Cheech Tremendous

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.

This man:

I didn't really get hangovers during my high school and early college days. It wasn't until my 20s that I started to feel like I was hit by a Mack truck after a rowdy night of boozing. Probably also has something to do with the fact that a big day of drinking might be 15+ beers these days as opposed to whatever minute amount got me shitty drunk when I was an 18-year-old begging for whatever shit alcohol my older friends would buy me.

Ecsktein signs with Padres Our long national nightmare is over. At least he's going to play second base instead of continuing to pretend that he can actually throw the ball to first from short. Other news: Michael Young has rescinded his trade demand from the Rangers and has agreed to move to third base next season. This will allow Elvis Andrus to take over the starting job and shift Blalock to full time DH. That should be an upgrade for the team, at least defensively.

Exercise. Run, bike, lift weights... anything that burns calories and gets your heart rate up. Burn more than you take in and you'll be golden. That's really all there is to it.

It ended like four years ago, man. But I meant "post-Mannie Fresh era" as in "the era following the mainstream advent of the Mannie Fresh aesthetic," not as in "after the Mannie Fresh era." The "Mannie Fresh era" itself was part of the "post-Mannie Fresh era." Sry for the confusion. Is this folder allergic to rap discussion? Other than your brief synopsis of Mannie Fresh vis a vis the southern rap scene and the timely thread about Warren G., there is nothing on the front page regarding hip hop music. Maybe this needs to be my next music folder project.

It was a really good idea to add that La Parka option. It has more votes than all four other options combined. Let's look at this situation from a different angle. If we were starting a brand new board with the existing members, what sort of wrestling folders would we need to satisfy their needs? My gut says WWE and Other would be all you need, but I don't know for sure. I guess what I am trying to say is don't look at it from what we have, think about what we actually need.

I love the fact that they added John Smoltz, Brad Penny, Takashi Saito, Rocco Baldelli, Mark Kotsay and Josh Bard to an already-solid core and the whole thing cost them less than one year of AJ Burnett. In all likelihood those guys offer very little next year, but if even one of them succeeds it'll make the whole investment worthwhile. I don't see the fit with a guy like Adam Dunn, but if the price tag is as low as some people are saying, I'm glad they're checking in and doing their due diligence. He won't sign to be a back-up, but maybe Theo sees some sort of time share that gets all the corner guys 500 or so ABs. If nothing else, it gives them insight as to what they might offer Jason Bay to lock him up for the next few seasons. 1. Dustin Pedroia

Fixed. I'm okay with letting Lester go year to year for right now. Last year was his first full season at the major league level. Let him do it a couple of more times and then start talking extension. No reason to go full out for a young pitcher given their propensity to get injured or flame out early. Same reason that I am glad the front office is showing restraint with Papelbon. The Sox have the money to minimize the risk and go year to year with these guys if need be. I love Youks, but he's just not on the same level with Teixeira. Teixeira's a switch hitter who is younger, gets on base more, hits for more power and plays superior defense. Last year was the first time that Youks put up an OPS+ even close to Teixeira's career average. That season looks like something of a fluke, given the crazy slugging percentage out of line with what he's done the rest of his career. Youkilis is a fabulous player who deserves his big deal, but there is no need to stand him up against an obviously superior player. As for Tek, he's probably only worth $4 or $5 million, depending on what you think his intangibles are worth. Bard's already signed for $1.6 million and he projects as the better player going forward. Given that Tek turned down $10 million earlier this offseason, I don't think he'd take such a low amount and I don't think the Sox would offer something so low for fear of insulting him. He might come back because no one else wants him, but it's time to start the realization that we've seen the last of him as an everyday catcher in this league. That skillset isn't there anymore.

My cable company didn't have any channels that carried ECW during its heyday. My first extended exposure to the product was the ECW on TNN show. Now, I had seen ECW here and there when I visited my friends with satellite dishes and PWI magazine filled in the rest, but I was salivating at the chance for a good look at the product. This was during the absolute apex of my fandom as well. Unfortunately, I never got into the show at all. A Friday night timeslot when I was in high school? May as well not even existed because the likelihood of me catching the show was 0. From what I remember, I didn't miss much either. ECW was really sort of a shell of its former glory at this point. When I was around I was intrigued by what I saw, but I think it did a poor job of trying to hook new viewers. The product wasn't really special or different anymore compared to Attitude-era WWF.

Youkilis signs 4 year, $40 million contract with Red Sox I like it. It seems like a very favorable contract for the team, locking up Youk through this prime at a below market rate. Gives Youkilis a little security for the next couple of years as well with the economy possible having continued downward pressure on player salaries. I wasn't looking forward to the upcoming abitration case with him at all. Now see if they can get Bay to do the same and I'll call this offseason a major success.