Dan Gould

On the positive side, though, Tuesday's game is at 4 pm Eastern time, so no walking around like a zombie Wednesday morning!

Well, Harold, both our teams have their work cut out for them. You get the toughest pitcher in the league, and for a bit more than five innings this time, at least once and almost certainly twice. And El Duque may even be dropped from the roster if he doesn't show improvement when he throws on Monday. We get one of the hottest teams, and their running game won't be easy to deal with, considering the rate that most of our pitchers allow stolen bases. But no one said the playoffs should be a piece of cake.

I just have a bit of info that contradicts some of Mike Fitzgerald's: May 3, 1967 - Arnheim, Holland (spelling I have wrong?) Rund Jacobs is listed as bass, no Pim Jacobs mentioned.

Something eating at you, Tim? You might just as well say, "Fucking bullpen".

GoM, No, I didn't; but one thing Bob told me is that the number of albums, and the creation of the subsidiary labels, were a direct result of cash flow. In order to avoid showing too much in profit and paying taxes on it, Bob wanted to put the money into production.

I am shocked that its running so closely-there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a separate, dedicated forum. Mike Fitzgerald's post hit it on the head. If you want to keep yourselves segregated in the Rat thread, go for it. Otherwise, post your threads where they already belong: Artist, New Releases, Reissues, whatever. Or do you people think that Free/Avante/whatever the fuck you call it is so special it deserves its own forum? After all, everyone else is looking in the rearview mirror, right?

Hope you guys enjoyed the division clinching game, cuz El Duque had his postponed start against Toronto, and on a scale of Loaiza (really horrifying) to Kevin Brown (horrifying) to Javier Vasquez (no command, no clue, no results), it wasn't quite up to the Vasquez standard. No fastball and no command of the rest of his repertoire. Throwing slop, and nowhere close to the strike zone. He looked like a man desperately trying to protect his shoulder. Yanks are in deep, deep trouble. Sleep well, Yankee fans.

BTW, I'm now into the second of three shelves of binders, so I guess I'm about 1/3 of the way through.

Much more Dex: Happy Birthday Revelation Go Parisian Concert Take the 'A" Train Both Sides of Midnight Body and Soul Live at Jazzhus Montmartre Gotham City Jazz at High School Manhattan Symphonie Live at Carnegie hall featuring Joe Newman Those were The Days Doin Allright Sophisticated Giant Daddy Plays the Horn at Montreux with Junior Mance The Jumpin Blues A Swingin Affiar A Day in Copenhagen Clubhouse Blows Hot and Cool Landslide One Flight Up Other Side of Round Midnight All Souls Love For Sale The Apartment Biting The Apple Assorted Private Recordings Wycliffe Gordon: The Gospel Truth The Search Bone Structure (with Ron Westray)

My point is, we've all been in a crowd when the reaction to the previous soloist completely drowns out whatever the next guy does, sometimes for more than a couple of bars. So, its really impossible for the audience to be both "impressed by the soloing and listening to the whole tune." I'm wondering if more of our musicians have the same view as Organfreak.

I'd like to catch Houston Person sometime, as I've become quite a fan of his recent High Note recordings. If he still plays, I'd kill for a chance to see Jay McShann.

I've wondered about this everytime I hear a kick-ass solo after which the crowd goes crazy. If you're the guy following the kick ass solo, how do you start, knowing that the crowd is applauding the other guy? I'm not asking in terms of what you do to follow that, but more like, the first few bars aren't even heard-do you "coast" through those til you have the audience's attention again? Do you not even think about it?

Nice pic, Harold. Did you see your namesake serve as equipment boy for the Sox last week? Pretty funny stuff, though I understood that the people he replaced also got the chance to be Baseball Tonite analysts, and I missed that part. Anywhoo, I'll concede the division, but I think you're still a tad too optimistic in some ways: For Brown to be a fearsome reliever, he has to find a fastball above 90 mph, and that doesn't seem physically possible. As Torre said, he might get you out of a jam with "courage" but really, how often can you hope for that without any stuff to back it up? As for Quantrill, he's a disaster since the all-star break, with an ERA over 6 since then. In fact, Quantril is the reason they're hoping Brown can be effective out of the pen, because they don't trust Quantrill and they can't throw Flash every day. In fact, how did the Sox come back on Saturday? Against Quantrill, and they were resting Gordon. Last, I'm not sure you "got past" Santana as much as managed to win on a day he was on a very short pitch count. I don't think the Yanks win the opener yesterday with Santana pitching deeper into the game. But I say, keep beating the Twins, send them into a tailspin through the weekend. Beating Santana in a short series is a tough job, and I'll enjoy watching the Yanks try. As for Pedro, I wouldn't say he's come up lame. He actually hit 96 on the radar gun which is a season high. He had no command though. He needs to get his command back pronto, and keep the intensity that he showed when he kicked it up and worked out of a bases loaded no outs situation. In other words, I'm not ready to throw in the towel on Pedro just yet. It will definitely be interesting to see if the A's can stop the Angels march or not. They're certainly the hot team right now.

Dan, While your team may not win the division, I will give you credit for hanging on until the end and never giving up. Nothing worse than someone who jumps on the bandwagon at the last second or bails on their team when the chips are down! I'm not a RedSox fan or even an American League fan but I'll pull for your team (at least in the AL)! I'm sure I will be a big help as they drive towards the pennant! Mark Thanks, Mark! Philly, As I've been saying, both teams want to avoid Minnesota (and Santana) in a five game series, but especially the Red Sox, since as wild card they'd be on the road for three of them. So I guess at this point I have to root for the Yanks to sweep today, and that the A's (or Aneheim) sweep this weekend. I likes our chances if its Yanks/Minnesota and Sox/A's or Angels. Of course, as worried as the Yanks are about their pitching, we've got to start worrying about Pedro. 10 hits and five earned runs in five innings to Tampa Bay??

Here's a picture from Hank Mobley's last recording session:

Extremely creepy, that Willie Wonka movie. The first time I saw it was when my son was 3 or 4, and my father got it for the grandkids. I thought it was very S&M toward kids, tempting them with candy and then punishing them for it. I disagree. Kids are not punished for wanting candy or reacting to candy being dangled in front of them. They're punished for being obnoxious, disobedient brats. The only arguably blameless child is Augustus, who hardly is warned not to try to drink the chocolate lake before he falls in. What I do find dark and depressing though is the boy's home life of extreme poverty and geriatric bedridden relatives. But I think the creepy vibe of the chocolate factory is more just a fun house kind of atmosphere, where things may get strange or a little frightening but the moment passes quickly. Oh yeah, and that Oompa Loompa melody-just try getting that out of your head!

Well, Harold, I bet it feels good knowing that if not for another Red Sox Manager Brain Fart, it would have been a sweep in Fenway and a 1.5 game lead heading into the last week (which would be half a game right now with the rain outs). Kind of like Florida State/Miami and "Wide Right"-the gift that keeps on giving. But I'll bet your feeling pretty antsy about El Duque having his start pushed back with a "tired shoulder" though. And that comes after two starts in which he averaged twenty pitches an inning. One old fart gets his wish and gets positively hammered in Fenway, the other old fart comes up lame. Not good with the playoffs so close. I admit the likelihood of a division lead collapse is not great, but with three against Minnesota, its quite possible that Toronto and Baltimore will have something to say about the AL East.

Unfortunately, we're not entirely fine. Turns out that Bellsouth got positively clobbered, and our DSL may not be back until October 6th!

No doubt about it! How dare they call me a nice person!!

I'm sure it was a record of some sort (no, really, it was!). What I do remember is the positive feedback I received, which was: "Nice person!" It left me thinking, how in the heck do they know I'm a nice person? I'd rather get the nuts and bolts of positive feedback: Quick pay, good communication, that sort of thing. Or even a blanket comment like "I would buy again" or "good buyer" but to decide I'm a nice person, well, that and the requisite cash will get me a cup of coffee and not much else.

Well, for future reference, now I'll know! Maybe you should have grabbed that dancing dude icon Brad is so fond of.

Would you mind telling that to Nessa? Speaking of which, if you had put a wink next to your observation, I wouldn't have responded. But I couldn't interpret the smilie you used, so it left me confused as to what you were trying to say, which is why I asked if there was something wrong with my comments.

I calls 'em as I sees 'em. Is there something wrong with that?

I used to never stretch, but had a steady experience (at least twice every every season) where after swinging the bat, the first step out of the batter's box would injure my hamstring or quad, and this happened batting righty or lefty, so it didn't matter which foot I pushed off of. I started doing intensive stretching before game time and it stopped happening.

I'm weird when it comes to this. Can't stand clutter in the house - totally tolerate it in (and on) the car. Never been one to wash by hand, and since we moved to a neighborhood that doesn't seem to have any car washes, its been even longer between them. And that's despite the fact that I park under a pine tree now. We need a "shoulder shrug" smilie.