Karl 
THE SUBWAYS have appeared on The OC, but won't have their record out in the US until February. That hasn't stopped the SF Bay Times and Filter from singing the band's praises. You can stream a few from MySpace or download the T. Rex-influenced “Rock and Roll Queen” right now.
PINK FLOYD have been named the greatest rock act of all time in a poll of 58,000 fans run by digital radio station Planet Rock.
ALBUMS THAT SHOULD BE RE-ISSUED (or just plain issued), courtesy of Flagpole.
DEATH OF AN INDIE STORE, as retold to the L.A. Times.
SEASON OF THE LIST: CMJ has a Best 30 list, with picks from some of those listed. Almost Cool Music Reviews goes with a Top 20. Filter rolls out Top Tens from Gilles Petersen of BBC1, Annie Hardy of Giant Drag and Matt Tong of Bloc Party.
KCRW Music Director Nic Harcourt will broadcast Morning Becomes Eclectic live from the BBC Radio 1’s studios in London next week.
GARY GLITTER will be formally charged with child molestation, but not child rape, in Vietnam.
THE ROSEBUDS: I sorta glossed over Birds Make Good Neighbors when it came out, but it scores a 78 at Metacritic. Alternately biting and atmospheric indie-pop, you can stream a few from MySpace or download a bunch from the new one and their back catalog at their webiste.
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS 2006 is happening in Chicago next month. At My Old Kentucky Blog, Dodge seems jazzed about the bill featuring Tapes N' Tapes, Lake Holiday and Chin Up Chin Up at Schuba's. The MySpace pages for TN'T and Lake Holiday sound promising; if you dig 'em, there's more linkage at MOKB.
SMELL THE GLOVE: Banned LP covers are on display at RateYourMusic.
MYSPACE has been so good at launching bands that it is facing competition from Friendster and TagWorld.
DAYLIGHT IS FOR THE BIRDS has a new song, “For Now” streaming from MySpace.
BEN HARPER married Laura Dern Thursday night.
HOWIE DAY: The singer-songwriter spent his Christmas weekend dealing with his arrest at Logan International Airport for rowdy behavior on a Boston-bound flight after he became intoxicated from a mix of sleeping pills and alcohol. Ho, ho, ho!
JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT, in contrast, served up a Christmas meal at the Los Angeles Mission Friday, hosting the event for the second time.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: King Kong managed to beat the expanded release of Narnia, taking in 21.3 million. USA Today wonders whether Kong will recoup its production costs, but that's because McPaper forgot the rest of the world. Moreover, as Box Office Prophets suggests, the week between Christmas and New Year's may be when Kong really shines, as people may have more free time to work a three-hour movie into their schedule.
WALK THE LINE costars Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix got so sick of each other that towards the end of filming they could hardly bear to be near each other. According to Witherspoon, “He'd make me stand further away because my singing was too loud.”
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Pitt and Jolie must not have married over the weekend, a the new rumor is that they are preparing to marry on New Year's Eve. If they float this rumor constantly, they may be right eventually.
VAUGHNISTON: The ever-reliable Star has an account of Jen and Vince's first fight so detailed that Aniston or Vaughn would have to be the source.
BRITNEY SPEARS appendage Spenderline has launched a website. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
VINCENT SCHAIVELLI: The acclaimed character actor who appeared in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ghost, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Amadeus, and The People vs. Larry Flynt, died of lung cancer at 57.
EVA LONGORIA and TONY PARKER had a run-in a San Antonio police officer when the San Antonio Spurs guard was cited for impeding traffic and failing to produce a valid Texas driver's license during a traffic stop.
MISCHA BARTON of The OC is trying to remove the stigma of being pretty by preparing to marry musician Cisco Adler, who will never have that stigma.
GARFLECK: Jennifer Garner has started using the Affleck name, thus triggering the countdown to the moment she profoundly regrets it.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN star Jake Gyllenhaal says the most rewarding thing he got out of playing a gay cowboy in the wilds of Wyoming was “a real opportunity to get close to animals – horses and dogs and sheep.”
ELTON JOHN: London's Mirror claims to have a list of the celebrity no-shows to his civil union last week.
TEA LEONI had a troubling moment while promoting her new (and poorly-reviewed) movie Fun with Dick and Jane in Europe, when a reporter asked, “So, which is better — George Segal's Dick or Jim Carrey's Dick?”
IRAQ: Amid peaceful protest and insurgent attacks seeking to deepen the political turmoil surrounding the contested pariamentary vote, Iraqi blogger Mohammed writes, “It’s become clear from the active shuttle-like movement of the rival parties and mediators that the intensity of the political crisis began to subside compared to how things looked like a week ago.” ALSO: The Chicago Tribune covers the Tiger Battalion, perhaps the most heralded unit of the struggling Iraqi army.
IRAQ II: In covering the information front, the Washington Post lumps bloggers in with military efforts to pay for favorable coverage in Iraq, which is apples-and-oranges. But Bill Roggio — often linked here — gets some good coverage in the piece. Michael Yon compares two photo montages to examine the information front of the war. Pamela Hess of UPI recently commented that “if there's a criticism to be made of the American media over there — and there are plenty of them, and I think some of them are outside — one of the important things to keep in mind is that we are quite vigilant about U.S. propaganda. We are less so about insurgent propaganda.”
TSUNAMI: Religious extremists are using last year’s storm to oppress the survivors. London's Times reports that with reconstruction slow, the stern message falls on fertile ground, with a Sharia police force modelled on Saudi moral enforcers enthusiastically seeking out female wrongdoers for public humiliation. Maybe the reconstruction is slow because up to about a third of the 590 million dollar United Nations fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead. The Financial Times also found that several UN agencies refuse to disclose details of their relief spending, despite earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials. Maybe the project could have been left in the hands of the “stingy” US. (BTW, this was the topic of Monday's Nightline, during which a UN official avoided talking about overhead, and Cynthia McFadden didn't follow up on her question of concern about wasted dollars.)
FESTIVUS is alive and well in northwestern Pennsylvania, nearly a decade after the bizarre “holiday” garnered pop culture notoriety on Seinfeld. Indeed, Festivus poles have been purchased by Con Ed and Merrill Lynch. It's doing so well that the AP has a piece decrying the commercialization of Festivus. Can A Charlie Brown Festivus be far behind?
JAPANESE SNOW MONKEYS protect their baby from the cold Tokyo winter. Awwww…
MAN STUCK IN TREE, trying to rescue a cat.
KWANZAA THE LION celebrated his first birthday on Christmas Eve.
REINDEER are indispensible at Christmas, then they're dinner.
A CAN OF BEES was among the stranger corporate gifts handed out this season. I wonder if some company gave it to the Soft Boys?
