Worst casting ever; and less humorous items

• Ang Lee's making a movie about Dusty Springfield! Huzzah! Starring Charlize Theron... what the fuck? Hopefully this is Ang Lee's little joke about how all white women look alike.

• Who scheduled both Art Brut and Belle and Sebastian/The New Pornographers for March 21st? Bah. Also: Vijay Iyer, Berkeley Ph.D. (in music and cognitive science) and last year's breakthrough jazzbo (6th equal in the Jazz Times critics poll, four decades younger than everyone who finished above him), and Jason Moran are coming to Zellerbach on November 4th. Mark yr calendars.

• Fortunately the South Dakotans have way, way overreached: even with the new ideologues on the Supreme Court, there's no way a law banning abortions for rape victims, or when there's a threat to the mother's health, will stand. I think.

• Iraq just got that much worse today. The thought that there's no course of action that can prevent an escalation in violence grows more ominous.