Karl 
SILVER JEWS: PopMatters interviews David Berman, who says he's “on a mission from G-d” and that “I am blown away to realize in my late 30s how wrong my old ideas about life and the works of life are.” At Metacritic, Tanglewood Numbers scores an average of 79 from critics and 9.4 (out of 10) from users. The band’s label, Drag City, has legit downloads of “I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You” and the Quicktime video of “How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lie Down.”
SUFJAN STEVENS turns up everywhere, even in Tikkun, which looks at his spiritual side.
U2: Stylus magazine “plays G-d” with The Joshua Tree.
RONALD ISLEY is facing a maximum 26-year jail sentence after being convicted of multiple tax evasion charges, including cashing royalty checks belonging to his late brother and former band member O'Kelly Isley. Goes to show you can't fight the power, Ron.
TORTOISE and BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY have an album of cover songs coming next year, ranging from Richard Thompson to Devo to Bruce Springsteen. Stereogum links you to others killing music.
JOHN PEEL UPDATE: Having previously noted the legendary British DJ's box of singles, I must note that I Love Music is absoultely slaughtering music by asssembling them through You Send It.
WILCO: Jeff Tweedy has canned the concert DVD, but is working on the next studio album and is looking to do new stuff with Loose Fur and Golden Smog.
SEX PISTOL guitarist Steve Jones thinks today's so-called punk bands are manufactured. Steve, meet Malcolm McLaren. Oh, you've met?
BILLY BRAGG has written music for lyrics by a single mother who has died from cancer, as part of a British government program designed to provide a voice to people with long-term and terminal illness.
JOHN LENNON: Grey Will Fade is killing music with indie Lennon covers from a Q magazine CD.
THE CONSTANTINES' singer-guitarist Steven Lambke says the band's latest, Tournament Of Hearts is more about melody than riffs this time. At Metacritic, it's scoring an average 76 from critics and 8.8 (out of ten) from users. You can compare for yourself with the legal downloads at SubPop.
50 CENT is defending President Bush against Kanye West's charge of racism in the response to Hurricane Katrina. I'm sure the Family Research Council is tickled to death.
GUIDED BY VOICES: Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow gets a 7.0 on the Pitchfork: “The problem isn't that the four discs are too much; the thing that's really f—ing infuriating is that if you spend the time, you will find those scattered brilliant songs.”
CREAM: The power trio's reunion set a merch record at MSG, with sales of t-shirts and memorabilia expected to top 11 million dollars.
JACK WHITE and JIMMY PAGE we're just photographed together, but there's been no word of musical collaboration, so there's no need to repent just yet. I must say that Page's compact with Satan has kept him looking pretty good for his age and milage.
GENE SIMMONS, otoh, is terrified he must be getting old after twice being mistaken for Ozzy Osbourne.
OZZY OSBOURNE would like to be played by Johnny Depp.
SHARON OSBOURNE would like to punch Madonna.
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The shamed supermodel is taking her comeback campaign to the pages of Vanity Fair magazine.
KATE WINSLET is going on the Skeletor diet? Let's hope not!
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Celebrity Living magazine goes literal by publishing Cruise's five rules for Holmes' pregnancy.
SCIENTOLOGY NIGHT FEVER: John Travolta got his Tony Moreno (or his Vincent Vega) on at the recent Scientology conclave in West Sussex. A source with close links to the sect said that the event was part of a larger campaign to recruit more British members. No doubt Scientologists have noticed that more Britons believe in ghosts than in G-d, which probably makes the whole ancient alien invasion spiel an easier sell.
CHRISTIAN SLATER apparently fell off the roof of the French Hotel's neighbor's house during a weekend party at the heiress' home. Slater purportedly made his climb to inspect some folks who complained about the noise, so why did he decide to climb the roof of the neighbor's house?
CAMBERLAKE: Cameron Diaz is inflicting boyfriend Justin Timberlake on Shrek 3, with reportedly disastrous results.
HEATH LEDGER and MICHELLE PHILLIPS are parents of a baby girl they have named Matilda. No doubt Heath's Aussie background influenced that choice, but that girl will be calling herself Tilda as soon as she figures it out.
JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT plans to star in and produce a fact-based feature about a hooker housewife from Texas. Finally, a role worthy of Love's considerable… talents.
STEVEN SPIELBERG is racing to finish Munich (about a a Mossad agent tracking Palestinian terrorists who assassinated Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games) in time for awards consideration.
PRINCE CHARLES will be protested by PETA on his US trip because Buckingham Palace uses bearskins to make the Palace Guards' hats.
JARHEAD: Reviews are starting to come in for the Gulf War drama and so far it’s not looking good for the Oscar hopes of director Sam Mendes, who acted out a bit at the Hollywood Film Festival earlier this week.
MY NAME IS EARL is primetime's top-rated comedy in the adults 18-49 demographic. Number 37 on Earl's list seems to be moving out of direct competition with ABC's Commander In Chief.
EVANGELINE LILLY: No definitive word on whether the Lost lovely is marrying her hobbit co-star, but they have now officially been caught canoodling.
CLOSED SENATE: Democrats forced the Senate into a closed session Tuesday, after Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid claimed that the indictment of Veep chief of staff “Scooter'' Libby “provides a window into… how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.'' Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has said the Libby “indictment is not about the war.” The Senate Intelligence Cmte unanimously found Amb. Joe Wilson's claim of manipulated intelligence to be wrong on every major point, so Senate Democrats must also have been out to destroy him. The Committee also unanimously found no evidence that intelligence on WMDs was mischaracterized due to politics or pressure. That didn't stop Vice-Chair Sen. Jay Rockefeller from then complaining about the “ambience” of the situation, because escalating demands for investigation have pretty much been the Democratic plan since 2003.
IRAQ: Iraqi forces arrested the ringleader and 13 accomplices behind the October 24th suicide attacks against the Palestine and Sheraton hotels. As these hotels are home to many journalists covering Iraq, you would think the press would be all over this story, but you would be wrong. Bill Roggio looks at terrorists using children and the mentally impaired to do their dirty work, another story largely ignored by western media outlets that prefer to run staged photos and video that makes terrorists look fearsome.
CRAB vs. PIPE: A crab suffers the fate of Auric Goldfinger when an robot cuts a 3mm slit in an undersea pipeline. Video at the link.
DOGS and CATS are listening to internet radio at DogCatRadio.com.
MALE MICE sing like birds when they pick up the scent of a female mouse. Male humans, being further along on the evolutionary scale, use Mr. Microphone. Actually, the attraction of women to Mick Jagger is probably a similar phenomenon.
PYTHON UPDATE: A dozen French firefighters were called in to cut their way to a 10-foot-long python hiding in the ceiling of a shop just outside Paris.
GOOD NEWS FOR RATS: All those rats that gott hooked on cigarettes for science can take heart from the discovery that Zocor can inhibit the lung damage that occurs with smoking-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
ILLEGAL BURBOTS threaten some of Wyoming's premier trout water.
BLACK BEAR CUB lives for two years on pizza and Dr. Pepper with mountain men.
SEAL bites off woman's nose. Apparently, the seal did not want to be helped back to the sea.
SQUIRREL starts a grass fire in Byram, Mississippi after electrocuting itself on a power line. A passing motorist told a local TV reporter: “I'm a country boy, so I'm thinking dinner time.”
