I've always felt that Duff was kind of the guy that was unfairly caught up in the Axl/Slash feud.  He was friends with both of these guys and I suspect he tried to smooth over some of the differences in 1995/1996 but at some point the Axl/Slash relationship deterriorated to the point where it was probably useless.

It's nice to see at least a little crack of light where these guys could make up (Axl and Duff) and just be friends and maybe collaborate on one song together.  This comment and Axl's earlier this year at leas give me some hope on this happening.

As far as the Weiland stuff goes, I think Scott might have been using drugs again probably annoyed them.  They are all former junkies (except for Dave) and having a lead singer on dope  couldn't have been very helpful.  Add that to the stuff that Weiland had a diva complex going and had stopped talking to the band at some point makes that situation toxic.

Walk, by a hair though.

I think one reason why a lot of us are bitching is that we've seen this movie before.  When things get promised--say an album---and it doesn't show up and
there's nothing but lame excuses or silence, it saps your enthusiasm for the brand name.  At some point it would be nice if they did stuff like a normal band and just released material every few years or so.  I'm not even talking about new music either.  By all accounts, Axl has an entire shitload of live GNR performances in his vault.  Why not release a two dvd set of live performances?  One would feature original GNR and I'd prefer to see the last show in Argentina, but I wouldn't complain if he picked the Ritz show.  The other dvd would be of new Gnr live performance--RIR  III, Hammerstein 2006 etc.  It would give the fans--old and new--something positive to talk about and he'd make a lot of money and make people happy.  It'd also tide over fans until the next supposed album.

But I think it makes too much sense for the band to ever consider this.  Sigh

State of Play--it was a lot better than Body of Lies.  A good film burdened by overplotting and a crappy performance by Ben Affleck.  Jason Bateman, Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren, and Rachel McAdams gave good performances.  I thought they explored the theme of traditional news media (newspapers) going by the wayside pretty well.

Shout it out loud.