Karl 
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE'S Out of State Plates came out yesterday. It's a double-disc of non-album material — two new tracks, live tracks and B-sides (for those who care what's on the flip side of a record), for the price of a single disc, I might add. If you like FoW, you'll like this, too; if FoW is anything, it's consistent. Much of it will remind you of other FoW songs, e.g., “California Sex Lawyer” reminds me of a crosss between “Radiation Vibe” and latter-day Jesus & Mary Chain tracks. I wouldn't say it's essential for the casual fan, but there's virtually no filler, either. The covers are all pretty good, including an acoustic take on Jackson Browne's (and Nico's) “These Days,” a deliciously countrified take on Gene Pitney's “Today's Teardrops,” Their infamous take on Britney Spears' “…Baby One More Time” rendered as a ballad and a live version of ELO's “Cant Get It Out Of My Head,” which Ken King could tell you is great without hearing the disc, as he commented that it might make him re-evaluate ELO generally when we heard it a little over a year ago. The version we heard was even more Lennonesque than this 1997 take, but this one's still pretty darn good. Plus, you get two Christmas songs and a Chanukah number to take you to years' end. And sardonic liner notes from Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood. All told, a nifty package at a nice price. Don’t forget you can stream samples at the Amazon link above.
ON THE PITCHFORK: Rhino is releasing deluxe editions of the Stooges' first two albums, The Stooges and Fun House, in August. The Decemberists and Ted Leo will headline the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle over the Labor Day weekend; Son Volt is opening its tour there. Nike apologizes to Minor Threat and Dischord Records for imitating the band's cover art in an ad for the shoe company's skateboarding tour.
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH: Brooklyn Vegan directs you to nine downloads from the band's vocalist, Alec Ounsworth.
A VENTI CAFFE LATTE'S A-GONNA FALL: Starbucks will produce and exclusively release a CD of 10 Dylan bootleg recordings from New York's Gaslight Cafe in 1962, including the earliest known recordings of “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” and “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.”
RYAN ADAMS cancels his UK tour due to an ear infection.
BONO WANTS HIS HAT BACK. And his earrings and sweatshirt. U2 went to court Tuesday to recover items from former stylist Lola Cashman, who has a range of memorabilia from her work on their 1987 Joshua Tree world tour.
BONO-McCARTNEY LIVE 8 FEUD: The Cute one threatened not to play Saturday's Hyde Park Live 8 concert unless he both opened and closed it, causing conflict with U2. A Live 8 source said that “Bono, in particular, was quick to demand a share of the opening number and sees what he has done politically over the years as a bit more relevant to Live 8 than what Paul has to offer.” The compromise: Paul and U2 will open the day with a version of “Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” – reworded to honour the achievements of Bob Geldof – wearing the multicoloured militarystyle suits the Beatles wore on the 1967 album cover.
AN EX-CORNETIST with the River City Brass Band has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming he was fired from the band because of his age, ethnicity, gender and his opposition to commands that violated “sincerely held moral and ethical belief as to right and wrong.”
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled ex-Libertines singer and his galpal, Kate Moss followed through on their faux two-day marriage plan for the Glastonbury music festival.
CHUCK KLOSTERMAN (mentioned here as recently as yesterday) has written a book, Killing Yourself to Live, recounting his road trip to visit rock and roll death sites. Chuck provides Largehearted Boy (a blog from which I steal mercilessly) a soundtrack for the book.
WAR OF THE WORLDS open today, which may begin to draw the curtain on the Tom-Kat experience. The movie seems to be getting almost unanimous good reviews, scoring a 92 on the Tomatometer, though it should be noted that even some of the good reviews say things like, “War of the Worlds is a terrific film for the first 100 or so minutes. Unfortunately the movie’s 117 minutes long and those last 17 minutes are just plain horrible.” The AP review seems negative, as does the San Jose Mercury News. There's no review from Roger Ebert yet, though there probably will be one at the link by the time you read this (unless you'e more of a night owl than I). Will I be going? The Magic 8-Ball says, “You May Rely on It.”
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Fresh off the Hollywood premiere for War of the Worlds, the ubiquitous duo showed up at the BET Awards. Allan Mayer of the Hollywood “crisis P.R. firm” Sitrick & Co., says reactions to Cruise invite comparisons to Jane Fonda, who sparked a backlash with her anti-war activism during the Vietnam era. The same article links to the viral video “Tom Cruise Kills Oprah,” which turns his now infamous TV appearance into a demonstration of Sith powers. Banterist diagrams Tom Cruise for the X-Box. Another blogger lists “Other Things that Tom Cruise Knows More About Than You.” Salon finds Dianetics to be “a fantastically dull, terribly written, crackpot rant.” The Citizens Commission on Human Rights issued a statement saying that Cruise was right on with his criticism of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Did I mention that the CCHR was formed by the Church of Scientology? Colby Cosh has no love for Scientology, but argues that, “Of the two cults to which Cruise belongs, Hollywood is easily the more powerful, and quite possibly the more menacing and ruinous.” Rosie O'Donnell expresses her concern for Cruise through the art of collage. Columnist Dave Barry gets in on the act, too. Even Statler and Waldorf get in a Scientology joke. And if The Superficial still has this post up by the time you read this, Cruise's lawyers are losing a step.
RUSSELL CROWE threw not just a cellphone, but also a vase at a hotel employee, then acted smarmy about it, according to people claiming to have seen a video of the incident.
PAULA ABDUL lobbied California lawmakers on Monday to crack down on nail salon hygiene. If you read the whole thing, you might conclude that the reporter does not take this topic seriously. Also, American Idol host Ryan Seacrest claims that when he was a wee lad, “I remember thinking Paula was hot. That's when I realized I liked girls.” An interesting choice of words.
BATMAN BEGINS: The real Batmobile is capable of going from zero to sixty miles an hour in 5.3 seconds, but lacks air conditioning.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY: A boxer who suffered brain damage during her first professional fight has come out of her coma, and is now able to recognize family members, according to her doctor.
EVA LONGORIA: The desperate housewife fears that the photographers hiding in bushes around her home will one day be replaced by a rapist.
LI-LO UPDATE: Perez Hilton seems quite proud that a Yahoo! search ranks the site number one on the Hohan lowdown. Not so on Google, where even Sterogum beats Perez's appearance on page three.
P. DIDDY seems to have no limit to his delusions of grandeur.
HUGH GRANT CAUGHT having his digit sucked by Liz Hurley, much to the anger of his current galpal.
BOX OFFICE BLAHS: A new Gallup poll confirms that nearly half (48%) said they were going out to the theater less. Asked why they are reducing their habit, one in three said they “prefer to watch movies at home,” but 1 in 4 said “it costs too much to go to the movies,” and 1 in 5 alluded to the “poor quality” of movies today. People don't want to pay a lot of money to see bad movies; who'da thunkit?
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Page Six and Star magazine are fanning baby rumors.
WEB NOLSTALGIA: Keep Going has a nice article ten years from the launch of Suck.com (wonder if our site software will censor that), which is dubbed “the first great website” with some justification. Site alumni have gone on to write for Salon.com, Wonkette.com and The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
BLOGGERS AS JOURNOS? Law Prof. Ann Althouse blogs an article in The New York Times bemoaning that federal courts are figuring out that the institutional press is not entitled to First Amendment protections over and above those of ordinary citizens.
UNVERIFIED SOURCES: An internal investigation of a former columnist for The Sacramento Bee could not verify 43 sources she used in a sampling of 12 years of her work.
STEM CELLS: It may surprise no one that James Thomson, the first scientist to isolate and culture human embryonic stem cells, supports federally funding embryonic stem cell research. It may be news that he believes supporters of stem cell research are overestimating the prospects for transplantation cures, that the current stem cell lines aren't well-suited for such applications anyway, and that there's no need to resort to therapeutic cloning right now — or perhaps ever.
ABE LINCOLN: During the slower news cycle of summer, mags often run canned stories like the Time cover story on Abe Lincoln (Jesus is a summer favorite also). Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has an essay on Honest Abe in the mag; there's a lively, but not too overheated debate on the essay at Indepundit. I think there's actually less distance between Obama and his critics than the critics believe on this point.
GITMO: Two Democratic senators just back from reviewing U.S. detention facilities and interrogations at Gitmo said they saw no signs of abuse and said it would actually be worse to close the facility and transfer the detainees elsewhere. Asked how they knew they were seeing real operations rather than a staged display, both Republican and Democratic senators said that they had access to everything and that they trusted the troops they talked with from their own states. The Democrats nevertheless called for better-defined rules about who should be detained there. BTW, I forgot to mention in noting the trip made by House members that one interrogation involved a female interrogator reading a Harry Potter book aloud for hours, causing the detainee to turn his back and put his hands over his ears. Where is Amnesty International when it's really needed?
IRAQ: A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that most Americans do not believe the administration's claims that impressive gains are being made against the insurgency, but a clear majority is willing to keep U.S. forces there for an extended time to stabilize the country. A narrow majority — 52 percent — believes that the war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States, a five-point increase from earlier this month. Michael Yon watches a robot dispose of an IED on the highway back to Baghdad. MSNBC's military analyst assesses progress one year from the transfer of sovereignty to the transitional government. Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, appeared to offer a major concession to the Sunni Arab minority on Monday when he indicated that he would support changes in the voting system that would probably give Sunnis more seats in the future parliament. Meanwhile, the Marines and Iraqi forces have launched Operation Sword, aimed at rooting out terrorists and foreign fighters living along the Euphrates River (which would be one of the major routes between Baghdad and Syria).
IRAQ II: one of the key issues is the training and progress of Iraqi forces. NBC News compares and contrasts two Iraqi units. Stars and Stripes, concluding a four-part series on the issue, notes that Iraqis are now involved in training Iraqi forces: “With all due respect to the Americans, I think it is better that Iraqis train Iraqis,” a 26-year-old former high school gym teacher, now a member of the Hilla SWAT team, said through an interpreter. “They know the language and the culture and the way Iraqis think.” I don't think that trainer has to worry about offending Americans.
CULT OF THE iPod: Diane Sawyer has Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen on hers. Apple has released the latest update for its iTunes software, which supports podcasting.
FLESH-EATING ALIENS CAUSED FATAL CAR CRASH, according to Scott Krause, the California man facing life in prison for crashing his car into a UPS truck.
CANADA TO BAN BULK DRUG SALES TO THE U.S. to block state-backed re-importation plans. Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh says Canada does not have the supplies to meet a vast increase in demand from south of the border. That whole supply-demand thing can be very tricky.
YOU'RE FIRED: A Taiwan stock trader mistakenly bought 251 million bucks' worth of shares with a mis-stroke of her computer. Her company is looking at a paper loss of more than $12 million; she is looking for a new job.
CHINA has declined to slaughter birds to contain the spread of the avian flu virus because many are from rare, protected species.
NORTH KOREA IS OPEN FOR SUMMER VACATION, right after they remove enormous stretches of barbed wire from its shores.
A FOUR-FOOT LONG CAIMAN, a relative of the alligator, was roaming the streets of a neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon. It's legal to own such reptiles in Oregon, though the neighbor who says her cat is missing might have a complaint or two…
A KANGAROO roams loose on the streets of… South Bend, Indiana?
AN IRISH BEEKEEPER failed to break the world's record for bees landing on a human body, but still looked really bizzare.
THE FEDS INVESTIGATED THE CAUSE OF THE TIGER ATTACK on Roy Horn. Some popular theories were ruled out, but the incident remains a mystery.
