Karl 
JOLIE HOLLAND is scoring an 85 on Metacritic for Springtime Can Kill You. Even the Independent's three-star review says “she effortlessly conjures up the moods and manners of an earlier time, her lazy, back-porch drawl sketching a folksy world of sweethearts and moonbeams, to which her instrumental armoury of harmonium, fiddle, piano, steel guitar and funereal brass band provide deft coloration.” You can stream and download (at 192 kbps) old and new Jolie from MySpace.
BJORK has a seven-album DualDisc box set coming on June 27th.
GUNS 'N' ROSES: Axl must have something left in the tank, as Brooklyn Vegan seems to have enjoyed a 2hr., 15 min. gig at NYC's Hammerstein Ballroom… and so did a few others, if the video is any indication.
RADIOHEAD frontman Thom Yorke is releasing a solo record in July, but doesn't want you to call it a solo record.
RICHARD HAWLEY — ” a 39-year-old singer with a voice so rich and relaxed it has seen him labelled the Sinatra of the north, Roy Orbison's long-lost son and Yorkshire's Johnny Cash” — takes London's Guardian on a tour of Sheffield. You can stream three live-in-studio cuts, separately or as part of an interview in Real or WMA format from KEXP.
MARK PICKEREL AND HIS PRAYING HANDS: The former Screaming Trees drummer, like former bandmate Mark Lanegan, is working the Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra vibe on his new album, Snake on the Radio. You can stream a couple of cuts via MySpace.
THE EVOLUTION OF DANCE may not be “the funniest 6 minutes you will ever see,” but Judson Laipply may be the hardest working comedian in show bidness.
APPLES IN STEREO is leaving their longtime label, SpinART, and “finalizing a deal with a well-known independent label.” YANP writes that the leaked demos for the new album are “sounding absolutely fantastic“ Until they leak, we have to make do with “The Apples In Stereo Theme Song.”
MOM ROCK: Its bands have names like HRT, Housewives on Prozac, the Mydols and Placenta, and their song titles run to the wackily domestic — “Eat Your D*mn Spaghetti,” “Born to Iron” or “Pick Up Your Socks.” Canada's Globe and Mail looks at the genre.
THE WALKMEN have had a coupe of new tracks leak on the Internet, like “Brandy Alexander” and “Don't Get Me Down (Come on Over Here).”
THE PIPETTES: Skatterbrain ripped an acoustic set from BBC2 that sounds remarkably good, when you consider their normal girl group sound is so produced. You can stream “Dirty Mind,” “Judy” and “We Are The Pipettes” via the Hype Machine.
SIR PAUL and Heather Mills are spending increasing amounts of time apart after a string of fights.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer missed a court review of his rehab, because of touring commitments in Germany, where he decided to perform in drag.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Holmes' parents didn’t get to see Princess Tom-Kitten for two and one-half weeks after she was born — on the day of the Mission: Impossible III premiere in L.A. And he didn't show pics of the Tom-Kitten on the Ellen show, but Cruise and Ellen danced, which more than makes up for it.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: There are probably a lot of long faces in Tinseltown today. Mission: Impossible III took the top slot with 24.5 million –a 49 percent drop would be okay had it done better last weekend. But Poseidon took second with a mere 20 million on a 160 million production budget. And the normally reliable Lindsay Lohan… wasn't, with Just My Luck taking fourth place on 5.5 million in receipts. Consider that the top ten movies one year ago took in 91 million, whereas this weekend, the top ten grossed a mere 77.6 million.
DENISE & HEATHER & RICHIE & CHARLIE & DAVID: Sheen and Richards agreed Friday to extend a temporary restraining order requiring the actor to stay away from his estranged wife, so a psychologist can evaluate and make a determination regarding a custody arrangement for their two young daughters.
TERI HATCHER was stunned to find a massive swarm of 20K killer bees had moved into the sofa by the back door of her house. And on The Late Show with David Letterman, she implied that her recent date — Ryan Seacrest of American Idol — may prefer men. Even a fluffy show like Extra began a recent story story: “Is Seacrest in or out?”
AUTOGRAPHS: Autograph Collector magazine issued its 14th annual survey of Hollywood's best and worst signers. Johnny Depp and George Clooney are among the best, as are Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood; Cameron Diaz and Bruce Willis are among the worst.
DIANE KEATON will star as a spokesperson for L'Oreal Paris and its brands. Good for her!
BRADGELINA: Pitt and Jolie are launching a range of African homeware products. Nanny sold separately.
VAUGHNISTON: Vaughn is convinced tabloid journalists reluctantly write about him because they hate the fact he's dating Jennifer Aniston: “I think they've got to be really disappointed, on some level, that I'm kind of a guy that they have to put in the tabloids.”
CHARLIE KAUFMAN, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has become one of the best writers of his generation, argues L.A. Times book editor David L. Ulin.
CHRISTINA AGULERA is releasing a concept album, going for a vintage feel with inspiration coming from jazz, soul, and blues from the 1920s-40s. She has the pipes, but I wonder whether this will sell as many as her last concept: buttless chaps.
THE FRENCH HOTEL may have had some work done.
KATIE COURIC: The entertainment industry opposes the so-called “Katie Couric” clause in a broad Securities and Exchange Commission proposal that would require them to tell the world how much they pay their top-earning non-executives such as actors and TV news anchors.
KIEFER SUTHERLAND: Sure, as Jack Bauer on 24, he will prbably save the country three more times by the end of the season. But off-screen, when he's not dropping his pants in kareoke bars, he's attacking a Christmas tree.
IRAQ: At ITM, Omar relays Arabic press reports that Iran is supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq with anti-aircraft weapons. Bill Roggio updates on the level of readiness of Iraqi forces, noting that logistics are a weak spot. The New York Times notes that logistics are one factor hindering a US drawdown. UPI reports that the top US logistics officer in Iraq said Friday that Iraq's Army divisions will have Iraqi logistics support within a year. Finally, the Washington Post had an must-read piece on troops returning to the US and working on adjusting to life in a non-combat zone.
IRAN: UN inspectors found traces of near bomb-grade enriched uranium on nuclear equipment from a former research site razed by Iran in 2004 before the UN could inspect it. A diplomat in Vienna said there could be many explanations for this, but didn't mention what those might be. Buried in an AP report, we discover that A.Q. Khan sold Iran centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium and that the former chief of the Pakistani Army believes Iran has had enough time to develop nukes. BTW, after I linked to the Wikipedia last week to note that Pres. Ahmadinejad's letter to Pres. Bush was a da'wa that often precedes jihad, that portion of the entry has been marked as “disputed,” though no concrete reason was given. So I thought it worth noting that the practice goes back to the Prophet Mohammed in 625 A.D. and that the closing of the letter — left untranslated in the version widely available — translates as “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.”
NSA SURVEILLANCE: As I suggested last week, lawyers who specialize in national security and communications, in and out of government, said it is difficult to assess the legality of the program. It may be similarly difficult to assess the snap polling done on the program. ABCNews and The Washington Post went first with a poll showing that Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the feds to investigate possible terrorist threats. Polls from Newsweek and USA Today showed 53 or 51 percent opposingthe program (though all of these polls have a 4 percent margin of error). Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal says the answer is probably somewhere in between. And a factor he didn't mention was that the latter two polls were taken entirely on Friday and Saturday. “Weekend polling” on politics is volatile and generally skews in favor of Democrats. Plus, in the internals of the USA Today/Gallup poll, we find that people were asked “Do you think the Bush administration has gone too far, has been about right, or has not gone far enough in restricting people’s civil liberties in order to fight terrorism?” Yet only 41 percent answered “too far.”
STONEHENGE: And where are they now, the little people of… Stonehenge? Brazil?
A HAMMERHEAD SHARK caught in Boca Grande Pass may shatter the world record at 13 feet, 4 inches and 750-pounds. They didn't need a bigger boat.
DOGS are tuning into web radio in Thailand.
RUNAWAY TORTOISE traveled 1.8 miles in 8 months away from home — a blistering average of 39 feet a day.
AN OSTRICH SHOOTING IN KANSAS: A western Kansas sheriff is defending his decision to order a deputy to kill an ostrich that wandered onto Interstate 70 near Colby, despite protests from a truck driver who called the shooting “inhumane and senseless.”
KORANIC TUNA: Kenyan Muslims are flocking to Mombasa by the hundreds to see a tuna that supposedly has a Koranic verse embedded in its scales.
