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The Smashing Pumpkins have enlisted artist Shepard Fairey to create the artwork for their first album in seven years, “Zeitgeist,” due July 10 via Martha’s Music/Reprise. The red-dominated cover image depicts the Statue of Liberty drowning, while the typeface mirrors that used on the Pumpkins’ debut single, 1990′s “I Am One” b/w “Tristessa.”

“I think global warming is an issue that is currently relevant, time sensitive, and a symptom of the shortsightedness of the U.S.,” Fairey says. “As a broader metaphor, the drowning Statue of Liberty, a revered icon of the U.S., symbolizes the eminent demise of many of the ideals upon which the nation was founded. Civil liberties, freedom of speech, privacy, etc. have been decreasing since 9/11. The sun in the image could either be setting or rising and this ambiguity shows that there is still hope to turn things around.”

As for Fairey’s use of red, he says, “I use red frequently because it is a visually powerful, emotionally potent color. Red gets people’s attention. In this case there is the added possibility that the red liquid could be blood, giving it an even more sinister sense of foreboding.”

“Tarantula,” the first single from “Zeitgeist,” hits U.S. radio outlets on May 22. A brief sample of the track can be streamed from AOL Music.

As reported earlier this week, the Pumpkins will stage two residencies this summer in Asheville, N.C., and San Francisco. The Billy Corgan-led group’s first reunion show will take place May 22 in Paris.

Oprah, it’s time to come clean about The Secret.

By John Gravois

Dear Oprah,

Not too long ago, one of your viewers-a woman named Kim-wrote you to announce that she had decided to halt her breast-cancer treatments and heal herself with her mind. Kim had just seen your two shows dedicated to The Secret, the self-help phenomenon that says we shape the world with our thoughts, and she was inspired to bet her life on it.

You’re an optimistic lady, Oprah, but this gave even you the willies. So you went on the air to “clarify your thoughts” about the Law of Attraction, The Secret’s underlying theory that mind conjures matter. You implored Kim to go back to her treatments. And you told your audience that the Law of Attraction “is not the answer to everything. It is not the answer to atrocities or every tragedy.”

You saw the craziness in that logic, and good for you. But frankly, Oprah, I don’t think you’ve done quite enough to make up for turning the Law of Attraction into the biggest thing since TomKat. Since you gave it your endorsement, The Secret has become one of the fastest-selling books and probably the most successful infomercial in history. The gaggle of gurus who peddle The Secret’s message all over the world are still out there, arguing that it is the answer to every atrocity and tragedy. One went so far as to blame the suffering in Darfur on stinkin’ thinkin’.

That’s a lot to answer for. But don’t worry, Oprah. You still have the power to turn this entire misguided craze into a “teachable moment.” And I know how you can do it. Just have your people pick up the phone right now and invite Karen Cerulo on to your show.

Cerulo, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a book last year called Never Saw It Coming. In it, she argues that we are individually, institutionally, and societally hellbent on wishful thinking. The Secret tells us to visualize best-case scenarios and banish negative ones from our minds. Never Saw It Coming says that’s what we’ve been doing all along-and we get blindsided by even the most foreseeable disasters because of it.

In her research, Cerulo found that when most of us look out at the world and plan for our future, we fuzz out our vision of any failure, fluke, disease, or disaster on the horizon. Instead, we focus on an ideal future, we burnish our best memories, and, well, we watch a lot of your show. Meanwhile, we’re inarticulate about worst-case scenarios. Just thinking about them makes us nervous and uncomfortable.

A glance at a few statistics shows that most of us see just what we want. In a national survey of parents by the Public Agenda organization, a hefty majority said their child never stays out too late, never uses bad language, never wears sloppy or revealing clothes, and never does poorly in school. Only a third of American sunbathers use sunscreen, and Californians are almost twice as likely to play the lottery as they are to buy earthquake insurance. When the American Association of Retired Persons asked a sample of adults what they expected from old age, most said they figured they would always have enough money and good health to do what they wanted. And only 30 percent of Americans have written their wills.

How is this working out for us? Think of all the times you’ve heard the refrain, “I never thought it would happen to me.” The American Academy of Dermatology projects that one in five Americans will contract skin cancer sometime in their lives. According to the author of the AARP study, elderly Americans have a “high probability” of eventually falling into poverty, and the surveyed adults had “unrealistic expectations about their physical abilities as they grow older.” (Most said they did not have a plan for old age.) And death-the event that really knocks the wind out of The Secret-still has a 100 percent chance of happening to all of us, no matter what we think.

Your viewers ate up The Secret’s advice about their personal lives. But I wonder whether they would be as enthusiastic if someone proposed running the government according to the Law of Attraction. As it happens, Cerulo spends a lot of time in her book documenting how even the public agencies designed to prevent disasters often fall victim to blindly positive thinking.

Take NASA, for example, which ignored repeated warnings from its engineers in advance of the Challenger explosion because it was so busy envisioning a perfect blastoff. Or the FBI, which turned a blind eye to a memo from its Phoenix office in the summer of 2001-a memo suggesting that al-Qaida was using local flight schools to infiltrate the civil aviation system. Or the Bush administration, which has been roundly condemned for planning the Iraq war around a set of best-case scenarios. (What do you think The Secret folks would say about Iraq? “We will be greeted as liberators” was good, but “Mission Accomplished” was even better. Visualize, guys, visualize!) A little negative thinking might have gone a long way in all those situations.

But unfortunately, we go to great lengths to make people who think negatively feel unwelcome-something Cerulo would probably point out if you invited her on to your show.

Just think of all the pejorative and even pathological terms we have for doomsayers. Like, for instance, doomsayer. Also alarmist, naysayer, paranoiac, complainer, defeatist, downer, and killjoy. Rack your brain: It is hard to think of a laudatory term for contemplating the worst-case scenario. So maybe The Secret appeals because its batty metaphysics help to keep us in the positive-thinking fold. In a culture that stigmatizes negative thinking and imbues it with fear and loathing, a rationalized escape from worry is its own reward.

But that’s not the liberation we should be after. Instead, Cerulo argues we have a lot to learn from two groups of people who have emancipated themselves from the pressure to think positively. She points out that medical workers and computer technicians-the professional troubleshooters of the world-keep our bodies and mainframes running by being paragons of pessimism. When doctors and IT workers take up a case, they begin by dispassionately assuming the worst and then move up from there. Their protocols demand precise and evolving definitions of the most severe maladies and malfunctions, while they tend to have fuzzy and almost absentminded definitions of health, well-being, and normal function. That’s the opposite of The Secret. While this may sometimes make doctors and techies a drag, it also helped them avert worldwide disasters like the SARS outbreak and the Y2K bug.

Everybody respects a good attitude, but no amount of magical thinking will make the universe obey our wishes. Your audience has gotten extremely good at visualizing what it wants. But now it needs your help envisioning the risks, goof-ups, and unintended consequences that accompany life on earth.

CANNES — Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team onscreen for just the second timein “Righteous Kill,” a $60 million indie production put together by Nu Image’s Millennium Films and Emmett/Furla Films.Shooting will begin Aug. 6 in Connecticut, with some work in Gotham to follow. The two stars play cops chasing a serial killer. Jon Avnet will direct and produce; “Inside Man” scribe Russell Gewirtz penned the script.

Nu Image topper Avi Lerner and Randall Emmett, two of the pic’s six producers, did not disclose additional plot details or the source material during a short press briefing Thursday. Rights to all world territories are being shopped in Cannes.

Emmett said the idea for the film originated from the two actors’ desire to co-star. “They’re friends, and this really all got started from that,” he said.

With typical showmanship, seated in the Nu Image Noga Hilton suite overlooking the beach, Lerner went a step farther.

“This is an event in world history,” he said. “They were in two scenes in ‘Heat.’ In this movie, they are in the whole thing together.”

Both thesps starred in “The Godfather: Part II” but had no scenes together.

CAA, which reps the two stars plus the helmer and scripter, played a key role in the final negotiations, which wrapped in the wee hours Thursday. More casting is under way, but Lerner said CAA clients were not necessarily in line for additional roles.

The existence of such a high-octane indie project is testament to the health of the well-funded new players that have emerged in the past couple of years, Lerner said. While Nu Image is hardly a newbie at 15 years and counting, it is among the companies capable of steering a full-scale, studio-esque production.

“We believe the independent world will do it more effectively, more cost-effectively and with more of the heart,” Lerner said. “When we make something, we allow filmmakers to be filmmakers.”

He cited “John Rambo,” “16 Blocks” and “The Black Dahlia,” some recent and upcoming pics nurtured by Nu Image and eventually marketed and distributed by a studio.

Lonnie Romati negotiated on behalf of Millennium.

Aside from Lerner, Emmett and Avnet, the producers are Boaz Davidson, George Furla and Alexandra Milchan (daughter of New Regency’s Arnon). Exec producers are Danny Dimbort and Trevor Short.

A sad day today. CBS has announced its Fall line-up, and Jericho isn’t on the schedule. Crikey. As I mentioned last week, some of the most fun I’ve had yelling at the TV during this past season has been at Jericho and its scrappy hero, Jake. In fact, in honor of the show’s passing, I shall henceforth make any future references to actor Skeet Ulrich as “Jake, from TV’s tragically-cancelled Jericho”. I’ll never use the words “Skeet Ulrich” again, unless I am asked by doctors to give a scientific name to a newly-discovered affliction of the gall bladder.

With Jericho’s demise, and the on-the-bubble equally-tragic ‘cancelled’ status of Veronica Mars, I got to thinking* about other geek TV shows that ended before their time.

10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Y-e-e-e-s, number 10. I can’t, in good faith, rank it any higher than that. Sure, it was a sad day when we all enjoyed our final, brand-new episode of Buffy. But let’s face it, by the time the end of Season 7 rolled around, Buffy had run its course on TV. Once Buffy had died (twice), defeated a god and “The First” evil, and caved her entire town in on the Hellmouth: where could we go from there? (Well, to comic books, apparently.) FYI, any goodwill that David Boreanaz created in the classic second season has been squandered on Bones.

9. Jake 2.0 The little show that couldn’t. A concept doesn’t get much geekier than this: A somewhat-dorky computer analyst fuses with microscopic nannites, which grant him enhanced abilities. He saves the world on a weekly basis, thanks to the government spy agency that sends him on missions suited to his new technologically-driven powers. Esoteric? Yes. But it also had its charm. Jake kicks ass, but never loses his awkwardness with girls.

8. Push, Nevada Didn’t even survive an entire season. Invented the concept of revealing storyline secrets through “easter eggs” strewn throughout the show. (You’re welcome, Lost.) TiVo’s Instant Replay had never been so useful: until the Janet Jackson incident.

7. Deadwood There’s probably going to be a couple of made-for-TV movies, but the show was cancelled after three seasons. Each season was better than the previous. Makes you wonder if Gerald McRaney (also of tragically-cancelled-Jericho fame) carries some sort of curse.

6. V When it comes to television miniseries in the 1980s, Baby Boomers probably think of Roots. My generation thinks of V. Apparently the original writer and director, Kenneth Johnson, is working with Warner Brothers to get a new series on the air. The question is: will it be a Rocky Balboa, or a Star Wars: Attack of the Clones?

5. Battlestar Gallactica As with so many other shows with striking productions (including sets, costumes, special effects, and ensemble casts): production costs helped to sink this one. At least the new series will make it to season 4.

4. Arrested Development When was the last time so many genuinely funny people (Jason Bateman: who knew?) got together on a show with such an original voice? If you say Desperate Housewives, go away from this blog, and never return again. We don’t serve your kind, here.

3. Freaks and Geeks Sigh. What was I saying about funny and having an original voice? I’m just glad all the kids (except for perpetual-second-rate-show-guest-star John Francis Daley / “Sam”) seem to have found their way to bigger-and-better things. Seth Rogan owns Summer comedies. See: Knocked Up, Superbad, and The 40 Year-Old Virgin.

2. Carnivale Two seasons: too expensive for HBO. How to describe? Ah, yes: as the French say, it had a certain: super-awesomenicity. Not many shows develop the fanatical fan-following that Carnivale had. Not many shows, except for:

1. Firefly The world was robbed of another Joss Whedon series, but gifted with the gem that is Serenity.

There you have it.

“But GWS, but GWS! What about Angel and The Screen Savers, dude? If we were chatting on IM, I would totally rag you out with a ‘super-frustrated’ emoticon face!”

But nothing. Angel jumped the shark in its early seasons, and The Screen Savers ran its course once our favorite faces departed, starting with Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton.

Oh, and about Wonderfalls: I just wasn’t into it. “Boring” strikes me as the right word.

What do you think? Did I miss anything?

* “I got to thinkin’.” Nice. You can take the boy out of the South, but:

UPDATE:  Hello, glimmer of hope!  In one form or another, Veronica Mars may return!

 Google Logos At Google Kirklandplex:

This one was from what Google used on its site in February 2004, for the birthday of French fractal mathematician Gaston Julia.

For Picasso’s birthday, used in 2002.

Einstein’s birthday, used in 2003.

I loved this one as a poster — used in 2003 for the 50th anniversary of understanding DNA.

When the Summer 2004 Olympic games happened.

Another great one wall sized — for the 100th anniversary of flight in 2003.