A ONE-WOMAN, A CAPPELLA VERSION OF THE WHO SELL OUT: It was Mike Watt's idea and Pete Townshend digs it the most. And you can stream clips of Petra Haden's multi-tracked arrangements at the link.
YO LA TENGO: The New Jersey Star-Ledger recaps the band's annual appearance on WFMU, taking requests from fans in return for donations to the station. They didn't know Rush's “The Spirit of Radio?”
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS must have been in Cleveland. Jason Isbell talks to the Plain Dealer and Patterson Hood talks to the Free Times, both about (among other things) the band's fans:”I think it's frustrating to record-company types because they don't know quite where to focus their attention; it's not like we're all the rage with some demographic that they can aim their little gun at and shoot us into making sales… [Our fans] are really a hodgepodge of people who have come together through word of mouth over the course of us being on the road for the last six years. So it's weird. It's cool, though.”
THE DECEMBERISTS are profiled by the Daily Nebraskan. Chris Funk notes that Pitchfork was a key ingredient in the band's rise: “The music fans in Europe read Pitchfork like it’s the Bible.”
DOGS will be able to avoid getting neutered once these condoms reach the market.
FAMETRACKER audits William Shatner, but which William Shatner?
DENISE RICHARDS is publicly breaking bad on hubby Charlie Sheen. Richards' pals say Sheen paid a hooker $15,000 for sex; Former porn star and prostitute Chloe Jones claims Sheen recently paid her more than $15,000 for sex and proposed marriage. Sheen denies Jones' claim and has gone to court to contest Richards' claim for spousal support.
PAULA ABDUL may have pleaded no contest to that hit-and-run charge last week, but the New York Post's Page Six claims she freaked out in Kuala Lampur and the flight home after learning she was being charged.
BRITNEY SPEARS wants a summer job as a waitress at her dad's fast-food restaurant. It doesn't sound like it will actually happen this summer, but I expect it will someday.
OPRAH WINFREY is the target of an assassination plot, according to an anonymous nutjob posting flyers up around NYC.
THE SCHIAVO CASE has a lot of people considering and signing living wills. However, people who want them should be aware that they do not always work, though I'm a bit more positive on them than the study discussed in the linked story. The linked story also recommends using a “durable power of attorney” to appoint someone to make decisions for them when they can no longer make their own decisions. I would recommend the same in addition to a living will for those interested. There are companies, like this one, that sell such forms cheaply (though I neither endorse nor recommend this particular company — it's just an example). I would bet that many states offer such forms for their state as a free download, as does my home state of Illinois. Yeah, that's not the best grammar in the world, but you get the idea.
THE KAISER CHIEFS make The New York Times: “If timing is everything, Monty Python has nothing on this rowdy five-piece group from Leeds, England, named for a South African soccer team.”
PAUL WESTERBERG: Following his well-received Folker disc, Rhino is putting out a “best of” compilation entitled Besterberg, natch.
METALCARVER produces handmade aluminium guitars. Very cool looking; the company claims they sound good, too.
“POP CRITICISM and Cred in the Era of MP3s, Zines, and Blogs” is a panel discussion to be held Tuesday at Columbia University. “These days, every aspiring pop critic can create his or her own soapbox. The resulting atmosphere is as fragmented as it is high-speed: A blogger shows up at a club, orders a beer, and reviews a show in real time. New trends break at a faster clip than ever before. How can anyone keep up? And which critical voice do you trust?” Panelists will include Sasha Frere Jones, pop music critic for The New Yorker (to whom I often link), Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone, Amy Phillips, blogger at More in the Monitor and Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life (a book I highly recommend).
BECK is interviewed by Elle magazine, which is a little… different from what you would get from a music mag. It's like what I magine a Barbara Walters interview of Beck would be like.
WEEZER: on their previously linked video-shoot at the Playboy mansion, frontman Rivers Cuomo looked just a bit uncomfortable as Playmates cavorted around him in the mansion's infamous grotto. Who'da thunkit? But MTV News has video at the link.
SIN CITY: Brad of Bradley's Almanac tries to resist the raising of your expectations and the all-out gushing, but only partially succeeds. Superherohype runs interviews with the men and women of Sin City. Coming Soon interviews co-director Robert Rodriguez.
FAMILY MOVIES sell tickets, says John Fithian, President of the National Association of Theatre Owners. Last year, PG titles grossed $2.3 billion domestically, with $2.1 billion for R-rated films. PG-13 movies did the most business with $4.4 billion. The story doesn't mention G-rated flicks, but it's no secret that G and PG-rated movies together regularly outgross R-rated movies.
PEZ MP3 PLAYER: Why didn't I think of that? But it's a big mistake that it won't carry the candy.
SIX-SHOOTER HAIRDRYER: Okay, I know why I didn't think of that.
GRAFEDIA: …and the e-mail addresses of the prophets are written on the subway walls.
HONEYBEES are being killed in large numbers by the resurgence of a pesky mite, with a potentially broad effect on agriculture in California.
CULT OF THE iPod: The iTunes music store catalog now tops one million songs. The Guardian finds UK complaints about Apple's customer service.
PODCASTING is now offered by the classic comedy troupe Firesign Theatre.
FILE-SHARING: The Big Picture questions the record industry's claims of big losses from music downloading. PC World magazine reports that industry lawsuits against file swappers may be forcing Internet users to using e-mail, instant messaging, blogs and other methods for exchanging songs and videos.
TiVo IS KILLING THE WATER COOLER? That's what an article in USA Today claims. I think HBO might beg to differ. And the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) –a pioneer in developing ethernet, laser printing and the graphical user interface for computers — is developing Social TV, which would allow geographically dispersed friends to chat and watch TV together. Social TV software, located on a device like TiVo or even your TV set, might notice that your and your buddy’s yacking has gone well past the commercial break. The software would conclude that you are no longer watching the show and, perhaps, pause the program until you are ready to resume, says Nic Ducheneaut, member of PARC research staff.
IRAQ: A bipartisan Senate delegation, including four Democrats and two Republicans, all indicated they are encouraged by signs of progress in bolstering Iraq's security forces, economy and political system. Even Sen. Barbara Boxer, a leading critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, seemed upbeat about the future of the new Iraq government. However, Iraqis who defied insurgent violence to vote in the historic January elections say they are increasingly angry at the failure of politicians to agree on a new government. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. notes that Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. helicopters, reportedly have seized 131 suspects in a dawn raid on insurgents planning attacks on the holy city of Kerbala. The sooner that Iraqis can conduct these operations regularly, the faster that the U.S. can take a smaller role.
IRAQ II: While insurgent attacks continue, including the Friday assassination of a senior Iraqi army commander, the Financial Times reports that many insurgents, including former officials of the ruling Ba'ath party, army officers, and Islamists have been searching for a way to end their campaign against U.S. troops and Iraqi government forces. Similarly, The Guardian reports that “at least two Middle Eastern intelligence agencies believe that recent 'backchannel' initiatives aimed at persuading Sunni Muslim tribes in western Iraq to cease their resistance are meeting with some success.”
CAMP BUCCA: Last Friday, U.S. military police thwarted a massive escape attempt by suspected insurgents and terrorists when they uncovered a 600-foot tunnel the detainees had dug under their compound. The Hill article compares this to The Shawshank Redemption. A better movie reference might be The Great Escape, though perhaps The Hill didn't want to be accused of comparing our troops to the Nazis — nor do I!
COKE ZERO UPDATE: The other day, I had a little rant about an Associated Press story that had the sweeteners in various Diet Pepsis and Cokes badly confused. In the interest of fairness, I note that this weekend, some of the Pepsi one bottles at my grocery store are marked as having a “brand new taste” using Splenda. The AP story thus might have been correct on that point in the market where it was written, though it failed to note that it was a new development. Indeed, given this new development, the AP may have missed the real story — that Coke Zero is adopting the sweetener blend used in Pepsi one at the very moment Pepsi is abandoning it for Splenda.
SMACKDOWN: New York State officials yesterday ordered radio station Hot 97, which bills itself as the “Official No. 1 station for hip-hop and R&B,” to stop its controversial Smackfest, in which women wallop each other in the face in order to compete for a grand prize of $5,000.
BLOG ADVERTISING is on a steep rise, but many companies are wary of putting their brand on such a new and unpredictable medium. But credit The Wall Street Journal for making this story a free link to generate traffic from blogs to its site.
PLAYSTATION PORTABLE: Sony's new handheld PSP, a device for playing games, music and video, has gotten nicknamed “PornStation Portable.”
THE UNITED NATIONS has been battered by a series of allegations embroiling its peacekeepers in a web of global sexual misconduct, usually involving children. But in East Timor, it appears that not even goats were safe. No wonder U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan is said to be struggling with depression and considering his future.
PAT O'BRIEN: That voicemail of his that's been floating around the internet is graphic. Probably NSFW, unless you work at a strip club. But he's pretty repetitive. You would think someone in the communications biz could think of ways to vary the basic message.
LEBANON: Beirut is now a place from which Syrians can protest their government, including a Syrian journalis who worked for the past 20 years for a Syrian state newspaper. ALSO: Senior U.S. officials met in Washington on Thursday with prominent Syrian Americans, including political activists, community leaders, academics and an opposition group. U.S. officials denied the meeting was meant to coordinate efforts to oust the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
TSUNAMI NEWS: Three months after the largest natural disaster in living memory struck South Asia, Aussie blogger Arthur Chrenkoff rounds up the follow-up coverage.
KYRGYZSTAN: Registan has a first-hand account of the Tulip Revolution from from Elnura Osmonalieva of Bishkek, with plenty 'o' pictures. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ready to work with the Kyrgyz opposition, but also has offered refuge in Russia to ex-president Akayev. Putin, who is ex-KGB, has undoubtedly noticed that Felix Kulov, freed from jail by supporters on Thursday and appointed acting interior minister, was once head of the National Security Ministry, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. And Fulov now is in the middle of discord in the newly formed government involving the legitimacy of dual parliaments.
BELARUS: A thousand White Russians rallying outside the office of authoritarian President Lukashenko on Friday were beaten back by riot police swinging truncheons. Lukashenko, who has largely retained the Soviet system and hasn't changed the name of the KGB in his country, has stifled dissent, persecuted independent media and opposition parties, and prolonged his power through elections that international organizations say were marred by fraud. Gateway Pundit has pictures of the rally and its aftermath.
TAIWAN had massive protests denouncing Beijing’s recent approval of an anti-secession law aimed at Taiwan. If Taiwan is relying on U.S. help, this is bad timing; right now, it's more likely Secretary of State Rice would offer to calm down Taiwan in return for Chinese help with North Korea.
DEMOCRACY IS ALSO on THE MARCH in places as far-flung as Mongolia and Bahrain, maybe even Zimbabwe.
LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF: New Jersey residents are divided over a Statehouse effort to designate the Jersey tomato as the official state vegetable. “The tomato is a highly partisan issue in New Jersey,” said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “Democrats say it's a vegetable, while Republicans and independent voters believes it's a fruit.” Of course, technically, it's a fruit, which we should all know from Reagan Budget Director David Stockman's attempt to classify ketchup as a vegetable in federal school lunch programs.
A SURE THING: A bill changer at the Bluffs Run Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa began spitting out 100 dollar bills instead of 20s. Customers walked away with almost $47,000 extra.
THE GENE GENIE: Researchers have shown that plants can overwrite the genetic code they inherit from their parents, and revert to that of their grandparents. The finding challenges textbook rules of inheritance.