THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE, with a thank you to everyone who helped out and visited Pate this year, with special thanks to our site admin Lance, who gets the gerbils running on their wheels when the power goes out:
YEAR IN REVIEW: MSNBC has the Year in Pictures — very cool multimedia slideshows of the Editors' and Readers' choices. New Year's Rockin' Eve will be a subject of morbid curiousity as lingering questions about Dick Clark's health were reignited by ABC's use of a doctored photo of a pre-stroke Clark supposedly standing next to co-hosts Ryan Seacrest and Hilary Duff. The New York Post looks back with a list of their favorite things, including Morgan Freeman voiceovers and the Copy, Right? blog, which made them realize that, yes, we really did want a flawless acoustic rendition of “Baby Got Back.”
BONO: The U2 frontman is an incorrigible flirt.
SHANE MacGOWAN: The Pogues' frontman is an incorrigible flirt.
LIVERPOOL LANDMARK THREATENED BY GENESIS PROJECT: Parr Street Studio, a converted 19th-century warehouse that helped to create the Britpop movement and where Coldplay, Pulp, the Stereophonics, Charlatans, Diana Ross, the Beautiful South, Teenage Fanclub, Björk and Barry Manilow have recorded, may be converted into flats by Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, who want to profit from the property boom generated by Liverpool’s status as the 2008 City of Culture. A spokesman said that the project would destroy such culture in favor of its new matrix.
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH finally gets some pixels from Newsday. Hard to be a prophet in your home town.
RADIOHEAD plans a tour and an album for 2006. US dates are likely for the summer.
SONY CD DEBACLE: A proposed settlement of lawsuits against Sony BMG Music Entertainment would let some consumers receive free music downloads to compensate them for Sony surreptitiously including spyware on millions of CDs. It might be one of the better class-action settlements I've seen in a while, as it's usually the lawyers who get most of the benefit of such suits.
SONG LICENSING ISSUES are messing up DVDs, especially of TV shows on DVD, which accounted for more than 2 billion in sales this year.
KURT COBAIN: The late Nirvana frontman will narrate a documentary on the band via hours of tape recorded by Michael Azerrad, the author of Come As You Are (and the excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life).
BRIAN WILSON talks to London's Sun about The Magic Numbers, Jesus Christ, meeting the Queen, etc. I hope he got that pair of shoes for Christmas.
JAMES BROWN: Wednesday's DC gig is now available on demand at NPR.
SEASON OF THE LIST: The Albany Times-Union lists the best albums (plus honorable mentions) and concerst. The A.V. Club lists the least essential albums of 2005. DoCopenhagen lists the Top 50 music videos, with plenty of links. Filter has Top Tens from James Mcnew of Yo La Tengo, Markus Acher Of The Notwist, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, Supergrass, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, a/k/a Will Oldham, Bob Mould, Elbow, Melissa Auf Der Maur (ex-Hole), The Redwalls and DJ Annie. NOW Toronto has album lists from Sarah Liss and Michael Hollett. The Pioneer Press stays local with the best Twin Cities albums. The Riverfront Times music writers each list a favorite and an overlooked album. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has best and worst albums and songs (I must check out the Click Five). The Springfield News-Leader has awards for favorites, including “Best album named after a letter.” Toronto's Eye Weekly has a best and worst list that makes the egregious mistake of putting Art Brut on the latter half. The Toronto Star has an unordered list and some interesting honroable mentions. The Torontoist posts a list of best singles, with links to some streams and downloads (check out the Deadly Snakes).
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The troubled singer's troubles will likely be documented in a forthcoming book on The Libertines. The supposedly sober supermodel is surrounded by the white powder… in Aspen.
BRADGELINA UPDATE: The Jolie pregnancy story has bubbled up to Us Weekly, according to the ever-reliable Perez Hilton. But as of post-time, the details were not on the Us Weekly website…
NOW SHOWING: The two movies opening today, The Matador and Match Point, both score well on the Tomatometer.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Spenderline not only got rejected by the major labels, his self-promotional website is leeching bandwidth from Britney's site. And yet the pop tart wants him to father her next baby now, “thinking” it will strengthen their marriage.
PATRICK SWAYZE is experimenting with rap music. Sounds like Spenderline has some competition!
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise has been voted the most irritating actor in a new Empire magazine poll. Sadly, he was also voted the greatest movie star of all time, which suggests you should take this poll with a dumptruck full of road salt. Meanwhile, Cityrag has pictures from Cruise's childhood. Maybe the kid won't look like him.
NICOLE KIDMAN and KEITH URBAN: The country singer's ex-manager and his ex-girlfriend think it won't last as long as Renee and Kenny.
NAOMI WATTS, the latest name in the Bond Girl derby, is also the subject of pregnancy rumors after she was spotted visiting a fertility specialist in Australia.
SUPERMAN RETURNS: Page Six reports that director Bryan Singer hosted “a 'mostly male' holiday pool party at his L.A. abode that drew David Geffen and cast members Kevin Spacey and Brandon 'Rhymes with Mouth' Routh.” NTTAWWT.
MRS. PARTRIDGE making like Mrs. Robinson?
LOST stars Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros were arraigned on charges of drunken driving Thursday.
SIENNA MILLER is desperate to quit smoking for 2006. Maybe she heard what an inspiration she is to teenage girls.
BILLY ZANE and KELLY BROOK generally don't interest me (other than NSFW pics and video of Brook), but Golden Fiddle makes them worth a moment. I'm laying a foundation in case I need to make fun of their big, fat Greek wedding.
IRAQ: An international team agreed to review the parliamentary elections — even though a UN observer's endorsed the Dec. 15 vote — a decision lauded by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups. Iraq the Model's Omar thinks an accordance may decide the composition of the government, though this may be positioning by parties ahead of announcing the final results. Bill Roggio rounds up coverage of post-election developments on the military front.
ALESSANDRA STANLEY: Gawker counts down the New York Times culture columnist's Top Five corrections, with plenty of honorable mentions.
EDU-BLOGGING: The 47th Carnival Of Education is online.
CULT OF THE iPod: Dave Winer thinks the iTunes interface is “the worst piece of crap I've ever used” and the user model “makes no sense.” David Berlind looks further at the problems caused by DRM schemes, with iTunes and other vendors.
INTERNET USAGE is about equal between the sexes, but men are still from Mars, and women still from Venus when it comes to the purposes of that usage.
NANOTECH: Nanoswitches may usher in post-silicon microchips as early as 2015.
CLONED DOG HOAX? A South Korean investigation panel looking into the works of a disgraced scientist said it could not yet reach a conclusion on whether the Afghan hound puppy named Snuppy is actually the world's first cloned dog, as was claimed.
FINNEGAN THE SQUIRREL, who became famous after cameras captured images of him joining a dog's litter of pups, has found a family of squirrels.
POODLE survives eight days in coyote territory after a rollover accident.
DOGS must be insured in Vienna this year.
CALICO CAT survives being tossed over a bridge with a 16-pound weight.
HARLEQUIN LADYBUGS invade Britain. The bugs are able to fly for miles and up to 10,000 feet high and Michael Majerus, of Cambridge University believes that many simply flew over the English Channel.
THIS AIN'T NO DISCO: It's a fish control effort by the Tennessee Valley Authority.