Cheech Tremendous

I'm apprehensive about making this about money for two reasons: 1. I don't intend to go all out in this thing. Ten pounds is my goal. It's not about competition, but just feeling and looking good. 2. I'm 100% positive that someone would cheat just to get the money. Also, you pussies who don't want to get involved are, well, pussies. Throw your name in the hat and track your weight for the next month. What's the worst that could happen? You don't lose any weight? That would have happened regardless.

4ding hard? I laughed.

Vitamin X - At this point, I'm throwing out my typical gut reactions and handling this a little more scientifically. Well, I'm not employing any actual science, but perhaps a good 30 seconds of thought. Usually when I do these things, I say the poster's name and try to jot down the first few things that come to mind. For instance, if I say Treble I might go: tie post, Canadian, one-liners. Or at least something of that ilk. I did the same with VX and came up with: football fan, food guy, and mod. Surprisingly, the same three buzzwords came up for Agent and by God, Agent's better than VX at all three. However, a little more thought swayed me back to VX. Where he succeeds is on the margins, in those quiet threads that no one really reads. There you see him showing a softer side, interacting with everyone and putting a great deal of thought into his posts. That's why he gets the nod. Oh, and Portland FTW~! Kinetic - I'd love to cast a vote for Venkman here, but I just can't do it. Not this year. Maybe he can come back next year and halt Dandy's Pursuit of Perfection. Everyone has said what these guys bring to the table, so no need to rehash and make this an ever bigger TL;DR. Perhaps you could argue that what Venk did last year was more important, at least in the sense of preserving TSM's wrestling folder. However, nothing embodies what we do here more than Kinetic's runaway train of sarcastic comments, go nowhere threads and ridiculous videos. It's why I fire this bad boy up every day when I click on that little Internet Explorer icon.

Often panned as a relic of the '80s and an example of the way excess and pomp can ruin good music, I still maintain that there is plenty of good stuff that came out this era. Yeah, maybe big hair and tight spandex invoke a snicker here and there, but like any genre you take the good with the bad. For my money, it's all about Motley Crue. Shout at the Devil and Dr. Feelgood are really solid albums. Surprisingly, I don't think they sound as dated as one might think. Discuss.

Parker fucks with his socks on! Ha!

I had ESPN Radio on during my ride home from work today and John Clayton called McNabb a future Hall of Famer. That was probably the first time I've heard someone from the media praise him that highly.

If I were to make a short list of my favorite wrestling angles from my childhood, Savage-HTM, the Mega-Powers and Savage-Roberts would all make the cut. My most intense fandom ran from approximately mid 1988 to early 1991, a period in which Savage was mostly a heel. For that reason, I never really regarded him as one of my favorites, but in hindsight he was really freaking good. The WCW run neither helped him or hurt him in the long run. It was just another five years of him doing the same schtick that he did in the latter days of his WWF run. It seemed like for most of his run he was just there to establish that he was second banana to Hogan. The DDP feud was great and really put Page on the map, but he never really did much of note after that. I hated the fact that he had one-day title reigns in both '98 and '99 that ended at the hands of a returning Hogan.

Actually, I think by promoting from within they don't have to go through the minority interview process. I know Wilbon is always raging on PTI that this practice was designed to subvert the Rooney rule. I don't necessarily by that line of thinking for one simple reason: it's always better to promote from within than to go through a long and arduous coaching search.

I'm just finishing up Choke now and it's the first Palahniuk that I've read. I loved it. I know that some people say that it's one of his least interesting works, but I was hooked. Any suggestions on what I should go for next? I was thinking either Survivor or Invisible Monsters. I also finished up The Average American Male. It's a light read. Mild recommendation if you're into stuff like Assholes Finish First, but I'd stay away if you have any aversion to reading a book obviously designed for the Maxim-reading crowd. I've got a little bit left on Artie Lange's Too Fat to Fish. Funny anecdotes, but nothing you haven't heard him tell a million different times on the Howard Stern Show. My next project is Team of Rivals. I've got a little bit done and I want to get into it, but I hate lugging it around. It's awkward to hold and carry. I'll probably have to devote a weekend in the future to tackling this bad boy.

That's a good start. Now they just need to fire everyone else.

Well, who's in? This was spurred by a thread in LSD. A lot of us were lamenting the fact that we put on a few holiday pounds this year. Perhaps a little friendly competition will help us get in shape before Spring hits. I'll take suggestions, but I figure we'll do something like 1 month (or more?). We'll report our respective heights and weight now. Each Monday we'll weigh in again and see how much we've moved the dial. I'll post the changes in the first post of the thread. The winner will be whomever loses the greatest percentage of their starting body weight. Therefore, if someone like Pbone loses ten pounds, Hoff would have to drop like 30 (these are rough estimates based on pictures, but I assume they're accurate). Please no shenanigans. This isn't about any type of reward, it's about accountability. EDIT: Week 1 Weigh-In Cheech 195 KOAB 208 Mik 223 Still Fly 253 Fazzle 220 Pbone 160 Cuban Linx 240 DCH 93 Kinetic 140 CanadianChris 291 Cyber Mark 145 Twisted Intestine 170 King Cucarcha 180 Krankor 166 Brody 248 Haws bah gawd 268 I think Dandy, VX and Czech are abstaining despite revealing their weights.

I don't think I've heard enough pre-Soul Beatles to make a determination. I mean, I know the songs, but I can't place them to their respective albums. I bought all of these on CD for my dad a few years ago; I should steal them next time I visit the 'rents. Incidentally, I don't think that I'll find myself too into these albums. I like the spacey experimental stuff like Sgt. Pepper's far more than most of the traditional pop classics.

Pioli to join the Chiefs This will probably mean the end of Herm Edwards as head coach. I've heard Spagnuolo's name mentioned as a possibility to replace him. On paper, this looks like a very good hire. Pioli has a fabulous reputation for what he helped build in New England, but as always when dealing with the Patriots it's hard to know how much was him and how much was Belichick.

Trading Ichiro probably isn't in the cards for a myriad of reasons, including both the wishes of Japanese ownership and Ichiro's star status in a market that is teetering on rejecting the team altogether. But then again, there were reports at the end of last season that Ichiro was completely ostracized by the clubhouse. I don't know what's going on there, but still, I wouldn't expect to see him go anywhere. As bad as Seattle as is (and they've been really bad), they could get back into contention really quickly. The money they spend and decent farm system will prevent them from having to tear down before they build up. The new GM whose name I refuse to attempt to spell is sharp and has already made massive improvements in the team. They've built a pitching and defense team that is going to be excellent in spacious Safeco next year. The offense is a disaster, but I think there are options out there for improvement. It's still, on paper, the worst team in the division but under the right circumstances they could compete in what I expect to be hands-down the worst division in baseball next year.

Pursuit of Perfection '09?

The Lowe signing will be made official on Wednesday after he passes his physical. The $60 million figure seems high given that the only other (reported) suitor offered him $36 million. But then again, we don't know how much of those media reports are actually accurate. They've now added Vazquez, Lowe and Kawakami this offseason. Losing Smoltz hurts, but pairing those three with Jurrjens gives them a very nice rotation. In other news, I read that Tom Tango was hired to work in the front office for the Mariners. That's really cool. After a half decade of putridness they are really putting something together up there in Seattle. I think they should take a long, hard look at Dunn for the DH spot. If things break right, that team could actually compete in the AL West next year.

Mary's a stupid name. They should have called him Sue.

Oh, that could be true. But you know what I mean w/r/t to WWE's marketing department adding z's and what not to names (see: Hardy Boyz, Dudley Boyz) so that they can copyright them. I don't think there was anything to the Sycho name other than trying to do something unique for marketing purposes.

It always struck me as a marketing thing. Like adding a 'Z' to Taz or whatever, Sycho Sid was probably just a little more cutting edge than Psycho. Personally I think they should have just kept the Vicious name.

I don't care for the new redesign of espn.com at all. Supposedly this took many years and lots of money to come up with. All I see is a clunkier, less navigable version of their old site. I've already cut down my number of visits considerably in the past year due to lack of content; this may put an end to my use of the site all together.

I must be crazy. I think McNabb is the third best quarterback this decade (behind Peyton and Brady). He's been up and down over his career, but has consistently been one of the best. He always puts up good, but not great numbers and has led some really average teams deep into the playoffs. In any given year, he might not strike you as the third best in the league, but over a sustained period his numbers hold up really well.

So Donovan McNabb is playing in his fifth conference championship game in the last eight years? That's astounding. What do you think that says about him as a quarterback? Has he been sufficiently rated relative to his peers? Is his success more of a reflection of the down state of the conference for most of the decade? He's down an awful lot with a fairly weak cast around him. It just seems like McNabb gets talked about a lot, but not as one of the best of his generation. Hell, a few weeks ago Philly was ready to run him out of town.

I think Agent's trying to swing some votes his way with the massive Food Folder overhaul. I'm glad that I voted for him. Mods being all moddy makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I don't think it's homerism at all. McGriff is borderline, but I could see him in the Hall. That magical 500 HR is just out of reach, but otherwise the numbers are strong. He's not a lock, but if you squint hard enough you could probably put him in. What will hurt him is playing in the PED era, where the power numbers don't look as good and the contemporaries were so over-the-top that he doesn't seem that special.

It's useless to try and explain, jimmy. There really is no discernible argument for Rice to be in the Hall, at least compared to both his peers and the others that are already enshrined. He was barely a blip on the radar five years after he retired, but for some unexplainable reason, his myth has grown in the past fifteen years. He was a popular player on a good team for one of baseball's most identifiable franchises. That's why there has been a push to get him in. That's why Tim Raines will eventually be lost to history and Rice gets in. Sad but true. The argument, as it goes, is that Rice was the most feared hitter in his era, with a peak that is hall-worthy. Fact is, the the numbers just don't support that. He racked up good counting stats for a few years in a hitter's park. He didn't run or field all that well and he dropped off a cliff late in his career. He had a massive three year run in the '70s, but it wasn't all that special, at least in terms of the Hall of Fame. Check this: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=1150 - Sheehan does a better job than I could summing it up