THE EDITORS, oft compared to Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Franz Ferdinand and early U2, play the title track from their second LP, "An End Has A Start," on the late night show with the lantern-jawed host.

THE PIPETTES:  As their first full US tour prepares to launch RiotBecki explains to Detroit's Metro Times how The Beatles ruined everything.  That's actually part of the band's standard PR, but the writer actually provides another argument in support of the claim (such as it is).

RILO KILEY played DC's 9:30 Club last night, so you should be able to stream the gig on demand via NPR.

THE PHIL SPECTOR TRIAL:  A judge declared a mistrial in the murder case against legendary pop producer Phil Spector after a jury announced for the second time in eight days that it was hopelessly deadlocked at 10-2.  The jury's inability to reach a verdict capped a five-month trial that played like a Hollywood film noir classic -- with a twist of the bizarre.  Also, a death threat against Judge Fiedler was posted on MySpace.

IRON & WINE:  Sam Beam (again) defends licensing his version of the Postal Service hit "Such Great Heights" for an M&Ms commercial: "I eat M&Ms... There's no reason to be hoity-toity about it if you eat them..."

PETER BJORN & JOHN stopped by The Current for a chat and some whistling you can stream on demand via MPR.

THE APPARITIONS break out the stop-motion animation for "God Monkey Robot," part of what the band calls its "spacey golden pop rock."  You can also stream it, along with three more, at ApparitionSpace.  Though I first ran accross 'em when Heather Browne posted "Electricity + Drums" last month, I thank Amber for reminding me to blurb 'em.

BLONDE ON BLONDE:  Just a day after that video of Bob Dylan & Jack White from Nashville, LHB turned up a great piece in the Oxford American about the recording of Dylan's classic double-LP in Music City.  And don't tell anyone you don't own Blonde on Blonde.

THE GO! TEAM:  Ian Parton and Ninja talk to the Scotsman, with Ninja claiming she'll do a solo album someday.

THE WHO are the subject of two movies, "Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who" and "Six Quick Ones," due Nov. 6 on DVD.  Producer Nigel Sinclair tells Billboard.com that "almost half of the (clips) have never been seen before in any context," including film shot by managers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert in 1964, when the Who were still known as the High Numbers.

PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE:  The supposedly sober supermodel is saying she's engaged to Kills guitarist Jamie Hince in part as a way of letting Doherty know it is over between them - forever.

BRITNEY SPEARS hides from the paparazzi in the bathroom at Quizno's subs.  Let's go to the video.

JESSICA & ASHLEE SIMPSON have not turned into Britney-scale trainwrecks, and creepy dad-manager Joe takes the credit.  But Ashlee's nose job?  He had no say about it.

NATALIE PORTMAN:  You've heard about her nude scenes in Hotel Chevalier -- the short film played at festivals before Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited?  Let's go to the video! (nsfw, natch.)

BRADGELINA:  The New York Observer observes the goings-on around Maddox Jolie-Pitt starting school at the Lycée Français de New York on East 75th Street.

PAM ANDERSON:  Friends are worried about her increasingly wild behavior, especially now that she's hanging with the French Hotel's sex-tape partner, Rick Salomon.  And she's telling pals alternately that she is either engaged or already married to Salomon, whom she's only known about six weeks.

THE FRENCH HOTEL, meanwhile, is headed to Rwanda as part of her new, postjail commitment to spotlight what she feels are important causes around the world.

TOM-KAT UPDATE:  Cruise plans to build a ten-million-dollar bunker to protect himself from the return of Xenu under his Telluride, Colorado, mansion, a source tells the ever-reliable Star magazine.

BRIDGET MOYNIHAN debuts her son John in OK! magazine, with no sign of baby daddy Tom Brady.

JOHN McTIERNAN, director of hit films including Die Hard and Predator, will spend four months behind bars for lying to the FBI about hiring the indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano.  And that's federal time, not L.A.-days-equal-minutes time.

KEVIN SPACEY becomes the latest actor to meet with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, though perhaps he was just getting tips for when he reprises his role as Lex Luthor in the next Superman flick.

TALES OF THE HOFF:  The E! channel is readying a a Ryan Seacrest-produced scripted comedy starring David Hasselhoff, following the dark, twisted trials and tribulations of an international icon as he navigates Hollywood and the world of dating after divorce.  Hasselhoff will play the title role in the project, which insiders said will have a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" feel.  Ooga-Chaka!

JESSICA BIEL is in talks to play Wonder Woman in Warner Bros.' all-star superhero film Justice League of America, reports Variety.  The movie is set to be directed by George Miller, who gave us both Happy Feet and the Mad Max movies.

CARTOON JIHAD:  In the interest of fairness, I must report that a Swedish artist's sculpture depicting Christ as a well-endowed dog vanished within hours of the sculpture being installed on a roundabout.  OTOH, it does not seem to have sparked international protest, arson and murder.

IRAN:  Robert Stengel writes for Time magazine about the swank dinner Pres. Ahmadinejad threw as part of "a media campaign that - in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention - would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience."  As Stengel then proceeds to regurgitate Ahmedinejad's talking points with not even a hint of skepticism, it seems to be working.

IRAQ:  A suicide bomber smashed his car into the house of a tribal sheikh in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, killing five people and wounding nine; it is not known if the sheikh was among the dead or injured.  This is near where AQI blew up nearly 400 Yezidis in August.  Hundreds of Iraqi police recruits, some of them coaxed back from the anti-US insurgency, graduated on Tuesday and pledged to help stabilize the volatile Abu Ghraib region just west of Baghdad.  Bill Roggio reports on three Baghdad neighborhoods thought to be among the last bastions of AQI in the capital.  The Council on Foreign Relations weighs in on the debate over casualty statistics, concluding (as I did earlier), that  the trend in the data as a whole is quite similar across sources.  Two Iraqi parliamentary blocs announced opposition to a plan aiming to subdivide Iraq on ethnic lines that passed the US Senate as a non-binding resolution.  While the US public and policy debate revolves largely around exit strategies and "redeployment," there is apparent consensus among European policy analysts that US troops should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

FIGHTING GIRAFFES!  Let's go to the video!

A 12-FT, 550 LB HAMMERHEAD was caught off the Central Florida coast.  Danny Ficocello pulled the shark in along Flagler Beach without needing a bigger boat.  Video at the link.

PUPPERWARE PARTIES:  The events are ringing up revenues for companies like Shure Pets, based in Chicago.

A CAT sparks a divorce by eating his owner's spouse's parrots.

A PYTHON is no substitute for payment at the Taco Bell drive-thru window in Round Rock, TX.

PYGMY GOATS are legal pets in Seattle thanks to the heroic efforts of the Goat Justice League.