1990s add allusions to A Hard Day's Night bring their raw, garage-y rock in the clip for "You're Supposed to be My Friend."

PATTIE BOYD reveals intimate details of her emotionally fraught love triangle with George Harrison and Eric Clapton -- which inspired the latter to pen "Layla" (she also inspired Harrison's song "Something")  -- in her new book, Wonderful Today.  There are links to excerpts from the book and a video interview at the link.  There's more at the Sydney Morning Herald.

OKKERVIL RIVER:  The Stage Names LP is due tomorrow, but you can stream it all now.

THE EAGLES are planning to take flight with a long-awaited new album and a tour, according to Joe "The Bomber" Walsh, who says he made sure the band's first full-length studio set since "The Long Run" in 1979 isn't "too ballad-y."

THE FOO FIGHTERS:  The first single from the upcoming sixth LP Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace is called "The Pretender."

THE FORTUNES play their big hit, "You've Got Your Troubles" at the 1966 NME poll-winners concert.

STEVIE WONDER announced he will launch his first US tour in more than 20 years on August 23rd during an impromptu concert at a public park in the business district of Century City.

TEGAN & SARA played a gig for WXPN and World Café last Friday you can stream on demand from NPR.

AMY WINEHOUSE makes the front cover of American Vogue for September -- traditionally the highest-selling issue of the year.

PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE:  After spilling all the details of their break-up in a series of interviews and calling the supposedly sober supermodel a "nasty old rag," the troubled singer has penned "A Song For Kate" in a last-ditch attempt to win her back.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:  Jason Bourne was unstoppable at the box office, taking in over 70 million -- the biggest August movie opening in history.  The Bourne Ultimatum is also the most expensive of the series, with a budget estmated between 110-125 million, but Bourne should be in the black when the flick opens worldwide next weekend.  The Simpsons Movie dropped almost 66 percent to make 25.6 million -- but has already made 236 million worldwide on a 75 million production budget.  Underdog debuted in third place with 12 million.  I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry took in another 10.5 million and will almost certainly turn a profit, despite an $85 million budget.  Hairspray rounds out the Top Five with 9.3 million.  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix also came in with roughly 9.3 million -- it has made about 260 million in the US and shouyld finish just behind Goblet of Fire when all is said and done.  No Reservations slid into the seventh slot with 6.6 million.  Transformers made another 6 million in the US -- it has taken in 545 million worldwide on a 150 million production budget.  Andy Samberg's Hot Rod debuted in ninth place with 5 million, just ahead of the debut of Bratz, which made 4.3 million.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, btw, has about 4000 edits -- to reflect the disorientation of its protagonist.

THE SIMSPONS model haute couture with a cartoon Linda Evangelista in the August issue of Harper's Bazaar.  Pics at the link.

VING RHAMES:  Did his dogs maul his caretaker to death?  Or did the caretaker have a heart attack running for his life after a confrontation with the dogs?  Either way, the dogs have been taken into custody.

THANDIE NEWTON discloses she suffered from bulimia in her early 20s.

LINDSAY LOHAN, contra to reports that she was back in rehab, is holed up at mom Dina's place on Long Island.  So she has had the chance to read the interview she gave Elle magazine 36 hours before her arrest, proclaiming she would never drive drunk.   And a chance to read that Louis Vuitton will no longer even lend her clothes because she walked off with a number of items after a photo shoot (also for Elle).  She is rumored to have a photographer spying on sometime bf Callum Best.

BRADGELINA cancelled a family holiday to Lake Mohawk, NJ, further fuelling speculation of a rift.  Pitt's rep denies the rumors.

REESE WITHERSPOON & RYAN PHILIPPE have been spotted shopping, jogging and lunching together in L.A., fuelling speculation of a reconciliation.  Philippe's rep denies it.

MADONNA has lawyers fighting to stop the publication of love letters and intimate photographs as she tries to make her adoption of a Malawian baby permanent.  Madge's controversial adoption of an African baby may collapse amid accusations that the child welfare expert overseeing it has become too close to the case.

SEAN PENN had a love-in with Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez.  Cuban-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, said Penn is lending support to a "totalitarian" leader who wants increasing control of society - a charge Chavez denies, despite having recently shut down TV stations critical of Chavez.  I guess Penn defends free speech only when it is not attacking nascent dictators.

JESSICA BIEL was reportedly caught canoodling with ex-bf Chris Evans (a/k/a/ the Human Torch) while attending a wedding reception last Saturday, according to the ever-reliable Star Magazine.  Evans rep states the two are "just friends."

ISLAMISM in the UK:  The British branch of a world-wide radical Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, held a conference in London on Saturday, in which speakers called for the overthrow of Muslim governments and their replacement with a single Islamic state, known as the caliphate.  As many as one in 11 British Muslims agree with and proactively support terrorism, a Government adviser has warned police.  Haras Rafiq also told officers at Scotland Yard that up to 20 percent of the Muslim population "sympathise" with militants, while stopping short of being prepared to "blow themselves up."  Meanwhile, a teacher near the home of three of the 7/7 bombers had ten-year-olds copying Allah is the greatest" and "I bear witness that there is no God but Allah" as a hand-writing exercise.

IRAN:  Iranian police detained more than 200 people and seized alcohol and drugs in a raid on a "satanic" underground rock concert, media in the conservative Islamic state reported on Saturday.

AFGHANISTAN:  British military commanders believe they have turned a significant corner, pushing the Taliban back  in Afghanistan's most dangerous province, while popular support for the insurgents is eroding.

IRAQ:  Haythem Sabah al-Badri, who was reputed to be the leader of AQI in Salahuddin province and who planned the bombing of Al Askari mosque in Samarra earlier this summer has been killed in an air raid, the US military announced Saturday.  The US military has launched a new air campaign against militant safe havens and weapons smugglers south of Baghdad as it seeks to choke the flow of bombs and weapons reaching the capital.  Photos purport to show a parade by the "Islamic State of Iraq" in Baqubah, but it seems unlikely, given that the US is transtioning to "hold" status there.  Wesley Morgan blogs his embed in Northern Babil, where he ran into Michael Gordon of the NYT.  The Marines are sectioning Fallujah and building joint command centers, following the pattern set in other cities.  Michael Yon, who has spent roughly a 1½ years on the battlefields of Iraq since Dec. 2004, writes in the NYDN that "Anyone who says Al Qaeda is not one of the primary problems in Iraq is simply ignorant of the facts."

IRAQI POLITICS in the MEDIA:  The Washington Post and the L.A. Times -- among others -- are writing a lot about sectarian distrust and political stagnation crippling the Iraqi gov't.  Nibras Kazimi, who once directed the Research Bureau of the Iraqi National Congress and helped establish the Higher National Commission for De-Ba'athification, suggests that Sunni parties have left the gov't because the insurgency is losing, which is emboldening the Shiites to play political hardball.  He also suggests that the hard-line Sunni leaders who got elected to oppose Shiite hegemony are being replaced with new faces that are accepting the new realities of Iraq and can work with the ascendant Shiites.  Meanwhile, amid the sectarian violence, a new poll shows a dramatic swing in popular support for secular political rule over the past year.

IRAQ and the MEDIA:  Col. Steven Boylan, Public Affairs Officer for General David Petraeus, announced that the Army's investigation into the allegations made by Scott Thomas Beauchamp as "Baghdad Diarist" for The New Republic found the allegations to be false; "members of Thomas' platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims."  It also appears that TNR left out statements it obtained from the Army in its statement purporting to corroborate PFC Beauchamp's stories.

A TWO-LEGGED DOG that can fetch and play with the best of them is looking for a good home.

THE "BEAST OF DARTMOOR," which stoked rumours that the moor is haunted by a pack of spectral dogs known as the Hounds of Hell, turns out to be a two-year-old Newfoundland called Troy.

MANUEL the CHIHUAHUA rescued a disoriented beaver from the waters off Vancouver's Stanley Park.  Who wouldn't?

THE SQUIRREL THREAT:  A Canadian Bible camp is defending a counsellor who skinned, roasted and then ate a squirrel in front of a group of boys.

A CATNAPPING rocks the town of Westmere in New Zealand.