CARIBOU won Canada's Polaris Music Prize.  The Guardian music blog is not pleased.  Grand Juror Frank Yang is pleased, and blogs what he's allowed to say about the process. Its as good a reason as any to relink the video for the trippy "Melody Day."

MATES OF STATE stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set you can stream on demand via MPR.

CALEXICO: Joey Burns talks to the L.A. Times about why the band's new album should not be labeled "a return to form" after the  band's less Southwestern, more pop-focused release "Garden Ruin."

TITUS ANDRONICUS does the four free songs thing for Daytrotter, one previously unreleased. What's not to like about a band that names its album, The Airing of Grievances?

RYAN ADAMS explains at the Guardian why his blog is like a spider plant.

NICOLE ATKINS talks to the Shreveport Times about her new album and her American Express commercial: "I was like, 'Robert De Niro is in those commercials.' But it definitely enabled me to move out of my parents' house as well." She gave the interview after appearing on Later... with Jools Holland, where she played "Maybe Tonight" and "The Way It Is."

FLEA, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, has just enrolled as a freshman at the University of Southern California's music program.

THOSE DANCING DAYS bassist Mimmi Evrell tals to Drowned In Sound about influences, other new bands and eBay hoaxes.  Videos at the link, too.

TAKE FIVE: Sara Fishko of WNYC introduces people to 5/4 time, from Tchaikovsky to Lalo Schifrin's theme for Mission Impossible.

DUFFY fears she's on the verge of a breakdown. Mercy!

CHRISTINA APPLEGATE talked more about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment on Oprah.  Video at the link.

SHARON STONE suggested that her son have Botox injections in his feet to resolve a problem he had with foot odor.  That's one example cited by the judge who rejected her request to move her son down to L.A. in the bitter, ongoing battle between Stone and ex-husband, Phil Bronstein.

JANET JACKSON was been released from Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital after a two-hour stay on Monday night.  Jackson cancelled her gig after falling ill during a soundcheck.

MEGAN FOX: The firefighter who broke her heart and made her run into the arms of a female stripper is interviewed by the uber-reliable News of the World.

ANNE HATHAWAY Esquire rumor debunked.

SPIDER-MAN 4: Kirsten Dunst sounds set to join Tobey Maguire and director Sam Aimi for another round, hopefully better than the last one.

KENNETH BRANAGH is negotiating to direct the live-action adaptation of Marvel Comics' Thor.

THE SPIRIT has a new trailer online in glorious Quicktime, via Moviefone.

JENNY McCARTHY & AMANDA PEET are having a catfight over childhood vaccinations.  I think this dispute could be resolved in a tank of Jell-O.

P.J. O'ROURKE, humorist extrodinaire, has been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind: "I'm told I have a 95 percent chance of survival. Come to think of it -- as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound -- my chance of survival has been improved by cancer."

THE STANS: The leader of Pakistan's Taliban is dead from kidney failure, sources told CNN. But US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal are highly skeptical of the report and see no evidence he is dead. Meanwhile, Afghanistan's government signalled it was open to a deal with the Taliban as Pres. Karzai revealed he had used Saudi Arabian envoys to relay messages of peace. The Long War Journal looks at the limits of tribal resistance to the Taliban in the Northwest region of the country.

IRAQ: Time magazine looks at the tricky business of disbanding the Sons of Iraq. The number of Iraqi security forces killed in September rose by nearly a third over the same period last year. while US troop deaths for the same period fell by nearly 40 percent. Security forces detained 21 policemen believed to be behind the Saadiya bombing. Coalition forces detained seven AQI operatives in and around Baghdad. Three AQI fighters were killed in Baqubah. The Hillah SWAT found numerous illegal weapons in an office run by the Badr Corporation. Coalition Detainee Operations released over 14K prisoners this year.

CRAB RIDES A JELLYFISH off the Gulf Coast of Florida. Let's go to the video.

WHEN THE STRAY CAT ON YOUR PORCH turns out to be a 80-90 lb. mountain lion.  Video at the link.

A BEAR checks into a hospital in Lake Tahoe, is put off by the paperwork. Video at the link.

DOLPHINS DIET after a poor performance at the Kinosaki Marine World in western Japan.

BEAVERS blamed for likely bank failure.  There's a lot of that going around these days.

BISHOP ALLEN rocks out a bit on "Middle Management," a clip to coincide with the upcoming release of the movie, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.

BOB DYLAN: Tell Tale Signs (Bootleg Series, Vol. 8) is streaming in full via NPR.

NEW RELEASES: Albums from Ben Folds, the J&MC, Dungen, the Dead, Roy Orbison, Todd Rundgren and more are streaming in full this week via Spinner.

LED ZEPPELIN REUNION DENIED: Robert Plant has no intention whatsoever of touring with anyone for at least the next two years.

BLACK KIDS:  Lead singer and chief songwriter, Reggie Youngblood talks to the Baltimore Sun about going from faith-based rock to indie buzz-band.

TEN BRILLIANT ONE-ALBUM WONDERS, courtesy of IGN.  First on the list is Moby Grape, so here's the band playing "Omaha." Plus, we have a separate clip including "Hey Grandma" and "Sitting By The Window."  It's like Twofer Tuesday, but one longer.

MARTHA WAINWRIGHT gives Elizabeth Day of The Observer a mini-tour of her favourite places in Brooklyn.

SILVER JEWS: David Berman explains to LAist that his songwriting is like playing chess against himself.  Plus, guitars, etc. 

WHAT IS HYPE?  Me, you and everyone you know.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND: Confirmed for Super Bowl XLIII.

TOM-KAT UPDATE: Holmes showed off her sultry side in an all-singing, all-dancing guest role on Eli Stone.  Pics at the link.  Meanwhile, the new trailer for Cruise's Valkyrie is online.  Industry insiders who have seen it say it's an absorbing thriller -- but there's no audience for it.

BRITNEY SPEARS' ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib has confirmed he owns a sex tape featuring himself and the pop wreck and will sell it for the right price.

HEATH LEDGER: The company that wrote Heath Ledger's ten-million-dollar life insurance policy is being sued after claiming the actor's death might have been a suicide, even though officials concluded it was accidental. Lawyers for Ledger's daughter say it's a transparent ploy to avoid paying the money.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR: TMZ has pics of her arrest, as well as the mugshot.

ANNE HATHAWAY is rumored to say something really interesting in an upcoming interview with Esquire magazine.

SARAH PALIN, current GOP vice-presidential nominee, in the 1984 Miss Alaska competition.  If anyone has a clip of Joe Biden in a swimsuit competition, please keep it to yourself.  Presumably, there will be no swimsuit segment in Thursday's debate.

JIMMY KIMMEL & SARAH SILVERMAN were snapped holding hands, but claim they remain friends after their break-up.

ISLAMISM in the UK?  The publisher of "The Jewel of Medina," a novel about the early life of A'isha, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad, was the target of an attempted firebombing.

PAKISTAN: Villagers in parts of the North West Frontier Province and the tribal territory, faced with the violent advance of the Pakistani Taliban, have started to organize an armed indigenous resistance.

IRAN:  Gary Milhollin, the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, writes that by the time we inaugurate our next president, Iran is likely to achieve "virtual" nuclear weapon status.

IRAQ: Followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and frmr Iranian Pres. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged Iraq's government and religious leaders to block the proposed US-Iraqi security pact.

SO, A HORSE walks into a pub... Video at the link.

FEEDING DUCKS: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

STOLEN HAMSTER brings a police response in Clinton Township, NJ.

A TINY CLEANER FISH picks parasites from the mouth of a giant bullethead parrot fish in a stunning entry to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

WORLD-CLASS BUDGIES: The secret is bathing them in sherry or cough syrup.

OKKERVIL RIVER releases "Lost Coastlines" as the first band video for the Stand-Ins album.

6 AM WAKEUP CALL: A streaming playlist for those days when you need more than two cups of coffee, courtesy of NPR.

LED ZEPPELIN REUNION may well be back on, accoring to the Sun, which was first with the news of last year's O2 gig.

DAR WILLIAMS sets a segment + songs on Weekend Edition Sunday on NPR.

KIM GORDON of Sonic Youth talks to the San Francisco Bay Guardian about collaboaring with women, the nature of the bass and more.  She has also launched a clothing line for cool Moms called Mirror/Dash with her friends Melinda Wansbrough and Jeffrey Monteiro.

HA HA TONKA adds some trippy animation to the Americana of "Caney Mountain," from the Buckle in the Bible Belt album.

DAVID CROSBY lists a few of his favorite things for Drowned In Sound, revealing that they are pretty much unchanged in the last 40 years.

THE WATSON TWINS' Leigh Watson shuffles her iPod for The A.V. Club in the current Random Rules segment.

MERCURY REV talks about making an album with "instruments" created by strangers on the Internet with software called Reaktor (which is pretty amazing; I have the lite version, Dynamo).

FLAMING LIPS: Wayne Coyne talks to IFC about the band's long-awaited animated film, Christmas On Mars.

PAUL NEWMAN, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, a race car driver, entrepreneur and a great philanthropist, died Friday of cancer at 83.  The NYT surveys his career fairly well, so I'll add that Newman knew his strengths, primarily playing roles in which the seemingly unprincipled or dissolute man who really was more alienated or lonely.  Moreover, around the time of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," he seemed to drop some of the intensity of Method Acting and seemed to settle more into his own skin.  Whether that reflected a change in his personal life or his method, it was (imho) a major reason why his career lasted beyond the 60s. I wish more praise had been given to his roles in The Verdict and Nobody's Fool before his death, but that's the way things go. The Academy had already given him a lifetime award and an Oscar for The Color of Money, so his later work tended to get overlooked. Newman was the first guest on Inside the Actor's Studio, which has been Tubed in seven parts: Part One, Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five; Part Six and Part Seven.  ALSO: Newman's philanthropic legacy will continue.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Eagle Eye led the weekend with 29.2 million -- impressive for a poorly-reviewed September Hitchcock rehash from the team that did the same with Disturbia.  Nights in Rodanthe served up the romantic counter-programming with 13.6 million -- a welcome relief for Richard Gere, but perhaps not a big enough relief without some legs.  Lakeview Terrace slid to third place with seven million, but has already exceeded its production budget.  Fireproof debuted in fourth with 6.5 million, which is gret, based on its shoestring budget and low screen count.  Whether it has legs beyond churchgoers remains to be seen.  The Coen Bros' Burn After Reading rounds out the Top Five with 6.1 million and seems to be earning  nice profit.  Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna debuted in ninth place, making 3.5 million against a 45 million budget. Ouch.  Righteous Kill and My Best Friend's Girl are shaping up as flops also.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON & RYAN REYNOLDS done got hitched on an island off the coast of Vancouver.

HEATH LEDGER: The late actor's entire estate, estimated to be worth 20 million dollars, will go to two-year-old daughter Matilda Rose.

GEORGE CLOONEY will play the Lone Ranger to Johnny Depp's Tonto. The film will be written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who also scripted the Pirates Of The Caribbean films.

HEATHER LOCKLEAR was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of driving while impaired.  Guess the rehab thing may not have been a total success.

RUSSELL CROWE jokes that his 2-year-old son is already betrothed to the daughter of Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman.

ISLAMISM in the UK: The daughter of firebrand cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed turns out to be a busty, blonde, topless, tattooed pole dancer.  Bakri, now exiled to Lebanon, dismissed the news as a ' fabrication' and described it as an attack on him and Islam.  Generally SFW pic at the link.

IRAN: Russia and the US have reached a deal to seek a new UN resolution on Iran, but without imposing new sanctions. Pres. Bush told Israeli PM Olmert he would not back an attack on Iran, according to senior European diplomatic sources.

IRAQ: The Iraqi and US military have stepped up operations against the Iranian-backed Special Groups over the past two weeks. killing two fighters and capturing 107 since Sept. 16.

SPIDER VS. SNAKE: You migh bet on the snake, but you would be wrong.

SNAKE in an AIRPORT: Austin Energy officials say a snake crawling into electrical equipment caused a "flash over," which knocked out power to parts of Austin's airport.

A BAT does not give coffee a distinct flavor?

PET HOARDING: Some 83 parakeets were voluntarily surrendered by a Peabody, MA man who had been keeping them in his basement.  Video at the link.

WHEN PETS CHEAT: Some cats and dogs ditch their owners for someone they like better.

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with THE WHO!  Mostly because I was in the mood, but also because I noticed the resurfacing of the infamous Cow Palace Incident (1973, San Francisco), with Scot Halpin. So let's add three tracks from the Charlton Athletic Grounds in 1974: "Substitute," "Bell Boy"  and "Baba O'Riley."  And amped-up takes on "Join Together" and "Squeeze Box" at the Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland, OH from 1975. 

AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FEST: Sets from Jamie Lidell, Vampire Weekend, The Old 97s, Drive-By Truckers, Man Man, Conor Oberst, John Fogerty, Nicole Atkins, Neko Case, Okkervil River, The Raconteurs, Tegan & Sara and many more will be streaming this weekend from the AT&T Blue Room, starting this afternoon.

ROBERT POLLARD talks to Youngstown, Ohio's Vindicator about GbV, his new album and his new band, Boston Spaceships, which may release three LPs a year. Pollard tells the Cleveland Free Times that the Spaceship songs aere "silly and filled with sexual innuendos and things a 50-year-old man shouldn't be doing. I guess it's a middle-age crisis." (Thx, LHB.)

CENTRO-MATIC does the six free songs thing for Daytrotter.

PETER HOOK talks to Drowned In Sound about New Order re-issues, the Factory legacy and staying relevant.

DUMPTRUCK: "Back Where I Belong," in the grooveyard of forgotten favorites.

THE 10 WORST #1 SONGS, according to Spike, starting with

SPIRITUALIZED stopped by the World Cafe for a chat and mini-set you can stream on demand via NPR.

THE BLACK KEYS: Patrick Carney talks to the Houston Chronicle about the Hadron Supercollider, G.I. Joe, Akron, etc.

THE RAVEONETTES: Sharin Foo announces the birth of Molly Foo Edwards. Congrats to her!

CUTOUT BIN: From Ian Hunter to Gary Numan, from the MC5 to Kim Wilde, from Barrett Strong to Billy Bragg to the Beach Boys and the Byrds, plus the Young Fresh Fellows, Jr. Walker & the All-Starss, the Seeds, Super Furry Animals and more -- this Friday's fortuitous finds can be jukeboxed or streamed separately via the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases include Eagle Eye, which is currently scoring xx percent on the ol' Tomatometer; Nights In Rodanthe, which is currently scoring xx percent; Miracle at St. Anna, which is scoring xx percent; and the near-wide Fireproof, which appears to have gone unscreened for critics.

JOHNNY DEPP has agreed to return as Captain Jack Sparrow in a fourth Pirates pic; play Tonto in a bigscreen adaptation of The Lone Ranger; and star as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's 3-D animated version of Alice in Wonderland.

BRITNEY SPEARS and Fed-Ex are reportedly undergoing couples counselling to rebuild their relationship in the hope that they can raise their two sons as a family, according to the ever-reliable National Enquirer. Spears will likely perform on the hit Brit music show X-Factor, according to Simon Cowell.

PAUL McCARTNEY played Tel Aviv and visited the birthplace of Christ, along with 5000 bodyguards. The security drive dwarfs the protection given to Pres. Bush when he visited Israel.

KIRSTEN DUNST & JUSTIN LONG are dunzo, with Dunst as the dumpor and Lond as the dumpee, according to In Touch.

THE 25 HOTTEST ACTORS UNDER 25, according to Moviefone, which means you should read it with the mental voice of the Moviefone Dude.

MICHAEL DOUGLAS fielded questions about the financial turmoil shaking world markets from reporters recalling his role in the 1987 film "Wall Street." Yes, really.

JENNIFER ANISTON is back in contact with John Mayer and longing for a reconciliation, according to the MailOnline.

RUSSIA bans The Simpsons as unpatriotic.

TERROR in the UK: A British Muslim was a senior al-Qaeda leader who kept a terrorist contact book containing telephone numbers and emails written in invisible ink, a court has heard.

IRAN: Russia's announced earlier this week that it is no longer willing to support the UN Security Council's permanent members' proposal for further sanctions against Iran.

IRAQ: Bing West has a piece in The Atlantic detailing how gritty work by US troops helped nurture the Awakening movement in Anbar province: "It is incorrect to say AQI "overplayed its hand," as if war were poker. The Americans at the squad level had shown for two years that they were both stronger and more decent than AQI."  Violence during Ramadan is 82 percent less when compared with levels in 2007.

COW!  And... COW!

SELF-MILKING COWS: New Zealand's first robotic dairy farm is now up and running, complete with milking robots that allow the cows to choose their own milking time. Video at the link.

BUMPER the TABBY CAT was so determined to get to the seaside that he travelled there by clinging to the underside of a camper van.

HORSE MASSAGE: Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time.

A SNAKE fails to eat a toad. Pics at the link.

COLD WAR KIDS make "Something Is Not Right With Me" the first video from their new album.

REGINA SPEKTOR played a set at Mountain Stage; you can stream the whole gig on demand via NPR.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS played a mini-set at Mountain Stage; you can stream it on demand via NPR.

RANDY NEWMAN talks to the Philadelphia Inquirer about presenting a worldview more askew than pop consumers are after. 

TEGAN QUIN of Tegan & Sara talks to AfterEllen about being covered by dudes and such.

SUZANNE VEGA blogs at the NYT about in-ear monitors and -- more importantly -- the story of the "Tom's Diner" remixes. So here is the original "Tom's Diner" as well as the DNA remix.  It's like twofer Tuesday, but on Thursday.

THE KINKS: Ray Davies has said the band are "three quarters of the way there" for a possible reunion, with his brother's health being a key issue. "The amazing thing is that The Kinks are the only band, of that period, where the only original members are still alive," he added.

DAR WILLIAMS stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set you can stream on demand via MPR.

INDIE LABELS may sue the the new MySpace Music service on antitrust grounds.

SILVER JEWS: David Berman talks to Drowned In Sound about the downside of being a good lyricist and more...

NATALIE PORTMAN has split with her boyfriend, freak-folk musician Devendra Banhart.

LINDSAY LOHAN's ex-con dad calls her galpal Samantha Ronson "dark, hideous and a disgusting representation of humanity." NTTAWWT.  Meanwhile, the ever relaible Star magazine claims that Li-Lo has been seen drinking, snorting cocaine and sporting cuts on her arms.

DREW BARRYMORE was... wait for it... caught canoodling on camera with Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick.  And it's not the first time for them making out, apparently.

LEIGHTON MEESTER, another Gossip Girl star, talks with Us Weekly about being born behind bars. I hope this marks the last time I ever have two Gossip Girl related items in a single day.

NICOLE KIDMAN has attributed her miracle pregnancy to a dip in a waterfall in Australia's famous Outback.  Whereas my theory is that Keith Urban not be ing Tom Cruise had something to do with it.

SYNEDOCHE, NEW YORK: The new film from the always strange and usually wonderful Charlie Kaufman now has a trailer online.

JENNA FISCHER (a/k/a Pam of The Office) has named writer Lee Kirk her "super cute boyfriend."

GEORGIA, GEORGIA: Blogger Michael J. Totten takes you on a photo-filled road-trip to Borjomi, an area that by all accounts was bombed by Russian jets, but was never occupied or controlled by its ground troops.

NORTH KOREA has expelled UN monitors from its plutonium-making nuclear plant and plans to start reactivating it next week, rowing back from a 2007 deal to scrap its atomic bomb program.

IRAN: The government's Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults has developed an Islamic version of Barbie-style dolls as an antidote to the "harmful" influence of dolls and accessories from America.

IRAQ: Parliament unanimously approved a provincial elections law after resolving objections over power-sharing in the province that includes the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

SUNNY THE CAT, one of many strays recued by Don and Cindy White of Hampshire, is likely the result of inbreeding. With Yoda.

TERROR PIG UPDATE:  The pony-size pig who held an Australian woman hostage for 10 days inside her home was to be removed on Wednesday to a piggery, where his bacon will be saved by a stint on stud duties, rangers said.

HUNDREDS OF ASIAN SWAMP EELS found slithering and breeding around Silver Lake in Gibbsboro, NJ.

A DR. SEUSS-LIKE DINOSAUR dug up near Red Deer, Alberta, is the smallest such species ever discovered in North America, say researchers. Pic at the link.

CHIMPS can match up the faces of group members with photos of their behinds.  Much like men in bars.