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[More Blogs][Comic Blogs] | 26 June 2002
[blogs] My Blog, My Outboard Brain — Cory ‘Boing Boing‘ Doctorow on blogging. ‘…operating Boing Boing has not only given me a central repository of all of the fruits of my labors in the information fields, but it also has increased the volume and quality of the yield. I know more, find more, and understand better than I ever have, all because of Boing Boing.’ [via Kookymojo]
[science] Professor Brainstorm — another profile of Oliver Sacks… On Chemistry and School: ‘When I first saw the periodic table it filled me with a sense of revelation. These were the building blocks of the universe, and they have a wonderful mathematical order. Comforting? Immensely after the chaos, caprice and cruelty of boarding school. Human behaviour seemed to be very unpredictable, whereas chemistry was the opposite.’
25 June 2002
[underground] Look Deeper.
[relationships] Things my girlfriend and I argue about — Mil Millington on trousers … ‘This is how clothes work with me: I need a pair of trousers, I go out and buy a pair of trousers, I wear that pair of trousers for 15 years, or until a court order compels me to buy a new pair. Buying new trousers is very quick, because it’s simply a matter of walking into a shop and saying, “I’d like a pair of trousers. I’d like them to be precisely the same as the pair I have on now, except, you know, with knees in them.” Margret is different.’
24 June 2002
[history] Inspired by the Finder’s guide to Deep Throat and Meg… Deep Throat was…
[art] Every Picture Tells A Story — Jon Ronson on a family portrait …
‘A few years ago, John Birt came in for lunch. My father approached his table: “Are you John Birt?” he asked. 23 June 2002
[film] ‘Who’s Tony Blair? he’s the US’s publicist’ — interview with Tom Sizemore … ‘I shared my life with a lot of drugs and bad girls. I was interested in fucking pretty girls whether or not they were nice people or read novels or knew who Winston Churchill was. If they had a good ass and did a bit of blow, that was good enough.’ [via Feeling Listless]
[bb3] When the Going Gets Tough, the Toughs Get Going — some interesting comments on Big Brother 3 …
‘It seems significant that, while this series of Big Brother has seen the most actual sex (that gory little escapade under the covers between PJ and Jade), it’s the ongoing aura of violence (the hostility, aggression and glowering resentment) that has been truly riveting. We might not like to admit it, but it is human nature to crane one’s neck towards an argument – we are all magnetically attracted to trouble, be it obvious (the chair-smashing ruck in the pub), or subtle (the backstabbing feud in the office). While I, for one, found it repulsive and tedious watching idiots like BB 2’s Helen and Paul leadenly flirt with each other, the anger whirling around in BB 3 somehow seems more honest, the resentment intoxicating, the unique misery of Other People impossible to fake.’ 22 June 2002
[history] Deep Throat: Not the Usual Suspects — from McSweeney’s … ‘Richard Nixon: On a dark, rainy evening in the spring of 1973, President Richard Milhous Nixon, tormented by self-loathing, picks up the phone and places a call to the Washington Post. The rest, as they say, is history, my friend.’
21 June 2002
[comics] Spidey and the Curse of the Comic-Book Movie … a look at the what happened to Brandon Lee, Christopher Reeve and Richard Pryor after starring in Comic-Book movies … ‘The curse is also judged to have claimed Margot Kidder, the acclaimed actress who played Lois Lane in the film series of the late 70s and early 80s. In 1990 Kidder was injured in a car accident, suffered through two years of convalescence during which she was unable to work, and was finally declared bankrupt. Four years later she showed up “in a distressed state” in someone’s back garden, having cut off her own hair with a razor blade. She was placed in psychiatric care. Since then her recuperative career has encompassed such films as Shadow Zone: My Teacher Ate My Homework.’
[history] Richard Nixon’s Last Secret — audio archaeologists go after 18 minutes of conversation deleted (by Nixon?!) from a Watergate Tape …
‘The fact that the tape contained as many as nine separate erasures contradicts any notion that it was caused by an accidental press of the Record button. The culprit was either very anxious to protect the president or was a mechanical klutz. Both descriptions, Watergate scholars have noted, fit Richard Nixon. The 37th president was laughably inept when it came to technology. Haldeman recounts in his now out-of-print book, The Ends of Power, that Nixon struggled with the most basic functions of cassette recorders. The Army Signal Corps supplied Nixon with the simplest recorder available so that the president could dictate memos in the evening. But even then, the various buttons had to be marked so Nixon could use the machine without mixing things up. Put a man like that in front of a reel-to-reel, and it’s easy to see how a simple erasure could turn into a clumsy mess.’ [Related: Nixon Resigns] 20 June 2002
[comics] Fake Memo about Superman’s Vision … old article from McSweeney’s … ‘Superman #102: Superman manages to resolve what would appear to be an intractable set of simultaneous crises (including a Doomsday machine, Lois Lane being held hostage, and a Kryptonite hailstorm), by using what are referred to as his “Defeating-His-Enemies Vision” and his “Hail-Reversing Vision.” This sort of thing is quite unsatisfying for the discerning reader, and, to put it bluntly, can only be attributed to laziness at the story-construction level.’
[people] A couple of celeb profiles / interviews I’ve looked at recently …
19 June 2002
[comics] Inventing Comics — Dylan Horrocks on Scott Mcloud’s Understanding Comics …
 ‘The problem with comics isn’t that they are crude, poorly drawn, semiliterate, cheap, and disposable kiddie fare (although most of them are). The real problem is that people think that’s all they are.’
[blogs] London Bloggers Tube Map — stalk your favourite bloggers via Cal’s tube map … [Related: NYC Bloggers]
18 June 2002
[comics] Challenging comics writer Grant Morrison true to form in ‘The Filth’ — brief backgrounder on Morrison and The Filth. ‘…he says, at heart, he is not some wildly perverse writer who happened to fall into the comics field. Despite what you read from him, he says he cannot be identified through his writing. “I’m really a man who likes to be alone and quiet,” he says.’
17 June 2002
[distractions] Limber Tongue Gallery — unusual things you can do with your tongue. What can you do with your tongue? :)
[music] Mad For It — interview with Liam Gallagher …
‘…’I’d like to be in a big house in the south of France,’ he decides, staring wistfully up at the stairs that lead towards the pub’s exit, ‘with a deckchair. And the deckchair is outside and I’m in the deckchair just chilling right out. Forever.’ He says he’s looking forward to being 60 in that deckchair in the south of France. Age is not a fear for him. If he’s in that chair outside that house, he says, he won’t even mind going bald. ‘I’ll moan about it, but I won’t be getting a wig. I will not be getting an Elton John. I’ll just get a skinhead and have it large with a goatee, get meself a part in EastEnders where I can shag the barmaid.” [Related: Vaughan likes Stop Crying Your Heart Out] 15 June 2002
[blogs] Don’t Read This — transcript of an Instant Message conversation from Chris at Do You Feel Loved? … ‘If Osama Bin Laden was gonna drop a nuke into the earth’s core and said “The only way to stop me is… to suck off this monkey!” I’d just be like “Dude, that’s it? Whatever” and go to town.’
14 June 2002
[tv] You ask the Questions… Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen … ‘Changing Rooms was the only thing left in the schedules on 11 September. We had the most phenomenal post bag as a result. People had been through one of the worst days of their lives, and for many that half an hour of the most irrelevant stuff – like me worrying about what shade of green to paint a breakfast room – was exactly what they needed.’ [Related: LLB’s Website, Changing Rooms Website]
13 June 2002
[film] A couple of interviews with Willem Dafoe …
Webbed feat … On his Green Goblin Action Figures: ‘Yeah. How about that? Now that I’ve made this movie, there’s a little bit of a, “What have I done?” thing. I’ve never made movies that kids could see, and now I’m ruing the day some little kid in the grocery store freaks out, “Mommy, it’s the Green Goblin!”‘ Dafoe’s Role as Green Goblin Isn’t the Stretch It Might Seem … On Comics: ‘”Growing up, I was aware of the Marvel superheroes, but I wasn’t much of comic-book reader,” concedes Dafoe. . “It wasn’t as if I was against reading them, it’s just that I wasn’t doing it. My introduction to comic books was through Zap Comix and Zippy the Pinhead. Those are the images I’d see when I visited my older brothers and sisters at the University of Wisconsin.”‘ 12 June 2002
[comics] Grant Morrison.com updates — New Column, new Digital Ink… Scripts for the aborted Invisibles TV Series … Episode 1:
Malcolm’s in the Invisibles classroom, combing his hair in front of a mirror. With only a few little changes, he’s turned his 70s teacher look into Jason King. Shirt open, he picks up a groovy 70s jacket. Checks out the window where a beautiful blonde in a sports car waves up to him. The full Invisibles team is assembled here but they’re little more than vague presences in the scene. Ragged Robin is laying out tarot cards. Tarot trump 20 – the Aeon, which represents the Crowned and Conquering Child of the coming Aeon of Aquarius/Horus. Malcolm slings his jacket on. 11 June 2002
[football] Japanese Phase of the Day from Channel 4 News …
[comics] Karen Berger and an Extraordinary Gentleman. [via WEF]
10 June 2002
[comics] Spiderman Bursts out of the Page — profile of Peter Parker, the Amazing Spiderman … ‘Realising the tremendous value tied up in old Marvel titles should have been easy. But the company managed to botch the job, selling the Spider-Man film rights to three different parties. Even now, argues Win Wiacek, the company is taking little advantage of the Spider-Man film hype to promote its comic books. Selling Spidey figures made in the Far East is more profitable in the short term. For Spider-Man, a successful future is more likely to be scripted in Hollywood than New York.’
[books] Strange ramblings in Woody Creek — interview with Hunter S. Thompson thirty years after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas … ‘I have a photographic memory and a very visual way of working and thinking. Christ, the cops at the [narcotics and dangerous drugs] convention is a scene that will never leave me. And I somehow remember the [Mint] gun club and going out there [for the Mint 400]. I remember long boulevards and cruising them in those convertibles, really just looking for action. That’s what we were doing. When you’re working on a story, you don’t have to manufacture the action, but you look for it with a keen eye. You know, something that will strike a spark.’ [via WEF]
8 June 2002
[bb3] Meanwhile, in the Big Brother House …
‘Jade – “I love you chipstick” 7 June 2002
[plasticbag] Tom is doing a survey about Weblogging…
[comics] Grant Morrison’s Filthy Mind [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] … A Newsarama Interview. ‘The Filth is ostensibly very different from something like The Invisibles – there’s no drugs, magic, pop culture references or tantric sex in this book, at least not so you would know. The Filth is immense, however, and builds to some rather disturbing conclusions about who we are and what we’re for. In some key ways, fans will recognize this book as something of a photo-negative of The Invisibles. The Filth is determinedly uncool, unfashionable and anti-stylish as a reaction to a lot of the more superficial glamour aspects of The Invisibles. The Filth is all ugly people and broken things, but shot in the most incredible colors and light.’
[underground] Tube Map — Cal’s been busy again… ‘I know about 374 connections between 272 stations.’
6 June 2002
[comics] Crack!Comicks — a new site from Grant Morrison … About The Filth: ‘It’s bigger, wilder, uglier and more heart-rending than the best summer blockbuster movie and if, like me, you love the awful smells of failure, shame, male pattern baldness and seedy compromise, then you’re sure to revel in the squirming twists and turns of this exotic international spy-fi thriller, where games of identity, madness and planetary hygiene combine with perverted sex, kitchen sink realism and ultra-technology to blind the mind’s eye and infect the soul forever. Sights to scupper the sanity! Philosophies to burst the frontal lobes! People with combovers having sex!’ [Related: Filth Trailer from DC]
[film] That’s Militainment — a look at what Jerry Bruckheimer’s is currently up to… a new “Reality Soap” set in Afghanistan. ‘Interested to see just how highbrow Bruckheimer is prepared to go, I spin him a hypothetical scenario. Ingmar Bergman is on the phone. He’s making a new film about an old woman who suffers a crisis of faith at a remote cottage in Sweden. He wants Jerry to produce it. “I’d have a problem with that,” Bruckheimer admits. What, even if it starred Liv Ullmann?’
5 June 2002
[comics] Gibbons Puts Two Hats On — Dave Gibbons is doing a new Graphic Novel for Vertigo called “The Originals”. The preview art looks incredible …
 Gibbons: ‘If I was going to spend a year or more on a single project, it was going to have to be something I had a real emotional investment in, something that related to the real world I’ve lived in. Not a science fiction story, although The Originals is not set in mundane reality. Not a tedious real-life autobiography or a thinly disguised philosophical treatise, but a piece that communicated aspects of life that had been overpoweringly important to me when I was growing up.’ [via Barbelith] 4 June 2002
[books] Narnia books attacked as racist and sexist — Philip Pullman on C. S. Lewis, Narnia and the “Republic of Heaven” … ‘Asked about his concept of a republic of heaven, Pullman said: “When it was possible to have a belief about God and heaven, it represented something we all desired. It had a profound meaning in human life. But when it no longer became possible to believe, a lot of people felt despair. What was the meaning of life? It seems that our nature is so formed that we need a feeling of connectedness with the universe. If there is no longer a king, or a kingdom of heaven, it will have to be a republic in which we are free citizens. We ourselves as citizens have to build the republic of heaven.”‘
[comics] An interview with Neil Gaiman [Page 1] [Page 2] [Page 3] … On Sandman: ‘The point about Sandman is it’s the single largest body of work I’ve done. It was about 10 years of actual work. I started working on it in ’87, and finished it in ’96. That was a solid nine years, for eight of which it was coming out in the public, but for one of which was just me. Sandman’s 2,000 pages long. It was 4,000 pages of script. It was done over nine years and it came out every month. It’s still 10 volumes long. […] The only reason I survived Sandman, frankly, is that it was coming out every month.’ [via Sore Eyes]
3 June 2002
[phones] How I became a ‘call’ girl — What it’s like to work on a phone sex line …
‘”Did you have any particular fantasy in mind tonight?” purred Jade.
[comics] Couple of articles about Comic Movies in the wake of the Spider-Man Film …
Angst in his Pants ‘As Ang Lee begins making his film of The Incredible Hulk, the hero of which is a personification of tormented male hostility, it seems inconceivable that twenty-first-century audiences would ever take to their hearts the kind of hero who soared through the clouds in Superman The Movie (1978). That picture looks now like a snapshot of innocent times every bit as nostalgic and obsolete as the images of gay abandon in the 1980 Village People musical Can’t Stop the Music. A Superman with that side parting, blemish-free morality and crisply chivalrous manner would be laughed off the screen today.’ How Superheroes took over the Cinema … ‘Last September changed the world. Even the escapist world of the comic book. Spider-Man the movie is replete with heartstopping scenes in which the superhero saves New Yorkers tumbling from burning or bombed skyscrapers, attacked by the flying Green Goblin, a one-man technologically enhanced al-Qaida. Haunting my pleasure in Raimi’s screen fantasies is the question: “Where was Spider-Man when New York really needed him? Why didn’t he, or some other superhero, intercept those madmen – or at least rescue their victims?”‘ [thanks Kabir] 2 June 2002
[bb3] Meanwhile, in the Big Brother House …
PJ – “aww the games kicked off! … say 10 mins gone… Beckham, has he got his boots on?”
[comics] Preview of Grant Morrrison and Chris Weston’s “The Filth” — Looks Good … ‘”She-Male Nurse”. Best for Wank, Eh? Best of Both Worlds, Some Men Say.’ [via I Love Everything]
[royalty] Putting his best foot forward in the shadow of the Queen — amusing, positive profile of Prince Philip … ‘He is said to view the Prince of Wales as “precious, extravagant and lacking in dedication and discipline”. He disapproved strongly of Charles sleeping with Camilla Parker Bowles after she married. And when Diana came on the scene, Philip felt Charles was toying with her, by continuing to see Camilla. “He told Charles to marry her or leave her alone,” one of Philip’s friends said. “He assumed Charles would drop her but the silly ass proposed and then went on later to claim his father bullied him into marrying Diana.” The rift between the heir to the throne and his father has never properly healed.’
31 May 2002
[omg!] Spiderman Body Painting [Warning: Link Contains Gratuitous Pictures of Blue Penis.] … Painted Naked Man As Spiderman. WHY? DEAR GOD, WHY?! [via FilePile]
[tech] A couple of interesting articles from Steven Levy [thanks Kabir] …
Great Minds, Great Ideas — Levy on Stephen Wolfram and Dean Kamen … ‘“A New Kind of Science” is encyclopedic, a “Ulysses”-like text that applies Wolfram’s ideas to a wide range of subjects: physics, math, philosophy, robotics, economics, logic, even theology. One reason it took him so long is that he kept unearthing new discoveries in various fields. It became a joke among his assistants. “So you’re going to figure out some big thing in this field in the next couple of days?” they’d ask. And Wolfram would say, “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do.” And proceed to do it, at least on his terms.Some scientists aren’t exactly thrilled. “There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories,” says physicist Freeman Dyson. “Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.”’ Will the Blogs Kill Old Media? — Levy on Blogs. ‘…once you’ve created your blog and filled it with links to news accounts of the Pim Fortuyn assassination, snarky criticisms of Bill O’Reilly and witty rants about airport security, how do you get visitors? Judging from the top blogs, the answer seems to be working hard, filling a niche, winning a reputation for accuracy, developing sources and writing felicitously. This sounds a lot like the formula to succeed as a journalist inside the Big Media leviathan. With the difference that traditional journalists uh, get paid. What makes blogs attractive — their immediacy, their personality and, these days, their hipness — just about ensures that Old Media, instead of being toppled by them, will successfully co-opt them. You might argue that it’s happened already.’
[web] The Guardian’s On-Line Section takes a look at what is available on the BBC’s Websites … ‘Every night in the UK, the dwindling number of executives left in the online content business must go to sleep cursing the BBC. Rather than worry about plummeting advertising revenues and failing strategic partnerships, the Beeb is in the enviable financial position of letting the licence fee take the strain, and now spends around £60m annually on its online content, all based around its home page. So what exactly do we get for our money?’
30 May 2002
[comics] The Boston Globe wonders if Comics are Good or Bad … [Related: Metafilter Thread, via Neilalien]
Comics: a vast universe to explore … ‘Reading McCloud’s first book, you may find yourself feeling a peculiar combination of exhilaration and exhaustion. It’s a feeling that I’ve come to recognize as part of the comics-reading experience, at least for me. Absorbing complex ideas through the combination of pictures and words is a new skill for most of us, and one that takes a particular kind of intellectual effort. But it also rewards that effort in ways that neither words nor pictures alone can do. When we simultaneously experience both the visceral effect of pictures and the intellectual engagement of words, our brains connect with the material in a richer and more interactive way. Because we have to put the words and pictures together, we’re more actively involved in constructing meaning, and the effort wakes us up. That’s how it feels to me, anyway.’ Got plot? Complex thoughts? Imagination? ‘Growing up, on the rough streets of Chestnut Hill, there were two groups: the comic-books kids and the others. While I found myself drawn to such wholesome preteen activities as shoplifting Atari cartridges and sneaking Marlboros at the town dump, the comic book kids – identified by the Marvel classics they kept protected under plastic – chose the world of fantasy. These weirdos scared me: A kid named Brian who spent hours at Hebrew School composed a ”hit list” of countries he would like to bomb. A group of peers at grammar school formed the ”Chinese Ninja Club.”’ 29 May 2002
[aftermath] The Battle For Ground Zero — what happens next in NYC … ‘…very tall skyscrapers are out of fashion these days, isn’t there still an impulse, he asks, to see something tall and triumphant at the site? So what about, say, a 70-story office tower with a sculptural steel lattice at the top that climbs to the 110-story height of the original Twin Towers? And what if it becomes more delicate as it rises, suggesting spirits released into the sky? Then again, where will you find a developer willing to pay for 40 stories of unprofitable frosting on his cake?’
[film] Soon to be a major motion picture — The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen … ‘Variety reported on February 20, 2002 that although Sean Connery has not yet signed the deal, he is in final negotiation for the key role of Allan Quatermain. Apparently, the storyline has been altered to include Dorian Gray and Tom Sawyer (the latter to generate more appeal in the American market). The $80 million project is said to begin shooting in the Czech Republic and Morocco in summer 2002.’ [via BenHammersley.com]
28 May 2002
27 May 2002
[film] Biggie and Tupac — review of Nick Broomfield’s new Documentary … ‘If James Ellroy wrote a novel about gangster rap, it would be a lot like Biggie and Tupac, teeming with chancers and casualties and underpinned by the threat of death. “You knocking like you scared,” chuckles the bodyguard who opens his door to let Broomfield in. And yet his timid knocking pays dividends.’
[aftermath] When Uncle Sam meets ‘Stan — another great report from Afghanistan …
‘In her book An Intimate History of Killing , the historian Joanna Bourke looks at the narratives men create to comprehend their own roles in war and, more specifically, in combat. Apparently, soldiers in each war look to the previous for a frame of reference. Those in the Pacific in the Second World War looked to the First World War. Those in Vietnam looked to the Pacific Theatre. No prizes for guessing where the men in Afghanistan were looking. 26 May 2002
[blogs] Pat Kane.com — the Scottish journalist and musician has a weblog … ‘pop, politics, technoculture…& scotland’
25 May 2002
[film] Dinomania — Review of Jurassic Park from Stephen Jay Gould in 1993 … ‘…the mantle of carnivorous heroism has clearly passed to the much smaller Velociraptor, Henry Fairfield Osborn’s Mongolian jewel. Downsizing and diversity are in; constrained hugeness has become a tragic flaw. Velociraptor is everything that modern corporate life values in a tough competitor-mean, lean, lithe, and intelligent. They hunt in packs, using a fine military technique of feinting by one beast in front, followed by attack from the side by a co-conspirator. In the film’s best moment of wry parody of its own inventions, the wonderfully stereotyped stiff-upper-lip-British-hunter Muldoon gets the center beast in his gun’s sight, only to realize too late that the side-hunting companion is a few inches from his head. He looks at the side beast, says “Clever girl” in a tone of true admiration (all of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs are engineered to be female in another ultimately failed attempt to control their reproduction), and then gets gobbled to death.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
24 May 2002
[aftermath] GIs Battle ‘Ghosts’ in Afghanistan — great article about the mopping up operations in Afghanistan … ‘The soldiers would set up nighttime roadblocks to search every car coming north from the Pakistani border, a particularly dangerous task. “If the vehicle tries to roll through a roadblock that is clearly marked as a roadblock . . . they are now hostile,” Fetterman told his subordinates. “That’s hostile intent. They could hurt you with the vehicle. You are allowed to engage. I spoke to the lawyers about this.”‘ [via Red Rock Eater News Service]
23 May 2002
[science] The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything — Steven Levy on Stephen Wolfram. ‘…he’s saying that all we hold dear – our minds, if not our souls – is a computational consequence of a simple rule. “It’s a very negative conclusion about the human condition,” he admits. “You know, consider those gas clouds in the universe that are doing a lot of complicated stuff. What’s the difference [computationally] between what they’re doing and what we’re doing? It’s not easy to see.”‘
[web] Geeks go hack to the future — Ben Hammersley on O’Reilly’s ETCon … ‘It was either a masterpiece of timing, or serendipitous coincidence. Either way, 500 of the world’s leading developers, hackers and alpha geeks gathered in a Santa Clara hotel for the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference last week. At the same time, Apple launched a new machine, Star Wars: Episode II premiered, the X-Files ended, and Napster shut down and then reopened. It was all just asking for trouble.’ [Related: Matt Webb’s notes on ETCon]
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