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Where would I be without imdb.com? Well, for one, I wouldn’t know that today is Haley Joel Osment’s 18th birthday. Happy birthday, ya creepy little fucker! Whenever I see him onscreen I think he’s gonna jump down and stab me with a crucifix or something.

Anyway, looks like HJO is making a comeback this year after a three-year hiatus with Home of the Giants, a drama about high school journalism, basketball, drugs, and crime. Hey, that sounds pretty crappy! At least it features appearances by Jay Bilas, Dick Vitale, and Wayne Coyne. Plus it’s got Roosevelt Brown! Well, not the Roosevelt Brown (who coincidentally played for the New York Football Giants), but a Roosevelt Brown.

Wow, fuck all the Chicago festivals. Add in all the local acts that usually play and D-town’s Tastefest is really gonna be good for a change. I have to go home for my cousin’s wedding anyways that weekend, but who wouldn’t wanna go see Kings of Leon, Common, New Pornographers and Ray Davies?

FOR FREE.

In case - and may God please forbid it - you find yourself with a Rob Schneider vehicle on your hands and you don’t know what to do with it.

I’m off to opening day at Wrigley today with my office. Chicago’s weather looks like ass today so don’t be too mad at me. I promise to throw peanuts at Vince and Jennifer the whole time. Here’s some links to tide ya’ over.

—”My dad wrote “Teenage Riot” and he says I can go on any TV show I want!” I keed, I keed. Actually this might be a really good sign for Coco Gordon-Moore: apparently they let her watch TV. Odds of normalcy now only a hundred to one.

—What kind of clown are you, Spike Lee? A crying-on-the-inside one? I THINK NOT.

—Sorry, Classes ’03-‘05. The economy arrived too late to save the drowning witches. Meaningless btw for all my homies holding it down in the M-I. Buy a Chevy already will ya, America?

— You know how FOX and ABC both have wife swapping shows? And nanny shows? But somehow they both seem to stay on the air? NBC decided to bring that sense of capitalistic competition to their own line-up…BY PITTING TWO OF THEIR OWN SHOWS AGAINST EACH OTHER. The weirdest thing is I will watch both of them. Your favorite catch phrase of the fall will be Tracey Morgon’s naked scream of “I’m a Jedi!”

—Pistons made Shaq look so old last night. I know the Heat are hurting with Mourning out, but damn D-town look so effing good rolling into the playoffs. Don’t sell the city for scrap until they burn it down post Championship.

Anybody know why “Meaningless” by Jon Brion is so hard to find? Was that self-released or something crazy like that? “Hook, Line and Sinker” is fighting it out in my head with Joanna Newsome’s “Bridges and Ballons” and it’s getting ugly in a really twee kinda way.

and the law won.

There’s satire, and then there’s making fun of Detroit. We ain’t gonna stand for it.

I’m pretty sure that the pirates are winning at this point. Smart money bet of the week: Bush’s approval rating shoot through the roof when he announces Global War on Maritime Piracy.

Isn’t that amazing? It’s like the coming influenza outbreak or seal clubbing. I just can’t get over these are actually problems we have to deal with. This entire decade is a wash, let’s skip ahead to the teens and never mention it again.

I don’t rag on Pitchfork that much, I kinda get mad when people do, in fact. Yeah they are crazy and excitable, and they put out fewer brilliant reviews than they use to, but they get people geared up about new music and to play hipster backlash games with the kings of hipster backlash seems obvious and boring.

If I were to level a complaint it would be using the 5.4 to 6.9 level reviews as an insult. Tufnel-ian logic of this scale does piss me off; possibly because it used to be my job to devise and enforce this sort of thing and their editor are being lazy and dishonest. You want to write a dismissive, even mean review, do it and slap a 3 on it. But I guess what makes people mad about lots of pitchfork’s writing is it only has two gears and between rant and rave there is nothing. Rock critics are bad at writing about 3.5 star albums, which is weird because having something to say about average records seems like it would be most of their job since most records are in fact “average.”

I’ve been sitting on “At War With the Mystics” for more than a month so reading over the reviews that have come out, none of which seem to have much do to with the album I’ve already had a chance to digest. It is not “Soft Bulletin” or “Cloud Taste Metallic,” neither was “Pink Robots” (which critics seem to suddenly love? Somebody called it a breakthrough. I have no recollection of this. I think what they mean is Wayne has gotten lots of ink since it came out).

Ever since Wife of the Future! bought me “Cloud Taste Metallic” for my birthday when we were first going out, I’ve adored this band so a pretty good record is likely to sound great to me, but I think it’s more than that. The songs aren’t that strong, but that’s not the point of the Lips. Think of “Spiderbite Song” or “Kim’s Watermelon Gun.” These are not strongly written songs in any traditional sense. So people saying the songs aren’t as strong (possibly true) don’t get it. Same for saying the lyrics are big and ham-fisted sentiments, cause that’s what Wayne does. I think the ablum’s welding of celeb-obsessed american values with our idiots-abroad forgein policy is brillant and yet it always seems like Wayne is singing about himself as much as he is Brintey and Bush. God that’s amazing.

I don’t write record reviews anymore (no tears, please), so I’ll spare you any further analysis. I just like this album in the purest sense: I enjoy when it’s on. Thanks to the fearless freaks.

Almost ten years later, Biggie still winning East Coast/West Coast feud. The only way 2Pac can fight back now is to have his ashes sprinkled in the NY water supply.