LONDON ATTACKED AGAIN: The coverage is being rounded-up at the Counter-terrorism blog.
SUFJAN STEVENS' Illinois gets rave reviews from Seattle Weekly and Rolling Stone, fwiw.
ON THE PITCHFORK: Wilco to open for the Stones and play Farm Aid. A tepid review of Frank Black's Honeycomb and a rave for a double-disc new wave retrospective. And Part Two of their Intonation retrospective, which has plenty more cool photos. At the risk of being barred from ever teaching journalism, I'll note that some of the pics in this installment were almost certainly taken by a really hot woman wearing a “Smile If You're Gay” t-shirt.
THE ARCADE FIRE has bought a church in rural Quebec to house a new recording studio.
BONNIE PRINCE BILLY AND TORTOISE have collaborated on an upcoming album of covers of Elton John, Richard Thompson, Devo, The Minutemen and more.
THE AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FEST highlights from 2004 will be collected on CD by Rhino.
JAY FARRAR of Son Volt lists music you should hear at Amazon, including albums by R.L Burnside, Richard and Linda Thompson and Guided by Voices.
ELVIS COSTELLO AND EMMYLOU HARRIS had themselves a hoedown in Central Park, dueting on “Sleepless Nights” and “Wild Horses” and covering Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams.
MY MORNING JACKET: Stereogum didn't care much for the trailer to Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, in which the band will appear, but digs the Z album, set for release ten days before the movie.
ROBERT POLLARD is providing the soundtrack to Steven Soderbergh upcoming movie, Bubble.
CREAM may reunite for three gigs in Madison Square Garden. The source for this story is supposed to be Billboard's website, but I didn't see it there.
THE GODFATHER OF SKA, Laurel Aitken has died at 80, following a battle with bronchial pneumonia. His musical style spawned a huge following among “mods” in Britain, including the 80's 2-Tone movement which led to the creation of bands such as The Specials, The Beat, The Selector, Bad Manners and Madness.
MADONNA: Should you ever get invited to celebrate Madge's wedding anniversary, don't say I didn't warn you against going.
BRITNEY SPEARS believes that having a baby may change her life. No, really.
MONTY PYTHON is compiling a new six-part series of old clips and new material.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON is sneaking out for midnight trysts with supposed ex-boyfriend Jared Leto. Porn starlet Corina Taylor knows why.
STRANGER THAN FICTION is the title of the latest movie to film in my neck of the woods. It's been shooting up and down Wells Street (for the El train, I'll bet) and in front of my building. I would have taken pictures, but Will Farrell, Gwyenth Paltrow, et al. were nowhere to be seen — just a lot of craft services tables with fancy coffee.
AL PACINO, 65, is reportedly romancing Rose MacGowan, 31. A few weeks ago, he went on a date with newly single former supermodel Elle Macpherson and reportedly hooked up with Winona Ryder several years ago.
DARYL HANNAH, who recently had a career revival with Kill Bill, Vol. 2, is going on hiatus to help save the environment.
DAVID LYNCH, a devotee of transcendental meditation and its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is announcing the formation of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Lynch believes that today's students “are even more stressed out. Their schools are hellholes. They're getting pathetic educations. They're not going forward with full decks of cards.” Lynch did not say whether the foundation will be headquartered on Mulholland Drive or in Twin Peaks.
“HE'S DEAD, JIM.” James Doohan, who played “Scotty,” the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original “Star Trek” TV series and movies, is dead at 85 of pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest (which was was stopped by his silver cigarette case). Doohan's ashes will be sent into space in accordance with his wishes.
STAR TREK AND THE SUPREME COURT: At the Huffington Post, business futurist Steven G. Brant has two questions he would like Judge Roberts to answer at his confirmation hearings: “What does Judge Roberts think of Star Trek?” and “What does Judge Roberts think of Bush v. Gore?” Brant is a fan of Star Trek's Prime Directive of non-interference with the development of other cultures. If Brant is a Trekker, he must know that the Enterprise violated the Prime Directive on any number of occasions. As for Bush v. Gore, Brant should know what Roberts thinks, because Roberts was one of Jeb Bush's lawyers during the Florida recount. Brant might be interested in the comments of David Boies, who represented Gore: “John Roberts is a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant judge. He is a very careful judge, a thoughtful judge. I would agree with what the president said earlier. He is a decent man.”
SEN. TED KENNEDY (D-MA), discussing the Supreme Court nomination on NBC's Today show, imho managed to display a near-total lack of understanding of what a judge does. Sen. Kennedy said, “The American people during this process want to know is he going to be on the side of the major corporate interests or is he going to be on the consumers’ interests? Will he be on the side of the polluters or will he be on the side of those that believe that the Congress had the right to pass important legislation on the environment? And will he be on the side of workers or is he going to be on the side of the bosses?” But the job of a judge is to decide cases impartially, not to automatically favor a “side.” The part Kennedy gets right is the issue of the scope of the power of Congress to legislate on a given topic; what he calls “commerce clause issues” should be fair game, if properly asked. However, given the Supreme Court's decision in the medical marijuana case this past Term, Ted probably doesn't need to worry about the Court restraining the power of Congress under the commerce clause.
ONE MORE THING: I have to give President Bush credit for not cracking up in the middle of introducing Judge Roberts when four year-old John G. Roberts, Jr. decided to bust some moves.
LONDON BOMBINGS: London Mayor Ken Livingstone blames western policies for contributing to the spread of the extremism that inspired the bombers: “This particular strand of extremism was funded by the West in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was just another businessman until he was recruited by the CIA.” The 9/11 Commission Report notes that the West aided the Muhajadeen through Pakistan, but “Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the United States.” Mayor Livingstone also defended Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the cleric who visited London at his invitation last year and who was scheduled to attend a conference in Manchester next month, calling him a “leading progressive Muslim” who had condemned the London attacks. Yusuf al-Qaradawi has not only defended suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq, but also suggested that last year's Asian tsunami was Allah's punishment of immorality in tourist areas.
MODERATE MUSLIMS are split on suicide bombings. The uncle of Shahzad Tanweer, one of the four London bomb suspects, has defended his nephew's actions as a desperate “sacrifice” in an interview with the British tabloid News of the World. Britain's Muslim leaders have demanded a judicial inquiry into what motivated the suicide bombers. In London's Guardian, Norman Geras, professor emeritus in government at the University of Manchester (and a Marxist) addresses the apologists for terror.
YEMEN is being rocked by anti-government protests, with at least 20 dead and hundreds injured.
SAUDI ARABIA: The U.S. warned its citizens in SA that militants were planning fresh attacks as Saudi security forces said they found a militant bomb factory.
CHOCOLATE ADDICTION is unlike other types of addicition in the brain (at least among women), according to a Texas A&M University psychology professor.
MYSPACE: The social networking site is bought by media mogul Rupert Murdoch; pranks ensue.
THE INTERNET AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA: A recent poll suggests that fear of spyware helps drive net traffic to trusted media brands. Business Week explains its differing editorial processes for its blog and magazine content.
FREE COLLEGE FOR VIRGINS: That's the offer made by a Ugandan member of parliament to girls living in his district.
TIME-TRAVEL: Physicist Amos Ori of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology has come up with a time machine design which, unlike most previous proposals, requires only normal matter and the vacuum known to exist in space.
CAR KARAOKE: Motorists who sing while driving tend to concentrate more and fall asleep less than their silent counterparts, but drivers should avoid overly rousing tunes or complex rhythms which can divert attention away from the road.
LEBANON: The U.N. wants to help the newly-formed Lebanese government expand its military presence in the south, with Syrian forces no longer in the country.
PAKISTAN has detained about 200 suspected Islamist extremists in a series of raids on religious schools, mosques and other properties. Most belong to banned militant groups and are wanted “in terrorist cases”, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said.
IRAQ: The draft Bill of Rights mentioned here yesterday prompts The New York Times to write: “A working draft of Iraq's new constitution would cede a strong role to Islamic law and could sharply curb women's rights…” Also: “The draft chapter… has ignited outrage among women's groups, who protested Tuesday morning in downtown Baghdad at the square where a statue of Saddam was pulled down by American marines in April 2003.” (That's an interesting location.) Religious Shiite politicians tried once before to abolish the 1959 law that has for decades been considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East in protecting the women's rights. As is happening now, women took to the streets. Protests by women and relatively secular blocs on the constitutional committee, like the Kurds, may force Shiite members to tone down the religious language. “Some of the points regarding women's rights in this chapter are still to be reviewed,” said Mariam Arayess, a religious Shiite on the committee. Other members of the committee said there were many different drafts in circulation and that women would have equal rights under the law: “There will be no humiliation for women,” said committee member Kassim Daoud. It may be more difficult to lobby for more secular terms if Sunni drafters decide to walk away from the process for security reasons. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated publicly that Iraqis would make “a terrible mistake” in adopting any constitution that sharply curbs women's rights.
IRAQ II: The headline is “U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Report Low Morale.” The story reports that a majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq say morale is low; the report itself (Acrobat pdf) states that 54 percent of OIF-II soldiers reported low morale, but noted that in OIF-I 72 percent reported low morale. In other words, morale has been improving, not that we would report it that way. One hopes it continues to improve; one also hopes that the military brass saw this January 2005 report long before the public did Wednesday.
VENEZUELA: There seems to be increasing criticism and protest of Hugo Chavez.
OWEN AND MZEE are a baby hippopotamus orphaned by the same tsunami that hit Asia and a 130-year-old giant tortoise; their true, but highly unlikely friendship has been turned into a children's book.
PET HOARDING: At Slate, Daniel Engber asks, What's the Deal With “Cat Ladies?” Meanwhile, the Chautauqua County SPCA is looking for blankets, old towels, and maybe foster homes for 117 miniature and toy poodles that were taken from a home in the town of Mina, NY on Friday. Almost around the clock since Friday, shelter workers and volunteer groomers have been shaving the poodles.
DOG-NAPPING? Engelbert Humperdinck has launched a public appeal for help to find his six-month-old German Shepherd, Charnie. Humperdinck has been scouring the streets of his village with a dog whistle, but fears the pup has been dog-napped.
SQUIRRELS fail in their third attempt to burn down a fruit packing business in British Columbia.