Karl I CAN'T INVITE Y'ALL over for some tasty BBQ, so here's your light holiday serving of the usual tripe:
ALL SUMMER LONG: My friends all know I tend to categorize my music listening by season, so it may come as no surprise I do a bit of the same with respect to movies. For example, Labor Day weekend is the ideal time to watch American Graffiti. For as much as has been written about how George Lucas changed Hollywood with Star Wars, his 1973 flick was just as influential in other ways. There were few — if any — movies with multiple story arcs before this one. And more relevant to this site, Lucas invented the wall-to-wall rock soundtrack as Greek chorus here, too. The end credits roll over The Beach Boys' "All Summer Long," which we see here played charmingly by Brian Wilson's band campfire-style from 2004.
MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC TURNS 30: Your morning show fun factoid — "David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, has said that it was while driving around L.A. listening to KCRW that he first heard 'Woke Up This Morning' by little-known English band Alabama 3 and realized instantly that he'd found the perfect theme song to capture the sense of dark paranoia central to his depiction of modern mob life." There's a nine-hour special airing today celebrating the three decades of MBE, so you may want to tune in…
RADIO, RADIO: Speaking of which, London's Guardian has a readers' playlist of songs about radio, with many more worthy candidates in the intoduction, though the absence of The Kinks' "Around The Dial," R.E.M.'s "Radio Song" and Joe Jackson's "On Your Radio" are glaring. BONUS: I am of course compelled to re-link Elvis Costello's historic performance of "Radio, Radio."
THE CONSUMER GUIDE: Robert Christgau has posted his grades for September, with streaming tracks from some of the main entries and honorable mentions.
LEVON HELM, singer-drummer of The Band, will be releasing his first solo studio album in 25 years at the end of October, with new material plus by singer-songwriter Steve Earle and the late blues legend J.B. Lenoir.
SPOON: I've had more than one person ask me for music recommendations lately. While I generally like most of the music I link here, and also figure the Internet allows folks to listen and make their own decisions, the volume of stuff can be overwhelming. I would certainly not be alone in recommending Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is still streaming in full from Merge Records. Plus, Keepon the Robot, seen dancing to Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On" back in April, is absolutely fantastic grooving to the band's "Don't You Evah."
CLOUD CULT frontman Craig Minowa has "always been deeply philosophical," and was "born without a prehensile tail, a kangaroo pouch and photosynthetic cells." Plus, I learned that Cloud Cult includes two painters as fully-fledged band members. (Thx, Chromewaves.)
BOB DYLAN: Austin360 has posted a primer on his career as preparation for his set at the ACL Fest.
SONIC YOUTH frontman Thurston Moore tells SPIN magazine that the band's biggest faux pas was not breaking up somewhere between 1988-90, because it prevented them from having a lucrative reunion tour.
AMY WINEHOUSE violently vomited blood in her hideaway Caribbean hotel room and refused to see a doctor.
HEATH LEDGER & MICHELLE WILLIAMS "quietly and amicably split a few weeks ago," a source tells US Weekly. The couple, who have a daughter, Mathilda, 23 months, met on the set of Brokeback Mountain in 2005.
BRITNEY SPEARS' comeback is set to be an X-rated affair. Two new songs, purported to be by our favourite unhinged mother, have cropped up on the Internet and one, Cold As Fire is a shockingly explicit, adult-only affair. But "Gimme More" is not without its innuendo, either.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY says that she is sickened by celebs who expose themselves to photographers, and claims their actions make them "s**ttier than everybody else.
SIENNA MILLER was literally falling out of her shoes drunk following a fashion launch party in London last Thursday night. She was so smashed she was walking into walls and had to be held up by her friends.
GEORGE CLOONEY has lost so much weight in recent months that his publicist has more than once been forced to deny rumors that he is seriously ill.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise has broken his silence about his controversial role as the German colonel famous for a failed attempt to kill Adolf Hitler — just long enough to tell his critics to shut up.
DANIEL CRAIG reportedly proposed to film producer Satsuki Mitchell during a romantic break in Italy.
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE and Andy Samberg are said to be in talks to perform their Saturday Night Live skit "Dick in a Box" at the Primetime Emmys , but they have reportedly balked at the request from the show's producers to change the words of the racy ditty to make it more family friendly. "Dick in a Box" is nominated for Original Music and Lyrics.
CHARLIZE THERON would tell In the Valley of Elah writer-director Paul Haggis that she had to go to her trailer to prepare for her role, but she was really sneaking off to play the Deal or No Deal videogame.
JOHN TRAVOLTA, of all people, should know to turn off his cellphone in a movie theater.
OWEN WILSON is back at home – and being watched around the clock.
LABOR DAY: Billy Bragg belts out "There Is Power In A Union" in the lobby of the AFL-CIO building. Doesn't get much more labor than that.
THE JERRY LEWIS MDA TELETHON is a Labor Day staple, but most of the good video has been yanked from the Tube. Even so, you can see Dean Martin sing "That's Amore" from the 1953 'thon.
BACK-TO-SCHOOL SUPPLIES: Perpetual Kid is selling Crayon, Glue and Play-Doh colognes.
CARTOON JIHAD: Afghanistan and Pakistan join Iran in condemning the printing of a sketch of Islam's Prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog in a Swedish newspaper. Fortunately, no buildings have bured and no one has been killed. Yet. The newspaper will not apologize, so we'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, Salon.com printed the second Opus comic strip to be banned from 25 US newspapers on the ground that it might offend Muslims.
PATCHES the HORSE wants to pick up a cheeseburger. Then he's ready to fetch beer and answer the phone for his owners.
THE SQUIRREL THREAT… to the New York Yankees, as one bushy-tailed rodent foretold the club's fall to the BoSox by reenacting the Norse legend of Ratatosk. No, really. Right Field Ratatosk joins a cast of baseball creatures that includes the black cat that crossed in front of the Chicago Cubs' dugout during their ill-fated pennant-race battle with the Mets in 1969 and the bird that Dave Winfield killed with a throw in Toronto in 1983.
THE SNAKE THREAT: Snakes seem to have launched a general offensive, attacking a Taco Bell in Hattiesburg, a goldfish in England, the Cal State University Bakersfield campus, and Mrs. Tennessee on the way to rehearsals for the Mrs. America pageant (she was treated on the scene by one of her competitors for the crown, Mrs. Iowa).
FOUR WHITETAIL BUCKS at the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray may receive vasectomies as part of the state's effort to control the deer population there. However, a group of supporters of the park are upset… not to mention the four bucks.
GERMAN HEDGEHOGS are no longer killing themselves by eating at McDonalds.
