DEMI MOORE AND ASHTON KUTCHER got hitched? Or is everyone being Punk'd?
AUSTIN CTY LIMITS FEST: TheAustin American-Statesman was all over it, with photos, videos, reviews and visitor blogs. Lucinda Williams, Roky Erickson and Buddy Guy just scratch the surface.
ROCKING FOR RELIEF: Pearl Jam and Robert Plant will play Chicago's House of Blues for the low, low price of a grand per ticket. More reasonably priced is Brian Wilson, who will call you for a Benjamin.
LIZ PHAIR: Her Exile in Guyvillewas an “answer” record to the Stones' Exile on Main Street. Her new album is sort of an “answer” to Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life.
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS' Twin Cinema is the streaming album of the month at Radio Indie Pop.
GIANT SAND frontman Howie Gelb talks about GS, his other band Arizona Amp and Alternator, and the split-off of Calexico with the Aussie press.
NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN — aring tonight and Tuesday on PBS — is “spectacular oral history,” according to the Washington Post. Jonathan Duffy of the BBC facetiously asks, “Bob Dylan – why the fuss?”
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH turns down a gig on The O.C.: “I don't like the idea of being overexposed,” said frontman Alec Ounsworth, adding “Vincent van Gogh never sold a painting, and he was perfectly content.” Tyler or Lee Sargent, identical twins who play bass, responded, “Of course he killed himself.” “Perhaps that wasn't the best example,” Ounsworth conceded, cracking a smile.
THE DECEMBERISTS' Colin Meloy talks songwriting in the Orlando Sentinel.
GREEN DAY: American Idiot borrows from or pays homage to everything from Johnny Cash to Bryan Adams to Icicle Works to Oasis and Whitesnake.
THE FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION held its fifth annual policy summit in DC recently; DIY career models and royalties from podcasting were on the agenda.
SUFJAN STEVENS yet again, this time in the Washington Post, noting that music is moving from the industrial age to the information age.
MUSIC AND ADVERTISING: A new survey suggests most music fans don't mind musicians being involved in ads, but product placement in songs is controversial.
PHIL SPECTOR, still facing a murder rap, is suing his agent for embezzlement.
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: Moss may not lose all of her endorsement contracts after admitting he cocaine usage. Coty Beauty, owners of the Rimmel brand, said it was considering dropping Moss from its ad campaigns, but was heartened by her apology for “letting people down.” The Mirror runs calims by a former model that Moss also did Special K and made a pass at her. Meanwhile, Doherty had to refute claims that a 16-year-old girl ran away with him on his tour bus and weather the damage when a 15-year-old girl was taken by police from his roadies' bus.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Jolie visits a 6-year-old cancer patient after being tipped off to the boy's desire to meet her by Nicole Kidman, who previously visited him. Pitt's work on a a controversial 525 million dollar British housing and sports complex is not well-received.
PORTIA de ROSSI turned down the chance to romance Angelina Jolie in the 1998 HBO movie Gia because she feared she'd have to “come out” as a lesbian. Given the number of ostensibly straight actresses who have since publicly stated that they would sleep with Jolie, de Rossi must be with Ellen De Generes just to punish herself. Or to get a pony.
STEVEN SODERBERGH decalres Hollywood is out of whack, shoots a movie in HD video with locals who had never acted. The movie, Bubble, will open in January, simultaneously in theaters, on HDNet Movies and on DVD: “I want them to sell Bubble DVDs in the theater lobby,” Soderbergh says, smiling.
NOT EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS: Comic Chris Rock's sitcom came in second to CBS' Survivor: Guatemala, ahead of Joey and The O.C. Rock even gets an apology from one of his former teachers.
THE FRENCH HOTEL: Her wedding plans are off—and have been for months, says a source very close to the groom’s family. And Baltimore police are clearing the heiress of claims she allegedly offered teenagers drugs and alcohol for a taped segment of The Simple Life: Interns.
JESSICA SIMPSON gets a kiss from a homeless guy and doesn't even look drunk this time.
DAKOTA FANNING JOINS GIRL SCOUTS: Cookie sales in Hollywood area expected to top 100 million dollars.
GHOST STORIES: Members of the U.S. military and the National Guard are seeing and hearing girl ghosts and finding Bibles open to the exact same passage from the Book of Revelation. on Capital Hill, lawmakers call for an investigation in the slow response of Mystery Inc. and Ghostbusters.
WOULD YOU LIKE A CONTRACEPTIVE WITH THAT? A health trust in the UK backs its nurse in giving a contraceptive injection to a schoolgirl in the toilet of a McDonald's restaurant. McDonald's said it considered the practice “completely inappropriate.” RELATED: At the other end of the scale, we now have instant pregnancies.
SEATTLE SUPERTRAIN DERAILED? It looks like Seattle's Mayor and City Council want to put an end to the financially troubled monorail plan. Life imitates Cameron Crowe's Singles.
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON says she cannot support the so-called International Freedom Center planned for Ground Zero in NYC. The family members of victims, as well as unions representing the city's police and firefighters, want nothing less than the IFC being booted from Ground Zero, which they do not see as the place to debate domestic and international politics. The IFC’s founder, Tom Bernstein, defends the concept by comparing the IFC to the Holocaust Museum, but — as new media guru Jeff Jarvis notes, “that, too, doesn’t fit. The Holocaust Museum is, truly, about the crimes of the murderers. The IFC is not about the crimes of the islamofascists. That would at least be more relevant. But neither is appropriate at this place, at this time.”
ANTIWAR WEEKEND: Last weekend's march on DC didn't get much media coverage in light of Hurricane Rita, which may be just as well for the antiwar movement. While DC Police Chief Ramsey said Saturday that the rally “probably” reached its goal of 100,000 protesters, police at the scene put the number much lower, from 10,000 to 20,000. Comparing the observation deck of the Washington Monument at 2 p.m. with photos of last year's abortion rights rally suggests the lower figure may be more accurate. And some members of the Daily Kos — the web's largest left-of-center website — were unhappy with the lack of focus on the message and march organizer ANSWER generally.
CULT OF THE iPod: Taking the Nano apart shows that it has a gross profit margin of about 50 percent. Nano owners are discovering that the screen scratches easily.
MISTER SOFTEE is moving toward bringing a Web platform to the PC operating system and recognizes the threat the Google and others pose to Microsoft's continued dominance. But is MSFT a decade late?
A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMPUTER VIRUS: An outbreak of a virtual plague is spreading across major cities in the virtual land of Azeroth in the popular World of Warcraft game.
ARMED, SIX-LEGGED ROBOTS may one day work alongside dogs on the southern side of the Korean DMZ.
NANOTECH: Harvard University researchers have found that molecular markers indicating the presence of cancer in the body are readily detected in blood scanned by special arrays of silicon nanowires.
LEFT-HANDED WOMEN may have an increased chance of developing breast cancer, research suggests. However, Emma Taggart of the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: “Although this is an intriguing study, it doesn’t give us enough evidence to link left-handedness with breast cancer.” Even so, southpaw women should start doing everything with their right hands. And we should definitely ban those blunt lefty safety scissors for kindergarteners, just to be on the safe side.
IRAQ: Muqtada Al Sadr — no friend of the U.S. — now considers Al Qaeda and Zarqawi to be bitter enemies. Al Qaeda is trying to patch up relations with the respected Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which also issued statements against Zarqawi. Bill Roggio notes that Iraqi and U.S. forces in Tal Afar have switched from combat operations to reconstruction and security operations and that the city of Ramadi currently appears to be the focus of a Coalition operation which may be the beginning of a clear and hold in the Hit-Ramadi corridor. An article at Strategy Page compares Iraq to the Balkans.
DAY OF THE DOLPHIN: Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
DOGS HAVE NINE LIVES: Abandoned as a four-month-old puppy at Heathrow Airport, Jessie falls off a cliff, is bitten by an adder, gored by a furious stag… and survives. Elsie, a St. Brenard puppy, swallows a 13-inch knife and lives.
CATBLOGGING: The 79th Carnival of the Ctas is blogged by the Incredible Hulk.
HAMSTERS are genetically modified to produce glow-in-the-dark sperm to aid male infertility research.
A LION is discovered in a routine traffic stop in Bogota, Columbia.
…AND THE CROWS STARE UNAMAZED as the West Nile virus threatens the magpie population in California.