Edwin MacPhisto

Walt was Logan's security chief. Doubt he's moved up in 18 months.

Well, that was a pile of "holy shit" moments. Looks pretty solid so far. I was really surprised at how many people get full cast member billing this year--it looks like it's Jack, Audrey, Chloe, Buchanan, Edgar, President Logan, Curtis, and Tony. That's got to be the most the show has ever had. And Tony's going to be a fucking wreck when he wakes up.

I don't have digital cable, and I'm moving in about 5-6 months, so I'm gonna wait until then. I'd kill for one now, though. 24 coming back means that, for the first time in a long time, I've got shit to record almost every night of the week.

You manage it for Lost. I get by with a VCR, tricky as it is to remember sometimes. I'm going to do my annual thing and suggest that we keep discussions of what's in the "next week on 24" previews in spoiler tags. 24 is notoriously the worst show on TV for giving shit away in the previews, and I've never watched them ever since they showed Reza getting plugged in season 2. Join me.

HAHAHAHA

HOLY FUCK

Seeing Polamalu blazing towards the line of scrimmage before the snap is a thing of beauty. Porter and Farrior have been smothering on this series.

"A couple plays go differently" is every fan's refrain when his team loses. They got beat, and turnovers are a huge part of the game. Deal with it. No one who beats New England wins the game, it seems. Weird vortex world.

They got handled. Is it possible for a Pats fan to just acknowledge that his team got beat, solidly, by a very good team?

The NFL is starting to learn that you can't cover Heath Miller with a safety. Roethlisberger spread that thing around--Ward, Randle El, and Miller all had big catches. That was a hell of an opening drive.

Kasabian's "Clubfoot." Not a very good song, in my estimation, especially for a 24 promo.

It is. Maybe two cheesy scenes, and the rest is exceptional.

You've always been able to boot Windows on a Mac, at least in recent years. I think this is just gonna streamline that a bit. MacBook Pro is the worst name I can think of for a computer, but so be it. I'm kinda glad I got a brand new Powerbook G4, though--I'm expecting the first few runs of intel chips to be pretty buggy.

I dunno. He's always been the most commercially successful/visible guy in the group, so maybe the promoters were just trying to reel in a few more people. Or maybe people were worried he'd be off shilling deodorant with Redman.

I got high as balls with a friend and went to see this yesterday. It was exceptionally dumb, but pretty enjoyable in the same way that Saw was. The first 40 minutes or so were really hilarious--"fuck you, you faggot elf?" Genius. I thought most of the torture make-up and effects were pretty cheesy, and that the most effective moments were the ones that were based on sound and what we didn't see -- . Most of it was pretty funny, though (which I can see that niskie suggests is sort of the point of this 'extreme' genre). I thought the most interesting part of the whole film was the business model. Certain scenes suggest that there are at least as many as 6 or 7 people being tortured at one time, and if that holds probably, even on a conservative estimate, at least 20 people a day. How does the money break down--who gets what cut, and how much is coming off the top to some nebulous C.E.O.-type figure? To get that many victims--and it's probably more than that--the scale of the operation has to be huge, between staff, guards, prostitutes, cops, people spreading the word, etc. I wondered how it was possible to find that many people who are so morally bankrupt that they can comfortably allow people to be tortured; maybe that's Roth's big, somewhat-clunky statement of what this movie is really all about, that in a place as bankrupt as Bratislava, you can buy anything from anyone. I also wonder if this sort of thing could even sustain itself under the radar for very long, with 7,000-odd people going missing annually after getting their Slovakian passports stamped. The scale and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque implication that everyone in the city is on it make it fucked-up, but also a bit more ridiculous than I think Roth intends. So, overall: the concept was way more interesting than the execution, which was way funnier than the concept. I'll say that it was worth my matinee ticket.

Lots. My understanding is that they basically just roll through tons of their verses, often not doing a whole song. That's how the Disciples of the 36 Chambers live album ended up with something like 30 tracks. If they all show up, that is.

Aside from the obvious answer that Agent has already provided: be on a dancefloor with at least 40 or 50 people, utterly intoxicated, singing along to "Ain't No Fun (If The Homies Can't Have None)." Especially the Nate Dogg part.

I love "Lucky Day" and the weird-ass crossroads song. I think a lot of my fondness for the album stems from when I saw an actual performance of the play, which was crazy as hell. "Lucky Day" is a good, fairly typical Tom Waits ballad (albeit with a monologue about beans), but its placement at the end of the show is expert.

Well, ain't that interesting.

Every year that's passed since the last Tool album has found me liking them less and less, and I used to love them. I feel like, while interesting musically, any of their songs that have lyrics have the same sort of half-life that Nine Inch Nails does, with Tool lasting a few years longer until you get tired of the sentiment.

I started reading Moore's Swamp Thing run over the last couple of weeks. I'm through the first two trades with the other four in the mail, and I've got to say, it's great. Watchmen is probably his greatest overall, but I personally find incredible things in Swamp Thing and Miracleman. Incredible vision, this guy has.

Gotcha. Yeah, things were looking up for everyone else. Poor little hobbit.

Happy? I don't know about that. Charlie's got his whole stash of heroin, and with Claire saying "so long," you know he's gonna start using again, unless Eko or Locke can get their hooks in him first. The security system was way cool. There was definitely something weird going on inside, with images of faces. Also, let's note that there absolutely has to be some weird-ass supernatural thing going on here, much to my chagrin. Desmond and Jack on the same place, and Eko and his brother on the same remote island...it's too much, I think.

Santonio Holmes and Derek Hagan are probably the two most impressive. A lot of people tell me Chad Jackson is really good, but I didn't see enough UF games this year to judge him. The glut this year is at tight end. Vernon Davis and Leonard Pope are gonna go way high, and Jeff King, Garrett Mills, and Marcedes Lewis ought to be first-day guys based on their ability. They're all good-to-great receiving tight ends, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of teams that might be looking for a wide-out to look at Davis and Pope first.

White is probably no lower than the third back picked at this point, and I agree that he'll probably go in the top 15. I feel like this draft is thin at receiver, and outside of Leinart and Young, I don't see any other QBs as locks for the first round (Cutler, maybe?). Some teams are going to want skill position players. The draft is loaded with good RB talents, but LenDale skips in front of almost all of them. Being so successful at USC could sneak him ahead of DeAngelo Williams, too. If Adrian Peterson declares next year, I can't see White skipping ahead of him, so he's not likely to move up too much on that one extra year.