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Our hugumbus YEAR IN MUSIC Omnibus is about to drop, but while we’re finishing up polishing this turd, chew on this from our pal JOE WARMINSKY in WASHINGTON CITY PAPER:

Don’t get me wrong—I fully embrace what the blogosphere does provide. It’s essentially a broad, asymmetric rebellion against the SoundScan regime and the stodgy business plans of the major record labels. Blogs offer what good fanzines used to offer: stylistic detours, obsessive detail, contrarian viewpoints, and a secondary economy that allows overlooked musicians to flourish, at least on a small scale. There isn’t much money in it, and it’s mostly done for love—or at least for the validation of other geeks. Alternative weekly newspapers like this one have long filled that role, too.

The problem is that—when compared to the worlds of zines or alt-weeklies—the blogosphere often feels like an arms race. Sites battle one another, writers battle commenters, commenters flame one another, and back up the chain again. An album like Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury, the No. 1 disc on the Washington City Paper’s critics poll, spurred so much good online commentary that I decided to scrap my review of it for the CP. Within a week of the disc’s release, it seemed as though every angle was covered. And that was just because of the debate on one site, Oliver Wang’s popular Soul Sides. (Never mind the fact that it was impossible to get a jump on the blogs. Clipse and its record label were so protective of the disc that advance listens were almost nonexistent until it inevitably leaked online two weeks before its release; those leaks had been thoroughly digested long before less savvy fans could hear the album.) CLICK HERE FOR THE MORE

IGGY POP Live Manchester Apollo 1977.

FRESH AIR: Moe Of The Stooges Still Worth A Million In Prizes, PLUS Andre 3000

Moon had already completed his enlistment papers when he graduated from high school in 2003. In the days before his induction, he drew his family and friends together in an extended celebration, Nam said.

His goal was to become an FBI agent, she said. He enlisted first because “he wanted to support his family financially. He wanted to support his country.”

Posted first to South Korea, where he met members of his extended family, Moon served a tour in Iraq from August 2004 to September 2005.

He won an Army Commendation Medal, an Army Achievement Medal and a Combat Infantryman’s badge.

Joining the Second Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., Moon returned to Iraq in September. He reassured his parents that a Baghdad assignment was safer than his earlier duty in the Sunni Triangle.

“He loved what he did,” Nam said. He told his parents he hadn’t called in recent weeks because of his new duties as a squad leader.

The circumstances of his death aren’t clear. The Pentagon said in a news release he was injured Dec. 14 by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Baghdad and died on Dec. 25.

But his parents, who had spoken with him at 1 a.m. Iraqi time on Dec. 25, were told by the Army that the explosion happened that day and that his death was quick and painless, Nam said.

INQUIRER: Lord, Won’t Someone Stand-Up And Remind Us All That Vietnam Was One Long Pointless SURGE

BEST PICTURE OF 2006: Because it held a cracked mirror up to the thing that is killing us all: ignorance and all its byproducts — fear, hate, superstition. Because fuddy-duddies may complain “Borat” is mean or crass or contrived, but the fact is nothing is made up, everything is true, sad to say, just exaggerated with industrial-strength absurdity for potent comedic effect. Because Sartre said ‘hell is other people’ and “Borat” is full of ‘other people.’ Because Borat played the MSM like a violin, with the wacky Khazhakstani becoming a constant ghost in the news machine for months before and after its release with one faux-International Incident and not-so-faux lawsuit after another. Because Hollywood blockbusters spend millions to stake that kind of a claim on media attention and barely hold on for a week or two, and then they run out of marketing money and go away. Because “Borat” kept it up for months, and, like Miles in “Risky Business,” he didn’t have to pay for it. Because “Borat” raises the on bar on broad physical comedy, dick jokes and hairy naked-man-on-fatman grotesques to beyond the beyond. Because Sacha Baron Cohen makes Andy Kaufman look like a sad, failed wrestler. Because “Borat” is arguably the funniest fucking movie ever made.

BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC
APOCALYPTO (2006, directed by Mel Gibson)
CASINO ROYALE (2006, directed by Martin Campbell)
DEATH OF LAZARESCU (2005, directed by Christi Puiu, Romania)
DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2006, directed by Amy Berg)
THE DEVIL & DANIEL JOHNSTON (2006, directed by Jeff Feuerzeig)
I AM A SEX ADDICT (2006, directed by Caveh Zahedi)
THE KING (2006, directed by James Marsh)
LITTLE CHILDREN (2006, directed by Todd Field)
MUTUAL APPRECIATION (2006, directed by Andrew Bujalski)
WASSUP ROCKERS (2006, directed by Larry Clark)

Is not gloom in the very air we breathe, or am I seeing the world through woe-colored, globally warmed, post-9/11 glasses? With “United 93″ and “World Trade Center,” the long hard Rumsfeldian slog has finally SURGEed into the fictional worlds of the megaplex and it seems like the hellfire of sex, sadism, and the Apocalypse has burned even Hollywood raw. Let’s just say it was a bad year for frivolity.

It is as if the images from Abu Ghraib and reality TV have upped the level of stimulation needed to fuel our cinematic nightmares. How else can you account for the torture-porn like “Saw” being a franchise picture, and films like “The Hills Have Eyes” being elevated out of the grind house and outfitted with even more graphic mayhem? Comedy has been taken to extreme sport level, whether it is the horse jism subtlety of “Jackass 2” or stirring a stick in the gooey psyches of Fox Americana in “Borat.”

Looking over my favorite films of 2006, I felt sheepish at their glaring morbidity, but I’m not sure whether I’m helping drive the trend or if we’re just living in a more grotesque world these days. Heck, even Will Smith is sleeping on a men’s room floor this season…

In “Little Children,” director Todd Field gives us the quaintest-looking small town since Blue Velvet’s Lumberton, where evil lurks in the guise of a recently released sex offender (played with a sad creepiness by long-absent child star Jackie Earle Haley), while the quietly frustrated parents are in danger of spinning out of control by chasing their own tempting demons. Filled with sharp writing and crisp performances, “Little Children” is like the best episodes of “Six Feet Under,” with its witty way of rubbing our noses in a very contemporary strain of ennui.

Tragedy dangles around the households of “Little Children,” while not really striking them. In “The King,” the prodigal son returns in hellbent rampage and actually claims what is his. The lost son is the strikingly handsome Gael Garcia Bernal, and the Biblical damnation he brings down on the father who abandoned him (William Hurt in his best role in years as a hip evangelical preacher) is presented in an understated, Terrence Malick-like style that leaves the catastrophe seeming as much preordained from God as conceived by man. Waifish newcomer Pell James is blankly amazing, doing that spooky young Sissy Spacek thing as the incestuous daughter.

Not since a boozy Robert Mitchum chased kids around the marsh in “Night of the Hunter” has there been a more blatantly villainous man of the cloth then Father Ollie, the focus of the documentary “Deliver Us From Evil.” Father Ollie’s genteel manner as he discusses his serial molestations sends a chill on par with cinema’s most monstrous psychopaths. Director Amy Berg transforms what could have been just a catalog of cruelties into a building tide of unfiltered emotion that convincingly pleads to change the politics of one of the world’s most unchanging institutions.

God and the Devil figure prominently in the legend of songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston, and his feature-length profile “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” tells the saga of his near mythological travails with unnerving intimacy. “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” joins recent docs like “Capturing the Friedmans” and “Tarnation,” where the subjects themselves had begun documenting their lives long before the film projects began. Having access to Daniel Johnston’s films, drawings and extensive audio journals gives the viewer a chance not just to recount a life but to be a voyeur present during a lifetime of ups and downs.

Caveh Zahedi is looking for that kind of intimacy and more in his autobiographical confession “I Am A Sex Addict.” Sex addiction is shown to be much the same as any old addiction, but for the added benefit that a blow job is inherently funnier than a beer. Zahedi, who resembles a bug-eyed and horny young Don Knotts, is an admitted egotist nut, but he’s a philosophy buff as well and seems to sincerely be seeking The Truth of his actions while fancifully recreating them, recasting a porn star as his wife.

Andrew Bujalski’s “Mutual Appreciation” is also obsessed with intimacy, stealing the 16mm black-and-white style that brought added immediacy to the French New Wave films of the 1960′s. Bujalski’s subjects are post-grads of today however, and these very recognizable white bohemian twentysomethings lack the sort of decisive personal momentum to cut an iconic image into the screen. “Mutual Appreciation” exploits their awkward indecision for all its humorous potential, making every thwarted romantic gesture carry the real-life sensation of humiliating dorkiness. What would make a better youth film — it’s like watching Truffaut direct “Napoleon Dynamite” through a night at the Khyber, but sadly, when I caught it at the Ritz there were only a couple of senior citizens present to relate.

“Wassup Rockers” is the most carefree film on the list, as well as the least angst-ridden of Larry Clark’s filmography. With “Kids” and “Bully,” Clark seemed like he had to fabricate some life-and-death scenario to justify his interest in hanging around a bunch of teenagers. But here, he seems happy just to quietly observe the comradery of his skateboarding gang of Latin punks. I can’t blame people for getting a little twitchy when confronted with Clark’s frankly sexualized teens, but here he is at his best catching this posse of sweet-hearted youth in that blissful, untethered teenaged moment that lingers like a mid-air 360 in the idle memories of oldsters.

The skateboarders of “Wassup Rockers” are shown being taunted by movie cops, meanwhile the real L.A. cops had to face the drunken Christ-complex rantings of Mel Gibson. It’s a shame Sugar Tits distracted people from what a primal thrill Gibson’s “Apocalypto” was once it arrived. Only a director coming off a monster hit would be able to fund an Inca-language period piece with no stars. But far from being a mad folly, “Apocalypto” is a mad delight, a timeless tale of enslavement and escape that is as crudely expressive and mesmeringly action-driven as the silent classics at the birth of cinema. The repentant Gibson tried to draw allegories between the fall of the Inca civilization and the America empire, but he was just blowing steam; he isn’t really concerned with politics. Instead, the Oscar-nominated director has created another heady and phantasmagorical tale that is his most concise telling to date of man’s brutal struggle to transcend life. Large sections of the film cruise along with the brilliant natural precision of “Jaws”-era Spielberg.

The viciousness of the year even reached the untouchable Bond franchise, with the scaled-down hero suddenly self-conscious about his status as a government hit man, finally realizing there may be a downside to traveling to beautiful locales, meet new people and murder them at his government’s behest. I’m enough of a film snob to admit it hurts a bit to have a Bond film in the Top Ten. Even at its best the series often gleams emptily like the juvenile fodder for Playboy readers that it is. But “Casino Royale”‘s small and large pleasures unfold with such elan and the elevation of Daniel Craig from solid film actor to bona fide movie star is a once-in-a-career transformation that is thrilling to witness. Craig creates a prickly, cocky and aloof Bond, radiating an efficient sense of earthy, man’s man cool like no actor since Steve McQueen.

Although Bond gets poisoned, smacked in the Royal jewels with a carpet beater and made to endure a theme song sung by Chris Cornell, you never feel the sensation death breathing down your neck like you do in the Romanian import “The Death of Lazarescu.” Here, you spend 2 1/2 hours with a senior citizen who sits slumped in assorted hospital waiting rooms, coughing away and getting sicker, being lectured about his sinful life and left rotting forever until the paperwork clears. There’s something oddly life-affirming about the little bits of black humor that arise along the way — the title makes us painfully aware that these are Lazarescu’s final minutes on earth, and he’s spending them listening to nurses gripe about their pay. The world continues on monotonously, all the way to the final curtain.

Last week CP struck a decisive blow against the tyranny of PW’s seemingly unbreakable Cover Wars winning streak. But this week the Empire has struck back. Hard. So jump down, turn around and pick a bail of cotton, City Paper, because PW is the master now. What’s that you say? ‘Only a master of evil, Darth’? Perhaps, Rabbit. Perhaps. Still, all this is good news for people who STILL read alt-weeklies. Hands down the most singularly disturbing alt-weekly cover of the year, PW’s music issue rocks the dumbly-named Man, Man on the cover, dubbing them Band Of The Year and giving us an unsolicited glimpse of how dentists see the world: a Diane Arbus-ian funhouse of slack-jawed mongoloidal beardos with obscenely gaping cake-holes. Hats off to music editor Brian McManus for piecing together PW’s best music issue in, like, ever. And it does our heart good to see that hirsute, bath-averse young men are still wowing the kids with trout mask replicas of Beefheartian sea chanteys. Kudos, too, for the art direction. Loved the Devo and Mothers of Invention homages. CP has a good thing going with its annual What Happened Next follow-ups on the year’s cover stories, but thumbnail covers handsomely arranged Scrabble-like against a black backdrop just don’t compare with the Ewwww-inducing power of PW’s freakozoic dental porn. The horror, the horror.
Winner: PW

ON FRESH AIR TODAY:
Thom Yorke is the lead singer and songwriter of the band Radiohead which has released six critically acclaimed records and explored the boundaries between rock and electronic music. Spin,magazine named Radiohead’s OK Computer the number one album of the past twenty years. Thom Yorke’s new solo CD The Eraser is his first release without the band. This interview originally aired on Jul. 12, 2006. ALSO: Singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch is the front man of the indie pop band from Scotland, Belle & Sebastian. The seven-member band includes a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, violinist, cellist, drummer and trumpeter. This year they completed their seventh album, The Life Pursuit. When they began a decade ago the band released only singles, refused to speak to the press, or to appear in press photos. This interview originally aired on Mar. 6, 2006.

Seeking to take advantage of the slow news days after Christmas Mr Edwards launched his campaign in the backyard of a house damaged by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last year.

Wearing jeans and an open-necked shirt, Mr Edwards, 53, worked with local youngsters to repair the house, his labour interspersed with interviews on America’s breakfast news programmes.

“I’m here in New Orleans… to announce that I’m a candidate for the presidency of the United States in the election in 2008,” he said. “To show what’s possible when we as Americans, instead of staying home and complaining about somebody else not doing what they’re supposed to, we actually take responsibility and we take action.”

“That’s what’s going to be the basis for my campaign. This campaign will be a grassroots, ground-up campaign, where we ask people to take action.

“It’s not like we don’t know what needs to be done, and this is not rocket science.”

In an early version of the stump speech he will hope to repeat hundreds of times in the coming 22 months, Mr Edwards described an agenda that included leading the fight against global warming, curbing America’s consumption of oil, combating poverty and “providing moral leadership in the world, starting with Iraq”

THE TIMES OF LONDON: ‘Breck Girl’ Rolls Up Sleeves, Sticks Shovel In Bush’s Achilles Heel, Then Twists It

(AP) PHILADELPHIA Three people were injured, including two teens, after gunfire erupted in West Philadelphia Wednesday evening.

Police said two teens and a 58-year-old [NOT pictured, right] were shot near the intersection of 57th and Walnut just before 7 p.m.

“We had a group of males in the 100 block of S. 57th Street firing a gun,” said Lieutenant John Walker of the Philadelphia Police.

Officials believe the three victims were just innocent bystanders in an act of senseless violence.

One 14-year-old was shot in the back and was taken to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in critical condition. Authorities said a 15-year-old suffered a gunshot wound to the arm and is in stable condition at CHOP.

Officials said a 58-year-old amputee was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after being struck in the leg by gunfire while standing on the porch of a group home.

No arrests have been made. Authorities believe the shooting may have stemmed from an argument at a nearby Chinese restaurant.

KYW: Settling The ‘MSG’ Or ‘No MSG’ Debate With Hot Lead

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-89770458144460734&hl=en
WASHINGTON POST: Offers a beyond-the-grave pardon or ‘Do Over’ to 43.

Sovereign will pay [Alan H.] Fishman a $4.56 million lump-sum cash payment, as well as other severance compensation valued at $2.58 million. Fishman’s other severance compensation includes an annual lifetime retirement benefit of $532,000, a pro rata portion of his annual bonus of about $758,000, and accelerated vesting of his equity awards valued at $1.29 million. Fishman, who was also chairman and chief executive of Sovereign Bank’s New York division, will also receive three years’ health coverage after he resigns, the company said.