Karl 
GEORGE WASHINGTON: Though now lumped in with everyone for Presidents' Day, tomorrow is the birthday of the “Father of his Country.” A team of scientists that began reimagining Washington as a reckless, rambunctious, 18th century action hero are putting finishing touches on wax sculptures so realistic they should shatter stereotypes when displayed at Mount Vernon this year. The statues show Washington at three stages in his life: an ambitious 19-year-old surveyor, a weary 45-year-old field commander and a deep-thinking, 57-year-old president being sworn into office. In 1776, David McCullough notes that when Washington took command in July 1775, he thought he would be home at Mount Vernon by Christmas. McCullough catalogs Washington's blunders — many of them nearly fatal to the Cause — but concludes: “He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, nor a gifted orator, not an intellectual… He had made serious mistakes in judgment. But experience had been his great teacher from boyhood… and above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake, and he never gave up.” That, as much as anything, is why Washington is usually ranked among the greatest of US presidents.
ARCTIC MONKEYS: With Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not hitting US stores tomorrow, NPR has discovers the phenomenon. The Daily Collegian actually reviews the songwriting. The Philadelphia Inquirer likes the band, but prefers Art Brut — and there's certainly a case to be made for that.
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS' Carl Newman tells the Calgary Sun that the members' various projects — Dan Bejar in Destroyer, Neko Case's solo career, etc. — creates mutual buzz that benefits all of them.
THE WHO is planning a hi-tech world tour with a mix of pay-per-view and free webcasts.
BUZZCOCKS frontmen Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle still fight over who writes the better songs — usually with their fists.
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB is on tour, so the readership of The News & Observer in Raleigh, NC get a quick history of the band leading up to the change of style to the Americana-tinged Howl. You can stream a bunch of BMRC video from Rolling Stone, including exclusive live tracks.
TELEVISION: At *Sixeyes, Alan pays tribute to the seminal guitar band by killing music (for a limited time) with selections from Marquee Moon and Adventure — two of his all-time favorite albums.
YELLOW SUBMARINE: A rare drawing has been discovered by David Ashton — a close childhood friend of John Lennon — and he is certain it sparked the idea for the pop ditty. There's just one problem with that theory: Paul wrote the song.
SEEN YOUR VIDEO: The Bangles — obvious, but universal.
YOU TUBE: Friday, I warned that artists and others would start demanding that their stuff be yanked from the video-sharing service. Now we learn that NBC has demanded the removal of “Lazy Sunday,” a/k/a the Narnia rap, from the service that helped make it an Internet hit.
KELLEY STOLZ: The multi-instrumentalist's new album, Below The Branches, is currently scoring a 77 at Metacritic, For example, The New York Times says: “In concise, perpetually tuneful songs, his voice echoes the slouchy charm of the Kinks' Ray Davies, while the sun-dazed reverberations of the Beach Boys meet the music-hall bounce of the Beatles.” And that's pretty accurate, as you'll hear from the three tracks streaming at MySpace, with “The Sun Comes Through” downloadable from the new album. Sub Pop has a download of “Memory Collector.” And Stolks has archived downloads, including three cuts from Crockodials, his version of Crocodiles by Echo & the Bunnymen.
RAY DAVIES: London's Guardian gives his new album, Other People's Lives, three stars out of five.
SPIN magazine is close to being sold for the bargain-basement price of five million dollars — with the cash part being significantly less than that. The magazine once sold for 42 million.
JOURNEY: Former frontman Steve Perry refuses to contact his ex-bandmates, because he fears any show of unity will spark reunion rumors. Hard to argue with that.
WOXY: The indie internet radio station is profiled in the Cincinnati Post in connection with its current subscriber drive: “Unlike zillions of Web sites that stream music, WOXY.com is still a true radio station with live, knowledgeable DJs and several dynamic music features, including frequent live performances from bands playing the Cincinnati area. It may indeed be the “future of rock 'n' roll,” but that future has not come to the Internet just yet. Station operators are trying to deal with an advertising community on how to size up the hybrid…”
DANIEL JOHNSON: The bipolar indie musician who lapsed into a comalike state for several weeks is having his artwork displyed in the prestigious Whitney Biennial.
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: There are Internet rumors that the troubled singer is an elaborate hoax by The KLF, though more likely the rumors are a hoax by The KLF. Either way, I'm sure the French Hotel would like to meet him. Meanwhile, the supposedly sober supermodel will reportedly know within two weeks if she is to be charged following her infamous cocaine-snorting scandal. Prior reports suggest she won't be.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Eight Below topped Date Movie, though not on a per screen average; Freedomland tanked in seventh place.
ROGER EBERT predicts that Brokeback Mountain will not win Best Picture as he launches his annual “Outguess Ebert” contest.
THE BAFTAS: Brokeback Mountain did take top prize at the British version of the Oscars, however. Ang Lee and Jake Gyllenhaal won their categories also. Best British film went to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit.
MADONNA admitted she and hubby Guy Ritchie have “clashes” and “petty fights” – but she lashed out at rumors of marriage trouble. Y'know, those rumors that have Madge asking everyone from the London Kabbalah Centre to Elton John and his partner David Furnish for advice. Sounds like she might need another hit from oxygen tank.
BROKEBACK-STABBING? Heath Ledger believes George Clooney deserves the best supporting actor Oscar this year for his performance in Syriana, rather than his Brokeback Mountain co-star Jake Gyllenhaal (and he was caught on video saying it). Larry McMurtry, who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Brokeback, says the film’s meaning can be summarized: “Life is not for sissies.” Had he not co-written the screenplay, the ranks of the professionally offended would be demanding an apology for use of the word “sissy.”
JENNY McCARTHY is rubbishing reports she had lesbian sex in a Las Vegas restroom with porn queen Jenna Jameson, who told the story on the Howard Stern show.
EVA GREEN will play femme fatale Vesper Lynd in the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. Last year, she starred in Ridley Scott's historical drama Kingdom of Heaven. However, she was much more naked in these NSFW video clips from The Dreamers.
BRITNEY SPEARS complains about the state of pop music and being chased by aggressive paparazzi, but wants you to know she's not bitter.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY has quashed rumors that she's leaving London for Hollywood: “I would never leave. I'm 20, and my family and my friends are there, and a lot of work for me comes from there – and I get the p*** taken out of me much more there than anywhere else!” Besides, moving to L.A. would just aggravate her body-image issues.
THE DAVIE-BROWN INDEX aims to bring scientific know-how to the subjective world of celebrity appeal, evaluating the worth of 1,500 celebrities based on eight criteria: appeal, notice, trendsetting, influence, trust, endorsement, aspiration and awareness. It turns out that Suntory and Dewar's were right on target in hiring Sean Connery to hawk their whiskey.
JESSICA SIMPSON is rumored to be in talks for a tell-all sidown with Diane Sawyer. Meanwhile, hubby Nick Lachey has response to the pneumatic blonde's divorce petition, challenging the date of separation (which affects the community property), asking for his jewelty back, and reserving his right to ask for spousal support.
THE TROUT POUT SHOP: A member of Oh No They Didn't helpfully posts a pictorial guide to celebrity collagen injections.
CULT OF THE iPod: Victory Records' boss and founder Tony Brummel has defiantly refused to license any of his label's music through iTunes because it “makes music disposable. It makes it a faceless impulse item. It steals its soul.”
BLOGGING: William Safire lead hsi “On Language” column with “blargon” from the denizens of the world of Web logs. New York magazine has an article the begins with complaints about alleged inequality in the blogosphere, but if you read the entire thing, you find this: “You think the A-list is the A-list is the A-list,” says David Sifry, the CEO of Technorati. “But I’m telling you, boy, does it shift—and does it shift fast.” Guy Kawasaki offers advice on “How to Suck Up to a Blogger,” because “It used to be that ink begat buzz… Nowadays buzz begets ink.”
IRAQ: The AP's Antonio Castaneda, embedded with Marines from Regimental Combat Team 2, blogs the soundtrack for a recent supply trip: “My thoughts were interrupted when tunes by the notorious 1980s hairband “Poison” kicked in. The song “Every Rose Has a Thorn” played, which made me desperately hope that we wouldn't be maimed to such an appallingly bad song. I wasn't about to complain though. Music had a disproportionately positive effect in lifeless parts of Iraq, and I had just seen the Spartan living conditions that these Marines survived in. They deserved to listen to whatever music they preferred, even if it was this bad.”
IRAQ II: Michael J. Totten has another dispatch from Kurdistan: “A Western journalist I met in Erbil, who has been in Iraq for some time, told me the place challenges almost every liberal idea he has ever had in his head. I don’t know what he was like, ideologically speaking, before he got there. But he certainly doesn’t have orthodox left-wing opinions today. (Some right-wingers, especially those who think of the entire Islamic religion as a totalitarian death cult, would likewise get a crash-course in reality if they ever bothered to hang out in Iraq and meet actual Muslims.)”
JAILED CHEERLEADERS: Twenty-one members of North Korean cheering squads who traveled to South Korea for international sports events are being held in a prison camp for talking about what they saw in the South.
CARTOON JIHAD: A Pakistani cleric announced a one million dollar bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew the Prophet Muhammad caricatures, apparently ignorant that there were a dozen cartoonists involved. Authorities in a central Russian city on Friday ordered the closing of a newspaper that published a cartoon showing Muhammed, along with Jesus, Moses and Buddha. In Libya, eleven people were killed and an Italian consulate was burned during Friday night protests, prompting Italian Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli — who wore t-shirts bearing the cartoons — to resign under pressure. In northern Nigeria, at least 16 people have been killed during protests. At that last link, the BBC states, “Islamic tradition strictly prohibits any depiction of Allah or the Prophet,” which is a myth, just like the myth that the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. So the BBC apparently takes the extremists at face value, as opposed to committing acts of journalism. In NYC, protesters waved signs showing the Islamic flag atop the White House, denouncing freedom of speech. In Pakistan, veiled women carried a sign reading “God Bless Hitler” (check the hilarious German caption stating that the intent of the sign was unclear).
CARTOON JIHAD II: CBS's 60 Minutes ran a feature on this turmoil, the subtext of which was to blame the Danish newspaper, to state that “The lines between fantasy and reality aren’t sharply defined around Denmark,” and to suggest the nation is racist (dutifully following London's Guardian.) Viewers were given no idea that Denmark was already self-censoring due to the violence of Islamic extremists in Denmark and the Netherlands. The show implicitly accused the newspaper of having a double standard because the editors “recently rejected a satirical depiction of the resurrection, saying it would cause a public outcry.” CBS did not mention that the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. In painting Danish Muslims as an oppressed minority, the show stated: “They may benefit from Denmark’s welfare system, but there isn’t a real mosque in the entire country; they have to make do with converted factories.” The reality is that the small Muslim population consumes over one-third of Danish welfare spending (and it doesn't occur to 60 Minutes that lavish welfare spending may support the Islamic extremist lifestyle). 60 Minutes pointed to no evidence that the gov't is preventing Muslims from building mosques; does CBS thinks the government should be building them? The notion that Denmark is racist or xenophobic isn't borne out by the latest study of 51 countries. And the claim that moderate Muslims are ” fast disappearing into fantasies of fear” is not true, either. That's a lot of work on the part of 60 Minutes to end up siding with tolerance for extremism over against freedom of speech.
OPEN HOUSE OF ILL-REPUTE: Amsterdam's famed red light district has held its first ever “open day” as its peepshows and brothels gave crowds of wide-eyed visitors free entry to help shed the area's increasingly negative reputation. “This is a very good idea,” 28-year-old Dutchman Maarten Ritsema said, grinning after experiencing his first ever lap-dance at the Bar La Vie en Proost.
PENGUIN EGG UPDATE: Kyala and Oscar, the penguins who had their chick stolen just before Christmas have hatched another egg at a zoo in southern England. The new chick was born Tuesday, but has yet to be named and its sex was not yet known.
ELEPHANTS WITHOUT A CAUSE: Inexperienced teenage mothers, combined with a lack of older bulls, appears to have created a generation of “teenage delinquent” elephants. Researcher Richard Lair: “The more human beings they see, the less tolerant they become.”
GONZO, a four-foot-long black and white Argentinian tegu lizard is on the loose in peaceful Cambridgeshire.
A TWO-METER CROC turned up in a carport in the centre of Jabiru, Australia. Rangers captured the crocodile, which spent the night in one of the ranger's bathtubs before it was released at the South Alligator boat ramp.
TIGER POOP is being tested as an animal pest repellant.
PLANNED GOAT SEX PRANK results in animal cruelty charges against Trenton Dakota Jackson of the Alpha Gamma Rho frat at Western Kentucky University. Chapter pres. Brian Peyton said that nobody actually was going to have sex with the goat, which police officers found stuffed into a storage room, standing in its own urine and feces.
“TINY” WOMAN ATTACKS POLAR BEAR and wins. I must remember to ask Sylvia if they're related.
