THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:
FRIDAY TIMEWASTER: Our site admin Lance has plenty of games up at his site. Let's start with the classics.
SUFJAN STEVENS tells the Cleveland Scene that he is more comfortable with storytelling than with history or politics.
THE ROLLING STONES are having so much trouble getting their new single played on the radio that they’ve hired a “specialist” to help them. Former Sony International exec Rick Dobbis may be paid as much as 500K to “work” the stations. Roger Friedman blames Clear Channel for fracturing radio into so many genres that there’s almost no place for an “oldies” act with new material. I blame Karl Rove! Or maybe the new Stones record — like all of them since at least Tattoo You — just isn't that good.
RILO KILEY: The opening slot on the Coldplay tour is getting the band lots of press, even in outlets like the St. Petersburg Times.
RAY DAVIES: The Kinks frontman criticizes President Bush and the government response to Hurricane Katrina generally, but spends more time noting that the whole infrastructure of New Orleans seemed very fragile to him.
DR. JOHN, who lost a nephew in New Orleans, does not like celebrities being used as propaganda.
NICK CAVE scored a victory for rock and roll over health and safety laws, refusing to take the stage in London without his beer and cigarettes.
LAURA VEIRS gets a feature in NOW Toronto, in which she talks about rocking out and mentions that Mudhoney is working on a new record.
THE POLYPHONIC SPREE is not just the soundtrack for the upcoming movie Thumbsucker — the band also pulled the director out of a depression following the suicide of Elliott Smith, who was originally going to do the soundtrack. You can stream a few cuts from the band's MySpace page.
DIAMOND NIGHTS are taking their “I Love the 80's” metal/rock/power-pop on the road. Check out the legal download of “Destination Diamonds” as an introduction.
MADONNA: We all knew her British accent was fake, but did you know her husband's accent is fake, too?
COURTNEY LOVE: Dean's Planet has a gallery of her scary faces.
GEORGE CLOONEY is angry that he cannot voice his opinions without fierce criticism from President Bush's supporters. Seems like Clooney can't stand to hear opposing viewpoints. He seems to think he's liberal, but that would include free and open debate, wouldn't it?
SUPERMAN RETURNS, set to open next June, has a budget of nearly 250 million dollars.
RUSSELL CROWE: As the studios plan to re-release Cinderella Man in hopes of recouping losses and boosting chances for Oscar nominations, Crowe says boxing is stupid. As is Crowe, apparently. Of course, he has a point — why punch someone with padded gloves when you can just throw your cellphone at them?
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Wedding bells?
HURRICANE KATRINA: The Natural Hazards Center 2004 paper analyzing the local response to Hurricane Ivan noted: “A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.” Thursday's Washington Post looked at federal flood-control funding for Louisiana and reported that during the Bush administration, Louisiana received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state. Moreover, Bush's funding requests for the key N.O. flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its last five years.
IRAQ: The operation to rescue hostage Roy Hallums was put together in under three hours. As noted here yesterday, Sunni voter registration surged for the contitutional referendum. Haqy Asaad — an Iraqi expert in bomb disposal — has been gunned down in an ambush. Peter Kann, who covered the Vietnam War, looks at differences and similarities.
THE SIMPSONS are flamed by famous photog David LaChapelle: “They're everything that's wrong with music. Out of everything combined, they're everything wrong with culture, and everything wrong with art, and what we think of as art and musical culture – in one family!” Also: “They're reality-red-carpet, lip-synching television stars. I don't know what they are beyond that. I don't think they offer anything.” The Simpson camp suggests LaChapelle is bitter that the sisters recently refused to pose for him for a Rolling Stone cover — and LaChapelle's producer doesn't really deny it: “We've worked with everyone from Madonna to Janet Jackson, and have never had someone so on-again, off-again as the Simpsons. In the 10 years I've worked with David, I've never known anyone to be so difficult as they were.” Someone who touts working with Madge and Janet probably shouldn't complain about lip-syncing… though the bit about being everything wrong with music still holds up.
BRUCE WILLIS will help pick Italy's most beautiful woman when he heads the jury of the “Miss Italia” pageant later this month. A decision made by people who should never run a henhouse.
THE FRENCH HOTEL and Colin Farrell sold themselves for hurricane relief. Shockingly, Farrell was cheaper.
THE MIDDLE EAST: The Economist looks at tentative steps down the road to democracy. The opposition is now claiming massive fraud in the Egyptian elections. The Big Pharaoh — an Egyptian blogger — thinks the Egyptian election was rigged, but still important.
OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL: London's Times editorializes that “The United Nations would be better off without Kofi Annan.”
SCARLETT JOHANSSON wants to tell budding starlets to eat something, already!
EVA LONGORIA: The Desperate Housewife has a euphemism for two-timing: “I end up overlapping people because I know I'm over the relationship, so I move on without telling them. It's not good. I've never broken up with someone successfully.”
BRITNEY SPEARS is planning a cesarean section because she doesn't want to go through pain. So much for giving birth in the tub of Kabbalah water.
ENGLISH WOMEN: are just getting started in their 40s. But the pre-teen girls are fond of Playboy stationery.
IT'S THE SHOES: The Manolo, he is having a Super Fantastic Essay Contest with many shoe-related prizes.
HURRICANE OF BLAME: The new CBS poll shows people spread the blame around all levels of government. Though President Bush lost some public confidence in his abilites, his job approval numbers are virtually unchanged from prior polls and only three percent think he is most to blame for the situation in New Orleans. ALSO: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's online petition to fire the head of FEMA also tried to raise money for Democratic candidates. After an inquiry from the Associated Press, the DSCC quickly pulled down the page and said they would donate to charity any money raised by the petition.
CULT OF THE iPod: People like Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal are raving about the iPod Nano: “it's stunningly skinny — about the thickness of five credit cards stacked on top of one another.”
SOLAR ENERGY: Southern California Edison has agreed to purchase upwards of 500 megawatts of electricity from Stirling Energy Systems — more than all other U.S. solar projects combined. But no photovoltaic panels are used.
NANOTECH: Ultrafast Electron Microscopy is a breakthrough that may allow scientists to to watch nanotechnology experiments as they happen.
HURRICANE RELIEF: Some evacuees will be stylin' in designer duds from Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs. What would Barbara Bush say? The linked article reports that Jay-Z and Combs are thrilled to be able to help “their people.” What would Kanye West say?
HURRICANE EXPLOITATION: Guys on Craigslist are targeting women from New Orleans looking for a fresh start.
SANDY BERGER, former Clinton National Security Adviser, is fined 50K for illegally taking classified documents from the National Archives. Under the deal, Berger avoids prison time but he must surrender access to classified government materials for three years. The sentencing capped a bizarre sequence of events in which Berger admitted to sneaking classified documents out of the Archives in his suit (in his pants, really), later destroying some of them in his office and then lying about it.
L.A. GATOR UPDATE: A second renegade gator was seen basking in a drainage canal this week, not far from where wranglers have spent weeks chasing the first alligator, “Reggie,” a/k/a “Carlito,” around murky Lake Machado.
POLICE FIND 130 ANIMALS IN A BUS in Mexico City, including an eagle, two toucans, 41 mockingbirds, three iguanas, 14 parrots, 15 snakes, 55 tortoises and a tarantula. Insert really politically incorrect crowded bus joke here.
EL CHUPACABRA shot in Coleman, TX. Or it could be a mangy coyote.
SHRIMP apparently knew enough to evacuate from Hurricane Katrina's path.
IT'S ILLEGAL TO SERVE TIGER MEAT in China, but authorities discovered that a restaurant advertising it was actually selling donkey flesh marinated in tiger urine, according to a reprt in the China Daily. “The report didn't say how the urine was obtained.” I'll bet they got it from tigers. Probably stuck sleeeping tigers' paws in bowls of warm water.