Cheech Tremendous

No, folks, these guys weren't gay

Agreed. There's a lot out there that falls under the umbrella of Lit. Hell, I subscribe to like a half dozen magazines and have always been looking for a place to discuss them with fellow posters. To respond to Inc, my hope is that we've come far enough in our evolution that we can have a Lit folder now. Just because it failed last time doesn't mean it will this time around.

Dear Jon, We are sorry about everything that happened. Come home, buddy. Signed, Al Davis

Cash Money had a couple of solid years, but I always thought they received an unfair amount of praise, at leastwhen compared to their contemporaries. Stylistically, they weren't that far removed from No Limit, but while they were heaped with mass praise the latter was often seen as a gimmicky label that promoted style over substance.

That was a weird move and I don't really remember why it happened. There were some members who wanted it with WWE since it was a WWE product. The posters who used the folder wanted to keep it away from the WWE folder out of fear that some of the posters there would bring down the quality of discussion. Somehow the WWE folder supporters won out. I guess I can buy both explanations but General is sort of a better fit, given the tone and nature of most of the threads in that folder. This is sort of why I have pushed for an Old School folder. That's a logical place for the 24/7 stuff to go. Personally I feel a little weird interjecting into that folder because I don't have the 24/7 service. However, I often feel compelled to discuss the shows you guys have been watching.

So it seems that I may have brought back a parasitic friend from my trip to Mexico. On one hand this sucks because I've spent the better part of the morning hovered over my toilet. On the other hand, this very well may give me the inside track I need to win this contest.

It's just regression to the mean. Jon Lester is emerging, but he threw 210 innings last season (not including playoffs). That's roughly 60 innings more than he has ever pitched at any level. Although he is past the injury nexus that sort of innings jump has red flags all over it. I'd expect some sort of injury this season, minor or even major, that will either cause him to miss some time or negatively impact his on-the-field performance. Pedroia will be good, but not MVP-level good. That .331 BABIP might be tough to match again, even though he might have the skillset to pull it off. It's not so much that I think anything happens to his overall quality of play, it just seems unrealistic to expect something approaching his magnificent 2008 campaign. Lowell and Ortiz are older, but probably have some production left in them. Just by showing up in better health they'll outproduce their 2008 numbers. They aren't getting better per se, but merely being active contributors to the squad should offset whatever minor setbacks Youk and Pedroia suffer.

I've been wanting to see Decline for years. The swimming pool scene is awesome, being both sad, funny and surreal at the same time. I read somewhere that people have blamed the movie for helping to kill hair metal. I don't see how that's possible. Isn't the life of excess and debauchery an important pillar in the whole hair metal culture? Like Motley Crue made some decent music and all, but didn't they become about ten times more interesting when you found out that most of them were so fucked up that they don't even remember entire years of their lives?

Whither Circuit City? The last vestige of my clever subtitles may be coming to an end

We need Jericholic82's feelings on this, stat.

Maybe a precursor to the Comic Books folder becoming a Literature folder? We can hope.

The Rays, Red Sox and Yankees all got better in the offseason. What does that mean going foward? I don't know, but let's take a look: Rays - The Rays were the best team in the division last year and made two critical offseason moves that will go a long way to improving the team. First, they traded Edwin Jackson for Matt Joyce. This is important for a couple reasons. Joyce is a great defender and a nice power bat to platoon in right. Second, it opens a spot in the rotation for David Price. Top to bottom, they have the best rotation in the division (I think). Then they added Burrell, who is not only their best hitter, but upgrades their DH spot, which was one of the few weaknesses they had last year. Even with some regression, I have them as an elite team heading into the season. Sox - Looking at Pythagorean numbers, they were the best team in the division in the last year and all things considered, it was something of a down year. Lester, Pedroia and Youks will regress, but that should be offset by improvements from Beckett, Ortiz and Lowell. The pitching, from the starters to the bullpen, is absolutely deadly (on paper). However, they have a lot of health question marks going into the season. They still look like a 95-win team, which may or may not be good enough. Yankees - Money aside, they made all the right moves in the offseason. But let us not forget that this team was at least 10 wins worse the Sox and Rays last year. That's a lot of ground to make up. Sabathia, Burnett, Teixeira and Swisher come in to replace Mussina, Pettitte, Giambi and Abreu. Now, the former group is definitely superior to the latter going forward. However, those four were major contributors last year. My back of the envelope math doesn't show the new group contributing much more in '09. They are going to have pick up the slack somewhere else, which they can do given the money and resources. However, they still might be the weakest of the three teams.

Is this a crazy idea for the top of the board: WWE Folder (for all things regarding the current WWE product) Old School (for WWE 24/7 topics and general discussion of older angles/wrestlers) TNA, Indies & Overseas (current TNA stuff, plus ROH, Japan and whatever)

This Dr. Funkenstein is one to watch in '09.

OR be average like they probably will be ... 2009 AL East standings imo 01 Yanks 02 Rays 03 Sox 04 O's 05 Jays The team that won 95 games last year with a hurt Ortiz, Beckett and Lowell, who returned their entire squad and added two former aces and a top-tier closer to the mix, are going to be average this year? What, exactly, is this based on? You may be correct that they end up in third place, but even under that scenario I'd wager that they'd be the third best team in the American League. Average would denote a team in the middle of the pack. Save for the disastrous '06 campaign (when they still won 86 games) the Sox haven't sniffed average since Theo took over.

If I had my druthers, we'd have an Old School folder, which would be an amalgam of the current General folder and the WWE 24/7 stuff. As it is, that's probably not in the cards. I don't really care for subfolders, but of the two options presented I'll go with the first choice (WWE subfolder).

Dear Czech, There are too many folders nowadays. Please eliminate three. P.S. I am not a crackpot.

It might attract new visitors. My beef has always been that the most active folders should go at the top of the page. As for the number of folders, I don't think there is an exact number that we need, but it shouldn't be cumbersome. The site should be organized in a way that all the folders are easily accessible. New people who don't bother to scroll down never see that there is a whole other board below wrestling. I mentioned it in this thread! I've wanted comics gone, or at least merged into a Literature folder forever. Having a whole folder for one thread is so not needed. These things get out of hand in such a hurry. No one's getting rid of anything. People have been asking about getting rid of indies and that seems to be the popular opinion of the board. Subsequently, we are left with a few options for the top of the forum: A. As is B. WWE, TNA & Indies, General C. WWE, TNA, General & Indies D. WWE, General (with TNA, indies) That's it! That's all were discussing. No one's getting rid of wrestling from this board, no one's ending TNA talk, nada. It's just housekeeping talk. I need to go bed. I'm going to be labeled a grouch forever.

I can't believe that was even discussed. That's terrible. The board's attitude to the people who like wrestling is one of the few, if any, things I hate about TSM. Oh, get over yourself. It had nothing to with disdain for wrestling fans. Being new to the job, we took a look at everything. Merging TNA and indies was just something under consideration. You act like I'm just some asshole sitting in my room bitching about TNA. It's not like that at all. Random thoughts was meant to for non-thread stuff. If discussion crept up, I'd spin it off into its own topic (you know, the very thing you praised Venk for). I'm just pointing out that it never worked and now it's gotten out of hand again. Besides, as you know, I have no power whatsover. I'm not changing anything. We are just talking here. That's the problem right there. How can you decide anything if you haven't been paying attention to it? Just because YOU don't think the wrestling folders matter doesn't mean that others don't and come here mostly for that. I'd be for having WWE, TNA and a General folder for everything else, but maybe it would be a better idea to actually ask the people that are active over there what they think? I said I didn't have the pulse on the folder, which basically meant that we should ask those who use it. Sorry I wasn't more clear. I don't use the TNA folder much, but I'm not advocating its removal simply because of that. I just wonder if it's necessary. Like I post about MLB a lot in Sports. Do we need a separate folder for MLB discussion? No we don't. I don't see this as being much different. We don't have to keep TNA just because it's always been there. Let's think outside the box. But again, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I don't have the power to do anything, nor would I even if I had said power.

It generates solid traffic, but it's a folder that mainly got megathreaded it looks like, probably because of the Random Thoughts thread. I think discussion can easily get going there again, just like Venk did a good job undoing the CTDWAT mess in the WWE folder, I think it can be done in the TNA folder. When Dandy and I first took over last year we briefly discussed axing the whole folder. Instead, we did the same thing that we did with the WWE folder: closed CWDWAT and spun off all the existing conversation into their own threads. Unlike WWE, this didn't really work out. Again we talked about getting rid of the folder. Someone (Bps21?) said that if they had a month to work on discussion topics they could get the place going again. That didn't work either. Alas, I quit like days later so there was no resolution. Let's just say that what you are proposing has been tried before and it failed due to lack of interest. Maybe TNA has improved and there are folder regulars who want that section to survive. I truthfully don't know. I don't have the pulse of that area one way or the other.

I don't think anyone is planning to touch the MMA folder. We're talking about the fake stuff here. Who cares? So what if they've "established" themselves, it doesn't mean that it deserves a folder. It receives a mild amount of activity and is, at best, like the tenth most used folder on the site. Actually, it's probably not even close to that high. It's not like this a wrestling forum anymore. We don't have to give respect to some two-bit promotion because we started out talking wrestling years ago. It's just preservation for preservation's sake.

No offense to Venk, but this is the best the folder has looked in years.

Nice.

Never been caught. I'm like a fucking a ninja when I masturbate.