Edwin MacPhisto

I just watched this and I think I'm with Byron. There were wonderful, individual moments (the bathtub scene, the ring tattoo), but overall it was a bit too fabricated to scoop me up in its tale of great love and sorrow. I also found its conclusion unsatisfying; I read it as an interpretation of different ways these figures deal with the death of a loved one, and found all of them pretty shallow. It was also kind of a goofy film, as an aside. This was particularly a problem when Hugh Jackman was flying around in the lotus position looking like a combination of the guy from Live and Dhalsim after you win a fight in Street Fighter II.

Straw man. The issue is dogfighting. Vick deserves the ire if he's convicted; otherwise, we're talking abstractly here Of course they would! If we raised dogs as livestock they'd be livestock. If there was a way to get cows or dears or platypuses or whatever to fight in a ring for hours, tearing each other to pieces while human trash cheer them on, people would be just as disgusted.

"There are more important things out there" is one of the worst arguments for anything in any context. No one could ever lose a debate if that held any weight. I also think your argument that Vick is "one of the most exciting players in the NFL" and it would suck to suspend him is probably the lamest specious idiot-relativist nonsense I've heard in some time. Too bad it's not AJ Feeley out there shredding dogs to pieces, or we could really learn a lesson from this.

Franz Ferdinand covered my favorite song of the year so far--LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends"--and didn't do very well by it. I usually like them, especially for big stompin' party jams, but they fuck up the urgency of this pretty badly and turn it into the wrong kind of epic. The last 30 seconds are just disastrous.

That was one of my favorite songs to hear in my mom's car when I was 7.

Dog fights can last for hours. Lots of hours. And they're incredibly violent, and vile. I don't know nearly enough about the meat industry to say whether or not the way calves and other animals bred for consumption are treated is obscene, but I sure know that dogfighting is.

Georgia Tech will win this year's NCAA dogfighting championships.

Pitino went right back to making big bank at Louisville, and Donovan would do the same. Probably even better, as long he doesn't pull a whiny "Larry Bird isn't walking through that door" press conference of his own. I mean, that much guaranteed money? For your first NBA coaching job? Even in a worst-case scenario, I would be perfectly happy with the ruination of my basketball legacy for $30 million more in the bank by my 47th birthday. The Magic haven't won more than 45 games and haven't won a playoff series in the 11 seasons since Shaq left, so he's going to have to bomb pretty hard to be a disaster.

I can't decide if LeBron scoring Cleveland's last 23 points is a sign of him being incredible or the rest of the Cavs really being that bad.

Too enthralled watching Lebron Jordan up while Detroit looks on helplessly. Those dunks were all awesome and the no-angle shot from nearly 3 point range was absurd.

I think it was just some goofy thing in the locker. My favorite part of this one was how every 15-20 minutes there was a lengthy sequence that was deeply surreal or very tangential to what was actually happening. I love when studios get $150 million and just fuck around with it.

I can understand why Kobe would be pissed about a poorly run front office--who can't identify with that?--but come on, guys. This doesn't seem a little silly to you? He makes $20 million a year. The guy shouldn't be crying or feeling used for any reason related to his career.

Pfft. It's the spirit of the thing.

Maria Quesadilla was workin' it tonight. I always forget how delightfully explicit this show's sex scenes are for basic cable.

If there's anything provable, Goodell will smack him down. Dude seems reasonably hardcore so far, even if his suspensions haven't really made sense with respect to each other. The "if" is a big one, though, because so far there doesn't appear to be much of anything but hearsay, and rich hearsay always beats poor hearsay.

So, where can I get the best prices on HDTVs? So far Amazon seems to be in the lead. I'm probably buying something for a new apartment in the next month or two, either a flat LCD or LCD projection around 40"-50".

He certainly is, and he is certainly right.

Exactly that. Let the actual national guard or whatever be the people who do that. If we're going to make it public works and go for a workforce that utilizes the homeless, the uneducated, the long out of work, etc., I really don't want somebody who hasn't worked in years or is not particularly smart and is desperate for a job to cap a Mexican because he thinks that'll make him a good guard. They can spot or man relay stations or however you want to swing, but I'd rather they not be packin'.

I would be fine with an increased--largely unarmed--border presence designed as a public works project. I definitely don't want my country to have an actual wall around it, though. I can hardly think of anything more antithetical to this country, except maybe shitting on a flag and baking the whole thing into an apple pie crust.

I did this last week, with a minivan.

I've never been particularly impressed with Rick Rubin's work producing rock music. I like those first couple of Slayer albums, but those are 15-20 years old at this point. He's just an old dude with a funny beard now, one who occasionally comes up with a good rap backing track.

That Portland lineup would be wild. Two rookies starting? Two second-year players? One third-year player? And despite that I still think they'd be okay, even if it's totally weird to have your oldest starter be 23. One way or another, Portland has been making the right kind of deals the past couple of years to have a very strong young core in a few seasons. If he can't work out a trade, I think Billy Knight just needs to grab Conley at 3 and be done with it. He won't last out of the top 10, and knowing the Hawks someone would grab Acie Law before #11 since nothing can ever seemingly go right for them. At a certain point it doesn't matter if you're getting the guy you need at 3, 5, 8, or 11, as long as you get him.

I guess when you're not on the show for 20 straight episodes you don't have to follow the one big plot point ever established for your characters.

No pronouns at all in any discussion of the dead person. It can be whoever the writers want it to be at this point. Clever, if awkward-sounding throughout.