>>Stunning New Order / Joy Division / side projects video archive. Via LinkMachineGo, from whence all good things come.

>>Matthew Fluxblog on seeing Zwan live, something I wouldn't mind doing. And if that doesn't get you there and reading, then that same post has a Radiohead Hail To The Thief MP3. Happy now?

>>In case you hadn't already noticed, the sequel to l33t Romeo + Juliet is now available -- l33t Hamlet. It's too long and not as funny as R+J, but it has its moments... via King Of Trash.

>>No Prince for Glastonbury after all. I can officially bear the pain of not being able to go, then. The new headliner is.... MICHAEL MOORE! I'm only half-kidding, you know, you'd better read the article...

>>Oh my heavenly Jesus, Bono's recorded a duet with Jennifer Lopez that may or may not get released. That man is a bigger slut than Slutty McSlut, Mayor of Slut-town. Via U2log.

>>Avril Lavigne is covering Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" for WarChild. I AM SO THERE. David Bowie and Leonard Cohen will also be on the compilation, along with a steaming pile of truly terrible acts like Bryan Adams and Celine Dion. Oh well, it's aaaaalll worth it. Avril 4evah.

>>Speaking of blubbery animals (AAAWWW SNAP), here's my favorite person in the whole wide world, Michael Moore, talking to Entertainment Weekly about his Oscars speech. He's convinced that the cat-callers at the ceremony were miked and pre-arranged, which on first glance is kind of irritatingly self-obsessed (like everything the man fucking says and does), but it doesn't hurt to reiterate that you're not paranoid if they're really out to get you... sigh. As a human being and a public figure he infuriates me immensely, but if he'd stop being right it'd be easier to hate him. Via the kindness of Kabir.

>>Ahem. War dolphins. Is it just me, or does life get progressively more like a truly shitty Ionesco play every day? Via King Of Trash.

>>OK, you're all allowed to look at R.E.M.'s newly-announced North American tour dates as long as you PROMISE you won't steal my ticket(s) to the New York show(s). You PROMISE? You'd better. Because if I miss a chance to see them I won't be responsible for my actions, I swear to God...

>>Supreme Court to hear challenge to sodomy law. I'm not optimistic; there are some reeeeeaaaaal shit-heads sitting on the Supreme Court right now, and I suspect they'll just uphold it in another one of those fucking 5-4 decisions. Sigh. Here's hoping, though. It really is fucking ridiculous legislation...

>>OK. So apparently Billy Corgan's Zwan is actually two bands -- the electric rock-monster who just put out their first album, and an acoustic outfit called "Djali Zwan" which boasts the exact same lineup but an entirely different set of material. And they'll be releasing their own album, and a documentary, next year. How very curious.

>>The Strokes in "Actually-sitting-down-in-a-recording-studio-to-make-music-instead-of-drinking-themselves-into-retardation-and-doing-coke-off-stripper's-breasts" shock! And wow, the producer is Nigel Godrich...

>>Don't make him come to Vegas -- Kevin C. Murphy on his unsettling Vegas vacation.

>>Seventeen subliminal messages of the word "sex" in New X-Men #118. Aaaawesome. Via LinkMachineGo.

>>Clonaid haven't disappeared -- they're distributing photographs of their "third clone," and they claim DNA proof is forthcoming. Again. Hmmm.

>>The Virgin Prunes' back catalogue will be reprinted by Mute next year. W00t!!!

>>Eight Mistakes Rock Critics Make. If you ever write anything about music, or read writing about music, you should read this, because it's simple and insightful. Via The Modern Age. (I'm guessing it would be unethical to just steal Laura's RSS feed and syndicate it as my blog, right?)

>>For the record, the rest of my birthday from the moment I clicked "Publish" on that entry to the left was very, very lame. Never, ever, EVER try to do anything fun in London on a Sunday night after 6PM. God, I miss New York.

>>Axl Rose puts the kibosh on The Offspring's plans to name their new album Chinese Democracy (You Snooze, You Lose). Shucks... that's some funny fuckin' shit.

>>Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja is innocent. As suspected. Good news.

>>Apple fixed the iPod battery life problem. Exxxcellent.

>>Depressed about the outbreak of war? Then here's a free Happy Thought -- the Senate rejected Arctic oil drilling. Huzzah.

>>I have a weird response to music writing on Massive Attack, mainly because I don't think I've really thought through the way I listen to their music and what I want to hear out of it, nor have I made up my mind about 100th Window, but this New York Times piece interested me briefly. You may find it to just be more of the same, I dunno. Requires free registration, found via The Modern Age.

>>From my friend Paul's AIM profile:

Prince: If night falls, and a bomb falls, will anybody live 2 see the dawn?
(Paul's IM): Is that a statement about the inevitable upcoming war on Iraq?
Prince: Partyup!
(Paul's IM): ...I'm taking that as a "no."

Best political commentary of the past six months...

>>The new Radiohead single is "There There" -- UK release date May 26th. Album still pencilled in for June 9th.

>>Ooh. Immense thanks to David for something I've wanted for months -- a geographically accurate Tube map.

>>George Bush Sr. upbraids George Bush Jr. for his foreign policy or lack thereof. Indirectly. But distinctly. Via Ghost In The Machine. By the way, the delay in getting this link out in a timely fashion reminded me why I switched off of Blogger in the first place -- because it always. fucking. breaks.

>>Thanks to everyone who wrote in and taught me how to do the favicon trick -- will get around to implementing it once the Ten Days Of Craziness have concluded. Woof.

>>OK, so I mainly use Safari for my browsing needs these days. And everyone who's anyone has a little icon that displays next to the URL, like so:



How do I make me one of those?!? I must have it! Answers on a postcard, please.

>>This one's a couple weeks old, and probably widely seen already, but it's fairly magnificent -- an interview with the author of "the worst novel ever written in the English language." Link via Metafilter.

>>Fuck. One of my favorite movie news sites is the uber-simply designed, massively informative Corona Coming Attractions, which maintains frequently-updated pages on all forthcoming movies that wind up almost becoming production bibles when taken cumulatively, tracking all the movements and developments of each project. But now, their editor, Patrick Sauriol, has merged the site with Cinescape and it has become, in the process, basically useless. Great. He's got every right to make a more lucrative living out of his profession, but it certainly seems to have come at the loss of an excellent information-display system in favor of a messy, poorly designed "professional" site. I just keep finding new things to ruin my day with...

>>Found this while looking for something else entirely. A selection from a New Yorker article on how Harold Bloom's The Anxiety Of Influence came to be; it's a book of theory that I haven't even read in much detail but which I'm curiously intrigued by anyway (not in the sense that I buy into it at all, just that something about it tickles me). It's things like this that make me wonder why I don't read more critical literary theory; I don't enjoy it per se but it does do interesting things to my brain.

>>Anthony Kiedis to write his autobiography for a 2004 release. Check the article for the worst publisher promo quote ever.

>>Lookin' shiny, snazzy, and new at 10.15 (J.L. McVay).

>>HULK'S DIARY. Hulk go to toy store today. They have Hulk toys. Hulk buy one. This blow Hulk's mind. Of course, Lite-Brite blew Hulk's mind once. Via LinkMachineGo.

>>Which New York City subway line are you? I, also, got stuck with the J-M-Z, which I don't think I've ridden on in my life, actually. Curious. Online quizzes are already showing up in the linkslog... the end is near. (I guess it's better than yet another post about music, eh?) Via Ghost In The Machine.

>>So as we all well know by now, my iPod is the greatest thing that I own. But it's been a little bitch lately. It's an original-model 5GB unit (woefully inadequate for my music-listening purposes, but ah well), which have universally been plagued by terrible battery-life problems. Basically, I can turn my iPod on and off twice before the battery conks out altogether -- I can listen as long as I want while it's on, but by the third time I try to switch it on without charging it, it won't respond and simply plays dead. This, as you can certainly understand, sucks ass, and Apple has no suggestion for how to fix it other than to replace it under the warranty with another 5GB unit with the same damn problem. Via Boing Boing I finally found what seems like a reliable fix for this battery problem, but its highly invasive nature has me more than a little spooked... I can't afford to replace my baby if I kill it entirely, and it does basically work now (albeit in a frustrating manner). What am I to do?

>>Fux0r. I've been following Robert Del Naja's child-porn scandal with a mixed reaction... I suspect he's been caught up in a witchhunt but it's irritating to be unable to say so for certain. There's also a purely selfish interest as well, since I'm going to see Massive Attack here in London in late April, and I'm hoping the dates won't be cancelled... unfortunately, they've had to delay two dates in New Zealand at the end of this month. Here's hoping it doesn't get any worse than that. Alternatively, if he's guilty, here's hoping it does get worse than that and they put him in jail; but I hope he's not guilty. Sigh. What a fucked-up moral position this sort of scandal puts everyone involved in.

>>I'm going to see this show tonight -- McKellen back on London stage in Strindberg's Dance Of Death. My friend Len saw the original New York production with Helen Mirren. I should've gone but was, frankly, just too lazy and uninspired; the class I'm taking here at NYU-London, however, has definitely re-sparked my love of theatre. Have a poke around the Dance Of Death website (Flash, unfortunately. Grumble).

>>Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the release of New Order's "Blue Monday" (thanks for the heads-up, Jen). And today is the third anniversary of the start of LinkMachineGo, one of the planet's best weblogs. March, eh? Good month. (This statement has nothing at all to do with my birthday being on the 23rd, noooo...)

>>Aw fuck -- Blixa Bargeld is leaving The Bad Seeds. He was a pretty fuckin' brilliant guitarist and he'd been with them since the beginning. The Bad Seeds are honestly one of the best bands I've ever heard, both on record and in live performance. I hope this doesn't completely destroy their dynamic... via Prolific.

>>Twenty-five years of biting the hand that feeds. Elvis Costello sounds off on joining the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, amongst other topics, including ex-Attraction Bruce Thomas. Owch.

>>Same Old Song and Dance: lengthy and detailed article on the history of music industry pay-for-play practices. Via MeFi (again).

>>And while we're at the NME -- Madonna to write children's books. Uhhh... OK then, right back about your business.

>>Just in case you hadn't heard -- the new Radiohead album is all done and is set to be released on June 9th, with an unknown single preceding it on May 16th. Thom Yorke has denied the rumored titles 2+2=5 and Are You Listening?, which is good because they were both crap. And yes, they'll be out on tour this year, certainly in Europe and possibly in America... For a collection of all the known info thus far, hit up GreenPlastic's new album watch page.

>>The First Church of Jesus Christ, Elvis. And Elvis so loved the world that he died, fat and bloated, in a bathroom. Could use some fact-checking (born in Memphis, eh?) but is hilarious nonetheless... via MeFi.

>>By the by, if you read Fiona's site (or hell, maybe if you don't), you should help her out and ask her some interesting questions for her new Bio page. She's copped the idea from me, and I copped the idea from Simon, so I'm just trying to get the meme spread ever further. Give her some good ones, though, OK? None of this "what's your favorite Transformer" nonsense. Actually, wait, that is a good one. Scratch that.