Definitely Not L.A.

ROME (AFP) — A convent in southern Italy is being shut down after a quarrel among its last three remaining nuns ended in blows, press reports said Sunday.  Sisters Annamaria and Gianbattista, reportedly upset about their mother superior’s authoritarian ways, scratched her in the face and threw her to the ground at Santa Clara convent near Bari in an incident in July that was kept quiet until now.

Picture it: having endured a bruising U.S. Supreme Court confirmation battle, Judge Clarence Thomas..oh hell, let’s let the Washington Post pick up the story as Thomas awaits his fate, as detailed in his memoir, out this week:

Instead of watching the Senate roll call, he drew himself a bath. His wife came to tell him he had been confirmed 52 to 48.

“Whoop-dee-damn-doo,” Thomas writes.

(Unreported: Thomas went on to coo “Rubber duckie, you’re the one.  You make bath time lots of fun,” slid down into the water and made motorboat noises with his mouth until his fingertips shriveled as the water grew tepid.)

Pumping up the hype volume for Tuesday’s release of Magic, his first record with his E Street born to running buddies since The Rising, Bruce Springsteen hit the airwaves early on yesterday’s “Today” show.

Here’s “Living in the Future.”

(You can tell it’s early in the life of the record when Bruce is relying so much on the TelePrompTer.) The fanboards filled up fast with “shut up and sing” comments from those who prefer Springsteen as human jukebox, without the sociopolitical commentary, but that’s always struck me sorta funny–how anyone could claim to be a Springsteen fan and be surprised he leans to the left is a head-scratcher. Or want the tunes without the back story.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German factory worker stole over a million screws from his employer and skewed the market with his cheap stolen goods, police said Friday.  “In the end, it became obvious that screws were being sold for much less than they usually cost,” said a spokesman for police in the southern city of Wuerzburg.  Over two years, the 33-year-old assembly plant worker smuggled between 2,000 and 7,000 screws out of work each night, and auctioned them on an Internet site, police said. The scheme cost his firm around 110,000 euros ($156,000).  The man confessed after officers raided his home.

…rocks harder than a few of these nominees. 

Chic?  Donna Summer?  Rock?  Did they make the cut to provide enough cover to get Madonna in?  “Madonna may not rock, but she still rocks harder than Donna Summer!”

I know it’s like saying “Saturday Night Live” hasn’t been funny for decades, but the derision the Rock Hall catches for its silly, political nomination/selection process is deserved when you see lists like this. 

(New York) — The nominations for 2008 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced today. The nine nominees are: Afrika Bambaataa, Beastie Boys, Chic, Leonard Cohen, The Dave Clark Five, Madonna, John Mellencamp, Donna Summer and The Ventures. Ballots with these nominees will be sent to over 500 voters who will choose the acts for inclusion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for this year. Five new inductees will be honored at the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on March 10, 2008 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

Breaking concert news: it’ll be anarchy in the pre-K when Nashville’s “Farmer Jason” Ringenberg returns for a November 4 harvest hootenanny at the Ellis Reference & Information Center in Monroe.

Here’s a preview:

“Twin brother” to alt-country pioneer Jason Ringenberg, Farmer Jason’s been making a joyful noise for the single-digit set for the past few years with songs like “Guitar-Pickin’ Chicken” and (my favorite) “Punk Rock Skunk.” The kiddies here in town have doggie-danced to FJ a few times now, so this one’s truly by popular demand.

Helluva commute to and from practice if you’re in MoCo, but here’s your chance to rock out with your checkbook out.  As publicity stunts go, it sure beats this, although I guess the link proves it worked.

Sen. Dodd’s website’s been tracking the amount of time participants (and the moderator) get to speak during the flurry of Democratic presidential candidate debates. Here’s last night’s graph:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: “Childrens do learn.”  Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at an event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.  The White House opted to clean up Bush’s diction in the official transcript.

In the Woke-Up-Too-Early, Had-Time-To-Kill Department, here’s

my SoundBadge, my “unique beat loop that sounds just like” me, per the website.  I’d always imagined my unique sound to be more like a dow-chicka-dow-dow chunky guitar riff like in a ’70s blaxploitation flick, so this new one will take some time to get used to.