Edwin MacPhisto

I become wistful. Really, I think everyone has got decent ideas, but one thing fun to do, similar on what Raynor said - I got to the point where, working with Wilson and Silent so much, I trusted them with the Edwin character to any extent. They generally felt the same way. It was a great blend of elaborate plans and the impromptu - I'd tell Wilson, "Well, I think we should do some sort of rivalry promo," just offhand, and he'd whip something out. And I'd come back with something. With Silent, we just had some crazy-ass ideas, he wrote one promo on a whim, and it all went from there. So, if you find a few favorite collaborators within the walls of the fed, give them absolute, unbridled permission to write and use your character. If they write something, come back, and vice versa. The kick you can get from basically sharing your character's potential with another person blows it wide open for both of you, and most of the best angles I ever did had that spirit behind them. (I leave exception room for the Grand Slam retirement angle, which we planned out meticulously to the point of individual hints in short show promos - so that can work too. In moderation.)

...You got autographs from a roller hockey team?

And of course, let's not forget Sandinista! Exclamation point is the album's, not mine. Yikes.

Right. A 100-person vocalist list that leaves off Prince? Someone fucked up. As stated earlier, I don't care much for lists that aren't about a band or artists as a whole. If you're good technically and shit for songwriting, kindly choke on your drumstick.

Anyone still criticizing Kanye for the sped-up soul samples thing needs to either a) listen to the album, or b) listen to the radio over the past couple years. Sure, the two biggest thing he's been on lately - "Slow Jamz" and "Through the Wire" - fill that bill exactly. But you've got "Get By," "You Don't Know My Name," and "I.Z.Z.O. (H.O.V.A.)" among others, and that's before even touching the rest of the album. The only tracks on College Dropout that overtly exhibit his traditional soul-sample thing are "Through the Wire," "Slow Jamz," "Spaceship," and I guess you could make the case for "Two Words" if you're really stretching it. The album's basically a catalogue of really good hip-hop production, similar in tone throughout but very different in style. I also don't care if he acts cocky, because right now he's pretty much backing it up.

After all these years, I still remember that the black guy's name was Jake and that Michael Caine played a character named Hoagie. The best part about Black Jake dying? He basically just falls in the shark's mouth. It's gold.

Quote 5_Moves choices exactly for me. Or maybe swap out London Calling for Exile on Main Street. That's the toughest choice.

Taking a look at the brackets, I just wanted to give a well-earned shout out to WC and X for going with 3 ACC teams in the Final Four. You goddamn right.

Tom Waits takes it to the house. Specifically, the verses of "Downtown Train." Even more specifically, that first verse. Outside another yellow moon Has punched a hole in the nighttime, yes I climb through the window and down to the street I'm shining like a new dime The downtown trains are full with all of those Brooklyn girls They try so hard to break out of their little worlds Well you wave your hand and they scatter like crows They have nothing that will ever capture your heart They're just thorns without the rose Be careful of them in the dark Oh, if I was the one you chose to be your only one Oh baby can't you hear me now, can't you hear me now Will I see you tonight on a downtown train Every night it's just the same, you leave me lonely now I know your window and I know it's late I know your stairs and your doorway I walk down your street and past your gate I stand by the light at the four-way You watch them as they fall, oh baby, they all have heart attacks They stay at the carnival, but they'll never win you back Will I see you tonight on a downtown train Where every night, every night it's just the same, oh baby Will I see you tonight on a downtown train All of my dreams they fall like rain, oh baby on a downtown train

I love it. Quite a lot. Knowing your tastes, I'd say you'd do well to pick it up. That was one of the first CDs I ever bought. Used, 8 bucks. Superb stuff, too. I like the later work but the early singles are my favorite Cure items, hands down. It's good for the little crying boy that ails you. This weekend I picked up: -the reissue of Modest Mouse's The Moon and Antarctica, having never picked up a legit copy of the first issue -and a copy of GZA's Liquid Swords, used, for $8. The Wu-Tang back catalogue is treating me well.

I've never worn them myself, making me a stupidhead.

IMDB info is almost entirely user-provided, so I wouldn't count that for anything. Also, those rumors are a bit old - about the message board guy - and have been pretty solidly debunked. Go to Whedonesque.com to keep up with everything. It's a Jossverse group blog, and I've found it's generally the best hub for assessing the validity of all this would-be news. Great discussions, too.

I'm seeing Prince there in a mere 5 weeks. Oh yes.

Well, to be fair, dying is pretty high up there on the "ways to lose" list.

Somehow I don't think "Edwin's Wire Hangers" was taken yet. But I'll keep at it. Edit: Well, I'll be damned, that was it. Someone else wanted to name their team "Edwin's Wire Hangars"? Fuuuuuuucked up.

Ok, what's the problem and why can't I create a team? I keep getting a "There was a problem creating the team" error. Is it because my new Yahoo e-mail is [email protected]? BOO

I did really well last year. By "really well" I mean "abysmally." I believe Duran schooled us all.

Fantastic book. I'm about to start Nabokov's Pale Fire. I enjoy Lolita, although about thirty percent of the jokes/metaphors/references/whatever went right over my head. I need to pick up the annotated version some time. The stuff you'll get from annotations is interesting, but not essential. Rather than do that, I suggest you just pick up a collection of Nikolai Gogol's short stories - most collections have "The Overcoat" and "Diary of a Madman," which are probably his two most famous. He's a solid forbearer of Nabokov's and you'll see a lot of parallels between the two, stylistically and thematically. A lot of the references Nabokov makes are to Russian minutiae, i.e. one particular sentence in one particular obscure story by Dostoyevsky. So it's not really worth the effort to decode *everything*, I think. If you liked the prose and wordplay of Lolita, read Invitation to a Beheading, which is probably his best translated work. If you liked the weird HH/Clare Quilty interactions and maddening stream-of-consciousness, try out Despair. And just read Pnin and Pale Fire regardless of what you think, because they're gorgeous, clever, and deliriously fun if you let yourself sink into them.

Your little cousin is kind of a wuss. Unless he's younger than four, in which cause he's a really big wuss.

Not really. I think you get more out of seeing Old School first, actually, despite it not featuring either of these guys.

Saw the movie tonight. It was, unfortunately, pretty disappointing. The devil was ridiculous in almost all incarnations. Audience was worse - how can you get mad at someone for laughing when there's a fucking Uruk-Hai reject popping out of the bushes and scaring Judas? The general interchangeability/compatability of the Aramaic and Latin was confusing. The slo-mo was cheap-looking, overdone, and manipulative to the point of excess. Same with the score - swelling and "dramatic" like it wanted to be Braveheart, but without the well-executed themes. Don't get me started on the "Christ's viewpoint" shots, which were almost as bad as the slo-mo and sometimes had the misfortune to coincide with them. Caviezel was pretty good, Mary was quite expressive, and the film was well-shot when not engaging in all the gimmickry. Oh, and I liked the shot of the nail going through the cross, with the blood running down after it came through. Clever. I was pretty much unmoved and unimpressed throughout, despite the buckets of blood. With the exception of rare shots - the aforementioned shot of the nail, or the overhead almost-still after the scourging - the film barely engaged me at all. It was a really basic film that, aside from the heroic make-up job on Caviezel, didn't seem like it had a lot of substantive effort supporting it.

I do too. It was two huge dudes, one good, one evil, beating the shit out of each other. You guys always made me feel like the ring was shaking with every move. Big dudes = big fun. That sounds kinda suspicious.

Someone got served. I'm just not sure whom yet.

I bought Slint's Spiderland today. There's no art on the CD at all. It's quite confusing. Great stuff, though.

Really, really funny. A shitload of belly laughs from me and my theater - sold out college kids. Good times for everyone. Small roles for "Earl" and his dragons as well as the Bat Mitzvah singer had me nearly shitting myself. I shan't spoil anything beyond that.