Just a quick late-Friday box office update, friends, since my lovely colleague Nicole Sperling already posted this week's box office preview a few days ago (thanks, Nicole!) ? and because, wowee, it sure looks like we've got a bona fide blockbuster on our hands here! Yep, Transformers hasn't slowed down one bit since opening with the biggest Tuesday gross in history ($27.9 million): It earned $29.1 mil on Wednesday and $19.2 mil on Thursday, and if you add all those numbers to the $8.8 mil it earned in "previews" on Monday, the Michael Bay flick is heading into the weekend with $84.9 mil already in the bank. At this rate, the movie should be close to $150 mil by Sunday. Whoa! (Oh, and the other Tuesday opener, License to Wed, has brought in $7.4 mil so far ? whatev.)

Anyway: This is huge! I mean, we sorta saw this coming, but did we really see it coming? Are you surprised? If you've already seen the movie, do you think it deserves all this financial success? If you're one of the three people who hasn't seen it yet, are you rarin' to buy a ticket? Or, dare I say it, a toy? Speak up, PopWatchobots!

Most of the entertainment news floating around the Internet today is about tomorrow?s Live Earth concerts (late breaking! Al Gore has just added a ninth show in Washington D.C., thus outmaneuvering Decepticon Republicans!) The purpose of the mega multi-continent 24-hour carnival ? featuring Madonna, Kanye West (pictured), my girl Rihanna, and a zillion others ? is to boost consciousness about global warming, of course. But do you care? Uh, you better ? what with the fate of the world hanging in the balance and all.

The opening Live Earth planetary downchord clangs tonight at 9:10 EDT in the U.S., which is also 11:10 a.m. tomorrow in Sydney, the first city to erupt in rock 'n' roll. (Action in Toyko, New York, London, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Hamburg, and presumably D.C. follows.) You can watch all the shows streaming live at liveearth.msn.com, and a schedule of coverage on the various NBC channels and list of your radio options is here. So there you go. Get your lighters out.

As for me, I doubt I?ll watch much of it at all. Like any normal person, I buy that we?re cooked unless we do something, but what I really want us to do, frankly, is elect Al Gore president. And for that to happen, the cagey candidate's gotta run, no matter how bruised and battered he remains by the 2000 election. Watching Bon Jovi croon out a soulful version of "Livin' on a Prayer" or somesuch on my laptop this weekend isn't gonna get me fired up about Live Earth or global warming at this point. Al Gore announcing before screaming masses on some global stage tomorrow that he was gonna take this issue all the way to the presidency would.

What?s your take on this, people? Don?t you think even a failed presidential campaign for Al Gore ? with a platform that primarily calls for dealing with global warming ? would do more to help fix our "planetary emergency" than a dozen Live Earths?

"Here's your new life," said the Apple Store clerk, beatifically, handing me the little black bag with my hot-off-the-FedEx-truck new iPhone. The comment was supposed to warm my heart, but I felt a slight chill. I'd just been thinking in line about how waggish bloggers had long since dubbed the long-in-coming device "the Jesus Phone," so the clerk's sendoff got me wondering what level of spiritual commitment I'd just made. I felt a little like Tom Cruise, finally graduating from the highest level of Scientology (and like I'd paid nearly as much for the privilege). When I ported over my old phone number from my previous carrier, would I also be automatically ported over from my previous religion?  My paranoia was compounded when I got home, activated the thing, hit the "weather" button on the opening interface, and for the longest time couldn't find a way to bring up a forecast for any place other than "Cupertino." Perhaps, in the fine print about the two-year agreement, there'd been something about having to pack up one's home and actually move onto the cult grounds.

As I walked out onto a crowded Colorado Blvd. in Old Town Pasadena, though, I felt nearly as enviable as Tom Cruise for a few fleeting moments. Now, back in the '90s, I once bought a sporty lemon of a car after reading the assertion on a message board that with this automobile I would "have to beat the chicks off with a stick!" ? an assertion I soon learned contained some margin of error, depending on the driver. (It was probably  a bad sign that I was taking advice from someone on the soon-to-be-defunct Prodigy dial-up service, and that the celebrity spokesman for my soon-to-be-defunct Eagle Talon was Greg Kinnear. I digress.) Believe me when I tell you, anyway, that with your new iPhone, you might actually require just such a mythical baton for protection, if by "chicks" we mean paunchy middle-aged guys named Phil. I did also get my share of attention from the coveted younger-female demo: Wandering into the 21 Choices Yogurt shop across the street from Pasadena's Apple Store, I nearly managed to shut down service entirely as the entire line of 20-ish female employees stopped what they were doing to fawn over the shrinkwrapped box. Not since I'd gone out riding in a limo with Bono on Sunset Blvd. a decade and a half ago had I inspired quite so many jealous (maybe hatefully jealous) stares.

I would like to report that, once I got it home, the buyer's remorse and backsliding set in ? no Cupertino Kool-Aid drinkers here, no sir ? and that I set my bank account aright by returning it (with a restocking fee) after my test run. But it is with some financial bittersweetness that I tell you I did learn how to change the weather setting to Los Angeles, and that, after 72 hours, I love the iPhone almost as much as life (not to be confused with iLife) itself. Which isn't to say that I, like everyone else, didn't find a drawback or three to drive me crazy. There's a reason why "three and a half stars out of four" has become the default review.  For anyone considering making the leap, let me go through a few of the features, perhaps hitting some angles that some of the more tech-oriented reviews might have skipped. (And I am certifiably a non-techie; my only previous "smartphone" was a Sidekick, and, as they say, how smart could it be if Paris Hilton had one?)

? The smudge factor. "Touch screens ? they're not just for airline self-check-in kiosks anymore." That might not be such a catchy slogan for Apple, but after spending some time with the iPhone, with the design malleability an almost completely buttonless interface offers, you may be ready to consign physical keypads back to the 20th century. Or not. This is probably not a phone for the truly anal-retentive, since the very nature of the thing is that you rub your greasy fingers across it all day long. And trust me: your fingers are greasier than you think they are, even if you're no KFC regular ? something that'll quickly become evident once the sun reflects off it a certain way and you realize the device you were working so hard to keep pristine is, from moment to moment, a CSI investigator's dream come true. For those of us used to telling our children to keep their dirty mitts off the TV screen, there's something that just seems wrong about that. The iPhone will affect any number of personal lifestyle changes, and the first one for me is this: Suddenly, I'm an obsessive-compulsive hand washer.

But if you've learned to love the diminishing use of actual buttons on later-model iPods, you'll learn to love it here. The on-screen virtual keyboard does have a learning curve, to be sure. At first, even the daintiest typist will probably feel like he or she has thumbs bigger than Shrek's. But after a couple of days, I'm typing with two thumbs at about three-fourths the speed I used to on my Sidekick. (I'm feeling rather cocky about it, in fact ? anyone want to challenge me to a WPM tournament?) The only really bad news here is that the keyboard only expands to fit the horizontal width of the phone when it's in web mode, which is great for typing in URLs and such; when you're doing e-mail, though, it stays in vertical mode, meaning the keys are even smaller. The limited use of the wider virtual keyboard has been a constant complaint on message boards, so expect Apple to use future software updates to allow the phone to go into "widescreen" mode in other applications.

? The opening interface. No complaints whatsoever here: This is Apple's simple brilliance at its best. You get 16 introductory icons as "buttons": Phone, e-mail, Safari Internet browser, and iPod are the critical four on the highlighted bottom panel, with the remainder on that bright opening grid including such obvious go-tos as calendar, photos, and camera? and such not-so-obvious choices as stocks, weather, Google Maps, and YouTube. Speaking of which...

? Stupid cat tricks, on the go. The iPhone is the result of the greatest minds in technology putting their heads together to solve the number one unserved need of cell phone users: the ability to watch that OK Go video with the treadmills while standing in line at the post office. YouTube is pretty much the only source of streaming web videos, since the device's Safari web browser doesn't support the Flash format, and Apple got YouTube to convert many of their clips to an iPhone-friendly protocol. It's hard to predict which YouTube videos you'll be able to view and which you won't. I did a search on my favorite artist, Elvis Costello, and came up with nothing on the phone, versus the myriad amount I would find doing a similar search on YouTube on my laptop. So then I did a search on Duran Duran, the favorite band of one of my editors, and instantly came up with clips of them performing at the previous week's Princess Di tribute concert. But toilet-flushing cats? Readily available, and that surely, we can all agree on while waiting for stamps.

? GPS, Scheme-PS. Who needs it? For me, Google Maps counts as a killer app on the iPhone. For others, it may not, since you can already access mapping systems on any smartphone with web access. But the iPhone has set it up in such a brilliant way, you'll swear you were using GPS. The "button" is on the opening interface; just type in the addresses and not only do you get map and satellite overviews of your route, but sequential lists of turns and mini-maps. You can also quickly zoom in on a satellite view of your house, of course. (Cue Robert Blake in David Lynch's Lost Highway: "As a matter of fact, I'm there right now!")

? The entire Web, on the head of a pin. That's kind of what it looks like, when you call up a particularly busy web page; the entire width of the page shrinks to fit the screen, which may involve microscopic type. But to zoom in on an area of a page, you start with your thumb and forefinger together on a desired area, then spread them out; to zoom out, you pinch them together. Depending on the web page, it can be a little bit like scanning a newspaper with a magnifying glass. But DIY sizing beats any other method of browsing I've seen on smartphones, which usually put you through a lot more unnecessary scrolling to find whatever you're looking for.

? Instant messaging. There is none. For some of my fellow (former) Sidekick users, this will be a deal-breaker, as it nearly was for me. If you're young enough that you use AIM constantly to keep up with your social network, you might hold off on the iPhone for a while. It stopped being a stumbling block for me when I realized that days go by where my wife is my only real IM partner, and that a lot of my incoming instant messages amount to: "Dinner is getting cold. Where are you? Please tell me you didn't stop at Amoeba Records on the way home from work." For that, I can probably use the phone's standard SMS text-messaging system, which is set up with balloons that resemble a live chat interface.

Will Apple add instant messaging to the iPhone in a future software update, as they easily could, or do they have no intention? Hard to tell. When the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg asked Steve Jobs about this and a few other missing popular applications, Jobs replied: "I will say that the iPhone is the most sophisticated software platform ever created for a mobile device, and that we think software features are where the action will be in the coming years. Stay tuned." Which could mean: Yes, we just couldn't get IM-ing together in time for the launch, or no, AT&T demanded we leave it off so people end up paying extra for unlimited text messages. Asking Steve Jobs about what may or may not be made available on the iPhone in the near future is like consulting the Magic 8-Ball: "Reply hazy. Try again." "Concentrate and ask again." "Better not tell you now." "Ask again later." If only you could shake his head in frustration till you finally get a "Signs point to yes."

? The advent of talkies. Not only does the horizontal screen make watching widescreen movies less of a squint than they were on previous iPods, but there's a built-in speaker. So if you forget your earbuds, or just want to share that hilarious episode of According to Jim with a friend and don't have an audio splitter handy, now you can enjoy the soundtrack in the open air. The sound for videos and movies is actually better than the sound when you put the headset to your ear for phone calls, which requires turning the volume up as far as it'll go. But you were expecting subwoofers in something not much thicker than the credit card you depleted to buy the thing?

? Eternal life. Not included, at least in version 1.0. What kind of self-respecting Jesus Phone is this, anyway, without the guarantee of a great hereafter, kingdom come, promised land, streets paved with gold and/or with no name, et al? Asked by Walt Mossberg if the promise of a blissful eternal rest might be included in future updates, Steve Jobs replied, "I will say that the iPhone is the most sophisticated software platform ever created for a mobile device, and that we think software features are where the action will be in the coming years. Stay tuned." Until then, hallelujah anyway, and please pass the deliciously fruity concentrated beverage that I swear isn't what you think it is.

A few months ago, I was at a party hosted by a hipster friend who also happens to be the sort of twentysomething guy who impulse-buys a shiny new Transformer toy and proudly places it on his shelves  ? and I made the mistake of picking one up. Three hours later, I'd worked my way through his entire collection, transforming each into its vehicle and back again.

More to the point, when I came up for air, I realized I'd been joined by most every other twentysomething dude in attendance that night. As I looked around me at this group of ostensibly grown men fixated with giddy concentration on complex contraptions of interlocking plastic, I realized two immediate truths: One, Michael Bay's impending Transformers movie was just about certain to make a gargantuan amount of money. And two, I needed to call toymaker Hasbro to get my hands on the new Transformers as soon as they were available. I mean, to review them. Professionally. For other people to read.

With my first insight apparently bearing considerable fruit, it seemed well past time to give you the 411 on some of those new toys. So, after the jump, I unabashedly dive into the new designs Hasbro's cooked up for Blackout (the nasty military helicopter Decepticon that opens the movie), Bumblebee (the Chevy Camaro Autobot and BFF of Shia LaBeouf's character), Megatron (the chief Decepticon baddie) and Optimus Prime (the cover subject of this week's EW and the real hero of Transformers).

BLACKOUT (Movie Voyager Version, $19.99)
THE VEHICLE: A Marine "Pave Low" Helicopter, and a pretty bitchin' one at that, for one good reason: A button on the tail lets you manually spin the chopper blades, so you can "fly" Blackout all through your office basement. Awesome. A bonus: A basket in the tail drops a mini Scorponok ? the nasty scorpion-looking Decepticon that gives Josh Duhamel so much guff in the desert ? into the fray... on your kitchen table.
THE TRANSFORMATION: The chr-chr-CHOR-chr-CHR! factor (you know, the noise all Transformers make while transforming) isn't all that thrilling for Blackout ? his arms have to do a weird windmill thing to get set up, and those chopper blades get in the way (and often fall off) even when they're folded back.
THE ROBOT: Eh. The package says Blackout's the largest of the Decepticons, but as the previous photo demonstrated, not so much in the toy world. You can also detach his chopper blades, mount them on one shoulder and create... the most ungainly weapon ever.
GRADE: B-

BUMBLEBEE (Movie Deluxe Version, $9.99)
THE VEHICLE: Here's the thing. I take Bumblebee out of his package, admire the somewhat subtle distressing on the "old fashioned" Camaro's, er, "paint job," and then promptly transform him into the robot version (more on that in a sec). But when I go to fold 'n' bend him back into the car, I can't seem to get the front part to lock in place. No matter what I try, it just wants to remain pulled down. Somehow, right out of the box, I broke Bumblebee. I'll give Hasbro the benefit of the doubt, though, and blame my overeager fingers for busting the mysterious cheap plastic nub that apparently holds everything together.
THE TRANSFORMATION: By far the easiest of this bunch to figure out, and yet I still had to marvel at the unexpected way the back end unfolded to become Bumblebee's feet.
THE ROBOT: Perhaps because Hasbro kept things so simple with this toy, he ends up the one who most resembles ILM's giga-pixeled version in Bay's movie. Plus, he comes with two spring loaded guns that pack a slightly unnerving wallop for something so small.
GRADE: B

MEGATRON (Movie Leader Version, $39.99)
THE VEHICLE: Part of this isn't Hasbro's fault. In an effort to inject at least some logic into the Transformers world, the filmmakers decided Megatron would not become a tiny pistol for someone else to hold as he did in the original cartoon series ? something about how that is defying the laws of physics or some such scientific hoobedegoo. And since the film's plot prevented the top-dog Decepticon from ever interfacing with Earth's technology, Megatron now transforms into what I can only assume is a fighter jet on his home planet of Cybertron. All that said, this massive hunk of cluttered, pointy gray plastic is pretty darn fugly ? a great example of when "more" does not equal "better."
THE TRANSFORMATION: Going from vehicle to robot is surprisingly swift, especially considering that when I first set forth to turn him from robot (as he came out of the box) into vehicle, it took me, no kidding, the better part of an hour to do so. Hasbro's got Megatron contorting into positions a master yoga instructor would shy away from, and the aforementioned payoff is not really worth all the headache.
THE ROBOT: Still way too much going on here, and he barely resembles his cinematic rendering, but at least it's more interactive: Meggy's right arm becomes a chain-whip, his left some sort of fusion canon, and a button on his chest spreads clear plastic wings in his back while unleashing a rather nasty, hawk-like scream. Seems about right for the baddest 'bot in all the galaxy. Besides, you certainly do get a lot of toy for your money.
GRADE: C+

OPTIMUS PRIME (Movie Leader Version, $39.99)
THE VEHICLE: Ahhh, that's more like it. In stark contrast to Megatron's gaudy Cybertronian airplane, Prime becomes a sizable and solid semi-truck cab that looks quite a bit like its filmic counterpart. Real rubber wheels, a button for an electronic truck horn that also lights up the cab, a smokin' red-and-blue flame paint job?now this is some vehicle!
THE TRANSFORMATION: There's no getting around it: Optimus is one complex dude to transform. His rear wheels have to be pulled and folded and attached to the legs, but not before the legs are moved back and forth and back again while his hands are pulled out from inside his arm and his head popped up from inside the cab. It is lengthy and seems hard to master, but it's really not that bad. Besides, the way everything just fits is some kind of crazy ingenious ? like a kick-ass Rubik's Cube with guns, wheels, and a much better name.
THE ROBOT: Like most of the toys, he's not quite like the movie version ? for one thing, there's no lips on this Optimus Prime. But he stands tall and strong, with a quick-shootin' gun at the ready and a coolness factor that's off the scale. Am I totally geeking out here? You bet I am. It's frakkin' Optimus Prime, and as far as I'm concerned, Hasbro got this one near perfect. Work time's over. Let's play!
GRADE: A-

Who's to blame for America's culture of narcissism? Our vanity-minded advertisers? Our media, obsessed with celebrity? Our elected officials, with their overdeveloped sense of entitlement? Our country's centuries-old isolationist strain that discourages us from exploring the world beyond our front yard? Nope, it's all the fault of Mr. Rogers (pictured).

So say the experts quoted in this Wall Street Journal article, laying the blame on the gentle children's TV host (who, alas, is not available to respond) for instilling generations of kids with too much unwarranted self-esteem. ""He's representative of a culture of excessive doting," says one such expert, a finance professor at Louisiana State University. Another pundit quoted is an anonymous yahoo posting on a Yahoo message board, saying, "Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement."

Sigh. Remember the good old days, when the cultural fulminators against bad TV role models cited actual rebel figures ? Bart Simpson, Murphy Brown, Tinky Winky? Now, not even someone as harmless as Mr. Rogers ? an ordained minister who called each of us his special "neighbor" (as in, "Love thy...") ? is safe from this sort of revisionist calumny. Let's face it, there are some folks who consider all popular culture to be a bad influence, and some who will hijack any pop-cultural artifact, no matter how anodyne and free of ideology, and use it to score vindictive, partisan points. Forget the culture of narcissism; where did this culture of mean-spiritedness come from?

I blame Oscar the Grouch.

Politics and pop culture continue to intersect in strange and often hilarious ways. For instance, we should have known that the outcry over President Bush's commutation of what he called Scooter Libby's "excessive"  sentence for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements would not be over until we'd heard from Richard Hatch. The original Survivor winner, currently serving a 51-month sentence for tax evasion, e-mailed the Boston Globe to say, "What a country! Excessive sentence! Where's my pardon/commutation?" As it turns out, Rich, President Bush did consider the merits of your case, but after reading a long legal brief including much mention of "snakes" and "rats," he decided to let your sentence stand. Sorry, dude, the executive branch tribe has spoken.

Also in the Globe: the news that Sen. Ted Kennedy doesn't hold a grudge against The Simpsons for satirizing him for the past 18 years as Springfield's sleazy Mayor Joe Quimby (pictured). He's even lent his vocal support to Springfield, Mass.'s bid to become the official Springfield that will host the premiere of The Simpsons Movie later this month. You can watch the Senator deliver his Quimby-esque pronunciation of the word "chow-dah" in the city's five-minute promotional video (as well as the video entries of 13 other Springfields) in the official contest page at USA Today's website. Vote early and often, as they used to say.

Some welcome developments on Wisteria Lane: First, says the Hollywood Reporter, Desperate Housewives might get some new blood, in the form of a family prospectively to be played by Dana Delany (reportedly, series creator Marc Cherry's original choice to play Bree), Nathan Fillion (pictured; apparently, Waitress has done for his career what Firefly/Serenity could not), and 20-year-old Lyndsy Fonseca (who's also set to play a recurring role on Heroes; maybe her superpower is an ability to be on two shows at once). Delany's always a welcome presence in TV land, and since Kidnapped was cruelly short-lived, a DH role would be a nice mini-comeback.

Second is the notion floated in Liz Smith's Variety column that Cherry is mulling a musical episode. I actually think DH would be well-suited to a musical episode, provided the golden throats of our housewives and their fellas are up to it. Smith notes that Teri Hatcher and Nicollette Sheridan have some documented singing experience, and that the others are, at least, pros who'll do whatever they need to...

Hold the phone, does this mean Edie's not dead?

How do these developments sound to you, PopWatchers? Eager to see a suburban kickline? And what other shows might benefit from Buffy/Scrubs-style musical episodes?

How do you define a movie's "impact"? Is it the number of later films that follow its example? Or is it the movie's influence on the world outside the multiplex? Alas, USA Today's list of "Movies with Real Impact," the 25 milestone films of the last 25 years, doesn't bother to answer that question. The paper's top pick, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is certainly a great work of popular and cinematic art, but what "impact" has it had, besides on the bottom line at New Line? Yes, it spawned the Narnia and His Dark Materials franchises and made Peter Jackson a brand-name director, but I think it's too early to judge what sort of impact, if any, LOTR will have on moviemaking or on real life. Besides, there are many other films, including several on this list, whose legacies are far more apparent.

Some of the list items are indisputable: Pulp Fiction, Do the Right Thing, Titanic, Fatal Attraction, There's Something About Mary (the most influential comedy of the era), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (for inspiring the creation of the PG-13 rating), El Mariachi (for launching the low-budget indie boom), Crouching Tiger, The Matrix (which surely belongs higher on the list than No. 20), Goodfellas, and sex, lies, and videotape (which put Sundance and Miramax on the map).

Others are close but not quite there. Mission: Impossible III is on the list for showing that Tom Cruise's career as the signature star of the past quarter century could suffer some damage from his off-screen behavior, but where's Risky Business, the film that effectively launched that career in the first place? Toy Story is here as the first all-CGI film, but where's Terminator 2, the film whose blend of CGI and live-action became the norm for most big-budget spectacles? The Bodyguard is here for its massive-selling soundtrack CD, but where's Flashdance, whose integration of film narrative and music (and music-video editing) was much more influential? Fahrenheit 9/11 is here as the top-grossing documentary, but it's had less real-world impact than An Inconvenient Truth or Super Size Me have had (or Sicko may yet have). Where's Scarface (pictured), which became the blueprint of so much of hip-hop culture? Where are such frequently copied movies as Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and The Silence of the Lambs?

Of course, a list like this is subjective; you surely have your own movies that have had a great impact on you during the past 25 years. That's your cue, PopWatchers...

Keira Knightley wants to quit acting, and not just because she had to wear this outfit (pictured). Frustrated by negative media attention and horrified to learn she's a role model for anorexics, the Pirates 3 star told Elle, "I think I just have to move away or give it up altogether... I'm just not so hungry any more. I made a decision very recently that I wanted a life instead."

I think she should quit. I personally love looking at her face on a screen, but there are DVDs for that. The girl should do what she wants. Look at her face in this photo. She's had it! One of these parties has to give up, and we know one of them never will. You may find Knightley's comments bratty, or wonder why her entitled ass gets to complain. I say, kudos to her for showing some semblance of a brain. I wish there were more Hollywood puppets who don't live to slut it up for the gross old guys running after them on the street. Besides, maybe there's room for her naturally thin self on Johnny Depp's private island, or in Dave Chappelle's Ohio farmhouse. 

What do you think? With Alec Baldwin* and now Knightley threatening to quit acting because of media pressure, is this the only solution? Will the paparazzi ever let up even a little, or are they just doing fans' bidding? And if so, isn't the public's own voyeuristic interest at least partly to blame for making stars want to chuck it all?

*Could anyone besides me not get through Baldwin's voicemail out of sheer disgust that you were listening in on his voicemail?

I don't go to many concerts. I tend to get crabby, whining about seeing zilch from my 5-foot-3 vantage point and cursing at all the stinky, annoying, often drunk people bumping into me. By mid-set, I usually end up dreaming about parking myself back on my couch and diving into all the goodies my DVR has waiting for me. (Insert pitying looks from readers here.)

But when my favorite performers go on tour, I'm freakishly completist. In 2004, I went to eight Siouxsie Sioux shows in less than a month. As my sister remarked at the time, "You're covering Siouxsie like CNN covers the war." (Nice one, Jen.) The Godmother of Punk's closest rival as my all-time most beloved musician is Björk. And what do you know? Iceland's favorite daughter is currently promoting her new album, Volta. Seeing as I'm in my 30s now, and I'm supposed to be a responsible adult (or something), I've decided not to go full-on Christiane Amanpour on Björk's bee-hind. But I am going to the three New York concerts she's giving in seven days. The first one, at Radio City Music Hall, happened last night.

And I'm happy to say that I did not think about my DVR once, PopWatchers! The show kicked off with Björk's new single "Earth Intruders," the same Timbaland-enhanced ditty she chanted on SNL two weeks ago. Only this time, there were pyrotechnic flames! And an electro-Etch-a-Sketch-ish laser show! And video monitors that ran close-ups of the busy hands of the dudes in her band! (Huh? Whatever, it's Björk.) Her Icelandic troupe of female horn-players was there too, once again clad in neon Teletubby suits. I figured Björk would take the stage in one of those intergalactic Rainbow-Bright-in-a-warped-chef's-hat ensembles she wore at the Coachella fest last month (pictured), but no. She went more demure in a shiny orange dress with winged sleeves that slinked just so when she shimmied through numbers like "All Is Full of Love." Ah? that song. I've witnessed it live countless times now, but the divine sound of those violins and beats still made me cry a little last night.

All right, all right, enough of the sap. For a few songs at the beginning of the set ? especially the snowy "Aurora" ? Björk's mic was up too high. (Come on, soundperson! Björk don't need no stinkin' mic turned to 11!) All told, she sang six new Volta songs, which the audience seemed to dig just fine, though none with as much crazed, jump-out-your-seat-like-you-might-not-make-it-to-tomorrow gusto as "Declare Independence," a thrilling anthem that closed out the show. "Start your own currency! Make your own stamps! Declare Independence! Don't let them do that to you!" she sang, fist-a-pumping. It's the punk-rockiest thing Björk's done since her pre-Sugarcubes band Kukl, and she belted it out with such force, I thought she might fly out of Radio City and kick the Danes out of Greenland and the Faroe Islands with her own bare feet. (In previous shows, she'd dedicated the song to those places, both autonomous possessions of the Kingdom of Denmark.)

So, one down, two to go. Here's what I'm wondering: how much will Lady B change the sets from night to night? How might the crowds differ? When my EW buddy Francisco Rosario and I travel up to Washington Heights on Saturday night, will I encounter starry-eyed youngsters like the one I saw outside Radio City who described her idol to a curious passer-by thusly: "She's a singer from Iceland ? and she's beautiful!" And most important, will my Björk Love prove a match for my dangerously increasing couch-potato tendencies? Stay tuned, PopWatchers. I'll be back with a report on Monday.