Jake

QUOTE (flavum @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 09:06 PM) I don't know what type of teammate or guy he is. He had the DUI a couple years ago. Well that's interesting. Could be something, could be nothing. Certainly reason for pause. For some reason I've never perceived him as "tough." I'm also not incredibly eager to lose Dayan's bat just to add his. Choo is better, but the marginal value isn't great. Would be interesting to see how we would shuffle guys to accommodate Choo as well as who we would need to send away.

QUOTE (flavum @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 09:04 PM) They've been rumored offering Swisher 4/48-50 mil. They offered Victorino 4/44 before he went to Boston. Why sign Swisher for a bundle of money just to get rid of Choo? Did I miss something outside of the rumors that leaked that they were selling everyone?

QUOTE (flavum @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 08:59 PM) Where are the make up concerns with him? Hopefully it's Choo, and the Indians are just waiting on Swisher's decision. I was thinking along the lines of health, position of need, and "tough". If it were a FA, that would obviously be Hamilton. Choo is interesting, but is there a make up concern?

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 08:03 PM) FWIW...Talks progressing for a guy that's been on the short wishlist lately. Conflicting make up concerns but when healthy, dude can slug and plays the game KW "tough". Deal has a good chance as of yesterday. Some risk but could be an impact move. Corresponding move(s) likely required which is the hold up. Chase Utley?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 07:05 PM) For whatever reason people are saying the dolphins plan on letting him walk. Strange, but the talk is getting louder I hope we get him... We share a name. I would buy the jersey.

I've been around a fair amount of steroid users, some of whom use more than can be used safely, and I just haven't observed marked changes in behavior. I have seen assholes be assholes, but I don't buy the whole roid rage thing. Way overstated. I also think ptatc summed up the concept of pitchers and steroids pretty damn well. It might sorta kinda add velocity, but strength is a surprisingly small part of the equation. My guess, like has been said, any increases in velocity were more related to the pitcher feeling healthy than having added on to his God-given strength. There is of course a huge performance boost just in feeling healthy day after day.

Simon Castro's only sin was getting a year older IMO. Still a very possible contributor for the Sox.

OL is all about value picks. Not taking one in round 1 doesn't necessarily bother me, you can get special players at various positions there. This is just predicated on being able to get 5 year starters on the OL in rounds 3-7. I sure wouldn't mind getting Te'O this year.

QUOTE (qwerty @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 02:14 AM) I have been in the process for years now watching every film ever nominated in every category since 1929. My whole purpose of this is to break down the nominees down by decade, choose what I consider to be the actual best, and when I have my/my teams winners from each decade they will all do battle for the number one spot. This is no small task, I am talking several thousand films to be analyzed and critiqued, with no stone unturned. The reason I am doing this is because truth be told, the Academy misses the mark, and misses it by far too much, on a rather consistent basis. The Academy tends to love itself too much for my liking, and films/people get nominated and end up winning for unworthy reasons year in, year out. Were the actual winners even truly worthy? Why weren't they? Etc... My goal is to try and bring films, performances, and techniques to light to the general audience that very well may be forgotten expect for a select few. There will be facts galore, lost quotes, (what I mean by that is a great deal of research at public libraries), interviews, etc. I plan on having a site side by side before this goes into publishing, because I do not want to to scare people off with the sheer size of this sucker. The site would be a way to ease people into it. I suppose it could be broken down into segments, but I am not too keen on that idea currently. From what I have gathered, something this extensive, fun, and knowledgeable has never been done on this scale. So, if you know anyone interested, or are interested in participating yourself, let me know as soon as you can. If you have an abundance of interest, contact me, and we can figure out if something like this is truly for you. Thanks. If you need help with foreign films in any regard, send me a pm if you like Jake. That's really interesting. For some reason, despite your lengthy description, I'm having a hard time envisioning what your final product would be. Is this something you've been begun to undertake already? The Academy is interesting and I'd be interested in what your findings look like against something like Sight and Sound's top films. I'm into academic criticism, which is far less interested in evaluative findings, but it is often hard to escape positive or negative feelings about a certain film. The first things I think about with the Academy Awards is 1. Alfred Hitchcock, who would be the hands down favorite director among academics and whose films like Vertigo consistently rank as best among these same people, never won an Oscar even though he enjoyed tremendous popularity. 2. Foreign films are almost wholly excluded except for their neat little category in which everyone can ignore them. The Artist, which IMO was a merited victory, is a sort-of-almost foreign film. The constitution of the Academy makes this no surprise since it is composed of domestic actors and directors and was founded by studios. It undermines the authority of the merit-based awards in my opinion -- Americans like to do things that are "best in the world" but "best in the USA" is all we get at the Oscars. QUOTE (Joxer_Daly @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 05:53 AM) You cut me deep, Jake. You cut me deep. I'm not too well up on decent films on the Irish and British film scene at the moment. There was 'Hunger' (Christ, I had to google to see when that was and it was 2008. Jesus!) that got a tremendous reception. Strangely, as a subject matter close to my heart, I haven't seen it yet. But it really does come highly recommended, notwithstanding your comment about not liking prison based films. I'm drawing a bit of a blank at the moment - I wouldn't be any sort of a flim buff at all - I know there's lots of great British and Irish films, but I'm a little bit slow today!!! I might have to come back to this. Take 'Hunger' as my starting offer. Another old one, did you see Gangster No. 1? Decent London gangster film from a decade or so ago. Sorry, my brain is utter mush today. Just found this blog, if it's of any interest to you: 5 Irish Films You Must See This Year... P.S. If you're going to study in Britain (any worthwhile courses in Ireland?), or even Europe, I'm now baptising you as a Celtic fan. A session in Glasgow beckons, methinks! Thanks for the tips! My current adviser in undergrad is a Madrileña so she is already making a big push to get me into Real Madrid when it comes to soccer. You'll have to tell me whether these are mutually exclusive choices and if so, you better make the case for Celtic! QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 10, 2012 -> 12:36 PM) I checked out It's a Wonderful Life at the Logan yesterday for a matinee. I thought I had seen that movie like 25 times, but it turns out I had never watched the first half. It's a lot funnier in the first half. It's weird how that film is hailed as an all-time great family movie, but it's really fairly dark. Upon its release, it received a mixed reception due to this. Some even called it a flop, though it picked up steam after its initial release. I love Jimmy Stewart

The question is whether we should care that it was effective. Killing countless civilians was also effective, but I'd rather that we hadn't done that.

Jay Cutler played just fine yesterday and it was one of those days where he made his line look awesome. He plays tough and makes some just absolutely amazing throws. He threw a perfect strike to a receiver who fell down -- turns into a TD On 3rd and 1, with our 3rd string running back in the game, we call a shotgun pass. Already a fail before the snap. He overthrows a slant, definitely his bad on that throw (though I think it may have been close enough for an excellent catch). Somehow that turns into a 60yd TD return. I know you can't really scheme these things, but it's crazy that the guy caught that ball with the entire offense in front of him and still got a TD. Hester drops a TD a pass that probably broke his hands. Jeffery drops a TD on what would have been a truly great play, but he dropped it AFTER doing the hard part of getting position. It should be mentioned that he did make some fine plays at other times. He still cost us 14 points by falling down and then dropping a TD pass, though. He did catch a touchdown, though. I mentioned this about Davis during the game, one of the passes to him was clearly too high (another I think was a throwaway). He makes any high pass look impossible to catch, though, because he has no idea how to play a football. He doesn't know how to turn and ends up facing and backpedaling when any ball is thrown to him on the run. He then proceeds to mis-time his jumps.

The White Sox are inadequate in every aspect while the Royals are formidable in every way and didn't just give up multiple top notch prospects for a guy they can only dream of resigning. Lol

One can only dream that this sets the market for Gavin pretty high.

QUOTE (coco1997 @ Dec 9, 2012 -> 09:50 PM) BREAKING: Royals acquire James Shields and Wade Davis from TB for Wil Myers and other prospects. Is it just me or is that a tremendous overpay? Either way, helps KC big time next year.

QUOTE (Joxer_Daly @ Dec 9, 2012 -> 06:25 PM) What's high up on your radar? Can be recent releases or older. At the moment my favourite foreign language films over the years would be (in no particular order): Goodbye Lenin A Very Long Engagement 9th Company A Prophet The Counterfeiters La Haine 11'09''01 - September 11 (Not so much a film, as eleven short films, by different directors, of eleven minutes and nine seconds each. It's quite a challenging and interesting piece of work) I thought Night Watch was a good laugh. Actually, there's a load of great Russian films, fecked if I can remember names at the moment though. What would you recommend for viewing? I really want to see 'Rust and Bone', and I've heard 'Amour' is great, too. Goodbye Lenin is awesome. Another good German one is The Nasty Girl, available on USA Netflix IIRC. Title not meant to sound sexual, it's a bad translation. 20 years old now, but based on a neat true story and the lead, Lena Stolze, is unbelievably charming. Real interesting aesthetic stuff too. Spain has a really underappreciated film market (I'm biased, as it is an area I am specializing in as I head to grad school hopefully in the nearish future). They've had some arthouse stuff that has been pretty popular abroad, ala Almodovar and Amenabar. Their popular films have gotten much better though, I am publishing a paper on Celda 211 (Cell 211). If you can get your hands on that, it is an excellent flick. I'd usually rather be kicked in the nuts than watch a prison movie, but this one is totally worth your time. I believe the Weinstein Bros. are trying to remake it in the USA, bastards. What's good around you? My knowledge of the UK film scene is pretty minimal, but I'm in the very, very early stages of thinking about graduate school there. All the good work in my Spanish Cinema specialty is being done in British Universities. Forgive me for making Ireland and GB sound interchangeable, too

As I said last week, all ills are healed by beating Green Bay

I'm concluding/continuing some pretty intensive foreign film study, so hit me up if you're interested in some good stuff from other countries. FWIW, Hulu seems to be the king of all-time great foreign films via their "Criterion Collection."

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 9, 2012 -> 02:05 PM) I thought Kepp was supposed to be quite a bit better with the glove than Youk? Seems like no one around here has seen him enough to make a judgment based on watching him UZR rates him as a good 3B in VERY small sample size and more or less dreadful everywhere else. It could be that his best spot is 3B, the sample size is indeed too small, or both. I'm trying not to expect much.

We were the better team. That means you have to win. Two weeks in a row now.

Well, this one isn't over until the onside fails.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 9, 2012 -> 03:02 PM) That doesn't seem odd to me, I feel like guys with concussions show up on the sidelines fairly often but they'll take their helmets away or something like that. Lights, noise, strong emotions, and critical thinking all have rather negative effects on concussion recovery.

Campbell looks okay.

It is just odd that they would leave a concussed player on the sidelines instead of the locker room.

If this is precautionary, it's in poor taste.

Cutler hurt?