Karl 
THOM YORKE gets pub from the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Village Voice for The Eraser, which Rolling Stone gives four stars, but which gets a mere 6.6 on the Pitchfork. Its currently scoring a 77 via Metacritic. The whole album is streaming from the AOL link below. You can also see him perform an unplugged version of “The Clock” on the Henry Rollins Show via YouTube.
NEW RELEASES: Albums from Thom Yorke, Sufjan Stevens, Phish, James Figurine (a/k/a Jimmy Tamborello of the Postal Service), Soul Asylum, Jeus & Mary Chain (re-releases), Ramblin' Jack Elliot and more are streaming in full from AOL Music. The Hellacopters move further down the pop path with Rock & Roll Is Dead. Killing Joke returns with Hosannas from the Basements of Hell. Shapes and Sizes puts out a self-titled debut on Sufjan's Asthmatic Kitty label.
PITCHFORK LAUNCHES THE INFINITE MIXTAPE: Pitchfork starts an “infinite mixtape” with “21 free MP3s that've kicked our collective a** in 2006 so far,” with more to follow every few days.
ONEIDA: In the Village Voice, Chuck Eddy profiles Brooklyn's weirdest and finest, now in their thirties. You can get a flavor of the band — including some from the band's ne Happy New Year — via the Hype Machine.
SON VOLT frontman Jay Farrar talks to the Edmonton Sun about the difference between playing solo versus with the band and says Son Volt 2.0 has enough recorded for a new album slated for next Spring.
BAD VIBRATIONS: The UK's Daily Mail offers a primer on the Brian Wilson saga for the uninitiated.
BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE will be taking time off after the band's Fall tour. BSS mastermind Kevin Drew told Billboard: “Things kept getting bigger and changing. But we've had an incredible, incredible, incredible run. It's something that can't be taken for granted. If we kept going (without a break), we'd be taking it for granted. Next time, we'd be doing college tours for money. That sucks the music out of you. Next thing you know, you're trying to get teenagers to buy your albums.” The picture is from the video for “Almost Crimes.” You can see 'em live on “Superconnected” from the Ottawa Folk Festival and “Fire Eye'd Boy,” which somehow escaped the network's eye.
CBGB: September 30 will mark the end for New York City's famous punk rock venue, though it may be the club of the undead in Vegas. Owner Hilly Kristal is taking the bars, the stage and “the urinal that Joey (Ramone) p****d in” to Sin City.
MATES OF STATE: The husband-wife duo talk to the Sydney Morning Herald about their creeping success and join the crowd of bands adding Gnarls Barkley's “Crazy” to their set list.
OVERCOMING TWANG-PHOBIA: PopMatters offers a guide to sneaking in the twang: “Straight off, admit to yourself that you probably won't get anyone to replace their Celine Dion or Sting CDs with Hank Williams or Jason & the Scorchers. If they're that far gone, there's really no helping them anyway. So be realistic, and merely hope that your friends will begin accepting twang with the same tolerance with which they might greet their jovial but slightly off-kilter uncle at Thanksgiving…”
THE… WHO? Roger Daltrey and the band reportedly had to produce ID to get back stage at the Oxegen festival. I just hope they didn't wake up in a Soho doorway.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: TMZ has posted a copy of the official birth certificate of the elusive Tom-Kitten, but Jossip asserts that it “might as well have come from a document purveyor in Chinatown.” MSNBC's Jeanette Walls relays speculation that nobody's seen Suri Cruise yet because she's being raised in accord with Scientology. The same column has speculation that Cruise is being overcome by his Scientology training and that’s leading to a paranoid world view that is being reflected in his behavior with the baby.
PIRATES STORM THE WORLD: Not content with shattering US B.O. records, Dead Man's Chest reportedly broke records in many overseas markets, raking in 46.6 million in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.K. and Uruguay. China, however, has banned the flick on the grounds of supernatural content or its portrayal of human cannibalism (though it's not actually shown), or it had not been submitted to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television for approval, So it remains to be seen whether the Chinese will have to see Pirates on the pirated DVDs for which the country is famous. depending on your source.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY could tell you about Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, but she'd have to kill you. As it is, MTV News quasi-spoils part of Dead Man's Chest in the article.
MICKEY ROURKE cut his little finger off because he thought he “didn't want it.” So there was less acting in Sin City than I thought.
MATTHEW McCONAGHEY, following his three-day bender in Costa Rica, is videotaped bumming money from the paparazzi to buy some sandwiches on a bike ride with Lance Armstrong.
ALICE COOPER and CORBIN BERNSEN helped 26-year-old Kyle MacDonald trade one red paper clip all the way up to a house.
LINDSAY LOHAN has been caught canoodling with Harry Morton, scion of the Morton's steak-house chain, CEO/founder of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, and founder of the fabulously named Pink Taco chain. Yet other reports have her buying a home in the UK after falling for Welsh actor Rhys Ifans. Click the second link if you do not realize how bizzare that story is.
KATE WINSLET has the hottest bod in Britain, according to a survey of female magazine readers.
JESSICA SIMPSON gets a haiku for her 26th birthday.
BRADGELINA: Jolie is going back to work as the voice of Tigress in the DreamWorks animated feature Kung Fu Panda
THE TOP TEN UNFINISHED FILMS of all time, according to Film Threat.
SIENNA MILLER: Engaged to Jude Law again, or caught canoodling with new co-star James Franco?
DENISE & HEATHER & RICHIE & CHARLIE & DAVID: Denise Richards has a near wardobe-malfunction pumping gas. Video at the link.
IRAQ: At ITM, Mohammed writes on the rising violence in Baghdad, which he does not consider to be sectarian. The typical report on the violence does not mention that it occurred in the wake of operations against the the Mehdi Army militia noted here yesterday. Michael Yon, who has blogged from Iraq and Afghanistan, writes: “Please do not let your respective media delude you: we are winning in Iraq, but we are going to lose increasing numbers of people in Afghanistan.”
IRAQ IN THE MEDIA: Rod Nordland, who served as Newsweek’s Baghdad bureau chief for two years, tells Foreign Policy that it's much worse in Iraq than is reported. Foreign Policy did not ask what Nordland is not reporting. Nordland claims that “the administration does a great job of managing the news,” but the example he gives arguably shows the exact opposite. Nordland says, “It is certainly hard to hide the fact that in the third year of this war, Iraqis are only getting electricity for about 5 to 10 percent of the day.” Acually, anyone with internet access can discover that Baghdad is getting four to six hours off the grid per day, which is 16 to 25 percent of the day — roughly three times better than Nordland's claim. Ralph Peters (who has called for Rumsfeld's resignation) recently reported from Baghdad that for all its problems, the electrical grid is in far better shape than it was under Saddam, and that if you're in almost any city outside Baghdad, you're far better off today than you were three years ago. Nordland says that “Living conditions have gotten so much worse, violence is at an even higher tempo, and the country is on the verge of civil war.” As if the US press has not reported this. Nordland is asked, “How often do you travel outside of the Green Zone?” He dodges that question, natch. The Green Zone is practically ground zero of the war, in part because jihadis understand they need the media to transmit bad news to advance their cause. That his view is colored by being hunkered down in the Green Zone does not seem to have occurred to him. Instead, it is the troops there that are “victims of their own propaganda.” He then gives an example regarding Taji that reveals a complete ignorance of the process by which the Coalition is gradually increasing the capabilities of the Iraqi forces. He also claims that “individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with the work they had done on embed,” though he gives no names, much like the Bizzaro World version of Joe McCarthy.
IRAN: Chief UN nuclear inspector Mohammad ElBaradei effectively fired his lead Iran investigator this spring at the request of the Iranians, according to a new report in the German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag.
TAI SHAN celebrates his first birthday with a giant fruitsicle at the National Zoo.
MEDITERRANEAN GECKO discovered in Kansas. And I just got a great deal on car insurance.
FROGS are looking for about £200 million, just to tide them over for awhile, yknow?
SPANISH DONKEYS may soon be subjected to singer James Blunt. Where is PETA when it's really needed?
A FUGITIVE OTTER who had spent almost a month on the run, eating the finest food and frolicking in clear public sight on the beach of one of New Zealand's swankiest suburbs, has been recaptured by desperate authorities.
