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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 4 March 2003
[name] Your Not Me — find out how many people in the UK share your name My name is… ‘unique like a yeti or some form of Magic Chimp.’ [via Swish Cottage]
3 March 2003
[comics] Abiogenisis Publishes Moore Tribute — Newsarama previews a tribute comic due in May for Alan Moore’s 50th. birthday. Gary Spencer Millidge: ‘…we quickly got together a wish-list of creators would we would invite to contribute. Our criteria was that they had to be either of significant stature, or they had to have had some kind of relationship with, or interesting connection to Alan. We also wanted to reflect Alan’s influence across the worlds of literature, film and music in addition to his comics writing, and also highlight his influence and popularity across the world of comics, so we have many international comics creators contributing to the book.’ [Related: Press release from Abiogenisis | thanks Stu]
2 March 2003
[computers] Maximum Overdrive — Cory Doctorow on PC Overclockers. ‘…for those bent on achieving the highest clock speeds, there’s nothing like liquid nitrogen. Whether the chip survives doesn’t matter, as long as there’s time enough to boot up, launch a benchmark app, and capture a digital trophy of your accomplishment. Purchased in bulk from chemical or medical suppliers, liquid nitrogen can drop a CPU’s temperature below -310 degrees Fahrenheit – though, after being subjected to that kind of cold, the machine’s other components won’t have much life left in them, either. Still, the message boards at Futuremark.com overflow with legends and advice about handling liquid nitro. “LN2 evaporates off your skin instantaneously,” one veteran writes, “but if it gets on your clothes, it will stick to you – instant frostbite. Work naked for safety.”‘
28 February 2003
[comics] Vertigo X Interview with Grant Morrison [Part 1 | Part 2] … On Reality TV in Scotland: ‘We have McBachelor, where a kilted throwback from the Isle of Eigg wrestles goats to the turf and slaughters kestrels with his fists in an attempt to impress single career women from the mainland.’ [via Barbelith]
27 February 2003
[search requests] Bush and Blair Sing Endless Love.
[blogs] Let Slip the Blogs of War — amusing commentary on warblogs. ‘…it is precisely their unconventional methods that make the war bloggers enemies to be feared. Like Al-Qaeda, the war bloggers are a loosely structured network, a shadowy underground whose flexibility and compulsive log-rolling make them as cost-effective as they are deadly. Kill Glenn Reynolds and a thousand James Tarantos will rise in his place. Try to apply the Powell Doctrine and the war bloggers will elude our grasp. Ignore them and they’ll use our own weapons against us.’ [via Haddock]
[comics] Why Team Comics is Still a Bad Idea — Tom Spurgeon dismisses grassroots/fan-based attempts to revive the comic-book industry … ‘Team Comics switches between two basic modes of entreaty: duty, by suggesting someone who really loves comics would do his best by them; and self-esteem, where one is flattered into believing he has the power to create a world in which his choice of entertainment reflects favorably upon him. The first asks for a cynic’s acceptance of standard business practices, while the second requires an optimist’s imagination to see the current day’s output as the medium in full flower. Stan Lee seized on both ideas to galvanize hardcore fans behind Marvel’s efforts in the 1960s. Today’s Team Comics booster resembles a Marvel Maniac with a slightly broader reading palette and industry-wide ambition.’ [via Neilalien]
26 February 2003
[film] In Your Dreams — interview with Steven Soderbergh … ‘My theory is that he has never figured out what it is in his movies that works – what it is that his audience looks for when they come to a Soderbergh film. I don’t mean technically. Clearly, he has a visual sense that never flags, and any director who could orchestrate Traffic, shot in nine cities largely by himself with a hand-held camera and combining 110 principal parts, has to be something of a technical maestro. But what is his personal component?’
25 February 2003
[film] Being Charlie Kaufman — Tilda Swinton profiles Charlie Kaufman … ‘Charlie Kaufman writes about identity. About escapology. About mortality. About monkeys. About the possibility of ‘facing inadequacy as a chimp’. About minds, refracted, inhabited, spotless and dangerous. About loneliness and its relationship to love. About the dance of despair and disillusionment. About what incarnation might actually be. About, as he puts it, the fact that ‘art always tells the truth even when it’s lying’. And above all about our incapacity to know the answers to any of our questions.’ [via I Love Everything]
24 February 2003
[mood] Meanwhile, at Davos … [Related: Mefi Thread | via ext|circ]
‘The world isn’t run by a clever cabal. It’s run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. A few have both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive — especially about science and technology. All of them are financially wise, though their ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock investing. They pay close heed to politics, though most would be happy if the global political system behaved far more rationally — better for the bottom line.’
[comics] Comic Links …
21 February 2003
[tv] Chris Morris: the Movie — rare interview with “Britain’s greatest contemporary satirist”… On his BAFTA nomination: ‘Morris is even unsure whether or not to attend Sunday night’s Bafta bash. He hasn’t received his invitation yet, and doesn’t know if he’ll have to part with any money. Then there is the obvious fear of terrorist attack. “Just imagine if there was a similar situation to that siege in the Moscow theatre,” he moans, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Just think of it. All those celebrities, held inside at gunpoint. The looks on their faces. Wouldn’t that be terrible?” A moment later he has strolled off on a tangent. “It would be the perfect opportunity, though. I thought about this after the tragic death of Jill Dando, when they believed that she might have been killed by a Serbian agent. [I thought that] if a terrorist organisation wanted to knock out the moral compass of Britain, all they’d have to do is to kill 100 celebrities at random. The entire country would have an instant nervous breakdown.”‘
20 February 2003
[science] You Ask The Questions — Richard Dawkins … ‘Q: If, when you die, you find yourself unexpectedly at the Pearly Gates, what would you say to St Peter? A: OK, I was wrong. But I was wrong for the right reasons. Those guys in there were right. But just look at their reasons.’
[comics] Grant Morrison at the ICA on 28th March:
19 February 2003
[web] Microsoft Gets a Clue From Its Kiddie Corps — Steven Levy on Microsoft’s new IM/P2P app Threedegrees … ‘Threedegrees is also a fascinating experiment in how music can be legally shared over the Internet. After much negotiation, the labels OK’d musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs won’t play unless the original owner is participating.)’ [Related: Slashdot on Threedegrees | thanks Phil]
18 February 2003
[blogs] Fame or misfortune beckons for weblogs? — BBC News on Google and Blogger … Comment from Rebbecca Blood: ‘Google buying Blogger validates the importance of weblogs to the internet ecosystem. You can’t devalue people and the things they care about.’
[poet] Wizard of Oz — Guardian Online interviews Felix Denis … ‘There are jobs, particularly database-oriented ones, for which computers are necessary, but for everyday office life, I question whether they have brought the productivity that their enormous cost, up to £10,000 per person, demands. Nor do I believe they will. Computers are wasteful of paper and time. Once, we’d get documents with a few errors. Now, people make hundreds of copies until each sheet is flawless and memos are duplicated endlessly. Managers get swamped with emails.’
17 February 2003
[blogs] More Google Buys Blogger Linkage:
[books] Eggers v the Establishment — update on Dave Eggers … ‘He is what every young literary publisher in New York would love to be if only the accountants didn’t keep telling them the money is in self-improvement books. In short, Eggers can do it all. What he will not do is sit down and be interviewed, having learnt on the road to literary fame that accessibility is the death of journalistic curiosity.’
16 February 2003
[blogs] Google Buys Blogger — WTF?! ‘…now Google will surge to the forefront of what David Krane, the company’s director of corporate communications, called “a global self-publishing phenomenon that connects Internet users with dynamic, diverse points of view while also enabling comment and participation.” “We’re thrilled about the many synergies and future opportunities between our two companies,” he said in a statement on Saturday.’
15 February 2003
[film] Green Party — Entertainment Weekly asks: “Is the Hulk ready for his close-up?” …’the real test of the movie Hulk will come not in the scenes of him smashing tanks, but in his quieter interactions with flesh-and-blood characters. ”In the commercial, we don’t get a sense of whether the Hulk will emote at all,” Knowles says. Given the past work of director Lee (”Sense and Sensibility,” ”Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), some sensitive Hulk moments seem inevitable, and such scenes could show up when a full-length trailer hits theaters Feb. 14 with prints of ”Daredevil.” But even without them, one expert already sees the beast’s softer side. Says Ferrigno: ”I think he’s cute.”’ [Related: Hulk Trailer]
14 February 2003
[film] Let’s Make a Meta-Movie — more on the movie Adaptation … ‘”I guess it documents my failure to do my job,” Kaufman says. The real Kaufman, that is. The real Kaufman is neither balding or sweaty. He is, instead, a wiry man in his mid-40s, hunched inside a black suit, with a tangle of brown curls on top of his head and a faceful of beard. He wears the polite grimace of someone for who all social contact is inherently painful, the only variant how much. “Although it’s not something I’m good at being snappy and quotable about.”‘
[fight] Who could you take in a fight? — the Onion AV Club asks a bunch of celebs. Alan Moore: ‘Ooh, let me see. Most superheroes, really. When you know them, they’re not anywhere near as tough as they appear. Whoopi Goldberg. I don’t think I’d have any trouble there. Macaulay Culkin. He better not start anything.’ [via I Love Everything]
13 February 2003  [comics] Observations from a Reluctant Anti-Warrior — “cartoon journalism” from Pete Bagge … [Related: Mefi Comments | via Boing Boing]
[blogs] UKBlogs Aggregator — follow ukblogs via an updated feed … Also available as an RSS Feed.
[comics] Seth Returns to Palookaville — update on the cartoonist Seth … ‘Outside of his work, Seth is probably best known for his appearances in Joe Matt’s Peepshow comic, where the conversations between those two and Yummy Fur’s Chester Brown has become part of comic book legend. Do the three still hang out? “Sure. But last night the three of us had our farewell dinner for Joe Matt. He’s leaving Toronto for good.” What, can this trio really be broken up forever? “It’s going to be odd. But Chester and I were friends before Joe showed up.”‘
12 February 2003
[tv] The Hair Apparent — Charlie Higson discusses turning Swiss Toni into a sitcom. ‘…Swiss is a man who has invented his own persona in order to deal with the world. A lot of people do this, they create a character for themselves which they can hide behind. The comedy comes from the gap between how Swiss thinks the world perceives him and how he really is. He’s a man putting up a suave, sophisticated front while behind it everything crumbles to dust. So he has an over-the-top look, voice and manner, but somewhere there’s a frightened little boy peering out at the world from inside this glossy suit of armour.’
11 February 2003
[blogs] Dear Raed — blogging from Baghdad … ‘Powell speech is around 6pm in Baghdad, the whole family is getting together for tea and dates-pastry to watch the (Powell Rocks the UN) show. Not on Iraqi TV of course, we have decided to put up the satellite dish to watch it, yes we will put it away afterwards until the next event. I don’t exactly like the thought of two months in prison just to have 24 hour BBC…’ [thanks Pete]
[politics] If it was a nasty party that won all those elections… — profile of Norman Tebbit … ‘He admits that he plays “spot the Brit” on escalators on the London Underground. But it would be very wrong to see the man who once proposed a “cricket test” for immigrants as today’s Enoch Powell figure. His distaste for “multiculturalism” should not be mistaken as a cover for racism. He recently was the star guest at a dinner to raise funds for medical services in Bangladesh, and repeatedly praises many aspects of Muslim life. “If we had more people in our inner cities who benefited from extended families and from sharing places of worship, we would probably have a better society,” he says.’
10 February 2003
[music] Bjork Video Gallery — all of Bjork’s videos in Quicktime … [via Metafilter]
 ‘I don’t know my future after this weekend and I don’t want to.’ |