>> Oh my fuck, speaking of new musical hotness, who wants a thirty-track live David Bowie DVD? I do! I do! (Thanks, Caroline -- we're even on the R.E.M. now ;-D)

>> Oh, and while U2 check under the sofa for their album, you may be pleased to know that R.E.M.'s new one is pretty much in the can, and will likely be released on October 5th in the U.S. It doesn't have a name yet, but the first single will be called "Leaving New York" and will be released commercially in late September -- so you may start hearing it on the radio -- if the radio cares about R.E.M. anymore -- as early as next month (i.e. August). It's reportedly a piano-led "love song," and one of the XFM DJs said it sounds a bit like "Drive." I'm getting a really, really good vibe about this record, and I haven't even heard a note of it yet... then again, the odds that I would flat-out hate an R.E.M. album are desperately low.

There's also about a million pounds of great Twilight Singers news, too -- She Loves You is due out August 24th; they're planning both a new album of originals and another covers disc (with "Ain't Nobody"!) in 2005; and a live DVD is due in September. I'm freaking out here!

To celebrate all this great news, I've updated my upcoming releases listing in the Music section.

>> So yes, The Curiosa Festival was a fantastic last-minute decision. It was hot as balls outside, but the brand-new Ford Amphitheatre (Thanks, ClearChannel! Sigh) was shady and very nice, and the festival itself was very smoothly managed -- there were no delays on either stage and the acts began within moments of their predecessor's finish, so it was possible to see everybody if you had the stamina to bounce back and forth between the first and second stages. Since we had pit tickets, Paul and I just parked ourselves in front of the mainstage (ended up in a pretty great spot, just off stage left and only three people back) and sat through Mogwai, who bored us to tears; The Rapture, who blew us the fuck away (I'd already seen them two years ago, right when they'd first recorded "House Of Jealous Lovers," and was only a tiny bit impressed -- at this show, though, they were really on, and looked like they were having the time of their lives -- we certainly were watching them); and Interpol, who had a very sharp set -- I was glad to finally get a chance to see them, since I'd stupidly skipped a couple of opportunities in New York for fiscal reasons. I don't remember the Rapture's set well enough to post it in its entirety, but I do know they played "Out Of The Races...," "Heaven," "Echoes," "Sister Savior," and "The Coming Of Spring," and ended with "House..." It all sounded fantastic, and I might just pick their album up after shrugging it off shortly after its release. Interpol's set I'm summoning from memory, so it might be slightly dicked up in terms of sequence, but:

• "Obstacle 1"
• "Say Hello To The Angels"
• "Slow Hands"*
• "NYC"
• "Evil"*
• "Roland"
• "Leif Erikson"
• "Narc"*
• "PDA"

Asterisks, of course, mean songs from their new album, which I am now looking forward to.

Then, of course, at 9:15 came The Cure, and they were indeed the hotness (happily enough, there was a cool breeze that started when Interpol came on, so it was downright pleasant in the pit for the Cure's set). They looked, and sounded, great -- between Interpol and The Rapture I'd almost gotten my $65 worth before they even walked onstage, but I certainly had by the time "Fascination Street" was over. My only complaint would be that the pit was not the ideal place to watch ten-minute "why don't I repeat this line and this guitar part once or thrice" epics like "The Promise" -- if I'd had the space to stretch my legs, look around, and savor the evening I could've been happy with it, but in the pit I wanted something a little bouncier. Of course "real" Cure fans would never admit to such a desire. I checked my setlist against this page, where hardcore Cure fans complain about the "pop nightmare" that was the West Palm Beach show -- though looking at that setlist, I think I would've freaked out with glee. I don't think I know of any band whose fans hate good songs as much as Cure fans hate good songs. But anyway, here's the Cure's set, with the songs that blew me away most in bold:

• "Lost"
• "Labyrinth"
• "Fascination Street"
• "Before Three"
• "A Night Like This"
• "The End Of The World"
• "Lovesong"
• "Inbetween Days"
• "Taking Off"
• "Jupiter Crash"
• "Pictures Of You"
• "Lullaby"
• "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea"
• "A Strange Day"
• "One Hundred Years"
• "Never"
• "The Promise"

Encore:

• "M"
• "Play For Today"
• "A Forest"

The Seventeen Seconds encore is a cute idea, but I'd have paid $10 more for any of the songs they played in their West Palm Beach encore. Oh well, I got to see them play "A Night Like This" and I can die content. I like the gloomy Cure stuff too, it just gets a little repetitive next to the little pop gems they've sprinkled their canon with, and I really wish they didn't catch so much shit for having the cojones to write strong songs in both styles. Though I will say, the morose songs on the new album sound very paint-by-numbers and "Well, let's give them what they want"-esque, with a couple of exceptions like "Lost" and "Labyrinth." Robert Smith does need to have an injunction filed against him that prevents him from using the words "always" and "never" when songwriting, however. Go through the lyric sheet for The Cure and count them, and I promise you'll laugh out loud.

Catty comments aside, it was a great, great show, probably nudging its way into my all-time Top Ten, and I'm very glad we made the last-minute ticket grab that we did; I'd always been intending to go but when I saw the good seats gone I let it slip away from me. Thanks to whoever it was at Ticketmaster (God, I'm just full of good words for ClearChannel tonight, aren't I) that released those tickets this week. If the tour's going to be anywhere near you, go see it -- and that goes double for my NYC folk on July 31st, since you get to see Interpol and The Rapture get a hometown boost. I'd've died to see Interpol playing "NYC" at sunset on Randall's Island...

>> If you ever needed a reason why the Patriot Act was a terrible goddamn idea, then here it is: A Stargate SG-1 fan has had his computers destroyed and his life thrown into turmoil because he ran a fansite -- and the FBI are prosecuting him under a clause of the "no, seriously, it's just for terrorism" Patriot Act for criminal copyright infringement.

I hate using old chesnuts, but it remains perfectly true: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more power you give to the people who surveil us, the more corrupt -- and incompetent -- they will get (The FBI's suit against the fan in question has attributed him a Social Security number and e-mail address that are not his).

(Via Boing Boing)

(EDITED to include the link I originally forgot -- and yes, "surveil" is a word)

>> Hurrah! Last-minute release of more general-admission pit tickets = Paul and I going to see The Curiosa Festival tomorrow night in Tampa. Let's get our mope on! (And if you're in the greater Tampa area, hit up Ticketmaster -- they just released tickets in most all of the seating zones! Earlier this summer I got nothing but nosebleeds when I checked, but today -- bonanza.)

>> More of the same-old same-old going on at the moment, which is both a blessing and a curse -- this is the point at which I should be laying the groundwork for kick-starting my return to a life of forward motion, but there are a bunch of problems in the way that I'm not going to be able to resolve too quickly. So I'm just twiddling my thumbs and getting more and more anxious that I'm about to get knocked off the rails.

Yeah, I know, that doesn't make any sense.

Mainly I just work at the summer camp, play X-Men: Next Dimension, and read. (Just finished Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver and have just moved on to The Confusion). Last night we saw The Bourne Supremacy and it was an enjoyable diversion for two hours (and Matt Damon is hot). Past that, what do I have to offer you? Very little, I'm afraid...

>> OK, off to Connecticut to see family for the weekend; not that you'd notice, since I've been posting pretty sporadically anyway.

Do me a favor and keep an eye open this weekend for leaked U2 tracks, OK? Gmail me some copies if you find 'em.

>> KYLIE MINOGUE TO GO INTO STUDIO WITH SCISSOR SISTERS?!?!?

Don't go breaking my heart, guys. Make this actually happen.

>> Three MP3 samples from the new Twilight Singers covers record, She Loves You. Yum. I've been on a serious Greg Dulli kick ever since I finished off the Afghan Whigs album catalogue the other day...

>> I almost forgot -- tonight is (almost definitely) the night!

(All my Jeopardy! dorks know what I'm talking about. Everyone else, go about your lives as usual.)

He'll quit when he cracks the mil, right? Right? Somebody please say "Right."

>> Wow, the All Music Guide redesigned! And it's hideous! And it keeps timing out! And it's difficult to scan through and hides the reviews behind click-through links! What a fucking terrible redesign! Wow!

All I wanted to do was read the reviews of the five albums I bought the other day (ahem... I'm being ever so fiscally responsible these days). Is that so wrong? (And FYI, they are the Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen, David Bowie's Scary Monsters, both Depeche Mode singles collections, and the Replacements' Pleased To Meet Me.)

>> U2log.com: Spidey Sings

You absolutely, positively have to be shitting me.

In other comic-book adaptation news, Halle Berry will not appear in X3. That's not all that sad, because she was very bad indeed as Storm, but it was also a very badly written part (indeed). They Say that Christina Milian is in talks to replace her, but that sounds kind of fucking ridiculous too. Just cast Angela Bassett and have done with it! Damn you! Also, Jessica "Chris Hates What You Did To 'Angels' And Also Thinks You Look Like A Golden Retriever" Simpson might appear as Dazzler. Prepare your Anti-Retardation Devices now.

>> So of course I went and saw Spider-Man 2 on opening night last night. But I have, in fact, decided that it was about fifty percent awesome and fifty percent retarded. Some of its retardation was good, and some of its retardation was awful.

For starters, it was slow. Really slow. There were only three action sequences in the film -- and they were all super-duper hot -- but by about the fifth or sixth time somebody gave Peter Parker a homily-filled speech that wasn't about Spider-Man but was, in fact, about Spider-Man, I was checking my watch. By the eleventh time I was waiting to die. I liked the slow pace of the first Spider-Man; without sounding too pretentious, I felt like it matched the texture of the characters' lives at that moment pretty well (and it took place over quite a lengthy span of time, you'll recall). This one just dragged and dragged in comparison.

But the main problem was the dialogue and the camp factor. Honestly, parts of this movie approached Batman & Robin levels of cheese, and I just didn't want to put up with it, since the movie had so much going for it and didn't need to sink to that level to get a laugh or a thrill. There's no excuse for Doc Ock's "The power of the sun in the palm of my hand!" monologue (or for his conversation with his tentacles, which was obnoxiously similar to the Green Goblin's chat with his masks in the first film). And by God, when your two main characters are brilliant scientists, shouldn't you at least pretend that the script knows what the fuck it's talking about when it comes to science?

The thing that bothers me about the camp and shitty dialogue is, as mentioned above, the fact that the movie doesn't need it. All of Sam Raimi's little comic mannerisms (the slapstick, the absurd camera angles, etc.) are funny enough without being pressed into the service of decades-old I SHALL DESTROY THE WORLD! affectations, and the relationships between the characters are complex and affecting enough to come through without blatantly telegraphing them in terrible solliloquies and "My, isn't it convenient that I had a speech like this prepared at this moment" exchanges of dialogue.

It's still a pretty enjoyable movie, and I can't lie, I do have a faint itch telling me to see it again -- I had similar feelings about the first Spider-Man until I rewatched it, but I certainly don't remember any moments that drove me as crazy in the first film as over a half-dozen scenes in this one did. Go see it, but don't listen to Roger Ebert or any of the countless other critics who are frantically splooging across the movie's torso -- X-Men 2 is still the best superhero movie evah. But then again, I spent the last three hours playing an X-Men fighting game, so I guess you know where my loyalties lie.