Edwin MacPhisto

I was going to say TSIB and one of a few Zappas, based on his past listmaking adventures. So yeah, go with those.

Given that your taste in rap and his seems fairly similar, that surprises me. Although if Since I Left You is the standard, his concoctions are certainly much rougher and more compartmentalized into bite-size pieces.

Ew. I'm not even gonna try that. The excessive and wrongheaded yelping must be terrible.

Yeah, I thought he was going to give me a list along with his NFL draft guys. I'll see if I can figure out two more for him.

So the Blazers come out of the night with Diogu, Bayless, Batum, and 4 future second round picks. Not bad for a team that already had plenty of players.

35 foot tall starting five. Best team ever.

And I don't think Mark Cuban is the teams GM. Right. Let's just say "team executive," then. Portland is going to have a nice 42 forward/center fouls to give this season.

So Kevin Pritchard is gonna take over for Mark Cuban as "GM everybody knows and reads about all the time," except he doesn't seem like an irritating-as-shit cock. I dig.

"No Diggity" over the flashing lights beat is one of the more transcendent music-listening moments I've experienced lately. Night Ripper was a serious party mix, while this one plays a bit more like the prelude to throwing down. Quite fond of it all so far.

Ramon Sessions looked pretty decent at the end of last year too, though at that point the Bucks were basically running around like the Washington Generals, not giving a shit on defense, and playing him for 40 minutes-plus a game simply because there was no one else.

Was waiting to see who'd take him. Excellent choice.

Just messing around on Hoopshype, I see that the Jefferson deal should clear a nice chunk of change from the Nets a couple of summers from now (about 11 million off the 2010-2011 payroll should they like and keep Yi, all $15M of Jefferson's salary should they dump him). Jiggaman will not lose ever.

No...well...kind of. In the Ultimates, Banner's part of the team, but he does a few very bad things in Hulk form and ends up needing to be restrained and neutralized by the rest of them. He floats in and out of favor throughout (though that's somewhat true of most of the characters in the Ultimates).

After the abortion that was Spiderman 3, I'm not sure anyone needs another one of these, particularly with the same creative team involved.

zooey deschanel is a pretty awful actress in general. but i could swim forever in the deep opaque blueness of those eyes. I was just coming here to post that. M. Night does have a mild gift for making slight, large-eyed actresses look amazing. This was pretty silly, though it wasn't laugh-your-ass-off bad. Like gtd, I was confused as to what he was going for here; it seemed like he wanted a serious terror-filled family drama at the outset and a sci-fi melange as he got into actually making the movie, and then wasn't willing to kill his darlings and focus on only one of those aspects. Embarrassingly, this is probably his second-best effort.

I've gained a much greater appreciation for Boston since the release of that 6-song pack for Rock Band. Steely Dan is another issue entirely.

Yeah, Hail to the Thief has some pretty high peaks. My list would look similar to yours, maybe swapping out "2+2=5" for "Where I End and You Begin." But there's a fat lot of "eh" throughout there.

I'm absolutely doing it too. 1. OK Computer 1a. "No Surprises" 1b. "Paranoid Android" 1c. "Let Down" 1d. "Airbag" 1e. "Lucky" 2. The Bends 2a. "Planet Telex" 2b. "The Bends" 2c. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" 2d. "Just" 2e. "Fake Plastic Trees" 3. Kid A 3a. "Everything In Its Right Place" 3b. "The National Anthem" 3c. "Idiotheque" 3d. "How to Disappear Completely" 3e. "Motion Picture Soundtrack" 4. Amnesiac 4a. "I Might Be Wrong" 4b. "Like Spinning Plates" 4c. "Life In a Glass house" 4d. "Pyramid Song" 4e. "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" 5. In Rainbows 5a. "Videotape" 5b. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" 5c. "Reckoner" 5d. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" 5e. "Nude" Edit: I dunno; looking at it now, I do really like all those songs. Maybe In Rainbows is #4 after all.

I was talking with one of my similarly Radiohead-fond friends, who now only likes Kid A and OK Computer more than this. Still can't quite get there myself, though I like it more than I did before I saw them live. Hearing "All I Need" on XM all the time is still kind of weird.

I dunno. What's the goal of the Knicks at this point? The most common thing I hear is "clear space for summer 2010 when LeBron can opt out." I guess this trade "helps" that goal by getting 6 million ready to be cleared when Cardinal's deal expires. The problem is that most of the mediocre/overpaid players they'd like to let go (Richardson, Curry, and James adding up to $27 million) have player options for that season. Considering how horrible this team is, I'm not sure "trade your best young player" is a good move unless it gets you a guy who you think will 1) be a good enough second banana to make LeBron come to you, or 2) be good enough to carry a team. Can you really say that about anyone not named Beasley or Rose? And if you want a good veteran, what team out there wants #5 and #6 this draft year?

I thought about it, but kind of had many aspects of their sound/feeling covered by several albums I like better.

Hahahaha. It must have burned you to have to type that out for me.

I'm back. Some write-ups on my final three choices: Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets Fuck do I ever love this album. Super-insane glamrock with Eno's trademark fuzzy, layered sound, and in my opinion the strongest of his four big pop albums. The arrangements are unpredictable and the album covers a huge range of sounds, from frenetic, cacophonic rock on "Needle in the Camel's Eye" (oh, and those keyboards at 2 minutes in!) and "Baby's On Fire" to simply one of the most beautiful walls of sound I've ever heard on the title track. His absurd vocal performances on songs like "The Paw-Paw Negro Blowtorch" are also a hoot. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Tough call between a few of their albums, but this one sticks with me the most. Their most sophisticated album, full of great and gorgeous songs. I used to listen to this album all the time the summer after my first year of college, when I worked in my dad's office and spent Thursday nights cleaning up his model homes. "Radio Cure" drifting through unoccupied expanses of high ceilings, tile floors, and snaking custom-home corridors was practically tradition, and one of my most distinct aural memories. This album was made with a bunch of members of the band pissed off at each other, and they really all go for broke in different spots. I don't think they'll ever get back to something that so successfully blends out-there instrumentation with accessible dad-happy rock. Knew I loved it from the first few strums of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," one of the all-time great confused love songs. The Wrens - The Meadowlands A personal favorite from a band I saw from 3 feet away. Evocative and intimate lyrics, unmatched mood, and a careful mix of despair and delight on tracks like "Hopeless" and "Happy" make this an album I can go back to any day. The Wrens are the one band I love who I really, really, really wish were more popular. Try those songs and "She Sends Kisses" and "Ex-Girl Collection" to get a feel for probably my favorite album of this century so far. Fucked-up guitars and noise and great songwriting that never, ever gets treacly despite its intensely personal and confessional nature. What's not to love?

My turn, so: David Bowie - Scary Monsters My three favorite Bowie albums got grabbed in the first handful of rounds, but life without a Bowie album is hard to fathom. In addition to all the huge singles, it has one of my favorite anthemic jams, "Teenage Wildlife." Probably one of his 10 best vocal performances, which is saying a lot. The whole album fuses the more experimental sounds he dabbled in on the Berlin albums with a healthy dose of early 80s new wave. A bit familiar, a bit new, and all told really, really good.

No question that good personnel have worked on it, but the end product seems to be unusually heavy on the machines for all the people who've undoubtedly recorded parts. The rest of the album was all right, but not too memorable. The effect losing Slash had is really clear, to me at least: most of the energy and uniqueness of the GnR sound is gone. The punch and guitar approach that helped them blend hair metal and hard rock feels heavily diluted. Axl's still got the passion and still sounds pretty good, but without his other half it doesn't really matter (the same could be said of all Slash's side projects and subsequent work, none of which approach the unique chemistry of peak GnR). "The Blues" is definitely my favorite of these, and the closest to what I like about GnR in general.