SLEATER-KINNEY: The band's new album, The Woods gets a whopping 9.0 on the Pitchfork, with the reviewer claiming it “marks a significant transformation for the band.” Indeed, as of presstime, MetaCritic's compilation of reviews gave the disc a “universal acclaim” score of 87. Should you want to delve deeper, CMJ inteviews drummer Janet Weiss, while Aversion tackles singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein.
SONIC YOUTH prepares a deluxe Goo reissue: “Our memories have collapsed the differences between Goo and the albums before it; in the short memories of today's young people, it might as well be Confusion Is Sex.” Sad, but true.
I PROCLAIM THIS THE SUMMER OF… Donovan? Quite rightly!
MAGIC NUMBERS get the magic number 7.6 on the Pitchfork: “The Magic Numbers could have waxed nostalgic for the folk-pop equivalent of the nouveau new-wave and gotten the easy 6.7. Instead, they've created what will doubtless stand as 2005's best AAA record. And, contrary to that genre's built-in assumptions, it doesn't even suck.”
MAXIMO PARK: Imentioned their new disc the other day; you can stream it at the NME site.
TEENAGE FANCLUB will release its new album June 7th. Stereogum has a download, though the comments suggest it's not the best selection from the album.
REVENGE OF THE SITH: Spoilers aplenty, but Flagpole has Flickerskinny's comic review of Episode III. Or you can go straight to the story about Darth Vader unsheathing the fleshsaber in public.
LI-LO: Moms at early test screenings of “Herbie: Fully Loaded” clucked about Lindsay Lohan being too prominent upfront to the point that execs spent more than $1 million to digitally downsize her bust and draw in higher necklines, reports Us Weekly. Lohan's rep denies this.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Contrary to prior rumor, Reuters reports that Michelle Monaghan has been cast as Tom Cruise's love interest in Mission Impossible 3. So Katie will only be playing Tom's galpal in real life.
NANOTECH: As Pate frontman Jon Pratt is an award-winner in the field of thin film coatings of the sort on our CDs, DVDs and hard drives, I note that Iomega (of Zip drive fame) is is seeking patents on nanotech-based optical storage methods that could allow future optical discs to potentially hold 40-100 times more information with data transfer rates 5-30 times faster than today’s DVDs, and at similarly low costs.
VOYAGER reaches the final frontier.
AD-WARE: Mainstream children's Web sites host a glut of adware, a security firm said this week.
V FOR VENDETTA, a movie based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore (for which Natalie Portman shaved her head) is being disowned by Moore.
A BLOG POST solves a murder case, but it's not a happy story, really.
BLOGS will change everything, then the novelty will wear off. True, but the second part does not negate the first part.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF IRAQ: Author Michael Yon, currently in Iraq, has an interesting essay on the multiple factors — including military procedure — that skew news coverage to the negative.
IRAQ: An Islamic website statement claimed today that Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda in Iraq chief, has fled to an unidentified “neighbouring country” with two Arab doctors treating him for gunshot wounds to his lung.
AUSTIN BAY asks: “What do we really know about Al Qaeda, and when will we know it?”
BRITNEY SPEARS' Chihuahua, Lucky, doesn’t like Kevin Federline and growls and snaps at him, according to Star magazine. Spears is sticking with K-Fed, which she will probably regret.
RINGO STARR'S birthplace and childhood home is scheduled to be demolished for a highway project.
NEW ORDER: The Globe and Mail argues for the band's influence: “For the past few years, the most influential band in the world was arguably Joy Division: the post-punk movement spearheaded by the late Ian Curtis and his Mancunian mates in the late seventies gave rise to a whole wave of frenetically funky groups with stripped-down sounds. Now, it would seem New Order, the more accessible band formed in the wake of Curtis's suicide, is in the ascendant.” The article mentions The Killers, The Bravery and Bloc Party as examples.
MOTLEY CRUE files suit against NBC for banning the band for using an obscenity on the Tonight Show on New Year's Eve. The Crue claims the ban violates the group's free speech rights –which is clearly wrong — and has hurt its sales — which is probably wrong, also.
P. DIDDY has been
ordered to pay what could be the biggest child support order in New York state history — $21,782 per month.
JESSICA ALBA: The Sin City angel spent her time hanging with the makeup artists instead of the overly-serious Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke. She also found her onscreen kiss with Wills boring and uncomfortable. This is the sound of someone who wants out of the Sin City sequel.
GITMO A GULAG? Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay Wednesday, calling it “the gulag of our time.” The gulag was a system of forced labor camps primarily used to suppress internal dissent in the USSR which killed about a million people. Thus, even if all of the allegations Amnesty makes are true (and many — including its interpretation of the Geneva Conventions — are debatable), Gitmo is not a gulag. Indeed, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, who is not a big fan of the Bush Administration, has written a book on the gulag and was stunned when asked if there was such a comparison to be made. If Amnesty International wants to be taken seriously, it should avoid irresponsible hype. After all, isn’t that the advice Amnesty would give the Bush Administration?
QURAN DESECRATION: On a related note, the press is now filled with stories like this AP story: “Terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just three months after the first detainees arrived, that military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran, declassified FBI records say.” Those who think this story vindicates Newsweek, are incorrect. The Newsweek blurb stated: “Investigators probing abuses at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, placed Qur'ans on toilets and, in at least one case, flushed a holy book down the toilet.” No one has ever denied the existence of the FBI reports of the allegations — but there was no confirmation of the “toilet” allegations as Newsweek reported. Moreover, the International Committee of the Red Cross has said that when detainees complained about mishandling of the Quran in 2002, the U.S. took corrective measures and the allegations have not resurfaced. Also, the ICRC did not witness any mishandling of the Quran. The focus and tone of the coverage of these stories says more about their authors than about Gitmo.
U.S. POLICIES IMPROVE GLOBAL SECURITY, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in a report that got nowhere near the press coverage of the Amnesty International report. If you Google the IISS, you will find its reports are cited across the political spectrum.
JESSICA SIMPSON did not file for divorce on Tuesday. But tomorrow is another day…
CONAN O'BRIEN previews the future of television.
NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR KIM JONG IL has grown in stature, thanks to a pair of platform shoes that increased the Dear Leader's height by about five inches. If he would ditch those drab jumpuits and don a pair of bell-bottoms, he'd move several decades closer to the rest of the world. He could call it the Great Leap Forward.
UZBEKISTAN: President Karimov, having presided over his own version of Tiennamen Square inks a fat oil deal with China, while some (as always) want to blame the U.S., which has pressed for reform there for years, though arguably not as much as it could.
ORIANA FALLACI is a journalist and best-selling author being ordered to stand trial by a judge in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book. State prosecutors had declined to prosecute.
WANNA BE SEDATED? Why not listen to the song instead?
BIG FISH: Tim Pruitt caught a 124-pound blue catfish. But you shoulda seen the one that got away…
DAILY CANDY serve up a few neologisms.
EGYPT: Plainclothes supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak beat up activists protesting against a referendum on Wednesday on a presidential election system that sets tough conditions for opposition candidates.
THE EX-DENTIST accused of using syringes to squirt his semen into the mouths of female patients was sentenced to probation on seven assault charges Wednesday though he refused to say he was guilty. Judge Robert Ervin chose that sentence over a maximum 120-day prison sentence in the hope that the man's activities would be monitored and similar acts prevented.
SUNTAN OIL helps a California woman escape an attack in a park restroom.