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[film] How Ben turns sinner from saint — a profile of Ben Kingsley. ‘With his performance in Sexy Beast, as Don Logan, the psychotic house guest from hell who terrorises Ray Winstone (think about that for a moment), he adds another notch to his thespian bedpost. Logan is truly terrifying; a walking, swearing ball of sick dynamism, a barrel of nitroglycerine waiting to be jolted; a shark in wolf’s clothing.’ [Related Links: Sexy Beast]

[animation] My flatmate is watching Dougal and the Blue Cat — which is the most deeply fucked up thing I’ve seen recently. He recommends it… ‘Something very unusual is happening in the garden. What are those strange noises coming from the old treacle factory? Why is everything turning blue? Dougal decides to investigate in this classic feature length story from the original Magic Roundabout.’

[books] The Digested Read covers The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook… ‘How to survive a mid-air explosion: 1. Take a deep breath and perform 3,000 somersaults in the pike position. 2. Clench buttock muscles and grab hold of your crotch. Hit the sea feet first and swim 1,000 miles to safety.’

[tv] MacIntyre uncovered — Guardian Unlimited profiles Donal MacIntyre. ‘So what precisely is Donal MacIntyre’s perspective? A man who fights to close down abusive care homes, yet describes being backstage with Naomi Campbell as a “unique experience” to tell his grandchildren about. A man who protects damaged teenage models, but gets a thrill from nearly being arrested because he “looked like” a hooligan. A man who would rather spend four of the past five years of his life undercover because, I suspect, he’s so alienated from the cynical, worldly tribe of hacks he’s found himself belonging to. A small-town lad, accidentally handsome, accidentally good at his job, accidentally famous.’

[weird tech] It does not get much weirder than this… Macs in Space. ‘Dennis Wingo is one aerospace researcher who definitely thinks outside the box. A self-proclaimed computer geek, he wants an astronaut to hurl a specially modified G4 MacIntosh Cube computer into orbit in 2001 from the International Space Station.’ [Related Links: Some Apple PR, via Unxmaal]

[weekend highlights] Friday: Blog, Oxford Street, Selfridges, Starbucks, Mark and Spencers, MyHotel, drink, Move on to Soho — more drink, Japanese food, drink, back to MyHotel, drink, cab, home, Try to Blog… too pissed, Sleep. Saturday: Badly hungover, 4 * Nurofen + time = feel better, hungry, read Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?, Eco, Sexy Beast, Blog, Sleep. Sunday: Blog, More Powers, Cast Away, National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, Baddiel’s Syndrome, Blog…

[weblogs] Not Enough Of Me seems to like UKblogs and Comics… which is enough to get you a link on LMG. ‘…Tobey Maguire in his SPIDER-MAN costume (scroll down to the bottom). Couple this with the news that Ang (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) Lee will be directing HULK, and comics fans are issuing forth tremendous collective orgasms… (Yeah, THAT’s a mental image you needed. Sorry.)’

[weird science] Makes me think of Blade Runner… a proposal for a standard way to encode ASCII characters in DNA. ‘Once we start editing DNA on a large scale, we will need to keep track of what we do, revision histories, comment the new genes and add copyright notices.’

[weblog avatars] Put some music on and click on this link… StorTrooperdance… any kind of music seems to work! [Find what I was listening to using Napster]

[comics] Just what you least expect… Ang Lee to direct The Hulk? ‘The story concerns research scientist Bruce Banner, who, after being caught in a nuclear explosion, finds that, when under stress, he transforms into the Hulk, a green-skinned personification of his repressed rage possessing superhuman strength. Banner is pursued by the military for a crime he did not commit. Lee’s version of the film, to be set in Berkeley, will be a big-budgeted, f/x-driven tentpole feature for Universal in 2003. No cast has been attached, nor a start date set.’

[books] Interview with Alec Garland just after The Tesseract was published. ‘…Garland has a knack for seeing and expressing things in a very understandable was, and this is no doubt part of his appeal to a generation turned off by so called ‘classic’ yet impenetratable authors. “I know exactly what you mean,” Garland says. “I think if you asked the average literary editor whether they thought my work was equitable with Salman Rushdie’s, they would say no. Well, that’s not something that bothers me very much and I doubt very much that it bothers Salman Rushdie.”‘

[moley] BBC News covers the new Adrian Mole TV series — The Cappuccino Years. ‘Adrian Mole is not just a figure of fun or soft comedy target – he is emblematic of the age in which we live. The title, The Cappuccino Years, relates to not just the current craze for coffee shop culture, explained Townsend. “It is a metaphor for the fact that Adrian Mole has a mixed race son whose skin is the colour of cappuccino, it is also a metaphor for the Labour government; a lot of froth – very little coffee. Adrian Mole is a conduit for what the country is like.”‘

[weblogs] Nobody fucks with the Blogging StorTroopers! [That page is just asking to be Hamster Danced… ]

[comics] Piercing — a fine and slightly disturbing online comic about a nipple, a ring and a bit of string… as Pete at BugPowder points out the art is reminiscent of Kyle Baker’s. Well worth the download…

[nude] Nudist ‘not a public nuisance’ — BBC News reports on a campaigner for nudism who was cleared of being a public nuisance. ‘As soon as he heard the verdict at Southwark Crown Court Mr Bethell – wearing nothing but a beard – shouted: “Being human is not a crime”. But Judge George Bathurst-Norman warned him: “I would not go away too much with that idea.’

[music] J’Accuse Indie Kids — Tanya and Tom list why they hate Indie Kids… ‘Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity. They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish. Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool.’

[final request] The final meal requests and last statements of prisoners on death row in Texas. ‘1 jar of dill pickles’ — Stacey Lawton. [thanks to Micky]

[politics] Are you a Ku Klux Gran? ‘Not old ladies dressed up in white sheets, rather very, very traditional and conservative housewives aged over 55. There are just under 2m of them in the UK and they believe that a woman’s place is in the home, disagree with the euro, buy British wherever possible and dislike foreign food.’

[weblogs] Never noticed this before — Spike Magazine has it’s own weblog… Splinters.

[old perv] Pass Notes on the Marquis de Sade. ‘The man in his own words: “Go fuck away the livelong day.” Do say: “Had a good day at the orifice, Count?”‘

[books] Friends of Meg’s Shelves. If you have bookcases crammed with books you really want to check this out. From Notsosoft: ‘Apparently, bookshelves are for ornaments and photo frames and candles, while any books that I’m not reading at the moment (and there are many many many), should be packed into boxes and “stored in the airing cupboard or something.” ‘

[distractions] “Do you speak English?” in over 190 different languages… ‘Parla inglese?’

[shipman] The true evil of this killer doctor. Interesting comments from Nicci Gerrard in the Observer on the Shipman Murders… ‘The Wests were murderous sexual sadists, performing unimaginable acts of torture on their young victims. But while there has never been a case quite like it, most of us have some understanding of sex as potentially dark and perverse and scarily powerful. The couple gave us a collective wince of terror, as if their monstrous actions offered a glimpse into a hidden side of our psyche. We called them evil and unnatural to comfort ourselves, because we feared they were human, like us – though it was a humanity taken to extremes and unravelled before our eyes. Harold Shipman does not do this. He offers us no glimpse into ourselves. He will not become a symbol of anything; his story spreads few ripples. His voice is dry, neutral. His face is blank. His eyes are polite and empty. His lips are closed. His heart is a mystery.’

[brands] The Guardian looks at the rebranding of Anderson Consulting as Accenture… ‘Not a decade ago, the amount of money and effort spent on rebranding would have been unanimously dismissed as the most self-indulgent navel-gazing, and it’s not hard to find even senior management consultants who still think it is. But this is the age of the brand: from breathless boosters such as the management guru Tom Peters to the anticorporate writer Naomi Klein, a consensus is emerging that it is brands, not commodities, that are the real centres of economic value. Tommy Hilfiger, the ultra-hip clothing label, manufactures no clothing at all; Virgin is nothing but a logo. This heady environment has spawned its own evangelists, such as Scott Bedbury, marketing chief in his time for both Nike and Starbucks: “A great brand taps into emotions [and] emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions,” he says. “A great brand is a story that’s never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that’s evolving all the time, [and] stories create the emotional context people need to locate themselves in a larger experience.”‘

[history] The secret loves of H.G. Wells unmasked — the Observer reports on a new book on H.G. Wells that reveals his secret love life… ‘The bouncy little man whose tiny hands and squeaky voice belied his success as the Don Juan of the intelligentsia, was loved by legions of beautiful women throughout his life, one of whom credited his phenomenal pulling power to the fact that his body smelt irresistably of honey.’

[distractions] Retro-Remakes… old computer games classics like Manic Miner that run on modern computers. Hours of time-wasting basically…

[more weird science] Forbes profiles Stephen Wolfram another of those scientists with brains the size of planets who are trying to figure out exactly what the rules are that make this Universe tick… ‘One rule, whose number he refuses to disclose, is a “universal computer,” apparently capable of creating the complexity found in the universe, not to mention possibly revolutionizing the way computers are built. It sounds clever, but is it right? After all, it’s a long way from something that looks like a crack in a sidewalk to the hundreds of billions of stars and all their accompanying planets, and every molecule on every one of them, in the Milky Way. “Is there any other evidence,” I ask, “that this process takes place in the real world?” Wolfram makes a small smile. He takes me over to a bank of printers and terminals and pulls out a large sheet of paper. On it are the results of a rule that creates great triangles within triangles. “Now,” he says, “look at this.” He pulls open a drawer, takes out one of those odd seashells, and hands it to me. A chill runs down my back. On the cold, shiny surface of the conical shell, in light brown, is etched the exact same pattern as in the printout.’ [via Metafilter]

[comics] Grant Morrison’s website updates…. Morrison on Lennon (in the Digital Ink section): ‘I was in a band at the time Lennon died and we were all huge Beatles fans (to annoy our raincoat-wearing Joy Division-loving peer-group we had the moptop haircuts, the Chelsea boots, the tight trousers, the psychedelic shirts, the guitars etc – see picture) so I was fairly down when my fave moptop was plugged by a madman but…when all was said and done, I’d been raised a punk on ‘Clockwork Orange’ and David Sherwin so when we went onstage with the band that night we began our set by yelling “THIS ONE’S FOR THE LATE GREAT JOHN LENNON! UP HIS FUCKING ARSE!!!!”. Big? No. Clever? No. Pure Pop Genius? I think so.’

[murder] The Guardian speculates on Harold Shipman’s state of mind… ‘David Canter, director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology in Liverpool, raised the chilling possibility that it could be a forerunner of cases to come. The theory is that as the human race in the 21st century thinks of itself increasingly as nothing more than a collection of physical bodies in an evermore materialistic society, then there will be individuals on the extremes who come to believe they are dealing not with people but with objects. He said: “This is one of the arguments for the increase of serial killers.” Is it possible Shipman came to see his patients as nothing but objects, no more valuable than his lists?’ [Related Links: The Shipman Murders from BBC News]

[politics] Tory Thinktank comes up with a Back To The Future scenario for the current Labour government… ‘By 2003, with another election looming, Mr Tyrell ponders deepening economic problems with a government “beleaguered and isolated”. The following year sees strikes, consumer boycotts, demonstrations and “mild acts of mass civil disobedience”. The transport networks are frequently targeted – perhaps indicating how last year’s fuel protests were a taste of things to come. Following Mr Blair’s resignation, Mr Tyrell predicts a political landscape which “resembles Italy in the 1970s and people talk of Britain being ungovernable”.’

[film] Guardian Unlimited reviews Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. ‘In one scene, the brutal clash of fists and weaponry disturbs the birds in the trees and Lee interrupts our view of the fight briefly, in favour of an epiphanic vision of the birds ascending into the sky: a pleasing moment of inspiration which anticipates the climactic fight between Jen and Li Mu Bai as they float through the treetops themselves: in its exuberance and charm, it has to be one of the most beautiful moments in modern cinema. Crouching Tiger adopts the convention of the wu xia martial arts stories: in formal combat, the rules of gravity are suspended, and with them the rules of narrative and ordinary human possibility – bringing into the action genre a delirious new sort of magic realism.’

[underground] Transport Plans for the London Area — interesting if you heavily use public transport in the London Area…

[music] I Hate Music on the Stone Roses… ‘Attitude apparently consisted of repeating what a good band you are three times in every interview, like Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz saying “There’s no place like home”. Oh, and if you poured paint over your bandmates it would help too, though this aspect of the Roses’ attitude has been low on imitators. Pathetic, really, but a generation of lazy geezers lapped it up – you don’t have to be good at anything as long as you give it a bit of front. And they all formed bands, the fuckers. Cue the 1990s, the grisly low point of five ghastly decades of British rock music, and it was all the Roses’ fault.’

[yawn!] Duvet Days — what I could do with right now… ‘duvet days, n, buzzword; a day when employees have the right to stay in bed instead of going in to work, no prior booking required.’ [via Dutch Bint]

[comics] The Mirror of Love — A complete Alan Moore script. He does panel descriptions in caps?! ‘PAGE 1, (PANEL) 1. OKAY, THIS STRIP HAS FIVE PANELS IN EXACTLY THE SAME LAYOUT UPON EACH PAGE: THERE ARE FOUR HORIZONTAL PANELS DOWN THE LEFT HAND SIDE OF EACH PAGE AND A TALL VERTICAL ONE DOWN THE RIGHT. SINCE I’VE HAD TO FIT THE ENTIRE OF KNOWN GAY HISTORY FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES ONWARDS INTO EIGHT PAGES, THERE ARE ABOUT TWO HUNDRED AND TEN WORDS ON EACH PAGE AND SOME RATHER LARGE CAPTIONS. SINCE THERE ARE NO BALLOONS I FIGURE YOU’LL BE ABLE TO LAY OUT THE PANELS TO ACCOMODATE THESE. THE HORIZONTAL PANELS ALL RECOUNT SCENES AND EVENTS FROM GAY HISTORY, WHILE THE VERTICAL PANELS ARE DIFFERENT.’

[underground] Extremely rude alternative map of the London Underground — I apparently live in “Bell End”. :)

[weblogs] Interconnected has some interesting thoughts on Google and weblogs: ‘This explains why weblogs rank so high in Google. The integrity of PageRank relies on the fact that you only own your own page, so you can’t force much linking to your ‘site to up your rank. The weblog community has several features that break this model: The tendency for links lists to be on every weblog page (and there are often many pages of archives too), and the large amount of reciprocal linking. The community appears as a very highly connected network, and this effect is magnified because of the large amount of the links on weblog pages compared to other ‘sites on the web.’

[travel] One of Philip Greenspun’s Web Travel Reviews — a short city guide for Las Vegas. ‘Personally I never wanted to learn how to win so I don’t gamble. If I were to gamble, I would do it at Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas. Binion’s has all the grit of old Las Vegas, before so many Disneyland-esque hotels were built on the Strip. The founder, Benny Binion, is a legendary figure. His son Ted was murdered on September 17, 1998 by his girlfriend and her lover. The girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, was an former topless dancer half Binion’s age. The death was arranged to look accidental, with Binion taking an overdose of Xanax, a prescription tranquilizer. Binion’s sister prompted an investigation: “That was not Ted . . . Ted would be the first one to tell you that his drug of choice was heroin.”‘

[y2k] Interesting profile of Peter de Jager — the man who spent a decade fighting the Y2K computer problem — on how he feels a year after the non-event. Unsurprisingly, he’s not a happy man… ‘On the evening of New Year’s Eve, Mr. de Jager kissed his wife and boarded the transatlantic flight. At 10 seconds to midnight the pilot began his countdown. “Understand, I was living and breathing Y2K,” he says. “I had absolutely no concern.” The New Year hit, the plane stayed aloft. “I’m officially unemployed,” Mr. de Jager proclaimed to a reporter who was on the flight with him. Early on New Year’s morning, Mr. de Jager awoke in a London hotel room to the ringing of a telephone. Another reporter. “So it was all a hoax!” the reporter said. Later, interviewers alleged he was a shyster.’ [via Slashdot]

[comics] Roger Sabin reviews some of the best graphic novels of last year… Talking about Joe Sacco: ‘For example, he is unafraid to put himself at the centre of the story, thus challenging our notions of objectivity. Sometimes, he admits, this could be too much: “I wanted out, out of there… I wanted to put a million miles between me and Bosnia, between me and those horrible disgusting people and their fucking wars and pathetic prospects…”‘

[politics] Thatcher — started as she meant to go on… ‘Margaret Thatcher’s first recorded intervention in Edward Heath’s cabinet was to propose the imposition of borrowing charges on library books, and the abolition of free school milk for children over seven, which earned her the nickname Milk Snatcher. The new education secretary told the cabinet in September that “she had been able to offer the chief secretary, Treasury, rather larger savings than he had sought on school meals, school milk, further education and library charges”‘

[watching] The Sopranos ‘Unlike Francis Coppola’s operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo’s Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane, intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini’s mercurial performance. Alternatively seductive, exasperated, fearful, and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various “associates” make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.’ [Related Links: Official Sopranos Site]

[weird science] The Observer looks at another attempt at creating a viable fusion reactor — a great piece of journalism about science. ‘…the human culture surrounding the Machine attempts to mimic the Machine itself , which is trying to mimic the universe. The mannerisms of the Machine become the mannerisms of its minions – people rage and tyrannise, overheat, relent, synergise, procreate, vanish, and recur. One idea seems brilliant and fails, while another may start as a quail but then, compressed by other ideas – electrons stripping off, ions colliding – transforms into something sharp and fast, something agitatingly, beautifully right. And then, of course, it is shot into the Machine to see if it is.’

[film] Hoffman Proves His Character — BBC News profiles Philip Seymour Hoffman. ‘And perhaps the most conclusive assessment of Hoffman is that offered by Schumacher: “The bad news is that Phil will never make $25m (£17m) a picture,” he told reporters. “The good news is he’ll be working all his life. He’s quite possibly the best character actor of his generation.”‘

[warren ellis] The Sermon On The Mount — Warren Ellis’ final column for Comic Book Resources. ‘And you know what? Eventually, one day, when you come to your local comics store, regular as clockwork on delivery day, to pick up your pile of cheap superhero comics that you really don’t read any more anyway, that really don’t change anything, that only ever get good for a little while and never ever end? You’ll come in alone.’ [Related Links: Tom Coates thoughts on the Column]

[y2k] Another look back at Y2K — this time from Matthew Fort. ‘A year that marked more debate over the role of alcohol in social violence even witnessed a spot of bother at a tea dance: a 77-year-old grandfather sent a 71-year-old rival to hospital with a broken wrist, broken nose and cuts after being accused of interfering with the ladies. The would-be pugilist was given a suspended sentence, but left court defiant, saying, “I am a gentleman and, anyway, I’m impotent.”‘

[politics] Politics is boring. LMG wants more Christmas photos of Ann Widdecombe and her cats — Pugwash and Carruthers…. and little poems as well: ‘Goodness gracious, what is that? It’s Mr. Pugwash, my black cat. Goodness gracious, are there others? Yes indeed, my cat Carruthers.’

[alan moore] Alan Moore on William Blake…. ‘Friday 2 February, 19.30 Tygers of Wrath. A spectacular finale to the exhibition, featuring music played by Alex James (Blur) and Simon Boswell, Jah Wobble, and Billy Bragg, and readings and performances by Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore. This event takes place at the Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly, W1. Tickets: £10 – £20’

[y2k] Jon Ronson looks back at Y2K…. On Tony Martin: ‘Martin had, for 18 months before the shooting, worked himself into a frenzy. He had sealed his windows, patrolled his property with a loaded gun and yelled at passers-by, “I’ll blow the heads off thieves and machine-gun Gypsies.” But as a metaphor he became a downtrodden rural Englishman protecting his castle against the worst sort of foreign invader, a Gypsy. Hague assured the Gypsy-haters that under a Tory government the “floods of Kosovars and Romanian Gypsies swamping soft-touch Britain” would be locked in detention centres.’

[comics] Warren Ellis on Stan Lee: ‘That man wanted himself completely identified with Marvel and completely beloved, and did everything short of breaking into peoples’ houses and fucking them in the night to do it. To be honest, I’m sure he considered it and was talked out of it by nervous assistants. “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth! I’ll do it! I shall dramatically decant myself into the beds of my best beloved brethren, the Mighty Marvel Mavens nationwide, and bring them all to outstandingly overwhelming orgasms with the purposefully pulsating penetrations of my — “‘

[year-end] The Guardian ponders the big questions for 2001… ‘Any chance Oasis will finally implode for good? British record companies should have a plaque reading “no more heroes” nailed over the front door. Whenever the biz trumpets its latest world-shaking phenomenon, you can guarantee it’ll go straight down the plughole. Richard Ashcroft has tumbled dramatically from rock’n’roll bard to po-faced bore. Ronan Keating has embraced premature middle age with disastrous consequences, and Oasis are only managing to cling on to the gossip columns for all the wrong reasons. Spectators relished Liam Gallagher’s yobbish spats with Robbie Williams and Patsy Kensit’s tearful reports of her life of misery. But the live album, Familiar To Millions, might more accurately have been called Dimly Recalled By Dozens.’

[film] Where in the world is Tyler Durden? Subliminal Tyler Durden’s from Fight Club…

[meat] Give me a Big Mac – but hold the beef. The Guardian takes a look at McDonalds in India… ‘As the stand-off between anti-globalists and multinationals continues, India has become the last great battleground. If McDonald’s can succeed here, without beef, it can succeed anywhere, so the reasoning goes. To woo customers, McDonald’s has devised a unique marketing strategy. India is the only country in the world where McDonald’s does not offer beef. With 140m Indian Muslims, pork is off the menu, too. This leaves chicken and mutton – the ingredient of McDonald’s flagship “Maharaja Mac”. There are other additions to the menu specifically designed to lure India’s middle-class – such as the tantalising McAloo Tikki burger. All foods are strictly segregated into vegetarian and non-vegetarian lines. Even the mayonnaise has no egg in it, so as not to offend India’s vegan sensibilities.’

[comics] The Slush Factory has a interesting interview with Evan Dorkin… ‘This entire industry is made up of fans… very few people come into comics form outside of comics. We get the best creators, retailers, marketers, and salesmen that the comics fan base can provide. That’s limiting a lot of people. Graphic designers, we are getting some of the best people… sometimes we get some terrific people. Most of the time we get “I was always a fan, I always wanted to have my own store. I was always a fan, I always wanted to have my own comic.”‘

[comics] Kathleen reads Watchmen for the first time… ‘On Christmas Day 2000 I finally read Watchmen for the first time. I tried to stretch out the book over several days but I found I couldn’t put it down for more than an hour at a time. I became anxious and snappy whenever anybody interrupted me from my reading for matters as inconsequential as eating. That’s because ten years late I have learned what everyone else in the world already knew: Watchmen is fucking good.’ I was lucky (old) enough to pick up the original issues. There was the longest delay between issue 11 and 12. Waiting for that last issue almost killed me…

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