godthedog

i concur. not a huge metallica fan, not a metal fan at all, but i love me some 'master of puppets'. i don't see what the big deal is about 'never mind the bullocks, here's the sex pistols'. nothing special about the lyrics, and the tunes are about as poppy & simple as it gets. and almost every song on the album sounds the same.

good thing nobody drafted me.

you could just buy the OTHER used copy wuxtry has in downtown athens for five dollars. they've also got '1999' on 2 LPs for fifteen bucks.

but last night, los angeles WAS the better team. even if kobe did get lucky with the 3-pointer, they had five more minutes to play. the better team would have stopped their momentum and gotten the lead. detroit didn't do that, they collapsed. in game one they were CLEARLY the better team, but LA outplayed them on tuesday.

bitchin. have fun. some kids from the drama department here are in london as well for some class type thing. if you run into any americans named matthew, jamie or maria let me know.

see above.

and the kids all look like containers of tang.

because detroit is OWNING the tempo of these games. they're not letting LA play like LA, and jackson has to go through his lineup by trial & error and see what sticks (re: putting in luke, kareem AND cook). they got into overtime by the skin of their teeth, and only AFTER the 4th quarter were the pistons letting them play like they want to play. and the laker bench isn't underrated, it's inconsistent. luke walton plays hungry, but he's inexperienced and usually sloppy, and when detroit turns up their defense on him he won't know what to do, and he'll panic, and he'll cause turnovers. by tomorrow night detroit will adapt & jackson will have to figure out yet another way for them to get ahead.

the only major thing 'ghostbusters' really has going for it is the jokes, and 'pulp fiction' is almost as funny. 'pulp fiction' has better-developed characters. 'pulp fiction' has more tension. the dramatic subplots in 'pulp fiction' actually WORK and MEAN SOMETHING (as opposed to the half-assed venkman/dana barett love story and the retarded EPA thing). the surprises in 'pulp fiction' are real surprises. 'ghostbusters' is standard formula stuff, and you know what you're going to get by about the 10-minute mark.

excellent game overall, but once OT came detroit had their minds somewhere else & LA made them pay for it dearly. good coaching too. i'll be very interested to see the adjustments made for the next game. the next time LA is in trouble and jackson puts 2 rookies on the floor, i don't think it will work. i don't see detroit winning 3 in a row at home, and i don't think that will be a huge problem if they go back to LA for a game 6. the crowd there is terrible (that entire first half was like they were playing in an empty arena), and as long as detroit can keep anybody from getting hot or making the game dramatic, they can negate that.

found on vinyl today: prince and the revolution - 'purple rain'. five dollars.

you don't want the hot topic people. i know hot topic people, and most of them have STDs.

considering what the opposing team was doing, i thought kobe did a terrific job and was the top all-around player in the game. whenever he got the right opportunity, he took it right home (the pistons just almost never let him have that opportunity) & he didn't give up. the argument "he could've worked harder" i suppose COULD be applied to him, but then he would've had to pull a KG and create his own shot out of thin air every possession against the defense. the problems with that are a) he's not KG, b) this defense is tougher than any of the defense KG had to fight off in the playoffs, and c) the rest of the lakers are good enough that kobe shouldn't HAVE to do that. he also shut down detroit's biggest offensive weapon, NEVER letting him get hot all night. and the "give the ball to shaq every possession and let him score 50+" strategy will NOT work. he can't win the game by himself. even if he scores 50 points in a game, who's going to score the other 30+ they'll need to actually win the game? kobe and the role-players HAVE to find ways of getting around the defense.

i caught two speeches on cspan this weekend: one by clinton promoting his new book, and reagan's '92 republican national convention speech. they were startlingly similar. very easygoing and humble, charismatic, and their attitudes were almost identically optimistic and constructive, using a lot of the same ideas with different rhetoric.

nice to see the subtle "oh some of them just didn't show up" excuses. where was derek fisher? he was being crushed by the defense. he wasn't making shots because they wouldn't let him make the shots he wanted to make. can't argue about malone objectively having a horrible night, but he was trying to make things happen. likewise, it's not like rip didn't show up last night, kobe shut him down. he was trying like hell, but kobe kept up with him & kept him from rattling off anything significant. kudos to him for it, if it weren't for that detroit would've ANNIHILATED them. everybody made the effort, LA just got outplayed. they seriously looked lost for most of the game.

...so basically, if you liked things more similar to agent, you and agent would like more similar things.

night-before-last through last night: 'notorious', for the 3rd time. i pimp this whenever there's a hitchcock discussion, and it gets better every time i see it. this time around, it just might have topped 'vertigo'. claude rains owns this movie. last night: 'battle royale'. eh. great concept, but it turned into a typical american action movie that starred japanese kids. last night through this morning: 'good morning'. another disappointment, especially after hearing so much about how consistent a director ozu was. he does great detailed observations on the way people go through their day and interact with each other (the relationship between the two brothers was pitch-perfect & very understated), but the story never went anywhere, and ozu never really gave me a reason to care about the characters.

nope. they lost to the 76ers.

somebody pimp me an iggy album to get.

shitty shitty tournament, but i have no complaints about the winner.

team defense doesn't generally translate into ratings, it's all about the star power. i think the espn game might have been more due to the pacers & their flagship player. if the announcers were doing the hard underdog sell for detroit it would probably be a different story, but literally every talking head i've seen has said it's a foregone conclusion that LA will destroy them & the most they can hope for is to "make it a series" or "take it to six or seven games." ratings will start low, and could get higher depending on how many games detroit wins.

teams with no defense don't win championships, either. trying to win by outscoring the other team is not a feasible way to a championship, and picking up ONE MAN who can play D won't help it.

Naked, with a naked hottie on my lap. Then again, that is my favorite way to enjoy anything. -=Mike that's my favorite way to enjoy a visit with my parents. they seem to enjoy it too.

<le sigh> what the hell, i'm bored. 2001: A Space Odyssey Key Largo The Usual Suspects Vertigo Raging Bull Reservoir Dogs Rear Window Rocky Dr. Strangelove Duck Soup Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid Night Of The Hunter Das Boot Jaws the Godfather Goodfellas Taxi Driver American Beauty The Searchers Heat LA Confidential Lord of The Rings: Return of the King It's a Wonderful Life Citizen Kane American History X The Shawshank Redemption Casablanca Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Cool Hand Luke Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Chinatown The Godfather Part II

'ladri di biciclette' critics' list: 1. citizen kane 2. vertigo 3. the rules of the game 4. godfathers I and II 5. tokyo story 6. 2001 7. battleship potemkin 8. sunrise 9. 8 1/2 10. singin' in the rain directors' list: 1. citizen kane 2. godfathers I and II 3. 8 1/2 4. lawrence of arabia 5. dr strangelove 6. the bicycle thief 6. raging bull 6. vertigo 9. rashomon 9. the rules of the game 9. the seven samurai making a tournament here out of these would be a disaster for so many reasons. maybe 3 or 4 people on the board have actually seen all these, and i'm sure the ones who HAVE don't agree with the choices (i know i don't).