Heather is dead on that to many shows live on far beyond what their premise(s) can maintain. I think the casual viewer likes that, however, as the reassurance of the known eliminates the need for thought.

Down below someone mentioned the British Office as an example of a show that neatly dealt with its premise and then went away. In fact, the BBC does a lot of this. Think of Fawlty Towers or the Black Adder series (plural). These could have become as stale as Friends (bad example I suppose, since Friends was stale from the outset) but the creators cut them off before they became rote and repetitive. I'm not sure why the BBC allows this from a business standpoint (or if they still do) but it sure did keep those shows interesting and, bonus points, it kept the characters honest to themselves since the scriptwriters didn't have to come up with 7 years worth of "new" scripts. Before I got rid of my TV I wondered how long House could last with the doctor as an unrelieved jerk and drug-addict.

Updates anyone?

;-)

sweet!

Am I the only person who heard the "In the Jungle, the mighty Jungle" owingaway riff stolen for the soundtrack?

Back to my obsessive taxonomy of rock-songs on my iPod. ;-)

just leave it at the door..

you can keep your pretensions though...

Her myspace site is even worse

sample lyric: "this house is not a home"

As Sarah noted, you may well see a bunch of letters here from idiots who can't understand someone else's experience and therefore reflexively hate and scorn it.

But why lose the "inner fat girl?" That inner fat girl was just you in a fat body. It's always good to stay in touch with the "you" in you. ;-)

"no parent should be in the position of having to teach their kids math"

How ridiculous is that? So all teaching is to be done at schools? Anyone with an attitude like that would be against homework on the basis of personal laziness.

That's not an argument, it's a preference.

Voting with or against the NRA has nothing to do with "principle" despite your obvious lack of affection for the NRA.

Sorry you don't like Feingold's vote here, but he explained it pretty well and, agree or disagree, I'm not sure how this vote represents an unprincipled act.

From the article:

"Although I voted for the ban on certain kinds of semiautomatic weapons in 1994, I have come to believe that it is a largely arbitrary and symbolic measure," Feingold said in a Senate speech. "Citizens see it as a first step toward confiscating their firearms."

and after the govt's actions in New Orleans (Post-Katrina) Feingold seems practically prophetic. And changing your mind over 10 years and explaining why?

That's evidence of thought, not lack of principle.

Where do all these one-issue folks come from?

Political neuroses aside, this is a classic hockey brawl and that is always funny..

and if it leads to international war because "whipped up" nationalists are a "symptom" of a "potentially deadly problem" that "could" (hmmm.. lots of conditional words here) lead the U.S. to war?

That would be even funnier...

I say we need to get the Korean national hockey team involved. That would "whip up" everybody!

It may just be my exquisitely honed Husker Du sensibilities, but these seem on the navel-gazing side of things. Even the "winding guitar jam" It's Not the Wind Chime That's Broken, It's the Wind by Tartufi seems a lot more like guitar-noodling to me.

Green and White Stripes by Colorforms may have "dreamy production and the singer's oh-so-engaging voice" if by that you actually mean synthesizer/keyboard patterns that would have embarrassed Gary Wright back in the day and vocals from the "i coulda been Natalie Merchant, but I had all these lyrics to steal."

I'll Roll With You is pretty amazing, but it is is obviously 'based' on Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" and I would have felt a bit better about the song if it were a bit more removed.

Welcome to Confusion is the closest thing to rock.. it has a funny/great progression of "welcomes" and it also does ramp up as it goes.. but even at the end, most of the "ramping" is accomplished by turning the volume levels on the amps up a bit. It's still jangly alterna-noise at heart.

Twenty Minute Loop's Cora May sounds like an acoustic outtake from a sh*tty Sleater-Kinney session fueled by peppermint tea and sleeping pills. Yeah, we get it, your vocals interlace.

"percolating Afro-pop vibe" is on my "want list" somewhere below stubbed toes and hangnails. But can someone please buy S' (whatever the hell that means) a better Casio?

Wikipedia isn't great or good by Salon's own judgement. But it "has an incredible knack for lodging itself deep inside the listener's head." Like bullets for Kennedys and Naegleria fowleri for the rest of us. Great.

Phil and the Osophers' Pretend Psalm is a bad Kinks ripoff by a band with a semi-clever name. Any time you mention a quirky voice in combination with "bouncy unpredictability" of melody? It's probably gonna suck and a semi-yodel and twangy country geetar aren't gonna help.

Delancey by the Jumping Bomb Girls reminds me a bit of a middling Replacements track. I must admit to liking it a bit and it has a bit of the Westerberg plaint and goes about 1 inch beyond jangle into rock. I give it an 8, but wish the plaintive bit had been cut down and the bashing bit increased. Only decent song here, says old Mr. Grumpy.

Mammoth's Tenochitlan is "intimidating and challenging" great. And murky and mysterious as well.... Nice. A song that doesn't want listeners.

I hope the finalists are better than this lot.

/Mr. Extremely Grumpy.

// ;-)

idiotic....

just like Gibson....

hang on now......

the Grinch didn't really steal Christmas?

Was it secular humanists? Or Fundamentalists?

Movies aren't history...