Karl HURRICANE KATRINA: Terry Teachout and Our Girl in Chicago continued to update their extensive round-up of Katrina-related links. For ongoing blog coverage, try N.Z. Bear's aggregator. Wonkette notices something strange about the captions for Associate Press stories about looting in New Orleans. The Mudville Gazette, a gung-ho Milblog, posts an extensive piece on NORTHCOM and coordinated military aid efforts. The world reacted with an outpouring of compassion Wednesday for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but Islamic extremists rejoiced in America's misfortune, giving the storm a military rank and declaring in Internet chatter that “Private” Katrina had joined the global jihad.
DUNGEN frontman Gustav Ejstes talks to PopMatters about the good reaction to the band's ta det lugnt: “I'm pretty amazed over all this of course, because I'm doing it in a language which I suppose no one understands. Of course it's great getting appreciated as a musician, though.” He also translates the title, which wouldn't go down well at Wal-Mart.
WHO'S LEFT is recording a new version of “My Generation” with McFly to promote HMV’s digital download site when it launches on Monday.
NEIL YOUNG: You can now stream “The Painter,” from his upcoming Prairie Wind album.
COURTNEY LOVE is allegedly claiming to be pregnant again. I think this will be sorted out in a few months.
CBGB: Its lease should have expired by the time you read this, but the venerable nightclub has gained NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as an ally.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer has hired a prisonmate to join Babyshambles. on-again, off-again galpal Kate Moss was caught canoodling with Bodyrockers frontman Kaz James in Ibiza.
LUCINDA WILLIAMS may have a new album out in early 2006 and a second volume of live stuff to boot.
THE BETA BAND were only a month away from the dole when the group finished.
ANDRE 3000 of OutKast, named “sexiest male vegetarian” last year by PETA, plans to make endangered gray wolf tails the must-have accessory from his upcoming clothing line.
ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN: The band's upcoming Siberia can now be streamed from Scenestars. Have they picked up where your precious Echo left off?
WHITHER THE ALBUM? Warner Music's decision to launch an e-label featuring packages of three songs sparks positive and negative feedback debating the merit of the album concept.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN will be discussed by academics at a conference devoted to the star. More than 150 papers are being presented at the symposium at Monmouth University in New Jersey, starting September 9th. Discussions will include “A Marxist Perspective on Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “The Boss and the Bible.”
MINUTEMEN: The Mpls. City Pages reviews the We Jam Econo documentary.
BLUEGRASS: Alison Krauss and Union Station led the nominations from the International Bluegrass Music Association, with 14. The Nashville City Paper has complete list of noms, natch. My personal fave, the Del McCoury Band, got at least five noms and has dominated the awards over the past decade or so. The band also just got a a nice write-up for The Company We Keep in Paste Magazine.
BRIAN WILSON talks to The Onion's A.V. Club about SMiLE and is more honest about the problem drug abuse became on the original effort than many of his friends and colleagues from the era. Probably doesn't know how to spin things in his current state.
JOHNNY ROTTEN takes aim at Bono and Bob Geldof. Maybe Lydon could form a band with Russell Crowe…
GOTHS AND CHAVS go to war in Peterborough, as distinctive and implacably opposed to each other as the rival gangs of mods and rockers in the 1960s.
AFGHANISTAN is getting its own Oprah-type show. The station said in a statement that the new chat show would examine topics affecting women, such as education, changing social norms, marriage, leadership, motherhood and physical and mental health.
JESSICA ALBA wants to be President because she fantasizes about dominating a room full of men. Ahem. Maybe she can start by replacing Geena Davis in Commander In Chief and wearing those chaps from Sin City.
JENNIFER GARNER: If you ask her for a nibble from one of her biscuits, know what you're getting yourself into.
DENNIS HOPPER comes out of the closet (try bugmenot, toves67@yahoo.com, toves67). It's not what you think; it's even more shocking.
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE SHOES: Tara Reid books an extra hotel room for hers. But Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell feels guilty that she owns a mere 60 pairs. The Manolo, his world must be in turmoil this day!
IRAQ: Panicked by rumors of a suicide bomber, thousands of Shiite pilgrims broke into a stampede on a bridge during a religious procession Wednesday, crushing one another or plunging 30 feet into the muddy Tigris river. About 800 died, mostly women and children. World leaders offered their condolences, though my favorite was Iranian President Ahmadinejad proposing the establishment of a regional trio to fight terrorism — comprised of Iraq, Iran and Syria.
WEST DES MOINES public school students were given a promo flier for a dance studio run by a man who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault after being accused of briefly caressing the buttocks of a 17-year-old female dance student.
JESSICA SIMPSON and hubby Nick Lachey seemed to exude all the warmth of liquid nitrogen — and Jessica's wedding ring was conspicuously missing — as they walked the red carpet at an MTV VMA party last weekend. Bet that won't stop them from wrecking “America the Beautiful” as part of the NFL's tribute to 9/11 on the opening day of football season. I'd rather have Jamie Foxx channel Ray Charles for that. For that matter, I think Ray could still do a better job.
LOHAN LOWDOWN: La Lohan claims feud with Hillary Duff continues after sister Haylie Duff hung up on Lohan's olive-branch phone call.
KATHLEEN TURNER is separating from her husband. The blurb notes that Turner is “known for her hard-partying ways,” which would explain why she now sounds like Marge's sisters from The Simpsons.
JON STEWART and The Daily Show's executive producer, Ben Karlin, talk to Wired about a new model of television and new media, but manage to be funny anyway.
KING KONG VS. THE PIRATES OF THE MULTIPLEX: Pegged to Peter Jackson's remake of the classic Beauty and the Beast tale, C|Net reprints an examination of professional movie piracy, which appears to be a bigger threat to the industry than filesharing.
GRETCHEN MOL is starring in The Notorious Bettie Page. Don't know how I missed that!
IRAQ II: Maj. Joe Leahy, who studied engineering at Iowa State University, is a civil engineer with the 20th Engineer Brigade of the Army National Guard, and has been stationed at Camp Victory, outside of Baghdad, since November 2004. Maj. Leahy tells a local paper in Missouri about combining combat and reconstruction: “One thing we've got to understand is that it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we are doing something that's getting better everyday.”
GOOGLE: Some fear the company is becoming the next Microsoft (though mostly it seems to be competing with the current Microsoft). Nevertheless, French president Jacques Chirac yesterday pledged to help fund a new European internet search engine to rival Google and Yahoo as he railed against what he sees as the threat of Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism: “We're engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy. In France, in Europe, it's our power that's at stake.”
CELLPHONE CANCER RISK: So far, so good.
NANOTECH may give you the wall-crawling abilities of Spider-Man. Research scientists at Georgia Tech have built nano-scale detectors so sensitive that they will be capable of spotting individual cancer cells. But how do scientists see the nano-scale objects they are trying to study? In the future, they may use a golden bowtie nanoantenna.
THE FIRST “MR. ROGERS SCHOLARSHIP” is awarded, making some young person feel very special.
CHE GUEVARA: His family is trying to contol the rampant commercialization of his image. What would Alanis Morissette say?
GIANT VENOMOUS CENTIPEDE from South America somehow turned up in a London apartment.
TREE KANGAROO: “Jumpy” has evaded capture for four days after escaping from his owners in Bavaria, Germany.
ROBOT DOGS monitor your diet.
LAB RODENTS my be replaced by freaky fluorescent fish that can show the impact of experimental drugs on cancerous tumors.
THE GREAT APES are endangered, prompting a summit in the Congo.
A MONKEY dressed in blue pants ran away from the circus, but is returned before the troupe left town. No word on whether the naughty monkey was spanked.
