PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page.  I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant.  The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

GRIZZLY BEAR drops a video "Yet Again."

TAME IMPALA is advance streaming Lonerism.

FREELANCE WHALES is advance streaming Diluvia.

LORD HURON is advance streaming Lonesome Dreams.

OKTOBERFEST:  NPR has your streaming playlist.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself."

CORIN TUCKER talks to Pitchfork about loving "Portlandia" and Fiona Apple, listening to Skrillex, wanting to work with the Roots, and women's rights.

TWO GALLANTS: Adam Stephens talks to Drowned In Sound about the state of music, musical duos and more.

KRISTY MacCOLL: Will the re-release of her first four albums finally get the great British pop singer-songwriterher due?

LEE HAZLEWOOD: The A.V. Club suggests points of entry for new fans.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Hotel Transylvania tops the chart with 43 million, a record opening for September.  A showing that strong sets up an interesting confrontation with Tim Burton's Frankenweenie next wekend.  Looper places with a strong 21 million (against a 30 million budget), showing audiences were willing to give Joseph Grodon-Levitt and Bruce Willis a chance with a complex premise and a quirky director.  Last week's champ, End of Watch, shows with 8 million, which is gravy against its low budget, especially given that the film was financed in part by both the Regal and AMC theater chains. Trouble With the Curve collects another 7.5 milion, holding pretty well (as I suspected last week).  House At the End of the Street rounds out the Top Five with an 7.2 million, off 42 percent, but still a pretty good hold for a horror movie.  Below the fold, Pitch Perfect (No. 6), on 335 screens, outgrossed Won't Back Down (No. 10) on 2515 screens. Ouch.

LOOPER: Director Rian Johnson brings us a movie we have not seen a million times before.  I say that despite the trajectory of the plot being predictable -- a certain amount of that comes with the time-travel subgenre.  But Looper is some old skool sci-fi, in the sense that it clearly aims to have the audience think about an issue larger than the plot.  As such, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and a blonde Emily Blunt are given much more to do than fire their guns, though they do that a lot, to ultra-violent effect.

KRISTEN STEWART & ROBERT PATTINSON: Amid reports that they were back living together, moving vans were once again spotted outside the L.A. area home they once shared.  Their friends don't believe it will last.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER admitted to having an affair with actress Brigitte Nielsen — while still dating Maria Shriver.

MALIN ACKERMAN and her husband Roberto Zincone are expecting their first child together.

BRITNEY SPEARS' former friend Sam Lutfi claims drug-sniffing dogs found a secret stash of crystal meth in her house during the dark months before her infamous meltdown.

JOHNNY DEPP made a surprise visit to the Comanche Nation Fair in Oklahoma.

RYAN GOSLING isn't the number one choice to play Christian Grey in the movie adaptation of  Fifty Shades of Grey.

LIBYA: The US intelligence community is finally coming around to the conclusion that the Sept. 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was "a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," and that "some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda."

THE UNITED NATIONS: Muslim leaders were in unison arguing that the West was hiding behind its defense of freedom of speech and ignoring cultural sensitivities in the aftermath of anti-Islam slurs that have raised fears of a widening East-West cultural divide.

SYRIA: After several days of fighting, a rebel offensive in the city of Aleppo made little progress against more heavily armed government forces.

AFGHANISTAN: The top US military commander in Afghanistan is being transferred and another Marine general will take over the war effort early next year as the United States and its allies shrink their combat role against the still-potent insurgency.

A NEW CAT helps kick off Rocktober.

A DRUG-SNIFFING DOG now is the only certified member of the police force in the small eastern New Mexico town of Vaughn.

A NEW SPECIES OF FISH is not to be messed with.

THE GREAT PUMPKIN: Rocktober kicks off with a world record 1845.5 lb specimen.