[people] Various celeb profiles I’ve looked at recently …

• Oh Brother — What happened to Brian after Big Brother … ‘Comparisons with Graham Norton and Julian Clary don’t do Brian any favours, however. He is every bit as original, but he has a beatific charm that allows you to forgive his bitchiness. When Narinder asked, “I wonder which celebrity guy is watching now thinking, ‘Ooh, I’d love to shag that Narinder’,” Brian didn’t hesitate: “Er, Stevie Wonder?”‘
• Singer. Songwriter. Messiah? — profile of Bono … ‘Political gestures have been a part of Bono’s pop persona. Sometimes they have been inspiring, sometimes they have been inappropriate, even tacky. At the MTV awards in Paris in 1995, after French nuclear tests in the Pacific, he received the award for best group then attacked Jacques Chirac, saying: “What a city, what a night. What a bomb, what a mistake. What a wanker you have for president.” Perhaps that sort of outburst goes with the territory of being a rock star. Largely, though, Bono has succeeded in transcending this. It’s enough of a feat to remain musically and politically correct for 22 years.’
• No Pain, No Gain — more on Elizabeth Wurtzel … ‘She is one of those spectacularly neurotic New Yorkers who have to have their coffee a certain way. You know, this much coffee, this much water, this much milk, at this temperature, then stirred anti-clockwise for three turns and then clockwise for two. “Shall we chance it?” she asks the waiter. He is up for it, but when the coffee arrives she takes a tiny sip then abandons it. Perhaps he foolishly skipped the anti-clockwise bit.’

[comics] I invented Judge Dredd — BBC News interview with John Wagner … ‘This was back in the days of Dirty Harry, and with [Margaret] Thatcher on the rise there was a right-wing current in British politics which helped inspire Judge Dredd. He seemed to capture the mood of the age – he was a hero and a villain. That villainous aspect to Dredd’s character – and the Draconian laws of Mega-City One [the post-apocalyptic metropolis Dredd polices] – really caught the readers’ imagination. Occasionally we’d get letters from children who seemed to be agreeing with his hard-right stance, so we made the strip more political to bring out the fact that we didn’t agree with Dredd.’ [via Coffee Grounds]

[books] More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel — the condensed version … ‘It’s December 1997 and I’m checking in to Silver Hill Clinic. There’s this guy there, Hank, who is fairly ugly but is the only one who’s remotely as clever as me. This is perfect as no way can we ever become lovers. Hank and I become lovers.’

[war] Nixon talked of nuclear bomb for Vietnam … [via Metafilter]

‘Kissinger laid out a variety of options for stepping up the war effort, such as attacking power plants and docks, in an April 25, 1972, conversation in the Executive Office Building.

“I’d rather use the nuclear bomb,” Nixon responded.

“That, I think, would just be too much,” Kissinger replied.

“The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?” Nixon asked. “I just want you to think big.”‘

[tv] Evan Dorkin Exposes Geek Chic for Cartoon Network — Dorkin talks about Welcome to Eltingville … ‘”Because of Dorkin’s antipathy towards the “Eltingville” quartet, he plans to retire the group from comics. “I always knew ‘Eltingville’ was something I was going to stop doing,” he says. “I hate these characters, to a small degree. I find them maddening to work on. I’m drawing these horrific, ugly characters acting in a really nasty way.”