THE POSIES/BIG STAR: The Posies' first album in seven years comes out tomorrow; Billboard has a preview. It also looks like there will be a new studio album from Big Star in late August. BONUS: Chromewaves has a download of the Posies covering the Beatles' “I'm Looking Through You” up this week. Of course, I wouldn't download it (killing music, y'know), but you unscrupulous types may well enjoy it.
WARNING: LIVE MUSIC IS ALSO KILLING MUSIC.
LIAM GALLAGHER thought Spinal Tap was a real band, accoring to his brother and Oasis bandmate Noel. SEMI-RELATED: A team of archaeologists has pinpointed the precise place in Wales from where the huge bluestones of Stonehenge were quarried in about 2500 B.C.
BEST OF 2005 (SO FAR): This ever-changing world in which we live in cannot wait until the end of the year for “best of” lists, if Brooklyn Vegan, My Old Kentucky Blog and TinyMeat are any indication.
PETE TOWNSHEND is pleased that Michael Jackson was acquitted, reminding us of that kiddie porn accusation made against Pete a few years back. Who knows? Maybe Jacko was just “doing research” also.
LIVE 8: Bono appeared on NBC's Meet The Press to talk about the concerts, aid, trade, debt, reforming African kleptocracies and more. And though some politicians seem to have forgotten it, Bono has figured out you can attract more flies with honey than vinegar: “I love America. I believe in America. It offends me, it upsets me when the rest of the world thinks America is not doing enough. The president is right to say they're doing a quarter of all aid to Africa. He has doubled, even tripled if he follows through, aid to Africa. But they are about to double aid, the rest of Europe, to double aid, so that will leave America as one-eighth of all aid going to Africa if they don't match that. And that's not a place Americans want to be, one-eighth. And that will be Europe doing four times as much as America. You know, I want to encourage Americans just to give their president permission. I know he wants to do this, but his advisers must break with this kind of fiscal conservativity on this one issue. This is the moment to be generous right now. I'm sure of that.”
MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC host Nic Harcourt is dubbed “The Star Maker of the Semipopular” in The New York Times.
THIS IS A PANTOMIME HORSE, spotted at the Glastonbury music festival.
JAMIE LIDELL has an old skool funkiness reminiscent of Stevie Wonder or (more recently) Van Hunt that you can preview at his site.
CHET HELMS, a towering figure in the 1960s Bay Area music scene who brought Janis Joplin to San Francisco and ran the Avalon Ballroom during the Summer of Love, died early Saturday after suffering a stroke last week. He was 62.
TIGGER is dead, man. Miss him, miss him.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise and Holmes threaten to breed, though Cruise added, “We would have to talk to our families about it.” (Huh?) Dave Letterman had a judge handy to marry the couple on The Late Show Thursday, but Homes was a no-show. Cruise has a tense interview with Today's Matt Lauer, again lashing out at Brooke Shields, despite the fact that she agrees with him about the over-prescription of Ritalin to kids. MSNBC posts the transcript as Cruise again goes off the rails at the mere mention of Scientology. MSNBC also posts a backgrounder on Scientology and Hollywood; taken together, it appears that Cruise claims that you can be a Christian and also believe that 75 million years ago, an alien ruler sent billions of subjects to Earth and it's necessary to purge yourself of possession by the aliens' souls. The Smoking Gun has Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's FBI file. Even Rosie O'Donnell is beaking bad on Cruise.
AND THERE'S A NASTY RUMOR about Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas and someone else. It's disappeared from at least one source, for unstated reasons, but these things tend to get copied and pasted other places.
LI-LO UPDATE: Herbie the Love Bug hit Lindsay Lohan with his door and rolled over her foot during the shooting of Li-Lo's video. And here I thought the VW wasn't really alive.
MADONNA has given her eight year-old daughter Lourdes a credit card with a ten grand limit. Friends say Madge hopes it will teach Lourdes to appreciate the value of money. Because nothing teaches an eight year-old the value of money like allowing them to get ten grand worth of stuff by handing a plastic card to someone.
BRITNEY SPEARS is reportedly in talks to pose nude and pregnant for the cover of Vanity Fair in an imitation of Demi Moore's famous 1991 cover shot. Brit's middle name is “Originality.”
BRADGELINA UPDATE: The new Pitt-Jolie family landed on the pages of Britain's News of the World. Brad and Jen's production company, “Plan B,” also seems to be splitting up.
THE DUKES OF HAZARD movie was temporarily blocked from release by a federal district court, though on reasons other than its effect on public health and welfare. Although the case has been settled, you may still want to read a federal judge refer to Jessica Simpson's “hotness.” Meanwhile, Simpson is following the Bragelina model of requiring the press to sign agreements not to ask personal questions, which must delight Warner Bros. as it tries to promote a movie it won't show the press.
CATS AND DOGS (and other pets) now have legal inheritance rights in Hawaii.
A BABY MONKEY is kidnapped by a trio of supervillains in Miami.
A 12 YEAR-OLD LEOPARD escaped from Nairobi National Park and was terrorizing nearby farms in Kenya, but it had lost most of its teeth and could not hunt effectively. So a Kenyan dentist performed a root canal and other dental work on the leopard.
GAY MARRIAGE: The infallible National Enquirer says talk show queen Ellen DeGeneres and actress Portia de Rossi are ready to say “I do.” In repeating that story, I would have thought th Seattle Post-Intelligencer would have avoided calling Ellen a queen, but whatever.
IRAQ: Michael Yon travels to Kuwait and the economically critical Al Basra Oil Terminal with Jeffrey Mellinger, the Command Sergeant Major responsible for the Multi-National Force in Iraq. European Marxists, Maoists, and aging, old-school fascists are funding the insurgency. An attack by insurgents on an Iraqi police station gets one treatment in The Guardian and another from Bill Roggio. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed a report in London's Sunday Times that U.S. officials met with representatives of Sunni insurgent groups, though it seems like the U.S. was primarily interested in gaining intell on the structure of these groups in an attempt to determine whether future negotiations would be meaningful.
GITMO got a visit from 16 members of the House Armed Services Committee who were on a one-day fact-finding trip. A Senate delegation also was to visit the prison Saturday. A few reporters and photographers accompanied the lawmakers, but military escorts controlled what the journalists could see and hear. The House Republicans and Democrats, including one who has advocated closing the facility, said the U.S. has made progress in improving conditions and protecting detainees' rights.
U.S. TARGETING JOURNOS: Newspaper Guild president Linda Foley, who accused the U.S. of targeting and killing journalists, is now backpedaling. She admits that most journalists killed in Iraq were killed by insurgents, “many of them brutally,” but then claims that 14 deaths involving U.S. forces have been inadequately explained or investigated. She cites the case of journalist Jose Couso, who was killed when U.S. troops shelled the Palestine Hotel in April 2003. Reporters from the Boston Herald and the Los Angeles Times who were on the scene show that the hotel was not shelled to kill journalists. Indeed, the Boston Herald reporter states that Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists — the groups Foley relies on — selectively and inaccurately quoted him in reporting the incident. Note that a milblogger who served at Camp Fallujah has done more journalism on this story than Foley. While Foley dismisses her critics as a vast right-wing conspiracy, former CNN honcho Eason Jordan's similar claim was criticized by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd.
THE MEDIA AND THE MILITARY: The latest poll from The Pew Cnter on People and the Press now shows more people believe that the media is weakening the nation's defenses than keeping the nation prepared. The critical view has risen ten percent in the last four years. And while the Pew Center attributes the trend since 1991 to Republicans, in the last four years the critical view went up seven points among Democrats and nine percent among Independents.
BATMAN BEGINS remains atop the box office with 28 million, though I think it's probably at the low end of studio projections, which is a shame. George Romero's Land of the Dead comes in fourth place with 10 million, but its budget was only 15 million, so it's well on its way. Horror is not one of my fave genres, but this one was well-done, though I would have preferred that the entire move be shot in black-and-white, as the prologue is. Movies like 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead were effective with new school fast zombies, but no one does old skool slow zombies like Romero — their lack of speed gives him time to personalize them, which furthers the broader themes of the movie. Billy Bragg will love the movie's politics.
IRAN: NBC News reports that between 20 and 25 of al-Qaeda’s former leaders, along with two of Osama bin Laden’s sons, are under house arrest north of Tehran because an anti-U.S. deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia blew up. Major media like the Associated Press and the BBC report elections statistics showing heavy turnout provided by the Interior Ministry, with no mention of anecdotal evidence of another boycott, especially by Kurdish parties, and the Interior Ministry official who was arrested after accusing the Guardian Council of election fraud. Note the difference between the AP's coverage here and its coverage of Gitmo poining out the restrictions placed on the journalists.
USAID FUNDS TERROR PROMOTION? That's the claim made by Palestinian Media Watch, which alleges that the agency has ignored legal restrictions to fund television programming that encourages hatred of Jews. Congress will investigate.
9/11 FAMILIES GET A RESPONSE from NY Gov. Pataki, who declares that the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center must show “total respect for the sanctity” of Ground Zero. The IFC sparked fears it will focus on acts of U.S. wrongdoing, like slavery and treatment of American Indians. The Drawing Center already has mounted works linking President Bush to Osama Bin Laden and showing a hooded victim of U.S. abuse at Abu Ghraib, and intended to continue its work at Ground Zero. “It's truly the most vulgar thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” said Jennie Farrell, whose brother James died on the 105th floor of the south tower of the WTC. However, the statements issued by the two groups at the end of the first linked story suggest that they are going to ignore Pataki.
WE CAN REBUILD HIM: We have the technology.
THE INTERNET is changing your reading habits. In the future, artificial intelligence may beyond highlighting your search words in a text to highlight whole sections it determines you should pay special attention to, as well as other words or phrases it predicts you'll be interested in.
HOVERCRAFTING: A Connecticut high school teacher offers a curriculum related to building hovercrafts, with students getting to the nationals in hovercraft racing this year. I (with help from my Dad) built a hovercraft for the science fair when I was in junior high, but it was tethered by an electrical cord.
FILESHARING: The recording industry is taking a different approach to online file-swapping: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. About time.
…AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: A computer screen made of fog.
GLOBAL WARMING: Alpine glaciers are shrinking, but new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today and probably didn't exist 7,000 years ago. But Ulrich Joerin, a wiry Swiss scientist in his late twenties, hastens to add that his research may or may not support theories of global warming.
NANOTECH: The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology responds to the Foresight Institute's announcement regarding the proposed development of a “Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems.” The Center for Irresponsible Nanotechnology was not available for comment.
CEOs USING THE OCCULT: Aussie businesspeople, from the self-employed to those running public corporations, are joining an expanding network of “covens” organised by businesswoman and self-described witch, Stacey Demarco.
EVEN HOWARD STERN has his limits: The outre radio host was miffed upon learning that porn stars Ron Jeremy and Tabitha Stevens made a sex video in Stern's studio after hours.
SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA) has rebuked the board of the J. Paul Getty Trust, saying it has failed to curb Chief Executive Barry Munitz's lavish pay, perks and travel: “I'm concerned that the Getty board has been spending more time watching old episodes of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' than doing its job of protecting Getty's assets for charitable purposes,” Grassley said. The comments came in response to a June 10 Los Angeles Times story reporting how Munitz, who makes more than 1.2 million bucks and is among the nation's highest-paid leaders of nonprofits, had traveled the world first class at Getty expense, often with his wife. This is part of Sen. Grassley's ongoing effort for reform in the non-profit sector following the United Way scandal. Nonprofit hospitals have also been a focus of Sen. Grassley's efforts, to the delight of trial lawyers and chagrin of some conservatives. Plus, Chuck is great with the constituent service; the photo to the right is autographed by the Senator for our site admin Lance's Dad, who was chaperoning a youth group in DC.
SHELDON, IOWA could stand to lose some of that fat. At least 200 gallons' worth.
TEEN LESBIANS were beaten with a sledgehammer in an attack by two men at Illinois State Beach Park. I usually leave the sledgehammer at home when I go to the beach. Also, if you were attracted enough to the girls to make a pass at them, and they said they were lesbians, wouldn't you rather call their bluff?