CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE: A Charlie Brown Christmas airs tonight on ABC. Unsurprisingly, network suits didn't dig it at first. That was 40 years ago. Granted, it's not quite the same without the Dolly Madison commercials, but the dancing is still very cool. UPDATE: The show airs next Tuesday, Dec. 6. I should learn to read more carefully.
SMOOSH: Seattle's tween twosome get a four-star concert review in Glasgow: “These kids are more than all right.” Audio and video of the sisters is available at SPIN magazine.
THE ARCADE FIRE frontman Win Butler talks to Canada's National Post about trying to remain unaffected by sudden success.
THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES for this year are Black Sabbath, Blondie, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Sex Pistols and… Miles Davis? The Stooges, The Dave Clark 5, The Patti Smith Group and Joe Tx appear to have been stiffed yet again. At Punk Turns 30, Theresa Kereakes asks several questions and “can only imagine the 'all star jam at the end of the night.”
THE DECEMBERISTS are rumored to be signing with Capitol Records.
THE PORTLAND SCENE is surveyed by Canada's Globe and Mail, with the usual focus on The Decemberists and The Shins. But there's a nice look back at past “scenes” at the end of the article.
SEASON OF THE LIST: PopMatters issues “An Indispensible Guide to Holiday Music.”
THE CRIBS are nifty little punk outfit that has some downloads through the band's site, but nip over to Insound for the freebie of “Hey Scenesters!” There are free downloads from other bands on the page, including stuff from American Analog Set, Antony and the Johnsons, Castanets, CocoRosie, Deerhoof… and that's just the A-D page.
AQUALUNG frontman Matt Hales gets a Pop Quiz in the San Francisco Chronicle. Feel your age as it's reported that he had no idea his band shared a name with the most famous album by Jethro Tull.
JOSE GONZALEZ: I don't think I've mentioned this young Swedish singer-songwriter before, but Australia's The Age says: “His songs are reminiscent of folk-pop's gentle giants, from Paul Simon and Nick Drake to Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens, but his influences are much more diverse, thanks to his Argentinian-born parents and the hardcore punk scene of his teenage years in Gothenburg.” You can stream a few live tracks from songs:Illinois, including an acoustic cover of Joy Division's “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
THE LIFE AQUATIC has just debuted on cable TV, so it's probably no accident that The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions Featuring Seu Jorge came out a week ago. If you haven't seen the movie, we're talking David Bowie songs performed as Portugeuse cabaret music. Brooklyn Vegan is killing music with links to downloads.
SUFJAN STEVENS: You Ain't No Picasso is uncharacteristically killing music by further circulating the bonus track on the vinyl version of Illinois
R.I.P. CDs? It's the San Francisco Chronicle's turn to look at digital alternatives, including MP3 blogs and online radio stations that frequently supply material for this site.
JESSICA SIMPSON: It appears that American Media Inc. occasionally gets it as wrong as The New York Times. Who'da thunkit? But that may not be the funniest Nick and Jessica story of the day if it pans out that there was no prenup.
LOHAN LOWDOWN: The Mean Girl was spotted getting very friendly with Johnny Knoxville, whose wife was nowhere to be seen. At least they weren't caught canoodling.
MADONNA gets no kick from Vicodin, but is “a lot of fun” on morphine. If I was forced to listen to her, I know I would prefer the latter.
THE FRENCH HOTEL was in tears when authorities took away her night monkey. No surgery was involved.
GEORGE CLOONEY groped Matt Damon daily while shooting Syriana. Most workplaces would consider that sexual harassment, but not so in the land of the casting couch.
GRAMMY BAROMETER: It seems that the Grammys may be accurately predicted by the year-end VH1 Top 20 Countdown. I wish that was shocking.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: Roger Ebert says the script was ghost-rewritten by Emma Thompson, who penned the screenplay to Sense and Sensibility.
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA: Folks in both Japan and China are irked that the big roles all went to Chinese actors.
JUDE LAW and SIENNA MILLER: Their friends say the fighting spices things up.
EVERY CHRISTMAS MOVIE EVER MADE: juiceenewsdaily is just daring someone to disprove it.
FELICITY HUFFMAN: The award-winning Desperate Housewife says she suffered from anorexia and bulimia and credits meeting her future husband, William H. Macy, with helping her over self-esteem issues.
OSCAR FRONT-RUNNERS, according to Premiere magazine. The person who posted this notes that Woody Allen's Match Point — a winner at Cannes — is notably absent.
KING KONG: The PR machine shifts into a higher gear with this rave piece in the latest Newsweek.
SEATTLE SUPERTRAIN: Two monorail trains clipped each other on a curve in the tracks Saturday evening in the heart of Seattle, resulting in minor injuries. I hope the passengers get the hot coffee and cool music they were promised.
IRAQ: Bill Roggio is blogging a storm from Husaybah, including a backgrounder on Operation Steel Curtain, and accounts of a night patrol and follow-up foot patrols, during which Corporal Austin Hall told Roggio: “Over three weeks ago, we wouldn’t have gotten 200 feet into this city without taking fire.”
IRAQ II: The Christian Science Monitor looks at the perception gap “that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.” Actually, the managing editor of the AP, as well as editors of its member newspapers have admitted they are the ones looking through the soda straw. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes that “objective realities in Iraq suggest that the military is too optimistic — but also that the public and the strategic community are becoming too fatalistic.” And journalists and academics are even more negative than that.
CANADA: A corruption scandal forced a no-confidence vote that toppled Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberal government, triggering an unusual election campaign during the Christmas holidays. Regular visitors here may have seen this coming since May.
HOW TO REACH A HUMAN from many corporate automated phone systems.
DEJA VU: Tonight on It's the Mind, we examine the phenomenon of deja vu — that strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived through something before, that what is happening now has already happened.
ABUSED CHEETAH CUBS UPDATE: The two cheetah cubs held captive and abused at a remote village restaurant in eastern Ethiopia are now in the custody of a government veterinarian and US troops.
LION CUB SNATCHED — two Arabic-speaking parrots — from the Gaza Zoo by armed robbers. Reuters notes: “Rival armed groups have been trying to stake a claim to power in Gaza ahead of key parliamentary elections in January.” It's not clear how the parrots figure into that, but whatever.
MOOSE MEAT: Alaska inmates at a prison work farm are taking on a new assignment: butchering the meat of moose struck by trains each winter along 68 miles of railroad track.
RUNAWAY OSTRICH captured by local police in St. John, IN. The bird was originally mistaken for an emu.