The Man in Blak

The Cardinals have holes everywhere and they're more than capable of letting the Astros take the Central crown, even this late in the season. There's barely even a team to take the field outside of Pujols, Rolen and (every fifth day) Carpenter. The bullpen, in particular, has been an abomination this year and that's before walking into Houston and blowing three straight games in the ninth. If Chris Duncan and Scott Spiezio don't play over their heads all year long in valuable reservist roles, the Cardinals are probably six games below .500 right now. Here's the VORP hitters' rankings of the Cardinals this year: 79.6 - Albert Pujols 37.4 - Scott Rolen 24.9 - Chris Duncan 21.6 - Jim Edmonds 11.7 - Scott Spiezio 9.6 - Juan Encarnacion 9.3 - John Rodriguez 8.8 - Hector Luna 8.1 - David Eckstein 7.8 - Mark Mulder 5.0 - Aaron Miles -3.0 - Ronnie Belliard -17.6 - Yadier Molina I don't even have the heart to post the pitching numbers. Easily the most infuriating Cardinals team to watch over the last ten years, and that's including the 2003 Hit Parade of Esteban Yan, Jeff Fassero, and Pedro Borbon Jr.

Because he was willing to pay the bills?

Ah, I caught the comment about not liking fighters, but read right over the shooters part, for whatever reason. Well, in that case, I probably wouldn't recommend TMB and ZotE.

Crucifixio Jones would laugh his ass off if he knew that such a hysterically low-rent version of himself was running around these parts.

Since you said you were looking for RPGs, I'd recommend the Shin Megami Tensei games on the system (Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga). They mix turn-based random encounters with pokemon-esque devil collecting in a modern setting and it's so offbeat from your typical RPG that I think you might enjoy it. Don't listen to Andrew about Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. And don't listen to Bobby Peru about picking up the whole R&C series - Deadlocked is mediocre, at best. Do listen to Andrew about ZotE: The 2nd Runner, though, which is one of the most criminally underrated games to come out in a long while. Finally, I also didn't see Twisted Metal Black mentioned anywhere, so I would recommend it to you as well, just for some mindless fun.

Just for the sake of reference, does anybody recall what the distribution percentages were for the Xbox360 when it launched? Maybe I'm overreacting, but my initial thought, upon seeing that they're only bringing in 20% of the "cheap" model for the US distribution, is that Sony has completely lost their mind. Not that this is news, considering how they've acted leading up to this release, but good lord.

I retract any defense I may have made for Mike and Mike in one of the half-dozen OAO ESPN Sucks threads around here. What a fucking idiotic comment.

If the tracks from Larks' Tongue in Aspic were even half as good of their live versions between The Night Watch and USA, I wouldn't even flinch before picking LTiA over Red. As it stands, though, Red is the much tighter studio album.

"The product of the first twenty years of the internet."

Just because it isn't "A Day In The Life" doesn't mean that it's one of the dumbest songs of all time. This isn't a binary outcome - there's an awful lot of gray area where perfectly decent (but, admittedly, overplayed and overwrought) songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" can reside. So, there's no overarching storyline throughout the narrative of the song. The song isn't necessarily stupid as a result - "I Am The Walrus" and "Paranoid Android" aren't exactly re-writes of Homer's Odyssey, but they contain more than a few memorable moments on their own, just as a result of some witty turns of phrase.

I know that it's so chic nowadays to tear down Nirvana and I won't argue with anybody who wants to say that it's probably the most overrated track from Nevermind...but to suggest that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is on the same level of idiocy as "My Humps", "Peaches", or any one of Toby Keith's recent offerings is motherfucking asinine.

Maybe I need to see it from a different angle. From the three-quarters view of the baseline to the plate, it looks like a tie at worst, but that angle may also give the impression that Byrnes had more of a lead than he may have had in reality.

Yeah, like em. Surprised the art-rock crowd didn't take to them more. Clinic's got a new album, Visitations, due in October, I believe. You probably haven't heard of them because, save for two erratic albums, they haven't really done anything noteworthy since they made their big splash with Internal Wrangler.

You think he might have been a little ticked off that Ortiz did his best Joe Carter impersonation running around the bases? He just destroyed that ball.

To be fair, Al, I'm pretty sure most people identify you as the sports folder moderator, which is one of the better and most civil boards on the forum, so that's probably why you aren't receiving a lot of feedback regarding issues that are occurring outside of your perceived jurisdiction.

Hey, only five of the nine runs were earned. That's nothing compared to my double-barreled Mets ERA bomb of doom of picking up El Duque (11 ERs in 4 IP) and John Maine (7 ER in 5 IP) for spot starts over the last few weeks.

WHOIS. Nice.

Even the posters that didn't exist had something to add back in those days.

I think the reaction to the opening chapter with Roxas is very closely tied to whether you played through Chain of Memories or not. If you went straight from KH1 to KH2, then you were probably a little less patient with the beginning of the game.

Well, there already is kind of a split, if you consider the BTF/BPro "feud" to have any legs. With a few exceptions (MGL comes to mind), most of the posters at Baseball Think Factory tend to be very reasonable about statistics and mixing that information with scouting and other anecdotal evidence.

When you spell out "please", you trip just a few yards before the finish line. You were so funny up to that point.

Updated For 2006, lolz.

I use Soulseek to track down singles or rare releases, but I've had more success using the Indious hub on DC++ for finding full albums at acceptable connection speeds.

If you're looking for a live CD of the 70's KC lineup, I'd recommend that you check out the USA album. Easily the best live take on "Lark's Tongue in Aspic, Part II" and the version of "21st Century Schizoid Man" is one of their best as well. If it weren't for the butchered stab at "Starless" (which, to be fair, is one of the only KC tracks that seems to consistently fare poorly in a live setting), it would probably be my favorite KC album.