FEIST: The Mpls/St. Paul City Pages says Leslie Feist's Let It Die is “make-out music for the whole family,” though I think that's meant as a compliment.
BEATLE PAUL, BONO, GREGG ALLMAN and others have been recording kareoke tracks for Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen to jam with.
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS' John Darnielle tells NewCity Chicago something about the job of songwriting: “It isn't asking much of a guy to write, say, one song a month. If you're only doing one a month, then you should be able to do twelve terrific songs per year. If you have any work ethic, it should be more than that, especially if you've been doing it for a while.”
THE CARTER FAMILY is the subject of PBS's American Experience this week. Left of the Dial has links to a podcast and more.
ANGELINA JOLIE gets more done than most celebrity activists, if this press release is true — securing a public commitment from the president of Sierra Leone that the government would release plans to implement the recommendations the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) within two weeks of receiving the final written TRC report. Given her position as a U.N. Goodwill ambassador, Angelina might also consider addressing the rampant sexual abuse of women and girls by U.N. peacekeepers in Sierra Leone and insisting at the very least that the U.N. implement the measures it has proposed to deal with this abuse, not only in Sierra Leone, but also the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, and Sudan.
LINDSAY LOHAN: Stereogum and Defamer are both noticing there's less of the Lohan to see lately.
MEAN GIRLS may start down that path when they still are toddlers, according to a Brigham Young University study.
NATALIE PORTMAN: Egotastic likes her buns and notes that she's recently shaved. He is referring to her movie hairstyles, of course.
J-LO recently told reporters “I've never really had any trouble with boyfriends' moms or any moms of anybody that I've been with,” causing the assembled press to blurt out, “No, Just the men!” Hysterical laughter followed.
JACKO JUSTICE: Michael Jackson is so wracked by financial troubles that he has secretly sold his Neverland Ranch for $35 million. So says The National Enquirer, so it must be true. Meanwhile, things are going better for Jackson in court as fellow child star Macaulay Culkin adamantly denied that Jackson had ever touched him inappropriately. Nevertheless, presenting testimony that he slept in Jackson’s bed several times between the ages of 10 and 14 –sometimes with other boys — carries a degree of risk.
LIVE AID II? More like Live 8, which will be held in Hyde Park on July 2-3 coincide with the G8 summit in Edinburgh.
ALMOST FAMOUS: Didja know that Penny Lane met up with the Golden God at SXSW?
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB is releasing their third album, Howl, in August.
THE VIRTUAL DRUM KIT, courtesy of the aptly-named Ken Brashear.
AFGHANISTAN: At least four people were killed and dozens injured in a riot in eastern Afghanistan yesterday after police fired on demonstrators protesting about reports that the Qur’an had been desecrated by US soldiers in Guantanamo Bay. These reports appeared in a Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff and John Barry that is anonymously sourced. If the claims of abuse at Guantanamo Bay are substantiated, the personnel involved will deserve to be disciplined, but if not, I wouldn’t want to be Isikoff and Barry.
IT'S ALMOST CARNIVAL SEASON: Do you have your copy of The Journal of Ride Theory Omnibus?
EDU-BLOGGING: Speaking of carnivals, the latest Carnival of Education is online.
UNITED AIRLINES won the approval of a U.S. Bankruptcy Court to dump its four pension plans on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., prompting renewed warnings from some members of Congress that taxpayers may someday have to bail out the deficit-riddled government pension agency. Had the government engaged in this sort of scheme, we would call it Social Security.
POWERBALL LOTTERY OFFICIALS SUSPECTED FRAUD when 110 players in the March 30th drawing got five of the six numbers right, instead of the statistically expected four or five. The real answer was more mystical. And you have to love that this story about numbers carries the byline of Jennifer 8. Lee.
VIKINGS RUNNING BACK ONTERRIO SMITH was caught with an elaborate kit used to beat drug tests called “The Original Whizzinator.” But the Associated Press doesn't tell you what that is. As you can imagine, that last link may be NSFW.
GWI: That's “G” for “galloping.” A Kentucky man has been charged with riding a horse while intoxicated. A breath test showed the man's alcohol level at .244, more than three times the limit.
CULT OF THE iPod: Okay, an iPod Shuffle Crucifix is a bit much.
YAHOO! is introducing an online music subscription service that will undercut the prices of all-you-can-download music rental services offered by Real Networks and Napster.
IRAQ: Winds of Change rounds up the round-ups of Operation Matador along the Syrian border. Another good source of Matador-blogging seems to be Milblogger Josh Manchester at The Adventures of Chester.
THE HUFFINGTON POST: David Rees, creator of Get Your War On, asks, “When Do I Get To Meet Gwyneth Paltrow???” It might be a while: Rees' co-blogger-author-journo Richard Bradley notes that of the group blog’s first 25 posts, only three were posted by women.
ROBOTS: Scientists at Cornell University have created small robots that can build copies of themselves. I, for one, welcome the coming of our robot overlords.
ROBOT DOGS: When it comes to robot dog competitions, the Germans rule, having won both the RoboCup US Open and the RoboCup German Open.
THE COUNCIL on AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS (CAIR) is complaining about a “disturbing rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes,” but the most recent FBI report on hate crimes found that anti-Islamic crimes remained at the about same level — 149 — as the year before. CAIR is counting incidents in which Muslims reported their civil rights had been violated, which rose 49 percent.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN: I thought I was done with this movie, but as a gushing firehose of pop culture references, I cannot help but admire Dr. Frank's review of the sword-n-sandal epic. Few reviews of a movie about the second Crusade will allude to the Who and Scooby-Doo in consecutive sentences.
BAD HUMOR MAN: A Pennsylvania Good Humor man was served 18 months' probation Tuesday for pummeling a pudgy-faced Bloomfield teen during a meltdown. In addition to the probation, the ice cream vendor must take anger management classes and reimburse the teenager $20 for damage to his bike.
SIZE MATTERS to fish, according to a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. And Teri Hatcher, who just traded a short fashion designer for 7-foot-tall former NBA star John Salley, according to Page Six.