Edwin MacPhisto

Anyone interested in picking this up should check out Best Buy this week - they're selling it for $9.98 through Saturday. It's definitely worth the ten bucks.

Mine, I think: "Rocks Off" "Tumbling Dice" "Salt of the Earth" "Under My Thumb" "Brown Sugar" The Rolling Stone thread transforms into the Rolling Stones thread.

Terror, most people at this board weren't BORN when "Centerfold" came out. You're dating yourself, pal... He's totally right, though. It gets no better than the drum made out of milk.

"Windowlicker" is brilliant. I want a limo that big. I just mulled this over in my head a few days ago, and of course now I can't remember. Recently though, the most brilliant pieces of work I've seen are Electric 6's "Gay Bar," Andre 3000's "Hey Ya," and the Darkness' "I Believe In A Thing Called Love." The first has a bunch of Abe Lincolns in hot pants. The second you all know. And the third is the most resplendent piece of cheese I've seen in ages. Other notables: NIN, "Closer" - duh. G'n'R, "Estranged" - using dolphins and conveyor belts to rock out. Beck, "Sexx Laws" - refrigerator sex.

"Tumbling Dice" is one of my faves, possibly top 5 Stones for me. GTD now holds the distinction of being the only person I've ever witnessed not like it.

Shania Twain's big album was diamond too. I think it's my dad's favorite album, if only because he likes to leer at the liner notes.

I haven't spent enough time with Husker Du to make any really legitimate judgments beyond "damn do I love 'Pink Turns To Blue'." Sign O' The Times is a different kind of big album, and anything but cohesive. I love it for that and think the manic all-overness is one of its biggest strengths, but I'd say Dirty Mind is the most cohesive thing he ever did. And that's just half an hour, which sorta takes it out of this long-and-strong discussion.

I don't think you will. Wake Forest has been struggling since the middle of the season and I don't expect them to give Maryland much trouble. The chances of the Gator Bowl committee taking an 8-4/5-3 team over a 9-3/6-2 team that might sneak into the top 25 don't strike me as high. They have done end-arounds in the past, though, so there's still a chance. The other side of the Gator Bowl, Big East #2, is going to be pretty interesting. If Miami loses to Pitt, giving West Virginia the Big East title, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Gator Bowl snap up the much bigger and much closer Hurricanes, even if they end up a game behind Pitt and in 3rd place in the conference. Amusing note elsewhere: who thought that, after toppling the unbeatable giant Miami, Virginia Tech would be on a path for the Tire Bowl? Though, again, I could see someone taking them over West Virginia if it came down to it, especially if they finish strong next week against Virginia.

What, you mean release Exile on Main St., one of the greatest albums ever period? I'm guessing you meant all the crap after that, but Exile was '72. After that, gimme Some Girls, and you can keep the rest.

In the ep last year where Faith let Angelus bite her, I thought they might make that happen...but then I remembered the needless diversion with the "Orpheus" drug that had to fit in somewhere. Too bad. I think a vamped slayer could be a wonderful big bad.

It's YOUR ACC wrap-up for the week! At the beginning of the year, anyone saying Clemson would be taking the Peach Bowl and FSU the BCS bid would probably get mocked extensively. Clemson was supposed to bomb, and UVA, NC State, and Maryland were supposed to step up and kick a mediocre FSU team to the curb. Not so. The bowl standings are pretty much set for the ACC: BCS (Orange, I think) - FSU (9-2, 7-1) Gator - Maryland (8-3, 5-2) Peach - Clemson (8-4, 5-3) Tangerine - NCST (7-5, 4-4) Continental Tire - UVA (6-5, 4-4) Humanitarian - GT (6-5, 4-4) NC State, Virginia, and Georgia Tech are all 4-4 in conference play, but NC State's win over Virginia puts them over the Cavs, and Virginia's 29-17 bonk of Georgia Tech this week does likewise for them over the Yellowjackets. Like I said last week, it's gonna depend on if the Tire Bowl wants Virginia for a second year in a row, or wants to branch out. Too bad that's the most thrilling news out of the conference. Game of the week was unquestionably NC State/Maryland. Anyone watching though can see why Phillip Rivers, great as he is, really doesn't even have an outside Heisman chance. NC State has played in the three best ACC games this year - against UVA, FSU, and Maryland - but has only won two. At 7-5, they just can't pull out the big wins when they count. Too bad his final game at home ending with asshole NC State fans throwing bottles at the field. Way to go, guys. Next week are three big out-of-conference rivalry games, and an incidental. Maryland plays Wake, but the big ones are FSU/Florida, GT/Georgia, and UVA/Virginia Tech. I'm taking Florida, Georgia, and UVA in those games. FSU is good, but for the second year in a row the ACC is going to have a mid-teens champ with a few losses representing them in the BCS. Georgia is fighting for a ton - a loss probably takes them out of contention for the SEC East title with that fancy tiebreaker - but could blow it. Still, they've got the momentum after this week, and GT doesn't. UVA/VT is going to be a helluva show, and I'll be there. For the Cavs, it's win or face a disappointing 6-6 season. For the Hokies, it's win or be laughed at, again, as the team that collapses huge at the end of the season. After the win over GT and VT's loss to Boston College, it's Advantage Cavaliers in this one. The biggest problem will be if UVA continues its fine tradition of turnovers, because Frank Beamer's team is going to be gunning for the special teams plays as always.

The Raveonettes, "That Great Love Sound." Jacking Jesus and Mary Chain for sure, but goddamn that's catchy.

I've just finished Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen, and Pnin by Nabokov. The last thing I've finished that you might actually care about is Phillip Roth's The Human Stain.

Man, I guess I need to finally go watch the first two seasons so I figure out what's going on. Don't have the money to get the DVDs, haven't been taping. Oh well. The first 3 seasons of Angel are my sinkhole of un-knowledge in the Buffyverse. Great episode though. I, uh, certainly felt like I was supposed to go "OMG IT'S ______," even though I had no clue what I was lookin' at.

Only one on there I care about and I bet you can guess who it is. And I even listened to Purple Rain and Parade today, too. Hoohah.

It is. All the rest of your line-by-lines I pretty much agree with, but not this one. That album is fricking incredible. If you don't like rap, then no, you won't like it. And actually, if you don't like gangsta-type rap, you probably won't like this either. It's not flat-out gangsta rap since it really is a wonderfully pensive work (yes, I just used "pensive" when referring to B.I.G.), but I'd definitely class it as similar to, say, Straight Outta Compton. It's still the best album Bad Boy has ever put out, and though I personally would have put an Outkast album and perhaps Jay-Z's The Blueprint above it, I have no problem with this being one of the highest-rated rap albums to appear on this list. I definitely think it belongs there. You want death = legend, I guess you could look at the barely-posthumously released Life After Death, but aside from the singles and maybe half the album tracks, no one really regards that as a classic.

He's saying that studying the facts of history fosters racism, which is categorically wrong. By recognizing these atrocities, we become much less ignorant of what allowed them to happen. We are appreciating the difficulties slaves went through. There's a little saying about those ignoring history being doomed to repeat it. Kinda got it, kinda didn't. I certainly don't mean to imply we shouldn't study history - we have to. It's crucial and pretty much the best resource anyone has to study how to do things and how not to do things. I'm just saying that merely the fact that we learn about slavery - that we as people become aware that blacks were once property - colors our perception of what blacks can be. Even in appreciating the difficulties slaves went through, we're adding a possible category. Blacks can be lawyers, blacks can be taxi drivers, blacks can be slaves. It's not an active racism at all, but it exists. How do we get around it? Well, we don't, really, because learning about slavery is far more important than the problem this creates. Consider it a small point if you like, but definitely don't think it discourages studying history. I believe the exact opposite.

Music has had the chance to become so much more complex and varied since the 1960's that I think you're really pigeonholing yourself to say that no era will ever touch it. What does the 60's have, really? Juggernaut-wise, you have pre-hard rock Who, the Beatles, early Pink Floyd and Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones...you know, what you actually have are a lot of bands that didn't even peak until the 1970's. You don't have punk yet, you barely even have the Stooges, you certainly don't have hip-hop, you have nothing electronic or synth-based (and I lean more towards Depeche Mode and Massive Attack here than, say, Tranceport DJ Ultra Ibiza Mix 13), and your rock is still all very straight-ahead and, with the exception of formative prog-giants and sheer nutballs like Beefheart, not a ton of experimentation. You have very little of the raw sounds you'd get from the Gang of Four, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth... Basically, if 60's music is what you love, then yes, nothing will ever top it. I'll take 1956 to the present very gladly, though.

London Calling has been regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time for a long time - way before Joe Strummer kicked it. From where I sit, perhaps only Exile on Main St. manages to be as good as long and as consistently as London Calling. My personal issue with the list was a lack of rap and 1990's music...until I hit about number 300, where they seriously flood in most of the major highlights. There are some really weird choices for ranking works by a particular artist (U2's latest album higher than War? Riiight...), but you know, it's mostly good. The whole numbering thing is lame though, once you get outside the first stream of albums. What makes 484 that much better than 483?

This movie was painfully retarded. I think I expressed my displeasure at how smart it made me feel in a thread last year, but I'll be damned if I'm going to dig it up.

I see a good bit of talk about how Asians have been able to succeed in America where many blacks have not, and how that's one of the major failures of the black community as a whole. There's something pretty simple here that I think is being overlooked. Papacita got it right, actually, when he said "THEY'RE NOT BLACK." Bottom line, Asians, Irish, and the Jews have never been slave laborers in America. Underpaid workers, seen as subhuman for extended periods of time, yes. But none of these groups have actually ever been owned by another human being and relegated to the status of property. The Chinese were interned, but that still has no connotation of ownership. Obviously, no blacks living today, or even any great grandparents of any blacks living today, were ever enslaved. However, it's pretty easy to see why even today's blacks have had to - and still have to - overcome perhaps greater adversity than any one of these other groups. As has been said a few times before, we're still just a few decades out of institutionalized racism. I make no apologies for flawed black leaders or especially the outdated modes of the NAACP, but I do point towards the fact that even in studying slavery, we're forced to acknowledge a tradition that unilaterally dubbed blacks inferior for 200 years and still has aftereffects, many of which were still institutionalized until Brown vs. Board and the desegregations/Freedom Rides/and so on of the 60's. Show someone a picture of an Irishman working in a field, and you're gonna get a response of "farmer." Show a black person in the same situation, and there's much greater chance you're gonna get "slave." This attitude still culturally and socially informs us simply by the ingestion of history. It's not to say that someone who reacts this way is cognizantly racist, but it is to point out one well-regarded aspect of why it has been more difficult for blacks to increase their social standing than the Irish, Asians, or Jews.

42 is way, way too much to expect out of TT. I think Symons can get them into the endzone a couple of times, but the Oklahoma secondary is insane. You've also got to remember that, against a relatively explosive 7-4 team, Stoops is probably going to keep his first-string guys in there for almost the whole game. For some reason, I'm feeling 48-14, but it could get a lot higher, depending on how bad the Tech defense really is.

Jay-Z, "Change Clothes." Didn't like it at all the first few times I heard it, but it's really growing on me. It's still not as good as the other Neptunes track on here, "Allure," but it's got a lot of charm.

Example #4: Jay-Z "Me And My Girlfriend" You, my friend, are nuts. That's one of the best singles of last year. It's got the Prince reference, for god's sake! Wonderful backing track, too.

I've had Portishead on the brain too. Are they ever coming out with anything else, or is Beth Gibbons just going to keep doing mediocre work with Rustin Man? I'd heard rumblings about a new album for the beginning of this year, but that obviously didn't happen.