Paul Westerberg offered some choice words to Rolling Stone about Ryan Adams, who has been copping some ‘Mats vibe in his recent work:

“I see his fuckin’ haircut, I hear his fuckin’ whine, I see his fake clothes, and then he opens his fuckin’ mouth and all I want to do is smash the fucker’s teeth down his throat.”

Ouch. That’s harsh.

My finger is sore from clicking all the applicable checkboxes on this quiz – Music Nerd Test. I’m shocked and dismayed that I only scored 62.31884% (Mega Music Nerd)…

The Online NES Emulator. This certainly takes me back – not least of all because I sucked at these games when I was 12 and still suck at them now. I wonder if Up-Down-Up-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Start will still work on the Konami games? The thing runs in a Java applet so I don’t think it’ll work for Mac people… Mac folks can’t play games – now there’s a shocking turn of events.

Because I feel like a list – my current top five fixations:

1) Luna – Sometimes I remember just why Dean Wareham and Sean Eden are my favorite guitarists ever.

2) Jeff Smith’s Bone – I am discovering this series just as it ends its run. One of the most enjoyable comic book reads I’ve found in ages.

3) Six Feet Under – um, so when is season two out on DVD?

4) Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic – now THIS is what Star Wars should be. I’d rather play this than watch the new movies. Damn you, George Lucas.

5) Phase shifter guitar pedals – swooooooosh

Not eliciting love is Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. Barely halfway through its 200 pages and I’m already bored to tears. I rarely abandon a book before its done but I’ve got a small stack of other stuff I’d rather be reading.

np – Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham / L’Avventura

Unleash your inner abstractionist at Mr Picassohead. Don’t pay my doodle too much heed – it doesn’t represent anything except my inner turmoil and despair.

The Largehearted Boy has links to mp3s-aplenty today. Live Suede from Toronto and Jools Holland circa 1995 (when they were still good), a smattering of unreleased Radiohead stuff and some live Ryan Adams.

After years, going on decades, of hearsay and speculation, rumours about the production of a Watchmen movie have been ramping up and getting louder lately. Once considered unfilmable (and who knows, maybe it still is), there seems to be a definite move to commit what’s regarded by many as the finest comic book ever written to celluloid. This is the latest tidbit to surface, in regards to the script:

“I have it in my hand now, it’s written by David Hayter and is a third draft written back in July of this year. I’m not sure of any other names in the production, other than the person I know. However if I remember correctly the reason the movie wasn’t made was someone higher wasn’t confident in the director which I was told may have been Hayter himself. Although the guy I know was a bit vague about that so I may be wrong. Also in the script, the alien teleporting thing is replaced with a solar beam weapon that vapourises everyone. Its pretty cool. Hope that helped.”

Hayter, by the way, is the guy who wrote the X-Men scripts as well as providing the voice for Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid video games. Truly a geek renaissance man. One of the other rumours I’ve heard has John Cusack being cast as Nite Owl. That would be… interesting. From Comic Book Resources.

I think it’s time to say ‘fuck you’ to Rogers (cable internet assholes). After making me wait around Sunday for the repairman to show up, they got me back online for a solid 12 hours before it went tits up again. So now I get to wait around Tuesday night for another repairman. Then the very next time Rogers even so much as hiccups, I’m calling Sympatico and switching. As they said in ancient Egypt, “Fuck this shit”.

UPDATE: Spider-Man 2 trailer. Ah-huh-huh-huh. From Stereogum.

np – Jeff Tweedy / Live At The Vic – January 9, 2003

Hello? Is this thing on?

The cable modem fairy came by this morning and finally got me back online. It seems the signal from the outside of the house to the inside was getting pooched somewhere, and I was not getting any signal. But he waved his magic wand and I seem to be back. I should probably not call him a fairy though, cause he was actually really big. I had been teased through the weekend with about a half-hour of uptime a day which let me check my email (but not reply), but things should be stable now.

The cover of the week is now up, a little later than usual. This marks the one-year anniversary of this little feature – I’m honestly amazed that I’ve managed to keep it going this long. Hopefully I can continue to do so.

I spent my weekend reading, shopping and watching Six Feet Under. I’m not loving it as much as I thought I would, but am slowly getting more into it. I hope everyone gets less bitchy and shrill, they’re all really quite annoying. Well, not so much Rachel Griffiths’ character, but that might just be because she’s hot. I also played a shitload of Knights Of The Old Republic. I’m kinda hooked now.

The strangest thing about being offline was losing stuff I took for granted, like checking the weather (yeah, I know I can do that on television as well, shut up). I had no idea there was snow forecast for today until I went outside to grab the paper and had to dig it out a snowbank. I need to get my boots.

I’m going to have to catch up on a weekend of missed internet going-ons, so no pithy links or commentary today, probably tomorrow. But I will say that while I’m thrilled that Saddam has been captured, I hope to God that Bush didn’t just win the ’04 election.

np – various artists – Pop Romantique

I seem to be back up, but for how long who knows. I’m not sure if it’s my modem that’s crappy or if something else is going on. But at least last night I got a lot of reading done.

I am doing Christmas shopping today.

Bye now.

My modem went down last night. To properly visualize what Frank is like when his internet craps out, picture a small cat. Sitting outside a window. Scratching at the glass. In the rain. Mewing pathetically.

I have a service call scheduled for SUNDAY around noon. God, I’m getting the shakes just thinking about it. I may well need my old friend Jack Daniels to get through this. So if this site doesn’t get updated for a couple days or you don’t get email from me or see me online on IMs, don’t panic – it’s not the seventh sign, I’m not dead. Of course, if I remain incommunicado through Monday, then I likely am dead and would appreciate it if someone could send people over to clean up the remains.

Sarah Harmer finally has a follow-up to You Were Here ready. All Of Our Names is scheduled for a March 9 release in Canada, March 16 in the US.

Get Fuzzy has some thoughts on Canadian money.

Stylus touches on what’s certainly one of my biggest fears in life – What do you do if your record collection vanishes? God, I can’t even imagine. From Burned By The Sun.

Okay, I can’t be arsed to go looking for any more interesting links. I hereby charge my readership to go find them for me, and post the links as comments. Or don’t, I don’t really care either way. But if you need to get in touch with me, today before 5:00 would be a good time. I will try to answer whatever backlog of emails I have by then as well.

Oh well, the longer I’m offline, the more Knights Of The Old Republic I get to play.

np – My Morning Jacket / It Still Moves