IT'S SHOWTIME! The Incredibles and End of the Century - The Story of the Ramones are out on DVD today. If you need more convincing, you can check out my review of The Incredibles in the Reviews section (see the "Modules" linked to your left). ALSO: Incoming Disney CEO Robert Iger's first big decision will be whether to make up or break up with Pixar Animation Studios. KATHLEEN EDWARDS AND M.I.A., both previously noted here, are among those featured in Time magazine's "5 Great Albums With Foreign Accents." Both are also on the Pitchfork: Edwards' Back To Me gets a good review, while the enigmatic M.I.A. is interviewed. ALSO ON THE PITCHFORK: A review of The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 1, the debut of of a new series from Rhino/Hip-O Select, which reviewer Joe Tangari deems "truly essential" for showing the label's early misses as well as its hits. SXSW ON YOUR COMPUTER: KarmaDownload and Internet radio station WOXY (a Ken King recommendation) are co-sponsoring a live music event Thursday at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas. The performances of all seven bands will be played live on WOXY.com, and on-air talent will be conducting interviews with artists and audience members. ALSO: DJ Frodo was working it at Maggie Mae's on 6th Street. MEN AND WOMEN have different dreams, according to a new study. Women, for example, have more emotion in their dreams and dream about food, clothing and personal appearance. Men, on the other hand, dream about other men, violence, sex, cars and weapons. MAN LOSES FINGERS, TOES TO MEET GIRLFRIEND: A Los Angeles man who sneaked into Canada in February to see his Internet girlfriend will be deported -- minus all his fingers and some of his toes -- which will be amputated because of severe frostbite suffered during a 100-hour trek from Pembina, North Dakota, across the border to Emerson, Manitoba. The man could not enter Canada legally because he was convicted of robbing a Pizza Hut in Arkansas in 1984, according to the Winnipeg Sun. LEBANON: Nearly one million people gathered for an opposition rally in Beirut, city officials say. It surpassed recent pro-Syrian rallies and is thought to be the biggest in Lebanese history. Lebaneseblogger is ecstatic. Publius has more. I'm just digging the Lebanese protesters' knowledge of Madonna and Mel Gibson. KYRGYZSTAN: Gateway Pundit blogs early news from the second round of parliamentary voting held Sunday. Registan has even more, including word that "[v]oting was postponed in four districts because of protests and protesters are continuing to cause headaches for the government, especially in Jalalabad, Naryn, and Osh." AT-HOME GENETIC TESTING is cheap, easy to administer and private, but as the popularity of at-home genetic tests soars, so do questions about whether they will be correctly interpreted. AOL PRIVACY UPDATE: AOL is trying to explain its new terms of service for its Instant Messenger service, stating that it refers to IM content an IM user might post on a public area of AOL or the internet. An AOL spokesman says that said that AOL does not monitor AIM traffic, and does not store it. A record of an AIM communication is not saved in any storage medium at AOL. Nevertheless, AOL may have to revise its TOS to clarify the matter. I DON'T KNOW whether this AOL link will work outside AOL, but Entertainment Weekly is touting A Girl Called Eddy and Nellie McKay for people who are sick of Ashlee Simpson. If only we lived in that dimension... THE JAYHAWKS used to cover Chris Bell's post-Big Star minor hit "I Am The Cosmos." Chromewaves has it available for download at the moment; just check under the RCA Nipper in the leftmost column on the site. COOLFER is finding that the Early 80s-Gang of Four-Cure influenced niche is getting saturated. THE SO-CALLED ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME inducted its "Class of 2005." Congrats to U2, The Pretenders, O'Jays, Percy Sledge and Buddy Guy. But to appreciate how lame the Hall ultimately is, consider the graf buried at the bottom of the story in Rolling Stone:"Approximately 700 music-industry figures vote each year on eligible nominees. Among the list of first-time candidates who did not receive enough votes for induction were Randy Newman, the J. Geils Band, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Past nominees who were again passed over this year include the Sex Pistols, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Stooges." THAT'S MY VADER: At The Morning News, writer Rob Eccles imagines what it would be like if Darth Vader spent a day in his shoes, speaking only in memorable quotes from the original Star Wars. TV NEWS IS SCHIZOPHRENIC: The Michael Jackson case proves it, according to Broadcasting and Cable magazine. A CAPITALIST MISTAKENLY ENROLLED AT HARVARD. A protest was inevitable. A FATWA ON OSAMA BIN LADEN has been issued by Spain's leading Islamic body. ORPHAN WORKS: Freeculture.org and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have teamed up on the issue of what happens when it's impossible to find out if a particular work is still under copyright, or impossible (or extremely costly) to find the copyright holder. Their site allows you to submit your comments directly to the U.S. Copyright Office which is seeking such comments in deciding whether to propose regulations. The comment period ends March 25th. SIN CITY: Entertainment Tonight kicked off its Sin City week with a piece focusing on Jessica Alba. It's also a nice summary of the project, including the appearance of "special guest director" Quentin Tarantino, a longtime friend and collaborator of main director Robert Rodriguez. But if you suspect that this was really just a pretext to post that Jessica Alba promo again, you would be absolutely right. CONGRESSIONAL CREDIT CARD DEBT: As the House is poised to take up a bankruptcy bill giving banks and credit card companies more power to seek repayment from debtors in bankruptcy, The Hill gives us the lowdown on Representatives and Senators carrying at least 10,000 bucks in credit-card or charge-card debt in 2003 and parts of 2004. I wish I was surprised to read that several members received campaign contributions from the same bank or credit card company with which they held an account. WaPo EDITOR SPEAKS TO THE CHINESE PRESS and may end up regretting it. Washington Post Managing Editor Philip Bennett gave an interview to the People's online Daily that is chock full 'o' nuggets, not the least of which is: "No, I don't think U.S. should be the leader of the world." No doubt bloggers will be chewing that one up over the next few days. But perhaps the funny aspect of the interview is Bennett's characterization of the U.S. media: "We have a little bit different roles in newspapers compared with our counterparts in Europe and other countries. We don't have any political point of view that we are trying to advance." Yet the Chinese reporter asks questions that make it seem that he does not believe Bennett. PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer's rehab efforts may have won back the heart of Kate Moss. KUDOS TO XTINA: Drrrty girl Christina Aguilera will not launch her own clothing line, calling the practice "tacky" and suggestive of a failing career. BRITNEY SPEARS promises to shut up about her personal life. We can only hope this commitment lasts longer than her first marriage. "In the future, I will refrain from discussing my private life in interviews," Spears wrote on her website. "It will be expressed solely through art." So we may never hear another thing about it. CHARLIE RICH: PowerLine, the conservative outfit named Time magazine's "Blog of the Year," takes a break from politics to pay tribute to the career of the country singer-songwriter. NO FLIRTING, JUST DISASTER: Danny Joe Brown, a founding member of Molly Hatchet, and singer and co-writer of the band's biggest hits, died last Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 53. LINDSAY LOHAN AND BRUCE WILLIS deny gossip that Willis was groping Lohan at the launch party for his new movie Hostage. And so would you. FREE CREDIT REPORTS are just the beginning: you can also get copies of "specialty reports" or "other consumer reports" that track other information like medical records, bankruptcy filings, driving records, criminal or civil case records, insurance information and banking information. MARTHA NEEDS A NEW PAIR OF SHOES: Robert Yeganeh, the flamboyant owner of the Love My Shoes shops, has designed footwear for Martha Stewart that will hide her ankle bracelet. When the Post uses the word "flamboyant" about a male shoe designer, is that code for something? MORNING TV BATTLES: The rivalry between Good Morning America and Today escalated to the point of requiring police intervention after GMA booker Mike Nagel tried to interrupt NBC's interview with Atlanta hostage Ashley Smith Monday morning. CULT OF THE iPod: i285 writes: "It is simply unbelievable that the great prophet Nostradamus not only foresaw the amazing iPod but the advertising campaign as well." I agree. Stephen Green of the Sky Captain-themed VodkaPundit joins the cult, suggesting it's worse than Scientology. BusinessWeek magazine lauds Apple's in-house design as reason for the success of the iPods. IRAQ: The London Telegraph recently published the story of Abdallah Al Jibouri, a 45 year-old dentist from Manchester who planned merely to check up on his elderly mother when he visited his home town of Muqtadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad, shortly after Saddam Hussein's fall. Much to his astonishment - and, he says, to the dismay of his British wife, Sharon - he also became governor of the province of Diyala, whose population is 1.8 million. The insurgents have tried to kill him 14 times already. IRAN, having rejected U.S. incentives to halt its nuclear program, apparently did so because the Iranians want more.
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