Karl Bade 
ON THE PITCHFORK: Rhino is reissuing Gang of Four's Entertainment! with the Yellow EP as a bonus. The Raveonettes set tour dates. RELATED: Pitchfork and the whole blog, e-zine, MP3 thang is chroncled by Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune.
APRIL FOUR: You know the tune.
PATTI SMITH talks to Newsweek magazine about the possible closing of CBGB and the possible opening of a new movement in rock music.
CBGB is getting a little help from its friends.
NEIL YOUNG was treated for a brain aneurysm last week and remains hospitalized; his doctors expect a full recovery.
CROOKED FINGERS frontman Eric Bachman, interviewed by twenty/forty magazine, makes a great statement about songwriting that's applicable to most everyone: “You know how they say that when you make a judgment about a person, place, or thing it actually says nothing about the person, place, or thing being judged but instead says mountains about the person making that judgment.”
THE DECEMBERISTS frontman Colin Meloy resists the charge of elitism: “For all of our high-mindedness, we kind of measure it with lowbrow humor. There’s nothing there that I don’t think can be found appealing. That said, there’s really nothing you can do if someone doesn’t want to hear songs about these things, Victorian prostitutes and homosexual doughboys in World War I trenches. There’s some things there that you just have to draw the line. Some people are just not going to like it. We would hope that everybody would like it.”
THE POPE IS DEAD, which you probably already know. But did you know that Pope John Paul II embraced the internet? America magazine has FAQs on Papal transition. And if you're so inclined, you can read up on John Paul II's Theology of the Body. The New York Times apparently had an obituary with criticism ready to go, but decided that it needed some quote from a supporter, too. David Remnick has a nice summation up at The New Yorker. At Slate, Christopher Hitchens unsurprisingly speaks ill of the dead. Which isn't to say he doesn't have a point, just that he lacks manners.
OH CANADA! The Canadian government may collapse in scandal.
IRAQ: Iraqis are enjoying some Terrorism and the Hand of Justice, reality television that is as educational as it is entertaining. Prominent Sunni clerics who once condemned the new Iraqi government opened the door Friday to participation of their followers in the army and police. Although the fatwa could exclude Sunnis from joint U.S.-Iraqi actions, the most important effect of the edict may be on the civilian population. And the Iraqi parliament made some progress in breaking its stalemate Sunday, as I suggested they would last week.
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME: Invented by Ben Franklin to get Parisians to rise before noon. At National Review, John J. Miller claims it became law to help businessmen, not farmers.
THE BRAVERY: Are they poseurs, or not? “It'd be simpler if they were just plain bad,” says Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield. “The fact that this record is good is a big disappointment to some people. You'll hear people say, 'Officially, I don't like them, but I kinda like that record.'”
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: John Darnielle talks to the Omaha Reader about the more personal nature of his latest work. The Memphis Flyer gives their forthcoming disc, The Sunset Tree, an A-
THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES founder Ebbot Lundberg talks about his start as a pinball wizard and the red vs. blue divide in the U.S.
KASABIAN break bad on Franz Ferdinand and Keane. Seems like post-punk is becoming more like hip-hop all the time.
KAISER CHIEFS: Their appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman is streaming in Real format.
SONIC YOUTH has a bunch of free MP3 downloads up at their site.
DINOSAUR JR: J Mascis talks to Play Louder magazine about the remastered re-issues of the band's first three albums, firt-wave punk and reuniting with Lou Barlow.
SIN CITY: Topped the weekend box office, raking in about $28 million against a $40 million budget. The Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington enjoyed it, but writes: “it will delight some and repel others—and that's probably the right reaction.” The reviewer for the San Diego Union-Tribune falls into the latter category: “It can cause a gasp, not just about its violence, but about where movies are headed.” In USA Today, Mike Clark says it “reaps genuine fun with more pummelings than Popeye and enough bad girls to fill a Donna Summer box set.” The review by Manohla Dargis for The New York Times says, “it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore.” A sidebar to the USA Today review notes that Sin City commits “The Seven Deadly Sins of Moviemaking.”
SIN CITY II: So what did I think of it? I think almost all of the reviews have valid points, save for the charge of mysogyny. Sure, the flick has the whole “madonna-whore” complex one tends to find in film noir, but a number of the women dish out as much as they take, as the film is as violent as the advance reviews suggest. Indeed, I would argue it's less misogynistic than some hip-hop videos that run on MTV. It is an amazing recreation of Miller's work — which has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. I think many people may feel as though they are watching a foreign movie. Outside of the Chandler-esque narration, the dialogue is almost as spare as one finds in a graphic novel or comic book, forms in which the visual predominates. And the visuals are stunning; Miller and Rodriguez use both chiaroscuro and high-contrast to fully exploit the near-total black and white format. Nevertheless, while I liked it, I cannot say I loved it, as its bare-bones approach left the characters undeveloped in a way that is tolerable in a graphic novel, but vaguely unsatisfying in a movie (Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis being notable exceptions). I suspect some will be simply baffled by it. Even so, I may well go see it again, just to appreciate it on a visual level.
SONY PICTURES wants to create an “iTunes” for films.
MICHAEL DOUGLAS looks like he visited the nip/tuck shop.
MUSLIM WOMEN often have it as bad in Europe as they do in the Middle East. Hirsi Ali, who was born in Somalia and has been a member of the Dutch Parliament since January 2003, now receives death threats in Internet chat rooms and in rap songs and lives at a naval base for security.
TONIGHT, on “IT'S THE MIND:” Déjà vu — that strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived through something before.
UGLY AWARDS: The Advertising Women of New York don't care much for Xtina or the French Hotel.
NANOTECH: A new paper published by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology suggests that molecular manufacturing may not be as distant as many believe. Physicists at the California Institute of Technology have created the first nanodevices capable of weighing individual biological molecules.
BRAIN IMPLANTS: Paralysed people can now control artificial limbs — and other devices — by thought alone.
UNEMPLOYMENT is high in Europe, perhaps as much as 20 or 25 percent in Sweden, according to that country's largest trade union.
SIDEWAYS PROTESTING: French winegrowers have set off dynamite in government offices to highlight their financial plight. The New Jersey Star-Ledger notes Americans' boycott over France's opposition to the Iraq war as an additional factor, but points out that French vintners have survived worse.
NATIONAL TREASURE UPDATE: Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger not only took classified documents from the National Archives, but also cut them up with scissors. Previously, Berger had descibed the episode as an “honest mistake.''
FIONA APPLE: Her unreleased, but widely leaked album is well-reviewed by Jon Pareles in The New York Times
RYAN ADAMS AND PARKER POSEY appear to have broken up.
BOB MARLEY: The BBC requested an interview with the legendary reggae artist. If they can get one, I'm definitely tuning in.
THE BRITISH INVASION: The Boston Globe surveys the newest wave.
GOSPEL SINGERS WERE TRICKED into firing their agent by record execs, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Friday.
FILESHARING: Sony BMG, Napster, RealNetworks and others are partnering with universities to try to get college kids in the habit of paying for downloads. Boing-Boing covers an amusing sidebar to the Grokster case. BTW, if you didn't know, there's actually a chart of top peer-to-peer music downloads compiled by Big Champagne.
PODCASTING: Encouraged by examples like KCRW, smaller DJs and record labels mull podcasting as an option. Radio stations around the country are adopting an iPod Shuffle format.
ZIMBABWE: Publius Pundit and WILLisms are rounding up the election and its aftermath. The opposition rejects the results, but it's not clear that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, will lead the people into the streets.
MS. WHEELCHAIR Wisconsin has been stripped of her title because pageant officials say she can stand — and point to a newspaper picture as proof.
MANCHESTER: Organizers of a major erotic festival are closing for business to a lack of interest, which they blame on recalcitrant northern English men. What did they expect? It's the hometown of Morrisey.
THE UNITED NATIONS: The second Volcker committee report, that supposedly “exonerated” United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan of knowing about his son’s alleged links to the Iraqi oil-for-food affair, has been called into question by a key witness. one example: “The committee had acquired a fax from Cotecna, which paid Kojo as a consultant, just weeks before the Swiss firm won a key UN contract in Iraq. The fax asked Kojo if he had received information from his 'main mentor.' The committee’s investigating team is understood to suspect this was a reference to Kofi. However, the existence of the fax was never disclosed in the report.”
A DUTCH WAR MEMORIAL may be scrapped after complaints it looks like a giant penis. However, it does not seem to function like one: “In full sunlight, the erection reaches a height of ten metres, shrinking back to just six metres when the light dims.” I thought this might be a hoax, but it appears to check out.
