[film] newsUnlimited profiles John Cusack ‘”It’s something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else’s poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you’re too awkward to do it. It seemed to me that Nick just nailed how men’s minds work when we’re trying to sort out what we do with women. And, of course, it’s funny.” It’s not about anything very much, except what’s going on in the characters’ minds. There’s no great plot, not a lot of narrative. But then, as he says, “There are lots of people who don’t have extraordinary things happen to them and who still live quite intense lives.”‘

[unabomber] Nice article on the Unabomber at Harvard — where he was psychologically tested (to destruction?). “When, soon after, Kaczynski began to worry about the possibility of mind control, he was not giving vent to paranoid delusions. In view of Murray’s experiment, he was not only rational but right. The university and the psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment that had treated human beings as guinea pigs, and had treated them brutally. Here is a powerful logical foundation for Kaczynski’s latterly expressed conviction that academics, in particular scientists, were thoroughly compromised servants of “the system”, employed in the development of techniques for the behavioral control of populations.”

[minogue] The Editor of GQ on Kylie’s bottom. “Kylie, I think, has come out of this rather well, at least as well as GQ. People are talking about her again, stills from her raunchy new video are being used liberally in the tabloids, and Radio 1 have even A-listed her single. So in a way we have been responsible for helping resuscitate the diminutive antipodean’s career. Which is nice.” Three Words: TINY DEFORMED EARS!

[film] Deconstructing Harry — Film Threat on Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News. “GRAFT. One tends to question Harry’s credibility due to the volume of gifts and gratuities he receives from both studios and filmmakers. Not only does he admit it, he begs for it! The only words in a story title that will turn me off faster than “Harry’s Adventure In…” would be “WAAAH! ME WANT PWESANTS!!!” Damn, son. Show some dignity.” [via Ghost in the Machine]

[hells angels] newsUnlimted profiles Sonny Barger. “‘Keith Richards had then threatened to stop playing unless the Angels halted their violence, telling Barger: ‘Either these cats cool it, man, or we don’t play.’ ‘I stood next to him and stuck my pistol in his side and told him to start playing his guitar or he was dead,’ says Barger now. ‘He played like a motherfucker.'”

[minogue] Charlotte Raven on Kylie’s bottom. “Only clearing the net by a couple of inches, Kylie plainly hasn’t spent the day playing tennis. Her racket is loose in her left hand and the all-over-sheen of her body suggests that she’s spent longer being airbrushed in Photoshop than in the elements.”

[kylie] Following on from yesterday’s post — here is photographic proof of Minogue’s tiny deformed ears… and interestingly it took me ages plowing through Kylie fan sites photos to come up with ones showing her ears. Conspiracy?

[therapy] I was very tempted not to blog this story about Minogue…. but I decided I just wanted to mention… um…. that Kylie Minogue has tiny deformed ears! Why has nobody else noticed this? Her head is to big for her ears! Why is nobody in the media covering this? I, for one, am not interested in Minogue’s arse!!

[music] newsUnlimited profiles the Dandy Warhols. “They put the ease into sleaze. Like the story of one of their label bosses who, Taylor says admiringly, ‘is a sleazy, sleazy man. He’s the coolest guy in corporate rock. If we had 10 of him at Capitol our worries would be over.'”

[THE HORROR!! PART DEUX] Not So Soft provides a link to an image of KEITH CHEGWIN’S KNOB ON TELLY LAST NIGHT!! [He’s the nude guy in the pith helmet.] Plenty of commentary about this from UK Blogs: Blogging The Line, I Just Type and LukeLog.

[news] Julie Burchill on Danniella Westbrook’s nose.

[comics] Bill Clinton tells Russia that he had in the past a used comic book business: “”In my lifetime, I probably had ? earned money doing 20 or 25 different things. I’ve built houses, I’ve cleared land, I’ve worked in a grocery store. I had a used comic book business. Obviously, I was a musician. I made money as a musician. I’ve been a teacher. I’ve done a lot of different things in my life.”” Totally weird if it’s true… [via Ghost in the Machine]

[comics] newsUnlimited profiles Steve Bell. “Steve has the idea, writes the words, does the drawing. He can do leader- page cartoons which – in their infinite detail – look as though they must be condensed versions of a much bigger cartoon. (Not so: what you see is virtually the size you get.) He can do illustrations that can dominate a whole page. And then there are the strips. Then there is If?”

[weird world] BBC News asks: Was Elvis Welsh? “According to Mr Breverton, his roots are in west Wales – the name Presley is related to Preseli – a hill range in Pembrokeshire. Supporting his theory is the legend of St Elvis of Muster who, it is said, baptised St David. Mr Breverton claims the family could well have had links with a nearby chapel dedicated to St Elvis – the only one known in Britain.”

[books] More strange quotes from Barbara Cartland. “Men have always made a fuss of me. I still have several admirers who send me jewellery and chocolates. So I must be doing something right” – aged 96. [via Adorable]

[quote] The wisdom of Barbara Cartland: “The trouble with half the Socialists is they’re suffering from vitamin dificiency”

[news] Barbara Cartland is dead. The BBC has a tributes page — some of them sound… well, a little critical. I wonder why? “Perhaps her works were ignored by critics because they deserved to be ignored by critics. Dame Barbara blamed women for the permissive society. She blamed women for teen violence. She blamed women for – well, let’s face it: Dame Barbara blamed women for everything. Maybe that attitude was acceptable a century ago, but no longer. We women don’t need pampered millionaires scolding us for running our lives as we see fit. And we don’t need their implausible melodramas, either.”

[another old link] Sam Sloan, ’nuff said… […Good Grief… Dirty Dancing is one of the all time great movies!]

[football] David Beckham immortalised in Thai temple reports BBC News. “The fan placed his sculpture of the Manchester United player in Bangkok’s Pariwas temple, in a spot normally reserved for minor deities.”

[interview] An interview with John Diamond [Text-Only] in the Observer. Diamond’s columns can be found at The Times Website. [Originally, I’d decided not to link to the John Diamond interview but it stuck in my mind for a couple of days, a friend mentioned it to me and I suddenly realised that columnists in newspapers and webloggers probably have a lot in common…]

[books] More profiles of Martin Amis: [BBC] The Martin Amis Experience [Sunday Times] Middle age is drawing the poison from his pen.

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about David Icke. [Icke’s Web Site] “There is an essential piece of this obviously quite decent man’s brain that is missing; the Quality Control function that allows most of us to cross the street when badly deluded people walk towards us waving a matchbox shouting “Do you want to see my bomb?””

[two random stories] BBC News reports that Malcolm McDowell mellows out and infertile woman gets pregnant after taking viagra.

[books] Final extract from Amis Autobiography — When darkness met light

[books] Extracts from Martin Amis’s new autobiography Experience: “I’ve been name dropping, in a way, ever since I first said: ‘Dad'” and “Mum, do you think I’m her father? – Definitely”

[weblogs] Interview with Jorn Barger – Portrait Of The Blogger As A Young Man . “I try to make it my ethic that whenever I see something that I enjoy, I don’t filter. You know, if it’s some silly thing about a TV commercial, I won’t say, well, that’s too frivolous.”

[books] booksUnlimited interviews Martin Amis. [Text Only]

[tv] Ali G to star in Madonna video reports BBC News.

[film] filmUnlimited interviews Harry Enfield about Kevin & Perry Go Large.

[south park] nme interviews South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

[mayor for london] newsUnlimited reports on: The collected controversies of Ken Livingstone According to reports Ken’s lead had dropped by 12 points.

[the horror! the horror!] newsUnlimited interviews Jimmy Saville. [Text Only]

[uk] newsunlimited has an interesting profile of Charlie Kray [Text Only] who died recently. Here’s the Guardian’s Obit [Text Only].

[tech] Julie Burchill comes out of the closet as a technophobe [Text Only].

[internet] newsUnlimited meets the man who sued the world [Text Only]. Very interesting profile of Laurence Godfrey — he sued Demon a UK ISP after it failed to removed some nasty comments about him posted on soc.culture.thai Usenet newsgroup [BBC News Story] .

[movies] Interview in the Guardian with Oliver Stone.“There’s a few things I’ve been. Hedonist. Moralist. Conspiracist. Misogynist – which I hate because, God, I love women.” Here’s a list of Mr Stone’s Films. Great stuff — my personal favourite is JFK, by the way. However, I don’t believe in any of the conspiracy theories! Okay?

Interesting article about Ali G. Apparently he’s the face of Channel 4?

[Movies] I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange but was amazed by the entrance, I said, the entrance of Weatherfields favorite butcher Fred Elliot halfway through the film!

“How Madonna became one of us” [NewsUnlimited]

[Mayor for London] NewsUnlimited reports that Chris Evans is giving £100,000 to Ken’s campaign.

[my-head-hurts] Interview in The Observer with David Irving. It’s too early in the morning to be reading the views of people like this.

[my-head-hurts] God help us… todays big news is that David Beckham has had a haircut.

[Mayor for London] 101 Things you never knew about Ken. [via The View From Here]

[lists] The Death List — Top 28 Celebrity Deaths and Suicides! [via clip2.com] My Dead Pool? The Queen Mum and Barbara Cartland…

The Guardian shines a spotlight on Alastair Campbell — Tony Blair’s press secretary. He does not seem to know very much about the Human Genome Project. I am not impressed.

Books Unlimited lists Mohamed al Fayed’s favourite books. Here’s a link to the BBC News profile of al Fayed from late last year.

[movies] Interview with Jeffery Wigand. This is the man who blew the whistle on Big Tobbacco and who’s story recently formed the inspiration for Michael Mann’s film The Insider.

The Sunday Times has a profile of Ian Brady. Why bother?

“Whatever happened to Quentin Tarantino?” Is Tarantino the bizzaro Y2K Howard Hughes?

Fantastic interview with Richard Ashcroft of The Verve in News Unlimited.