ONE DAY LEFT o­n that eBay auction of a near-complete set of 45s issued by the Sub Pop Singles Club. As you're reading this, Craig O'Neill's ears are burning.

ON THE PITCHFORK: Modest Mouse announce its U.S. tour, Yo La Tengo plans a three CD career retrospective, Crooked Fingers to issue a new album. Also, a cover of Cream's "Politician," by Chris Stamey & Yo La Tengo.

MOURNING OF BRAD AND JEN SPLIT CONTINUES: The rumors involving Angelina Jolie now center o­n phone sex. PLUS: The tsunami issues a statement o­n the breakup.

WHY I LOVE LAWYERS (IRAQ edition):  A lawyer for the accused ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal addressed the charge of piling naked prisoners into pyramids by rhetorically asking, "Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?"  But the cheerleaders aren't forced to do so naked, as fair as I know.  If you have evidence to the contrary, drop me an e-mail, preferably with an attachment.

AMBER FREY autographs a copy of her book (i.e., the o­ne bearing her name) for New York Post scribe Andrea Peyser.  The favor is not returned.

THE GOVERNATOR'S SECRET WEAPON: Most people have not noticed that California Republicans now chair the most important committees in the House of Representatives: Appropriations (spending), Ways and Means (taxes, Social Security and Medicare), Rules (controls whiich bills go to the floor and the terms of debate), Armed Services and Homeland Security. A better return o­n the tax dollars California sends to DC certainly would help Ahnuld fix the state budget.

POLITICS allowed Polio to spread in Nigeria.

CRITICS' CHOICE AWARDS went Sideways, as the "little film that could" collected five awards, including Best Picture. Jamie Foxx took home Best Actor for Ray, whereupon he led the crowd in a call-and-response from "What'd I Say?"

THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD nominations have been announced.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES has sneaky product placement.

MR. BLACKWELL puts a desperate housewife at the top of his 45th Annual "10 Worst Dressed Women" list, while complimenting Teri Hatcher o­n her improvement. You could probably guess most of the fashion victims (e.g., Courtney Love, French Hotel), but placing Jessica and Ashlee Simpson in a tie was a nice touch that will avoid any sibling rivalry. The big surprise was number nine.

ASK METAFILTER rounds up MP3 blogs.AOL's music programming, much of it created specifically as o­nline content, has become the top free video-on-demand service o­n Time Warner's cable TV network.

LITTLE STEVEN'S UNDERGROUND GARAGE: Top 15 Records of 2004.  Garage records, that is... black gold... Texas Tea...

NANOPARTICLES will be reviewed by the FDA as a treatment for breast cancer. In a somewhat related story, The New York Times reports that "[h]uman milk is like ice cream, Valium and Ecstasy all wrapped up in two pretty packages."

DEMOCRATS' DIAGNOSIS: In the Village Voice, cartoonist Will Sutton hands out "The 2004 Wussies of the Year Award to Self-Hating Democrats." o­n the other hand, at NewDonkey.com, an unofficial weblog sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, disputes the notion that Clintonism is to blame for the party's fortunes.

MICHAEL MUSTO, the gossip columnist for the Village Voice, following Lloyd Grove's example, bans the heiress named after a French hotel from his column.

GUIDED BY VOICES: Reviews of their last show continue to roll in.  Here's o­ne in Filter magazine.

NEW ORDER: New disc. New details. New Musical Express.  Also a story detailing the planned biopic of suicidal Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

DAN'S THE MAN desperately dialing Jenny.

IF THERE'S A CELEBRITY TELETHON, could some mud-wrestling of George Clooney and Bill O'Reilly be far behind? At least they managed to kiss and make up the next day. But if I was George, I would make sure Bill doesn't bring a falafel to the show.

NOT FOOTLOOSE: A high school principal cancels the rest of this year's school dances after students refuse to stop "freak dancing." I guess the kids will have to dance in a barn across the tracks.

NATIONAL TREASURE: Sandy Berger, the unappetizingly-named former National Security Adviser, faces a grand jury investigation into his smuggling of top-secret documents from the National Archives. The probe began after archives staffers reported seeing Berger sneak the documents out his pants and socks while vetting Clinton-era items for 9/11 commission. And since the story runs in the New York Post, the headline is "JURY PROBES EX-BILL AIDE'S 'SOCKS DOCS'."

MICHAEL MOORE AND MEL GIBSON chummy at the People's Choice Awards? It's the New World Order, I tell you!

LET'S KICK OFF the week with a few Pate influences:

GANG OF FOUR: profiled in the Guardian.

THE JAM: There's a limited edition of the non-compact Snap.

X is profiled by the San Francisco Chronicle.

GbV's FINAL STAND was reviewed by Don Thrasher, who beat the skins for a number the night Ken King and I went (registration or bugmenot req'd). Robert Pollard looks to be getting his solo career o­n track.

GOOD NEWS o­n IRAQI WOMEN: A new poll (downloadable in full as a pdf here) discloses that: 90.6% of Iraqi women are hopeful about their future; 94% want to secure legal rights for women; 84% want the right to vote o­n the final constitution; and nearly 80% believe that their participation in local and national councils should not be limited.

ROYALE WITH CHEESE: McDonald's ads are much cooler in other countries. Watch or download an Israeli ad for the "McShuarma."

MILLION DOLLAR BABY: wins Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics.

MICHAEL MOORE: tipped in advance to winning the People's Choice Award? Of course, this is what you get from online polling for awards...He gave a fairly uncontroversial speech; trying to influence Oscar late deciders?

DUBYA AND BUBBA getting chummy? It's the New World Order, I tell you!

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: I can't decide whether this article wants us to embrace Luddism or admit that we are just spoiled.

QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY, hich offers the hope of unbreakable codes, is showing up in the market. But the real reason to mention it is that I'm a sucker for anything that mentions both the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and uses the phrase "spukhafte Fernwirkungen."

TSUNAMI UPDATE: Visits to the area from VIPs including Kofi Annan and Colin Powell are hindering aid delivery. Not to mention the visit from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: "Get some devastation in the back," Frist told a photographer. Meanwhile, the U.N. is asking for 28 million dollars for family planning, including condoms, which seems like an odd thing to do in the midst of well over 100,000 dead. With the U.N. assuming the lead role, let's hope that it does better than it did with the Oil-for-food program, which got bad coverage in both The New York Times and the New York Post. At least, let's hope the U.N. staff there doesn't end up in a sex abuse scandal.

MEGA-TSUNAMI: Researchers say that a "mega-tsunami" originating from a Canary Islands volcano will o­ne day wreak certain havoc along the eastern coast of North America and much of Europe. But maybe not for 10,000 years.

MP3NEWSWIRE publishes its annual lists of winners and losers.

LINDSAY LOHAN into L7 and the Dead Kennedys? In truth, probably not.

AIN'T-IT-COOL-NEWS: has pictures from Richard Linklater's adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

CREDIT WHERE DUE: Microsoft gets a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. But this review of the beta version of MS Anti-spyware claims it beats Ad-Aware and Spybot.

CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER: Like me, InstaPundit must be a Ghostbusters fan.

HOW COULD I FORGET? Happy Birthday, Elvis Presley... wherever you are.

WILLIE NELSON, JOE ELY AND ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO will headline a benefit concert for tsunami victims Sunday night in Austin.

LOU REED and Robert Plant will perform at this year's SXSW. Not together, I hope. Would they play both versions of "Rock and Roll?"

SEATTLE FITTEST U.S. CITY in a survey by Men's Fitness magazine. Chicago was fifth fattest out of the 50 cities in the survey, beaten out by cities like Memphis. Perhaps it's a coffee versus barbeque thing.

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER has some great advice for Robert DeNiro. PLUS: The NYO also crunches the numbers o­n celebrity charities. Bruce Springsteen does well, Whitney Houston, not so well.

PORN: Becoming mainstream media, according to some in this CBS story.

GUIDED BY VOICES: Celia Farber adds her remembrance.

JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO, now a senior analyst with Fox News Channel, is not a fan of the Patriot Act or the amendments made by the Intelligence Reform Act.

CATS have a tailor to satisfy their demand for frog costumes.

CHEESE RACING is sweeping Great Britain. Wait until Robyn Hitchcock finds out!

APPLE BEING SUED by someone claiming Apple is breaking anti-competition laws in refusing to let music players other than iPods work with Apple's iTunes service. And somewhere else, Bill Gates is laughing himself silly.

PEOPLE WRITING SONGS THAT VOICES NEVER SHARE: Meanwhile, Apple is selling sounds of silence not recorded by Simon and Garfunkel for the usual 99 cents a track.

TiVO: Thinking outside the (set-top) box.

THE VILLAGE VOICE runs an article o­n hip-hop's 30th anniversary, suggenting that the moment hip-hop "disappeared from the air and marketplace might be the moment when we'd discover whether hiphop truly was a cultural force or a manufacturing plant, a way of being or a way of selling porn DVDs, Crunk juice, and S. Carter signature sneakers, blessed be the retired."

WHY I LOVE LAWYERS: Fear of silly lawsuits causes companies to put wacky labels o­n their products, such as the toilet brush with the label "Do not use for personal hygiene."

HANS MORAVEC starts a company to realize his prediction that we would someday routinely download our minds into robots. As seen o­n Friends.

IKEA: Lost in translation.

WILLIAM KENNEDY SMITH has the latest sexual assault claim brought against him dismissed.

THE SOCIAL CUSTOMER makes the case against Real Networks.

THE SMOKING GUN has a comprehensive roundup of the disturbing allegations against Michael Jackson.

WIRED has a lengthy feature o­n Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, which now may account for more than o­ne-third of all data sent across the Internet.

SID VICIOUS was also the nickname for ex-Clinton aide and journo Sydney Blumenthal, who was just dumped by Salon.

RACE TO THE BOTTOM: The perfume promoted by Paris Hilton is outsold by the o­ne promoted by Britney Spears. Neither o­ne is named "Skanktastic," but o­ne should be.

WESTWORD wants videogame criticism worthy of Lester Bangs, Pauline Kael and Robert Christgau.