Edwin MacPhisto

It's just a confusing opinion, because it's an okay song on Blonde on Blonde, and it's about 3 minutes away from a run of some of the best songs by anybody ever. Speaking of which: "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)."

Yeah. I'm mystified by their inability to take a song that could have been a massive hit, go so far as to release it as a single, and still fuck it up. TOTBL is the better album, I think. Antics is way good, but I think they actually show more range on the first album, which is kind of funny considering that its sameness was one of the nitpicks lots of people had with it. That Mike Patton album sounds fun. Girl Talk's Night Ripper is extremely, extremely fun. Basically a gigantic 42-minute mash-up with tons of extremely recognizable samples. Some of the combinations come off cheesy, particularly whenever the album veers towards shitty techno club beats, but most of it is inspired.

The original worked because it was probably the greatest deliberate assemblage of terrible actors in a big-budget movie. Absolutely amazing. I caught 20 minutes of the second on TV and had no idea what was going on. Terribly shot.

Hinrich getting an invite to training is a good thing. Really good candidate for the starting PG spot.

They should just field the original Dream Team. Laettner might actually get a few minutes a game this time.

Yeah, that sucks. That it only got his hand is pretty fucking fortunate, all things considered. A friend of mine had a similar thing happen to him on the D.C. beltway and ended up with both arm and leg in a cast for way too long.

Yeah. If you take the 7-8 songs I love on there and add them to the 3, maybe 4 tracks I really dig off the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, you'd get the ultimate 2005 mega-hyped indie album of all time. ("Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away," "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth," and "In This Home On Ice" are the winners off the latter, incidentally.)

I was at a party last weekend, maybe 35-40 people, and the host ran out of music, so he just put on the Wolf Parade album. It went over surprisingly well. This was right after listening to the entirety of Doggystyle.

Me too. No Doubt synth > No Doubt ska. I feel like Rock Steady is the closest they ever came to aping Blondie in spirit and sound, which is really what they were always meant to be anyway.

It's not really a minefield as long you just let the punches roll off you. The Arcade Fire hooked me on first listen, and they're extremely impressive live, even if a lot of their theatrics aren't at all spontaneous. I like 'em quite a bit.

ITAOTS is one of my all-time favorites. Probably top 10 stuff. To continue the Dylan references, it hits me in a lot of the same ways that Blonde and Blonde and Blood on the Tracks do, alternating between gut punches and moments of euphoria. I can listen to it at any time of day, in any mood. I'm also not surprised at all when people whose tastes I otherwise agree with don't like it. Re: the Smiths, I love "Reel Around the Fountain." And though I think all their albums are pretty good, I really enjoy them the most when I toss the whole catalog out there, including all the b-sides, and just put iTunes on shuffle. I don't care how many times I've heard "Cemetry Gates" or "William, It Was Really Nothing"; when they pop up unpredictably, it makes my damn day.

Summerall somehow managed to make the Steve Young run sound boring as hell. Amazing.

Anytime I do a google image search on my name I get tons of those Bill Bruford pictures. I think one of his frequent photographers has my exact name.

Anyone know if there are plans for a full season 2 DVD set? I'm gonna pick up 2.0 this week, since I haven't seen some of those episodes, but I don't want to double dip if I can avoid it.

I don't really agree with that Yahoo article so much. I mean, Wade is great. Fantastic player, carried the Heat to the championship, but that team changes a lot when Shaq retires. He's nowhere near the player he used to be in terms of production, but he still commands frequent double-teams and allows Wade to be a more flexible first scoring option than almost every other #1 guy in the league. As for LeBron, yes, he's great, and he'll win titles when he's got a better team around him. Cleveland's still working on getting that better team and really haven't figured it out yet despite millions of dollars of trying. Dwight Howard's way good, but I think it's preemptive to say that he's going to lead teams as dominant as Cleveland and Miami could be when the most proven other guy on the Magic roster is Hedo Turkoglu (Grant Hill doesn't count anymore). If the Chicago/NO trade goes down, then I really, really love the Ben Wallace signing, even at that bloated price. With two consecutive years of extremely high drafts picks followed by offseasons with substantial cap space, they can afford to throw that max deal out and be happy with the additional wins they get. Getting rid of Chandler's contract is good, especially since the deal for a reasonably comparable player like Przybilla is confirming that they overpaid for Chandler's services. Like Ripper said, they have enough assets now to comfortably work a trade for almost any player being shopped without giving their own roster a significant hit, and the situation will be the same next offseason. I mean, they could probably get Iverson from Philadelphia in a heartbeat if they wanted him and could make the salaries match.

Wallace to the Bulls is interesting. Probably not the move I would have made, but interesting. I wonder if they would have been better off getting someone younger and cheaper like Przybilla or Mohammed, or sticking with Chandler. Still, those guys are probably going to get more money than they're worth, if Nene's contract is any barometer, and at least Ben Wallace is probably worth that money for the next 2 years. Getting him for less than max has got to be considered a minor victory, at least.

Makes sense that each team's fans would feel that way. Each guy is a young player who's proven his ability in front of a group of fans. To Bucks fans, Villaneuva is probably a decent rookie but a guy with just one good season--who knows if he'll replicate it and improve on that? To Raptors fans, Ford is a guy who's spent half of his three years in the league injured. And if any of them are doubting Bargnani, dumping Villaneuva, who seemed like such a steal at #7 after last season, has got to look very risky.

That's a wild deal. I'm surprised either team would give up either guy, but I think both teams got better as a result.

This blew my mind. Utterly terrible. Between this and Lamar Odom's kid dying, SI.com has had two of the more depressing news headlines of the entire year in the past 24 hours.

Brian Grant'll fuck you up. I didn't realize he was on the books for another year at $15 million and change. Lamar Odom always makes more than I think he does too, $12.5 mill this season.

I live in Arlington now, so I'm one of those kids, I guess. Fucking metro was awful today. The worst thing about a metro delay is that there are always a few people who complain, very loudly, not realizing that the other 90% of the people on the train were doing just fine until they start jabbering. Once I got enough room to lift my arms and put on my headphones, I did manage to listen to the entirety of the Wrens' Secaucus on the way in, so there was a slight silver lining.

The hits are definitely up front, but "Lady Cab Driver" is my favorite song on the whole album. I usually stick around all the way through 1999 just because it changes so radically in style about three different times. Feels like a couple of extremely good mini-albums to me.

Losing Barbosa would be all right, and I expect that to happen sooner rather than later. He's a fantastic guy off the bench, but guys like James Jones and Eddie House can do what he's doing well enough. Hold onto Marion. He's going to be valuable as trade bait no matter when the team decides to cut him loose, and this is a team that, with Amare back, is going to be good enough to contend for the title right away.

Of course I'm back in. Good times, good times.

Marion is just not the right guy to lose. I see how that trade is good in that it gets them a very good player in Lewis and clears something like $13 million in cap room after the 2006-2007 season...but Marion's just too good right now. I'm rarely fond of trades like that.