PHIL SPECTOR: The written story is that prosecutors can introduce some (but not all of the) evidence that the famed music producer had a history of threatening women with guns in Spector's murder trial. If I was Spector's lawyer, I'd almost be tempted to agree to let all such evidence in, so long as Spector gets to introduce evidence that he threatened all sorts of men and women with guns over the years. The unwritten story is whether, based on this current photo, Spector is trying to play the race card.
STEPHEN MALKMUS: The reveiwer at Pitchfork really digs his new disc, Face The Truth, giving it an 8.7. The review in the New York Sin, not so much.
JEFF “SKUNK” BAXTER played psychedelic music with Ultimate Spinach, jazz-rock with Steely Dan and funky pop with the Doobie Brothers. But in the last few years he has become one of the national-security world's well-known counterterrorism experts.
SEMISONIC drummer Jacob Slichter (also author of So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer's Life) has a list of “Music You Should Hear” at Amazon.
BEACH BOYS UPDATE: It turns out that Mike Love blew off the dedication of the BB Memorial because he's still carrying a grudge against the Wilson brothers. Sounds like Brian's people drove a hard bargain in selling Mike the BB name for touring purposes.
REVENGE OF THE SITH: Two Star Wars fans who tried to duel with lightsabres made by filling fluorescent light tubes with gasoline were consumed by the Dumb Side of the Force. Hayden Christensen is considering leaving acting to become an architect, saying, “Maybe the new Star Wars film will be my last movie.” A handy excuse for acting more wooden than Pinocchio.
HOW THE INSURANCE BUSINESS RUNS HOLLYWOOD: “Sure, it may help a career to have talent, a well-connected agency, and a hot media image, but unless an actor can get insurance, he or she can't play a part in a major movie.”
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX: In China, that would be just about everything.
NORTH KOREA: Another sign of internal dissent?
IRAQ: Al Qaeda's group in Iraq said on Tuesday its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been wounded. And here's a survival manual of sorts for civilians headed to Iraq.
THE MEDIA AND THE MILITARY: Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley’s unsupported claim that the U.S. military is targeting journalists (previously noted here) and her lame defense are getting coverage in newspapers. In an interview with Editor & Publisher magazine, Foley offered a clarification: “I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military.” She still has no evidence to support her claim, but seems to think that’s okay as long as you blame the civilians in the military. If you are associated with the media and wonder why yet another poll shows a yawning gap between the attitudes of the press and the public about press freedom, bias in news, and journalists’ rights, look no further.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Pitt and Jolie are photographed holding hands. I think there might be something going on there.
COLDPLAY: The band's new single will likely be beaten out of a number one entry by a cover of “Axel F” recorded by The Crazy Frog as a ringtone. No wonder Chris Martin doesn't like capitalism.
EMINEM has a new target: the Olsen twins. However, given that one of them has an eating disorder, his claim seems factually incorrect. Mr. Mathers is closer to the mark with his claim that that Britney Spears “has shoulders like a man.”
MP3 BLOGGING: Monkeyfilter has turned the Tofu Hut's recent encyclopedic list of MP3 blogs into a wiki.
ROADCASTING: Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute was commissioned by the R&D arm of a major automaker to create a system that allows anyone to have their own radio station, broadcasted among cars in an ad-hoc network.
THE STATE OF DOWN-HOME DINING is the title of a new series running in USA Today about “dining scenes that still are robust, unpretentious and affordable — all while serving soul-satisfying regional fare.” Sylvia Hauser probably suspects that I am tweaking her with this link; she would be correct.
TOM AND KATIE UPDATE: Art imitates life, as Katie Holmes is being tipped to play Cruise's love interest in the third installment of Mission Impossible. Defamer rounds up the largely skeptical reax to the couple's appearance on Oprah. USA TODAY also runs a piece on the skepticism.
PAGING DR. DOOLITTLE: A young cat somehow travels from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Downey, California. A runaway carriage horse bolts onto Interstate 75 near Cincinnati, Ohio. A bear wandered into a San Fernando Valley neighborhood and took a dip in a swimming pool. Chickens and roosters have been terrorizing several neighborhoods near Columbia, MD for months. A manatee has wandered hundreds of miles out of its range to a fishing post at the southern tip of Texas.
THEY GOTTA LOTTA LOTTA LOTTA RATS, SNAKES AND CATS (uh-huh!) at the Government Center. They were supposed to make the secretries feel better, but a cat attacked a clerk with all the ledgers.
TRANSPLANT SHOCKER: Three die from hamster virus!
CANADA: Although the minority Liberal government just survived a no confidence vote by the tie-breaking vote of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the situation may change now that forensic accountants are testifying in the Adscam inquiry that the total amount of money lost now appears to be $355 million, far more than than was originally thought.
CULT OF THE iPod: Mike Industires, fresh off the “make an iPod out of food” contest, launches the Photoshop contest, Great iPods in History. Web geeks will also marvel at Mike’s stylin’ CSS.
HACKER HUNTERS: Business Week covers the rise of joint local, state, and federal cyber-crimefighting efforts; the collaboration is necessary, because the cyber-crooks are currently winning. Indeed, hackers have found a way to lock up the electronic documents on your computer and then extort money over the internet to get them back.
TIME TRAVEL: The idea of building so-called traversable wormholes for time travel is looking increasingly shaky, according to two new scientific analyses. Of course, anyone who went to the time-travelers' convention knows this.
SUPER-LASER: At the National Ignition Facility, scientists hope to produce the world’s most powerful laser — one that will create in a laboratory the energy found at the center of the sun.
GINORMOUS: Miriam-Webster posts favorite words not in the dictionary.
THE SOPRANOS: The seventh season will focus on materialism, according to creator David Chase, who sounds like he's leaving himself a little wiggle room as to whether this will be the final season of the critically-acclaimed gangster dramedy.
GREAT GRINCH: Thurl Ravenscroft, who provided the rumbling “They’re Grrrrreeeat!” for Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger ads has died of prostate cancer at 91. He also sang, “You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”
ERNEST T. BASS passed away last weekend at 85.
SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE: An Arkansas man suffered trauma to his nose, eyes and chin after jumping from a car traveling 55-60 mph while trying to retrieve a cigarette blown out of the passenger-side window.
PEOPLE OF ARAB DESCENT living in the U.S. are doing far better than the average American, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000. Daniel Drezner links to an article by Moises Naim in Foreign Policy posing questions raised by the data, such as, “how does one explain why Arab immigrants in Europe are worse off than those in the United States?” Naim continues: “Cultural determinists may want to revise their theories of Arab backwardness. Arab leaders should be ashamed when they see their emigrants prospering in the United States while their own people are miserable. And Europe should wake up to the possibility that it may have less of an 'Arab problem' than a 'European problem.' Then again, maybe the cultural determinists have an explanation for why Europeans are so predisposed against Arab success.”
JACKO JUSTICE: The trial isn't over quite yet, but online gamblers have rendered their verdict: the smart money is on acquittal.
A PARENTING TIP: Tell your kids to never joyride with the ice cream man. I'm not a parent, but I was once hired as an ice cream man, so you know there are no standards. In Pace, FL, 69 year-old William Stafford was arrested on more than 100 counts of various lewd and lascivious activities.
ZIMBABWE: I previously noted the recent fraudulent election held there. Now, the government is cracking down on its people and the country is collapsing.
YOU THINK YOUR FEET DON'T STINK? A stench by any other name might smell sweeter…
PRODIGAL SHEEP returns, saves farmer.
HAT SAVES IMPALED MAN from bleeding to death.