JoeHova

If we're talking new (ie- not used), I like the Fat Possum "Not The Same Old Blues Crap" compilations. Volumes 1 and 2 are on Amazon for $5 each new. Volume 3 is a little more ($6.28). They have guys like Junior Kimbrough, The Stooges, Paul Westerberg, Hasil Adkins, The Black Keys, RL Burnside, Joe Callicot, Mississppi Fred McDowell and others. Well worth the couple bucks, imo. I'd say Volume 3 is the one to go with, but if you're firm on the $5 thing, 1 & 2 are also good options (or, you could get volume 3 used from Amazon). I too have been on a cheap CD buying kick lately. You've got to love Electric Fetus up here in Minneapolis for that. They sell "cut-outs" which are out of print CD's new for pretty cheap prices. I got a double-disc Fire Records compilation for 1.99 and a Fat Wreck Chords compilation for $.99 last week. I've found some really cool stuff there that maybe I wouldn't normally buy because I wouldn't want to waste $15 on an impulse buy. With the cut-outs, that's not a problem.

Well, I didn't think my design was all that busy, but I'm not a professional (obviously). I still plan on making a general baseball one, I just haven't thought of a good design yet and I'm busy for the rest of the week. Maybe sometime on Sunday.

I think the projections are best-case scenarios. Also, Salome has an I-Rod type arm, not defensive ability in general. Pudge had already won 2 MLB Gold Gloves by the time he was 21 (which is how old Angel was last year in high A ball).

I think the projections are best-case scenarios. Also, Salome has an I-Rod type arm, not defensive ability in general. Pudge had already won 2 MLB Gold Gloves by the time he was 21 (which is how old Angel was last year in high A ball).

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Ok, here's a quick update of my Tour Design. I'll try to think of a more general baseball logo I could possibly design, but in the meantime I cleaned up the one I already made a little. as you can see, I changed the color of the "arms" to brewer blue and added the cuff pinstripe that the team's blue jersey's have. I changed the position of the diamond and also changed it to an accurate diagram of Miller Park's dimensions. I made the glove and bat less realistic (though I could maybe mess more with the glove) and added text on the bat (just "Milwaukee Baseball Club", I'm open to changes). Last but not least, I changed the sausage from a hot dog to a Bratwurst. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/chief119/prince-prince10.jpg edit: I should add that I did these designs with a 300 dpi resolution, I just converted them to 72 dpi jpegs so they wouldn't ruin the thread.

I think a lot of what happens this season will depend on what Doug gets for whatever pitcher(s) he trades away. He ended up doing badly (partly bad luck, partly hubris in ignoring all the stories about how Estrada was a %!%+%%%#+) in his last trade of a serviceable starter. If he could somehow parlay a couple pitchers into a better catcher or 1 better pitcher, the team would be looking pretty excellent right now. As it is, there is a hole at catcher (though hopefully not as big a hole as Kendall was for the A's last year) and a few serious question marks on the staff. Gallardo and Villanueva look good but they are still young. Sheets will always be a question mark (until he isn't anymore), Suppan is average and the 5th spot probably won't be anything special (although it will hopefully be better than the average teams 5th starter). I fear another year where no one on the staff has a good year. If everybody is basically average again, I don't see the Brewers winning the division. They need a couple break-outs from the pitching staff, imo. Last year we all thought that they had a lot of pitching. It turned out that they did, just no good pitching (until the end when Gallardo and Villanueva dominated September).

edit: see post below for revised version of "Prince Tour Shirt".

edit Feb 5th: removed old version of design to save space in the thread

That depends on how dark you like it to be while you watch TV. If you like to watch in the dark, the projector will probably be cool because of the gigantic picture and also because it can save space (assuming you mount it on the ceiling or out of the way somewhere and have a roll-up screen). I personally don't like to watch television in the dark, so I would go with the regular TV. If its not totally dark in a room, the picture is going to be washed out. One last note- if you like playing video games, go with the projector. Playing a racing game (especially) on a 100 inch screen is pretty cool. Really any game is cool on that large of a screen.

If we're giving suggestions, I always thought "Venus In Furs" by the Velvet Underground would make a sweet intro song, whether for a closer or a position player.

I think "Enter Sandman" (Rivera & Wagner) is a much better track than "Welcome To The Jungle".

I know, my advice was in two parts- get the projector working, than see what size screen to get. I should have made that more clear.

18 feet is more than enough space to get at least a 96" diagonal screen in there, at least in my experience. Try projecting it on a wall first to get an idea of how big a screen you can use, then go from there.

what happened to Chris Ray? Is he hurt?

Really? You'd think about moving him within the next year or two? There's no guarantee that LaPorta will be anywhere near as good as Prince is, that seems like a big risk. Consider that LaPorta is only 7 months younger than Prince and it seems like the odds of him being as good are slim. I hope he becomes a great hitter, but I don't know how likely it is. Plus, even if does become one, wouldn't it be nice to add him to a lineup that already features Braun, Hart, and Prince?

Judging from past contracts (average guys like Suppan and Gagne at $10 million per), it seems like the Brewers will at some point be willing to go into the high teens for a great player. Obviously they won't be able to do it as much as some other teams but 1 Fielder is worth 2 Suppans any day of the week, in baseball terms as well as marketing terms.

People are crazy about this. Try living in the Twin Cities. The roads here have 3 inches of caked snow and ice on them for weeks at a time. This type of complaining actually really upsets me. You can't have it both ways. Either taxes will be high so that we can have exemplary city services or taxes will be low and we'll have crap. Add in all the suburban people in this thread complaining about the CITY of Milwaukee and the urge I have is to tell you to move someplace warm. Thanks for taking your tax dollars out of the city so that the budget can be reduced more, and thank you for then complaining about how the city has no money to plow the streets. Plowed streets cost money. The city does not have a category of worker known as "snowplowers". The sanitation workers are charged with that duty, in addition to their regular jobs. Thus, all plowing is over-time because of laws that have been enacted over the years to protect workers from exploitive employers. The workers are professionals who are used to navigating crowded city streets while driving 50 ton trucks, so it wouldn't be feasible to hire a bunch of winos off the street to plow with rusted-out pickup trucks like some suburbs like to do. People are so unrealistic about snow removal. I saw a letter to the editor in the Journal Sentinel last month where some guy was complaining that snow was piled too high at the curb. WHERE IS IT SUPPOSED TO GO!???! Would that idiot really want to have city employees working around the clock through the whole winter to pick up every snowflake and take them all to some snow landfill somewhere? People have to be rational. We live where it snows. Thus, it will sometimes be snowy where we live, despite the best efforts of all involved.

I wouldn't do this because then iTunes skips all of the unchecked songs when you are trying to play them on your computer as well. Of course, if you don't have your computer hooked up to your sound system, that probably won't be relevant. I would go with the playlist idea that stoops and others mentioned. Just make a playlist with most of your favorites. It's not necessarily ideal because then you won't be able to hear unknown stuff (by which I mean, things you haven't listened to in years) while you listen but that's not that huge of a deal. One last tip, whatever you do, put whole albums onto your iTunes. When I first got my iPod a few years ago I put only a couple songs from many of my albums on iTunes. It was a real pain to go back later and add all the songs I didn't add the first time.

Hmm, I'm surprised that a few people on this thread have so little empathy. A man once wrote that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind". It's a sentiment I agree with. I think if his death was an accident, it was an obvious tragedy. On CNN they said the pills were over the counter, perhaps he just didn't realize that it was easy for something available over the counter to kill you. Also, drugs vary greatly in the amount needed to kill you. The reason you always hear so much about heroin overdoses is because the lethal dose is only 5 times greater than the effective dose. Most other drugs have at least two times as much room for error. Maybe Ledger recently switched from a drug where taking 6 pills is no big deal to one where that could kill you. However, if he purposefully killed himself, the news is perhaps even more tragic. Think how bad things must have gotten for him if a guy as good-looking, talented, and wealthy as him didn't see any reason to keep living. Most of us hope to be one of those things and yet someone with all that going for him couldn't deal with the world. What chance do the rest of us have if that's the case? Any suicide is a terrible shame, in my opinion, because it's such a final solution. I know that there are philosophical arguments to be made for killing yourself (by Goethe, notably) but I don't know if such views are commonly held by people who eventually commit suicide. Anyway, I just feel bad for Heath, whatever the circumstances of his death. If it was an accident, so be it. If it was suicide, I just wish that he would have tried something else first. Retire from showbiz, or check into a mental hospital (like Dave Chapelle), or run marathons, or adopt some kids (like Angelina Jolie), or concentrate on your record label, or whatever. Anything to try to get his mind off of whatever it was that was causing him such anguish. Of course, maybe he felt he had already exhausted his options, in which case, the only thing left to say is that I hope I never get to that point.

whoa. That really sucks, I enjoyed his work quite a bit.

That would be hilarious. At $170 it's a little expensive for a joke present though.

I like Melvin's rationale for not re-signing Miller. This gives the team the flexibility to make a deal for a guy like Shoppach or Mathis at some point without having to worry about Miller's feelings. Also, I really like Mike Rivera, so I hope he takes advantage of this opportunity to be on an Opening Day roster. I wonder where Damian ends up? Back to the Cubs maybe? Or are they set on Blanco as their backup? The Yankees? They could use an upgrade on Jose Molina. There shouldn't be any shortage of opportunities for him in 2008 considering the fact that Chad Moeller played in the Majors for 2 (!?!?!!) teams last season.

This trade doesn't seem to make that much sense for the Mets. Church is a good player, but he's a lot older than Milledge and doesn't have the upside of Lastings. Plus, Lastings is already pretty good himself (he hit about average for a corner OF last year and he was only 22). Schneider isn't the worst catcher in baseball but he's nothing special and is signed for $10 mill over the next 2 years. I guess they wanted defense from the catcher spot pretty badly. To conclude, I like this trade for the Nats, but I don't think it's a hugely horrible deal for the Mets like the Kazmir deal was. Church is under control for 4 more years so they have him almost as long as they would have had Milledge and Church is a useful player. This reminds me of the trade the Magic just made with the Lakers. The Magic traded a young player with upside (Trevor Ariza) for a similar, but older player (Maurice Evans), and an ok player who filled a hole (Brian Cook, who can hit the 3 as a frontcourt player). So, the Lakers and Nats come out ahead in terms of absolute value, but for the Mets and Magic the trades make sense too because they get 2 useful guys for one.

What? I see russ and greg already pointed out the fact that it's too early to say this with any kind of certainty, but Suppan's xFIP this year was 4.85. The average pitcher ERA this year (park adjusted for MP) was 4.50. Starters ERA's are obviously higher, but I find it hard to believe that a guy who was worth maybe 2.5 wins above replacement this year and who has always been on the brink of losing his effectiveness is some kind of great deal. If he loses any effectiveness over the next 3 years, the contract will be bad for the Brewers. As it stands now, it's fine, but I still think the deal was a poor use of resources for a team like the Brewers.