THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with THIN LIZZY! Remember that chick who used to dance a lot? Here's Phil Lynott & Co. live at the Sydney Opera House in 1978, playing "Jailbreak," "Bad Reputation," "Cowboy Song," "The Boys Are Back In Town," "Waiting For An Alibi," and "Are You Ready?"

THE ALLAH-LAS stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

PHOX stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

TORI AMOS stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

STRAND OF OAKS stopped by WFUV Live for a chat and mini-set.

KENNY ROGERS & THE FIRST EDITION: "I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)." Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Yeah.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT talks to The Guardian about his love for Obama, lyrical oversharing and how he has no memory of his guest appearance in Absolutely Fabulous.

LOS CAMPESINOS! Gareth managed to find the one bright spot on an otherwise intolerable “alternative” radio channel.

BOBBY WOMACK: The late soul legend's label unearthed an unseen interview.

25 SONGS THAT SHOULD NEVER BE COVERED, according to NME. They start with "Stairway to Heaven," a song now the subject of a copyright lawsuit. Hmm.

THE CUTOUT BIN: From the Jam to Steely Dan, from the Grass Roots to the Psychedelic Furs, from Led Zeppelin to The Church, plus Cher, the New York Dolls, 999, Marvin Gaye and more -- this Friday's fortuitous finds are streaming from the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING:This weekend's wide releases include: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, currently scoring 17 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; Into the Storm, currnetly scoring 9 percent; Step Up All In, scoring 53 percent; and The Hundred-Foot Journey, scoring 58 percent.

KRISTEN STEWART talks to Elle about her career, fame, and not smiling for the camera.

LARRY DAVID is headed to Broadway.

CHRISSY TEIGEN is funny. But that's not why Esquire did the photo spread.

LINDSAY LOHAN ignoring texts from sober friends?

TRUE DETECTIVE creator Nic Pizzolatto rejects claims of plagarism.

ISRAEL: Rockets from Gaza hit Israel early Friday morning, breaking the cease-fire, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

SYRIA: The Islamic State killed over 40 people in three suicide bombings at one of the regime's last remaining bases in Raqqah; clashed with tribal gunmen in Deir Izzour, where it also executed 18 employees of the sharia council who had been guarding oilfields for the Al Nusrah Front, the Islamic Front, and rebels; and clashed with the Islamic Front, regime forces, and Kurdish YPG forces in separate battles in Aleppo.

LIBYA: Demonstrators in Misrata protested against the new government. The commander of Operation Dignity's air forces confirmed its support of the new government, noting that a number of its jets are based in Tobruk. Prime Minister al Thinni and the head of US Africa Command agreed to try to speed up training of Libyan military forces.

IRAQ: President Obama announced he has authorized "targeted" air strikes if necessary to protect American interests in Iraq from insurgent forces that are taking over the country's northern cities. US forces also airdropped humanitarian aid to help a group of 40000 Yazidis, a group of ethnic Kurds, who fled villages in northern Iraq under threat from ISIS. Militants from the Islamic State group seized Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam on Thursday, giving them control of enormous power and water resources and leverage over the Tigris River that runs through the heart of Baghdad.

MARU: The box cat discovers window shades.

CROCODILE vs BULL SHARK: Who you got?

A MACAQUE is at the center of a copyright dispute with Wikimedia.

RATS ON A PLANE ground a flight in India.

SPOON plays "Inside Out" from backstage at the Tonight Show.

THE ROSEBUDS advance stream Sand + Silence.

CHILDHOOD advance streams Lacuna.

WILLIS EARL BEAL advance streams Experiments In Time.

MARISSA NADLER stopped by KUTX for a mini-set.

LIZ PHAIR: "Jealousy." It sneers like she does.

TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS top the Billboard album chart for the first time.

MARIANNE FAITHFULL tells MOJO she knows who killed Jim Morrison.

THE CIVIL WARS announce they've split for good.

TY SEGALL talks to Pitchfork about Manipulator, his most thought-out and labor-intensive album to date.

ALEXIS BLEDEL & VINCENT KARTHEISER secretly married earlier this summer.

KANYE WEST swears under oath, “I'm the smartest celebrity you've ever f***ing dealt with.  I'm not Britney Spears.”

BATMAN & SUPERMAN don't want to take on Captain America. A March release date? Hmmm.

GEORGE CLOONEY: Licensed to Marry.

CHRIS PRATT: When Guardians of the Galaxy was pitched to me, I said, "I don't think so."

KALEY CUOCO-SWEETING talks about marriage and season 8 of the Big Bang Theory.

KATIE HOLMES talks about The Giver and motherhood.

UKRAINE: Fear of a Russian invasion hung over eastern Ukraine on Wednesday as NATO said 20K combat forces massed on the border for war games could intervene under the pretext of helping ethnic Russian civilians caught up in what Moscow calls a "humanitarian catastrophe."

ISRAEL has offered to extend a three-day ceasefire in Gaza which began on Tuesday after nearly a month of conflict, Israeli officials say. However, unconfirmed reports on social media suggest the militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, has not agreed to the extension. Meanwhile, the battle over casualty statistics rages on.  Indian TV network NDTV captured footage of Islamic militants preparing to launch a rocket at Israel in a densely-populated civilian area.

LEBANON: A brief humanitarian truce in Arsal fell apart after Islamist militants resumed attacks on the Army.

IRAQ:  Kurdish forces attacked Islamic State fighters near the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil in northern Iraq on Wednesday in a change of tactics supported by the Iraqi central government to try to break the Islamists' momentum. The Iraqi military killed 60 people in an airstrike on an Islamic State sharia court in Mosul.

A LION CUB sneaks up on a dog.

ROOSTER RAGE: “I know it sounds crazy, but I got to a point where I thought the bird was mocking me."

ZEKE THE CAT dialed 911 from a Sarasota animal rescue.

BEARS are walking around like humans in New Jersey.

CHRIS PRATT, while promoting Guardians of the Galaxy, busts out some vintage Eminem from "Forgot About Dre."

THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM is streaming Get Hurt via iTunes.

LITERATURE is advance streaming Chorus. Like it.

OF MONSTERS AND MEN stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set. 

JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD stopped by KUTX for a mini-set.

STEVIE NICKS drops "The Dealer" ahead of 24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault, a new collection of unreleased tracks, mosly from 1969-87.

KIM WILDE: "Kids In America."

THURSTON MOORE will collaborate with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe, and London-based musician James Sedwards on The Best Day.

PHOX is briefly profiled by Magnet, where the band will be guest editors.

GLEN HANSARD talks to the L.A. Times about staging Once as a musical.

TOM PETTY, ranked by Stereogum.

MEGAN FOX revealed her absolute best on-screen kiss.

MICHAEL STRAHAN & NICOLE MURPHY. And another woman? And another man?

TRUE DETECTIVE: Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss may join Colin Farrell, Taylor Kitch and Vince Vaughn for Season 2. Meawhile, series creator Nic Pizzolatto is being accused of plagarism.

MICHAEL JACKSON  had code words and signals that he used with a boy he allegedly molested to describe various sex acts.

JAMES CORDEN  is taking over for Craig Ferguson as host of The Late Late Show.

A WRINKLE IN TIME is headed to the big screen with the director of Frozen.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES is also headed to the big screen.

JEFF GOLDBLUM cameos in a Jurassic wedding photo.

LEBANON: A brief humanitarian truce in Arsal fell apart after Islamist militants resumed attacks on the Army.

THE ISLAMIC STATE: Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.  Islamic State jihadists beheaded three fighters from a Sunni tribe that is battling the extremist group in eastern Syria, a monitor said on Tuesday.

AFGHANISTAN: An Afghan soldier killed a US general and wounded 14 others, including a US, German, and Afghan general, in an attack at a training facility in Kabul.

A PUPPY is allowed on the bed at last.

YAHOO SERIOUS sleeps with the fishes.

A STOLEN SNAKE fights crime.

WHEN MEGA-PENGUINS Roamed The Earth.

ARCADE FIRE covers Jane Addiction’s “Been Caught Stealing,” a little bit of Guns ’N Roses’ “Welcome To The Jungle," and Harold Faltermyer's "Axel F" for a little more than Twofer Tuesday.

SHARON VAN ETTEN stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

JOE HENRY stopped by WFUV Live for a chat and mini-set.

MIREL WAGNER advance streams When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day.

JJ advance streams V.

REDBONE: "Come and Get Your Love."

TOM PETTY talks to All Things Considered about Hypnotic Eye, his long friendship with George Harrison and why it pays to hear one's own music on a bad car stereo.

THE FLAMING LIPS cast a wide net for their Sgt. Pepper's tribute.

KATHLEEN HANNA also has a proposal for Miley Cyrus.

THE 50 BEST GRUNGE SONGS, according to Paste.

BIG BANG THEORY stars Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco have agreed to new three-year contracts in the Friends neighborhood of a cool million per episode.

SANDRA BULLOCK tops the new Forbes list of Hollywood's highest-paid actresses.

TARA REID was afraid that starring in Sharknado would ruin her career, whatever that was.

VINCE VAUGHN is in preliminary talks to play one of the three leads in the second season of True Detective.

ZOOEY DESCHANEL has split from her boyfriend of two years, Jamie Linden. For the record, it's not my fault.

ANWAN GLOVER, who appeared in the film 12 Years a Slave and the TV series The Wire, was stabbed and beaten at a D.C. nightclub early Sunday morning.

LIBYA: After weeks of delay, the new Parliament met today for the first time, in Tobruk, not in Tripoli as the Islamists had demanded. A number of Islamist lawmakers were not present at the meeting, but 158 out of 188 elected members of parliament did attend the Tobruk session, as well as representatives from the UN Security Mission in Libya, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

IRAN provided weapons technology to Hamas.

ISRAEL and HAMAS on Monday accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal meant to halt a bruising monthlong war that has claimed nearly 2,000 lives, raising hopes that the bloodiest round of fighting between the bitter enemies could finally be coming to an end. CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan about televised comments in which he claimed that Jews use Christian blood to make matzoh, a charge generally referred to as blood libel.

ISLAMIC STATE fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping across much of northern Iraq in June. There are reports of the IS executing dozens of Yazidis in northern Iraq.  Lebanon’s defense minister is accusing fighters with the Islamic State of executing a premeditated attack on Lebanese territory launched from inside Syria in the north.

MEERKAT PUP CAM at the Richmond Zoo.

A BEARDED DRAGON was taken into custody in Merrimack, NH.

A GIANT TORTOISE was found ambling down a street in suburban Los Angeles.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: A massive whale shark on a truck.

REAL ESTATE drops a video for the "Had To Hear" single.

TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS played three songs for Jimmy Kimmel.

MAVIS STAPLES played a cameo-rich set at the Newport Folk Festival.

SINEAD O'CONNOR returns with I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss.

SARAH JAFFE advance streams Don't Disconnect.

TUATARA: Peter Buck lends his guitar to “Even Demons Fall In Love,” a moody jazz fusion number.

GET ON UP! The James Brown biopic was largely an impressionistic collection of the best stories from the storied acreer of the R & B master, but well acted (esp. Chadwick Boseman as Brown) and filled with great stories (perhaps not always accurate) and music.  For example, JB and the Famous Flames getting bumpec from the headlining slot of the legendary T.A.M.I. Show in favor of the Rolling Stones, but still giving 18 minutes of pure emotion and energy.The part of the story only implied in the movie is that the Stones later regreted having to follow JB, which makes it all the more rich that Mick Jagger is a co-producer of Get On Up.

SPOON, esp. Britt Daniel, get a lengthy profile in the New York Times magazine.

JENNY LEWIS joins the ranks of rockstar winemakers.

THE ANTLERS did a Reddit Ask Me Anything.

DOUG GILLARD shares a Guided By Voices tour story.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Guardians of the Galaxy dominates the chart with 94 million, blowing through expectations and shattering the August record previously held by The Bourne Ultimatum (69.2 million).It's also the third-biggest debut of the year, behind Transformers 4 (which crossed the billion-dollar mark this weekend worldwide) and Captain America 2. It also exceeded in overseaes markets to the tune of 66 million. Not bad for a quirky space opera featuring one current A-lister (Zoe Saldana) in a role that's not voice-only. Lucy places a distant second with 18.2 million on a 58 percent drop (although with foreign markets largely untapped, this should end in the black). The debut of Get On Up shows with a well-deserved 14 million against a 30 million budget.  Hercules tumbles to the fourth slot with 10.7 million on 64 percent drop, clearly the biggest victim of the Guardians.  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes rounds out the Top 5 with another 8.7 million; its 447 million total is closing in on profitability.

ORLANDO BLOOM and NINA DOBREV: Caught canoodling at Comic-Con.

JENNIFER LAWRENCE & NICHOLAS HOULT are amicably dunzo again.

GHOSTBUSTERS 3: Paul Feig (Bridesmaids,The Heat) has emerged as the front-runner to direct, raising the possibility of female ghostbusters.

MICHAEL STRAHAN & NICOLE MURPHY broke off their engagement.

JENNIFER GARNER sparked pregnancy rumors Thursday.

CHERYL HINES married RFK JR at the Kennedy family compound on Cape Cod.

ISRAEL withdrew most of its ground troops from the Gaza Strip on Sunday in an apparent winding down of the nearly monthlong operation against Hamas that has left more than 1800 Palestinians and more than 60 Israelis dead.

UKRAINE: The growing confrontation between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine has derailed a recent accord that promised one of the most expansive collaborations ever between the countries' nuclear scientists, including reciprocal visits to atomic sites to work on projects ranging from energy to planetary defense.

SYRIA: The regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is holding 150K civilians in custody, all of whom are at risk of being tortured or killed by the state, the Syrian defector known as "Caesar" told Congress on Thursday.

GEEP: Half-goat, half-sheep, all adorable.

CATS rule the Niagara River's Tonawanda Island.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Transparent mice.

100 CHICKENS, joyriding with a drunk driver in Nebraska.