DARLENE LOVE's final "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)" for Letterman.

THE NATIONAL plays a mini-set on KEXP.

BENJAMIN BOOKER plays a mini-set on KEXP.

LUKAS NELSON & PROMISE OF THE REAL stopped by World Cafe.

FIRST AID KIT covers Lorde's "Perfect Places."

YO LA TENGO backs MICHAEL SHANNON & FRED ARMISEN on Suicide's "Ghost Rider."

PAUL McCARTNEY is vlogging on Instagram.

THE 30 BEST TOM WAITS SONGS, according to SPIN.

MICRODISNEY is reuiniting after 30 years. My Mom was a fan.

WOLF ALICE is profiled Under The Radar.

THE BEST SONGS of 2017, per Said The Gramaphone.

LARGEHEARTED BOY's Favorite Albums of 2017.

THE GUMMY AWARDS results are announced.

T.J. MILLER (Silicon Valley) is accused of hitting and sexually assaulting a woman while in college.  He denies the claim.

MATT DAMON thinks the men in Hollywood who aren't sexual predators should be talked about more.

LADY GAGA is set for a 100MM Vegas run.

THE OFFICE: Returning to NBC?

JOHN LEGEND has been tapped for the title role in NBC's live staging of Jesus Christ Superstar, set for Easter Sunday. 

EVA LONGORIA and husband Jose Baston are expecting their first child together.

HEATHER NORTH, the longtime voice of the danger-prone Daphne Blake on TV's Scooby-Doo, has died.  She was 71.

SEVEN THINGS All Corgi Owners Know.

THE COMEDY WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS for 2017 are announced.

A COCKERELL, chased by a man with a golf club.

GOATS perform all your holiday favorites.

KIM WILDE drunkenly warbles "Kids In America" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" on the subway.

STARS stopped by WFUV's Studio A for a chat and mini-set.

HANSON plays a Holiday Tiny Desk Concert.

LO MOON plays a mini-set at KXT.

AVEY TARE (Animal Collective) shares a video for “Ms. Secret.”

OASIS gets a two-hour discussion on Political Beats with columnist Stephen Miller, which includes a very funny bit on Noel editing his own Wikipedia entry.

MICHAEL McDONALD talks to World Cafe about how he (and his kids) feel about having impressions done of his voice on late-night television, and being parodied in a web series about yacht rock.

JASON ISBELL & AMANDA SHIRES talk to The Record about speaking up.

AQUARIUM DRUNKARD's Year in Review 2017.

ANNA KOURNIKOVA & ENRIQUE IGLESIAS are first-time parents after a secret pregnancy.

JOHNNY DEPP and his former lawyers are suing each other.

THE LAST JEDI: Skywalker unlike the galaxy has never seen. (Spoilers.)

RIDLEY SCOTT reveals how Kevin Spacey was erased from All the Money in the World.

PARAMOUNT carves out territory for four tentpoles through 2021.

THE 20 WORST FILMS of 2017, according to The A.V. Club. 

TITANIC, 20 Years Later.

A CHRISTMAS STORY: Zack Ward, who played bully Scut Farkus in the classic film,talks about the royalty checks.

A STRAY CAT broke into a zoo and befriended a lynx.

SNOW MONKEYS & SIKA DEER, getting it on... mass hysteria!

WRANGLER, he Yellow Labrador who joined the Today show in 2016 to help educate the public on service dogs, is now joining a K-9 unit focused on detecting explosives. 

SHEEP. MARY tussle over baby Jesus in children's pageant gone hilariously awry.

SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS are dreaming of a "White Christmas."

RAYN ADAMS & SHHAKEY GRAVES played Austin City Limits.

FOO FIGHTERS played a Christmas Medley on SNL.

THE DECEMBERISTS & LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA share “Ben Franklin’s Song.”

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:  The Last Jedi, to no one's surprise, topped the chart with a whopping 220MM.  That's signigficantly less than the 247MM debut of The Force Awakens, but was also to be expected from the mddle film of a trilogy that lacks Han Solo.  There's some drama in the gap between the critics on Rotten Tomatoes and the fairly bad public score there. However, TLJ also got an "A" CinemaScore and high marks from other similar surveys, so it will be interesting to see how this one stands by year's end.  Ferdinand placed with13.2MM, which seems like a terrible start until you remember that it was up against Star Wars; it still has a chance to find an audience over the core holiday season.  Coco, last weekend's champ, showed with 10MM, which seems good given both TLJ and Ferdinand competitng for family dollars.  Wonder took the fourth slot with 5.4MM, edging past Justice League's 4.2MM.  BTW, The Last Jedi's opening weekend beat Justice League's entire run in North America so far. Ouch.

PETER JACKSON claims Harvey and Bob Weinstein made an effort to blacklist Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino from starring in the Lord of the Rings franchise in the late 1990s.

MATT DAMON talks about Harvey Weinstein and sexual harassment.  Minnie Driver isn't having it.

BEN AFFLECK is continuing treatment for alcohol and substance abuse.

KELLY CUTRONE accuses Russell Simmons of attempted rape.

MATT LAUER's secret relationship with a TODY production assistant.

GENE SIMMONS is accused of “unwanted, unwarranted sexual advances” in a new lawsuit.

CAROLINA PANTHERS owner Jerry Richardson put his National Football League franchise up for sale, hours after the league said it had taken over an investigation into allegations of workplace misconduct.

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with AIMEE MANN's CHRISTMAS CAROL (profanity warnings): Part One has your Scrooge-y set-up with Michael Penn. Part Two features The Office's John Krasinski. Part Three has Michael Cera. Part Four has John C. Reilly.

CURTIS HARDING brings the soul to WFUV's Studio A.

EMILY HAINES stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set.

RAG'N'BONE MAN also stopped by World Cafe.

S. CAREY shares “Still, Still, Still” (billed as a Christmas carol).

PURLING HISS shares “My Dreams."

TOM WAITS gives a reading of a "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis."

THE TOP 40 POP SONGS of 2017, according to Stereogum.

BLANK PLACE: Richard Hell after Lexington. (Thx, Katherine)

THE SUSPECTS: Steve Wynn and Kendra Smith’s band before the Dream Syndicate.

WHAM!: The inside story of "Last Christmas."

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases are Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which is currently scoring 93 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; and Ferdinand, which is scoring 80 percent. Fairly sure the Jedi will win the weekend.

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, the eighth installment of the venerable space opera, may require a brief revisitation of theprior installment, The Force Awakens. I get the impression it didn't age well for many as essentially a remix of elements from the original trilogy and as featuring Rey as a "Mary Sue" character so instantly powerful that she efectively reduced the stakes in that film's climactic lightsaber battle.  I get those arguments, though I tended to think that there was probably a corporate imperative to assure people these new films were going to be more in the style of the originals than like the prequels, and because I thought Luke Skywalker was himself a bit precocious in Episode IV (though the point about that last fight in TFA is well-taken).  This was my basic mindset entering the theater.  On the other side, I can say that The Last Jedi does a better remix; some of the elements -- drawn primarily from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi -- are obvious, but some are more subtle and those tend to work better.  And Rey is less of a Mary Sue insofar as the second act of the trilogy (in an echo of TESB) finds her challenged more on an emotional and personal level from both Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren.  Poe Dameron gets a better arc in this picture, most likely because he was supposed to be killed early in the last installment and was grafted onto later versions of that script.  Finn continues to frustrate me insofar as there is an interesting idea to be explored in his character that the scripts have not executed well.  Mark Hamill gets a great turn as Luke; some may wonder if they stretched his demeanor a bit too much, but I'm forgiving given the lapse of time and how well Hamill delivers. I really can't say much non-spoilery about Leia Organa, save to say that Carrie Fisher's final performance is much improved over TFA (when she hadn't acted in a while).  Overall, the script is perhaps not as viscerally satisfying as some of the other installments -- and that's even adjusting for the inherent problems of a second-act movie.  Some of the remixed ideas are in fact weaknessses that get imported here.  For example, I don't think it's very spoilery of me to note that TESB -- considered by many to be the best of the franchise-- had a timeline does not withstand rigorous scrutiny.  Indeed, the second act of this second act gets into a sublot that really didn't do much for me (this is a big part of my Finn frustration).  And it only occurs to me now, decades later, that one of the subtexts of that film and this one is really a rather odd one for an all-ages space opera.  I can't tell you what it is here, but it goes from subtext to text in Poe's story here.

MARK HAMILL recalls the shock of finding out about Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford's secret affair, and more.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN is accused of sexual misconduct by three more women, anonymously.

HARVEY WEINSTEIN "does not recall" pressuring Salma Hayek to do a gratuitous sex scene with a female costar in Frida.

ESPN may not be the most female-friendly workplace, to put it mildly.

DISNEY WANTS TO BUY FOX: What does that mean?

THE DARKEST HOUR: Inside Gary Oldman's transformation into Winston Churchill.

DWAYNE "THE ROCK" JOHNSON  is actually considering running for President of the United States in 2024.

AWAY FROM A MANGER, a cow flees down I-95.

PET HOARDING: An animal group has removed more than 100 cats from a central Ohio home where 55 other felines were found dead.

SHELTER DOGS may be forced into Veganism in Los Angeles.

ASBESTOS THE KITTY is living the good life after falling through his new owner’s ceiling.

PAT DiNIZIO, who as lead singer and songwriter for the New Jersey band the Smithereens blended pop, rock and New Wave music for such hits as “Blood and Roses, "Behind the Wall of Sleep," “Only a Memory,” ” “In a Lonely Place,” and “A Girl Like You,” died Dec. 12. He was 62. The band announced the death on Facebook but did not disclose any other details. Here's the local angle from NJ.com.  A 2011 concert was re-upped by World Cafe.  My personal fave still may be "Strangers When We Meet," particularly the Beatle-esque counterpoint during the middle-eight.

BIG THIEF played a full set at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, Mass.

MARGO PRICE plays from the 9:30 Club balcony for NPR Music's 10th anniversary.

CIGARETTES AFTER SEX play a Tiny Desk Concert.

U2 covers Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On."

CAR SEAT HEADREST returns with the 13-minute "Beach Life-In-Death."

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD share two new singles, “Beginners Luck” and “All is Known.”

SHE & HIM get animated for their take on "Baby, It's Cold Outside," which Zooey originally sang in Elf.

THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME inductees include Bon Jovi, The Cars, Dire Straits, The Moody Blues, and Nina Simone.  The snubbed include The Zombies, Radiohead, the MC5, Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, LL Cool J, Judas Priest, the Meters, Link Wray, Rufus with Chaka Khan, and J. Geils Band.

THE 20 BEST ALBUMS of 2017, according to Pitchfork.

THE 100 BEST SONGS of 2017, according to NPR Music.

THE FLAMING LIPS' Wayne Coyne reviews 2017.

YO LA TENGO returned to their Hanukkah tradition at the Bowery Ballroom, starting with a reworking of KISS.

HARVEY WEINSTEIN:  Salma Hayek writes of his sexual misconduct and threats to kill her.

RUSSELL SIMMONS is accused of rape by three women.

TAVIS SMILEY has been suspended by PBS after allegations of misconduct.

MORGAN SPURLOCK on Wednesday admitted to a history of sexual misconduct that reaches back to his college days.

THE SAG AWARDS nominations went to these folks. Congrats.

KIRSTEN DUNST & JESSE PLEMMONS are expecting their first child together.

DWAYNE "THE ROCK" JOHNSON an Lauren Hashian are expecting their child (his third).

JOHN STAMOS is going to be a dad at 54.

J-ROD: Marriage rumors.

A MONKEY ON THE LAM in Tokyo dodges capture for over a week.

RUDE TIT steals squirrel's nut.

GIANT PENGUIN BONES have been dug up in New Zealand.

FRANCESCA THE HIPPO was welcomed to the Oklahoma City Zoo by Gayla Peevey, who sang the novelty hit, "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" in 1953.