[weblogs] Tom has some interesting comments from Keith Waterhouse about how to do a good column in a newspaper. Much of it applies equally well to weblogs … ’13) I is 106 years since Jerome K Jerome related his difficulties in trying to open a tin of pineapple in Three Men In A Boat. Unless you can improve this classic account, keep your problems with packaging to yourself.’

[comics] Quick profile of Dan Clowes … ‘Time spent with his book “Ghost World” — now a film that opened here Friday — leaves you with the sense that the gentleman responsible for it must be some frustratingly inaccessible, enervated, neurotic ogre. But Clowes looks like David Hyde Pierce with a more keyed-down demeanor. If Clowes is a dork, it’s from the inside out, his geek sensibility being something he shares with those who read him. Otherwise, he appears to be surrounded by outer peace.’ [via Comic Geek]

[wtf?] Okay, Swingin’ Chicks of the ’60’s — spot the odd one out: Angie Dickinson, Marianne Faithfull, Sharon Tate and…. Truman Capote?! ‘…in that same book Truman also declares what should be inscribed on his tombstone, “an excuse, a phrase I use about almost any commitment: I TRIED TO GET OUT OF IT, BUT I COULDN’T.”‘

[comics] Roger Ebert on Ghost World … ‘Seymour and Enid are too similar to fall in love; they both specialize in complex personal lifestyles that send messages no one is receiving. Enid even offers to try to fix up Seymour, but he sees himself as a bad candidate for a woman: “I don’t want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests.”‘ [via Link Worthy]

[70’s pulp fiction] Sextacular! — the Guardian profiles the life and books of Jacqueline Susann. ‘…The result was Valley of the Dolls, “the sensational truth about the glamour set on a pill kick”, a careening, gossipy, salacious ride of a read about three women trying to make it, hampered by cads and drugs. She satirised [Ethel] Merman as a blowsy has-been, and based an actress-singer battling with weight and drugs on Judy Garland. Thanks to years of listening at dressing-room doors, her dialogue was irresistible. Caked in kohl, tripping on hairspray (as well as sleeping pills, diet pills and amphetamines), in her Pucci print frocks and lacquered wigs, she rose at dawn to serve truck drivers breakfast – to make sure they’d get her books out in time – then schmoozed booksellers all day, and stayed up late partying with the glitterati.’

[weblog] Pop Quiz, Hot Shot — Marcia wants to know about blogging styles … LMG is unashamedly: ‘hunt around other weblogs for a few interesting links so you at least have something to post?’.

[quote] ‘You’ve become a significant threat to the national security structure. They would have killed you already but you got a lot of light on you. Instead they’re trying to destroy your credibility. They already have in many circles in this town. Be honest, your only chance is to come up with a case. Something, anything. Make arrests, stir the shit storm, hope to reach a point of critical mass that’ll start a chain reaction of people coming forward, then the government will crack. Remember, fundamentally people are suckers for the truth — and the truth is on your side, Bubba.’

[stuff] Metafilter is on holiday so I’ve decided to mine the archives …

• Einstein Quotes … ‘There’s a wonderful family named Stein, There’s Ep, there’s Gert, and there’s Ein. Ep’s statues are junk, Gert’s poems are bunk, And nobody understands Ein.’ [MF]
• Excellent Paul Thomas Anderson Fansite — he’s the director of Magnolia and Boogie Nights. ‘You’re not the boss of me, Jack! You’re not the king of Dirk! I’m the boss of me! I’m the king of me. I’m Dirk Diggler! I’m the star! It’s my big dick and I say when we roll!’ [MF]
• Eric conveys an Emotion — does exactly what it says on the tin. [MF]
• Things you would never know without the Movies. ‘A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.’ [MF]
• Cabeem — another time-wasting game. [MF]

[profile] Johnny Vegas Laid Bare — another profile from the Independent … ‘Johnny isn’t Michael’s invention in the way that, say, Alan Partridge is Steve Coogan’s invention. Johnny is Michael, magnified. Or Johnny is comprised of the bits of Michael — the pain, the rejections — that Michael has hived off, to save himself from the Priory and, possibly, out-and-out alcoholism. Johnny, the stand-up, is Michael at his most brilliantly hurt and resentful.’ [Related: Johnny Vegas Website, link via I Love Everything]

[comics] Anticipating a ‘Ghost World’ — Time on Clowes and Zwigoff’s Ghost World … ‘…most importantly the Clowes sensibility has successfully made it into movie theaters. It’s too bad that it takes a movie to expose vast numbers of people to Clowes’ pessimistic universe of the lummoxes, schlubs, and dorks who made the Wendy’s foodchain possible and who write “comix” review columns on “the web.”‘ [via Comic Geek]

[movies] retroCRUSH Christopher Walken Audio Library … ‘The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He’d be damned if any of the slopes were gonna get their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.’ [via Metafilter]

[movies] The Walken Shtick, Creepy . . . and Cool … great interview / profile of Christopher Walken. ‘Walken looks like if he sat next to you on the subway, you’d probably move to another seat. His longish brown hair is slicked back, and he wears a scraggly beard. His pale blue irises have an eerie intensity, and he seems to have trouble maintaining eye contact. There’s a halting rhythm to his speech that has inspired countless impersonators, including, famously, Kevin Spacey and comedian Jay Mohr. Walken paces his words like this: It’s as, if, he’s . . . following. The punctuation rules, of another . . . galaxy.’ [via Fark]

[lists] Five awful films I’m embarrassed to say I’ve watched:

• Death Ship ‘Out Of A Sea Of Endless Terror… Into A World Of Eternal Damnation.’
• Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan ‘New York has a new problem!’
• Raise The Titanic ‘They said that God himself couldn’t sink it. Now they say that no man could raise it.’
• Eyes Wide Shut ‘So, because I’m a beautiful woman, the only reason any man wants to talk to me is because he wants to fuck me? Is that what you’re saying?’
• Airport ’77 ‘All new, bigger, and more exciting than AIRPORT 1975!’

[movies] The From Hell Movie Trailer is available at Apple’s Trailer Site. ‘I made it all up, and it all came true anyway. That’s the funny part.’ [requires Quicktime 5, link via WEF]

[lists] Five good films I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never watched:

• The Conversation … ‘I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of murder.’
• Paths of Glory … ‘BOMBSHELL! the roll of the drums… the click of the rifle-bolts… the last cigarette… and then… the shattering impact of this story… perhaps the most explosive motion picture in 25 years!’
• The Deer Hunter … ‘Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain’t something else, this is this!’
• The Night of the Hunter … ‘The wedding night, the anticipation, the kiss, the knife, BUT ABOVE ALL… THE SUSPENSE!’
• Dog Day Afternoon … ‘The robbery should have taken 10 minutes. 4 hours later, the bank was like a circus sideshow. 8 hours later, it was the hottest thing on live T.V. 12 hours later, it was all history. And it’s all true’

[intersection] Adrian Mole and Big Brother 2 … ‘I lay awake pondering yet again on the true nature of my sexuality. Did I vote for Brian out of gay solidarity or because he is a semi-erudite Irish eccentric? I garnered the evidence: a) I like Kylie Minogue; b) I sleep with a lavender pillow; c) I am no good at sex with women; d) I am very fussy about my sheets, pillowcases and towels.’

[comics] Scott Shaw’s Oddball Comics … A collection of pointers to world’s weirdest comics. Some classic comics including Jack Kirby at his nuttiest… 2001: A Space Odyssey ‘”White Zero” is the fictional identity given to mild Harvey Norton in simulated superhero “sequences” artificially created in the high-tech chambers of “Comicsville, Inc.” But during one of his synthetic “adventures”, Norton unexpectedly encounters a floating monolith similar to “the one they found on the MOON in 2001 A,D.” When his manufactured exploit goes awry, Norton’s enthusiasm for superheroics dwindles: Another Comicsville Inc. patron observes: “Man, if you can’t make it in COMICSVILLE, you may as well try KNITTING sweaters!”‘ [Related: Oddball Comics Archive, Gone and Forgotten]

[mp3] Top 10 Bootleg Napster MP3’s. Eminenya is well worth downloading … ‘The lush celtic strings of Sail Away clash with the vocal from the Real Slim Shady, speeded up by a factor of about three. A nightmare within a dream.’ [via Popbitch]

[tv] The inside story on Elizabeth from Big Brother … ‘On Friday morning, after Elizabeth’s eviction , Druitt’s mobile phone is almost constantly engaged. The horror on her face at her exit interview, when nude pictures from the Star flashed on the screen, was, says Druitt, a big sham. “She loved those pictures.”‘ [via Popbitch]

[comics] Long, fascinating interview with Grant Morrison over at Disinformation … ‘What I want to see is people doing their own experience and their own life without trying to be clever or trying to be hip or fashionable. If you do what’s in your own head it’ll always be cool because no one else will have thought of it.’ [via Plasticbag]

[movies] Interesting review of Apocalypse Now Redux … ‘Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), the surfing-obsessed, napalm-crazy Air Cav honcho, the additional minutes are more than a madness bonus. They excavate contradictions in his character that were glimpsed only briefly in the ’79 cut, and make him seem both more monstrous and more human–more monstrous because he is more human. His interest in acid-tripping California surf god Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms) now seems less like a middle-aged man’s power-juiced nostalgia trip than a prepubescent’s obsessive male crush. Kilgore dotes on this fair-haired visitor, monitoring his needs the way an old-school movie producer might pamper a star, and Lance–like Kilgore, a fancy cipher in ’79–responds with a stoner’s sense of privilege. (Refusing to surf in artillery-pounded waters, he says: "I’m an artist.")’ [via Robot Wisdom]

[medicine] ickle tackles painkillers … and allows me to dispose of this link I’ve had sitting in my “Must Blog” Folder for ages… the history of aspirin — Rise of the 1p wonder. ‘The trouble for the drug firms is that so many of them make aspirin, and it is so cheap to produce, they make no profit from it. Instead, they are intensively trying to develop so-called ‘super-aspirins’ which are more powerful and can be patented to ensure that they make money. ‘If something is found as a successor to aspirin, it is likely to be expensive. The market is huge – a goldmine,’ said Elwood. But the reason the drug companies don’t like the common aspirin is why patients and doctors do. It’s almost as cheap as chalk – about 1p a pill – and tackles all the big killers: heart disease, stroke and cancer.’

[pop] Make your mind up, M’lud — Amusing article about the the court battle between Bobby G from Bucks Fizz and David Van Day from Dollar over who has rights to the name Bucks Fizz. ‘If all this sounds like a particularly bitter lover’s tiff, it is because the two men are former friends and colleagues. Van Day was one of the best-known bubblegum pop stars of the early 80s in his own right as one half of Dollar, an equally peroxide-heavy act which had 14 hits including Oh L’Amour and Mirror Mirror between 1978 and 1983. “We were fifth in a recent TV programme on the world’s top 10 duos,” he says. “Underneath us were people like Ike and Tina Turner.” ‘

[comics] Borderline the new PDF format magazine about comics launches… Two versions are available: High Resolution / Low Resolution … It contains news, reviews, articles and an interview with Bryan Talbot… ‘Borderline is the result of a renaissance in British fan circles during the last two years but with the use of the internet for delivery we hope to offer something with points of interest to readers of comics anywhere in the world.’