The Man in Blak

I don't believe you. Let me check the main page.

Wait, the OAOAST is still around?

Upon further inspection, I guess he's got a new run of albums out with Les Claypool and the drummer from Tool on board. That definitely sounds like an intriguing lineup - do you know if that's the group that's performing at your concert?

"Eh" pretty much covers it, but there are some high spots throughout. I like the title track on Young Lions (probably his strongest album), African chanting be damned. You might dig the Bowie collab from that album as well, "Pretty Pink Rose." He also has (or had) a tendency to play some of his Crimson work on his solo tours - one of his albums had live cuts of "Three of a Perfect Pair" and "Dinosaur", IIRC.

What, the Tigers that are spending $82M on payroll this year? You're not really referring to a small market team here.

Reyes takes a tough loss on a one-hitter to the White Sox on Thome's home and Chicago sweeps. The good news is that Reyes is going nowhere - they would have to be galactically stupid to send him down to the minors after almost no-hitting the World Champs after two straight nights of their seemingly non-stop hit parade. Pujols, on the other hand, looks like he could have used an extra day or two on the DL, just to work on getting his timing back, if nothing else. Chris Duncan gets demoted and Mulder lands on the DL (with a "shoulder strain") to make room on the 25-man.

Reyes finally makes a mistake over the middle of the plate and it gets destroyed by Jim Thome, who's got to be hitting something like .600/.800/1.000 against the Cardinals over his career. No-no gone, shutout gone, and the game is in jeopardy, as we head to the top of the eighth.

Hey pal you don't like it then don't read it or use that ignore feature. That's why it's there. So you don't have to read posts from people you don't like. But instead of just simply using it you'd rather start shit. Just use the god damn feature and leave me alone. Here's how I feel about it. (And you should probably note that this is somebody who only watched bits and pieces of the series.) Trying to pin this one completely on the Mavericks or the referees falls under a "chicken or the egg" dilemma. There are way too many uncomfortable parallels between this series and the Kings/Lakers series from a couple of years ago, with this year's Game 5 almost surpassing the absurdity of the Kings/Lakers Game 6 where the Lakers received twenty-seven foul shots in the fourth quarter. (And, just to put things into perspective, while Game 5 may have been a very frustrating game to watch, it still pales to that Game 6, which was, hands-down, the most poorly officiated game that I've ever witnessed in sport. Never again will you see the officials take control of a game like you did in the fourth quarter of that game.) The Mavericks basically gave away the last two games (maybe even the last three), but it was more due to them getting psyched out of their game by the referees than any strong dip in ability. Dirk basically giving up his low-post game is not a new development - it's something that had already started in Miami. Same with Howard, Terry, and the rest of the team mentally checking out of the series. Part of the problem here is actually Mark Cuban. When he steps on the court, jawing at referees, and making himself (and, by proxy, the officiating) the story leading into Game 6, he plants the seed in the Maverick locker room that, not only will/should things change for the next game, but that Game 5 provides them with a "reason" for losing the series. What's even worse is that I think Avery Johnson, a first year coach who was a player only a couple of years ago, may have been affected by that mindset even more than the team itself and that distraction probably played into his questionable decisions. That being said, if somebody wants to say that the Mavericks had Game 5 taken away from them by incompetent officiating, I'm willing to buy into that. I watched more of Game 5 than I did of any other game in the series and I got those Kings/Lakers jitters all over again, watching Wade get call after call after call. You can't fault Wade for taking what the referees were going to give him, but you can't just completely turn a blind eye to what they gave him and pin that Game 5 loss entirely on the Mavericks. Someone earlier in the thread had mentioned about the lack of referee attention during the first two games. 1. Despite any potential home-cooking that the referees may have provided, the Mavericks looked dominant in those first two games, as though the officiating wasn't even a factor. 2. The Mavericks' offense isn't really conditioned to draw foul after foul, because they don't have to; they play a diverse offensive game with many contributors. The second point may indirectly lead to the first one, just because of our perception of dominance in an NBA game - the Mavericks just kept piling on points, unabated by the Heat or the referees for the most part. Of course, that second point is also something that Avery Johnson could have re-established going into Game 6 after things had turned sour in Miami, but he didn't. He could have played the "star game" and encouraged Dirk to throttle up his low-post scoring rather than taking twenty-some jumpshots. Like Edwin said earlier, even if they feared that they wouldn't get the calls with Dirk driving into the lane, they should have at least tried instead of conceding their game plan. But they didn't, and I don't know whether to blame the Mavericks for having that mental block, or the unbelievably incompetent officials for doing everything short of giving them a legitimate reason for creating it in the first place. Simmons couldn't have been more dead-on in his analysis that the Miami win probably sets the league back a year, if only because it demonstrates that the playoff officiating implicitly punishes a team who doesn't buy into the "star system." Casual fans (like me) that may have tuned in for this series after abandoning the league following the Kings/Lakers debacle just got another helping of the dissatisfaction that made them tune out in the first place. If I'm David Stern, I take a long look at revising the much-criticized selection process for playoff officials in the offseason.

I buy that complaint for game 5, but this game? The reason Dallas isn't getting foul shots is because they're putting up 10-15 foot jumpers four out of five trips down the court. Part of that, though, comes from the Mavericks fearing that they're going to get hacked into oblivion whenever they go into the paint without anybody calling a foul. And that mindset, however silly it may be, does have a lot to do with the crappy officiating that virtually dominated the Miami games.

Not exactly recent vintage, since it's pre-Primus Les Claypool at work, but the cover for Sausage's Riddles Are Abound Tonight is ghastly: And I'll freely admit - I had a Secret Samadhi t-shirt back in high school. I never really got into "Lightning Crashes", but "Lakini's Juice" was the shit way back then.

That's an...interesting deal. Not that Gathright doesn't have value as a defender and a stolen base threat, but the Royals are struggling to find live arms to start games and Howell, recent shoulder soreness be damned, was still a young arm that might have been worth keeping around. Does Gathright go to left, or does he take center field and push DeJesus/Costa out to the corner?

The guy didn't score from first on a double and then, when asked about it after the game, essentially said that it was all right because they won the game anyway. By adding that to a Cal Ripken Victory Lap after his first major league home run, Milledge doesn't really give Randolph or Minaya much of a choice here.

Yeah, I think Game 4 would classify as a Dick Bavetta Game, by Bill Simmons' standards.

And he's a baseball fan too. Who knew?

I don't think we'll see John Mabry in an A's uniform again. How could the Cubs trade away that veteran presence?

In all fairness, the deals that brought Bonderman, Polanco and Carlos Guillen have worked out very well for the Tigers. Also, don't forget that they picked up Chris Shelton in the Rule 5 draft for little more than the cost of an airplane ticket to fly him to Detroit. Their dips into free agency have been sketchy, but the rest of their transactions actually haven't been as destructive as you'd think.

I'll admit, I laughed. And White Light / White Heat is my favorite VU album. Maybe getting back on coffee for the first time in months has affected my sense of humor this morning.

If the Tigers can somehow foist Todd Jones onto some closer-starved team in the hunt (Atlanta, maybe?), I think they'll improve just by getting him off of the roster. Rodney is more than capable of closing out games for that team.

Griffey should come back to Seattle for interleague next year, right? Last year, the NL Central played the AL East...this year, they play the AL Central, I believe. Next season, they should hit the AL West and line up against Seattle.

I'm curious to see how MLB treats Leyritz's confessions, since he actually works as a host on the radio programming that they broadcast on MLB.com.

But I had heard here that the Reds - like other Central teams - laid down for the Cardinals, but always played the Cubs like their life was on the line every game. You must be mistaken.

Well, Cabrera's really the only young one with speed and his walk rate (which is considerably higher than shown in the minor leagues) will probably take a dive in the future. The other two are essentially in line with expectations, though, so I don't know if disaster is really on the horizon.

Too bad SMEK isn't hyphenated.

Seriously, explain to me why Bon Jovi has more impact on the hair metal genre (let alone rock and roll in general) than Van Halen or Def Leppard. Especially since Bon Jovi came around after both of them.