Karl 
PATE BIRTHPLACE HIT BY CYCLONES (REAL ONES, NOT ISU CLONES): Tornadoes ripped up farms and destroyed homes in several towns across central Iowa on Saturday, killing a woman in Stratford (25 mi NW of Des Moines). Tornado sirens sounded in Ames shortly after 5 p.m. where people were gathering for Iowa State University's football game against Colorado. The stands at Jack Trice Stadium were cleared, with several thousand fans taking shelter at the Bergstrom Indoor Facility, the basement of the Jacobsen Athletic building, Hilton Coliseum, C.Y. Stephens Auditorium and the veterinary medicine building, while others milled under the stands or the parking lot. BTW, the 'Clones ended up upsetting Colorado.
THE ARCTIC MONKEYS: London's Guardian goes on tour with the band, which is still playing tiny venues and trying to play down the hype.
STEVE EARLE talks flyfishing, activism and “no depression” bands with Stuff in New Zealand.
VOXTROT: Like the early Smiths? This band does, if the songs at MySpace are any indication.
DEATH CAB FOR CUITE frontman (and Postal Serviceman) Ben Gibbard gives good interview, though good questions help.
VINYL JUNKIES: The Hartford Courant reports on Connecticut shops “that offer sanctuary to fans of vinyl, long after cassettes disappeared without a eulogy.”
LEARN TO PLAY GUITAR THE NICK DRAKE WAY with Hanging on a Star, an online book detailing his style and techniques.
BORN TO RUN + 30: The 30th-anniversary edition of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, with a remastered CD of the album, a “Making of” DVD and a second DVD containing a complete 1975 concert, arrives Tuesday. The reviews suggest that the first DVD has plenty of nuggets, while the the concert is “garage-rock cinema,” but compelling.
OTHER NEW BOX SETS are rounded up for review by the San Jose Mercury News.
URIAH HEEP singer (1976-79) pleads guilty to illegally seeking council tax benefits. Sounds like he was stealin' when he should've been buyin'.
SGT. PEPPER'S PARADISE: A mash-up of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Guns 'N' Roses' “Paradise City” is so wrong… and yet so right that I can't believe I missed it in September.
GARY GLITTER has reportedly fled his villa in southern Vietnam after local police officials were tipped learned about his past convictions on child pornography charges. He was already banned from a popular local night spot for allegedly groping an 18-year-old barmaid.
ISSAC HAYES returns to the Billboard albums chart after 25 years. However, Hayes' South Park song, “Chocolate Salty Balls,” hit No. 1 in the U.K. in January 1999.
SPEAKER SPEAKER: You Ain't No Picasso refers us to this nify power pop outfit and their MySpace page. I would start with “Statues Shadows,” but they're all pretty good. The band is playing at a Twee Pop festival in Seattle on December 10th, for those of you in the area.
JACK WHITE thinks the White Stripes' fans are jaded and spolied because they are too laid back at the live shows. At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I've noticed these kids today are a bit laid back. But if I wwas Jack White, I wouldn't say it publicly.
SAM COOKE is the subject of a new biography that gets a good review in the New York Daily News.
SONY is yanking the hideous copy-protection software it used on a number of CDs, following consumer outcry over the difficuly in removing it and the security hole it opened on PCs. Even a Department of Homeland Security official slammed it. It turns out the “rootkit” may also infringe on others' copyrights. And Microsoft's next Windows security update will detect and remove the rootkit.
MIXTAPES: Some Japanese dude scanned all of his online.
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: While the Babyshables album gets a surprisingly good review on the Pitchfork, troubled singer Doherty believes his passport has been pinched so he can’t meet up with shamed supermodel Moss. Meanwhile, Moss' move to the country is not going down well with the neighbors.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE cracked the Top Ten at the weekend box office, despite playing on only 215 screens. It's gotten largely good reviews and deservedly so. It's not an easy book to condense down to two hours, but Jane Austen would probably deem the result “amiable” at the least. Keira Knightley makes for a charming Elizabeth Bennet (though her face may be a bit too striking for the part); the largely unknown Matthew MacFadyen manages a Mr. Darcy that make one forget — at least temporarily — Colin Firth's portrayal in the 1995 BBC miniseries. Indeed, MacFadyen's delivery tended to remind me of Alan Rickman, which is a good thing for a Darcy. Brenda Blethyn and (especially) Donald Sutherland are top-notch as the Bennet parents and Dame Judi Dench was a natural pick for Lady Catherine de Bourg. But time constraints mean most of the supporting roles are relatively small. I also enjoyed that the movie is set in the 1790's (when the book was written), rather than the 1810's (when it was finally published), as it supported the earthier tone of this movie compared to the formality of prior versions. Coming Soon had an interesting interview with Knightley, but you'll have to visit the Daily Mail if you are looking for picture of Knightley's dress falling down at the premiere.
BRUCE WILLIS offering a million bucks to any civilian who turns in terror kingpins Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He's also in talks to make a movie about the Deuce Four, the soldiers whose heroic exploits have been chronicled by embedded blogger Michael Yon (a fave of mine) who is headed back to Iraq soon.
GWYNETH PALTROW is becoming a germophobe, according to the ever-reliable Star magazine.
SIENNA MILLER attacks the papparazzi, while Jude Law looks on with amusement.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: According to the National Enquirer, movie patrons complained about an annoying sound emanating from Katie Holmes in a Santa Monica theater. Holmes' Scientology minder, Jessica Rodriguez, was reportedly on hand to explain that her charge was wearing an electronic transmitter intended to create a soothing environment for whatever is growing inside her.
JESSICA SIMPSON insists the only way to prevent herself from “exploding” with stress is to write her feelings down. She can write?
WALK THE LINE: In a piece ostensibly about Reese Witherspoon, the New York Daily News notes that movie audiences will learn that the story of Johnny Cash is really the story of his love for June Carter.
JESSICA ALBA was reportedly guzzling champagne straight from the bottle at 3 a.m. in an NYC nightclub.
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE currently has nothing but good reviews on the Tomatometer, and Quint (a Potter book fan) at Aint-It-Cool-News dug it too.
RUSSELL CROWE had a standoff with wife Danielle in a London restaurant. No phones were reported injured.
SARAH JESSICA PARKER has bought the rights to produce Jessica Cutler's novel “The Washingtonienne” for an HBO series. Culter was fired from her job as a staffer to Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) for “misuse of office property,” which is to say blogging her tawdry sex life. Someone hotter than Parker should play Cutler.
PRODUCT PLACEMENT: The Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are calling for a code of conduct to govern hidden advertising in TV shows and films, and say they will appeal to federal regulators if studios don't respond… by cutting them in on the money.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: No doubt that Barbie would prefer the Brad Pitt doll to Ken, but won't it end up running off to be with a Lara Croft Tomb Raider action figure?
PROBLEMS AT THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Allegations of plagarism have been lodged at the dead tree edition, while a web geek got fired for getting wacky with the ALT tags.
IRAQ: A Baathist Web site reported the death of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most senior Baathist leader still on the run (the “King of Clubs” in the infamous deck of cards), now says he is still alive. However, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Operation Steel Curtain is clearing Karabilah with light resistance. Operation National Unity has detained 250 suspected rebels in the greater Baghdad area. Operations are also ongoing in Ramadi, with local insurgents turning against al Qaeda. The unprecedented televised confession of an Iraqi woman involved in the Jordanian hotel bombings will further expose AQ's brutality, putting the group on the PR defensive throught the Middle East. Milblog ROFASix has an interesting e-mail on weapons, equipment and tactics in Iraq. The e-mailer writes that nothing is by any means classified, though I wonder whether CENTCOM would see it that way.
FRENCH RIOTS: on Sunday, police in the French city of Lyon used teargas to disperse youths throwing stones and attacking cars in the first rioting in a major city center. The AP reports on the role of family breakdown in Frances heavily Muslim ghettos, quickly glossing over this complaint: “France is a democratic country. It gives rights to women and children,” said Abderrahman Bouhout, director of the Bilal Mosque in Clichy-Sous-Bois. To be fair, France's child welfare bureacracy may well be intrusive. one of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring coverage of the riots for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians. Meanwhile, about 60 vehicles have been burned in Belgium in the past week, including more than a dozen already over the weekend.
CLIMATE CHANGE: The near doubling in the rate of sea level rise during the 1990s was probably due in part to the delayed effects of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines – and not runaway melting of ice caps.
GIANT JELLYFISH are causing serious damage to the fishing industry off Japan's east coast.
U.S. JELLYFISH accidentally imported to the Caspian Sea are threatening fish stocks and caviar.
SQUID: Researchers love the calamari. Mapping the squid's genetic thumbprint may help solve mysteries like Alzheimer's disease.
BABY PANDA at the San Diego Zoo will be called Su Lin, which means “a little bit of something very cute” in Chinese. Awwww-inspiring photos at the link.
