JOHNNY RAMONE memorial unveiled; Nicholas Cage, Vincent Gallo, Rick Rubin, Rod Zombie and others attend.

THE RASPBERRIES: Ken King will kill me for not noticing they were coming to Chicago (Actually, Ken will just be disappointed; Mark Flora would kill me).  They rawked, or power-popped, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

AWARDS SEASON: Ann Althouse simulblogged the Golden Globes. Drunken Stepfather has pictures of women in dresses. Dateline: Hollywood charts how red carpet coverage divides our country. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts announces its nominees for the BAFTA awards.

CLEAR CHANNEL: The radio giant wants to get into the digital music biz in the next year or two.

WILLIE NELSON is getting into the alternative fuel biz. Not for tax reasons, I hope.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES is showcasing some new material in concert; at least o­ne reviewer likes it.

MLK DAY AFTERWORDS:  Since MLK Day fell o­n the 17th this year, not many people noted that it was also the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, who saved approximately 100,000 Jews from slaughter during WWII.  He was o­ne of o­nly two people in history to be given honorary U.S. citizenship.  Anti-slavery activists used MLK Day to protest the U.N.'s failure to recognize genocide in Darfur.  Columnist William Raspberry thinks that half of King's legacy is being continued by Bill Cosby.

THE NEW YORK TIMES is partnering with a Swedish pornography distributor.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO joins a growing list of colleges with a student-funded sex magazine.  The debut issue was a hit.

CLINT EASTWOOD is ticked over the failure of Warner Brothers to fully back Million Dollar Baby, noting that the studio did not want Mystic River, either.  Great films that make a ton of money, directed by a legend... yeah, who would want that?

LILEKS: The first part of his Monday Bleat pays tribute to Ember's.  Having known a few people with the same types of memories Lileks has, I also thought of the post-Pate show jaunts to Perkins.

NANO-TERMINATORS: Scientists at UCLA have created tiny robots powered by rat muscle cells.

DEEP IMPACT: The NASA probe scheduled to shoot a copper projectile into a comet next July may rank with the Wright brothers in 1903, Sputnik in 1957 and the first human lunar landing in 1969. It may even save humans from extinction some day.

AL KHANSA is Al Qaeda's online women's magazine, with articles including dietary advice for suicide bombers and tips o­n how to "dominate the passions" before blowing yourself up.

HARVARD PREZ LARRY SUMMERS sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be o­ne reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers.  Not mentioned is that Summers was Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration; I suspect that had he been in the cabinet of a Republican, it would have been noted in these news accounts.

SERIOUS: A Romanian couple name their son Yahoo!

BRAD AND JEN WIRE: Jen moves in with her hairdresser; Brad will hawk Heineken during the Super Bowl; Jolie denies rumors; an animated GIF tells the tale.

FACIAL NEWS: Duprey Cosmetics signs a promo contract with Traci Lords.

IRAQ: Aussie blogger Arthur Chrenkoff regularly rounds up good news from Iraq, stating that "[w]hat follows is not the full picture of Iraq--merely that part of it you don't often see o­n the nightly news or the pages of newspapers."

KRISITN HERSH,  formerly of Throwing Muses, discovers it's bad timing to name your new band 50 Foot Wave and your new disc Golden Ocean.

ON THE PITCHFORK: An essay and review of those final Guided by Voices shows.

KATE STELNICK weighs 100 pounds, but polished off an 11 pound burger.  Now that's a thickburger.

BILL GATES IN TEEN BEAT?  The Monkey Methods blog seems to have dug up the photos [Warning: this site disclaims any liability for any eye damage cause by viewing said photos].

VODKAPUNDIT reluctantly notes that the new Battlestar Galactica is not terrible.  I reluctantly agree.

MLK DAY: The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't set out to be a great man. He was a Baptist pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, until he became involved in the the 382-day boycott of the city's bus lines. Soon thereafter, he was touring the country and assisting other communities in organizing themselves for peaceful civil rights demonstrations. His argument for civil disobedience is famously set forth in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," but he is probably most known for the "I Have a Dream" speech, given o­n August 28th, 1963, at the March o­n Washington.

THE GOLDEN GLOBES: Sideways, The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby and Desperate Housewives were the big winners. William Shatner also takes home a Globe for Boston Legal. Even though The Aviator took Best Drama, Scosese has to be worried about getting his Oscar with Eastwood taking Best Director. You have to like an award show where you can see Liam Neeson sitting with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth and Teri Hatcher thanking people for taking a chance on her when she was a big has-been.

NEKO CASE talked to Jim DeRogatis about her new live disc and her next studio effort.

CARL WILSON (not the late Beach Boy) takes a hard look at charity rock.

ANOTHER PATE INFLUENCE: The Lost Bands of the New Wave Era recently posted a brief profile of Dirty Looks, with a couple of links.

CANADIAN IMMIGRATION MINISTER JUDY SGRO resigns, not o­nly over allegations that she agreed to help a pizza shop owner avoid deportation in return for free food. Granted, a court ruled last year that pizza man Harjit Singh took part in a $1 million credit card scam with his three children. But the allegation followed prior claims that Sgro gave priority treatment to a Romanian stripper who worked o­n her campaign. She had to discontinue a program that fast-tracked work visas for other strippers.

HAS YOUR CHILD CONSIDERED A CAREER IN EXOTIC DANCING? Students at a Palo Alto middle school learned more than school officials ever expected when a recent "career day" speaker extolled the merits of stripping. About 16 students were told that strippers can earn as much as 250,000 dollars a year and that a larger bust -- whether natural or augmented -- has a direct relationship to a dancer's salary.

FORTHCOMING TRACKS FROM SON VOLT, RAVEONETTES, KINGS OF LEON, and more can be streamed from NPR's All Songs Considered

VIDEO PROMOTED THE RADIO STAR? Manchester band Happy Mondays has had a resurging sales due to reality TV. Meanwhile PopMatters examines "The O.C. Effect."

DAN DREZNER has been blogging everything from how a discussion between two old-style baseball scouts and two new-style sabermetricians relates to Hobbes' Leviathan, to o­ne of his areas of expertise, outsourcing -- or, in this case, homeshoring.

JANE GALT had a wonderful question of the day last Friday.

SEX BOMB, MY BABY, YEAH! The Pentagon rejected the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal said. The proposal was undoubtedly classified as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," but what would Flipper say?

I COULD SEE How this could give you a headache.

NEUROECONOMICS wants to use brain-scanning experiments to study how well economics' "rational person" theory comports with reality.

DELICIOUS MONSTER: This Seattle-based software company has cut out the middleman by officing in a coffee shop.

PSEUDO-DISNEY: Bangkok's largest theme park,"Dream World," looks eerily familiar. Meanwhile a Disney World fan saddened by the removal of "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" is creating a CGI version of the attraction.

THE JOY OF LAZINESS is a book with a point, but probably an overstated o­ne.

ONE STATE, TWO STATES, RED STATES, BLUE STATES: Berns Rothchild is selling blue bracelets that say "COUNT ME BLUE," a sign of her opposition to the reelection of President Bush; her father has invested in 5,000 "COUNT ME RED" bracelets. From another perspective, however, blue and red bracelets might mean the same thing.

SPACE.COM has pics from the European Space Agency's Hguyens probe of Titan. UPDATE: Open source processing of the Titan images is even cooler.

THE FBI never adequately investigated complaints by a fired contract linguist who alleged shoddy work and possible espionage inside the bureau's translator program, although evidence and witnesses supported her, according to the Justice Department's Inspector General.

GUIDED BY VOICES attempts "Sympathy for the Devil;" The Copy, Right? blog has it for download, though I must add that it's not from the Dec. 30th show to which Liza refers.

THE VILLAGE VOICE is not high o­n Decemberists' frontman Colin Meloy's Let It Be, the 16th entry of 33 1/3's series of essays o­n really important albums.

A PHOTOGRAPHIC HiSTORY OF MICHAEL JACKSON'S FACE, complete with commentary.

BRIGHT EYES opens its latest tour in Omaha before an appeciative hometown audience.

CULT OF THE iPOD: Mercedes-Benz USA, Volvo, Nissan, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari join BMW and Mini Cooper in offering iPod integration with their automobiles.

DARTH VADER AND MR. POTATOHEAD: Synergy!

ONE DAY LEFT o­n that eBay auction of a near-complete set of 45s issued by the Sub Pop Singles Club. As you're reading this, Craig O'Neill's ears are burning.

ON THE PITCHFORK: Modest Mouse announce its U.S. tour, Yo La Tengo plans a three CD career retrospective, Crooked Fingers to issue a new album. Also, a cover of Cream's "Politician," by Chris Stamey & Yo La Tengo.

MOURNING OF BRAD AND JEN SPLIT CONTINUES: The rumors involving Angelina Jolie now center o­n phone sex. PLUS: The tsunami issues a statement o­n the breakup.

WHY I LOVE LAWYERS (IRAQ edition):  A lawyer for the accused ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal addressed the charge of piling naked prisoners into pyramids by rhetorically asking, "Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?"  But the cheerleaders aren't forced to do so naked, as fair as I know.  If you have evidence to the contrary, drop me an e-mail, preferably with an attachment.

AMBER FREY autographs a copy of her book (i.e., the o­ne bearing her name) for New York Post scribe Andrea Peyser.  The favor is not returned.

THE GOVERNATOR'S SECRET WEAPON: Most people have not noticed that California Republicans now chair the most important committees in the House of Representatives: Appropriations (spending), Ways and Means (taxes, Social Security and Medicare), Rules (controls whiich bills go to the floor and the terms of debate), Armed Services and Homeland Security. A better return o­n the tax dollars California sends to DC certainly would help Ahnuld fix the state budget.

POLITICS allowed Polio to spread in Nigeria.

CRITICS' CHOICE AWARDS went Sideways, as the "little film that could" collected five awards, including Best Picture. Jamie Foxx took home Best Actor for Ray, whereupon he led the crowd in a call-and-response from "What'd I Say?"

THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD nominations have been announced.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES has sneaky product placement.

MR. BLACKWELL puts a desperate housewife at the top of his 45th Annual "10 Worst Dressed Women" list, while complimenting Teri Hatcher o­n her improvement. You could probably guess most of the fashion victims (e.g., Courtney Love, French Hotel), but placing Jessica and Ashlee Simpson in a tie was a nice touch that will avoid any sibling rivalry. The big surprise was number nine.

ASK METAFILTER rounds up MP3 blogs.AOL's music programming, much of it created specifically as o­nline content, has become the top free video-on-demand service o­n Time Warner's cable TV network.

LITTLE STEVEN'S UNDERGROUND GARAGE: Top 15 Records of 2004.  Garage records, that is... black gold... Texas Tea...

NANOPARTICLES will be reviewed by the FDA as a treatment for breast cancer. In a somewhat related story, The New York Times reports that "[h]uman milk is like ice cream, Valium and Ecstasy all wrapped up in two pretty packages."

DEMOCRATS' DIAGNOSIS: In the Village Voice, cartoonist Will Sutton hands out "The 2004 Wussies of the Year Award to Self-Hating Democrats." o­n the other hand, at NewDonkey.com, an unofficial weblog sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, disputes the notion that Clintonism is to blame for the party's fortunes.

MICHAEL MUSTO, the gossip columnist for the Village Voice, following Lloyd Grove's example, bans the heiress named after a French hotel from his column.

GUIDED BY VOICES: Reviews of their last show continue to roll in.  Here's o­ne in Filter magazine.

NEW ORDER: New disc. New details. New Musical Express.  Also a story detailing the planned biopic of suicidal Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

DAN'S THE MAN desperately dialing Jenny.

IF THERE'S A CELEBRITY TELETHON, could some mud-wrestling of George Clooney and Bill O'Reilly be far behind? At least they managed to kiss and make up the next day. But if I was George, I would make sure Bill doesn't bring a falafel to the show.

NOT FOOTLOOSE: A high school principal cancels the rest of this year's school dances after students refuse to stop "freak dancing." I guess the kids will have to dance in a barn across the tracks.

NATIONAL TREASURE: Sandy Berger, the unappetizingly-named former National Security Adviser, faces a grand jury investigation into his smuggling of top-secret documents from the National Archives. The probe began after archives staffers reported seeing Berger sneak the documents out his pants and socks while vetting Clinton-era items for 9/11 commission. And since the story runs in the New York Post, the headline is "JURY PROBES EX-BILL AIDE'S 'SOCKS DOCS'."

MICHAEL MOORE AND MEL GIBSON chummy at the People's Choice Awards? It's the New World Order, I tell you!