Edwin MacPhisto

Unreal. I go to a dinner party and miss out on some of the craziest games of the year. Oh well. Florida should be going to Glendale, no question in my mind. More wins over good to great teams, more wins over bowl teams, more wins over ranked teams, more wins over teams with winning records. Oh, and amidst all that, they actually won their conference. Almost any way you quantify what actually happened this season and what each team achieved, the Gators have a better case than Michigan. At the end of the regular season you can't go by how "good" you think a team is or what you predict they might do in the title game. There's no guesswork anymore: you have to go by the results of the whole year now that you have them all in front of you. I see very little indicating that Michigan should play for the title. Number 3, absolutely. Number 2? No way.

I've been saying that Georgia Tech will be down next year without Ball, but that's probably not actually that true. I imagine that Reggie Ball is the kind of person who forgets to turn off the coffee maker 50% of the time and will get to his job late every other day.

I found a couple of the tracks on an MP3 blog. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" blows. Whoever was responsible just added some irritating noodling on the chorus, tweaked some of the bass plucking, and layered on some crap. Sound quality is better than ever and separation is much more pronounced, but whoever mixed this just made it too active and too consciously "psychedelic." Then there's the mashup of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," and "Helter Skelter." It's also stupid. It accents all the most overblown, climactic parts of the songs in question and sounds like it was done by a bored college kid in Garageband. The "different context" is one of sucking ass.

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but I love the Dylan remasters. They sound fantastic, and the fact that they were all released at once was great. I also like the Elvis Costello remasters that Rhino did, though the platooning of those kind of made it hard to maintain my interest in him. After I heard My Aim Is True and This Year's Model I wanted everything else from that period, but it only gradually became available. Conversely, I don't like the remaster of Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club as much as the original. One of my friends picked it up, and Cooke's voice and the band are pushed a little too much to the front, deemphasizing the crowd at a concert with one of the best, most perfectly participatory crowds ever.

I love "Rocky Raccoon." And have no interest in this release, which appears to be the kind of thing you'd hear at a half-full Beatles laser light show at the planetarium.

Unrelated, but delightful: a couple months ago, someone got into my EBay account and started selling flugelhorns. I got everything resolved and restored my account, but the notion of someone stealing an EBay account to sell brass instruments is really amusing to me.

I agree that it'd be a huge blow, but I mean that it'd be a big loss more from a storytelling aspect. I think the show's writing benefits tremendously from having someone around who doesn't have any superpowers and is just along for the ride, both for a different point of view and to keep it from seeming like everybody in the world can walk through walls, etc. Superheroes aren't as interesting without their foils, sidekicks, and "regular" friends.

Beggars Banquet took me a while, too. Maybe try just downloading a ton of the 60s singles you've probably heard on oldies stations and forgotten over the years. I didn't realize how deeply songs like "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "19th Nervous Breakdown" were ingrained in my mind until I really took the Stones up heavily a few years back. I didn't actually check out Zappa in the past year, but I did get into King Crimson. Actually, listening to and really liking their Discipline has started warming me up a bit more to the Talking Heads. Still haven't heard much Sonic Youth.

I'd prefer it to be almost anyone but Ando. He's one of the rare non-powered characters on the show, but more importantly he's an interesting non-powered character (unlike Simone, Mohinder, etc.). Adds a different perspective to things than you get from everyone flying around reading minds and so on.

I don't think this album will ever come out. A few years down the line, Axl'll release a live album from a big concert, and those'll be the most definitive versions of the songs. Or, the songs will just gradually trickle out as the "new GnR!" song on an increasing number of best-of albums every few years.

Maryland's good and will probably finish in the top third of the ACC, but yeah, homer nonsense Marv. Not even about them maybe being better than UNC or Duke--no one will have any real idea of that till January at the earliest--but about them going 7-0 against a good but not great slate being one of the "big stories." It's a big story in the state of Maryland and that's really it.

I like the idea of the 8 team playoff, but I'd just make it easier and shift things to on-campus sites for everything but the championship game. Your way somewhat gets around the difficulty of having playoffs while still maintaining the major bowls and having the semis on New Year's, but the execution is really difficult. But, if you move, say, the "Sugar Bowl" and the "Cotton Bowl" to mid-December to make it easier for people to set up travel plans, then those traditional games do lose some of their lustre. I dunno, though...I'd probably take a sell-out home crowd over a bowl crowd for atmosphere and fun, even if the major bowls would never go for it. Of course, the current major conferences would never go for the "top 6 conference champions" thing. I also wonder how the money would be distributed--would there be payouts to playoff teams, or would the revenue work just like a home game for the host team? I see how having the semifinals at the Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, etc. is meant to settle that, but still think it's a bit more trouble than it's worth.

This is really good. And it comes in at 48 minutes, which keeps the whole thing crisp, eliminating the 79-minute bloat that drags down a lot of rap albums.

I'm thinking the Haitian's capabilities might be exclusively mentally based. He can block telepathy and Eden's Purple Man-esque powers of suggestion, but he can also shut people down entirely (Sylar) or wipe someone's memories (Claire's rapist football player). Yet Claire's not going to stop regenerating and Nathan's not gonna stop flying just cause he's around. Or he's got to be active in doing it, and he just wasn't firing on all cylinders yet when Nathan took to the skies.

I'm a Groh guy from the start (my first year at school was his coaching), but he's basically got next year to get a couple decent road wins and get Virginia back to stability (I'd be satisfied with 8-4). The rash of recent firings leaves him as the worst coach in the ACC. I don't really count Ted Roof, cause Duke is just perpetually hopeless.

And this one too. The big, big rumor going around right now: Spurrier steps in for 3 years, $10 million. Yowza. I don't know if I believe that--Spurrier comes up for every single job opening--but we'll see. What I find hilarious about so many of these firings, especially Shula and Koetter, is that they come almost immediately after the coaches have signed really, really long extensions. Miserable planning, athletic departments.

Add Chuck Amato to the dead list, after a 3-9 season. Chuck, the ACC will miss your high-pitched squeal, your man-breasts, and your stylish red kicks.

I'd like to know how fast they "rammed" the undercover cop. Did he get pulled under the car? Or was the dumbass drunkenly fucking around the parking lot, when he bumped a cop while moving 2 mph? Shooting these guys is inexcusable either way, but I'd still like to know that.

Hey, look at that. Dirk Koetter got fired, despite ASU rebounding back to 7-5 and a mid-level bowl game. Bye, average coach.

Guys, guys! The Broncos are on next Sunday! I can't wait to see them!

My roommate got a Wii...and four controllers, all with the nunchuk. Yet he never has people over to the apartment. I'm wondering about him.

Nope, Navy has the Tire Bowl bid. Gator Bowl gets the runner-up, unless they use their once-in-four-years exception to take a Big XII team. After that, you get into lovely games like...the Insight Bowl and the Texas Bowl, whichever one that is.

Unless USC loses to UCLA, they're probably not going to the Rose Bowl. They did exactly what they needed to do tonight to make up ground on Michigan. LSU/Michigan doesn't have quite the sheen, though I would still expect LSU to be taken over Louisville.

Louisville may still have a decent shot at the last BCS at-large in that scenario. Your only realistic competition is LSU and possibly Florida if they lose the SEC championship game.

At least that one's kinda clever. PapaJohns.com and Chick Fil-A make me want to shit on someone's head. Aggressively.