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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 10 February 2003
[comics] Chaykin’s Mighty Love — Newsarama interview with Howard Chaykin … On his new comic: ‘The germ of this came from my wife — who asked me why there weren’t anymore love comics. I explained that all comics are love comics, because they’re all soap opera. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, so she pushed and badgered me, and ultimately what emerged was the title, Mighty Love — the idea of doing a screwball romantic comedy with people wearing masks. The natural source of that would be The Shop Around the Corner, You’ve Got Mail, and all those stories of mistaken identities.’
9 February 2003
[film] Who’s the proper Charlie? — nice profile of Jonze and Kaufman’s new film Adaptation … ‘…little is revealed about Kaufman beyond what we suspected in the first few minutes; that he is effortlessly neurotic, terminally self-conscious, and spectacularly ill-suited to the latte-sipping, air-kissing, back-stabbing, social snake pit that is contemporary Hollywood. What’s more, the sweating, pacing, fretting Kaufman we see on screen, barely articulate in an interview with an executive, could well be an exaggeration, even a caricature, of the real one. Or, indeed, a complete fabrication.’ [Related: the film trailer, and Kottke’s Adaptation Blog]
8 February 2003
[shuttle] Shuttle Tiles had History of Glitches — backgrounder on the history of Space Shuttle tiles … ‘It took forever to glue on the thermal tiles that shielded the space shuttle from the scorching heat of reentry — nearly two man-years of work for every flight — and the glue dried so fast that technicians had to mix a new batch after every couple of tiles. But they came up with a solution: spit in the glue so it took longer to harden.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
7 February 2003
[books] Brewer’s Unoriginal Miscellany … ‘This is not Schott’s Original Miscellany.’ [via Troubled Diva]
[comics] Matt’s World — Newsarama interviews Joe Matt. ‘The last few girlfriends I’ve had including my current one have all read my comics. They were all fans. It definitely helps. If they can read all that and still want to go out with me the worst is over.’
6 February 2003
[books] AL Kennedy’s top 10 controversial books … [via I Love Everything]
‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S Thompson. Insanity, obscenity, profanity, illegality and reptilian paranoia – but which is more distressing, HST’s lunatic chemical life and Gonzo prose style, or Richard Milhous Nixon and co taking a whole country for a nasty ride? And where, by the way, is the energy of Gonzo now when we need it?’ Brief Extract from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 … ‘On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.’ 5 February 2003
[music] Oh, You Little Devil — profile of Kelly Osbourne … ‘She says Jack, her younger brother, is actually less crazed than he used to be. “The therapy has helped. He’s less violent and more motivated to do stuff.” Are you in therapy, Kelly? “God, no. I tried it once and hated it. I can give myself better advice.” I bet she can. And does. She appears not only absolutely to know herself, and her mind, but also absolutely to like herself as she is, which is quite something. If she is fast becoming a sort of anti-Britney, anti-Christina teen icon — “They can both kiss my fat ass,” she once famously said — I think it can only be good news, frankly.’
[films] UK Film Release Dates — very useful. [via Sashinka]
4 February 2003
[shuttle] Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty — article from 1980 about problems within NASA’s Space Shuttle program … ‘The main cause of [problems] is currently the shuttle’s refractory tiles, which disperse the heat of reentry from the ship’s nose and fuselage. Columbia must be fitted out with 33,000 of these tiles, each to be applied individually, each unique in shape. The inch-thick tiles, made of pyrolized carbon, are amazing in two respects. They can be several hundred degrees hot on one side while remaining cool to the touch on the other. They do not boil away like the ablative heat shieldings of capsules and modules; they can be used indefinitely. But they’re also a bit of a letdown in another respect–they’re so fragile you can hardly touch them without shattering them.’ [via Metafilter]
3 February 2003
[shuttle] Net History… First Mention of the 1986 Challenger Disaster on Usenet. ‘…it appears that the first inflight disaster of the NASA space program has claimed the lives of six astronauts and NASA’s first passenger. The disaster occured 17 years and 1 day after the Apollo I tragedy.’
[comics] Eddie Campbell has announced he has stopped self-publishing for “the foreseeable future”. Some good news: ‘For the rest of the year I’ll be working on a one-off Batman book, writing and painting. (I seem to have got into this gig by a series of peculiar accidents). In a way it could be viewed as a development of my interview with old Batman artist Lew Sayre Schwartz in Egomania #1. I’ll also be revisiting From Hell territory since the book is set in London in 1939 and involves a complicated mystery and a very eccentric secret society.’ [via ¡Journalista!]
2 February 2003
[shuttle] ‘I knew what was about to happen’ — two NASA engineers describe the “inside story” behind the Challenger Shuttle Disaster in 1986 … ‘When the clock reached T minus five seconds the two engineers held hands and braced themselves for an explosion. But to their immense relief Challenger cleared the launch pad. “I turned to Bob and said ‘we’ve just dodged a bullet,’ because it was our expectation it would blow up on the pad.” The two men began to relax. But then, at 73 seconds, the heart-stopping plume of white smoke suddenly filled the screen.’
1 February 2003
31 January 2003
[distraction] Snowball — throw snowballs and get sworn at. Not safe for work. [thanks John]
[politics] The lady’s not for turning – but will her party turn to her? — what’s Ann Widdecombe up to? ‘…she must be more of a threat to Mr Letwin than anyone on the Labour side of the House. She praises him with deadly condescension as “a brilliant brain”, and predicts that, at the next election, the Tories will advocate the detention of all asylum-seekers. “On asylum, crime and tax, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in 2005 the manifesto that we fight on is the same under another name as the one in 2001.” Ambition still lurks. Twice in the interview, she accidentally referred to herself as Home Secretary.’
30 January 2003
[comics] Interview with Grant Morrison by Rich Johnson. GM on the WACKYJAC photos: ‘…think of it as a kind of Victoria’s Secret that should have been KEPT and perhaps the images won’t hurt so badly. Now if I hadn’t been flaccid, it would have been illegal, so be glad I spared humanity.’ [via Barbelith]
[books] Logomancer — a review of William Gibson‘s new book by Rudy Rucker … ‘Cool hunting, advertising, and marketing pervade Pattern Recognition – the book’s acronym is PR, after all. Pollard “knows too much about the processes responsible for the way product is positioned in the world, and sometimes finds herself doubting that there is much else going on.” But The Footage is there to prove her wrong. The Web makes it possible for an independent artist to gain a global following for no commercial purpose whatsoever. Gibson exploits the inherent tension between the monoculture and the emergence of novelty. On one hand, the monoculture lives by assimilating originality. On the other, new art has nothing but the monoculture to launch itself from. It’s one of the happy paradoxes of modern life.’
29 January 2003
[comics] When Grant Morrison had hair… (click image to enlarge) …
 ‘It was great […] I got to do the Flash. The real Flash, not this abomination that’s running around today. One of the most exciting moments of my entire life, believe it or not, was writing the sequence where Barry Allen presses his ring and the costume leaps out. When I wrote that I was sitting there all charged up with adrenalin. I suppose that just shows how sheltered a life I’ve led.’ 28 January 2003
[mp3] Hating Hilary — profile of Hilary Rosen the frontwoman for the RIAA …
‘Commercially speaking, it’s hard to argue that peer-to-peer music-sharing doesn’t have the same effect as walking out of Virgin Megastore with the latest Coldplay CD under your jacket. But by moralizing the issue – here and in a series of ads featuring artists like Stevie Wonder and Britney Spears – Rosen and her colleagues have failed to grasp the fact that they’ve already lost. File-sharing has become part of pop culture; witness the Intel ad that shows a scruffy guy happily burning tunes onto a CD-R. To some extent, at least, the record companies have themselves to blame. Whereas blank CDs sell for pennies at the nearest CVS, the price of new releases continues to creep up in most stores, to the point where movies can be cheaper to own. Rosen, 44, seems to have planted herself squarely in the path of inevitable technological change.’ 27 January 2003
[politics] Hoggart’s Parliament Sketches — an archive of recent articles by Simon Hoggart about the British Parliament. On Tony Blair: ‘…he walked away with the cheers of his own party echoing round the chamber. It must be an extraordinary sensation – even in these days when the Commons counts for so much less – to arrive facing 30 minutes of abuse and complaint, and to leave hearing huzzas, bellows of applause, and the demented waving of order papers. It was like those TV dramas in which Winston Churchill thrills the House in 1940: the noises are a little too loud, over enthusiastic, too actory. It sounded like that. My guess is that Alastair Campbell has had a silicone chip installed in Mr Blair’s Y-fronts.’
[film] Young and Breathless — profile of Paul Thomas Anderson … ‘Anderson’s main characters talk in just the same way — Boogie Nights’ porn star Dirk Diggler; Magnolia’s earnest LAPD cop, Jim Kurring; Punch-Drunk Love’s Barry Egan, a sex-line-ringing, occasionally violent entrepreneur. These men might seem slow at first glance — even gormless — but all prove remarkable: superheroes whose special power is innocence.’
26 January 2003
[comics] New X-Men #136 — a great thread on Grant Morrison‘s latest issue of X-Men over at the comics forum on Barbelith … ‘There were worrying things about Xorn even in his stand-alone issue, and I remember this being discussed – “If I could save every life, I would” – but you can’t. And how do you deal with that realisation – how do you handle death? Morrison did actually say in an interview early on that NXM would be about death, and he wasn’t kidding. Xorn’s already got so depressed he nearly destroyed the world once – what if the senselessness of it all pushes him that close as well?’
25 January 2003
[email] Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978 — the first ever Spam email … ‘WE INVITE YOU TO COME SEE THE 2020 AND HEAR ABOUT THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AT THE TWO PRODUCT PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE GIVING IN CALIFORNIA THIS MONTH. […] A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW. ALSO TERMINALS ON-LINE TO OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 SYSTEMS THROUGH THE ARPANET. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE NEAREST DEC OFFICE.’ [Related: A Brief History of Spam]
24 January 2003
[links] Remaindered Links — Kottke launches a Linklog.
[politics] British-U.S. Union — web site for the The Expansionist Party who advocate UK union with America … ‘Britain is in the wrong Union. Rather than the European Union, a group hostile to Britain and the English language, Britain belongs in the American Union, on the road to worldwide English-Speaking Union.’ [via politX]
23 January 2003
[blogs] Tagline: ‘So Gangs of New York. Hey, from what I saw: the street fights, the spaceships, the elephant, the Transformers cameo, the ornate facial hair; it looked great, you should check it out.’
[reading] At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft … ‘Through the desolate summits swept ranging, intermittent gusts of the terrible antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible. Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which occur in the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I was rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that monstrous book at the college library.’
22 January 2003
[comics] Fans Howl in Protest as Judge Decides X-Men Aren’t Human — the X-Men are apparently “nonhuman creatures” according to a Judge in New York … ‘To Brian Wilkinson, editor of the online site X-Fan (x-mencomics.com/xfan/), Marvel’s argument is appalling. The X-Men — mere creatures? “This is almost unthinkable,” he says. “Marvel’s super heroes are supposed to be as human as you or I. They live in New York. They have families and go to work. And now they’re no longer human?”‘ [via Pete and Pelvey]
21 January 2003
[weblogs] Warming Up — the comedian and writer Richard Herring has a weblog (kinda) … ‘I’ll do my best to eventually have something from every day. Sometimes it is quite hard to think of anything. Especially as much of my day is spent sitting in my house writing, or failing to write. But I figure that there has to be one interesting thing in every 24 hours.’ [via Gas Giant]
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