Karl 
WONKA WEEK CONTINUES with a few more advance reviewsof Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Gannett News Service is generally negative: “There's so much facade at the center of this movie that it suffers from emotional drift about halfway through… Luckily, the heart that Burton loses somewhere in the middle of the movie is regained in the end.” The Amsterdam News calls it “by Hollywood standards, a pretty good film. The sets (both real and computer generated) are stunning. Freddie Highmore's Charlie comes off as sympathetic, but not sappy.” In Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gives it an “A,” calling it “a madhouse kiddie musical with a sweet-and-sour heart.”
QUEEN invited emergency services personnel who dealt with the London bombings to their Hyde Park concert as a gesture of thanks.
SUPER FURRY ANIMALS: Kyle at Information Leafblower gives an early reaction to SFA's latest: “Imagine if Brian Wilson teamed up with Steely Dan and ELO to make their own version of (Radiohead's) Kid A. That might be Love Kraft. It's totally doing my head in.”
WILLIE NELSON: Jam has 19 true stories about Willie Nelson and one fib. Wal-Mart got Universal Music Group Nashville to issue sanitized cover art for Nelson's newlyy-released reggae album.
THE SCIENCE OF THE SETLIST: The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Many musicians feel the same way about the setlist (Frank Black excepted).
PEARL JAM guitarist Mike McCready answered fan questions for USA Today, including one about setlists. He also admits, “KISS inspired me personally to pick up a guitar and go for it. My life would have been different without Paul Stanley or Ace Frehley.”
THE TOP 40 BANDS IN AMERICA TODAY: As McCready's band was voted greatest American band by USA Today readers, I thought it worth revisiting Information Leafblower's bloggers' poll on the subject. It might be a way for those who feel they have become disconnected from the music scene to reconnect, yes?
ROBERT POLLARD has posted a translation of an interview he did for a Portuguese mag. He's going to be right in my neighborhood for a book signing this Fall. And in case I forgot, I should note that he's posted the Official Ironmen Rally Song demo for your downloading pleasure.
SUFJAN SAYS ILLINOISE, others say Illinois. Lets call the whole thing off?
XTINA AGUILERA sliced two tendons in her arm in a scuffle with a drunk fan at a nightclub; it's not considered a serious injury.
“PUSH” FOR NEW ARTISTS: The L.A. Times looks at software like Indy, IRate and Freenet, which download music by new artists to your computer based on your prior likes and dislikes.
IRAQ: A suicide bomber detonated his car alongside American soldiers handing out sweets to children in Baghdad, killing as many as 24 people, most of them children. Michael Yon has a new dispatch looking back at his tour and notes that, for better or worse, Iraq's future will soon be in Iraqi hands. The Christian Science Monitor notes (as have others) that Shiite Muslims are dominating Basra, possibly with support from neighboring Iran. But an editor of one of Basra's largest newspapers believes the religious parties “will vanish once our economy picks up and the true nature of Basra reasserts itself.” Austin Bay flags news reports that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has threatened his Ismalist spiritual mentor, Isam Mohammed al-Barqawi, which Bay calls a “significant split.”
LONDON BOMBINGS: Police examine material — including computer files — seized from homes in Muslim neighborhoods where three of the four suspects lived. The Independent profiles Hasib Hussain, Mohammed Sadique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer. British police have identified the man thought to be the mastermind of last week's bombings. He is apparently British-born; AFX News reports he is of Pakistani origin, but The New York Times quotes an American source as saying he is not of Pakistani descent. Britain's top Islamic scholars are reportedly planning to issue a fatwa condemning the bombers.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Jolie's pet African Gray parrot has reportedly staged hunger strikes and attacked customers at the Amazon Rainforest Shop (where he has lodged while Jolie does press junkets) because he's pining for his famous owner. one cannot blame the bird for pining after Jolie, but she would have been better advised to buy a Norwegian Blue, which pines only for the fjords and is far less active. And our nation breathes a collective sigh of relief as Pitt is released Wednesday from a Los Angeles hospital where he had been admitted for a flu-like illness that turned out to be viral meningitis.
COLIN FARRELL and his former Playmate girlfriend caught on videotape?
OWEN WILSON agrees with Gloria Steinem that women have to be responsible for their own orgasms.
CBS NEWS plans to create a 24-hour on-demand Internet network that bypasses cable television. Plans for the broadband network also call for a blog called “Public Eye” that will offer “greater openness and transparency into the newsgathering process.”
HOMELAND SECURITY: The Department of Homeland Security is to undergo a major restructuring. Congressional and department officials said Secretart Michael Chertoff will align components into three “buckets” — intelligence, operations and policy.
GITMO: Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, who who investigated FBI allegations of detainee abuse at Camp X-Ray, found three incidents of abuse out of roughly 24,000 interrogations, or one-eighth of one-tenth of one percent. The investigation found no cases of actual torture. The AP summarizes the allegations.
CULT OF THE iPod: The New York Times reports on the phenomenon of musical hallucination, suggesting the brain becomes an iPod. Apple Computer saw sales jump 75 percent in its latest quarter — and net income more than quadruple — on sizzling sales of iPods.
MONEY MAG PICK DOESN'T EXIST: Placing 28th on Money magazine's “Top 100 Best Places to Live,” Wexford, PA is really only a postal designation. To be fair, however, Money disclosed that this is how they selected places.
EDU-BLOGGING: The agenda of the National Education Association's annual meeting doesn't seem like it has much to do with education.
TEN MILLION GALLONS IS A LOT OF SHOWERS: In Mascoutah, IL (a suburb of St. Louis), Rose Mary Cook got a 74,000 dollar water bill.
THAT AIN'T NO WOMAN! IT'S A MAN, MAN! A chicken seller in Myanmar inexplicably grew a penis last month.
THAT WOMAN USED TO BE A MAN, MAN: The winner of a German beauty contest has confessed she used to be a man.
CATS: Behold the genius of stuffonmycat.com: stuff + cats = awesome.
DOGS: James Lileks pays a tribute of sorts to his dog, Jasper.
SIMBA: The Workman family of Murphysville, KY have a 400-pound pet lion. Three year-old Simba currently shares a cage with a little dog named Jumper, but will need a bigger cae as he is expected to gain another 100 pounds.
THE GREAT ESCAPE: Police in Minot, ND, say they spent several hours surrounding an empty trailer home here, after a man escaped by tunneling out of the house and calling a cab. Police were still looking for the man Tuesday night.
FUGITIVE MONKEY on the loose in Caldwell, Ohio.
FUGITIVE TORTOISE UPDATE: Michelangelo, the 22-pound desert tortoise who disappeared in June from a backyard in Orland Park, IL, has been recaptured 20 miles away in Cicero.
CAPUCHIN MONKEYS have been taught to use money. And they're spending it on sex.
KING COBRA BITES HINDU PRIEST: Priest lives, snake dies.
