Karl 
WILCO adds more tour dates and mulls over 700 ideas for the next album. Wilco is playing not only ACL Fest, but also Stubbs BBQ in Austin the night beforehand. There's more I would like to say about that, but will uncharacteristically restrain myself.
LOLLAPALOOZA was blogged by USA Today. It would have been cool to hear Cake cover Buck Owens' “Excuse Me I Think I've Got a Heartache.” And to see the Dandy Warhols – Brian Jonestown Massacre reconciliation. Jon Pareles has his take in The New York Times.
BONAROO organizers will stage a mega-event in Las Vegas around Halloween called Vegoose. Dave Matthews is believed to performing; insert your Halloween-scary joke here.
SUPERGRASS has a new album coming in August; Scenestars is killing music with a leak of the title track.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer has a violent fight with his manager, who accused Doherty galpal Kate Moss of breaking up Babyshambles. He took a beating from three men a late night street fight and fled the police, even though he was the victim. And that brawl triggered Doherty's latest breakup with Moss.
STAGE DIVING DEATH: Patrick Sherry, lead singer for the Bad Beat Revue died after an acrobatic leap from the stage went wrong in Leeds.
RYAN ADAMS talks to Pitchfork about his ear infection and the Grateful Dead. He also (unsurprisingly) flew into a rage over minor technical problems at Splendour, an Aussie music fest.
SUFJAN STEVENS tells Radar magazine that he ended up using Carl Sandburg as a muse for the Illinois ablbum “because I found his writing to be more classical and antiquated, and kind of silly, and that lends itself to lyric writing.”
BOB MOULD talks to PopMatters about blogging and his new album, which coincidentally drops today.
ON THE PITCHFORK: Negative reviews for Rhino's Whatever: The 90s Box Set and Willie Nelson's Countryman.
PAYOLA: Sony BMG Music Entertainment, agreed Monday to pay ten million bucks and to stop paying radio station employees to feature its artists to settle an investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
EVERYBODY WAS FOO FIGHTING: There's still bad blood between Courtney Love and Dave Grohl. Courtney thinks Dave has “been taking money from my child for years.” As opposed to the money she shoveled up her nose, to rehab and to lawyers.
EUGENE RECORD, former lead vocalist of the Chi-Lites, died Friday at 65 after a long bout with cancer. Record wrote “Oh Girl” and co-wrote “Have You Seen Her.”
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Celebrity watchdogs are wondering whether the hideous sores that erupted around Holmes' mouth shortly after the couple announced their romance are the side effects of a Scientology “detoxification” procedure involving the vitamin niacin, or stress-induced cold sores. Meanwhile, Cruise gets more criticism from a conservative Catholic psychiatrist.
HOWARD STERN is in talks to move the television version of his popular radio show to subscription video-on-demand.
BRITNEY SPEARS' hubby K-Fed forgot his son's first birthday. At least baby mama Shar Jackson could be comforted by her new boyfriend, Quentin Tarantino, who is undoubtedly a natural at an infant's birthday party.
HOLLYWOOD'S DEATH SPIRAL: At Slate, Edward Jay Epstein looks at the secret numbers that tell the tale.
JANN WENNER sounds like he's not a fun boss.
FLUFF JOURNALISM: Give the Chicago Sun-Times two points: one for truth in labeling, one for the correct editorial stance on Lindsay Lohan.
NOT-SO-BLIND ITEM: Page Six asks, “Which newly humiliated actress is not so innocent herself?” I have no idea who that could be… on an entirely unrelated note, people are speculating as to whether Jude Law and Sienna Miller remain engaged.
TERI HATCHER: The Desperate Housewife makes love in an old VW van parked in the driveway of her luxury mansion, to prevent her seven-year-old daughter from accidentally interrupting. Shouldn't it be a Chevy Van?
IRAQ: Sunni Arab members rejoined the committee drafting Iraq's new constitution as a suicide minibus bomb attack targeted a checkpoint outside Baghdad's Sadeer Hotel, which Al-Zarqawi previously targeted as the “hotel of the Jew.''
IRAQ II: A joint task force is being set up to decide how the U.S. military will hand over responsibility for the country's security to the Iraqi forces. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who visited Iraq in June, has a report assessing the progress and remaining problems in standing up Iraqi forces (Acrobat pdf). There are 35 battalion-size operations going on every day in Iraq, and Iraqi security forces solely are running roughly 20 percent of those, according to Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston. The Iraqi army is actively recruiting women. one of the women pictured in the story, Sgt. Bushra Jabar, gets more attention at Publius Pundit.
IRAQ III: A Newsweek “web exclusive” claims that civilian killings by U.S. troops are not nearly as common as the war’s critics would like us to believe.
THE UNITED STATES NOW HAS A MERCENARY ARMY. That's the opening sentence of an op-ed by Prof. David M. Kennedy in The New York Times. He hastens to add, “Neither the idealism nor the patriotism of those who serve is in question here.” I can't imagine how anyone would have gotten that impression from his lede.
JANE FONDA intends to take a cross-country bus tour to call for an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq. Fonda said her anti-war tour in March will use a bus that runs on “vegetable oil.” No word on whether Fonda intends to pose atop an Improvised Explosive Device.
THE BLACK PANTHERS plan to sell “Burn Baby Burn” Hot Sauce and a line of clothing on the 40th anniversary of the Watts race riots.
STARBUCKS now in churches. At least until the company forms the Church of Starbucks to avoid income taxes.
CARIBOU COFFEE, otoh, operates its business according to Islamic law. Indeed, the company used to be advised on Shari'ah by controversial cleric Dr. Yusuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, whose views prove that the term “moderate” is a highly relative one.
LONDON TERROR PROBE is “racing against time” to find the bombers, who fled three subway trains and a bus when their devices failed to fully detonate; an explosive found in a park was like those used in the attempted attacks, raising fears a fifth bomber was on the loose.
EGYPT TERROR PROBE seeks five Pakistanis believed to have come to Sharm el-Sheik from Cairo earlier this month.
IT WAS CHRISTMAS IN JULY at the World Santa Claus Congress in Copenhagen. No doubt everyone had a jolly ol' time.
THE 20 HAMBURGERS YOU MUST EAT BEFORE YOU DIE, courtesy of Style.com
PREGANANCY DISCRIMINATION at a maternity clothing company? That's what a Boston jury will be asked to decide.
WHAT MAKES LANCE ARMSTRONG CYCLE? A combination of genetics and training, according to Ed Coyle, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
PREDICT THE FUTURE with cellphones?
TIGLONS: A Chinese nature park has revealed two “tiglon” cubs — a cross between a tiger father and a lion mother — born in May.
CATS: Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia believe they know why Morris was such a finicky eater. And yes, I know the Morris reference dates me badly. But he went from a homeless cat whose hours were literally numbered when he was discovered in a Chicago animal shelter to being named “The Feline Burt Reynolds” in five short years.
DOGS: I thought about just making “Don't Touch My Bone” the headline without mentioning dogs, but thought better of it.
COW gives birth to four calves. Hard to stare unamazed at that.
SQUIRRELS' mating habits are destroying trees.
