", some kind of "tangible product", but good lord, how rational is that, and how willing to be played for a fool are you willing to be to have that need met? I'll give it to Cornhological Classics - they straight-up say here is what we do -you're going to get every released recording by Artist A from time Period B, and that's that. Period. You want meat, we got meat. You want a sandwich, go make it yourself. These other guys...they sell you a sandwich and make you think that they made the bread themselves, grew the vegetables in their back yard, and made the mayo in their own kitchen. And charge you accordingly. Bullshit! When and if some PD concern actually starts doing that (and I think a few actually have), then we can talk. Until then...BULLSHIT! Again! Not sure why using the internet allows you to maintain self-respect. Surely the only way to do that is to refuse to purchase anything that infringes the copyright laws of wherever you live. I've spend a fortune on legitimate recordings since 1970 (not sure how much of what I spent ended up in the creators' pockets, but...). But I've also made cassettes/CD-Rs of friends' LPs/CDs and of library copies. I've bought Andorran releases and, more recently, downloaded MIA recordings from the likes of Rapidshare. So I have to throw my hands up and admit moral weakness. You've maintained a balance, so good for you. You would not be one of the chumps. But really...throwing up your hands...how'd they get in your stomach in the first place? Is English food really that bad? Really being realistic about today's world means not paying good money (hell, any money) for cheapass "product" such as these issues.

Well, yeah. The "Andorran" releases are quite often needle drops. Hell, I could get needle drops back in the day using cassettes. Same thing with live shows, they circulated on cassettes. Nobody really paid for that stuff exceet for when it came out on those weirdass Boris Rose labels and such. And even then...those things were just so...blatant as to have thier own appeal. There wasn't one shred of legitimacy to them, not one shred! And htey were priced accordingly, at least in my part of the world. Why should I now pay the same price as a regular CD for what is essentially a CD equivalent of a cassette dub or a Boris Rose lp? Use the internet for getting your cassette dubs, save your money, and maintain some self-respect!

Now that there's the internet, there's no need to buy a bootleg. Ever. Simple as that. Altogether different game now.

I mean, really, look at this: Just spread that shit around like it's the aftermath of some drunk's house party and you just happened to be sober enough to pick them up and get out the house while everybody else is passed out...and now you gonna carry it off to the other side of town and offer "EIGHT CLASSIC ALBUMS DIGITALLY REMASTERED FOR SUPERIOR QUALITY". Sorry bub, I've seen pimps in action and I've seen carnies in action and I've seen cheap thieves trying to fence in action, and I really don't care what the legalities are in the country of origin, this looks and feels exactly the same way. Legally, it may be "public domain", but in spirit, It's going for the cheap score by appealing to people who are looking for the cheap score.

It's misogynist to point out the dignity of women by using their degradation as a negative example/metaphor? Coulda fooled me... Ok, next time I want to point out how fundamentally wrong something is, I'll use a less powerful metaphor..like a tuna sandwich, or...a Yugo. Either way, the "whoring out somebody else's woman" mentality is exactly what's at work with these type labels, and the pimp/whore mentality is about 99% of everything else you see in the "music business" these days.