HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR LAWRENCE
To celebrate the drummer boy’s birthday, here’s a rare shot of him at work.

Taken by E.S. at a Boston fan press conference the date of which escapes us at the moment.

MINIBUS
Taking a time out from all the ATYCLB info, here’s an inside look at U2’s special Popmart Minibus which was auctioned off for charity earlier this year. It’s a 91′ Mercedes which looks like it’s had Bono behind the wheel – it’s battered: We even have a shot of the car’s registration.

HE EVEN GROANS LIKE BONO
We at U2log love a sense of humour. So why not have a listen to comedian Adam Sandler takin the mickey out of Bono. In Real Audio.

FARMCLUB
Lots of readers are asking for Farmclub mp3s, but we haven’t got them. Yet. In the meantime, we can offer you ‘Bad‘ from that session, in Real Audio. Not bad at all.

You can also go to Farmclub, join up, click ‘watch’, choose U2 from the dropdown menu and see the entire performance and interviews in Real Video.

And while we’re multi tasking, why not read the AOL chat transcript as well?

This just in: more links to Farmclub stuff:
1, 2, 3, 4
(thanks to Amy (AKA U2WildHoney))

U2.com DISCUSSION
Over at community blog “Metafilter” there’s a discussion going on regarding the new U2.com. For those of you who don’t know, k10k.net and Kioken are highly regarded in webdesign circles, and much imitated. We have lost count of the sites who ripped off the famous k10k buttons. We do think ‘Magic Minds’ who seem to have designed the U2.com site were, let’s say, ‘influenced’ by these two cutting edge design megas. And that’s not cool. Not that we here at U2log.com are particularly innovative when it comes to our look – which is of course highly derivative of U2’s current promo art work. But we think that if U2 are paying people to build their site they deserve something original. Otherwise we’re happy with U2.com. At least its there!

U2TRL
Here we have ‘New York’ and ‘Beautiful Day’ (ooh, dud note there, Adam) performed live on TRL in New York today.

Is it us, or has the ‘touch me’ part been changed to sound even more like AHA?

Elsewhere on the web, Dotmusic have some killer footage of the Paris Man Ray promo gig.

FANNING THE FLAMES
Edge: ‘The day we start to do something for pure commercial reasons it’s kind of the end. And it would be a terrible fiasco.’ … part 2 of RTE’s Dave Fanning’s talkie with U2 is archived at the RTE website.

TREE OF PAIN
More visibible proof of the aul’ JT’s demise, plus some more extraordinary shots of it alive and um… rooted.

RACE AGAINST TIME
Netscape users may have noticed some odd looking design on these pages. Fear not, the problems have now been solved.

This means we managed to beat U2.com to solving Netscape related aggro. If you want to see the new U2.com site with Netscape (and we know you want to!) – you will have to use this backdoor entry to the site. You won’t be able to see the Flash intro, which is.. um, flashy, and intro-ey.

(If you try surfing to www.U2.com you will be redirected to mini.U2.com and see the old ‘temporary’ site. If you try it without the www, just U2.com… you won’t see anything.)

Tip: Netscape users who want to see the Flash intro anyway can try downloading it here and play it from your harddisk.

STRIKING A CHORD
The new album gets four stars out of four – and a lot of newsprint, too, in today’s issue of USA Today.