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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 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]
[books] Extract from A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker. ‘…when the hole in the sock on my foot became intolerable, I reached down and pulled it off in a clean, strong motion and flipped it across the room in the direction of the trash can — although I have to say there is something almost painfully incongruous in the sight of an article of underclothing that one has worn and warmed with one’s own body for many days and years, lying bunched in the trash.’ [via Anglepoised]
20 January 2003
[comics] The Accidental Artist — interview with David Rees the creator of Get Your War On. ‘…despite rumors of hate mail, Rees says the response to the strip has been almost unanimously encouraging. “The positive outnumbers the negative 30-to-1,” he said. No one has made the slightest move to shut him down. “This is an awesome country!” he exclaimed. It’s hard to be sure whether he means it. On the other hand, it’s possible that Capitol Hill has just not yet noticed Rees. “It takes like 400 years for culture to get there,” he observed.’ [via Sore Eyes]
[film] The Two Jacks — profile of Jack Nicholson … ‘Nicholson has often said that his films are “one long autobiography” – the reason he has no plans to write a memoir. With a little poetic – or comic – licence, you can well imagine many lines from his movies being written about the actor himself. In Five Easy Pieces, his character is criticised for abandoning his pregnant girlfriend: “I can’t say much for someone who’d leave a woman in a situation like that and feel easy about it.” “I don’t think he’s overly psychotic,” a psychiatrist says of his character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “but I still think he’s quite sick.”‘
16 January 2003
[comics] Warren Ellis reviews Get Your War On. [Buy GYWO: UK | US] …
 ‘This book, collecting the majority of the strips so far, is an amazing artifact; not only is it one of the few successful transferences of web material into print, but it clearly shows the guy growing into the work and, in a few short months, sees him go from clunky-but-funny into someone totally in control of his materials and timing.’ 15 January 2003
[web] With Friends Like These — Rod Liddle on Friends Reunited … ‘The long, intervening years since school are assumed to have overlaid a gloss of civility, nostalgia and affection but, really, they haven’t. Radgey: you can sod right off, you little thug. So can the snivelling, boring, fat boy who, in a physics class in 1976, we wired up to the mains using crocodile clips. Zzzzapp! They have photos at Friends Reunited and he is still fat. And snivelling and boring, too. He communicated with me, the fat boy, in the manner of a much-loved, long-lost friend. But really he was just curious to see whether I was in prison yet.’
14 January 2003
[comics] Begging the Question — interview with Bob Fingerman the creator of White Like She and Minimum Wage …
‘NRAMA: So that’s the key to success? 13 January 2003
[books] Particular Obsessions — profile of the author Nicholson Baker and his new book … ‘A Box of Matches isn’t just about groping around the house before dawn and lighting fires. It also deals – in exhaustive detail – with such domestic mysteries as hole-ridden socks, belly-button lint and emptying the dishwasher. It features a protagonist/narrator practically indistinguishable from Baker himself and a family suspiciously like the wife and two children sleeping soundly in various rooms around Baker’s 18th-century wood-panelled, oak-beamed house. Even the pet duck that features prominently in the book is instantly recognisable as one of two now quacking in the yard. Baker has made a virtue of celebrating daily existence, whether it is the kaleidoscopic detailing of a single lunch hour in The Mezzanine [or] the labyrinthine sexual obsessions of The Fermata…’
11 January 2003
[uk] A Cynic’s Guide To Entitlement (*cough* ID *cough*) Cards — an internet campaign against proposed compulsory ID cards in the UK …
‘ID Cards are one of those ideas that the public never votes on, but governments always propose. When you’re a minister, having an easy-to-get-at list of everyone in the country sounds a terrific idea. But when you find out quite how many people don’t share that opinion, you’re tempted to think again. Especially when those people are voters. Oh, sure, that’s us speaking cynically. But cynically speaking, we think, is better than not speaking at all.’ [MORE] 10 January 2003
[cloning] A Clone Writes — Lowri Turner writes about what it’s like to be a
[comics] Author Praised for Comic-Book on Palestine Tragedy — more on Joe Sacco and his comic Palestine … ‘Drawing on first-hand experiences, extensive research and more than 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews, Sacco has gained access to unusually intimate testimony, giving space to details and perspectives normally excluded by mainstream media coverage. “I came from the standpoint of ‘Palestinian equals terrorist’,” Mr Sacco wrote. “That’s what’s filtered down in the course of watching the regular network news.” He makes no pretence of the observer’s invisibility and depicts his own initial disbelief of reported detentions and torture. Nor does he shy away from revealing his own ambiguities as a visiting Western journalist.’ [via Egon]
9 January 2003
[blogs] Nico asks: ‘If you kill your clone, is it suicide or murder or both?’
[comics] Two Samples [#1] [#2] from Joe Sacco’s Palestine comic. ”It’s good for the comic. It’s good for the comic. It’s good for the comic.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
8 January 2003
[books] Pattern Recognition — extract from William Gibson‘s new book … ‘Damien is a friend. Their boy-girl Lego doesn’t click, he would say. Damien is thirty, Cayce two years older, but there is some carefully insulated module of immaturity in him, some shy and stubborn thing that frightened the money people. Both have been very good at what they’ve done, neither seeming to have the least idea of why. Google Damien and you will find a director of music videos and commercials. Google Cayce and you will find “coolhunter,” and if you look closely you may see it suggested that she is a “sensitive” of some kind, a dowser in the world of global marketing. Though the truth, Damien would say, is closer to allergy, a morbid and sometimes violent reactivity to the semiotics of the marketplace.’
[comics] Eyewitness in Gaza — Observer review of Joe Sacco‘s Palestine … ‘Approaching such daunting topics with a disreputable and supposedly juvenile medium may seem futile, even absurd, yet Sacco’s greatest achievement is to have so poignantly depicted contradiction, oppression and horror in a form that manages to be both disarming and disquieting.’ [Buy Palestine: UK | US]
7 January 2003
[blogs] William Gibson has a blog … ‘In spite of (or perhaps because of) my reputation as a reclusive quasi-Pynchonian luddite shunning the net (or word-processors, depending on what you Google) I hope to be here on a more or less daily basis.’ [via Boing Boing]
6 January 2003
[comics] Who Cares? — Jack Chick on 9/11 … [via Metafilter]
 ‘Bob, now I know that Allah doesn’t really love me or even care about any Muslim. But Jesus, the Son of God, does. That’s why I must chose Jesus.’
[books] All the Best for the New Year [Part 1 | Part 2] — a cultural preview for 2003. William Gibson’s new book looks really interesting: ‘Pattern Recognition, his seventh novel, is notable for being set in London one year after 11 September, and the business of imagining the future takes a back seat to the complexities of the modern world. In a tip of the hat to Naomi Klein, the heroine, Cayce Pollard, makes her living through an unusual sensitivity to corporate branding. When a toothsome ad executive asks her to investigate the source of a mysterious phenomenon on the internet, which could be the most important viral marketing campaign ever devised, Cayce soon becomes entangled in a world of paranoid surveillance and commodity fetishism. Pattern Recognition is a stylish and ambitious novel.’
5 January 2003
[radio] Northern Lights — BBC Radio 4 are broadcasting a dramatisation of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman over the next three weeks… Terrance Stamp is playing Lord Asriel. [via I Love Everything]
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