Beltmann

Had a pretty good year... went 20/24, missing only Foreign Language, Sound Mixing, Short Subject Documentary, and Animated Short. Man, I thought Presto was a lock. I'm more or less indifferent about the winners, but I'm glad Sean Penn and Heath Ledger won, and I wish that Viola Davis and Auf der Strecke had won, too.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is overheated, ridiculous, disjointed, detached. Stunningly bad. I also re-watched Burn After Reading and had just as much fun as the first time.

Not their finest moment--Meg looked way off--but I enjoyed the idea of re-working the song as more contemplative.

We have Charter cable, and I noticed that "Kicking Television" is currently available On Demand on the Havoc channel. It's the same video clip Wilcoworld hosted right before the live album came out. Nice to have something salvaged from the scrapped DVD, especially as my memories of that show continue to fade.

Love 'em. Going to see them in April.

Magic Slim & the Teardrops - Midnight Blues

I did that, too, and have been listening to both all night. The ears are happy.

Really? I've gone to the Pabst a lot, and it's almost always GA. Agreed on all counts (except for the drive, which for me is about 50 minutes).

4. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

I personally heard 50+ once; I think it was in Milwaukee, maybe a Summerfest show.

Yep. Not only is the sound crap, the rest of the place is falling apart, too. I've decided that I won't go there again unless it's a band I can't bear to miss under any circumstances. Wilco, for example.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Hodie! Miss having you around these parts!

Yeah, it's his new one. It was released in Europe last year. If you liked Songs, then you'll like this one--it's more of the same.

You, the Living [Du Levande] / Roy Andersson / Sweden More perfection from Andersson. Like Songs from the Second Floor, the movie is a series of carefully crafted, highly stylized tableaux that don't quite mold into a narrative but fit like jigsaw pieces into a kind of thematic consistency. (If the earlier film was about impending apocalypse, this one is about dreams, nightmares, and the desire for connections with others.) I'm a bit of a sucker for Andersson's stone-faced style (most scenes are one shot, with the camera perfectly placed to capture all necessary detail and action, plus hi

The guy Michael referred to as "Penguin"? I went to high school with that actor. Super nice guy.

This is genuinely ridiculous. Come on.

Yeah... still, I'm gonna try to get to both!

That'll help traffic, at least.

I'm a huge Packers fan and a huge Favre fan--I lived in Green Bay during the Super Bowl season, and it was bliss--and didn't want Favre to retire after last season. Even so, I believe the team did the right thing sticking with Rodgers. The organization badly mishandled the decision, but at the end of the day, it was, indeed, the right decision. Would the Packers have won more games with Favre at the helm rather than Rodgers? Based on comparison stats alone, there's no reason to believe that Favre would have outperformed Rodgers. Obviously Favre has intangibles that exist outside of the s

Indeed.... thanks!

But the real problem is that too many conservatives think of Hannity when they think of the ideal Conservative. Nearly every single one of my Republican or conservative friends thinks he's the cat's pajamas.

Insurance companies don't specialize in medicine; they specialize in making money by helping people as little as possible. My own family has been touched many times by the evil that is the medical insurance business plan.

I agree--we should leave those decisions to the insurance companies.

I would love to hear left-wing voices dominate the airwaves, but I oppose any kind of fairness doctrine. It's cumbersome, ineffective, and totally unnecessary.