Karl 
ART BRUT turns Nick Sylvester of the Village Voice: “I truly hated these guys… Four sold-out nights in the New York area later, two of which I attended, Art Brut might be my favorite new act in years.” ALSO: Chart Attack digs 'em in Toronto. Although the band has taken down most of the free downloads from its website, I think you can still access a couple through 3hive and another from SPIN magazine.
WHO CARES ABOUT WHAT'S ON THE FLIP SIDE OF A RECORD? Stylus magazine does! Especially now that digital downloads threaten their very existence.
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT… and digging the classics. “Meet the new rock, same as the old rock.”
SANDY DENNY is the subject of a streaming feature at NPR.
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN gives an interview, just in time for Dateline NBC to exploit the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death.
BEST OF 2005: Amazon already has its “Editors' Picks” and “Customers' Favorites” posted in advance of the holiday shopping season. FYI, a quick glance suggests I’ve written here about 33 of the Editor’s Picks… and beaten you over the head with their Number One.
LAURA VEIRS talks to the L.A. Daily News about her new album and her old day jobs, including a stint in rural China. You can stream Year of Meteors from Nonesuch records.
ON THE PITCHFORK: Good reviews for Spurts: The Richard Hell Story and Galaxie 500's Peel Sessions.
MORRISSEY is changing his tune on the tone of his upcoming album.
NOEL GALLAGHER of Oasis is not a fan of hip-hop: “I f—ing hate it, all the people that make that kind of music and all the people that buy it…” And that's for starters.
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE is the title of a romantic musical currently in production, featuring music of the Fab Four. You can share the stage as an extra with Bono as he performs “I Am The Walrus”… if you're the high bidder on eBay.
SONY COPY-PROTECTION: Sony is pulling their controversial rootkit CDs from stores, but the PC endangering software has already infected at least half a million networks. And the software that Sony is distributing to users who want to remove the rootkit has security flaws of its own!
VAUGHNISTON: Jennifer Aniston ain't no woman! It's a man, man! At least, that's GQ's gimmick. The mag thinks Vince Vaughn is also a “Man of the Year,” but not as much of a man as Aniston, apparently.
WALK THE LINE star Joaquin Phoenix – who raised eyebrows at the L.A. premiere by asking a reporter if he had a frog in his hair – apparently couldn't resist more red-carpet shenanigans at the Cash biopic's NYC debut: In response to a question from The New York Times' Campbell Robertson, Phoenix began to gently massage her earlobe, drawing stares and nervous laughter from nearby journalists.
CELEBS are detouched at Worth 1000.
THE FRENCH HOTEL was attacked by her monkey. Too. Many. Punchlines.
TARA REID: You would think that things couldn't get worse for the professional party girl, who goes without acting work after the cancellation of Taradise on the E! channel. You would be wrong. At her 30th birthday party, “She wasn’t falling all over the tables like she sometimes does,” said one attendee. “It might have something to do with the fact that her mom was sitting there eagle-eyeing her all night.”
MOON UNIT ZAPPA tops an online poll of celebrity offspring with the most bizarre names, beating out Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter, Apple and others.
ELISHA CUTHBERT: Former lead singer for Weezer, counter-terrorism agent, porn star (though I think they prefer the term “adult film actress”) and now a blogger for the National Hockey League. Is there nothing she can't do?
CHILDREN'S CHRISTMAS LETTERS to… Christopher Walken.
JACKO JUSTICE: In Be Careful Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case, author Diane Dimond claims that Jacko's child molestation trial should have ended in a mistrial, due to alleged improprieties of juror No. 5, a gray-haired widow named Elanor Cook. But shouldn't the book title be: Stop! The Love You Save May Be Your Own?
ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK: Get your kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
THE CAST OF SEINFELD will appear together to promote the DVD release of the sitcom's fifth and sixth seasons on Live with Regis & Kelly next week.
LAURIE DAVID, wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, is on a crusade to save the planet, but the man who has done more harm to the planet than anybody she can think of is… author Michael Crichton.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY is in no hurry to grow up: ''I have people telling me I'm a role model. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Don't turn a 20-year-old into a role model because we're going to make mistakes. How could you not? You'd be a freak if you didn't.” We also learn she was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 6 1/2.
IRAQ: In sporadic but heavy fighting, Operation Steel Curtain has inflicted serious casualties on al Qaeda in Ubaydi and has probably disrupted their supply chain. Several insurgents were captured trying to sneak out of the area by crawling among a flock of sheep. Michael Yon blogs about how wounded Army Sgt. Walt Gaya became a US citizen. The Friday sermon at the Jordanian mosque Abu Musab al-Zarqawi attended as a child was on “the criminality of the attacks and how they were not in keeping with Islam.” The Z-man is a PR genius.
OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL: The UN reinstated the only official who was fired over the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, after an internal appeals body ruled that he violated staff rules by showing preference to one bidder for an oil-for-food contract but concluded the punishment was too harsh. Glad the UN is cleaning itself up.
BILL CLINTON is “The Most Influential Man in the World,” according to Esquire magazine. Since leaving office, Clinton has been so active that his post-presidency amounts to “a third term” for the Democrat who held the White House from 1992 to 2000, the magazine said. So if you blame anyone for anything that you think has gone wrong in this millennium, start with Bill. Yes, I'm kidding — even if Esquire isn't.
MOTHER NATURE topped the unofficial list of nominees for Time magazine's “Person of the Year” at a panel discussion held by the magazine. Hey, if Jennifer Aniston can be GQ's Man of the Year, why not?
NANOTECH is the real subject of a book titled The Gecko's Foot, which reports on labs that practise “bio-inspiration” — the attempt to develop new technologies explicitly modelled on natural phenomena. And the really good news is that I just saved a lot of money on auto insurance.
THE WORLD'S BIGGEST OWL is secretly and successfully breeding in England, after centuries of absence.
HOT ARMADILLO-ON-ARMADILLO ACTION on David Letterman's desk.
VAMPIRE BAT SALIVA may help reduce stroke damage in humans. (Thanks, Debbie) It's certainly kept me looking young these past few centuries.
DOGS lower anxiety, stress and heart and lung pressure among heart failure patients.
PUGGLES, SCHNOODLES AND LABRADOODLES breed controversy among communities of dog owners.
NEW LEMUR SPECIES will be named after John Cleese as a tribute to Cleese's promotion of the plight of lemurs in the movie Fierce Creatures and documentary Operation Lemur with John Cleese.
