Karl 
THE DECEMBERISTS played NPR's Morning Becomes Eclectic last Thursday. Listening to Picaresque again this weekend, I would recommend you stream the audio or video from KCRW if you haven't heard the band yet.
FRANK BLACK: MTV News details his forthcoming solo disc, Honeycomb, which was recorded in Nashville: “None of the tracks sound anything like Black's previous work. It's more like a mixtape for a peaceful hike, heavy with alt-country and Van Morrison-like light rock. An updated Blonde on Blonde is about accurate.”
LOLLAPALOOZA has announced its lineup, which includes Pixies, Weezer, Dinosaur Jr., the Killers, Death Cab for Cutie, Liz Phair, the Arcade Fire, Billy Idol, Dashboard Confessional, the Walkmen, Cake, Widespread Panic, Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs, M83, the Black Keys, Dandy Warhols, Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Bravery, Blonde Redhead, Digable Planets, VHS or Beta, Tegan & Sera, Louis XIV, Ambulance LTD, and the Changes.
TALKING HEADS: According to the RIAA, downloading is killing music. So whatever you do, do not download a cool collection of demos Talking Heads did for CBS Records — alternate versions of “Psycho Killer” and other early faves, unreleased stuff, etc. It would just be wrong, y'know?
RICHARD THOMPSON, in contrast to the RIAA, gets it and offers free, legal downloads at his site.
AMERICAN IDOL: Former Idol hopeful Corey Clark now claims he had an affair with Paula Abdul, according to the ever-reliable Globe magazine. The article also says that Clark was told that Idol runner-up Justin Guarini, “bragged about having an affair with Paula.” Guarini's rep denies there was any affair. What is undeniable is that both Clark and Guarini have wild hairdos.
SEN. TED KENNEDY'S BROTHER-IN-LAW has been operating in Democratic circles for the last three years as an undercover informant for the FBI, according to the New York Sun. Raymond Reggie, who organized fund-raisers for President and Mrs. Clinton, has pleaded guilty to two felony charges, bank fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors did not publicly detail his cooperation with the government, but he liekly recorded conversations involving Democratic bigs. There's a lot of weird stuff in the story, including that Reggie faces a separate, unrelated state trial in Louisiana next month for allegedly impersonating a police officer.
IRAQ: The recent story regarding the retrieval of around 60 corpses from the Tigris River near al-Suwayra is turning into a murky mystery. StrategyPage's April 23 entry claims that while terror attacks are increasing directed against Sunnis by Sunnis, Sunni leadership is not sticking its neck out to oppose the terrorists.” However, Saturday's Associated Press round-up notes that a leading Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, condemned an attack near a Shiite mosque near Basra, calling it a “hideous crime” and warned the militants they “will not crack our unity and sow dissension between us by spitting out your venom.” That tidbit is buried in the final graf of the story, natch. Other Sunni leaders have confirmed their intent to participate in future elections.
WARREN BUFFETT bought a significant amount of Budweiser. The billionaire investor then sat on the hood of his limo and cracked open a six right in the parking lot.
USED CARS: Mighty Max Weinberg is suing a car dealer for selling him a '57 T-bird for $93,785 that is allegedly a lemon.
STEREOGUM points to links for the new Foo Fighters single and delivers the sad news that the Pretty in Pink sequel story was a hoax.
BILL COSBY: Lawyers for the woman suing Bill Cosby for sexual assault claim they have lined up ten witnesses to testify they also were doped and groped by the sweater-clad Jello pudding pitchman.
JAMES BROWN and his former road manager, the Rev. Al Sharpton, will atttend the May 6th unveiling of a life-size bronze statue of the Godfather of Soul, Mr. “Please, Please, Please” and the hardest working man in show business in Augusta, GA.
NEIL DIAMOND is served up as only Jeff Goldstein can, at Protein Wisdom.
OSAMA BIN LADEN'S NIECE may land a record deal with Clive Davis (“The Man Who Passed on Pate,” iirc).
SONGS YOU LOVE, songs you hate: Class Maledictorian Amber Taylor posed a bit of a brain-teaser about them on Friday.
HOW GAY IS SUPERMAN? Now that a photo of Brandon Routh from Superman Returns has surfaced, web gossips are checking out his tights and debating how gay he looks. A bit too gay, according to The Superficial. But Defamer is relieved that he does not look as gay as Batman did in the past couple of movies.
CATS: Pope Benedict XVI is a cat person. When he was a cardinal delivering sermons in Regensburg, Germany, he would venture into the cemetery behind the church afterwards. According to Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University, “It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous.”
DOGS in Turin must be walked three times daily under a new law.
CATS AND DOGS: The Illinois Appellate Court recently issued an opinion (with which I had no involvement) addressing the continuing legal issue of the value of a pet.
ELECTION 2008: Sen. John F. Kerry is fuming mad at Sen. Mark Dayton for calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “the next great president of the United States” at a Minneapolis Democratic dinner.
SPONGEWORTHY NEWS FROM THE FDA: The Food and Drug Administration has approved U.S. sales of the Today Sponge, a popular nonprescription birth control product that was yanked from the market in 1995.
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, star of a new flick about the aftermath of 9/11, believes the United States “is responsible in some way” for the devastating terror attacks. The lady is just asking for a spanking.
HOLLYWOOD GREED: I recently linked to a cople of articles about outrageous celebrity demands for freebies. L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke writes that the wretched excess of Hollywood moguls makes the toys for Hollywood A-listers seem like chump change.
SUSPENDED ANIMATION CHAMBERS have been tried on mice, with tests showing they had suffered no ill effects after six hours.
POPE BENEDICT XVI is accused by lawyers of having obstructed investigations of sex abuse by priests.
TOO MUCH INORMATION: People distracted by incoming e-mail and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ – more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking marijuana, according researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry. Those who are constantly breaking away from tasks to react to email or text messages suffer similar effects on the mind as losing a night's sleep. Which is a handy excuse for why I'm such an idiot.
JOHNNY KNOXVILLE is no jackass when it comes to women. Wait, what am I saying? He's married! He can't be canoodling with Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Bridget Hall and Kate Moss, to name a few.
JOHN BOLTON: Carl Ford, the former chief of intelligence and research at the State Department, told the Senate Foreign Relations committee that Bolton was a “quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy.” If Bolton was a kiss-up, it apparently did him no good with his boss,Colin Powell, who privately told at least two key Republican lawmakers that Bolton, nominated to be ambassador to the U.N. is a smart but very problematic government official.
BLOGS make the cover of BusinessWeek with a piece on the impact blogs can have on businesses. The magazine must believe it's a big effect, as it has launched its own blog, Blogspotting, which is devoted to issues raised in the article. And television shows are developing blogs as a method of “permission marketing.” one of the examples is Pam Anderson's new show, Stacked. I suspect that if she reallyjournaled, the blog could be a bigger hit than the show.
SPEAKING OF PAM ANDERSON, she calls Jennifer Lopez an “idiot” in an interview with Jane magazine. And a “kettle,” to boot.
THERE IS WIDE, BIPARTISAN UNITY in the blogosphere to resist most regulation of blogs under the rubric of campaign finance reform. That bipartisanship seems to be developing in Congress, also, with Minority Leader Harry Reid getting conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) as a cospsonor of a bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act exclude Internet communications from the Act's definition of public communication. Plus, I'm a sucker for a Ghostbusters reference.
ALBERT BROOKS has signed on to Arianna Huffington's upcoming group blog.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are vacationing together in Africa, according to a Page SixSixSix exclusive. The site had Britney's hospital trip first, so it might be true… maybe.
CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS: According to an article at OpinionJournal, “Until fairly recently, most celebrities wouldn't be caught dead doing paid pitches in the U.S.: When actress Brenda Vaccaro made a tampon ad in 1981, she was ridiculed partly because it was widely assumed that a performer who went commercial like that was signaling the end of her real career.” After noting the disdain found for celebrity pitches in Neil Young's “This Note's For You,” the article adds “These days, however, an icon like Robert De Niro can do an American Express ad and nobody bats an eye.” Largely true, though people have raised questions about DeNiro's career recently. At least Tom Waits still cares, likening the recent use of a Waits imitator in an Opel commercial in Scandinavia to “having a cow’s udder sewn to my face. Painful and humiliating.”
THE SOURCE UPDATE: Already facing a sexual harassment lawsuit against some top managers, the hip-hop magazine is being rocked by a host of financial, advertising and circulation woes, according to the New York Post.
JACKO JUSTICE: A potential witness in the Michael Jackson trial is accused of having sex with a minor. Going out on a limb here, but I'll bet he's much less potential now.
PROM THEME: At Lots of Co., Max imagines his alt.prom mix.
INDIE ROCK: The Wikipedia is working on defining it.
INDIE VIDEOGAMES: Pitchfork has a feaure on videogames going punk.
SOUTHERN CUISINE: The Oxford American is trying to match its Southern Music issue with a Southern Food issue (on newsstands only) that seems packed to the gills with cool stuff. Essays on Prince’s Hot Chicken, dogfood, hangover cures, roasted racoon, okra and a Kentucky research lab devoted to pawpaws are just the tip of the tip — there's an extensive, but incomplete list at the link.
YAHOO! has been ordered to provide a family access to the e-mail account of a Marine killed in Iraq, but many Internet service providers still are trying to figure out the best way to handle such situations.
U.K. ELECTION: The BBC equipped three hecklers with microphones and sent them into a campaign meeting addressed by Tory leader Michael Howard.
THE TENSION BETWEEN CHINA AND JAPAN may be a symptom of Chinese discontent with their own government, with retired miltary dissidents posing a particular danger for the PRC.
THE STUPIDITY OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY policy is argued by James Boyle of the Financial Times: “How would the blues, jazz, Elizabethan theatre, or Silicon valley have developed if they had been forced to play under today’s rules?”
RUMMY AND DOLLY: Defense Secreatry Rumsfeld and Dolly Parton duet at the Grand Ole Opry. “Somebody had to pick up the slack after Ashcroft retired,” Rumsfeld said. Okay, not really, but I think he would have had he thought of it.
OIL-FOR-FOOD: The recently-departed investigators from the Volcker committee are rejecting the U.N. spin that they left because their work was done and getting more vocal about an alleged whitewash to protect senior U.N. officials.
LEBANON: The last Syrian troops are supposed to be gone this week. But I would bet intell agents have melted into neighborhoods controlled by Hezbollah.
TOGO is having an election today, but that's not necessarily a good thing, as explained by Publius.
NANOTECH: Live bacteria could one day act as reconfigurable components for nanoscale electronic circuits, or even a scaffold for building nanomachines.
EARTH DAY: You know it's in trouble when the march in Madison, Wisconsin looks like this.
TEACHER MISCONDUCT: NYC Mayor Bloomberg called recent sex-abuse charges against a string of teachers “business as usual.” The city scored a victory last week when a judge shot down an arbitrator's decision allowing a Manhattan high-school chemistry teacher who admitted to soliciting sex from his 16-year-old female student to return to class. The issue is part of an ongoing dispute between the city and the teacher's union.
