PITCHFORK FEST THREEDUX:  Sadly, there's still no official video, but P-Fork has three days worth of pics and interviews posted.  Plus, there's bootleg video of The New Pornographers opening their set with the new track, "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth,"  Cat Powers' full-band cover of The Stones' "Satisfaction" Of Montreal playing thier brooding "Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider" and their risque take on The Kinks' "All the Day and All the Night."  These don't really convey the live energy in the park, but they're better than nothing at the moment.

THE MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE shortlist has been announced, including Arctic Monkeys and the painfully thin Amy Winehouse.

BRIGHT EYES:  MOKB can point you to five videos Polyydor commissioned for the Cassadaga album.

LILY ALLEN shows you her third nipple.

LAURA VEIRS kicks off a new series of live performances at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

EUGENE McGUINNESS will release his debut album in August.  For now, you can watch the very poppy, yet profane "Monsters Under the Bed."

SMASHING PUMPKINS are trying to track down the siamese twins who featured on the cover of their 1993 album, Siamese Dream.

COLOR ME IMPRESSED:  Fits and Starts has posted a nifty mix of mostly-80s indie, including The Replacements, Husker Du, Minutemen and more.  You can jukebox 'em on the ol' HM.

100 DAYS THAT CHANGED MUSIC, according to Blender magazine.

SQUEEZE cofounder Chris Difford lists his favorite songwriters for Spinner.

BRITNEY SPEARS, having left rehab in March, will host the opening of LAX Las Vegas nightclub at the Luxor on August 31.

THE FRENCH HOTEL is threatening to release a second album.  Even the fluffy, heirhead friendly People magazine notes: "As for Hilton's music career, she has nowhere to go but up..."

MICHAEL BOLTON & NICOLETTE SHERIDAN are teaming up to record an album of duets.  I forget whether that's the fifth seal or the sixth.

STING and his wife have been ordered to pay 51K to a former chef after she won a sexual-discrimination claim against them.  They fired her after she became pregnant.  Very progressive of them.

JON LOVITZ roughed up Andy Dick at an L.A. comedy club over the murder of their Saturday Night Live colleague, Phil Hartman.  That's the ticket.

TOM-KAT UPDATE:  New pregnancy rumors swirl around Holmes, but it's far from the first time.

LATE WWE STAR CHRIS BENOIT was on testosterone, painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs when he killed his wife and son and later comitted suicide in his Atlanta, Georgia, home last month.  I'm shocked!

BOBBY BROWN believes he is being targeted by Osama bin Laden, though that's not in the unclassified National Intell Estimate.

HILARY DUFF was confused and devastated to learn that her parents are people.  I was also mildly surprised to learn her parents were humans.

STEVE BUSCEMI, a/k/a "Mr. Pink" (NSFW) talks to IFC about directing and starring in the remake of the late Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's Interview.

THE WORLD'S TOP-EARNING SUPERMODELS, according to Forbes magazine.  RELATED:  All is not well with Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady, as his baby mama, actress Bridget Moynihan is due to give birth on Gisele's birthday.

REP. KEITH ELLISON (D-MN), the nation's first Muslim congressman, said that he erred in comparing the Bush administration's response to 9/11 to the 1933 burning of the Reichstag -- an event that led to Adolf Hitler's consolidation of power in Nazi Germany.

TERROR in the US?  The FBI is investigating an alleged operation based in Chaparral, NM, that agents say is smuggling "Iraqis and other Middle Eastern" people across the Rio Grande from Mexico.  Maybe to do a job that ordinary Americans won't do?

IRAN:  One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where (fwiw) the American intell community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.  That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate.  Iranian arms are entering Afghanistan and reaching Taliban insurgents in such quality and quantity that the Tehran government must know about it, the US ambassador to Kabul said on Tuesday.

IRAQ:  Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said his political bloc had resumed participation in Iraq's parliament, suspended last month in protest over an attack on a revered Shi'ite mosque.  Joint Iraqi-US forces raided the office of Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi People's Congress.  The top target for al Qaeda in Iraq south of Baghdad was killed July 14 in Arab Jabour by precision-guided munitions.  Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell has an update on conditions in Baghdad, saying Iraqi Security Forces have shown continued improvements.   And now that Congress is debating the issue, mass media coverage of Iraq has skyrocketed.  Though the amendment debated overnight was expected to falter, Iraqi leaders already have resigned themselves to the likelihood that the US soon will withdraw at least some troops, with a bloodletting to follow.

THE SAND CAT is techinically a "big cat," but in real life, not so much.  (Thanks, Debbie.)

A 15-FT PYTHON was captured in a residential neighborhood of Holly Hill, FL, and it was caught on camera.

DONKEYS in Kenya aren't keen on wearing diapers.

DOLPHINS like to watch.  Of course, you knew this if you have seen The Life Aquatic.

CHINESE RODENT UPDATE:  Yesterday, I noted the abundance of rats.  Today, I note that in the villages around Dongting Lake, rising waters have brought a plague of biblical proportions: an invasion of some 2 billion mice.  That's a phrase that inevitably reminds me of Ghostbusters. (NSFW)