willhines.net

That’s all.

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Okay, people, let’s figure this out: how good ARE Liz Phair albums?

The central problem in figuring this out is that it’s very hard to separate the appeal of Liz Phair Albums from the appeal of The Idea Of Liz Phair. And that’s even more complicated since it’s very difficult to nail down what exactly The Idea Of Liz Phair is.

For myself, the Idea of Liz Phair is that she is the Coolest Woman Alive. She isn’t, of course, but for those of use who were in our early 20s in 1993, when Liz Phair’s first album Exile In Guyville came out — that’s what she is. This unknown, deadpan, sarcastic, sexually aggressive girl singer arose from the wake of super-macho [...]

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I’ve got some bad news, people. I feel compelled to write about baseball. Just for today.

My thoughts today are about Marvin Miller, who is one of the smartest people I’ve ever heard of. He was the head of the baseball player’s union in the 1970s, and in 1975, he won the right for players to be free agents. Before that time, once a player signed with a team, they were essentially stuck with that team for life. It meant players couldn’t shop their talents to the highest bidder. With free agency, players shopped themselves around — and salaries skyrocketed.

That story could make you HATE Marvin Miller, if you see him as the man who [...]

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I drove down to the laundromat early this morning in my shlumpiest form: hair sticking up, face unshaven, glasses sliding down my greasy nose, Sandman T-shirt hanging out untucked and big dumpy brown coat sliding around my shoulders — all while lugging an enormous sack of crusty clothes. As I got out of my car, a red sedan sped by with the driver shouting out the window:

“Channnelll one oh twooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

That guy is either a friend of mine, or was just randomly shouting out the name of that web site to any and all who would listen on Metropolitan Avenue at around 8 thie morning.

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I’ve been cleaning my apartment all evening, and while doing so I sank into an odd daydream that I lived in the world of the (HBO mob family drama) The Sopranos. Not as a mobster, just a guy who worked in a generic seedy gambling/strip joint as a second or third assistant to the owner, who was a cocaine-sniffing crook.

In my daydream, mob lieutenant Christopher comes bursting into the place, furious that we had fallen behind in our “protection” payments by $15,000. The guys higher than me were trying to buy time, while Christopher started breaking furniture and fingers. I calmly walked over to the safe and gave him its contents — about $10,000. I collected another $3,000 from everyone [...]

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I was sitting on the subway yesterday, reading Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbon’s comic book epic Watchmen. The guy sitting next to me, a thin 40ish guy with a business suit, nods at it and says to me:

“V is coming out soon.”
“What’s that?”
“V, the movie of V for Vendetta [another Alan Moore comic] is coming out soon.”
“Oh, yeah. I saw the trailer. It looks good.”
“Yeah, it should be awesome.”
“I hope so.”
“I saw you reading that and I thought maybe you were boning up on all your Alan Moore classics in prepartion.”
“No, I’m just re-checking that issue 5 is truly symmetrical. I read that it’s laid out so the last panel reflects the [...]

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I was teaching an improv class last night, and Al Long was doing a very funny monologue as a depressed husband sadly complaining about his wife. I thought it might get better if he also talked about things he liked about his wife, so I interrupted him,

“Try talking about why you love her.”
“Okay, Um… well, hmmm… ”
“Anything you like, ever.”
“Yeah, well.. she’s… um… a real pretty lady.”
“Right, good.”
“Yeah, a real pretty lady.”
“Good face,” I suggested.

The whole class turned its collective heads to me, brows furrowed. I realized that the phrase “good face” had sounded really creepy and weird, somehow. I just meant it to be an example of a specific thing you could [...]

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Who wouldn’t?

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My five-minute pilot (co-created with Matt DeCoster and Terry Jinn) “The Block” was selected for another episode, folks. If you’d like, check it out the first episode here, and look for a second, kick-ass installment come January sometime.

http://www.willhines.net/102/block2.mov

I have a deep, horrible-sounding cough that makes me sound like the plague victims from the beginning of The Stand. I can feel the itch in the back of my throat, about halfway down my windpipe. That’s eerie. But cool. Maybe I’m turning into a robot warrior. Or about to mutate into a winged demon. It could be.

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Matt DeCoster, Terry Jinn and I made a five minute television pilot called “The Block” for Channel 102, and it will be part of their screening this Tuesday night. Check it out, if you’d like! 8:30pm at the Anthology Film Archives.

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