Edwin MacPhisto

Well, given that Best Buy is currently selling the album for $12 (retail price: $14), they'll make it all back if they sell just over 1.2 million of the 1.6 they've received. Just under $5 million of gross product if they sell all 1.6 million copies. If one of the singles takes off (which I still doubt happens, mind you, especially with the complete lack of promotion), they'll break even. But that's not really why you do an exclusive deal; you do an exclusive deal so people have to come to Best Buy or go on BestBuy.com to buy this particular item. While they're there, they buy a bunch of other stuff.

Could be either, as neither conference has enough teams to fill the game. It's #8 for the SEC, which has 8 teams eligible but will send 2 to the BCS; and #7 for the Big XII, which has 7 teams eligible but will also be sending a pair BCS-ward. The SEC is going to be putting a 7-5 team in the Outback Bowl, probably 3-5 in-conference LSU. I hate their damn plethora of New Year's Day bowls.

My mom is into Bon Iver. Apparently a few of the songs off For Emma, Forever Ago were used on Grey's Anatomy, and she thought they were great. I think that album's really good, but there's some weird cognitive dissonance involved for me, since the rest of my mom's musical taste extends to Il Divo and Bruce Springsteen. 2008's best songs for dancing drunkenly at 1 in the morning: M83 - "Graveyard Girl" Cut Copy - "Light and Music" Lil Wayne - "Mrs. Officer" Girl Talk - "Here's the Thing," in large part because of "I wish that I had Jessie's Girl/But I'd rather get some head"

The rumor mill is a-buzzing that Virginia coach Al Groh has been asked and subsequently has refused to fire his inept-ass son Mike, UVA's rather poor impression of an offensive coordinator. The powers that-be are still in discussions and have supposedly begun to pool money together to buy out Groh's contract. I have zero confidence that this will actually happen, and believe it's more likely that Al will somehow cross the streams and eat athletic director Craig Littlepage's soul, then order the soul to line up at tight end and run a 2-yard underneath route across two linebackers on 3rd-and-11.

Yeah, it's officially been the Chick Fil-A Bowl for a few years, after a brief and tolerable run as the Chick Fil-A Peach Bowl.

I'd add this article as well, from Wired's Danger Room blog. Among other issues, the very same Nick Davis points out the big problem with those noise blasters that went unmentioned in the Salon interview: The whole non-lethal noise blaster really doesn't seem sufficient, since all it takes to nullify its effects are some good earplugs and a few rifle rounds (to say nothing of an RPG).

A bit of a surprise in terms of program prestige and record, but makes sense for the Gator Bowl: FSU was there in December 2005 (ACCCG), January 2007 (Gator Bowl vs. WVU), fall 2007 (neutral site vs. Alabama), and this past September (neutral site vs. Colorado). Although Florida State fans are generally central and northern Florida gutter trash, even they've probably run out of things to do in the state's least appealing coastal city. Clemson hasn't been in 8 years, so they'll bring 30,000 people, stay a couple nights, and make it more than a disinterested day trip.

In the Pac-10, there's one consistent, dominant program right now; in the Big XII South, there are two. He'd also be in charge of the premier program in the state, as opposed to being #2 behind Texas (and having A&M always lurking as well). He has a much better chance of making a Pac-10 team a permanent fixture at the top than he does in Lubbock, but I expect him to stay anyway--he's adored there, and Texas Tech will surely give him as big a raise as he could want. What they do for his assistants could be a sticking point, though.

Actually, I'd be thrilled to get someone who's not a comic writer in there as showrunner. Most of the problems with the show currently are pretty standard flaws of the worst comic books: character motivations/roles changing rapidly, fake deaths, big "events" (omg eclipse everyone lost powers!), and the inclination to make every encounter and story the most epic shit ever.

I figured it out! 24 seconds in:

There's something in the cadence of this I like very much.

I think his point is that the murdering sumbitches tortured their Jewish victims during this series of incidents in Mumbai. However, a quick bit of research indicates they might just have been regular murdered. I don't really know much about the source, but there's at least a conflicting report from a doctor who examined the bodies. Anyway, that doesn't really matter, as it's still a ridiculously stupid point either way, given that torture is an animalistic, sadistic, and dysfunctional response well beneath respectable folk and sovereign entities who aren't asshole terrorists. E-cock torture bloodlust is about as embarrassing a torch to bear as I can conceive, perhaps second only to the recession being a lie because people walked past a $50 bill in the dark.

I've just ordered this, with free super saver shipping. I'll report back in 5-7 days.

You can't hate Pete Carroll, unless you're a fan of one of the teams he routinely pounds. He goes into the hood in the middle of the night to talk to inner-city kids about going to college, and he had Lendale White fake jumping off the roof of a building as a gag. The guy was absolutely born to be a college football coach.

Ugh. That's the puppet guy, right? He used to come to my hometown all the fucking time, and his stupid puppets would be on the front of the weekly entertainment section every visit. He strikes me as a morning radio comedy DJ who also happens to be a ventriloquist. Fuck that guy; I hope Frank Caliendo eats him.

To me, it says "I finally started boning people, and now you've got this demon baby, cause I'm Morrissey, and I'm a fucking Terminator." He looks more like Trent Reznor in this picture than I ever thought he could.

Well, you can probably safely say that's more a trend of "the Ravens lose when they play really good teams" than it is "the Ravens lose when nationally televised." I think they'll win this one, as Washington sputters when Portis can't lead the way. Should be some big opportunities for Ray Rice if they're smart, as the Giants showed just the way to eat up Washington's linebackers with screens and slants out of the backfield.

I'm still holding out hope for this one.

Impossible, I thought, but I checked, and I did. Total cut and paste mishap on my part, though I fully cop to voting for the Supremes over "A Change..." in the first round. Sam, I'm sorry!

At least it looks like Hiro will only have been 10 years old for a total of three-ish episodes. Stupid fucking show. This must be the easiest paycheck for almost every actor on here, since nothing the stories have them do from episode to episode has to be consistent at all. Thank god this whole arc is over in a few weeks.

Eight was probably a bit of an overstatement, as off the top of my head I can come up with four: "Someday Never Comes" "Lodi" "I Put A Spell On You" "Bad Moon Rising" There are probably one or two more out there. I actually like Creedence quite a bit.

Haha. Sunshine of Your Love on the tiebreak. Oh, tournament administrator: knocking out two tremendous Sam Cooke songs on the tiebreak in consecutive rounds is near-embarrassing. Pretentious finger-wagging, commence. GROUP A "Respect" by Aretha Franklin "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye GROUP B "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. There are probably 8 CCR songs I like better than this one, but "Hey Jude" is actually one of my least favorite Beatles' efforts. "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles. The best song left by a Mama Cass-esque margin. GROUP C "My Generation" by The Who. Fuck Elvis Presley. That song blows. "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys GROUP D "Venus in Furs" by The Velvet Underground. I'll take weird and fucked up over Bob for a more interesting final. "Gimme Shelter" by Rolling Stones

Tough to say. The selection order this year is Fiesta, Sugar, Orange. However, the SEC champ will probably be #1--obviously so if it's Alabama--so the Sugar will technically get first replacement pick. If Florida wins, I can't see the Sugar even thinking about passing on Alabama, who hasn't been to the Sugar since winning the national title in the game 15 years ago. The bowls do work out deals all the time, though, so who knows. If I had to predict, I'd say Texas/Utah in the Fiesta and SEC loser/Ohio State in the Sugar.

Hey, Ian Cohen! He blogs about UVA sports for AOL, too. In the aspect of writing Virginia football analyses and online music reviews, he covers everything to which I digitally aspire.

The Gators are opening at -9.5 over Bama. Damn, dog.