THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

First D.J.: "Rise and shine, campers and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today." Second D.J.: "It's cold out there every day. What is this, Miami Beach?" First D.J.: "Not hardly. So the big question o­n everybody's lips..." Second D.J.: "O­n their chapped lips..." First D.J.: "...their chapped lips is, 'Does Phil feel lucky?' Punxsatawney Phil! That's right, woodchuck chuckers it's...

(IN UNISON): GROUNDHOG DAY!!!"

Sunday, Punxsutawney Phil ---  the Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary will predict whether we will have six more weeks of winter.  According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, Phil has seen his shadow 97 times, and hasn't seen it (predicting an early spring) only 14 times.  Phil's track record is hotly disputed, though he's has had a pretty good run recently.  Nevertheless, thousands will await the sunrise and the groundhog at Gobbler's Knob in the tiny Pennsylvania hamlet that has become known as the "Weather Capital of the World," due in no small part to the movie that makes every day Groundhog Day.

This is o­ne time where the Internet really fails to capture the true excitement of a movie about a large squirrel predicting the weather. However, you can see the trailer as a refresher (while BuzzFeed compiles trivia).

In 2005, Roger Ebert revisited Groundhog Day, declaring that the film "finds its note and purpose so precisely that its genius may not be immediately noticeable. It unfolds so inevitably, is so entertaining, so apparently effortless, that you have to stand back and slap yourself before you see how good it really is."

At the other end of the political spectrum, Jonah Goldberg's equally effusive movie meditation grabbed the cover of National Review: "When I set out to write this article, I thought it'd be fun to do a quirky homage to an offbeat flick, o­ne I think is brilliant as both comedy and moral philosophy. But while doing what I intended to be cursory research -- how much reporting do you need for a review of a twelve-year-old movie that plays constantly o­n cable? -- I discovered that I wasn't alone in my interest. In the years since its release the film has been taken up by Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement."

Indeed, a 2004 article mentioned by Ebert (but not linked) from London's Independent observes that the Harold Ramis comedy has been hailed by some religious leaders as the most spiritual film of all time. More examples can be found at the NYT and the Christian Science Monitor.

As Phil Connors ultimately observed: "When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."

ACCORDINGLY, we start off the weekend:

...with Sonny & Cher o­n Hullabaloo and famously o­n Letterman years later, plus UB40 with Chrissie Hynde, not to mention The Cynics (from the Bonograph tribute CD), and David Bowie & Marianne Faithfull. A bit more for Fivefer Friday.

BLITZEN TRAPPER stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set. 

WARPAINT plays a mini-set for KEXP from the Cutting Room Studio in NYC.

RICHARD BUCKNER plays unplugged at the KEXP studio.

ANGEL OLSEN played a Tiny Desk Concert at the offices of NPR.

YUCK drops "Athena" ahead of the Southern Skies EP. (No, it's not The Who tune.)

THE BIRD & THE BEE, with an assist from The National's Matt Berringer, drop “All Our Endless Love,” from the Endless Love soundtrack.

NENA: "99 Luftbalons." Because I found myself watching Watchmen the other night.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS talks to the Village Voice about the 25th anniversary expanded edition of her self-titled LP.

FUTURE ISLANDS talk to Pitchfork about their ambitious new album Singles and why being a careerist in the world of music isn't such a terrible thing.

T-BONE BURNETT talks to Drowned in Sound about scoring the Coen Bros' Inside Llewyn Davis.

THE BUZZCOCKS' A Different Kind Of Tension -- essayed by The A.V. Club.

CUTOUT BIN: From Oscar Issac & Marcus Mumford to David Bowie & Joy Division, from Jeff Buckley to X-Ray Spex, from Al Green to Of Montreal, plus the Lovin' Spponful, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, The Cure, Wrens and more -- this Friday's fortuitous finds are streaming from the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases are That Awkward Moment, which is currently scoring 21 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; and Labor Day, which is scoring 35 percent.

JUSTIN BIEBER was “excited, talkative, insulting, cocky” and profane when he was arrested in Miami Beach last week. He was also on weed and pills, accoring to the toxicology report.

JERRY SEINFELD and George Costanza, together again.

SHARKNADO: Ian Ziering and Tara Reid return for the New York-set sequel.

MILEY CYRUS & MADONNA grind on a MTV Unplugged medley. Shocka.

LINDSAY LOHAN claims half of her 75K coat went missing at a New York nightclub.

THE UNITED STATES: Federal prosecutors said they plan to seek the death penalty for suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

SYRIA: The US blamed Syria for delays in the removal of its chemical weapons arsenal.

LIBYA: The son of the Libyan army's special forces commander was kidnapped in Benghazi.

IRAQ: An Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham suicide assault team killed 17 Iraqis in an attack on the Transportation Ministry in Baghdad; the six suicide bombers were also killed.

HAMSTERS Playing Dead.

A DOG was charged with biting a bank worker’s penis in Lagos.

DOG-SLED TAXIS now available at Kirkenes Airport in Norway.

COLONEL MEOW, internet predecessor to Grumpy Cat, has passed away.

OF MONTREAL drops an appropriately trippy clip for "She Ain't Speaking Now."

AZTEC CAMERA is streaming the 30th anniversary reissue of High Land, Hard Rain.

THE FRATELLIS stopped by WFUV's Studio A to share some of the new songs and talk abouttheir latest LP.

DALE EARNHART JR JR stopped by WFUV's Studio A to share songs from their latest album, The Speed of Things.

ALL SONGS CONSIDERED: New tracks from Wye Oak, John Lurie, Cheetahs, and more feature on the latest edition.

EELS drops "Agatha Chang" ahead of The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett.

ABRACADABRALIFORNIA: Not the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

BOB DYLAN: After 35 albums, frequent tours and countless interviews... why do we know so little about him?

BROKEN BELLS: James Mercer and Danger Mouse talks to Stereogum about the making and meaning of After The Disco.

ART BRUT: Fmr guitarist Jasper Fulcher discusses life after leaving the band.

LAURA CANTRELL is profiled by MAGNET. 

JUSTIN BIEBER will fight charges that he resisted arrest, was driving under the influence and driving with an expired license. He is unlikely to be deported based on the charges, despite a White House petition urging his removal. The Biebs was also charged with criminal assault in Toronto.  Bieber's new galpal is miffed about reports claiming she has a string of arrests in her past.

KANYE WEST reportedly paid his battery victim 250K to settle a civil claim.

HUGH GRANT is now the father of three love children.

ALEC BALDWIN: Another day, another misdirected Twitter tantrum.

PRINCE dropped a 22 million dollar bootlegging suit.

CHRISTIE BRINKLEY celebrates her 60th birthday with a People swimsuit cover.

THE OLYMPICS: There has been an uptick in reports of security threats against next month’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, but the key concern for an attack centers on locations outside the main event areas, a top US intelligence official said Wednesday.

ALGERIA has adopted legislation to try to retake control of the thousands of extremist mosques in the country.

SYRIA: The US National Intelligence Director James Clapper warned in the agency's 2014 threat assessment that "Syria has become a significant location for independent or al Qaeda-aligned groups to recruit, train, and equip a growing number of extremists, some of whom might conduct external attacks," and said elements of Syria's biological warfare program might be capable of production though not yet weaponized.

LEBANON: A military prosecutor charged al Qaeda-linked 13 suspects with planning terror attacks.

LIBYA: Gunmen in Tripoli attacked the armored car of Deputy Prime Minister and acting Interior Minister Sadiq Abdulkarim Abdulrahman, but he escaped the attempted assassination.

A CAT warms himself with popcorn.

SEXUAL CANNIBAL SPIDERS may have poor impulse control. Most sexual cannibals do, Clarice.

SNAKES in a bag on a Brooklyn sidewalk, but not in a Pennsylvania casino.

BIZARRE EEL INCIDENTS worry a train driver.

HOSPITALITY's video for "Going Out" stars Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips.

BROKEN BELLS is advance streaming After The Disco via iTunes.

WILLIS EARL BEAL is advance streaming A Place That Doesn’t Exist.

THE FAMILY RAIN is advance streaming Under The Volcano.

FOUR TET is streaming early releases via Bandcamp. 

TEGAN & SARA drop “Don’t Find Another Love" from the Endless Love soundtrack.

DALE EARNHARDT JR JR covers Randy Newman's “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today”.

THE TREMELOES: "Here Comes My Baby," live circa 1967. Written by Cat Stevens.

PETE SEEGER, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 94. The New York Times obituary, however, is pretty lame when it comes to discussing Seeger's Communist past (as the NYT knows, Seeger didn't denounce Stalin until the 1990s).  The New Republic does a better job, and refers to ex-communist Ron Radosh's writings on Seeger. Whatever one's opinion of Seeger's politics, his music, Stalinism, or the blacklist, the supposed Paper of Record could have done much better at reporting that aspect on Seeger's momentous life and career.

THE HOLD STEADY frontman Craig Finn talks to the Memphis Flyer about the band's upcoming album and tour. (Thx, LHB.)

U2 manager Paul McGuinness talks about the road from pubs to stadiums.

JONATHAN RICHMAN: Ten of his best.

JUSTIN BIEBER has decided to move out of Calabasas; the egging incident and the Sheriff's raid on Bieber's home were the final straw. Will he retire from music and open a tattoo parlor? It's too good to check.

MILEY CYRUS &  MADONNA: Unplugged together. Obligatory, really.

VIN DIESEL dances with himself... to the strains of Beyonce and Katy Perry.

ZOOEY DESCHANEL is designing for Tommy Hilfiger.

CAPTAIN AMERICA 3 is already being discussed, even before the sequel opens this Spring.

CLASSIC COEN BROTHERS FILMS, reinterpreted as gig posters.

UKRAINE: Anti-government protesters on Tuesday said they would not leave the streets despite a vote by Ukraine's parliament repealing anti-protest laws that have sparked demonstrations and takeovers of government buildings. The vote came hours after Prime Minister Mykola Azarov submitted his resignation in a bid to end the protests that have gripped the country since November.

THE UNITED NATIONS Security Council urged countries to stop the payment of kidnap ransoms to extremist groups like al Qaeda, which have earned hundreds of millions of dollars from such crimes.

EGYPT: Former president Mohammed Morsi went to court for his trial related to a January 2011 jail break. An Egyptian general in the Interior Ministry was shot dead outside his home in Cairo.

IRAQ: The US will sell 24 Apache attack helicopters to the Iraqi military.

A LIONESS sneaks up on a reporter.

GEM the PUPPY is looking good after surviving a trip through a recycling center.

ZOMBIE BEES are spreading across the United States. 

MAN STABS SHARK, stitches up his own leg, goes to the pub for a beer.

CULTS played "“Keep Your Head Up” at the Ed Sullivan Theater.

SWEETHEART 2014: Fab love songs covered by fab artists, streaming at NPR.

PLUS/MINUS advance streams Jumping The Tracks.

MARK McGUIRE advance streams Along The Way.

GOLDEN SMOG, Live at the Great American Music Hall,June 26, 1996.

CHVRCHES covers the Bauhaus classic "Bela Legosi's Dead" for the Vampire Academy soundtrack.

CLOUD NOTHINGS drop "I'm Not Part of Me" ahead of  Here And Nowhere Else. Nice!

THE MINDBENDERS bring Twofer Tuesday: "Game of Love" and "Groovy Kind of Love."

SAVAGES talk to PopMatters about Throbbing Gristle, Alan Moore, Surrealist Manifestos, and more...

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN plans to sell recordings of his shows at exorbinant prices. I blame the bankers.

MAXWELL's: The inconic Hoboken music club is reopening as an artisanal pizza parlor.

THE 10 BEST GRATEFUL DEAD SONGS, according to Stereogum.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Preview her Super Bowl commercial.

HEIDI KLUM and her bodyguard boyfriend Martin Kirsten split after dating for a year and a half.

ELIZABETH BANKS will make her feature directorial debut with Pitch Perfect 2.

QUENTIN TARANTINO has filed a copyright lawsuit against Gawker Media for allegedly disseminating copies of his script, The Hateful Eight.

ADAM SCOTT & PAUL RUDD gave Bosom Buddies the shot-for-shot parody treatment.

BETTER CAUL SAUL: Jonathan Banks has joined Bob Odenkirk for the Breaking Bad prequel.

UKRAINE: The Ukrainian president and opposition leaders have agreed to scrap anti-protest laws that had fueled anger at the government, the presidency says. Viktor Yanukovych also offered an amnesty to protesters, but only if they cleared barricades and stopped attacking government buildings.

SYRIA: The US is providing light arms, including antitank rockets, to "moderate" rebels in southern Syria. The US has also resumed the shipment of nonlethal aid, including vehicles and communications equipment, to Syrian rebels in the north, a month after shipments were suspended following the seizure of Free Syrian Army warehouses by Islamist rebels. A recent effort to unify jihadist ranks split by infighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham has temporarily stalled.

EGYPT: Army chief Abdel Fatah el Sisi is expected to soon announce plans to run in presidential elections, a move supported by the military.

HUNDREDS OF CHICKENS made a brave bid for freedom when a truck transporting them overturned on a motorway in China.

FLATULENT COWS set fire to a German dairy farm.

CATS were lifted off their feet by the blast of gale-force wind that ripped across counties from Kent to the Midlands on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by lightning, hailstones and torrential rain.

SNATCHED BY A CROCODILE: A 12-year-old boy is missing in a remote part of the Australian Outback.

ARCADE FIRE covers INXS's "Devil Inside."

ROBERT ELLIS is advance streaming The Lights from the Chemical Plant.

JEREMY MESSERSMITH is advance streaming Heart Murmurs.

MARISSA NADLER is advance streaming July.

DAVID CROSBY is advance streaming Croz.

MARCHING BAND is streaming So Much Imagine.

TEGAN & SARA sing an Oreo jingle.

THE MARY ONETTES drop "Silence Is A Gun" ahead of Portico.

THE BOTH: Aimee Mann and Ted Leo share "Milwaukee" ahead of their self-titled LP.

PAUL COLLINS & PETER CASE, formerly of The Nerves, play "Hanging On The Telephone" in-store.

NEIL YOUNG shares his recording philosophy.

NEIL GALLAGHER reviews Oasis videos...and he hates them.

THE PIXIES talk to Salon about the perks of being veteran artists, and the downsides of social media.

A HISTORY OF THE DRUM MACHINE, from Soul-Sides' Oliver Wang.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Ride Along repeats atop the chart with 21.2 million; its 49 percent drop is not terrible after a long weekend debut, and 75.4 million against a 25 million production budget should leave a happy studio. Lone Survivor repeats at No. 2 with 12.6 million; again, a 43 percent drop isn't great for a well-reviewed war movie (and one unlikely to do big overseas biz), but 93.6 million so far against a 40 million production budget isn't bad. The Nut Job shows with 12.3 million on a 37 percent drop -- and should recoup its 42 million production budgetin the coming week.  Frozen moves up a notch to the fourth slot with another 9 million and a 347 million domestic total against a 150 million production budget (worldwide, it has crossed the 800 million mark).  Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit rounds out the Top Five with 8.8 million; the reboot seems unlikely to recoup its 60 million budget domestically, but has grossed 76.7 million worldwide so far.  Below the fold, I, Frankenstein opened in sixth place with 8.3 million against a 65 million budget. Ouch. I note, however, that Lionsgate isn't really taking the hit for this -- Lakeshore Entertainment (which produced the similar Underworld series) is really the company on the hook for this one. Also, American Hustle continues to lead the Oscar-bait on this week's chart, despite the widening releases for Dallas Buyers Club and Nebraska.

BEHOLD A PALE HORSE: The Grammys Winners.

JAY-Z & BEYONCE top Billboard's Power 100 List.

JUSTIN BIEBER resurfaces on the beach in Panama with Chantal Jeffries, who has a record. Bieber's people are asking the singer to come back to L.A. so they can sit with him and convince him to go into therapy.  Meanwhile, TMZ questions the charges against him.

ROBIN WILLIAMS & PAM DAWBER, together again. Ork, ork.

JOSH LUCAS and his wife, Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, are calling it quits after almost two years of marriage.

UKRAINE: Dozens of protesters on Sunday seized the justice ministry in Kiev, smashing its windows.

THE UNITED KINGDOM: The head of the Police Officers' Association said British nationals who travel to Syria to fight with the rebels could be arrested upon their return, and noted that already this year UK authorities have arrested 16 people on suspicion of terrorism offenses in Syria, compared to 24 arrests total in 2013.

LIBYA: Kidnappers holding five Egyptian diplomats gave Egypt 24 hours to release Libyan Revolutionaries Operations Room head Shaban Hadia Al-Zway, who was arrested two days ago in Alexandria on suspicion of links to al Qaeda. As a precaution, Egypt evacuated staff from its embassy in Tripoli and consulate in Benghazi.

SYRIA: The Assad regime and the Syrian opposition failed to reach any agreements in their first face-to-face meeting.

THE UNITED STATES Congress cut the US military and development aid budget for Afghanistan for this year to $1.1 billion, down from last year's $2.1 billion, in the wake of President Karzai's refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement and reports of waste and fraud in Afghanistan.

IRAN: The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog says the interim deal reached with Iran on its nuclear program is an important step forward, but that "there is still a long way to go".

A DEER. In the woods.

THE BIRDS are forcing the move of a Spokane bus stop.

THE CANNIBAL RATS' GHOST SHIP likely sunk.

AN ABANDONED PINK PUPPY finds a home.