Karl 
ROBERT POLLARD has allowed his first serious post-GbV album, From A Compound Eye, to leak all over the 'net. Maisonneuve magazine's Frank Smith writes: “What strikes me most about the album is how Pollard has rocketed back in time, in search of the spirit that informed earlier albums like Vampire on Titus… and Not in My Air Force… This fresh start that he’s given himself is full of promise.”
PAUL WESTERBERG played Chicago on Friday, but I couldn't go, so I cannot break the tie between Greg Kot, who wrote: I haven't had this much fun at a rock concert in months, and Jim DeRogatis, who called it “a sad reminder of a great talent that has either been squandered or lost to the passage of time.”
ON THE PITCHFORK: A reviewer concludes that the reissue of the Buzzcocks' 1993 reunion disc, Trade Test Transmissions, “deserves credit for further documenting the band's sincerity and voracious performances after years outside the limelight… (but) the album remains a strictly diehards-only affair.”
JAMES TAYLOR was the best Joni Mitchell ever had, but she no longer does that sort of thing.
CYBILL SHEPHERD, in contrast, shares more than you wanted to know, more than enough to suggest that she doesn't date much. And that's before she starts in on irritable bowel syndrome.
DOGS: A miniature dachsund-pinscher named Mr. Jengels is cheated out of a cash drawing because he can't cash a check.
WAR ON TERROR: The Washington Post reports that Zacarias Moussaoui has notified the government that he intends to plead guilty to his alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and could enter the plea as early as this week if a judge finds him mentally competent. ALSO: A KLM flight refused entry to U.S. airspace on April 8th was reportedly carrying two Saudi Arabian brothers with suspected links to Al Qaeda.
PAPAL CONCLAVE: The Pope Blog has a link to a live chimney-cam in Real format.
THE VIRGIN MARY has miraculously appeared in Chicago, on a wall on Fullerton Avenue under the Kennedy Expressway.
IRAQ: The Christian Science Monitor offers a mixed assessment of progress in Iraq. Perhaps more original is the paper's look at how soldier blogs, chat rooms and e-mail may affect troop morale.
ADOBE PLANS TO BUY MACROMEDIA (maker of Flash, Dreamweaver and other web staples) for about $3.4 billion in stock.
DAVE GROHL hopes the forthcoming Foo Fighters double-disc is to the band's catalog what Physical Graffiti is to the Led Zeppelin catalog.
ROCKSHOW: Paul McCartney (the cute one) announces U.S. tour dates.
U.K. ELECTION: The Sun, of all papers, is co-sponsoring Rock The Vote U.K. How long until the conspiracy-minded suggest that putting up Joss Stone (who now lives in the States) and Justin Timberlake for this project is meant to depress voter turnout?
TiVo IS in talks with Google and Yahoo, though it's unclear whether TiVo is looking for a partner or a buyer.
LUXURY HOMELESS SHELTER: Los Ageles just opened a $17 million state-of-the-art facility, complete with a full-sized gymnasium, library, playroom, hair salon, education center, and professional kitchen.
FLYING CARS are coming to market and folks at NASA have built a computer system designed to let millions of people fly whenever they please, and take off and land from wherever they please, in their very own vehicles.
WANT TO DESTROY EARTH? Sam's Archive warns that it's harder than you may have been led to believe. Indeed, even changing the Earth's orbit is fairly difficult. Getting everybody in the world to jump at the same time will not cut it. SEMI-RELATED: An asteroid which is on a course to miss the Earth by a whisker in 2029 could go round its orbit again and score a direct hit a few years later.
WARD CHURCHILL UPDATE: Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard jousts with Churchill over drinks on the Ward Churchill Notoriety Tour. At Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldsein presents another in his series of dialogues between Churchill and Billy Jack.
IS THE UNIVERSE STUCK IN GROUNDHOG DAY? Didn't I just ask that? Professor Paul Steinhardt, the Albert Einstein professor in science at Princeton University, argues that recent findings that the universe's expansion is speeding up, and that the majority of energy in the universe must therefore be gravitationally repulsive “dark energy,” could mean that the universe is destined to repeat its own history.
STANLEY KUBRICK: Low Culture has posted a “Definitive and comprehensive list of African-American actors and characters appearing in films directed by Stanley Kubrick.” Check it out; it won't take you long.
CULT OF THE iPod: Like NYC, Washington, DC is in the grip of a wave of iPod thefts. The Washington Post surveys the psychic damage: “Victims said they felt the thieves got an illicit glimpse at their musical tastes and even their souls.'”
MILITARY HACKERS: Last month, Military leaders from U.S. Strategic Command disclosed the existence of a unit called the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, which according to Wired News “could best be described as the world's most formidable hacker posse. Ever.”
JAPAN AND CHINA have a rocky relationship right now, with potentially global implications.
MORE DESPERATE THAN HOUSEWIVES: Jesse Metcalfe, who plays the lawnboy servicing Eva Longoria on Desperate Housewives, hooked up with Tara Reid? Plead drunkenness, dude.
LEBANON: Protesters seeking Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon are blogging from the tent city Martyrs' Square in Beirut.
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM: Sunday marked the 35th anniversary of Apollo 13, prompting some kudos to the engineers who solved that famous problem.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Test screening reviews for the Pitt-Jolie flick Mr. & Mrs. Smith surface at IMDB. But it's hard to put too much stock in a review that compares it to other movies without mentioning Prizzi's Honor.
MARIAH CAREY: In a particularly delusional moment, even for her, Carey claims her flop movie Glitter helped Americans recover from the tragedy of September 11th. It's not like Americans flocked to see the movie, which made only $2.4 million on its release the weekend of September 28, 2001, which did not even crack the top ten. So maybe she meant that Americans all needed something to laugh about and she was it.
GITMO: Military officials have completed tribunal hearings for all 558 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and have compiled their most comprehensive report detailing what they have learned about potential future terrorist attacks. The declassified summary cites more than 4,000 interrogation reports and says that some indicated Al Qaeda operatives were pursuing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The summary does not elaborate on what that information is or how close the terrorist organization might be to getting such weapons.
LASER CANNONS: U.S. scientists are on the verge of creating a laser weapon that could give American forces an awesome advantage on the battlefield, but would also raise tough questions for Pentagon war planners, reports the Oakland Tribune.
COLLEGE STUDENTS don't realize how much they're drinking, according to a new study. Who can keep track after the first dozen or so?
