Was our graduation song. I made some serious lists, man, shit that I figured would appeal to a decent swath of my peers. We ended up with Green Day, so fuck my efforts, but still. Maybe it was all location, but I liked my high school and (generally) harbored nothing but goodwill for my Clint Black-blasting, Sugar Ray-pumping classmates. I've long had a perverse affection for my social betters... if Ice Cube made 'em happy, well damnit, "You Can Do It". As if playing the Adverts would've meant jack shit to my friends... that's what wedding receptions are for.

Well, they may if it's a stylistic school to which they're drawn. However, a lot of Harry Potter fans - like fans of almost every widely-disseminated book - use the novels as tools to work out or amplify their own issues, neuroses, and pleasures. This may be why Potter fic retools the boys rather than reclaiming the girls - like Traister noted, it's not because the girls are one-dimensional (well, Cho kinda was), it's because that sort of thing just doesn't pump the blood of your average Potter slasher. Yes, there's a veneer of academia about the proceedings - we are talking about nerds, after all (God love 'em) - but it seems these conventions are cathartic first and literary second. 'Tisn't bad or stupid or lesser, just 'tis.

Hurt him. Foul him hard. I love what LeBron turned himself into, but sorcery didn't get him to the hoop past four guys (unlike that dunk over 'Sheed a couple games ago - that was all magick). The Pistons seem like an honorable bunch, but now that they've seen what Bron-Bron can do when he's pissed, they need to slap him silly. He's not a great foul-shooter by any stretch - his percentage has dipped each time the Cavs have advanced this year - so the Pistons would do well to (at least try to) wear him down.

smileyy

Hah! I'd forgotten we're talking about David Stern's NBA. Good point. Well, someone ought to try it before he enters the pantheon of playoff warriors (assuming one excellent game isn't enough)... McDyess might want to dust off his Bad Boy impression for Game 6. He's got about an inch on James. The worst that can happen is another ejection. I just don't think the Pistons have anything else. One is finally more than five.

mikes pace

Don't forget the Dead Boys!

That is, if they were honest with themselves. Other than baseball's AL forcing a merger with the NL, I'm hard-pressed to think of an American sports league that's managed to exist concurrently with its rival for more than a decade or so. For several reasons, we think of athletes as a super-rarified crop; beyond 700-800 or so players we begin thinking "dilution". You can make all the rational arguments you want about the randomness of the draft (is Hambrecht basically saying that his league will magically attract the kind of coaching that will turn third-rounders into bankable stars?); fandom is rarely rational. You can't talk many people into switching loyalty, sad to say.

Plus, the NFL has about 80 years' headstart in the mystique department. Fans say they'll watch sping football? Well, fans bitch all the time about being squeezed out, but the NFL's still setting attendance records. There's a cultural pull that $90 million franchise fees can't overcome. Plus, what another letter writer said was correct: the NFL has the TV contracts, it has exposure it doesn't need to pay ESPN for (hello, AFL!). Even if this new league can pay a better median wage, there's no way in hell the endorsements can match. The NFL might as well stand for No Fans Lost; they'll be fine and I hope Messrs. Hambrecht and Cuban get good money reselling those tackling dummies in five years.

Unless that's what Tuesday is for?

Why omit Mastodon? "Thinking person's metal" is such a condescending term, the kind (sorry, David) usually employed by metal dilettantes. Just because Isis or Pelican may borrow from acceptably "arty" styles like shoegazer or post-punk doesn't mean they're the only - or even primary - bands worth a damn. When Ulver or Watain's got a new album, maybe a post will be in order. Seriously, metal doesn't have to sound like Cluster or Brian Eno for it to be 1) worthwhile, 2) gripping, or 3) cerebral.

Fewer things made me happier in 2004 than Karl Malone being denied a championship after a desperate jump to the Lakers. On some rational level, I don't care that a man switches jobs to work in a more fun environment with better perks (hoisting the Cup, say). Viscerally, though, the notion that some old guy is "due" because he stuck it out on mediocre teams for 20 years galls me. I think Bill Simmons mentioned Kevin Willis' San Antonio payday the other day. Baseball used to be relatively free from this sort of thing, from Ernie Banks to Don Mattingly to Jeff Bagwell.

I know positioning yourself to win a Stanley Cup isn't the same thing as guaranteeing a win - ask Karl, there's no guarantee - but it's still a little cynical. At the very least, don't expect me to applaud Ray Bourque any louder than Joe Sakic.

It's like a crack-and-moon-pie sandwich. It took me months before I clicked on the neutralize-stats tag, and since then I've tried to figure out every major leaguer who could've made it to 3,000 hits, all else being equal. And 98% of its functionality is free. High schooler Jose Canseco, 15th round the year I was born! Amazing.

Imagine a Democratic party official talking about her frustration that American public sentiment about the war isn't translating into altered policies. Imagine her saying something offhand like "Apparently this country needs another attack on American soil to drive home the fact that the President's foreign policy has left us less safe than before 9/11."

How long would she have before she's forced to resign? One MSM news cycle? Half a news cycle?