PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page.  I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant.  The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

GRIZZLY BEAR drops a video "Yet Again."

TAME IMPALA is advance streaming Lonerism.

FREELANCE WHALES is advance streaming Diluvia.

LORD HURON is advance streaming Lonesome Dreams.

OKTOBERFEST:  NPR has your streaming playlist.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself."

CORIN TUCKER talks to Pitchfork about loving "Portlandia" and Fiona Apple, listening to Skrillex, wanting to work with the Roots, and women's rights.

TWO GALLANTS: Adam Stephens talks to Drowned In Sound about the state of music, musical duos and more.

KRISTY MacCOLL: Will the re-release of her first four albums finally get the great British pop singer-songwriterher due?

LEE HAZLEWOOD: The A.V. Club suggests points of entry for new fans.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Hotel Transylvania tops the chart with 43 million, a record opening for September.  A showing that strong sets up an interesting confrontation with Tim Burton's Frankenweenie next wekend.  Looper places with a strong 21 million (against a 30 million budget), showing audiences were willing to give Joseph Grodon-Levitt and Bruce Willis a chance with a complex premise and a quirky director.  Last week's champ, End of Watch, shows with 8 million, which is gravy against its low budget, especially given that the film was financed in part by both the Regal and AMC theater chains. Trouble With the Curve collects another 7.5 milion, holding pretty well (as I suspected last week).  House At the End of the Street rounds out the Top Five with an 7.2 million, off 42 percent, but still a pretty good hold for a horror movie.  Below the fold, Pitch Perfect (No. 6), on 335 screens, outgrossed Won't Back Down (No. 10) on 2515 screens. Ouch.

LOOPER: Director Rian Johnson brings us a movie we have not seen a million times before.  I say that despite the trajectory of the plot being predictable -- a certain amount of that comes with the time-travel subgenre.  But Looper is some old skool sci-fi, in the sense that it clearly aims to have the audience think about an issue larger than the plot.  As such, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and a blonde Emily Blunt are given much more to do than fire their guns, though they do that a lot, to ultra-violent effect.

KRISTEN STEWART & ROBERT PATTINSON: Amid reports that they were back living together, moving vans were once again spotted outside the L.A. area home they once shared.  Their friends don't believe it will last.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER admitted to having an affair with actress Brigitte Nielsen — while still dating Maria Shriver.

MALIN ACKERMAN and her husband Roberto Zincone are expecting their first child together.

BRITNEY SPEARS' former friend Sam Lutfi claims drug-sniffing dogs found a secret stash of crystal meth in her house during the dark months before her infamous meltdown.

JOHNNY DEPP made a surprise visit to the Comanche Nation Fair in Oklahoma.

RYAN GOSLING isn't the number one choice to play Christian Grey in the movie adaptation of  Fifty Shades of Grey.

LIBYA: The US intelligence community is finally coming around to the conclusion that the Sept. 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was "a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," and that "some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda."

THE UNITED NATIONS: Muslim leaders were in unison arguing that the West was hiding behind its defense of freedom of speech and ignoring cultural sensitivities in the aftermath of anti-Islam slurs that have raised fears of a widening East-West cultural divide.

SYRIA: After several days of fighting, a rebel offensive in the city of Aleppo made little progress against more heavily armed government forces.

AFGHANISTAN: The top US military commander in Afghanistan is being transferred and another Marine general will take over the war effort early next year as the United States and its allies shrink their combat role against the still-potent insurgency.

A NEW CAT helps kick off Rocktober.

A DRUG-SNIFFING DOG now is the only certified member of the police force in the small eastern New Mexico town of Vaughn.

A NEW SPECIES OF FISH is not to be messed with.

THE GREAT PUMPKIN: Rocktober kicks off with a world record 1845.5 lb specimen.

PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page.  I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant.  The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

...and now, our regularly scheduled programming...

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

... with THE BYRDS! The turning of the seasons had me in the mood for this rare live threefer of "Turn! Turn! Turn!", "Bells of Rhymney" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", introduced by... David McCallum? There are more screaming girls, plus go-go dancers when they hit Shivaree for "All I Really Want to Do" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better."  There are even more dancers when they cover Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" for Shindig! on June 23, 1965, while I'm pretty sure that's Ed Wynn introducing "Chimes of Freedom."

REGINA SPEKTOR stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

THE WALKMEN played before a live studio audience in KUT's Studio 1a.

MOUNTAIN GOATS: John Darnielle recently dropped by WNYC Soundcheck to play a solo session at the piano, and to share the origins of his new music.

MOON DUO is advance streaming the psychedelic Circles.

PILOT works their "Magic" on TOTP.

PATTERSON HOOD sets the record straight about what his output means with PopMatters. And tells Straight.com that songwriting may have saved his life.

JOHN CALE talks to The Guardian about his love of hip-hop, why tangerines are more tempting than drugs, and why he doesn't feel bad about taking his anger out on pianos ... or chickens.

THE DECEMBERISTS' frontman Colin Meloy talks to the Salt Lake Tribune about his next children's book. (Thx, LHB.)

THE BEACH BOYS: Mike Love fires Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, and David Marks. So sadly predictable.

CUTOUT BIN: From Andy Williams to Teenage Fanclub, from Dubley Moore to Prince, from Los Lobos to Rose Royce, plus Waterboys, Glen Campbell, Nick Lowe, Susanna Hoffs 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: Hotel Transylvania, which is currenly scoring 47 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; Looper, which is scoring 92 percent; and Won't Back Down, scoring 31 percent.

SONS OF ANARCHY: Law enforcement sources believe Johnny Lewis was on PCP or meth when he allegedly killed a woman and then fell to his death. Seems like this story will keep getting worse and worse.

REESE WITHERSPOON is a mom for the third time.

TOM CRUISE: The ever-reliable Star magazine asks: Could Scientology's most famous ambassador be parting ways with the church?

AMANDA BYNES is reportedly going to great lengths to avoid Lindsay Lohan.

ERIN MORAN has hit some very unHappy Days; she's homeless and haggard.

HERBERT LOM, the versatile Czech-born actor who could play Napoleon Bonaparte or a witch hunter with equal aplomb but who was perhaps best known as Peter Sellers’s frustrated boss in the Pink Panther franchise (but was also great in the original version of The Ladykillers), died on Thursday at his home in London. He was 95.

THE UNITED NATIONS: Muslim leaders demanded international action to stop religious insults in a challenge to Pres Obama's defense of freedom of expression at the UN General Assembly.

TURKEY: Prime Minister Erdogan said he might be willing to negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has been fighting for a separate Kurdish state since 1984 in a conflict that has killed over 40000 people so far.

SYRIA: Several thousand rebels fighters launched a "decisive attack" for control of the city of Aleppo. The Al Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the double suicide bombing of the Syrian Army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday. More than 300 people died in Wednesday's fighting.

IRAQ: Al Qaeda in Iraq launched a suicide assault on the Tasfirat prison in Tikrit; one guard was killed. Security forces detained a senior terrorist in Baghdad. US special operations forces reportedly have deployed to Iraq to advise and train security forces.

LAMB & DOG, cuddling together...Mass hysteria!

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A militant, self-immolating rodent ignites a grass fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

PYTHONS tour Rome. No parrot sketch.

POACHERS KILL TIGER... in a zoo.

VAMPIRE SQUID: Garbage disposals of the ocean.

ANDY WILLIAMS, the affable, boyishly handsome crooner who defined both easy listening and wholesome, easygoing charm for many American pop music fans in the 1960s, most notably with his signature song, "Moon River," died on Tuesday night at his home in Branson, Mo. He was 84.

NO DOUBT is advance streaming Push and Shove via Spotify.

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

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

AMANDA PALMER & GRAND THEFT ORCHESTRA perform at WNYC Soundcheck.

HOSPITALITY dops a new single, "Monkey."

THE KINKS: "Victoria," live in Rhode Island, circa 1979.

MOUNTAIN GOATS: John Darnielle talks to TIME about songwriting for tortured souls.

BETH ORTON talks to the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Sugaring Season.

SUFJAN STEVENS talks to New York magazine about scoring a ballet.

SONIC YOUTH is still recovering stolen guitars 13 years later, with the help of fans.

KRISTEN STEWART & ROBERT PATTINSON have reconciled and are shacking up again, according to Us Weekly.

TOM CRUISE: His life alone.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS promises an unconventional memoir.

NICOLE SCHERZINGER denies swapping spit with Chris Brown inside a Hollywood nightclub, insisting the two were simply talking ... very closely.

RUSSELL BRAND hints at the real reasons for his split with Katy Perry.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH and... Liv Tyler?

JENNU "JWOWW" FARLEY is engaged.

THE "SNOOKI LAW" would allow New Jersey towns to regulate the shooting of reality TV there and impose conditions including requiring TV crews to pay for additional police officers needed to assure public safety.

LIBYA: The decision to withdraw the CIA team from Benghazi drew criticism from former officers, who called it an overly cautious response to the Sept. 11 attack, which killed two security officers, an information technology officer and the U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens.

YEMEN: President Hadi said the government is willing to negotiate with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula if the terror group disarms.

SYRIA: Two suicide bombs exploded outside Syrian Army headquarters in central Damascus, killing four guards. The rebel Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility. Forty people were massacred outside Damascus. French President Francois Hollande called on the UN to protect liberated zones.

PAKISTAN is developing non-strategic nuclear weapons.

ORPHAN APE & STRAY CAT are best friends...

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A reckless driver tells police he was under attack by a militant rodent.

A KILLER BEAR roams Fukushima, not Godzilla-sized... yet.

A BABY ELEPHANT born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park has been named Quinsa.

JOEY RAMONE: The posthumous video for "New York City" goes there, with a truckload of cameos.

BETTY LaVETTE is advance streaming Thankful N' Thoughtful.

GRIZZLY BEAR played DC's 9:30 Club; you can stream the whole gig on demand.

M83 played DC's 9:30 Club; you can stream the whole gig on demand.

TAKEN BY TREES is advance streaming Other Worlds.

ANDREW BIRD drops "Three White Horses" ahead of the eight-song Hands Of Glory.

REDBONE: "Come and Get Your Love."

THE RASCALS original lineup-Felix Cavaliere, Gene Cornish, Eddie Brigati and Dino Danelli-will reunite for their first public performances in over 40 years with "Once Upon A Dream," a combination concert/theatrical event produced and directed by Steven Van Zandt and lighting/projection wizard Marc Brickman.

THE SEA & CAKE: Sam Prekop talks to Pitchfork about growing up in Chicago listening to Captain & Tennille, Joy Division's mysteriousness, and appreciating the Beach Boys at 30.

BEACHWOOD SPARKS talk to MAGNET about the second time around.

FEIST wins the Mercury Prize, hides under a table.

LINDSAY LOHAN claims her recent arrest aggravated the the "walking pneumonia" she's been suffering from the last few weeks.

SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR and Freddie Prinze, Jr. welcome a second child.

BEYONCE pregnancy rumors run rampant. Tina Knowles dismisses them.

CHRIS BROWN fails a drug test, but won't be jailed for violating probabtion.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE reboots MySpace.

SIMON COWELL & CARMEN ELECTRA are soooo not a publicity stunt, no no no.

FARGO is coming to cable with help from the Coen Bros. And Tru-Coat.

THE MUMMY has the worst luck, really.

LIBYA: The US offered Libya help in securing weapons and cracking down on militias.

IRAN: President Obama warned the UN that the US will "do what we must" to prevent Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon, but did not indicate the timing or nature of such US action.  A senior commander of the Republican Guards said a cyber war was more dangerous to Iran than a physical war. President Ahmadinejad railed against Israel and the US in a speech at the UN.

IRAQ: The civil war in Syria is testing Iraq's fragile society and fledgling democracy, worsening sectarian tensions, pushing Iraq closer to Iran and highlighting security shortcomings just nine months after American forces ended their long and costly occupation here.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A militant rodent escapes from a kitchen.

STINK BUG INVASION: A potentially historic outbreak next year has federal officials scrambling to deploy a killer that will stop the Chinese import's march into 38 states so far.

SHEEP shock sports store shoppers in Austria.

KITTENS ARE CUTE. Rabid kittens, not so much.

BEST COAST covers "About a Girl," still one of my favorite Nirvana tracks.

NEW RELEASES from Dum Dum Girls, Jason Collett, Crine & the City Solution, Suzanne Vega and more are streaming this week at Spinner.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS advance stream Transcendental Youth.

THE SOFT PACK is streaming Strapped.

CHRIS COHEN (Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Deerhoof, Cass McCombs) advance streams Overgrown Path.

ROBIN PECKOLD put out a very limited edition of "White Lace, Regretfully," but the 'net de-rarifies things somewhat.

LOU REED jois METRIC on "The Wanderlust" and the VU classic, "Pale Blue Eyes," just in time for Twofer Tuesday.

BON IVER: Justin Vernon ponders abandoning the band. ALSO: His Radio City performance may still be streaming at that link today.

GREEN DAY: Billie Joe Armstrong enters rehab after a very public meltdown.

RICKIE LEE JONES talks to Weekend Edition about her new covers LP, and plays "Sympathy For the Devil."

AFGHAN WHIGS frontman Greg Dulli takes The A.V. Club on a tour through the back catalog.

LINDSAY LOHAN was rushed to the emergency room in NYC Sunday night, reportedly suffering from a bad lung infection.

SOFIA VERGARA had a wardrobe malfunction at the Emmys.

KANYE WEST reportedly has two sex tapes being shopped... is Kim Kardashian in one?

KATY PERRY has fallen head-over-heels for John Mayer, but as far as her friends and family are concerned the relationship is headed for disaster, according to RadarOnline.

BONNIE FRANKLIN has pancreatic cancer, a family spokesman announced Monday.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: BBC's Sherlock is set to lock horns with Daniel Craig as the next Bond villain... in 2014.

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR will be "closer to the source material than before," according to director Robert Rodriguez.

LIBYA: The attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.

IRAN cut off Internet access to Google search, YouTube, and Gmail. A government news agency said the reason was YouTube's refusal to take down an inflammatory movie trailer about the Prophet Mohammed. Others cited the use of social media in anti-government demonstrations.

IRAQ: The government is speeding up executions, citing security concerns; 96 people have been executed this year.

PAKISTAN: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed serious alarm over the recent spike in incidents of violence and intolerance against vulnerable groups across the country, saying the failure to address intolerance was contributing to gravity of the problem.

KEO the DOLPHIN gives birth.

A CROCODILE escaped from its cage during a flight between Brisbane and Melbourne.

THIS EEL? Oh, I slipped and fell on it, or something.

MINSK the SQUIRREL was rescued, served with the Belarussian Army, now rides shotgun in a taxi. He's a sleeper agent.