DudeAsInCool

Didn't get invited to the Microsoft Zune party in Hollywood last night--that tells you how hip they are :) Didn't got to a symposium on Bobby Kennedy, either, due to the last minute invite. Instead, went to a book signing party for a bud in Venice at a book store on the beach - lots of fun - saw some old friends, met some new ones. Today I get together for a monthly lunch with a PR agent, talent agent and attorney where we diss the entertainment industry, gossip and what not. Not sure whats up for the weekend...I promise to be up to no good What about you?

You wish--not on these boards

Badly Drawn Boy - The Long Way Round from the album 'Born In The U.K.' KCRW's Tune For A Day

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) -- The Doors last played the Sunset Strip's Whisky a Go Go on Aug. 21, 1966, and lead singer Jim Morrison's rebellious, shamanistic shouts burned memories into the audience. The group, whose sound helped define the 1960s, was fired by the famous club that night -- Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger. They never played the Whisky again ... until now. On Wednesday night, the rock band's remaining three members -- all gray-haired and in their 60s -- hosted a cacophony of events on the Strip to celebrate the group's 40th anniversary, including a thunderous performance at the Whisky by Manzarek, Krieger and guest musicians. The repertoire included such Doors anthems as ''L.A. Woman'' and ''Light My Fire.'' Read More

The new Bond was a controversial choice, but critics are saying he is the best Bond since Sean Connery. Check out out Todd McCarthy's review at Variety

You guys are being very cryptic - who passed on? Lisa Gerrard? Loreena?

Nope--he's still on the hot seat along with Biggie-Cheney

Whenever someone finishes a sentence say, "And then what happened?"

Drowned in Sound interviews contemporary singer Imogen Heap: "She’s possibly the ultimate contemporary one-woman band, running around the stage to play piano and keyboards and some other stuff as well that escapes me right now. She’s utterly mental onstage, offstage and everywhere else, and is quite easily the best thing that’s ever been in The OC. Yes, even better than either of the hot brunette ones. More to the point, she is also Imogen Heap and she has answered Some Questions with deep thought, witty wit and alarmingly gritty realism. Ms Heap, we salute you and everyone who sails in your eternally majestic boat. I want a boat! I ride bike!" Read the full interview right here

Lifehacker takes a look at the latest version of Skype: "By far the most interesting is Click-to-call, which lets you initiate a call to any phone number listed in a web page just by clicking it. (A clever Lifehacker reader has already "hacked" this, too--see yesterday's clickable-phonebook tip.) Other new features include moderated Skypecasts and public chats, which enable people to communicate via voice or text (respectively) on virtually any subject. Skype 3.0 also adds clickable "mood" messages and wallpapers you can use to gussy-up the interface."

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Norway, Iceland, Australia, Ireland and Sweden rank as the best five countries to live in but Africa's quality of life has plummeted because of AIDS, said a U.N. report released on Thursday. The United States was ranked in eighth place, after Canada and Japan, in the report that rates not only per-capita income but also educational levels, health care and life expectancy in measuring a nation's well-being. Read more at Yahoo News

Pigeon John - Welcome to the Show from the album 'And the Summertime Pool Party' KCRW's Tune For A Day

12. Tell 1-800 operators they sound gay and ask for a date.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Ravenous giant snails that emerge from the ground by night are thriving on the tropical island of Barbados, destroying crops and prompting calls for the government to eliminate them. A nocturnal survey last weekend found hundreds of thousands of African snails — which are often about the size of a human hand — swarming the central parish of St. George, the country's agricultural heartland, where farmers complained of damage to sugar cane, bananas, papayas and other crops. Read More

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A musical set to the songs of Bob Dylan will close less than a month after it opened on Broadway, the show's public relations firm said in a statement on Wednesday. "The Times They Are A-Changin" -- which was critically panned -- will have its final performance on November 19, closing after 28 performances, a spokesman for Shaffer-Coyle Public Relations said. The closure of the show, conceived and choreographed by Twyla Tharp who successfully transformed Billy Joel's songs into Tony-award winning musical "Movin' Out," follows failures like last year's flop "Lennon" about the late Beatle. Read more at Yahoo News

Trying Out the Zune: IPod It's Not ...So how is the Zune? It had better be pretty incredible to justify all of this hassle. As it turns out, the player is excellent. It can’t touch the iPod’s looks or coolness, but it’s certainly more practical. It’s coated in slightly rubberized plastic, available in white, black or brown — yes, brown. It won’t turn heads, but it won’t get fingerprinty and scratched, either. It sounds just as good as the iPod. The Zune matches the price ($250) and capacity of the 30-gigabyte iPod. But it’s noticeably thicker (0.6 inch vs. 0.4), taller (4.4 inches vs. 4.1) and heavier (5.6 ounces vs. 4.8). Battery life is the same for music playback (14 hours), slightly better for video (4 hours vs. 3.5). The three-inch screen has the same 320-by-240-pixel resolution, but it’s larger (3 inches vs. 2.5), so movies and slide shows feel more expansive. Read more

A couple of months ago, Robert Basic, a 40-year-old technology consultant in Frankfurt, signed up for MySpace, the online social networking site, mostly out of curiosity. In September, MySpace opened public test pages for Germany and France, the company’s first versions in languages other than English. That month, the site had 2.5 million unique users in Germany and about half that in France, respectable numbers for a new venture. But Mr. Basic was only briefly among them. “I’m not a typical user,” he said. He became frustrated by unwanted messages and he did not care for the flashy pages. Read more at the NYTimes

Wanna Try This?

Owners of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console will soon be able to watch science fiction epics as well as play them. Microsoft said last night that it would offer movies and episodes of television shows for downloading through its Xbox Live online service in the United States, starting Nov. 22. With the new offerings, Microsoft is joining cable giants and Internet start-ups on the long list of companies hoping to profit from video downloading. But Internet-based services have had trouble getting traction because it can be complex to send a downloaded film to a television screen and frustrating to watch it on the small screen of a computer. Owners of the Xbox have already connected it to a TV and, in most cases, the Internet. Read more at the NYTimes

The insult of 'bird-brain' is generally applied to scatty people who cannot hold much in their heads. But it seems this may be doing an injustice to our feathered friends. Scientists have discovered that the common pigeon actually has an astonishingly good long-term memory. In tests they found a single bird can memorise 1,200 pictures. Read more at The Daily Mail

50) Drive By Truckers – "A Blessing And A Curse" 49) Belle & Sebastian – "The Life Pursuit" 48) Muse – "Black Holes and Revelations" 47) Gnarls Barkley – "St. Elsewhere" 46) Band of Horses – "Everything All Of The Time" 45) The Walkmen – A Hundred Miles Off 44) Kasabian – "Empire" 43) Bruce Springsteen – "We Shall Overcome" 42) Donald Fagan – "Morph The Cat" 41) Jenny Lewis – "Rabbit Fur Coat" 40) Joan As Policewomen – "Real Life" 39) Lambchop – "Damaged" 38) Lily Allen – "Alright, Still" 37) OutKast – "Idlewild" 36) Scissor Sisters – "Ta-Dah" 35) Sonic Youth – "Rather Ripped" 34) Grandaddy – "Just Like The Fambly Cat" 33) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – s/t 32) Johnny Cash – "American V" 31) Mastodon – "Blood Mountain" 30) Neko Case - "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood" 29) Oakley Hall – "Second Guessing" 28) Tom Waits – "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards" 27) Yo La Tengo – "I am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass" 26) TV On The Radio – "Return To Cookie Mountain" 25) Scott Walker – "The Drift" 24) Howlin' Rain – s/t 23) Ghostface Killah – "Fishscale" 22) Espers – "Espers II" 21) Vetiver – "To Find Me Gone" 20) Burial – s/t 19) Beck – "The Information" 18) CSS – "Cansei Der Ser Sexy" 17) Ali Fakra Tourne – "Savane" 16) The Raconteurs – "Broken Boy Soldiers" 15) Brightblack Morning Light – s/t 14) Cat Power – "The Greatest" 13) Lindsey Buckingham – "Under The Skin" 12) Bonnie 'Prince' Billy – "The Letting Go" 11) The Flaming Lips – "At War With The Mystics" 10) Thom Yorke – "The Eraser" 09) Sufjan Stevens – "The Avalanche" 08) Hot Chip – "The Warning" 07) Midlake - "The Trials of Van Occupanther" 06) Arctic Monkeys – "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" 05) Neil Young – "Living With War" 04) Joanna Newsom - "Ys" 03) Comets On Fire - "Avatar" 02) Scritti Pollitti – "White Bread, Black Beer" 01) Bob Dylan – "Modern Times" Source

Rep. John Murtha (who started the anti-war campaign) on Bush's press conference: Yesterday I heard the same old rhetorical garbage in the President's press conference. America remains a nation at war, but the enemy that attacked us on September 11th is not the enemy we are fighting in Iraq. As of Tuesday, the President can no longer mask an Iraqi civil war as part of the real war on terrorism. This election was a referendum on the President's disastrous course in Iraq, and the American people clearly had ENOUGH. Source

(CBS) Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley died of leukemia this morning. He joined the staff of the venerable news magazine 26 years ago. Bradley’s consummate skills as a broadcast journalist and his distinctive body of work were recognized with numerous awards, including 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till. Read more

LOS ANGELES - A day after Britney Spears filed divorce papers, Kevin Federline counter-filed court papers Wednesday seeking sole custody of the couple's two children. The former backup dancer and aspiring rapper is also seeking spousal support. He says the couple's community assets are "uncertain," though Spears said in her divorce papers there were none to speak of, suggesting the two had a prenuptial agreement in place. Read more