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1 October 2000
[music] Radiohead are interviewed in The Observer… ”The middle-class thing has never been relevant,’ he spits. ‘We live in Oxford, and in Oxford we’re fucking lower class. The place is full of the most obnoxious, self-indulgent, self-righteous oiks on the fucking planet, and for us to be called middle class… well, no, actually. Be around on May Day when they all reel out of the pubs at five in the morning puking up and going “haw haw haw” and trying to hassle your girlfriend…”
[degrees of seperation] What is Adolf Hitler’s Kevin Bacon Number? 2! ‘Adolf Hitler was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) with Maximilian Schell. Maximilian Schell was in Telling Lies in America (1997) with Kevin Bacon’ [idea via NTK’s Hitler Filmography… ]
30 September 2000
[burchill] Julie Burchill — Conspiracy theories and Paula Yates: ‘Come on down, Muriel, Justine, Jane, Deborah, Yvonne. The byline was different, but the sob remained the same: Paula Yates Died For Our Sins; Paula Yates, Innocent Victim Of A Feeding-Frenzied Media; Tragic Paula, Broken Butterfly On The Wheel Of Misogyny. Paula, We Hardly Knew You! What Are We Doing? What Does It Mean? Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been? What’s It All About, Alfie!’
29 September 2000
[manics] Steve Lamacq reports on “the most disturbing” moment in 90’s pop — when Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers cut ‘4 REAL’ into his arm with a razor…. ‘Nottingham Forest were playing and bassist Nicky Wire and singer James Dean Bradfield spent their pre-gig downtime in the hotel bar watching the match on TV. James was wearing a ludicrously long shiny mac. During the 15-minute drive to the venue, he sat at the back of the bus and refused to be drawn into conversation. I remember thinking: “Well, this is a good start. He hates me and I don’t like his coat.”‘
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28 September 2000
[sci-fi] Guardian Unlimited interviews Arthur C. Clarke as he promotes his new book… ‘The book, with its vision of a relentlessly voyeuristic society, includes a memorable sex scene on a bench in 2041AD Rome. Who wrote the sex bits, I wonder? “I had an operation for prostate cancer 10 years ago,” Clarke says. “I haven’t the slightest interest in sex. But you have to keep up with reality.”‘
26 September 2000
[walken] Guardian Unlimited accuses Christopher Walken of being mild. Apparently his real name is Ronnie and he wants to do a cookery programme on TV… ‘Measured by his screen persona, the 57-year-old actor is anything but normal. Take the wheelchair-ridden Man With The Plan in Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, or the psychotic mob boss Vincenzo Coccotti in True Romance. Indeed, many thought his performance as the demented Frank White in the super-violent gangster flick King Of New York was his most extreme – until last year’s Wildside showed him whipping his chauffeur with his underpants while attempting to sodomise him at gunpoint.’
25 September 2000
[books] Stephen King writes about the car accident that almost killed him…. ‘He and Bullet left the campground where they were staying, he later tells an investigator, because he wanted ‘some of those Marzes-bars they have up to the store’. When I hear this little detail some weeks later, it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character right out of one of my own novels. It’s almost funny.’
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24 September 2000
[big brother aftermath] The Observer does an interview with Anna… “Then there was Nick. ‘He fooled us all,’ sighs Anna, without a trace of indulgence, ‘and he fooled the nation so much more because everyone’s intrigued and adores him. I’m just like, “Nick, you just need help.” I was so dim, I just didn’t see it.’ Maybe she didn’t see it because he never showed her his little pieces of paper.”
20 September 2000
[cringely] Robert X. Cringely answers questions on Slashdot. Cringely on the origin of Cringely: ‘Cringely came to be as a guy on the masthead who could be blamed for fuck-ups. The idea was he’d be fired from time to time then reinstated when the advertiser (it was always an advertiser) had cooled down. He could never come to the phone because he was the Field Editor — always out in the field.’ [ Related Links: I, Cringely, Accidental Empires at Amazon]
18 September 2000
[yates] Paula Yates’ Obituary from todays Guardian Unlimited. ‘Renowned for her dizzy, flirtatious television persona, Yates seldom received credit for the qualities that made her a more substantial person. Widely read, with a quick wit and sharp intelligence, she was also a devoted partner and mother to her and Geldof’s extravagantly-named daughters, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.’
12 September 2000
[big brother] Is Bernie Winters dead? Yes he is… and here’s his gravestone. He’s buried in Golders Green cemetary along with Peter Sellers.
11 September 2000
[McCartney] Guardian Unlimited interviews Paul McCartney. “It was summed up one morning when we were doing the White Album. I was working all day and till three in the morning and we’d worked late right through the weekend. I was coming into work and there was a guy watering his garden. It was a sunny morning and he just looked at me and smiled, ‘Good morning !’ and I said, ‘Good morning,’ and I just stopped and said, ‘Shit, who’s got it right here?'”
10 September 2000
[80’s authors] Bright Lights, Big City — the Observer profiles Jay McInerney. “‘I think I’ve been trying to prove I’m a really bad guy for 20 years, that I’m not a mother’s boy. But part of me is stuck with being a Catholic boy who is slightly shocked by things.’ Part of him – but perhaps a decreasing part. He once admitted that, as a teenager, he was deeply influenced by the Playboy ‘Adviser’ section and he still retains that slightly tacky notion of sophistication – he really has to have a beautiful woman on his arm. And the emotional detritus is piling up.”
8 September 2000
[words fail me] A profile of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. ‘There is a mausoleum in the basement, the only bit we don’t get a tour of because Van Hoogstraten thinks we will poke fun at it. At each stage, he stops to point out a) the quality of the fittings, b) the uselessness of the people who installed them. I ask if he enjoys being aggravated. “I used to,” he says. “Twenty years ago I would go out looking for it, but now I’d rather stay in and watch EastEnders – for God’s sake don’t put that in the Guardian.” Why not, I ask. Would it damage his image? He says: “I only watch it because Leslie Grantham is a friend of mine.”‘ [Sorry for overusing the Guardian — but I cannot resist a profile of Hoogstraten]
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7 September 2000
[oasis] Guardian Unlimited covers Noel Gallagher and Meg Matthews marriage breakup. ‘Male stars are so used to having the most adolescent behaviour indulged that they need partners who are prepared to knock sense into them. What they crave, what Gallagher probably craved even as he and Mathews groped through a drug haze (“We got to know each other through drugs; when I came off them I didn’t know if I’d still like her,” he said), is a steadying influence.’
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[lone nut] Following on from an earlier post… Guardian Unlimited’s Netnotes covers Mark Chapman. More from the John Lennon’s Murder Site: ‘Two days later, he is watching television, when the picture goes blank and “Thou Shalt Not Kill” appears across the screen. It is the sixth Commandment, as written in The Gospel of St. Mark – his Gospel, and Mark Chapman is shocked at the intensity of the experience, and sees it as an example of synchronicity, giving him a message to go back to reading the Bible.’
6 September 2000
[corrections] From the Guardian’s Corrections and clarifications page: ‘Lady Birdwood whose death was reported in a brief item on page 6, June 29, appeared repeatedly before the courts for anti-semitic pamphleteering, not anti-semitic profiteering.’ Who was The Dowager Lady Birdwood? ‘In a memorably fatuous observation in 1994, Judge Henry Pownall told Birdwood he accepted that she did not intend to stir up racial hatred. “You are not a wicked old woman in that sense,” he added. Birdwood had been convicted of distributing a pamphlet, which denied the holocaust, and proclaimed a Jewish conspiracy to subvert society. She had also suggested Jews drank the blood of gentile children. Judge Pownall sentenced her to a three-month suspended sentence.’ [via Beesley]
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5 September 2000
[murder] GuardianUnlimited profiles Tony Martin. ‘He described his thrombosis (responsible for the limp), his run-down farm, his closest companions (three rottweilers), his love of travel, farming at night, his love of solitude. This disconnected rambling ranging across his life often returned to the first thing he had said that day; what was happening to him was surreal, beyond his control, not his responsibility.’
30 August 2000
[saville] plasticbag.org covers the the whole Saville hoax transcript meme… [#1] [#2] ‘Anyway. Such a document is clearly legally dubious at best, and since there is no evidence attached to the e-mail, it would seem logical to try to assume that it is entirely spurious as well. (In which case, of course, you would be talking vast potential libel damages.) But the strange thing about this particular meme is that most people who received the letter in question (including me – and I consider to be extremely cynical about chain e-mail) thought it to be at least plausible.’ [ Interesting fact: If you type “ Saville Hoax” into Google the first item you get up is a directory entry on Chris Morris. Hmmm….]
[mp3 people] Inside has a facinating profile of Justin Frankel — the man behind Winamp and Gnutella. ‘Frankel hasn’t been able to resist all contact with the dozens of hackers who are working on new versions of Gnutella, according to one programmer who works on file-sharing software. But Gene Kan, who is creating a version for a startup now called GoneSilent, points out that the new software ”can’t have a single line from the original AOL-controlled code — his fingerprints can’t be on it anywhere.” ”He’s peering over the fence,” says the person who sees him frequently. ”They’re doing the revolution and he’s supposed to work on stuff like the transition from Winamp 2.64 to Winamp 2.65 or some dumb thing.”’
25 August 2000
[simpsons] The Evening Standard meets Matt Groening. “I haven’t figured out whether comedy is truly healing or whether it’s merely a bandage on the wound. It is momentarily cathartic but then you see comedians who are great on stage and depressed afterwards. Basically, we all want to be loved. Maybe my secret is that I can’t ask for it directly so I ask for it through a cartoon. ‘Hey, please love my cartoon, while I’ll just sit over here.’ If they go ‘heh, heh’ maybe that means they like me a little, too.”
24 August 2000
[madonna] Enough! Julie Burchill has a right dig at Madonna in todays Guardian Unlimited. ‘In the annals of bad records, this one has legs – it is very conceivably worse than the Birdie Song, Aga Doo and the last Phil Collins combined. Some books, songs and films really do make you believe that the chief ape in “Planet of” was right when he maintained that human beings were lower than chimps: Music is one of them. Give 1,000 chimps access to recording equipment for 100 years and they would not, could not, produce anything as boring as this castrated, truncated funk. Who in the name of God could summon up the motivation to walk into a record shop, enunciate the words, “Please can I have Music by Madonna?” and put their hand into their pocket? Beats me.’
[jesus wants me for a sunbeam] Which of your favourite celebrities is an atheist or agnostic? Find out at the The Celebrity Atheist List. Garth Ennis: ‘I’m an atheist, really. But everyone seems to think I’m some terrible lapsed Catholic who suffered the worst of a Catholic upbringing and had the crap kicked out of him by nuns and monks. In actual fact, I’m not Catholic, and I never had any kind of direct religious upbringing at all, although I was exposed to the inevitable religious influence that growing up in Ireland will give you.’
21 August 2000
[god is dead] Guardian Passnotes profiles Friedrich Nietzsche. ‘Didn’t he love his fellow man? No: “Many too many are born. The state was devised for the superfluous ones.” Didn’t he regard women highly? No: “Goest thou to woman? Forget not thy whip.”‘
20 August 2000
[movies] The Observer interviews Joe Eszterhas on the movie business, politics, Sharon Stone and Bill Clinton. ”Politics has become entertainment,’ says Eszterhas, ‘and entertainment has become politics. Betty Thomas, who made Private Parts and Dr Dolittle, said that comedy in Hollywood was now “funny moments with liberal inserts”, and that is right, because Sixties liberals and political correctness have taken over the industry. And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives – they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet. Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock’n’roll, politics as a movie.” [Related Link: Eszterhas at IMDB]
18 August 2000
[photo] Image of Cary Grant taking LSD. ‘Patient Cary Grant. From a vision, a tough inner core.’
17 August 2000
[TV] Guardian Unlimited profiles The Prisoner and Patrick McGoohan. ‘The last episode, written and directed by McGoohan, completely overdosed on weirdness pills. “Fall Out” had Number 6 gunning down guards to “All You Need is Love”, with no obvious answers to all the questions posed throughout the 17 episodes. On the night of transmission, thousands jammed the ITV switchboard, complaining about the incomprehensible finale.’ [Related Link: McGoohan at IMDB]
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14 August 2000
[interview] The New York Times profiles/interviews Stephen King. ‘If there is a single trait common to most of King’s writing, it is the reader’s feeling that the author is playing God. He can and will make really bad things happen to his beloved creations. He will then watch them confront this evil, occasionally offering aid. Finally, after they’ve been scared witless and have proved themselves worthy, they are welcomed back into His warm embrace, humble and grateful.’
[big brother] The Observer finds somebody to praise Nasty Nick… ‘Even his name bears testament to his mission. Nicholas is clearly a reference to Niccolo Machiavelli, the founding philosopher of group intrigue. And Bateman is of course a nod to Patrick Bateman, the homicidal stockbroker who ruthlessly eliminates his rivals in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.’
13 August 2000
[profile] The Observer profiles Guy Ritchie. ‘He is irritated, for a start, by the way the press have attacked him for having an affluent background and a cockney, or ‘mockney’, accent. Too many jokes about his ‘manor’ having a gravel drive and a swimming pool have made him cross. ‘I never said I lived in the East End for 30 years,’ he complains.’
11 August 2000
[big brother] GuardianUnlimited profiles ‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman. ‘On Wednesday night’s show, the voiceover wrapped up incredulously, “Nick is now the most popular man in the house,” and Caroline and Nichola, those two “brainless rooks”, were captured on the Big Brother sofa, sharing a tender word about him. “Poor Nick,” said Caroline. “He’s so delicate.” Shakespeare himself could not have wrought a better intrigue. Recall Edmund’s defiant cry: “I grow; I prosper: now, gods, stand up for bastards!”‘
10 August 2000
[young william] A Guardian reporter follows in William Hague’s footsteps around Rotherham attempting to drink 14 pints in the process. Not surprisingly he gets a little drunk… ‘”He was in my class at Wath Comprehensive and he was a prat even then,” says Sharon, when the incredulous laughter finally subsides. “A prat. The first week of school, he stood in front of the class – nobody else did this – and his mum was standing beside him, and he said, ‘I would like to introduce myself. My name is William Hague and I’m looking forward to being at school with you all.’ I never slept with him,” she adds, as if it would have been only natural to have wondered. “He’s trying to be a Rotherham man,” says Liz, “and all Rotherham men drink a lot.” It is becoming increasingly clear that I’m never going to pass for a Rotherham man.’
9 August 2000
[young william] What’s the big political story in the UK at the moment? Apparently William Hague used to drink 14 pints a day when he was a younger man. ‘Leading PR man Max Clifford said the opposition leader was “trying to get away from the image of the sweet, precocious, 16-year-old cherub who stood up at the Conservative Party conference.” But added: “It won’t work because it is obvious – you don’t look at him and see a 14-pint man.”‘ [Related Links: Wonderful Steve Bell Cartoon, Guardian Article]
8 August 2000
 [bacon] How many degrees of seperation between Kevin Bacon and Detective Chisholm (from Minder)? [Related Links: Patrick Malahide’s website, Minder fan-site]
[britney] Elizabeth Wurtzel talks about Britney Spears in GuardianUnlimited. ‘The signifier and the signified have gone their separate ways, as is always the case in current semiotic thinking. Men with long hair might vote for Tory MPs, guys with earrings – I mean in both ears – are usually not gay, Princess Zara has a tongue stud, Prince William wears an Eton vest meant to look like something out of Austin Powers, and a ring in the nose is a passing teenage fad that has nothing to do with worshipping Kali or Vishnu. There are hippie capitalists, there are millionaire computer programmers in Silicon Valley with purple hair. And so it has been for quite a while now. What, in this day and age, is really subversive?’
2 August 2000
[war] The Man Who Dropped The Bomb — Newsweek interviews Paul Tibbets who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima fifty-five years ago … ‘Oftentimes, in Tibbets presence, I would see men and women in their seventies and eighties come up to him (once they figured out who he was) with tears in their eyes, to thank him for letting them live full lives. The men had been young American soldiers on their way to a land invasion of Japan. Because of what Tibbets did, they came home instead, and raised their families. They cry now, when they meet him.’
1 August 2000
[pitts] William Reith talks about the Pitt’s wedding photo. ‘This – the luxury, the security, the plunder and price of fame – is what the picture is trying to negate. It’s trying to negate the barrage balloons, the guards outside the wedding compound talking into their radios, the prison vans. It might as well be a photograph of a politician and his wife. It is spin. Here is a couple who want to pretend they are just like you and me. They know the price of milk. Knowing that we would not like them if we saw them represented by more conventional images, they have given us a more likable version of themselves. And they think they’ve taken us in!’
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27 July 2000
[bins] Benji The Binman — British newspapers hire an obsessive-compulsive to hunt through the rubbish bins of the rich and powerful. ‘As well as filling the family home with papers, his daily routine involves repeated checks of doors, locks, lights and other possessions. The illness is thought to have started in his early teens after an older brother died in a car crash. Around the age of 14 he became known as the “bag boy”, carrying around half a dozen bags stuffed with papers and books.’
24 July 2000
[profile] newsUnlimited profiles The Coors. ‘Brother Jim seems more reserved than his sisters. In the words of a recent pop magazine profile, he exudes “the stoical air of a guy used to waiting his turn in the bathroom”.’
23 July 2000
[profile] The Observer profiles John Peel. “As you might expect, Peel is as laid-back a father as a teenager could wish to not get on with, with mellow views on education (‘I always told them that passing exams and going to university was a good way of getting out of Stowmarket…’)”
14 July 2000
[cams] newsUnlimited on Being Caprice. “It made me think, also, strangely, of Mrs Thatcher. In the mid-80s, Mrs Thatcher was interviewed by Russell Harty for a seemingly anodyne series called My Favourite Things. Mrs Thatcher’s favourite things included Bovril toast and, pride of place on her mantelpiece, a porcelain depiction of the recapture of the Falkland Islands by Royal Marines. I firmly believe her downfall can, in part, be attributed to this creepy revelation.”
12 July 2000
[comics] I’m trying to avoid the X-Men but Salon profiles Stan Lee and manages to mention Jack Kirby. It quite literally amazes me that the media still believe the myth that Lee created most of the Marvel characters. Lee was just the editor of those comics. “Jack Kirby returned to the company that year and, lore has it, found Lee sobbing while movers took the furniture out of Marvel’s offices.” [via Slashdot]
[photo] Young William from The Guardian’s Left a Bit Gallery. “Apart from the hair nothing has changed.”
[bulls] newsUnlimited profiles an English toreador. “The gore, shouts and sand seem impossibly remote two days later, as El inglés – The Englishman, a title he increasingly uses in tourist fights – looks back on his dual career as a toreador and supplier of fitted kitchens in Salford.”
10 July 2000
[tv chef] Thank God for Delia — the life of a Chef. “Yesterday he was served with a subpoena as a witness in Marco Pierre White’s libel case against a fishmonger and he’s just found out his brother, Ronnie, is back on heroin.”
8 July 2000
[tory] newsUnlimited takes a look at William Hague ‘It was my first Conservative dinner, and it was a shock. The Party is old; most of the dinner guests were in their 70s. It was hard to believe that this Britain bouffant hair-dos, portly, uniformed chauffeurs, crinoline ball-gowns and floral prints still existed; Planet Tory. It was like stepping back into the 50s. One thing was sure, these people would not be knocking door to door at election time. At one table at the back was a small clique of young men from Glasgow University’s Conservative Society. They are strangely awkward, arrogant, odd-looking, dressed in clothes borrowed from their grandparents; young Williams revisited 20 years later.’
7 July 2000
[news] newsUnlimited on runaway teenage prodigy Sufiah Yusof. ‘In the same email she told her side of the story, accusing her father of ruining his five children’s lives by hothousing them, of exploiting her older brother’s tennis skills for money, of labelling her “Crybaby Soo-Fi” as part of his motivation technique. Worst of all, she said that when she was 11, two years before she started her maths degree at Oxford University and when everything was apparently fine, she had twice tried to kill herself. “Maybe the public will have a different view of you as devoted parents . . . I’m not Crybaby Soo-Fi any more”.’
5 July 2000
[sport] newsUnlimited on John McEnroe’s coverage of Wimbledon for the BBC. ‘McEnroe, like his fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, is a master of deconstruction: he provides a narrative and then unpicks it. “Can Henman ever win?” Inverdale enquired innocently. “Sure, when Sampras is no longer around; he’ll have to slow down at some point – maybe in 2015 or something.” He cannot be serious: well he is and he isn’t, which is perfect for the hall-of-mirrors world of sport. Check out Prolific 2000 for a different view…
[weblogs] Pearls asks: Who is the most repulsive woman in rock? “One of the great mysteries of the world is how Celine Dion manages to sing so loudly with that emaciated frame of hers. Now that same brittle vessel is carrying the seed of her 90-thousand-year-old manager/husband.”
3 July 2000
[books] Quick interview with the great Scottish author Iain M. Banks. “ Though it also strikes me that the Culture would only work with people who are nicer than us – less bigoted, less prone to violence and genocide. We don’t know to what extent aggression is necessary to achieve sentience, consciousness, space travel, a genuinely stable civilisation. We don’t know if we’re a particularly violent species or a relatively mild one – in which case you’d better hope we haven’t been discovered yet.”
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