Edwin MacPhisto

Brando. Me likee De Niro, but far and away, it's Marlon.

Also, if you want the most plaintive song these guys have ever pulled together, it's "Make Everyone Happy/Mechanical Birds," straight off their first album. Superb.

Don't scare me like that. Use more smileys.

Also, I'll say that the first half of Low is better than the first half of Heroes. In London I picked up Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt and, finally, Pulp's Different Class. And just the other day I grabbed the remaster of Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die. All excellent, but The Blueprint is still the best thing Jay-Z's done. No more albums for the rest of July. The first week of August brings the annual CD spree, wherein whoever among my friends spends the least is labeled Giant Stupid Pussy.

Alternately, who cares if the Cars are good? I do believe you've besmirched the Cars. I do believe them's fightin' words.

You're all mystifying me again. Even girls can hold their Goldschlager.

^Correct. Anything in the Cars catalog, really. They give you the handclaps; all you've got to do is follow.

Those assholes cover international news. Fuckballs.

You guys are nuts. If anything other than kids running around in Stone Cold shirts in 97 gets coverage, I'll be amazed.

Yes. It's definitely top-3 of what's on there, but the album is very good and the single is pretty reflective of it as a whole, in both sound and lyrics. If you like that, check out their back catalogue as well. Excellent albums all over, though everything but the new one can be a bit overwhelming at times. The Lonesome Crowded West is my favorite. Song recommendations across their career: "Gravity Rides Everything," "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine," "Dramamine," "Tundra/Desert," "Polar Opposites," and "Never-Ending Math Equation."

I get the big ones off Blood on the Tracks all the time: "Simple Twist of Fate" and "Tangled Up In Blue."

See, I count the holy deer as something premium. My vice is the gin bucket. Take a bottle of gin - kids love Gordon's - and a bottle of Sprite. Dump in bucket. Drink rapid-fire with turkey basters. Fall over shortly thereafter. It's the bucket that gets you.

"Mr. Brightside" is painfully catchy. Haven't decided if I like it or not, but I've heard most of the album and it's definitely up and down. Good pop sensibility, uneven debut, hopefully sticking around for more than a flash in the pan.

Did you dl Antics yet? 'Cause you damn well better have. I almost did. Saw it on SoulSeek, but held back. Part of me just wants to wait for the official release and be surprised. More Roots thoughts: most of the press I've seen thus far points towards it as a fairly average album, with beats surpassing lyrics. Which I thought was very odd for the Roots. Any word yet?

Xias is spot-on and I don’t see what’s so hard to get about that. Yeah, civil unions will give gay people exactly the same benefits under the law, but equal is equal in all terms. If we’re not making everything civil unions as Jobber suggests (not a half-bad idea, if a little unromantic – “honey, will you enter into a civil union with me?”), we ought to make everything marriage. Rant’s concern that “only the people who look down on you now will look down on civil unions, and who cares about them?” doesn’t hold water with me simply because this is going to be a change that lasts through generations. Among people living now, sure, it probably won’t make a difference, since most of us already have a decent conception of how we perceive homosexuals and any sort of union between them. But among the next generation, and the one after that, and so on, the difference between “marriage” and “civil union” will likely be a big part in determining perspectives. Policy-wise it’s just a word; socially and culturally, it’s still just a word, but that will be a much bigger deal when it’s the only difference between homo- and heterosexual unions. Don’t underestimate the incisive and prejudicial power of terminology. My case: if it’s civil unions now, it’ll be marriage further down the road, as more people take notice of the sole lingering linguistic inequality. Let’s just finish it all now and not waste our descendents’ time.

Your picture of Incandenza needs work.

damn...dont get much more wrong than that... Which is odd, because those other two picks are very solid. I am at a logical disconnect.

Oh man, he's a face? You're on easy street, boy. Underdog it up. I think I have a hard time doing multiple personalities = face. It's so sinistralicious.

Whenever I ran into something like the Rando thing - which admittedly wasn't too often - I just played the underdog even more. When Thugg used to do the occasional random promo attack, the people who came off best afterwards were the ones who did the same, or at least just ran with it in one direction. Clark is a heel now if I remember correctly, so just come out with a neck brace, stumble through the match, and cheat like a voracious dickbag. Or pretend to be injured all over, but really be faking on a few parts. You can be busted up and still be sneaky, or even still by psycho/no regard for your own well-being if that's how you swing. Potential in every mishap.

REALLY FUCKING GREAT ALBUM ALERT Was just listening to this again this afternoon. The opening salvo of tracks is incredible, and "Faded" is the best closing track they've ever done. Which is saying a lot. I'm on a big Whigs kick of late, this album especially.

Probably TV on the Radio's full-length for me, though I really haven't heard enough of this year's output to judge. Van Lear Rose isn't a bad call either, though it's not my favorite. The new Modest Mouse has been another highlight.

I was thinking about getting it, but I went with the remaster of Ready to Die instead. Been meaning to pick that up for a while, and this was the perfect opportunity. I haven't heard anything advance on the Roots album, but the last few have been pretty excellent. I just hope it isn't quite as long-winded as Phrenology, which I really like but felt stumbled down the stretch.

I'm guessing he doesn't resign at all.

No, not at all. I've seen a dozen of them, love just about all of them. Most people cite him for direction rather than writing, and I can see why. Although he had an incredible grasp of character and story, the first thing that comes to mind with him are laudatory images: swinging on the park in the snow in Ikiru, the humor and shock of the final duel in Sanjuro, the horses storming through the village and the slo-mo in Seven Samurai, etc. Of course, he had to write all those situations out and deal with the subtleties of characters to make those beautiful images feasible. For being a writer/director, he also lacks (partly due to the nature of translation) the snappy, memorable dialogue that makes people point to a guy like Tarantino and say "great writer." Kurosawa's one of my all-time favorites for both the epic and the personal, which he so often managed to fuse.

w00t. I too will comment on how fun it is to belittle our peers. And hey, welcome back.