Edwin MacPhisto

This was a great, great movie. So many good details, excellent performances, and one of the tightest, most propulsive narratives I've seen in a while. I loved how Cuaron avoided overloading the movie with "futuristic" stuff--it feels like he looked back 20 years, said "where were we then?," and then gradually modified stuff from present day to have that evolved but not unrealistic feel. Oh, and I loved the Tate Modern transformed into a big office building.

They'd lost 14 in a row to the Kings, not overall. They're kind of mediocre this season so far.

I'm in an airport right now, and the TV at the gate is showing Al Sharpton's (fantastic) eulogy for James Brown. I think I'm the only white person here who isn't totally confused.

He also might really get AIDS.

I swear Kevin Kolb has been at Houston for 6 years. Good day for unappreciated excellent QBs, as both Kolb and Kentucky's Andre Woodson are having/had great days. Woodson really should have been 1st team all-SEC. I loved the call at the end of the Oregon State game. You're already a four loss team, it's the bowl game, and you've had Missouri on their heels for the whole quarter. Why not? Now Oregon State can write 2006 down as one of the best years in team history, upsetting USC, beating Oregon at the last second in the Civil War, and winning the Sun Bowl with a huge-nuts call at the gun. Pretty good season for a team that's so historically bad.

What a peculiar thread to bump after 9 months. I've heard "Squeeze Box" since this discussion. It totally sucks.

Good game over in the Music City Bowl with Clemson and Kentucky playing close. Jad Dean's also have a monumentally bad game kicking, having missed two short field goals and an extra point already. So much for "I'm done with kicking," Tommy Bowden.

His funeral services are being held at the Apollo. That's baller.

3. Point Break 2. Red Dawn 1. Road House

I call it exceptionally creative because that sort of thing isn't common in the pop music environment now. Compare it to most of what's out there now and it's particularly great, taking reasonably weird stuff and making it into a great, coordinated dance song that really raises hairs when it's supposed. The parts are simple, but the sum of the production, the performance, and the contributor's total commitment to the song (unlike the half-assed effort of, say, Gwen Stefani's "Wind It Up") is much greater than those parts. Nor do I think he's "the next Prince"; he's not at a compositional or craziness level like that yet and probably will never get there. However, he's starting to strike a lot of the same themes--namely, sticking playful sex and angry love and music together in big funky messes--which is really nice. Ultimately, I think your last statement there--"for a dance song"--belies some of our difference of opinion here. Banky and I both seem to hold dance music, or music aimed primarily at the dancing/partying/etc. market, in significantly higher esteem than you do. Speaking of the Hold Steady, I love the new album, but "Same Kooks" is awfully boring, especially when compared to the rest of the songs. Neither adventurous enough nor fun enough. And while I'm here: slagging the Arcade Fire for Worst Songs of 2006 doesn't really make sense, because I don't think they've released anything in the past 12 months.

The Gwen Stefani song disappoints me, too, because if there's two things I love in this world, they're weird pop songs and The Sound of Music. I think she underdid it.

This is worse than the other thread because that one had lots of good jokes and an excellent picture of PLAGIARISM! I hope you're pleased that you didn't get to see Happy Feet, you fucker.

Sure, maybe. But they didn't. That dude from My Chemical Romance could have written David Bowie's "Queen Bitch" or "Purple Rain," but he didn't. Do we really think the artistic merit of a product is linked to that person's unique ability to write a given song, or the fact that many other people hypothetically could have written it? I guess I'm making an argument for New Criticism in music on behalf of "Sexyback." Or maybe I just think that "Sexyback" is pretty innovative and cool anyway. Syntactical and academic jibba jabba aside, I just think it's a creative, goddamn fun song that's excellent to dance to. Though it's probably only the third or fourth-best song on the album. I avoided enough radio this year that I probably missed a lot of the worst songs out there. Something by Nickelback or Live or this Hinder band was probably it.

Noted. Too many Colts out there.

Colt Brennan gives a shout-out to America and wishes the world a merry Christmas. He probably just got himself millions of dollars by being the most aw-shucks QB since Peyton.

Shit, me too. File it under the "albums I really like," I think. That's on the cusp between like and love; I just haven't listened to it in a few months. Just downloaded the new Junior Boys too. This might get in there.

This game hasn't looked much closer than the first bowl so far. Go Mormons, go.

Reggie Ball has been ruled academically ineligible to play in the Gator Bowl. I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing for Georgia Tech, though I'm leaning towards bad at this point, unless they go with an offensive gameplan that's strictly "Hey backup, throw to Calvin Johnson." That might be better than whatever their offensive gameplan was for the second half of the season, though.

I drew mine from probably around 30-35 albums total, so it's fairly self-selecting. Usually right around this time of year is when I play catch-up, and then keep playing catch-up through all of January. This year I might just spend that time listening to the Brian Eno and Destroyer back catalogues, though.

Big game for Amare, 28 and 10. I'm really glad to see him starting to get his game back after all the near-disasters he's run into over the past year and a half.

The first half of the Justin Timberlake album (through "What Goes Around") is completely awesome. It falls off to just decent-to-good after that, but that first 30 minutes puts it way up there.

I thought about it a bit more and I did it this way since numbers are tough. My favorite new album in a long time: TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain Albums I loved: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury Ghostface - Fishscale Mastodon - Blood Mountain Justin Timberlake - Futuresex/Lovesounds Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit Albums I liked a lot: Hypatia Lake - And We Shall Call Him Joseph Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies Joanna Newsom - Ys T.I. - King Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass Califone - Roots and Crowns

I've long believed that there should be a video for "Mint Car" that involves Robert Smith rolling around in a field with a bunch of puppies.

Jerk, you're probably not that out of touch. I don't think any of those albums have sold over 100,000 copies (even though several of them are very good). I'll return to this later with some more thoughts, though there are still a lot of albums I've yet to hear. Off the top of my head, I'd say that TV on the Radio is tops by a solid margin, but that the Hold Steady, Mastodon, Clipse, and Justin Timberlake (not at all kidding here) are all way up there too.

I think he would have been a better fit on the Clippers or Celtics, but this is a decent destination for him.