APOSTLE OF HUSTLE:  BSS lead guitarist Andrew Whiteman's other band has a new video for "Cheap Like Sebastien," which is a nice way to ease into an autumnal Monday.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS played DC's 9:30 Club Saturday, with opening sets by Benjy Ferree and Emma Pollock.  You can stream all three sets on demand via NPR.

THE REPLACEMENTS:  I stumbled across an interview of Jim Walsh, author of The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting.  I loved this from the interviewer's intro: You should have been here, the walls of old venues like the 7th Street Entry seem to whisper to its younger patrons. You should have seen it.  I did, and you should have (nyah).

INGRID MICHAELSON:  You may think you haven't heard of her, but her MySpace page landed her songs all over TV --on Grey's Anatomy, One Tree Hill, Kyle XY, The Real World and in an Old Navy ad that put her album on the Billboard charts as an unsigned artist.  You can check out embedded video at DC's Express and Rolling Stone.

FIERY FURNACES:  Matthew Friedberger tells the NY Post about Widow City: "We thought we'd make not so much a '70s-sounding record, but a record full of '70s sounds, if that makes any sense."

THE PIPETTES are sporting new dresses and hair colors on the US tour.

SEAN RILEY and the SLOWRIDERS are from Portugal, but sound nothing like it.  Their video for "Moving On" popped up in my new custom news aggregator, which led me to the band's MySpace page, where their friends include T-Bone Burnett and Heavy Trash.  More songs streaming there, too.

NELLIE McKAY played the World Cafe Friday, you can stream the whole gig on demand via NPR.

THE SEX PISTOLS warmed up for their reunion tour in LA... and it was anarchic.

OiNK -- the music-sharing site busted by Interpol last week, will be succeeded by BOiNK, which will be launched by Pirate Bay, a movie-trading site.

AMY WINEHOUSE has spoken for the first time about the overdose which nearly killed her - and revealed she owes her life to husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

PETE DOHERTY avoided jail Friday and was instead given a suspended custodial sentence plus a fine on drug and driving offenses.

CONTROL:  I got out to see the Ian Curtis biopic on Saturday.  I managed to get five blisters on my feet and a bruised shin getting there, which I mention only because Control is the sort of film that still goes down well when one is in a certain amount of pain.  I find myself much in agreement with Frank Yang's review -- Anton Corbijn's film looks like his incredible photography set into motion, and no band is more apt for a black & white movie than Joy Division.  The primary cast -- in particular Sam Riley as Ian -- do a great job with the material they have; the re-creation of  Joy Div's performances are downright eerie.  I also think the movie performs a service by placing Curtis and his story in a real and generally pedestrian reality, as Joy Division records always sounded to me as though they took place in some other more epic and abstract realm.  The main flaw in the film (imho) may have been the problem in real life, which is that Ian Curtis was so self-isolated offstage that we rarely get a sense of his inner workings outside the songs.  Perhaps that's all there was, though outside reading suggests there was more to the man.  Based on the film alone, it's hard to see why Ian and Deborah married, though it seems part of Ian's pattern to have pursued his goals, only to remain unsatisfied when he reached them.  It is also sad that the same people who seemed so protective of Ian with regard to his epilepsy come off here as so unprotective after his first suicide attempt.  And it appears that in reality, Factory label founder Tony Wilson didn't see it coming, even if Ian's other love, Annik Honore, did.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:  Saw IV topped the pre-Halloween box office with 32.1 million -- about what its predecessors made and better than analysts expected.  Steve Carell did well to open Dan In Real Life with 12 million on less than 2000 screens.  30 Days Of Night took a big 58% drop, but landed in third place with 6.7mil, but has made back 27 of its 30 mil production budget.  The Game Plan took in another 6.28 mil, for a total of 77 mil so far. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? rounded out the Top Five with another 5.7 mil, for a total of 47.3mil to date.  Michael Clayton dropped to sixth place with 5mil, for a total of 28.7 mil. Gone Baby Gone was off a mere 29% and took in 3.9 mil.  The Comebacks dropped to eighth with 3.4 mil.  We Own The Night dropped to ninth with 3.3mil, but has made 25mil on a 21 mil budget, Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas 3D rounds out the Top Ten with 3.3 mil.  Rendition fell out of the Top Ten in its second weekend -- ouch.

SONDRE LERCHE talked to Cinematical about his score for Dan In Real Life, among other things.  You can stream a few tracks via LercheSpace.

DAVID COPPERFIELD:  A Seattle federal grand jury is investigating allegations by an aspiring model who said she was raped, assaulted and threatened by the magician at his private island in the Bahamas in July.  Details at the link.

WITHERHAAL GYLLENSPOON showed up as a couple -- albeit in disguise -- at Kate Hudson's Halloween party.  Reese seems embarrassed.

KEITH RICHARDS, LORD of the UNDEAD, joined 15K protesters marching against possible cuts in services at a hospital near his country home.  Wearing a skull-patterned scarf.  Really.

THE McCARTNEYS:  The Daily Mail looks at how the tables have turned on Heather Mills in her divorce battle with Sir Paul.

BRITNEY SPEARS:  The verdict is still out on whether Britney will get joint custody of her kids back.  The pop tart looked extremely distraught during breaks in Friday's hearing and cursed at the press while returning to court crying.  Fed-Ex's new girlfriend, Nicole Narain, shoveled the dirt on Spears to the uber-reliable News of the World.

BRADGELINA is 2007's most popular celebrity costume, according to a survey.  I'm guessing the costumes include four or five baby dolls.

ELLEN DeGENERES has her rep denying rumors of trouble with girlfriend Portia de Rossi.  But her emotional breakdown over her adopted mutt boosted ratings for her daytime talk show at least ten percent.

THE FRENCH HOTEL's first major post-jail philanthropic effort - her planned trip to Rwanda - has been postponed by the "restructuring" of the  foundation that organized it.  Meanwhile, employees at a Toronto adult video store claim the heirhead stormed into their establishment and demanded posters promoting her infamous sex tape be removed.

ORLANDO BLOOM will not be charged over the accident he was involved in on October 12 that injured his two passengers.

OWEN WILSON was inteviewed by Wes Anderson for MySpace's Artist on Artist series, but the media -- from ABCNews to TMZ -- was miffed that the duo avoided Wilson's recent suicide attempt.  This seems dumb at two levels.  First, the series is designed to promote movies -- and The Darjeeling Limited's business did jump on Saturday.  It's not meant to be serious journalism.  Second, this means some media outlet can still try to get Wilson to talk about the suicide attempt; why should they be mad they werten't derived of a potential scoop?

WILLIAM. SHATNER. is. miffed. that. he. is. not. in. the. Star. Trek. reboot. movie.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG compared the post-9/11 US to Nazi Germany on The View Friday.  I guess I missed the part where the US built enormous extermiantion camps for Muslims.  And the part where Jews flew airplanes into German buildings.  Maybe that's Whoopi's theory on the Reichstag fire.

MIDEAST MYSTERY:  Last week, a company released a satellite photo showing that the main building of a possible nuke facility in Syria was well under way in September 2003 - four years before Israeli jets bombed it.  The NYT thinks this raises questions "about whether the Bush administration overlooked a nascent atomic threat in Syria while planning and executing a war in Iraq, which was later found to have no active nuclear program."  Or maybe Iraq taught them a lesson about not preemptively bombing things unless you're really, really, really sure about the threat.  Maybe the US asked Israel to provide photographs, physical material and soil samples from the site before greenlighting a raid.  Can the NYT really be critical of that?

IRAQ:  Iraqi Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar says overall violence in Baghdad is down 80 percent over the same period in 2006; overall terrorist attacks are down 59 percent, and assassinations are down 72 percent.  US Lt. Gen. Odierno says the movement toward peace that began in mostly Sunni areas is moving into Shiite areas as well.  Today, US forces will turn over security to Iraqi authorities in Karbala province, a Shiite region in south.  However, radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could end a ban on his militia's activities because of rising anger over US and Iraqi raids against his followers.  In Anbar, things are quieting enough that the Marines are working on garbage collection.

IRAQ and the MEDIA:  Your opinion of conditions in the Sadiyah neighborhood may vary, depending on whether you read the Army's Public Affairs release, US News & World Report, or the Washington Post.  Taken together, I think the message is that there is some progress there, but that unit morale will vary from day-to-day, particularly as the US gets down to the more intractable situations.

IRAQ and the MEDIA II:  The New Republic finally decided to post a response to the latest round of questions about its "Baghdad Diarist," Pvt. Scott Beauchamp.  It says the same things they have been telling other media.  TNR does not tell its readers about the pressure TNR Editors and Beauchamp's wife (then a TNR staffer) put on Beauchamp, claiming instead that they were only interested in the truth and that it's the Army pressuring him (though the penalty for making a false statement to the Army still existed when he supposedly told hs wife he backed the stories).  They continue to claim others back Beauchamp's stories, when they do not corroborate them.  TNR does not tell its readers that the official investigative report states that Beauchamp admitted he was not an eyewitness to at least two of the stories he claimed to have witnessed.  So either the Army is lying in its report or Beauchamp (or his wife) is lying to someone.  What we do know is that TNR is not telling the whole story to its readers.

TWO CATS, just sittin' around talkin'.

THE GREAT AMERICAN COOTER FESTIVAL in Citrus County, FL is shrouded in controversy.

DOG SHOOTS MAN:  In Tama, IA, no less.

A SIX-FOOT LONG CROC  has been found in a drain in the center of Cairns, Australia,  Click for the byline.

GIANT SEA SLUGS that squirt toxic ink invade Britain.