Didn't 3 Doors Down ensure a decade of utterly unmerited national semi-fame by contracting their each and every new single to be the new soundtrack for National Guard Recruiting Commercials?

I actually like Collective Soul, as they were among the best of the endlessly sandpapered, utterly neutered post-grunge bands that started cropping up in the mid-90s, a musical movement that reached its horrible, horrible nadir with Creed. Collective Soul could actually write a decent song or two per album, which…

Lifehouse=Fifth-rate Collective Soul.

Albeit giving bizarro impromptu performances in karaoke bars and over Home Depot PA systems.

I just read a concert review that confirms that Lifehouse just passed through LA as the opening band…

I'll stand up for Aerosmith's mid-70s peak output, but inevitably the bottom fell out of their coke-fueled creativity. Their voodoo resurrection at the hands of Desmond Child just illustrates the utter desolation that was mainstream hard rock at the end of the '80s, Guns 'n Roses notwithstanding. There are (painfully…

That's a stain on your soul that's never going to wash out, Leonard.

If Michael Bay does not qualify as a charter member of The Damned, then no one does. Bring on the commentary tracks!

Spider-Man 3 was a travesty.

Are we forgetting that James Marsden also starred in Superman Returns? He was filming his role in SR (Once again playing the "boyfriend getting in the way") concurrently with the X-Men 3 production, so one could speculate that his relative unavailability necessitated re-writes that made Cyclops' end even more…

Good lord, did I despise X-Men 3 when it came out. I would say that X3 tried just as hard as the first two installments for a self-consciously "serious" tone, but since Brett Ratner is evidently the sort of guy who awkwardly has to focus the room's attention on the expensive motorcycle he bought for himself, used in…

The Shape of Things? REALLY?

I have to give kudos to Todd for sticking out what looks like a difficult interview, and eventually warming Russell Hoban up to share at least some of his creative process.

I've noticed that the comment activity tends to wind down as WUiB week progresses. The chat did read to me as a little less populated than it's been in the past, but then again, we were missing a large number of staffers, and the Thursday afternoon chat time doesn't jibe with a lot of commenters' schedules.

I'm inclined to agree with BVC. Riddley *finds* the Punch puppet, just like someone else before him had found and preserved it. Punch's importance to Riddley and to his narrative stems largely from the physical coincidence of Riddley stumbling across that puppet. If he'd found an action figure of the Incredible Hulk,…

Agh, I'm quite disappointed that I couldn't participate in the chat this week. It looked insightful and delightful, as it's always been.

And yet the mind is also key to triumphs of rationalism such as the Holocaust, the Bhopal disaster, and the development of the Atom Bomb.

God, if ever there were a group of people who were entitled to light a spliff and forget their troubles, those people were the proud citizens of Inland.

I used to tutor English at a community college, and I was shocked at how poor many of the students' composition skills were. That statistic doesn't surprise me at all, sadly.

I was hoping to be all cool and original, picking some heretofore neglected word…