T.D.

Harry Nelson Pillsbury [Conn's avatar...] Charles Nelson Reilly Ignatius J. Reilly

Chess.

Whitesnake Tawny Kitaen Chuck Finley

John Akii-Bua Edwin Moses Edwin Starr

What jostber, Chuck and HP said. I'm not sure it's necessarily a function of the cost of the player. Long ago, I had a Revox (very sexy name, though I bought it cheap) player. The innards were made by Philips, and shared with many more "pedestrian" models. BTW, the laser on that unit crapped out after 10 years or so; a cheaper Magnavox unit that used the same Philips hardware lasted almost 20. -_-

Yeah, it's probably the hardware. I've had a number of lasers go bad on old CD players. A few discs don't play in the manner you described, and gradually the problem gets worse and worse. One quick thing to try is cleaning the laser using one of those CD/DVD lens cleaner discs. That sometimes clears up skipping/tracking problems. If that doesn't work, your player may be on the long slide to oblivion...

Arrington really stunk for the Jints last year (his mental approach wasn't great, and injuries had greatly reduced his physical skills), so I think he was going to have trouble getting a contract offer this season.

These are just about my two favorites also, although there are a lot of excellent albums within a very close margin.

Tastes differ (obviously), so I wouldn't try to impose my specific preferences on others... My collection isn't that extensive, so my approach doesn't run to the big boxes (although I regret not jumping on the Bill Evans box in last summer's Concord blowout). So I'd look mostly to single discs rather than Mosaics or boxes. That said, I've long had an eye on the Farmer/Golson/Jazztet Mosaic, and to a lesser extent the Farlow (which is available as a Universal). I'd first look at single CDs which have been on my wish list, or at Japanese imports of hard-to-find items. The ejazzlines.com inventory has really caught my attention, though a lot of the titles have trickled down to Amazon Marketplace at lower prices. I could easily go over $100 in individual CDs, which might leave room for a Mosaic.

Damn. I just got a defective CD from yourmusic. My June queue selection, Horace-Scope, skips and doesn't play properly. I e-mailed customer service, but am not optimistic about getting a response. OTOH, the one time I had a problem with a BMG Club order, almost 10 years ago, they sent me a replacement disc immediately, without requiring the bad CD to be mailed back. So there's slight cause for hope...

Interesting that they marked up a bunch of the Toshiba Blue Notes since yesterday...

Skins player excused from minicamp session due to unusual injury...

Bronko Nagurski Branko Radivojevic Preki

Thanks for posting this. New to me, and plenty of interest. Going to have to wait until the next credit card billing cycle, though...

Hugh G. Rackshawn Pud Galvin Dick Pound

Black Jack Pershing "Red Fred" Rzewski Hugh "Lumpy" Brannum

Agreed. I'm the treasurer of a (small) nonprofit organization. Every year, our board of directors (and families) purchase a significant portion of the raffle tickets (merely to bring proceeds to non-ludicrous levels ...), and we fear this situation. Another possibility would be to donate the car back to the charity, but this works better for non-depreciating assets like antiques (which can be held over for the next year's raffle prize).

Ralph Bunche Mikhail Alexandrovich Bonch-Osmolovsky Nick Didkovsky

More on NFLPA and medical plight of ex-players: Ditka, DeLamielleure introduce DeMarco in fight to take care of ex-players

Lenny Bruce Bruce Wayne Wayne Cochran [Funny: I was about to reply, had the exact same first two names, but held off for want of a third...] Mickey Cochrane Finn MacCool Vanilla Ice

Macdonald Carlovich Nikolai Gogol Sergey Brin

Gino Cappelletti Juliet Capulet Ed Montague

Good pick! I really missed the boat on this one...

Caught me at a bad moment: as a result of car repair expenses, I'm temporarily out of the CD market. In palmier times I might've expressed interest in the Hawkins...

I rarely read the Times any more (moved away from NYC area), but I recall plenty of classical and opera reviews that were totally wacky.