Karl THE WEEKEND (AND NO PANTS DAY) STARTS HERE:
I AM 8-BIT: Fort 90 has a slew of photos from the opening of an art exhibit based on classic videogames.
FRIDAY TIME-WASTER DELUXE: A classic video arcade — Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Frogger and more.
RICK MOSHER, vocalist and guitarist for the New Duncan Imperials (and The Service before that), has a 48-drawer cabinet full of nearly 4,000 beautifully mounted and catalogued insects. A little Jame Gumb for my taste, but to each his own. Hat tip to Craig O'Neill for the link!
RICHARD THOMPSON has an impressive slate of releases planned throughout the rest of 2005, including a new studio album, a five-disc box set and several live CDs and DVDs. It will be much easier to get RT's killer version of “Oops… I Did It Again.”
AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL lineup is announced. Acts include: Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Jimmy Cliff, Kasabian, Rilo Kiley, The Decemberists, The Ditty Bops, Kathleen Edwards, Buddy Guy and many, many more.
THE HOLD STEADY get a mighty 8.7 for Separation Sunday on the Pitchfork. They also get called “Brooklyn's best band” in a Village Voice piece calling the new disc “an early contender for record of the year.” Brooklyn Vegan can hook you up to some downloads.
LOUIE, LOUIE: A pop culture controversy that has simmered for decades came to a head when a middle school marching band in Michigan was told not to perform “Louie Louie” in Saturday's Grand Floral Parade. Band members and parents complained to the Board of Education at its Tuesday meeting that it was too late to learn another song. Since they were going to play (rather than sing) the song, any Pate fan knows the solution is to have the band play the same music, but tell everyone they are playing “Wild Thing” or “Hang on Sloopy.” UPDATE: The band will now be allowed to play Louie squared; never underestimate the power of public mockery.
CATS: Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na…. Cat Man! That's not makeup, that's tattoos and surgery! More pictures here.
BIONICS IS BIG at Wired this week, with an article on bionic eyes and another on bionic animals. I get the feeling PETA won't be happy about the chickens.
A NEW DINOSAUR discovered by paleonotlogists in the Utah desert was going vegan.
AL-QAIDA ROUND-UP:The Pakistani commandos who captured al-Qaida honcho Abu Faraj al-Libbi ambushed him by wearing burqas. “We are trying to arrest his other contacts, but news of his arrest was prematurely leaked to the media,” said a Pakistani intelligence official. Nevertheless, raids across Pakistan Thursday resulted in the arrest of more than 20 other al-Qaida suspects. al-Libbi was said to be plotting new attacks on U.S. targets in Afghanistan and possibly on the American homeland itself.
U.K. ELECTION: Britons grudgingly returned the Labour Party to power for a third time on Thursday (a record for Labour), according to an exit poll of voters (for what such polls are worth), but the party may lose close to 100 seats, a worse-than-expected showing that may weaken Prime Minister Tony Blair.
BRADGELINA CAMBERLAKE MASH-UP: New York Daily News gossips Rush & Molloy note Pitt and Jolie's second hookup in Africa and Justin Timberlake's discomfort at being used as a dancing pole by Cameron Diaz.
GET THE FUGU OUT OF HERE! A man died in Nagasaki, apparently from poisoning caused by eating a puffer fish. Life (and death, sadly) imitates The Simpsons.
HOW DID IT GO IN? is a site devoted to theories explaining that incredible shot Tiger Woods made on the 16th hole of the Masters, illustrated with movie clips. Yes, one theory involves a gopher.
INSIDE TV, a new weekly magazine from the publishers of TV Guide, is marketing itself as a TV Guide for women. At Slate, Dana Stevens asks, “Why on earth do women need their own TV guide?”
PEOPLE NEED TO GET THEIR HANDS OFF OF KIDS: A Deerfield Beach, FL baseball coach was arrested late Tuesday on charges of having sexual relations with a 15-year-old girl. Two men have accused the mayor of Spokane, WA of molesting them when they were boys and he was a sheriff’s deputy and Boy Scout leader.
JACKO JUSTICE — BEATLES FOR SALE? Roger Friedman of FOX News writes that Bank of America has sold Michael Jackson's $270 million in loans to a private hedge fund called Fortress Investments. The fund stands to become a 50 percent owner in Sony/ATV Music Publishing if Jackson should default on the loan (and he is technically in default now). Sony/ATV, which holds a catalog of 251 Beatles songs as well as thousands of other compositions, including most of Bob Dylan's better-known songs and Destiny's Child's “Bootylicious,” is valued at $1 billion.
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE: The Seattle Times' Tom Scanlon writes: “Atlantic Records, please, please do not mess this up: Ben Gibbard has written a remarkable, perhaps even perfect pop song. 'I Will Follow You Into the Dark' is not only better than any song Gibbard has written, it's better than any song most people have written (notable exceptions: Dylan, Bob; Shakur, Tupac; Hooker, John Lee).”
A MUSIC RESEARCHER with Sun Microsystems complains that Digital Rights Management schemes interfere with the sort of research and innovation that created things like the MP3 format in the first place.
MADONNA is too busy to be godmother to Britney Spears' baby. So Madge is apparently not planning to settle all family business anytime soon.
ANN COULTER UPDATE: The dude who heckled her at UT Austin sends his message to the masses at the Daily Kos: “I am Ajai Raj, and I am a jackass.”
REVENGE OF THE SITH: Matt Dentler, producer of the SXSW Film Festival, saw it and dug it: “This film makes the first two weak prequels well worth it… the film we've wanted for 20 years.” Whitney Matheson of USA Today blogs that “the movie is incredibly satisfying and worthy of the positive buzz it's been given thus far.” The Hollywood Reporter raves: “The final episode of George Lucas' cinematic epic Star Wars ends the six-movie series on such a high note that one feels like yelling out, 'Rewind!'” Chinese actress Bai Ling ended up on the cutting room floor, perhaps because she will appear in the June issue of Playboy. An unemployed techie (shocking, I know) has written a comprehensive essay of literary influences on the Star Wars saga. ALSO: How a lightsaber works and how to choose the right one for you.
SUMMER MOVIE MADNESS: Wondering what's coming after the Sith? There's a comprehensive round-up by category at efilmcritic.com. Sadly, I found this too late to enter the “March Madness” style contest, in which movies are bracketed and advance based on box office success.
IRAQ: Female marines are being integrated into line companies in combat for the first time, ironically due to cultural sensitivities in Iraq. Syria is detaining Saudis attempting to infiltrate into Iraq. Iraqi civilians who have suffered from U.S. military operations face steep obstacles in obtaining compensation for the deaths of their loved ones or material damage, human rights analysts say. It's criticism that would carry more weight if any of the groups quoted had complained even half as much about Saddam Hussein's regime. ALSO: In Cape Coral, FL, city officials spun into damage control mode in the face of public outrage that a city worker removed signs and yellow ribbons a mother had posted to greet her U.S. Army daughter as she returned home from Iraq. You shouldn't do that sort of thing in Matt Drudge's backyard; he'll get the word out, y'know?
A TALE OF TWO JESSICAS: In Las Vegas, Jessica Alba notes that Tobey Maguire needs a trip to the squeezing room and Jessica Simpson gets down on the dancefloor with Lance, our site administrator. Okay, I made up that last bit, but Lance was just in Vegas checking out the new Wynn hotel, so maybe that is him in the article.
BILL GATES is on a mission to defeat Google, which has morphed from a successful search engine into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance.
SOPRANO PLEA DEAL? Vincent Pastore, who played Salvatore 'Big P–sy' Bonpensiero on the HBO smash, may cop a plea in connection with charges that he assaulted his former girlfriend.
CULT OF THE iPod: How dominant is Apple? The iPod Shuffle has 58 percent of the market for flash memory based digital media players. And a whopping 90 percent market share in hard drive-based players. ALSO: James Lileks gets random rock royalty on his Shuffle.
OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL: Documents involving actions taken by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the Oil-For-Food investigation have been given to Congress by Robert Parton, a former senior investigator on the supposedly Independent Inquiry Committee probing the $64 billion program, led by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Congress has been trying to talk to Parton since he resigned, charging that the Volker committee was going soft on Annan. Last week, Volcker had tried to block such efforts by insisting that Parton and former investigator Miranda Duncan, both Americans, had diplomatic immunity. After Volcker failed to answer Parton's lawyer as to whether he would order Parton to defy the subpoena, Volcker's committee is some sort of sanction against Parton. This will only make Volcker look worse if Parton's charges are proved out by the documents.
THE HUFFINGTON POST: Arianna Huffington tells the Online Journalism Review that her soon-to-launch celebrity group blog will never use ghost writers.
THE PENTAGON VS. BLOGS: The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defence for Public Affairs thinks it has pretty good strategies for dealing with the media, but admits that they don't know how to handle critical bloggers.
PESKY BLOGS: It turns out that NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin doesn't know how to handle blogs, either. NPR posted a government report online that bloggers discovered could be converted to show parts the government meant to redact; apparently, that's the bloggers' fault. He also doesn't like the “undisguised opinion” found on blogs, though some might argue it's better than the disguised opinion often found on NPR. According to Dvorkin, “bloggers tend not to care if they, and their readers conflate opinion and fact.” Apparently, Mr. Dvorkin has never heard of The New Republic, National Review or The Nation? And any decent blog links to sources that the readers can evaluate themselves. What's really funny is at the end of the piece, Dvorkin mentions news organizations fighting to “regain their battered credibility,” which ought to tell him something about what he's holding up as the gold standard.
LIT-BLOGGING: Author Adam Langer mentions the blogs he reads and asks other authors which blogs they read.
AREA 51: Folks are checking it out with satellite maps from Google.
YO HO, YO HO, A PIRATE'S LIFE FOR ME: The scourge of piracy is a potentially terror-related threat, according to Austin Bay and Jane's Defence Weekly.
TRENDS: Scientists find that trendy behavior, including patterns of applause at concerts, is imitative (duh!) and tends to follow the laws of magnetism. This might also explain some of how people react in disasters.
BOY FINDS SNAKE IN CEREAL BOX: Just in case you missed it elsewhere.
…AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: The Random Vin Diesel Fact Generator. Be sure to hit you browser's “Refresh” button!
