Karl 
JACK WHITE responds to criticism he’s received for writing the tune for a Coca-Cola ad: “I saw a beautiful ad, and I wrote a song for it because I was inspired by it.” BTW, while I linked to the ad last month, today's link points to a longer version.
PIXIES guitarist Joey Santiago, meanwhile, has just inked a deal to score TV commercials.
ARTHUR LEE: The Love frontman gets a little help with his leukemia battle from Robert Plant, New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, the Ian Hunter Band, Love guitarist Johnny Echols, Yo La Tengo and an indie-rock supergroup led by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah vocalist Alec Ounsworth. You can hear some classic Love tracks via MySpace.
ROCKISM AND POPTIMISM: At Slate, Jody Rosen charts the swing of the critical pendulum on the question of authenticity in popular music.
KURT COBAIN is the greatest rock hero of all time, according to the new NME readers poll. Shouldn't that category really be “anti-hero?”
DIPSOMANIACS made contact through the Pate page at MySpace, wanting to be added as a friend. AllMusic says they play a raucous but melodic brand of power pop, more Replacements and early Cheap Trick than Raspberries and Badfinger. So they are now a Friend of Pate. You can hear 'em via MySpace.
SEEN YOUR VIDEO, but it's still hard to believe: Here's Michael Landon singing the We Five's “You Were on My Mind” on Hullaballoo. Having Jackie DeShannon on hand is strange, but having The Byrds wandering around in the back is just plain wrong. I had the We Five's original version last month.
DAVID BOWIE comes out of his short-lived semi-retirement to curate the inaugural High Line Festival in NYC, which will feature emerging artists, along with some well known names, like David Bowie. Seriously, I do give Bowie credit for seeking out bands like Arcade Fire and Secret Machines. I found it ironic that Bowie is the veteran rocker who admitted boredom when he's the one open to new bands and trying new genres.
RICHARD HAWLEY: Brooklyn Vegan says (rightly) that you will dig him if you're a fan of Jens Lekman, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, and/or Roy Orbison. He's posted a studio track and live tracks from Hawley's site to celebrate a coming summer tour.
MOUNTAIN GOATS frontman John Darnielle recommends other people's songs in “The Dirty Dozen:” “None of the following tunes are safe for work, unless you're doing a very specific type of work…” But Standard Bitter Love Songs is hosting a trove of live Mountain Goats material.
FEIST talks to Pitchfork about songwriting, rootlessness and sock puppetry. There are plenty of Feist tracks on the 'net you can stream via the Hype Machine.
STEVE MASON: London's Guardian has more on the ex-Beta band and King Biscuit Time frontman's sudden decision to drop out of music.
THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION is a San Diego-based indie supergroup featuring members of The Album Leaf, Three Mile Pilot and Modest Mouse. Normally gothy and brooding, the band's new record, The Spell, is comparatively upbeat. The key word there is “comparatively.” I forgot to mention on Tuesday that the entire album is streaming this week over at AOL Music.
BRITNEY SPEARS: The pop tart's mom did not take news of the second spawn of Spenderline well. Life & Style Weekly reports that Spears met with her family and lawyer — but not Spenderline — and the topic of divorce came up. But Us Weekly claims the second pregnancy has doomed her to remain with her trashy husband. BONUS: Like the rest of the world, Spears is “dumbfounded” by the pro-life “monument” fictionalizing the birth of her child: “I think it's the most hysterical thing I've ever seen in my life.” And she's married to Spenderline, so that's saying something.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: The couple caused a stir in Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, WA, by turning up for a for a contest winner's premiere of M:I 3. Local radio stations planned to hold an Oprah-style couch-jumping contest, but Paramount asked them to drop it. CBS's Melissa P. McNamara asks whether bloggers hurt the box office debut of the movie. I doubt bloggers were a main cause of Cruise's plunge in popularity over the past year, from 58-31 favorable to 35-51 unfavorable.
JONATHAN RHYS-MEYERS, one of Cruise's M:I 3 co-stars, is disgusted with stars who complain about press intrusion: “(W)hen people then become famous and go, 'Oh God, I hate the press; God, I hate the paparazzi,' I'm like, 'Dude, it's not as if you didn't f**king beg for it.'”
WARNER BROS. plans to sell movies and TV shows to BitTorrent Inc. for legal downloads. Until last year, BitTorrent's software and Web site were considered to be aiding piracy of major studio films.
HALLE BERRY had to make love to herself on-camera when Bruce Willis couldn't make the shoot for Perfect Stranger. Willis will be digitally inserted later. And that's a sentence Richard Ness will love.
DENISE & HEATHER & RICHARD & CHARLIE & DAVID: Jason Itzler, the owner of the New York Confidential escort service, claims that in 2004, Sheen shelled out more than 20K for Cheryl, a blond ballerina and Juilliard grad, and Victoria, a dark-haired former Hotel Gansevoort hostess, dressing them as cheerleaders on one occasion.
JESSICA SIMPSON'S personal assistant, CaCee Cobb, finally told her childhood friend that she quit. Reps for the pneumatic blonde claim the two remain friends, though Cobb has been snapped solo at clubs where Simpson's future ex, Nick Lachey, just happened to be…
KATIE COURIC told the most influential people in the world: “I'm worthless without a teleprompter.” But she's more than Ron Burgundy — Katie has great legs and it was really cool when they stuck the camera up her butt on the Today show, so she shouldn't sell herself short… and she didn't, signing up with the CBS Evening News for a reported 15 million a year. So I guess she was wrong when she said “The era of the robo-anchor is over.”
JESSICA ALBA is nice to an old lady. Yes, there's video.
LINDSAY LOHAN looked under the weather at the premiere of her new film, Just My Luck.
BRADGELINA: George Clooney is terrified Pitt is planning to pull out of Ocean's 13. Pitt hasn't signed his contract yet and a source told London's Sun newspaper: “Instead of being there to work on the project, Brad is in the middle of Africa. People are worried that he will prefer to carry on being a dad rather than go back to work.”
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: People magazine declares she has the best cleavage on the planet. Blog NYC examines the evidence.
IRAQ: Pres. Talabani and Baghdad's most senior Shiite cleric urged Iraqis to unite for the sake of security as about 50 clerics and tribal leaders met in the capital to discuss ways of ending widespread violence. Coalition forces are striking back at insurgents following a terror attack in Tal Afar. An estimated 20,000 participants from 50 countries looked for business opportunities at the “Iraq Rebuild 2006” exhibition in Amman, where there was cautious optimism about doing business in the country, despite the raging violence.
IRAN: A top Iranian commander has called for the former US embassy in Tehran — where Islamist students held US hostages for 444 days — to be turned into a Great Satan Park: “We would be able to nicely show off the American crimes to citizens strolling in the park,” General Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh told the state news agency. Clearly, the regime is trying to reach out and form a bond with the US.
THE UNITED NATIONS' new Human Rights Council will count five nations seen by rights groups as among the world's worst abusers as members after a first round of voting. After the second round, we discover that the mix of free, partially free and not free nations is about the same as the composition of the discredited Human Rights Commission the new Council was supposed to replace. The reform there is remarkable.
CIRCUS ELEPHANTS escaped from a truck that overturned on the highway near Stockholm, Sweden. But they were content to graze in a nearby meadow until the situation was rectified.
A SIX-FOOT-LONG GATOR is beaten back by a 74-year-old woman with a garden hose in Fort Myers, FL.
PIZZLY GROLAR BEAR UPDATE: A DNA test confirms that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter was half polar bear, half grizzly — possibly the first documented in the wild.
BAT BITES can kill you, so get a checkup if you encounter a bat. You may not even know you have been bitten, as bats have tiny teeth.
BRITISH LABRADORS are sniffing out counterfeit DVDs.
