Karl HOPE THAT CLICKING FINGER IS LIMBER:
MEMORIAL DAY HANGOVER: There are plenty of ways to support our troops. Chicago Boyz links to groups helping wounded soldiers. Winds of Change links to a slew of groups, just scroll down to find the U.S. links.
SUMMER MUSIC is blogged by Michele at A Small Victory.
THE TEN WORST ALBUM COVERS OF ALL TIME, according to the Pork Tornado.
LOU BARLOW discusses his new solo record and the Dinosaur, Jr., reunion with London24.
THE WHO SELL OUT (AGAIN): Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are asking Who fans to help them squeeze a few more drops of blood from their rock.
BECK is opening for the Rolling Stones in Canada. Loser.
ELVIS COSTELLO: Fans discuss when he jumped the shark.
YOUR MOMENT OF SITH: The official Star Wars site publishes the Easter Egg List of the Sith. We now know that Anakin's father is ESPN NBA analyst Dee Brown. And why does C-3PO, a droid fluent in over six million languages, need a spokesman?
EDDIE ALBERT HEADS FOR GREENER ACRES, passing away at 99.
JESSICA SIMPSON is resisting doing publicity for The Dukes of Hazzard with married co-star Johnny Knoxville because she doesn't want to feed gossip that they had a fling, according to Rush & Molloy at the New York Daily News. She's also done a duet with Wille Nelson on “These Boots are Made for Walkin'.” A photo from the video shoot adorns the cover of Us magazine. Putting her in a bikini washing a car is an inspired choice.
LI-LO: Stereogum has a SFW picture of Lindsay Lohan that is worth a thousand words, though I don't think I could tell you what most of them are.
BRITNEY SPEARS' mother is upset over all of the sex talk on the pop tart's UPN-televised train-wreck. Cheer up, Ma: the show is on the verge of being cancelled because her fans just don't care anymore.
THE FRENCH HOTEL gets engaged to a guy named Paris. I guess she couldn't stand that the rumored Tom-Kat weekend engagement was going to suck up all the pub. Or is it that Nicole Richie has moved on to hanging with Lindsay Lohan, who would be classed as a larger starlet were she not vanishing before our very eyes.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled ex-Libertines frontman believes his apartment is bugged.
NINE INCH NAILS will not play the MTV Movie Awards because the band would not be allowed to play “The Hand That Feeds” in front of a giant photo of President Bush.
NO ROCK AND ROLL FUN demonstrates that some issues transcend politics.
ELTON JOHN ATTACKS MADONNA AGAIN, suggesting that Madge will probably not perform at this year's Geldof-organized “Live 8” charity concert because she would rather attend a Kabbalah meeting.
CHEAP TRICK is slated to be honored with a display at the Rockford, IL Civic Center. Always nice when local boys make good.
ROCKIN' VERDICTS: A jury awarded the BoDeans more than 200 grand in damages Thursday from a longtime former manager, Mark McCraw. In the latest chapter of a decades-long dispute, Sony Music was ordered to pay 5 million bucks for not putting indie Cleveland International Records' logo on Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell album.
GENRES: Yes, it's one of may favorite words and even moreso when Chuck Klosterman explains some pop genres for the curious yet inexpert listener.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB sequel turned out to be a hoax, but the cast is reuniting at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, with the possible exception of Emilio Estevez. Yellowcard is set to perform “Don't You Forget About Me.”
HOW THE HEATHERS HAVE FALLEN: Shannen Doherty is dropped from a UPN series before it even premieres. Wynona Ryder gets pub for wearing out Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay with her non-stop demands for sex. And in an apparently unrelated story, Christian Slater gets caught asking a stranger in the bathroom of Brother Jimmy's BBQ in NYC whether he had any Cialis to spare.
EVA MENDEZ, like Li-Lo, appears to be a candidate for a digital breast reduction.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON: The late gonzo author's archives are homeless. Thompson was not much of a planner, but we all assumed that, didn't we?
JOHNNY DEPP is arranging for the creation of 150-foot cannon, designed to resemble Hunter S. Thompson's “gonzo fist” emblem, built to shoot the late gonzo journo's ashes.
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: The latest trailer is online at Moviefone, complete with Oompa-Loompas. I want an Oompa-Loompa now!
THERE ARE CERTAIN STEREOTYPES ABOUT THE SOUTH, but the Northeast has the dumbest drivers.
CATS: I guess you would call Romeo a “fat cat” at 33 pounds.
DOGS: Doggie day cares are instituting rigorous admissions standards as they strive to put together classes or play groups of well-behaved animals that don't growl, nip or bite. An innocent dog is killed after terrorists in Iraq strapped an explosive belt to it. A bomb-sniffing dog causes a stink at the South African parliament. Plus, I just like saying the name “Mangosuthu Buthelezi” to myself.
IRAQ: Some of the insurgent bombers claim they were deceived into killing and wounding innocent Iraqis. Is there no honor among terrorists? For four days this month, U.S. Marines were onlookers at a battle between suspected followers of Zarqawi and Iraqi Sunni tribal fighters at the western frontier town of Husaybah. And the London Sunday Times seems to confirm that Zarqawi has fled the country for emergency surgery after an American airstrike left him with shrapnel lodged in his chest.
LEBANON ELECTION UPDATE: Publius Pundit has a nice backgrounder pointing out that with Syria removed as a common enemy, we can expect the opposition to become more factionalized. Publius also covers the first round of the election, concluding with a photo of Miss Lebanon, just because she's hawt. Lebanon's anti-Syrian alliance has swept the board in the first round of general elections, but pro-Syrian Shia groups are tipped to fare better in next Sunday's second round of voting.
SYRIA, meanwhile, is cracking down on human rights activists and dissidents are calling for protests.
THE ARAB STREET has been polled. They seems to understand their problems pretty well, which is better news than from the Muslim focus groups who think the U.S. is 85 percent Jewish.
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES: Teri “They're Real and They're Spectacular” Hatcher claims that ABC has spent thousands of dollars digitally airbrushing her nipples out of the show — Nicollette Sheridan's, too. If ABC is smart, they can recoup that cost by using the unaltered footage for the inevitable DVD box set.
CULT OF THE iPod: The gadgets are being used for official and unofficial museum guides. one official use if for listening stations at the exhibition of portraits from famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz in Austin, TX.
PRESIDENT BUSH'S POLL NUMBERS are as low as ever, but it seems that he's doing better than nearly all his fellow leaders of the world's big industrial democracies. Indeed, France's vote on the European Constitution has become more of a referendum on the record of President Jacques Chirac and most analysts believe the expected “no” vote would destroy any possibility of Chirac standing again for the presidency in 2007.
THE FRENCH VOTE AGAINST THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION: The Times of London thinks Chirac is done, but that Europe will muddle along. A piece at Tech Central Station suggests France is going protectionist and collectivist. Power Line has more reactions from Europe and France's own “Red State – Blue State” map.
THE “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” ACT may have its faults, but it is spurring an extraordinary effort into improving the achievement of minority students.
ABDULLAH MESHUD is a Taliban commander who was captured in December 2001 in northern Afghanistan and turned over to the U.S. military. He spent a little over two years in the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But since his release, he has rejoined the jihad, operating out of Pakistan, including kidnapping Chinese contractors in Waziristan, along the border with Afghanistan. And there are at least 10 detainees released from Guantanamo that have been recaptured or killed fighting U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
QURAN DESECRATION: I want to give credit to the ACLU for posting the documents it obtained from the FBI investigation, along with summaries of detainee interviews on its website. For example, FBI notes from 07/30/02 state: “[t]he Camp Delta detainee uprising which occurred on or about 19-20 July 2002, was started when one detainee claimed that a guard dropped a Qur'an. In actuality the detainee dropped the Qur'an and then blamed the guard. Many other detainees reacted to this claim and this initiated the uprising.” The records for 03/28/03 suggest that some soldiers were handling the Quran because “it had been found that detainees were hiding things within the pages of the Qur'an. As a result, the guards were required to look through the Qur'an for their own safety.” Did you hear all about these reports on TV and in the newspapers? No?
SHUT IT DOWN? Thomas L. Friedman writes in The New York Times that the U.S. should shut down the Guantanamo prison. The first reason he cites is a May 8th article in The Observer of London about an American soldier's claims of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The soldier is Eric Saar; his allegations were reported by the AP in January, which Friedman would havee known if he read his own newspaper. Saar's book has already been found to contain at least one serious error, so I'm reserving judgment on his credibility until folks have had time to analyze it in toto. Friedman also cites an Australian radio report repeating allegations from detainees, without considering that the Al Qaeda training manual instructs jihadis to lie about being abused, or that the FBI investigation at Gitmo shows instances where the prisoners lied about being beaten (see, e.g., reports for detainees 3998, 4086-4088 and probably 4047). Nor does Friedman consider that the Guantanamo detainees have provided useful information on Al Qaeda and other terror groups, including their leadership, recruiting, funding, training and plans for attacking the United States and other countries, as well as Al Qaeda's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Nor does he address the aforementioned problems arising from releasing terrorists like Abdullah Meshud. Friedman's argument –taken to its conclusion — is that in fighting a war against Islamic extremists, we cannot imprison them if other Islamic extremists complain about it, regardless of whether the charges are true. Imho, it's better to have complaints investigated and, if proven, proper punishment imposed.
A MORE SERIOUS DISCUSSION OF DETAINEE TORTURE can be found at The Q & O Blog. Jon Henke lays out the reasons why he believes detainee torture is more widespread than it should be, focusing on the serious accusations, rather than the sensationalistic charges of Quran desecration. In turn, the reader comments make a few points regarding possible flaws in Henke's use of statistics. one commenter notes, as does Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that since the 9/11 those attacks, the U.S. has taken 68,000 suspects into custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, with relatively few deaths and cases of abuse. Of course, the U.S. should always strive to do better.
JAMES DEAN lived fast, died young and left a good-looking image behind. But was Dean's three-movie resume more promise than perfection?
PARKER POSEY, who was so great in Best In Show, unfortunately, smells.
OLIVER STONE was arrested for investigation of drug possession and driving while intoxicated, Beverly Hills cops said Saturday. I'm sure it's a conspiracy of some sort.
SLANDERING THE MILITARY: Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley made a public statement on May 13th that journalists are “being targeted for real in places like Iraq.” Foley's spokeswoman admits that Foley can provide “no evidence” to support her charges. Thomas Lipscomb, writing for Editor & Publisher, notes that Foley seems to be getting away with it, but observes that this is one reason why “Media credibility is in the toilet, even if the Koran isn’t.” Journalist Hiawatha Bray also weighs in after speaking with Foley by telephone. BTW, unlike the U.S. military, insurgent snipers are in fact trained to shoot journalists. Not that Linda Foley cares.
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA is the most likely replacement for ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, should he he step down this summer. U.S. News & World Report claims the White House thinking is: How could the Senate reject a judge they OK'd for the court 98 to 0? I don't know about the Senate as a whole, but I expect the Democrats would answer, “Based on Scalia's record since he got on the Court.” That being said, it probably would be unwise for the Democrats to spend much time on Scalia if he gets the nod. After all, when Chief Justice Burger retired, then-Associate Justice Rehnquist was nominated for Chief and Scalia was nominated for Associate. The Democrats devoted their efforts to attacking Rehnquist and lost — but Rehnquist could have remained on the Court even if his promotion had been nixed. As for Scalia, the Democrats joined in the celebration of the first Italian-American to be nominated for the Court and gave him little scrutiny, much to their later regret. If President Bush tapped Scalia for Chief, the Democrats should not fight the last war.
NO, VIRGINIA: A billboard that questions the existence of Santa Claus went on display on a street corner in Glasgow, Scotland on Friday. Critics say the piece — which carries the slogans “Stop Lying To Your Children About Santa Claus” and “Santa Gives More To Rich Kids Than Poor Kids” — is an attempt to ruin the magic of Christmas.
A NASHVILLE MOM faces criminal charges after she hired a stripper to dance at her 16-year-old son's birthday party.
KNIFE CONTROL: Britain already has strict gun control laws, so E.R. doctors are calling for a government ban on the sale of long, pointed kitchen knives.
DANCE LIKE A WHITE GUY: How did this video leak onto the 'net? It's supposed to be a secret.
IOWA'S “BUTTER COW” LADY: Norma “Duffy” Lyon, who has carved a full-size dairy cow at the Iowa State Fair for almost 50 years, hopes to also hopes to sculpt a life-size Tiger Woods.
