Karl 
KEITH RICHARDS has been Lord of the Undead for longer than I thought. A super-8 color flick showing his near-fatal electrocution in 1965 was auctioned on Friday at Itsonlyrocknroll.com. The footage, from a Rolling Stones show in Sacramento, captures a nervous audience watching as bandmates Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones stagger toward Richards while attendants struggle to revive him. It was predicted to sell for around 10K, but ultimately sold for over 26K. Other items on the block included the original cover photo for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (which sold for just over 10K), an MTV jacket signed by all members of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, handwritten Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen lyrics, and more.
VETIVER: The avant-folk ensemble will preview the group's upcoming second album, To Find Me Gone, by playing it in its entirety during select appearances on the West Coast. You can stream clips from the first album at the band's website.
DAVID LEE ROTH is revisiting Van Halen's hits on a new bluegrass tribute album, Strummin' with the Devil.
COLDPLAY plays Austin City Limits. Producers say it marks a step in a new direction, but some fans are (rightly) worried.
SEASON OF THE LIST: More Cowbell has a Top 50 and then some. Filter continues its series with Top Tens from Shock G of Digital Underground, Josh Ritter, and Butch Vig of Garbage (as well as the producer of classics like Nirvana's Nevermind and The Service's George's Duty-Free Goulash.) Pichfork has more artists' lists, including some from members of Wilco, Okkervil River, New Pornographers and the Decemberists. Pitchfork also has a list of the 15 worst releases of 2005. Greg Kot names Chicago's Top Ten indie releases.
TOP TEN FILTHIEST SONGS, courtesy of Stylus.
JOHN LENNON is to be “honored” in the wake of the 25th anniversary of his death with a talking doll after Yoko Ono sold the rights to his image to a toy manufacturer.
YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY: The surviving members of The Beatles and relatives of the late band members, John Lennon and George Harrison, are suing EMI for £30 million in unpaid royalties.
CALEXICO frontman Joey Burns talks about the upcoming album, which may sound less like a spaghetti western soundtrack.
THE STROKES' upcoming album gets a middling review in London's Guardian.
KILLING LYRICS UPDATE: Warner Chappell Music formally apologized to Walter Ritter over a letter it sent to the software programmer earlier this month targeting a helper application for Apple's iTunes called pearLyrics.
GIRL GROUPS: The piece on the One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds, Lost & Found box set, has a few streaming at NPR.
STARS: These labelmates of Broken Social Scene and Metric have a download of their cover of “Fairytale of New York” downloadable through Chromewaves and elsewhere. The band is also profiled in the Montreal Mirror.
JENS LEKMAN, who I recently blurbed (with links to downloads), is taking an indefinite hiatus.
LOU RAWLS has been hospitalized for treatment of brain and lung cancer. Best wishes to him.
BONO was named one of Time magazine's Persons of the Year, along with Bill and Melinda Gates. Bob Geldof, a co-organizer of Live8, was named Time magazine's “Rocker Not Big Enough to Sell Our Magazine” by me.
WILLIE NELSON and ARLO GUTHRIE staged a musical homecoming for hurricane-wrecked New Orleans at Tipitina's on Saturday night. Tipitina's runs a charity for hard-hit artists, finding them apartments or ready cash.
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The troubled singer has reportedly been arrested on suspicion of possessing heroin. The incident adds to the singer's January court appearances, after also being arrested in November on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine.
RED HOT CHILI PEPPER Anthony Kiedis was apparently looking very chummy with National Geographic's Lisa Ling at Barneys in Beverly Hills on Saturday.
KING KONG topped the weekend box office. The 50 million/3-day, 66 million/5-day numbers may still leave the studio a bit nervous, though the “weekend multiplier” should be reassuring that the film's length and competition from the Narnia movie are the culprits and that word-of-mouth will give Kong legs. As a side note, the debate as to whether King Kong has a racial subtext is one of the silliest I've seen in some time. The depiction of the natives in thge 1933 version was stereotypical, but Jackson addresses the issue several ways in the remake — some serious and some mocking the stereotype. Moreover, if the metaphor was applied consistently, it would be obvious that the audience is meant to sympathize with Kong and that the stand-ins for white imperialism are intended to be the villains.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is the current odds-on favorite for Best Picture at the Oscars. But Gold Derbyist Tom O'Neil — the Mel Kiper, Jr. of awards shows — thinks that it may not win the Golden Globe, despite the nominations' obviously gay-friendly theme this year.
COURTNEY LOVE: Spotted looking clean and groomed at a showing of Brokeback Mountain.
JOHN SPENCER, a veteran actor of everything from The Patty Duke Show to L.A. Law and The West Wing, died of a heart attack Friday. He was 58.
VIKING LOVE BOAT: The Smoking Gun has all the lurid details — butt groping, sex toy usage, assorted oral favors, topless lap dancing, etc. — that caused four Minnesota Vikings players to be charged with lewd conduct for their roles in a ribald October party boat excursion on Lake Minnetonka.
BRADGELINA: If you haven't seen their Christmas card from their future, you really should.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise's faith in Scientology reportedly was nurtured at a secretive SoCal desert compound that catered to his needs around the clock. Fifteen years ago, two dozen members worked through dawn to plant a meadow of wildflowers in which Cruise and then-wife Nicole Kidman could romp, alleged a former Scientologist who said she was at the base for 17 years. The head of Scientology International's Office of Special Affairs said such accounts were fabricated by “apostates.” In more recent events, for Holmes' birthday, Cruise drew attention to himself, doing handstands on a giant piano in a toy store (shouldn't that be left for Tom Hanks?) and taking his pregnant fiancee ice-skating in the rain. Also, Cruise has been given the Stinkiest Diaper of the Year Award by Babytalk magazine.
VAUGHNISTON: Jennifer Aniston on being snapped topless by paparazzi: “It was like I was saying earlier today, 'Well, I might as well pull my pants down at this point, since they've seen everything else.” A few more flop movies and it may happen.
BRITNEY SPEARS is reinventing herself… as Madonna. Doesn't Gwen Stefani already have that gig? Or will Brit stake her claim to Madge's more recent aging hooker style?
TARA REID: If you met her on a cruise ship, you might just jump overboard, too.
JESSICA ALBA and HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN took time out of filming “Awake” at Bellevue Hospital last week to donate four bags of toys to kids who will be spending Christmas in the pediatric unit. Photos at Just Jared.
SCARLETT JOHANNSON may have liked shooting Woody Allen's Match Point because she doesn't like stunt work, but it turns out that she got injured in Match Point too.
JESSICA SIMPSON files for divorce. Ashlee Simpson collapses following a performance in Tokyo, presumably not because of the divorce, but the standard show biz “exhaustion.” Hey, you try lip-synching for a couple of hours sometime! She would have collapsed ages ago if she had to lip-synch after visiting whatever trout pout shop Jessica is using…
IRAQ: In the International-Herald Tribune, John F. Burns finds among Sunnis a “willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, (and) a yearning… to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq.” Bill Roggio blogs from the Al Asad air base that Sunnis in western Anbar province voted overwhelmingly for Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. And after last week's historic vote Sunni Arabs may be they key to a coalition government, either with secular Shiites and Kurds, or with the now-governing religious Shiites. This may give Sunnis the leverage to gain concessions and support for constitutional amendments that may bring them much more into the political process and weaken the insurgency.
IRAQ II: The US is scaling back combat forces in regions of the Sunni Triangle that were once fiercely contested, freeing thousands of troops to shift to other trouble spots or to go home without being replaced. The transition to Iraqi security is being tested in places like the east-central Diyala province, where the military expects by next month to have cut the number of ground combat units by two-thirds. Overall, the number of attacks there has dropped compared with last year, as the the Iraqi Army in Diayala is laying down the law to local leaders. StrategyPage notes that non-Iraqi Arabs are impressed at the economic growth and proliferation of media in Iraq, as well as the eagerness of Iraqis to vote and make democracy work.
PREWAR INTELL: The Washington Post and the Knight Ridder chain highlighted a congressional report concluding that President Bush had access to more intelligence and reviewed more sensitive material than what was shared with Congress when it gave Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. What neither story reports is that — according to the bipartisan Robb-Silberman Commission — the intell reports not shared with Congress, e.g., the Presidential Daily Brief, were even more alarmist and less nuanced than the National Intelligence Estimate provided to Congress. (See, e.g., Conclusion 22). The Washington Post should know this, as the White House pointed it out to the paper just last month.
MENTOS: Though their mood-altering qualities are known to fans of the Foo Fighters, who knew the freshmakers could be explosive when mixed with soda? (Thanks, Ted!)
BAD SANTAS: A group of 40 people dressed as Santa Claus — many of them drunk — rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores, assaulting security guards, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars, spraying graffiti on buildings and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass. Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group, said “Santarchy” was a worldwide movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas.
SANTA CLAUS: Speaking of which, it's an interactive oldie but goodie from They Might Be Giants.
POST-9/11 INTELL: The New York Times reports that President Bush authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, e.g., numbers found on the computers, cellphones and personal directories of of top Al Qaeda operatives overseas. The program is believed to have foiled at leats two al Qaeda plots, including a planned attack on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Anonymous officials have raised legal concerns about the program. There is not much case law in this area — in part because intell may be gathered without an eye toward prosecution, which is when it would be challenged. Judge Sand's opinion in U.S. v. bin Laden has good background material. As has the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review has noted, all courts that have decided the issue have ruled that the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. (One of the “experts” consulted by the NYT didn't know this.) Whether Congress can limit that authority with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is questionable (and the NYT story leaves open basic questions like whether “US persons” under FISA were subject to surveillance — pieces like this Washington Post editorial making claims about spying on Americans and US citizens are misreading the NYT story). These may be some of the reasons the NYT waited a year to publish this story. Other reasons might be to influence debate over renewal of the Patriot Act or to help promote James Risen's upcoming book.
ANIMAL HOARDING: More than 100 animals — 74 small dogs and nine big ones, seven cats, 26 birds, four goats and a lone duck — have been removed from a small three-bedroom house in San Luis Obispo, CA.
MONARCH BUTTERFLIES have armed bodyguards at the Biosphere Reserve in Mexico.
HERMIE THE TURTLE survived an experimental orthodontic procedure, only to die of kidney failure a few days later.
DONKEY RUNNING AMOK is taken into custody in Shelbyville, TN.
CRIMEBUSTING CATS nab a burglar by giving forensic evidence to police in Britain.
SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES: is back in fashion in L.A. and in Portsmouth, England.
IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER: The AP has more on the search for the elusive bird in the wildlife refuges of the Arkansas Delta.
ELEPHANTS cleared of going on drunken rampages.
