T.D.

Checking in from Angola, Valquiria Rocha:

Well, absent nerdish tendencies it'd probably be difficult to achieve an international chess title, even WIM (Women's International Master). Might be more hotties in the WFM (Women's FIDE Master) category; certainly more candidates.

The photogenic Ms. Sharevich is a special favorite of Chessbase... I've always been fond of Regina Pokorna (SVK):

Should be getting Blue Mitchell "Boss Horn" in a few days. Just put Oliver Nelson "Blues and the Abstract Truth" at the head of the queue.

I can't find a microtonal-themed smiley, so will just say Happy Birthday!

I can justify the amputation on the basis of Scripture. Dunno about the microwave issue; I'll defer to Biblical experts on that one.

Yes, you're correct, the perjury issue is clear-cut. But I hate seeing moronic Selig and greedhead Fehr getting away essentially scot-free. And there's a big-ass dose of hypocrisy by Congress. There's been a truckload of juice-related deaths in professional wrestling; why didn't the politicians step in and shut that business down long ago?

At the risk of sounding foolish, I'm really not sure that "freeway" and "fast lane" images are highly applicable to the world of classical music. The tastes of the mainstream buck-paying classical music "market", as exemplified by Mark's Chamber Music Society of Detroit anecdote, change at a glacial pace ("glacial" may be too fast, given the global warming trends). And opera's little different, although it's a little more open (to cite one of the composers who elicits the most violent reactions in said "market", Berg's Wozzeck has a relatively secure place in the repertory), and has a directorial element. It's been this way for a long time, and seems almost unique in modern culture. That's why the issue seems almost intractable to me; I don't argue about it any more. It's really hard to analyze, because the "institution" of classical music is heavily subsidized, making economic/market issues difficult to clarify. Although, in the simplest terms, the tastes of the biggest donors carry a whole lotta weight...

I agree (and that's probably a first... ). I think you're overanalyzing. I'm taking a step back, and not paying any attention to the various PR gestures. At this point, anything of practical import will be decided in a legal/courtroom forum (or maybe in pre-trial settlement). FWIW (which is to say squat), I believe that Clemens (and pretty much all the names named, along with myriad other ballplayers) juiced, but think they have a good chance of "getting away" without legal penalties. Which would be fair IMO; I'd consider it mucho inequitable for players to get tagged unless MLB and Players Union execs also pay a comparable price.

Not cheap, but... Complete Sacred Cantatas Be careful about what level of documentation (texts, notes, etc) is included. Berkshire has a version of the Harnoncourt/Telefunken box at a higher price, but they claim: "Label: TELEFUNKEN/TELDEC BRO Code: 132146 Label Cat. #: 91765-2 Format: CD Amount/set: 60 Audio Type: Analogue Genre: Cantatas Country: GERMANY Bach, The Sacred Cantatas. (Cond. Harnoncourt & Leonhardt. PLEASE NOTE: this is the fully-annotated version, not the 'bargain box' package.) Featured Restock! Add to Cart Price: $239.40" I can't tell from the CDU link which version they have.

My bad for not reading... In that case, since U of Arizona has a music school, there oughta be plenty of concert-going options. When I was in/near NYC, I attended a boatload of free or minimally priced concerts at Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard, and moderately-priced ones at Miller Theater (Columbia U). Considering the prices paid (or not paid), I never complained if the programs had a clinker or two...Granted, I'd be more selective at Carnegie Hall/Lincoln Center prices.

24-10, early 3d quarter. Looks like Ohio St. is headed for another BCS drubbing.

Depends on where you live. In NYC (or big cosmopolitan cities, college towns, etc.), where there are many chamber performances, it's easy to recommend voting with one's feet, and not attending the series if you don't like the programming. In the hinterlands, there may be very few chamber concerts, and one might feel an obligation to support the few that take place. In that case, biting the bullet and attending, but writing a letter to the organizers, seems reasonable. I've been in both situations. Dunno where Peter hails from.

I don't see any reason for McNamee to give a press conference. Clemens is giving press conferences to try and protect his image. McNamee is simply trying to stay out of jail (or minimize his sentence), and doesn't seem to have any reason to do anything outside a courtroom venue. Tough to imagine McNamee's counsel letting him give a press conference (unless the claims about him firing his lawyer are true ). But then, I wouldn't have expected Clemens's counsel to let him play the taped phone call gambit. Maybe the headstrong clients are ignoring legal advice...

Well, we oughta teach the kids, especially the current obese generation, that sports are to be participated in, for recreation and fitness. Fuck the pros; instead of watching, get off your ass and do something. But that ain't gonna happen.

As often happens in such situations, Berkshire Record Outlet has a whole bunch (282 when I checked) of ASV titles.

It was on an old thread about becoming an AAJ critic. I remembered it because it goes back to my early days on this forum, and the post made a big impression. Having trouble linking directly, so here's a copy/paste: Oct 25 2006, 09:35 AM Post #71 Master of the Groove! ******* Group: Moderator Posts: 2520 Joined: 22-March 03 Member No.: 206 Clem -- I vaguely recall enjoying Higgins' "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." What I recall much more clearly was an episode I had with him in 1989, when I was in second in command of the Chicago Tribune books section. John Le Carre's "The Russia House" was about to come out, and it was a so-called "embargoed" book -- which meant that only one copy per newspaper would be sent out to the reviewer you had designated, and this would be done at the last minute. Higgins was our man, the book would get to him from Random House on Friday, he'd read it over the weekend and fax us a copy of his review (things weren't fully computerized and wired-up then) on Monday morning so we could get it into the paper the following Sunday, on the cover of the book section. The review comes in on time, I read it, and see that it's rather short and oddly circulaqr and inconclusive -- as though Higgins were merely stating and re-stating what seems to me like it might be like the initial premise of the book (that the Soviet missile defense system is a sham, and that a noble Soviet scientist wants to relay this news to the West in the hopes that a lessening of tensions and eventual peace might follow). Now I have no way to be sure about this, because we don't yet have a copy of the book (our only copy is in Higgins' hands), but my gut tells me that something's wrong here -- that Higgins probably has read only the first 50 or 100 pages of "The Russia House," then stopped or was stopped for some reason (booze? drugs? fear?), and is trying to fake his way through this. (In fact, it eventually became quite clear that Higgins hadn't read the whole book, because his review didn't even mention the book's main male character, Barley Blair, the guy Sean Connery plays in the film version, or the main female character either.) So I called Higgins on Monday, without yet knowing for sure what he had done or failed to do, and tried to talk around this -- saying that the review was a bit short and we'd like another page or so, hoping that he might have finished the book in the meantime, if that's what the problem was. He agreed to write more, rather testily, and what arrived in a hour or two was just more of the same, and even more lame. I tried one more time, saying that the Random House catalogue implied that the book was about something more and a good bit other than what he was saying in the review At this Higgins became furious, saying that he had read the book and I hadn't, that I was mortally insulting him, etc. So the book editor and I put our heads together and decided that by this point (our literal deadline for sending copy down the hopper now just a short time away) we had no choice but to run the review as written. As I said, it was our cover review that week, with a nice piece of art locked in place there, which made the deadline tighter and our eventual embarrassment greater, because Higgins had in fact read only a bit of the book -- with the review and the book in hand, you could see on what page he'd stopped. As to why this happened, I'm pretty sure it was personal craziness amplified or in league with booze or drugs. "The Russia House" is not a long book, and it would have been just as easy -- if you weren't loco or blotto -- to keep reading and then write the review, even if that tightened your own deadline, rather than to stop and try to fake the damn thing. On the other hand, now that I think of it, in the realm of personal goofiness there are some people who are drawn to the idea of faking things -- that there's a sick thrill for them in it when it works and another kind of sick thrill when it doesn't.

Larry, I think you told that story on some other thread (forget where, but it's buried inside an ulta-long thread). IIRC, it concerned Higgins submitting a book review when he had clearly not read the book in question. A nasty exchange ensued. I was once a huge fan of Higgins, based on his earlier Boston/crime based novels, but my enthusiasm diminished over the years, because many of his later novels became incredibly stylized and tedious. (Michiko Kakutani of the Times, for whom I have no strong feelings one way or the other, once wrote a hilarious review of The Manderville Talent, which ended with a lengthy lampoon of Higgins's prose, praising the beautiful craft but concluding (IIRC) "But why does it have to be so boring?". I read the book anyway, and she was right.) Certainly Higgins, who was once a lawyer, wrote remarkably good dialogue. I once had occasion to go over courtroom transcripts, which also featured interesting/verismo dialogue, and theorized that his legal pursuits helped develop that part of his writing.

Really, if Congress wanted to seriously investigate performance enhancing drugs (PED) within the context of the antitrust agreement, they should go after MLB management (Commissioner, club GMs, owners) and the Players Union. I'm certain that, from the mid/late '80s on, the sport was riddled with PED use, management from the Commissioner's Office on down turned a blind eye to it, and the Players Union fostered a fertile environment for drug taking. I don't particularly blame individual players; with so much money at stake, what do you expect? "Don't hate the player, hate the game..."

I guess the DBs shoulda taken knees after intercepting the passes... The sheer number of drunks at sporting events is pretty scary. I've been to one MLB playoff game, the Yankees' first home game vs. Seattle in 1995 after the strike (interestingly, tickets were easy to buy, and didn't sell out for several days. That all changed by the following year). I've never seen so many drunks as were walking up and down River Ave. before the game. Definitely made me uneasy, and I was rooting for the home side; I imagine M's fans would have been terrified. There were subsequently many fights in and under the stands. [Never been to a football playoff game, but expect they'd be at least as bad; have attended several NHL playoff games, and they were nowhere near as hairy.]

Thanks for posting that. Pretty lame interview IMO. Now I don't have to watch and be p**sed off/let down. I'm not expecting too much from the Congressional hearing. I often listen to radio broadcasts of the Federal Reserve Chairman (Bernanke, earlier Greenspan) being questioned by the House and Senate, and many of the questioners aren't, shall we say, very astute. Interestingly, one of the worst offenders is Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), former baseball hero. Wonder if Bunning will chime in on the steroid issue.

Thanks. I'll probably tune in some of the football (with the sound off), to be sure of the start time. I agree, it won't be a hard-hitting interview. My subjective probability of Wallace pursuing my (and NY Post's) suggested Why was McNamee even injecting you? line of questioning is less than 5%. I assume the interview will have been previously taped, and edited prior to broadcast (could it possibly be live? Hard for me to imagine). IMO, this makes it even less likely to be revealing; I wouldn't be surprised if Clemens's reps were allowed to screen the edited tape to make sure that Roger isn't "slandered"...

I rarely watch TV, but will have to watch the Clemens interview on 60 Minutes tonight. I assume that it'll run as the final 20-minute segment, in order to sucker in the maximum # of viewers and minimize the audience dropoff from football. Not sure what to expect from the Congressional hearing. A Sosa-McGwire style farce is possible...but that didn't appear to work out so well for McGwire, who subsequently withdrew into self-imposed isolation.

Yevgeny Mravinsky Gennady Rozhdestvensky George Udny Yule

I disagree. That's some serious hindsight. Both two-point calls were "by the book" according to The Two-Point Conversion Chart. And conditional on missing the first one, surely the Steelers had to go for the second one, with a mere one-point lead. So you can only argue with the first call, when down 5. Even in retrospect, I have no beef against going with the odds and the chart.