Karl Bade 
FEIST: Leslie Feist is profiled in the Boston Globe. Asked about her genre-bending solo disc, Feist says, ''Willie Nelson is country, but is he really? He's a great jazz guitarist and writes better folk songs than anyone. Is Nina Simone jazz or roots or blues? I've never been good at differentiating. It's music that occupies a space in my mind and my heart.”
ROBBIE FULKS “takes country's drowsiest subjects – drunken losers, dead-end towns and low-end cheaters – and infuses them with tart story lines, rapid-fire puns and bursts of moving humor,” according to a profile in the New York Daily News.
NAPOLEON IN RAGS: Rock critic emeritus Greil Marcus promotes his book, “Like A Rolling Stone,” with an article in the Guardian suggesting the Dylan anthem is a candidate for the greatest record ever made, perhaps, or the greatest record that ever would be made.
“IT'S THE MODERN DAY EQUIVALENT OF…” is the theme of Insound's e-mail newsletter, comparing new discs to old, as reprinted at Chromewaves.
GUMBY is on the comeback trail with a series of events marking his 50th anniversary and plans for television and a movie.
IRAQ: Bill Roggio has been on a roll at his blog, The Fourth Rail, with plenty of analysis of Operation Matador along the Syrian border and other war news.
IRAQ II: Saddam Hussein's spies planned to bribe members of the French political elite in the run-up to the invasion, including an offer to help fund President Jacques Chirac's re-election campaign, according to the Iraqi intelligence service memos uncovered by investigators working for the U.S. House of Representatives. Roselyne Bachelot, then a member of the National Assembly and the spokesman for Mr Chirac's re-election campaign, denied that any such offer had been made.
SEXY CHEERLEADING still legal in Texas, as a bill approved by the state House to ban bawdy cheerleading routines apparently isn’t going anywhere in the Senate this year.
…AND THE PEOPLE BOWED AND PRAYED: In a correction, the Washington Post informs its readers that an Episcopal congregation in Falls Church, VA does not sing Simon and Garfunkel's “Sounds of Silence” in Spanish before taking Communion.
BLUEGRASS PIONEER JIMMY MARTIN, who performed with the Blue Grass Boys, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and many others, died Saturday, a year after being diagnosed with bladder cancer. He was 77 years old.
MADONNA was offered a spot on the prestigious Cannes Film Festival jury, but turned it down because she would have missed two Kabbalah meetings back in London. And because it might remind people of her fine body of work in film. And maybe because she's busy taking giant fertility tablets flown in from India in her desperate attempt to have a third child.
CATS AND DOGS: The former mayor of Beverly Hills has 165 of them in her house when the cops showed up.
DOGS on the street are being recruited as sentries and informers by police in India.
DOGS: “What's that you say, Shannon? Ted's trapped under the tractor?” “Woof, Woof!” “Let's go!”
DOGS can dress as Darth Vader or put on a Leia slave outfit. Really, can't we save that for women?
REVENGE OF THE SITH: In The New York Times, A.O. Scott says, “it's better than Star Wars.“ on Friday, I gave Episode III the thumbs-up, but Scott clearly needs to be committed.
SUMMER MOVIE CALENDAR: Peter vanDerbeek has it nicely programmed by day, week and month.
LAWYERS SHOCKED AND STUNNED to discover that they cannot lie under oath and mislead a court. This is why, after the advance screening of Revenge of the Sith, when I was asked by the Coldstone Creamery whether I wanted a dish of Jedi ice cream (a/k/a “vanilla”) or the Dark Side ice cream (a/k/a “chocolate brownie”), I replied, “I'm a lawyer, so of course I'm having the Dark Side.”
AFGHANISTAN: Newsweek magazine has backed away from a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated copies of the Quran while questioning prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base — an account blamed for sparking violent riots in Afghanistan. “We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst,” Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in a note to readers. However, Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas proceeds to blame an anonymous government official allegedly knowledgeable about the matter (when he apparently was not) and other media outlets. Thomas then prints another unsubstantiated allegation of desecration made by Guantanamo detainees, even though U.S. military spokesman told him, “If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels.” Meanwhile, a group of Afghan Muslim clerics threatened on Sunday to call for jihad against the U.S. in three days unless it hands over military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Koran. Perhaps we could give them Evan Thomas?
GARAGE BIOLOGY: Home DNA labs are not a big deal…yet.
TARA REID GONE WILD? Well, yes, a long time ago, but now she may get paid for it. Page Six reports that the boozy floozy is close to a deal to become the next host of the E! channel's popular Wild On! travel show.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON, doing press for Woody Allen's Match Point, says she's not Woody's muse. Or his adopted daughter.
CAMBERLAKE IN COURT: Cameron Diaz is suing The Sun newspaper over a story claiming she was cheating on boyfriend Justin Timberlake with a married man. In another case, Timberlake is suing the News of the World over a story that claimed he cheated on Diaz.
CAMERON DIAZ also stars in a report from the Reebok Human Rights Awards posted at You Can't Make It Up.
CULT OF THE iPod: Do not run your iPod through the washing machine. Bill Gates thinks that the iPod will be killed by the cellphone. And newspaper columnist Ralph De La Cruz finds his lost youth in the iPod Shuffle he got as a birthday gift.
PODCASTING: Newspapers and magazines such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Philadelphia Daily News, Washington Post and Forbes have started podcasts in recent weeks.
THE FRENCH HOTEL: It looks like we will get to see her shove that huge hunk of meat in her mouth, after all.
IRAQ III: Arthur Chrenkoff's round-up of good news from Iraq actually gets published in The New York Times in a cool graphic format. Reporting all sides may be part of the paper's campaign to regain credibility, so it would be interesting for the NYT to report where each piece of good news ran in the paper, along with a similar chart of the bad news and where that ran in the paper. I'm not saying that there needs to be some artificial equality in the coverage, but I suspect that maybe one or two of the stories listed by Chrenkoff ran in the back of the paper and the rest were ignored.
IRAQ IV: The data suggests that between 60 and 70 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudis.
CANADA: The opposition grabbed control of the House of Commons on Thursday and shut it down for a day, the boldest move yet by the Bloc Quebecois and the Tories to demonstrate that the minority Liberals no longer hold power.
UZBEKISTAN: Protests over the trial of 23 prominent Muslim businessmen accused of terror ties and Islamic extremism exploded into violence in eastern Uzbekistan on Friday. The story is being well-blogged at Publius Pundit, Registan and Gateway Pundit. In contrast, CBS News changes the headline on the Associated Press report to “U.S. Ally Fires on Its People.”
GEORGE BARRIS AUTO AUCTION: Some of Hollywood's most famous cars are being auctioned by Bonhams and Butterfields. I'm thinking about getting the Black Beauty, but if I do, I probably won't be able to get this for Sylvia and Lex's wedding.
SENATE CANDIDATE Stan Jones is running as a Libertarian, but looks like a member of Blue Man Group.
SOPHIE MARCEAU, probably best known in the U.S. for her roles as Princess Isabelle in Braveheart and Elektra King in the Bond flick The World Is Not Enough, had a wardrobe malfunction at the Cannes Film Festival. NSFW, but you weren’t going to click to see the hi-res pics, anyway. I mention it only so that you don’t seem clueless at the watercooler; a public service, really.
WOMEN WRESTLING IN PUDDING: “It's a beautiful thing when the degradation of women and Greek philanthropy collide.”
