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So Tasteless gets a lot of love around TL. This is for some pretty good reasons, he is oldschool and a strong community member for longer than I can remember. He always gives proper shout-outs to TL and GG. He is a good player and has some good insights about the game. He is able to turn on the 'excited voice' quickly as well. He is sometimes really funny. These are great commentator qualities.
However, I really hated the casting he did for the GSI. Hated! The main reason was the constant word jumbling. Almost every other sentence mixed up what he intended to say. Mixing up player names, unit names, colors, everything.
My guess is this may be due to the nervousness of casting such a big important event, but I was a little surprised that I have not heard anyone else complaining about this. Maybe it is just thin ice to flame the great Tasteless. 
Irregardless, I have to say his casting of the Surprise Tourney was a 100 times better. Unfortunately the game quality of the Surprise Tourney was pretty crappy. Saviors games in particular were painful to watch (and Tastelss actually said this exact thing). But the casting was full of insight, predictions, and almost no word jumbling. There was still a little bit, but at least he caught himself (which shows me that there is a conscious effort to improve in this area - Good for him!).
But it was missing the 'excited voice'. My speculation is that 'excited voice' is at odds with saying things without jumbling. Tasteless if you read this I hope you will take it to heart. Being able to do the 'excited voice' and not jumble words feels like the biggest obstacle you have.
Even if I am not totally happy with the casting, I will not argue that getting live english-casted progames is freaking amazing and one of the best things to ever happen for us.
Edit:
I reread this later in the day and realized that I came off way harsher then I originally intended. I just want to say I love Tasteless and everything he has done and is doing for the community. There are just a few things in his casting that drive me crazy.
I think this came off harsher then I intended because it was some bottled up feelings. It always does feel like it is hard to offer criticism about certain things without being 'at odds' with the community. It is OK to love something, but still see the flaws in it.
  
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Uh...
It's Tasteless, dude. That's just what he does.
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I actually kind of agree with you... even though I can't really say there was ever an occasion when I was disappointed with Tasteless' casting. However, the strength of his virtues overthrow his flaws, and it is crystal clear that, though imperfect, he is by far the best English caster there is or ever was.
It is also fairly noticeable that he's improving incredibly fast, and I expect him to become near perfect (that means EXTREMELY professional and perfectly aware of everything from game flow to the fluctuations in his own voice) within the next couple of months or so.
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Yeah there are better english commentators IMO. [dont hate me nick!] hes great in his own unpolished punk rocker funny comment casting. But truley there are some [a] casters out there that have a huge vocabulary(*cough* as a writer *cough* hint;hint), speak VERY fast while remaining perfectly clear and understandable, superior game sense and strategic vision, just better energy too (that ''excited voice'' you were talking about).. Adding another caster (which they have said they are doing right?) will be a great step, I just hope its the one *I* want to hear.
Ive always hesitated posting this cause I dont wanna sound like I dislike Nick or want to hurt his feeling OR give the impression that I dont hugly appreciate whats being done for the forgein community. But your right.
EDIT (I agree that the newest tournement he did show improvment, GJ! look forward to your future cast nick <3 dont take this the wrong way please )
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I on the other hand didn't mind the mixups. I really loved the general feeling of the commentating and the jokes too (the "meet me by the cc" one made me laugh so hard :D). I really hoped though his terran knowledge was better. he absolutely sucks at judging some situations and so, jumps to wrong conclusions about the current situation of the game that he soon has to take them back. i'm a terran player and i don't know if he does it for the zergs too (I guess him being a toss player makes him better at judging toss's situations) but I hope he would take some rekrul exeprtise lessons for better game understanding (at least for the matchups he's not familiar with).
on the other hand, he doesn't "need" any improvement at all since he's alone there doing what he's doing so he can choose to not bother. and it's totally understandable
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everyone agrees that GSI commentary started off dodgy (for those various obvious reason) and that he has improved massively from game to game
hopefully (i´m sure he does) realise that being a great entertainer involves a lot of "acting" when natural talent/personality aren´t sufficient - for example expressing excitement and interest in low-interest or crappy games. things like this are skills that need to be learnt/discovered and practiced.
a good entertainer is naturally good at what he does due to personality. a great entertainer also incorporates practiced skills - superior game knowledge or learnt acting skills
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I disagree, I think Tasteless is waaaay better at commentating than anyone else I've heard. And as for the mixups, they don't really bother me too much because I always know what he means anyway.
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On April 08 2008 06:59 Luddite wrote:
I disagree, I think Tasteless is waaaay better at commentating than anyone else I've heard. And as for the mixups, they don't really bother me too much because I always know what he means anyway.
if you´ve ever held a proper job with a degree of responsibility then you should understand why "mix ups" are pretty bad, even tho they might not bother you so much
if i made "mix ups" in my job i´d probably laugh about it with some coworkers but get shit from others and would be completely expected not to make that mistake again
sorry don´t mean to sound harsh. this is just a generalisation
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irregardless isnt a word
I really think he should sit down with korean amateurs or casters or something, watch games together with them and pick up the insights not available to the foreigner community.
also as he gets more familiar with the playstyle of the players, his comments will get more detailed
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On April 08 2008 07:21 fusionsdf wrote:
irregardless isnt a word
I really think he should sit down with korean amateurs or casters or something, watch games together with them and pick up the insights not available to the foreigner community.
also as he gets more familiar with the playstyle of the players, his comments will get more detailed
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless
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I agree that he is the best English commentator around by far and I think his flaws make him a lot more interesting and are part of his style and personality. No offense to the other guys, all power to you.
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They should get deus073 to replace him ^^. jk
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I agree, Tasteless is by far the most entertaining to listen to. The word mix-ups don't really bother me all that much, he'll get better: it's a learnable skill. How he makes the game exciting, that is not learnable for the most part.
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On April 08 2008 07:43 Doctorasul wrote:
I agree that he is the best English commentator around by far and I think his flaws make him a lot more interesting and are part of his style and personality. No offense to the other guys, all power to you.
i actually think that the artosis & Gentho team is better than tasteless. i really really think tasteless needs a gentho or some other caster to call the play by play action. tasteless is excellent at forming analysis and at showing us what the players are thinking at certain moments, however i think he struggles with the play by play. not that i dont think tasteless is good, but i must respectfully say that artosis and gentho are better overall, however tasteless is the guy with the balls to move to korea and base his livelihood on casting, so much love and props to him.
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These comments made me chuckle.
I wonder if it is true that fixing word jumbling is a trainable skill. It appears like one of those subconscious things that is very difficult to break the mental block on. We all have things like that (mine is months. I can never get the months in order correctly..). Maybe speech training can help with this?
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Well, keep in mind that hes doing these castings live. I dont know how the other english commentators do it, whether they watch it first and then cast or just cast on their first viewing.
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his GSI commentating was great and the surprise tournament was good quality. Savior put up a good struggle, even more so considering his slump. Stork got his head caved in because of a slump, which made that entertaining. Mind vs Flash was also pretty good. No idea whatsoever where your coming from, basically....
Edit: To be honest I hope they dont give tasteless a support caster. I am a tasteless fanboy, lol. He actually does make Starcraft more enjoyable, and adding anymore commentators will detract from his good insights and humour. The only other commentator who is even worthy to listen to at all is Diggity, but he just doesn't have the energy for this kind of scene. The other commentators are just incoherently fast, always have have snot/are way too young, etc etc. Piss me off, in short...
Edit2: And who the hell needs a huge complicated vocabulary to commentate on Starcraft? I have a large vocabulary, I'm not going to use it though for hundreds of thousands of people who may not understand it. Even if they do, throwing out large words just for the sake of it is a tad pretentious...
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Tasteless is great and entertaining. For his first few times it is quite impressive and he continues to improve rapidly. Plus he's talking to himself the whole time, that takes a lot of intuitive feedback and skill, and in front of a live audience in front of him, no sign of pressure at all.
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On April 08 2008 09:06 ScarFace wrote:
Edit: To be honest I hope they dont give tasteless a support caster.
the problem is, he really needs it. not to say he isnt good, and i understand his castings are done live so it is even more difficult, but it would really help if he had a co-commentator to help him out, and he was the strategic analysis guy. if you watch almost any sport or something where there are announcers there will usually be a team of two people, one who is very familiar with the topic and can provide in depth analysis, and one who is great at play by play, who has a lesser understanding of them game, but brings excitement
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On April 08 2008 07:04 perisie xx wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2008 06:59 Luddite wrote:
I disagree, I think Tasteless is waaaay better at commentating than anyone else I've heard. And as for the mixups, they don't really bother me too much because I always know what he means anyway. if you´ve ever held a proper job with a degree of responsibility then you should understand why "mix ups" are pretty bad, even tho they might not bother you so much if i made "mix ups" in my job i´d probably laugh about it with some coworkers but get shit from others and would be completely expected not to make that mistake again sorry don´t mean to sound harsh. this is just a generalisation
President Bush makes the same kind of verbal mixups... surely a game commentator can be given the same amount of slack as the leader of the free world?
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On April 08 2008 05:57 Goosey wrote:
Irregardless
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i was going to comment that irregardless is nonstandard, but someone already did it
so i dont know why i'm commenting
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Dude If you gave him 5-6 years like some of the korean commentators he would be so ace
Edit: he'll just get better, etc etc gogo tasteless
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On April 08 2008 09:14 Aux1 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2008 09:06 ScarFace wrote:
Edit: To be honest I hope they dont give tasteless a support caster. the problem is, he really needs it. not to say he isnt good, and i understand his castings are done live so it is even more difficult, but it would really help if he had a co-commentator to help him out, and he was the strategic analysis guy. if you watch almost any sport or something where there are announcers there will usually be a team of two people, one who is very familiar with the topic and can provide in depth analysis, and one who is great at play by play, who has a lesser understanding of them game, but brings excitement You are right of course. I was being a bit hasty. Its just that I am worried about who they will bring in! I don't like many commentators outside of Tasteless and Diggity. I don't really know any who top Tasteless for excitement, though some rival him with strategic analysis. But all in all, Tasteless connects well with the audience, and hes a good all around commentator. They need to get someone who can do that as well, not even assign roles, just someone who can connect with the audience and understands the game. Of course, someone who also takes some of the pressure off tasteless! 
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I am not gosu, but I think the casting Tasteless has done is great. However, I was only able to watch a small part of the Intel Classic because of my "limited connectivity" problem with Windows (I wrote a blog about it, anyone? T_T). I think he can only get better and this surprise new partner will make it better also. Even I was aware of a few superficial errors in GSI, but the fact that I was aware of them shows they were so superficial that they didn't really matter that much.
And since casting is his job, I'm sure he'll get more professional in the future.
And I say irregardless in a satirical sense whenever I see fit ... all the Luxembourgers need to calm down... -_-
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President Bush makes the same kind of verbal mixups... surely a game commentator can be given the same amount of slack as the leader of the free world?
He gets no slack.
@ All the people posting about 'irregardless': bite me. I don't care! But just to be clear, when i say Tasteless mixes up words, I am talking about the "Flashes Dragoons will have trouble dealing with Stork's tanks.. in SIEGE MODE!" style mistakes. Just flipping which words go where, such a 'small' thing that really bugs me. Honestly fixing this issue (which was almost non-existent in the Surprise Tourney) fixes my main complaints with this otherwise amazing caster.
Diggity would have to be my pick currently for favorite commentator. He brings a ton of energy, speaks very clearly, and probably has the most insights of any commentators I have watched. The thing I like a lot about Diggity is that he is not afraid to say that he thinks one of the pros is making a mistake here and there.
So many commentators (Tasteless sometimes falls into this) will see a strategy they don't agree with, but rather than say that they will say something along the lines of "well I don't see why so and so is doing such and such, but he is the master so we will see what he has planned". More useful and entertaining when they say "this strategy is non-standard and usually is countered by X" and if it really is an innovation later to say "such and such has really made a surprising move here that lead to Y". Not sure if I explained that very well, but hopefully you will get what I mean.
Anyways, I can see from these comments that the love for Tasteless is pretty sincere and not just a TL mob mentality, so I can appreciate that.
Tasteless + Diggity would be awesome. Diggity providing play by play, both of them jamming on strategy talk, and Tasteless busting jokes. Probably an impossible thing to wish for, but might be?
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You've gotta remember that casting a live game in front of a huge audience by yourself is much harder than commentating over Vent or something like that. There's much more stress involved in Tasteless' job than Gentho/Artosis and having a second person to ask/answer questions makes it much much easier as roles can be divided. Even still, I prefer Tasteless' commentating to Ascension's because he makes the games more entertaining and that's what matters to me. Secondly, Diggity doesn't have anywhere near the level of SC understanding that Tasteless, and Tasteless already does an excellent job at play-by-play so that would a no-no.
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EPT
