J Larsen

Thanks for the pronounciation tips. I guess I'll have to ask a Brazillian some day!

Fair enough! BTW, 2.5 for Blue John seems a tad bit stingy to me.

Well, we are in the recommendations forum... I think we're having a useful discussion in this thread. I don't see why you would want to come post in an "overrated" thread just to piss on the parade and say that it's a bad topic for conversation.

Then read another thread, dude.

Christian McBride's "A Family Affair" gets four stars from AMG. It gets two from me, and one of those is a courtesy star. What they hail as a fusion of "70s funk and soul" with "50s and 60s hard bop" strikes me as closer to smooth jazz. More egregiously, Lovano's "Celebrating Sinatra" gets 4.5 stars from AMG. NO WAY!!! The only time I pull that disc out is when I need a coaster! I give it a half a star, as it even makes a pretty lousy coaster!

Hey dude, the last thing I want is for people to accept everything I say because of "greater apparent knowledge"; that would make life pretty damn boring! I'm skeptical of almost everything I hear, myself. Brian Sabean's weekly radio show aside, I've always heard about the early-August waiver wire from fanatical non-insiders (the "amature Moneyball crowd", I guess you could call them). My guess as to why they keep waiver wire transactions under wraps (which even Stark implicity acknowledges they do) is this: the rules are so complicated that few people understand them, so the possibility of a headline in, say, Seattle along the lines of "Boone Waived by Mariners" would make people very upset, even though it's a completely benign transaction. They therefore choose to just keep it quiet. That's NOT a fact or some "insider info" I'm stating, it's just how I rationalize the fact that August waiver-wire info is not made public.

Fair question, although I must say that Gammons and Stark are probably the two least reliable of the national baseball commentators. Sometimes I think GMs BS those two all the time just for kicks. Not that that really undermines your point. I've always been told that the teams all put their full rosters through at the same time so that their true intentions are as masked as possible. For instance, if you waited until next week to clear a player, it would be pretty clear that you were trading him, as by the time he made it through there would only be a few days to the deadline. Actually, there would be another reason that many players have yet to clear that would be consistent with both my story and Starks': it could be that the vast majority have been put on waivers, but only some have made it through *so far*. Teams get something like 12 hours to decide whether or not to put a claim on a player when their turn comes up. There could be a few teams on the chain that are just slow with the clerical work.

While were on the subject, could someone tell me how Joao is pronouced?

Dan, waiver wire info is not made public, Stark only has access to a few names that were leaked to him. My comment is based on what Giants GM Brian Sabean said (perhaps inadvertently) in his radio address last week. In any event, it has always been my understanding that nearly everyone clears waivers on or about August 1. Because of the way the waiver rules work, it really makes no sense to claim players off waivers in early August unless you think a team really wants to dump the player in question (in which case they likely would have put the player through waivers earlier) and you are willing to accept their salary, or if you are trying to block a trade to a rival team. The later is a dangerous strategy, as it is a real bridge-burner with the waiving team. Edit: there's one other circumstance where it makes sense to claim players off waivers in early August, and that's when you have a pre-arranged trade in place for the player in question. If the trade falls through, the waiving team can still put the player through waivers once more. After that, they lose the ability to pull players back. If you couldn't already tell, I'm a bit of a contracts/transactions/stats junkie. We used to have big office arguments about this kind of thing every day when I was working on Wall Street - those guys are really fanatical about this stuff!

You're right, Mule, $30 is low. In fact, I actually paid $40. The sticker is still on it. I didn't realize that the set is $140 new, I thought it was quite a bit less than that. I guess $80 would be a reasonable target price for a used set. Nonetheless, I've seen it for under $70 more than once in the shops. At $90 I'd still keep looking, but then again I'm a penny pincher when it comes to cds.

This is easily one of my favorite sets. I play it all the time. The sound is fine (to my ears) and the music is, for the most part, incredible. Dolphy's playing is uniformly stupendous throughout. That being said. $90 is way high for a used set. I got mine used for about $30. Shop around!

93% humiditiy in NYC today. I golfed in the Bronx this afternoon. By the time we were done, I had sweated through every article of my clothing, including my leather glove!

I think a lot of people would agree with that. BTW, Rooster, are you aware of the personel for Astral Weeks? Richard Davis and Connie Kay, among others.

They weren't like this one, were they? I know, it's a great dane, but I've heard a couple people refer to them as Marmadukes because of the cartoon.

Evidently that didn't happen to this guy when he got hit with "several DUIs". This judge sucks. BTW, the guy's teenage son must have gotten a different judge, becuase he's in jail for year. Actually, he was originally given 50 months probation, but was jailed for a year after violating his parole terms almost immediately.

George Wallington and Julius Watkins have some dough coming their ways as well! Ditto Gene Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. Okay, I'm going to find something better to do now...

Well one of the first people on their list, George Adams, has been residing in the next world for about 10 years now...

I really dig Astral Weeks. That's one of the (if not the) best pop record I've ever heard. I'm pretty lukewarm to most of the rest. Most of his records seem to at least have their moments, and I'm sure this will have it's fair share as well.

Ted Gioia - West Coast Jazz (just a few pages left) Tony Morrison - Song of Solomon And the obligatory science books: DD Awschalom - Semiconductor Spintronics S Maekawa - Spin-Dependent Transport in Magnetic Nanostructures Next on the list: Moneyball and Bros. Karamazov.

Just for the record, almost every MLB player has cleared waivers by this point, so trades will continue to occur until August 31.

You know, Mark, I don't know if this news has gone national yet but in Brooklyn they are investigated a number of judges for accepting bribes. One has already been indicted, and we have been told to expect many more idictments in the near future. One has to wonder what's going on in Chicago... BTW, I had no idea that drunkeness afforded one the ability to commit crimes with impunity.

Guys, this decision is a lot worse than you think. Not reported in the ESPN.com article copied above is that the judge blamed the violent nature of baeball and the ready availibility of beer at ballparks for the attacks, and claimed that the attackers' behavior is what one ought reasonably expect from persons in the baseball park environment. That's the real reason the sentence was so light. Read about it for yourself: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nw...ws-ligue07.html

JSngry, it sounds like you're talking about my mother. Seriously. She would be my strongest entry into this thread. She used to get phone calls from God on an invisible phone and believed that she was haunted by seven ghosts. I grew up in an apartment building in the tenderloin district of SF. Those familiar with the neighborhood will not be surprised by or suspicious of my claim that my upstairs, downstairs and adjacent neighbors were all smack addicts, so I have some "good" neighbor stories, too. The FBI found one of their most wanted two apartments up from me when I was very young. The suspect tried to escape by running down the fire escape. I was playing in the living room when he passed by out living room window. I'm not sure what he was wanted for, but drugs is a safe bet. The couple who lived across the airwell from my bedroom when I was about 10 or 11 walked around naked with the blinds up all the time, and then the lady would get mad when I looked at her. I was like, "well, what do you expect from a boy my age lady? Close your effing blinds if I'm not supposed to look!" It was not uncommon for them to engage in sexual acitivity with the blinds up. I could go on and on and on...

I agree Brownie, and I'm surprised that Ben Webster hadn't been mentioned yet! Talk about "instantly recognizable"!

Well, for contemporary players it's tough to miss Jason Moran or Brad Mildau. I don't like Mildau that much, but I certainly know him when I hear him. I think Osby is pretty easy to pick out, too.