The Man in Blak

Lite Brites?

Here's another article from a Boston TV station. "Detonated the package"? Was John Rambo involved somehow?

You know, I don't doubt that we can reach 100 reasons without much of a problem, but some of the stupidity cited here isn't all that different from poor decisions that have been made by Sega's competitors. Sega's failure as a hardware manufacturer is far and away the biggest contributing factor to their downfall in the console business. It's probably worth an entire thread in itself. Absolutely. What third-party development studio wants to spend top dollar on purchasing a dev kit and acquiring/training talent to develop on a platform that doesn't appear to have any real long-term support from its manufacturer?

There are a lot of options out there, depending on what OS you're working from. The Wikipedia article on free audio software has a pretty good list of applications for you. If you're looking for free software to edit and mix recorded tracks from Windows, Audacity is worth checking out. It exports out to multiple formats, supports multi-tracks, and can take in plug-ins for effects as well. I know it's not free, but the commercial version of Fruity Loops is actually a great value, depending on what you want to use it for. If you're just looking for a software-driven drum machine/sequencer, you can pick up the Express version for something like $50, I think.

This was today's pick for the commute and I didn't really like it at all. I've never heard the band before but, if the 80's-ish techno-pop that permeates this album is the standard for them, I probably won't be coming back; it's just not my thing. "The Past is a Grotesque Animal", however, is very good. Far and away the strongest track on the album.

I think the paper's proposed suicide "link" between Kid A and Amnesiac would make a lot more sense if the latter started out with "Pyramid Song." I understand (though I don't necessarily agree with) the idea that Amnesiac is supposed to represent a spirtual emptiness, but it doesn't quite work sequentially, with Thom monotonically grumbling "I'm a reasonable man / get off my case" over and over in the opening track.

Roth and Hagar are both exceedingly annoying as singers, but the songwriting was considerably better when Roth was the frontman, for whatever reason. Also, I'd take their debut album over 1984 without hesitation.

Oh, come on. That post was the best laugh that the Socket had seen for a good week or so. Sure, it was a complete accident, but there are two things that SuperJerk does well...and the other is unintentional hilarity. Don't be playa hatin'.

I want to say that they used it in The Shield, but not 100% sure about that. EDIT: Wikipedia saves the day.

The real question is how much Latin has viva taken in school. I had an idea with "I have come for the exequies of the king", but "In pace requiescat"? For a horse? That's quite the articulate zinger there, cowboy.

Yup. It's cane dude. Odd that you "weren't that good at it." I've managed to make nearly everyone else my bitch, especially with time attack practice. I can even counter the Bull Charge on both MTPO and SPO (left body punch right on the 3rd hop for the instant knockdown). Hoy Quarlow was a nightmare in Super Punch-Out because he really didn't offer much in the way of discernable attack patterns - he'd just sidestep or parry seemingly any attack that you made and then knock your head off with that cane. That fight is more about pure reaction than pattern recognition, which is essentially the opposite of every other fight in the game. Hate fighting that guy. I've never thrown a controller, but I've definitely caught myself, in the past, launching expletives and other assorted sentence enhancers at the TV whenever I: 1. Fight the Grim Reaper in the original Castlevania. 2. Play Ninja Gaiden II. Any stage past the first one, it really doesn't matter.

Outside of "the dogs", the one really legitimate "OH SHIT" moment I remember from the original Resident Evil (Director's Cut) was the billiards room in the guardhouse. Nevermind that the guardhouse itself is a fucking creepy spectacle, with creaking wood under each footstep and background music sounding like somebody was methodically dropping a dead body on a dusty piano over and over again. You walk into the billiards room, hear this little "skitter-skitter-skitter" and then two absurdly large and hairy spiders drop off of the ceiling and start running towards you with the front two legs up like a goddamn praying mantis. I won't lie, my freshman college roommate and I screamed like women; they would have had to call an ambulance to tow Dames out of there if he had seen that at 2:30 am like we did. And, of course, even if you kill those things with a rocket launcher, they just roll over on their back, legs curling up in disgusting fashion. Just the ugliest, nastiest looking spiders I think I've ever seen in a video game. As for Silent Hill 2, what else can you say? As I said in the "Best Writing" thread, the game has one of the most sad and horrifying storylines you'll ever see, and Pyramid Head (and what you eventually realize he represents) is probably the most disturbing part of it all.

I remember Phantasy Star and Double Dragon...and that's really about it. The third-party support was almost negligible, most of the notable in-house games were bad ports from the arcade division, and the hardware stands as one of the worst console designs out there, in my opinion. A real crap system. That strange sound is probably a result of the terrible sound hardware built into the console: a PSG chip with 4 channels of mono output, three square wave generators, and one white noise generator. (In non-synth speak, that means that there's really not a lot to choose from when it comes to creating sound.) It's the same chip that they'd use in the Game Gear a few years later, just to give you a point of reference.

It's a slow day at work, so I'll take a shot at the White Album. The double album thrives off of its variety and eccentricity - there was really nowhere else for the Beatles to go after Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour - so cutting it down to a palatable single album is a pretty rough exercise. SIDE ONE (26:40) Back in the USSR (2:43 - McCartney) While My Guitar Gently Weeps (4:45 - Harrison) Helter Skelter (4:29 - McCartney) Glass Onion (2:17 - Lennon) Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Di (3:08 - McCartney) Dear Prudence (3:56 - Lennon) Long, Long, Long (3:04 - Harrison) Blackbird (2:18 - McCartney) SIDE TWO (28:56, 20:34 w/out hidden track) Yer Blues (4:01 - Lennon) Mother Nature's Son (2:48 - McCartney) Savoy Truffle (2:54 - Harrison) I'm So Tired (2:03 - Lennon) Julia (2:54 - Lennon) Good Night (3:11 - Lennon [vocalist: Ringo]) Happiness Is A Warm Gun (2:43 - Lennon) Revolution 9 [hidden track] (8:22 - Lennon) You get about 47 minutes of music out of 15 listed tracks on the album, 7 for Lennon (one of which is sung by Ringo), 5 for McCartney, 3 for Harrison. At first, I sliced out all of the overtly gimmick tracks ("Bungalow Bill", "Rocky Raccoon", "Birthday", "Wild Honey Pie"), tracks that were redundant ("Cry Baby Cry", "Sexy Sadie", "I Will"), tracks that were retreads of older material ("Honey Pie", "Revolution 1") and tracks that were weaker throwaways ("Why Don't We Do It In The Road", "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey", "Don't Pass Me By"). "Piggies" and "Martha My Dear" were my final cuts from that mix. I think this sequence has some teeth to it - all of the real heavy rockers are left around, but the quieter moments left over are the real strong ones from the original album. "Glass Onion" retains some of the original White Album's self-referential leanings, while other parts of the album mirror back to Sgt. Pepper's layout; "Good Night" offers a similar faux conclusion as the Sgt. Pepper reprise, "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" works as Lennon's strong final track, and "Revolution 9" stands in as a more sinister evolution of the laughing/conversation loop at the end of the album. Both sides even work by the LP standard, which is limited to about 30 minutes of playtime on each side. (Like I said, a slow day at work.)

I wouldn't say that David Carr is a crappy quarterback, but I'm not sure he's the superstar in the making that many people here consider him to be. He had a high completion percentage (and, as a result, a high QB rating), but it's mostly out of short yardage gimmies on third-and-longs and checkdowns; he was far less efficient whenever he was required to stretch the offense. He is fairly mobile, but he's not a difference maker on the ground - don't forget that QB rushing statistics are somewhat skewed, since tackles behind the line of scrimmage are scored as sacks rather than rushing attempts. He still takes a ton of sacks (41 this year) and he doesn't protect the football well (16 fumbles this year). That being said, Plummer's definitely not an upgrade and he's certainly not worth burning a draft pick to acquire, when there are still countless holes all over the team.

It's just a really bad Dylan imitation, with an obnoxious opening. Obviously, it's not the only pastiche on the album (McCartney alone one-ups this song with "Back in the USSR" at the start of the album), but it's the worst of the lot by a long shot, going so far over the top with sweet, sugary honky tonk that it makes my teeth hurt. It's been said in other discussions in this folder, and it applies here: you can't really get worse than a bad parody. As for "Julia", that one's all about context - if you don't catch that Lennon is writing about finally moving on from his mother's death and embracing love with Yoko Ono, then it's just a slow acoustic song that immediately follows another acoustic song in "I Will". (Probably the only hiccup in sequencing on the whole album, really.)

I haven't heard the live version, but the original track from Kid A is pretty stirring in itself. Got a neat music video as well. I've been listening through a leak of Deerhoof's Friend Opportunity all day at work and I'm falling in love with it. They're continuing their drive from The Runners Four to be more accessible with actual songs, but there's still enough of the trademark metric shifts and general quirkiness to create a very interesting art-rock mix. "The Perfect Me" is a highlight, but most of the album (save for maybe "Kidz Are So Small") is nice, regardless. Of course, Matsuzaki's vocals will put some people off immediately but, if you can get past that, I think you could find a really good album.

Yeah, not to derail the Zeppelin discussion, but my exposure to Sabbath is somewhat limited. *ducks flying tomato*

Well, don't get me wrong - I tend to think that FFVII is overrated garbage too. (*cue endless FFVII debate*) But, even given that, I think I'm allowed to hold the opinion that MGS2's plot isn't so good that it gets a free pass for derailing the gameplay with so much tiring exposition. Those views aren't really mutually exclusive, are they?

I think Byron the Bulb was referring to the production behind the song - the entire track feels like it's recorded underwater, deep enough to where you feel constant pressure from every move. From that standpoint, "When The Levee Breaks" feels a lot heavier than "One More Red Nightmare" to me, despite the aggressive guitar textures in the latter; it's methodical, it's loud, and it feels like it weighs a metric fuckton. That, and "One More Red Nightmare" has handclaps. Fo sheez. I haven't heard "Children of the Grave", though, so I can't vouch for it.

Calling MGS2 "pleasantly postmodern" puts a gloss over the fact that: 1. The entire game is framed around an ill-advised bait and switch with the main character. 2. The storyline is presented in the most painful fashion possible, with tiring cutscenes and codec sequences that seem to stretch on for days. 3. A big chunk of the resolution of said storyline is deus ex machina at its absolute worst. Having a storyline that's weird and illogical is not necessarily a bad thing, but a lot of it depends on the delivery - I've already cited We <3 Katamari earlier in the thread and nobody in their right mind would ever consider any of the events in that game to be plausible. But, by the same token, nobody would ever feel the need to contend that they were, due to the light-hearted presentation that the game uses to deliver its premise. It's all about tone - Katamari is all about cartoony surrealism, so we're not compelled to infer any basis of reality from the events. The Metal Gear Solid is, by no means, a bastion of realism, but it's far from whimsical and no trickery and/or quirkiness in plot delivery (transmissions from "Outer Heaven", fake Game Over screens) can excuse such an incomprehensible plotline, especially when it distracts so much attention away from the actual gameplay. The fact that Sons of Liberty references James Bond, countless animes, and even previous games in the series may make it postmodern and it may make it more literary than your average game, but it doesn't necessarily make it good - the smirk you get from hearing sappy piano music over the conversations between "Jack and Rose" does not even begin to outweigh the absurdity of the S3 Plan, or the Patriots, or Naked Raiden, or Otacon having an incestuous relationship with his stepmother. MGS2 has phenomenal gameplay, perhaps even the best in the series, depending on your patience with eating snakes and mending wounds...but the storyline almost completely torpedoes the entire experience.

Considering the out-of-conference records of the NFC playoff teams to the AFC playoff teams, it's not really that far-fetched: NFC Playoff Teams vs. AFC Bears: 2-2 Saints: 1-3 Eagles: 1-3 Seahawks: 2-2 Cowboys: 3-1 Giants: 1-3 ------- Packers: 1-3 Panthers: 2-2 Combined record against AFC: 10-14 Combined record against AFC (including teams that barely missed): 13-19 _____________________________________________ AFC Playoff Teams vs. NFC Colts: 3-1 Patriots: 4-0 Chargers: 4-0 Ravens: 3-1 Chiefs: 4-0 Jets: 3-1 ------- Broncos: 1-3 Bengals: 2-2 Combined record against NFC: 21-3 Combined record against NFC (including teams that barely missed): 24-8 And that's just taking a look at the playoff teams. The AFC dominated the interconference play as a whole, piling up a 40-24 record against the NFC over the regular season: AFC East: 12-4 AFC South: 9-7 AFC North: 9-7 AFC West: 10-6

I didn't watch much of college football this year until the bowl games - how much did Lane Kiffin change the USC offensive scheme that he inherited from Norm Chow?

The issues with Kraft were related around a desire to be a fully-fledged GM, but most coaches would normally have some input over selections made in the draft. I will concede that the extent of that input can probably be disputed, though. I don't know that much about the Patriots infrastructure at that time to specifically gauge how much input Parcells had, but I would sincerely doubt that he was left in the dark. Some clarification regarding this point, now that I've found some articles that shed some light on the Parcells/Patriots situation. This feature, which was written last year, reveals that Parcells had signed a five-year deal with coach and GM priveleges. What's noteworthy, though, is that Kraft was not the owner of the Patriots when Parcells was hired, as Kraft purchased the Patriots roughly one year after Parcells signed on with New England. Also worth mentioning is the state of the franchise at the time; in the three years prior to the hire, the New England Patriots were 9-39, earning a 2-14 record in the previous season. Over the next two seasons with Kraft as the owner, Parcells would return mixed results: he would make the playoffs in his second year with the team on a 10-6, only to lose to Cleveland (and, ironically, Bill Belichick, in what was BB's only playoff win as the Browns' HC). The next season, 1995, would not go as smoothly, as Drew Bledsoe regressed and a young defense struggled to keep opponents out of the end zone. Though Parcells had a well-established track record of success, there were rumblings that he was having issues handling player personnel decisions as well as coaching. Kraft stripped Parcells of his responsibilities as general manager before the 1996 season, appointing Bobby Grier to be his director of player personnel and, in the process, really pissing Parcells off. An incident in the 1996 war room, involving a dispute between Parcells and Kraft over the Patriots' first pick, would widen the gap even further between the coach and the new owner. The decision to reduce Parcells' role in the organization seemed to yield an immediate turnaround, as the Patriots would capture their first AFC East title in ten years with a 11-5 record in 1996. New England would steamroll through the rest of the AFC en route to meeting Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXI, but the game was hardly the biggest story; six days before the Super Bowl as Will McDonough of the Boston Globe broke the news that Bill Parcells was going to be stepping down as the head coach of the Patriots after the season. New England would go onto lose to the Packers and the whole Parcells/Belichick saga between the Patriots and the Jets would begin. Parcells was 32-32, exactly .500 over his four years with New England, with one rebuilding year (his first), two playoff appearances, and a disappointing 1995 campaign. To take a look at his impact on the personnel over that period, here's a look at his draft picks during his stint in New England (including Grier's 1996 season, just for the sake of reference): Notables from the 1993 Draft Drew Bledsoe Chris Slade Vincent Brisby Troy Brown Notables from the 1994 Draft Willie McGinest Notables from the 1995 Draft Ty Law Ted Johnson Curtis Martin Notables from the 1996 Draft (Bobby Grier) Terry Glenn Lawyer Milloy Tedy Bruschi Adam Vinatieri (an undrafted free agent) Martin, Slade and Brisby contributed more to the 1996 AFC Championship run and Bledsoe and Glenn's impact on the 2001 is understated (at best), but a surprising amount of the "core" of the 2001 Patriots comes from this era, particularly the defense. Grier's first year on the job was particularly fruitful, but Parcells does get a bit of a bonus for grabbing Curtis Martin, who might have turned out to be an impact player for a long time in New England, had Parcells stayed around. A couple of thoughts about the history of Parcells with New England: 1. I completely forgot about Parcells standing up Tampa Bay to go to NBC, and doing it after a handshake agreement, no less. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for his character. 2. The Parcells/Kraft situation was probably rigged to explode from the get-go - Parcells was not Kraft's guy and, given how ambitious Kraft has been with the franchise, it would be hard to believe that he would have settled around for anybody, let alone a guy like Parcells that was bordering on insubordination through his final year there. 3. Having read more about the soap opera that would unfold between Parcells, Belichick, and Kraft over the next five years, I'm not sure there's much that you can really say positively about any of it. I knew it was bad, but never that bad. All three guys come off with black marks, in my opinion. 4. Considering points #1 and #3, I'm willing to concede that I glossed over a fair amount of Parcells' character when making my initial argument. I think, on the merits of his success on the field, Parcells is still a top all-time coach. I would take him over Schottenheimer, over Cowher, over virtually anybody in the era, save for probably Belichick. (That Belichick inherited so much talent from this era is another discussion entirely.) Overall, though, I can see where there's a lot of distrust towards the guy and, ultimately, a lot of irony surrounding his tenure in Dallas. What a crazy career.

It's not quite Scoop Jackson's assertion that everybody who criticizes Dusty Baker is a racist, but it's closer than I'd ever prefer to be. Maybe The Worst Article Ever (Non-Racist Division).