KENNY ROGERS & THE FIRST EDITION: I could say that "I Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In," but you can probably already guess I was in a Big Lebowski kinda mood. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

MORE JAMES BROWN: Though I covered his death yesterday, he's legendary, so let's add a remembrance from saxophonist Maceo Parker at NPR, Glide magazine's compilation of James Brown's greatest quotes, USA Today's critic's guide to the best of JB and -- courtesy of WFMU -- six hours of streaming audio from a show that aired (ironically) o­n Christmas Day 2001.

SEASON of the LIST: Stereogum's Gummy Awards includes a Top 30 Albums list, Most Over-blogged bands of the year, and more. Other notable blogger lists include the Top 15 at Each Note Secure, the countdown at Harmonium, and the Top 15 at Skatterbrain.

THE YEAR AHEAD: Drowned in Sound takes a look at 2007's early releases, while Canada's Gazette lists Montreal bands you don't want to miss. Both have links to MySpace pages for the artists named.

MY SPACE: Speaking of which, New West ran a piece this month o­n how the social-networking site is changing the face of music in spots as remote as Missoula, MT. (Thanks, Coolfer.) Even after all these years, the mere mention of Missoula makes me think of the tragic death of Maddie Ferguson.

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS promise a "speaker blowing" LP this Spring. In the meantime, we can enjoy the channel-surfing clip for "Rings Around The World" again.

LOVE TRACTOR put out a Christmas album! Who knew!?

TV o­n the RADIO, whose The Return to Cookie Mountain is o­ne of 2006's best-reviewed albums, played the World Cafe last week, so you can stream an interview and performance via NPR.

THE DECEMBERISTS' Chris Funk tells Jambase that for all of the band's Victorian image and frontman Colin Meloy's vocabulary, Meloy's tone and style "probably come from a healthy dose of Robyn Hitchcock and The Replacements."

PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The troubled singer and supposedly sober supermodel are rumored to be getting hitched Friday in a civil ceremony in West London.

BRADGELINA: Jolie and Pitt spent Christmas handing out gifts to mostly Columbian refugee children in Costa Rica.

GERALD R. FORD, the 38th president of the United States, has died at age 93, according to a statement issued late last night by his wife, Betty Ford. The statement did not say where or when Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments including an angioplasty and a pacemaker implant in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

JAMES BROWN: Lawyer Buddy Dallas locked Tomi Rae Hynie out of the late singer's South Carolina home amid questions of whether she was legally married to Brown.

JACKO is suing his former accountants, claiming they withdrew millions from his bank accounts but did not properly pay his bills.

BRITNEY SPEARS has lost another publicist -- Sonia Muckle, a flack at Spears's label, who was serving as a temp after Spears dropped Leslie Sloane Zelnik. Muckle insists that her departure is totally unrelated to Spears' recent antics.

DENISE & HEATHER & RICHIE & CHARLIE (maybe DAVID): Denise Richards is denying recent rumors of her engagement to Richie Sambora.

GRINDHOUSE: A trailer for the upcoming Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double-feature is o­nline, with all of the guns, blood, hot rods and flaming motorcycles that you would expect. Plus, Rose McGowan with a machine-gun leg.

DICK CLARK: As health questions dog the o­nce-seemingly ageless mogul, Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest are trying hard not to look like they want to take his place o­n New Year's Eve.

FELICITY HUFFMAN is offering sex tips in her new book, A Practical Handbook For The Boyfriend.

THE TEN BEST TEN BEST LISTS at Best Week Ever are all pretty good, but my fave is "The 10 Best Celebrity Trends of 2006," which begins its countdown with "Acting All Gay With Jake Gyllenhaal." NTTAWWT.

THE 2006 HOT 100 Girls of Maxim magazine would be better described as women. Just a little something to get us to the end of the year.

THE 50 GREATEST CARTOONS, as voted by folks in the animation industry in 1994, with plenty of video found by Cityrag for 2006. While Daffy Duck is well-represented, some of the Disney clips have been yanked from YouTube for legal reasons, though you might find Donad Duck in "Der Fuehrer's Face" elsewhere o­n the 'net. And though I get why animation folks would name the first Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, I would pick "The Mechanical Monsters."

BRITAIN and FRANCE are both o­n high terror alert.

IRAQ: Parents of slain GIs traveled to Iraq, where they found the Kurds still welcome Americans as liberators. Iraq's highest appeals court upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days, which unfortunately may moot his second and subsequent genocide trials for crimes committed against the Kurds and ohters. Naturally, The New York Times is more concerned about Kurdish prison conditions. Meanwhile, British forces raided the HQ of a rogue police unit in Basra o­n Christmas morning to free prisoners who were about to be executed and showed signs of torture. Bill Roggio, still blogging from Camp Fallujah, writes that politicians and tribal leaders in Anbar province are very concerned that the Iraq Study Group report spells the end of the US presence in western Iraq.

IRAN has jailed about 600K people this year, was found by a US District Court to be partly to blame for a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, may be stealing local elections won by less extreme candidates, plans to announce that it has enriched uranium using 3,000 centrifuges, and looks to be trying to destabilize Afghanistan.

SOMALIA: Al Qaeda